The controversy seems to have commenced,[17] as was very natural considering the circumstances, with oral discussions between Christine de Pizan, Jean de Montreuil,[18] and a third person, probably Gerson.[19] Then Jean de Montreuil, wishing to convince Christine and the third person before mentioned of the great value of the tenets of Jean de Meung expounded in the Roman de la Rose, wrote, probably in 1401, a treatise in the form of a letter (document III) now lost, which he sent to his two opponents.[20] This correspondence with Gerson (if it be he) is not improbable, as we have several other letters of Jean de Montreuil addressed to him.[21] We subjoin herewith also three undated Latin letters[22] from his pen, which bear on our subject.
Shortly afterward, Christine wrote a letter (document IV) to Jean de Montreuil (whom she calls “maistre Jehan Johannes”) refuting his arguments and again assailing the Roman de la Rose.
Gontier Col,[23] secrétaire du roi, having heard of this letter of Christine’s, sent her, in order to convince her of the unsoundness of her views regarding the poem, “un pou de trésor” (i.e., the work, Le trésor de Jean de Meung, ou les sept articles de la foi)[24] together with a request for a copy of her letter to Jean de Montreuil, in order that he might be informed concerning her point of view. This communication (document V) is dated September 13, 1401.
After his request had been promptly acceded to, Gontier Col hastened to write to Christine (document VI, September 15, 1401). This letter censures Christine sharply for her narrowmindedness regarding Jean de Meung’s great work, and rather brusquely calls upon her to retract her statements and sue for pardon.
Shortly afterward the authoress replied to this (in document VII). She now not only refuses to abandon in the slightest degree the position she had taken, but proceeds to adduce other reasons for condemning the poem and to repeat some arguments already brought forward.
Christine went further still. With an impulse born of clever feminine intuition, she assembled the documents of the debate and “la veille de la chandeleur 1401” addressed one copy, with a dedicatory letter (document VIII) to the queen, and the other, also with a letter introducing the subject (document IX), to Guillaume de Tignonville, prévôt of Paris. These two personages already favored her side of the case, and Christine’s appeal to Cæsar, as it were, was well calculated to prejudice further public opinion in her favor.
Doubtless Christine had already been confirmed in her attitude by the support of Jean Gerson. The latter had written in 1399 a Sermon contre la luxure, in one place in which, with all the authority he possessed, he condemned the Roman de la Rose to the fire: “Au feu, bonnes gens, au feu!... C’est le remède meilleur.” Gerson’s condemnation of the work was based on grounds somewhat different from those of Christine. He saw in it a work subversive of private and public morality. Although a humanist and a friend of humanists, he failed to see the real literary and philosophical merits of Jean de Meung’s work, and endeavored to use the great authority of the church to wipe it out of existence. On May 18, 1402, he wrote his Tractatus contra Romantium de Rosa,[25] which we reprint here (document X). This is cast in an allegorical mould, in the form of a “vision”—if he thought at all that he was borrowing a form of composition established by his opponents, he probably regarded it as fighting the devil with fire—and is a veritable procès-verbal against the romance. He divides his work into eight articles, and writes in a vivid, forceful, and conclusive style.
The quarrel seemed to be dying away, political events being presumably responsible,[26] when, four months later, Pierre Col[27] wrote a passionate letter (document XI) refuting both the Tractatus of Gerson and the letter of Christine to Jean de Montreuil. He sent copies to Gerson and Christine. With the appearance of Pierre Col the real position of the partisans of Jean de Meung becomes clear for the first time, and it is this part of the controversy which is particularly interesting to us now. Pierre Col undoubtedly recognized the lubricity of parts of the Romance, though he attempted to gloss it over. His share in the debate is virtually an eloquent defence of freedom of thought and liberty of expression, an attitude which links him with the representative writers and thinkers of France. Jean de Meung had dared to be free in thought and speech, and his great disciple ardently champions his right (and inferentially anyone’s right) to liberty in the intellectual and moral world, which France always has allowed more than other nations, and to which one eventful day she was to add political liberty. To him the Roman de la Rose was a precious public possession, and he was determined to keep it such.
We reprint herewith the eloquent reply of Gerson: Responsio ad scripta cujusdam errantis[28] (document XII) and publish for the first time that of Christine (document XIII) dated October 2, 1402, in which she adds no new arguments, though she reiterates and expands some already put forth, and confesses her weariness of an apparently endless struggle.
The indefatigable Pierre Col apparently did not intend to let the lady have the last word. Unconvinced by either the learned eloquence of Gerson or the feminine appeals of Christine, he concludes the controversy by a reply to Christine’s letter (the one dated October 2, 1402), of which only a short fragment has been preserved (document XIV).