Note 18 — I.—INTRODUCTION.

Jean de Montreuil (called maistre Jehan Johannes by Christine de Pizan), diplomat and secrétaire du roi, was one of the leading humanists of his time, and numbered among his friends many famous men. Cf. A. Thomas, De Joannis de Monsterolio vita et operibus, Paris, 1883, p. 1: “ut Petro de Alliaco, Joanni Gersoni, Nicolao de Clamengiis, sed etiam italicis, ut Colutio Florentino Leonardoque Aretino amicitia conjunctus est.” He studied at the University of Paris, though he did not attend lectures there by Gontier Col, whom he elsewhere calls his “praeceptorem.” He seems to have abandoned the church, for which he was originally intended, and to have gone into public life. In 1391 we find him secretary to Charles VI, and also to the duc de Bourgogne and the duc d’Orléans. He soon became chanoine de Rouen, and then prévôt de Lille, a title which he liked. He undertook many embassies for the king of France: to England and Scotland, 1394; to Germany and Italy; to Pope Benedict XIII. at Avignon, 1404; to Rome (Jean XXIII.), 1412 (where he learned to know Leonardo Bruni). In 1413 he went as ambassador of the king of France to the duc de Bourgogne. In the civil war he attached himself to the party of Orléans and refused to leave Paris, with the result that it cost him his life in the massacre, June 12, 1418, of the party of the Armagnacs, which effected for a long time a stifling of the first Renaissance.