Honorat Bovet

Honoré Bonet also known as Honorat Bovet and Honoré Bouvet and by the alias Carobovis (c. 1350 – c. 1410) was a Provençal Benedictine, writer, heraldist and legal adviser. He was the prior of Selonnet. His work L'arbre des batailles on war, chivalry and the laws of war was very influential and became a guidebook for knights and men-at- arms in their conduct of war. He was in the service of King Charles VI of France and attempted to resolve the Schism in the Catholic Church through his literary and diplomatic activities. Life He was born in the Provence in a family established in the Viscounty of Valernes, near Sisteron. He took his monastic vows in 1368 at the Benedictine monastery of Île Barbe in Lyon (where he was elected abbot in 1399). In 1328 he was a student of canon law in Montpellier. He likely later followed pope Urban V to Italy. In 1371 he left his post of prior of Sainte-Marie de Bayons in the diocese of Embrun for that of prior of Selonnet in the same diocese. In the same year he is granted a degree in canon law. 14 May 1382 he became a priest and received his licentiate in canon law. In the spring of 1386, Jean Le Fèvre, Chancellor of the Duchy of Anjou, sent him on several missions to secure the allegiance of the people of the Sisteron region to the Duchy of Anjou. On 23 October 1386, he was awarded an honorary doctorate in canon law from the University of Avignon by the bishop Jean Le Fèvre.

At the beginning of the Western Schism (1378), he was an ardent defender of pope Clement VII's Avignon party until the latter's death in 1394. From 1390 onwards, he entered the service of King Charles VI of France, who granted him an annual pension in 1392 and entrusted him with various missions. and her writing was in turn popularized by William Caxton in England. Jean Courtois, herald of Alfonso V of Aragon, also used Bonet extensively in his 'Blason des Couleurs'.

The Dutch-Israelian historian Martin van Creveld writes that Bonet's subject "was not so much military theory and practice as the art of 'chivalry' and the rules of war." According to van Creveld, such works "are little more than handbooks... Taking the formations and armament of their own day more or less for granted, however, they seldom rise above the specifics of time and place... The fact that some of them were in actual use until 1700 and beyond shows how indebted early modern Europe felt itself to the ancient world—or, conversely, how slow the evolution of warfare was. Unlike the Chinese classics they do not provide a coherent philosophy of war."

Other works by Bonet are L'Apparicion maistre Jehan de Meun and the Somnium super materia scismatis (1394).

Editions and Translations The first French edition Lyon 1481. Thereafter it was published several times. The Tree of Battles of Honoré Bonet, translated by G. W. Coopland, Liverpool: At the University Press, 1949.