{{italic title}} {{distinguish|Codex Carolinus|Codex epistolaris Carolinus}} {{Multiple issues| {{More citations needed|date=July 2025}} {{sources exist|date=July 2025}} }}
'''''Carolinus''''' (or '''''Karolinus''''') is an instructional poem written in Latin by twelfth-century poet Gilles de Paris for the future King Louis VIII of France.<ref>{{cite book |title=Histoire littéraire de la France suite de treizième siécle jusqu'à l'an 1226 |date=1832 |publisher=Firmin Didot |page=29}}</ref> It is an example of the Mirror for Princes genre, which gained renewed popularity in many parts of Europe in the twelfth century.<ref>{{cite journal |last1=Jonsson |first1=Einar Már |title=LES 'MIROIRS AUX PRINCES' SONT-ILS UN GENRE LITTÉRAIRE? |journal=Médiévales |date=2006 |volume=51 |pages=153–65 |url=http://www.jstor.org/stable/43027634}}</ref> It was written between 1196 and 1200, and exists in two manuscripts from the early thirteenth century. It contains over two thousand verses in five sections. It is written as a biography of Charlemagne, showing how his life exemplified the four cardinal virtues, and urging Louis, who was thirteen years old in 1200, to follow this example and become a new Charlemagne.<ref>{{cite book |last1=Billot-Vilandrau |first1=Céline |editor1-last=Bejczy |editor1-first=István Pieter |editor2-last=Newhauser |editor2-first=Richard |title=Virtue and Ethics in the Twelfth Century [electronic resource] |date=2005 |publisher=Brill |chapter=Charlemagne and the Young Prince: A Didactic Poem on the Cardinal Virtues by Giles of Paris (c. 1200)}}</ref>
The book is divided between five parts as such:
*Prologue *Book I *Book II *Book III *Book IV *Book V
==References== {{reflist}}
==Further reading== *Lett, Didier & Christiane Klapisch-Zuber, [http://www.persee.fr/web/revues/home/prescript/article/medi_0751-2708_2001_num_20_41_1532_t1_0176_0000_2 "L'Ombre des ancêtres. Essai sur l'imaginaire médiéval de la parenté"]; in: ''Médiévales''; 2001; vol. 20, issue 41, 176–180.
Category:12th-century poems Category:French poems Category:Louis VIII of France
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