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Virtue Ethics for Women 1250-1500 pp 53–80Cite as

Charles V’s Visual Definition of the Queen’s Virtues

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Part of the book series: The New Synthese Historical Library ((SYNL,volume 69))

Abstract

Charles V of France, like his father and his brothers before him, commissioned a great number of luxurious manuscripts during his reign. Personally involved in the selection of Latin texts to translate into French, he also assembled translators who were able to clarify practical knowledge. Even if he didn’t organise the exact disposition of illustrations in his manuscripts himself, he may have issued directions, especially concerning the portraits of his own family. In these royal representations, King Charles V and his wife Jeanne de Bourbon are seated side by side and looking at each other, with their children, often surrounded by monks or members of the court. The king speaks, and the queen listens.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    Claire Richter Sherman, “The Queen in Charles V’s Coronation Book: Jeanne de Bourbon and the ‘Ordo ad reginam benedicendam’,” Viator 8 (1977): 255–298; idem, “Taking a Second Look: Observations on the Iconography of a French Queen, Jeanne de Bourbon (1338–1378),” Feminism and Art history: Questioning the Litany, ed. Norma Broude and Mary D. Garrard. New York: Harper & Row, 1982, pp. 101–117; idem, Imaging Aristotle: Verbal and Visual Representation in Fourteenth Century France (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1995).

  2. 2.

    Carra Ferguson O’Meara, Monarchy and Consent: The Coronation Book of Charles V of France (London, Turnhout: Harvey Miller, 2001), chapter 4: “The Ordo of Jeanne de Bourbon and the Ministerium of the Queen of France,” pp. 153–179.

  3. 3.

    Elodie Lequain, L’éducation des femmes de la noblesse en France au Moyen Âge (XIII e–XV e siècle), dissertation, Université de Paris X, 2005, in particular pp. 748–773, chapter “La dame dans l’image,” where the author analyses the attitudes of women in the dedication scenes introducing didactic manuscripts created for them.

  4. 4.

    Bernd Carqué, Stil und Erinnerung: Französiche Hofkunst im Jahrhundert Karl V und im Zeitalter ihrer Deutung (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2004), pp. 559–561.

  5. 5.

    Wolfgang Brückle, Civitas Terrena: Staatsrepräsentation und politischer Aristotelismus in der französichen Kunst (1270–1380), (Munich and Berlin: Deutscher Kunstverlag, 2005).

  6. 6.

    Charles V possessed in his library eight Latin versions of Le Gouvernement des roys et des princes, selon frere Gille l’Augustin (nos. 511–517, 522), and six French versions (nos. 518, 519 bis, 520, 521, 523); see Léopold Delisle, Recherches sur la librairie de Charles V: Inventaire général des livres ayant appartenu aux rois Charles V et Charles VI et à Jean, duc de Berry, vol. 2 (Paris: Champion, 1907), pp. 87–88.

  7. 7.

    C.R. Sherman, The Portraits of Charles V of France (1338–1380) (New York: New York University Press, 1969). In the Louvre of Charles V, built by the architect Raymond du Temple between 1364 and 1366, ten stone statues represented six members of the royal family: the king, the queen, and the four brothers of the king. Jean de Liège depicted the royal couple; Jean de Launay and Jean de Saint-Romain the figures of the Duke of Orleans and the Duke of Anjou; and Jacques de Chartres and Guy de Dammartin the statues of the Duke of Berry and Duke of Burgundy. In Bourges, the sculptor Jacques Collet created the monumental sculptures of the ducal couple kneeling, exhibited for a time in the Sainte Chapelle’s porch. See Jacques Baudoin, La sculpture flamboyante: Les grands imagiers d’occident (Nonette: Editions Créer, 1983).

  8. 8.

    Claude Jeay, “Du sceau à la signature: histoire des signes de validation en France, XIIIe–XVIe siècle, thèse pour le diplôme d’archiviste paléographe,” dissertation, Ecole nationale des chartes, 2000, pp. 163–171; idem, “La naissance de la signature dans les cours royales et princières de France (XIVe–XVe siècle),” in M. Zimmermann ed., Auctor et auctoritas: Invention et conformisme dans l’écriture médiévale, Mémoires et documents 59 (Paris: Ecole nationale des chartes, 2001), pp. 457–475.

  9. 9.

