Jean Petit

The recorded working language is Middle French and medieval Latin. Works named in the authority record are La justification de Jean Sans Peur, La complainte de l'Eglise, La disputoison des pastourelles, Hore de conceptione beate Marie virginis, Le livre du champ d'or et des III nobles Marteaulx and Le livre du miracle de Basqueville.

Some historians (César-Egasse du Boulay, Luke Wadding) say he was a Franciscan, others that he was a Dominican: as a matter of fact, he never was a member of any religious order. He owed his education to the generosity of the Duke of Burgundy, who granted him a pension. In the first extant document that records his name, he is called Master of Arts (16 August 1385). Two years later his name occurs in the list sent by the University of Paris (31 July 1387) to the Avignonian Antipope Clement VII, recommending its masters for vacant benefices. He became a licentiate in theology in May 1400, and received the degree of Doctor before 1403, since he is mentioned in that year on the roll of the university as an active member of the theological faculty of Paris. In April 1407, he formed part of the embassy sent by Charles VI of France to urge the Avignonian Antipope Benedict XIII and Pope Gregory XII to abdicate and thus reunite Christendom. This embassy had just returned to Paris, after a fruitless journey, when an event took place that gave Jean Petit a great notoriety in history.

• Illustration — The assassination of the Duke of Orléans On 23 November 1407, assassins in the pay of John the Fearless, Duke of Burgundy, murdered Louis I, Duke of Orléans, brother of the mentally ill king Charles VI. The unpopular Duke of Orléans was widely held responsible for public disorder and heavy, arbitrary taxation. The University of Paris bitterly opposed him for having renewed obedience to Avignon antipope Benedict XIII. The Duke of Burgundy, on the contrary, was very popular, regarded as a friend of the commoners and an opponent of abusive taxation, while the university supported him in opposition to the Avignon antipope. Excluded from the royal council after the assassination, he withdrew to his estates in Flanders, raised an army, and called around him several of the university professors, including Jean Petit himself, who for three years had been attached to his suite and was receiving a pension from him. Thus supported, Jean Petit declared that he would go to Paris and justify himself. The royal council forbade him to enter Paris, but he came anyway and was received with popular acclaim. He demanded an audience with the king. It was granted on 8 March 1408, in the Hôtel de St-Paul, where the court habitually resided. There, before the Dauphin, King of Sicily, Cardinal de Bar, Dukes of Anjou, Berry, Brittany, Bar, and Lorraine; the rector of the University of Paris, and many counts, barons, knights, and citizens, Jean Petit delivered on behalf of his client an address bristling with propositions, syllogisms, and biblical quotations. The 1913 Catholic Encyclopedia summarizes his argument as follows: This thesis seemed preposterous to some members of the assembly; but the Duke of Burgundy was present with his troops, ready to suppress any attempt at reply, and further he was in the good graces of the university; so he had no difficulty in obtaining letters of pardon from the king. As for Jean Petit, who in his address admitted that he was receiving, and expected still to receive, a pension from the Duke of Burgundy, he found it more prudent to withdraw from Paris and retire to the estate of the Duke of Burgundy at Hesdin, Artois, where he died in a house of his protector, regretting, it is said, that he had ever allowed himself to defend such a proposition.

Petit's career occurred at the time of the Western Schism. France sided with the Avignonian Antipope Clement VII, but every one was anxious for reunion. Petit gave expression to this desire in his Complainte de l'Eglise, a poem discovered in the National Library, Paris. This poem of 322 verses was composed in 1394. He had already written four others, the Disputation des pastourelles (1388), defending the Immaculate Conception; the Livre du champ d'or; the Livre du miracle de Basqueville (1389); and the Vie de Monsieur saint Léonard, about the same time. They offer an unflattering picture of the society of the day.