A Lamentable and Consolatory Epistle, 1397

In 1396, a Franco-Burgundian crusading army was crushed by the Ottoman forces of Bayezid I at Nicopolis, one of the most shocking defeats of the later Middle Ages. Within a year, Philippe de Mézières, an influential crusade propagandist of his age, responded with the Epistre lamentable et consolatoire.

For Mézières, Nicopolis was not merely a military catastrophe, but a moral and spiritual crisis afflicting all Latin Christendom. His epistle not only offers advice on avenging the defeat and recovering what had been lost but also sets out a programme for moral and military reform and finally makes an appeal for his lifelong project -- the Order of the Passion of Jesus Christ, a new, disciplined military order which would remedy the shared illness of Christendom.

This volume presents the first English translation of this key text, with an introduction and full annotations. It will be of interest to scholars and students of the crusades, late medieval France and Burgundy, and early Ottoman history.