author
count of Foix Gaston III Phoebus
1331–1391
A brilliant and hard-driving medieval ruler, he turned Foix and Béarn into a powerful state between France and Spain while building a lasting legend around his courage, wealth, and independence. He is also remembered as the author of the famous hunting manual Livre de chasse.
1 Audiobook
The Master of Game: The Oldest English Book on Hunting
by of Norwich Edward, count of Foix Gaston III Phoebus
About the author
Born in 1331, Gaston III of Foix—better known as Gaston Phoebus or Fébus—became count of Foix and viscount of Béarn in 1343. During the long turmoil of the Hundred Years' War, he strengthened his lands in the Pyrenees by balancing the rival powers around him and made his court in southern France known for its splendor.
Contemporaries remembered him as a striking, forceful figure, and later writers helped turn him into one of the great legendary nobles of the late Middle Ages. He has often been described as independent-minded and politically shrewd, with a strong sense of his own authority.
He is especially well known today for writing the Livre de chasse between 1387 and 1389, a richly influential medieval book on hunting dedicated to Philip the Bold, duke of Burgundy. Gaston Phoebus died in 1391, but his name has endured through both his political reputation and this celebrated work.