Late Middle Ages · Europe · Culture

1357

Charles V invites humanists to the French court

1357

While still regent for his captive father, Charles began gathering manuscripts and commissioning French translations of Aristotle, Augustine, and Valerius Maximus, determined to make the French language a vehicle for classical learning. The Louvre library, assembled over the next two decades, would contain almost a thousand volumes, the largest lay library of the century.