Fifteenth-Century Studies 35

Editorial Advisory Board Jean Dufournet, Université de Paris III, Sorbonne Leonardas V. Gerulaitis, Oakland University Sibylle Jefferis, University of Pennsylvania Guy R. Mermier, University of Michigan Ulrich Müller, Universität Salzburg Roxana Recio, Creighton University Barbara N. Sargent-Baur, University of Pittsburgh Joseph T. Snow, Michigan State University Steven M. Taylor, Marquette University

Founder and Consulting Editor: Edelgard E. DuBruck

Fifteenth-Century Studies Volume 35

Edited by Matthew Z. Heintzelman, Barbara I. Gusick, and Martin W. Walsh

CAMDENHOUSE

Copyright © 2010 the Contributors All Rights Reserved. Except as permitted under current legislation, no part of this work may be photocopied, stored in a retrieval system, published, performed in public, adapted, broadcast, transmitted, recorded, or reproduced in any form or by any means, without the prior permission of the copyright owner. ISSN: 0164-0933 ISBN-13: 978-1-57113-426-4 ISBN-10: 1-57113-426-3 First published 2010 by Camden House Camden House is an imprint of Boydell & Brewer Inc. 668 Mt. Hope Avenue, Rochester, NY 14620–2731, USA and of Boydell & Brewer Limited P. O. Box 9, Woodbridge, Suffolk IP12 3DF, UK This publication is printed on acid-free paper. Printed in the United States of America.

Fifteenth-Century Studies appears annually. Please send orders and inquiries to Boydell & Brewer at the above address. For editorial correspondence and manuscript submissions, write to: Prof. Barbara I. Gusick 40 E. Delaware Place, Unit 203 Chicago, IL 60611, USA Articles and book reviews submitted for publication may be edited to conform to FCS style. Information on membership in the Fifteenth-Century Society, which entitles the member to a copy of each issue of Fifteenth-Century Studies, is available from: Prof. Edelgard E. DuBruck 29451 Halsted Road, Apt. 141 Farmington Hills, MI 48331, USA

The editors wish to thank the University of Michigan for a research award granted on behalf of Professor Martin W. Walsh.

For Professor Edelgard E. DuBruck

Contents Preface

ix

Essays Violencia en tres cuentos hagiográficos de la España medieval Milagros Alameda-Irizarry

1

Physical Impairment in the First Surgical Handbooks Printed in Germany Chiara Benati

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Serious Elements in Medieval French Farces: A New Dimension Edelgard E. DuBruck

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Reading Piers Plowman in the Fifteenth and Sixteenth Centuries: The Evidence of British Library Cotton Caligula A XI Rosanne Gasse

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Narrative Afterlife and the Treatment of Time in Henryson’s Testament of Cresseid Chelsea Honeyman

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Euclid in Boethius’s De Consolatione Philosophiae and Some of its English Translations Noel Harold Kaylor, Jr.

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Seeking the Medieval in Shakespeare: The Order of the Garter and the Topos of Derisive Chivalry James N. Ortego II

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A Revelation of Purgatory and Chaucer’s Prioress E. L. Risden Eyeglasses for the Blind: Redundant Therapies in Meschinot and Villon Julie Singer Jean de Meun in the Cité des Dames: Author versus Authority Geri L. Smith The Festival Context of Villon’s Pet au Deable: Martinmas in Late-Medieval Paris Martin W. Walsh

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112 132

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Book Reviews Blanchard, Joël, éd. Philippe de Commynes: Mémoires. 2 vols. Geneva: Droz, 2007. Pp. clxxii; 1754. 16 illustrations. (DuBruck)

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Burman, Thomas E. Reading the “Qur’$n” in Latin Christendom, 1140–1560. Philadelphia: University of Pennslvania Press, 2007. Pp. vi; 317. (DuBruck)

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Dufournet, Jean. Philippe de Commynes: Mémoires, livres I–VI. Présentation et traduction (bilingue). 2 vols. Paris: GF Flammarion, 2007. Pp. 450 and 559. (DuBruck)

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Fuchs, Franz, ed. Osmanische Expansion und europäischer Humanismus. Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, 2005. Pp. 188. (DuBruck)

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Grassnick, Ulrike. Ratgeber des Königs: Fürstenspiegel und Herrscherideal im spätmittelalterlichen England. Köln: Böhlau Verlag, 2004. Pp. xii; 471. (Kaylor, Jr.)

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Harris, Nigel, ed. The Light of the Soul: The “Lumen anime C” and Ulrich Putsch’s “Das liecht der sel.” Oxford, Bern, et al.: Peter Lang, 2007. Pp. 487. (Classen)

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Hochner, Nicole. Louis XII: Les Dérèglements de l’image royale, 1498–1515. Seyssel: Champ Vallon, 2006. Pp. 308. (Smith)

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Kem, Judy, ed. Symphorien Champier: La Nef des dames vertueuses. Paris: Editions Champion, 2007. Pp. 305. (Hochner)

168

Knape, Joachim. Poetik und Rhetorik in Deutschland 1300–1700. Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz Verlag, 2006. Pp. viii; 227. 23 illustrations. (Wade-Sirabian)

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Mathey-Maille, Laurence. Écritures du passé: histoires des ducs de Normandie. Paris: Champion, 2007. Pp. 292. (Szkilnik)

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Régnier-Bohler, Danielle, ed. Voix de femmes au moyen âge: savoir, mystique, poésie, amour, sorcellerie, XIIe–XVe siècle. Paris: Robert Laffont, 2006. Pp. xxxix; 1010. (Adams)

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Roux, Simone. Christine de Pizan: Femme de tête, dame de coeur. Paris: Payot, 2006. Pp. 270. (Adams)

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Preface In 1978, Fifteenth-Century Studies appeared for the first time, with over a dozen articles on topics ranging across European culture. By pursuing an international and scholarly course over the past three decades, the editors have developed FCS into a leader in late medieval research, especially in the humanities and social sciences. Under the steady guidance of Professor Edelgard E. DuBruck, the journal has supported scholarly communication by consistently presenting its readership with excellent articles, stretching over a broad panorama of interdisciplinary approaches and subjects. Professor DuBruck’s generous leadership and wide-ranging interests have made FCS an indispensible resource for all who pursue research in the late Middle Ages. Fifteenth-Century Studies has always provided a forum for established and newer scholars to posit innovative ideas and explore fresh territories of fifteenth-century culture, and volume 35 is no exception. True to its international heritage, this volume continues the journal’s traditional representation of cultures from across Europe. At the same time, the fifteenth century remains a time of cultural, technological, and social transformation that still provides uncharted horizons for scholars to sail towards — whether actual horizons such as eastern, southern, or northern Europe, or figurative horizons like the re-formation of book culture or the changes reflected in society, science, law, theology, art, and elsewhere. Indeed, there may not be a fifteenth century, but rather numerous fifteenth centuries for us to explore. The editors wish to thank Professor Joseph T. Snow, Michigan State University, for his invaluable assistance in preparing one of the articles. In addition, we would like to thank all those who have helped organize the Fifteenth-Century Symposium sessions and to dedicated members of the Fifteenth-Century Society. However, our most profound gratitude is reserved for the scholar whose intellectual acumen, generosity, and foresight has brought Fifteenth-Century Studies so far and to whom this volume is dedicated — Professor Edelgard DuBruck. Matthew Z. Heintzelman Hill Museum & Manuscript Library (Collegeville, Minnesota), 2010

Violencia en tres cuentos hagiográficos de la España medieval Milagros Alameda-Irizarry La imitación es una virtud y aparentemente no hubo una sociedad más virtuosa que la medieval. Por lo menos en el aspecto religioso, la imitación de Cristo y de los mártires de la tradición cristiana fue para algunos quizás el único camino hacia la redención. La literatura hagiográfica latina y subsecuentemente la de toda la cristiandad medieval se nutre de ese deseo o necesidad de imitar a aquellos cristianos que sacrificaron sus vidas con la esperanza 1 de alcanzar así la vida eterna. Carlos Maynes, Santa enperatrís y Otas de Roma son tres cuentos españoles de fines de la Edad Media en los que el contenido hagiográfico basado en esa necesidad de imitar a Cristo no ha recibido aún toda la atención crítica que merece a pesar de que los cuentos forman parte 2 del manuscrito Flos Santorum, una colección de vidas de santos. En los tres cuentos las protagonistas imitan a Cristo y a las santas y mártires cristianas en que se presentan como víctimas constantes del abuso físico y verbal que es característico de la literatura hagiográfica. Los cuerpos sangrantes, las doncellas ultrajadas y las amenazas de desmembramiento podrían causar revulsión en un lector desprevenido o no acostumbrado a la otredad que es la Edad Media. Toda esta violencia tiene su porqué y pasaré ahora a explicar cómo esto funciona en los tres cuentos. En su libro The Lady as Saint: A Collection of French Hagiographic Romances of the Thirteenth Century, la profesora Brigitte Cazelles utiliza el término hagiographic romance para definir una serie de poemas franceses del siglo XIII en los que se combinan elementos hagiográficos con los elementos y estructuras de 3 la novela cortesana al estilo de Chrétien de Troyes. De acuerdo con la profesora Cazelles, el cuento hagiográfico es el producto de “the interaction between secular and saintly narratives in the thirteenth century”(8). El cuento hagiográfico es un género secular que no debe ser confundido con la hagiografía. No es una Vida, sino que utiliza elementos de la Vida para dramatizar las desventuras de las protagonistas. El cuento hagiográfico no sólo adoptó los temas de las Vidas sino que además incorporó las técnicas de composición y los temas de la literatura secular, especialmente el “romance” cortés que era muy popular (8). Las aventuras en tierras lejanas, los combates, el amor, el naufragio y el viaje al otro mundo son algunos de los elementos constitutivos del “romance” que aparecen combinados con la hagiografía 4 en Carlos Maynes, Santa enperatrís y Otas de Roma. La hagiografía tiene sus orígenes en los primeros siglos del cristianismo y se popularizó grandemente como género literario después de las perse-

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cuciones del emperador Dioclesiano. Originalmente estas historias o pasiones tenían como propósito el documentar para la historia el proceso judicial, la tortura y muerte de la mártir y solían ser muy sucintas. A fines del siglo cuarto, cuando se abatió la espectacularidad del Coliseo, estas “pasiones históricas” dieron paso a unas “Vidas” en las que no sólo se contaba el proceso judicial con su consabido resultado, sino que ahora también se incluirían otros datos personales: nacimiento, familia, obra apostólica y milagros realizados antes y después de la muerte. Estas nuevas “pasiones literarias” o “épicas,” como las llaman Delehaye y otros estudiosos del tema, eran adornadas con 5 elementos sobrenaturales y enfatizaban lo espectacular y el sufrimiento físico. Esta tradición hagiográfica fue adoptada por las literaturas vernáculas y en España está representada por, entre otros, el Flos Santorum. Carlos Maynes, Santa enperatrís y Otas de Roma son adaptaciones de poemas franceses del siglo 6 XIII. Estos cuentos hagiográficos fueron muy populares en la península a 7 fines del siglo XV y frecuentemente citados durante todo el XVI. Comparten su popularidad con el llamado debate feminista del siglo XV en el que se vitupera y alaba al mismo tiempo a las mujeres, con la novela de caballerías y también con la gran crisis espiritual que desembocaría en el Barroco del XVII. El dramatismo y el sufrimiento físico de las mujeres en estos cuentos es parte de lo que Cazelles llama ideología del sufrimiento: “… female perfection appears to be grounded in bodily pain, silence and passivity. The prevalence of those motives suggests that the portrayal of female greatness in both secular and hagiographic romance is part and parcel of what can be characterized as an ideology of suffering” (9). El motivo de la reina falsamente acusada de adulterio es muy popular en la literatura europea durante toda la Edad Media y naturalmente se repite en 8 muchas obras españolas de los siglos XV y XVI. Es posible que la acusación de adulterio proceda de un hecho histórico, pero para el tiempo en que se popularizó como motivo literario ya se había combinado con otros motivos folclóricos, legendarios y hagiográficos de tal forma que dilucidar sus po9 sibles orígenes históricos se hace sumamente difícil si no imposible. Tal parece que el motivo de la reina acusada dice tanto del miedo a la ilegitimidad de los hijos como del miedo al infierno inculcado por la Iglesia católica durante ese periodo histórico. La trama de los tres cuentos que estudio es esencialmente la misma: la reina es acusada de adulterio por lo que tiene que salir al mundo para, de alguna forma, pagar por su supuesto pecado. Tras un viaje largo plagado de mucho sufrimiento físico, la emperatriz logra que sus detractores confiesen su culpa, el emperador se da cuenta del error que ha cometido al dudar de su esposa y ella es reivindicada y devuelta a su lugar original al lado de su marido o se interna en un convento. En el cuento de Carlos Maynes la acusación de adulterio es precipitada por la necedad de un enano quien, a la ma-

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nera de los caballeros corteses, dice estar perdidamente enamorado de la emperatriz Sevilla y al verse rechazado y humillado decide vengarse. Se introduce en el lecho de la emperatriz mientras ésta duerme con la intención de ultrajarla, pero mientras considera las posibles consecuencias de su acto se queda dormido. El emperador descubre al enano durmiendo junto a la emperatriz y concluye que ella ha cometido adulterio. El enano es ahorcado y ella es condenada a muerte en la hoguera. Mientras Sevilla espera su castigo en las llamas el emperador se compadece ya que ella está embarazada y decide expulsarla. Al cabo de muchos años se descubre la verdad, ella regresa con su hijo, es recibida por el emperador y reintegrada a su posición original. En Santa enperatrís es el cuñado quien trata de seducir a la emperatriz mientras el emperador se haya ausente. Al verse acosada ella lo encierra en una torre. Al regreso del emperador el cuñado la acusa de adulterio y ella es condenada a muerte. La emperatriz es rescatada por un noble quien la acoge en su casa donde ella se convierte en niñera. Nuevamente la emperatriz es acosada por otro hombre, ella lo rechaza. Para vengarse el hombre mata al niño que ella cuida y la acusa del homicidio. Esta vez ella es abandonada a su suerte en una isla donde ella recibe una visión de la virgen María. En esta visión la virgen la instruye en el uso de ciertas hierbas curativas que la emperatriz utilizará para curar a todos los leprosos que encuentre en su camino. La emperatriz comienza su peregrinaje y su obra curativa y eventualmente llega al palacio del emperador. Allí los hombres que la acusaron están enfermos de lepra y ella les promete curarlos pero antes ellos deben confesar sus pecados. Después de confesar ella los cura y se va a un convento. En Otas de Roma es el cuñado también quien acusa a la emperatriz Florencia. Miles secuestra a Florencia y trata de ultrajarla. Después de golpearla brutalmente Miles la cuelga de un árbol. Ella se salva milagrosamente de este ataque. Un hombre rico la encuentra y le da alojamiento. Otro hombre la acosa sexualmente y ella lo rechaza. Este hombre mata a la hija del hombre rico y acusa a la emperatriz del homicidio. Florencia es expulsada y tras un largo peregrinaje lleno de peligros y sufrimiento ella llega a un convento donde las monjas la reciben como si ella fuera Cristo en domingo de ramos. Florencia realiza curaciones milagrosas y su fama de mujer santa y sabia corre por todo el lugar. Eventualmente el emperador, quien sufre mucho debido a una herida en la cabeza, y los hombres que la acusaron, quienes están padeciendo de lepra, coinciden en el convento donde Florencia obliga a los leprosos a confesar su culpa y estos son condenados a muerte. Florencia regresa a su lugar junto al emperador. Al igual que en las Vidas latinas estos cuentos se caracterizan por el origen noble, buena educación, juventud y belleza de la protagonista, extremado sufrimiento físico, y otras circunstancias de carácter más bien fantástico cuyo propósito es conmover, despertar la simpatía del público y en última instan-

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cia instruir moralmente a los oyentes o lectores. La acusación de adulterio y los resultados catastróficos de dicha acusación convierten a la emperatriz en un modelo de conducta moral que otros cristianos pueden si no imitar, por lo menos, admirar. Los últimos siglos de la Edad Media se caracterizan por el auge de la espiritualidad y de la literatura religiosa, especialmente esas Vidas de mártires con toda su violencia y espectacularidad. Esta es una espiritualidad que privilegia la expresión externa de la piedad, lo que es comprensible si se toma en cuenta la precariedad de la vida en esa época. Las guerras, el hambre, la pobreza y la peste negra contribuyeron grandemente a lo que bien puede llamarse el gusto obsesivo por el sufrimiento físico que predomina en la vida y en el arte de la época. La enfermedad larga es también un motivo recurrente en muchas de 10 estas Vidas. Esta realidad material contribuyó al desarrollo de cierta actitud de desprecio hacia la vida material y a una visión apocalíptica del fin del mundo. La concepción organicista de la sociedad y la actitud ambivalente de la Iglesia que concibe a la mujer como un ser irracional al mismo tiempo que le concede un alma inmortal son otros factores que contribuyeron a esta obsesión con el sufrimiento corporal. El cristianismo vio con mucho recelo al cuerpo al que había que dominar a la fuerza si se quería alcanzar la vida eterna. Es por esto que en la Edad Media el dolor es necesario para purificar el cuerpo, para expiar los pecados y limpiar el alma. De ahí la importancia del dolor y el sufrimiento como medios de purificación y expiación. En los cuentos que estudio la emperatriz se ve sometida a varias formas de sufrimiento físico y mental: humillación, peregrinación, enfermedad, golpes, amenazas de desmembramiento, intentos de ultraje, y lo mismo que en las Vidas de las mártires, el propósito de todo este sufrimiento es su purificación y la expiación de sus pecados, ya fueran estos reales o imaginados. Sólo así podrá ella reintegrarse a la sociedad al lado de su marido o recluirse en un convento. La emperatriz es acusada de adulterio, un deshonor que amenaza tanto a la seguridad y estabilidad material del cuerpo social, como a la solvencia moral y espiritual de la persona. Es por eso que dicha acusación en estos cuentos siempre conduce al caos social, y es también una amenaza a la salud espiritual de la emperatriz que puede terminar conduciendo su alma al infierno. Una idea importante de la fe cristiana es que la pureza espiritual se refleja en la pureza y limpieza del cuerpo. Por eso el motivo central en muchas de las Vidas es la virginidad y la manera heroica en que la mártir la defiende. La violencia o amenaza de violencia física es el elemento más importante en las Vidas latinas, y es de importancia especial en las Vidas de las mujeres mártires, cuya feminidad y belleza física las hace más vulnerables a la crueldad y lujuria de algunos hombres. La ordalía de la mujer mártir puede incluir el obligarla a caminar desnuda en la calle o a vivir en un prostíbulo o a extirparle los senos o los dientes, y otras atrocidades. Para la mártir, todo lo que

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la identifica como mujer está siempre al borde del desastre. Sólo la fe y la intervención divina salvan a la virgen y a la casta. No sin razón el cuento de la Santa enperatrís incluye en el largo título la palabra castidad. El narrador tiene que asegurarle a su público que el cuerpo maltratado y sangrante de la emperatriz mantiene a salvo la parte más importante y que el convento protegerá su alma hasta que Dios disponga. I. Carlos Maynes, Santa enperatrís y Otas de Roma contienen por lo menos cuatro elementos básicos que las conectan con la tradición hagiográfica latina y el primero de estos tiene que ver precisamente con la sexualidad, la virginidad de la emperatriz y los apetitos que su belleza física provoca en algunos hombres. La emperatriz es siempre muy niña, muy educada y sobre todo bellísima. Del mismo modo, la virgen hermosa y educada es el prototipo de la mártir en la hagiografía latina y su belleza despierta la lujuria de sus perseguidores. En la hagiografía propia la fe cristiana y la virginidad van inextricablemente unidas. La virgen es martirizada por su fe, por no hacer sacrificios a los dioses paganos, y su virginidad siempre está en juego. Y no hablo solamente de la virginidad corporal, sino también de cierto estado espiritual por el cual la virgen permanece virgen en su mente aunque haya sido violada, y no cabe duda de que algunas de estas vírgenes sí fueron violadas. Un ejemplo es el caso de una virgen de Antioquía cuya Vida aparece en el primer volumen de The Golden Legend de Jacobo de Vorágine. Dice la virgen: “What do we do today — martyrdom or virginity? ... It is more meritorious to keep the mind virginal than the flesh. Both are good if possi11 ble, but if not, let us at least be chaste in God’s sight if not in men’s” (251). Si se va al prostíbulo pierde la virginidad del cuerpo, lo que no es muy halagador, pero si hace sacrificios a los dioses paganos pierde la virginidad espiritual, lo cual es peor. No hay otra salida excepto el martirio. En el cuento hagiográfico la emperatriz sufre por el honor de su esposo el emperador. La mártir del cuento hagiográfico no tiene que optar por el martirio y su virginidad siempre está a salvo gracias a la intervención divina. En otras palabras, la verdadera mártir sólo puede escoger la muerte. Cuando no se es puro moralmente, el cuerpo se rebela contra el individuo como ocurre en el caso de los hombres que acusan falsamente a la reina: se convierten en leprosos, enfermedad que tradicionalmente la Edad Media asocia con la lujuria y la corrupción moral. El emperador también es castigado, aunque por razones diferentes. En Otas de Roma, el emperador es herido en la cabeza por una saeta cuyo hierro incrustado en el cráneo le produce mucho dolor y sufrimiento. Su pecado no ha sido la lujuria, sino la falta de seso. Ha dudado de su esposa y la ha expulsado del reino sin detenerse a considerar la posibilidad de su inocencia. Es obvio que cada uno sufre el castigo en aquella parte con la que ha pecado. En el caso de la emperatriz, quien no ha pecado, ¿cómo explicar los horribles sufrimientos a que es sometida?

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Como he dicho antes, el sufrimiento puede ser resultado de la corrupción moral, pero también puede ser producto de la auto percepción, internalizada por parte de la emperatriz quien se ve a sí misma como la culpable de su propio sufrimiento. Esto es muy obvio en el cuento de la Santa enperatrís quien culpa su belleza física de la situación en que se haya: “Por mi beldat me viene tanto mal, que todos me demandan.... Mejor me fuera de ser tuerta o ciega o contrecha....” (202). II. El segundo elemento que conecta nuestros cuentos a la tradición hagiográfica latina está muy relacionado con el cuerpo, naturalmente, pero esta vez va ligado a la expresión externa de la santidad, especialmente la santidad femenina. En los tres cuentos la belleza física de la emperatriz la convierte en el objeto de la lujuria de varios hombres quienes al verse rechazados deciden vengarse acusándola de adulterio. La emperatriz se ve obligada a imitar a Cristo y a las mártires para poder así salvar su cuerpo y su alma. La imitación de Cristo y de las mártires es muy dramática en Santa enperatrís y en Otas de Roma, en los que la emperatriz, además de representar el cuerpo social alrededor del cual gira toda la acción política/guerrera representa también el cuerpo de Cristo, de tal forma que las tribulaciones de la emperatriz muchas veces adquieren todas las características de la Pasión y en ocasiones ella aparece representada con la imaginería típica del Cristo crucificado. Esa identificación del cuerpo de la emperatriz con el cuerpo de Cristo no debe sorprendernos. De acuerdo con Caroline Walker Bynum: “medieval authors ... have associated this particular image with the rise, from the eleventh century on, of a lyrical, emotional piety that focuses increasingly on the human12 ity of Christ.” Aparentemente, para las mujeres, un Cristo sufriente y sangrante era una imagen más humana y más fácil de imitar. La identificación y la imaginería maternales en torno al cuerpo de Cristo fueron aprovechados por la hagiografía medieval, especialmente a través de las Vidas de Perpetua y Felícita quienes sufrieron martirio en el año 203. Perpetua era una joven madre y Felícita dió a luz en prisión. Estas Vidas sirvieron de inspiración a toda la cristiandad medieval y contribuyeron a la formulación de la Imitatio Christi. Como el nombre indica, los adeptos a este tipo de devoción aspiraban a vivir una vida similar a la de los primeros cristianos, imitando a 13 Cristo en su pobreza, servicio y martirio de ser necesario. Este anhelo de imitar a Cristo se traduce en una interpretación literal de las sagradas escrituras, en particular del Nuevo Testamento, donde la vida, pasión y muerte constituyen el paradigma que los cristianos pueden y deben imitar. Richard Kieckhefer ha realizado estudios extensos sobre este tema y nos dice que las santas y místicas medievales predicaban la imitación de Cristo, no simplemente de forma teórica, sino literalmente, sufriendo o aspirando a sufrir en sus propios cuerpos todos los castigos sufridos por Cristo durante su pa14 sión. En Otas de Roma, la identificación del cuerpo de la emperatriz Florencia

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con el cuerpo de Cristo se hace mediante el uso de imágenes muy gráficas que despiertan sentimientos de compasión y afecto y que recuerdan los sufrimientos de Cristo en la cruz. Miles, el traidor, después de secuestrar a Florencia la golpea brutalmente: … e fue a un ramo e tajolo, que era de’spino, que tenia mucho agudos espinos,…e firiola conél por los pies e por las piernas e por los costados, que toda la ensangrentó, e le rompió la rica púrpura de que era vestida.… Erguyose e fuéla tomar por los cabellos e colgola por ellos. Después atole las manos a tras rezia mente e metió le por entre los braços un ramo, e dexóla asy estar que sus pies non tañían a tierra.… e firiola tanto e tan mal que toda la ensangrentó, de guisa quele rompió la carne en muchos logares, que el sangre corría della en la yerva (86–87).

El cuento se vale de la Vida de Blandina quien sufrió martirio en el año 177, no sólo en la imagen del Cristo colgante sino también en la clara identificación de la mártir con Cristo y el ejemplo que ella representa para los demás, Blandina was hung on a post and exposed as bait for the wild animals that were let loose on her. She seemed to hang there in the form of a cross, … she aroused intense enthusiasm in those who were undergoing their ordeal, for in their torment with their physical eyes they 15 saw in the person of their sister him who was crucified for them.

III. El tercer elemento que consideraré es el sobrenatural. En Otas de Roma las primeras muestras del elemento sobrenatural están asociadas a la tradición folclórica y pagana. El nacimiento de Florencia viene acompañado de varios desastres, E su madre fue luego muerta. E aquel día aveno tan gran maravilla en su nacencia que llovió sangre, onde la gente fue muy espantada. E otrosy se conbatieron aquel día todas las bestias que en aquel regno eran, e las aves enel aire, asy que todas se pelaron. E esto dio a entender que era significansa de la mortandad que había de venir por ella ... (14).

Lo sobrenatural es muy importante en la estructura de las Vidas latinas y es lo que identifica a la mártir como intercesora entre Dios y la comunidad cristiana, intercesión que se manifiesta en la habilidad de realizar milagros antes o después de la muerte de la mártir. Naturalmente la condición necesaria para poder realizar actos milagrosos es la virginidad. En Santa enperatrís la virgen María le habla a la emperatriz en un sueño y le concede el poder de curar leprosos, ... porque el tu fermoso cuerpo guardaste tan bien, & porque mantoviste tan linpiamente castidat … cata so tu cabeça, & fallaras una santa yerva a que yo daré tal virtud & tal graçia, que a todos los gafos a

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quien la dieres a bever en el nombre de la madre del rey de gloria, que luego serán guaridos & sanos; ya tan perdidos no serán (207).

Del mismo modo, en Otas de Roma la emperatriz que ha defendido su virginidad heroicamente está lista para realizar curaciones, esta vez simplemente con el uso de sus manos procede a curar a una monja. Este episodio es sumamente interesante y contiene varios niveles de significación. Aquí el concepto de santa y mártir se extiende a la monja, quien se haya postrada, con los miembros tullidos, hinchada y casi ciega. Esta mujer es el prototipo de la santa. Es hermosa y rica, vive enclaustrada y su cuerpo sufre horriblemente. La emperatriz invoca la ayuda de seres puros y virginales como ella para que la ayuden en su tarea curativa, Señor Dios ... que prendiste carne enla virgen Santa Maria, ssin corrompimiento de virginidat, e ella fincó virgen ante del parto e después del parto ... que guardastes los tres niños enla fornalla ardiente ... que librastes Ssanta Ssusanna del crimen en que era acusada, e Daniel en el lago de los leones (112).

La virginidad del cuerpo, el de la virgen María, coincide con la virginidad de la monja enferma y con la de Florencia quien a pesar de estar casada aún no ha consumado su unión, dato que se nos suministró mucho antes de este episodio. Esta insistencia en la integridad física apunta claramente hacia la necesidad del estado virginal para poder servir de intercesora entre Dios y sus criaturas. Dios actúa a través de la virgen. No es Florencia quien cura sino Dios. IV. El cuarto y último elemento a considerar es la peregrinación, cuyo destino es ese lugar sagrado donde los huesos de algún santo o la presencia de algún objeto sagrado realizarán el milagro de una curación, o el perdón de los pecados cometidos, en otras palabras, la salvación. Aquí se ve también la importancia de esa presencia física, esta vez del santo, que es tan importante para la mentalidad medieval que vive obsesionada con el cuerpo. Pero esa cercanía inspiradora de las reliquias no era la única causa de la peregrinación. El castigo por crímenes cometidos era también un factor que obligaba a muchos viajeros a peregrinar, quisieran o no. Muchos peregrinajes penitenciales eran 16 impuestos por las cortes, a veces como alternativa a la pena de muerte. Este es el caso en el cuento de Carlos Maynes. Cuando el emperador encuentra a su esposa dormida junto al enano concluye que ella ha cometido adulterio y decide quemarla viva. Pero luego se compadece y decide que el castigo más apropiado es echarla de la tierra, “yr-se-há derechamente al Apostóligo & manifestar-le-há sus pecados, & fará dellos penitencia” (119). Este peregrinaje penitencial está conectado, sin duda, a la mujer penitente más admirada de los siglos XIII al XVI, santa María Magdalena, cuya historia fue difundida por 17 toda la cristiandad occidental a través del sermón. Sevilla, convertida en peregrina, sale a expiar su supuesto pecado y al igual que miles de peregrinos medievales encuentra otros compañeros de via-

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je, enfrenta muchos peligros en el camino, es asaltada por ladrones, recibe alojamiento y comida en diferentes lugares, una posada, una ermita, hasta que finalmente da a luz a su hijo Loýs en la casa de un “rico burgués” donde permanece enferma en cama por un periodo de diez años (141). Entre los compañeros que Sevilla encuentra en su peregrinación hay uno muy peculiar: el gigante Barroquer. Este personaje, quien inicialmente se nos presenta como leñador, se convierte en un peregrino falso. Después de descubrir la verdadera identidad de Sevilla, Barroquer decide acompañarla, no sólo porque se compadece y quiere ayudarla, sino también por la ganancia personal que esta ayuda le traerá en el futuro. Barroquer viste la ropa típica del peregrino, “esportilla y bordón en la mano, & un capirote & un sombrero grande que todo el rostro le cobria” (149). La falsedad de Barroquer es más obvia cuando él decide regresar a su hogar, después de diez años de ausencia, y oculto bajo las ropas de peregrino pone a prueba a su esposa para determinar si ella le ha sido fiel durante su larga ausencia. Otro peregrino falso es el ermitaño. Este personaje es mucho más enigmático que Barroquer. Es hermano del emperador de Constantinopla y ha vivido aislado del mundo por más de veinte años. Su humilde vivienda es un lugar sagrado a juzgar por las declaraciones del bandido Griomar quien asegura que por más que trató en el pasado de entrar a robar en la ermita, Dios siempre se lo impidió. En cuanto se entera de la identidad de Sevilla, el ermitaño decide abandonar su vida eremítica y unirse al grupo, lo cual no sería extraño si no fuera por el propósito que dicha reintegración al mundo conlleva, “& tornaré al sieglo a traer armas, e la lazería que fasta aquí sofrí por Dios, quiérola toda olvidar, & puñar de comer bien & 18 beber bien y de me tener vicioso” (148). Estos falsos peregrinos contribuyen a engrandecer, por contraste, la figura de la emperatriz peregrina. Otas de Roma y Santa enperatrís también contienen el elemento de la peregrinación, aunque en estos el viaje adquiere las características del viaje como parte de un proceso de iniciación: traslación física acompañada de cambio y crecimiento personal. Al final de su viaje, la emperatriz Florencia de Roma ha adquirido la sabiduría necesaria que le servirá para cumplir con su papel de esposa y emperatriz, capaz de perdonar, castigar y gobernar junto a su esposo. Su viaje ha sido un largo rito iniciatorio al final del cual ella resurge preparada para comenzar una nueva etapa como mujer casada y servidora del reino. En el caso de Santa enperatrís, al final de su viaje, ella ha aprendido lo suficiente como para poder determinar por sí misma lo que más le conviene: el convento. Ha aprendido a curar leprosos con la ayuda de conocimientos aprendidos de la Virgen María, pero más importante, ha aprendido a dominar su propio cuerpo, a no echar de menos las comodidades de su vida anterior, o la comida sabrosa que solía comer. Al final de su viaje la santa emperatriz está lista para iniciar una vida de contemplación y estudio, lejos del siglo y su materialismo. Ésta es la imitadora por excelencia, la que imita a la santa.

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En resumen, Carlos Maynes, Santa enperatrís y Otas de Roma se valen de estructuras y motivos típicos del “romance cortés” para presentarnos tres imitaciones de las Vidas latinas. Estos cuentos hagiográficos enfatizan la manifestación externa de la santidad con su empeño de resaltar la belleza física y la virginidad y castidad de la protagonista. Al igual que en la hagiografía propia, en estos cuentos predomina el sufrimiento físico como característica principal de la perfección femenina. La belleza física es parte central en la representación de la emperatriz, no la fe. Es su belleza física lo que la convierte en víctima y, paradójicamente, al final, en mujer santa. La violencia dirigida al cuerpo de la emperatriz, con sus connotaciones sexuales, es lo que más acerca nuestros cuentos a la tradición hagiográfica latina. Obviamente estos cuentos reflejan el clima moral de su época, los valores, preocupaciones y miedos de la sociedad medieval en la que predomina una gran preocupación por el cuerpo humano, especialmente el cuerpo femenino en el que convergen todo tipo de conflictos sociales, políticos, culturales y religiosos. Estos cuentos hagiográficos conciben el cuerpo de la emperatriz como un locus conflictivo: símbolo de orden y desorden al mismo tiempo. El cuerpo continúa siendo conflictivo, y ese conflicto lo heredamos de la Edad Media.

Notas 1

Los títulos completos de los cuentos son: Noble cuento del enperador Carlos Maynes de Roma & de la buena enperatrís Sevilla su mugier; Fermoso cuento de una santa enperatrís que ovo en Roma y de su castidat y Cuento muy fermoso del enperador Otas de Roma e dela infante Florencia su fija e del buen cavallero Esmeré. Carlos Maynes y Santa enperatrís han sido editados por Anita Benaim de Lasry, Carlos Maynes and La enperatís de Roma: critical edition and study of two medieval Spanish romances (Newark: Juan de la Cuesta, 1982); para el cuento de Otas de Roma utilizo la edición de Herbert L. Baird, Análisis lingüístico y filológico de Otas de Roma (Madrid: BRAE, 1976). La edición de Lasry contiene también un estudio formalista de los dos cuentos. Todas las citas proceden de estas ediciones. En los tres cuentos he mantenido la ortografía de las ediciones que he utilizado. Para un estudio mas extenso consúltese la tesis doctoral de Milagros Irizarry, “De donde se habla de los funestos resultados del adulterio y del hablar excesivo: Manipulación histórica y literaria del cuerpo y del discurso femenino en el Noble cuento de Carlo Maynes, Fermoso cuento de una santa emperatrís, Cuento del emperador Otas de Roma y La donzella Teodor.” Diss. Temple University, 1996. 2 Ms. h-I-13 de la Biblioteca del Escorial. Para los títulos de los otros cuentos consúltese la nota no. 14 de Lasry p. 25. Consúltese también la nueva edición crítica de Carina Zubillaga, Antología castellana de relatos medievales (Ms. Esc. h-I-13) (Buenos Aires: Secrit, 2008). 3 Brigitte Cazelles, ed. The Lady as Saint: A Collection of French Hagiographic Romances of the Thirteenth Century (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1991): 31. 4 Alan Deyermond, “The Lost Genre of Medieval Spanish Literature,” Hispanic Review 43 (1975): 231–59 (233). 5 Hippolyte Delehaye, The Legends of the Saints, trans. Donald Attwater (Dublin: Four Courts Press, 1998); Peter Robert Brown, The Cult of the Saints: Its Rise and Function in Latin Christianity (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1981); Michael John Roberts,

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Poetry and the Cult of the Martyrs: The Liber Peristephanon of Prudentius (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1993). 6 Carlos Maynes procede de La Chanson de Sebile; Santa enperatrís y Otas de Roma proceden de la leyenda de Cresencia. En cuanto a la naturaleza derivativa de estos cuentos consúltese el comentario de Deyermond en n.4. 7 De la historia de la reina Sevilla existen seis ediciones de acuerdo con Lasry, que datan de los siglos XV al XVII p. 11 8 La acusación de adulterio aparece en Libro del cavallero Zifar y El cavallero del cisne, entre otras. 9 En cuanto a la historicidad de esta acusación en el caso de la reina Sevilla consúltese a Erich Richthofen, Tradicionalismo épico-novelesco (Barcelona: Planeta, 1972): 67–73. 10 Margery Kempe y Julian of Norwich son dos místicas cuyos libros fueron muy populares durante la Edad Media y en ellos la enfermedad física es uno de los motivos que definen la devoción de estas dos mujeres. Al respecto consúltese a B. A. Windeatt, trans. The Book of Margery Kempe (London: Penguin Books, 1985); Showings: Julian of Norwich, trans. Edmund Colledge and James Walsh (New York: Paulist Press, 1978). 11 Jacobus de Voragine, The Golden Legend: Readings on the Saints, 2 vols., trans. William Granger Ryan (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1993), 1: 251. 12 Caroline Walker Bynum, Jesus as Mother: Studies in the Spirituality of the High Middle Ages (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1982): 129. 13 On the Imitatio Christi, see Dennis J. Billy, The Imitation of Christ: Thomas à Kempis: A Spiritual Commentary and Reader’s Guide (Notre Dame, IN: Ave Maria Press, 2005). 14 Richard Kieckhefer, Unquiet Souls: Fourteenth-Century Saints and Their Religious Milieu (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1984): 89–121. 15 Esta cita procede de Herbert Musurillo, Acts of the Christian Martyrs, y la he tomado del libro de Thomas J. Heffernan, Sacred Biography: Saints and their Biographers in the Middle Ages (New York: Oxford University Press, 1988): 228. 16 John Ure, Pilgrimages: The Great Adventure of the Middle Ages (New York: Carroll & Graf Publishers, 2006): 7–9. 17 En relación a la popularidad de María Magdalena consúltese Katherine Ludwig Jansen, The Making of the Magdalen: Preaching and Popular Devotion in the Later Middle Ages (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2000); Susan Haskins, Mary Magdalen: Myth and Metaphor (New York: Harcourt, Brace & Co., 1993). 18 Existe un precedente histórico para este personaje en Norman Cohn, The Pursuit of the Millennium: Revolutionary Millenarians and Mystical Anarchists of the Middle Ages (New York: Oxford University Press, 1970; reprint, 1976): 177–78. De acuerdo con Norman Cohn el místico alemán Heinrich Suso (1300–1366), miembro de la secta herética Hermandad del Libre Espíritu abandonó su vida penitente después de veintidós años para dedicarse a una vida más o menos mundana.

First Judicial District of Pennsylvania Court of Common Pleas

Physical Impairment in the First Surgical Handbooks Printed in Germany Chiara Benati From a modern point of view, surgery represents a natural form of intervention against different forms of physical impairment and can alleviate infirmities if not heal them completely. Thus, early during the diagnostic phase of an affliction, one may consider whether an operation can be performed to alleviate the debilitating condition. Yet the assumption that surgery represents the solution to pathologies resulting in lameness or blindness, for example, does not automatically seem valid for earlier stages in the history of medicine and surgery; for instance, during the late Middle Ages. The study of how various forms of physical impairment were treated as demonstrated in popular surgical handbooks of this era can help us ascertain what the relationship was between impairment 1 and surgery as perceived by contemporaries, thus widening our view. Early sources in Germany include Hieronymus Brunschwig’s Buch der Cirurgia and Hans von Gersdorff’s Feldtbuch der Wundarzney, both of which will be discussed in this study. Hieronymus Brunschwig’s “Buch der Cirurgia” The Buch der Cirurgia, Hantwirckung der wundartzny von Hyeronimo brunschwig, the first surgical handbook printed in German, was first published in folio on July 4, 1497, by the Strasbourg printer Johannes Grüninger. The first edition was soon followed by others: 1. December 1497, Augsburg, Hans Schönsperger, folio; 2. Das buch der wund // Artzeny. Handwirckung der Cirurgia…, “uff den Palmabent,” 1513, Strasbourg, Johannes Grüninger, folio; 3. 1534, Augsburg, Alexander Weyssenhorn, quarto; and, once again, 4. 1539, Augsburg, Alexander Weyssenhorn, quarto. The popularity of this handbook, even outside the High German language area, is witnessed by a series of translations that were made into other languages, such as English (London, 1525), Dutch (Utrecht, 1535), Czech (Olomouc, 1559), as well as a Low German adaptation (Rostock, 1518). We know little about the author of the aforementioned handbook, however. The main source for his biography is represented in his works. In the first edition of the Buch der Cirurgia, he describes himself as Hieronymus

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2

Brunschwig, born in Strasbourg and belonging to the Sauler family. According to Choulant, he was one of the travelling surgeons active in the fifteenth century who, during his last years, had settled down and had been working 3 in his home town. In addition to the Cirurgia, he wrote two distillation books (De simplicibus: Die eintzingen Ding and De compositis: Von den zusamengethonen Ding). For this reason, Wieger suggests that he could have also been a travel4 ling chemist or pseudo-chemist producing liqueurs. The eighth chapter of the second treatise describes the extraction of an arrow, a procedure performed by Hans Meier of Strasbourg during the Burgundian War (1474– 1477), allowing the assumption that Brunschwig had fought on the side of 5 the Swiss and Alsatian anti-Burgundian league against Charles the Bold. As pointed out in the preface by Brunschwig himself, the Buch der Cirurgia is a compilation of classical, Arabic, medieval, and late-medieval sources, integrated with the author’s personal experience and commentary: diß aller cleinste buchlin dz ich Iheronimus brunsch[wi]g burtig von strassburgk des geslecktz von saulern mit fliß und erst zG samen bracht hab von vil gelertten unnd gutten meistern und gedacht an 6 dz wort das die alten gesprochen unnd dar zG gelert hant:

The aim of this compilation is mainly didactic: Brunschwig claims to be writing this handbook to be useful to all those who want to learn the art of surgery, or to quote his own words: “chirurgia das ist die hantwirckung in 7 der wundertznie.” This didactic aim is further witnessed by the forty-eight woodcuts accompanying the text, many of which represent the surgeon as a teacher showing his students how to cope with various pathologies. The handbook consists of seven treatises (tractate), each of which is divided into chapters. The first treatise is aimed at outlining the role and function of the surgeon, indicating which wounds can be healed and which wounds are fatal. In the second and third parts, the different kinds of wounds and their varying aetiologies are described following the a capite ad calcem (“from head to heal”) scheme. Accidental and deliberate blows are dealt with in the fourth treatise, while the fourth and fifth treatises are dedicated to fractures and their reduction, respectively. The handbook ends with a collection (antidotarium) of all the remedies which can be useful to a surgeon. This original core is later expanded with the insertion of four new chapters and two woodcuts to complete the fourth treatise and Brunschwig’s anatomical compendium, Von der Anathomi, in addendum. These new insertions were combined by Grüninger with the original surgical handbook in all possible ways, so that, according to Sudhoff, at least eight different combinations 8 must have arisen.

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Hans von Gersdorff’s “Feldtbuch der Wundarzney” Only twenty years after the first edition of Brunschwig’s Buch der Cirurgia, another surgical handbook was printed in Strasbourg: the Feldtbuch der Wundarzney, a field surgery manual written by Hans von Gersdorff and printed in folio by Schott in 1517. This guide was also quite popular as manifested by the large number of editions printed after the first: four in quarto (Strasbourg, between 1524 and 1540) and two in folio (Strasbourg, 1542; and Frankfurt am Main, 1551). The Feldtbuch was also translated into Latin (Strasbourg, 1542, 9 and Frankfurt, 1551) and into Dutch (Amsterdam, 1593, 1622, and 1651). In the preface to his handbook, the author introduces himself with these words: “Meister Hans von Gerßdorff / genant Schylhans / burger und wundartzet zG Straßburg.” He was a citizen of Strasbourg, where, after serving as a surgeon on the battlefields of the Burgundian War, he continued to practice medicine. The importance of experience in combat zones is stressed by von Gersdorff, who proudly claims to have performed more than 200 amputations. In contrast to Brunschwig, von Gersdorff presents his work mainly as the result of his forty years in surgical practice rather than as a compilation of documented sources. The authoritativeness of the handbook is guaranteed by the fact that many doctores medicinae (in Latin in the text!) have approved and followed the guidebook themselves: Mein erfaren experimenta der Chirurgy zG er=ffnen / hab ich zGsamen gestelt ein gemein FeldtbGch der wund (rtzney / das / so ich min tag gesehen / bewert /von vilen doctoribus medicine approbiert in der practick und mit der hand geFbt / und bey .xl. jaren här g(ntzlich 10 durch gründt hab.

This is not to say that the Feldtbuch is free of influences from contemporary sources. The most evident influence is traceable to one of the most eminent surgeons of the fourteenth century, Guy de Chauliac (c. 1300–1370), from whose Cirurgia Magna (1363) derive the anatomic principles introduced by Hans von Gersdorff. In the 1517 edition, the handbook consists of four treatises, the last of which consists of three Latin-German glossaries on anatomy (“Vocabularius anathomie aller des menschen glyder”), pathology (“Vocabularius Infirmitatum / etlicher kranckheiten des menschen”), and the herbs used in pharmacopoeia (“Vocabularius herbarum / der kreüter wurtzelen / somen / und vil apotheckischer materialium”). In the first treatise, von Gersdorff deals mainly with anatomy, which, following Guy de Chauliac, is divided into 11 twelve chapters. The thirteenth chapter (“Von dem Aderlasszen”) deals with the practice of phlebotomy and is introduced by a woodcut represent12 ing the “counterfeit bloodletting manikin” (“Contrafacter Lasszman”) and the points for bloodletting. The first book ends with a description of the

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twelve zodiac signs and their corresponding features, along with a table containing the ides, nones, and kalends for each month, ordered according to traditional Roman numeration. In the second book, preceded by an illustrated woodcut depicting a “Wound Man,” the author presents different pathologies which can be treated surgically — mainly traumata, but also infectious and oncological diseases — and lists respective therapies. The third book is dedicated to dermatological pathologies such as leprosy. In later editions of the texts, the aforementioned material has been modified, integrated, 13 and given a new structure, with the contents divided into seven books. The Concept of Impairment in the Handbooks The surgical handbooks analyzed in this study do not differentiate impairment and illness and sometimes assimilate the two; this blurred distinction is attributable to words used to describe handicapped people, who are often dubbed “ill” (sieche or krancke) or referred to only by the personal pronoun er (“he”) (see, for example: “Würt aber pia mater gewunt / das ist die sanffte mGter die soltu erkennen by disen zeichenn. er mag nit gon noch ston / er 14 mag sich auch nit bewegen vnd mag auch nit reden” [emphasis mine]) or by the impersonal pronoun ein (“one”) (“Würt einem ein Or ab gehowen” [em15 phasis mine]). Neither Brunschwig nor von Gersdorff consistently distinguish between illness and impairment; however, some passages in their handbooks seem to indicate that the two conditions may have been perceived as contradistinct. See, for example, Brunschwig’s description of the various hand wounds which can occur: Du solt auch mercken mit fliß. an was personen solich wunden der hend sint. Darnach sollent die wunden lemung vnd glider geschetzt 16 werdenn vnd ob es sy an der rechten oder lincken hant.

The very fact that before evaluating a wound, a surgeon should take the patient’s profession into consideration as well as physical evidence — for instance, the position, depth, and extension of the lesion — reveals an awareness of not only clinical but social ramifications associated with the affliction. To illustrate, a hand injury when sustained by one who works with his hands (such as a tailor or shoemaker) is viewed as registering a more consequential economic impact than the same injury inflicted upon a merchant, for example. The term lemung here indicates generically any form of “impairment” or 17 “mutilation” rather than the modern German word Lähmung used to describe the specific physical condition of a paralyzed limb (or another manifes18 tation of paralysis).

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In several passages, Brunschwig refers to disability; that is, to the social disadvantages experienced by an impaired person. Evidence appears in the case of a person having an amputated ear: Würt einem ein Or ab gehowen vnd in dz hobt nit gerürt das ist ein grose wund dar zG ein glid verlorn und ein =wig laster wan er mag be19 dacht werden ym ab geschniten sy diepstals halber (emphasis mine).

The loss of an ear is said to cause an ewig laster (“constant shame”) because people seeing the mutilated man would believe the injury had been inflicted upon him for having been caught in the act of thievery. The same can be said of a woman with a wounded nose; the scar upon her face would be a 20 sign of her adulterous behavior (in the public’s view). Physical Impairment as Symptom or Outcome of Surgically Treatable Pathologies In their handbooks, Brunschwig and von Gersdorff mention a series of pathologies which we would define today as “impairment.” Most of these designations could be labeled “orthopedic impairments” since these maladies affect limb mobility and function. Their different aetiologies can be found mainly in war injuries, fractures, and traumata in general; the only exception is represented by infectious diseases such as leprosy (lepra, ußsetzigkeit or maltzey) as described by Hans von Gersdorff in the third treatise of his Feldtbuch. Lesions can have varying degrees of impairment outcomes. For example, when a person’s arm is wounded, the surgeon must ascertain whether the limb should be completely amputated (der gantz arm abgehauwen) or whether the arm will be paralyzed (lam) or remain disabled as in the case of an immovable shoulder or an arm that cannot be lifted: Dz soltu also verstan ob einer verwunt ist / vnd der gantz arm abgehauwen oder lam wer / das er in der achselen nit uffgehaben oder 21 bewegen m=cht.

Other arm-related injuries pertain to the elbow, hand, or fingers. If the fingers are paralyzed, they cannot be folded (biegen) or straightened (strecken) but 22 23 24 will remain motionless (unbüglich), bent (krump), and contracted (hart). When faced with certain pathologies, the surgeon has no recourse but to recognize his impotence. This is the case when dealing with spinal lesions: Dar uß einplaster gemacht. vnd gestrichen vff ein tGch vnd vff die nucha geleit / wan vß s=lcher ertzeni kumpt die rechtfertigung der nucha die verlierung der bewegniß der glider die do vmb gebenn sint die verserten stat / ouch besserung das den wund artzet unmügliches duncket.Wan der natur ist nichts vnmügliches / so ir geholffenn mag werdenn mit sterckunge durch die gGtten artzeny die dar zG gerein25 iget ist (emphasis mine).

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If the nape (nucha) or the vertebrae (spondilen ) are injured, a patient may lose mobility (bewegniß) of his or her limbs. In the majority of such cases, the surgeon may find it impossible to avoid this outcome since “nothing is impossible in Nature.” Thus, he has to assist the patient with “good medicine” in whatever way possible. Once the medical practitioner determines that the patient has lost functionality of his or her limbs, the physician’s task is to reassess the situation and further aid the patient: “Hat er dan sin bewegniß 26 verloren so ist im s=rglichen zG helffen”(emphasis mine). In his treatment of spinal lesions, Brunschwig does not elaborate on the form of help which should be extended to quadri- and paraplegic patients but moves on to describe the therapeutic procedure which a surgeon should employ for patients who have not lost functionality of their limbs and who therefore can be completely healed (the power of movement having been restored). If the dramatic outcome of spinal lesions occurs from a cause other than surgical malpractice, in some cases, physical impairment may occur as a result of inadequate therapy. That is to say, some wounds are capable of healing completely unless they are approached and treated poorly, in which case paralysis of the affected anatomical area can occur (“Aber von einem b=éen 27 cirurgi. mag lam geheilt werden”). Just as impairment can be the result of surgical ill-treatment, it can be the result of a life-saving procedure conducted by a surgeon: the most common example being an amputation performed upon a patient (abschneydung). While the surgical technique for amputation is described in detail by the authors — in particular, by Hans von Gersdorff, who claims to have performed more than 200 28 surgeries of this kind — no reference is made to the patient’s condition after he or she has recovered. Amputations are documented from the vantage point of the surgeon who has to perform them rather than seen from the perspective of afflicted patients who have to endure the life-altering operations. Physical impairment may be a consequence of severe traumata or inadequate medical treatment but also appears in the description of symptoms for certain pathologies. A patient’s loss of feeling and a reduced mobility in his or her extremities are included by von Gersdorff in the list of signs indicative of leprosy: Unentpfindtlicheit der glider / die do st(tigs w(rt vnd wenig von jnrn kompt / vnd in sonderheit der letsten finger vnd zehen an henden vnd an fGßen. Als des kleinen fingers / vnd der am nechsten sot. desszglich der kleinen zehen / vnd die zehe die an die klein rGret. Und got zG zeyten die vnentpfindtlicheit von den kleinen finger / bitz zG dem ellenbogen / oder gantz in die achßelen … zGm anderen so kommen die schloffenden glider von l(my. als in der 29 kranckheit paralisis zG latin genant / vnd zG teüsch das p(rlin.

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This lack of sensibility, which starts from a patient’s fingers and toes and spreads up towards his/her elbow and shoulder, may be indicative of imminent paralysis in the affected limbs. Apart from orthopedic impairment, a small number of other forms of handicap are referred to in the handbooks taken into consideration for this study. While dealing with phlebotomy (aderlass), von Gersdorff points out that this procedure can be helpful against deafness (touby) and clouded vision 30 (nübelung der augen). Surgery against Impairment All of the passages quoted above refer to physical impairment as a symptom or possible outcome of surgical pathology described in the two handbooks, but in none of these instances has a surgery been presented as a form of intervention upon a preexisting infirmity. In other words, the various forms of handicap were dealt with as peripheral to the surgical instruction itself. Yet, we must acknowledge that impairment should be viewed as absolutely central to the treatment of particular kinds of surgical pathology. Both Brunschwig and von Gersdorff describe the procedure of intervention with regard to patients who limp or suffer from reduced limb mobility due to improperly healed fractures. A series of procedures — both invasive and non-invasive — are accordingly presented (shown hereafter in Brunschwig) to improve such a patient’s condition: Do einnem ein bein zerbrochen ist vnd krump geheilt wer das einner hincken oder vngerad das an ist vnd wil oder begert einner wider gerad zuwerden alß vor so laß im machen ein wasser bad in einner mülten do die brotbecken teick in machen vnd bad in dar in 31 sex oder acht tag.

According to Brunschwig, if a person has suffered a fracture and consequentially limps (hincken) or cannot walk straight (vngerad), then the treatment to regain proper ambulation is to take daily baths for six or eight days. More invasive are the procedures described and illustrated in Hans von Gersdorff’s Feldtbuch der Wundarzney. Aided by a series of woodcuts, von Gersdorff teaches his ideal audience how to straighten an arm or leg which has previously healed in a bent condition (krum). In order to perform such a straightening, the practitioner should use certain instruments to rectify the contracted limbs in a gradual way. Some of these instruments are a sort of armor with a turnable rod (rather like the external fixation frames used today to heal fractures or lengthen limbs) called harnesch (armour, cuirass). No other forms of impairment are considered surgically treatable. In particular, no mention is made of other forms of impairment deriving from congenital pathologies. This lack of reference becomes significant, but perhaps can

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be explained when one considers: first, the very nature and task of medieval and early modern surgery; and secondly, the moral-religious implications associated with congenital physical affliction within culture and society. During the medieval and early modern eras, surgery is mainly conceived of as a procedure done within an emergency and war traumatology context — as witnessed by the title von Gersdorff gives to his handbook — “on battlefields.” Taking this orientation into consideration, it comes as no surprise that Brunschwig and von Gersdorff say little about accidental incapacitation because the majority of their patients were probably men fit for war and thus deemed malady-free before entering into battle. The second reason which can be adduced for the silence of the two authors on congenital defect stems from contemporary perceptions of handicap. As pointed out by Metzler, during the Middle Ages, impairment was viewed within a biblical context as a visible sign of sin and its consequence: divine punish32 ment. Thus, affliction was considered incurable or, at best, treatable only through miraculous means. As a result, physicians and surgeons were averse to depleting their resources of time and intellect; neither did they wish to risk 33 their reputations by attempting to cure the incurable. Except for recommending treatment in the case of a patient having an improperly healed fracture, these writers view accidental impairment as an unchangeable reality, a condition resulting from a severe lesion which can be alleviated but not cured. Conclusions Having analyzed the first two vernacular surgical handbooks printed in Germany (Strasbourg 1497 and 1517), we have shown that surgery was perceived as a possible solution to a limited number of pathologies resulting in physical infirmity. These impediments are mainly orthopedic in nature, as indicated by a patient’s limp or as manifested by mobility limitation resulting from improperly healed (or treated) fractures, treatable both invasively and without the help of the aids and instruments depicted in woodcuts shown in Hans von Gersdorff’s Feltbuch der Wundarzney. A series of accidental impairments is mentioned in the two handbooks (aside from improperly healed fractures viewed as treatable); these afflictions are listed as symptoms or possible outcomes of wounds and traumata, without further investigation being called for. Both Brunschwig’s Buch der Cirurgia and von Gersdorff’s Feldtbuch der Wundarzney are aimed at teaching surgeons’ apprentices how to deal with emergency situations. Their focus is therefore on surgery and short-term post-surgical therapies, while little attention is paid to long-term support of handicapped people. This concentration of attention upon the treatable malady can be seen in the instance of amputa-

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tions, where the surgeon’s task is seen as ending once the stump is cicatrized (healed by the formation of scar tissue). Because of the nature of the texts analyzed and the (medieval or early modern) world views reflected in these books relative to the role of surgery, the handbooks’ silence about afflictions that a person is born with becomes understandable. Such chronic conditions as congenital defect would not be seen among soldiers and men-of-arms sustaining injuries on the battlefield and thus finding themselves in need of a field surgeon. Besides this demographic factor, congenital impairments and the healing thereof were usually considered a matter for God and the Saints, not one for doctors or surgeons. On the whole, the study of these first vernacular documents on surgical practice contributes to our understanding of German contemporary attitudes — and in particular Strasbourgian ones — towards impairment and impaired people. A handicap was often perceived, as we have seen, as the inevitable consequence of a severe trauma or as the result of a life-saving procedure performed by a surgeon who could sometimes intervene by preparing potions and medications to mitigate the patient’s suffering. The highly technical quality of the texts excludes any consideration of social disadvantage experienced by disabled persons. Disability is only hinted at by Brunschwig in his classification of wounds, when he highlights the social disadvantages caused by some kinds of mutilations, usually associated with crimes such as theft or adultery.

