quickly attained the status of legal maxims4, and in turn often re-emerged as vernacular proverbs, as with the forty-third rule, qui tacit consentire videtur, which became in French qui ne dit mot consent, and in German wer schweigt, stimmt zu, As will be seen, while Boniface’s use of the term accessorium was not its first attribution in medieval Latin texts5, an inspection of the pertinent classical and medieval Latin lexica and of the occurrences of the term accessorium in the online Brepols Library of Latin Texts confirms the importance of Boniface’s Rule 42 for all subsequent occurrences.

Evidence of the enormous international influence exerted by Boniface’s Liber Sextus Decretalium is found in the simple fact that it immediately produced a huge body of commentary from such famous canonists connected to Boniface’s curia as Jean Lemoine, Guido de Baysio and Giovanni d’Andrea. (Christine herself speaks of Giovanni d’Andrea and his daughter Novella in the Cité des Dames, II. 36, and it seems as though Christine’s ancestors in Bologna probably new Giovanni d’Andrea)6. The forty-second rule quickly came to be quoted by later commentators in proverbial form as accessorium non ducit, sed sequitur suum principale. This adage was also extensively commented upon by Albertus Magnus and

Thomas Aquinas in Latin7, and by Christine’s contemporaries at the royal court, Philippe de Mézieres, Évrard de Trémaugon and Jean Gerson in French, and their reception of the proverb seems to have influenced Christine’s usage, a phenomenon which requires further scrutiny here. Admittedly, and this point must be stressed, the original meaning of accessoire, arising from canon law, is far removed from the contemporary sartorial meaning of the term.

The second example of accessoire in Christine’s works is found in the Livre de la Mutacion de Fortune, where Christine remarks before speaking of the devastation of the Theban civil war that she will only give an abbreviated account of the story:

Mais de tout ne pense a parler,

Il me souffist que de l’istoire

Je die, sanz plus, l’acessoire.

Pour cause de briefté, me passe,

Car je y mettroie trop d’espace8.

At first view, this example is extremely difficult to interpret because Christine appears here to have taken accessoire to mean a condensed version, which corresponds to her general practice of abbreviatio in the Mutacion de Fortune9. Her use of the term accessoire reflects a semantic or metonymic shift: accessorium meaning something secondary or marginal now means precisely the opposite, something which expresses in a nutshell the essential significance of an event. The most famous comparable semantic shift in French is exhibited by the semantic evolution of Latin rem, meaning “a thing”, to modern French rien, meaning “nothing”. Christine’s use of the term here contrasts as well with the meaning assigned to it by her contemporaries which followed the strict medieval Latin opposition between principale and accessorium, evidenced, for example, when Oresme uses the term in his translation/commentary on Aristotle’s Politics to note that a city’s location should ensure it ample

water supply: “Et secundement qu’elle [la cité] use de eaues saines et que l’en ait solicitude et cure de ceste chose non pas par maniere de accessoire, mes principalment”10. This second example is significant because it shows that Christine’s use of a particular Latinism could also depart from the original meaning in Medieval Latin.

The third, but in this case implicit, example of Christine’s use of the concept of an accessoire is characteristic of iconographic practice, in her use of attributes or in the citation of visual topoi. Iconographic attributes act as a non-verbal commentary and, consistent with the meaning of accessoire in the Mutacion de Fortune, also function as an in nuce or “in a nutshell” commentary on the text being illustrated. This complex and subtle practice, in turn, signals authorial intention to the reader, and can be illustrated by several illuminations in the Queen’s Manuscript (London, Harley 4431), including the frontispiece (a scene intended in the first place to illustrate the unifying role of the Queen’s court, a process which Christine called coagulence regulee in the Fais et bonnes meurs de Charles V11), the illumination at the beginning of the Proverbes moraulx12, the illumination at the beginning of the third part of La Cité des Dames (where the entry of the Virgin into the nearly completed City is reminiscent of the iconography of the joyeuse entrée or royal entry, specifically that of Isabeau13), and in the recurrent use of a dog as a traditional medieval symbol of fidelity in several illuminations14 – including the celebrated Harley frontispiece mentioned above, Christine’s frequent self-portrayal of herself at her desk with a small dog, and Christine’s appearance with two

dogs in the illumination in BnF, fr. 603, fol. 127v, of the sale du chastel de Fortune at the beginning of part four in the Mutacion de Fortune. Taken together, these three meanings for accessoire in Christine contextualize more precisely how her vocabulary shares common features with that of her contemporaries, but also how her use of iconographic accessoires or attributes creatively redeploys traditional motifs.

