Abstract
Le Livre des trois vertus, written by Christine de Pizan between 1405 and 1406 for Marguerite of Burgundy (1393–1441; wife of Louis de Guyenne, the Dauphin of France), invites several avenues of commentary and comparison. On the one hand, it is the counterpart of Christine’s Livre du corps de policie completed one year later for Louis de Guyenne, with which it shares a tripartite structure reflecting three main strata of society. On the other hand, it is the continuation and completion of a project begun in her earlier Livre de la cité des dames. It is written with the express intention of populating the city constructed in Cité des dames with future noblewomen, who are then to be counselled and inspired by the Livre des trois vertus. But rather than examining Christine’s Trois vertus in relation to her own corpus, here I want to compare it with a considerably earlier work of moral advice directed towards women, Le Miroir des dames.
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Notes
- 1.
Christine de Pizan, Le Livre des trois vertus, ed. Charity Cannon Willard and Eric Hicks (Paris: Champion, 1989); Christine de Pizan, The Treasure of the City of Ladies, trans. Sarah Lawson (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1985); Christine de Pizan, The Book of the Body Politic, trans. Kate Forhan (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994); Christine de Pizan, Le Livre du corps de policie, ed. Angus J. Kennedy (Paris: Honoré Champion, 1998).
- 2.
Karen Pratt, “The Context of Christine’s Livre des trois vertus: Exploiting and Rewriting Tradition,” in Contexts and Continuities: Proceedings of the IVth International Colloquium on Christine de Pizan (Glasgow 21–27 July 2000) Published in Honour of Liliane Dulac, ed. Angus J. Kennedy, et al. (Glasgow: University of Glasgow Press, 2002), vol. 3, pp. 671–684. Pratt addresses the relationship between the Trois vertus and earlier books of advice for women, but does not discuss at any length the Miroir des dames, which she mentions only in its Latin original (p. 671).
- 3.
See my “Isolated Individual or Member of a Feminine Courtly Community? Christine de Pizan’s Milieu,” in Communities of Learning: Networks and the Shaping of Intellectual Identity in Europe, 1100–1500, eds. Constant Mews and John Crossley (Turnhout: Brepols, 2010), pp. 229–250, and “What Were the Ladies in the City of Ladies Reading?” Medievalia et Humanistica 36 (2010), pp. 77–100 for a discussion of these women and their libraries.
- 4.
Catherine Louise Mastny, “Durand of Champagne and the ‘Mirror of the Queen’: A Study in Medieval Didactic Literature,” PhD dissertation, Columbia University, 1969, p. 124.
- 5.
Folio numbers in this paper refer to this manuscript (Cambridge, Corpus Christi College MS 324).
- 6.
Léopold Delisle, “Testament de Blanche de Navarre, reine de France,” Mémoires de la Société de l’histoire de Paris et de l’Île de France 12 (1886), pp. 1–63, here p. 32.
- 7.
- 8.
Miroir des dames MS 324 Corpus Christi Cambridge (fol. 1v). Christine quotes the Latin, “Non quemquam magis decet, vel meliora scire vel plura quam principem cuius doctrina omnibus potest prodesse subjectis,” at Livre de paix I. 6, and translates “voirement n’est a nul homme tant convenable savoir plus de choses ne les meilleurs qu’il est au prince.” Christine de Pizan, The Book of Peace, trans. Karen Green, Constant J. Mews, and Janice Pinder (University Park: Penn State, 2008), p. 210.
- 9.
These references to Roman virtue occur only in the French, not in the Latin versions of the text. This may suggest that the translator was not Durand, but a later scholar with a more classical orientation; see Constant J. Mews, Chapter 2, this volume.
- 10.
- 11.
Patricia A. Phillippy, “ ‘Establishing Authority’: Boccaccio’s De Claris Mulieribus and Christine de Pizan’s Le Livre de la Cité des dames,” in The Selected Writings of Christine de Pizan, ed. Renate Blumenfeld-Kosinski (New York: W.W. Norton, 1997), pp. 329–361.
- 12.
Christine de Pizan, Le Livre des trois vertus, ed. Charity Cannon Willard and Eric Hicks (Paris: Champion, 1989), I.9, p. 35; Christine de Pizan, The Treasure of the City of Ladies, trans. Sarah Lawson (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1985), p. 51, mentioned by Pratt, “The Context of Christine’s Livre des trois vertus: Exploiting and Rewriting Tradition,” p. 679.
