Surviving examples, and the records of the time, testify to the
splendour and the sum of them. At the beginning of the thirteenth
century, the French miniature was influenced in no small degree, both
in technique and in colour, by glass painting. Towards the end of the
century this influence yielded to the prevailing enthusiasm for
architecture and sculpture, and in Bibles and Psalters alike there
appear scenes with figures as in bas-relief, with architectural
backgrounds and decorative details. The same spirit that evolved
tender foliage out of the hard stone of cathedral and church evolved
also the delicate hawthorn-leaf enriching the initial letter of the
MS. It mattered little whether the material worked on was stone or
parchment. Each was but a means for giving expression to a newly
discovered scheme of beauty--the beauty of Nature. In the thirteenth
and fourteenth centuries a renewed impetus had been given to the arts
of writing and illumination. This was partly because a demand had
arisen for a secular literature to supersede the tiresome and
time-worn recitations of minstrels, and partly because, in the
fourteenth century, Books of Hours, instead of the Psalter alone as
had hitherto been customary, came into general use in private
devotion. This created a fresh want, and at the same time supplied a
number of new subjects in which the artist could reveal his skill.
Arras was one of the chief centres of this new movement, a movement
which Mahaut continued and stimulated. She employed artists to
illuminate both sacred and secular works for her own use as well as
for gifts--gifts counted beyond compare and beside which even precious
stones were deemed of less worth. To Mahaut this desire for beauty was
a very lode-star. To glance at a list of the gold- and silver-smiths'
work--the jewelled and enamelled chaplets of gold, the jewelled
girdles, and buckles, and braids for the hair, and the cups, some of
silver with crystal covers or wrought with enamel and precious stones,
and others of jasper mounted with silver work--reads like a fantasy of
hidden treasure in some fairy tale. Even her chess-boards--and she was
a devotee of the game--were of silver or ivory, and one, we read, was
of jasper and chalcedony mounted with silver and gems, the chess-men
being of jasper and crystal.
For the younger folk about her there was tennis, and also games of
hazard with forfeits of girdles and coifs to the ladies. In the Castle
garden were certain mechanical contrivances which, by their sudden and
unexpected action, were supposed to amuse the unwary guests. One
sprinkled them with water, another with black or white powder, as they
passed by, and yet another, in the form of a monkey, struck them with
a stick, whilst in a bower might be seen a mirror wherein all who
looked saw only the distorted semblance of themselves. These unwelcome
pleasantries were a part of the miscellaneous borrowings from the
East. But for the easily amused folk of the Middle Ages, time passed
merrily enough in the midst of such pastimes, and only the shadow on
the dial seemed to mark its flight.
But Mahaut, amid the manifold claims on her time and talent, had seen
the shadow lengthening. From time to time she had been attacked by
illness, to which blood-letting and other remedies of the day had
brought relief. But on the 25th November 1329, when in Paris, she was
seized with a sudden sickness, so sudden that sinister rumours were
noised abroad. Human aid was of no avail. Two days later there was
general lamentation. The shadow had lengthened into the night. Mahaut
was dead. In accordance with her wishes, she was buried at the foot of
her father's grave in the Abbey of Maubuisson, near Paris, her heart
being placed in the Church of the Franciscans in Paris, beside the
remains of her son, whose tomb there was afterwards removed to St.
Denis. Her possession of Artois, for which she had laboured devotedly,
became annexed to the Duchy of Burgundy through the marriage of her
granddaughter with its Duke.
Here, though only a tithe has been told, we must take leave of this
cultivated woman of the fourteenth century, a type of the time and for
all time. Her aim was the aim of all culture--the attainment of as
complete a life as possible. To this she aspired, and to this in large
measure she attained. What more can be said of even those we count the
greatest?
