MEYRIFAB, a small semi-nomad tribe of Semitic stock, on the east bank of the Nile near Berber who never marry slaves. MEZIERES, PHILIPPE DE (c. 1327-1405), French sol dier and author, was born at the chateau of Mezieres in Picardy.
He belonged to the poorer nobility, and served under Lucchino Visconti in Lombardy, and subsequently under Andrew, king of Naples, who was assassinated in September 1345. He then set out for the East in the French army. After the battle of Smyrna in 1346 he was made a knight, and went to Jerusalem. He planned a new order of knighthood, the first sketch of which was drawn up by him in his Nova religio passions (1367-1368; re vised and enlarged in 1386 and 1396). From Jerusalem he went in 1347 to Cyprus to the court of Hugo IV., where he met the king's son, Peter of Lusignan, then count of Tripoli; but he soon left Cyprus, and had resumed soldiering when the accession of Peter to the thrones of Cyprus and Jerusalem (Nov. 1358) in duced Mezieres to return to the island, probably in 1360, when he became chancellor. He came under the influence of the pious legate Peter Thomas (d. 1366), whose friend and biographer he was to be, and Thomas, who became patriarch of Constanti nople in 1364, was one of the chief promoters of the crusade of 1365. In June 1366 Mezieres was delegated to Venice, to Avignon and to the princes of western Europe, to obtain help for Cyprus against the Saracens. His efforts were in vain; even Pope Urban V. advised peace with the sultan. Mezieres remained for some time at Avignon, seeking recruits for his order, and writing his Vita S. Petri Thomasii (Antwerp, 1659), which is invaluable for the history of the Alexandrian expedition. The
Prefacio and Epistola, which form the first draft of his work on the projected order of the Passion, were written at this time. Mezieres returned to Cyprus in 1368, but was still at Venice when Peter was assassinated at Nicosia at the beginning of 1369, and he remained there until 1372, when he went to the court of the new pope Gregory XI. at Avignon. In 1373 he was in Paris, and he was thenceforward one of the trusted counsellors of Charles V. He was tutor to the future Charles VI., but after the death of Charles V. he was compelled to retire. He lived thence forward in the convent of the Celestines in Paris, but continued to exert an influence on public affairs. To this period of his life belong most of his writings. Two devotional treatises belong to 1386-1387. In 1389 he wrote his Songe du vieil pelerin, an elab orate allegorical voyage in which he described the customs of Europe and the near East, and advocated peace with England and the pursuit of the Crusade. His Oratio tragedica, largely autobiographical, was written with similar aims. Mezieres died in Paris on May 29, 1405.
See A. Molinier, Manuel de bibliographie historique vol. iv. (5904); and especially the researches of N. Jorga, published in the Bibliotheque de l'ecole des hautes etudes vol. II() (Paris, 1896) ; and the same writer's Philippe de Mezieres, et la croisade au xiv. siecle (1896). Jorga gives a list of his works and of the mss. in which they are preserved, and analyses many of them. On the Songe du vergier, see P. Paris, in Memoires vol. xv. (1843) of the Academy of Inscriptions.