Viator 40 No. 1 (2009) 223–248. 10.1484/J.VIATOR.1.100352. PHILIPPE DE MÉZIÈRES’S LIFE OF SAINT PIERRE DE THOMAS AT THE CROSSROADS OF LATE MEDIEVAL HAGIOGRAPHY AND CRUSADING IDEOLOGY ● by Renate Blumenfeld-Kosinski * Abstract: Philippe de Mézières (1327-1405), politician, crusade propagandist, counselor to the French king Charles V, spiritual thinker, and prolific author, met Pierre de Thomas (ca. 1305–1366), a Carmelite friar who rose to become a papal legate and titular patriarch of Constantinople, in 1362 on Cyprus. The two men were soul mates and embarked on many joint diplomatic and military ventures of which the most dramatic was the taking of Alexandria in 1365. Pierre de Thomas died shortly afterwards and within months Philippe began to write his Life of Pierre de Thomas with a view to his canonization. A somewhat later inquiry into Pierre’s miracles and sanctity had no result. This article explores how Philippe tried to construct a new saint—to whom he was attached by deep emotions—at a time when canonizations became more formalized and difficult and when the ideal of the crusade became more and more problematic in the face of late me- dieval political realities. Key words: canonization processes, crusade against Alexandria (1365), Cyprus, hagiographer and his sub- ject, Jean de Joinville (1225–1317), late medieval crusade ideology, late medieval hagiography, medieval emotions, Philippe de Mézières (1327–1405), Pierre de Thomas (ca. 1305–1366). As a young boy Pierre de Thomas (ca. 1305–1366) left his parents to beg for bread in nearby castles; he became a Carmelite religious, but even then needed a miracle from the Virgin to get oil for his lamp so that he could study; he was a miracle-working rain maker; a charismatic preacher; a zealous crusade ideologist; a fearless military leader; a skilled if sometimes unsuccessful diplomat; an inspiring father figure; a willing martyr ... All of these not necessarily contradictory facets of Pierre’s life and character emerge from The Life of Saint Peter Thomas by Philippe de Mézières (1327–1405), written shortly after Pierre de Thomas’s death on the island of Cyprus on 6 January 1366. 1 This Life is the major source for one of the key figures of the late medieval crusading movement in a period when, as Christopher Tyerman so aptly puts is, cru- sading had become a “state of mind” rather than an effective means to regain the Holy Land or to rein in the Turkish advance in Eastern Europe. 2 Aziz Suryal Atiya sees Pi- erre de Thomas and Philippe de Mézières as exemplary for late medieval crusading ideologies, as men who “by their dominating personality and influence, contributed more to the promotion of crusades than probably any of their contemporaries.” 3 The third member of this crusading trio should not be forgotten, however: Peter I of Lusignan, king of Cyprus from 1359 to his assassination in 1369, was the most ardent promoter of the crusade ideal and closely allied with Philippe de Mézières and Pierre de Thomas. In his book on the myth of the crusade Alphonse Dupront pays tribute to * Department of French and Italian, University of Pittsburgh, Pittsburgh, PA 15260. 1 Philippe de Mézières, Life of Saint Peter Thomas, ed. Joachim Smet (Rome 1954). Although Smet in- cludes the word saint in his title, Pierre de Thomas was never canonized. I choose the form Pierre de Tho- mas rather than Peter Thomas, following Frederick J. Boehlke who points out that Pierre’s name appears as Petrus Thomae (i.e., in the genitive form) in Carmelite documents; Pierre de Thomas Scholar, Diplomat, and Crusader (Philadelphia 1966) 24 n. 9. See also Aziz Suryal Atiya, The Crusade in the Later Middle Ages (London 1938) 129 n. 1. 2 Christopher Tyerman, God’s War A New History of the Crusades (Cambridge, MA 2006) 825. 3 Atiya, Crusade (n. 1 above) 129.