Medieval princes

[Annanan]

What would a medival prince have been educated in?

[jno]

you mean as in school? He'd have private tutors. If you mean subjects, it would vary hugely. Might be the art of knightly behaviour, or of fancy dressing, or just of commanding armies. Some princes were learned in history, piety and oratory, others were violent louts.

[Octavius]

Warfare, how to be a general, matters of state, trivium and quadrivium, and Latin.

For something a little more detailed...

http://www.stoics.com/erasmus_s_education_of_a _chris.html

[jno]

I dunno, Octavius - that sounds more like a programme for a renaissance prince than a medieval one.

[Davethedog]

Latin - Religion a lot of time would have been given to decorum and physical pursuits

[Octavius]

In early 15th C England, most young male members of the lay nobility received their education in the patriarchal household, where they were taught hunting, jousting, estate management, heraldry and manners. As the century went on, however, this traditional approach was replaced by a classical education that emphasised reason and discipline, and equipped the young for service to a state that was increasingly preoccupied with imperial ambitions.

The new educational literature consisted of translations and adaptations of the philosophers and historians of ancient Rome, especially Cicero and Seneca. The works of classical authors had been popularised during the reign of Charles V of France (1364-80), who had commissioned French translations of Livy, and the Ethics and Politics of Aristotle. Translations of Cicero and Seneca followed in the reign of Charles VI (1380-1422). Christine de Pisan (1364-c. 1430), who grew up at the court of Charles V, sought a broader view of the functions of the governing class.

The tradition of consciously educating the heir to the throne in anything more than the military arts began with the Tudors and the Renaissance. The young Edward VI, Mary, and Elizabeth all of whom became monarchs in their turn were true prodigies, with what seems almost a genetic gift for languages, politics, geography, theological discourse (high intellectual sport in those days), and especially music. Elizabeth I is reckoned to have been perhaps the most gifted and certainly the most academically prepared woman in the Europe of her generation.