Notes 1

Disability studies’ scholars have consistently drawn distinctions according to which impairment is the “medically classified condition” and disability is “the social disadvantage experienced by people with an accredited impairment.” See Colin Barnes, Geof Mercer, and Tom Shakespeare, Exploring Disability: A Sociological Introduction (Cambridge: Polity Press, 1999): 7. I will use the term impairment rather than disability when referring to the physical condition. 2 Hieronymus Brunschwig, Das Buch der Cirurgia des Hieronymus Brunschwig, ed. Gustav Klein (Munich: Kuhn, 1911). 3 Ludwig Choulant, Graphische Incunabeln für Naturgeschichte und Medicin (Leipzig: Weigel, 1858): 75. 4 Friedrich Wieger, Geschichte der Medicin und ihrer Lehranstalten in Strassburg (Strassburg: Trübner, 1885): 13. 5 Ernst Julius Gurtl, Geschichte der Chirurgie und ihrer Ausübung, 3 vols. (Berlin: Hirschwald, 1898): 2:202. 6 Quotations are from the facsimile edition of the Strasbourg 1497 version of the text by Brunschwig, Cirurgia, 4; see n. 2 above. For transcription of the quoted words and phrases I followed the indications of Werner Besch, “Zur Edition von deutschen Texten des 16. Jahrhunderts,” 392–411 in Alemannica: Landeskundliche Beiträge: Festschrift für Bruno Boesch zum 65. Geburtstag (Bühl, Baden: Konkordia,1976). According to that source, the original spelling of the Alemannic diphthongs and of the umlaut vowels has been maintained, as well as the original distribution of the graphemes < i >, < j > and < u >,

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< v >. In the same way, the original consonants have also been maintained; only the reduplication of the nasal in unnd and unns is normalized in und and uns. The different graphemes for the dental spirant / s /, < s >, < z > and < ß > have been faithfully reproduced, while the opposition between < ∫ > and < s > has been eliminated. Capitalization and united or separated spelling of compounds are the same as in the original, as is punctuation. Abbreviations have not been expanded unless it was absolutely clear what they stood for. 7 Brunschwig, Cirurgia, 4; see n. 2 above. 8 Karl Sudhoff, “Brunschwig’s Anatomie,”Archiv für Geschichte der Medizin 1 (1908): 41– 66; 141–156. 9 See also Gurtl, Geschichte, 222 (see n. 5 above). 10 When not otherwise indicated, all quotations from Hans von Gersdorff’s Feldtbuch der Wundarzney are from the reduced facsimile print of the 1517 edition published by Johannes Steudel: Hans von Gersdorff, Feldbuch der Wundarznei (Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 1967). For the material in the Preface quoted, see pg. 4 of the handbook. As for the quotations from Brunschwig’s Buch der Cirurgia, the transcription follows the indications of Besch, “Zur Edition.” See n. 2 above. 11 In order: skin and muscles, nerves, veins and arteries, bones and cartilages and then, following the a capite ad calcem scheme, head, face, neck and spine, shoulders and arms, thorax, abdomen, genitals and lower limbs are treated. 12 Ludwig Choulant, trans. and ed. History and Bibliography of Anatomic Illustration in its Relation to Anatomic Science and the Graphic Arts (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, Illinois, 1920), 165, underlines that this plate had been especially engraved for Scott’s first edition of von Gersdorff’s Feldtbuch. 13 See, for example, the in quarto edition printed in Strasbourg in 1526 and analyzed in detail by Gurtl, Geschichte, 222 and following. See n. 5 above. 14 Brunschwig, Cirurgia, 17 = fol. XIr (11r). 15 Brunschwig, Cirurgia, 24 = fol. XIIIIv (14v). 16 Brunschwig, Cirurgia, 27= fol. XVIr (16r). 17 See also Jakob and Wilhelm Grimm, Deutsches Wörterbuch (Leipzig: Hirzel, 1854– 1960), 12: col. 72 and following. 18 See also Grimm, Deutsches Wörterbuch, 12: col. 76. See n. 17 above. 19 Brunschwig, Cirurgia, 24 = fol. XIIIIv (14v). 20 Brunschwig, Cirurgia, 25 = fol. XVr (15r). 21 Brunschwig, Cirurgia, 27= fol. XVIr (16r). 22 See, for example, von Gersdorff, Feldtbuch (note 10 above) XXXIIIIv: “Blibt dann der arm unbüglich ston” (emphasis mine). 23 See, for example, Brunschwig, Cirurgia, 28 = fol. XVIv (16v): “Dan ich hab gesehen etwan manchen der do sprach im werent die finger krump und lam. und künt sie weder biegen noch strecken” (emphasis mine). 24 See, for example, von Gersdorff Feldtbuch (note 10 above), XXXIIIv: “Begibt es sich aber dz noch der heylung so einer wund ist gewesen / jm ein gleych oder glid krumm oder hart würt” (emphasis mine). 25 Brunschwig, Cirurgia, 118 = fol. LXIv (61v). 26 Brunschwig, Cirurgia, 118 = fol. LXIv (61v). 27 Brunschwig, Cirurgia, 30 = fol. XVIIv (17v).

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von Gersdorff, Feldtbuch, LXXr and following: “Item nGn so das glyd mGssz geschnitten werden / vnd kein leschung gehelffen mag / oder dz da geleschen ist nit behalten mag werden vnd bleyben / so soltu den krancken heyssen vor allenn dingen beychten / vnd das heylig sacrament entpfahen am anderen tag ee du jn schneydest. vnd soll der chirurgicus vor messz h=ren / so gibt jm got glück zG seiner würckung. Und wan du jn schneyden wilt / so soltu vor vnd ee allen deinen gezeüg vnd bereytschafft bey einander haben. als scher / schermesser / sege / blGt stellung / loßbendel / bindenn / büsch / vnd werck / eyger / vnd was dann darzG geh=rt / dz eins vff dz ander gang nach dem schnit. dan die noturfft erheischt dz. Und wann du jn schneyden wilt / so heyß dir einen die hut hart hynder sich streiffen / vnd bind dann die hut also mit einem heylend / oder lasszbendel hart. vnd bind dann ein einfaches laßbendel für den bendel / dz es ein spacium hab zwischen den zweyen bendelen eines fingers breyt /bloßlichen dz du mit dem schermesser darzwischen mügst schneyden. dan dißer schnit ist gar gewissz /vnd godt glich ab / vnnd machet hüpsche strümpff. Wann du nGn den schnit also gethan hast / so nim ein seg vnd stossz die r=r herab. vnd darnach so thG den laßbendel wider herab / vnd heyssz dir einen die hut über die r=r vnd dz fleisch zyehen / vnd vornen hart zG heben. vnd solt vor ein binden haben die zweyer finger breyt sey / vnd die soll vor genetzt sein / dz sye durch nassz sey / so legt sye sich satt an. vnd bind jm dann also den arm herfür bitz zG dem schnit / dz das fleisch für die r=r gang / vnd lassz diß also gebunden. Und darnach so leg jm die blGtstellung darüber. Unnd du darffst nit erschrecken des blGtes halb wann du das also hebest / als hye vor geschriben stat. Unnd bind jm dann über die blGtstellung ein gGten dicken buschen. vnd darnach so nim ein bloß / oder ein blotter wie du das nennest von eim styer oder ochßen / oder von einem schweyn die da strarck sey / vnd schneyd den knopff oben an der blotteren vff / vnd schneyd sye so weyt das sye über den buschen vnd strumpff gang. vnd die blotter soll vor genetzt sein / dz sye nit gantz weych sey / so streyff sye dann darüber / vnd bind sye da hynden hart zG mit einem lasszbendel / so darffest du kein sorg haben für das blGten. Auch so wissz / dz ich kein strumpff nye gehefft / sunder alle mit meynen heylungen geheylt hab. dz vil gGter gesellen wissen die bey mir gedyent haben / deren noch vil in leben seint. […] Es würt gar vil gesagt vnd offt gemeldt / wie man tr(nck jngebe die do schlaffen machen dißen die man schniden soll / loß ich sein / ich hab es aber nie keim gethon / oder gesehen jngeben / vnd hab doch ein hundert glyd oder zwey abgeschnitten in sanct Anthonien hoff zG Straßburg / vnd vßwendig des hoffs.” 29 von Gersdorff, Feldtbuch, LXXIIIIr. See n. 10 above. 30 von Gersdorff, Feldtbuch, XIVv. 31 Brunschwig, Cirurgia, 192 = fol. XCVIIIv (98v). 32 Irina Metzler, Disability in Medieval Europe: Thinking about Physical Impairment during the High Middle Ages, c. 1100–1400 (London; New York: Routledge, 2006): 38 and following. 33 Metzler, Disability, 69.

Università degli Studi di Genova, Italy

Serious Elements in Medieval French Farces: A New Dimension Edelgard E. DuBruck Farces are short comic plays usually involving a trick by which one or more characters deceives another for personal gain. Major popular entertainments mostly in urban areas during the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, farces were often played on trestle stages that were quickly set up in streets or squares on holidays. The small number of roles required few actors and stage props, making the plays easily transportable. Farces were written and played by amateur groups, such as student organizations, municipal confraternities, trade guilds, and jongleurs. There are numerous references in fifteenth-c. documents to the staging of farces, but no plays have survived that 1 antedate the Farce de maistre Pathelin, written in the 1460s. About 175 farces 2 date from the hundred years following the appearance of Pathelin. Modern research on French farces has concentrated on three aspects of the plays: their structure, themes, and possible genres. The results of this scholarly activity suggest that no unified construction exists, but instead many different comic “systems” hold sway, often based on an automatic 3 formula, a “machine à rire” (Bernadette Rey-Flaud); the themes include all human activities (often domestic) and render the plays “mirrors of reality” 4 (Barbara Bowen and Jean-Claude Aubailly); while genres seem recognizable, a farce may reflect more than one type of genre and be quite complex, deemed thusly by Alan E. Knight. As religious theater does not always remain serious (consider the comic diversions in mystery plays), the universe of farces cannot be reduced to grotesque distortions, to ridicule, satire, buffoonery, and obscenities. On the contrary, certain plays reveal a philosophic view toward a serious human situation which makes these plays caustic, even absurd; in any case, farces require pondering and reflection. We agree with Knight, who wrote: “comic plays and scenes served in some cases to release collective tension, in other cases to express serious metaphysical 5 truths”; after rereading some of these farces in the Tissier edition, we will 6 discuss their serious dimensions in detail. As early as 1901, Gustave Lanson had recognized that “la farce est un genre de drame ayant, bien que ces mots paraissent ambitieux, son esthétique, sa méthode d’invention … et une certaine façon originale de traiter la 7 matière de la vie.” Bowen added in 1964 that most literary critics had neglected “la vision nettement définie du monde et de l’homme que recèlent les meilleures d’entre ces pièces” and the philosophical topics which some farces 8 bring forth, without, however, any scholar going into detail, she writes. Like

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Bowen, a specialist of farce theater, we also think that Robert Garapon’s characterization of the farce’s verbal phantasy as a means of evading life’s 9 difficulties is too narrow, and that the talent of a farce actor is “un art conscient,” which not only mirrors reality, but extends beyond to reveal eternal 10 truths about the plight of humankind. It is possible that a few witnesses in the audience realized the serious issues conveyed by several farces, but modern readers cannot fail to notice and ponder these moments of profundity. The Search for Identity The divergent aspects of Jenin, fils de rien [son of nothing — c.1500, Tissier III], were underestimated vis-à-vis the piece’s textual quality, even by its editor. This farce is not well known and was judged mediocre by Robert Garapon; but its psychological, philosophical, and anthropological meanings are considerable. The story line is simple enough. Jenin, a naïve young man, believes that he is the son of Master Jehan, a priest. An allusion to this father provokes an ambiguous reaction by Jenin’s mother: “Your father! Who told you?” (v. 33). Jenin demands to know: “Who is my father then?” (v. 36). His mother gives absurd explanations: “Maybe a jacket, a doublet, or a pair of sleeves.” Soon after, the priest speaks to Jenin and, using the ambiguity of clerical appellatives, insists on his own paternity, visibly proud of his progeny; but — surprise! — Jenin’s mother, he says, is not his female parent. We already know that some medieval clergymen lived in the same 11 promiscuity as parishioners, intermingling without shame. Finally, the mother consults a devin (charlatan), in order to establish Jenin’s origin by a medieval urine analysis; first, the charlatan contradicts himself and then announces that Jenin is the son of nothing (v. 412). The boy concludes: “I am the son of nothing” (v. 426). His final monologue poses an important problem ending on a tragic note about loss of identity and its consequences (a summary follows in English): Doncques Jenin n’est point Jenin. Qui suis-je donc? Janot? Nennin. Je suis Jenin, le filz de rien. Je ne puis trouver le moyen Sçavoir si je suis ou suis mye. Suis-je Dieu ou Vierge Marie? Nennyn; ilz sont (tous deux) en paradis. Suis-je diable? Qu’esse que je dis! Vrayment, je ne suis pas cornu. Dieu sache dont je suis venu! Pourtant si ne suis-je pas beste: Il est bon à veoir à ma teste Que je suis faict ainsi que ung homme. Et pourtant je conclus en somme

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Que je suis et si ne suis pas. Suis-je sainct Pierre ou sainct Thomas? Nennyn; car sainct Thomas est mort. Et, vrayment, cecy est bien fort A congnoistre, que c’est que de moy. Mais je vous prometz, par ma foy Je ne croys point que ne soye sainct. Il fauldra donc que je soye paint Et mis dessus le maistre autel. Quel sainct seroy-je? Il n’est tel Que d’estre en paradis sainct Rien. Au moins si je fusses d’ung chien Ou d’ung cheval le vray enfant, Je seroys trop plus triumphant Que je ne suis et plus gentil. Or conclus-je, sans long babil, Que je ne suis filz de personne. Je suis à qui le plus me donne (vv. 432–63).

A son of nothing is, ergo, nothing; his mere existence becomes ambiguous, it is “to be or not to be.” Seeking his identity, he tries to borrow that of invisible beings: God, the Virgin, or the devil. Nevertheless, Jenin is here on earth; he exists, and his preliminary conclusion is sic et non, “je suis et si ne suis pas.” Would he then be a holy man called “St. Rien,” the best of all the saints? For the moment, he would be satisfied to be the child of a dog or a horse, or (at this point) belong to the highest bidder (money). This last remark reminds us of the fact that he acts like a juggler who wants to be re12 warded for his monologue. The quasi nonchalance of the last line (463) does not hide the profound problem of Jenin’s identity, his pathos (the innocent suffers). Speaking in the first person singular, Jenin shares the existential consternation expressed in Werner Herzog’s film Kaspar Hauser, and, like those of his companion in misery of the 1800s, Jenin’s words develop, beginning with monosyllabic grunts in the first twenty-two verses of the play, to the sophisticated subject 13 matter of the above thirty-two lines in monologue. Jenin and Jehan both mean “helpless fool” in French, but neither one nor the other acts or speaks like deranged individuals. Jenin is a naïve person, like Perceval, Lazarillo de Tormes, Candide, Kaspar Hauser, and Hans Castorp (Thomas Mann). Innocent like Kaspar, Jenin is a victim of society, a crucified Christ turning to God, the Virgin, and all the saints. By the way, Herzog’s film has the bitter subtitle: “Jeder für sich und Gott gegen alle” (Every man for himself and God against all). We cannot deny the obvious comical implications of this farce, which satisfied the audience of the moment; but the piece also reveals the psychologi-

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cal mindset of someone whose universe is crumbling away when he loses his identity (evocative of an amnesiac) and who tries anxiously to create a new mental image of the self. From the anthropological point of view, no humans know their origins, since they were not consciously witnessing their own conception — certainly not Guillaume, Pathelin’s clothier (La Farce de Maître 14 Pierre Pathelin). How many official genealogies are faulty or falsified! Like Estragon and Vladimir in Samuel Beckett’s Waiting for Godot, none of us can know the moment of our conception or of our death. Mimin’s Search for Communication Those who are deaf would attest to the power one can exercise through the speech act of uttering words (both spoken and heard). Mimin le goutteux et les deux sourds (1534, T. V) is based on three misunderstandings which eradicate communication. The frustration of Master Mimin (French pet-name for Émile), sick of gout (easy to perform on the stage), is comic, of course, but the situation emphasizes the trauma of someone who needs help but does not receive any on account of several misunderstandings, as we will show. Hence the profundity of this farce is an aspect neglected until now by scholars: human beings depend on communication, the sick and old even more than others. Yet, the medieval attitude toward physical defects and sicknesses has been revealed as being quite ambiguous, not only because of Platonic idealism (defects are ugly), but also attributable to the theology of 15 punishments. As Bronislaw Geremek has shown, handicapped people (true or false) were ostensibly marginals, and even though they benefited from 16 public charities, they remained suspect in the eyes of society. Mimin needs a medication, but his deaf valet begins to speak about Rabelais’s Gargantua (written, as we know, to heal people by laughter) and understands vicaire instead of apothicaire (vv. 116–17). The deaf fellow mistakes one word for another on the basis of a vague homophony of end-rhymes; he does what the master has not asked for, but he does not do what the man demanded him to do (while the audience chuckles). Misunderstood, in his turn, by a tailor who simulates deafness while taking Mimin’s measurements, the valet believes that the Master has been manipulated by a deaf fool: the result is physical pain when the tailor measures Mimin’s sick leg. Finally, all three of them (Mimin, the valet, and the tailor) utter sounds lacking logical connection: all communication breaks down. Plays on words create verbal phantasy (as in Rabelais) and spoonerisms (see v. 91: “Il a du livre en la science”) blossom in the middle of rubbish. Within this “âge d’or de la fantaisie verbale” (Garapon), the audience laughs, of course, when hearing the comic utterings. Mimin le goutteux suffers from physical and mental pain, while the breakdown within the communicative interaction of the three men produces laughter in the audience. Mimin himself feels alienated — as do those people

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who hear jargon or foreign languages, other resources of comedy on the stage. Today, the sound of a foreign idiom may shock bystanders and reduce their hope for interaction to nothing. Within the medieval countryside, lacking transport and perhaps messengers, there would be an abundance of people for whom strangers, formerly thought to be intruders, would be deemed ridiculous, and considered marginal outsiders, simply because they 17 are different. If we think of Pathelin (apparently) “hallucinating in different languages” (vv. 606–968), or of the Limousin student in Rabelais, alienation may be an efficacious comedic device on stage. “He does not speak like a Christian / Nor any comprehensible language” (vv. 937–38), Pathelin’s clothier exclaims — and the audience giggles with mirth. Then Guillaume begins to doubt his own words because he is uncertain about Pathelin’s “hallucination” as well as about the identity of the customer (Pathelin!), whom he had served a few hours ago. Communication stops, and the clothier fears an act of the devil upon seeing his cloth gone for good. Unlike Guillaume’s situation, Mimin’s predicament remains serious indeed in spite of comic devices suggesting otherwise. The Search for Proper Education For a medieval peasant’s son, one way to rise above social station is for the young man to become a priest. The would-be ecclesiastic must engage in study, yet in some farces, the priests’ lack of knowledge is shown as proverbial (especially in Latin), revealing the religious man’s insufficient preparation. Furthermore, late-medieval priests seem to have no spiritual vocation and display human weaknesses in conduct. Maître Mimin étudiant (c.1480–90, T. III) is a satire of teaching in general and of “scholastic” Latin particularly. Mother Lubine anxiously observes that her son Mimin becomes more estranged every day, as his “knowledge” of Latin increases: “Il ne parle plus françoys,” she says (v. 12). In fact, Mimin’s first words in this play are in a hybrid and grotesque idiom impossible to understand: Ego non sire. Franchoys jamais parlare; Car ergo oubliaverunt (vv. 118–20).

Again, this language leads to an alienation. Lubine, a model mother, immediately blames the teacher: Ilz sont des maistres si pervers Qui batent leurs clercs pour un vers. Vous l’avez trop tenu soubz verge (vv. 204–206).

Neither Mimin nor his father nor the schoolteacher seem to realize the deplorable quality of the Latin which Mimin regurgitates; only the audience may appreciate this linguistic comedy, whose essential technique is based on

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grotesque deformation. In order to heal Mimin, he is placed into a cage like a bird, and they teach him French again, mechanically. His definite return to nature is achieved, however, by his fiancée, who teaches him the language of love. This farce contains some “Rousseauism,” not only questioning the quality of curricular material taught by schoolmasters but asking whether educators should try to teach anything, period. While it is true that most townsfolk find it necessary to ameliorate their respective social situations and strive toward doing so, given the corrupted results of clerical education during the Middle Ages (especially in the countryside), the outlook for their intellectual growth appears bleak. Thus, the farce contains a serious warning, an admonition against perpetuating substandard pedagogy and its broad im18 plications for the future. The popularity of Pre-Reformation farces on medieval education is shown well by Tissier; admittedly, we would doubt a popular attitude (established in the Middle Ages) which requires learning Latin in order for one to appear erudite. Given the priests’ necessity of communicating biblical truths to the public, the crucial point becomes that which a priest is trying to convey to his parishioners. For a medieval clergyman must be capable of reciting the mass, giving homilies, administering the sacraments, and accomplishing other pastoral duties. The priest, the mayor, the doctor, and the schoolmaster con19 stituted the intellectual elite of a village. (And it is possible that the parishioners, on account of the considerable use of “Latin” at church, identified knowledge [intellect] with an apparent facility to speak in an incomprehensible idiom, which was sometimes utilized to keep the faithful aloof from discovering the weaknesses of the priest.) Beyond any verbal comedy and satire, the subjects taught within the geographical area mirrored by the plays were inadequate for pupils’ needs, and the lack of competent teachers as well as qualified students is a significant problem — certainly not only in the Middle Ages. To return to Mimin’s situation, the young man requires a properly educated teacher — or should choose another occupation. The Search for Times Past In our perusal of serious elements in farces (1450–1550), we have further studied a segment of human life hardly mentioned before the fifteenth century: that of old age. When meditating about their own lives, humans who are old (as reflected by characters in the plays) assess their former competence and compare that prowess to professional or sexual performance at the moment, sometimes with nostalgic regret, as in Le Ramoneur de cheminées (beginning of sixteenth century, T. IV), a farce dismissed as obscene and therefore left undiscussed by critics. Chimney-Sweep differs from most other farces because the play lacks action/intrigue. The piece consists of a series of dialogues between a man and

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his valet, involving husband and wife. The man can no longer sweep well, because he is old; the audience quickly grasps the analogy — and in fact anticipates such a connection: the man’s weakness manifests itself not only in sweeping chimneys, but also in the conjugal bed. He confesses: By God! I knew all about the art Of my job, as well as any man in this kingdom; But to do it, by my soul, My forces fail me (vv. 35–38).

Then he breaks into an elegiac lamentation about the passage of time, using one rich rhyme in the manner of rhetoriqueur poetry: Je sçay que c’est: tout se passe, Ce que nature a compassé; Car je suis ja tout passé. Bien joueroit de passe passe, Qui me feroit en brief espace Corps bien compassé! Je suis ja cassé, Faulcé, Lassé (vv. 43–51).

Audience members, both young and old, are thus prompted to cry (in sympathy with his plight), as well as laugh. No doubt, the first literary complaint (by the chimney-sweep) about his own sexual impotence (as far as we know) must have provoked merriment in the audience. The coital metaphor of sweeping was used traditionally with success and appeared also in other medieval texts. Our farce, however, employs this ambiguity with finesse and discretion: it is a sexual carpe diem in linguistic form, which uses an everyday activity and its metaphor, just as in the 20 German carnival plays. In addition, this farce is an eloquent commentary on 21 aging, its “desert of love,” and the passage of time; incidentally, unusually early impotence was considered God’s punishment for sins. A comparison of the past and the present is also the subject of Les Gens nouveaux, a farce-morality-sottie (1461, T. IV). The play opposes generations and brings something like a consciousness of historicity, together with a caustic satire of the newly rich who spurn tradition. The personages are abstractions: three Nouveaux (new generationals) and the World. Naturally, the three youngsters want to reform the World by turning him upside-down (vv. 41–43), and they criticize society no end: Let’s make all cowardly officers Be the first in the ranks of battle; When assaults are commanded — Thus, we are the new generation (vv. 48–51) — my translation.

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The World, however, speaks in terms of courtly rhetoriqueur poetry, a mode of the past; with his florebat olim he is an elegiac person and afraid of going from bad to worse, as shown in linked verses: Je suis mal, Et à Mal m’avez amené. O povre Monde infortuné! Fortune, tu m’es bien contraire. Contraire, dès que je fuz né, Ne fuz qu’en peine et en misere. Misérable, que doy-je faire? Faire ne puis pas bonne chere. Cher me sont trop les Gens nouveaux. Nouvellement sourdent assaultx. Vivre ne peult le povre Monde (vv. 246–56).

We do not agree with Tissier, for whom the World’s complaints are comical. Mundus speaks in the first person singular like the other personages; his regret is authentic, and he is surely “le personnage collectif du petit peuple” (T. 302) of the old generation who is disappointed to see, for example, that Louis 22 XI will be surrounded by young advisers rather than those of his father. This farce is doubtless the most serious piece of T.’s collection. It shows that commonfolk of the Middle Ages had a concept of time and of their own 23 historicity (Duby), and that they doubted progress and reform. Perhaps they feared a mundus senescens just then, at the dawn of the Renaissance and its optimism. Comic theater thus had its serious moments and never abandoned a healthy realism, when speaking of everyday life, of education, politics, and economy. Bernadette Rey-Flaud shows that moments of anxiety are “at the heart of 24 problems within the great dramatic genres,” and our laughter veils hardly, according to Bergson, a “pessimisme naissant qui s’affirme de plus en plus à 25 mesure que le rieur raisonne davantage sur son rire.” In fact, Eugène Ionesco reveals very well the absurdness of the human condition, where everyone is imprisoned in an incomprehensible determinism and asks “who am I?,” “how to communicate?, what should one learn?, what is the aim of my 26 life in the long run?,” and “how to face old age and death?.” The pathetic anxiety of these questions undermines the laughter of certain farces and 27 gives them, according to Rey-Flaud, “an unsuspected dimension.”

Notes 1

This information follows Alan E. Knight’s excellent article in Medieval France: An Encyclopedia, ed. William W. Kibler et al (New York: Garland, 1995): 337. 2 Pathelin is unusual in both its length and its complexity (1,600 octosyllabic lines).…

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Whereas most other farces are constructed around a single trick, the anonymous author of Pathelin has woven an intricate web of mutual deception. Pierre Pathelin, a down-and-out … lawyer, purchases cloth on credit from Guillaume the clothier, who cheats him on the price. Guillaume’s attempt to collect his money is thwarted by Pathelin, with his wife’s complicity, in an inspired scene of comic delirium. Because Guillaume has also cheated his shepherd on his wages, the latter kills and eats a number of the sheep. Accused of the slaughter, the shepherd hires Pathelin to defend him in court. The latter deceives the judge by having the shepherd reply “Baa” to all his questions. Finally, when Pathelin asks to be paid, the shepherd dutifully replies “Baa” to all his entreaties. The theme of the trickster tricked (à trompeur, trompeur et demi) is thus exemplified several times over (ibid., 713). 3 Bernadette Rey-Flaud, La farce ou la machine à rire: théorie d’un genre dramatique, 1450– 1550 (Geneva: Droz, 1984). 4 Barbara C. Bowen, Les caractéristiques essentielles de la farce française et leur survivance dans les années 1550–1620 (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1964): 15; Jean-Claude Aubailly, Le Théâtre médiéval profane et comique (Paris: Larousse, 1975): 160–62. 5 Alan E. Knight, Aspects of Genre in Late Medieval French Drama (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1983): 6. See also: Wim Hüsken and K. Schoell, Farce and Farcical Elements (Amsterdam: Rodopi, 2002); Olga Anna Duhl, ed. Le Théâtre français des années 1450–1550: état actuel des recherches (Dijon/France: Centre de Recherches, 2001). 6 André Tissier, ed. Recueil de farces (1450–1550), 13 vols. (Geneva: Droz, 1986–2000). Henceforth: T. 7 Gustave Lanson, “Molière et la farce,” Revue de Paris 9 (1901): 129–53 (142). 8 Bowen’s assessment (note 4 above): ibid. 9 Robert Garapon, La fantaisie verbale et le comique dans le théâtre français du moyen âge â la fin du XVIIe siècle (Paris: Colin, 1957). 10 Bowen: 79–84. 11 See: Edelgard E. DuBruck, Aspects of Fifteenth-Century Society in the German Carnival Comedies: Speculum Hominis (Lewiston: Mellen, 1993): chapter three. 12 On jugglers, see Philip Butterworth, Magic on the Early English Stage (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005); Evelyn Birge Vitz et al., eds., Performing Medieval Narrative (Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 2005); Werner Danckert, Unehrliche Leute: die verfemten Berufe (Bern: Francke, 1963, 1979): 214–62; Ernst Schubert, Fahrendes Volk im Mittelalter (Bielefeld: Verlag f. Regionalgeschichte, 1995). 13 Kaspar Hauser (c.1812–Ansbach 1833), enigmatic German person. He appeared in public in 1828, dressed like a peasant and was generally identified as the abandoned son of Great-Duke Charles of Baden. His origin: according to literary sources and Werner Herzog’s film, he was found as a baby at the door of an Ansbach couple, who kept him on a chain in the basement. His only toy was a wooden horse, and he was unable to speak, except for uttering the word “horse.” The film is fascinating. 14 Jean Dufournet, ed. and tr., La Farce de Maître Pierre Pathelin (Paris: GF Flammarion, 1986): vv. 118–79. Also: J. Dufournet et Michel Rousse, Sur “La Farce de Maître Pierre Pathelin” (Paris: Champion, 1986); and Donald Maddox, Semiotics of Deceit: The Pathelin Era (Lewisburg: Bucknell University Press, 1984). 15 DuBruck (note 11 above): ch. 5, “Sickness and Health.”

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16

Bronislaw Geremek, Les Marginaux parisiens aux XIVe et XVe siècles, trans. Daniel Beauvois (Paris: Flammarion, 1976): 202 ff.; Michel Foucault, Histoire de la folie à l’âge classique (Paris: Gallimard, 1972): 316–60. 17 Margaret Aston, The Fifteenth Century: The Prospect of Europe (London: Thames and Hudson, 1968): 111. 18 In the late Middle Ages, Bibles in the vernacular existed as manuscripts. Still, priests quoted from the Vulgate until the parishioners’ need to hear the biblical stories in the vernacular led to the composition of Lives of Christ, following the thirteenth-c. Meditationes Vitae Christi. Its first translation into French occurred in 1398, commissioned by Queen Isabeau; the excerpt concentrated on Holy Week, and was saturated with popular piety, in order to be read aloud to small groups (see: Edelgard E. DuBruck, ed. La Passion Isabeau: une édition du manuscrit fr. 966 de la Bibliothèque Nationale de Paris avec une introduction et des notes [New York: Peter Lang, 1990]; chosen from c.23 manuscripts). In the fifteenth century, the Passion stories, with some apocryphal details, spread into most European countries. 19 Friedrich Heer, The Medieval World, trans. Janet Sondheimer (New York: NAL, 1962): 58–59; 221. 20 Johannes Müller, Schwert und Scheide: Der sexuelle und skatologische Wortschatz im Nürnberger Fastnachtspiel des 15. Jahrhunderts (Bern: Peter Lang, 1988): 1–29. 21 Shigemi Sasaki, “Le poète et le ‘désert,’” in Vieillesse et vieillissement au moyen âge (Aix-enProvence: CUERMA, 1987): 319–35. 22 See Jennifer Lee, “Louis XI, A French Monarch in Pilgrim’s Garb: Badges,” FifteenthCentury Studies 34 (2009): 113–32. 23 Georges Duby and Philippe Ariès, eds. A History of Private Life, 5 vols., trans. Arthur Goldhammer (Cambridge Press of Harvard University Press, 1987–91). Vol. 2: Georges Duby, ed. Revelations of the Medieval World (Cambridge: Belknap Press, 1988): 379–80. 24 Rey-Flaud (note 3 above): 298. 25 Henri Bergson, Le rire, essai sur la signification du comique (Paris: PUF, 1956): 152. 26 Eugène Ionesco, Notes et contre-notes (Paris: Gallimard, 1966): 61. 27 Rey-Flaud: 300.

Marygrove College

Reading “Piers Plowman” in the Fifteenth and Sixteenth Centuries: The Evidence of British Library Cotton Caligula A XI Rosanne Gasse In their attempts to recreate the authorial texts of the recensions of Piers Plowman in as accurate a manner as possible, scholars have invested a great deal of effort. Their commendable aim of reclaiming the author’s words of necessity ignores the early reader’s experience of the poem, however. For medieval perusers of the manuscript, the concept of a set, authorially-sanctioned version of the text would have been mystifying to say the least. The three or four recensions of Piers Plowman that have been recognized — the A, B, C, and perhaps the Z texts — are indeed a myth from the early reader’s point of view; and as George Kane has admitted, as many different versions 1 of the poem exist as surviving manuscripts. This article is a close examination of some of the annotations found in one particular fifteenth-century manuscript of Piers Plowman: British Library Cotton Caligula A XI, in which Langland’s masterwork is found between pages 170 recto and 286 recto with pages 274 recto to 276 verso being blank, 2 although no part of the text is missing as a result. Cotton Caligula’s version is a CAB text, giving more or less C readings from the Prologue through to C.2.128, then A readings from A.2.86 through to the end of passus 2, and 3 then B readings from B.3.1 through to the end of the poem. Cotton Caligula’s text is closely related to that of two other manuscripts, Oxford Bodley 814 (Bo) and British Library Additional 10574 (Bm), which exhibit the same CAB textual combination and which surpass it both in terms of closeness to the authorial text and in overall presentation. Other than Sir Robert Cotton, the antiquarian who acquired the manuscript in the sixteenth century, the only named owner/reader of Piers Plowman: Cotton Caligula A XI, was one John Godere (or Godeve), who wrote 4 out his name twice on 269 recto. His hand is such a scrawl that even Kane and E. Talbot Donaldson questioned whether the man’s surname was Godere 5 or Godeve. Archbishop Parker’s secretary likely inscribed “Pierce Plough6 man” at the top of 170 recto to give this otherwise untitled work its name. Yet the manuscript obviously has had more than these few men peruse its pages, for many readers have left traces of themselves behind, both within the text, such as the reader who preferred spelling with y rather than i and altered some words accordingly, and also on the side in the manuscript’s ample margins. The Piers Plowman section of Cotton Caligula A XI has built up layers of readerly interest over time, from the four surviving marginal no-

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tations attributable to the scribe himself; to full textual messages written out by the pens of four different readers, two from the fifteenth century, one from the sixteenth century, and one who wrote too little text to be classified by the style of handwriting; to a whole range of non-verbal notations in the manuscript’s wide margins. The presence of marginalia from multiple, largely unknown sources immediately foregrounds the problem of how to interpret such material. Even the best approach is fraught with questions which must be answered before proceeding, questions arising from variables such as handwriting styles and the disparate types of crosses and nota marks manifested in a particular manuscript. Ought one to consider herself a final reader of the text in the margins, one who builds upon all the marginalia as if that data formed one gestalt bolus of information? Or ought one attempt to peel away the layers, so as to discern to what elements of the text individual readers at particular stages during the manuscript’s history reacted? The second investigatory proposition is stymied by the mass of notations which cannot be linked to dateable, individual readers — the various crosses, pointing fingers, line-drawn faces, and the several variants on nota bene in the manuscript — yet which surely cannot be simply ignored as evidence of early readerly opinion, even if the identities of those writing notations and dates are unestablishable or what these conjectured readers want us to notice through using such signs is unclear. Moreover, the first proposition becomes unworkable when one acknowledges that readers of any text would never have agreed in their interpretations; and it is historically naïve to think that a fifteenth-century reader (if an archetype can be posited) would share the same reaction to the text as a typical sixteenth-century one, especially during the post-Reformation era. Any reception history would deserve better. What marginal comments can be said to signify is likewise frequently open to question. Benson and Blanchfield have well described some of the difficulties arising from the task of interpreting marginalia in Piers Plowman manuscripts: Although marginal notes can be more revealing than paraph signs and emphasized words, they frequently share their opacity. They call attention to particular lines, but we cannot always be sure why. What does it mean that one of only two notes in Bo (the other is the same as one in the closely related Bm) is a nota in red at 6.159 when Piers appeals to the knight to discipline the wasters on the Half Acre? Does this line, marked by paraphs, words, and a later note in other manuscripts but by no other original note, really have a special significance to the scribe, and, if so, exactly what is it? Are we supposed to note Piers’s tough line against agricultural slackers or, as many modern critics have observed, the failure of knighthood to preserve social order? When C2 and O put the note,

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‘Caton of almes dedis’ next to 7.72 are they (or their exemplar) endorsing Cato’s strict attitude toward beggars or do they expect the reader to understand that this is only one view in contrast to Gregory’s more generous position that follows? We might presume the former because Gregory’s words are not marked and the next note in both is ‘ffalse beggers’ at 7.83, but we cannot be sure 7 because the annotation is so reticent.

The quite numerous marginal notations of Piers Plowman: Cotton Caligula A XI share the challenges described by Benson and Blanchfield; nonetheless, these notations can be broken down into various categories, not all types of which are truly significant to readerly interpretation of the text, although all jottings share the same broad function of enabling readers to locate quickly specific passages, whether for purposes of later textual correction, critical dialogue with the work, or convenient return to a favorite place in the text as a 8 whole. The first kind of reader’s aid is the definitional gloss, of which the Cotton Caligula version of Piers Plowman has five. On 177 recto, in the margin next to the line containing “lippe”(177r.4; C.2.37), someone helpfully wrote “a Lompe” (a lump), whether intentionally or not, aiding later readers 9 in understanding the meaning of the very rare word lippe. The reason for the other glosses is less apparent. At the bottom of 184 verso, the fairly common spelling “makemeth” is underlined (184v.34; B.3.329), and the equally common form “Machamite” is written in the margin. At best, this gloss seems to indicate a reader’s preference for a particular spelling of the name Mohammed and perhaps speaks to that person’s own dialect. Another case also centers on orthography. On 240 verso, the scribe’s original spelling “hiire” (240v.7; B.14.134) has been adjusted to “hiyre,” but this alternate spelling for modern English “hire” did not satisfy another individual, who wrote out the option “huyre” in the margin. Readers of this manuscript could also be remarkably persistent as they attempted to correct the text. On 230 verso, someone erased part of the poetic term “ledene,” which had been used by Langland to describe the peacock’s cry and replaced that word with “hy dene” (high din; 230v.7; B.12.246). When “leden” reappears a few lines later in Langland’s text, again relative to the peacock (230v.16; B.12.255), the term was underlined and “high dene” written in the margin. Only the third and final usage of leden nine lines later at 230v.25; B.12.264, this time referring to the lark’s song, escapes the redactor’s pen. By 1340, leden was a well-established trope to describe bird song according to the Middle English Dictionary (MED), and so it seems likely that some reader objected vehemently to the extension of that poetic fancy to a 10 peacock’s screeching call. A similar incident over language had occurred much earlier in the manuscript, on 186 verso, where the scribe’s original reading, “hewen,” was un-

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derlined and the synonymous “hynen” written beside the word in a different hand (186v.28; B.4.107). Both words mean someone who works in the service of another, and Langland himself uses both terms. The scribe or his exemplar, however, shows a distinct preference for the Anglian “hynen” over the West Saxon “hewen,” and twice switches “hewen” to “hynen” (197r.10; B.5.552 [also Bo] and 237r.24; B.14.3) and once to the pronoun “they” (240v.7; B.14.134 [also Bo]). “Hewen” survives in Cotton in just three places, all appearing early in the manuscript: 175r.16; C.1.123, 186r.11; B.4.55, and 186v.28; B.4.107. Remarkably, some reader chose to intervene only upon the third and last occasion, writing in at that point his apparent dialect preference for “hynen.” A more complicated matter than the definitional gloss is the marginal cross, rendered in three different styles: T (eighteen times), + (eighteen times), and X (twice). The evidence is inconclusive as to whether the three different styles indicate three separate readers, although one point in the text is suggestive, 236 verso, where both T and + appear next to the same line: ¶ I wayted bisiloker . and thanne what soilled (236v.22; B.13.342).

Is it plausible that the two marks indicate the puzzlement of two different readers at the unusual comparative form “bisiloker” or the grammatical slip which may be attributable to the authorial “was it” being transformed to “what”? Or do these entries signify something else? Indeed, Benson and Blanchfield suggest that the various crosses “occur at places where a later reader or corrector may not have understood the mean11 ing of the line.” On 177 recto, for example, + appears opposite two lines which contain “doumbe” used very abstractly: + +

I do h[i]t vpon dauid . the doumbe wulnat lyae d[omi]ne quis h[ab]itabit in tab[er]naculo tuo et c[etera] . And dauid undoth hymself . as he doumbe schewyth[e] (177r.6–8; C.2.39–41).

Any reader might be forgiven for being confused about the meaning of “doumbe” here, and for not immediately realizing that books, because they convey language in written form, cannot literally speak aloud and therefore are construable as dumb mute. Forgiveness may be warranted just as in the case of “lippe” appearing two lines earlier because only Langland is cited by the MED as using “doumbe” to refer to the Bible in this figurative sense. Moreover, the reader must contend with the interpretive problems which arise when a word with considerable pejorative value refers to something sacred, and indeed even in our modern (far more secular) age we are not generally accustomed to thinking of the Bible as dumb. A medieval reader perusing the manuscript after 1425 could well have been more shocked than an earlier individual because “doumbe” had by that time picked up another

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meaning pertinent to books — unintelligible or unrevealing — which would 12 have added to its overall pejorative sense. Benson and Blanchfield also suggest that many of the crosses “seem to be textual or perhaps call attention to unusual words,” although these scholars also allow for the possibility that some of the crosses might have been added 13 to note points of interpretative interest for the reader. Benson and Blanchfield’s range of possibilities are all justified by an examination of the evidence in Cotton. X appears close to the dropped French at 219r.29; B.10.445. T likely notes at 217v.24; B.10.339 the uncorrected duplication of “knyathode” (instead of “kinghood”) in the previous line, and the uncorrected reading of “somer” instead of “synne” at 241r.28; B.14.186, and perhaps the need for the correction by insertion on the following line at 236v.20; B.13.340. It also likely indicates at 219v.17 that the promised English translation (Langland’s B.10.463) is missing, and notices the problems occurring in both the Latin and English texts at 219r.20–21; B.10.436–37, and the textual errors at both 240v.26; B.14.152 (reversed word order) and 247v.30; B.15.252 (corrected by erasure). On 254 recto, + appears where the text resumes at 254r.18; B.16.92 after a catastrophic loss of 36 lines of text, and then again on 256 verso opposite the line where “mawl” has been emended by erasure to “mal” (male; 256v.8; B.16.236). In this sense, T seems to be the preferred mark for required textual correction, although its proofreader’s advice was only taken up two of the seven times that symbol can be linked to serious textual error (236v.20; 247v.30). For all three styles of cross, however, notation of textual error is only one facet of the crosses’ apparent function. Indeed, even T marks a significant textual problem less than half the time the symbol appears (seven out of eighteen), and had readers used crosses to designate all episodes of textual difficulty, then one would expect to find many more crosses in the margins than those that presently exist. It is likely, then, that the remaining crosses signify something other than the need for considerable emendation within the manuscript. Overall, in fact, the crosses seem more frequently related to the presence of unusual words in the text. These words are of three types. First are the foreign words, either proper nouns like perhaps Rochemadour (T at 227r.24; B.12.36) or technical terms like the monetary unit mnam (+ at 202r.27; B.6.239). Second are the loan words: from Latin, “semyuyf” (half alive; 258r.9; B.17.58), which must have struck someone’s fancy because the + is written in red ink — the only annotation in all of the Piers section of the manuscript to be found in red ink, and “intestate” (246r.12; B.15.138), as well as “spelonkes” and “spekes” (caves and hollows; T at 248r.22; B.15.275); from French, “souche” (in the meaning of devise; + at 176v.25; C.2.26), “mote” (as a legal term; + at 182r.31; B.3.160), “mesendeux” (hospital; T at 204r.7;

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B.7.26), and “songwarie” (dream interpretation; 206r.16; B.7.154); and from Germanic languages, at 177r.4; C.2.37, “lippe” (a small mouthful, or a “lompe” as one reader helpfully glossed for later readers). Third are the English words and phrases which are either rare, or used in an unusual fashion, or spelled in a manner which even Middle English considers odd or mistaken: “doumbe” (+ at 177r.6, 8; C.2.39, 41), “laumpe line” as a phrase (+ at 233v.31; B.13.151), “childris” and/or “longes” (+ 254r.3, 4; B.16.43, 44), “bisiloker” (a rare comparative form of “busily”; T and + at 236v.22; B.13.342), and the possessive “pownes” (X at 230v.20; B.12.259). There are two other spellings of “po” (as in peacock) attested by the MED which include an n, but the MED regards both as errors, victims of a scribally turned u, for a single 14 vocalic articulation, pou. Cotton’s unusual spelling, however, cannot be so easily accounted for, since turning the n over would only create the still twosyllabled and equally peculiar powues. If the point was to identify unusual words and phrases in Langland’s text, then the T and + reader(s) had sharp eyes indeed, for even if they missed a few words, nine crosses mark words in which Piers Plowman is either the earliest source (souche, songwarie, intestate, spelonkes, semyuyf) or even the only Middle English source (lippe, doumbe, spekes, laumpe line) cited by the MED. The remaining crosses, seven + and five T, do not seem to be associated with textual problems severe enough or vocabulary odd enough to warrant special notice, although of course such an explanation ought not to be dismissed summarily out of hand any more than the possibility that any cross signifies something entirely different from what may seem evident to the modern reader. Nevertheless, one possible explanation for the remaining crosses is that they mark passages in the text which someone thought were either interesting or important, and this is the point at which readerly annotation truly starts to verge onto reception and interpretation. One possible avenue for investigating how Cotton’s version of Piers Plowman was understood by readers is study of its paraph marks. Those which appear in any manuscript of Piers are almost certainly the choice of the scribe to include, although there is no reason to dismiss without question the possibility that the custom of paragraphing began with Langland himself. Without having access to an authorial autograph, one cannot know for certain Langland’s own habits in writing out his text, and the innovation of including paraph marks in the text has been attributed variously to the author 15 and to the copyists. Regardless, these devices have a role to play in shaping the text’s structure for the reader’s benefit and the signs can arguably play a significant role in expressing the scribe’s response to the poem as well. According to C. David Benson: Unlike the signs that mechanically indicate stanza divisions (as in the manuscripts of Chaucer’s Troilus and Criseyde) or modern para-

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graphing, the paraphs in the Piers manuscripts are employed for a range of different purposes and work in concert with other forms of annotation. In addition to marking off units of the text (often into smaller subdivisions than those found in modern editions), and signaling the appearance of new speakers, paraphs are used in Piers manuscripts to call attention to important or vivid lines in the text, functioning very much like a nota. Examples of this last kind of emphasis in many of the B-manuscripts are the paraphs placed at Meed’s request to the friar to have mercy on lechers (3.59), at Conscience’s warning to Reason that Waryn Wisdom and Witty love covetousness (4.32), and at Haukyn’s confession that he could not keep his baptismal coat clean for an hour (14.12). Whether few or many, paragraphing is almost always deliberate. For example, paraph guides in Oriel College, Oxford, MS 79 drop off sharply after passus 5 (none is found after 10.149), but one of the last occurs at Wit’s dramatic statement that no Christian would be forced to cry for help in public if prelates behaved correctly (9.80), indicating that 16 though the scribe’s paragraphing may be sporadic, it is not casual.

In Cotton, paraph marks are found throughout the poem, and these symbols certainly function to break down the flow of the overall narrative into more manageable, coherent portions of text by dividing up material; and when a new character or topic is introduced, a paraph mark is likely to communicate the switch. On 188 verso to 189 recto, for example, paraphs diligently break down Reason’s advice as addressed to various specific types: to waster (188v.12; B.5.24), to “Tomme of stowue” (188v.16; B.5.28), to prelates and priests (188v.31; B.5.41), to “religion” (189r.3; B.5.45), to the king (189r.6; B.5.48), to the pope (189r.8; B.5.50), to the keepers of law (189r.10; B.5.52), and to pilgrims (189r.15; B.5.56). When the subject then changes to the start of Repentance’s run, that episode too is introduced to the reader with a paraph mark at 189r.19; B.5.60. Cotton’s paraphs also give direction as to who is speaking. In passus 6, the symbols track the exchange between the courteous knight and Piers, distinctly marking when the voice switches from one to the other: the knight speaks (198v.30; B.6.21), Piers replies (199r.1; B.6.24), the knight “comsid these wordis” (199r.10; B.6.33), Piers replies (199r.14; B.6.37), and the knight agrees (199v.1; B.6.55). Sometimes the paraphs instead break down the flow of dialogue into some other coherent arrangement. On 192 recto, for example, they mark the steps in Repentance’s words to Coveitise, but not the Vice’s reply which follows in the very next line: Have you lent to lords? (192r.17; B.5.250); Have you pity on the poor? (192r.21; B.5.254); Are you a generous neighbor? (192.24; B.5.257); You must repent (192r.27; B.5.260). Such dividing marks as these clearly make it easier to navigate the many twists and turns of Piers Plowman, but we must question whether these em-

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blems can be said to express scribal interpretative interest, as Benson claims. Cotton has only one of the four paraphs that Benson above regards as being an example of those functioning as a nota (4.32). However, this notation seems to act as a method of signaling a shift from the narrative action of riding to a reflection upon Conscience’s opinion about the two riders, “oon Waryn Wysdom[e] . and witty his fere” (185v.16; B.4.27), coming up behind himself and Reason. And how might readers have distinguished between paraphs which were scribe’s markers for something new (whether the introduction of another speaker, fresh topic, or new episode) and those which were 17 scribal cuings to something especially interesting transpiring within the text? On surer ground in Cotton are the four surviving marginal annotations which mark points in the text that the copyist must have felt were particularly important. The first is on 175 recto, where in the right margin a simple “No[ta] b[e]n[e]” in the scribe’s hand appears opposite the line: “nere h[i]t nere for northrene men anoon I wolde `ou tell[e]” 175r.6; C.1.115). To point to the trope which places the devil in the north and thus to the “natural geographic prejudice” for which Holy Church according to Pearsall “halfplayfully” apologizes, might seem a peculiar choice of text for the scribe to 18 identify as worthy of special notice. In its larger context, however, the copyist has identified the very first place in the text where the Dreamer’s innate desire to know the “how and why” of things causes him trouble. He has already asked several questions in this passus: what is the meaning of the elements of his vision? (173v.1; C.1.11), to whom does money belong? (174r.1; C.1.43), what does the dark dale signify? (174r.14; C.1.56), what is Holy Church’s name? (174r.29; C.1.71), and how may he save his soul? (174v.4; C.1.80). His question about Lucifer — why did Lucifer establish himself in the cold north rather than the sunny south? (175r.3–5; C.1.112–14) — is the first which Holy Church even playfully refuses to answer. Her reason for refusing is evident enough, for there is little purpose beyond idle curiosity in the Dreamer’s wanting to know about Lucifer’s motivations, and so with this question he has crossed an essential line in expressing a desire to know things beyond his need to know them. This desire will lead him in later life to the arms of Coveitise-of-Eyes in passus 11 and remain a central aspect of his character throughout the poem. The scribe’s second marginal intervention at 188 recto marks an obviously important point in the poem’s structure: “than awaked I of my wynkyng . and wo was w[i]t[h] alle” (188r.23; B.5.3). In the right margin, the scribe notes: “hic primo evigilavit petrus” (here peter first awoke). The copyist has identified another first for the reader: the first time the Dreamer wakes up, and in his so doing, the scribe duly notes the importance of sleeping and awakening as structural motifs. The truly surprising aspect is that he identifies the Dreamer by name as petrus — that is, Peter or Simon (Symme)

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or even Piers. This unusual choice of name for the dream narrator perhaps explains why the name is underlined in black ink. Did someone later question it, concerned by the potential confusion between the dream narrator and the mysterious figure of Piers Plowman? The third scribal note in the margins is a common signpost in the marginalia of Piers Plowman, and it is the only one which Cotton shares with either Bm or Bo; in this case, Bm. A simple “Test[amentu]m” is written opposite the line at the very bottom of 199 verso, where Piers Plowman begins to dictate the terms of his will: “In dei no[m]i[n]e Amen . I make hit self” (199v.32; B.6.86). The scribe’s final written comment in the margins, “No[ta] quide[m] do wel,” is found opposite one of the definitions of Dowel: “To se moch and sofre more . cert[is] coth I is do wel” (226r.18; B.11.412). This particular definition of Dowel is not much credited by modern scholars, and indeed Imaginatif promptly points out that the Dreamer does not meet the criteria of his own definition: haddist suffrid he seide . slepynge tho yu were yu sholdist haue knowe y[a]t clergie . can & co[n]ceyued more bi resou[n] for resou[n] wolde haue rehersid the . ryght as clergie seide and for thyn entirmetyng here . art yu forsake Philosophus e[ss]es . si tacuisses (226r.19–23; B.11.413–16a).

But it was not necessarily the definition itself that caught the scribe’s eye here, because this point in the text restates the concerns of his first two marginal comments. The definition follows hard upon the heels of another one of the Dreamer’s awakenings, this one occurring after he had offended Reason with yet another inappropriate question — “Whi yu ne suwist man and h[i]s make. that no mysfeith her folwe” (225v.23; B.11.375) — to which Reason responded with the sharp rebuke which woke “petrus” the Dreamer up, thereby losing him the opportunity to “know more,” the motive which drives him for much of the narrative. Yet the Dreamer has not come away entirely emptyhanded from the experience, because he now pointedly knows the importance of sufferance, even though he cannot yet act according to its principle. As Imaginatif will shortly suggest to him at 226r.23; 11.416a, to push the limits of human understanding he must first learn the value of silence. Piers’s testament aside, there looks to be a thematic coherence to the scribe’s four marginal notations: wakenings, questions, and submission to authority. Perhaps Piers’s will functions for the copyist as the encapsulation of everything “petrus” ought to be: a man focused on acts, instead of words, one who speaks not in unwarranted interrogatives, but in statements of fact. The various other readers of Piers Plowman: Cotton Caligula A XI did not, however, follow the scribe’s lead in marginal commentary. In all four

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instances of scribal verbal signposts, there are no nearby marks of interest made by any of Cotton Caligula’s other manifold layers of reader. Either later readers were entirely content with the copyist’s guidance to meaning at these four points, or they brought to bear very different perspectives on the identification of textual importance. Surprising also perhaps is that these early readers expressed very little interest in the great issues that have consumed much of modern Piers Plowman studies. The definitions of Dowel, Dobet, and Dobest are barely noticed, inspiring only two commentators beyond the scribe. The separation of the pardon and the argument between Piers and the priest elicit no comment at all. The question of authorship is non-existent, as is interest in the whole dream framework of the poem. Its discussion of controversial theological issues in the vernacular passes with barely a ripple of interest from readers. Concerns about the second estate are expressed by readers, but their comments are not particularly antifraternal, or antipapal, or even anticlerical (or intraclerical) in tone. The existence of Lollardy is perhaps obliquely recognized by one reader at B.15.601 through the T which appears next to the line “and `it wenen the jewis . that he were pseudo p[ro]pheta” (253r.12; B.15.601), given that pseudopropheta had acquired by the fifteenth century something of a Lollard flavor because it was used in the rhetoric of both 19 sides against the other. Even so, given how T is used elsewhere as a marginal comment, the T mark at this point just as likely notes the T reader’s continuing interest in matters of vocabulary, perhaps the observation that Langland employed in this line a term which was in the process of making the transition from foreign word to loan word, or it might signal that the next line of the authorial text is missing, even though the sentence reads fine as it is. In sum, there is no concrete evidence from the margins that any of these readers responded to Piers Plowman in the light of a particular Lollard discourse. If one does not find what modern readers expect to be so intriguing about the poem, nonetheless certain threads of comment are discernible in the marginalia, particularly with regard to individual readers. As a commentator, the + reader, for example, appears drawn to issues that concern the dichotomy between the true and the false. His mark appears next to 179r.17; A.2.139, which describes how “paulines peple” (an order of friars) act as confidential agents for lay persons in ecclesiastical courts. These same confidential agents will become the baggage horses of Civil and Simony in their ride to Westminster, being as they are corrupted agents of what Law should stand for: that is, Truth. Likewise, + placed his mark close to this line “but thorgh a charme hadde I chaunce . & my chief hele” (236v.21; B.13.341). If the + does not signify the relatively minor textual problem or the rare comparative “bisiloker” in the following line, then perhaps the + is meant to acknowledge the clash between the fraudulent witch’s charm and the true

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word of Christ, an acute observation of the precursor to the confrontation between Christ the Good Physician and Satan the Doctor of Death at 268v.8–11; B.18.363–66. Just as in the Harrowing of Hell episode in passus 18, Truth wins out over False in the + commentator’s notations in terms of sheer number. Truth is a “dereworthi” love-gift at 174v.7; C.1.83 marked with a +. Likewise marked with a +, Conscience foretells the terrible events that presage the world’s end, heralding the coming of true justice to the earth (184v.31; B.3.325). The + reader focuses not upon the evil enabled by friars when they knowingly accept alms from corrupt sources, but instead upon the true justice that results when they accept financial assistance from only rightful, lawful men and women:

+

and thanne wolde lordis and ladies . be lothe to agilte and to take of hire tenaunt[is] . more than treuthe wolde founde thei than frer[is] wolde . forsake hire almys and bidde hem bere hit . there it was yborwid (248v.22–25; B.15.309–12).

And finally marked with a + is the visualization of God as a hand which can counter any heretic’s argument against the Trinity (259r.27; B.17.140). T as commentator, on the other hand, seems focused more largely upon the important thematic opposition between Love and Envy in the poem. His mark appears next to these lines attributed to Envy in Haukyn’s confession: T

auenge me fele tymes . other frete mysilue withynne as shippister[is] shere . in sherwid men & cursid (236v.6–7; B.13329.30).

Envy’s destructive force, whether expressed as self-inflicted internal damage to Haukyn’s heart and digestive system or external damaging gossip and scandal about others, is acknowledged by the T reader as an important motif in the poem. A few lines later, like +, T also notes that the witch whose charm Haukyn relies upon for health is Dame Envy, a direct counterpoint to Christ 20 the Loving Physician. T

and seie that no clerk ne can . ne crist as I leue to the soutere of sothwerk . or of shrodiche dame enuye (236v.18–19; B.13.338–39).

This concern with Envy perhaps explains some of the other T notations also. Will is matched with Patience as a table mate earlier at 231v.31; B.13.35, duly marked in the margin with a T. But Will himself is hardly a model of patient conduct, as he exemplifies in his criticisms of the Doctor of Divinity, because he is envious of the wine, stews, puddings, and meat (232v.30; B.13.60, 233r.17–18; B.13.107–8) that the Doctor enjoys while he does not, however dubious such privileges might be, given that they make one ill to the point of

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vomiting. Will acts as exactly envious Haukyn does later in the passus, only making himself miserable and causing scandal in the process. But T’s interests include examples of love to counter those of envious hate, as the mark at 231v.31; B.13.35 also suggests, being next to Patience. The T mark appears opposite 240v.26; B.14.152 and 241r.21; B.14.179, the first declaring that Christ offers heaven to rich and poor alike, and the second asking Christ to comfort all the careful. Heaven itself is all Love, as witnessed by the Trinity: T

thre leodes on oo liche . none lengur than other of oon mochel and one myghtte and mageste . i[n] mesure & lengthe y[a]t oon doith alle doith . & eche doith bi his one (255v.15–17; B.16.181–83).

This visualization of the Trinity emphasizes the Godhead’s equality and mutuality. What one member of the Godhead does, each other one does, but out of love, and not out of a competitive desire to outrank the other two. Love has no patience for envy. Those remaining T marks not associated with identifying substantial textual error include the mark at 253r.12; B.15.601 opposite “pseudo propheta,” a possible very oblique allusion to discourse surrounding Lollardy, although as said before, that symbol more likely marks this reader’s interest in the developing English vocabulary or the dropped line following. The other two are rare examples of readerly interest in the Three Lives: the one marks the Dreamer asking Imaginatif for his definition (227r.13; B.12.26) and the other identifies Imaginatif’s response, at least as that reply pertains to Dowel and the second estate. T

right so if yu be religious . renne yu neu[er] the ferther to rome ne to rochemado[ur] . but as thi reule techithe and holde ye vndir obedience . y[a]t the highe weie is to heuene (227r.23–25; B.12.35–37).

