Whilst Christine wrote and lived her student life—“son cuer hermit dans l’ermitage de Pensée”—her fame went forth, and princes sought, by tempting offers, to attach her to their courts, but without success. Of these, Henry the Fourth of England, already acquainted with her poems, and Gian Galleazo Visconti, Duke of Milan, were the most importunate, and particularly the former, who was unaccustomed to rebuff and failure. But Christine, with repeated gracious thanks and guarded refusals, remained firm. No reason for her decision is recorded, but it may well be believed that her patriotism would not allow her, even with the certainty of ease and emolument, to quit France at that critical time, or to serve the enemy of her adopted country.
Although Christine’s reading was very varied and extensive, there were two subjects—the amelioration of her war-distraught country, then in the throes of the Hundred Years’ War, and the championship of the cause of womankind—which specially appealed to her as a patriot and a woman, and for which she strove with unceasing ardour. In all her writings she so interweaves these two causes that it is only by approaching them in the same way that we can understand her view of their psychological unity. To Christine these interests were essentially identical, for she recognised how paramount is woman’s influence in the making or marring of the world—how, in truth, in woman’s hand lies a key which can unlock a Heaven or a Hell.
There was sore need of a patriot, and in Christine one was found. It has been well said of her, and by a Frenchman too, that “though born a woman and an Italian, she alone at the Court of France seemed to have manly qualities and French sentiments.” France was in a sorry plight. There was war in the land, there was war in the palace. The sick King suffered more and more from attacks of madness, and during these periods the Dukes of Orleans and Burgundy fought for the regency. Christine began her patriotic work by fervent appeals to Isabella, the Queen (to whom she offered a MS. now in the British Museum),[31] to use her influence to put an end to these dissensions which so greatly added to the troubles of the kingdom. She also lost no opportunity of proclaiming in her various writings the duties and responsibilities of kings and nobles to the people, and the necessity, if there was ever to be peace and prosperity, of winning their regard. At the command of Philip le Hardi, Duke of Burgundy, and uncle of the King, she wrote in prose, from chronicles of the time and from information obtained from many connected with the King’s household, Le Livre des faits et bonnes mœurs du roi Charles V, recounting his virtuous life and deeds and their advantage to the realm, and introducing a remarkable dissertation on the benefit to a country of a strong middle-class. She, of course, reasoned from Aristotle. The subject is a commonplace one now, but in the case of any one living at the beginning of the fifteenth century, and brought up, as Christine had been, at a magnificent Court, it shows rare independence and breadth of thought to have grasped and proclaimed with such firmness and clearness as is displayed in her treatise the germ of the policy of all modern civilised nations—that a middle-class is essential to bring into touch those placed at the opposite extremes, the rich and the poor.
To Christine belongs an honour beyond that of having been a patriot and a champion of her sex—the honour of having revealed Dante to France.[32] Scattered up and down her writings are many allusions to the Divina Commedia, showing how real a place it must have filled in her soul’s life. She especially recommends it for profitable study in the place of the “hateful” Romance of the Rose, concerning which she gave the warning to her son:—
Se bien veulx et chastement vivre,
De la Rose ne lis le livre.
Like Dante, sad and lonely—“souvent seulete et pensive, regretant le temps passé”—like him she also realised the thirst for knowledge as an ever-present want of the soul, and that its ultimate perfection is only to be attained by following after virtue and knowledge. Although, as regards profundity, her conception of the world and of life cannot be compared with that of her great prototype, or even with that of such an one as St. Hildegarde, still she had read with unflagging diligence a vast number of profane and ecclesiastical writers, and seems to have been well versed in the varied knowledge of her time, especially history. But whilst it is possible to criticise her learning, tempered as this was by her character and the needs of her day, it is at the same time possible to acknowledge that in spite of flaws and an often over-elaborated setting, moral truth sparkles gemlike throughout her writings. One of her biographers speaks of her thus: “Her morale is so pure and so universally human that not only does it remain true to-day, but it will retain imperishable value as long as ever human society is based on a pure and healthy moral foundation.”
