were valuable allies to the Thomists, for their aid, coming from an
independent organization, appeared to carry the weight of impartiality,
and to be unassailable on the plea of partisan interest. In the year
1287 there was a general convocation of the order of St. Augustine at
Florence, and at this assembly it was decreed that the doctors of the
order should teach in conformity with the decisions arrived at by
Colonna. To him is largely due the success of the Thomist scheme, of
which he was an able, persistent, and vigorous exponent. Many tracts by
him remain in print and MS. on these subjects. The fame he had thus
acquired gained him the name of _doctor fundamentarius_ and _doctor
fundatissimus_. His lectures at Paris attracted to him the attention of
Philippe le Hardi, who thought him a fitting person to be entrusted with
the education of his son, who was afterwards known to hiftory as
Philippe le Bel. It was whilst occupied with this royal youth that the
thought of composing or compiling--and the terms were in practice
interchangeable in those days--occurred, and the result was the treatise
"De regimine Principum libri iii." Philippe le Hardi, if not an educated
man himself--and there are doubts as to whether he could write his own
name--was laudably anxious that his heir should have the best
instruction that could be obtained. It cannot well be claimed that the
able, handsome, and unscrupulous Philippe was any great credit to his
preceptor. The despotic and perfidious character of the king probably
owed more to the influence of Nogaret and other defenders of the "right
divine of kings to govern wrong," than to the soberer precepts of
Colonna. That Philippe had some tincture of literary feeling may be
inferred from his employment of Jehan de Meung to translate the military
treatise of Vegetius Flavius Renatus, a compilation of the second
century of the present era, which was so popular in the middle ages that
it was translated by Caxton into English. Still better evidence is the
translation made for the king by the same poet of Boethius, whose