- 13.
- 14.
Pizan, Le Livre des trois vertus, I.4, pp. 12–13; Pizan, The Treasure of the City of Ladies, pp. 36–37.
- 15.
Pizan, Le Livre des trois vertus, I.4, p. 14; Pizan, The Treasure of the City of Ladies, p. 37.
- 16.
Pizan, Le Livre des trois vertus, I.10, p. 40. Pizan, The Treasure of the City of Ladies, p. 54.
- 17.
Pizan, Le Livre des trois vertus, I.9, pp. 33–36, Pizan, The Treasure of the City of Ladies, pp. 50–52.
- 18.
See Paul M. Viollet, “Comment les femmes ont été exclues en France de la succession à la couronne,” Mémoires de l’Institut de France, Académie des Inscriptions et Belles-Lettres 34 (1893), pp. 125–178.
- 19.
Pizan, Le Livre des trois vertus, I.5, pp. 20–22; Pizan, The Treasure of the City of Ladies, pp. 37–41.
- 20.
- 21.
I am indebted in my discussion of Christine’s attitude rhetoric to Donald M. Bruce and Christine McWebb, “Rhetoric as a Science in the Prose Works of Christine de Pizan,” in Christine de Pizan: Une femme de science, une femme de lettres, ed. Juliette Dor and Marie-Elizabeth Henneau (Paris: Champion, 2008), pp. 23–37. For earlier discussions of Christine’s humanism see Diane Bornstein, “Humanism in Christine de Pizan’s Le Livre du Corps de Policie,” Les Bonnes feuilles 3 (1975) pp. 100–115; Liliane Dulac and Christine M. Reno, “L’humanisme vers 1400, essai d’exploration à partir d’un cas marginal: Christine de Pizan traductrice de Thomas d’Aquin,” in Practiques de la culture écrite en France au XV e siècle: Actes du Colloque internationale du CNRS, Paris, 16–18 mai 1992, organisé en l’honneur de Gilbert Ouy par l’unité de recherche “Culture écrite du Moyen Âge tardif,” ed. Monique Ornato and Nicole Pons (Louvain-La-Neuve: Fédération internationale des instituts d’études médiéviales, 1995).
- 22.
Christine de Pizan, Le Livre de la mutacion de Fortune, ed. Susanne Solente, 4 vols. (Paris: A. & J. Picard, 1959); Bruce and McWebb, “Rhetoric as a Science in the Prose Works of Christine de Pizan”; Glynnis Cropp, “Philosophy, the Liberal Arts, and Theology in Le Livre de la mutacion de Fortune and Le Livre de l’Advision Christine,” in Healing the Body Politic: The Political Thought of Christine de Pizan, ed. Karen Green and Constant J. Mews (Turnhout: Brepols, 2005).
- 23.
Pizan, Le Livre de la mutacion de Fortune, II. 109, l. 7363, Cropp, “Philosophy, the Liberal Arts and Theology in Le Livre de la mutacion de Fortune and Le Livre de l’Advision Christine,” p. 158.
- 24.
Cropp, “Philosophy, the Liberal Arts and Theology in Le Livre de la mutacion de Fortune and Le Livre de l’Advision Christine,” p. 157, Anne Paupert, “Philosophie ‘en fourme de sainte Théologie’: l’accès au savoir dans l’œuvre de Christine de Pizan,” in Christine de Pizan: Une femme de science, une femme de lettres, ed. Juliette Dor, Marie-Elisabeth Henneau, and Bernard Ribémont (Paris: Champion, 2008), pp. 49–52.
- 25.
- 26.
Pizan, Le Livre de la mutacion de Fortune, vol. 2, p. 132, ll. 7983–8006.
- 27.
The quotation from Cicero is best thought to end here. Christine, constrained by the added difficulty of fashioning short rhymed lines, is paraphrasing rather impressionistically Brunetto Latini, Li Livres dou tresor, ed. Francis J. Carmody (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1948), 1.4, p. 21: “C’est la science de qui Tulles dit en son livre que celui a haultisme chose conquise ki de ce trespasse les homes dont li home trespassent tous les autres animaus, c’est de la parleure.” Cicero’s text (from De inventione 1.5): “Ac mihi quidem videntur homines, cum multis rebus humiliores et infirmiores sint, hac re maxime bestiis praestare, quod loqui possunt. Quare praeclarum mihi quiddam videtur adeptus is, qui, qua re homines bestiis praestent, ea in re hominibus ipsis antecellat.” (“And it seems to me that men, though they be in many ways humbler and weaker, surpass the beasts most of all in this: that they can speak. So I consider that he has achieved something remarkable, who outshines other men in the very matter in which men surpass beasts.”) Christine continues in imitation of Latini’s loose paraphrase of Cicero. My thanks to Alan Crosier for finding the Latini, locating and translating the Cicero, and assisting with detailed analysis of the Mutacion excerpt.
