Christine de Pizan's crown of twelve stars

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

   Homo. O anima, quid dicere valeo? Cum futurum gaudium aspicio, iam
   pene prae admiratione deficio, quia 'gaudium erit intus et extra,
   subtus et supra, circumcirca'. Gaudebis enim in omnibus, gaudebis
   de omnibus. Gaudium tuum, ut puto, praefiguratum fuit in Apocalypsi
   per illam mulierem beatam, quae amicta fuit sole, et luna sub
   pedibus eius, et in capite eius corona stellarum duodecim. Mulier
   ista, ut aestimo, est anima beata, aeterni Regis filia, sponsa et
   regina: filia per naturae creationem, sponsa per gratiae
   adoptionem, regina per gloriae collationem. Haec bene dicitur
   amicta sole, quia decorata splendore ctaritatis deificae, coronata
   dignitate felicitatis aeternae; in qua felicitate ob specialem
   decorem sunt duodecim gaudia, per duodecim stellas praefigurata,
   per quae decoratur et ornatur felicitas superna. (21)

   (Innermost Self. O soul, what can I say? When I look to the joy
   awaiting us, I almost expire with admiration, because 'joy will be
   within and without, below, above and all around'. You will rejoice
   in everything and about everything. Your joy, as I believe, was
   prefigured in Revelation in that blessed woman clothed with the
   sun, with the moon under her feet, and on her head a crown of
   twelve stars. This woman, in my view, is the blessed soul:
   daughter, spouse, and queen of the eternal King; daughter by the
   creation of nature, spouse by adoption through grace, queen in
   attaining the [rewards] of glory. Such a soul is justly
   characterised as clothed with the sun, because it is resplendent
   with God-like clarity and crowned with the dignity of eternal
   happiness. Involved in this happiness on account of its special
   decor are twelve joys, prefigured by the twelve stars wherewith
   heavenly happiness is decorated and furnished.) (22)

If one leaves aside the interesting presentation of the Woman of the Apocalypse as the immortal soul, what is of crucial importance here is the explicit link made between the twelve stars and the twelve joys, the former prefiguring the latter; and reassuringly this link is made in a context that seemed at the outset of this discussion to be the most plausible one to explore, namely, commentaries linked to Rev. xii. In my view, this point confirms beyond all reasonable doubt that Christine's source for the twelve stars is indeed Rev. xii.1. It is to be borne in mind too that this link made by Bonaventure is the only one pre-dating Christine's text that I have been able to find, though, as indicated earlier, it would be surprising if it were the only example available. However, even if more examples were to surface, they would still be vastly outnumbered by the standard interpretations of the twelve stars that were more widely circulated. What can be safely said is that Bonaventure's interpretation is at the very least exceptional and unusual. Though Christine clearly did not invent the link between the stars and joys, it can hardly be argued, in the light of what has been discussed, that she was drawing on a widely established and widely disseminated tradition; and although it might be thought that by the fifteenth century Bonaventure's works were as widely known as Bernard's or Augustine's, it is significant for our purposes to note that Bonaventure is not a name that occurs in the indexes of proper names in the published works of Christine. (23) For these reasons alone (and there are others, as will be seen below), it is appropriate to consider at this stage how Christine might have come across an interpretation of this kind.