This mark too could actually be pointing to the foreign place name, the shrine to the Virgin Mary at Rochemadour in France, but the figure could also be meant to point out a message that is strikingly similar to those of the other “meaningful” T marks: the path to heaven is found not through trying to be independent of the group, but through patiently submitting to one’s place within it. The fifteenth-century reader labelled as Hand 3 by Benson and Blanch21 field likewise focuses on the theme of love. His preferred definition of the Three Lives is Patience’s “disce ... doce . and dilige inimicos” (233v.16; B.13.137), which Latin he repeats word for word in the margins preambled

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by “no[ta].” He signposts the upcoming Tree of Charity scene as “q[ui]d e[st] caritas” at the very start of passus 16 (253r.24), and he draws elsewhere the strong connection between love and Christ which Langland developed at length in the poem. After his proclamation that he is the Lord of Life whose drink is love, Christ anticipates the mercy that he shall extend to mankind at the Last Judgment: for we be brethren of blode . but naught in baptym[e] alle ac alle y[a]t beth myne hool brethren . in blood & in baptyme shullen nat be da[mn]pned to the deeth . y[a]t is w[i]t[h]oute ende (268v.21–23; B.18.376–78).

Hand 3 jots beside these lines which extoll the promise of salvation for believers, “Sum[m]u[m] bonu[m] e[st] not[ta] b[e]n[e].” Christ’s best love-gift indeed to note for those who choose to accept it is salvation in heaven. Hand 3 follows up this comment with “No[ta] de Jh[es]u[s] & C[hri]stus” at 270v.18; B.19.69, where Langland begins his explanation of the differences between the two names. Hand 3 returns to the subject of salvation at 281r.14; B.20.64 against the assertion that Anti-Christ ruled over all folk. He qualifies this statement in the extreme right hand margin by restating with a nota Langland’s own words from just a few lines previous, “no[ta] sauf fooles.” The final comments upon Cotton Caligula’s Piers Plowman also belong to Hand 3. After the conclusion on 286 recto, he jotted “ante hominem mors et Vita,” again recognizing the importance of human choice in salvation. Just as one is free to reject salvation in spite of blood kinship with the divine through the rejection of baptism, so too each human is free, albeit self-destructive, to choose death over life, the dungeon in the dale over the tower on the toft. As his final comment to the poem states, “intenc[i]o iudicat q[uid]q[ue].” Our intention, that which we choose to ask for, is what judges us. The other fifteenth-century reader, Hand 2 according to Benson and Blanchfield, in comparison seems interested in the twin issues of process and knowledge, given that both of this reader’s marginal comments are signposts related to particular episodes in the text in which one character gives direc22 tion to another. Hand 2, that is, seems clearly interested in the didactic process. The first — “No[ta] how piers tolde þe wey to treuþe” — appears at 197r.14; B.5.555, marking the point at which the pilgrims accept Piers’s offer to guide them. In the second case — “No[ta] how Studie techeþ Witte þe way to Clergie” — opposite 215r.5–7; B.10.162–64 — Dame Studie has just begun giving her directions. Of course, it is the Dreamer, Will, actually who has asked for guidance here, although Hand 2 has Dame Studie instruct her husband, Wit, instead. Hand 2 may have been simply inattentive to the plot or he may have thus implicitly recognized that many of the figures whom Will encounters, like Wit and Clergie, are realizations of different aspects of

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the Dreamer: formal study can transform experiential knowledge (wit) into advanced levels of critical thinking (clergie) in every human being. The sixteenth-century scholar, Hand 1 according to Benson and Blanchfield, in comparison focuses on matters of wealth, especially its corruptive in23 fluence. In the confession of the Deadly Sins he signposts only the beginning of Coveitise’s speech, “Av[a]r[i]c[i]a ad confessione[m] venit” (191r.17–18; B.5.188–89) and next to Wit’s sarcastic description of economically-motivated May/December marriages at 211v.17–24; B.9.165–72, he adds his own note of agreement — “Iuvenes cum Iuvenib[us] mat[ri]mon[ium] Ineant & cetera” — putting into Latin what Wit himself says in English a few lines later at 211v.30; B.9.178. In passus 10, Hand 1 notes Dame Studie’s disapproval of rich lords and ladies who prefer to dine in a private room separate from the poor in the hall with another paraphrasing comment, “de diuitib[us] no[n] reficientib[us] in Alla” (214r.6–9; B.10.98–100). Hand 1 spares no social class or estate in his notice of wealth put to an improper use, and at 217r.24–26; B.10.310–12 he concurs with Clergie’s denunciation of religious who put on the airs of lords — “carpit superb[os] p[re]latos.” Yet Hand 1’s comments do not seem especially informed by the discourse of the Reformation period, as one might expect of a sixteenth-century reader, although notably a comment written in what looks like was probably his hand has been erased opposite the famous “prophecy” of the Reformation in which a king will come to forcibly restore discipline among the religious orders (217v.2–9; 24 B.10.320–27). This comment, most unfortunately, has been rendered indecipherable for some unknown reason, but clearly someone vehemently objected to the passage, or thought better of the sentiments expressed. With the potential exception of this lost comment, the two notations of the π commentator in fact, may seem more “protestant” in spirit than Hand 1, focusing as the symbols do upon corrupt wealth: π

for coueytyse aftir cros . the c[ro]wne stant in golde both riche and religious . y[a]t rode thei honoure (252r.2–3; B.15.543–44).

If the first π notation is fairly general in its scope, encompassing all men and women who have displaced spirituality with materialism, the second which follows shortly after, narrows its vision to the clergy and the controversial issue of disendowment: π

¶ Yf knyghthode and kynde wytt . and com[m]une & conscience to gedris loued leely . lieueth wel ae bieschopes the lordschipes of londes . for eu[er] ae shullen lese (252r.14–16; B.15.553–55).

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Does the π mark interest in what might happen, or in what has happened, or is happening? Does it express approval or disapproval of such secular interference in the affairs of bishops? No certain answers are possible, because the π reader has left behind too little to be either dated or much interpreted, but π reminds the modern scholar that the issue of disendowment held prominence both long before and after Henry VIII’s dissolution of the monasteries in the 1530s. Modern scholars have often expressed disappointment in the early readers of Piers Plowman, especially in those “professional” readers, the scribes, whose responses to the poem have been disparaged with such descriptions as mediocre (Kane), unambitious (Russell), or theoretically unsophisticated 25 (Benson). Even a scholar as appreciative of the early readers of Piers Plowman as Kathryn Kerby-Fulton admits that compared to Langland’s “top layer” of readers, “Certainly, the evidence provided by many of his scribes 26 indicates that not all medieval readers were so capable.” We want readers prepared to argue ideology and theology with Langland, readers deeply engaged with the major controversies and intellectual discourses of the late Middle Ages in England; we seem to find readers content to parrot the author’s own words in the margins, readers too caught up in the minutiae of the text — its spelling, vocabulary, and identification of textually problematic gaps — to grasp the greatness of the work’s complex whole. Yet to judge them solely upon what we find in the margins is manifestly unfair, though perhaps inevitable, for how many of us would wish the sophistication of our engagement to be judged on the basis of the marginal scratchings we left behind in any book we have read? Inescapably, the barest glimmer only into what these readers thought of Langland’s masterwork is afforded to us by studying the visible trace evidence these readers have left behind to mark their varying responses. The annotations are suggestive that readers’ engagement with the text of Piers Plowman: Cotton Caligula A XI was likely thematic rather than ideological or polemic. These readers recognized and responded appreciatively to the essential thematic polarities of Langland’s argument between which they must choose: the cosmic opposition of Love and Envy, Truth and False, Life and Death. They engaged with the text’s social criticism, especially the piece’s indictment of the corruptive influence of wealth upon all orders, all levels of society. And these individuals are keenly aware, to a degree that not all recent scholars have appreciated, of Piers Plowman’s focus upon the academic life, its obsession with knowledge and the endless need of some academicians to determine the why and how of things.

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Notes 1

George Kane, “The Text,” in A Companion to Piers Plowman, ed. John A. Alford (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1988), 175–200 (175). 2 The Piers Plowman text of Cotton Caligula A XI has been dated by Doyle as written between 1410 and 1430, and by Hanna to the first quarter of the fifteenth century. Kane and Donaldson concur, although they would place the manuscript toward the beginning of that range rather than its end. See George Kane and E. Talbot Donaldson, “The Manuscripts,” in Piers Plowman: The B Version, Will’s Visions of Piers Plowman, DoWell, Do-Better, and Do-best: An Edition in the Form of Trinity College Cambridge MS B.15.17, Corrected and Restored From the Known Evidence, with Variant Readings, ed. George Kane and E. Talbot Donaldson (London: Athlone Press, 1975), 1–15 (5, note 37). See also C. David Benson and Lynne S. Blanchfield, The Manuscripts of Piers Plowman: The B-Version (Cambridge: D.S. Brewer, 1997), 69. 3 All citations to the A, B, and C-Texts are keyed to the Athlone editions of Piers Plowman, referenced by text, passus, and line. A-Text: George Kane, ed., Piers Plowman: The A Version (London: Athlone, 1960); B-Text: Kane and Donaldson, eds., Piers Plowman: The B Version (London: Athlone, 1975); C-Text: George Russell and George Kane, eds., Piers Plowman: The C Version (London: Athlone, 1997). 4 Cotton had the manuscript bound as the fourth item of five in a disparate collection of works all by different scribes: a Latin table of contents, The Chronicle of Robert of Gloucester, forty-three lines of anonymous Latin verse, Piers Plowman, and Aldhelm’s De vita monachorum. Some marginal annotations were lost or damaged through cropping, presumably to make the individual manuscripts uniform in size. The three blank pages were probably inserted accidentally by British Museum staff during one of the manuscript’s later rebindings. 5 Kane and Donaldson, Piers Plowman B, 5. 6 Benson and Blanchfield, Manuscripts, 69. 7 Benson and Blanchfield, Manuscripts, 21. 8 Carl James Grindley has proposed a comprehensive (and complex) system of classification to describe marginalia in early texts: three Types, each of which further breaks down into several subtypes, some of which further break down into various subcategories. See his article “Reading Piers Plowman C-Text Annotations: Notes Toward the Classification of Printed and Written Marginalia in Texts from the British Isles 1300–1641,” in The Medieval Professional Reader at Work: Evidence from Manuscripts of Chaucer, Langland, Kempe, and Gower, ed. Kathryn Kerby-Fulton and Maidie Hilmo (Victoria: University of Victoria, 2001), 73–141. I have made minimal use of Grindley’s system in this study. 9 The multiple textual differences between the Cotton Caligula A XI version and the modern reconstructions of the author’s text can be significant to meaning, and thus in this study of reader responses to Piers Plowman, the quotations are all from the Piers Plowman manuscript that these same readers actually read, British Library Cotton Caligula A XI. Abbreviated forms are expanded, but the text otherwise is quoted relatively unedited. All references to the Cotton Caligula A XI Piers Plowman text are dual, citing first, the location in the manuscript by its page and line references, and second, the text, passus, and line references for the corresponding modern Athlone A, B, or C edition. 10 MED (Medieval English Dictionary), “leden,” L.2.752.

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11

Benson and Blanchfield, Manuscripts, 186. MED, “doumbe,” D.4.1217. 13 Benson and Blanchfield, Manuscripts, 186. 14 MED, “po,” P.5.1080. 15 Ralph Hanna and C. David Benson, for instance, take up opposite stances on this topic, Hanna arguing for authorial origins, Benson for scribal. Ralph Hanna, London Literature, 1300–1380 (Cambridge University Press, 2005), 246. C. David Benson, Public Piers Plowman: Modern Scholarship and Late Medieval English Culture (University Park, Pennsylvania: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2004), 69–70. 16 Benson, Public, 71–72. 17 The same “more ordinary function” is true of Benson’s fourth example (9.80), which marks a shift from the topic of a godparent’s responsibilities to the duty of prelates toward the poor. His argument for the meaningful significance of some paraphs is on surer ground with respect to the other two cases he cites, in which it is harder to see a more ordinary paraph function as operational. 18 Derek Pearsall, ed., Piers Plowman by William Langland: An Edition of the C-Text (London: Edward Arnold, 1978), 48, note 110a. 19 MED, “pseudopropheta,” P.8.1443. 20 This passage is a striking example of how important it is to read marginal annotations in the context of what the reader actually saw on the page. Langland’s authorial text reads simply “Dame Emme” at this point. 21 Benson and Blanchfield, Manuscripts, 185. 22 Ibid., 185. 23 Ibid., 185. 24 Benson and Blanchfield are mistaken about the location of the erased comment, which they identify as found on 190 verso. Benson and Blanchfield, Manuscripts, 185. 25 Kane, “Text,” 194. George H. Russell, “Some Early Responses to the C-Version of Piers Plowman, ”Viator 15 (1984): 275–303 (280). Benson, Public, 70. 26 Kathryn Kerby-Fulton, “Langland and the Bibliographic Ego,” in Written Work: Langland, Labor, and Authorship, eds. Steven Justice and Kathryn Kerby-Fulton (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1997), 67–143 (114). 12

Brandon University

Narrative Afterlife and the Treatment of Time in Henryson’s “Testament of Cresseid” Chelsea Honeyman As she composes her final testament, the eponymous heroine of Henryson’s Testament of Cresseid (likely composed before 1492) commends her soul to the goddess of chastity: Thus I conclude schortlie and mak ane end: My spreit I leif to Diane, quhair scho dwellis, 1 To walk with hir in waist woddis and wellis. (586–88)

When Cresseid dies shortly thereafter, the narrator brings his tale to a “sore conclusion” (614), relating her epitaph’s statement that she “lyis deid” (609) and ending his tale with a brusque, “Sen scho is deid I speik of hir no moir” (616). This decidedly abrupt ending of Cresseid’s story is imposed with an insistence that gives the reader pause; given the “flower of Troy’s” explicit determination to redeem herself after her death, the narrator’s refusal to address her cosmic fate seems slightly suspicious, an attempt to obscure the full story. The reader is left to wonder whether Cresseid has indeed “made an end” of her existence, or whether her wish to commune with Diana is granted. In other words, does Cresseid experience an afterlife? And, if so, what is its nature? Most critics approach the question of Cresseid’s afterlife by attempting to determine whether the poem’s moral system is Christian or pagan. Denton Fox contends that by the end of the poem Cresseid achieves a Christian selfawareness and redemption despite her ostensibly pagan context; he argues that “Christianity and the condemnation of earthly love are clearly enough 2 implicit at the end of the Testament.” E.M.W. Tillyard believes the poem operates “within the scheme of orthodox theology,” perceiving Cresseid’s pro3 gress through it as following a Christian arc. Robert L. Kindrick writes in his critical biography of Henryson that “Cresseid does reach a state of moral salvation”; this redemption is colored by Henryson’s religious context: “[T]here can be little doubt that the elements that tempered Henryson’s way 4 of looking at the change [Cresseid] underwent were Christian.” Inherent in all these readings of Cresseid’s Christian salvation is the implication that she enjoys an afterlife in the Christian heaven (or at least within purgatory). Some critics construe the poem’s moral system as pagan while acknowledging that Henryson’s Christian context leads readers to assume that Cresseid’s repentance will — or should — be repaid in the form of an afterlife. C. David Benson argues that “[t]he Testament is careful to remain faithful

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to its pagan setting while demonstrating the need … for Christ’s mercy to 5 replace the strict justice of the gods.” Lee Patterson sees the poem as exemplifying both Christian and pagan systems, contending that [Cresseid’s] growing inwardness marks the shift from the objective pagan world of Cresseid’s beginnings to the Christian world of her end. Originally the querulous victim of querulous pagan gods, 6 Cresseid is now a Christian penitent possessed of a sense of sin.

Another critical school is more absolute about the text’s pagan morality and its role as an argument against Cresseid’s afterlife. Henrietta TwycrossMartin, for example, sees the Testament’s value system as so rooted in “the earthly experience of love, of passion and fidelity or infidelity,” that the system fails to provide “any exterior yardstick against which to mention the entire experience in a wider context,” rendering “a world in some ways much 7 more ‘pagan’ than the mental world of Troilus and Criseyde.” Dolores Noll also views the Testament as articulating a secular morality, arguing that “Henryson has created, for the purposes of this poem, a love-universe both selfcontained and eclectic. Its self-containment precludes a relationship to a lar8 ger, Christian world.” A.C. Spearing writes that Henryson’s pagan setting is so clearly identified that “however strong the will to moralize, Cresseid’s treachery and her death, once they have themselves been recounted, do leave nothing more to say,” an allusion to the narrator’s final words about 9 Cresseid: “Sen scho is deid I speik of hir no moir” (616). On one level, Spearing is correct in saying that the poem concludes when the narrator has no more to say, and indeed, because the reader is given no sense of how — or whether — Cresseid’s remorse affects her fate after her death, it is difficult (if not impossible) to argue conclusively for the poem’s (presumed) stance on Cresseid’s spiritual afterlife. As Lesley Johnson observes, “Although the Testament makes gestures towards having the last word on the subject of Cresseid, there is a fundamental equivocation about the 10 status of the conclusions, judgments, and facts of Cresseid’s case.” On the question of Cresseid’s narrative afterlife, however, I believe a positive argument may be more confidently advanced. The narrator’s abrupt closure of discussion on Cresseid’s fate after her death may leave the poem with “nothing more to say”; the very abruptness of this closure, however, invites speculation on Cresseid, extending her existence as a literary character, much as the Testament itself extends Cresseid’s life from its previous incarnations, particularly that suggested by Chaucer’s Troilus and Criseyde. The Testament, which Henryson’s narrator identifies as an interpolation within the fifth book of Troilus and Criseyde, constructs the fate of Cresseid after her exit from Chaucer’s poem. As Benson notes, “Henryson goes forward to tell an original story about [the Troilus’s] most vulnerable character,” one in which “the Scottish heroine achieves a literary and moral life distinctly her

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own.” Henryson takes pains throughout the Testament of Cresseid to remind readers that Cresseid springs from a larger literary tradition — one which Gretchen Mieszkowski has noted is deeply rooted in the Criseyde figure’s depiction as faithless — and that she will continue to exist within that tradition 12 in the future. Henryson’s main technique in asserting this point is his use of 13 the narrative voice versus the voice of lyric complaint. The Testament’s selfconscious participation in the preceding literary tradition of its heroine has received general critical acceptance, as Benson’s remarks above help to illustrate. One need only remember the books which the narrator takes up to read on the cold spring night — Book V of the Troilus and the mysterious “vthir quair,” whose identity is still debated but is generally agreed to be representa14 tive of some form of literary authority. The narrator is dissatisfied with Chaucer’s version of events and, in taking up the “vthir quair,” seeks fulfill15 ment and resolution to the open question of Criseyde’s fate. Henryson’s adoption of complaint and narrative for his characters is a clear response to Chaucer’s own use of the forms in the Troilus. In his study of complaint and narrative in Chaucer’s works, W.A. Davenport contends that Criseyde’s final communications in the Troilus situate her firmly within the static realm of complaint, as demonstrated both in Criseyde’s last direct speech — a complaint in which she recognizes her inability to perceive “future tyme” (V. 748) — and in her final letter to Troilus (which follows a descending trajectory 16 from critical self-evaluation to rationalization and excuses). While I largely agree with Davenport’s assessment of Chaucer’s Criseyde as a figure ultimately unable — or unwilling — to take control of her own future, I would like to revisit his interpretation of her final words of direct speech: “But al shal passe; and thus take I my leve” (V. 1085). While Davenport sees a “helplessness” in these words, I believe that the line suggests Criseyde’s awareness of the inevitable passage of time and the consequent 17 potential for her life (or at least her reputation) to continue after her death. This potential is articulated even more explicitly in Criseyde’s woeful awareness of the future literary impact of her actions upon her name: Allas, of me, unto the worldes ende, Shal neyther ben ywriten nor ysonge No good word, for thise bokes wol me shende. O, rolled shal I ben on many a tonge! Thorughout the world my belle shal be ronge! (V. 1058–62)

In the Testament, Henryson takes up the challenge Chaucer implicitly offers through having his heroine speculate about future interpretations of her character, thus seizing the opportunity to build on Criseyde’s story. Henryson deliberately manipulates Cresseid’s treatment of complaint and narrative; in doing so, he allows Cresseid to move beyond the stasis of complaint that traps Chaucer’s Criseyde and offers the Testament’s heroine the chance

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to redeem herself through narrative. Rather than allowing Chaucer’s inconclusive stance on Criseyde’s fate to stand (the character disappears from the story after her letter to Troilus vaguely promises her return [V. 1590–1631]), he exploits the mechanism of narrative — both his own narrative extension of the larger Cressida tradition and Cresseid’s gradual adoption of her own narrative voice — to demonstrate Cresseid’s potential for a narrative afterlife. The Testament sees her evolve from a self-centered woman focused on her immediate pleasure and pains to an individual concerned with her spiritual welfare as well as her literary future beyond the grave. Henryson marks this transition through the use of the voice of complaint in Cresseid’s former 18 life and her embrace of a narrative voice by the end of her days. In their interpretation of Cresseid’s life, Troilus and the narrator never move beyond a limited — and limiting — reading, as evidenced by their persistent use of the voice of complaint and their attempts to stunt the narrative of Cresseid’s afterlife at the end of the poem. Henryson’s treatment of Troilus and the narrator highlights how they remain rooted in Cresseid’s notorious physicality, unable to abandon the present-centered nature of lyric complaint and recognize Cresseid’s evolution, which takes place in the narrative realm. Troilus and the narrator, faced with Cresseid’s inconclusive fate, choose to interpret her destiny selectively, incorporating only information culled from her earlier existence and excluding the new evidence suggestive of her repen19 tance. Troilus and the narrator each strive to close off Cresseid’s narrative in his own way — Troilus with the epitaph, the narrator with his abrupt concluding stanza — rendering their interpretations unsatisfactory for readers who have witnessed Cresseid change over the course of the poem. The oppressive and arbitrary nature of these conclusions, rather than ending the debate over Cresseid’s fate, instead incites readers to speculate about Cresseid’s story, attempting to satisfy their desire for narrative fulfillment. By extension, Henryson extends his poem’s — and his own — reputation beyond the Testament’s closing lines, providing himself with a literary afterlife as well. In the Testament’s introductory frame, the narrator does not furnish readers with an extensive account of Cresseid’s life before her rejection of Diomede, a lacuna likely attributable to the fact that Chaucer (and, indeed, the larger Troilus-Cressida literary tradition) has already provided readers with such an account, one centered on her infidelity to Troilus and her affair with Diomede. The narrator himself appears to believe there is no need to revisit what has already been established, given the abrupt conclusion to his already brief summary of Book V of Chaucer’s Troilus: Of [Troilus’s] distres me neidis nocht reheirs, For worthie Chauceir in the samin buik, In gudelie termis and in ioly veirs, Compylit hes his cairis, quha will luik. (57–60)

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By then introducing the notion of the “vthir quair,” however, Henryson subtly advances the idea that one may extend or invent the reputation of the literary Cresseid. In his narrator’s oft-cited question, “Quha wait gif all that Chauceir wrait was trew?” (64), Henryson hints that one can challenge what previous literary authorities have already established even if their assertions remain unalterable. The narrator, however, also questions the authority of his “vthir quair’s” response to Chaucer, claiming, Nor I wait nocht gif this narratioun Be authoreist, or fenaeit of the new Be sum poeit, throw his inuentioun Maid to report the lamentatioun And wofull end of this lustie Creisseid, And quhat distres scho thoillit, and quhat deid. (65–70)

By having his narrator question not only the conclusive authority of Chaucer’s account but also the “vthir quair’s,” Henryson illuminates the potential for Cresseid’s life to be extended through numerous literary speculations and inventions, none of which may be “authoreist” but all of which certainly continue the “narratioun” of Cresseid’s existence. There is also the tantalizing possibility that, in his ambiguous use of the adjective in the phrase “this narratioun” (my italics), Henryson may shrewdly be encouraging readers to think of the “vthir quair” as the Testament itself, thereby emphasizing the writer’s awareness that his own poem is one such continuation of Cresseid’s narrative, itself open to debate, challenge, and extension. After Cresseid curses the gods for Diomede’s rejection of her, she collapses into a dream. In the vision of divine judgment which she experiences, Saturn, Cynthia, and especially Mercury — the pair who render judgment on Cresseid and the god who records the proceedings, respectively — constitute a fitting tribunal for the young woman, as their symbolic associations serve to reflect Cresseid’s spiritual flaws and to point toward her potential for change. Saturn and Cynthia, as Jill Mann has pointed out, figure prominently both in Chaucer’s (at III. 624–25) and Henryson’s accounts of their heroine’s behavior: The planets in this conjunction are not chosen simply for their malevolent nature, but for what more precisely they represent: Saturn (by virtue of his Greek name Kronos) represents Time, and the moon, Change. Time and Change bring the love between Troilus and Criseyde to fruition; Time and Change will destroy it. We can see already how perceptive a reader of Chaucer Henryson was, for he identifies the same two planetary gods — Saturn and the moon — as responsible for Cresseid’s fate. In Chaucer, Time and Change bring about her treachery, in Henryson they bring 20 about its punishment.

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That these divine manifestations of time and change serve as judges of Cresseid’s future, therefore, foreshadows her later self-recognition as a narrative being, one with a capacity to change and have some say in how her identity is shaped by future readers. In this vision, Mercury’s role as court reporter must not be underestimated. Along with Cresseid, Troilus and the narrator, Mercury is one of the poem’s most literary figures, in that he records the story of Cresseid’s life and fame in words while the trial unfolds. As with the poem’s other authors, however, Mercury does not merely report happenings as they occur, but analyzes Cresseid’s actions which have led her to this trial. This narrative construction is appropriate given that Mercury is presented not solely as a stenographer “[w]ith pen and ink to report all reddie” (242) but as “ane poeit 21 of the auld fassoun” (245), “[r]icht eloquent and full of rethorie” (240). As Frank Kermode points out, Mercury’s Greek counterpart Hermes is the patron of interpreters, an association that makes Mercury’s role as shaper 22 rather than observer of unfolding events even more fitting in this scene. The gods unanimously choose Mercury to be “foirspeikar in the parliament”(266); while Denton Fox takes this appointment to mean “chairman” or “speaker,” he is uncertain whether “foirspeikar” means here what it tends to mean elsewhere in Scots — that is, “One who speaks for another; an advo23 cate.” Mercury’s status as interpreter suits this latter definition quite well, serving as further indication that the deity is not a passive recorder but one directly involved in fashioning the proceedings. Accordingly, when Cupid makes his argument against Cresseid to Mercury, the latter offers “counsall” in return: Refer aow to the hiest planeit heir And tak to him the lawest of degre, The pane of Cresseid for to modifie: As God Saturne, with him tak Cynthia. (297–300)

Mercury may delegate the actual responsibility for judgment to Saturn and Cynthia, but his assignment of the task does not detract from his active role in judging Cresseid’s past actions. Along with Troilus and the narrator, Mercury views Cresseid from the lens of her past behavior; while he, unlike Troilus and the narrator, does not have the opportunity to see how Cresseid’s nature changes later on, his acceptance of such an irreversible sentence suggests that he is not interested in the possibility that her attitudes may evolve. He focuses only on her initial, more selfish self. In fact, by choosing the moon — traditionally known to adopt the countenance of the astrological force with which the planetary deity is paired — to act as judge with the cold and frightful Saturn, Mercury effectively engineers a unanimous decision 24 against Cresseid before a verdict is officially reached. Thus, when Saturn and Cynthia elect to reverse Cresseid’s fortunes by inflicting her with leprosy, Mercury’s interpretation of the young woman’s character plays a sig-

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nificant part in her present affliction, an adversity from which Cresseid initially believes she cannot escape. After Cresseid is sentenced to leprosy, she awakens, sees her reflection in the mirror, and launches into a self-pitying lament, which vividly conveys her limited capacity to interpret her own character as a result of her inability to embrace the potential of a narrative view of her life: Weiping full sair, “Lo, quhat it is,” quod sche, “With fraward langage for to mufe and steir Our craibit goddis; and sa is sene on me! My blaspheming now haue I bocht full deir; All eirdlie joy and mirth I set areir. Allace, this day; allace, this wofull tyde Quhen I began with my goddis for to chyde!” (351–357)

While Cresseid speaks rather than writes this lyric exclamation, it is a highly literary mode of expression that reflects her efforts to “write” her own life. The distressed woman’s superficial self-examination in the looking-glass complements the complaint’s equally shallow “introspection”; at this point, Cresseid’s interpretation of her circumstances is obscured by her attachment to her beautiful former self. Just as she can only observe her disfigured “schaddow” in the mirror, her complaint demonstrates that she looks through a glass darkly. Cresseid’s initial reaction to her disfigurement reveals a perception of time rooted in the past. The character’s “fraward langage” towards the gods has resulted in the loss of all her “eirdlie joy and mirth,” which Cresseid significantly “sets areir (behind).” The impaired lady’s language is permeated with regret; her desperate repetition of “Allace!” — “Allace, this day; allace, this wofull tyde” — reveals her fixation on what she believes to be her mistake: her “blaspheming.” She later reveals her reversal of fortune to Calchas, to whom she cries, “[A]ll mirth in this eird / Is fra me gane; sic is my wickit weird!” (384–85). This exclamation evaluates her present misery in terms of her former pleasure; moreover, she foresees this same wretchedness in her future. That Cresseid anticipates a future as inauspicious as her present suggests she cannot conceive of the future at all; rather, she sees the rest of her life as a static reinforcement of her current physical and emotional turmoil. In this respect, Cresseid’s attitude is reminiscent of Book V of the Troilus, in which she laments her confusion and lack of foresight as she debates escaping the Greek camp and returning to Troy and Troilus: Prudence, allas, oon of thyne eyen thre Me lakked alwey, er that I come here! On tyme ypassed wel remembred me, And present tyme ek koud ich wel ise, But future tyme, er I was in the snare, Koude I nat sen; that causeth now my care. (V. 744–49)

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Here, Chaucer’s Criseyde reveals her inclination to remain confined by the past and grounded in the present rather than exercise her ability to shape her 25 own future. Henryson elaborates on this reticence in the Testament and depicts its most extreme manifestation: the protagonist’s reaction to her leprosy reveals how she is trapped in the paralysis of lyric expression, unable to see her life as a narrative, subject to time and change. After she takes up residence in the leper-house, Cresseid utters a regretful 26 and despairing complaint reinforcing her belief that her life cannot progress. The stricken one’s lamentation conveys an overwhelming sense of regret, trapping her in her old identity, precluding the evolution and learning which might emanate from overcoming adverse circumstances. Moreover, Cresseid’s superficial references to “the future” are shown to be misleading since she persists in believing her future will be exactly the same as her present, thus effectively eliminating the idea of a future at all, and submerging her in the misery of a perpetual lyric present. She cries, “O catiue Creisseid, now and euer mair / Gane is thy ioy and all thy mirth in eird” (408–09). The phrase “mirth in eird” recalls Cresseid’s earlier complaint to Calchas that “all mirth in this eird / Is fra me gane” (384–85); her repetition of past words and ideas reflects her attitude that she cannot move forward. These opening lines, however, also reinforce the young woman’s feelings about time. She only understands the idea of time bringing change insofar as her joyful past has been replaced by a sorrowful present; in asserting that her happiness is gone for “now and euir mair,” Cresseid denies the possibility that the future might bring further changes to her life — and, in doing so, rejects the very idea of a future. Cresseid’s ubi sunt catalogue of pleasures lost elaborates her position of despair about what is to come. In lamenting the loss of her material comforts — her chamber, feasts, clothes, garden and friends (416–33) — Cresseid reveals that her heart and mind are still firmly rooted in the past. As she puts it, “All is areir, thy greit royall renoun!” (424), a phrase that recalls her earlier statement “All eirdlie ioy and mirth I set areir” (355), reminding readers that she seeks not to understand how her misery will change her future actions, but wishes only to ruminate on how bereft she is about having lost past delights. Particularly interesting in the character’s complaint for an examination of the treatment of time is her use of imagery related to spring and flowers. Cresseid asks herself: Quhair is thy garding with thir greissis gay And fresche flowris, quhilk the quene Floray Had paintit plesandly in euerie pane, Quhair thou was wont full merilye in May To walk and tak the dew be it was day… (425–29)

She recalls not merely a garden, but one of a very specific kind and season — a spring garden in May. Longing for a season of flowering, light, and

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growth during a time when she is experiencing darkness and decay, she draws a parallel on her own when she says, Thy greit triumphand fame and hie honour, Quhair thou was callit of eirdlye wichtis flour, All is decayit, thy weird is welterit so; Thy hie estait is turnit in darknes dour … (434–37)

Cresseid’s memory of the garden, however, is further indication that her conception of time is frozen and incapable of perceiving change. The May garden, as she remembers it, may indeed be gay and lovely, but seasons invariably shift and leave the physical realm dead and decayed, just as the distraught one perceives herself to be. Of course, she ought to embrace the cyclical nature of the seasons inasmuch as the manifestation of environmental change would offer her decayed self the opportunity of regenerating. At this point, however, Cresseid has not considered that her future might bring with it some sort of rebirth. Although at the end of her complaint, the pensive woman appears to invoke the future, the language of her warning to the other ladies makes it clear she remains mired in current preoccupations: O ladyis fair of Troy and Grece, attend My miserie, quhilk nane may comprehend, My friuoll fortoun, my infelicitie, My greit mischeif, quhilk na man can amend. Be war in tyme, approchis neir the end, And in aour mynd ane mirrour mak of me: As I am now, peraduenture that ae For all aour micht may cum to that same end, Or ellis war, gif ony war may be. (452–460)

Cresseid asks the ladies of Troy and Greece to observe her wretched state, imploring them to focus on her current “friuoll fortoun” and “infelicitie” as if her life’s story must end with her sad circumstances. She seems to take stock of her future reputation when she counsels ladies to learn from her mistakes, in telling them, “[I]n our mind ane mirrour mak of me.” The “mirrour” is a conventional image for a moral example, but it is hard to ignore its particular applicability to Cresseid’s static mindset: the mirror is an object that cannot look forward, but only reflect upon the subject. One also cannot ignore the image’s echo of Troilus I. 365–67, in which Troilus daydreams about Criseyde: Thus gan he make a mirour of his mynde In which he saugh al holly hire figure, And that he wel koude in his herte fynde.

In Chaucer, too, the result of Criseyde’s being made a “mirror in one’s mind” is the encouragement of stagnant complaint: Troilus’s meditations

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lead to the first Canticus Troili (I. 400–20), in which he ultimately likens himself to a boat tossed to and fro “[a]mydde the see, bitwixen wyndes two, / That in contrarie stonden evere mo” (I. 417–18). Cresseid’s hopelessness is further reinforced by her statement that the ladies of Troy and Greece “[f]or all [their] micht, may cum to that same end, / Or ellis war, gif ony war may be,” asserting that others may fall prey to misery comparable to what the disconsolate one feels now — despite the women’s best efforts to avoid that despair. Any utility Cresseid may have had as an example is negated by her statement that womenfolk may end up like her despite their best efforts to avoid such a fate. Moreover, that Cresseid still remains fixated on her own present is clear in her doubt that any person’s fate could be worse than her own. Because she remains convinced she occupies the lowest rung of existence, she cannot fathom descending further; however, because she also denies that her life will improve, she refuses to extrapolate that she might move up. Cresseid sees her life as static, an attitude that makes the usage of the lyric mode here very appropriate. Thus when she advises, “Exempill mak of me in aour memour” (465), it is doubtful that she sincerely believes her story may be of future benefit. The dispirited woman sees her situation as inescapable; she is too low to descend any further and too desolate to hope to ascend. It is precisely at this personal nadir, however, that Cresseid begins to accept the narrative potential of her life. Her transformation begins with the advice of a fellow leper-lady, who declares that Crisseid’s weeping does nothing but “sla [her] self and mend nathing at all” (476) and tells the despondent one she must “leir to clap [her] clapper to and fro, / And leif efter the law of 27 lipper leid” (479–80). Cresseid’s reaction to this advice reveals a significant transition in her attitude; she realizes that “[t]hair was na buit,” so “furth with thame scho aeid / Fra place to place” (481–82). The phrase “thair was na buit” (there was no point) suggests at first the sense of passive futility that motivated the protagonist’s earlier statements regarding her situation. Here, however, the phrase further demonstrates that she perceives the uselessness of indulging in self-pity. Instead, the character undertakes to learn the art of begging and lead the leper life; these action verbs indicate a desire to effectuate a process toward growth and change. She goes forth with the other lepers “[f]ra place to place,” moving forward literally but also inching towards a self-perception that allows room for a future different from her present. Cresseid’s journey toward a sense of her life as a still-unfolding narrative rather than an inescapable lyric moment takes a somewhat dramatic turn after her encounter with Troilus, who bestows gold and jewels upon her without realizing who she is. That she fails to recognize her former lover in this scene is of particular interest when one analyzes the progression of her character. Although the young woman “kest vp baith hir ene” (498) on Troilus, she does

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not recognize him, a reaction that cannot be attributed solely to her leprosy. It may be that Cresseid fails to recognize Troilus because she no longer remains focused on the exterior qualities that attracted her to him in the first place. She is more moved by his “greit humanitie” (534) in having given her gold and jewels, even before she realizes who this benefactor is. Cresseid’s personal evolution is thus demonstrated here in her refocusing of priorities by moving from the superficial to the substantive. Despite her earlier assumption that leprosy had ended her life, the malady has caused her to grow morally, a change she embraces (albeit with much sadness) in her second lament. This lament acts as a transition point in a self-construction process, which becomes discernible through literary expression. While her first complaint illustrates her refusal to move beyond regret and hopelessness, this second lament demonstrates her ability to reinterpret her past behavior towards Troilus; this reconsideration invests the past with new meaning, revealing she has evolved morally and resulting in a renewed sense of herself as one able to go forward ahead in life and, in essence, reconstruct her own character. Her lament begins with the words, “Now is my breist with stormie stoundis stad” (542) and ends with the climactic line “Nane but my self as now I will accuse” (574). In each of these cases, the focus is on what Cresseid feels now about past events, specifically those pertaining to her relationship with Troilus. The character’s lyric focus on the “now” has subtly but vitally shifted; she can interpret her past with Troilus from a position of intellectual distance, indicating that she is now able to step outside her misery. This ability to reinterpret suggests a progression in Cresseid’s character; while she still uses the conventions of a lyric complaint in focusing on her present turmoil, that turmoil is now of a more detached nature, thus demonstrating the woman’s incipient ability to move on with her life. As upset as she is in this lament, Cresseid’s hopelessness with respect to Fortune is not as total as that expressed in her complaint; while she maintains that luck in love is rare, saying “Thocht sum be trew, I wait richt few ar thay” (572), she acknowledges that the possibility of a faithful lover does exist, a sign that her attitudes are changing. Perhaps even more significantly, Cresseid contrasts Troilus’s fidelity with her own decision to climb “vpon the fickill quheill sa hie” (550). Whereas in her complaint, Cresseid ascribed to Fortune a power overwhelming all human desire and agency, here she suggests that one can also choose to be governed by Fortune, indicating an awareness she can in some measure determine the events of her future and construct her life in a narrative way. Immediately after Cresseid utters the final line of her lament, she composes her testament. While one may not immediately think of a testament as being a narrative genre, Cresseid’s final composition acknowledges her past, assesses her current possessions and state of affairs, and looks towards her un-

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certain future; in this sense, the document presents her life as a narrative which she has the power to shape, a power which she now exercises in order to construct an image of herself in writing that will survive her physical death. This act is striking given Cresseid’s leper status, which would traditionally prevent her from composing a testament; as Jana Mathews has pointed out, in late-medieval Scotland, lepers were deprived of their property rights and official status as individuals; they were considered “dead to the world” in legal 28 terms. Thus, the brave woman’s decision to compose her testament is a bold reclamation of her identity, her right to determine the course of her own fu29 ture. Moreover, that Cresseid sits down “with paper” (575) to make her declaration strongly suggests that rather than dictating her wishes to a scribe, she writes them down herself; this brief but potent detail reinforces Cresseid’s role in rewriting the literary tradition informing her character. Cresseid begins by bequeathing her body to the worms and toads and her gold to fellow lepers so that they may bury her “[q]uhen [she] is deid” (581). This bequest of one’s body is in itself quite conventional in literary testa30 ments, but Cresseid’s acknowledgement that she will soon have no need of her body or goods and her acceptance that the future will bring dramatic changes indicate a narrative view of her existence, both before and after her death. She will not suffer for “now and euer mair” (408) as she was once wont to complain; her pain on earth will cease with her death, which she is now able to acknowledge. Just as crucially, Cresseid’s willing divestment of her body and goods demonstrates how she has distanced herself from the very things she once held most dear, illuminating for the reader her evolution from a lyric perspective dominated by paralyzing self-pity and complaint to a narrative vantage point exemplified by the forward-looking testament. Cresseid then revisits her romantic past, writing that the ruby ring given her by Troilus be returned to him with news of her death (583–86). While this is the first mention of the ring in Henryson’s work, the reader is meant to recall its brief appearance in Chaucer’s Troilus, where, after the couple’s consummation of love, the narrator says, of the two, they “pleyinge entrechaungeden hir rynges, / Of whiche I kan nought tellen no scripture” (III. 1368–69). Henryson’s reference to an incident that occurs in Chaucer’s text, not in his own, consciously evokes the literary tradition of Cresseid’s character that both informs and motivates the Testament. The mention of the ring is a form of shorthand that demonstrates Henryson’s debt to previous literary constructions of Cresseid, particularly Chaucer’s. More significantly, however, Henryson picks a detail from the Troilus that Chaucer’s narrator expressly declines to elaborate, thereby demonstrating how gaps in the TroilusCressida narrative can, will, and should be filled in by future interpreters, including Henryson himself. Cresseid’s desire to return the ring, however, reflects not so much a wish to recapture her earlier love as it does a need to let

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Troilus know how her life unfolded — indeed, that her life unfolded — after their parting. By willing that the ring’s return be accompanied by the story of her “cairfull deid” (585), she assures that the gesture will communicate to Troilus a sense of how she has changed over time; it also anticipates that her own story will be told after her death, thus ensuring the beginnings of a narrative afterlife. Cresseid also hopes to secure for herself a spiritual afterlife, as noted earlier, by leaving her “spreit … to Diane, quhair scho dwellis, / To walk with hir in waist woddis and wellis” (587–88). Whether Diana will in fact receive the penitent’s spirit is in question, and there is no indication in the poem itself of Cresseid’s fate after her death. Whether the wish is granted, however, is in a sense beside the point; what is important to remember here is Cresseid’s effort to establish a future for herself beyond her death. Even if her hope for a spiritual future is not realized, Cresseid has expressed her aspiration in writing, thus actively contributing to a narrative construction of her life’s story that will persist once she is dead. Her testament breaks off mid-sentence as she cries: O Diomeid, thou hes baith broche and belt Quhilk Troylus gaue me in takning Of his trew lufe… (589–91).

The doomed woman appears to lament her decision to give Troilus’s tokens to Diomede. In addition to this being another example of Henryson’s use of literary shorthand that both draws on and responds to the literary tradition of Cresseid, the dying person’s unfinished declaration leaves room for the reader to complete her thought and discern her intentions. Perhaps she died in the midst of an attempt to reclaim the items so that she could return them to Troilus, with the ring, along with the story of her misery and profound regret for her faithlessness. This suggestion is, of course, purely conjectural, but the poem encourages readers to make such speculations when faced with the abrupt termination of the protagonist’s life. The incomplete nature of Cresseid’s last statement motivates readers to continue her story in their imaginations, thus fulfilling her desire for a form of life after death. Cresseid’s testament thus embraces the power of narrative to shape her literal, and literary, afterlife. Cresseid’s perspective has been the focus of my argument thus far, but for the sake of contrast it will prove useful to examine briefly Troilus’s and the narrator’s interpretations of her life and fate. The two men’s reactions to Cresseid’s misery and death demonstrate their inability (or unwillingness) to consider her life beyond her youth, infidelity, and leprosy. This limiting perspective contrasts with the young woman’s efforts to extend and change the narrative of her life. Troilus does not move beyond his memories of Cresseid as beautiful but faithless; his construction of his former lover is so rooted in their history to-

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gether that her leprous appearance inspires recognition not of who she is, but who she was, “sumtyme his awin darling” (504). As far as Troilus is concerned, Cresseid does not exist as a leper; she is frozen in his mind in her earlier incarnation as his beloved. Even when a member of the leper colony delivers the ring with the story of Cresseid’s demise, Troilus cannot accept that she had changed before her death. After he hears of “hir greit infirmitie, / Hir legacie and lamentatioun, / And how scho endit in sic pouertie” (596– 98), he initially swoons, an involuntary movement to escape the forward movement of time which permits all individuals — including Cresseid — to move on. After Troilus revives, he says, “I can no moir; / Scho was vntrew and wo is me thairfoir” (601–02). Despite having heard the complete story of Cresseid’s life after their split, Troilus cannot accommodate a view of the woman that takes her moral growth into account; for him, she will always be “vntrew.” He further attempts to define Cresseid’s reputation by the epitaph he has inscribed on her tomb: Lo, fair ladyis, Cresseid of Troy the toun, Sumtyme countit the flour of womanheid, Vnder this stane, lait lipper, lyis deid. (607–09)

Troilus acknowledges Cresseid’s leprosy only to imply its role as a punishment for the infidelity with which he will always associate her. As if to close all discussion on the question of her afterlife, Troilus ends the epitaph with the words “lyis deid,” suggesting an attempt to ensure that Cresseid’s story ends with her death. Readers first encounter the narrator in the Testament’s introductory frame, in which he reveals his preoccupation with his own past, soon paralleled in his depiction of Cresseid. The aged man laments the loss of his virility, praying that Venus will “mak grene” his “faidit hart” (24) and bemoaning the fact that concoctions of various compositions have failed to restore the heat of love to his old, cold body (29–35). The narrator’s preoccupation with the past extends to his perception of Cresseid, which for him is limited to her “fair” (63; 78) and “lustie” (69) nature and her “fatall destenie” (62). His view of the young woman inhabits points of extremity — her “feminitie” versus her “filth” (80), her early role as the “flour and A per se / Of Troy and Grece” (78–79) versus her “wofull end” (69) — while failing to recognize her eventual transcendence of wretched leprosy and her efforts to cleanse her spirit. The narrator thus demonstrates, like Troilus, his selective reading of Cresseid’s character, excluding moments from later in her story that pose a challenge to his interpretation of her tale as that of a fallen woman punished for her transgressions. Before the reader can assess the interpretative abilities of Henryson’s narrator any further, it is important to confront two questions. Firstly, to what degree is Henryson distinct from his narrator? Secondly, how much of the Testament’s story is the narrator’s invention rather than a paraphrase of the

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“vthir quair”? On the first point, it seems that the Testament deliberately separates the narrator’s view from Henryson’s through each figure’s embrace of separate forms of literary structure: while the narrator’s perception of Cresseid remains firmly rooted in modes of expression that emphasize the same negative aspects of her reputation which he accuses others of promulgating, Henryson himself allows his protagonist to evolve over the course of the poem to embrace the possibility of change, of a future. Cresseid’s shift from wallowing in self-pitying lyric stasis to composing a testament that acknowledges her past but seeks to improve her future ultimately places her in a mode of narrative expression that both matches Henryson-the-poet’s own adoption of a narrative structure for the Testament as a whole and demonstrates the insufficiencies of the narrator’s and Troilus’s efforts to deny Cresseid a narrative afterlife through their use of lyric, memory, and epitaph. On the second point, while it is technically the narrator who recites the story of Cresseid from the beginning to the end of the Testament, it is evident that he does not subscribe to the narrative development of Cresseid articulated in the poem. This suggests that Henryson wants us to think of the narrator as merely rehearsing the story contained in the “vthir quair” he reads by the fire. Indeed, it is clear when the narrator’s own voice intrudes on this narrative, as he consistently reminds readers of the way Cresseid once was; his interjection after the unfortunate woman is sentenced to leprosy, for instance, deplores Saturn’s harsh justice and asks, “On fair Cresseid quhy hes thow na mercie, / Quhilk was sa sweit, gentill and amorous?” (325–26). By fixating on an earlier Cresseid, the narrator distinguishes himself from the poem’s narrative and subscribes firmly to a stagnant and outdated interpretation of Cresseid’s character. Early on, the narrator consciously refers to Cresseid’s literary reputation by claiming that he desires to “excuse” (87) her from those who have slighted her in the past. He does not, however, construct a redemptive future for Cresseid any more than previous writers have done; he is too preoccupied with the young woman’s past to consider seriously the issue of her future. The narrator’s final assessment of Cresseid’s life similarly seeks to curtail the open-ended nature of her story: Now, worthie wemen, in this ballet schort, Maid for aour worschip and instructioun, Of cheritie, I monische and exhort, Ming not aour lufe with fals deceptioun: Beir in aour mynd this sore conclusioun Of fair Cresseid, as I haue said befoir. Sen scho is deid I speik of hir no moir. (610–616)

The narrator attempts to reduce Cresseid’s complex personal evolution and undetermined future into a moralitas with a simple message to “worthie we-

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men”: “Ming not aour lufe with fals deceptioun” (613). He calls attention to his efforts to close discussion on Cresseid’s life by insisting that he has intended to recount a “ballet schort” (610) which relates her “sore conclusioun” 31 (614). Finally, he attempts to end speculation on Cresseid’s afterlife through his concluding phrase, “Sen scho is deid I speik of hir no moir”(616). While the narrator hopes that ladies will take heed of the deceased woman’s story, his version of that story is selective and concludes arbitrarily. His resolution not to speak of Cresseid simply because she is dead defies the natural impulse to continue her narrative after her testament breaks off in mid-sentence. More importantly, however, the narrator, like Troilus, ignores the moral growth Cresseid exhibits near the end of her life; he remembers only “fair Cresseid” (615), the woman who was disfigured for her infidelity and who suffered a wretched death. The narrator’s incomplete assessment of Cresseid and his firm refusal to discuss her after her physical death are at odds with the heroine’s own attempts to live on through her testament; these sins of omission are also contrary to the advocacy of narrative reinterpretation that Henryson advances throughout his account of Cresseid’s life. Presented with three visions of Cresseid — Troilus’s, the narrator’s, and Cresseid’s own — the reader must decide which most accurately reflects Henryson’s attitude. An answer lies in how the writer himself has constructed the poem. Although punctuated by lyric outbursts, the Testament of Cresseid is clearly a narrative, documenting Cresseid’s journey from carefree but fickle youth to a sadder yet wiser maturity. Of the three characters examined here, only Cresseid follows Henryson’s narrative trajectory for her personhood all the way to its conclusion — Cresseid’s account of her own life is the focus of Henryson’s narrative from beginning to end, and the two share a literary kinship, asserting the potential for numerous additions to and reinterpretations of Cresseid literary tradition. The narrator and Troilus fall short in their respective abilities as shapers and interpreters of narrative, as neither follows Cresseid’s evolution as far as she experiences it. In her embrace of the full narrative potential of her life, Cresseid assures for herself an afterlife that sustains her well beyond the poem’s — and her own — end.

Notes 1

All line quotations from the Testament of Cresseid are from Denton Fox, Testament of Cresseid (London: Nelson, 1968). Discussions of Fox’s editorial notes will also refer to this edition. Quotations from Troilus and Criseyde refer to the Riverside Chaucer, 3rd ed., ed. Larry D. Benson (Princeton, New Jersey: Houghton Mifflin, 1987), 471–585. 2 Fox, “Introduction,” Testament, 57. 3 E.M.W. Tillyard, Poetry and its Background, Illustrated by Five Poems: 1470–1870 (London: Chatto and Windus, 1970 [1948; reprint, under title Five Poems]): 13. Tillyard elaborates, “[T]hrough the working of God’s will she was punished, brought to

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penitence, and ended by taking the blame on herself: in fact the story of her salvation according to the Christian scheme” (17). 4 Robert L. Kindrick, Robert Henryson (Boston: Twayne, 1979): 147. 5 C. David Benson, “Troilus and Cresseid in Henryson’s Testament,” Chaucer Review 13 (1979): 263–71 (268). 6 Lee W. Patterson, “Christian and Pagan in The Testament of Cresseid,” Philological Quarterly 52 (October 1973): 696–714 (712–13). 7 Henrietta Twycross-Martin, “Moral Pattern in The Testament of Cresseid,” 30–50 in Chaucer and Fifteenth-Century Poetry, ed. Julia Boffey and Janet Cowan (King’s College, London: Centre for Late Antique and Medieval Studies, 1991): 38. Twycross-Martin concludes, “It is characteristic of Henryson’s vision that illumination does not come from any divine intervention or any apprehension of divine reality, for in his poem the planetary deities function as reflections of Cresseid herself, thrown as it were on the walls of her universe, just as in the opening stanzas the planets seen setting and rising presage the course of her life. In such a closed world as this, devoid of any yardstick other than this present life, human beings are all we have to go by, and illumination will come through them or not at all” (49–50). 8 Dolores Noll, “The Testament of Cresseid: Are Christian Interpretations Valid?,” Studies in Scottish Literature 9 (July 1971): 16–25 (18). Noll concludes, “The Testament of Cresseid is from start to finish a poem built upon courtly love premises” (24). 9 A.C. Spearing, “The Testament of Cresseid and the ‘High Concise Style,’”Speculum 37 (1962): 208–225 (223). 10 Lesley Johnson, “Whatever Happened to Criseyde? Henryson’s Testament of Cresseid,” 313–21 in Courtly Literature: Culture and Context: Selected Papers from the 5th Triennial Congress of the International Courtly Literature Society, Dalfsen, The Netherlands, 9–16 August, 1986, ed. Keith Busby and Erik Kooper (Philadelphia: John Benjamins, 1990): 316. 11 See Gretchen Mieszkowski’s The Reputation of Criseyde, 1155–1500 (Hamden, Connecticut: Archon, 1971), in which Mieszkowski surveys the portrayal of Criseyde from Benoît de Saint-Maure’s Roman de Troie to sixteenth-century ballads and prose works condemning Criseyde and argues that her literary reputation is largely defined by her infidelity, either by the works themselves or by readers’ interpretations of those works. Henryson, to an extent, necessarily comments on the entire literary tradition of Cressida in his response to Chaucer’s particular version. Given the relative consistency in Cressida’s portrayal, Henryson in a sense responds to all of these accounts; I will focus in this argument, however, on how Henryson responds to Chaucer’s account specifically in his approach to narrative and its role in the construction of Cresseid’s identity. 12 C. David Benson, “Critic and Poet: What Lydgate and Henryson Did To Chaucer’s Troilus and Criseyde,” Modern Language Quarterly 53 (1992): 23–40 (34, 40). 13 For the purposes of my argument, I refer in this phrase only to secular complaints, which I take to focus on a particular moment or feeling related to the physical world. While religious lyrics are also focused on moments and feelings, their subject matter implies a world that transcends the physical, and Cresseid’s complaints in the Testament focus mainly on the earthly realm. 14 The possible identity of this “vthir quair” (61) — and whether it even exists — have generated considerable academic debate. James Kinsley, in “A Note on Henryson,” proposes that Henryson may be referring to G. Myll’s translation of the Spektakle of Luf (Times Literary Supplement, 14 Nov. 1952: 743). Eleanor R. Long suggests that Henryson may have been referring instead to a version of Guido delle Colonne’s Historiae

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Destructionis Troiae included in the original Latin moral treatise on which the Spektakle is based, though she acknowledges that this treatise has not been found and may be as fictional as Chaucer’s Lollius (“Robert Henryson’s ‘Vthir Quair,’” Comitatus 3 [1972]: 97–101). William Stephenson is more convinced of the “vthir quair’s” mythical status, noting that “[i]n each of the major early witnesses of the complete Testament (Thynne, 1532; Charteris 1593; Anderson, 1663), the acrostic “FICTIO” appears in the first letters of lines 58–63, the same lines in which the reference to the ‘vthir quair’ appears” (“The Acrostic ‘FICTIO’ in Robert Henryson’s The Testament of Cresseid [lines 58–63],” Chaucer Review 29 [1994]: 163–65 [164]). If indeed the “vthir quair” does not exist, the reference acts as a reminder of Chaucer’s own use of the technique in the Troilus with his “autour called Lollius” (I. 394). 15 For the idea of the reader’s desire for resolution, I draw from Frank Kermode’s discussion of the topic in The Genesis of Secrecy: On the Interpretation of Narrative (Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard UP, 1979), in which he writes, “[I]t does appear that we are programmed to prefer fulfillment to disappointment, the closed to the open” (64). 16 W.A. Davenport, Chaucer: Complaint and Narrative (Cambridge, England: D.S. Brewer, 1988): 155; 170–75. Davenport argues that at the point of Criseyde’s critique of complaint in Book IV 1254–57, complaint is actually a device meant to push the story towards its tragic conclusion through the catharsis of emotion, and that Criseyde’s admonishment of complaint temporarily delays the poem from reaching its sad end (155). Thus, even in her rejection of complaint, Criseyde is associated with a lack of narrative movement. 17 Davenport, Chaucer, 170. 18 Patterson hints at this distinction when he writes that Cresseid’s first complaint “stands like a stone in the narrative stream” while “the testament is rushed and tumbled along” (“Christian and Pagan,” 712; see n. 6 above). Patterson’s perceptive comment, which is unelaborated upon, partly motivates my expansion of this idea within these pages. 19 In this respect, Troilus’s and the narrator’s interpretation of Cresseid’s character may best be described by Kermode’s description of the history of interpretation as “a history of exclusions, which enable us to seize upon this issue rather than on some other as central, and choose from the remaining mass only what seems most compliant” to our preconceptions about the thing interpreted (Genesis, 20); see n. 15 above. By excluding from their analysis of Cresseid what they know of her repentance and attempts to make amends, Troilus and the narrator engage in a selective, exclusive form of reading. 20 Jill Mann, “The Planetary Gods in Chaucer and Henryson,” 91–106 in Chaucer Traditions: Studies in Honour of Derek Brewer, ed. Ruth Morse and Barry Windeatt (New York: Cambridge UP, 1990): 92–93. 21 See Priscilla Bawcutt’s “Henryson’s ‘Poeit of the Auld Fassoun,’” Review of English Studies 32 (November 1981): 429–34, for a more detailed discussion of how Henryson portrays Mercury as a “god of rhetoric and patron of poets” (429). 22 Kermode, Genesis, 2. See n. 15 above. 23 Fox, Testament, 266, n. Fox takes his definition from the Dictionary of the Older Scottish Tongue, s.v. “forspekar.” See n. 1 above. 24 Fox, in his note to the description of the moon at 253–63, cites Bartholomaeus Anglicus as an example of the belief in Cynthia’s malleability: “And Galienus … seiþ þat by conyunccioun of þe body of þe mone wiþ sterris fortunate comeþ dreadful sikenes to good ende, and wiþ contrarye planetis falliþ þe contrarye, þat is to euel ende” (VIII. xvii). Fox adds, “[Cynthia’s] partnership with Saturn is therefore generally

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ominous” (Testament, 253–63, n.). See also Jill Mann’s remarks, quoted earlier in this essay (and n. 20 above). 25 Davenport briefly assesses this passage: “Criseyde diagnoses her own failing as lack of foresight and this addition by Chaucer invites the reader to view the rest of Criseyde’s speech with irony. The one eye of Prudence which Criseyde lacks is the ability to envisage future time; how then can one take her plan for escape by night, ‘bityde what bityde,’ as anything but a repetition of that failure?” (Chaucer, 168). See n. 16 above. 26 In both the 1593 Charteris print and the 1663 Anderson print, Cresseid’s complaint is specifically labeled as such (Fox, Testament, 124, n.), indicating how closely Cresseid’s expression was identified with the genre even in editions printed well over a century after the poem’s composition. 27 In this respect, the leper lady acts in a manner similar to how Davenport describes Pandarus’s role in the Troilus as an embodiment of “the spirit of anti-complaint” (Chaucer, 137), persuading Troilus to end his laments and take active steps towards winning Criseyde: “From the role of confidant, necessary to the plot, Chaucer develops in Pandarus a contrasting rhetoric of persuasion towards action, and so creates a motivator towards narrative change who resists the lyric impulse to dwell in the moment and leave situations as they are” (Chaucer, 137). See n. 16 above. The leper lady, in persuading Cresseid to end her complaining and lead the leper life, moves her to act and indirectly engineers the meeting between Cresseid and Troilus, thus serving a similar narrative function in Henryson’s poem as Pandarus does in Chaucer’s. 28 Jana Mathews, “Land, Lepers, and the Law in The Testament of Cresseid,” 40–66 in The Letter of the Law: Legal Practice and Literary Production in Medieval England, ed. Emily Steiner and Candace Barrington (Ithaca, NY: Cornell UP, 1999): 58. See also Julia Boffey’s “Lydgate, Henryson, and the Literary Testament,” Modern Language Quarterly 53 (1992): 41–56, not only for its remarks on Henryson’s literary interpretation of the legal testament but also for a useful discussion of the main themes and tropes employed in medieval literary testaments. 29 Mathews also asserts Cresseid’s recovery of identity through the composition of her testament but focuses on Cresseid’s reclamation of her legal status as an individual rather than of her literary reputation: “Cresseid, once crippled, is now whole; where once she was invisible, now she can be ‘seen’ — and, by implication, ‘heard’ and ‘understood’ — in both literal and legal senses” (“Land,” 66; see n. 28 above). Mathews does offer, however, a reminder that Henryson is the poem’s ultimate authorial power, saying that he “keeps his character alive long enough for her to obtain a legal identity, but destroys her before she can exercise her new rights,” a remark that suggests the persistent role that Cresseid’s literary reputation plays in shaping her fate (“Land,” 66). While this statement is valid, it must also be noted that once Cresseid realizes that she has once again encountered Troilus, her voice — in the form of her repentant complaint at lines 546– 574 and her testament at lines 577–591 — dominates the latter portion of the poem, overwhelming Troilus’s and the narrator’s postmortem assessments of her fate. The prominence of Cresseid’s voice in the final stages of the poem suggests that Henryson (as opposed to the narrator) has given his character a chance to redeem her reputation by allowing her to speak in her own words. 30 As Boffey notes, Cresseid’s testament “follows the familiar four-point pattern” common to the literary version of such documents (“Literary Testament,” 52). See n. 28 above. The testament itself contains most of these points — “Her body is left to worms and toads; her few possessions to her fellow lepers and to Troilus; her soul to Diana,

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goddess of chastity” — but, given that Cresseid is pagan rather than Christian, Boffey contends that the “customary bequest of sins to the devil” instead takes the form of Cresseid’s self-condemnation at lines 546–574, ending in the line, “Nane but my self as now I will accuse” (Testament 574; Boffey “Literary Testament,” 52–53). Cresseid may employ conventional language to write her testament, but her document’s embrace of her unknown future is what makes her composition especially significant to her individual growth. 31 In using “sore,” Fox follows Thynne’s 1532 edition of Chaucer; in both the later Charteris and Anderson prints, however, the text reads “schort conclusioun,” a variation which, if accurate, only serves to reinforce the narrator’s desire to truncate discussion on Cresseid’s life. Fox writes that, while either reading is possible, he prefers “sore” “since schort may have arisen under the influence of the stock phrase short conclusion,” which appears in various forms in the Moral Fables, Orpheus and Eurydice and Colkelbie Sow (614, n.). Henryson’s very use of the phrase in these other works, however, suggests that it is not unreasonable to suppose that he may also employ it here.