- 28.
Bruce and McWebb, “Rhetoric as a Science in the Prose Works of Christine de Pizan,” p. 30.
- 29.
Christine de Pizan, Epistre Othea, ed. Gabriella Parussa (Geneva: Librarie Droz, 1999), p. 200; Christine de Pizan, Christine de Pizan’s Letter of Othea to Hector, trans. Jane Chance (Newburyport MA: Focus Information Group, 1990), p. 37. See also the discussion of this passage in Karen Green, “On Translating Christine de Pizan as a Philosopher,” in Healing the Body Politic: The Political Thought of Christine de Pizan, ed. Karen Green and Constant J. Mews (Turnhout: Brepols, 2005), pp. 117–137, here pp. 126–127.
- 30.
Gianni Mombello, La tradizione manoscritta dell’Epistre Othéa di Christine de Pizan (Torino: Accademia delle Scienze, 1967).
- 31.
Livre de Prudence, British Library Harley MS 4431, fol. 268v. Folio numbers to quotes from Prudence from this MS are available at http://www.pizan.lib.ed.ac.uk/.
- 32.
Pizan, Epistre Othea, p. 210; Pizan, Christine de Pizan’s Letter of Othea to Hector, p. 42.
- 33.
Pizan, Le Livre des trois vertus, I.11, p. 41; Pizan, The Treasure of the City of Ladies, p. 55.
- 34.
Pizan, Le Livre des trois vertus, I.11, p. 42; Pizan, The Treasure of the City of Ladies, p. 56. Here Christine may be drawing on a passage from the Bible quoted in the Miroir des dames in which memory is represented through smell: “Memoria Josye in composicione odoris et c.”: “La memoyre du Roy Josye est pleinne de toute bonne odeur. Et pour tant en la bouche dun chascun doyt estre la memoyre de li douce comme miel et savoreuse” fols. 141r–141v, quoting Ecclus. 49:1: “Memoria Iosiae in conpositione odoris facti opus pigmentarii.”
- 35.
Christine de Pizan, Le Livre du corps de policie, II.17, p. 83; Christine de Pizan, The Book of the Body Politic, pp. 82–83 (translation modified).
- 36.
Dubrulle, “Le Speculum dominarum de Durand de Champagne,” p. 267.
- 37.
See Jacqueline Broad and Karen Green, A History of Women’s Political Thought in Europe, 1400–1700 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009), pp. 38–59; Cassandra Fedele, Letters and Orations, trans. Diana Robin (Chicago and London: The University of Chicago Press, 2000); Isotta Nogarola, Complete Writings, trans. Margaret L. King and Diana Robin (Chicago and London: The University of Chicago Press, 2004).
- 38.
See Tracy Adams, Chapter 8, this volume.
- 39.
Margaret King, “The Religious Retreat of Isotta Nogarola (1418–1466): Sexism and its Consequences in the Fifteenth Century,” Signs 3 (1978), pp. 807–822.
- 40.
Broad and Green, A History of Women’s Political Thought in Europe, 1400–1700, pp. 48–55; Laura Cereta, Collected Letters of a Renaissance Feminist, trans. Diana Robin (Chicago and London: The University of Chicago Press, 1997).
- 41.
Pizan, Le Livre de l’Advision Cristine, III.22, p. 88; Pizan, Christine’s Vision, pp. 89–90.
- 42.
Madeleine des Roches and Catherine des Roches, From Mother and Daughter: Poems, Dialogues, and Letters of les Dames des Roches, trans. Anne R. Larsen (Chicago: Chicago University Press, 2006); Madeleine des Roches and Catherine des Roches, Les Œuvres (Geneva: Droz, 1993). See also Catherine Müller, Chapter 11, this volume.
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Green, K. (2011). From Le Miroir des dames to Le Livre des trois vertus . 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_7
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