A FIFTEENTH-CENTURY FEMINISTE, CHRISTINE DE PISAN
Christine de Pisan, Italian by birth, French by adoption, may be
regarded not merely as a forerunner of true feminism, but also as one
of its greatest champions, seeing that in her judgment of the sexes
she endeavours to hold the scales evenly. Possessed of profound common
sense and of a generous-hearted nature, she is wholly free from that
want of fairness in urging woman's claims which is so fatally
prejudicial to their just consideration. Although, strictly speaking,
Christine was not original, she was representative, and interests us
for that very reason. She was perhaps one of the most complete
exponents of the finer strain of thought of her time. She stands
before us, at the dawn of the fifteenth century, Janus-headed, looking
to the past and to the future, a woman typical of a time of
transition, on the one hand showing, in her writings, a clinging to
old beliefs, and on the other hand asserting, in her contact with real
life, independence of thought in the discussion of still unsolved
questions.
Christine was born at Venice in 1363, where her father, Thomas de
Pisan, of Bologna, distinguished for his knowledge of medicine and
astrology, had settled on his marriage with a daughter of one of the
Councillors of the Republic. When five years of age, she was taken by
her mother to Paris to join her father, who had been summoned thither
some time before by the King, Charles the Fifth, to serve as his
astrologer. At the end of the fourteenth century astrology played a
very real and important part in men's lives. Before wars or journeys
were undertaken, or additions to castle or chapel made, or even a new
garment put on, the stars were consulted for the propitious day and
hour. So deeply was Charles the Fifth imbued with a belief in the
efficacy of this occult art that when he wished to confer some special
honour, or to express his gratitude for some service rendered to him
or to the State, he sought to enhance his bounty by sending an
astrologer as part of his gift. By the time little Christine arrived
in Paris her father had gained the confidence and esteem of the King,
and was settled at Court with substantial maintenance. Here she was
brought up as a maiden of quality, surrounded by much magnificence,
for Charles loved beautiful things, and never stayed his hand to
procure them, even when the gratification of his desires involved
hardship to his people. He possessed many virtues, but economy was not
one of them. The dismal castle of the Louvre, which had been the home
of the French kings since the days of Philip Augustus, found no favour
in his sight as a place of residence, and he quickly set about
building the sumptuous Hôtel de St. Paul, in what is now known as the
"Quartier de l'Arsenal." The Louvre he destined for official
functions, for an arsenal, and for his library. To form a library was
no new thing in Paris. Some thirty years earlier Richard de Bury,
Bishop of Durham (1333) and sometime Chancellor of England, speaks of
his frequent ambassadorial visits to "Paris, the Paradise of the
World, with its delightful libraries, where the days seemed ever few,
for the greatness of our love." And he adds, "unfastening our
purse-strings, we scattered money with joyous heart, and purchased
inestimable books." But whilst it is true that Charles's predecessors
had collected books, none before had thought of forming a library for
public use, and Charles's work, as M. Delisle remarks, was really the
first germ of the Bibliothèque Nationale.[30] To collect books was one
of his greatest delights, and he spared no trouble or money to make
his library as complete as possible. This taste for books he may have
inherited from his father, King John, who, learning to read from a
beautiful Book of Hours, early acquired a love of books from his
mother, Jeanne of Burgundy. Charles also loved to lend or make
presents of books, and among his many gifts, one--an offering to
Richard the Second--may be seen in the British Museum (Royal 20, B
VI.). The library was considerably depleted during the reign of
Charles the Sixth, when it was used as a sort of storehouse from which
presents were made to prince and prelate, or to any to whom it was
desired to make a gift, or a recognition of services rendered. On the
death of Charles the Sixth, in 1425, it was bought by the Duke of
Bedford, Regent of France, and doubtless some of its treasures were
transferred by him into England. Those that were left, and some that
gradually found their way back to France, may now be seen in the
Bibliothèque Nationale and in other libraries of France, and also in
various libraries in other countries, but out of the 1200 books
collected by Charles the Fifth, rather less than a hundred are now
known to us.