In her poem Le Chemin de long Estude—a title taken from Dante’s appeal to Virgil at the opening of the Inferno—Christine begins by acknowledging her debt to the immortal poet, saying that much that she has to tell has already been told by “Dante of Florence in his book.” Virgil as guide is replaced by the Cumean Sibyl, who appears to Christine in a dream, and offers to conduct her to another and a more perfect world, one where there is no pain and misery. To this Christine consents on condition that “sad Hades, whither Æneas once was taken,” is not included in the journey. The Sibyl therefore promises to reveal to her, instead, in what manner misfortune came upon earth, whilst at the same time showing her on the way all that is worth seeing in this world, from the Pillars of Hercules, “the end of the world,” to distant Cathay. However exhausting this programme may appear to us, Christine, knowing the real passion of the late Middle Ages for travel—for even those who could not travel in reality did so in imagination,—makes use of it as a setting for the introduction of a discussion on the qualities most necessary to good government. This she does, even at the risk of incurring displeasure in high quarters, recalling how Dante’s patriotism led to banishment and death in exile, but she adds, “Qui bien ayme, tout endure.” She pours forth her classical examples in a chaotic stream, but when she leaves earth, and ascends to the celestial regions, she not only shows herself versed in the astronomy of the time, but also expresses some beauty of thought. The order of the firmament, where all obey law without ceasing, so that harmony ensues “like sweet melody,” reminds her of Pythagoras and Plato, and suggests to her what life on earth might be if good laws were made and observed. In furtherance of her idea, she appeals to Reason, who presides over the Virtues or Divine Powers, to interrogate the three earthly disputants, Nobility, Riches, and Wisdom. In the end Reason awards the prize to Wisdom, condemning Riches as the great enemy of mankind. Thereupon Wisdom appeals to the verdicts of Juvenal, Boëthius, St. Jerome, and others to establish that it is Virtue alone that is of worth, and ennobles a man, and then sets forth the qualities of a good sovereign. But as this leads to some difference of opinion, Christine, who was withal a courtly lady, descends to earth in order to ask the King, Charles the Sixth, to decide the matter. This dream-poem she dedicates to her royal master for his diversion in his saner moments, and thus once again introduces into high places the subject so near to her heart. She lets it be seen that she herself, like Dante, did not believe in the blending of the spiritual and the temporal powers. And as regards temporal power she adds—perhaps borrowing the idea from Dante’s De Monarchia, and anticipating Napoleon’s dream—that in order to ensure peace on earth, it is necessary that one supreme ruler should reign over the whole world. “La sua volontade e nostra pace,” sang a soul in Dante’s heaven of the Moon—the lowest in the celestial system—when questioned whether it was content with its lowly place. The poet therefore adds, “ogni dove in cielo e paradiso.” Christine, echoing these thoughts, would fain apply them to life on earth, giving them their deepest and fullest meaning.
