"Rex Francie in regno suo princeps est": The Perspective of Pierre Dubois

“‘Rex Francie in regno suo princeps est’: The Perspective of Pierre Dubois.” Pierre Dubois, lawyer by profession and author of a number of tracts written in support of the Capetian king Philippe IV le Bel during the first decade of the fourteenth century, is often considered to be amongst the first exponents of the idea that the world is naturally divided into self-contained political units whose rulers recognize no superior temporal authority. This article sets out to explore the place occupied in Dubois’s thought by the contemporary western Empire, an institution whose rulers had frequently claimed to be, and had been traditionally regarded as, a necessary apex of temporal power. It suggests that Dubois assigned a unique and necessary function to the western emperor and questions the view that he formulated a conception of the world which completely dispensed with the need for an ultimate temporal authority.