McGill University

Euclid in Boethius’s “De Consolatione Philosophiae” and Some of its English Translations Noel Harold Kaylor, Jr. Introduction: The Corpus of Boethius’s Writings Like Aristotle before him, Boethius approached acquiring and recording knowledge systematically, but less comprehensively than his more famous antecedent. Unlike Aristotle, Boethius was more scholar than scientist, as his interests focused on certain well-defined areas of the humanities to the exclusion of the biological sciences. His extant works fall generally into four subjectareas of inquiry: (1) logic, (2) mathematics, (3) theology, and (4) the uniquely comprehensive final work entitled De Consolatione Philosophiae. Boethius’s books in these areas established the basic curriculum of medieval education, with its “lower-division courses” of the trivium and its “upper-division courses” of the quadrivium, and they laid the groundwork for scholasticism, which came to define the methodology of teaching and research in the later Middle Ages. Translations of the Consolatio appeared in abundance in the late medieval era; within the work, Lady Philosophy affirms a rational order for the universe, with which Boethius the Prisoner concurs. The production of translations represents one significant aspect of the general attempt to find “real order” underlying the “apparent chaos” of events occurring during the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries in particular, including the political and military confrontations of the Hundred Years’ War, social and demographic devastation brought about by the bubonic plague, the rise of nation states and national monarchies, and other changes for which the certainty of universal order would have provided a form of assurance or consolation. One facet of the popularity of the Consolation translations is this affirmation of a universe ruled by a rational deity. Regarding the first subject-area of inquiry mentioned above, logic, a discipline in the trivium, Boethius produced Latin translations, adaptations, and commentaries; and his application of the rules of logic in his final statement to the world, the Consolatio Philosophiae, is remarkable. Today, however, many readers find Boethius’s argument in the work aesthetically appealing, but the premise upon which he constructs his intellectual edifice — that the universe is rational — has fallen increasingly from general favor since the Renaissance. It is in the subjects of the quadrivium that Boethius’s predisposition for system and classification manifests itself most clearly. From a letter to Symmachus (his father-in-law) that prefaces the Arithmetic, it appears that Boethius

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intended to write a book on each of the four mathematical disciplines (arith1 metic, music, geometry, and astronomy), but only his book on arithmetic and a fragment of his book on music are extant. A geometry and an astronomy 2 are attested to in Cassiodorus, who wrote after Boethius’s death, but, if Boethius produced those books, they are lost today. Probably because we possess only one complete book from these four mathematical subjects, the relationship between Boethius’s total work in the quadrivium and the mathematical thinking that informs the Consolatio too often is overlooked, and perhaps especially in the discipline of geometry. Boethius was a learner throughout his life, and he drew upon all of his accumulating knowledge, which formed a continuously-developing intellectual Gestalt, when he constructed the Consolatio. Apart from his books on logic and the subjects of the quadrivium, Boethius also produced his Theological Tractates or the Opuscula Sacra for the discipline of theology, all five of which are generally accepted today as authored by Boethius. In these short treatises, he applies logical rigor to discussing the nature of the divinity and the problems of heretical thinking. John Marenbon explains: “Christianity, as Boethius presents it, is a revealed religion, built around a particular sacred history, and with precise doctrines that it is heretical 3 to infringe [upon].” Nevertheless, Christian concepts do not appear in the textual foreground of the Consolation, and the deus of the work is not the Christian Trinity, about which Boethius had written one of his earlier theological essays. Finally, it was just prior to his execution for treason in 524 A.D., during a year he spent in prison in Pavia, that he wrote the Consolatio, his summary statement on the nature of the universe and his own place in it. The work is far-reaching in its implications and attempts to be comprehensive in its scope; thus the Consolatio should be understood as a culmination of Boethius’s earlier learning and not as an independent appendage of that intellectual exploration. It is Boethius’s lifetime of study that forms the total field that the Consolatio comprehends, and I maintain that Boethius’s work in geometry is particularly relevant to understanding the Consolatio and that his English translators have appreciated that fact only in varying degrees. The Missing Point in Some Translations of Boethius In the long tradition of translations of the Consolatio Philosophiae into English, diverse translators have been attracted to different aspects of the work, and their varying perspectives constitute an important dimension of the translation and reception tradition. An example of how the English versions of the Consolatio affect a person’s reading of the translated text is discernible in the rendering of one significant Latin word or concept, punctus, into English. During his discussion of distinctions between the eternal and temporal realms of reality, Boethius writes in Book 4, Prose 6: “Providentia namque cuncta pariter quamvis diversa quamvis infinita complectitur; fatum vero singula

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digerit in motum locis formis ac temporibus distributa,” which Stewart, Rand, and Tester translate as: “For providence [from the eternal realm] embraces all things together, though they are different, though they are infinite; but fate [in the temporal realm] arranges as to their motion separate things, 4 distributed in place, form[,] and time….” Later in the same passage, Boethius expands his description of the relationship between things eternal and things temporal with: “Igitur uti est ad intellectum ratiocinatio, ad id quod est id quod gignitur, ad aeternitatem tempus, ad punctum medium circulus, ita est fati series mobilis ad providentiae stabilem simplicitatem” (emphasis mine), which these translators render into English as: “Therefore as reasoning is to understanding, as that which becomes is to that which is, as time is to eternity, as the circle is to its centre, so is the moving course of fate to the unmoving sim5 plicity of providence” (emphasis mine). Stewart, Rand, and Tester’s edition has been quoted here and elsewhere in this study because the Latin text and its Modern English equivalent appear facing each other, for ready comparison. In this last example given above, the translators equate “ad punctum medium circulus” with “as the circle is to its centre.” In doing so, they allow an important Euclidian concept to become “lost in translation,” and that idea is represented by Boethius’s word punctum. When Alfred rendered this passage into his native Old English in the late 800s, he took even greater liberties with its subtle meanings: “[Chapter 39] ¶ 8 … With respect to the divine providence; as argument and reasoning is, compared with the intellect, and such the wheel is, compared with the axel6 tree. For the axel-tree regulates all the waggon.” Stewart, Rand, and Tester remove a central object, a point, from the center of Boethius’s circle and leave empty space (perhaps a hole incised by the pin of a compass). Alfred, however, creates an image in the Anglo-Saxon that the Latin does not convey at all, and Boethius’s concept of a point at the center of a circle is replaced by Alfred’s image of the central hub of a turning cartwheel. Such liberties are rare in the English tradition of Boethian translation, but this example from Alfred vividly illustrates a general failure to notice the influence of Euclidian vocabulary upon Boethius’s final work. Boethius and Geometry We no longer have Boethius’s book on geometry — a fact that probably explains the failure of translators to notice Euclid’s influence upon the Consolatio — but we do have Euclid’s Elements, an earlier book written in Greek, which Boethius would have used as the basis of his own Latin work on geometry and adapted to his own needs. We can assume, therefore, that Euclid’s text gives us knowledge of the matter that Boethius’s work probably contained and of how he thought about geometry. Euclid begins his text in Book One by defining his terms systematically. Definition 1 states: “A point is that which

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has no part”; Definition 2 follows with: “A line is breadthless length.” Definition 7 states: “A plane surface is a surface which lies evenly with the straight lines on itself.” Definition 15 defines the word circle: “A circle is a plane figure contained by one line such that all the straight lines falling upon it from one point among those lying within the figure are equal to one another.” Definition 16 then follows almost as a corollary upon Definition 15: “And the point 7 is called the centre of the circle.” Euclid’s Elements is constructed as a propositional system, and as such, it would have appealed to Boethius’s attraction to definition and classification. Boethius uses a system similar to Euclid’s to develop the argument in one of his Theological Tractates, the Quomodo Substantiae (How Substances are Good in Virtue of Their Existence without being Substantial Goods). He begins that particular work by stating clearly that he “followed the example of the mathematical and cognitive sciences and laid down bounds and 8 rules according to which [he will] develop all that follows.” Like Euclid before him, he then lists nine definitions of words and concepts that will be used technically throughout the text. In doing so, Boethius obviously is following the example set by Euclid’s systematic method. The Consolatio also is constructed as a propositional system, but less rigorously than Euclid’s Elements, and without benefit of a list of precisely-defined terms at the start. Nevertheless, Euclid’s definitions of the words point, line, plane surface, and circle, probably represent the technical definitions of these words, which Boethius would have adopted subsequent to his intensive study and translation of the Elements. If this theory is correct, then the terms provide a very specific geometric meaning to Boethius’s “ad punctum medium circulus” and related phrases. Stewart, Rand, and Tester’s rendering “as the circle is to its centre” is an accurate interpretation of the Latin, but it loses any precisely Euclidian significance that Boethius might have intended in his use of the word punctum — which is that of a geometric object having no parts, or a geometric object having no dimensions in space and time. Around 1380, Geoffrey Chaucer translated Boethius’s Latin passage in this way: “Thanne ryght swich comparysoun as is of skillynge to undirstondyng, and of thing that ys engendrid to thing that is, and of tyme to eternite, and of the cercle to the centre; ryght so is the ordre of moevable 9 destyne to the stable symplicite of purveaunce.” Chaucer does not translate punctum as point here, but earlier in the same paragraph, he does emphasize that a point is the object at the center of a circle: “For ryght as of cerklis that tornen aboute a same centre or aboute a poynt, thilke cerkle that is innerest or most withinne joyneth to the symplesse of the myddle, and is, as it were, 10 a centre or a poynt to the tothere cerklis that tornen abouten hym….” Stewart, Rand, and Tester also use the English word point in this particular passage, but, unlike Chaucer, they do so almost as an afterthought:

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For just as, of a number of spheres turning about the same centre, the innermost one approaches the simplicity of middleness and is a sort of pivot for the rest, which are placed outside it, about which they turn; but the outermost one, turning with a greater circumference, the fur11 ther it is separated from the indivisibility of the central point ....

In comparing these two translations, it becomes evident that Chaucer attempts to focus more clearly on the abstract geometric paradigm inherent in the Latin while Stewart, Rand, and Tester convey a less technically accurate image, or picture, which also can be discerned within or beneath the textual surface of the Latin passage. Like Alfred, they seem to be thinking of wheels instead of plane or solid geometric figures. Chaucer aimed fairly consistently for more technical accuracy throughout his translation. During the early fifteenth century, John Walton also translated the Consolatio, but entirely into English verse, whereas Chaucer had made his translation entirely into English prose. Walton’s rendering, nevertheless, is highly influenced by Chaucer’s version: he casts the earlier books of the Consolatio into Chaucer’s eight-verse stanzas of “The Monk’s Tale” and the later books into Chaucer’s seven-verse stanzas of Troilus and Criseyde; and there is much evidence that he uses Chaucer’s variant as a “crib” for his own work. For the two passages quoted above from Chaucer, Walton interestingly reverses the order in his use of the word point. He renders the earlier passage without employing the word: As dyuers cumpaces on a poynt ypight Vpon þe centre turnynge all aboute, Þe innermeste compace to þi sight The whiche anext þe centre is wiþoute, A centre wil it seme it is no doute, For þou schalt see it moue noght a dele 12 Aboute whiche so moueth all þe whele ….

In the subsequent passage, concerning reason versus understanding and time versus eternity, he changes Chaucer’s metaphor “of the circle to the centre” to “They ben not lyk in worthiness of kynde / Bot as þe point [to] þe circumfer13 ence, / Bytwene theym ys an huge difference .…” From this change and others like it, readers can assume that Walton had the Latin Consolatio on his desk as well as Chaucer’s translation, the Boece, as he produced his verse rendition. In this instance, Walton seems to be correcting Chaucer’s reading of Boethius. In 1593, at the age of sixty, Queen Elizabeth I translated the passage under discussion — concerning the relationship between reason and undern standing — in this way: “For as Reason is to understa ding, & that that is made, to that / that is, And as tyme to Eternity, & Circle is to the middest / m poynte, So is the order of fate changeable, co pared to / the stable purenes of n 14 Provide ce.” Queen Elizabeth construes punctum literally, as point, but such lit-

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eral translation is typical of her renderings of Latin texts into English. Roger Ascham had instructed her in his dual translation method when Elizabeth was a young student. Ascham’s teaching method promoted literalness and the use of cognates in her work, and she maintained that approach throughout her life. In all probability, her accuracy in transposing this passage into English (at the age of sixty) results not so much from any knowledge she may have had of Euclidean geometry as from her practice in Ascham’s dual translation method. Among the most popular Consolatio translations of the twentieth century is one by Victor E. Watts. Since 1969, his version has gone through several reprintings, and a revised edition appeared in 1999. He “was born in 1938 and read classics and English at Merton College, Oxford, and he did a year of 15 postgraduate work at University College London.” He renders the Boethian passage on reason and understanding into Modern English: “The relationship between the ever-changing course of Fate and the stable simplicity of Providence is like that between reasoning and understanding, between that which is coming into being and that which is, between time and eternity, or between 16 the moving circle and the still point in the middle” (emphasis mine). Watts takes liberties with the Latin, as in his rendering of punctum as “the still point,” which has religious rather than geometric connotations. Thus, in this instance, he presents a subtly Christianized and non-Euclidian interpretation of the passage to his readers. Still, his is the Boethius that many students received during the last three decades of the twentieth century and are receiving now, well into the first decade of the twenty-first century. Joel C. Relihan, also a classicist, published a translation of the Consolatio in 2001. His adaptation of the Boethian passage reads: “Therefore: As is the relation of rational argument to knowledge; of that which comes into being to that which is; of time to eternity; of the circle to its center point — such is the relation of the moving sequence of Fate to the unchanging simplicity of 17 Providence.” Joseph Pucci comments: “Entirely faithful to Boethius’s Latin[,] Relihan’s translation makes the philosophy of the Consolation intelligi18 ble to readers....” Pucci’s praise certainly holds true for the passage quoted above. However, Relihan’s opening verses of Book 1, Meter 1, do not indicate the same control that we see in the later passage. Boethius begins famously with: “Carmina qui quondam studio florente peregi, Flebilis heu 19 maestos cogor inire modos.” Relihan gives his readers: “I who was once at the height of my powers a master of versecraft — Woe is me! — weeping, 20 coerced, enter the grief-ridden mode.” Here he shifts the opening emphasis from the first word “carmina” to the second word “qui” or to Boethius himself, the subject of the verb “peregi,” and he then constructs phrases akin to Old English kennings as he translates the remainder of the first two verses. Elizabeth I did a better job when she worked with the opening verses, al-

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though she, too, takes liberties with the grammar: “Righmes that my growing er 21 studie ons p formed In teares alas cumpeld woful staves begin.” Stewart, Rand, and Tester also maintain Boethius’s original emphasis when they begin their translation with: “Verses I made once glowing with content; /Tearful, 22 alas, sad songs must I begin.” In fairness, it must be noted that Relihan, as a classicist, generally makes interpretive choices similar to those of Elizabeth, but for different reasons. Elizabeth was constrained by circumstances in 1593 to translate quickly, in just a few weeks, but with surprising accuracy in an English rendering that 23 was never fully revised for printing. Relihan did not have to expedite his work in similar fashion, and he could enjoy the luxury of time to proof and correct his text for publication. However, neither Elizabeth nor Relihan missed or otherwise reinterpreted the punctus or point in Boethius’s text. In this instance, they do not miss the geometric statement in their translations that Boethius makes in his Latin text. Boethius’s Biography and His “Consolatio” The Consolatio has been translated into English many times, and each interpreter has come to the text with a different vision of who Boethius was and what Boethius’s final statement to the world represents. The translation into English made by Geoffrey Chaucer is fairly accurate, and Chaucer’s glosses on the text indicate that the poet had taken time to seek out technical meanings of words used by Boethius in at least two commentaries on the Consolatio, 24 one by Nicholas Trevet and one by Remigius of Auxerre. Evidence in the translation and in his poetic works indicate that Chaucer used the Consolatio as a reference book on issues relating to cosmology and epistemology. Chaucer’s interest in science and in instruments used in the cosmological sciences is further evidenced by his Treatise on the Astrolabe, which he wrote as a technical manual for his ten-year-old son about 1391. Chaucer, therefore, is one of the few translators of the Consolatio who seems to have envisioned Boethius as a scientist and cosmologist, and Chaucer paid particular attention in the technical subtleties of his use of terminology. Conclusion The influence of Euclid upon Boethian thought and his construction of the Consolatio is clear: Boethius often presents the “simplicity of Providence” as a single point which lies beyond space and time, in the eternal or timeless realm, in which knowledge of all events in space and all of time are contained, simultaneously. In Euclid, a point is the insubstantial object from which all other geometric forms and substantial objects derive. The definitions given at the beginning of Book 1 of the Elements indicate how all consequent geometric

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structures are generated from the movement of one point, and from the subsequent movement of those elementary structures in space and time. Boethius’s deus, understood as a point, is represented, then, as the deus or creator of the universe, but if my theory is correct, that deus is not extended in space and time: it is, as Boethius affirms repeatedly in the Consolatio, a creator who creates from a position of absolute simplicity. In fact, in Rule 1 given in his Quomodo Substantiae, Boethius defines a common conception of mind to be “a statement which anyone accepts as soon as he hears it,” and as one of his two examples of such conceptions, he offers the following: “Things which are incorporeal are not in space,” a principle that 25 he describes as “obvious to the learned but not to the common herd.” In Boethius, a point, therefore, not only has no extension in space and time but also, it would seem, no actual locus in space and time. Some metaphorical images in the Consolatio do appear in conflict with the proposition that Boethius’s deus is comparable to a geometric point. In a famous passage, Book 3, Meter 9, we find the prayer: “Grant, Father, to my 26 mind to rise to your majestic seat” (emphasis added). Boethius’s augustum sedem 27 has been translated more accurately as “august seat” and quite surprisingly as 28 29 “holy foundations,” or even “august abode.” During the Renaissance, Queen n Elizabeth I renders the passage as “Graunt that the my d O father Clime to thy hiest 30 Seat.” Such occasional Boethian images that signal a deus extended in space should not discredit the significance, however, of the geometric point that the author uses more often in constructing his deus in the Consolatio. In the Consolatio, it must be noted that Boethius occasionally is ambivalent in his use of Euclidian concepts and Christian metaphors in describing his deus, but in the general presentation of the work, Euclid prevails. Boethius is not so much “writing philosophy rather than theology” as presenting the Gestalt of his knowledge as he had developed it to the moment of his untimely death. Euclid and Euclidian postulates are significant in the Consolatio, and those concepts are maintained only to varying degrees in the English translations. In a recent book on Abraham Lincoln, Daniel Mark Epstein makes an interesting observation: Lincoln’s favorite author was not Shakespeare, Burns, or Byron, though he loved them all. It was the Greek geometer Euclid; Herndon [Lincoln’s law partner in Springfield, Illinois] marveled during their circuit-riding days how Lincoln could lie awake concentrating until 2:00 A.M., memorizing the propositions of Euclid by candlelight while the other lawyers snored in the hotel room. The Greek formed Lincoln’s style of debate. Now Lincoln was searching for a still center of the turning world of human nature, a diamond-hard pivot on which he might set his compass to draw the circle of an 31 American civilization.

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Euclid may not have been Boethius’s favorite writer, but Boethius seems to have responded to Euclid in a way similar to that of Lincoln. As the American Union was being challenged in the 1850s, the Roman Empire was being challenged in the late 400s and early 500s, and both Lincoln and Boethius seem to have found in Euclid assurances that mathematical reasoning can be used to reestablish order. Similarly, translators of Boethius in the late Middle Ages, when the medieval order of Europe was being challenged by developing ideas and technologies as well as changing social and political realities, would have found similar assurance in the Consolatio that order can prevail, if only in the mind. Like modern translators, those in the late Middle Ages grasped to some degree the significance of Euclidian thought behind Boethius’s assumptions on the order of the cosmos, and resonances of that thought can be discerned, to varying degrees, in their renderings of the Latin text into the English of their day. In the English translations, however, more attention should be directed toward Boethius’s work in geometry as Boethian studies and the tradition of Boethian translation develop in the future.

Notes 1

Michael Masi, Boethian Number Theory: A Translation of the “De Institutione Arithmetica” (Amsterdam: Rodopi, 1983), 66–68. 2 See: Henry Chadwick, Boethius: The Consolations of Music, Logic, Theology, and Philosophy (New York: Oxford University, 1981), 103–04; and John Marenbon, Boethius (New York: Oxford University, 2003), 15. 3 Marenbon, 67. 4 H. F. Stewart, E. K. Rand, and S. J. Tester, trans. Boethius: Tractates, “De Consolatione Philosophiae” (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University, 1973), 358–59. 5 Stewart, Rand, and Tester, 362–63. 6 See: King Alfred’s Anglo-Saxon Version of Boethius “De consolatione philosophiae”: with a literal English translation [by Martin F. Tupper]; notes, and glossary by Samuel Fox (1864; reprint, New York: AMS, 1970), 225. For the Anglo-Saxon [also] see Walter John Sedgefield, King Alfred’s Old English Version of Boethius “De Consolatione Philosophiae” (Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 1968), 130–31: Swylc is þæt þe we wyrd hatað be þæm godcundan foreþonce, swylc (sio) smeaung / sio gesceadwisnes swylce is to metanne wið þone gearowitan, / swylce þas lænan þing bioð to metanne wið ða ecan, / swilce þe hweol bið to metanne wið ða eaxe; foreðæm sio eax welt ealles þæs wænes. 7 Euclid, The Thirteen Books of Euclid’s Elements, trans. Sir Thomas L. Heath, Volume 11 of Great Books of the Western World (Chicago: Encyclopaedia Britannica, 1990), 1–396; here, 1. 8 Stewart, Rand, and Tester, 41. 9 Geoffrey Chaucer, The Riverside Chaucer, 3rd edition, ed. Larry D. Benson (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1987), 452. 10 For the Latin, see: Stewart, Rand, and Tester, 360: Nam ut orbium circa eundem cardinem sese vertentium qui est intimus ad simplicitatem medietatis accedit certerorumque extra locatorum veluti cardo quidam circa quem versentur exsistit, extimus vero maiore ambitu rotatus quanto a puncti media individuitate discedit tanto amplioribus

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spatiis explicatur, si quid vero illi se medio conectat et societ, in simplicitatem cogitur diffundique ac diffluere cessat, simili ratione quod longius a prima mente discedit maioribus fati nexibus implicatur ac tanto aliquid fato liberum est quanto illum rerum cardinem vicinius petit. 11 Stewart, Rand, and Tester, 361. 12 John Walton, trans. Boethius: “De Consolatione Philosophiae,” ed. Mark Science (London: Oxford University, 1927), 260. 13 Walton, 261. 14 Italic is in the hand of Elizabeth’s secretary (or amanuensis). See: The Consolation of Queen Elizabeth I: The Queen’s Translation of Boethius’s “De Consolatione Philosophiae,” ed. Noel Harold Kaylor, Jr. and Philip Edward Phillips (Tempe, AZ: Arizona Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies, 2009), Book 4, Prose 6, lines 63–66, page 121. 15 Victor Watts, trans. Boethius: The Consolation of Philosophy. Revised Edition (Bury St. Edmunds: Penguin Books, 1999). Biographical Note prefacing the volume. 16 Watts, 105. 17 Joel C. Relihan, trans. Boethius: Consolation of Philosophy (Indianapolis, IN: Hackett Publishing, 2001), 115. 18 Relihan, on the back cover of the book. 19 Stewart, Rand, and Tester, 131. 20 Relihan, 1. 21 Consolation of Queen Elizabeth I, page 43. See n. 14 above. 22 Stewart, Rand, and Tester, 131. 23 See “Introduction” by Quan Manh, in Consolation of Queen Elizabeth I, 1–38 passim. See note 14 above. 24 Alastair J. Minnis, “‘Glosyne is a glorious thynge,’” in The Medieval Boethius: Studies in the Vernacular Translations of “De Consolatione Philosophiae” (Bury St. Edmunds, Suffolk: St Edmundsbury Press, 1987), 119–20. 25 Stewart, Rand, and Tester, 41. 26 Stewart, Rand, and Tester, 275. The Latin phrase reads: Da pater augustam menti conscendere sedem. 27 Watts, 97. See n. 15 above. 28 Relihan, 72. 29 P. G. Walsh, trans. Boethius: The Consolation of Philosophy (Oxford: Oxford University, 1999), 57. 30 Inscribed in Elizabeth I’s italic hand in the manuscript; Consolation of Queen Elizabeth I, Book 3, Meter 9, line 25, page 92. See note 14 above. 31 Daniel Mark Epstein, Lincoln and Whitman: Parallel Lives in Civil War Washington (New York: Ballantine, 2004), 13–14.

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Seeking the Medieval in Shakespeare: The Order of the Garter and the Topos of Derisive Chivalry James N. Ortego II An excerpt from John Chamberlain’s Letters dated 23 August, 1599, describes the great frustration of the populace over the frivolous making of knights by Robert Devereux, Lord Essex, during his Irish campaign. Chamberlain records the following about Essex: The Earl of Essex hath made many new knights, English and Irish, to the number of 59 in the whole since his first arrival. It is much marvelled that this humour should so possess him, that not content with his first dozens and scores, he should thus fall to huddle them up by half hundreds; and it is noted as a strange thing that a subject in the space of seven or eight years (not having been six months together in any one action) should upon so little service and small desert make more knights than are in all the realm besides; and it is doubted that if he continue this course he will shortly bring in tag 1 and rag, cut and long tail, and so draw the order in contempt.

The complaints against Essex suggest a manifestly growing concern with the deterioration of knighthood; in fact, his mismanagement of troops abroad did much to contribute to the Order’s decline. The Order of the Garter seated only twenty-four knights at any given time during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries (even today, membership is limited to twenty-four knights — the monarch and heir apparent are ex officio members of the Garter), but Essex established more knights during the 1590s than, as Chamberlain says, “the realm desired or could maintain.” A little more than a month later, a “Letter of State” notes Queen Elizabeth’s displeasure regarding Essex’s haphazard 2 creation of knights during his Irish campaigns. Queen Elizabeth was especially displeased with the surplus of new knights who could now claim the privileges of knighthood. The injudicious actions of Essex caused his downward spiral from grace with the Queen and the Commonwealth, culminating 3 ultimately with his execution for treason in 1601. The political indiscretions of Essex — a member of the Garter himself — did not escape the attention of Shakespeare and will prove illuminating to scholars of the late Middle Ages as well as to early modernists. Shakespeare’s references to knightly behavior remind medieval critics that the Garter has always been an honorable institution, but also a very public one, and while societies are continuously evolving, the motto of the Garter — “Honi soit qui mal y pense” (“Evil be to him who thinks evil”) — remains a fixed constant,

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forcing every member and observer to confront this fraternity’s esteemed reputation and past accolades, but from an ever-changing perspective. Shakespeare thought differently than Chaucer about the Order of the Garter, just as Queen Elizabeth II today assesses this brotherhood of knights and her responsibilities differently than Queen Victoria, yet the immutable motto of the Garter demands excellence from all members of past, present, and future eras, and the interesting point is that no matter the time period, literary depictions of knighthood inevitably condemn their own society for failing to maintain the standard of perfection demanded by the Order of the Garter. In order to demonstrate what I will refer to as the social devolution of knighthood (or the appearance thereof), I plan to analyze how knighthood and chivalry are represented in late-medieval texts as well as within Shakespeare’s plays. The Garter knights of Shakespeare’s day differed from those of the Middle Ages with respect to induction ceremonies as well as to the physical appearance and dress of fraternity members, but not to the men’s moral and social obligations to God and the monarch, duties which remained constant. From its beginnings, the Garter mandated an adherence to an unyielding standard of ideals and societal expectations, but in order to examine the social disintegration of the Garter appearing in Shakespeare, I must first provide an overview of the founding of the Order of the Garter and the literary rendering of knighthood in key works predating Shakespeare. I therefore examine Lord Bertilak’s assessment of Sir Gawain’s behavior at the end of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, Chaucer’s characterization of ambivalent knights in The Canterbury Tales, including his illustration of chivalry in “The Merchant’s Tale,” then conclude my discussion of medieval works with Caxton’s “Appeal” preceding his edition of Malory’s Le Morte D’ Arthur. I finally focus on Shakespeare’s references to the Garter and its knights, culminating with an examination of The Merry Wives of Windsor (also known as the “Garter Play”), in particular the conclusion of that theatrical piece and what its parodies suggest about the devolution of the Garter in Shakespeare’s day. Every allusion that Shakespeare makes to the Order of the Garter laments the loss of an ideal, yet since its inception, the Garter and its members have been satirized by authors. Shakespeare’s observations about the Garter demonstrate a long-standing literary tradition that mocks an idealized code of behavior, and a return to Shakespeare offers insights into medieval perceptions of the decline of knighthood. Modern scholars have begun to acknowledge this idea; in their recent book Reading the Medieval in Early Modern England, McMullan and Matthews convincingly argue that strict boundaries need not always be applied to period studies of literature. The scholars posit that their book marks the emergence of this renewed recognition of the close relationship between the ‘medieval’ and the ‘early modern’ by exploring

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the full range of ways in which the Middle Ages were constructed 4 and reconfigured in the early modern period.

The study by McMullan and Matthews supports the expansion of scholarship and removes the temporal limitations of literary criticism. Scholarly studies now continue beyond traditional boundaries formerly confining discussions of specific topics. Although scholars examine multiple periods occasionally, as is the case with the social devolution of the Garter and its knights, a critical construct has remained steadfast through the ages; and where one would expect to discover changes, there are none. As Hugh Collins notes, “the order set a benchmark for knightly eminence that was to remain throughout the medie5 val period.” Yet, as Stephanie Trigg points out, “Just as the story about the lady who lost her garter is continuously retold, the effects, or the possibility, of shame continue to haunt the Order and its historians as a worrisome ne6 cessity.” The “worrisome necessity” that Trigg mentions has “haunted the Order” since its inception; thus, the significant allusions to the Garter by Shakespeare offer a glimpse back into medieval history, but his references suggest a continuity of frustration derived from lofty expectations of all-toohuman members, an idea I intend to discuss in The Merry Wives of Windsor and briefly in Richard III and II Henry VI. Most scholars immediately envision Falstaff when the topic of Shakespeare and knighthood arises, and while Falstaff is certainly an errant knight who dishonors the chivalric model of perfection every chance he gets, many critics overlook the multiple references and allusions Shakespeare makes to the deterioration of knighthood, the precepts of chivalry, and the Order of the Garter (established perhaps as early as 1344) in his works spanning the years 1589–1609, the decades during and after Essex’s successes and fail7 ures. The Elizabethans began to hold the once proud Order of the Garter “in contempt” because of Essex’s abuse of authority, an attitude which did not go unnoticed by Shakespeare, who mockingly parodies knights, knightly ceremonies, the chivalric code, and the Order of the Garter in every such allusion with three exceptions: Cymbeline, Pericles, and Edward III, all plays that 8 scholars doubt Shakespeare wrote solus. His allusions to the “disgraces” of Essex satirize the diminishment of a social institution held in high esteem by medieval poets. The diminution of knighthood began long ago and evolved by the late-sixteenth and early-seventeenth centuries into a social outcry against the behavior of knights and the tenets of chivalry. Shakespeare most prominently addresses the attenuation of knighthood through his references to the Order of the Garter, but some background on this ancient society is necessary in order to contextualize Shakespeare’s thematic concerns.

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The Founding of The Order of the Garter The founding of the Order of the Garter in 1349 is traditionally associated with Edward III and his response to the loss of a blue garter belonging to ei9 ther the queen or one of his “friendly women.” As chroniclers have noted, those noble patrons who intentionally ignored the stray garter incurred the wrath of Edward III, prompting the monarch to quip, “You, my masters, do make small account of this blue garter here,” after which he held up the blue leg band and said, “but if God lend me life for a few months, I will make the proudest of you all to reverence the like.” Thus, historians say, marks the 10 origins of the Order of the Garter. Edward III’s apparent objection to his men’s neglect for the unknown lady’s garter compelled him to establish an order of knights sworn to uphold the chivalric virtues and idealism which he had long admired in Arthurian legends. A promise to show kindness to women was the most important of the oaths sworn by the Garter knights after the vow of loyalty to the king and obedience to God, yet despite the best efforts of many knights (virtuous and not-so-virtuous), chivalric rules of conduct and office of knight devolved, changed, and even diminished with time. Political thought evolved, philosophy fluctuated, scientific ideas and discoveries revolutionized perceptions of the universe, and society altered accordingly, but the code of chivalry remained a constant touchstone that impelled 11 Henry VIII to “amend” the codes of behavior mandated by Edward III. By the time the Tudors firmly established themselves in the sixteenth century, Garter knights faced a remarkably different social landscape from that of the mid-fourteenth century. Edward III wanted to replicate the courtly behavior common to the Arthurian legends, and the rise of the middle class along with other “internal pressures” forced knights to seek their chivalric identity outside 12 the realm of military service. By Shakespeare’s day, even though some knights still upheld traditional chivalric principles of knighthood, the Order of the Garter was largely a ceremonial office closely tied to the prevailing political climate of the day. Men from all social classes (even some condemned prisoners) were dubbed knights for political rather than martial reasons, causing a devolution of knighthood and making the image of the “knight in shining armor” an idealized example recognized more by historians than active knights. Queen Elizabeth as head of the Garter naturally supported its unswerving integrity; she took her role as “Sovereign of the Garter” seriously and desired that all Garter members uphold the code of chivalry, but despite her displeasure over the lapses she noted, she did not demand that the Garter grant membership exclusively to the aristocracy.

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Knighthood and the Nobility The value system of chivalry was upheld by those who swore sacred oaths to the king and to God, but the only persons fit to swear such oaths were the nobility. Scholars have already noted that by the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, knighthood was, and had been for a long time, an exclusive office limited to members of the aristocracy. Norman F. Cantor writes: A whole science of heraldry and genealogy developed, expressing the belief that nobility was a matter of blood and not of service. The ritual of knighthood and chivalry became steadily more elaborate and a code of gentility became more universal among the great 13 lords. (467–68)

A son of noble birth in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries often served as page for an aristocratic family, then later trained in the art of warfare, and 14 finally “took on him the knighthood” if that were affordable. As Cantor emphasizes, genealogical restrictions in addition to expenses excluded all but the nobility from knighthood, which, he argues, was “the means by which an old ruling class, whose importance in society was atrophying, attempted to 15 preserve its former status, substituting class exclusiveness for social utility.” The knight still owed his lord martial service when required, but enjoyed by the later Middle Ages a ritual aspect of knighthood that heretofore had not been available. Thus as Cantor demonstrates, the demeanor, ethics, and even morality of the late-fourteenth to early-fifteenth-century knight differed from his predecessors and might best be examined through the depiction of knights in Sir Gawain and the Green Knight and Chaucer’s The Canterbury Tales, 16 but within the context of the Garter’s criterion of perfection. Chivalrous Behavior in “Sir Gawain and the Green Knight” and “The Canterbury Tales” That the office of knighthood was reserved for the upper class is well known, but not as well known are the expectations that the medieval knight would be revered by all, respected in society, and idealized in verse. The Gawain poet and Chaucer often question the purported behavior of knights and their half-hearted oaths to the chivalric paradigm. The Gawain poet’s narrative weighs Sir Gawain’s character against the ideals of chivalry, and although the reader ultimately judges Sir Gawain’s behavior, the Green Knight concludes that Sir Gawain lacks absolute adherence to the Code of 17 Chivalry. After the Green Knight reveals his true identity as Bertilak and his wife’s role in their “test” of Gawain, the Green Knight tells Gawain: Yet you lacked, sir, a little in loyalty there, But the cause was not cunning, nor courtship either, 18 But that you loved your own life; the less, then, to blame.

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The fifteenth-century narrator of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight seems to have no trouble condemning Sir Gawain for withholding the magic garter from the lord of the castle. The Green Knight’s assessment that Gawain “loved [his] own life” reminds readers that Sir Gawain forswears his oath to uphold the truth, even when faced with death. Like it or not, Sir Gawain has sworn to exchange gifts — every gift he received from the lady — with the Green Knight, but Gawain’s deception besmirches his oath to uphold chivalric law, whether or not the Green Knight excuses his behavior. Bertilak does not condemn Gawain for withholding the magic belt and thus saving his life, but the motto of the garter appended to the poem — “Honi soit qui mal y pense” — recalls the virtues expected of all knights. Sir Gawain and the Green Knight succeeds the chivalric principles mandated by Edward III by only a few years, yet the decentralization of knighthood has already become a social concern as texts reveal. Like the Gawain poet, Chaucer captures the devolution of knighthood and chivalry in The Canterbury Tales, but unlike the Gawain poet, Chaucer’s depictions exceed skepticism and embrace satire to depict the loss — not the diminishment — of chivalric tenets. Beginning with the knight’s profile in “The General Prologue” and continuing sporadically throughout the Tales, Chaucer never misses an opportunity to ridicule knightly behavior defying 19 the mandates of chivalry. We learn in “The General Prologue” that the knight “loved chivalrie, / Trouthe and honour, fredom and curteisie” (45– 46), that “At mortal batailles hadde he been fiftene, / And foughten for oure faith at Tramyssene / In lystes thries, and ay slayn his foo,” (61–63), but “Al bismotered with his habergeon, / For he was late ycome from his viage, / 20 And wente for to doon his pilgrymage” (76–78). Fourteenth-century knights certainly fought battles when necessary, but how many knights during Chaucer’s era could honestly claim to have fought in all of the crusades? Maurice Keen points out that Those who have written footnotes to the Prologue have been able, it is true, to find an English knight who played some part in each of the campaigns and engagements that Chaucer’s Knight had a hand in. They have never, though, found a knight who had a hand, as he 21 is supposed to have had, in all of them.

Keen’s study demonstrates Chaucer’s intentional embellishment of the knight’s character by emphasizing the improbability that any knight during the Middle Ages fought in every battle of the Crusades, and Chaucer would have known this as well, yet he deliberately subverts temporal and physical possi22 bilities to humorously conflate the typical martial obligations for knights. Chaucer’s ambiguous characterization of the knight in “The General Prologue” initiates the strain regarding chivalric devolution, which continues throughout the Tales.

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In addition to his having acquired military experience in the Crusades, Chaucer’s knight has fought three duels, and each time emerged victorious over his “foo.” That a fourteenth-century knight fought a duel or three is not unusual, but Chaucer’s literary concept raises a few important questions: Why did the knight have to fight a duel on three separate occasions? Did he encounter multiple affronts to his honor? And if so, does the knight’s obligation to fight three duels reveal his ill temper, detrimental character, or model chivalric behavior? Chaucer does not answer these questions, but simply praises the knight for his martial prowess and incorruptible conduct; however, an ironical tone undermines the knight’s combats and challenges arguments for his idealization in that introductory segment of the Tales. Chaucer is aware of his own poetic effects, and what we as readers discover upon closer examination of Chaucer is his intentional depiction of a medieval knight whose incredulous lifestyle suggests a devolution of knighthood. Scholars have not reached a consensus regarding the portrait of the knight in “The General Prologue”: some argue the knight is idealized, and some argue he is satirized, but few scholars would claim that Januarie in “The Merchant’s Tale” and Sir Thopas in “The Tale of Sir Thopas” embody 23 knightly comportment at its finest. Chaucer’s poetic conflation of Januarie and Sir Thopas, however, emphasizes the sorry state of knighthood in the late fourteenth century. We see in “The Merchant’s Tale” a hedonistic knight who repents from his debaucherous lifestyle not because of his age, but because of the physical limitations brought about by years of neglect and abuse. After the Merchant introduces Januarie as a lifelong bachelor, the Merchant says: And sixty yeer a wyflees man was hee, And folwed ay his bodily delyt On wommen, ther as was his appetyt. (1248–50)

Januarie is not faulted for remaining a bachelor, but for his long-standing “delyt on wommen,” a lifestyle that eventually results in his decrepit physical state, but the decay of Januarie’s physical abilities advances Chaucer’s motif regarding the devolution of knighthood. The statutes of the Garter mandated that knights honor God, the king, and women of all classes, but exemplary moral behavior is not enough, as Chaucer suggests through his literary sketch of Januarie. If the mind is kept pure but the body defiled via debauchery, then the knight in question is guilty of violating the moral system of chivalry, an idea suggested by Chaucer when Januarie explains his motivations for marriage. Januarie’s pre-nuptial toast embellishes his sexual lasciviousness, especially his admission of former transgressions, but also underscores Chaucer’s literary thesis regarding the responsibilities of knighthood. Upon making his decision to marry, Januarie tells his guests:

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Freendes, I am hoor and oold, And almoost, God woot, on my pittes brynke; Upon my soule somwhat moste I thynke. I have my body folily despended; Blessed be God that it shal been amended!” (1400–04)

Januarie’s admission that old age forces him to think somewhat upon his soul hints at the insincerity of his reform and recalls his lifetime of physical debauchery and negligent health care, but equally important is the prominence Chaucer accords to the physical body of the ill-mannered knight. The poet’s topos in “The Merchant’s Tale,” for all the tale’s cuckolding, deceptive characters, and allegorical garden scene, implies that the physical as well as the moral principles of chivalry must be upheld to maintain the consummate precepts of knighthood. Chaucer’s narrative structure in the Tales denotes a progressive representation of delinquent knights, beginning with the emphasis on the knight’s martial feats in “The General Prologue,” then advancing to the physical consequences of sexually immoral behavior symbolized by Januarie in “The Merchant’s Tale,” and culminating with the outlandish behavior and appearance of Sir Thopas, perhaps the most preposterous knight in all of English literature. Whereas the deterioration of knighthood in “The Merchant’s Tale” focuses on the body physical, the satirization of knighthood in “The Tale of Sir Thopas” centers on the appearance — not physicality, deeds, or moral behavior — of the knight. About the clothing of Sir Thopas, we discover that His shoon [were made] of cordewane. Of Brugges were his hosen broun, His robe was of syklatoun, 24 That coste many a jane. (732–35)

The fine leather shoes, fancy leg stockings, and silk robe certainly dazzle the eye, but Sir Thopas will soon battle the giant “Sir Olifaunt”; such a foe necessitates suitable apparel for a knight, at the very least, body armor; but despite his peculiar appearance, Sir Thopas represents for Chaucer a literary mockery of knights who valued appearance over substance and form over 25 function. Sir Thopas is better suited to attend a celebratory feast or holiday festivities, but to understand Chaucer’s satirical depiction of the decaying state of knighthood, readers must remember that Chaucer’s derision of Sir Thopas also indirectly mocks any fourteenth-century knight more concerned with his appearance than his chivalric responsibilities. Whereas the clothing of Sir Thopas associates him with the bourgeois class, his physical training and hobbies associate him with the commoners, but in a manner that subverts the reputation of knighthood. When describing Sir Thopas’s hunting abilities, Chaucer tells us that the buffoonish knight is skilled in the arts of the nobility, for he

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koude hunte at wilde deer, And ride an haukyng for river With grey goshauk on honde; Therto he was a good archeer. (736–39)

We learn that Sir Thopas rides through the forest filled with “bothe bukke and hare,” but that the valiant knight “hadde almest / Bitid a sory care” for such dangers; he is a good hunter who fears not to “hunt” and “hauk,” which 26 is part of the required training for the nobility, and expected of knights. But the details regarding Sir Thopas’s physical strength, “Of wrastlyng was ther noon his peer, / Ther any ram shal stonde” (740–41), link him with the commoners, which causes a representative discrepancy because knighthood, along with hunting and hawking, was reserved for the nobility, but wrestling 27 belonged to the common man. Chaucer’s earlier description of Robyn the Miller in “The General Prologue” reminds us that “At wrastlynge he [the Miller] wolde have alwey the ram,” and whereas this assessment is a compliment to the Miller, it is a satirical criticism for a bourgeois knight such as 28 Sir Thopas. The comical depiction of Sir Thopas is then as much a lampoon on the appearance of knights as it is on their social standing and the diminishment of a chivalric society. Chaucer could have given himself any tale to tell about any subject in any narrative style, yet he chose a narrative in an irksome rhyme scheme to portray a knight who appears to represent the virtues of chivalry, yet degrades himself and the fraternity of knighthood via his buffoonish appearance, hobbies, and habits. Chaucer’s literary design regarding the devolution of knighthood begins with the knight in “The General Prologue,” continues with Januarie in “The Merchant’s Tale,” and culminates with “The Tale of Sir Thopas,” yet one constant remains: the poet’s literary depiction of the degeneration of knighthood and chivalry into a laughable state. Caxton’s Appeal for the Restoration of Chivalry Whereas Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales requires some literary interpretation to understand the poet’s representation of the devolution of knighthood, William Caxton’s “Prefaces,” which appeared approximately one hundred years after Chaucer, but before Shakespeare, directly addresses the reader with the 29 writer’s concerns over the decay of chivalry. Caxton, like Chaucer, expresses reservations over the state of knighthood, but unlike Chaucer, he relies on an emotional appeal to readers to induce them to emulate the exemplary behavior of King Arthur, his knights, and the ladies of Arthur’s court. The Preface to Malory’s Le Morte D’Arthur in particular reveals Caxton’s desire to revitalize the decaying code of chivalry. After he closes by urging readers to imitate the behavior of Arthur’s knights, Caxton then pleads:

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I, according to my copy have down set it [Malory’s Le Morte D’Arthur] in print, to the intent that noble men may see and learn the noble acts of chivalry, the gentle and virtuous deeds that some knights used in those days, by which they came to honour, and how they that were vicious were punished and oft put to shame and rebuke; humbly beseeching all noble lords and ladies and all other estates, of what estate or degree they be of, that shall see and read in this said book and work, that they take the good and honest acts in their remembrance and to follow the same, wherein they shall find many joyous and pleasant histories and noble and re30 nowned acts of humanity, gentleness, and chivalry.

Caxton’s frustration with chivalry in 1485, the year he printed Le Morte D’Arthur, exemplifies the attenuation of knighthood and the apathetic temperament of the aristocracy regarding chivalry. He appeals specifically to the nobility and provides a glimpse into an already devolving state of knighthood approximately one hundred years before Shakespeare’s plays first appeared on stage, but contextualizing Caxton’s anxiety is important to under31 standing Shakespeare’s derision of knights and their ceremonies. Although the high standards of the Garter remained a constant over the years, literary representations of knights and chivalry, especially in Shakespeare, continued to lament the decay of knighthood and the chivalric ethic. By the 1590s, common citizens were dubbed knights for little or no reason other than nepotism, often roaming the streets of London and frequently causing more harm than good, and even though Queen Elizabeth labored to maintain the esteemed ideals of chivalry, the Garter knight of Shakespeare’s day 32 was frequently scrutinized in literature. And Shakespeare had no reservations mocking knights or the devolution of chivalry. The Influx of Knights in Elizabethan England The Irish Wars plagued Queen Elizabeth for almost the entirety of her reign, but the battles that occurred under the charge of Robert Devereux, Lord Essex (a one-time favorite of the Queen), were the most detrimental to knight33 hood and chivalry. Essex garnered immense support from the monarchy for his successes in Ireland during the 1590s, but lost it all when in 1599 he appointed himself commander of the troops dispatched to quell the rebellion in Ireland. In what proved to be a grievous error, Essex began knighting soldiers in anticipation, not actualization, of “honour,” thus subverting a ceremony reserved for recognizing heroism in battle. The result was an influx of newly-created knights who suddenly found themselves among the gentility, but these soldiers knew nothing of the “matter of blood” and cared little for an oath hastily sworn (if sworn at all), and seldom acknowledged 34 outside celebratory feasts and holidays.

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G. B. Harrison’s The Elizabethan Journals outlines the fiasco of Essex and his indiscriminate establishment of knights as reflected in contemporary accounts describing the Commonwealth’s frustration, anger, and finally outrage at Essex’s abuse of power. In an account dated 16th October, 1591, the anonymous author notes that Essex created twenty- four new knights in expectation, not realization, of obtaining future honors; he records the following about Essex: The next day (8th) the Earl of Essex took his horse very early and went to a hill near the town, not far from St. Katherine’s Castle, bemoaning his fortune that he was recalled before he was master of the market place; and there on a fair green in sight of the town (where there were 3000 soldiers besides the inhabitants), commanding all the gentlemen to dismount, he told them he was very sorry that no opportunity was offered him to have led them into a place where they might have gained honour; but the fault was not his neither was it theirs, for he had received great good will in all, and thereof was determined to give notes of honour to some. And there 35 he made twenty-four knights.

The “good will” that motivated Essex to create twenty-four knights likely originated from his frustration over the lack of battle and his desire to pacify the “gentlemen” to maintain his respect as commander, but equally signifi36 cant is Essex’s negligence in regards to the traditional aspect of knighthood. We learn from a report only two weeks later that Essex’s arbitrary creation of that number of knights was “greatly mocked” by the populace. In a letter that dates 31st October, 1591, an account of Essex’s fortification of troops tells us about him: The war in Normandy and Brittany is greatly liked, and 1000 prisoners are to be sent over to the siege of Rouen and 1000 new soldiers to the Earl of Essex, who has obtained leave to remain there till he has done something to revenge his brother’s death; but 37 his making of twenty-four knights is greatly mocked.

The arbitrary creation of knights proved detrimental to the welfare of the Commonwealth; the nobility complained that an office traditionally reserved for the aristocracy now included commoners, and the general populace protested the abuse they suffered at the hands of knights who held little or no 38 regard for the chivalric code. Shakespeare on Knightly Ceremonies, Behavior, and Falstaff This change in knightly behavior was not unnoticed by Shakespeare, whose literary depiction of corrupt knights always mocks the customs associated with knighthood and the Order of the Garter, but always within a context more relative to medieval than early modern society. Shakespeare’s I Henry

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VI, for instance, summarizes the devolution of knightly behavior and the Order of the Garter when Talbot defends the inglorious discharge of Fastolf after the cowardly knight flees from battle. After Talbot accuses Fastolf of having been “unworthily installed in that high degree” (4.1.16–17) and tears the garter from his leg, Talbot responds to Gloucester’s objections by saying: When first this order was ordain’d, my lords, Knights of the Garter were of noble birth, Valiant and virtuous, full of haughty courage, Such as were grown to credit by the wars; Not fearing death, nor shrinking for distress, But always resolute in most extremes. He then, that is not furnish’d in this sort, Doth but usurp the sacred name of knight, 39 Profaning this most honorable order. (4.1.33–41)

Talbot’s speech recalls the former glories of the Garter by juxtaposing former 40 models of perfection to Fastolf’s illicit behavior. The knights of old, Talbot reminds us, were of “noble birth,” “full of courage,” and advanced their reputation “by the wars”; Fastolf is none of these things, but depicted instead more like a knight of Essex’s than of the idealized Order established by Edward III, yet the criteria for knightly behavior remained a constant through the centuries. Shakespeare then through his theatrical illustration of Fastolf disparages knighthood and laments the decline of the Garter, yet in terms that remind spectators of archetypes now faded into obscurity. The playwright refers to medieval gallantry to judge the performance and condition of early modern knights, but although he looks to history for poetic inspiration, he records his observations not according to the expectations of his day, but according to those of earlier writers, such as Chaucer. Shakespeare in effect applies a fourteenth-century aesthetic paradigm to evaluate the knights of his day, but he cannot do otherwise, for the tenets of chivalry remained fixed for centuries, yet its representatives devolved into a mockery of knighthood. Whereas Talbot laments the loss of principles once observed by knights of the Garter, Cade in II Henry VI derides the customs associated with promotion to knighthood. While Shakespeare was drafting perhaps his very first 41 play, II Henry VI, Essex was busy in Ireland indiscriminately establishing new knights; unsurprisingly, II Henry VI features an astute satire on Essex’s disregard for traditional knightly customs and the loss of a venerable medie42 val ideal. Before Jack Cade leads the rebel forces to overthrow the city, he first dubs himself a knight to prepare for battle with Sir Humphrey, then presumes to meet Sir Humphrey as an equal. The following brief exchange is all Cade requires to become a knight: Cade. Stand, villain, stand, or I’ll fell thee down. He shall be encount’red with a man as good as himself.

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He is but a knight, is ‘a? Mich. No. Cade. To equal him, I will make myself a knight presently. [Kneels] Rise up Sir John Mortimer. [Rises] Now have at him! (4.2.115–21)

Cade’s presumptuous behavior ridicules the traditions required to become a knight and mockingly parodies the creation of knights in Ireland by Essex. No authority figure has granted him knighthood, no oath has been sworn, and no formal ritual has been observed; he simply kneels and “rises” as “Sir John Mortimer.” The ceremonial rituals of knighthood have been abandoned and replaced with a disdain for custom, but such characterization is part of Shakespeare’s literary design that satirizes early modern Garter knights, including those dubbed by Essex without formality while in Ireland. Shakespeare represents the devolution of knighthood through references to medieval ideals and subverted early modern customs, but he also lampoons knights who were established in exchange for political favors. The standards established by Edward III and revised by Henry VIII mandate, as Talbot reminds us, acceptance into the Garter based upon social status, valor, and martial reputation; but by Shakespeare’s day, entrance requirements into the Garter also included the granting of political favor, a subject the playwright frequently refers to in his works. In II Henry IV, for instance, the Chief Justice excuses Falstaff’s part in the Gadshill robbery because he believes the knight has found favor with the royal family. After confirming with his servant Falstaff’s guilt in the “robb’ry,” the servant tells the Chief Justice about Falstaff, “but he hath since done good / service at Shrewsbury, and (as I hear) is now going / with some charge to the Lord John of Lancaster” (1.2.61–63). Falstaff’s “good service at Shrewsbury” consisted of stabbing Hotspur’s dead body and hauling away the corpse in order to claim credit for killing one of the great rebel leaders, but the Justice does not know what the combatant did or did not do at Shrewsbury, and thus to avoid conflict with the royal family, tells Falstaff, “Your day’s service at Shrewsbury hath a little / gilded over your night’s exploit on Gadshill” 43 (1.2.148–49). Just moments before speaking these lines, the judicial authority had sought Falstaff on criminal charges, but his perspective changes upon believing the knight to be allied with Prince John. The man of law is not muddleheaded; he is perfectly capable of judging character but knows that if Falstaff has procured favor with the king or his brothers, he must be treated with courtesy, whether or not he deserves such treatment. The fear of political retribution motivates the Chief Justice to excuse Falstaff’s criminal behavior; thus Shakespeare expresses the political nepotism that existed among knights and the nobility in Elizabethan England, but received little attention in writers such as Chaucer. The intrigue of this scene

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lies in Shakespeare’s mockery of the creation of knights via political, not martial, considerations, a point that Sir Toby Belch in Twelfth Night emphasizes when embellishing Sir Andrew’s martial skills in an effort to save Ague44 cheek from the “wrath” of Viola. Twelfth Night features two knights — Sir Toby Belch and Sir Andrew 45 Aguecheek — Shakespeare presents as detrimental to the order of society. Sir Toby and Sir Andrew epitomize knights established for political reasons rather than merit. In answer to Viola’s queries regarding Sir Andrew, Toby tells her: He is knight, dubb’d with unhatch’d rapier, and on carpet consideration, but he is a devil in private brawl. Souls and bodies hath he divorc’d three, and his incensement at this moment is so implacable, that satisfaction can be none but by pangs of death and sepulcher. Hob, nob, is his word; giv’t or take’t. (3.4.235–40)

Anne Barton says of the phrase “carpet consideration” that “a carpet knighthood was one not given on the battlefield for services performed there, hence often one given for political reasons; consideration suggests a bought 46 knighthood.” Sir Toby’s deceptive portrait of Aguecheek reveals the problems that often resulted when nepotism dictated the terms of knighthood: uncontrollable, often violent, behavior. We learn from Sir Toby that Sir Andrew has killed three men in “private brawls,” and that “Hob nob is his word,” not the ethos of chivalry. The Oxford English Dictionary notes that “Hob” was in Shakespeare’s day, “a familiar or rustic variation of the Christian name Robert or Robin”; if we remember that Lord Essex was named Robert Devereux, and that Shakespeare often alluded to contemporary people and events in his plays, then Sir Toby’s comments might intentionally refer to the folly 47 of Essex’s dubbing knights for “good will.” The “carpet consideration” motif expands Shakespeare’s interest in errant knights and their ceremonies; we see in Shakespeare a comprehensive study of the devolution of chivalry, one that, unlike many of his medieval literary predecessors, encompasses all aspects of Garter knights and their rituals. Shakespeare, Falstaff, and The Order of the Garter In all of Shakespeare’s plays that feature a knight, few, if any, are worse than Falstaff. A noted womanizer, drunkard, liar, thief, and all-around vagabond, Falstaff does little that adheres to the principles of chivalry. He subverts everything about knighthood, and his exploits in I Henry IV and II Henry IV have been well documented by scholars; there is no need to re-hash the Falstaff of Shakespeare’s history plays, but The Merry Wives of Windsor must be considered when examining Shakespeare’s theatrical rendering of the Garter and its knights, which will now be undertaken after a brief discussion of Richard III.

