ABSTRACT
In November 1119, at Gisors, just after the end of the sessions of the Council of Reims in October, a singular debate took place in the presence of the Roman Pontiff, Calixtus II, and the English sovereign, Henry I Beauclerc. There are indeed many implications to the relationship between royal “clerisy”, twelfth-century state-building, administrative kingship, and royal literacy. First of all, it has to be stressed that a notable handicap of royal patronage of learning in the Anglo-Norman and Plantagenet kingdoms was the marginal place of twelfth-century England in the European twelfth-century Renaissance. In the end, sanctity and wisdom were related in biblical tradition, and both were associated with St Louis. Unlike the Hohenstaufen and Plantagenet ones, the Solomonic narrative of kingship in the Capetian court was about a holy and wise king, not an intellectual ruler.