Christine and Her Trials

Les biens mondains et tous leurs accessoires

In a celebrated passage in Le livre de l’avision Cristine, Christine describes her legal tribulations after the death of her husband:

Or me convint mettre mains a œuvre, ce que moy nourrie en delices et mignotement apris n’avoye, et estre conduiserresse de la nef demoree en orage et sanz patron, c’est assavoir le désolé mainage hors de son lieu et pais. Adonc me sourdirent angoisses de toutes pars et comme ce soient les metz des vesves, plais et procès m’avironnerent de tous lez [….] O vertu de pascience, tousjours ne t’avoie mie en la bourse, ains te suppeditoit souvent en moy grant amertume. Je vi le temps qu’a.IIII. cours de Paris je estoie en plait et procès deffenderresse15.

The points of contention in all four lawsuits were matters of inheritance and real estate, so that it seems more than likely that Christine must have repeatedly heard claims presented in court touching upon on les biens mondains et tous leurs accessoires. For this reason, her remarks on the vanity and frailty of these possessions in Autres ballades, 5 seem to echo the linguistic reality of the Parisian law courts. (Her familiarity with legal proceedings also stemmed in part from her acquaintance with Guillaume de Tignonville, her ally in the Quarrel over the Rose, who as prevost de Paris oversaw many lawsuits.)

Ever since 1908, when Lucy M. Gay, professor of Romance Languages at the University of Wisconsin, published her classic and pioneering

study of Christine’s language16, the list of Latinisms introduced or employed by Christine has grown longer. For this reason, when Christine remarks, seemingly in passing, at the opening of Autres ballades, 5: “Les biens mondains et tous leurs accessoires, / Chacun voit bien qu’ilz sont vains et falibles”, a careful reader will know that a certain amount of comparative lexicography will be needed to understand this use of accessoire. The connection of biens mondains (translating the Latin principale) and accessoires is first attested in French in 1328 in an unpublished legal document cited by Godefroy (Complément, v. 8, p. 21) from the archives of Loiret, Ste-Croix, Fresnay d’Aubery, “Tant sur le principal que sur l’accessoire”. As the DMF indicates, it is found in 1378 in the Songe du Vergier, “on peut veoir et cognoistre […] le grant tort et desraison des Anglois ou principal et en l’accessoire du procés”17, and in the first part of Jean de Montreuil’s Traité contre les Anglois, written in 1413, “Je sauroye voulentiers, se ung a promis par sa foy et serement aucune chose devant ung tabellion royal, et il se parjure en venant contre son serement, se c’est pas peschié, et se il est pas parjure? Le juge lay le absouldra il du peschié? Il n’est pas prestre et c’est accessoire du parjurement”18. Apart from these examples recorded in the online Dictionnaire du Moyen Français, it was also used three times in French by Jean Gerson19. A cursory search for the term accessoire in Le grand

coutumier de France (compiled by Jacques d’Ableiges [d. 1410], that is, a text which directly reflects legal usage contemporary to Christine) also shows that the term was used especially in disputes concerning inheritances as the following citation shows:

Item quant l’en a faict execution d’aucun jugement et arrest donné sur certaines causes en meubles, et aucun s’en complainct, et dit l’execution avoir esté faicte de plus grant somme qu’il ne devoit. Et dont fault distinguer ou la partie a faict adjourner ses executeurs comme principaulx, et la partie comme accessoire soubs ceste clause20.

The significance of Christine’s passing remark about les biens mondains et accessoires ultimately lies in the fact that one would hardly expected such a specialized juridical term to pop up in a lyric poem, a Latinism to boot, and this in a poem in which Christine clearly alludes to her personal sufferings as a widow. With this having been said, it must also be recalled that Christine frequented a bilingual French-Latin milieu in Paris. In the prologue to the as yet unedited the Livre de Prodommie, Christine reminds Louis d’Orléans of how he had cited both Latin and French authorities in describing the nature of prodommie (“honesty, probity, integrity, respectability”):

Et je vous ouioe descrire tant bien et tant notablement, allegant a propos auctoritez sainctes, tant en latin comme en françois, par preuves vraie, comme le gist de la prodommie du noble et vertueux homme est en trois choses21.

