ABSTRACT
Once the Gregorian Reform put an end to sacral kingship in the Medieval West, royal “clerisy” was still available to secular rulers as a way to incarnate the wise king figure with its associated auctoritas. Latin literacy, more than ever, became a token of social distinction in the mostly illiterate Feudal Age and this development influenced the narratives of kingship. Hence the rise of the miles litteratus theme of kingship, that is, the king as a literate and bookish knight. However, in Year Thousand France, the combined strategies of cultural patronage and narratives of princely wisdom were not only used by the Early Capetian monarchy but also by its rivals, the Feudal princes. For the first time since the fall of the Roman Empire, sapiential rulership was not monopolized by kings. Among the always vague terms that defined the social group of the “intellectuals” in the Feudal Age, litterati was without a doubt the word most used.