    These queens appear as virtuous exempla in Charles V’s Grandes chroniques de France (Paris, BNF fr. 2813). Queen Clotild acts as a wise counsellor of her sons during the ten years after Clovis’s death, and prays for peace before the altar of St Martin de Tours (fol. 23). Blanche de Navarre and Jeanne d’Evreux insist with John the Good to forgive Charles of Navarre (fol. 395). Constance d’Arles, at the death of her husband Robert II the Pious, prefers her younger son Robert to her elder, later to be Henri I (Lyons, BM MS 880, dated 1390, fol. 189).

  10. 10.

    There are a few portraits of the royal family during Charles VI’s reign. Nevertheless, the numerous children of Isabeau de Bavière could have been a good iconographic subject to legitimise her role during Charles VI’s illness. The brothers of Charles V had undoubtedly been encouraged to spent time and money in promoting their own image in art productions. The Petites heures du duc de Berry (BNF MS lat. 18014) is an impressive example of miniatures repeating images of the duke in prayer before the Christ and the Virgin, or making his devotion during mass.

  11. 11.

    Françoise Autrand is considering Charles V’s predilection for the angels and concluded: “Ils rappellent, eux, comme le disait la légende de Joyenval, que les armes de France aux fleurs de lis son venues du Ciel, comme la Sainte Ampoule du Sacre. L’Archange de la salutation évangélique et le lis de la Vierge Marie expliquent la dévotion spéciale que Charles, ses freres et ses amis ont voué à l’Annonciation.” (“They recall, as the legend of Joyenval said, that the arms of France came, with their fleur-de-lys, from Heaven, just like the Holy Ampulla for the anointment of kings. The Archangel of the evangelic salutation and the lily of the Virgin Mary explain the special devotion that Charles, his brothers, and his friends swore to the Annunciation.”) Françoise Autrand, Charles V: Le Sage (Paris: Fayard, 1994).

  12. 12.

    Françoise Autrand, Charles V, p. 697.

  13. 13.

    BNF MS fr. 5707, fols. 20, 368. The miniature of fol. 368 is reproduced beside a similar portrait of Philip VI before the Virgin by Jean Pucelle (Carra Ferguson O’Meara, Monarchy and Consent, p. 204).

  14. 14.

    In the Bible of Jean de Vaudetar, made for Charles V in 1372, the Song of Songs is illustrated by a royal couple kissing (The Hague, Koninklijke Bibliotheek, Museum Meermanno-Westreenianum, MS 10 B 23, fol. 330v).

  15. 15.

    Françoise Autrand, Charles V, pp. 488–489.

  16. 16.

    Bernd Carqué, Stil und Erinnerung: Französiche Hofkunst im Jahrhundert Karl V und im Zeitalter ihrer Deutung (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2004), p. 327: “Die Jeanne de Bourbon des Livre du Sacre findet sich in der jüngeren Historienbibel bereits als Maria zu Beginn des Hohenliedes wie als Johannes Evangelista.”

  17. 17.

    Claire Richter Sherman, “The Queen in Charles V’s Coronation Book”, pp. 292–293: “The text which Golein supplied for this occasion made an analogy between the queen and the Virgin who was anointed ‘souveraine royne par le mistere du saint esperit’.”

  18. 18.

    Carra Ferguson O’Meara, Monarchy and Consent, p. 175: “Rather than being a reference to fertility, it is more plausible that Jeanne’s long loose hair pertains to the programme of associating her sacre with the entry of a woman into the religious state. [. . .] The nudo capite is thus an implicit expression that the queen has left the lay estate. [. . .] the queen’s uncovered head also signifies that she submits to her lord to become the bride of Christ.”

  19. 19.

    Jeff Richards has “shown that Christine posits the Queen of France as a figura of the Virgin Mary and that Christine resorted to Mariology because the Virgin was arguably the ultimate political model of female power”; Earl Jeffrey Richards, “Political Thought as Improvisation: Female Regency and Mariology in Late Medieval French Thought,” in Virtue, Liberty, and Toleration: Political Ideas of European Women, 1400–1800, ed. Jacqueline Broad and Karen Green (Dordrecht: Springer, 2007), pp. 1–22, here p. 15. Charles V himself stresses the analogy of the king with God; see Donald Byrne, “Rex Imago Dei: Charles V of France and the Livre des propriétés des choses,” Journal of Medieval History 7 (1981), pp. 97–113.

  20. 20.