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Shakespeare’s dramatic portrayal of the Order of the Garter consistently derides knightly ceremonies and behavior; the playwright always seems to have the misdeeds of Essex in mind, perhaps because the influx of knights caused the populace to look with “contempt” upon the Order, an idea ech48 oed by Queen Elizabeth in Shakespeare’s Richard III. King Richard and Queen Elizabeth argue during a confrontational scene that pivots the plot, but the queen chides Richard in language that transcends the dramatic illusion on stage and encourages spectators to think of the Garter such as it was in Shakespeare’s day rather than fixate upon simple dialogue exchanged by characters on stage. When King Richard says to Queen Elizabeth, “I swear” in protest of her accusations, she interrupts him and replies: By nothing, for this is no oath; Thy George profan’d, hath lost his lordly honor; Thy Garter, blemish’d, pawn’d his knightly virtue; Thy crown, usurp’d, disgrac’d his kingly glory. If something thou wouldst swear to be believ’d, Swear then by something that thou has not wrong’d. (4.4.368–73) 49

Historians have documented the cruelty of Richard III; Shakespeare himself followed such accounts when dramatizing Richard’s life and reign, but the phrases that refer directly to the Order of the Garter — “George profan’d,” “garter blemish’d,” and “disgrac’d his kingly glory” — are entirely 50 Shakespeare’s dramatic invention. The reference to “George profaned” alludes to Richard’s brother, George, Duke of Clarence, as well as to Saint George, patron saint of the Order of the Garter. And of course the “garter” to which the Queen alludes is the emblem of the Order of the Garter and the organization itself, which Richard has “blemished” and “pawned” with his tyrannical and riotous behavior. Queen Elizabeth’s speech suggests the devolution of the Garter in Shakespeare’s day, for neither More’s Richard III nor Holingshed’s Chronicles mention anything about Richard’s “profanation” of the Order of the Garter. While Shakespeare followed More and Holingshed closely for source material, Elizabeth’s accusations against Richard represent the dramatist’s own creative invention, one that decries the loss of a medieval idealization of the Garter. Whereas Queen Elizabeth in Richard III clearly outlines Richard’s violations of the Garter’s principles, The Merry Wives of Windsor more than any 51 other Shakespearean play derides knightly ceremonies, especially those associated with the Garter, but in a subtle manner that reveals the fullest extent 52 of the devolution of knighthood and chivalry. The Merry Wives of Windsor is the only play by Shakespeare set in Elizabethan England, and one of the few with no direct source; the play is penned entirely from Shakespeare’s imaginative efforts, and as such, represents more closely the dramatist’s assess53 ment of the Garter and its knights. With no source to follow, Shakespeare

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is free to indulge in poetic license, and so he does, especially in the play’s conclusion, which criticizes the celebratory feasts of the Garter while maintaining a temperate level of respect. Falstaff during the conclusion is bound and “inducted” into a fraternal order of faeries, elves, and other woodland spirits, and just as newly-inducted knights observed a customary initiation upon entrance into the Order of the Garter, so too does Falstaff undergo a 54 ritual, but one that accentuates the deterioration of the Garter. We see in Act 5 the ridiculous knight standing beneath Herne’s Oak “with a buck’s head upon him,” soon to be accosted by a hobgoblin, a satyr, and assorted fairies who “sing a song about him,” while Pistol gives the following orders to his fellow spirit creatures: Elves, list your names; silence, you aery toys! Cricket, to Windsor chimneys shalt thou leap; Where fires thou find’st unrak’d and hearths unswept, There pinch the maids as blue as bilberry; Our radiant Queen hates sluts and sluttery. (5.5.42–46)

Pistol’s directions “to Windsor” refer to the chapel of St. George (the patron saint of the Garter), housed at Windsor Castle, also the home of the Garter knights, one of the royal palaces of Queen Elizabeth I, and the conventional feast and induction of new knights that took place on April 23rd, St. George’s day. The “radiant Queen” refers to Queen Elizabeth herself and her serious demeanor; she had no patience for “sluttery,” as Pistol says, but Shakespeare’s contemporary references patronize Queen Elizabeth and her attendants at the Feast of St. George, all the while mocking knighthood and 55 its ceremonies. The Merry Wives of Windsor was written to commemorate the Feast of St. George, the Order of the Garter, and to satisfy Queen Elizabeth’s request to see “Falstaff in love,” all of which were serious topics in Shakespeare’s day, yet he intentionally chose a comedic form that disparages and 56 humiliates the Garter, its knights, and their triumphal induction. Shakespeare’s light-hearted tweaking of the foibles of knighthood seems ill-befitting a sacred establishment, yet if we remember that medieval authors satirized knights long before Shakespeare, then the Bard’s literary portrayal of a delinquent knight undergoing a ludicrous induction extends the devolution of knighthood beyond the individual to the body. Falstaff’s “punishment” beneath Herne’s Oak is the focal point of humor, but the joke is on the Garter knights in attendance. The final scene at Herne’s Oak is not so much a punishment as a burlesque initiation of knighthood and the festivities that follow. Shortly after the elves respond to Pistol’s orders, the wives and their cohorts gather about Falstaff to penalize his behavior. As he drops to the ground fearful to look upon the “fairies,” Falstaff cries out as the tapers burn his fingers, and then Mistress Quickly leads her group in the following song:

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Fie on sinful fantasy! Fie on lust and luxury! Lust is but a bloody fire, Kindled with unchaste desire, Fed in heart, whose flames aspire, As thoughts do blow them, higher and higher. Pinch him, fairies, mutually! Pinch him for his villainy! Pinch him, and burn him, and turn him about, Till candles, and starlight, and moonshine be out. (5.5.93–102)

Falstaff suffers comical torments for his courtship of Mrs. Page and Mrs. Ford, but the “scornful rhymes” signify Shakespeare’s social commentary on 57 the diminishment of the chivalric code. The fairies accentuate Falstaff’s “lust and lechery,” “unchaste desire,” “villainy,” and “sinful fantasy,” and then “punish” his disgraceful lifestyle, but interestingly, his crimes also represent those that Garter knights swore to avoid. The Garter knights in attendance at the Feast of St. George must have felt the sting of Shakespeare’s satire a little more sharply than other spectators, for watching a delinquent knight tormented for his reprehensible behavior likely stirred feelings of nervous anticipation as well as laughter. That Shakespeare pokes fun at the Garter and its knights becomes clearer with Falstaff’s subsequent admission of guilt. After the “scornful rhymes” conclude, the two wives upbraid Falstaff’s “lecherous” conduct and along with Evans, convince Falstaff to yield to their entreaties; he finally admits, Well, I am your theme. You have the start of me, I am dejected. I am not able to answer the Welsch flannel; ignorance itself is a plummet o’er me. Use me as you will. (5.5.161–64)

The humiliation of Falstaff at the conclusion of the play concludes a pattern that first punishes him for his ill behavior, then forces his admission of guilt, 58 and finally culminates with forgiveness and a celebratory feast. But inviting Falstaff to a banquet also completes Shakespeare’s parody of the initiation rites associated with the Order of the Garter. Falstaff has thus far journeyed to the forest for “revelry” that mimics an initiation rite, endured reprimands that allude to common violations of the chivalric code, acquiesced to demands that mimic an oath to forswear illicit behavior, and accepted an invitation to a feast that anticipates a “new” Falstaff. The closing scene of The Merry Wives of Windsor most clearly pronounces Shakespeare’s satirical allusions to the Order of the Garter and his utter humiliation of a corrupt knight, yet also raises an important question: if The Merry Wives of Windsor was written to celebrate a regalement honoring England’s finest knights (as most scholars now believe), then why would Shakespeare mock this ancient

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and respected order in the presence of the Queen, new inductees, and senior 59 members of the Garter? No one truly knows what Shakespeare was thinking, but the literary evidence as it appears in his theatrical depiction of the Garter knights and their rituals suggests that Shakespeare — like his medieval predecessors — observed and then mocked the deterioration of chivalric principles. The Order of the Garter as portrayed in Shakespeare remained an honorable institution; the dramatist never lampoons the Garter as an organization, but instead ridicules its members and their efforts to maintain the moral system of chivalry, an observation encouraged perhaps by societal expectations of a continuation of the impressive goals established by Edward III. One might expect that literature from eras preceding Shakespeare would portray knighthood and chivalry differently than the Bard, but this is not the case. As McMullan and Matthews write in their introduction: Early Modern historians writing on the Order cannot reject the medieval because they are drawn to the continuity of national tradition that the Order represents; at the same time, they wish to impose their own critical judgements on the medieval past, producing the medieval period as a historical object worthy of study and 60 dispute within antiquarian discourses.

Chaucer and the Gawain poet disparagingly portray knights and their behavior just as stringently as Shakespeare, but the steadfast literary complaints against knighthood reveal a certain synchronicity. Medieval knights are satirized because they fail to maintain a sublime set of ideals, but since these rules of conduct remain constant and do not change over time, writers and historians in subsequent eras inevitably complain about the Garter knights’ failure to maintain the consummate standards of their fraternity just as medieval authors did. Even today, the strict customs of the Garter must be followed, upon penalty of degradation, although the modern era differs considerably from the medieval and early modern periods. The Japanese Emperor Hirohito, for instance, was formally dismissed from the Order of the Garter in 1941 (no doubt for political reasons), but his appointment was re-instated in 1971, which reminds us that people change all too whimsically, but re61 vered institutions and ideals remain immutable.

Notes 1

Quoted from The Elizabethan Journals, G. B. Harrison, Vol. II (Garden City, NY: Anchor Books, 1965): 111. 2 The anonymous letter cited by Harrison notes about Essex that “My Lord’s [Essex] sudden return brings all sorts of knights, captains, officers and soldiers from thence that

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the City is of full of them, to the great discontent of her Majesty that they are suffered to leave their charge.” Harrison, Vol. II, 118. 3 Two helpful editions of sixteenth-century historical documents relating to the strained relationship between Queen Elizabeth and Essex are those by Arthur F. Kinney, Elizabethan Backgrounds (Hamden, CT: Archon Books, 1975): 106–86, and Harrison, Vol. II. Kinney offers an introductory essay that precedes each document, but Harrison offers little commentary aside from his editing and reprinting of historical documents. Scholarly works of particular interest on the history between Elizabeth and Essex include Frances Teague, “Elizabeth I: Queen of England,” 522–47 in Women Writers of the Renaissance and Reformation, ed. Katharina M. Wilson (Athens: Georgia UP, 1987); John Guy, “Elizabeth I: The Queen and Politics,”183–202 in Where Are We Now in Shakespearean Studies? 3 volumes, The Shakespeare International Yearbook, Vol. II, W.R. Elton and John M. Mucciolo, eds. (Aldershot, UK: Ashgate, 2002); Ray Heffner, “Essex, The Ideal Courtier,” ELH 1 (April 1934): 7–36; and Lisa Hopkins, Queen Elizabeth I and Her Court (London; New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1990). Hopkins is especially known for her studies of Elizabeth I and Essex in terms of their political relationship, but all of the aforementioned works are useful reading. 4 Quoted from the “Introduction” to Reading the Medieval in Early Modern England, Gordon McMullan and David Matthews (Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 2007): 1–14 (6). 5 Hugh E. L. Collins, The Order of the Garter, 1348–1461: Chivalry and Politics in Late Medieval England (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2000): “Introduction” 1–5 (1). Collins aims “to re-evaluate the early history of the Garter society”(3) and fully treats the relationship between the monarch, the Garter knights, and the society they served. He maintains throughout his study, however, that while the dynamics of Garter membership certainly changed as readily as history, the high standards and expectations for the fraternity of knights remained constant. 6 Stephanie Trigg, “‘Shamed Be…’: Historicizing Shame in Medieval and Early Modern Courtly Ritual,” Exemplaria 19 (Spring 2007): 67–89 (87). 7 Falstaff has drawn an enormous amount of scholarly attention, most of which discusses either his comical behavior in The Merry Wives of Windsor, or his connections to the history and politics in the Henriad. Interested readers should peruse Leslie S. Katz, “The Merry Wives of Windsor: Sharing the Queen’s Holiday,” Representations 51 (1995 Summer): 77–93; Regina M. Buccola, “Shakespeare’s Fairy Dance with Religio-Political Controversy in The Merry Wives of Windsor,” 159–79 in Shakespeare and the Culture of Christianity in Early Modern England, ed. Dennis Taylor and David Beauregard (New York: Fordham UP, 2003); Ronald Huebert, “Levels of Parody in The Merry Wives of Windsor,” English Studies in Canada 3 (1977): 136–52; Anita Helmbold, “King of the Revels or King of the Rebels?,” Upstart Crow 16 (1996): 70–91; David Scott Kastan, “Killed with Hard Opinions: Oldcastle, Falstaff, and the Reformed Text of I Henry IV,” 211–27 in Textual Formations and Reformations, Laurie E. Maguire and Thomas L. Berger, eds. (Newark, DE: Delaware UP, 1998); and Lawrence Levin, “Hotspur, Falstaff, and the Emblem of Wrath in I Henry IV,” Shakespeare Studies 10 (1977): 43–65. The critical works on Falstaff are so vast that scholars have even discussed Falstaff’s obesity: David Womersley, “Why is Falstaff Fat?,”Review of English Studies 47 (1996): 1–22, and Barbara Everett, “The Fatness of Falstaff: Shakespeare and Character,” Proceedings of the British Academy 76 (1990): 109–28. But few critics have studied Falstaff as a metaphorical parody of Essex’s mismanagement of his campaigns in Ireland, as proposed in this essay.

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Not every allusion in Shakespeare mocks knights, knightly ceremonies, and the chivalric code, but the plays that do feature an idealistic depiction of chivalry and knights — Cymbeline, Pericles, and Edward III — are all plays that scholars denote as collaborative efforts between Shakespeare and another playwright. Act V of Cymbeline is thought by scholars to have been written by a co-author, as are Acts I and II of Pericles and the majority of Edward III. I will not debate the authorship question regarding Shakespeare’s contribution to Cymbeline, Pericles, and Edward III, but I would like to point out these three plays offer the only variations in the thematic treatment of chivalry and knighthood in the entire Shakespearean Canon. Interested readers should refer to Cymbeline (5.2.1–10 and 5.5.19–22) for an honorable depiction of the chivalric code; Pericles (Act 2) for an idealistic depiction of a knightly ceremony; and Edward III (3.3.172–78) for a show of exemplary behavior by a knight who attains honors in battle, and a king who insists that all of his knights — including his own son — gain military glory before being knighted. Other than these three plays of dubious authorship, nowhere else does Shakespeare depict knights or knightly ceremonies and orders in an idealized manner. 9 Both Polydore Vergil’s Angelica Historia and William Harrison’s The Description of England include this famous account of Edward III’s motivation for establishing the Order of the Garter. Most scholars now attribute at least the Garter’s origins (if not the “ribbon incident”) to Edward III, but some scholars such as Lisa Jefferson, “MS Arundel 48 and the Earliest Statutes of the Order of the Garter,” The English Historical Review 109 (April 1994): 356–85 (356), argue that Henry V — not Edward III — established the earliest statutes of the Order of the Garter on April 22, 1415. 10 Quoted from William Harrison, The Description of England, Georges Edelen, ed. (Washington, D.C. and New York: The Folger Shakespeare Library and Dover Publications, Inc., 1994): 105. 11 Jefferson, see n. 9 above and her n.1. 12 Richard W. Kaeuper and Bohna Montgomery, “War and Chivalry,” 273–91 in A Companion to Medieval English Literature and Culture c. 1350 – c. 1500, Peter Brown, ed. (Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishing, 2007), provide a useful study on the changes in chivalry and the “conducts of war” due to social forces such as the Hundred Years’ War. 13 Norman Cantor, The Civilization of the Middle Ages (New York: Harper Collins, 1993): 468. 14 Chaucer himself served as page in the household of John of Gaunt but did not “take on himself” the office of knight. 15 Cantor, 468. See note 13 above. 16 While I am aware of the numerous medieval texts depicting knightly custom and behavior, I chose Sir Gawain and the Green Knight and The Canterbury Tales because these works best demonstrate a progressive evolution of chivalric behavior as displayed in fictive texts — beginning with the Gawain poet’s questioning of Sir Gawain’s actions at the conclusion of that poem, then appearing in Chaucer as a skeptical view of knighthood, and ultimately reaching a mockery of knighthood as reflected through Sir Thopas. Additionally, the non-specialist will be able to follow my argument more readily in popular texts than in lesser-known works, and I hope that this essay draws scholars in from other fields as well as medievalists. 17 See, for instance, Francis Ingledew, “Sir Gawain and the Green Knight” and the Order of the Garter (Notre Dame, IN: Notre Dame UP, 2006); Kevin Gustafson, “Sir Gawain and the Green Knight,” 619–33 in A Companion to Medieval English Literature and Culture c. 1350–c. 1500, Peter Brown, ed. (Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishing, 2007); and

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Valeria Allen, “Sir Gawain: Cowardyse and the Fourth Pentad,” Review of English Studies 43 (1992): 181–93. That the Gawain poet intends for his audience to consider Gawain’s behavior in light of the chivalric code is clear from the inclusion of the Garter’s motto “Honi soit qui mal y pense” (“Evil be to him who thinks evil”) inscribed on the final page of the MS. 18 Quoted from Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, Marie Borroff, trans., Sir Gawain and the Green Knight (New York: W.W. Norton, 1967): lines 2366–68. 19 Scholars have not reached a consensus regarding the idealization of Chaucer’s knight, and at present, the matter is still debated. See note 21 below. 20 All quotes from Chaucer are taken from The Riverside Chaucer, 3rd Ed., Larry Benson, ed. (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1987). 21 Quoted from Maurice Keen, “Chaucer’s Knight, the English Aristocracy and the Crusade,” 45–61 in English Court Culture in the Later Middle Ages, V.J. Scattergood and J.W. Sherborne, eds. (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1983). The litany of battleexperience and the shape of the knight’s clothing testify for some scholars to Chaucer’s satirical depiction. The knight has fought in the crusades, as he should, but as Terry Jones points out, the knight has also voluntarily joined numerous battles as a mercenary, which was in Chaucer’s day a despicable character. Terry Jones, Chaucer’s Knight: the Portrait of a Medieval Mercenary (New York: Methuen Publishing Ltd., 1980), represents perhaps the most famous study of Chaucer’s satirical depiction of the knight, but interested readers should also refer to Paul T. Thurston’s Artistic Ambivalence in Chaucer’s “Knight’s Tale” (Gainesville, FL: Florida UP, 1968); and Charles Muscatine, “Form, Texture, and Meaning in Chaucer’s ‘Knight’s Tale,’” PMLA 65 (1950): 911–29. 22 Keen argues that the problem with Chaucer’s knight is that the idealization of the knight is subverted because he “embodies values that already looked antique” (46). See note 21 above. 23 “The Wife of Bath’s Tale” features a derisive knight, but since he is obviously unscrupulous and chivalry is not of much concern to Alison, I do not discuss her tale, yet interested readers may wish to review Alison’s narrative and its portrayal of a delinquent knight. 24 Much scholarly attention has been devoted to Chaucer’s language and Harry Bailey’s complaint about Chaucer’s poor rhymes. Readers interested in general studies of Chaucer’s language should refer to Barbara Nolan, “‘A Poet Ther Was’: Chaucer’s Voices in the General Prologue to the Canterbury Tales,” PMLA 101 (1986): 154–69; Francis P. Magoun, Jr., “The Source of Chaucer’s ‘Rime of Sir Thopas,’” PMLA 42 (1927): 833–44; John Matthews Manly, “The Stanza Forms of ‘Sir Thopas,’” Modern Philology 8 (1910): 141–44; and E. A. Jones, “‘Loo, Lordes Myne, Heere is a Fit!’: The Structure of Chaucer’s ‘Sir Thopas,’” The Review of English Studies 51 (2000): 248–52. 25 The shoes (made from Cordovan leather), leggings (of costly material from Bruges), and robe (made of expensive silk) are made of the finest material and were often associated with the bourgeois class; by dressing Sir Thopas in such rich garments, Chaucer calls attention to the knight as a pretty boy, a dandy after the mold of Absolon in “The Miller’s Tale,” rather than as a heroic knight typically associated with romances. 26 See lines 742–47 for the description of Sir Thopas’s female admirers, lines 754–59 for the description of his fearless journey through a forest replete with “bukke and hare,” and lines 851–89 for the description of his careful preparation for battle with “Sire Olifaunt.” These passages depict Sir Thopas as a “true knight” in his efforts to battle the giant, yet details such as his careful attention to his breath, hair, and shoes suggest

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that Sir Thopas the hero dresses for a festive occasion such as a formal Ball rather than a battle with a fierce giant. I assume (as always) that Chaucer knew exactly what he was doing when writing the Tales, and that the MS represents Chaucer’s intentions as best as possible for a 600 year old document; thus I weigh such discrepancies within the context of the narrative and conclude that the humorous inconsistencies in the character of Sir Thopas satirize the deteriorating state of knights in Chaucer’s England. 27 Benson points out that “By Chaucer’s time, wrestling was not considered a knightly sport” (The Canterbury Tales, 919); neither was archery, as Benson notes, “practiced by knights in romance,” but Chaucer includes these two details to emphasize the satire of Sir Thopas’s character. 28 Chaucer, “The General Prologue,” 548. 29 See, for example, Robert L. Montgomery, “William Caxton and the Beginnings of Tudor Critical Thought,” The Huntington Library Quarterly 36 (1973): 91–103; William Kuskin, “Caxton’s Worthies Series: The Production of Literary Culture,” English Literary History 66 (1999): 511–51; Wang Yu-Chiao, “Caxton’s Romances and Their Early Tudor Readers,” The Huntington Library Quarterly 67 (2004): 173–88. 30 All citations from Caxton are taken from the following source: The Prologues and Epilogues of William Caxton Microform, ca. 1422–1491, ed. W. J. B. Crotch (London: Oxford UP, 1928). 31 Some scholars feel Caxton’s pleas were “naïve”; see, for example, Kenneth Hodges, “English Knights, French Books, and Malory’s Narrator,” Fifteenth-Century Studies 28 (2003): 148–72, who notes that “Caxton’s hope that Arthurian history will unite Englishmen in shared chivalric glory has been proven naïve”(166). 32 The entry from the Salisbury Papers dated June 29th, 1600, notes that “The proclamation for the annulling of the knighthoods conferred since last August was drawn and signed four days since, but not yet published.” A few years earlier, the Queen refused to knight the Duke of Wirtenburg in fulfillment of an earlier promise; when he pressed her for admission into the Garter, “the Queen returned answer that no such promise had been made nor could be, seeing that the Garter is not yet dispatched to certain Kings that were a long time past elected by the Order.” Queen Elizabeth did not take the principles of the Garter as lightly as Essex, which is why, in part, he fell quickly from her favor. Quoted from Harrison, The Elizabethan Journals, Vol.II, 165, and Vol. I, 296–97, respectively. See note 1 above. 33 Essex was engaged in foreign campaigns from about July of 1591 until his death in February of 1601. His “Irish Campaigns” were marked by sporadic successes and failures, though his excessive creating of knights caused many problems for the Commonwealth. 34 Essex apparently knighted men in the fields of battle, but with little regard for ceremony, oaths, or authoritative support. 35 The account is from the Acts of the Privy Council, quoted from Harrison, The Elizabethan Journals, Vol. I, 49. See note 1 above. 36 Knights were formally inducted into the Order of the Garter during a ceremonial feast on St. George’s day (April 23) by the Queen or her appointed representative, and swore an oath of loyalty to the monarchy, God, and the code of chivalry. Other types of knights existed besides those of the Garter, and swore an oath similar to that of the Garter knights, but those knighted by Essex seemed to have been “made in the fields” and then dismissed to do whatever they wished. 37 Harrison, The Elizabethan Journals, Vol. I, 55. See note 1 above.

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The Sidney Papers record the misbehavior of Essex’s knights, reminding scholars that during so many instances in past history, idle soldiers sometimes caused more trouble than they were worth, or so thought the authorities. See Note 2; consult Harrison’s The Elizabethan Journals, Vol. II, 118, for further details. 39 All quotations taken from Shakespeare appear in The Riverside Shakespeare, 2nd Ed., G. Blakemore Evans, ed. (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1997). 40 Falstaff is not the only Shakespearean character who draws scholarly criticism on knights; interested readers, for instance, might consult the following works on Shakespeare and chivalry sans Falstaff: Madelon Lief and Nicholas F. Radel, “Linguistic Subversion and the Artifice of Rhetoric in The Two Noble Kinsmen,” Shakespeare Quarterly 38 (1987): 405–25; Peter C. Herman, “‘Is This Winning?’: Prince Henry’s Death and the Problem of Chivalry in The Two Noble Kinsmen,” South Atlantic Review 62 (1997): 1– 31; Alan C. Dessen, “Price-tags and Trade-offs: Chivalry and the Shakespearean Hero in 1985,” Shakespeare Quarterly 37 (1986): 102–106; and Reta A. Terry, “‘Vows to the Blackest Devil’: Hamlet and the Evolving Code of Honor in Early Modern England,” Renaissance Quarterly 52 (1999): 1070–86. 41 Shakespeare wrote II Henry VI in 1590–91, about the time Essex finally convinced Queen Elizabeth to grant him permission to join in the wars abroad in Normandy and Ireland. 42 Shakespeare, for instance, directly alludes to Essex and the Irish campaign of 1599 in the Chorus that begins Act 5 of Henry V, where the Chorus says: Were now the general of our gracious Empress, As in good time he may, from Ireland coming, Bringing rebellion broached on his sword, How many would the peaceful city quit, To welcome him! (30–34) The “general” refers to Essex, and the “gracious Empress” is of course Queen Elizabeth, but this reference alludes to the time before Essex lost favor with the Queen. In The Merchant of Venice, Salerio says at the beginning of the play: But I should think of shallows and of flats And see my wealthy Andrew [dock’d] in sand, Vailing her hight top lower than her ribs To kiss her burial. (1.1.26–29) The Andrew was one of two large Spanish ships captured in 1596 at the battle of Cadiz, in which Essex shared command with the Lord Admiral; and as Anne Barton, contributing editor to The Riverside Shakespeare, puts it, “news of the exploit created great excitement in England, and it is doubtless alluded to here.” See n. 39 above; Barton 288 and her n. 27. These are but two examples that demonstrate Shakespeare’s propensity to allude to Essex; other examples are discussed within this essay. 43 Falstaff stabs Hotspur in I Henry IV (5.4.127–29) and tries to claim credit for squashing the rebellion, but is rebuked by the Prince in line 143. 44 See, for instance, Karin S. Coddon, “‘Slander in an Allow’d Fool’: Twelfth Night’s Crisis of the Aristocracy,”Studies in English Literature, 1500–1900, 33 (1993): 309–25; and Camille Slights, “The Principle of Recompense in Twelfth Night,”The Modern Language Review 77 (1982): 537–46, for discussions on the politics of class in Twelfth Night. 45 See note 37. 46 Anne Barton, “Twelfth Night,” 464, n. 236. See n. 39 above. 47 John Simpson and Edmund Weiner, The Oxford English Dictionary, 2nd Ed. (New York: Oxford UP, 1989) accessed through a subscription by Troy University Library.

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Queen Elizabeth in Richard III is the queen of the former king, Edward IV; Shakespeare is merely following the history of characters, not alluding to the Tudor Queen Elizabeth I in Richard III. 49 Sir Thomas More and Raphael Holingshed’s account of Richard III documents his cruelty and numerous affronts to humanity, but not all scholars agree with historians who depict Richard as a “monster.” W. Gordon Zeeveld, “A Tudor Defense of Richard III,” PMLA 55 (1940): 946–57, for instance, argues that Tudor historians were motivated to attack Richard’s reign “to magnify Henry’s excellence,” and that Richard III was not the evil villain as depicted by More and Holingshed. 50 Shakespeare’s chief source for Richard III is Raphael Holingshed’s Chronicles of England, Scotland, and Ireland (1587), but Oscar James Campbell and Edward G. Quinn have noted that “Holingshed took verbatim the account of Edward Halle’s chronicle The union of the two noble and illustre families of Lancastre and York (1548),” and that Halle used More’s The Life of Richard III as a source. See O.J. Campbell (ed.) and Edward G. Quinn (ed.), The Reader’s Encyclopedia of Shakespeare (New York: MJF Books, 1998): 696. 51 Scholars such as Stephanie Trigg, “The Vulgar History of the Order of the Garter,” 91–105 in McMullan and Matthews (see n. 4 above), offer a full history of the ceremonies associated with the Order of the Garter; see also Henry L. Savage, “Sir Gawain and the Order of the Garter,” ELH 5 (1938): 146–49. 52 Parody in The Merry Wives of Windsor has not escaped the notice of scholars, most of whom denote the play as a “Garter Play.” Few scholars, though, discuss the conclusion of The Merry Wives of Windsor as a parody of the induction process associated with the Order of the Garter. The association of play to the Order of the Garter, Lord Hunsdon, and the Feast of St. George has been noted in works by scholars such as Leslie Hotson, Shakespeare Versus Shallow (Whitefish, MT.: Kessinger Publishers, LLC, 2003); James H. Forse, “Secularizing the Saint: The Journey of St. George’s Day from Feast Day to Horse Race,” Popular Culture Review 16 (2005): 37–44; Giorgio Melchiori, Shakespeare’s Garter Plays: “Edward III” to “Merry Wives of Windsor” (Newark and London: Delaware UP, 1994); and Peter Erickson, “The Order of the Garter, the Cult of Elizabeth, and Class-Gender Tension in The Merry Wives of Windsor,” 116–40 in Shakespeare Reproduced: The Text in History and Ideology, Jean E. Howard and Marion F. O’Connor, eds. (London: Methuen, 1987). 53 The Merry Wives of Windsor is thought by some scholars to be written to celebrate the Feast of St. George in 1597, the year that Lord Hunsdon, Shakespeare’s patron, was knighted into the Order of the Garter. The Merry Wives of Windsor holds a special distinction in the Shakespearean canon, for this play is the only one set in Elizabethan England, an attribute that affords Shakespeare ample opportunity to satirize the foibles of knighthood. That the play is concerned with the Feast of St. George and the Order of the Garter is not debatable: Mistress Quickly commands Evans to write “‘Honi soit qui mal y pense’” — the motto verbatim of the Order of the Garter — upon the seats of St. George’s Chapel (5.5.69). The motto of the Garter knights occurs only once in the entire Shakespearean canon, and only in The Merry Wives of Windsor, which leaves little doubt that the playwright had the Order of the Garter in mind when drafting The Merry Wives of Windsor. See Leslie Hotson, n. 52 above. 54 Windsor Castle was the “seat” of one of the royal palaces, housed St. George’s Chapel (built by Edward III) used to induct new knights into the Order of the Garter, hosted the Feast of St. George every April 23rd, and was thought to be the place of

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performance for The Merry Wives of Windsor in celebration of the Feast of St. George on April 23, 1597. 55 According to her biographers, Queen Elizabeth enjoyed chatting with her ladies-inwaiting, reading for pleasure and profit, and attending occasional entertainments such as plays, but was “all business” most of the time. She had a reputation for a “no nonsense” demeanor, and this attitude extended to knighthood and the Order of the Garter. See John Guy, Lisa Hopkins, and Frances Teague (all n. 3 above) for further discussions of Elizabeth’s political and social practices. 56 The Journal of the Siege of Rouen notes in January, 1602, about The Merry Wives of Windsor that “Some months since the players presented Sir John Falstaff before the Queen, who was so pleased therewith that she commanded Master Shakespeare to write another play showing Falstaff in love, which he is said to have finished in fourteen days, to her Majesty’s no small delight.” This note is debated by scholars, but Leslie Hotson’s dating of the play (n. 52 above) fits the occasion and motivation of Shakespeare’s writing The Merry Wives of Windsor. Quoted from Harrison, The Elizabethan Journals, Vol. II, 317. See note 1 above. 57 Scholars have not neglected the significance of Shakespearean songs and their lyrics. Some particular works of interest include: Ginny Graham, “‘To Perform or Not to Perform?’ A Question Worth Exploring,” The English Journal 92 (2002): 80–87; Lawrence J. Ross, “Shakespeare’s ‘Dull Clown’ and Symbolic Music,” Shakespeare Quarterly 17 (1966): 107–28; and John H. Long, Shakespeare’s Use of Music: The Histories and Tragedies (Gainesville: Florida UP, 1971). 58 Feasting was an important part of the celebration of St. George’s day; once the formalities were concluded, a great feast that sometimes “continued over three hours” served as a stamp of approval of earlier ceremonies, such as the induction of new Garter knights. A banquet also typically concludes many of Shakespeare’s comedies (along with a wedding), and is a fitting way to finalize Falstaff’s “initiation” at the end of the play. 59 Scholars do not debate that The Merry Wives of Windsor celebrates the Feast of St. George, and that the play is a rollicking good time, even farcical at times, but no one knows exactly why Shakespeare would write a play that mocks a serious ceremony. I propose that perhaps Falstaff’s buffoonery over-shadowed Shakespeare’s satire of the Garter, but that the dramatist’s satire is still present for spectators to consider. 60 McMullan and Matthews, “Introduction,” 10. See n. 4 above. 61 Stephanie Trigg (see n. 6 above) briefly discusses the modern degradation of Garter knights. Peter J. Begent and Hubert Chesshyre give a fuller account of modern Garter knights in their book The Most Noble Order of the Garter: 650 Years (London: Spink, 1999).

Troy University – Dothan

“A Revelation of Purgatory” and Chaucer’s Prioress E. L. Risden Despite such judicious scholarship as Florence Ridley’s The Prioress and the 1 Critics, a whole volume devoted to the matter, debate has continued on 2 Chaucer’s intentions regarding the character of his Prioress. A Revelation of 3 Purgatory by an Unknown, Fifteenth-Century Woman Visionary (1422) provides an excellent comparison that lends clarity to Chaucer’s portrait and suggests how readers of Chaucer’s day may well have been predisposed to view the character. Details of the piece suggest that readers from the late fourteenth and early fifteenth centuries would probably have found the Prioress culpable not so much because of her anti-Semitism, but due to her attachment to worldly pleasures inappropriate to a nun and especially to a prioress (given her position as head of and role model for a community). Though it appeared twenty-two years after Chaucer’s death, A Revelation of Purgatory confirms that others during that time period were reflecting on those traits exhibited in the Prioress; the work provides a case-study exhibiting the grim imprudency of behaviors unbefitting members of religious orders — such indulgences as over-attentiveness to eating or dress and obsessive concern about pets. Chaucer is likely to have shared such opinions or at least to have felt himself reasonable in satirizing them despite his own attachment to 4 secular as well as religious genres. The text in question relates a brief series of visions characteristic of medieval apocalypses: visions of hell or purgatory. In A Revelation a nun gives her confessor an account of how a deceased member of her order, one Margaret by name, appeared to her in four consecutive dream visions spanning three nights, displaying her suffering in purgatory, begging her sisters’ prayers, and pleading that masses be said for her soul to gain its release to heaven more quickly. The memorable foibles that we observe in Chaucer’s portrait of the Prioress, such as the woman’s oath-swearing, pride in French, attachment to fleshly or worldly concerns like food, clothing, and pets, and even the ambiguous motto “Amor vincit omnia,” are manifested in life choices made by the departed nun, for which Margaret claims she now receives cleansing punishment in purgatory. As readers have so often commented, the Prioress’s peccadilloes, as we find them mentioned in the General Prologue, may at first seem nearly beneath notice, ambivalent at worst. I include the relevant passage here so that the reader may examine Chaucer’s characterization fully: . . . hir smylyng was ful symple and coy; Hire gretteste ooth was but by Seinte Loy. . . .

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Ful weel she soong the service dyvyne, Entuned in hir nose ful semely; And Frenssh she spak ful faire and fetisly, After the scole of Stratford atte Bowe. . . . At mete wel ytaught was she with alle; She leet no morsel from hir lippes falle, Ne wette hir fyngres in hir sauce depe; Wel koude she carie a morsel and wel kepe That no drope ne fille upon hire brest. In curteisie was set ful muchel hir lest. Hir over-lippe wyped she so clene That in hir coppe ther was no ferthyng sene Of grece, whan she dronken hadde hir draughte. Ful semely after hir mete she raughte. And sikerly she was of greet desport, And ful plesaunt, and amyable of port, And peyned hire to countrefete cheere Of court, and to been estatlich of manere, And to ben holden digne of reverence. . . . She was so charitable and so pitous She wolde wepe, if that she saugh a mous Kaught in a trappe, if it were deed or bledde. Of smale houndes hadde she that she fedde. With rosted flessh, or milk and wastel-breed. But soore wepte she if oon of hem were deed, Or if men smoot it with a yerde smerte. . . . Ful semyly hir wympul pynched was . . . But sikerly she hadde a fair forheed; It was almoost a spanne brood, I trowe; For, hardily, she was nat undergrowe. Ful fetys was hir cloke, as I was war. Of smal coral aboute hire arm she bar A peire of bedes, gauded al with grene, And theron heng a brooch of gold ful sheene, On which ther was first write a crowned A, 5 And after Amor vincit omnia. (lines 119–62)

As we collect the Prioress’s attributes and compare these traits to ideas of medieval womanhood (both lay and religious), her distinguishing characteristics comprise an incongruous visual portrait built from a combination of history, romance, and Chaucer’s own inventive irony. Using oaths of any sort — speaking, dressing, and eating too preciously; attending more closely to her pets than to the needs of the poor and to her appearance rather than to her soul — all place the Prioress at odds with societal expectations for one of her religious station (rather than her noble birth and secular tastes), and her motto better suits a romance heroine than a nun.

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The anonymous Revelation of Purgatory relies for its literary power on its exploitation of similar (and in many instances exactly the same) details. The narrator tells her priest of having had a dream in which she witnessed three great fires in whose midst she saw suffering “al maner Cristen men and wommen þat lyved in this world,” but “men and wommen of ordyr me 6 thogt in þat sygt þay had moste peyne.” In the greatest of the fires she spotted the spirit of a sister of her own religious house, a woman named Margaret, who was suffering from such pains as the young nun feared to describe and the abhorrence of which caused her to waken. After rising to say psalms and a litany, the narrator tired and returned to sleep, only to see a second vision of Margaret, her skin rent and burning, fire leaping from her mouth, and with a small, burning dog and cat following her. Margaret at first seemed to threaten the dreamer, but then she identified herself and asked the young nun to have masses sung for her soul to quicken its release from purgatory, at which point the dog and cat led her back to her punishments. She assured 7 the dreaming nun that she would see her again the next night. Of hell Margaret would reveal nothing, other than to say that both in hell and purgatory the “worm of conscience” is the worst punishment. With respect to heaven, she said that she would ultimately be conducted to earthly paradise and be “washed in the well of grace and cleansed and be anointed with oil of 8 mercy.” Margaret then called the visionary by name, bade her farewell, and disappeared with a terrifying cry. The next night our narrator saw Margaret again, “in her worst clothes as 9 she went on earth and in the greatest fire of the three.” Seven devils dressed the departed soul in a fiery red gown full of sharp hooks and wrapped worms and pitch and tar, and they enwrapped a great, hissing adder about her head while the dog and cat tore at her legs. A devil announced that she was suffering so intensely because of earthly pride, presumably love of showy clothing, and from excessive love of her pets. Other devils pulled out her tongue and her heart, tearing at these organs with hot iron rakes, explaining they were punishing her for wrath and envy, forswearing, backbiting, and slander. Two devils then cut off her lips with razors, struck her heart with an iron hook, melted about her stinking lead and brimstone, and forced her to eat food replete with snakes and to drink venom because of her gluttony, misspending, and waste. They cast her into freezing black water and then into fire, leaving her covered with worms due to her sloth and gluttony. To reinforce the cause of this punishment, two other devils poured down her throat molten gold and silver, which ran out through her stomach. Margaret was then thrown into a great brass bath full of “al maner of 10 stynkynge thynge” for coveting and lechery, from which punishment she continued to cry horribly. The narrator notes that at this point she saw a conglomeration of sinners being punished for their sins, particularly for the special

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sins they loved best; but those guilty of lechery suffered most, especially those of the church, a hundred times more than the others. Nor does she spare detail in describing their punishments. Anchorites, both males and females, were thrust into fire, raked with hooks and sprayed with venom, and they had their heads shot through and enveloped with adders and serpents for having listened to “idle words” rather than “good words.” Even for showing their faces publicly, the women had their heads covered with veils of fire. The departed one emerged from her vessel, saying that those who had prayed for her had helped ease her pains, and she added that one is best off calling on Mary and fasting according to Marian rites in order to win release from the pains of purgatory most quickly. But Margaret had not yet gained freedom from suffering: flame still flickered from her mouth and heart, and fiery animals still dogged her footsteps. The flame, Margaret explained, was a penalty for having spoken oaths, and the animals continued to follow her for having shown too great devotion 11 to her pets, for “sho sett hyr hert to mych on such foul wormes.” She added that additional masses which would be offered in her behalf and additional cleansing she must undergo in the two great fires of purgatory would eventually prepare her for heaven. On the following night the narrator had a final vision in which a devil drew Margaret into the middle fire, in which she turned from black to red, and then into the great fire, where she turned from amber to white. She told the narrator that Jews and Saracens and other heathens go directly to hell and 12 never come to purgatory to be saved. Some good Christians, she noted, those contrite folk who have done penance or those too easily shriven on earth, need not suffer the great fire, but are purged by the middle fire alone. A day of penitential suffering on earth, she explained, counts for a year of purgatory. Some pass only briefly through the first fire and then go quickly into the bliss of heaven, and some, already sufficiently cleansed by suffering on earth, may go directly to heaven. Margaret received one final punishment then — the worm of conscience — for a pilgrimage that she promised to undertake but failed to accomplish. After that final penance, in the presence of a devil, a “fair lady” and a “fair young man” weighed her in a balance, declaring her forgiven of her sins. The lady then invited the tested soul to be anointed with the oil of mercy and washed in a well by a white chapel, from which Margaret rose to enter through a golden gate into the joys of heaven. The parallels between Margaret and the Prioress emerge clearly and immediately in the particulars: the Prioress’s coy smiling need not imply lechery, the sin that Margaret identifies as especially the worst for churchfolk, but that involuntary response may suggest pride or too great self-consciousness and too ready exhibition of her beauty, sins punishable, according to Margaret, by one’s being dressed in clothing of fire. The Prioress’s “well-pinched wimple”

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and her beads and brooch further exemplify that point. Excessive attention to her singing, her French, and to the niceties of table etiquette, plus immoderate pleasure in courtesy and the feigning of courtly manners, may also qualify as exhibitions of pride, eliciting such chastisement. The Prioress’s ambiguous motto may imply lechery, or the adage may provide an additional instance of pride in her heritage, the noble class storied in romance. Oaths, even gentle ones (“by Saint Loy”), apparently merit such torture as a burning tongue and heart. The Prioress’s unwillingness to let a morsel drop from her lips and also her “deep” sauce imply at least a tendency to gluttony, and the fact that she is “hardly undergrown” provides more damning evidence; Margaret’s punishments illustrate that even the least overindulgence, anything that can direct a churchwoman to sin rather than to virtue, will result in purgatorial suffering of having to eat wormy meats, drink venom, and have molten metal poured down her throat. The Prioress’s hearty if seemly reaching for her food reinforces this point. She directs her charity to small animals and pets rather than to needy people, sins of misgovernance and misguided love, punishable by one’s being followed around by burning, tormenting demon-animals and being forced to drink venom. About the only counts on which the Prioress escapes blame are her span-broad forehead, something over which she has no control, unless one might argue that she should have had her brow veiled to begin with (to avoid pride in her noble appearance) and the completion of her pilgrimage, which, if we follow Margaret’s experience, should spare her the “worm of conscience” (as long as she goes on the expedition for appropriate reasons: penance rather than self-display). Certainly this reading of Chaucer’s text may appear to modern tastes too hard on the Prioress, whose chief error from our viewpoint may lie rather in heedless anti-semitism than in overindulgence in pleasures. Yet Margaret’s sins, too, seem all too small to have warranted the devilish chastenings which the visionary narrator reports. But ours is a more forgiving century (at least with respect to private, personal habits), or perhaps one readier to turn to selfpreservation, less willing to accept the notion of a just or even wrathful God and much more eager to descry a merciful one. Sadly Margaret confirms and affirms her time’s deeply rooted anti-Jewish and anti-Muslim sentiments by referring all “heathens” directly to hell, beyond even the possibility of penance. Finally, the comparison of the two figures provides no evidence that the Prioress is damned, but instead suggests that she may suffer even less than Margaret in purgatory, since she, at least, will have done her pilgrimage. Because A Revelation of Purgatory in many ways typifies medieval apocalypses that unveil visions of hell or purgatory, I think one may fairly claim that audiences of Chaucer’s age would have seen Margaret’s punishment and the Prioress’s seeming fate as both just and merciful. Religious folk must attain higher standards than their lay siblings. Repentance and suffering in life and

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masses said for one’s soul after death could relieve some purgatorial punishment, and as for the remainder, one should willingly suffer, an audience of Chaucer’s time would argue, pains to cleanse the soul for entry into the eternal joys of heaven. Apocalyptic/eschatological concerns appear prominently elsewhere in The Canterbury Tales--for instance, in the “Parson’s Tale,” the “Re13 traction,” and in the very notion of pilgrimage — and Chaucer and his audience lived in the tradition of Dante: fire-and-brimstone sermons, frighteningly illuminated Apocalypses, and of course the specter of the Book of Revelation itself. Keeping in mind that revelations guide us so that we know how to live in order to avoid punishment in the afterlife, and also that the literature of the Middle Ages is almost universally didactic and apocalyptic, we can read the Prioress, by means of Chaucer’s gentle but firm irony and by means of Bosch14 like parallel texts such as A Revelation of Purgatory, not only as an example of estates satire, but also as encouragement to avoid worldly attachments and focus instead on the joys of the life to come. Such Chaucerian visions evidently endured into the fifteenth century, at least the early part of it, little changed.

Notes 1

Florence H. Ridley, The Prioress and the Critics, Berkeley: University of California Press, 1965. I reach the same conclusion as does R. J. Schoeck, though he focuses on the Prioress’s anti-semitism; see his “Chaucer’s Prioress: Mercy and Tender Heart,” 245–58, in Chaucer Criticism: Volume 1: “The Canterbury Tales,” ed. Richard Schoek and Jerome Taylor (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 1960), reprinted from The Bridge: A Yearbook of Judaeo-Christian Studies, ed. John M. Oesterreicher (New York: Pantheon, 1956): 239–55. For a telling explication of the details in the portrait in the “General Prologue,” see especially Muriel Bowden, A Commentary on the General Prologue to “The Canterbury Tales” (New York: Macmillan, 1954): 92–106. Other extremely useful scholarship includes the following: Chauncey Wood, “Chaucer’s Use of Signs in His Portrait of the Prioress,” 81–101, in Signs and Symbols in Chaucer’s Poetry, ed. John P. Hermann and John J. Burke, Jr. (University, AL: University of Alabama Press, 1981); Richard Rex, “Chaucer and the Jews,” Modern Language Quarterly 45 (1984): 107–122; John Finlayson, “Chaucer’s Prioress and ‘Amor Vincit Omnia,’” Studia Neophilologica: A Journal of Germanic and Romance Languages and Literature 60 (1988): 171–74; Edward I. Condren, “The Prioress: A Legend of Spirit, a Life of Flesh,” Chaucer Review 23 (1989): 192–218; Julia Bolton Holloway, “Convents, Courts and Colleges: The Prioress and The Second Nun,” 198–215, in Equally in God’s Image: Women in the Middle Ages, eds. Julia Bolton Holloway, Joan Bechtold, and Constance S. Wright (New York: Peter Lang, 1990); Hardy Long Frank, “Seeing the Prioress Whole,” Chaucer Review 25 (1991): 229– 37; Thomas Hahn, “The Performance of Gender in the Prioress, Chaucer Yearbook 1 (1992): 111–134; Richard Rex, ed., “The Sins of Madame Eglentyne” and Other Essays on Chaucer (Newark: University of Delaware Press; London: Associated University Presses, 1995); Maureen Hourigan, “Ther Was also a Nonne, A Prioresse,” 38–46, in Chaucer’s Pilgrims: An Historical Guide to the Pilgrims in “The Canterbury Tales,” eds. Laura C. Lambdin and Robert T. Lambdin (Westport: Greenwood Press, 1996); Stephanie 2

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Trigg, Congenial Souls: Reading Chaucer from Medieval to Postmodern (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2002); Thomas J. Farrell, “The Prioress’s Fair Forehead,” Chaucer Review 42 (2007): 211–221. 3 For the text, see A Revelation of Purgatory by an Unknown, Fifteenth-Century Woman Visionary: Introduction, Critical Text, and Translation, ed. Marta Powell Harley (Lewison, NY: Edwin Mellen, 1985). For additional readings of the “Prioress’s Tale,” see Beverly Boyd, ed., The Prioress’s Tale (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1987). 4 On Chaucer’s satire, see especially Jill Mann, Chaucer and Medieval Estates Satire: The Literature of Social Classes and the General Prologue to “The Canterbury Tales” (New York: Cambridge UP, 1973). 5 Text from Geoffrey Chaucer, Riverside Chaucer, ed. Larry D. Benson (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1987). 6 A Revelation, page 60 (see n. 3 above). 7 As the New Dictionary of Theology (edited by Joseph Komonchak, Mary Collins, and Dermot A. Lane) somewhat backwardly notes, “While there is no scriptural evidence that contradicts the doctrine, the scriptural basis for the doctrine remains unclear” (Wilmington, DE: Michael Glazier, 1987). Purgatory as part of the Christian cosmos has gone in and out of fashion. For a complete study of its history, sources, linguistic background, and implications, see Jacques Le Goff, The Birth of Purgatory, trans. Arthur Goldhammer (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1984). Of the ultimate reason for the imaginative creation of purgatory, Le Goff asks: “Wasn’t the point of introducing a temporary Purgatory mainly to throw the inextinguishable fires of Hell into sharp relief?” (359). That idea suits well with the fifteenth-century work I treat in this essay. A brief overview of purgatory during the fifteenth century can be found in Sarah Stanbury, The Visual Object of Desire in Late Medieval England (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2008): 47–48. 8 A Revelation, page 66 (see n. 3 above). 9 Ibid. 10 A Revelation, page 68. 11 A Revelation, page 78. 12 The narrator apparently suffers from the same prejudice as Chaucer’s Prioress. 13 See Richard K. Emmerson and Ronald B. Herzman, eds., The Apocalyptic Imagination in Medieval Literature (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1991): 153–54; and D. W. Robertson, Jr., Preface to Chaucer: Studies in Medieval Perspectives (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1962): 373. 14 A recent excellent study on A Revelation of Purgatory is the following: Mary C. Erler, “‘A Revelation of Purgatory’ (1422): Reform and the Politics of Female Visions,” Viator 38 (2007): 321–47. Brief examinations of the text can be found in the following: Robert Easting, Visions of the Other World in Middle English (Rochester, NY: D. S. Brewer, 1997): 81–82; Mona L. Logarbo, trans., “The Gast of Gy,” 64–84 (67–68), in Cultures of Piety: Medieval English Devotional Literature in Translation, eds. Anne Clark Bartlett and Thomas H. Bestul (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1999); Douglas Gray, Later Medieval English Literature (Oxford, NY: Oxford University Press, 2008): 285.

St. Norbert College

Eyeglasses for the Blind: Redundant Therapies in Meschinot and Villon Julie Singer Of the late medieval inventions dating from the period Jean Gimpel has termed the “industrial revolution of the Middle Ages,” none save the printing press had a greater impact on the culture of reading and book production than did eyeglasses: these magnifying devices, invented in northern Italy at the close of the thirteenth century, facilitated the activities of readers, authors, copyists, and illustrators. Though their use quickly spread throughout Western Europe in the fourteenth century, it is in the mid-fifteenth century that French vernacular poets first grant eyeglasses serious literary attention. The two best-known French literary references to glasses, both dating from the early 1460s, appear in Jean Meschinot’s Lunettes des Princes and in a brief passage within François Villon’s Grand Testament. These two strikingly similar allusions reveal that in the late Middle Ages eyeglasses bear a significant conceptual kinship to books, and, perhaps less intuitively for the modern reader, to the cemetery. For the cemetery figures prominently in late medieval urban life as a didactic space where epitaph and image meet, becoming a memento mori in three dimensions; glasses can therefore constitute a tool with which to “read” the textual and pictorial message. Villon’s mock legacy and Meschinot’s didactic treatise, however, employ the figure of eyeglasses in conjunction with the textual spaces of the book and the burial grounds in a remarkably self-reflexive fashion. We shall demonstrate that beyond their evident association with visual impairment, literary “glasses” effectively serve to crystallize the emerging primacy of the author at the close of the French Middle Ages. The Testament, begun in 1461, consists of over 2,000 lines of ballades and burlesque legacies. The narrator-testator includes among his bequests a gift of eyeglasses, without their case, to the blind beggars of the Quinze Vingts. Item, je donne aux .XV. Vings — Qu’autant vauldroit nommer Troys Cens — De Paris, non pas de Prouvins, Car a eulx tenu je me sens; Ilz auront, et je m’y consens, Sans les estuiz mes grans lunectes, Pour mectre a part, aux Innocens, Les gens de bien des deshonnestes. (stanza CLX, vv. 1728–35) [Item, I give the Fifteen Score (Three Hundred, one might say as well)

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Of Paris, and not of Provins (For it’s to them I feel obliged)... They’ll have, with my fullest consent, Without the case, my spectacles, To sort out, at the Innocents, 1 Good people from dishonest ones.]

The Quinze Vingts, residents of the hospital for the blind established by Louis IX in the faubourg Saint-Honoré in the mid-thirteenth century, were 2 highly visible participants in late medieval Parisian society. The brothers and sisters were licensed to beg in specific locations, accompanied by their guides and sporting a royally sanctioned fleur de lys insigne. The hospital was supported by kings and bourgeoisie alike: benefactors “seem to have sought memorial masses and prayers there because they believed in the effi3 cacy of the prayers of the blind.” In short, their public activity and the royal favor they enjoyed gave the Quinze Vingts a high profile, and the fact that they were blind would have been obvious to Villon’s contemporaries: Quinze Vingts serves, in Villon’s poem, as shorthand for “blind beggars.” The gift of eyeglasses to the blind, as well as the omission of the glasses’ case — an accessory that may seem inconsequential to the modern reader, who is accustomed to wearing eyeglasses for extended periods of time or tucking them in a breast pocket, but that was of far greater importance to the preservation of the expensive and uncomfortable medieval pince-nez used for reading — 4 lends this huitain an ironic yet lighthearted tone. However, the bequest’s levity quickly gives way to a more somber mood as in the subsequent five stanzas, in which Villon famously meditates on the charnel houses at the cemetery of the Innocents, no place for fun and games (“n’y a ne riz ne jeu,” 1736). While these stanzas on the Innocents have often been treated as a digression, and as a sharp divergence from the lighter tone of the series of bequests into which the material appears to be “inserted,” considering Villon’s “lunectes” in light of Meschinot’s text will help us understand that these stanzas are in fact an integral part of the legacy of eyeglasses to the blind. Less widely read today than Villon’s seemingly tongue-in-cheek will is Jean 5 Meschinot’s Lunettes des Princes, probably composed between 1461 and 1465. This opus magnum features the (re)presentation of eyeglasses not as one jape among many, but as its central conceit. The book is effectively divided into three parts: a lamentation, a narrative of the narrator’s encounter with Reason followed by his prayer and dream, and a “transcription” of a treatise on the cardinal virtues. At the text’s beginning, the narrator finds himself in a sorry state, so preoccupied with complaining about the human condition and mourning the successive deaths of three dukes of Brittany that he loses his mind (“mon sentement est devenu folie,” XXXIX.6) and briefly contemplates sui6 cide. Reason soon arrives, sent by God. She shows the narrator the book of

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Conscience, which allows the reader to distinguish good from bad, and she explains the allegorical composition of the eyeglasses needed to read the book: Prudence is the right lens, Justice the left, Fortitude the frame, and Temperance the central hinge of the pince-nez. The narrator prays (in prose), falls asleep, and dreams (also in prose) of Reason and the book. Upon awakening, he transcribes Conscience’s teachings. The book consists of an enumeration and explication of the four virtues, each composed in a distinct meter; the discourse on Justice includes the memento mori of the Saints Innocents cemetery as a remedy for readerly vanity. His morally “blind” readers (V.1; 1069) having thus regained their senses, Meschinot concludes his treatise — and it is unclear whether this conclusion represents text transcribed from Conscience or added by the narrator — by explaining that one’s ultimate goal should be to use the lunettes des princes in order to see God face to face. Despite what modern readers often perceive as dry and overstated didacticism, the Lunettes des princes was widely read in the years following its composition. Christine Martineau-Genieys catalogues four manuscripts and at least thirty printed editions from the late fifteenth and early sixteenth centu7 ries; indeed, she calls Meschinot “the most printed poet of his time.” The Lunettes and texts like it were popular enough to be mocked some seventy years later by Rabelais, whose Librairie de Sainct Victor (Pantagruel, ch. VII) contains, among other pseudo-didactic tomes, the evocatively titled Lunettes 8 des Romipètes. Thanks to Meschinot’s opus magnum, many late-medieval readers were exposed to the allegorical potential of eyeglasses. Despite the difference in tone between Villon’s humorous bequest and Meschinot’s moralizing didacticism, the similarities between the two authors’ allusions to lunettes are unmistakable. Simply put, both authors offer spectacles to the blind so that the recipients might distinguish between right and wrong. And in both cases, discussion of eyeglasses is closely paired not just with death but with a specific site, the Saints Innocents cemetery. It is not without interest to note that Rabelais, too, juxtaposes his fictive library with a comical evocation of the horrors of the Saints Innocents. Immediately before visiting the library of Saint-Victor, with its copy of the Lunettes des Romipètes, Pantagruel complains of the cemetery’s gruesome spectacle, characterizing Paris as “une bonne ville pour vivre, mais non pour mourir, car les guenaulx de Sainct Innocent se chauffoyent le cul des ossemens des mors” [a good city in which to live but not to die, since the wretched of the Saints Innocents warmed their 9 asses with the bones of the dead]. Pantagruel’s tour of Paris shows the city to be an undesirable place to be dead but an ideal place to read (and to be read), especially if one is in need of textual “glasses”; as we shall see, a similar characterization of the cemetery is already present in the writings of both Villon and Meschinot. What lies at the heart of this persistent connection between the book, the blind, and the Saints Innocents?