[30] L. Delisle, _Recherches sur la libraire de Charles V_,
Paris, 1907.
[Illustration: _Bib. Royale, Brussels._
CHRISTINE DE PISAN.
_To face page 119._]
To increase the usefulness of his library, Charles employed a number
of translators, not only of Greek and Latin authors, but also of the
most important Arabic writings, thus bringing both the classics and
the science of the day within the reach of the many students
privileged to make use of it. It was in this library that Christine
spent long days reading and meditating on the thoughts of the greatest
minds, thus fitting herself for the part she had to play when life had
ceased to be a gay dream. We can get from a miniature in a Book of
Hours, now at Chantilly, and painted by the brothers Limbourg for
Jean, Duc de Berri, a brother of the King, some idea of what this old
residence of the Louvre was like. In this miniature we see represented
a square grim castle, with a large tower at each corner and narrow
slits for windows, suggestive more of a place of refuge in time of war
and tumult than the home of a peace-loving, enlightened king. When
Charles determined to beautify this sombre structure, statues were set
up without and tapestries hung within. One of the towers was fitted up
for the library, panelled with rare woods and furnished with some
thirty small chandeliers and a large central silver lamp, kept lighted
both night and day so that work could go on at all hours. In the
courtyard an outside circular staircase (one of the earliest, if not
_the_ earliest, of the kind) was added to give, as was said, a note of
gaiety. But the idea of gaiety seems somewhat ironical when we learn
that as it was difficult to get a sufficient number of large slabs
quarried quickly, headstones from the cemetery of the Holy Innocents
were taken for the purpose!
Christine, as a child, showed an extraordinary capacity for learning,
and this her father zealously fostered and developed. At the age of
fifteen she married, and married for love, the King's notary and
secretary, Etienne de Castel, a gentleman of Picardy. Her happiness
and well-being seemed assured, but Fortune, whose wheel is ever
revolving, though sometimes so slowly as to lull us into
forgetfulness, had decreed otherwise. For Christine it revolved all
too quickly. Two years after her marriage the King died (1380), and
her husband and father lost their appointments. Gradually anxiety and
sorrow crept like some baneful atmosphere into the once happy home.
First she lost her father, and then, two or three years later, her
husband died, leaving her, at the age of twenty-five, with three
children to provide for. Like many another, she turned to letters as
both a material and a mental support. Endowed with an extraordinary
gift of versification, she began by writing short poems, chiefly on
the joys and sorrows of love, expressing sometimes her own sentiments,
sometimes those of others for whom she wrote. But she tells us that
often when she made merry she would fain have wept. How many a one
adown the centuries has re-echoed the same sad note!
"Men must work and women must weep." So says the poet. But life shows
us that men and women alike must needs do both. And so the sad
Christine set to work to fit herself, by the study of the best ancient
and modern writers, to produce more serious matter than love-ballads,
turning, in her saddest moments, to Boëthius and Dante for inspiration
and solace. "I betook myself," she says, "like the child who at first
is set to learn its A B C, to ancient histories from the beginning of
the world--histories of the Hebrews and the Assyrians, of the Romans,
the French, the Bretons, and diverse others--and then to the
deductions of such sciences as I had time to give heed to, as well as
to a study of the poets." Her master was Aristotle, and she made his
ethics her gospel. "Ancelle de science," she calls herself, and
remains a humble worshipper at the shrine of knowledge, for knowledge,
she says, is "that which can change the mortal into the immortal." We
can picture her to ourselves at work in the library of the Louvre,
amidst its 900 precious MSS., and in the library of the University of
Paris, to which she had access through her friend Gerson, the renowned
Chancellor. In a miniature at the beginning of one of her MSS. she is
seen seated, in a panelled recess, on a carved wooden bench, dressed
in a simple blue gown and a high white coif. She is working at a folio
on a large table covered with tapestry, with a greyhound lying at her
feet. It is quite possible that this may be either a conventional
setting, or one due to the imagination of the artist, but as the
miniaturists of those days were, as far as they could be, realists, it
is more than possible that we here see her represented at work in her
favourite nook in the Louvre library, together with the favourite dog
who shared her lonely hours. Gradually solace came to her through
work, and having found so precious a treasure for herself, she, like
our own modern sage, never tired of preaching to others the gospel of
its blessedness.
