Jean Petit (theologian)

Some historians (Duboulay, Luke Wadding) say he was a Franciscan, others that he was a Dominican: as a matter of fact, he never was a member of any religious order. He owed his education to the generosity of the Duke of Burgundy, who granted him a pension. In the first extant document that records his name, he is called Master of Arts (16 August 1385). Two years later his name occurs in the list sent by the University of Paris (31 July 1387) to Pope Clement VII, recommending its masters for vacant benefices.

He became a licentiate in theology in May 1400, and received the degree of Doctor before 1403, since he is mentioned in that year on the roll of the university as an active member of the theological faculty of Paris. In April 1407, he formed part of the embassy sent by Charles VI of France to urge Antipope Benedict XIII and Pope Gregory XII to abdicate and thus reunite Christendom. This embassy had just returned to Paris, after a fruitless journey, when an event took place that gave Jean Petit a great notoriety in history.

The assassination of the Duke of Orléans

On 23 November 1407, assassins in the pay of John the Fearless, Duke of Burgundy, murdered Louis I, Duke of Orléans, brother of mentally ill Charles VI. The unpopular Duke of Orléans was widely held responsible for public disorder and heavy, arbitrary taxation. The University of Paris bitterly opposed him for having renewed obedience to Avignon antipope Benedict XIII.

The Duke of Burgundy, on the contrary, was very popular, regarded as a friend of the commoners and an opponent of abusive taxation, while the university supported him in opposition to the Avignon antipope. Excluded from the royal council after the assassination, he withdrew to his estates in Flanders, raised an army, and called around him several of the university professors, including Jean Petit, who for three years had been attached to his suite and was receiving a pension from him. Thus supported, Jean Petit declared that he would go to Paris and justify himself. The royal council forbade him to enter Paris, but he came anyway and was received with popular acclaim. He demanded an audience with the king. It was granted on 8 March 1408, in the Hôtel de St-Paul, where the court habitually resided.

There, before the Dauphin, King of Sicily, Cardinal de Bar, Dukes of Anjou, Berry, Brittany, Bar, and Lorraine; the rector of the University of Paris, and many counts, barons, knights, and citizens, Jean Petit delivered on behalf of his client a pedantic address, bristling with propositions, syllogisms, Scriptural texts, and examples from Holy Writ. To summarize his argument: Whosoever is guilty of high treason and becomes a tyrant, deserves to be punished with death, all the more so when he is a near relative of the king; and in that case the natural, moral, and Divine laws allow any subject whatever, without any command or public authorization, to kill him or to have him killed openly, or by stealth; and the more closely the author of the slaying is related to the king the more meritorious the act. Now, the Duke of Orléans — so ran the minor proposition — a slave to the passion of greed, the source of all evil, was guilty of high treason, and was a tyrant; which was proved by holding him guilty of all the pretended crimes which popular imagination and the partisans of the Duke of Burgundy laid to his charge. The conclusion was therefore that the Duke of Burgundy not only should not be punished or blamed for what had been done to the Duke of Orléans, but rather should be rewarded. This thesis seemed preposterous to some members of the assembly; but the Duke of Burgundy was present with his troops, ready to suppress any attempt at reply, and further he was in the good graces of the university; so he had no difficulty in obtaining letters of pardon from the king.

As for Jean Petit, who in his address was not ashamed to admit that he was receiving, and expected still to receive, a pension from the Duke of Burgundy, he found it more prudent to withdraw from Paris and retire to the estate of the Duke of Burgundy at Hesdin, Artois, where he died in a house of his protector, regretting, it is said, that he had ever allowed himself to defend such a proposition.

Petit's career occurred at the time of the Western Schism. France sided with Pope Clement VII, but every one was anxious for reunion. Petit gave expression to this desire in his Complainte de l'Eglise, a poem discovered in the National Library, Paris. This poem of 322 verses was composed in 1394. He had already written four others, the Disputation des pastourelles (1388), defending the Immaculate Conception; the Livre du champ d'or; the Livre du miracle de Basqueville (1389); and the Vie de Monsieur saint Léonard, about the same time. They offer an unflattering picture of the society of the day.

• Bulaeus, Historia Universitatis Parisiensis (Paris, 1770);
• Jean Gerson, Opera, ed. Dupin, V (Antwerp, 1706);
• Amédée Hellot, Nobles et vilains, le miracle de Basqueviue, d'apres les poesies inedites de Jean Petit (Paris, 1895);
• Le Verdier, Le livre du champ d'or et autres poemes inedits de Me Jean Le Petit (Paris, 1896);
• Bess, Zur Geschichte des Constanzer Konzils, Studien I, Frankreichs Kirchenpolitik und der Prozess des Jean Petit (Marburg, 1894);
• Valois, La France et le grand schisme d'Occident, III and IV (Paris, 1902):
• Denifle, Chartularium Universitatis Parisiensis, III and IV (Paris, 1893, 1897);
• Mansi, Sac. conciliorum collectio, XXVII (Venice, 1784).

• Catholic Encyclopedia article

 This article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain: Herbermann, Charles, ed. (1913). Catholic Encyclopedia. New York: Robert Appleton Company. {{cite encyclopedia}}: Missing or empty |title= (help)