Counsel amidst uncertainty: conceptual traditions of consilium and their medieval adaptations, c. 1150 – c. 1270

Thesis

This thesis examines conceptions of counsel (consilium) within the broader intellectual milieu of England and France from c. 1150 to c. 1270. In all its forms, counsel functioned as a means of mitigating life’s uncertainties and contingencies, but consilium was also a multifaceted concept, encompassing multiple positions between in-process deliberation and settled plan, individual and multilateral involvement, and divine and human insight. The very unity of its terminology enabled the influence of one type of counsel to be readily felt upon others: divine counsel had implications for human counsel, private deliberation for public debate. Understanding how consilium is utilised in this period therefore requires engagement with a broad range of contemporary sources.

Investigating consilium on both sides of the Channel grounds this inquiry in the broader intellectual culture influencing both English and French schools and political courts, while the specified period encompasses important intellectual and societal changes such as the development of canon law and the rise of the universities and mendicant orders. By this period, conceptions of consilium were being drawn from a variety of overlapping discourses, both longstanding and more recently emerging. The language of counsel was therefore derived from a wide spectrum of sources from diverse genres, including theology, philosophy, law, rhetoric, and historiography, all of which contributed to the contemporary definition and limits of counsel. Through an examination of the works of contemporary writers and the authorities upon which they frequently relied, this thesis teases out the various facets of consilium– dealing in successive chapters with key elements of spiritual, deliberative, moral, rhetorical, and political counsel – while recognising that these facets often bled into one another in contemporary usage. The language and associations with which consilium was surrounded could be deployed in both intellectual and political contexts to support a diversity of models of ‘good counsel’.

Authors: Lavallée, E

• DOI: 10.5287/ora-pm82x86r5
• Type of award: DPhil
• Level of award: Doctoral
• Awarding institution: University of Oxford
• Language: English
• Keywords: preaching; political languages; medieval; deliberation; spiritual counsel; advice
• Subjects: England--Intellectual life--1066-1485; Philosophy, Medieval; Rhetoric, Medieval; France--Intellectual life--To 1500