    When the king became ill, Isabeau received much advice to enable her to take on political responsibilities for the kingdom. In her City of Ladies, Christine de Pizan “appeals to Isabeau to assume the position of the Virgin mediatrix, to mediate between the rival factions at court, and points to the Virgin who is called the mere de chrestienté [mother of christendom]” (Earl Jeffrey Richard, loc. cit.).

  21. 21.

    BNF MS fr. 5707, fol. 31.

  22. 22.

    Tracy C. Hamilton, “Queenship and Kinship in the French ‘Bible moralisée’: The Example of Blanche of Castile and Vienna ÖNB 2554,” in Capetian Women, ed. Kathleen Nolan (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2003), pp. 177–208. She is compared to the Church in reference to her actions during her regency.

  23. 23.

    Carra Ferguson O’Meara, Monarchy and Consent, p. 309.

  24. 24.

    In 1370–80 Jean de Berry commissioned a royal gold cup whose scenes relate the life and miracles of St Agnes, probably to offer to his brother Charles V. Since Charles died in 1381, Jean presented it instead as a gift to Charles VI; the cup is now at London, The British Museum, Room 40, Medieval Europe.

  25. 25.

    Bible, dated 1313, BNF MS fr. 13096, fol. 85.

  26. 26.

    André Chastel, “La légende de la reine de Saba,” Revue de l’histoire des religions 119 (1939), republished in Fables, Formes, Figures (Paris: Flammarion, 2000), fig. 19, p. 93. Also in Peter Kurmann, “La façade de la cathédrale de Reims: architecture et sculpture des portails.” Etude archéologique et stylistique (Paris: CNRS, and Lausanne: Payot, 1987).

  27. 27.

    Charles V possessed two copies of the Ci nous dit, one coming from “le roy Jehan qui fut fait à l’exemple d’un livre qui fut de la royne Jehanne d’Evreux, et se appelle ‘Cy nous dit’, and another one ‘signé Charles’.” Jeanne de Bourbon had her own manuscript of this text (Léopold Delisle, Recherches sur la librairie de Charles V, vol. 2, p. 22, nos. 110, 111, 112).

  28. 28.

    Gérard Blangez ed., Ci nous dit: Recueil d’exemples moraux (Paris: Société des anciens textes français, 1979–1988). Le faux tavernier, no. 204, vv. 5–7: “La bonne renommée doit couvrir une réalité encore meilleure que la rumeur ne le dit. Comme ce fut le cas pour la reine de Saba qui trouva en Salomon encore plus de qualités que ce qu’on lui avait dit. C’est ainsi que chacun, qu’il soit en religion ou dans le siècle, doit être encore meilleur que ce qu’on en voit dehors.” (“Good reputation should conceal a reality still better than rumour declares, as was the case for the Queen of Sheba, who found in Solomon many more qualities than she had heard about. Everyone, in religion or in the world, must be better than we see from outside.”) Visite de la Reine de Saba, no. 653, vv. 3–5: “Après avoir vu toute l’ordonnance de sa maison, elle y trouva bien plus de bien et de sagesse qu’elle n’avait entendu dire, ce qui lui plut beaucoup. Cela signifie que nous devons être en nous-mêmes meilleurs que notre apparence extérieure et que nos moeurs doivent surpasser notre renommée.” (“After seeing the disposition of his house, she found much more good and wisdom than she had heard tell of, which pleased her a great deal. This signifies that we must be in ourselves better than our appearance, and that our conduct must surpass our reputation.”)

  29. 29.

    Léopold Delisle, Recherches sur la librairie de Charles V, vol. 2, pp. 15, 16, notices 72–76. The manuscript of notice 76 contains the text of Saint Louis.

  30. 30.

    Jean-Patrice Boudet, “Le modèle du roi sage aux XIIIe et XIVe siècles: Salomon, Alphonse X et Charles V,” Revue historique 3 (2008), no. 647, pp. 545–566.

  31. 31.

    Michael Richarz, “Prudence and Wisdom in Christine de Pizan’s Livre des fais et bonnes meurs du sage roy Charles V,” in Healing the Body Politic: The Political Thought of Christine de Pizan, ed. Karen Green and Constant J. Mews (Turnhout: Brepols, 2005), pp. 99–116, here p. 109. Christine idealised Charles and compared him to kings of legend, “que peut plus estre dit de l’ordre de vivre du sage Salemon” (Livre des fais, III, 49).

  32. 32.

