Hugo Fraslin

Hugo Fraslin is a student engaged in the first year of a Master’s Degree in Medieval History (ENS de Lyon / EHESS). He is currently carrying out a critical edition project under the supervision of Jacques Chiffoleau and Sylvain Parent. His work focuses on a long, unedited treatise dealing with the Great Western Schism and the issue of the pope’s legitimacy. Called Judicium Veritatis, it is an allegorical fiction whose aim is to foster Clement VII’s supremacy on the pontifical throne. It is still preserved nowadays in three different manuscripts:

– Paris, BnF, Ms. Lat 1463, fol. 12^r-38^v(14^th century, base manuscript).

– Dijon, Bibliothèque municipale, Ms. 235, fol. 138^r-156^r(15^th century).

– Paris, BnF, Lat 8975, p. 29-59 (17^th century).

This Latin treatise can roughly be divided into two parts: a literary one/a jurisdictional one. While the first tells the tribulations of several allegories (rumor, ratio, oratio, virtutes et vitia) looking for veritas’ residence in the heavens to get her back to earth, the second is a theatrical mise en scène in which veritas, as head of the tribunal, listens to the procuratores of each pope before finally proclaiming the truth and the true obedience. Full of poetical figures and jurisdictional allegationes, the two parts provide a very colourful background of the schism.

His works interrogate the use of the “allegorical dream” pattern in the context of a divided ecclesia and the information it provides for the schism’s history. As such, it delves into rhetorical, jurisdictional and ecclesiological issues from a pro-clementine viewpoint.