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This most famous Parisian cemetery, which succeeded a Merovingian necropolis on the same site, was located beneath (but was somewhat larger than) the present-day Place Joachim du Bellay. Enclosed circa 1186, it had become incorporated into Paris intra muros upon the construction of Philippe Auguste’s enceinte. The late-medieval Saints Innocents housed, in addition to the cemetery, a parish church; several chapels and monuments; reclusoirs for ancho10 resses; charnel houses in arcades along the perimeter, attested from the fourteenth century, into which skeletal remains were transferred after flesh had 11 decomposed in order to make way for more burials; and the celebrated danse 12 macabre frescos, whose creation in 1424 is noted by the Bourgeois de Paris. Painted under ten arcades on the charnel houses along the rue des Lingères, the frescos depicted Death leading away thirty representatives of diverse social categories, each pair accompanied by a huitain. Villon’s meditations on death, and especially the description of the Saints Innocents mentioned above, are often discussed in light of the frescos and their 484 verses; a recent biography of 13 Villon is even titled Danse Macabre. The cemetery of the Innocents was, as Villon’s Testament indicates, one of many Parisian locations where the blind of the Quinze Vingts were licensed to beg. That burial ground was also a place of asylum and commerce; located then as now in a market district, delinquents sought refuge among the same arcades under which merchants had set 14 up shop. The cemetery’s peculiar conjunction of poetry, painting, epitaph, and sculpture, as well as the multiple perspectives that were alternately permitted and obscured by its walls, arcades, and cells, foreground the distinctly visual nature of this memorial and commercial space. The Saints Innocents was a crossroads of image and text, the blind and the sighted, the outlaw and the merchant, the living and the dead. Because of the superficial similarities between Villon’s and Meschinot’s texts — the eyeglasses, the treatment of the Innocents — the question of the precise chronology of the works’ composition, as well as the possibility of one’s influence on the other, has often been raised. Christine MartineauGenieys’s widely accepted dating of the Lunettes des Princes places that text’s composition shortly after that of Villon’s Testament; given both poets’ connections to the court of Charles d’Orléans, it is certainly possible that they knew each other’s work. Italo Siciliano cautions, however, that the evocation of the Saints Innocents as memento mori is so commonplace that even if Meschinot’s Lunettes can be securely dated after 1461, it is difficult to demonstrate any di15 rect influence from Villon. The Testament incontestably enjoys wider popularity today, hence Leonard W. Johnson’s declaration that “one thinks inevitably of Villon when Meschinot evokes, for the same reason, the Cemetery of the Saints Innocents in Paris: all, prince and pauper alike, are indistin16 guishable in death.” It is by no means clear that a medieval reader would inevitably have thought of Villon when reading Meschinot, though, nor that

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the two poets’ “reasons” for describing the cemetery are as straightforward as Johnson suggests. Can (and should) we ascertain what the authors’ reasons are, and whether the latter are the same? Are Villon and Meschinot simply reminding us of Death’s role as the great leveler of mankind? If so, why rely specifically and exclusively on the Saints Innocents, and why juxtapose this conventional memento mori with the imagery of eyeglasses? For while the cemetery as memento mori is a literary commonplace, the two texts’ more striking commonality — the eyeglasses — is most certainly not. If Meschinot’s evocation of the Saints Innocents is not demonstrably modeled on Villon’s, how can we account for both poets’ discussion of the cemetery in conjunction with magnifying lenses? I propose that Villon and Meschinot raise the problems of vision and discernment not just to reinforce the “indistinguishability” of prince and pauper in death, but also to manipulate, albeit in somewhat differing manners, models of readership, authorship, and textuality current at the close of the Middle Ages. Glasses in the Cemetery Athough Villon’s comical bequest is better known today, the Lunettes des Princes foregrounds blindness — not only in its title but in the narrative itself — in a way that the Testament does not. Meschinot’s lamentations, and by extension his “lunettes,” are destined for all sinners, “gens aveuglez, gens sourdz, mutz, insensibles” (V.1). Meschinot’s (figuratively) blind readers are offered eyeglasses, as are Villon’s beggars, in order to know the cardinal virtues and lead a virtuous life — that is, to discern right from wrong. These eyeglasses, which take the form of a book containing lessons on the very virtues that compose it, must be observed and studied by the reader; and yet the virtues’ lessons suggest that the eyes of the body are insufficient and unreliable if not deceptive: “Aveugle est tel qui a vers yeulx” [Blind is he who has clear, bright eyes, 746]. Many earthly distinctions discernible with the naked eye are false. One such lesson appears in the book of Conscience’s passage devoted to justice, wherein the charnel houses of the Saints Innocents illustrate the fundamental invisibility of the only human distinctions that matter: those based on virtue and morality. 17

Si tu vas a Saint Innocent Ou il y a d’ossement grant tas, Ja ne congnoistras entre cent Les os des gens des grans estas D’avec ceulx qu’au monde notas En leur vivant, povres et nus: Les corps vont dont ilz sont venuz. (733–39) [If you go to Saint Innocent Where there are great heaps of bones,

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Out of a hundred of them you will never distinguish The bones of the mighty From those whom you saw on earth, In their lifetime, poor and naked: Bodies go back whence they came.]

Meschinot’s treatise derides human efforts to distinguish between bodies, that is, between those formerly belonging to earthly estates — a futile task according to him. Villon, too, in the meditation on the Innocents that immediately follows his legacy to the Quinze Vingts, states that different classes are now “ensemble en ung tas, pesle mesle” [together in a heap, pell-mell, CLXIII.1757] such that “d’evesques ou lanterniers, / Je n’y cognois riens a reddire” [as to bishops or to lamp-men, / I can’t tell any difference, CLXII. 18 1750–51]. Meschinot’s Justice, citing the example of the Saints Innocents just as Villon had done, reinforces the lesson of equality. For as Reason tells the narrator in his dream, Saches aussi que je leur ay donné a nom les Lunettes des Princes, non pas pource que tu soyes prince ne grant seigneur temporal — car trop plus que bien loing es tu de tel estat, valeur ou dignité — mais leur ay principalement ce nom imposé, pource que tout home peult estre dict prince, en tant qu’il a receu de Dieu gouvernement d’ame. Et ceste principaulté prefere toutes aultres, d’autant que le bien spirituel et de l’ame, qui jamais n’aura fin, vault mieux que celluy qui en brief temps passe et perist… (35, lines 100–108) [Know, too, that I have called them the Lunettes des Princes not because you are a prince or a great worldly lord — for you are more than far from that state, worth, or dignity — but chiefly because any man can be called a prince as long as he has entrusted his soul to God. And this principality is preferable to all others, insofar as glory of spirit and soul, which will never end, is better than that glory that soon passes and perishes.]

True princes are not distinguished by the accoutrements that can be seen with the aid of material eyeglasses, but by those visible through the figurative eyeglasses that enhance the eyes of the soul. Villon’s and Meschinot’s shared image of the Saints Innocents demonstrates that, aside from the mention of eyeglasses, the bodily blindness that prevents the Quinze Vingts from visually distinguishing a bishop from a lamplighter perhaps bears a more complex relationship to the moral blindness, suffered by Meschinot’s readers, that prevents them from seeing and becoming princes. It is surely no coincidence that both Villon and Meschinot (and, far less directly, Rabelais) introduce the image of eyeglasses in tandem with the Saints Innocents, and a closer reading of their texts reveals a conceptual nexus of eyeglasses, blindness, and death that has, to my knowledge, hith-

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erto remained unexplored. Given the cemetery’s geographical, spiritual, and symbolic position, it is wholly fitting that such a site could come to represent in our texts a conjunction of physical disability (beggars and the poor), (im)morality, (im)mortality, and judgment. Moreover, the Saints Innocents’ unique status as a site not just of death but of visuality and textuality can aid our understanding of the extraordinary relationship the burial place bears to the presentation of eyeglasses in Villon and Meschinot. Generally speaking, cemeteries begin to occupy a privileged position in fifteenth-c. architectural French texts as a lieu de mémoire instrumental in the formation of a specifically literary form of memory. Jacqueline CerquigliniToulini has demonstrated the manner in which, in the late Middle Ages, earlier romances’ lists of bygone heroes give way to literary cemeteries: Achille Caulier’s Cruelle femme en amour and Hôpital d’Amour (both before 1441), Martin le Franc’s Champion des dames (1441), René d’Anjou’s Livre du cuer d’amours espris (1457), George Chastellain’s Temple de Boccace (1463–64), and Antitus’s Portail du temple de Boccace (1501), all contain graveyards featuring the tombs and epitaphs of notable writers, from Ovid to Alain Chartier. This site where text becomes tomb represents not only an anthologizing tendency but a spatialization of a nascent vernacular literary canon, wherein the disposi19 tion and description of corpses serve to constitute a textual corpus. Like these literary graveyards, real medieval cemeteries, too, with their monuments and epitaphs, were spaces of memory and the letter. The Saints Innocents, even more than other burial places, is additionally marked by multiple modes of visuality, as it is a space for sermons, processions, and public spectacle. Colette Beaune remarks that the cemetery was one of the mendicant friars’ preferred sites for sermons because the site lent itself so well to calls for penitence: the orally delivered message was reinforced by the audience’s physical surroundings, the memento mori of the charnel 20 houses serving as a potent illustration of human mortality. The Bourgeois de Paris records multiple sermons and processions in the Saints Innocents between 1429 and 1449, when his journal ends; in that final year he reports a spectacular procession of more than 12,500 children who sang a mass at the Innocents before accompanying the relics of one of the cemetery’s name21 sakes to Notre-Dame. The particular layout of the Innocents also gives rise to multiple perspectives and points of view: the anchoresses’ windows onto the church and the cemetery, panoramas of the cemetery from within and above the galleries, the dynamics of thieves and prostitutes hidden in the shadows, beggars and peddlars exposing their wares, acquaintances crossing one another beneath the arcades. Huizinga was thoroughly apt in his charac22 terization of the Saints Innocents as “a public lounge and a rendezvous.” The visual stimuli of such a space serve to accommodate and complement the fundamental specularity of the memento mori.

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The cemetery of the Saints Innocents is furthermore a textual space, a site of public reading and interpretation of images in conjunction with the written word. Parisians strolled in the galleries, looking upon the carved tombstones and epitaphs of the cemetery’s notables, such as the famed hieroglyphs of Nicolas Flamel’s monument — epitaphs that are, regrettably, 23 largely lost. Vanished, too, is the burial grounds’ most famous text-image complex, the danse macabre, whose verses survive in some twenty fifteenth-c. manuscript transcriptions and in Guyot Marchant’s incunables. Jane H. M. Taylor has argued that the danse macabre “was certainly received and may 24 very well have been conceived in terms of a unit of text and image.” Furthermore, the subtitle of Miroer salutaire pour toutes gens et de tous estats borne by Guyot Marchant’s 1485 editio princeps demonstrates that public contemplation of the danse macabre was not only a readerly but a specular and speculative 25 act. The presence of the frescos and their accompanying poems multiply the ways in which the living in the cemetery can look upon death. The danse macabre is a mirror, and, as David Fein argues, a distorting mirror at that: “when the vif faces the mort, he is not confronting death in the abstract, but rather his own death, contemplating a barely recognizable image of his body 26 distorted by the degradation following death.” As we shall see, this link between the living and the dead, difficult for the naked eye to discern, is perhaps facilitated by grans lunectes sans les estuiz. The questions of specularity and distortion raised by the danse macabre’s association with mirrors are not without relevance to the subject of eyeglasses, as material object and as trope. Indeed, in the late Middle Ages mir27 rors enjoyed a privileged connection both with death and with eyeglasses. As the making of eyeglasses grew into a specialty, it seems to have been largely practiced by the lead- and tinsmiths who were already making mirrors, both of polished metal and of lead-backed glass: “les diverses transformations du miroir ont donné naissance, suivant les époques, à de nouvelles industries de la part de ces ingénieux ouvriers” [the many transformations of the mirror gave rise, over the years, to new industries among these ingenious 28 workers]. In medieval Paris the same artisans specialized in the production of lead and tin objects including bells, rings, medals, toys, household objects, mirrors, and (certainly in the sixteenth century, presumably in the fifteenth) eyeglasses. These craftsmen are identified as bimbelotiers mirreliers in the statutes they receive on 23 november 1489; a century later, Henri III’s new stat29 utes refer to these artisans as miroitier, lunetier, bimbelottier. Furthermore, Middle French terminology indicates that a high degree of affinity was perceived to exist between mirrors and eyeglasses. Early European lenses were often made from pieces of rock crystal, or beryl — hence the modern term bésicles as well as the Middle French berille, a form attested by Meschinot in the Lunettes des Princes (LXXIX.1). Lunette, on the other

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hand, typically designated a number of round or convex objects, especially polished metal mirrors, to which the term was applied from the second half of the thirteenth century. These curved devices sometimes produced anamorphic or otherwise distorted reflections. Before the middle of the fifteenth century, the word lunettes was evidently used quite infrequently in reference to eyeglasses, presumably to avoid confusion with the mirrors designated by the same term. Meschinot’s title and Villon’s bequest, then, constitute very early examples of modern usage of the word “lunettes,” and as we see in Meschinot’s simultaneous deployment of berille and lunettes, the mid-fifteenth century still marks a transitional phase. As the same word can still refer to a mirror and to eyeglasses, Meschinot’s title could potentially have been interpreted, prior to reading and in the absence of contextual cues, as a more 30 conventional mirror of princes. In short, in the 1460s the ambiguity of terminology relating to eyeglasses is such that at first glance it is not immediately clear what lunettes even are. Eyeglasses, though progressively more common, were still a relatively recent innovation at the close of the Middle Ages, and their particular cultural/social valences more specific than the connotations assigned to them in later periods. Spectacles as we know them today had been proposed by Bacon in the Opus Maius (1266–67) and were likely invented in northern Italy in 31 the last two decades of the thirteenth century. Literary references to eyeglasses become progressively more commonplace throughout the late fourteenth and early fifteenth centuries, in Latin and vernacular texts as varied as medical treatises (Guy de Chauliac’s Inventarium, 1363), antifeminist tracts (Jean Le Fevre’s translation of the late thirteenth-century Lamentations de Matheolus, c. 1371–72), verse narratives (Pierre Chastellain’s Temps recouvré, 1454, and, in the early sixteenth century, Pierre Sala’s Tristan), and lyric poetry (Charles d’Orléans, 1450–55). In the late Middle Ages the use of eyeglasses was typically associated with old age, as we see in Charles d’Orléans’s ballade XCV, Par les fenestres 32 de mes yeulx: Or, maintenant que deviens vieulx, Quant je lys ou livre de joie, Les lunectes prens pour le mieulx, Par quoy la lettre me grossoye… (vv. 8–11) [But now that I’m getting old, When I read from the book of Joy I’m better off using my glasses With which the letters are enlarged…]

Eyeglasses are evidently no longer exceedingly rare, as a number of fourteenth- and fifteenth-century texts allude to these devices as a normal part of

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the aging process. This association is consistent with the persona of Meschinot’s aged narrator and adds to the melancholy of Villon’s testator who, though only thirty years old, is preoccupied with death before his time. The verses by Charles d’Orléans also demonstrate, more importantly for the present discussion, the instrumentality of glasses to the act of reading. In fact, the only medieval eyeglasses were reading glasses, magnifiers that enlarged objects at close range. That eyeglasses are popularly associated with scholarly activities, especially reading and writing, is further suggested by their 34 earliest pictorial representations. The nature of the instrument, a facilitator of textual production and consumption, invites reflection not only on physical impairment but on readership, reception, and authorial identity. Cheap Joke or Precious Inheritance? Looking at the Lunettes des Princes and the Testament in light of the symbolic and material reality of lunettes in fifteenth-c. France, these texts’ seemingly simple metaphors (conscience attained through application of cardinal virtues) and images (offering eyeglasses to blind beggars) break down before our eyes. Once we can no longer be sure what lunettes are, other received ideas about these texts, particularly the Testament, seem even less certain. We cannot easily discern, for example, whether Villon’s bequest is truly humorous. The question is not a facetious one. The paradox of offering eyeglasses to the blind is jarring, as is manifest in the disapproval voiced by the composer and moralist Eloi d’Amerval in his Grant Deablerie (1508). D’Amerval condemns Villon’s “nonsense,” for the text’s humor, if there is any, is of a particularly cruel cast: Et de son bon gré ordonna, Pour mieulx bailler de ses sornettes, Qu’on donnast toutes ses lunettes, Apres sa mort, aux Quinze-Vingtz Pourtant qu’ilz furent ses voisins: En se farsant d’eulx, enten bien. Que leur valoit ce don? De rien, 35 Veu qu’ilz ne veoyent nullement. [And of his own will he dictated, The better to convey his nonsense, That all of his glasses be given, After his death, to the Quinze-Vingts Because they were his neighbors: Making fun of them, I mean. What good did this gift do them? None, Considering that they couldn’t see at all.]

Villon’s early critic has pinpointed the fundamental paradox that modern readers continue to note, no longer with moralistic horror, but as a source of

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(admittedly dark) humor. While a majority of modern scholars apparently agree with Eloi d’Amerval’s contention that Villon’s bequest is a “farce,” the object of his mockery remains in question: Jean Favier, for instance, eagerly rushing to Villon’s defense, protests that the poet’s true targets are the people 36 of standing who seek to enshrine themselves in elaborate tombs. Yet much of the bequest’s humor, though commonly accepted as such, disappears or metamorphoses under closer scrutiny. The obvious contradiction of bestowing glasses upon the blind is only the beginning of the interpretive difficulties in Villon’s deceptively simple mock-legacy. For the humor in Villon’s bequest to the Quinze Vingts also stems from two other, fundamentally absurd premises: using eyeglasses to distinguish between virtue and vice, and donating eyeglasses while withholding a case for the spectacles. But are these details as preposterous, and hence as humorous, as they initially seem? The first, and most self-evident, absurdity in the bequest is the glaring paradox of offering eyeglasses to the blind. We read Villon’s bequest as a flip and facile joke on the basis of the premise, implicit in Villon’s text and explicit in Eloi d’Amerval’s critique, that the Quinze Vingts “ne veoyent nullement.” However, because “the hospital did not record the visual acuity of its residents,” as Mark O’Tool has pointed out, we cannot know exactly 37 how much the beggars could or could not see. No surviving records indicate the degree of visual impairment experienced by individual “pauvres aveugles” of the Quinze Vingts; in fact, both blind people and their unimpaired spouses lived in, and wore the insignia of, the Quinze Vingts. A fifteenth-century register indicates that married couples from the Quinze Vingts begged together, and we can surmise that sighted residents, usually women, were sent out in the regalia of the Quinze Vingts to guide their blind spouses; O’Tool remarks that because of their identical garb, “when they were guiding the blind, the sighted and the blind would have appeared al38 most indistinguishable.” Furthermore, blind beggars are often regarded with suspicion in medieval French texts, as “moralists warned — again and again — about the deceptions of beggars who were not disabled at all, promulgating the suspicion that many ‘robust’ men of the lower strata of society pretended not to be robust, because they preferred the ‘soft’ life of the 39 beggar to the harsh demands of paid labor.” If indeed the beggars to whom Villon bequeathed his glasses were not truly blind, either because they were licensed guides, or only partly blind, or because they were frauds, the poem instantly loses its simplest layer of humor: the obvious incongruity of giving a visual aid to those whose vision can never be restored. A second difficulty arises from the purported explanation for the bequest of the glasses: helping the legatees distinguish “les gens de bien des deshonnestes.” Such discernment seems unfeasible, but let’s play along for a while and assume, for now, that visual differentiation between upright and dishon-

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orable people is humanly possible. Even when the reader labors under this assumption, the logic of the bequest starts to erode, and the humor reemerges in a different form. First of all, given the nature of the Parisian cemetery, it is not entirely clear whether the beggars are meant to judge the living or the dead — the Quinze Vingts were, after all, known and sought out for their masses in memory of deceased donors — or perhaps the lunectes are mirrors by which they should judge themselves. Since the brothers and sisters of the Quinze Vingts sent to the Innocents would be meant to pray especially for the souls of passersby giving them alms, though, it is likely the living “gens de bien” who are to be sorted out from the “deshonnestes.” Either way, should we accept that it is possible for a beggar to make this distinction, we nonetheless face the improbability that there even are any living “gens de bien” to be found in the Saints Innocents. The burial site was the stomping ground of peddlars, prostitutes, merchants doing business amongst the bones of their compatriots. Even the cemetery’s anchoresses were not always present out of pure devotion: some were immured in fulfillment of criminal sentences, like Renée de Vendômois, condemned to perpetual reclusion in 1486 upon her conviction 40 for the murder of her husband. As we have seen, it was not always easy to distinguish genuinely disabled beggars from frauds; even the holy beggars 41 may not have been particularly holy. In this respect they mirrored their broader environment in places like the Saints Innocents: the disguises of false beggars were also considered one aspect of the larger problem of deceit in the marketplace. According to moralists and chroniclers of the thirteenth century, deceit was endemic to urban commerce: craftsmen substituted cheaper materials for costly ones; bakers falsified bread; prostitutes used makeup to transform undesirable bodies and faces into desirable ones. In their attempts to gain alms under false pretenses, false beggars resembled all men 42 and women who falsified goods in the marketplace.

The possibility of even finding honest good in such an environment, let alone distinguishing virtue from the rampant fraud, seems slight — and not just because good and bad people cannot be discerned with the naked eye. To do so, the Quinze Vingts will need more than a pair of glasses, unless Villon’s “lunettes” do not correspond at all to the material object we know as “eyeglasses.” Furthermore, what is one to make of Villon’s emphatic omission of the estuiz from his bequest? If read literally, these objects’ deliberate exclusion from the legacy constitutes a seemingly negligible detail that only enhances the poem’s absurd humor. The insistence that the glasses’ case be withheld suggests, first of all, that the lunettes are never to be taken off. Such could never be the case (forgive the pun) with real eyeglasses, as medieval pince43 nez were both expensive and uncomfortable; one would neither wish to wear spectacles at all times nor to damage them by putting them away with-

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out a protective case. I suggest that Villon’s “lunettes” are conveyed without a case because we are not to read the visual aids as representing real glasses at all, but as a figure for some other aid to perception. Indeed, the only other allusion to eyeglasses in Villon’s writing of which I am aware supports the reading of glasses as a figure for a perceptive spirit rather than as a material object. In a burlesque double ballade earlier in the Testament, Villon writes of the blindness brought on by love: Folles amours font les gens bestes: Salomon en ydolatria, Sanson en perdit ses lunectes. Bien eureux est qui rien n’y a! (vv. 629–32) [Foolish love makes people fools: Solomon turned to idolatry, 44 Samson lost his glasses for love. Happy the man who keeps away!]

“Lunettes” are included here as a proxy both for eyesight (in reference to Samson’s blinding) and for insight; “lunettes” are that without which men become “bêtes” (a rhyme that is, I believe, not without significance). The playful anachronism of an Old Testament hero possessing and losing an object of medieval invention creates a sense of displacement not unlike the kind we feel upon reading of a gift of glasses to the blind, and leaves us with the impression that Samson’s “lunettes,” like those offered to the Quinze Vingts, are not real glasses at all. Perhaps Villon’s “lunettes” are more like Meschinot’s: a conceptual device that allows the user to reconfigure social hierarchies according not to earthly status but to spiritual worth. This reading of Villon’s paradoxical bequest eliminates the need to consider the Testament’s next five memento mori stanzas on the Saints Innocents as a digression. Removing the lunectes from their estuiz, we now see that in Testament CLX-CLXV we encounter not a jarringly unsophisticated quip juxtaposed with a somber meditation on the transitory nature of human existence, but rather a single and coherent bequest, i.e., a description of an item to be bequeathed (the lunectes). The five stanzas on the Saints Innocents are the very “lunectes” (eyeglasses and mirrors) that Villon has promised to the Quinze Vingts. In this light, the legacy to the Quinze Vingts integrates better with the series of bequests of which it forms a part: the gift to the Foundlings that immediately precedes it, and the gift to Jacquet Cardon that follows. The legacy of a lesson to the Foundlings consists of a one-stanza description of the item in question (“Item, riens aux Enffans trouvés / ... Une leçon de mon escolle / leur liray” CLV.1660–65), followed by the text of the lesson, which occupies the following three stanzas, as well as a ballade; the legacy after the Quinze Vingts’ likewise consists of a one-stanza description

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of the bequest (“Item, riens a Jacquet Cardon / ... Synon ceste bergeronnecte” CLXV.1776–79), followed by the text of the bergeronnecte. Our “joke” stanza is one of a series in which the heirs are offered “nothing” but a text; eyeglasses for the blind, though they have long been interpreted as offering “nothing,” are in fact a perceptual tool much like the Lunettes des Princes or like the “miroer salutaire” of the Danse macabre. For what can help the blind (real or figurative) see the light better than a text that puts life, death, and the state of the body in perspective? All of this time, Villon’s glasses have been right in front of us. Though we have been unable to see it, Villon’s gift of a five-stanza-long pair of textual glasses is arguably responsible for what Jane H. M. Taylor has termed the deliberate “defamiliarization” of the memento mori enacted in Villon’s verses on the Innocents. As Taylor explains, by Villon’s time the danse macabre is a conventional image, and so the poet employs strategies of defamiliarization in order to elicit a renewed response from his jaded readership; what could otherwise be a somewhat banal reminder of human mortality gives readers pause, allowing them to see the commonplace in a new way. For this reason Taylor characterizes defamiliarization as a “prolongement de l’acte de perception,” a prolongation or an extension of the act of 45 perception — not unlike the quasi-prosthetic extension of the field of clear vision that eyeglasses can provide. Thus I would add to Taylor’s compelling arguments that the Testament’s defamiliarization of the memento mori stems not just from the bold treatment of the Saints Innocents, but from the fact that this textual treatment is presented as a pair of eyeglasses meant to change the reader’s perspective on a common subject. Villon’s glasses (like the texts he leaves to the Foundlings and to Jacquet Cardon) are really bequeathed to us, the readers, insofar as the interpretive confusion surrounding their association with the blind not only sharpens but prolongs our perception of the textual memento mori. Ultimately we become the Quinze Vingts because we “see” through the glasses left to them. Eyeglasses, Authorship, and Readership The act of reading offers new insights even as the reading process leaves eyes vulnerable, either to eyestrain or to authorial manipulation. As we have seen, Villon and Meschinot are able to align their readers with the blind precisely by proffering those readers a metaphoric pair of eyeglasses: the very instrument that, in its literal or material form, serves to sharpen and improve sight. Indeed, both poets use the figure of the eyeglasses to shift and refocus conventional constructions of readership and authorship. Villon, for one, blurs the boundaries between legator, legatee, and audience. For instance, in bestowing the gift of eyeglasses, the poet-testator establishes a relationship of simultaneous allegiance and raillery with the denizens of the Hôpital des

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Quinze Vingts, as he invites them to “read” the fine distinctions between upstanding and dishonest souls. The authorial persona aligns himself with his 46 blind legatees, not only because he holds himself “a ceulx tenu,” but because of their shared need, whether real or farcical, for eyeglasses. After all, if Villon has a pair of glasses to bequeath to the Quinze Vingts, it must be 47 because he himself has needed to use them. Yet with the same gesture he sets himself and his readership in opposition to the Quinze Vingts, for while readers and writers can benefit from the use of eyeglasses, blind beggars apparently cannot. The author-narrator and readers are not only drawn together by their shared need for them; experiencing Villon’s “optical” stanzas on the Innocents, seeing the human condition through 48 them, readers are forced to adopt the poet’s perspective. However, given the multiplicity of narratorial voices in the Testament as highlighted by Tony Hunt, even this fleeting imposition of a sole “authoritative” perspective may prove 49 illusory. The paradox of offering eyeglasses to the blind lies at the heart of a larger dilemma, that of writerly and narratorial authority. Meschinot, with even greater subtlety, likewise uses his gift of eyeglasses simultaneously to identify his narratorial persona with, and distance himself (as author) from, his audience. Even as the narrator explicitly establishes himself as his readers’ counterpart, his privileged access to the book of conscience belies his apparent equality with his fellow “princes.” Only he lays eyes on the original “eyeglasses,” and it is on his transcription — not just of the book, but of Reason’s description of the lunettes — that readers must rely. While the element of contradiction in Villon’s text is clear — he gives glasses to the unseeing so that they might perceive the unseeable — a similar paradox arises from Meschinot’s text. So that they might read a book, the (metaphorically) unseeing are given glasses with lenses of Prudence and Justice, frames of Strength, and a central hinge of Temperance. However, as the author/narrator transcribes the book, readers discover that its subject matter is the same set of cardinal virtues that comprises the glasses; in other words, one needs glasses in order to read the book, but the glasses are only usable once the book has 50 been read and understood. Once again, as with Villon, the remedy is available exclusively to those who neither require nor can make use of it. Like Villon, Meschinot offers his public multiple sets of interpretive “lenses” through which to read his text. As Johnson notes, “the allegory of the glasses is… double [operating on the level of each component virtue and as a new whole], and its force is increased through its always being presented 51 in conjunction with the book, itself an allegory.” Beyond these first two allegorical levels commented upon by Johnson, we must not forget the third veil consisting of Meschinot’s book, which, unlike Conscience, is specifically called “lunettes.” The fifteenth-c. iconography of the cardinal virtues complicates matters, too, for not only is Temperance a component of Meschinot’s

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glasses, but in numerous mid-fifteenth-c. illuminations glasses are themselves 52 depicted as an attribute of Temperance. The multiple symbolic deployments of eyeglasses in the Lunettes des Princes thus take on the character not just of an elaborate mise en abyme but of a textual mobius strip, with virtues and eyeglasses so intertwined as to render insoluble the puzzle of where one ends and the other begins. In this respect the iconography of Temperance, who is a part of an object to which she is also external (and of which she is the proprietor), can be assimilated to the problems raised by the creation and consumption of the Lunettes des Princes: Meschinot is at once author and audience of his own book, an object from which all other readers can only profit once they already possess what is inside it. Reason offers the lunettes directly to Meschinot, not to his public, and so the virtues contained therein constitute a precious (in)sight that only the author/narrator can impart. The use of a therapeutic tool (eyeglasses) serves in the Lunettes des Princes, as in Villon’s Testament, to construct and differentiate author and audience according to their respective states of impairment. The discrepancy between the author-narrator’s and the reader-subject’s ability to use and benefit from glasses serves first and foremost to highlight the author’s privileged aptitude of sight, diminishing the instrument’s benefit to the reading public. After all, Meschinot’s readers are “aveuglez,” while the narrator, never described in terms of visual impairment, has merely “perdy de raison le compas” (XV.11), leaving his “regard corporel” intact (line 120, p. 35); lest there be any confusion on this count, Meschinot’s narrator underlines his own visual acuity, “Car j’aperçoy clerement, voy et sens” (VI.2). The author-narrator constructs and glorifies himself not only as the one who can see, but as the one for whom the glasses of reason were intended. Can a broad readership, though, truly benefit from one person’s therapy? Ultimately, the “blind” readers are offered a pair of lenses ground by and for someone else, one whose “sentement est devenu folie.” Given the highly indirect nature of the access to Reason that Meschinot’s narrator permits his readers, one cannot altogether discount the possibility that the lunettes in question are in effect distorting mirrors, a skewed perspective, indeed. In the Testament and the Lunettes des Princes Villon and Meschinot construct their narratorial personas as possessors and users of glasses; in so doing, they establish themselves as readers and thus seemingly align their own dependence on spectacles with their audience’s similar needs. Their particular deployment of those figurative glasses, though, demonstrates that despite appearances, these authors do not present themselves as their readers’ peers; rather, they situate themselves in a strong position of authority as pertains to both the composition and the interpretation of their texts. There emerges a new profile of the author, as he becomes the one with a privileged view of his material: the acteur is not just a player in the text, but the sole lens

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through which the reading public is obliged to consider its words. The reader, consequently, is accorded the lesser position of being a visually (and, by extension, morally and intellectually) impaired recipient of the authorial gift of sight. In the land of the blind, the bespectacled author is king.

Notes 1

All quotations from Villon’s Testament are taken from Jean Rychner and Albert Henry, eds., Le Testament Villon (Geneva: Droz, 1974), while English translations of Villon are quoted from Barbara N. Sargent-Baur, François Villon: Complete Poems (Toronto: U of Toronto Press, 1994). Modifications of Sargent-Baur’s translation will be noted; all other translations from French are my own. 2 Rutebeuf complains of the “Trois cens aveugles route a route” in “Les Ordres de Paris,” in Oeuvres complètes, ed. Michel Zink (Paris: Poches Lettres Gothiques, 2001): 252–54. The Bourgeois de Paris recounts public fun at expense of the blind in 1425: Journal d’un Bourgeois de Paris: de 1405 à 1449, ed. Colette Beaune (Paris: Poche Lettres Gothiques, 1990): 221. On the history of the Quinze Vingts, see: Léon Le Grand, Les Quinze-Vingts depuis leur fondation jusqu’à leur translation au Faubourg Saint-Antoine (XIIIeXVIIIe siècle) (Paris: Société de l’Histoire de Paris, 1887); Louis Guillaumat and JeanPierre Bailliart, Les Quinze-Vingts de Paris: échos historiques du XIIIe au XXe siècle (Paris: Société Francophone d’Histoire de l’Ophtalmologie, 1998); Edward Wheatley, “Blindness, Discipline, and Reward: Louis IX and the Foundation of the Hospice des Quinze-Vingts,” Disability Studies Quarterly 22 (2002): 194–212; Mark O’Tool, “Caring for the Blind in Medieval Paris: Life at the Quinze-Vingts, 1250–1430” (Ph.D. diss. University of California, Santa Barbara, 2007). 3 O’Tool, “Caring for the Blind,” 274. 4 “Ironic inversion,” according to Tony Hunt, is one of the Testament’s primary rhetorical modes. Villon’s Last Will: Language and Authority in the Testament (Oxford: Clarendon, 1996). 5 Christine Martineau-Genieys, “Introduction,” in Édition des Lunettes des Princes de Jean Meschinot (Geneva: Droz, 1972): ix–cxxxvi, civ–cvii. 6 All quotations from Meschinot’s Lunettes des Princes are cited by stanza and verse or by line and page number (for metric and prose passages, respectively) from the MartineauGenieys edition. 7 Martineau-Genieys, “Introduction,” lxxix. 8 Cited from François Rabelais, Pantagruel, ed. Pierre Michel (Paris: Gallimard, 1964): 113. 9 Rabelais, Pantagruel, 109. 10 The Bourgeois de Paris records one such immurement: “Item, le 11e jour d’octobre, au jeudi, fut la recluse, nommée Jeanne la Voirière, mise par maître Denis du Moulin, lors évêque de Paris, en une maisonnette toute neuve dedans le cimetière des Innocents, et fit-on un bel sermon devant elle et devant moult grande foison de peuple, qui là était pour le jour,” Journal, 411–12. See n. 2 above. 11 On dating the charnel houses, see Guy-Michel Leproux, “Le cimetière médiéval,” 37–53 (44) in Les Saints-Innocents, ed. Michel Fleury and Guy-Michel Leproux (Paris: Délégation à l’Action Artistique de la Ville de Paris, 1990). According to Huizinga, “it

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was believed that in this earth a human body was decomposed to the bone in nine days.” See The Waning of the Middle Ages (New York: Anchor Doubleday, 1954): 149. 12 “Item, l’an 1424, fut faite la Danse Macabre aux Innocents, et fut commence environ le mois d’août et achevée au Carême ensuivant,” Journal, 220. See n. 2 above. The danse macabre is amply discussed by Émile Mâle in L’Art religieux de la fin du Moyen Age en France, 2nd ed. (Paris: Armand Colin, 1922): 359–80. 13 Aubrey Burl, Danse Macabre (Stroud, Gloucestershire: Sutton, 2000). 14 Leproux, “Le cimetière médiéval” (see n. 11 above): 51–52. See also Christine Métayer, “Un espace de vie: les charniers du cimetière des SS. Innocents à Paris, sous l’Ancien Régime,” Journal of the Canadian Historical Association 4 (1993): 183–206. 15 François Villon et les thèmes poétiques du Moyen Age (Paris: Nizet, 1967): 253 n2. 16 Leonard W. Johnson, Poets as Players: Theme and Variation in Late Medieval French Poetry (Stanford, CA: Stanford UP, 1990): 217; emphasis added. See also Edelgard E. DuBruck, “The Emergence of the Common Man in Fifteenth-Century Europe: A Probe of Literary Evidence,” Fifteenth-Century Studies 1 (1978): 83–109 (100–101), on Eulenspiegel as optician, 1515. 17 In the later Middle Ages and the Renaissance, there is considerable confusion between the “Saints Innocents” and “Saint Innocent,” such that written accounts refer to the cemetery and church by both names: see Leproux, “Le cimetière médiéval,” 38. See n. 11 above. 18 The danse macabre frescos and the book printed by Guyot Marchant convey a similar message: “While the living identify their specific position in the social hierarchy by their manner of dress (and sometimes by the symbolic objects they carry), the figures of the dead, stripped to the flesh and sometimes even to the bone, remind their living counterparts of the superficiality and meaninglessness of the material and social distinctions that separate one group from another.” See David A. Fein, “Guyot Marchant’s Danse Macabre: The Relationship Between Image and Text,” Mirator (August 2000): 1–11 (1). 19 Jacqueline Cerquiglini-Toulet, La Couleur de la mélancolie : La fréquentation des livres au XIVe siècle, 1300–1415 (Paris: Hatier, 1993): 130–43. Cerquiglini-Toulet remarks that in texts such as these, “l’écriture se fait tombeau” (140). 20 Bourgeois de Paris, Journal, 253 n47. See n. 2 above. 21 Frere Richard drew such large crowds that he frequently preached at the Innocents (Bourgeois de Paris, Journal, 253, 263, 300); see n. 2 above. The Bourgeois de Paris notes other large-scale public events in the cemetery, including a sermon by the Bishop of Paris in 1449 (441–42), the reclusion of an anchoress in 1442 (411–12), and a procession (444). 22 Huizinga, Waning, 149. See n. 11 above. 23 A treatise explicating these hieroglyphs was published, with an attribution to Flamel himself, in 1612; it is reprinted in Nicolas Flamel, Le Livre des figures hiéroglyphiques, ed. Eugène Canseliet and Maxime Préaud (Paris: Denoël, 1970). Interestingly, Flamel is one of the many Parisians who left testamentary provisions for masses at the Quinze Vingts, according to Éric Muraise, Le Livre de l’ange : Histoire et légende alchimique de Nicolas Flamel (Paris: Julliard, 1969): 284. 24 Jane H. M. Taylor, “Danse Macabré and Bande Dessinée: A Question of Reading,”Forum for Modern Language Studies 25(1989): 356–69 (356). 25 See Jane H. M. Taylor, “Un Mirouer Salutaire,” 29–43 in Dies Illa: Death in the Middle Ages, ed. Jane H. M. Taylor (Liverpool: Francis Cairns, 1984). 26 David A. Fein, Danse Macabre, 7. See n. 18 above.

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Jane H. M. Taylor notes that “the mirror itself had, to the medieval mind, a particular association with death and mortality,” “Miroer,” 37. See n. 25 above. 28 René de Lespinasse, Les métiers et corporations de la ville de Paris, XIVe-XVIIIe siècle, 3 vols. (Paris: Imprimerie Nationale, 1886–97): 3: 723. 29 Lespinasse, Métiers, 722–23. 30 Leonard W. Johnson has discounted the possibility of “technological novelty” in the Lunettes’ title, given the device’s date of invention (Poets as Players, 323 n29). In light of the still-evolving terminology pertaining to glasses, however, as well as the burst in literary references to glasses in the mid-fifteenth century, I argue that at this moment eyeglasses are only beginning to lose their novelty. See n. 16 above. 31 In a sermon delivered at Santa Maria Novella in Florence on February 23, 1306, Fra Giordano stated that eyeglasses had been invented fewer than twenty years earlier. For a detailed account of the confusion surrounding the date and attribution of the first eyeglasses, see Edward Rosen, “The Invention of Eyeglasses,” Journal of the History of Medicine and Allied Sciences XI (1956): 13–46 and 183–218, esp. pages 204–213. 32 Quoted from Charles d’Orléans, Ballades et Rondeaux, ed. Jean-Claude Mühlethaler (Paris: Livre de Poche, 1992): 328. 33 Jean de Tournemire in his medical treatise Nonum ad Almansorem (1365) and Petrarch in his Letter to Posterity (circa 1370–72) both allude to eyeglasses as attributes of the elderly. For further discussion, see Julie Singer, “Lines of Sight: Love Lyric, Science, and Authority in Late Medieval and Early Modern French and Italian Culture” (Diss. Duke University, 2006), 106–110. 34 For surveys of early images of eyeglasses, see Chiara Frugoni, Books, Banks, Buttons, and Other Inventions from the Middle Ages, trans. William McCuaig (New York: Columbia UP, 2003), esp. pp. 7–26; and Charles E. Letocha and John Dreyfus, “Early Prints Depicting Eyeglasses,” Archives of Ophthalmology 120 (2002): 1577–80. 35 Quoted in Pierre Champion, François Villon, Sa vie et son temps, 2 vols. (Paris: Champion, 1913): 2:273. 36 “L’ironie cingle les tombes des gens de bien, non la charité que sont les QuinzeVingts” (the irony stings the tombs of people of standing, not the charity cases that are the Quinze Vingts): Jean Favier, François Villon (Paris: Fayard, 1982), 50. 37 O’Tool goes on to note that “only six of the people known to have resided at the hospital between the 1270s and the 1430s are actually described as blind in the archival record” (“Caring for the Blind,” 118); see n. 2 above. This, of course, does not mean that so few of the Quinze Vingts were truly blind, but simply that archival records do not allow us to establish the identities, let alone the physical conditions, of a large proportion of the hospital’s medieval residents. 38 “Caring for the Blind,” 222–23; see n. 2 above. 39 Sharon Farmer, Surviving Poverty in Medieval Paris (Ithaca, NY: Cornell UP, 2002): 64. 40 Leproux, “Cimetière,” 51. See n. 11 above. 41 Guillaumat and Bailliart relate a later anecdote indicating that the Quinze Vingts themselves were not immune to criminal temptations: “En effet si l’on en croit Félibien [Histoire de Paris, 1712], certains d’entre eux, postés aux porches des églises ou devant les demeures des notables, recueillaient par l’oreille les propos des entrants et sortants, déterminaient leur personnalité, et renseignaient éventuellement les malandrins sur la valeur du butin” (Les Quinze-Vingts de Paris, 4). 42 Sharon Farmer, 67–68; see n. 39 above.

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43

For a discussion of the ownership and valuation of eyeglasses in fourteenth-c. Italy, consult Rosen, “Invention,” 204. See n. 31 above. 44 Sargent-Baur translates this line as follows: “And Samson, for love, lost his eyes.” I have substituted my own rendering of the verse for reasons that should be quite obvious. See n. 1 above. 45 Jane H. M. Taylor, “Villon et la danse Macabré: défamiliarisation d’un mythe,” 179– 96 in Pour une mythologie du Moyen Age, ed. Laurence Harf-Lancner and Dominique Boutet (Paris: École Normale Supérieure de Jeunes Filles, 1988): 183. 46 The exact nature of the obligation he ostensibly feels towards the Quinze Vingts is never specified, but it is likely related to Villon’s criminal activities: “on connaît l’aventure de Villon faisant le guet auprès de l’hôpital pendant que deux de ses compères volaient des burettes de l’église des Quinze-Vingts” (Le Grand, Les Quinze-Vingts, 123). See n. 2 above. Villon was perhaps complicit in his companion Régnier de Montigny’s theft of two silver burettes from the church of the Quinze Vingts (Pierre Champion, François Villon, II. 73). See n. 35 above. 47 We have no knowledge of whether Villon, the author, owned a real pair of eyeglasses. How would he have held on to them during his varied misadventures, and what would they have allowed him to see in the oubliette of Meung-sur-Loire? 48 Karl Uitti points toward a somewhat similar conclusion, though one reached through a very different inquiry, in positing that “Villon’s Testament perhaps attested to the authenticity of poetry: a discourse which, when well served in suffering and deprivation — perhaps especially then — by a perceptive poet, provides a glimpse for those few — the “socially” marginal? — capable of understanding it and grasping what things are all about”; I would add that the eyeglasses are that which can make the poet “perceptive” and provide a “glimpse” of the poet’s perspective to those readers “capable... of grasping” them. Karl D. Uitti, “Villon’s Le Grand Testament and the Poetics of Marginality,” Modern Philology 93 (1995): 139–60 (145). 49 Hunt carries this idea further, commencing his study of Villon with the premise that “the whole idea of recovering a single unitary or authentic personality from the work is misguided and, indeed, futile”: Villon’s Last Will, 1; see n. 4 above. While Hunt reads the text’s dialogism as a “refusal of authority” (49), I am inclined to agree with Evelyn Birge Vitz’s remark in her review of Hunt’s Villon’s Last Will that “while the testator may indeed, by the end, have nullified his ‘testament,’ the poet and his poetry remain — and they do, paradoxically, have ‘authority’”: Speculum 74 (1999): 1072–74 (1073). 50 Johnson argues that the glasses’ “peculiar appropriateness is underlined even more when we realize that we are, in fact, reading the very book, Conscience, the author himself is reading (and, in truth, has written), and that we could not do so in the right — that is, the ‘clear’ — way without the four cardinal virtues, since they are, in fact, the subject or substance of the book itself” (Poets as Players, 182–83). See n. 16 above. 51 Johnson, Poets as Players, 182. 52 For further discussion of clocks and Temperance in the fifteenth century, see Julie Singer, “Clockwork Genres: Temperance and the Articulated Text in Late Medieval France,” Exemplaria 21(Fall 2009): 225–46.

Washington University in St. Louis

Jean de Meun in the “Cité des Dames”: Author versus Authority Geri L. Smith The focus of this essay will be a sequence of three specific allusions to the Roman de la Rose found in Christine de Pizan’s Cité des Dames, which have yet to be read in relation to one another. These references to the Rose constitute a potent example of Christine’s use of Jean de Meun as a counterpoint for her own concepts of authority and truth, grounded in her experience as a woman. By comparing their respective contexts, and certain details present in or missing from each, we can trace across these nods toward the Rose an increasingly pointed challenge to Jean de Meun. The differences among the three allusions also reflect the modulation of Christine as protagonist within the text. As that persona she moves from being a confused and troubled reader for whom the supposed truth found in books destabilizes her own sense of personal authority, toward being an educated, emboldened woman having the wherewithal to speak on behalf of women and to offer counsel. The protagonist’s evolution, in turn, is evocative of Christine de Pizan herself as an increasingly confident voice of authority in the real world. Christine de Pizan (c.1364–1431), known as the first professional woman of letters in France, created a vast body of work ranging from lyric love po1 etry to prose treatises on warfare and judicious governing. With her Cité des Dames, written in 1404–05, she became the first woman to compose a formal defense of women, in which she systematically confronts and rewrites the predominantly misogynous discourse that had constituted literary authority for centuries. She became the lone feminine voice in what is considered the first major literary debate in French, the quarrel over the Roman de la Rose that raged between 1401 and 1402. Disgusted by the Rose’s negativity toward women, especially in the section written by Jean de Meun, Christine projected herself into the fray, and emerged from the dispute with a new level of credibility in the intellectual sphere of her time, and a more credible status as an author in her own right. The period surrounding the debate also corresponds, generally speaking, to a trend in Christine’s oeuvre toward a more resolutely didactic agenda, grounded in real-world concerns. This shifting orientation might be seen, at least in part, as evidence of Christine’s ongoing program of crafting her specific authorial persona while asserting her authority as a writer ever more forcefully. Through her role in the Rose polemic, and especially by merging key letters and texts from the debate into a unified document (destined for high-profile addressees Queen Isabeau de Bavière

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and Guillaume de Tignonville, Provost of Paris), Christine advanced herself 2 as a formidable player in the literary arena of the late Middle Ages. Christine’s disdain for Jean de Meun’s criticism of women, for his promotion of questionable morals, and for his indulgence in unsavory vocabulary was no secret, and calculated responses to Jean de Meun as an author — and to the Rose as a quintessentially misogynous text — figure often in 3 Christine’s works. In fact, Jean de Meun became a target in Christine’s writ4 ing as early as within her 1399 Epistre au Dieu d’Amours. In that work, Christine names Jean and his poem explicitly (v. 389), and she places him solidly in the camp of “li felon mesdisant, / qui les femmes vont ainsi desprisant” 5 (vv. 423–24) [the nasty scandalmongers … / who go about disdaining women]. Throughout her writings, Christine emphasizes gender, explicitly at times and implicitly elsewhere, as the central element of her authorial persona, 6 which itself hinges on her status as wife, mother, and widow. It is not surprising that Christine’s gender is an issue on both sides of the Rose debate. She remarks, for example, in a 1401 letter to her adversary Jean de Montreuil: “de tant comme voirement suis femme, plus puis tesmoingnier en ceste partie que cellui qui n’en a l’experience, ains parle par devinailles et d’aventure” (19; lines 255–58) [it is precisely because I am a woman that I can speak better in this matter than one who has not had the experience, since he speaks 7 only by conjecture and by chance (53)]. Worth noting, Christine’s “signature” is “je, Christine,” which Maureen Quilligan convincingly shows to be a means by which Christine continuously reasserts her personal experience as the key to her credibility as a defender of women, an aspect which appears 8 frequently throughout the Cité des Dames. More generally, readers of Christine de Pizan have already acknowledged the important connections between the Cité des Dames and the quarrel of the Rose, with respect to recurring 9 themes as well as to Christine’s status as a writer. We might say that the Cité, as an active exercise in defending women against misogynous thought and rhetoric, represents, to a large extent, a continuation of and response to the preoccupations demonstrated in earlier works such as the Epistre au Dieu d’Amours, and puts into practice the very principles that Christine had championed in the debate. The references to the Rose in the Cité des Dames are most meaningful when read in light of Christine’s method of citing her own oeuvre, directly as well as indirectly, a strategy that she employs throughout her corpus to validate 10 herself as a writer. The form of auto-citation that is of primary interest here involves an intradiegetic speaker alluding to Christine the author’s works in order to substantiate an argument, at times naming these texts by their titles and even attributing them to herself as protagonist through the dialogue. Not only do such instances of self-attributation fuse the identities of Christine the author and her incarnation within the text, but they appear to raise Chris-

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tine’s works to the same plane as the canonical texts that she confronts in the Cité des Dames. At the same time, the practice of self-attribution implicitly 11 situates Christine in the category of auctores heretofore populated by men. Through auto-citation, Christine asserts her identity as a writer and adds to the edifice of credibility that she so painstakingly constructs. At the same time, she showcases a kind of authority exercised by weighing what is asserted in books against truths she has learned from her own life experience. Keeping in mind Christine’s proactive involvement in the Rose debate, her strategic use of auto-citation in her literary enterprise, and the critical link between authority and feminine experience, let us examine more closely the interplay of the three pointed references to Jean de Meun in the Cité des Dames. In light of Christine’s participation in the public forum of the debate, one must consider the references to Jean de Meun and his work as qualitatively different from the allusions to other authors making up the compendium. The invocations of Jean de Meun hold a special status in the Cité, as these entreaties bridge the divide between Christine’s textual universe and the material environment outside the text — when Christine’s characters speak about Jean de Meun and the Rose, they also foreground Christine as a writer and proclaim her a worthy participant in the famous polemic. The Rose first appears in the opening pages of the Cité, as the demoralized protagonist Christine wallows in a self-denigrating reverie inspired by the overwhelmingly misogynistic writings of respected auctores. Christine’s salvation comes in the form of three divine ladies sent by God to console her, to set her thinking straight, and to enlist her as the founding mother of the City of Ladies. The task of Reason, Rectitude, and Justice is to correct Christine’s misapprehensions by teaching the already well-read woman about the validity of her personal judgment. In other words, the ladies must bring the featured character’s “subjective knowledge,” her experience, into balance with 12 her “procedural knowledge,” or what we might call her “book-learning.” Ultimately, the self-doubter will gain the ability to make optimum use of bookish tradition by approaching that convention through the lens of the 13 truths that life has instilled in her. The completed city, constructed of literary building blocks, will represent a process having come full circle: Christine’s dedication to study paves the way for her encounter with the divine ladies; with their guidance, she will learn to accept the reliability of her own sense of truth; the resulting self-assurance will in turn allow her to validate the credibility of texts or expose their weaknesses with confidence. Christine’s conversation with her divine visitors is launched when Lady Reason calls into question the very concept of the authority of the misogynous auctores and their written words. Christine’s unquestioning acceptance of the presumed authority of those texts had utterly shattered her faith in her

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own judgment, itself based on her experience as a woman. Laying the theoretical foundation for the city, Lady Reason states: Et des poetes dont tu parles, ne scez tu pas bien que ilz ont parlé en plusieurs choses en maniere de fable et se veulent aucunefois entendre au contraire de ce que leurs diz demonstrent? Et les peut on prendre par une figure de grammaire qui se nomme antifrasis qui s’entent, si comme tu scez, si comme on diroit tel est mauvais, c’est a dire que il est bon, aussi a l’opposite…Et par aventure que cellui homme qui se nomma Matheolus en son livre, l’entendi ainsi, car maintes choses y a lesquelles qui a la letre tenir les vouldroit, ce seroit pure heresie. Et la vituperacion que dit, non mie seulement lui, mais d’autres et mesmement le Rommant de la Rose (ou plus grant foy est adjoustee pour cause de l’auctorité de l’aucteur) de l’ordre de mariage, qui est saint estat digne et de Dieu ordené, c’est chose clere et prouvee par l’experience que le contraire est vray du mal qu’ilz proposent et dient estre en ycellui estat a la grant charge et coulpe des femmes. (48–50) [And as for the poets of which you speak, do you not well know that they spoke of some things as fictions, whose meaning is to be understood as the opposite of what their words say? One can read them according to a figure of grammar called antiphrasis which means, as you know, that if one were to say that something is bad, that thing is in fact good, and vice versa…And perhaps that man who called himself Matheolus in his book intended his work to be read as such, for there are many things there which, if one wanted to take them at face value, it would be pure heresy. And as for the reproaches against marriage, which is a holy and dignified state ordained by God, put forth not just by (Matheolus) but by others and in particular the Romance of the Rose (which is given more credibility because of the authority of its author), it is a clear matter and proven by experience that the truth is the opposite of the bad things that they claim are inherent in that state, to the great burden and blame 14 of women.]

This passage contains a number of details worthy of notice. First, while Lady Reason does not refer explicitly to the Rose debate, that polemic is powerfully if indirectly evident in the character’s words. Where we see the title Roman de la Rose, we, as readers of Christine, cannot help but see the debate as well. The fact that the allusion to the Rose is contextualized in a passage about marriage amplifies that resonance. The topic of marriage, including unflattering depictions of the wife as a source of misery for her husband, is one that Jean de Meun exploits amply, and through which his negativity toward women is prominently displayed. Marriage is also a subject of particular importance to Christine, as a central element of both the persona that she con-

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structs over the course of her works and her strategy of speaking from personal experience. That marriage would figure as a key issue in the Rose debate is reasonable, and as we will see, all three allusions to the Rose are linked with that theme. This first reference cites the Rose by title alone without naming its author. Not only does that attribution attest to the evocative power of the title of the Rose as a negative example, it becomes a rhetorical maneuver relegating Jean de Meun to the background, unacknowledging him. In fact, juxtaposing the title of Jean’s work with the name of the author Matheolus highlights the former’s absence. We can consider the omission of Jean de Meun’s name here in light of a passage found in a letter from Christine to Pierre Col, another of her opponents in the Rose debate. In that letter, Christine compares Jean de Meun unfavorably to Dante, referring to Dante by name and to the Rose by title only: Mais se mieulx vuelz oïr descripre paradis et enfer, et par plus subtilz termes plus haultement parlé de theologie, plus prouffitablement, plus poetiquement et de plus grant efficasse, lis le livre que on appelle le Dant, ou le te fais exposer pour ce que il est en langue florentine souverainnement dicté: la oyras autre propos mieux fondé plus subtilment, ne te desplaise, et ou tu pourras plus prouffiter que en ton Romant de la Rose, --et cent fois mieux composé; ne il n’y a comparison, ne t’en courouces ja. (141–42; lines 868–76) [But if you wish to hear paradise and hell described more subtly and, theologically, portrayed more advantageously, poetically, and efficaciously, read the book of Dante, or have it explained to you, because it is written splendidly in the Florentine language. Without wishing to displease you, I say that you will find there sounder principles, and you will be better able to profit from it than from that Roman de la Rose of yours. It is one hundred times better written; there is, be not offended, no comparison. (138)]

What Maureen Quilligan says about this passage would apply to the first reference to the Rose in the Cité des Dames as well: “Christine refers to Jean’s text by its title; Dante’s poem she calls by Dante’s name, as if text and author were one, thereby privileging Dante as an auctor and denigrating Jean’s claim to true au15 thority.” Pushing that notion further, we can observe that by effacing Jean de Meun behind the title of his work, Christine not only undermines him as an authority, but she obscures his masculine identity behind the feminine figure of the rose, presented through the feminine voice of Lady Reason on behalf of the woman author. We might also add that Jean is doubly overshadowed by the figure of Christine as author, in the sense that the Rose debate is more prominent here than the name of Christine’s ideological adversary. Finally with regard to this passage, the proximity of terms “authority” and “author,” set in dramatic opposition to the word “experience,” all in the

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space of a single sentence, serves to underscore the central question: to what extent does the status of the author guarantee authority, as that correlation is presumed to do? The Middle French “mesmement” conveys the sense of “in 16 particular,” meaning that the Rose is singled out here as an especially potent example of misogyny and a model for such an ill-informed concept of women. And the ostensibly superior authority of the Rose’s author draws attention to criticism of the text. The Rose appears for the second time in Chapter 25 of Part 2 of the Cité, in the context of women’s purported inability to exercise discretion with secrets, and that manifestation is again linked with the topic of marriage. In this case, Christine as protagonist addresses Lady Rectitude, who has just offered numerous stories of women who are exemplary in marriage: Dame, je congnois certainement maintenant, et autrefoiz l’ay apperceu, que grant est l’amour et la foy que maintes femmes ont eu et ont a leurs maris. Pour ce je me donne merveille d’un lengage que cuert assez communement entre les hommes et mesmement maistre Jehan de Meun trop fort l’afferme en son Rommant de la Rose, et autres aucteurs aussi le font, que homme ne die a sa femme chose que il vueille celer et que femmes ne se scevent taire. (280) [Lady, I now know for sure, and I had perceived it earlier, that great is the love and fidelity that many women had, and have, for their husbands. That is why I am astonished by a discourse that circulates quite commonly among men, and in particular master Jean de Meun affirms it quite strongly in his Roman de la Rose, and other writers do as well, that a man should not tell his wife anything that he wants to keep secret, and that women do not know how to keep quiet.]

What stands out immediately here is the addition of the critical detail omitted from the first reference, which is of course the name of the author. In this instance, both the author and title are named, drawn into the text in the voice of Christine the protagonist who now exercises power over them, and who by this point in the Cité has been established as a well-studied woman and author herself. If one accepts that in the first passage the absence of Jean’s name was an intentional, if subtle, jab against him, one should nonetheless refrain from reading this naming as his rehabilitation. Jean de Meun and the Rose are evoked here in terms of negatives, representing premises that are in direct opposition to what the rational and truth-seeking Christine had supposed all along. In other words, Jean de Meun and his work are the invalid counterpoints to the truth with which Christine as principal character has opened the sentence and which is based on her experience as a woman. This reference also recalls the previous allusion to the Rose through use of the term “mesme-

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ment,” “in particular” — both text and author are to be singled out as extreme 17 cases in the already misogynous, and mistaken, literary world. Regarding the speaking voice at this moment in the text, there is a notable shift. Whereas the first reference to the Rose is an indirect allusion to the debate in the voice of Lady Reason to the silent Christine, here it is the voice of Christine in her capacity as lead persona, who invokes Jean de Meun’s erroneous stand on a specific issue argued by Christine qua author in the debate. What is paramount is that this time the names of both the author and his work are pronounced by, and remain in control of, the increasingly confident and informed Christine, whose faith in her experience now matches her learnedness. In this reference, which is not only attached once again to the concept of marriage, but which includes specific points of argument from the quarrel of the Rose, the protagonist’s voice seems synchronized with the voice of Christine the author. The character within the text is echoing, in a sense, the words that the author had put forth in the letters she contributed to the debate, and the fact that this passage is about silencing women provides a pointed note of irony as well. The third passage of interest here is found in Part 2, chapter 54, of the Cité des Dames. The theme of this section of book is the fidelity of women, a topic with which the devoted wife and now resolutely chaste widow Christine would have been very familiar. This invocation of the Rose reaches yet another level of specificity and advances the power of auto-citation to the forefront. This time it is Lady Rectitude who speaks, prompted by a query Christine poses: Amie chere, quant est ad ce qu’ilz dient que si decevables soient, ne scay a quoy plus t’en diroie, car toy mesmes as assez souffisamment traictié la matiere tant contre cellui Ovide, comme contre autres, en ton Epistre du dieu d’amours et es Epistres sus le “Rommant de la Rose.” (376) [Dear friend, as for when they say that women are very deceitful, I do not know what more I can say to you about it, because you yourself have quite sufficiently handled the topic, as much against Ovid as against others, in your Epistre au Dieu d’Amours and your Epistres sur le “Roman de la Rose.”]

