Of Six Mediæval Women; To Which Is Added A Note on Mediæval Gardens

by Alice Kemp-Welch

Later, Christine, with Boccaccio’s De claris mulieribus before her, writes La Cité des Dames, an account of the building of an imaginary city which is to shelter within its strong ramparts the women of all times and all countries who have distinguished themselves by good and heroic deeds. This has been aptly called “The Golden Book of Heroines.” It may certainly be considered her masterpiece on her favourite subject. She urges that philosophers and poets, with one accord, have defamed women, and she appeals to God, asking why such a thing should be, seeing that He Himself made them and gave them such inclinations as seemed good to Him, and that in no way could He err. She maintains that God created the soul, and made it as good in woman as in man, and that it is not the sex, but the perfection of virtue, that is material. Combating the suggestion that women are not fit to plead in Court because they have not sufficient intelligence to apply the law when they have learnt it, she refers to history to prove that women who have had the management of affairs have shown that, far from lacking intelligence and judgment, they have possessed both in large measure. At the same time, whilst defending their capability when necessity arises, she does not think it necessary for women to interfere in matters which seem essentially man’s business. Her remarks on the subject of marriage are certainly practical, and at the same time disclose a strange unloveliness in contemporary manners. She is not of St. Paul’s opinion that it is better not to marry, but all the same she suggests that, unless without means, that woman is happier who does not marry a second time, seeing that the life of a married woman is often worse than if she were in the hands of the Saracens—the terror of the Middle Ages,—and that frequently after her husband has been out enjoying himself, her only supper, on his return, is a beating. She counsels the education of women, and condemns those who suggest that this will conduce to unseemly ways. In truth, her wonderful sense of justice, and her enlightened opinions generally, make it a marvellous résumé of statesmanship as far as it goes. It is a real Utopia. Perhaps to Christine it was a glimpse of the Promised Land! As we read her views on the education of boys and girls together, in this happy city, we feel that she might be discussing with us the problems of to-day. She says that if boys and girls are taught the same subjects, girls can, as a rule, learn just as well, and just as intelligently, as boys, and so on. In this conclusion she forestalls the learned Cornelius Agrippa, a doctor and philosopher of the sixteenth century, and one of the most original and remarkable men of his time, who boldly asserts that sex is merely physical, and does not extend to soul or rational power. She sums up by strongly advocating study and learning, both for self-improvement and as a consolation and possession for all time.

Photo. Macbeth.

SETTING OUT FOR POISSY.

Harl. MS. 4431, Brit. Mus.

To face page 140.

Of her poetical writings on love and the sexes, perhaps the most enchanting is Le Livre du Dit de Poissy. In it she takes us, on a bright spring morning, with a joyous company, from Paris to the royal convent of Poissy, where her child is at school. She describes all the beauties of the country, the fields gay with flowers, the warbling of the birds, the shepherdesses with their flocks, the willow-shaded river bank along which they ride, the magic of the forest of St. Germain, a little world apart of greenery and shade, filled with the song of the nightingales. Laughing and singing by the way, they reach the convent gate. Then follows a description of the beautiful carved cloisters, the chapter-house, the nuns’ dress and their dormitory, the garden scented with lavender and roses, with one part, where small animals are allowed to run wild, left uncultivated, and the ponds well stocked with fish. As the day wanes, they bid farewell to the nuns, who offer them gifts of purses and girdles embroidered in silk and gold, worked by their own hands. They return to the inn where they are to spend the night, and after supper wander forth to listen to the nightingales, then dance a carole, and so to bed. The ride back to Paris in the morning, during which a discussion on love matters is introduced, is painted with the same impressionist touch, and it is with real regret that we take leave of these happy folk as they alight in Paris city from their stout nags.

Another similar discourse, Le Débat de deux amants, has for setting a gala entertainment, taking place, like the founding of the “Order of the Rose,” under the auspices of Louis, Duke of Orleans, who ever extended a princely protection to Christine. Louis had married Valentine Visconti, daughter of Gian Galleazo Visconti, founder of the Certosa, near Pavia, a princess well versed in art and letters, and withal in pomp and splendour. It is on a day in May, the garden gay with gallants and fair ladies. We hear the minstrels play, and watch some of the company, decked with garlands, dancing under the trees. In the palace there is music and singing. Christine is seated in a tapestried hall with one or two esquires who prefer to discourse of love to joining in the jollity. After a time the talk turns on fickle men, and Christine brings forth from her vast storehouse of knowledge classical and mediæval examples. As she mentions Theseus, and recalls his baseness to Ariadne, she points to the tapestry on the wall before them, where the story is woven. This little touch makes the scene very real to us, for the record of the purchase of this tapestry, with the price of twelve hundred francs paid for it, may still be found amongst the royal inventories.

There is such a volume and variety of works from Christine’s pen that it is no easy task to make a fair selection. One of the most significant, since it deals with a subject which permeated mediæval thought, and on which she was wont to dwell, is La Mutation de fortune, “Fortune more inconstant than the moon,” says Christine. In it she writes with her heart in her hand, as it were, telling first of the sore havoc Fortune has wrought amongst those most dear to her. Yet though her own heart has been torn on the Wheel of Fortune, she stands before her fellow sufferers like some figure of Hope pointing upward, where, she says, wrong is surely righted. And thus she turns to the world in general, not in the spirit of the pessimist, but rather in that of the philosopher. She well knows that Fortune is no blindfolded goddess turning writhing humanity on a wheel, but a something rooted in ourselves, and she has pity for “la povre fragilité humaine.” Though so independent and advanced in thought, she is still found clinging in her writings to mediæval forms. As a setting for her thoughts on Fortune’s changes, she makes use of the favourite simile of a castle—here the Castle of Fortune—as representing the world, wherein the rich and the poor, the strong and the weak, jostle one another. She criticises all men, from the prince to the pauper, but not women, since these have been sufficiently criticised and decried. It is like the prelude to a Dance of Death. Then she tells of the paintings on the walls of this imaginary castle, and uses this mediæval fancy, itself borrowed from the classics (Met. ii. 5. 770), to give what is really a history of the world as she knew it, written to demonstrate the instability of all earthly conditions.