The Doctrina Compendiosa (Global Doctrine) is a literary work about political matters that is attributed to

Francesc Eiximenis Francesc Eiximenis (; died 1409) was a Franciscan Catalan writer who lived in the 14th-century Crown of Aragon. He was possibly one of the more successful medieval Catalan writers since his works were widely read, copied, published and translated ...

and was written in

Catalan Catalan may refer to: Catalonia From, or related to Catalonia: * Catalan language, a Romance language * Catalans, an ethnic group formed by the people from, or with origins in, Northern or southern Catalonia Places * 13178 Catalan, asteroid ...

Valencia Valencia ( va, València) is the capital of the autonomous community of Valencia and the third-most populated municipality in Spain, with 791,413 inhabitants. It is also the capital of the province of the same name. The wider urban area al ...

between the end of the 14th century and the beginning of the 15th century. The

Capuchin Capuchin can refer to: *Order of Friars Minor Capuchin, an order of Roman Catholic friars *Capuchin Poor Clares, an order of Roman Catholic contemplative religious sisters *Capuchin monkey, primates of the genus ''Cebus'' and ''Sapajus'', named af ...

Martí de Barcelona Martí de Barcelona was the religious name of the Catalan Capuchin Jaume Bagunyà i Casanovas (Barcelona, ca. 1895 — Montcada i Reixac, 1936). Biography He entered the convent of the Sarrià Capuchins and got his degree in history at the Cath ...

published it in 1929.

Content and structure

The book has the form of a dialog, in which a group of

citizens ask several questions to a

Franciscan , image = FrancescoCoA PioM.svg , image_size = 200px , caption = A cross, Christ's arm and Saint Francis's arm, a universal symbol of the Franciscans , abbreviation = OFM , predecessor = , ...

about social and political matters, and even about morality and religion. The friar divides the dialog into two parts. The first one, that consists in twenty chapters, deals specially with morality. The second one, that consists in other twenty chapters, deals with practical matters, specially about social and political ones. And the book ends with a final conclusion.

Reasons against Eiximenis' authorship

Nevertheless, some works of Jaume Riera Sans and

Curt Wittlin Curt Wittlin (13 April 1941 – 23 September 2019) was a Swiss philologist and an expert of medieval Catalan language and literature. Biography Wittlin studied romance philology in Basel with Germà Colon, and later in Paris, Florence and Barcel ...

have proved that Eiximenis was not the author of this book. The main reasons would be the following ones: * Eiximenis never wrote any other book with the form of a dialog. * Six of the nine preserved manuscripts do not have the name of the author. * The author of this work does not make any other internal reference to the Eiximenis' works, as he used to do in his works. * There are few quotations of the Bible and of the Church Fathers and

Doctors of the Church Doctor of the Church (Latin: ''doctor'' "teacher"), also referred to as Doctor of the Universal Church (Latin: ''Doctor Ecclesiae Universalis''), is a title given by the Catholic Church to saints recognized as having made a significant contribu ...

. * The way of making quotations in Latin in this work is totally different from the rest of Eiximenis' works.

Possible author

suggests that the author of this work could be Ramon Soler, who was a

jurist A jurist is a person with expert knowledge of law; someone who analyses and comments on law. This person is usually a specialist legal scholar, mostly (but not always) with a formal qualification in law and often a legal practitioner. In the Un ...

and important citizen of Valencia, and also a close friend of Francesc Eiximenis. Therefore, this work would be a kind of reminder of the doctrines of Eiximenis, since this book has a lot of similarities with Eiximenis' social and political thought, and with his works where he deals with those matters, such as the

Regiment de la cosa pública The Regiment de la Cosa Pública (Government of the Republic) is a work that has 38 chapters and that was written in Catalan by Francesc Eiximenis in 1383. It was just written after Eiximenis' arrival in Valencia, and it was dedicated to the ''jur ...

. Furthermore, C. Wittlin has found a lot of influence from the works of the mediaeval jurist Albertanus of Brescia.Introduction to ''Doctrina Compendiosa''. València. Ed. Denes. 2006. Pp. 15–27. It would support the theory that the author was a jurist, like Ramon Soler was.

References

{{Authority control Francesc Eiximenis 1929 documents