Christine de Pizan's crown of twelve stars

Medium Aevum, Fall-Winter, 2008 by Angus J. Kennedy

In the twelfth chapter of her Epistre de la prison de vie humaine, (1) a consolatory epistle completed on 20 January 1417 OS (1418 NS) and designed to comfort all the grieving princesses of the realm and other noble ladies affected by the French defeat at Agincourt on 25 October 1415, Christine de Pizan lists and defines the twelve joys of paradise that will be experienced by the righteous dead after the Last Judgement. She states that, according to the doctors of the Church and other authorities, each resurrected body will receive a victor's crown which is studded not with precious stones bur with twelve stars, each star corresponding to one of the twelve joys of Paradise:

   Des beneureux dient (2) que avec leur juge Jhesu-Crist iront en
   Paradis ... la gloire que auront ces benois corps resuscitez sera
   en accroissement de la beatitude precedant que les ames avoient,
   dont entre les autres gloires et joies en mettent .xii. que ilz
   figurent a une couronne d'autant de luisans estoiles en lieu de
   pierres precieuses qui a un chascun comme roy et vittorieux sera
   mise sur son chief. (lines 1293-301)

Christine then proceeds to list in detail the twelve joys that the elect will experience: body and soul will be reunited; they will see God and Christ in majesty; they will find themselves 'light', powerful, rejuvenated, inhabiting a body of about 30 years of age (i.e. the approximate age of Christ at his death), freed from all imperfections; they will have perfect wisdom; they will see and recognize all members of their families who have been saved (and will rejoice at God's justice if this is not the case); they will be agile and weightless, able to pass through all obstacles and move freely from heaven to earth and earth to heaven; they will be living in the domain of all virtues; endowed with light and beauty, they will rejoice in each other's company; they will enjoy perfect peace, love, and union with God; they will be treated as the sons of God and as Christ's brothers; they will love and worship the Trinity; they will see the Trinity (lines 1302-459)"

To date, the most important contribution to our understanding of this section of the text is an article published in 2000 by Josette Wisman, (3) who perceptively rereads Christine's presentation of the resurrection in the light of (among others) Caroline W. Bynum's study The Resurrection of the Body in Western Christianity, 200--1336. (4) Wisman shows in her article how Christine, conscious of the need to maximize the effect of her consolatory message on her grieving readers, presents an anthropological, aristocratic view of heaven, where the particularities of gender, class, and kinship all reassuringly survive the passage from life to death; she demonstrates too that, whilst drawing on the learned, patristic tradition of the dotes analysed by Bynum, (5) that is the dowries bestowed on the glorified body (e.g. claritas, agilitas, subtilitas, impassibilitas), (6) Christine dispenses with technical language and concentrates on delivering a message to which her audience can easily relate. Comprehensive as Wisman's article is, there remain, however, three questions that merit further discussion. Given that Christine herself says that, in addition to using the 'Sains Escrips' (line 1281) or the 'Sainte Escripture' (line 1356), (7) she searched the 'livres des benois dotteurs de Sainte Eglise' (lines 1161f.) for material for her last chapters, what was Christine's source for the crown of twelve stars? Why is it that she connects the twelve stars with the twelve joys of the resurrection? Finally, what do we know of the tradition of the twelve joys independently of Christine's work?

The answer to the first question must lie in the one scriptural mention of a crown of twelve stars (Rev. xii.1). Before discussing the twelve joys, Wisman touches briefly on this reference in the course of an analysis of Christine's imagery (including that of the crown), observing that '[t]he image of a crown of twelve stars is rarely used in scriptural writings, one exception being the figure of the woman in Rev. 21: 12 who also wore a crown of twelve stars'. (8) The reference here probably contains what is simply a typographical slip, and should read Rev. xii.1-2, verses which describe a great portent in heaven, a woman in childbirth, robed with the sun, beneath her feet the moon, and on her head a crown of twelve stars:

   Et signum magnum apparuit in caelo: Mulier amicta sole, et luna sub
   pedibus ejus, et in capite ejus corona stellarum duodecim: Et in
   utero habens, clamabat parturiens, et cruciabatur ut pariat. (9)

   (And there appeared a great wonder in heaven; a woman clothed with
   the sun, and the moon under her feet, and upon her head a crown of
   twelve stars: And she being with child cried, travailing in birth,
   and pained to be delivered.) (Authorized Version)

These verses clearly deserve to be given special importance in any search for Christine's source, not only because they contain the only explicit reference in Scripture to a crown of twelve stars, but because, from a very early date, they inspired artists and theologians to create an immeasurably rich tradition of both iconography and patristic commentary based on the Woman of the Apocalypse, at least some of which must have been familiar to as erudite a writer as Christine. It seems reasonable simply to note at this stage that Christine would have been made familiar with the crown of twelve stars, both through her own knowledge of the Bible, and also through the iconography of the Woman of the Apocalypse, most notably in illustrated bibles or in illustrations of biblical scenes. While the iconography of the Woman of the Apocalypse is a fascinating topic in its own right, (10) it is important in the present context only as one of the ways in which the crown of twelve stars was made known in the society to which Christine belonged. The images themselves give very little or no indication as to how the twelve stars were to be interpreted. For an answer to this question, Christine's linking of the twelve stars and the twelve joys of paradise, we have to turn to the patristic commentaries on the Woman of the Apocalypse in Rev. xii.1.