    In the City of Ladies, “Christine names as the first lady in Part 1 the Empress Nicaula, that is, the Queen of Sheba, whose entrance into Jerusalem to visit Solomon was taken in patristic lore as a figura of the entrance of the Virgin Mary in to the Celestial Jerusalem. The chapter title, ‘Here she tells of Nicaula, Empress of Ethiopa, and afterwards about several queens and princesses of France,’ links the Queen of Sheba and contemporary ruling women.” Earl Jeffrey Richards, “Political Thought as Improvisation”, p. 14.

  33. 33.

    The manuscript opened on fol. 2 with a miniature in four partitions. One image at the top, King Solomon teaching his son Rehoboam, illustrates the first words of the Book of the Proverbs: “My son, listen to the instruction of your father.” In the adjacent image, Solomon famously orders a baby, whom two women claim as their own, to be cut in two. The pair kneel before him, with long unbound blond hair. Solomon gives the child to the one who relinquishes the child rather than see him killed. The two scenes below tell a story wrongly attributed to Solomon: a king, to test the legitimacy of three sons, orders them to shoot an arrow into their father’s corpse, and only the legitimate son refused. These three exempla of royal wisdom are particularly appropriate to Charles V in 1363, just before he succeeded his father as king of France.

  34. 34.

    There are other teaching scenes in this manuscript: Baruch preaching (fol. 111v); a clerk preaching (fol. 329v).

  35. 35.

    The Hague, Meermanno-Westreenianum MS 10 B 23, fol. 163v.

  36. 36.

    Guy Lobrichon, “La dame de Saba: interprétations médiévales d’une figure impossible,” in Graphè 11 (2002), pp. 101–122, here especially pp. 120–121. Pierre le Mangeur (Petrus Comestor), Historia scolastica, PL 198, ca. 1370 and 1578–1579.

  37. 37.

    Jeanne had in her library a manuscript of Le gouvernement des princes, article 526 de la librairie du Louvre; see L. Delisle, Le cabinet des manuscrits de la bibliothèque impériale, vol. 1 (Paris: Imprimerie Impériale, 1868–1881).

  38. 38.

    Paulette L’Hermite-Leclercq, “La femme dans le De regimine principum de Gilles de Rome,” in Guerre, pouvoir et noblesse au Moyen Âge: Mélanges en l’honneur de Philippe Contamine, in Actes du Colloque international de Conques, 15–18 octobre 1998, ed. Michel Rouche, Culture et civilisations médiévales 21 (Paris, Presses de l’Université de Paris-Sorbonne, 2000), pp. 471–479, here especially pp. 474, 479. First, she insists on taciturnitas, a virtue privileged as prudence against the perversion of language. Second, the reduced social life is a radical solution for women. See also, by the same author, “L’image de la femme dans le De eruditione filiorum nobilium de Vincent de Beauvais,” in Mariage et sexualité au Moyen Âge, accord ou crise?, ed. Michel Rouche (Paris: Presses de l’Université de Paris-Sorbonne, 2000), pp. 243–261.

  39. 39.

    Dated from the first quarter of fourteenth century to the early fifteenth century, the miniature’s composition shows a prince addressing his queen and his two children, a boy and a girl. The manuscript of Baltimore, produced in England around 1320, is of the highest quality and includes an extensive iconographic suite of ten miniatures of Queen Mary’s circle. It indicates as first owner a king, perhaps Edward III, or a member of high aristocracy. Charles F. Briggs, Giles of Rome’s De regimine principum, Reading and Writing Politics at Court and University, ca. 1275–1525 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999). These manuscripts are, chronologically: Baltimore, Walters Arts Gallery W.144, fol. 41v; Cambridge, Cambridge University Library Ff.3.3, fol. 67, and London, British Library Harley 4385, fol. 59v.

  40. 40.

    Other manuscripts of De regimine, in French translation by Henry de Cauchy, had been diffused in illuminated copies whose illustrations can be compared, all of French origin and produced at the beginning of the fifteenth century. Briggs, “Giles of Rome’s De regimine principum,” p. 39; BNF MS fr. 573, fol. 226; BNF MS fr. 1202, fols. 59, 77v, and 96.

  41. 41.

