Continuities between the Politiques and the Ethiques

Continuities are deliberate between King Charles V's first two illustrated copies of the Politiques (including the short pseudo-Aristotelian Yconomique ) with those of the Ethiques . As sister texts, conceived as a unity, the counterpart of A (the Brussels Ethics ) is B , a manuscript in a French private collection, completed be-

tween 1374 and 1376. They share a common physical format in size, page layout, and graphic design. B , like A , is an official, library copy, lavish in all aspects of its writing and decoration. In both A and B the text is separated from the glosses, which are written on both sides and in the lower margin.^[3] A companion to C , King Charles's smaller copy of the Ethiques , is D , a manuscript of the Politiques and the Yconomique , now in Brussels. Like C, D was written by Raoulet d'Orléans, completed by 1376, and also shows the intermingling of text and gloss. D lacks certain important textual features present in B , such as the prologue and the two instructions to the reader.^[4]

The two sets of manuscripts also share the same ateliers of miniaturists patronized by Charles V. For B , major shares went to the Master of Jean de Sy, whose shop was responsible for all the miniatures in A , and the Master of the Coronation of Charles VI, later assigned the cycle in C . The last two miniatures of B were entrusted to the Master of the Coronation Book of Charles V, whose shop executed the cycle in D . Familiar from work on other Charles V manuscripts is the hand identified with Perrin Remiet, who executed the two small preliminary miniatures of B .