Gervais de Tilbury

Gervais de Tilbury (C. 1155 - 1234)

Lawyer, politician and writer of the Middle Ages.

Biography

Its youth

Gervais de Tilbury was born in England towards 1155. It receives an education at the court of Henri II Plantagenêt, then with Rheims between 1176 and 1180, near the archbishop Guillaume with the White Hands, uncle of king de France Philippe II, the future Philippe Auguste, then with Bologna, great center of teaching of the canon law.

A court gentleman

He attends then the court of Henri II Plantagenêt, and belonged to a group of clerks impassioned by the natural philosophy , who form a cultural circle around his/her son, Henri the Young King. With the brutal death of Henri in 1183, Gervais leaves England and saw a time in Italy of the South, at the court of the last Norman king of Sicily, Guillaume II the Good. In 1189, with died of Guillaume, Gervais emigrates with Arles, where he exerts his talents of lawyer near the archbishop and of the count de Provence and he there Marie. In 1207, it is named judge magus of the count de Provence Alphonse II of Provence.

Faithful of the emperor Otton IV of Brunswick

In 1209, it accompanies Otton IV by Brunswick to Rome for its sacring, then is named marshal of the imperial court for the kingdom of Arles by the emperor who, formed in his youth at the court of England, likes to surround himself by English and Saxon. Arles is at the time with the crossroads of all the competitions and this context can explain the portrait poorly flattering of its inhabitants such as draws up it Gervais de Tilbury:

Close to the course of the Rhone, the breaths are full with force, and the men are generated inflated of wind, vain, inconstant and supremely liars in their promises .

And it is in this city of Provence that it finishes for the emperor, towards 1210 - 1214, the drafting of the Otia imperialia ( Entertainments for an emperor ). In 1214 after the Battle of Bouvines, the overcome emperor is withdrawn in his grounds of Brunswick, and Gervais, while preserving its load of marshal of the imperial court at the kingdom of Arles, follows it. It remains in Germany after the death of its guard, and becomes probably provost of Ebstorf of 1223 with 1234, date probable of its death. In these last years, it would have supervised the realization of the map of the world on the model of that which appeared, perhaps, on the manuscript of the Divertissements .

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