Montreuil, Jean de

(1354-1418)

   Chancellor of France in the early 15th century. Though commonly associated with the French Middle Ages, he was not only a contemporary but a friend and ad-mirer of the Florentine humanists Coluccio Salutati, Leonardo Bruni and Niccolô Niccoli, and he admired the works of the early hu-manists Petrarch and Boccaccio. He collected a library of classical and humanistic books and formed a circle of friends who shared his interests. Thus he is often viewed as a precursor of later French hu-manism, though his example also shows that even a circle of influ-ential individuals who knew and appreciated the Italian humanists does not necessarily signify the arrival of the Renaissance in coun-tries not politically and socially prepared to embrace a new culture. He was assassinated in 1418 when the Burgundian faction at the French court staged a coup d'état and executed royal officials associ-ated with the rival Orléans (or Armagnac) faction.