    Pierpont Morgan Library MS 456, fols. 50, 51, 54v, 55, 56v. The queen’s passive attitude is associated with needlework and related preoccupations as a way to direct women’s inactivity. This leitmotiv of misogynist literature is addressed in two chapters: one for the queen, another for the young princess. The first miniature depicts three queens, of whom one spins wool, another weaves, and a third embroiders a blue boot (Book II, ch. 7, fol. 56). In the second, dedicated to the king’s daughter, three young men contemplate the princess in her room, embroidering a white piece of fabric (fol. 58). For a quite different perspective on these feminine arts, see Chapter 9 by Natasha Amendola in this volume.

  42. 42.

    Nicole Oresme. Le Livre de Ethiques d’Aristote, published from the text of Bibliothèque Royale de Belgique MS 2902, with a critical introduction and notes by Albert Douglas Menut (New York: G.E. Stechert, 1940), pp. 443–445.

  43. 43.

    Matrimonial harmony accordingly evokes wider themes, detailed in Books VIII and IX of the Nicomachean Ethics: friendship, and a moral attitude that might inspire a king such as Charles V, whose approach to political science successfully incorporated familial and diplomatic relations; see Bénédicte Sère, Penser l’amitié au Moyen Âge: Etude historique des commentaires sur les livres VIII et IX de l’Ethique à Nicomaque (XIII e –XV e siècles) (Turnhout: Brepols, 2007).

  44. 44.

    Elodie Lequain, L’éducation des femmes de la noblesse en France au Moyen Âge (XIII e –XV e siècle), dissertation, Université de Paris X (2005), p. 296.

  45. 45.

    She is represented overseeing Louis IX’s education in a manuscript of Guillaume de Saint-Pathus’s Vie de Saint Louis (BNF MS fr. 5716, fol. 16), reproduced in Anne D. Hedeman, The Royal Image, Illustrations of the “Grandes Chroniques de France”, 1274–1422 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1991), fig. 88, p. 126; and also in the Heures de Jeanne de Navarre, painted after 1336 (BNF MS nouv. acq. lat. 3145, fol. 85v).

  46. 46.

    “Une Bible historiée et toute figuree à ymages, qui fut de la royne Jehanne d’Evreux” (101), “Le Miroir aux dames, qui fu de la royne Jehanne d’Evreux” (338 bis), in Léopold Delisle, Recherches sur la librairie de Charles V, pp. 20, 60.

  47. 47.

    Auguste Castan, “Un manuscrit de la bibliothèque du roi de France Charles V retrouvé à Besançon,” Bibliothèque de l’Ecole nationale des chartes (1882), vol. 43, pp. 211–218; La Librairie de Charles V: Catalogue de l’exposition de la Bibliothèque nationale (Paris: 1968), no. 184, pp. 105–106; Christiane Raynaud, “Image d’une éducation choisie: L’enseignement des princes de Guillaume Peyraut et le Livre du gouvernement des princes de Gilles de Rome dans le MS 434 de Besançon,” in Initiation, apprentissage, éducation au moyen âge, Actes du I er Colloque International de Montpellier (Université Paul Valéry) de Novembre 1991 (Montpellier: Université Paul Valéry, 1993) pp. 429–447; Catherine Sparta, “Le manuscrit 434 de la Bibliothèque municipale de Besançon: Culture antique et latinité sous le règne de Charles V,” dans Histoire de l’art 45 (1999), pp. 13–25. BNF MS fr. 1128 is a copy of Besançon MS 434. It contains the Gouvernement des rois, the Jeu des echecs moralisés translated by Jean de Vignay, and the French version of Boethius’s Consolation, by Jean de Meun.

  48. 48.

    It contains Le Jeu des echecs moralisés de Jacques de Cessoles (fols. 245–292v); La Consolation de Philosophie de Boèce (fols. 293–338v); Les Moralités des philosophes de Guillaume de Conches (fols. 339–352v); L’Etablissement de Sainte Eglise (fols. 353–358); Le Miroir de Sainte Eglise of Hugh of Saint Victor (fols. 359–371); Esope’s Isopet (fols. 371v–377); and Misère de la condition humaine of Pope Innocent III (fols. 377v–400); see Léopold Delisle, Recherches sur la librairie de Charles V, p. 88, nos. 519, 520.

  49. 49.

    Several Franciscan texts were translated into French during the reign of Charles V, such as the Liber de proprietatibus rerum composed in 1230–1240 by Barthélemy l’Anglais, translated in 1372 by Jean Corbechon as Le Livre des propriétés de choses, or with variant titles (Lyons: 1445, 1446, etc.). There is no complete modern edition; see H. Herfray-Ray, Jean Corbechon, traducteur de Barthélémy l’Anglais (1372), dissertation, Paris: Ecole nationale des chartes, 1944. Also in 1372, the king commissioned the translation of John of Salisbury’s Policraticus by the Franciscan Denis Foulechat (BNF MS fr. 24287).