Though she laboured so unceasingly for the good of her country, she also did her utmost to defend her sex from the indiscriminate censure which had been heaped upon it, for the evil spoken seemed to her far to outweigh the good. A century before, Dante had also idealised woman—even if, as some think, he personified some abstract quality—and placed her in heaven beside the Deity. Chivalry had also idealised woman, but in an exotic, exaggerated manner, which was bound to reach its zenith, and bound also to have its darker side. So we find that to speak good or ill of womankind became a conventionalism in the Middle Ages. Black or white was the tone chosen by the artist in words. There was no blending, no shading. Women were either deified, or held to be evil incarnate. The material side of life men understood, and could depict with some exactness, but to grasp in any way its subtler aspects required an education which could be attained only by slow degrees, since it meant the gradual modification of the long-cherished illusion that brute force is the world’s only weapon. A want of capacity to discern is often responsible for a depreciatory opinion, and we can but ascribe this strangely narrow-minded and superficial attitude towards woman to some such want. Christine set herself the task of trying to remedy this evil, not by shouting in the market-place, but by studying men and women as God made them and as she found them. Before she began her work, a new day seemed to be dawning. Just as, when classicism was in full decadence, Plutarch wrote De mulierum virtutibus (of the virtue of women), so, in the fourteenth century, Boccaccio gave to the world De claris mulieribus (of right-renowned women). We do not expect to find woman treated on a very high plane by Boccaccio, but we recognise that, in a way, this work forms a fresh starting-point in the eternal controversy. Perhaps we should not have had this curious collection of stories of women, virtuous and vicious, mythological and historical—stories which are certainly very inferior as art to those of the Decameron—had not a crisis occurred in Boccaccio’s life. One day a Carthusian monk came to him with a warning message from the dead, and, much troubled in mind, he resolved to try to begin life afresh. But he was a better story-teller than a moraliser. He would fain save his soul, but he liked and courted popularity, and knew well the deeper meaning of the proverb, “A terreno dolce, vanga di legno.” And so he mingles virtue and vice, hoping, as he says, that “some utility and profit shall come of the same.” To us of to-day, the chief interest of this work is that Boccaccio’s fame perhaps gave a definite impetus to the discussion of the sex, instead of wholesale assertion, and also that it probably suggested to Chaucer the idea for his Legend of Good Women. How refreshing to find ourselves in the atmosphere of the kindly Chaucer! Let us pause for a moment, and recall what he says of women, he who was not only a knightly Court-poet, but also a popular singer, well versed in the practical wisdom of life. In the prologue we read, “Let be the chaf, and wryt wel of the corn,” and in allusion to his library of sixty books, old and new, of history and love-stories, he says that for every bad woman, mention was duly made of a hundred good ones. Time and experience in no way dull this appreciation, for when, later, The Canterbury Tales appear, his estimate has risen ten-fold, since in the prologue to “The Miller’s Tale” we read, “and ever a thousand gode ageyn one badde.” From this time onwards, literature on the subject increases almost ad infinitum. Treatises and imaginary debates seem to vie with each other for popularity. All these make intensely interesting reading, for these fanciful discussions, which are supposed to take place, sometimes between a man and a woman, sometimes between a mixed company in a garden or villa or some bath resort where many are gathered together, are really a record of the intellectual amusements of the late Middle Ages and the Renaissance. “Que devez-vous préférer, du plaisir qui va vous échapper bientôt, ou d’une espérance toujours vive, quoique toujours trompée?” “Which sex loves the more easily or can do the better without love?” “It is not enough to know how to win love, but one must also know how to keep such love when it has been won.” Such-like were the subtle problems which on these occasions folk set themselves to solve.
But whilst love problems could be treated as a pastime, they also had their serious side. Of this there is an example in Christine’s story of The Duke of True Lovers. Although much in its narration is evidently the mere invention of the poetess, it is quite possible, nay even probable, that it has some historical basis. Christine begins her story by saying that it had been confided to her by a young prince who did not wish his name to be divulged, and who desired only to be known as “The Duke of True Lovers.” It has been suggested, with much likelihood, that this is in truth the love-story of Jean, Duc de Bourbon, and of Marie, Duchesse de Berri, daughter of the famous Jean, Duc de Berri, and the inheritor of his MSS. When the story opens, the heroine of it, whoever she may have been, is already wedded. Hence all the difficulties of the hero, and indeed of both. Christine, with her womanly sympathy and psychological insight, makes all so intensely real that we are quite carried away in imagination to the courtly life of the fifteenth century. We read of the first meeting; of the Duke’s love at first sight; of Castle daily life; of a three days’ tournament given in honour of the lady; of devices for secret meetings and the interchange of letters; of the inevitable scandal-monger; of a letter from a former gouvernante—whose aid as go-between had been sought—containing a most comprehensive and remarkable treatise on feminine morality, the dangers of illicit love, and the satisfaction of simple wifely duty; of the separation which the position of the lady, and the gallantry of her lover, alike demanded; of meetings at intervals; of the mutual solace of short love-poems; and then the story, perhaps to evade identification, ends vaguely. But as we finish the story, we cannot help feeling that even if Christine’s setting is fiction, she yet gives us a glance of real life.