The Livre des fais du bon messire Jehan le Maingre is one of the most famous chivalric biographies of the middle ages. Written in 1409, it presented the controversial figure of Jean II Le Meingre, known as Boucicaut (1366– 1421), as a chivalric hero and role model. It is an important and, at times, unique source for the study of the history of warfare and crusading, as well as French, Italian and papal politics at the beginning of the fifteenth century. It also offers an important case-study through which to explore the complex and energetic debates surrounding knighthood in France during the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, themes that I first addressed from a broader perspective in a monograph entitled Chivalry and the Ideals of Knighthood in France During the Hundred Years War (2013).

I first began to look more closely at the Livre des fais while collaborating with Jane Taylor on an English translation of the text. Up to that point, my understanding and appreciation of this text was framed by the excellent work of Denis Lalande who had first edited the text in 1985 and then published an important modern biography of Boucicaut (Jean II le Meingre, dit Le Boucicault (1366–1421): étude d’une biographie héroïque) three years later. The more closely that I read and studied the Livre des fais, the more dissatisfied I became with recent debates regarding the identity of the author, and hence the position of this text between aristocratic and learned clerical cultures, as well as the scholarly consensus that the biography championed a conservative, nostalgic vision of chivalry at a time of mounting crisis for the French aristocracy.

In this book, I argue that the Livre des fais was a collaborative effort between the famous scholar Nicolas de Gonesse and the lay companions of Boucicaut, including most notably the squire named Jean d’Ony. Their efforts were directed firmly at the goal of defending the reputation of the beleaguered marshal, rather than offering wider statements about the state of the French aristocracy in the year 1409. Above all the biography set out detailed explanations for his failure to force the two rival popes to meet to bring an end to the Schism, to save Pisa from falling into the hands of the Florentines, for military defeats at the hands of the Turks and the Venetians, and for the degenerating situation in Genoa.