  50. 50.

    Robert Gane, Claudine Billot, Le Chapitre de Notre-Dame de Paris au XIV e siècle: Etude sociale d’un groupe canonial, CERCOR, Travaux et Recherches (Saint-Etienne: Publications de l’Université de Saint-Etienne, 1999), p. 329.

  51. 51.

    Xavier de la Selle, Le service des âmes à la cour: Confesseurs et aumôniers des rois de France du XIII e au XV e siècle, Mémoires et documents de l’Ecole des Chartes 43, Paris: Ecole nationale des chartes, 1995.

  52. 52.

    Charles V holding council (fols. 116, 142v, 184, 209), a king (Charles V) and bishops listening to a monk (151v), a king and a queen (Charles V and Jeanne de Bourbon) attending to a monk speaking with three men (158v), a king and a queen and their two sons listening to a monk (171v), a king hearing a lesson (197v).

  53. 53.

    In BNF MS fr. 22542 and at least five other manuscripts, and a modern edition with long introduction, founded on that BNF manuscript: Le Songe du vieil pelerin, ed. G.W. Coopland (London: Cambridge University Press, 1969).

  54. 54.

    BNF MS fr. 1999, for example.

  55. 55.

    Besançon, Bibliothèque Municipale MS 434. See also: Jacques de Cessoles, Le Livre du jeu d’échecs ou la société idéale au Moyen Âge au XIII e siècle, translated and presented by Jean-Michel Mehl (Paris: Stock, Collection Moyen Âge, 1995); and Le noble jeu des échecs: le Livre des moeurs des hommes et des devoirs des nobles, au travers du jeu des echecs de Jacques de Cessoles, trans. Jean-Michel Péchiné (Paris: Gallimard, 1997).

  56. 56.

    Besançon MS 434, fol. 250. See also Péchiné, Le noble jeu des échecs, for reproductions of illustrations in the Besançon manuscript; here see especially pp. 12, 40.

  57. 57.

    Charles already had two manuscripts of Boethius’s De consolatione. One was a bilingual version in Latin and French (Léopold Delisle, Recherches sur la librairie de Charles V, vol. II, p. 85, notices 498, 499).

  58. 58.

    Besançon MS 434, fol. 294v: “Un homme gisant en un lit et une femme en estant a son chief tenant i. ceptre en la main senestre et en la destre main un livre. Et doit estre la dame haute et grant et en vieil age, une coronne en son chief et doit parler a boece et doivent etre au pie du lit iii ieunes femmes pescheresses en lestant.”

  59. 59.

    Brussels, Bibliothèque Royale MSS 9505–9506, fol. 2v.

  60. 60.

    Kalila wa dimna (in translation by Raymond de Béziers), BNF MS lat. 8504, fol. 1v.

  61. 61.

    See Didier Lett, “ ‘L’expression du visage paternel’: La ressemblance entre le père et le fils à la fin du Moyen Âge: un mode d’appropriation symbolique,” in Lett ed., Etre père à la fin du Moyen Âge, Cahiers de recherches médiévales 4 (1997), pp. 115–125.

  62. 62.

    C.R. Sherman, Imaging Aristotle, fig. 9, p. 52.

  63. 63.

    Paris, Archives Nationales, J. 465, no. 48. See C.R. Sherman, op. cit., fig. 11, p. 108.

  64. 64.

    Fanny Cosandey, La Reine de France: Symbole et pouvoir, XV e –XVIII e siècle (Pais, Gallimard, 2000), and especially the legal foundations, chapter 1, pp. 19–54. Ralph Giesey had detailed the textual and iconographical modifications on Charles V’s Grandes Chroniques, made to reinforce the legitimacy of the Valois claim to the throne. The elimination of a queen’s sons from the French succession established in 1328 was always discussed in England in 1380, and allusion to this historical period had been simplified; see Ralph Giesey Le rôle méconnu de la loi salique: La succession royale, XIV e –XVI e siècles (Paris: Les Belles Lettres, 2007), pp. 79–82.

  65. 65.

    BNF fr. 437, fol. 1.

  66. 66.

