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The Boke of Brut, attributed to Thomas Castleford and completed soon after 1327, was handed down in the form of a single fifteenth-century manuscript. It is in the long and flourishing Brut tradition, but has its own specific characteristics. One of the most interesting is its insistence on the idea of the law. This long text of 39,439 verses defines a good king, his political power, and the forms his action should take. It outlines what concerns he should have at all times – specifically the common good – and underscores the indispensable collaboration between royal and sacerdotal power. Castleford also concerns himself with the Breton/English people (the question of national identity features prominently in the chronicle), who are supposed to find peace and prosperity within their vast territory. This can be assured by each person respecting his position, observing the law and its rules and ensuring that one's own rights as well as those of others prevail. In the view of Thomas Castleford, unity and a single authority were essential to avoid chaos. They justified a call for a nationalistic crusade, with Castleford taking up the idea of a just war, which several theologians had helped to define. “Faith, Law, Country”: this, it seems, was Castleford's credo throughout the chronicle.

Guillaume de Bruc's confession, recorded before the Châtelet in Paris in September 1389, reveals, like all prisoners' confessions preserved in the criminal record for their edifying characteristics, an unusual portrait of a gentleman. De Bruc, the youngest in a noble Breton family, joined the military at a very young age, but followed the king's enemies in the war of succession in Brittany, after leaving Du Guesclin's forces. Although Guillaume de Bruc admitted to having participated in several pillages at the side of Captain Teste-Noire, he also confessed to considerable pilferage and theft committed on his travels. Notwithstanding the impressive list of his misdeeds, it was as a traitor to the king that he was executed.

The head of King Lancelot the Elder, Sir Lancelot's ancestor who was assassinated by the Duke of Belle Garde, was plunged into a miraculous, boiling fountain, while his body, guarded by two lions, was preserved in a special tomb from which drops of blood with curative properties leached. On a textual level, the references to the marvels that followed the death of Lancelot the Elder in the Estoire del saint Graal, the Lancelot propre, and the Queste del Saint Graal attest to the construction of the Lancelot-Graal cycle, integrating a dimension that is both historical and genealogical. Yet, the iconography of the illuminated manuscripts of the Lancelot-Grail concentrate more on creating a series out of related episodes than on constructing a truly cyclical structure. Re-using composition and iconographic motif strengthens the coherence of the chivalrous, marvelous universe thus created, without necessarily implying a circular effect.

This paper returns to examining the concept of fidelity, which is central to Carolingian political ideology and relationships within the aristocracy. It looks at the example of Bégon and Bérenger, two faithful followers of Louis the Pious who definitely succeeded one another as heads of the earldom of Toulouse. It is important to understand the basis of this unfailing fidelity at a time of decreasing fidelity among the powerful. Although family ties and friendship linking these two counts to Louis the Pious partially account for this, the force of the ideology of service, which grew within the entourage of the early Carolingian kings, should not be disregarded. Fidelity was also a way for them to accede to the highest level of power. Indeed, these two counts had considerable responsibility at the heart of the Regnum of Aquitaine as Counts of Toulouse, while having a primary role at court. However, their rise was not only the result of their loyalty, but also of Louis the Pious's desire to have sufficiently powerful agents to apply his military and religious policy effectively. In this, Louis the Pious showed good, clear political sense. These two counts were particularly active agents in the monastic renewal and the defense of the southern borders of the Kingdom of Aquitaine. For his part, Bérenger contributed to upholding the authority of Louis the Pious in the Midi against the machinations of King Pépin I and Bernard de Septimanie.

In 1316, the canon of Saint-Junien, Étienne Maleu, concluded the historiographical work he had spent several years writing, having accomplished what he had set out to do: record the history of his chapter from the year 500 so as to preserve memory of the facts he considered important. To achieve this, he used a wide variety of sources – hagiographical, historical, diplomatic, and oral – and he selected the information very specifically. This study is primarily interested in Étienne Maleu's sources, his historical methods, and his objectives. His work should be restored to its singular space and context, that is, Limousin at the end of the fourteenth century, a land where medieval historiography was particularly flourishing. Maleu was heir to a long tradition of Limousin chroniclers, and it is fitting that his name should be preserved, since his work is the only source today that deals with Saint-Junien from the time of its origins.

This article focuses on a complex land properties transaction performed in Lombardy in 1317 by the women's Benedictine abbey of St. Victor of Meda, close to Milan, with two main partners: the religious community of St. Bartholomew of Monza, belonging to the penitential Order of the Humiliati, and the dominus Corrado Lambertenghi, member of one of Como's most important aristocratic families. Disclosed by a small record of documentary charter nowadays preserved in the archives of St. Victor, this transaction gives a dynamic portrait of the land between Milan and Como at the beginning of xivth century. In addition, by retracing its main steps, we will observe how its key players' economic choices were influenced by the political consequences, at local and regional levels, of the ongoing conflict between the Avignon Papacy and the Ghibellines Visconti, lords of Milan.