This citation caps the progression set in motion by the first allusion, in that the naming does not take the form of a reference to Jean de Meun but rather is stated in terms of Christine’s own titles. Jean has in fact been replaced by Ovid, another of Christine’s targets in the Cité and in the debate docu18 ments, and is relegated to the anonymous pool of “others.” Of course, calling upon Christine’s titles underscores her strength as a writer and imbues her works with the same status as the learned texts of her masculine predecessors. What makes this instance of auto-citation all the more noteworthy is

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that the works named here are specifically those constituting the beginning and end points of Christine’s involvement in the debate — this is a statement about Christine as a proven authority, who has already handled the subject so adequately, in writing, that nothing more need be said. This moment also represents a powerful fusion of Christine the protagonist and Christine the author, as the former is being credited with writing the texts bridging the gap between the world of the Cité and Christine’s real world. Christine as feminine authority has supplanted the masculine author, whose own sovereignty has been quite effectively undermined. That the title of Jean’s work is contained in, subsumed by, the title of Christine’s Epistres du Roman de la Rose, is striking; Christine accords herself the last word in the sequence of references to Jean in the Cité, just as she did when she compiled the debate records into a unified dossier and closed the verbal controversy just a few years earlier. Only women, of course, and virtuous ones at that, are invited to populate the metaphorical city that Christine the protagonist builds. As for the male auctores whose names and stories appear in the Cité, their words and ideas are appropriated, redirected, and broken down to become the raw material of which that city is built, and it is Christine the author outside the text who demonstrates her mastery by crafting the edifice. This is not the only place in which Christine emphasizes the author’s role in forging raw material into something of value. In her Fais et bonnes meurs du sage roy Charles V, published in 1404 and therefore written concurrently with the Cité des Dames, she is explicit on the subject: tout ainsi comme l’ovrier de architecture ou maçonnage n’a mie fait les pierres et les estoffes, dont il bastist et ediffie le chastel ou maison, qu’il tent à perfaire et où il labeure, non obstant assemble les matieres ensemble, chascune où elle doit servir, selon la fin de l’entencion où il tent… tout ainsi vrayement n’ay je mie fait toutes les matieres, de quoy le traittié de ma compilacion est composé; il me souffist seulement que les sache appliquer à propos, si que bien puissent servir à la fin de l’ymaginacion, à laquelle je tends à perfaire. (I/191, emphasis added) [just as the architect or mason has not made the rocks or the materials from which he builds and constructs the castle or the house, which he strives to bring to completion and on which he works, nevertheless he assembles the materials together, each piece where it should serve, according to the purpose to which he directs himself […] in such a manner, truly I have not made all of the materials from which the substance of my compilation is composed. It is enough for me that I know how to apply them appropriately, so that they might well serve 19 the intellectual purpose which I endeavor to achieve.]

As Daisy Delogu remarks with regard to this passage:

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It is the intervention of the architect/author and the assembly of the materials into an original whole that endows the materials with meaning. The works of other authors are reduced in Christine’s metaphor to the status of raw materials, which require her own authorial genius to achieve their greatest worth, as elements of her compilation. (165)

Just as the title of Jean de Meun’s work is ultimately subsumed by one of Christine’s own titles, the male-authored discourse is incorporated into the mortar that holds the women’s stories together, with the female author fully in control of that process. While Jean de Meun would never be eligible to enter the place, he figures in a special way into the construction of Christine the author’s message represented by the physical image of the city. With his presumed authority shown to be an illusion that does not stand up to the test of experience, Jean de Meun serves Christine’s agenda well in the Cité des Dames as he had outside it in the Rose debate, and reading the allusions to the Rose in this light brings the question of author and authority full circle. Through her deft use of compilation and auto-citation, and given the Rose’s place in her career as a professional woman writer, Christine reconfigures the concept of literary authority by emphasizing that upon which that autonomy is based. Ultimately, what is at issue here is not just how Christine establishes authority — displays of erudition, of which this compilation is itself remarkable evidence, serve men as well — but how she expresses that leadership, and that is through a feminine voice that has demonstrated its credibility. Christine proves that she, whose truth comes from a synthesis of the learned and the experiential, represents a new kind of model, carrying a distinctly feminine imprint, which is that of author with authority.

Notes 1

The most valuable gateway into the scholarship on Christine and her works is the exhaustive bibliography compiled by Angus J. Kennedy: Christine de Pizan: A Bibliographical Guide (London: Grant & Cutler, 1984); Christine de Pizan: A Bibliographical Guide. Supplement 1 (London: Grant & Cutler, 1994); and Christine de Pizan: A Bibliographical Guide. Supplement 2 (Woodbridge, Suffolk and Rochester, New York: Tamesis, 2004). 2 Christine’s close involvement in the production of her works is another area in which she broke new ground and asserted herself as an author. On this topic, see in particular James C. Laidlaw, “Christine de Pizan: An Author’s Progress,” Modern Language Review 78 (1983): 532–50, and “Christine de Pizan: A Publisher’s Progress,” Modern Language Review 82 (1987): 35–75. 3 For a discussion focused on this aspect of Christine’s authorial strategy, see Kevin Brownlee, “Discourses of the Self: Christine de Pizan and the Rose,” Romanic Review 79 (1988): 199–221.

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Certain critics have considered Christine’s Epistre to be the first blow in the Rose debate. That assertion has been refuted, in particular by Eric Hicks’s later establishment of the likely existence of an earlier letter by Jean de Montreuil, now lost; see Eric Hicks, ed., Le Débat sur le “Roman de la Rose” (Paris: Champion, 1977), xiii; and Eric Hicks and Ezio Ornato, “Jean de Montreuil et le débat sur le Roman de la Rose,” Romania 98 (1977): 34–64 (35). The Epistre au Dieu d’Amours is, however, Christine’s earliest serious engagement with Jean de Meun’s poem. 5 Citations and translations of this text are from Poems of Cupid, God of Love: Christine de Pizan’s “Epistre au dieu d’Amours” and “Dit de la Rose”: Thomas Hoccleve’s “The Letter of Cupid,” editions and translations; with, George Sewell’s “The Proclamation of Cupid,” ed. Thelma S. Fenster and Mary Carpenter Erler (Leiden/NY: E. J. Brill, 1990). Line numbers are indicated. 6 On Christine’s constructed persona, see, for example, Renate Blumenfeld-Kosinski, “Christine de Pizan et l’(auto)biographie feminine,”Mélanges de l’Ecole Française de Rome 113 (1991): 17–28; and Kevin Brownlee, “Widowhood, Sexuality, and Gender in Christine de Pizan,” Romanic Review 86 (1995): 339–53. 7 All citations of the debate documents are from the edition by Hicks, with page and line numbers indicated. Translations are from Joseph L. Baird and John R. Kane, comp. and ed., La Querelle de la Rose: Letters and Documents (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina, 1978). Page numbers are indicated. 8 See Maureen Quilligan,“The Name of the Author: Self-Representation in Christine de Pizan’s Livre de la cite des dames,” Exemplaria 4 (1992): 201–28 (207). 9 Studies that take this link into account include Maureen Quilligan, The Allegory of Female Authority: Christine de Pizan’s “Cité des Dames” (Ithaca/London: Cornell UP, 1991); Rosalind Brown-Grant, Christine de Pizan and the Moral Defence of Women: Reading Beyond Gender (Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1999); Renate Blumenfeld-Kosinski, “Christine de Pizan and the Misogynistic Tradition,” Romanic Review 81 (1990): 279–92; Mary Anne C. Case, “Christine de Pizan and the Authority of Experience,” in Christine de Pizan and the Categories of Difference, ed. Marilynn Desmond (Minneapolis/London: University of Minnesota Press, 1998): 71–87; Anna Suranyi, “A Fifteenth-Century Woman’s Pathway to Fame: The Querelle de la Rose and the Literary Career of Christine de Pizan,” Fifteenth-Century Studies 23 (1996): 204–21; David F. Hult, “The Roman de la Rose, Christine de Pizan, and the querelle des femmes,” in The Cambridge Companion to Medieval Women’s Writing, ed. Carolyn Dinshaw and David Wallace (Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 2003): 184–94; Patricia A. Phillippy, “Establishing Authority: Boccaccio’s De Claris Mulieribus and Christine de Pizan’s Le Livre de la Cité des dames,” Romanic Review 77 (1986): 167–94; Charity Cannon Willard, “Christine de Pizan’s Advice to Women,” in A Medieval Woman’s Mirror of Honor: The Treasury of the City of Ladies, trans. Charity Cannon Willard, ed. Madeleine Pelner Cosman (NY: Persea Books; Tenafly, NJ: Bard Hall Press, 1989): 27–46; and Joël Blanchard, “Compilation et légitimation au XVe siècle,” Poétique 18 (1988): 139–57. 10 For an analysis of Christine’s use of auto-citation, see Kevin Brownlee, “Rewriting Romance: Courtly Discourse and Auto-Citation in Christine de Pizan,” in Gender and Text in the Later Middle Ages, ed. Jane Chance (Gainesville: UP of Florida, 1996): 172–94. 11 See Brownlee, “Rewriting,” 182–83. See n. 10 above. 12 I borrow these terms from Case (75). See n. 9 above. 13 See Blumenfeld-Kosinski, “Christine de Pizan and the Misogynistic Tradition,” 279– 92 (289–92); n. 9 above.

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14

The citations of the Cité des Dames are from Earl Jeffrey Richards, ed., and Patrizia Caraffi, trans., Christine de Pizan: La Città delle Dame, 2nd ed. (Milan/Trento: Luni, 1998). Page numbers are indicated; translations are mine. In his “Where Are the Men in Christine de Pizan’s City of Ladies? Architectural and Allegorical Structures in Christine de Pizan’s Livre de la Cité des Dames,” Richards notes that Jean Gerson, who sided with Christine in the debate, had enlisted Lady Reason (along with Lady Justice) as a spokesperson for criticism of the Roman de la Rose, further testimony to the link between Christine’s text and the real-world polemic (in Translatio Studii: Essays by His Students in Honor of Karl D. Uitti for His Sixty-Fifth Birthday, ed. Renate Blumenfeld-Kosinski, Kevin Brownlee, Mary B. Speer, and Lori J. Walters [Amsterdam: Rodopi, 2000]: 221–43 [233]). 15 “Name,” 211. See n. 8 above. 16 Eric Hicks and Thérèse Moreau translate this line into modern French as “Il ne s’agit pas seulement de ce Mathéole mais de bien d’autres encore, en particulier du Roman de la Rose, qui jouit d’un plus grand crédit en raison de l’autorité plus grande de son auteur” (Christine de Pizan: Le Livre de la Cité des Dames, ed. and trans. Eric Hicks and Thérèse Moreau [Paris: Stock, 1986]: 39). 17 Here again, Hicks and Moreau translate “mesmement” as “en particulier” (161). 18 She writes to Pierre Col, for example: “Ha! livre mal nommé L’Art d’amours! Car d’amours n’est il mie! mais art de faulse malicieuse industrie de decepvoir fanmes puet il bien estre appelés. C’est belle doctrine!” (138–39; lines 771–73) [Ha! Art of Love! a book badly named! for of love there is nothing. It could well be called the art of falsely and maliciously deceiving women. This is a beautiful doctrine! (135)]. 19 This passage and its translation are quoted from Daisy Delogu, Theorizing the Ideal Sovereign: The Rise of the French Vernacular Royal Biography (Toronto: U of Toronto Press, 2008): 164–65. I thank Professor Delogu sincerely for alerting me to this striking coincidence of themes in the two works.

United States Military Academy, West Point

The Festival Context of Villon’s “Pet au Deable”: Martinmas in Late-Medieval Paris Martin W. Walsh À la Saint-Martin l’on boit de bon vin. Traditional Proverb

There are strong indications that the famous Paris student prank of 1451, known as the affair of the Pet au Deable (Devil’s Fart or Turd), coincided with and may have been more than partially inspired by the winter feast of St. Martin of Tours (11 November). The incident is well covered in the biographies of François Villon, who was about to receive his Master’s degree from the University of Paris at the time and who claimed, moreover, to have written a now lost Rommant du Pet au Deable. As he bequeaths to his “more than father” Guillaume de Villon in his famous Testament: Je luy donne ma librairie I give him my library Et le Rommant du Pet au Deable Including “The Tale of the Devil’s Fart” Lequel maistre Guy Tabarie Which that truthful fellow Grossa, qui est homs veritable Master Guy Tabarie clear-copied. Par cayers est soubz une table, It’s in notebooks under a table. Combien qu’il soit rudement fait Although the style may be crude La matiere est si tres notable The matter itself is so potent Qu’elle amende tout le mesfait. It makes up for the defects. 1 Le Testament (lines 857–64).

Scholars are not convinced that Villon actually completed such a work. More likely the item was simply a fragment, or even just an idea, soubz une table 2 being equivalent to “shoved in a lower drawer.” The main point of the strophe is to ridicule “that truthful fellow” Guy Tabarie, the informer who gave Villon’s name to the authorities as an accessory to the notorious robbery of the Collège de Navarre. While the poem may never have existed, the affair of the Pet au 3 Deable itself is fairly well documented in court records. The episode brought long festering tensions between town and gown to a violent head, but at its inception the incident was more practical joke than belligerent provocation. Outside of the opulent townhouse of Catherine de Bruyères, widow of Charles VII’s notary, and of her widowed daughter Isabelle, stood a large boulder. The stone evidently had a scatalogically evocative shape and was popularly known as the Pet au Deable. It had long stood as a boundary marker on the Rue du Martroi Saint-Jean, near the church of St. Jean-en-

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Grève, and was quite likely an irregular megalith surviving from prehistoric 4 times. The rich, elderly Mme. de Bruyères was something of a celebrity, having dedicated herself to the thankless task of reforming the prostitutes of Paris — elle et ses bachelieres are mocked in Villon’s Testament (line 1510) — and so she became something of a target for the obstreperous student population, along with her ornamental stone. Late in the year 1451 a band of university scholars uprooted the Pet au Deable, carted the object halfway across the city over the Seine to the Left Bank, and re-erected it deep in the student ghetto at Mont St. Hilaire on the 5 slopes of Mont Ste Geneviève. Guillebert de Metz had described the stone in 1434 as une diverse grosse pierre de merveilleuse façon que l’en nomme Le Pet au De6 able. We have no idea of its actual size, but even a minor menhir of some five or six feet in height would have required dozens of hands to dig up and haul about. Considerable planning and manpower, therefore, would have had to have gone into this seemingly spontaneous “prank.” At Mont St. Hilaire the Pet became the focus of riotous dancing and celebration, night after night, to the sound of flutes and drums, with the student participants no doubt in a state of high intoxication. Within a few days the sergeants of the watch under Jean Bezon, Criminal-Lieutenant of the Châtelet, broke up the fête and repossessed the stone, placing it in the courtyard of the Palais Royal for safe-keeping. However, just as quickly a mob of scholars, together with their confreres, the law clerks of the Basoche, broke into the courtyard, re7 captured the menhir, and returned it to Mont St. Hilaire. Mme. de Bruyères meanwhile had defiantly set up another, smaller rock in the place of her missing domestic landmark. This was dubbed La Vesse, which we might translate the “Silent-but-Deadly Fart,” the refined French language having given itself the luxury of two words for fart, one sounded, le pet, and one silent, la vesse. The difference in gender of these onomatopoetic words no doubt suggested the next phase of the festive uprising. La Vesse was also snatched up by the students and “married” to the Pet with iron bands and mortar. The conjoined stones were garlanded with rosemary, the wedding herb, and the revels were taken up again with renewed vigor. The student caper was fast becoming a major disturbance of the peace. Innocent passersby as well as sergeants of the watch were forced to do homage to this lithic “Bride and Groom,” as they were now hailed. The larger stone purportedly had a special chapeau as well, which it wore on Sundays and feast days. Celebrations around the standing stone were to continue for weeks, transforming into a series of other carnivalesque pranks such as stealing house- and tavern-signs and “marrying” them together as well. Over a year later, on the feast of St. Nicholas (6 December), a large-scale raid on suspected clerical premises yielded stolen goods, weapons, and burglary tools, precipitating a violent sweep through the College of Coquerel and the arrest

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of some thirty to forty scholars. At this time the Pet au Deable and La Vesse were finally recovered and, presumably, returned to Mme. de Bruyères. In May of the following year the Rector of the University successfully appealed to the Provost for the release of his students, but the returning procession of academics unluckily ran afoul of the watch, and a savage mêlée ensued in which at least two scholars perished. To return to the Pet au Deable, the one firm date in the original affair is very suggestive. Provost Robert d’Estouteville’s order to Jean Bezon to confiscate the stone, acting on Mme. de Bruyères’s complaint, is dated 15 November. This date fell squarely within the important Octave of the Feast of St. Martin of Tours (11–18 November). Some days must have elapsed between the discovery of the vandalism and the execution of the Provost’s order. Police forces of the time were not particularly efficient or conscientious. Discovering the perpetrators and the whereabouts of the stone, registering the complaint, and moving the case on up to the Provost (no doubt aided by a bribe or two), all would have taken some time. And then the officers had to arrange for the object’s transportation back to the Rue du Martroi SaintJean and choose an appropriate moment to invade the ever-volatile student ghetto. Subtracting a plausible four or five days from the date of Provost’s order brings us to the Vigil of St. Martin or the feast day itself as the period in which the prank was executed or, at the very least, hatched. The Affair of 8 the Pet au Deable, then, had a specific festival context, Martinmas. This feast day and its vigil were, throughout the later Middle Ages, devoted to wine-induced festivity. St. Martin’s days served as a kind of miniCarnival before the lesser penitential season of Advent. As the great Neo-Latin poet Pontano noted in his dialogue Charon, “In France, Spain, Germany, and 9 Italy men regarded it as disgraceful not to be drunk on St. Martin’s Day.” The carnivalesque aspects of St. Martin’s feast were due primarily to the broaching of new wine at this time, together with an increased availability of fresh meat and innards, Martinmas being also the season for slaughtering the winter’s meat supply. Celebration of new wine survives to the present day in such Martinmas/mid-November festivals as Les Sarmentelles in Bordeaux, named for the dead vine branches assembled for bonfires. St. Martin was so closely associated with serious wine-bibbing that the saint gave rise to the celebratory injunction to faire le saint Martin as well as to the proverbial expression mal de saint Martin for hopeless drunkenness or raging hangover. Rabelais in like manner coined the term martiner for heavy drinking. In a French Book of Hours of 1407 one finds, in the Suffrages, a standing Bishop Martin with lower-class imbibers in the margins, two with wine cans, one with 10 a chalice, a mingling of sacred and profane images for the saint’s feast day. The mal de saint Martin found its way into the comic sote balades of such poets as Eustace Deschamps (c.1346–1406) and Charles d’Orleans (1394–1465). A bal-

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lad by Germain Colin Bucher (1475–1545), addressed itself to Gentilz pions, 11 amys de la bouteille, with the refrain Pour celebrer la feste Sainct-Martin. Pierre Ronsard also contributed to this sub-genre with Le Nuage ou, l’Yvrongne (The Cloud or the Drunkard), part of his Livret de Folastries (Little Book of Drolleries) of 1553. There he celebrates, during un soir, le jour de saint Martin, the feats of one Thenot who, in the “spirit of the festival,” knocks off “a thousand glasses” wolfing down “salty ham . . . a thousand sausages . . . a thousand pâtés full of spices.” In this gorged and drunken state Thenot dreams of a “thousand horned beasts,” of Naiads, Dryads, and other Classical grotesques, as well as le bon Pere joyeux, Bacchus himself, in what Ronsard’s editor, Gustave Cohen, 12 calls a véritable vision fantastique à la Brueghel ou à la Jérôme Bosch. With Ronsard mal de saint Martin is indeed a fully Dionysian madness, something very much akin, I would suggest, to the bacchanal that developed 13 around the Pet au Deable. The Feast of St. Martin is likewise prominently signaled in such wine-soaked sermons joyeux as the Sermon de saint Raisin, Sermon de bien boire, and Sermon de la Choppinerie, products of the same learned Goli14 ardic subculture. As “Winter” reminds “Summer” in the fifteenth-century Debat de l’Yver et de l’Esté: Esté, on a grant joye quant je suis en chemin, Chascun si se gogoye la veille Saint-Martin; Il n’est grant ne petit qui ne boyve du vin, Se son gaige y devoit laisser, jusqu’au matin. [Summer, man has great joy when I’m on the way for everyone carouses on the eve of Saint Martin; there’s none, great or small, who doesn’t drink wine 15 and gamble away until morning.]

The Feast of St. Martin was, moreover, an important one for students of medieval Paris specifically. It was only slightly less important than that of Nicholas of Myra, the traditional patron saint of schoolboys. The two saints, indeed, were often linked in popular piety as charitable bishops and champions of the marginal, their feast days being little more than three weeks apart at 16 the start of the winter reveling season. The churches of St. Martin des Champs and St. Nicholas des Champs stand side by side today on the important artery, the Grand Rue de St. Martin, as they did in medieval Paris. In the late fourteenth century the city’s Ave Maria College had a high-spirited version of the Boy Bishop ceremony, the Inviolata procession, in which both Mar17 tin and Nicholas impersonations were performed by boy scholars. One of the earliest colleges of the University of Paris, the Collége de Marmoutier (also called the Collége de S. Martin du Mont), founded by Geoffroi du Plessis in 1329, had a connection to the great Martinian monastery and was naturally under the pa18 tronage of the saintly Bishop of Tours. The well-known icon of the “Charity

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of St. Martin” can be found on the 1398 seal of the “English Nation” of the 19 University, reinforcing the connection of St. Martin with the baccalaureate. External students not affiliated with a particular college in the city came to be nicknamed martinets (“swifts” or “martins”) after the folkloric oiseau de Saint 20 Martin and were well known for their pétulance. Some idea of the festival culture of the undergraduates in fifteenth-century Paris can be gleaned from the disciplinary measures taken by the Faculty of Arts of the University. On 4 November 1488, for example, the academic body issued an interdict against des excès tout-à-fait intolérables on the feast days of Saint Martin, Saint Catherine (25 November), and Saint Nicholas (6 December). As these saints’ days are only two weeks apart from each other, this is strong evidence for a fairly well developed, early winter festival season among the student body, Catherine and Nicholas being favored patron saints of scholars. Within this same period occurred the major patronal feast of the “English Nation” of the University, that of St. Edmund King and Martyr (20 November). On such feast days the university authorities specifically condemned dancing, singing, drinking, and dicing in college and ecclesiastical spaces, fearing that such activities might lead to “town and gown” violence in the streets. Stage plays on these festival days were also censured, particularly for their sumptuous costumes considered contrary to la modestie cléricale & académique. In the document some exception was made for celebrations surrounding the Epiphany (le fête des Rois), the major and culminating feast of the season, although a presumably raucous fete & l’election du Roi des Foux had been outlawed on 5 21 January 1470. Despite strict supervision, however, obstreperous Epiphany farces and mummeries continued to erupt and draw censure well into the six22 teenth century, finally being banned entirely in 1559. Martinmas thus signaled for the university authorities the beginning of a season of “abuse” and “excess.” The early November date of the 1488 statute perhaps indicates that it was intended to nip that year’s Martinmas activities in the bud, thus foiling the undergraduates’ seasonal curtain-raiser. The Feast of St. Martin was also a traditional date for mock court cases (causes grasses) staged by the Basoche, the Parisian guild of law-clerks. Poet Guillaume Coquillart, for example, dated his L’Enqueste d’entre la Simple et la Rusee, a dispute of two women over one man, with the clear festival indica23 tor: Le jour saint Martin. . . Mil. CCCC. LXXVIII (1478). Charles d’Orleans likewise referred to the festival activity of the mock trial in his Ballad 96 — Ce saint Martin presentement / Qu’avocas font commencement / De plaidier les faiz de la 24 loy. The students who initially stole the Pet au Deable were members of the University’s Arts faculty, but as we have seen, they were quickly joined by the law-clerks of the Basoche, who might well have taken the repossession of the stone as another raucous Martinmas “case” for them to argue. Journeymen printers in eighteenth-century Paris would also use St. Martin’s Day for

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burlesque tribunals, which were a survival of the activities of the late medieval “Abbeys of Misrule.” These mock trials regulating craft infractions were followed by raucous banquets financed by the collected fines, as Robert 25 Darnton reminds us in The Great Cat Massacre. The geography of Paris itself displayed evidence of a carnivalesque St. Martin. The saint was linked to at least one scatological Parisian place name, the Pissotte-Saint-Martin behind the Temple, evidently a fountain of some sort 26 if not an actual public urinal. Compare Pantagruel’s urine as the source of local hot springs in chapter 33 of Rabelais’s second book. St. Martin’s name was also attached to a notorious bathhouse cum brothel, l’Image de St Martin in the rue Garnier-Saint-Ladre, run by one of Villon’s infamous “heirs” in the 27 Testament, Jacques James. Another, more indirect bit of evidence for the association of the Pet au Deable affair with Martinmas, is the fact that St. Martin was often linked in folklore with the origin of megaliths and other conspicuous stones in the French countryside, where he shared popular fame with such figures as Gargantua. Naturally, there are several examples from the Touraine, Martin’s home territory, such as les Pierres Saint-Martin à Luzillé, à Sainte-Gemme, and à Brèches. Numerous other examples could be cited from la Vienne to 28 Normandy to Haut-Savoie. Just north of Paris in the Val d’Oise are the Saint-Martin-du-Tertre menhir and the Polissoir de St Martin, a communal whetstone. Folk tales explaining the origins of these prehistoric stones often featured the Devil contending with St. Martin, as in those stories associated with the Pierre de Saint-Martin d’Assevillers on the Somme, the Pierre à Martin in Canton de Douvaine, Savoy, or the Pas de Saint-Martin in the Col 29 du Lein, Valias, Switzerland. Other stones carrying the imprint of Martin’s feet, knees or staff, of his horse’s hooves, or of those of his defeated adver30 sary, can also be found throughout central and southern France. Finally, we have the unintentionally amusing but certainly grotesque incident in Sulpicius Severus’s widely known Vita Martini, written during the saint’s own lifetime and which became the primary source for the Martin cult through the entire medieval period. In his chapter 17, Severus recounts how Bishop Martin once confronted a violently gnashing demoniac. The saint jammed his fingers into the raving man’s mouth so that the evil spirit was forced to depart through the victim’s anus in a great malodorous explosion. The scene is portrayed, among other places, in the fourteenth-century glass of the Cathedral of 31 Tours. This notable instance of sacred coprology, together with Martin’s associations with megalithic monuments, and the importance of Martin’s feast in the festival life of late medieval Paris, would seem to indicate that the time chosen for the affair of the Pet au Deable was not arbitrary and coincidental but rather influenced significantly by the secular Martinmas tradition. Although Villon never finished his epic account of the student hijinks of 1451, it might well have

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begun with un soir, le jour de saint Martin…. Under the influence of the “wine of St. Martin,” how better for Parisian students to honor their carnivalesque saint than by “liberating” the Devil’s Turd?

Notes 1

The Poems of François Villon, Bilingual Edition, ed. and trans. Galway Kinnell (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1977): 80–81. All other translations are by the author. 2 See Winthrop H. Rice, “A Villon Hypothesis,” French Studies 2 (1948): 348–50. 3 Marcel Schwob discovered the original court documents in the National Archive and employed them in his 1890 lecture “Une œuvre perdue de François Villon,” in Marcel Schwob, François Villon: Rédactions et notes, ed. Pierre Champion (Paris: J. Dumoulin, 1912): 87–94. The fullest account of the affair in English can be found in Aubrey Burl, Danse Macabre: François Villon: Poetry & Murder in Medieval France (Stroud, Gloucestershire: Sutton Publishing, 2000). D. B. Wyndham Lewis’s account, François Villon: A Documented Survey (New York: Coward-McCann, 1928) quotes generously from the original testimony. See also Gustave Charlier, “Notes sur Villon (II. L’affaire du Pet au-Diable et sa date),” Archivum Romanicum 4 (1920): 506–24 (518–19) and Pierre Champion, François Villon: Sa vie et son temps (1913), 2 vols. (Paris: Honoré Champion, 1984–85):1: 54–64, including an 18th-c. engraving of a local landmark “La Tour du Pet-au-Diable.” 4 Cf. the surviving “London Stone,” a more regular quadradic monument (3’x 2’ x 1’), most probably a Roman milliarium from which distances were measured. Near Cherbourg is a Cul du Diable (Devil’s Asshole) stone; see the gazetteer/blog “Megalithic Portal” (www.megalithic.co.uk). Demonic scatology had a long tradition in French comic writing and popular culture. The motif of the Devil mistaking a peasant’s fart for his soul, for example, can be found from Rutebeuf’s late thirteenth-century fabliau Le pet au vilain to Andrieu de la Vigne’s farce Le meunier de qui le diable emporte l‘ame en enfer, the afterpiece to his Mystère de Saint Martin of 1496. 5 Aubrey Burl indicates that, by “megalithic coincidence,” a small stone circle existed on Mont Ste Geneviève, Burl (note 3 above): 32. Burl’s own sources, however, point to Nanterre outside of Paris as the site of a stone circle associated with Saint Geneviève (notes by Stuart Piggot and John Peek, Antiquity 47 [1973]: 292–93, and 48 [1974]: 134– 36, respectively). Still, it is a pleasant thought to have the Parisian scholars erecting a phallic menhir inside a “feminized” stone-circle. Rabelais would also link undergraduate festivities and megaliths in the fifth chapter of Pantagruel, where he describes picnics of wine, ham, and pâtés on the broad capstone of a dolmen near Poitiers called Pierre Levée. He also records the custom that no one was allowed to matriculate at the University of Poitiers until he had climbed up on the stone. 6 See Schwob (note 3 above): 88. 7 See Schwob: 89–91. See also Lewis (note 3 above): 90–93. 8 Martinmas was a significant calendar date for late medieval Paris as the journal of the so-called Bourgeois de Paris makes clear. It marked such political events as the 1411 procession to Notre Dame to excommunicate the Armagnacs; the final entry of England’s Henry V in 1421; the burial of Charles VI at St. Denis in 1422; and the 1437 entry of Charles VII, who was “welcomed as magnificently as if he had been God.” See Janet Shirley, ed., A Parisian Journal 1405–1449; Translated from the Anonymous Journal d’un Bourgeois de Paris (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1968): 59, 161, 185, and 319.

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On a more popular level, Martinmas marked the groundbreaking for the new Parisian boucherie in 1411, reflecting Martin’s patronage over the winter slaughtering season, and Martinmas was also the occasion for a particularly grotesque spectacle a dozen years before the affair of the Pet au Deable. In 1439 a notorious man-eating wolf called Courtaut was hunted down on St. Martin’s Eve and “its body was put into a wheelbarrow with the jaws wide open and taken about all over Paris. Everybody left whatever they were doing, drinking, eating…to go and look at Courtaut.” Shirley: 332. 9 Giovanni Gioviano Pontano, I dialoghi, ed. Carmelo Previtera (Florence: Sansoni, 1943): 25. 10 Rabelais’s neologism can be found in Pantagruel, chap. 28. The illumination: Bodleian Library, Douce 144, fol 137r. 11 Germain Colin Bucher, Les poésies de Germain Colin Bucher, ed. Joseph Denais (Paris: Librairie Léon Techener, 1890): 191–92. 12 Pierre de Ronsard, Oeuvres complètes, ed. Gustave Cohen, 2 vols. (Paris: Gallimard, 1950): 2: 761–64 and 1116. 13 Some idea of popular Martinmas celebrations can be gleaned from Flemish paintings of the following century. Marten van Cleef’s “The Fires of St. Martin,” now in Dunkirk, shows bonfires in the streets, wine being dispensed from barrels, begging processions of children, youths violently squabbling over a St. Martin banner, and a somewhat deformed, undersized figure in a long apron and crowned with vine-leaves singing, evidently an example of what Germanic-speaking areas call a Martinsmann. See Georges Marlier, Pierre Brueghel le Jeune (Brussels: Robert Finck, 1969): 353–54. More of a satirical fantasy is the subject known as “The Wine of Saint Martin” deriving from Pieter Bruegel the Elder, which was copied by Jan Bruegel the Elder and Pieter Balten, and engraved by Nicolas Guérard. That image shows a heap of peasants scrambling for a dole from an enormous elevated wine tun. See Martin W. Walsh, “Martín y muchos pobres: Grotesque Versions of the Charity of St. Martin in the Bosch and Bruegel Schools,” Essays in Medieval Studies 14 (1998): 107–20. 14 See J.-C. Aubailly, ed., “Le sermon de la Choppinerie,” Revue des Langues Romanes 80 (1972): 73–88. 15 Recueil de poésies françoises des XVe et XVIe siècles, ed. Anatole de Montaiglon, 13 vols. (Paris: P. Jannet, 1855–78): 6 (1857): 190–98 (194–95), with another version in 10 (1875): 41–53. 16 Both Martin and Nicholas student associations are reflected in the famous fabliau Le meunier et les deux clercs (The Miller and the Two Clerks), a source for Chaucer’s “Reeve’s Tale.” The young men appropriately swear by the patron saint of boy scholars, Nicholas. Likewise the use of the expression l’ostel Saint Martin (St. Martin’s hospitality), as the clerks seek shelter from the miller, also relates to their peripatetic, mendicant existence. L’ostel Saint Martin, however, emerges by the end of the tale as a double-entendre for sleeping with the miller’s women folk. Thus the expression takes on popular celebratory connotations of the Martinian festival. 17 See Astrik L. Gabriel, Student Life in Ave Maria College, Mediaeval Paris: History and Chartulary of the College (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 1955): 181–84, with pl. 23, an illustration of the procession of the two boy bishops from the Chartulary. The college was served by the parish church of Saint-Martin in the Cloister of Saint-Marcel. 18 See Jean Baptiste Louis Crevier, Histoire d l’Université de Paris, depuis son origine jusqu’en l’année 1600, 7 vols. (Paris: Chez Desaint & Saillant, 1761): 2:276. 19 Reproduced in Gray Cowan Boyce, The English-German Nation in the University of Paris during the Middle Ages (Bruges: Saint Catherine Press, 1927): 33.

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20

Crevier (note 18 above): 4:250, 281, and 464. Crevier: 4:433–35 and 325. 22 Crevier: 5:147, 191, 229, and 6:74. 23 Guillaume Coquillart, Oeuvres, ed. M. J. Freeman (Geneva: Droz, 1975): 56–113 (68). 24 Charles d’Orléans, Ballades et rondeaux. Édition du manuscrit 25458 du fonds français de la Bibliothèque Nationale de Paris, ed. and trans. Jean-Claude Mühlethaler (Paris: Librairie Générale Française, 1992): 314. 25 Robert Darnton, The Great Cat Massacre and Other Episodes in French Cultural History (New York: Basic Books, 1984): 97–98. In sixteenth-century Lyon, printers’ journeymen formed an Abbey of Misrule, with the Seigneur de la Coquille (Lord of Misprint)) as their leader. See Natalie Zemon Davis, “The Reasons of Misrule: Youth Groups and Charivaris in Sixteenth-Century France,” Past and Present 50 (1971): 41–75 (59–60). Further indirect evidence for the importance of Martinmas in late medieval/Early Modern Paris might be the assignment, in 1793, of the newly invented “Festival of Reason” (in the now desanctified Notre Dame-de-Paris) to the formerly raucous Vigil of St. Martin on 10 November. This is perhaps an example of the Revolution not only supplanting Christian feast days but of cleaning out messy popular accretions on the same as well. See Mona Ouzouf, Festivals and the French Revolution, trans. Alan Sheridan (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1988). 26 M. Guérard, Cartulaire de l’Église Notre-Dame de Paris, 4 vols. (Paris: De Crapelet, 1850): 4:396. 27 Burl (note 3 above): 67 and 204; see also Champion (note 3 above): 2:368–69. There was another Maison de l’Ymage saint Martin, from 1410, in the Rue Saint-André-des-Ars in the neighborhood west of the University. See Topographie historique du vieux Paris, 6 vols., ed. Adolphe Berty and L.-M. Tisserand (Paris: Imprimerie Nationale, 1866–97): 5 (1887): 155. 28 See esp. Jean Moreau, “Rabelais et saint Martin à propos de legends,” Bulletin de la Société Archéologique de Touraine 49 (2003): 119–28 (124–25 with photos); Louis Bousrez, “Étude sur les monuments mégalithiques de la Touraine,” Bulletin de la Société Archeologique de Touraine 9 (1892–94): 71–90 (84–86); and Jean-Mary Couderc, “Les toponymes ‘Saint Martin’ dans nos campagnes,” Mémoires de la Société Archéologique de Touraine 62 (1997): 179–212 (194–95). 29 See esp. G. Fouju, “Le Pierre de Saint-Martin d'Assevillers (Somme),” Revue des traditions populaires 6 (1891): 55–56; Arnold van Gennep, “Le folklore préhistorique de l’ancienne Savoie” in Corpus du folklore préhistorique en France , 3 vols., ed. P. Saintyves (Paris: É. Nourry, 1934) 2: 295–386 (341–42); Estella Canziani, “Savoy Traditions and Folk-beliefs,” Folk-Lore 42 (1931): 60–67 (63); and Clemént Bérard, “Le folklore lapidaire de Vollèges,” Cahiers valaisans de folklore 13 (1930): 1–51 (15–20). Megaliths connected with St. Martin can be found as far away as northern Scotland; see, for example, the “St. Martin’s Stone,” a fragmentary Class II Pictish Symbol Stone in Balluderon, Co. Angus (www.megalithic.co.uk). 30 Janet Bord, Footprints in Stone: The Significance of Foot- and Hand-Prints and Other Imprints Left by Early Men, Giants, Heroes, Devils, Saints, Animals, Ghosts, Witches, Fairies and Monsters (Loughborough: Heart of Albion Press, 2004): 71, 94–96, 103, and 107. 31 See Henri Boissonnot, Les verrières de la cathédrale de Tours (Paris: Frazier-Soyre, 1932): 58. 21

University of Michigan

Book Reviews Blanchard, Joël, éd. Philippe de Commynes: Mémoires. 2 vols. Geneva: Droz, 2007. Pp. clxxii; 1754. 16 illustrations. Blanchard’s latest work seems to be the best and most complete edition of Commynes’s new genre, to date. Volume one offers a thorough introduction and the edition’s eight books. In fact, to guide the reader, the editor should have given a table of contents of this introduction which starts with a description of nine manuscripts, from which B. selected P (Paris, BNF, ms., nouv. acq. fr. 20960 — early sixteenth century — xi); a list of previous editions follows. Manuscript P is written on vellum (320mm x 250mm), in 211 folios; the pagination is double and modern (B. used the one on the bottom of folios). The covers of the manuscript have been added later (embossed), i.e., after the sixteenth century, according to Omont’s catalogue. The text was proofread and corrected on the margins and/or on interlines, sometimes by another hand than that of the author (or copyist). Two miniatures are visible: on one, Commynes offers his book to Angelo Cato, archbishop of Vienne, who had encouraged the author to write his memoirs (fol. 2r, one full page); the other shows the battle of Fornoue (fol. 149v) depicted at several levels: Charles VIII against the Italians. Both miniatures are placed into vol. two of B.’s edition, just before the glossary; and both show the architectural gilding favored in the Renaissance, along with a heraldic identification of the main figures. According to B. Mandrot (editor of the Memoirs, 1901–03), the date of the illuminations is 1530. Blanchard then discusses all previous editions of Commynes’s Mémoires, also the partial renderings. The state of the manuscript, according to one editor (Denis Sauvage, 1552), is “un corps navré” [distressing]; Mandrot counted 3,000 variants, while B. found more than 12,000; and the various copyists took certain liberties when rendering the text. Blanchard tries some corrections, which should be refereed by someone; even manuscript P is not free of errors: there are omissions (B. records), truncated words, confusions (ex.: esperance instead of experience), duplications, and modernizations. Commynes may have dictated the first version. This part of B.’s introduction is followed by the phonic system of P, by graphic and linguistic features, a morphology, and a syntax. He kept the division into books and chapters established by Sauvage. A chapter on historical and literary references follows. Commynes leaves the Burgundian Charles the Bold (7–8 August, 1472) and joins Louis XI, king of France (the latter’s accession to the throne was the birthdate of an absolute monarchy in France, 1461). Born in Burgundy c.1445, Commynes

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died 1511 at Argenton. He was the world’s first memorialist; as a diplomat, he ventured out beyond France’s borders (England, Italy, Savoy); C. was a “visionnaire pragmatique” (lxxxvi), who kept an eye upon Burgundy, however. He spent years as advisor and friend of Louis XI, upon whose initiative C. married Hélène de Chambes and received the barony of Argenton (château). Even though the memorialist has been called Louis’s mignon, the king used such a friend but did not depend upon the person. In fact, C. was later punished by Louis and the king’s successor for real or invented misdemeanors, some financial. Commynes’s diplomacy went hand in hand with his financial activities; he kept his diplomatic missions secret (by order of the king). With all C.’s duties, he remained a devout Christian, according to B. (and the memoirs); he owned a manuscript translation (with miniatures) of St. Augustine’s City of God (2 vols., tr. Raoul de Presles); building a new romanesque church at the château of Argenton, C. also created masses read for the salvation of his soul, and planned a magnificent tomb for himself — but not in Argenton: Paris was a safer place. As a writer, C. was accused of having falsified (or erred about) some figures and dates, but B. proves that these errors did not occur. The memorialist wrote the manuscript mostly from daily notes made at home or traveling; he also kept documents and letters, and combined private and political events (while Montaigne the humanist wrote on any subject from his own point of view, not necessarily political — note of the reviewer). C. remains the inventor of memoirs, a new genre at a time when writing in personal prose was still in its infancy — which lasted until Cervantes’s Don Quijote, 1617 (note of the reviewer). Blanchard’s bibliography, forty-eight pages of volume one, is so detailed that here again a table of contents could have been desirable. He gives once more all the manuscripts (under “sources françaises”), then adds Italian sources and those of six other countries. B. lists complete editions and translations (into modern French), and two into English, one German, another into Italian, and one into Russian. Editions of Commynes’s letters are mentioned (three by Blanchard); contemporary documents as sources follow (cxxvii to cxxxix). Section 5 of the bibliography lists works on C. and the Burgundian state; section 6 mentions books devoted to the relationship between C. and Louis XI (among them two by Blanchard); section 7: C., the Regency, Charles VIII, and Louis XI; section 8: C.’s relationships and networks in France; section 9: C., Italy and Savoy (one by B. and many others); section 10: C. and England; section 11: C. and Spain; 12: C. and the Turks; 13: C. and Bretagne; 14: C. and political practice (one item by B.); 15: C. and justice: private, political, and judiciary; 16: C. and money; 17: C. and war; 18: C.’s religion; 19: C. as feudal lord; 20: C. as a writer (three items

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by B., and another three by Jean Dufournet); 21: the text of the Memoirs, again all the manuscripts, textual criticism (one item by B.); 22: C.’s language (containing such general linguistic guides as a reference to Christine Marchello-Nizia); 23: C. as subject of books from the sixteenth to the eighteenth century (two items by B., one by Dufournet). The edition is well done, practically flawless. Volume two of Blanchard’s work contains all that is necessary to decrypt Commynes’s text. The variants (without interlines) take up 219 pages; the notes for the memorialist’s eight books are very detailed, and the references are correct, as far as we notice (368 pages), and are followed by a chronology, some geographical maps, as well as sixteen illustrations in color, miniatures from manuscript P. The glossary takes thirty-one pages, double columns. The analytical index (162 pages) is grouped into words used by C. which are still utilized; words employed by C. which are no longer in current use or have changed their meanings (here signalled by quotation marks); and (in italics) terms designating important themes in the text (date, distance, ethnography, geography, religion, time). An index of places and persons follows (207 pages). It goes without saying that B.’s edition should be acquired by university libraries anywhere. Edelgard E. DuBruck, Marygrove College Burman, Thomas E. Reading the “Qur’$n” in Latin Christendom, 1140–1560. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2007. Pp. vi; 317. In his introduction, Burman reminds us that the Qur’$n was a bestseller in medieval and early modern Europe. In fact, the Koran was read by European Christians from the mid-twelfth to the mid-sixteenth centuries and had been translated into Latin four times. About forty Latin and Arabic manuscripts of the holy text have survived to this day, as well as some printed editions. Of the six chapters in Burman’s book, we outline three specifically, since they contain the essential development of European Koran scholarship. Except in chapter titles, we are using the European spelling of Qur’$n. How did Latin-Christian intellectuals react when they opened Koran pages? These readers looked especially for passages which could serve Christian polemics and apologetics, strictly on a need-to-know basis, and wrote the following words on the margin, for example: “Muhammed was a lecherous warmonger, Islam is a bellicose and promiscuous religion; the Koran is a fraudulent pseudo-scripture”(2) — at least in the beginning of Koran translation and exegesis, in the twelfth century. Working with scholarly care, the first translator/paraphraser was Robert of Ketton (c.1110–60). Our review of Burman’s work starts with chapter three, called “Polemic, Philology, and Scholastic Reading in the Earliest Manuscript of Robert of

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Ketton’s Latin Qur’$n.” Robert’s translation had abundant notes, mostly written on the margins of the folios; the annotations “thunder with hostility” (60) against the Islamic “false doctrine” (ibid.). Scholarly research considered annotations by previous readers as almost more important than a work’s text. Thus, the version became a widely read Arab-Christian attack on Muhammed’s religion. The Koran was placed within a frame (paraphrased), in order to make it easier to understand — from a Christian point of view. In fact, Burman devotes chs. three to five to explaining successive frames, after dividing the Koran into easily digestible sections. Robert of Ketton had used scholastic methods for the layout of the book and often transliterated rather than translated the Arabic words. Among the scholastic mechanisms were running headlines, chapter titles in brightly colored ink, alternating red and blue initials, variation in the size of initials, paragraph markers, tables of contents, cross-references, citations of quoted authors, and elaborate marginal annotations (79),

and other notes placed interlinearly (between the lines of the text). In chapter four, “New Readers, New Frames: The Later Manuscripts and Printed Versions of Robert of Ketton’s Latin Qur’$n,” the author explains that soon, the manuscripts showed how copyists reworked the twelfthc. annotations, offered indexes, and tables of contents. Abridged and excerpted editions of Ketton’s work appeared, and polemical readings still resulted. During the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, authoritatively glossed manuscripts with twelfth-c. layout predominated, while later an interesting diversity could be observed; until the 1400s, the Koran became a Christian textbook with marginal annotations. Further reworked versions began to omit these commentaries, especially within pocket editions printed on extremely thin parchment, renderings which were polemically searchable, first found in Wratislava (Breslau), in the hands of Dominicans. At the end of some pocketbooks, a list of Koran errors was made available, to be found by page numbers of folios. Some readers realized that the Koran, “if properly understood, will confirm the basic Christian teachings” (96); the book thus was connected to the Church’s struggle against heresy (97). A non-polemical table of contents appeared in a sixteenth-c. codex now in Dresden (Sächsische Landesbibliothek); but the table was in fact a disconnected list of what the compiler considered the most important points of the Koran (100), and the listing was reworked into an abridged version of the sacred book, published by the humanist Johann Albrecht von Widmanstetter (1543), a Catholic with a fascination for Semitic languages, especially the Kabbalah. Widmanstetter wanted to undermine both the Protestant reformers as well as the Muslims. Next, Ketton’s Koran was printed in its entirety (1550–60) by a Swiss reformer named Theodore

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Bibliander (1504–64), a Protestant humanist. He even included some twelfthc. annotations, and also other anti-islamic works by Juan Luis Vives, Savonarola, and Nicholas of Cusa. For Bibliander, Islam was “aggressively warlike”(112); he wished both to explain and to attack the Koranic text. In chapter five, “The Qur’$n Translations of Mark of Toledo and Flavius Mithridates: Manuscript Framing and Reading Approaches,” Burman explains that Mark wrote some typically polemic Koran chapters; yet, each of the two philologists had a different approach. Mark carefully followed the work’s syntax, while Mithridates was a more thorough philologist: his version (without polemics) was laid out alongside the original text (practically bilingual, but not without faults). His book was beautifully ornate, made for a wealthy reader, Federigo da Montefeltro, if in a somewhat hasty way. In the sixteenth century, the balance between polemics and philology is seen to shift gradually in favor of the latter’s methods, by Egidio da Viterbo, whose 1518 bilingual edition received special recognition by European scholarship. Shortly after the fall of Constantinople, Juan de Segovia (1393–1458) took up Koran study “in a nearly obsessive way”(178). For Juan, Islam was “a vile, militant, and sexually promiscuous heresy”(179); nevertheless, this Spaniard admitted that the Koran’s elegant Latin form conferred prestige on its owners. Burman’s work is concluded by four translations of the Koran’s ch. 22: 1– 5; a list of abbreviations and short titles; 280 pages of notes; a selected bibliography (14 pages); and three indexes. The book contains a treasure of Koran scholarship for a time when ownership of an ornate Qur’$n was desirable for educated lay people. Burman’s text was proofread carefully (except on pages 77 and 98) and stylistically satisfactory. The volume should become part of university and parochial holdings. Edelgard E. DuBruck, Marygrove College Dufournet, Jean. Philippe de Commynes: Mémoires, livres I–VI. Présentation et traduction (bilingue). 2 vols. Paris: GF Flammarion, 2007. Pp. 450 and 559. This edition and translation are destined for students learning to know Commynes and his memoirs, for the general francophone readers, and for medievalists interested in fifteenth-c. France. The two volumes are reader-friendly and bring technical aspects (some variants, but mostly explanations and details about persons and events) in the notes, exactly forty-five pages of each book. The introduction (32 pages) contains everything needed to study Commynes (c.1447–1511) and his work (1489–98). Volumes VII and VIII have not been included (they had been published by D. earlier). Until C.’s Mémoires, the only historiographical genres were chronicles, diaries, and chivalric biographies. Composed for Angelo Cato (archbishop of Vienne), the memoirs have since become a new genre which gives eyewitness reports of

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events during the second half of the century; the work does not serve to enhance princes or persons who commissioned a report in their honor with all the writer’s resources of rhetoric, but it exalts King Louis XI, whose confidant and advisor Commynes had been for quite some time. The king’s mistakes are mentioned, nevertheless, unlike in works of chroniclers such as Jean Molinet and George Chastellain, who never criticized their masters. C. even minimizes his own work (9–10) — whether as a polite disclaimer (désaveu poli) much used at the time, or not: “il se présente comme un ‘homme non litteré’ (lettré) qui ne sait que ‘parler naturellement comme un homme qui n’a pas beaucoup de sens naturel ni acquis’” (D. p. 10, quoting C., livre VI, ch. xii), but offers instead his experiences as eyewitness. Princes, C. says, are humans like everyone (12). [These disclaimers are common in Montaigne’s Essais: see M. Rat, ed. Book I, p. 350, and, of course ‘Au lecteur,’ p. 1 — the reviewer.] History must be told, C. continues, by those who have lived and acted during a certain period. This directness requires a special style, Dufournet continues: realism and precision; an individual’s point of view, in C.’s case about the actions of three individuals: Duke Charles of Burgundy, King Louis XI, and himself, Commynes. The Memoirs become an autobiography, told by “je” [Montaigne’s expression: “moi”], even a plea pro domo: he had left service for Charles (though C. was born in Burgundy, a member of the Flemish nobility) and joined Louis XI (July, 1472), the new monarch who (in C.’s opinion) deserved C’s courage, devotion, lucidity, secrecy, and skill in deception — an early Machiavelli. In fact, C. believed that diplomacy should replace reliance on military strength. After Louis’s death in 1483, Commynes’s position deteriorated: he lost his lands, was imprisoned (1487–89), and began composing the Mémoires. Dufournet then discusses the memorialist’s thoughts, beginning with the qualities of princes. C. signals four types: cruel persons, incapable rulers, those lacking strength of character or common sense, and very few whose wisdom and humbleness are as perfect as the qualities of Louis XI. C. is a moralist, while trying to remain a realist, who seeks the causes of a political panorama which is complex and requires an esthétique du fragment (25), giving anecdotes that show the désacralisation des princes (28). In a way, the Mémoires become a textbook (with plenty of digressions) for rulers; yet, its unity is profound and convincing. Dufournet’s introduction is followed by remarks about his edition: his basic manuscript is P (there are five MSS altogether, whereas Joël Blanchard counted nine — see my review above), and D. sometimes consulted the edition of Bernard Mandrot, who had divided the Mémoires into books and chapters. The chapter titles are Dufournet’s own. His translation into modern French allows C.’s readers better to understand the work (the memorialist

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used long phrases of almost Latinist precision, archaisms, introduced multiple personalities, allusions, and graphic, often ambiguous, varieties of language). Some of C.’s repetitions have been avoided by this translator. Dufournet also gives a small bibliography containing the best morphologies, grammars, syntactic, and lexical guides to explain C.’s Middle French idiom; D. adds a few titles about fifteenth-c. French history. A longer bibliography is available in volume II (five pages), maps, and two genealogies, the milestones of C’s life (four pages), a historical chronology, a list of personages mentioned (thirtyfive pages), and a glossary (Middle French words vs. modern usage). Since both editors, Blanchard (once Dufournet’s student) and D., used the same basic manuscript, there are practically no differences in style between these versions; in fact, Dufournet’s modern French translation resembles in most points that of Blanchard (Philippe de Commynes: Mémoires [Agora: Pocket, 2004]). The greatest difference, in the opinion of this reviewer, is that B. filled a second volume with all the technical instruments necessary to read Commynes, and gave much more space to variants, references, chronology, illustrations, glossary, etc., as shown in our review of B.’s edition (see above). The most important point of Dufournet’s work is, however, his thorough penetration of Commynes’s mindset and this writer’s (perhaps unconscious) service to introduce readers to France’s historical panorama at the doorstep to a complex modern world. Edelgard E. DuBruck, Marygrove College Fuchs, Franz, ed. Osmanische Expansion und europäischer Humanismus. Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, 2005. Pp. 188. This collection of articles on Turkish expansion and European humanism was presented in an International Symposium at the Museum of Wiener Neustadt (2003). The first essay (by Stephan Füssel) investigates European fear of the Turks after the Osman conquest of Constantinople (1453), a reaction manifested in the propaganda of Emperor Maximilian I (1459–1519). This monarch, living at the time of the first prints, was conscious of propaganda as a means of reaching many citizens and creating a memoria for himself and his plans. Maximilian introduced humanistic studies at Vienna University (Latin and vernacular literatures, but also technologies, and weaponry). Above all, he wished to lead an army against the Turks, as is obvious from the Emperor’s Prayer Book (which exists in only one printed version, Augsburg: Hans Schönsperger, 1514), with marginal drawings by Albrecht Dürer and Lucas Cranach (the Older) on the motif of St. George’s fight against the dragon. Maximilian’s crusade never materialized, however. The article is followed by a useful bibliography.