    Tracy Adams has analysed a similar phenomenon when Christine de Pizan idealised Isabeau de Bavière and the dauphin Louis de Guyenne, during Charles VI’s illness, “as the creation of icons, or figures, behind whom the people can gather while they wait for the king to regain his sanity.” Christine aimed to “promote an image of Isabeau as untainted by the narrow political interests of the ducal factions”; see Tracy Adams, “Moyennerresse de traictié de paix [sic]: Christine de Pizan’s mediators,” in Healing the Body Politic, ed. Karen Green and Constant J. Mews (Turnhout: Brepols, 2005), pp. 177–200, here pp. 179–180.

  67. 67.

    Philippe Verdier. Le Couronnement de la Vierge: Les origines et les premiers développements d’un thème iconographique, (Montréal-Paris: Institut d’études médiévales-Vrin, 1980).

  68. 68.

    It can be related to the French inserted between lines of the Latin text in the genealogical tree of Hugh Capet, in Ivo of Saint-Denis’s Vita et Passio Sancti Dionysii, BNF MS lat. 13836, fol. 78. Around the figures of Matilda of Saxony, Gerberga of Saxony, and Hedwige (here “Haouide”) of Saxony is written: “cestui hue chapet roy de france fils du dessus dit hue le grant comte de paris et de la dite haouide est descendu de la lignie charlemaigne laquele chose nul ne peut nier.”

  69. 69.

    Arnaud Alexandre and Frédéric Pleybert, Paris et Charles V (Paris: Action artistique de la ville de Paris, 2001).

  70. 70.

    Charlemagne attends the crowning of Louis, King of Aquitaine: a crowned baby in the arms of his mother Hildegard (Bibliothèque Mazarine MS 2028, fol. 131). Another example is the transmission of regalia by Empress Richilde, a means of remaining active even after the death of the husband, and keeping in touch with the transmission of his power to his descendants. In Charles V’s Grandes Chroniques de France, a miniature depicts the Empress Richilde bringing Charles the Bald’s regalia to Louis the Stammerer, for him to become the French King in 877 (BNF MS fr. 2813, fol. 160).

  71. 71.

    Anne D. Hedeman, The Royal Image: Illustrations of the “Grandes Chroniques de France” (1274–1422) (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1991), pp. 124–128.

  72. 72.

    BNF MS fr. 2813, fol. 182.

  73. 73.

    “Le roy Charles le Chauve recut message quil nentrast ou roy qui ot este Lothaire son frere iusques apres ce quil fut parti. Et comment les prelaz le recurent a seigneur en la cite de Mes et des institucions qui la furent establies” (BNF fr. 2813, fol. 149).

  74. 74.

    Charles V’s library includes two manuscripts of the “service de saincte Clotilde noté,” in Léopold Delisle, Recherches sur la librairie de Charles V, p. 49, nos. 275, 276.

  75. 75.

    Les Grandes Chroniques de France, ed. Jules Viard (Paris: Société de l’Histoire de France, 1920), vol. 1, Book 1, chapter 17, p. 64.

  76. 76.

    “Li forz rois Clodovees out IIII fiuz de la bone roine Crotilde, Theoderic, Clodomire, Childebert et Clothaire. Tuit ci quatre furent roi et deviserent le roiaume en IIII parties” (Viard, Les Grandes Chroniques de France, vol. 1, Book 2, ch. 1, p. 95).

  77. 77.

    London, British Library, Royal 16 G VI, fol. 31v.

  78. 78.

    Anne Hedeman, in her study of the Queen and the dauphin, analyses the representation of Clotild and her four sons in MS 2028 of Bibliothèque Mazarine, realised by the Master of the Cité des Dames in 1405–1408. She had identified the objects held by the four kings: the bâton noueux of Louis, Duke of Orléans, and the hammer of John the Fearless, Duke of Burgundy. She concluded: “The use of Burgundian and Orléanist emblems in a scene of Clotild and her sons may therefore comment on the deadly rivalry between these blood relations of Charles VI” (The Royal Image, 1274–1422, p. 171).

  79. 79.

    Philippe Verdier, Le Couronnement de la Vierge; Daniel Russo, “Les représentations mariales dans l’art d’Occident: Essai sur la formation d’une tradition iconographique,” in Marie, Le culte de la Vierge dans la société médiévale, edited by D. Iogna-Prat, E. Palazzo, and D. Russo (Paris: Beauchesne, 1996).

  80. 80.