The significance of this remark cannot be underestimated because it sheds valuable light on the Latin-French interface in the courtly world in which Christine lived and worked. Given the fact that accessoire in Middle French is a Latinism, it certainly must have been used in the kind of bilingual setting which Christine described above.

be taken as a suggestive hypothesis for future research which may help demonstrate that Christine’s rhetorical strategies were consistent with late Medieval Latin practice. The controversial, but nevertheless important, reservations voiced by Joël Blanchard regarding Christine’s participation in the Latin culture of her contemporaries in a classic article from 199326, while perhaps now somewhat outdated, remain a necessary and salutary warning for exaggerating Christine’s Latinity. The issue remains the determination of Christine’s position at the interface of Latin and vernacular culture.

Iconographic Attributes and Accessories

A “Dogged” Question, also involving
a Harp and a White Crow

Ever since Erwin Panofsky published his analysis iconographic attributes in Jan van Eyck’s 1434 painting of the Arnolfini Portrait (London, National Gallery), art historians have been particularly sensitive to the disguised symbolic messages conveyed by attributes presented in art historical works27. The same may also be said about Giovanni Bellini’s Saint Francis in the Desert, from around 1480 (New York, The Frick Collection)28. While both of these fifteenth-century works postdate

Christine, the attention which their artists paid to attributes underlines the importance of iconographic accessories which serve to comment on the subjects portrayed. Their function corresponds to, and flows from, the beneficium accessorium evoked by John of Salisbury. That Christine deployed traditional iconographic attributes in the illuminations whose execution she supervised is a well-known fact, beginning with the attributes which she assigns to two of the Three Virtues, Raison and Justice, at the beginning of the Cité des Dames. Yet even here Christine shows that she does not follow iconographic traditions in a mechanical or servile fashion, for her definition of the attribute of Droiture is clearly untraditional simply because there was no traditional iconographic model for this allegorical figure. Christine’s Three Virtues depart from the potentially expected triad of Ratio, Aequitas and Justitia29. In other words, Christine’s use of iconographic attributes was certainly deliberate, self-conscious and well-conceived. One particularly clear illustration of this phenomenon would be the illumination which introduces Une Oroison de la Vie et Passion de Nostre Seigneur in the Queen’s Manuscript, fol. 257r30. Here all the traditional instruments of Christ’s Passion or arma Christi – standard iconographic accessories – are presented, consistent with the iconographic pattern associated with the Christ de pitié, perhaps best known today as being represented in a somewhat simplified form in the “Croix de la Salette”, often worn by traditional French Catholics.

With all this having been said, one iconographic question has in fact long challenged researchers of Christine’s works. Why does she portray herself with a dog when she depicts herself in her cele, composing her works, as the well-known illuminations found at the beginning of the Cent ballades in BnF, fr. 835, fol. 1r, and British Library, Harley 4431, fol. 4r? After reviewing the portrayal of a little white dog in the illuminations found in BnF, fr. 835, fol. 1r, Harley 4431, fol. 4r, and Munich, Codex gall. 11, fol. 2r (and also found in ex-Phillips 128, fol. 7r), Susan Groag Bell suggested, “Perhaps the little white dog by her side […] was also there to comfort

her”31. Christine does not always portray herself with a little white dog, so it must be of special significance when she does. In the instance of the Cent ballades, it would seem that the little dog corresponds to the refrain of the first ballade, Pour accomplir leur bonne volonté (Œuvres poétiques, ed. M. Roy, v. 1, p. 1) that is, the act of writing the Cent ballades was an exhibition of a loyalty to the people who asked her to compose them in the first place. But what about the other examples of iconographic accessories in her works?

In order to sketch out a brief and suggestive answer to this question, it is important to examine two passages where Christine gives specific instructions regarding attributes to be portrayed in an illumination accompanying the text. The first example is from the Epistre Othea, chapter eight, which discusses the allegorical significance of Saturn for the education of the good knight. In the text of this chapter found in Harley 4431, fol. 100v-101r, Christine adds instructions not found in the earliest manuscript of the Othea, BnF, fr. 848, fol. 4r32:

Le souleil, que anciennement ilz nommerent Phebus ou Appollo, est planette qui enlumine ou esclere toutes choses troubles et obscures, qui signifie verité, qui esclere toutes choses troubles et muciées ; et pour ce y a gens dessoubz qui font signe jurer et faire serment de dire verité. Il tient une harpe qui peut estre pris pour bel accort et doulx son, qui est en la vertu de verité ; il a coste soy un corbel qui signifie le premier aage du siecle qui fu net et puis noirci par les pechez des creatures33.

