Richard de Fournival


Richard de Fournival or Richart de Fornival was a medieval philosopher and trouvère perhaps best known for the Bestiaire d'amour.

Life

Richard de Fournival was born in Amiens on October 10, 1201. He was the son of Roger de Fournival and Élisabeth de la Pierre. He was also half-brother of Arnoul, bishop of Amiens. Richard was successively canon, deacon, and chancellor of the cathedral chapter of Notre Dame d'Amiens. He was also a licensed surgeon, by the authority of Pope Gregory IX and this privilege was confirmed a second time in 1246 by Pope Innocent IV. He died on March 1, either 1260 or 1259.

Writings

Richard also wrote several other works besides the prose Bestiaire d'amour: the Commens d'amours, Censes d’amore, Poissance d’amore, De vetula and Amistié de vraie amour. In addition, he composed a list of his own books entitled the Biblionomia, the Nativitas, and the De arte alchemica.

The ''Biblionomia''

The Biblionomia is a list of 162 volumes, divided into grammar, dialectic, rhetoric, geometry and arithmetic, music and astronomy, philosophy, and poetry. Whether this was an ideal library or a real one is uncertain. But we can say, however, that at least 35 volumes have been identified as items in medieval libraries and still existing in various modern libraries, so it cannot be entirely made up.
The list does allow us to date certain medieval writings. For instance, the inclusion of various works by Jordanus de Nemore – his Liber philotegni, the De ratione ponderis, an Algorismus, his Arithmetic, the De numeris datis and the De plana spera – is our only information on when Jordanus must have lived, i.e., before 1260.

His library

Richard's library passed to Gérard d'Abbeville, an archdeacon at Amiens, who then left many of them to the recently established Collège de Sorbonne. Some of these volumes then passed to the Royal Library in the 18th century.