Abstract
The treatise on queenship that Durand de Champagne wrote for Jeanne de Navarre, the Speculum dominarum, was soon translated into French as the Miroir des dames, and chiefly disseminated in this form.1 As Catherine Mastny observes in her doctoral dissertation on Durand’s work, the Mirror was a genre that by the late thirteenth century had an encyclopaedic vocation.2 The Miroir des dames certainly attempts to cover the whole field of moral considerations necessary for a queen, dealing with the virtues she should cultivate both as a (female) member of fallen humanity, and in her public role in the government of the kingdom. However, at the turn of the fifteenth century a version of this Miroir was made, expanded by the addition of a number of shorter texts of spiritual and moral import, indicating perhaps a feeling that there were areas necessary for salvation that it did not adequately cover.
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- 1.
For details of the twelve surviving manuscripts, see Mews in Chapter 2, this volume.
- 2.
Catherine Louise Mastny, “Durand of Champagne and the ‘Mirror of the Queen’: A Study in Medieval Didactic Literature,” PhD dissertation, Columbia University, 1969, p. 34.
- 3.
These are Brussels Bibliothèque Royale (Bibl. roy.) MSS 9555–9558 and London, British Library (BL) MS Addit. 29986, which both belonged to Jean de Berry and subsequently to his daughter Marie; and Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France (BNF) MS nouv. acq. fr. 5232, an early fifteenth-century copy on paper, without decoration. The contents of all three manuscripts are identical.
- 4.
- 5.
Millard Meiss, French Painting in the Time of Jean de Berry: The Limbourgs and Their Contemporaries, 2 vols., vol. 1 (London: Thames and Hudson, 1974), pp. 408–409. Meiss dates BL Addit. 29986 as ca. 1407–1410 and Bibl. roy. 9555–9558 as ca. 1410.
- 6.
Bibl. roy. 9555–9558, fol. 154va.
- 7.
“Et pour ce que derrainement auons fait mencion de la maison de paradis de laquelle parle le sage en ecclesiastique, Ad domum convivii in illa finis est cunctorum. En la maison du conuit la est la fin de tous. Afin que chascun saiuise que en ce monde na nulle habitacion pardurable ains est chascune transitoire. Et fugit velud umbra. Pour ce sensuit le traitte qui demoustre de chascun estat la finable conclusion humainne. Vt quisque de se ipso loquatur. Selon son estat en disant” BL Addit. 29986 fol. 147ra. The corresponding passage in Bibl. roy. 9555–9558 is on fol. 148rb.
- 8.
BL Addit. 29986 fol. 167ra; Bibl. roy. 9555–9558, fol. 179 adds “et autres livres”.
- 9.
- 10.
Eleven manuscripts are listed by K. Chesney, “Notes on Some Treatises of Devotion Intended for Margaret of York,” Medium Aevum 20 (1951), pp. 13–19. To these should be added BNF fonds français 2094 and 19397.
- 11.
For a summary of the contents of the text, and of the tradition of allegories of the cloister of the soul, see Christiania Whitehead, “Making a Cloister of the Soul in Medieval Religious Treatises,” Medium Aevum 67 (1998), pp. 1–29.
- 12.
Otto Pächt, “The Illustrations of St Anselm’s Prayers and Meditations,” Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes 19, nos. 1–2 (1956), pp. 68–83.
- 13.
“Or deuroient donc toutes les fenestres de ceste maison estre closes. Par les fenestres nous entendons les senz lesquelz nous deuons soingneusement garder” (BL Addit. 29986 fol. 124va).
- 14.
“[E]t garde bien soingneusement que tu ne atouches a chose dont la char se puist esmouoir car mult est endable. et pour ce garde bien sus quoy tu metras tes mains ne quelle chose tu atoucheras sur toy ne sur autrui. car trop grant peril y a. Je ne parleray plus de ceste matiere car tu sces bien que ie te vueil dire” (BL Addit. 29986 fol. 162va).
- 15.
“Religion est dite de relier, car la conscience si est le tonnel de vin de graces du saint esperit qui doit estre si forment relie que il n’espande pour nulle achoison” (BL Addit. 29986 fol. 152vb). The reader of the manuscript might find an echo of this passage in the Droite forme de vivre, also in the context of guarding the senses: “Et qui verroit vn tonel tout deslie il cuideroit que tout le bon vin seroit coru hors” (fols. 162rb–va).
- 16.
“Apres si doit l’en corre aux .v. sens du corps ou l’en peche mult souuent, par les yeux en folement regarder, par les oreilles en folement escouter et oir volentiers medisans menteurs et autres folies, ou par la bouche en folement parler ou trop boire ou trop menger, ou par les narines en soy deliter en bonnes odeurs, ou par folement touchier et deshonnestement. En soy ou sa femme que il a ou en autres qui piz vault soit homme soit femme” (BL Addit. 29986 fol. 165ra).
- 17.
Dubrulle, Le Speculum dominarum, pp. 242–266.
- 18.
J. Keith Atkinson, “Manuscript Context as a Guide to Generic Shift: Some Middle French Consolations,” in Medieval Codicology, Iconography, Literature, and Translation: Studies for Keith Val Sinclair, ed. Peter Rolfe Monks and D.D.R. Owen (Leiden: Brill, 1994), pp. 321–332, here p. 322.
- 19.
Sean L. Field, “Reflecting the Royal Soul: The Speculum anime Composed for Blanche of Castile,” Mediaeval Studies 68 (2006), pp. 1–42.
References
Durand de Champagne. Speculum Dominarum, ed. Anne Debrulle. “Le Speculum Dominarum de Durand de Champagne,” 2 vols. Thèse presentée pour l’obtention du diploma d’archiviste-paléographe, Ecole nationale des chartes, 1987–1988.
Atkinson, J. Keith. Manuscript Context as a Guide to Generic Shift: Some Middle French Consolations. In Medieval Codicology, Iconography, Literature, and Translation: Studies for Keith Val Sinclair, ed. Peter Rolfe Monks and D.D.R. Owen. Leiden: Brill, 1994, pp. 321–332.
Chesney, K. “Notes on Some Treatises of Devotion Intended for Margaret of York.” Medium Aevum 20 (1951): 13–19.
Dunne, Michael “A Being-towards-Death—the Vado mori.” Maynooth Philosophical Papers 4 (2007), 1–16.
Field, Sean L. “Reflecting the Royal Soul: The Speculum anime composed for Blanche of Castile.” Mediaeval Studies 68 (2006): 1–42.
Hammond, E.P. “Latin Texts of the Dance of Death,” Modern Philology 8 (1911): 399–410.
Meiss, Millard. French Painting in the Time of Jean De Berry: The Limbourgs and Their Contemporaries. 2 vols. London: Thames and Hudson, 1974.
Whitehead, Christiania. “Making a Cloister of the Soul in Medieval Religious Treatises.” Medium Aevum 67 (1998): 1–29.
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Pinder, J. (2011). A Lady’s Guide to Salvation: The Miroir des dames Compilation. In: Green, K., Mews, C. (eds) Virtue Ethics for Women 1250-1500. The New Synthese Historical Library, vol 69. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-007-0529-6_4
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