It is actually unclear if this passage belongs to “allégorie” section of chapter eight. In any event, the illuminator duly depicts Saturn with a harp and a white crow (and the crow is deliberately portrayed as white, following Christine’s instructions, in order to emphasize its purity which subsequently came to be blackened by sin, turning the crow into a harbinger of disaster)34.

The attributes or accessoires which Christine deploys here are important details which correspond to those given in the new text. The instructions

to the illuminator reflect Christine’s self-conscious use of iconographic attributes to complement the written text.

The second example where Christine gives instructions to the illuminator (although in this case the illuminator failed to follow them) is found in the Mutacion de Fortune, BnF, fr. 603, fol. 127r35. There, lightly scratched out, is the following text:

Histoire doit estre en cest espace qui la veult faire en livre et doit estre sicomme une gra[n]t sale comme se elle fust painte et pourtraitte autour d’istoires de batailles de roys et roynes a deux rencs.

The illumination does in fact depict murals on two walls, but their details are vague, at best. One can make out a jousting scene and two knights duelling with swords, but otherwise there are no battle scenes. In their place, and in a striking gesture, the illuminator has added two small dogs (not mentioned in the text) accompanying Christine during her visit to the chastel de Fortune. Why were the two small dogs suddenly so important? Gilbert Ouy, Christine Reno and Inès Villela-Petit observe that the original owner of BnF, fr. 603 was probably a member of the Armagnac faction36. Now, if one takes the traditional iconographic symbolism of a dog as representing fidelity, was the addition of these two dogs meant to underscore Christine’s loyalty to this faction at the time when this manuscript was copied (generally thought to have been 1410/1411)? Now, if one compares the presence in the Queen’s chambers depicted in the Harley 4431 frontispiece (from 1413/1414) of both a small lap dog sitting next to the Queen and a greyhound in the corner of the room with the dogs accompanying Christine in the castle of Fortune in BnF, fr. 603, as well with the little dog in Christine’s self-portraits, the significance of the dog as iconographic accessory in Christine’s works would seem to underscore in the first place Christine’s fidelity to her patrons, especially to Isabeau, and in the second place, in the case of the frontispiece, Isabeau’s fidelity to the King (the lap dog sitting next to her) and to the monarchy itself (the greyhound in the corner). Isabeau’s personal role in the union of the royal French house and the house of Wittelsbach prominently figures in the tapestries of

the arms of each house hanging from the walls of the Queen’s chamber. The iconographic emphasis on Isabeau’s fidelity to the monarchy corresponds to Christine’s repeated defense of Isabeau’s regency and of her well-known role as a mediator between the rival factions. Placing the greyhound in the corner who “points” at the Queen’s court underscores how the Queen’s court fulfills its key function of a providing a model of coagulence regulée within the realm.

For this reason, the loyalty implied by the dog as iconographic accessoire corresponds not only to the political passion displayed in the “graphic vivacity” of Christine’s signature at the end of the Epistre à la Reine in BnF, fr. 580, fol. 54v, but also to Christine’s literal self-characterization there as “vostre humble obeissant creature,” an image published recently by Liliane Dulac and Christine Reno in their exhaustive treatment of the problem of self-portraiture in Christine’s manuscripts. Commenting on the Christine’s passionate engagement in her political treatises, they note: “Peut-être pourrait-on se hasarder à voir un reflet de cette vivacité de sentiments dans quelques particularités graphiques d’une main qu’on a identifiée avec vraisemblance dans de nombreux manuscrits comme celle de Christine, et qui se caractérise par une certaine exubérance”37.

The brief comments here are meant to encourage future research into the many other accessories hidden in Christine’s works, particularly her descriptions of iconographical attributes in the Othea. They reveal once again the often unsuspected richness of her writings and how deeply imbued they were with the legal, rhetorical and iconographic culture of the late Middle Ages.

Earl Jeffrey Richards

Bergische Universität Wuppertal

In collaboration with

Liliane Dulac