26 THE KING'S MIRROR 



the author seems to have written largely from memory, 

 and his memory is not always accurate. 



Having discussed the subjects which he considers of 

 chief importance for the education of a merchant, the 

 learned father proceeds to describe jj}- king's 



hold anH jt.s nrgfl.nigfl.t.i'on, the 



at n.mirt fc1 and fa* business thai, is 



before a king. For the part which deals with the royal 

 court, it is probable that no literary sources were used. 

 The author evidently wrote from long experience in the 



king's rvitirmg- frg is rmt rh'grngging an irl^ft] organisation 



hr>"**ho lr| as it was in J^erg pTi 



n his own ^ fl y If he drew from any written de- 

 scription of courtly manners, it may have been from 

 some book like Petrus Alfonsus' Disciplina Clericalis, 

 which has already been mentioned * and which seems 

 to have had a wide circulation throughout western 

 Europe in the later middle ages. 



The chapters that are devoted to the discussion 0f the 

 duties and activities ^4-4h^ king*f guaHsm^n^ to the 

 manners and fiuptoT^ whirh sh^iiM -nil ir t"h kf^g' 

 jgaxiJb, and to the ethical ideas on which these were 

 largely based are of great interest to the student of me- 

 ^ dieval culture. They reveal a, progress in the direction 

 ^\ j)f rf>-finp^| ]f"ff> find .po^ gn ^ > . i rl Ty>ATinpr.^ which one should 

 scarcely expect to find in the Northern lands. JThe de= 

 velopment of courtes}^ and refined manners may have 

 been accelerated by the new literature which was com- 

 ing into Scandinavia from France and Germany, a 

 literature that dealt so largely with the doings of 



* See above, pp. 9-10. 



