Christine de Pizan's crown of twelve stars

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

ANGUS J. KENNEDY

University of Glasgow

NOTES

I wish to express my thanks to the following for help in the preparation of this article: Cambridge University Library (particularly Jayne Ringrose and Ruth Long), Glasgow University Library, Liliane Dulac, Kenneth McDonald, and Kenneth Varty. I owe a special debt of gratitude to Peter Walsh who provided invaluable help throughout my engagement with the PL.

(1) A partial edition of the Epistre was published by Suzanne Solente in the Bibliotheque de l'Ecole des Chartes, 85 (1924), 263-301, and complete editions by Angus J. Kennedy, Epistre de la prison de vie humaine (Glasgow, 1984), and Josette A. Wisman, The Epistle of the Prison of Human Life, with An Epistle to the Queen of France and Lament on the Evils of the Civil War, Garland Library of Medieval Literature Series A, XXI (New York, 1984). The Wisman edition contains text and facing English translation. Ali references in the present article are to lines of the Kennedy edition.

(2) The third person plural subject of dient ('they say of the blessed' etc.) and later mettent and figurent (line 1298) is not explicitly defined but must refer to the authorities consulted by Christine, in particular the 'dotteurs de Sainte Eglise' (see lines 1162, 1288).

(3) Josette A. Wisman, 'The Resurrection according to Christine de Pizan', Religion and the Arts, [IV.sub.3] (2000), 337-58.

(4) New York, 1995.

(5) See General Index in Bynum, Resurrection, p. 349, under dotes. Knowledge of the dotes could have reached Christine via a variety of sources (see also nn. 17 and 18 below, especially with regard to Jean Gerson, who is not mentioned in Christine's text). It will be recalled too that Marie-Josephe Pinet (Christine de Pisan 1364-1430: Etude biographique et litteraire (Paris, 1927), p. 266) argued that Christine's greatest debt in the Epistre de la prison de vie humaine was to another source not mentioned in her text, namely, Vincent de Beauvais's Larin consolatory epistle (addressed to St Louis in 1270, on the death of the latter's eldest son), or Jean Daudin's Middle French translation of Vincent's text commissioned by Charles V in 1374, Paris, BnF, MS fr. 1032. In my 1984 edition of Christine's text (pp. 9f.), I argued (and still believe) that Christine did not rely on Vincent de Beauvais's text to the extent asserted by Pinet. Having reread Daudin's translation in the light of Bynum's study on the Resurrection, I think it possible that the Daudin translation could have been one of the texts that made Christine familiar with the dotes tradition. For references to the douaires, see Paris, BnF, MS fr. 1032, fols 47r, 49v, 50r, 59r, 61v-62r. It should be noted that a number of other authors who are named by Christine in her text also deal with the dotes, e.g. Anselm (see line 1257 of the Epistre) in his Proslogion, ed. M. J. Charlesworth (Oxford, 1965), ch. xxv; Albert the Great (see line 129 of the Epistre), De resurrectione, tractatus quartus, in Alberti Magni Opera omnia ... Bernhardo Geyer praeside (Monasterii Westfalorum in aedibus Aschendorff, 1958), XXVI, 322-40.