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Claudia Märtl proves that Donatello’s statue of Judith and Holofernes (1457) served the European fifteenth-c. sentiment about warring against the Turks. The bronze sculpture shows the victory of humilitas against luxuria; Judith is seen as Mary/Ecclesia, while Holofernes (present by his severed head, held by Judith) may be considered the Turkish devil; the scene also points to the Republican ideology of the Medici (of ousting tyrants). According to Märtl, the commissioning of this art work was undertaken by Siena rather than Florence: the Sienese bishop (Enea Silvio Piccolomini) opted for a battle against the Turks; Popes Calixtus III and Enea Silvio P., as well as Leonardo Benvoglienti (Donatello’s Maecenas), openly advocated fighting the (heathen) Osmanlis, the “army of Holofernes.” Five epistolary documents and as many illustrations constitute the end of this article. Johannes Helmrath investigates a Nürnberg manuscript of a tractate by the Greek Sagundinos (1456) dedicated to Enea Silvio Piccolomini, who had asked him for a kind of genealogy of the Turks. The Greek derived the latter from the Scythians rather than from Troy, and followed them until Mehmed II, the conqueror of Constantinople. Sagundinos then added some crusade polemics. This tractate was linked in the manuscript to a work by Pius II about the excellentia hominis, called De viris doctis et rerum inventoribus (later superseded by the De rerum inventoribus signed by Polydore Vergil in 1499), also dedicated to Enea Silvio (1460 — now lost). It was Enea who in fact considered Western “inventors” as imbued with the Christian religion — one more reason to fight the “Scythians.” The transfer of Greek manuscripts to the West after 1453 is described well by Brigitte Mondrain, who explains that the conquest of Constantinople was told by the Byzantine humanist Konstantinus Laskaris (in his Synopsis historiarum, fol. 176), who in his turn copied many Greek texts. First a prisoner of the Osmans, he appeared later in Florence and Rome, teaching Greek; his Greek grammar was as successful as the textbooks by Manuel Chrysoloras and Theodoros Gaza: Laskaris’s work was the first written in Greek on the bookmarket and was printed a second time by Aldo Manuzio (1449–1515). However, Laskaris was disappointed by his reception in the West, having had no access to the splendid courts of the Italian princes. Another Greek refugee, Michael Apostolis, went to Rome where he taught Johannes Reuchlin (1455–1522) and Jacques Lefèvre d’Étaples (1450–1536). Later, during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, ambassadors began to travel to Osmanic lands and picked up more manuscripts. Thus, Greek knowledge was in fact channelled to Western countries. George Castriota Skanderbeg (1405–68), an Albanian national hero, has been called a new Alexander, who wished to make late-medieval Albania receptive to Italian humanist ideas. He was not calling for a crusade against the Turks; this Adriatic prince looked to Italy and its worship of ancient mas-

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ters. In any case, the political and economic weakness of Albania prevented (in the long run) a reconquest of Eastern Turkish lands, as Oliver Jens Schmitt explains. Finally, Italo Michele Battafarano offers an essay on Hungary in the fifteenth century, the country then situated between the Empire and the Turks. The Hungarians welcomed Baptists and various other minorities who were persecuted in early modern times. Turks defeated the Magyars in the battle of Mohács (1526); later, in 1699, Hungary’s independence came to an end at the Peace of Karlowitz effected between Turks and the Habsburgs. Hungary had been a vast territory, comprising parts of Poland, Romania, Bulgaria, Serbia, Croatia, Austria, and still other countries. Under the monarchy of Matthias Corvinus, the Magyar country saw further expansions (ended by his death in 1490); Corvinus was influenced by Italian humanism. Hungary fell into three parts, was plagued by inner conflicts, and would offer little resistence to the Turks. Battafarano then gave an account of one chapter of Grimmelshausen’s Simplicissimus (1668), which describes the Magyars as having a utopia of tolerance, promoting religious freedom, and a home for persecuted emigrants. Franz Fuchs’s edition concludes with six book reviews. The work offers splendid insight into the problematic relationship between Europe and the Turks, information which is well timed: nowadays, the Turks would like to join the European Union, while the latter hesitates to welcome them. The collection is recommended for purchase by university libraries. Edelgard E. DuBruck, Marygrove College Grassnick, Ulrike. Ratgeber des Königs: Fürstenspiegel und Herrscherideal im spätmittelalterlichen England. Köln: Böhlau Verlag, 2004. Pp. xii; 471. Ulrike Grassnick’s book bears the subtitle Fürstenspiegel und Herrscherideal im spätmittelalterlichen England, which accurately describes the contents of the volume. The author studies seven Mirrors of Princes in Middle English: John Trevisa’s The Governance of Kings and Princes (c.1388–92), Thomas Hoccleve’s The Regiment of Princes (c.1410–11), John Lydgate and Benedict Burgh’s The Secrees of old Philisoffres (1449–50), Sir Gilbert Hay’s The Buke of the Gouernaunce of Princis (c.1456), George Ashby’s Active Policy of a Prince (1470), John Gower’s Confessio Amantis (Book VII — 1386–93), and Geoffrey Chaucer’s The Tale of Melibee (c.1372–74). All of these texts were produced between the 1370s and the 1470s (none are extant from the 1200s), and in their form the first five are pragmatic texts, while the last two are narrative-fictional. Interestingly, according to Grassnick, Chaucer’s The Tale of Melibee, one of the narrative-fictional texts, is the earliest Fürstenspiegel in English. Thus, Chaucer not only wrote the earliest manual on the use of a scientific instru-

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ment in English, “The Treatise on the Astrolabe,” but also the first Mirror of Princes in the vernacular. As G. points out, The Tale of Melibee is one of only two prose elements in the Canterbury Tales (along with The Parson’s Tale), and it is the one that the poet assigns to his own fictional alter ego, Chaucer-thePilgrim. G. gives special attention to narrative-fictional texts, so that her book is informative and thought provoking not only for students of political science but of literature and history as well. In her fifty-page introduction, G. defines the primary goal of the Fürstenspiegel to be the creation of behavioral patterns proper to leadership (32), a function quite different from the “mirroring” of existing behavior that the word Fürstenspiegel seems to imply. Quoting Pierre Bourdieu in English, she writes: “Symbolic power is a power to construct reality”(29); in fact, G. identifies her methodological position as borrowed from Bourdieu’s Handlungstheorie (Praktische Vernunft. Zur Theorie des Handelns [Frankfurt a. M.: 1998]) and acknowledges her use of his central concepts of Feld, Kapital, Sozialer Raum, and Habitus [pattern of behavior — 18]. In her Literaturverzeichnis [Works Cited], sixteen entries are by Bourdieu. Within the political and literary fields of the Middle Ages, therefore, G. recognizes that the image of an ideal leader may be as much a construction of the texts as a critique of any prevailing system or specific leader. Her second chapter provides a brief history of the medieval Fürstenspiegel. During the Middle Ages theorists generally drew their models of kingship from Old and New Testament traditions rather than from those of classical antiquity, although the Secretum Secretorum [Secret of Secrets], the “Letter to Alexander the Great” by the Pseudo-Aristotle, was very influential and often translated. It was St. Augustine who interpreted the Bible as the first “mirror,” and that interpretation prevailed as other texts became secondary mirrors of archetypal and exemplary models of behavior. Throughout the Middle Ages, the Fürstenspiegel followed this Augustinian textual tradition in the construction of ideal leader images. Grassnick’s third chapter contains a separate section on each of the seven Fürstenspiegel that her book treats. The order of her discussion is not strictly chronological: the narrative-fictional texts (Gower’s and Chaucer’s) are grouped last because they offer the expanded possibilities of meaning that fiction permits. Chapter 4 then synthesizes information on the principal areas of behavior for the leaders discussed in the Fürstenspiegeln: as individuals (their virtues and vices, attention to personal health), as heads of family (their marriage, children, household, economy), and as political leaders (their distinction, style of leadership, interactions with advisors, knowledge of the laws, the various estates, and skills in warfare). Such a synthesis is possible because all of the Middle English Mirrors of Princes present similar idealized leader images rather than mirrors of specific princes. An ideal monarch

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should be guided by moderation, directed toward the common good and attentive to the voice of the people (“peples vois”), and able to interpret the voice of God (“Goddes vois” — 177). Chapter 5 clarifies the point that individual Fürstenspiegel reflect the times during which they were produced; G. reiterates, however, that they stand as generalized statements on the art of leadership rather than as “how-to” books on specific problems encountered by monarchs in certain situations. Chapter 6 further describes the relationship of a Fürstenspiegel to the Christian culture in which it developed: it is the canon of Christian virtues and vices codified during the Middle Ages that they either extol or condemn (rather than voice the humanistic values recommended or warned against in classical antiquity). Chapter 7 clarifies the literary and political functions of the Fürstenspiegel. In her next chapter, Grassnick discusses the special case of King Richard II, deposed in the fall of 1399. The section is designed to illustrate how the generalized political theory developed in the books may be used to judge one of the most controversial events of medieval English history: the usurpation of the throne by Henry Bolingbroke, son of the richest and most influential man in the realm, John of Gaunt. G. judges that the Middle English Fürstenspiegel represent, to varying degrees, a genre both literary and political. All of them, as written works, hold pragmatic and narrative value, and the author concludes that the demarcation between fiction and fact in the later Middle Ages was not drawn strictly. She further illustrates this point by briefly discussing the texts relating the deeds of Alexander the Great and King Arthur. Finally, the seven English texts served both to entertain and to instruct. Grassnick’s scholarship is apparent: one fourth to one half of each page is filled with citations and explanatory notes. Ratgeber des Königs: Fürstenspiegel und Herrscherideal im spätmittelalterlichen England is structured as an introduction to the subject on proper behavior of “magistrates or kings” in late-medieval England. She concludes that “Spätmittelalterliche Fürstenspiegel dienen vor allem der Beratung und Erziehung von Herrschaftsinhabern” [Late-medieval Fürstenspiegel serve foremost for the advice and education of people in power — 332–33]. G. astutely observes that, as a genre, the Fürstenspiegel relate to medieval chronicles, which are pragmatic texts emphasizing fact over fiction, and secondly to medieval romances, which are narrative-fictional texts preferring fiction to facts. Ratgeber des Königs is to be recommended to all students of medieval civilization, because the book presents a very clear, thorough, and well-reasoned introduction to an area of investigation often neglected. Noel Harold Kaylor, Jr., Troy University

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Harris, Nigel, ed. The Light of the Soul: The “Lumen anime C” and Ulrich Putsch’s “Das liecht der sel.” Oxford, Bern, et al.: Peter Lang, 2007. Pp. 487. Bischof Ulrich Putsch von Brixen ist nicht nur aufgrund seiner Beziehung zu dem berühmten Dichter Oswald von Wolkenstein bekannt (wenngleich es eigentlich aus kirchlicher und politischer Sicht genau andersherum sein sollte); Putsch verdient auch Anerkennung heute dafür, daß er eine wichtige öffentliche Rolle einnahm und eine Reihe von Texten verfaßte, darunter vor allem sein Tagebuch und eine Reihe von 23 Gebeten für die Liturgie, die in zehn Handschriften und einem Druck von 1520 enthalten sind, nicht zu vergessen sein Manuale simplicium sacerdotum libros non habencium, das in fünf Münchener Handschriften überliefert ist. Noch wichtiger dürfte seine Übersetzung des Lumen anime aus der Handschriftentradition C sein, die hier durch Nigel Harris in zweisprachiger Edition (Latein-Spätmittelhochdeutsch) endlich im Druck herausgebracht worden ist. Dieses Lumen anime liegt in drei großen Familien vor, A, B und C, die jeweils aus einer umfangreichen Sammlung von Exempla bestehen, jedoch nicht enzyklopädische Intentionen verfolgen, und statt dessen zur moralischen Belehrung der Gläubigen dienen sollen, die einer Predigt lauschen. Lumen anime A wurde zwischen 1317 und 1330 von Berengarius de Landora, dem General-Ordensmeister des Dominikanerordens, verfaßt. Es enthält Kapitel wie: De amore, de animabus, De cruce, De dilectione, De fine, De honore, De ira, De Jhesu, De mortuis, De passione, De sanctis, und De trinitate und muß eine recht hohe Beliebtheit genossen haben, wie die 16 Hs. [Handschriften] demonstrieren. Lumen anime B legt größeren Wert auf naturwissenschaftliche Aspekte, verharrt aber auf dem Schwerpunkt der moralischen und geistlichen Belehrung, z.B. De sanctis, De accidia, De adventu Christi, De affectu, De castitate, De culpa, De aggregacione, De amore sui, De beatitudine, De semine, De sanitate, De silencio und De sopore. Diese Tradition ist in 44 Hss. und in drei Wiegendrucken überliefert. Lumen anime C ist nicht so systematisch aufgebaut, weicht aber deutlich von A und B ab, wenngleich es sich in der Textauswahl mehr A annähert. Zu den charakteristischen Themen gehört u.a.: De accessu, De angelis, De confessione, De carne, De errore, De felicitate mundi, De gustu, De gaudio, De humilitate, De labore, De oracione, De resurreccione, De venustate und De Christo. Dazu schließen sich zwei Gruppen von Handschriften als Lumen C1 und Lumen C2 an, die jeweils unterschiedliche Schwerpunkte aufweisen; dazu kommen weitere Manuskripte, die mehr oder weniger entfernt von den anderen stehen. Ulrich Putsch bezog sich für seine Übersetzung auf die folgenden lateinischen Handschriften aus der Gruppe C2: Frankfurt Leonh. 6, Clm 3041, Clm 8970, Salzburg St. Peter a II 22 und Wroclaw Cod. 6072. Insbesondere der Salzburger Text muß ihm am ehestens gelegen gekommen sein,

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wie eine Reihe von Charakteristika bestätigt, die hier nicht einzeln zu behandeln wären. Für den synoptischen Abdruck der mhd. Fassung durch Ulrich Putsch neben der lateinischen stützt sich daher Harris auf diese Gruppe, und darin speziell auf das Manuskript aus St. Peter. Der Herausgeber bietet anschließend eine knappe Biographie des Bischofs, der 1426 seine mhd. Version des Lumen anime veröffentlichte, diskutiert seine politische Position in Tirol, und seine sehr beachtliche Bibliothek. Putschs Das liecht der sel ist in sieben Handschriften überliefert, die Harris einzeln auflistet und beschreibt. Aus dem philologischen Vergleich ergibt sich für ihn, daß sich Hs. A (Cgm 389) als Leithandschrift anbietet, wobei er nur sehr behutsam in die Vorlage eingreift, so bei Schreiberfehlern, Auslassungen oder Formulierungen, die unser Verständnis hindern würden. Abkürzungen wurden aufgelöst, die Groß- und Kleinschreibung wurde reguliert, nur das moderne “s” wurde benutzt, das Trema über “y” wurde stillschweigend weggelassen, und Präfixe und Komposita wurden im deutschen Text nach der modernen Rechtschreibung normiert. Im ersten Teil des Fußnotenapparates erscheinen die Abweichungen von der Leithandschrift, im zweiten Teil Querverbindungen zwischen den Natur-Exempla, knappe biographische Informationen und manchmal Erklärungen zu ungewöhnlichen Vokabeln. Der Text erweist sich als eine für uns heute eigentümliche, für das Mittelalter aber ganz selbstverständliche Kombination von naturwissenschaftlichmedizinischen Kommentaren mit theologischen Interpretationen. Krankheitssymptome und Eigenschaften des Menschen werden hier theologischsymbolisch ausgelegt und erklärt, was die große Popularität des Lumen gleich welcher Gruppierung erklärt. Diese Quelle bietet sich großartig dafür an, Einblick in religiös-wissenschaftliche Formen des mittelalterlichen Aberglaubens zu gewinnen. Zum Beispiel heißt es, daß ein Brot, das in Salz gestoßen und dann auf eine Wunde gelegt wird, den Schmerz zu stillen vermag. Darauf folgt freilich: “Also so Maria in das gemüt gelegt wirt, die benymt alle bewegung einer yeglichen laydung vnd smerczen” (§442, 341). Man findet Kommentare zu Fledermäusen, Blindheit, Brot, Wolken, Tod, Taubheit, Durst, Feuer, Fliegen, Frost, Gold, zum menschlichen Körper in relativer Detailfreude, zu Elfenbein, Löwen, Melancholie, Bergen, Phlegma, Planeten, Salz, Schlaf etc. (im Index nach der englischen Sprache geordnet). Die sehr willkommene und sorgfältig betreute Edition schließt mit einer Bibliographie, einem Handschriftenverzeichnis, einer Liste der autoritativen Namen sowie einem Index der natürlichen Phänome, die im Lumen zur Sprache kommen. Albrecht Classen, University of Arizona

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Hochner, Nicole. Louis XII: Les Dérèglements de l’image royale, 1498–1515. Seyssel: Champ Vallon, 2006. Pp. 308. Between the reigns of Charles VIII and François I, during a timespan on the cusp of the Renaissance and its ongoing debates concerning le régime idéal, the seventeen-year reign of Louis XII in France provides a unique opportunity for Hochner to study the representation of royal power. She focuses her book on Louis XII, a king “sans prestige et non charismatique” (23), in part because historians have paid relatively little attention to him and also because his era illuminates both political ideologies and artistic creations. Louis XII’s image is difficult to assess. H.’s analysis of visual media and textual accounts of French events reveals a royal persona who is shown to be a devoted Christian, chivalric hero, and benevolent père du peuple. She asserts that the plurality, the dérèglement [irregularity] of the royal image, reflects the time of Louis XII’s kingship. This characterization is not derived from royal propaganda or a vision of authority strategically honed and disseminated by powerful subjects; rather, the king’s image is the product of artists, politicians, intellectuals, writers, and other cultural influences. H. uses the term “image” in a broad and inclusive sense, the result of an impressive array of visual media (painting, sculpture, and manuscript illuminations), objects (coins, medals, and triptychs), and the symbolic “language” woven into monarchal events such as the coronation or state entries. With respect to methodology, the author rejects a chronological approach on the grounds that a time-oriented procedure would presume, or indeed impose, a quasi-linear evolution which does not necessarily exist. She therefore organizes her chapters according to the different aspects of the king’s persona, as represented by artists and others. H. sets the stage in Chapter I by analyzing Louis’s image as king with respect to his reputation as Duke of Milan. Considered rebellious and even frivolous by many critics, Louis (after his accession to the French throne) required a transformation of his public image that would distance him from his past. Because he was the son of Charles d’Orléans, two elements of his Orléanais identity would persist, however — his claim to the duchy of Milan and his resurrection of the porcupine emblem of his grandfather, to become central to his iconography. The animal was viewed as a menacing and invulnerable figure, an emblem of which Louis availed himself when he accompanied Charles VIII to Italy in 1494, in order to communicate his intention to reclaim Milan from the Sforza dynasty (1450–1535). H. goes on to analyze the pageantry surrounding Louis’s coronation and state entry (1498); in contrast with his coronation, his entry was marked by innovations specific to Louis and his reign. Citing his first entry as “le reflet de la perfection royale” (58–59), H. indicates that the event hinged on three elements of the king’s future: a successful religious crusade against Pope Julius II, social harmony, and military glory

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attained, in particular the hoped-for conquest of Italy. The entry was also aimed at restating the legitimacy of Louis’s rule; overall, the king rejected an authoritarian, tyrannical regime in favor of a politics of relative moderation. In Chapter II, the author considers the chivalric aspect of Louis’s persona. A warrior king, he is represented as an active participant in battle and a triumphant victor, all shown by the king’s real-life military exploits in Italy; yet, he justified his wars publically, and tried not to come across as ambitious and self-serving. Chapter III then goes on to explore Louis’s imperialism: citing a weakened interest in Charlemagne in the political imagination of early Renaissance people, H. seeks to describe the nature of Louis’s imperialist aspirations during this period. Although several emblems associated with Louis recalled the iconography of antique imperialism — the globe, the imperial eagle, details of clothing — H. concludes that on the whole there seems to have been reticence among his subjects to associate him with the absolutist ideologies that such imagery would suggest. In fact, the preeminence of neo-antique elements shown during Louis’s grandiose entries into Italy did not provoke similar displays in France, where the king’s Christian piety was celebrated. While Louis did not reject the role of all-powerful leader, his rule was part of a nobler cause, ultimately in service of God. The Christian aspect of the king’s persona is discussed in Chapter IV. By examining portrayals emphasizing Louis’s special relationship with God, the author pinpoints two aspects of the king’s Christian identity — he was at once an obedient, faithful vicar of God and a powerful leader of the crusade against Pope Julius II. Some descriptions cast positive light on what one might view as Louis’s disgraces, such as military blunders (144) and the failure to produce a male heir (146), showing that even “divine” authority could be interpreted in multiple and sometimes contradictory ways (147). H. examines at length Louis XII’s own ideological and military “crusade” against the Pope starting in 1509, a potentially troublesome development considering the king’s reputation for piety and devotion to the church. Overall, however, Louis is portrayed as a faithful Christian, defending his church against an imposter unfit to lead it, and the king finally emerges as appearing reverent and devoted (174). Chapter V returns to the notion of the king as père du peuple, a generous and caring monarch concerned for his subjects above all; H. seeks specifically to affirm his fatherly image and to see in Louis the ideal of a just king epitomized (176). The king’s iconography comes to incorporate the emblem of the bee, which represents social harmony and political unity (188–90); H. stresses that within this vision of royal authority, the king’s power remains absolute (195), but his goodness leads him to use this control with discretion (196): the king needs the love and fidelity of the people and must foster the people’s good will toward their monarch and their solidarity with him.

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In her two final chapters, H. broadens the scope to consider those who surround the king. In chapter VI, she examines real and allegorical personages as contributors to the king’s reign. Two important counselors, George d’Amboise and the disgraced Maréchal de Gié, reveal the paradoxical status of those close to the king — not only their strength, privilege, and influence, but also the counselors’ fragile positions (236–37). In Chapter VII, H. shows Queen Anne de Bretagne (the widow of Charles VIII, married to Louis in 1498) to be a good partner, and an essential mediating presence between the king and the people. With respect to the queen as a political entity, peace is shown to be an outgrowth of her feminine influence on the king (248), with the theme of maternity defining her as a woman. Another aspect of Anne de Bretagne’s persona is her independence, her value as an individual whose strength exists in perfect symbiosis with that of the king (261). In sum, these two chapters underscore a government based on shared power, in which the sovereign holds ultimate authority, but whose effectiveness also depends on the contributions of his queen and loyal counselors. True to her stated goals, the author does not attempt to explain the hybridity of Louis XII’s image by pulling the varying elements of his character into a coherent whole. She stresses that frequent lack of intervention by the king gives rise to an unprecedented pluralism in contrast to the regimes of his successors (280). H. even suggests that one reason why historians have left Louis XII largely unexplored is because — when one looks at the political ambiance of his time, with the age’s emphasis on the realm rather than on the person of the monarch — Louis is instead disrupting a “mirage d’une continuité, qui mènerait de Charles VIII à François 1er” (281). This book accomplishes what it sets out to do and is clearly the result of a tremendous amount of research by a person very knowledgeable in the field. Ironically, the other side of that acknowledgment is the primary criticism for H.’s work, which is that the text is at times less than user-friendly. Some references and quotations are not clearly attributed, and discovering the bibliographic details of cited texts takes a bit of detective work. There are occasional typographical errors and oddities of punctuation; globally, this book presumes familiarity with the historical context and important figures in the political and literary arenas of France at this time. Even Chapter I, which contextualizes Louis XII’s reign, presumes a good deal of background knowledge, to include, for example, details regarding Louis’s rebellion against the regency of Anne de Beaujeu and his imprisonment (1488). These facts led some critics to question the legitimacy of his claim to the throne, and the details surrounding his marriage to and divorce from Jeanne de France. The authors should have considered (and dealt with) the readers’ unfamiliarity regarding Pierre Gringore and Seyssel, writers during Louis

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XII’s time whose works are heavily used throughout this book, but whose significance is assumed to be known to the reader. On a more technical note, the author translates some of the fairly numerous Latin phrases, but not all; on the other hand, she presumes that modern readers will not stumble at citations in the idiosyncratic French of the period. This study may also prove less accessible to some audiences who may approach it, for example, because of their respective interest in art, coins, religious iconography, or political pageantry. One would like to imagine a wider audience for this work, which not only helps to fill a gap in the scholarship on the French monarchy, but also sheds new and thought-provoking light on the weakness of a king’s image, reflecting and shaped by the mutability of power itself. Geri L. Smith, United States Military Academy West Point Kem, Judy, ed. Symphorien Champier: La Nef des dames vertueuses. Paris: Editions Champion, 2007. Pp. 305. Champier’s La Nef des dames vertueuses is composed of four texts. The first is entitled La Fleur des dames, followed by the Gouvernement de mariage, the Propheties des sibilles, and a fourth part called the Livre de vraye amour dedicated to Anne de France (published in 1962 by James Wadsworth). Kem’s introduction includes biographical details as well as analyses of Champier’s feminism and medical humanism. The text itself is complemented by explanatory footnotes, including references to Biblical or classical texts and the extremely useful transliteration and translation of Latin marginal quotations (notes of variants are awkwardly placed at the end of each part). Three appendices conclude this edition. The first is a letter in Latin dated April 1485 by Bartolomeo Fonte (followed by a French translation) sent to his friend Francesco Sasseti; the second is a letter from Symphorien Champier addressed to three doctors: Jean Guercin, Louis de Villeneuve, and Antoine Fedelio. The third appendix (another letter) is addressed by Champier to André Briau and deals with Platonic love, where Symphorien writes, incidentally, that “it is clear that our science, medicine, is to be preferred to all the other human arts that exist, because of the excellence of its origin, the nobility of its object, and the perfection of its goal” (268). The choice of these appendices and their relevance to the Nef are unfortunately not explained; the volume ends with a glossary, a bibliography of primary and secondary sources, and an index nominum. Since the instant popularity of Sebastian Brant’s Ship of Fools (1494), the framing device of a “ship” as a genre comparable to that of “mirrors” became used frequently. Champier, a polyvalent and eclectic humanist, used the device to embed his four texts on women in it. Born in c.1472 near Lyon into a family of notables, Champier received a medical education first in

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Paris and later at Montpellier. As early as 1497 he turned to writing and publishing. His first book was published in Lyon and seems to have been inspired both by Aristotle’s Physics via Lefèvre d’Étaples, and by his animosity toward Parisian Scotists (such as Pierre Tateret). Symphorien’s first vernacular work La Nef des princes was printed in 1502, followed by our text La Nef des dames vertueuses, which was dedicated to Anne de France and Suzanne de Bourbon in 1503. He would later publish more than fifty works in fields as varied as medicine, religion, music, history, and politics. A preliminary check-list of Champier’s writings published by James F. Ballard and Michel Pijoan in 1940 gave a tentative listing of Symphorien’s impressive production. It appears that one of the most famous pieces known to the general public (then and probably today as well) details the life of the mythical chevalier sans paour et sans reproche Bayard (the expression itself is by Jacques de Mailles), a French military icon since Francis I’s Italian victories. This fact is easily proven by the large number of (Bayard) editions from the first half of the sixteenth century onwards. Yet, Judy Kem fails to quote this almost canonical text even once, despite its recent edition by Denis Crouzet (Imprimerie Nationale, 1992) and the fact that she recalls that Champier married Marguerite de Terrail (in 1503), her being a cousin of the famous Bayard for whom the Nef des dames was possibly written in the first place (the reviewer’s hypothesis). Also, Kem does not attempt to give an updated list of modern editions of Champier’s works. Most notably she omits the critical edition of six of the eleven texts included in Champier’s La Nef des princes (still unedited but available by ProQuest), which is Phyllis Ann Hall’s doctoral dissertation (Columbia University, 1975), as well as Le Triumphe du tres chrestien roy de France Loys XII, edited by Giovanna Trisolini (Rome: Edizione dell’Ateneo & Bizzarri, 1977). A third political text of much interest is the history of Lyon written in the vernacular after an uprising against the political élite of the town in 1529, but Kem only refers to that history in a footnote. Champier was far more prolix and reputed as a doctor than as a humanist writer, particularly for his numerous medical treatises in which he mixed what we would consider today occult and magic with medicine and science, and compiled various and sometimes contradictory opinions. As a rule, Champier followed the Greek medical traditions rather than Arab science and attacked Jewish gynecologists with much virulence (35), chemists in general. It would seem that his meeting with Jacques Lefèvre d’Étaples, which familiarized him with Greek wisdom and more specifically enrolled him with neoplatonists, left more of an impact on his life than his meeting with Jacques Robertet, an encounter connecting him with the Bourbon family (12). Indeed, despite the fact that the Nef des dames was dedicated to Anne de France and Suzanne de Bourbon, Champier was unsuccessful in securing a pension for this family, and he finally had to move to Nancy where he was

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nominated primarius medicus in 1509 by Duke Antoine. A few years later Champier was back in Lyon, where he founded the Collège de la Trinité (but we learn nothing about this institution) and where he remained active until his death in 1539. Kem announces a bibliography in preparation by Richard Cooper (13), and such a work will certainly be welcome because it would cast important light on many aspects of the early sixteenth-c. French cultural, philosophical, political, and literary world that Kem’s introduction can only touch on. We know little, for instance, about Champier’s relationship with the kings and the military élite (for Louis XII, for example, he wrote Le Triumphe, which could be compared with the first Nef and with the story of Bayard’s deeds); nothing is mentioned about his exchanges with the literary circles of the Rhétoriqueurs and later the Pléiade (he was respected and reputed amongst them) and with such humanists as Guillaume Budé. This reviewer highly recommends that readers consult the Nef via the internet site of the Bibliothèque Nationale (gallica.fr), firstly because that listing reproduces in full the first edition (1503) which is — quite rightly — the basis of a scientific edited text, but more in order to view the exquisite woodcuts unfortunately not reproduced in Kem’s edition. She gives but a short description of a few woodcuts in footnotes, especially alluding to the two painted pictures in the Vellum book presented to Anne de France by Champier (38). The almost totally missing description of the visual aspects of Champier’s Nef is regrettable, especially since the text (if provided) could have thrown interesting light on the symbolism of the boat as understood by early French political imagination — as well as on the interaction of Champier with the print industry in Lyon (the question of Champier’s own awareness of printing presses and his use of prefatory letters for his own selfpromotion is suggested by Cynthia J. Brown, Poets, Patrons and Printers: Crisis of Authority in Late Medieval France, Cornell University Press, 1995 [47] and Eugene Rice Jr., ed., The Prefatory Epistles of Jacques Lefèvre d’Étaples and Related Texts, Columbia University Press, 1972). Regarding Champier’s feminism, we deplore Kem’s superficial discussion of Christine Hill’s article in French Studies 7 (1953) “Symphorien Champier’s Views on Education in the Nef des princes and the Nef des dames vertueuses” (see pp. 11, 23, 28) and oddly enough the absence of Kem’s own fine article on Christine de Pizan and Champier, which was published in Romance Notes 45 (2005): 225–34. A comparison between Champier and earlier French vernacular writers could have been much more profitable and relevant than with the Boccaccio of De Claris Mulieribus and another De Claris Mulieribus signed Jacopo Fillipo Foresti da Bergamo. There exists no discussion here of Eustache Deschamps (Miroir de mariage, 1381), Christine de Pizan (Le Trésor de la cité des Dames, 1405), Alain Chartier (Excusation pour La Belle dame sans mercy, 1425), Martin

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Le Franc (Champion des Dames, c.1440), Guillaume Alexis (Le débat de l’homme et de la femme, c.1460), Pierre Michault (Le procès d’honneur femenin, post-1461), or the anonymous Miroir aux Dames, to quote but a few texts of the immense literature on women since the famous quarrel about the Roman de la rose. In addition, Kem’s comparison between Boccaccio, Foresti, and Champier is limited to the first part of the Nef and does not examine the parallels (or divergences) in the respective lists of heroines in the second and third groups of portraits (21). Kem later suggests comparing Champier with Agrippa d’Aubigné despite the fact that the latter’s De nobilitate et praecellentia foeminei sexus was published in 1509. Regarding the part devoted to the sibyls, Kem emphasizes the important fact that Champier borrowed prophecies from Jean Robertet and Fillipo de Barbieri (22), but she says nothing about the allegation that Champier was equally inspired by Ficino, Plato, and André Le Chapelain (see the notice on Champier in Jean-Claude Margolin’s Anthologie des humanistes européens de la Renaissance [Paris: Gallimard, 2007]: 211–16) and Kem’s notes in the text itself. In fact, a more scrupulous analysis of Champier’s sources would have been extremely helpful since Kem herself sees the Nef as a hybrid assortment of works and opinions (36–37). In conclusion, the edition of the text is very impressive despite a disappointing introduction and an unexplained appendix. The notes are particularly valuable and give a wealth of data and information; remarkable work has also been done to track down the sources of the Latin marginal quotes translated for further clarity. This edition is therefore an important source for anyone interested in the many themes touching this multifaceted patchwork of texts. We have here a discussion by one of the major French humanists on heroines, virtues, marriage, sexual pleasure, impotence, sterility, love, education, economics, theology, prophecies, and more. We hope that this new edition will encourage scholars to include Symphorien Champier in their cultural, historical, and literary research of the early modern period, since his Nef embodies an exceptional synthesis of the original encounters of diverse and often contradictory philosophical and moral traditions. Nicole Hochner, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem Knape, Joachim. Poetik und Rhetorik in Deutschland 1300–1700. Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz Verlag, 2006. Pp. viii; 227. 23 illustrations. Joachim Knape’s new book examines the increasing use of German as a medium for theoretical consideration applied to the arts of persuasion and poetry between the late Middle Ages and the end of the early modern period. The volume is a detailed and comprehensive introduction to the field of German rhetoric and poetics as it began to take shape after 1300, as well as an excellent illustration of how a thorough understanding of rhetorical con-

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cepts seen through the lenses of both classical writings and modern communication theory can enrich the analysis of seminal works of this period. Knape’s study is divided into three parts. Part One (“Poetiken, Rhetoriken und ihre Theorie”) functions as a general introduction to the field during the late-medieval and early modern period, one which can stand alone (it appeared in shortened form in the 2006 Camden House History of German Literature edited by Max Reinhart) or serve as a prelude to Part Two’s rhetorical and poetical analysis of Sebastian Brant’s Das Narrenschiff (1494), which Knape had published in his Studienausgabe of Das Narrenschiff in 2005. Part Three looks back upon the accomplishments of German rhetoricians between 1300 and 1700 in view of the eighteenth-c. shift from a focus on the mastery of the forms and mechanics of literary production to the liberation of literature from conventional patterns and assumptions. The author begins Part One by briefly delineating the corpus of rhetorical works and poetics produced by German authors in both Latin and German. In Chapter Two, he discusses the range of works produced to address the readers’ need for standards of language and form. Then, he examines the theories of Niclas von Wyle (c.1415–78) and Friedrich Riederer (c.1450– 1508), among others, and considers the influence of normative “rhetorical thinking” upon the varieties and aspects of communication before 1700. Knape notes that for German humanists, rhetorical categories and issues of form took on new urgency as the medium of encoding the vernacular by means of the written word changed drastically with the invention of printing and the rapid growth of imprints. It was, however, difficult even for the most determined authors to disengage totally written, learned German from the authority of Latin norms, a situation evident in the German of the chancelleries. Wyle, as Knape relates, was one of the first to wonder “if one can actually apply the principles of style and the stylistic repertoire used for texts in one language (in this instance, Latin) to texts produced in another”(19; my translation). Wyle suggested using Latin rhetoric as a guide for accomplishing textual objectives in German, although both he and his contemporaries viewed such endeavors with skepticism. Knape credits Friedrich Riederer with having taken a decisive step to remove literary German from the sway of the guidelines for rhetoric used in the chancelleries and places Riederer alongside the eleventh-c. German grammarian Notker Teutonicus as a writer in German about that language. In his Spiegel der waren Rhetoric (1493), Riederer expanded upon Latin rhetoric by including the work of contemporary authors, such as Albrecht von Eyb (1420–75) and Jacob Publicius (fl. 1460). Knape lauds Riederer’s accomplishment because “with skill and theoretical understanding he was the first German to succeed in taking formal concepts intended for neo-Latin humanistic discourse and apply them to German circumstance” (31). Knape’s regard for Riederer’s (currently little known, but

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apparently significant) activity has moved him to begin work on an edition of Spiegel der waren Rhetoric. Authors such as Wyle, Riederer, and others such as Kaspar Goldtwurm (1525–59), wrestled with German as an effective medium of practical and persuasive communication at a time when German itself lacked universally accepted grammatical norms and writing conventions. Knape points out that what was perceived by later ages as the restrictive quality of handbooks of rhetoric and poetics from this period rested on a misunderstanding of the goals of rhetoric and an overemphasis on correctness in language and form. The author’s overview of rhetorical works and poetics illustrates the perception common before 1700 that the tools of rhetoric functioned as an array of possibilities to be employed according to the type of communicative goal a writer had in mind. The later tendency to fixate upon correctness as opposed to appropriateness had its roots in rhetorical formularies (compiled in the late-medieval period) to facilitate practical communication such as correspondences and administrative writing. In addition, the desire of humanists to revive and issue correct Latin resulted in a renewed concern with the regularization of German, an objective cultivated by later grammarians such as Justus G. Schottelius (1612–76). The remainder of Part One examines the concepts of rhetorical and poetic thinking found in sixteenth-c. examples of metaphorical and visual expression and discusses the relationship between the two concepts of thinking as it lasted up to the end of the 1600s. Knape includes with his analysis of visual representations of eloquence theory a number of illustrations from works he discusses. We are introduced to Gregor Reisch, whose Margarita philosophica of 1503 associated images of art (Kunst) and war (Krieg) such as flowers and swords, for example, with a female “Rhetoric” to illustrate the purposes of this art as ornamented speech and forceful persuasion. Reisch placed the figure of Rhetoric in the company of ancient authors to illustrate the kinds of speech ruled by this discipline, among them natural science, poetry, ethics, historiography, and public speaking. Knape points out that Reisch’s removal of Virgil the poet and Sallust the historian and his addition of Cicero nearer the “seat of eloquence” in a later version document a change in his understanding of rhetoric and poetry. What was the difference between rhetoric and poetics? Much poetry, especially from the seventeenth century, seems highly artificial in nature to modern readers, given the genre’s cumbersome rhetorical figures. In the final section of Part One, Knape reminds us that criticism of this period has varied widely in the critics’ view of the relationship between rhetoric and poetics to each other. Early twentieth-c. literary historians such as Heinrich F. Plett and Charles Sears Baldwin conflated rhetoric and poetics, while others, such as Charles O. Brink, considered these two arts as necessarily separate disci-

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plines. Knape agrees with Marvin T. Herrick’s contention that rhetoric is grounded in appropriateness; that is, rhetoric is a practical discipline whose purpose is effective expression. Herrick finds that poetic texts can employ rhetorical devices without being rhetorical in their purpose and here endeavors to follow the paths of the two disciplines up to the 1700s. He states that the fifteenth century viewed rhetoric as responsible for the basic principles and generalities of communication as well as for the prose forms of practical communication; on the other hand, one made poetics responsible for the theoretical questions of the production of aesthetic texts and that meant mostly that it was responsible for those texts composed in verse (71).

Seventeenth-c. poets often sought to persuade, thus appropriating not only rhetoric’s primary goal, but also a number of its tools, an attitude poets in the following century condemned as inimical to the force and expression of creative genius. In the closing portion of Chapter Four, Knape prepares the stage for the next part of the study, an analysis of rhetoric and poetics in Brant’s Das Narrenschiff, by focusing on several key concepts taken from the field of communicative theory. His overview concentrates on three areas: the partners in an interaction (orator/poet and public), the goals and purposes of communication, and the text as result of poetic diction. For each of these areas, Knape traces the evolution of definitions and theories of rhetoric and poetics as found in contemporary sources and in doing so, reveals theoreticians such as Martin Opitz (1597–1639) as consciously seeking a break with poetic tradition. Poetry then became a pursuit of all who sought to refine their linguistic skills and increasingly served varied social functions. Knape revisits the fifteenth century in Part Two, the focus of the latter being Sebastian Brant’s Das Narrenschiff (1494), a wide-ranging satire in text and image, whose rhetorical underpinnings Knape finds in Brant’s life-long acquaintance with Horace’s Ars poetica from the first century B.C. Knape examines The Ship of Fools in terms of its poetic construction of “virtual realities” (fictions) in graphic and verbal art, its language and language games, its capacity as poetry to expand knowledge in philosophy, and the importance of the poet. For K., Brant’s admiration of Horace was by no means slavish; he points to Brant’s debt to German Spruchsprecherkultur and to the wealth of German proverbs and sayings which enliven and enrich both text and illustrations in the Narrenschiff. Indeed, K. shows that Horace’s concept of satire as a highly developed form which permitted focus upon popular and everyday themes struck Brant as familiar from his own milieu, one which cherished the moralizing “Schimpf und Spott” so characteristic of the German Shrovetide tradition. Brant’s self-conception as a poet-orator mirrored Horace’s ideal of the poet as highly educated and skilled in working with the written word. As K. relates, Brant had not only studied Horace intensively, he also taught Horace in Basel,

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and thus viewed himself in a position to make pronouncements on literary subjects, and he used the newest media technology to do so. In his Narrenschiff, the Alsacian strides to the podium, so to speak, and if the enthusiasm of his Latin editor, Jacob Locher, and the praise of his contemporary, Johannes Trithemius, can be taken at face value, Brant’s work immediately stands out as representing both the rhetorical and poetic heritage the humanists so admired and also as an exemplary vernacular work. Brant’s originality lies in his inventio, his use of the Narren, both as concrete figures and as abstractions; the Ship becomes a vehicle for satire, but raises ethical and philosophical questions. In one of the most masterful and engaging of the twelve sections on Brant, Knape reveals a subtle, yet illuminating relationship between the Narrenschiff and Petrarch’s De remediis utriusque fortunae (1360). He finds that although both authors dealt with topics of virtue and fortune as problems facing mankind, in Petrarch’s De remediis human ratio fights the affects of joy, hope, fear, and despair, which are aroused when fortune strikes. For Brant, the enemy of ratio is not external fortune, but is found within each of us; it is irrationality contending with rational action. Rather than employ rationality to master one’s emotions in response to the outer world, as Petrarch (under Seneca’s tutelage) advises, Brant places before each of his readers the moral decision of whether or not to embrace or reject his/her inner fool. The Alsacian’s portraits of the myriad types of human folly are fleshed out by hundreds of examples drawn from what K. describes as an “enormous intertextual universe” (151), illustrated for us here in part by a selection of pages from the 1494 edition of Das Narrenschiff. As Knape notes, in Petrarch’s dialogues, it is almost impossible to tell who really wins an argument; often, it seems that ratio and the affects are simply talking past one another. The Ship of Fools, on the other hand, presents a series of what K. calls “sermones” which present an obvious choice to a reader. Who, after all, would freely choose to be a fool after reading such persuasively, entertainingly detailed, and mocking descriptions? K. expands his discussion of the Narrenschiff’s philosophical dimension to include Brant’s views and writings on the subject of free will and briefly looks ahead to Luther’s concept of grace and even to Büchner’s fatalism. Part Three of Knape’s study considers Johann Christoph Gottsched’s work on rhetoric in order to summarize the observations and conclusions (about the work of German writers between 1300 and 1700) made in the preceding chapters. For K., Johann Riederer, Sebastian Brant, and Martin Opitz exemplify the vernacularization of classical rhetorical traditions as German was being refined as a language of literary expression (171). Gottsched, however, in his three works — Versuch einer Critischen Dichtkunst (1730), Ausführliche Redekunst (1736), Vollständigere und Neuerläuterte Deutsche Sprachkunst (1762) — embraced French classicism in genres and forms. In omitting any

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mention of the attempts during the previous century, Gottsched declared his Dichtkunst to be the first noteworthy poetics in German. Joachim Knape’s thorough and fascinating study refocuses attention on the role of classical rhetoric in the age of Germany’s first media revolution and specifically demonstrates rhetoric’s dynamic influence upon German literature at the close of the fifteenth century. The author invites readers to engage in further inquiry by including in his bibliography a detailed, up-todate, and comprehensive listing of primary texts on theoretical works relevant to the study of German rhetoric and poetics before 1750. Elizabeth I. Wade-Sirabian, University of Wisconsin-Oshkosh Mathey-Maille, Laurence. Écritures du passé: histoires des ducs de Normandie. Paris: Champion, 2007. Pp. 292. e

Comment raconte-t-on le passé au XII siècle? C’est la question à laquelle répond de manière claire et convaincante le livre de L. Mathey-Maille. Alors que beaucoup d’enquêtes récentes portent sur l’historiographie en prose, LMM s’intéresse à des textes en vers (ou dans la forme mixte du prosimetrum): le De moribus et actis primorum Normanniae que Dudon de SaintQuentin compose autour de l’an 1000, le Roman de Rou de Wace (1160–70), la Chronique des ducs de Normandie de Benoît de Sainte-Maure (vers 1174) et la Chronique de la guerre entre les Anglois et les Écossois en 1173 et 1174 de Jordan Fantosme (rédigée sans doute vers 1175). Ce corpus cohérent d’un point de vue thématique, puisque tous les textes traitent de l’histoire des ducs de Normandie, est suffisamment divers pour suivre la naissance et l’évolution de l’écriture historiographique. L’inclusion du texte de Dudon, qui pourrait surprendre a priori, est de ce point de vue très précieuse. Écrit en latin, un siècle et demi avant les autres, ce récit est la première histoire de la Normandie, le premier essai d’histoire dynastique. Il est de plus l’une des sources de Benoît de Sainte-Maure. A l’autre extrémité de la chaîne des textes, la Chronique de Jordan Fantosme raconte la révolte du jeune Henri contre le vieux roi Henri II Plantagenêt. Elle ne s’intéresse donc qu’à une période restreinte de l’histoire des ducs. Dudon, Benoît et Wace développent une fresque généalogique qui remonte à la fondation de la lignée; Jordan consacre sa chronique à un passé récent qu’il a vécu. La méthode est donc forcément un peu différente: on ne raconte pas un passé lointain, auréolé du prestige du mythe comme le passé récent, même si tout se fait sous l’œil du mécène Henri II, pour Benoît, Wace et Jordan. La Chronique occupe de ce fait un statut un peu marginal et reste absente de plusieurs développements (sur la généalogie par exemple, mais aussi sur “le passé à l’épreuve du présent” ou l’hagiographie). L’inclure n’était certes pas une mauvaise idée, mais peut-être aurait-il fallu marquer plus nettement

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l’originalité de ce texte par rapport aux autres. En revanche, disposer de deux histoires de la Normandie écrites par deux écrivains contemporains et rivaux, Wace et Benoît, est une chance extraordinaire dont LMM tire un bon parti en comparant de manière très fructueuse les deux textes (201–14 en particulier). L’étude se déroule selon deux axes: le traitement de la temporalité d’une part, les formes littéraires dans lesquelles se coule l’écriture naissante de l’histoire d’autre part. L’analyse de la temporalité occupe les trois premiers chapitres: “Marques et mesures du temps,” “Temps du récit” et “Brouillages temporels.” Malgré le titre de chronique donné à deux des textes du corpus, LMM montre que les quatre auteurs, peu soucieux de dater précisément les événements qu’ils relatent, sont des historiens plutôt que des chroniqueurs. Comme dans l’épopée ou dans le roman, c’est le calendrier liturgique ou le cycle annuel de la nature qui permet de situer les événements, et le temps s’alourdit souvent d’une valeur symbolique. L’ordre suivi par les récits est en général chronologique dans la mesure où leur visée est de dérouler la généalogie des ducs de Normandie. Quant au rythme narratif, il varie considérablement à l’intérieur d’une même œuvre, souplesse qui révèle les enjeux politiques et idéologiques sous-tendant les textes. Le passé est vu en effet à travers le prisme déformant du présent. Dudon, Benoît et Wace télescopent tous trois le temps de l’histoire et le temps de l’écriture, alors que dans la Chronique de Jordan, les deux temps coïncident sans effet d’anachronisme. La seconde partie, “Représentations littéraires du passé,” évalue le poids des modèles littéraires qui ont influencé l’écriture de l’histoire: l’hagiographie, l’épopée et le roman. Le modèle hagiographique est particulièrement prégnant à l’époque de Dudon, ce que LMM explique par la force de la pensée théologique: “Loin d’être un hasard, l’alliance entre histoire et hagiographie résulte d’un mode de pensée théologique, d’une conception providentialiste de l’Histoire placée entre les mains de Dieu” (140). Les liens avec l’hagiographie se distendent chez Benoît qui campe des personnages certes toujours exemplaires, mais plus profanes. Wace pour sa part renonce à une lecture providentialiste de l’histoire et promeut une morale pratique (150). Le sujet politique et guerrier que traitent les quatre auteurs favorise l’influence de l’épopée. On ne s’étonnera donc pas de voir qu’ils adaptent de nombreux motifs épiques: narratifs comme le conseil ou l’ambassade, ou rhétoriques comme l’armement du héros. Plus complexes sont les jeux avec la laisse et les intentions qui président au choix du vers, alexandrin ou octosyllabe. Jordan Fantosme par exemple recourt à la laisse épique en alexandrins pour conférer une dimension eschatologique à son récit (178). Wace expérimente tour à tour la laisse d’alexandrins et le couplet d’octosyllabes pour marquer des ruptures dans sa matière (passage du monde carolingien au monde capétien; glissement d’une matière politique à une matière plus romanesque [185]).

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Quant au genre naissant du roman, son influence se discerne en particulier dans l’inclusion d’histoires d’amour, traitées parfois en lien avec le sujet historique (la femme étant celle qui perpétue le lignage), mais parfois comme de simples ornements du récit. Pour leur part, les épisodes légendaires ou merveilleux peuvent certes constituer des parenthèses, mais ils contribuent aussi à donner une couleur mythique aux récits. C’est qu’en effet, comme je l’ai déjà noté, Wace, Benoît, Jordan écrivaient tous les trois à la cour d’Henri II Plantagenêt. La glorification du lignage qui culmine dans ce royal mécène explique le glissement de l’histoire au mythe, le caractère fortement idéologique des récits. Quant à Dudon, plusieurs dizaines auparavant, il écrit sur la demande insistante du duc Richard II de Normandie et est lui aussi “motivé par un projet apologétique évident” (223). Au terme de son étude LMM montre comment écrire l’histoire pour les e e écrivains du XI et XII siècles, c’est “célébrer, enseigner, penser le temps” (257): faire l’éloge du mécène et de son lignage, transmettre une morale religieuse ou pratique, reconstituer à sa manière le cours des événements. Elle suggère alors de nouveaux titres pour des œuvres qu’elle estime avec raison mal nommées: Gesta Normannorum Ducum pour Dudon, Geste des Normands pour Wace, Histoire des Ducs de Normandie pour Benoît et Estoire del vieil Henri pour Jordan (256). Ce livre, de lecture très agréable, regorge d’analyses de détail stimulantes, en particulier sur le Roman de Rou pour lequel LMM ne cache pas sa préférence et qu’elle juge “le plus abouti” (259). S’il ne propose pas une lece e ture totalement nouvelle de la pratique de l’historien du XI au XII siècle, il confirme de manière précise et méthodique bien des études antérieures et offre, sur un sujet restreint mais exemplaire (l’histoire des ducs de Normandie), un panorama synthétique de l’écriture de l’histoire. Michelle Szkilnik, Paris III-Sorbonne Nouvelle Régnier-Bohler, Danielle, ed.,Voix de femmes au moyen âge: savoir, mystique, poésie, amour, sorcellerie, XIIe–XVe siècle. Paris: Robert Laffont, 2006. Pp. xxxix; 1010. The title of this collection, because Rénier-Bohler does not specify a location, implies that the medievalVoix de femmes, the women’s voices, issue from different parts of Europe, if not from the world. However, this is not the case: of the women writers represented here in modern French translation only two were not French: Hildegard of Bingen and Mechthild of Magdeburg. Of course, the trobairitz (female troubadours) and the anonymous (presumed) authoress of the “Vie de sainte Douceline” composed their works in dialects of Occitan. Still, because speakers of Occitan lived and wrote in areas that are today part of France, their works are routinely categorized as French lit-

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erature. The women’s voices collected here, then, are mostly French. Why, one wonders, did the editor, Régnier-Bohler, include the two German mystics at all? Or, alternatively, why did she not include authoresses from a range of medieval European cultures? Even more mysteriously, a table of “repères chronologiques” (historical landmarks) lists major literary works in Latin, Occitan, and French, and recalls historical events of France and England, although not a single item of a woman who writes in the English language is included in the collection. Régnier-Bohler does not clarify the editor’s principle of selection in her introduction. Still, whatever the logic, for an English-speaking academic audience on the lookout for collections to use in courses on medieval French women’s literature, Voix de femmes is a possibility to consider adopting. Even if the Hildegard and Mechthild selections might have to be left aside in the interests of disciplinary purity, a rich assortment of medieval French writings by women remains, including some works that have never been translated into modern French in their entirety. In the introductory essay, the editor proposes that the collection presents a response to Georges Duby’s assertion that the lives of medieval women, inevitably filtered through masculine lenses, must remain inaccessible. The collection aims to bring medieval women to life: to “convoquer un peu ces ombres, d’entendre leurs voix, de s’engager dans ce que l’Histoire des femmes se proposait naguère de mettre en lumière, ces silhouettes ‘laissées dans l’ombre de l’Histoire’” (call together these shadows, to listen to their voices, to take up what the Histoire des femmes attempted long ago to bring to light, these silhouettes left in the shadows of history): see Duby, et al., eds., Histoire des femmes en Occident, 5 vols. (Paris: Plon, 1991–92), 2: viii. To this end, a variety of writings has been brought together by Bohler and translated under five section headings: “La voix poétique” (The poetic voice); “Les voix mystiques” (Mystical voices); “Une voix dans la cité: Christine de Pizan” (A voice of the city: Christine de Pizan); “Les savoirs secrets des femmes” (The secret wisdom of women); and “Voix d’hommes: la voix des censeurs” (Voices of men: the voice of the censors) — which does not contain female writings but summarizes the themes of prominent authors of misogynistic texts. The first section presents poems by female troubadours, known today as trobairiz, introduced and translated by Jean-Charles Huchet. Readers hoping to recover the silenced voice of the woman addressed in male troubadour lyrics will be disappointed, Huchet explains, because the trobairitz adopt the bi-polar structure typical of troubadour poetry, of the poetic je (I) confronting an absent Other. The female je conforms to the same rules as those of the male; even in dialogues, two “solitudes thematized by a difference in opinion” (10) alternate with one another, leaving the fundamental structure intact. According to Huchet, “les trobairitz n’aiment pas autrement que les

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troubadours” (the trobairitz love no differently from the troubadours) (7). This perspective has been contested by more recent criticism, although Huchet’s bibliography, which lists nothing more recent than 1990, makes no reference to these challenges: see, for example, Mathilda Tomaryn Bruckner’s “Fictions of the Female Voice: the Women Troubadours: Guilhem IX to Bernart de Ventadorn” in The Troubadours: An Introduction, ed. Simon Gaunt and Sarah Kay (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999): 66– 82. However, the section with its introduction and translated poems would form the basis of an interesting class or series of classes if one incorporated recent critical perspectives on trobairitz poetry into the discussion. The works of female mystics are presented in section two. Laurence Moulinier translates selections from Hildegard of Bingen’s “Songs and Letters” (c.1150), and Marie-Françoise Notz transfers into French some extracts from The Book of Divine Works (c.1163). René Perennec offers selections from Mechthild of Magdeburg’s The Flowing Light of the Godhead (c.1250–70). The Life of Sainte Douceline follows (after 1274), translated by Geneviève Brunel-Lobrichon; this saint’s life would be a fascinating text to read in a “Women’s Literature” course. Transcribed by a woman and narrating the life of a woman, BrunelLobrichon’s translation offers a perspective on daily life and the popular religion of southern France; this book also lends insight into medieval assumptions about femininity. Extracts from Marguerite Porete’s The Mirror of Simple Souls (c.1300), translated by Régnier-Bohler, conclude the section. Three works of Christine de Pizan’s, translated in their entirety, make up the third section. Christine’s Vision (1405) is translated by Anne Paupert, followed by Liliane Dulac’s The Treasure of the City of Ladies. Completing the section is “The Poem of Joan of Arc” (1429) given in French by Margaret Switten. Specialists of Christine teaching French courses will especially welcome these selections, because although English-language translations exist for all three, none had previously been available in modern French. The three selections represent most of the major themes that Christine explored throughout her corpus: her political views and tendency to express her opinions on the state of France through her personal biography are manifested in her Vision; her understanding of women’s place in French society, which has disturbed many feminist critics, is laid out in The Treasure of the City of Ladies; finally, in “The Poem of Joan of Arc,” Christine returns from prose to poetry. Section four, on women’s secret wisdom, contains two astounding texts, although neither was written by a woman. The Gospel of the Distaffs (Les Évangiles des Quenouilles, late fifteenth century) is a man’s transcription of some 230 bits of feminine advice, or “gospels,” supposedly uttered by six women over a series of evenings spent together spinning. The sayings of wisdom are parodically “glossed,” in ways that are humorous and sometimes obscene: we learn, for example, that a person who wishes to win at dice should never

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sit back turned toward the moon. To this “gospel,” one of the spinners adds that one who plays during the day should turn away from the sun (762). Later we discover that a pregnant woman who steps over the draw bar of a cart will give birth to a boy with a large and extremely hard membre or to a girl with fat red lips, “both below and above” (776). The work is a monument to masculine ambivalence toward feminine know-how: the transcriber’s tone is mocking, but it attests to a male’s fear of the women whose words he supposedly records. The second work of this section, The Fifteen Joys of Marriage, although a fascinating text, appears an odd choice for a collection of women’s voices: composed by an anonymous male writer, the work recounts the fate of a poor young man caught in the snares of marriage by a petulant female and his gradual demoralization. True, The Gospel of the Distaffs was also written by a man, but it supposedly records a feminine oral tradition, however mockingly. Although some exchanges between the young man and his wife are included in The Fifteen Joys of Marriage (late fifteenth century), the piece represents a male world view. Perhaps the juxtaposition of the two works of this section is meant to force the reader to question to what extent the first can be read as representing a female perspective at all; indeed, it may be intended to force us to consider what the expression the “words of women” means during a period when the major literary genres were constructed by men. In fact, because the two selections on “women’s secret wisdom” were written by men, it might have been more coherent to fold them into the final section, which describes the works of some well-known fifteenth-c. misogynists. In principle, the usefulness of this concluding essay is clear; the material is important for grasping the extent to which female pennings of the conclusion must be viewed as implicit responses to misogynistic texts. However, the section’s relationship to the rest of the collection might have been clarified. Undoubtedly, the design and choice of content in Régnier-Bohler’s collection are at times unclear; however, ready availability of medieval women’s texts is something to be desired. For researchers in need of easy access to the key texts translated here in modern French, or for an upper-division or graduate course about medieval French women writers, the gathering represents a useful addition to any reading list of books. Besides, the general reader of French may be interested in this text, which should be acquired by university libraries. Tracy Adams, University of Auckland (New Zealand)

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Roux, Simone. Christine de Pizan: Femme de tête, dame de coeur. Paris: Payot, 2006. Pp. 270. Since the 1980s, students have been introduced to the life and times of Christine de Pizan through Charity Cannon Willard’s biography of the poet (Christine de Pizan: Her Life and Works [New York: Persea Press, 1984]) and now an alternative work has been created by Roux’s Christine de Pizan: Femme de tête, dame de coeur. Written by an historian, the new biography presents some advantages over that of Willard; for example, Roux’s description of the events that marked Christine’s life, including the Armagnac-Burgundian war, is more comprehensive, but remains concise and unintimidating for an undergraduate approaching that chaotic era for the first time. Moreover, since the publication of Willard’s biography in 1984, the research of Nikolaï Wandruska has brought information on the poet’s extended Italian family to light, and is now included in Roux’s work. Finally, with its serious historical perspective, R.’s biography offers an important corrective to Willard’s quasicaricatured depiction of Charles VI’s court and the debauched pair, Isabeau of Bavaria and Louis of Orléans (a description taken from the “mythology” prevalent in nineteenth-c. popular French histories). Willard’s Christine was a disapproving, moralistic observer of court life; Roux’s work rectifies this image, offering instead an engaged court poet. The first two of the three sections in Roux’s biography are devoted to Christine’s life. The first covers the poet’s happy youth, that is, the period beginning with her birth in 1364 and ending at the death of her beloved husband in 1389; the second part is devoted to her career from 1399 to c.1430 and presents her major works against the background of her daily life. The gap in chronology between parts one and two, from 1389 to 1399, corresponds to Christine’s phase of financial difficulty, which, ushered in by the death of her husband, finished when she began to attract serious literary accolades. During this ten-year cesura, as Christine explains in autobiographical references scattered throughout several of her works, the poet was confronted with a seemingly endless series of problems with creditors and those who owed her money, but she also undertook a self-guided apprenticeship in writing. Her literary bequest is explored in the book’s third section, “Visages de Christine.” Part one begins with the circumstances surrounding the move of doctor/astrologer Thomas de Pizan and his family, which included his wife, two sons, and daughter Christine, from Italy to Paris, to the court of Charles V, in 1368. Roux creates a vivid picture of Christine’s youth against the circumstances of Thomas’s career, including details on his financial status and an estimate of where this circumstance placed him relative to other members of the court: “Les revenus de Thomas de Pizan étaient abondants, donc capables de lui permettre de faire vivre sa famille selon le haut rang que la

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faveur royale lui donnait” (44). However, as Roux explains, Thomas did not plan sufficiently for the future; he had one important failing, “sa trop grande générosité, qui lui interdisait de rien refuser aux pauvres alors qu’il avait femme et enfants” (60). Still, the death of her father did not plunge Christine and her family into destitution, for her husband, Étienne Castel, with whom she professes to have enjoyed an intimate and loving relationship, took up the role of family head. Nevertheless, with Étienne’s premature death in 1389, she was forced to fend for the family on her own. The section closes with some fascinating details about the poet’s working life, which seem to relieve the reader after the description of Christine’s woeful autobiographical anecdotes; at the same time, Roux calculates that, based on the value of the gifts Christine received from her patrons, her annual income during the first decade of the fifteenth-century must have averaged between 100 and 150 livres parisis a year, roughly equivalent to the income of her husband just before he died (82). Part two explores the poet’s career, using information gleaned from Christine’s major works. Although Roux is not a specialist of literature, this section offers an excellent overview of the chronology, the historical context, and the major themes of the poet’s corpus. Chapter six of this part, “Les lignes de force d’une vie,” provides a useful résumé of the poet’s main ideas in the context of fourteenth and fifteenth-c. political thought. Roux continues (on page 145) that a synthesis placing Christine within “une approche globale des idées et des mouvements politiques en France durant les années 1350–1450” does not yet exist; and yet, Kate Langdon Forhan’s The Political Theory of Christine de Pizan: Women and Gender in the Early Modern World (2002 — 144– 53) has indeed situated the poet’s notions of kingship, law, and justice in their historical context. Still, Roux’s discussion of “Christine et la politique” remains concise and valuable. In part three, beginning with the poet’s self-portrayals in her literature and positive assessments by contemporaries and near-contemporaries (like Eustache Deschamps and Guilbert de Metz), the section traces Christine’s literary fortunes through the Renaissance and the seventeenth century to the Enlightenment, when she was derided as conservative, and finally to the modern era, when Christine was re-discovered. This part evaluates the proliferation of modern literary criticism on the poet in recent decades; unfortunately, however, this discussion fails to acknowledge the enormous influence of English-language criticism on Christine de Pizan studies, with just a few scattered references to Anglo scholars. One may expect a French bias in a book written in that language; still, given the regular exchange of ideas among Christine scholars of many nationalities who gather frequently at international colloquia and are familiar with each other’s work, it is odd to encounter such an exclusively French perspective.

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The same problem undermines the bibliography, which, as Roux explains, is perfunctory and geared toward historical rather than literary studies — but it cites French scholars almost exclusively. The section on historical background contains none of the major English-language studies on the Hundred Years’ War, such as those of Christopher Allmand and Anne Curry; neither R. C. Famiglietti’s essential work Royal Intrigue: Crisis at the Court of Charles VI (1986) nor Richard Vaughan’s studies on the dukes of Burgundy find a place in the bibliography. Furthermore, in Roux’s section devoted to works on Christine, the absence of collections like Earl Jeffrey Richards’s edition Reinterpreting Christine de Pizan (1992) is disconcerting. Missing as well are Rosalind Brown-Grant’s Christine de Pizan and the Moral Defense of Women: Reading Beyond Gender (1999) and Kate Langdon Forhan’s The Political Theory of Christine de Pizan, mentioned above. Another bibliographical problem is a lack of attention paid to spelling: for example, Catherine M. Müller’s name is once misattributed as “Catherone,” and once as “Caroline.” Nonetheless, Roux’s study provides the reader a useful preliminary exposure to Christine and her corpus; its goal is to employ historical expertise to enhance the words of the poet herself, quoted abundantly and often in the original language, thereby allowing Christine to speak directly to modern readers. Roux facilitates a “prise de contact immédiat” with the poet (19). The book is recommended for acquisition by university libraries. Tracy Adams, University of Auckland (New Zealand)