Whilst Christine wrote and lived her student life--"son cuer hermit
dans l'ermitage de Pensée"--her fame went forth, and princes sought,
by tempting offers, to attach her to their courts, but without
success. Of these, Henry the Fourth of England, already acquainted
with her poems, and Gian Galleazo Visconti, Duke of Milan, were the
most importunate, and particularly the former, who was unaccustomed to
rebuff and failure. But Christine, with repeated gracious thanks and
guarded refusals, remained firm. No reason for her decision is
recorded, but it may well be believed that her patriotism would not
allow her, even with the certainty of ease and emolument, to quit
France at that critical time, or to serve the enemy of her adopted
country.
Although Christine's reading was very varied and extensive, there were
two subjects--the amelioration of her war-distraught country, then in
the throes of the Hundred Years' War, and the championship of the
cause of womankind--which specially appealed to her as a patriot and a
woman, and for which she strove with unceasing ardour. In all her
writings she so interweaves these two causes that it is only by
approaching them in the same way that we can understand her view of
their psychological unity. To Christine these interests were
essentially identical, for she recognised how paramount is woman's
influence in the making or marring of the world--how, in truth, in
woman's hand lies a key which can unlock a Heaven or a Hell.
There was sore need of a patriot, and in Christine one was found. It
has been well said of her, and by a Frenchman too, that "though born a
woman and an Italian, she alone at the Court of France seemed to have
manly qualities and French sentiments." France was in a sorry plight.
There was war in the land, there was war in the palace. The sick King
suffered more and more from attacks of madness, and during these
periods the Dukes of Orleans and Burgundy fought for the regency.
Christine began her patriotic work by fervent appeals to Isabella, the
Queen (to whom she offered a MS. now in the British Museum),[31] to
use her influence to put an end to these dissensions which so greatly
added to the troubles of the kingdom. She also lost no opportunity of
proclaiming in her various writings the duties and responsibilities of
kings and nobles to the people, and the necessity, if there was ever
to be peace and prosperity, of winning their regard. At the command of
Philip le Hardi, Duke of Burgundy, and uncle of the King, she wrote in
prose, from chronicles of the time and from information obtained from
many connected with the King's household, _Le Livre des faits et
bonnes moeurs du roi Charles V_, recounting his virtuous life and deeds
and their advantage to the realm, and introducing a remarkable
dissertation on the benefit to a country of a strong middle-class.
She, of course, reasoned from Aristotle. The subject is a commonplace
one now, but in the case of any one living at the beginning of the
fifteenth century, and brought up, as Christine had been, at a
magnificent Court, it shows rare independence and breadth of thought
to have grasped and proclaimed with such firmness and clearness as is
displayed in her treatise the germ of the policy of all modern
civilised nations--that a middle-class is essential to bring into
touch those placed at the opposite extremes, the rich and the poor.
[31] Harley, 4431.
To Christine belongs an honour beyond that of having been a patriot
and a champion of her sex--the honour of having revealed Dante to
France.[32] Scattered up and down her writings are many allusions to
the _Divina Commedia_, showing how real a place it must have filled in
her soul's life. She especially recommends it for profitable study in
the place of the "hateful" _Romance of the Rose_, concerning which she
gave the warning to her son:--
Se bien veulx et chastement vivre,
De la Rose ne lis le livre.
[32] A. Farinelli, _Dante e la Francia_, vol. i. p. 192, 1908.