    The education that Christine de Pizan suggests is not unlike the training Parsons believes real queens gave to their daughters, to prepare them for royal marriages; see J.C. Parsons, “Mothers, Daughters, Marriage, Power: Some Plantagenet Evidence, 1150–1500,” in Parsons ed., Medieval Queenship (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 1997), pp. 63–78, 75–78. Christine does, however, mention saintly queens: Clotild, wife of Clovis; Bathild, wife of Clovis II; and St Elizabeth of Hungary.

  81. 81.

    This account is modelled on Geoffrey of Beaulieu’s short version and accompanied by a copy of the instructions to Isabelle. See David O’Connell, The Teachings of Saint Louis: A Critical Text (Chapel Hill: The University of California Press, 1972), p. 18.

  82. 82.

    When the Barons argued that the Queen “ne devoit pas gouverner si grant chose comme le royaume de France, et qu’il n’appartenoit pas à fame de tel chose faire,” Louis affirmed his own capacity to govern with wise counsellors. When the Barons tried to kidnap him in Orleans, he went to Monthléry, where he asked his mother to send him armed soldiers to return to Paris. In the war between Louis IX and Thibaut, the peace was attributed to the intervention of his mother: “A celle pais faire fu la royne Blanche qui dist: ‘Par Dieu, conte Thibaut, vous ne deussiez pas estre nostre contraire. Il vous deust bien remembrer de la bonte que le roy mon filz vous fist, qui vint en vostre aide pour secorre vostre contree et vostre terre contre touz les barons de France qui la vouloient toute ardoir et mettre en charbon.’ ” Viard, Grandes Chroniques de France, vol. 7 (1932), pp. 40–41. Count Thibaut IV was impressed by the beauty and wisdom of the queen.

  83. 83.

    Joanna of Flanders is one of these women whose military activity was combined with a real knowledge of negotiations with kings. When the false Count Baudoin of Flanders convinces subjects to disinherit Joanna of her county, she goes to King Louis IX and “li pria pour Dieu, que il eust pitie de li, et li monstra rayson pour quoi il pooit et devoit estre esmeuz, et restablir li, sa terre et sa contée” (“begs him before God to take pity on her, and show him why he can and must be moved to restore her land and her county”). Grandes Chroniques de France, vol. 7 (1932), pp. 17–18.

  84. 84.

    Françoise Autrand, Charles V, p. 536.

  85. 85.

    BNF MS fr. 2813, fol. 395, “Comment le roy de france pardonna au roy de navarre la mort de charles d’espaigne connestable de france.”

  86. 86.

    Brigitte Buettner stresses this exceptional valorisation of female intercession in royal action, as a sign of the personal involvement of Charles V in this specific chapter of his manuscript; see “Le système des objets dans le testament de Blanche de Navarre,” Clio 19 (2004), Femmes et images, pp. 37–62. The text of the Grandes Chroniques de France has: “Et assez tost après, la royne Jehanne, ante, et la royne Blanche, suer du dit roy de Navarre, laquelle Jehanne avoit esté femme du roy Charles, dernierement trespasse, vindrent en la presence du Roy et li firent la reverance en euls enclinant devant ly. Et lors les dites roynes et le dit roy de Navarre, qui mist le genoil a terre, en mercierent le Roy”; Chroniques des règnes de Jean II et Charles V, ed. R. Delachenal (Paris: Renouard, 1910), pp. 43–45.

  87. 87.

    Jean de Berry commissions individual portraits more than other brothers of Charles V. In the Grandes heures du Duc de Berry, he used the courtly festive and luxurious context but not the family context. In the third quarter of the fifteenth century, Hélène de Laval particularly appreciated family portraits, staying in the traditional frame of a writer presenting a book to its recipient: Pierre le Baud offers his Chroniques de Bretagne to Jean de Derval and Hélène de Laval; BNF MS fr. 8266, fol. 393v, reproduced in Colette Beaune, and François Avril, Le miroir du pouvoir (Paris: Hervas, 1997), p. 21.

  88. 88.

    Christian de Mérindol, “Portrait et généalogie: la genèse du portrait réaliste et individualisé,” in Population et démographie au Moyen Âge, ed. Olivier Guyotjeannin (Paris: Comité des travaux historiques et scientifiques, 1995), pp. 219–248.

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  1. University of Lille 3, Lille, France

    Cécile Quentel-Touche

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    Constant Mews

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Quentel-Touche, C. (2011). Charles V’s Visual Definition of the Queen’s Virtues. 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_5

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