Like Dante, sad and lonely--"souvent seulete et pensive, regretant le
temps passé"--like him she also realised the thirst for knowledge as
an ever-present want of the soul, and that its ultimate perfection is
only to be attained by following after virtue and knowledge. Although,
as regards profundity, her conception of the world and of life cannot
be compared with that of her great prototype, or even with that of
such an one as St. Hildegarde, still she had read with unflagging
diligence a vast number of profane and ecclesiastical writers, and
seems to have been well versed in the varied knowledge of her time,
especially history. But whilst it is possible to criticise her
learning, tempered as this was by her character and the needs of her
day, it is at the same time possible to acknowledge that in spite of
flaws and an often over-elaborated setting, moral truth sparkles
gemlike throughout her writings. One of her biographers speaks of her
thus: "Her morale is so pure and so universally human that not only
does it remain true to-day, but it will retain imperishable value as
long as ever human society is based on a pure and healthy moral
foundation."
In her poem _Le Chemin de long Estude_--a title taken from Dante's
appeal to Virgil at the opening of the _Inferno_--Christine begins by
acknowledging her debt to the immortal poet, saying that much that she
has to tell has already been told by "Dante of Florence in his book."
Virgil as guide is replaced by the Cumean Sibyl, who appears to
Christine in a dream, and offers to conduct her to another and a more
perfect world, one where there is no pain and misery. To this
Christine consents on condition that "sad Hades, whither Æneas once
was taken," is not included in the journey. The Sibyl therefore
promises to reveal to her, instead, in what manner misfortune came
upon earth, whilst at the same time showing her on the way all that
is worth seeing in this world, from the Pillars of Hercules, "the end
of the world," to distant Cathay. However exhausting this programme
may appear to us, Christine, knowing the real passion of the late
Middle Ages for travel--for even those who could not travel in reality
did so in imagination,--makes use of it as a setting for the
introduction of a discussion on the qualities most necessary to good
government. This she does, even at the risk of incurring displeasure
in high quarters, recalling how Dante's patriotism led to banishment
and death in exile, but she adds, "Qui bien ayme, tout endure." She
pours forth her classical examples in a chaotic stream, but when she
leaves earth, and ascends to the celestial regions, she not only shows
herself versed in the astronomy of the time, but also expresses some
beauty of thought. The order of the firmament, where all obey law
without ceasing, so that harmony ensues "like sweet melody," reminds
her of Pythagoras and Plato, and suggests to her what life on earth
might be if good laws were made and observed. In furtherance of her
idea, she appeals to Reason, who presides over the Virtues or Divine
Powers, to interrogate the three earthly disputants, Nobility, Riches,
and Wisdom. In the end Reason awards the prize to Wisdom, condemning
Riches as the great enemy of mankind. Thereupon Wisdom appeals to the
verdicts of Juvenal, Boëthius, St. Jerome, and others to establish
that it is Virtue alone that is of worth, and ennobles a man, and then
sets forth the qualities of a good sovereign. But as this leads to
some difference of opinion, Christine, who was withal a courtly lady,
descends to earth in order to ask the King, Charles the Sixth, to
decide the matter. This dream-poem she dedicates to her royal master
for his diversion in his saner moments, and thus once again introduces
into high places the subject so near to her heart. She lets it be seen
that she herself, like Dante, did not believe in the blending of the
spiritual and the temporal powers. And as regards temporal power she
adds--perhaps borrowing the idea from Dante's _De Monarchia_, and
anticipating Napoleon's dream--that in order to ensure peace on earth,
it is necessary that one supreme ruler should reign over the whole
world. "La sua volontade e nostra pace," sang a soul in Dante's heaven
of the Moon--the lowest in the celestial system--when questioned
whether it was content with its lowly place. The poet therefore adds,
"ogni dove in cielo e paradiso." Christine, echoing these thoughts,
would fain apply them to life on earth, giving them their deepest and
fullest meaning.