Medieval Narratives of Accused Queens

edieval Narratives of Accused Queens

Nancy B. Black

Medieval Narratives of Accused Queens

Florida A&M University, Tallahassee Florida Atlantic University, Boca Raton Florida Gulf Coast University, Ft. Myers Florida International University, Miami Florida State University, Tallahassee University of Central Florida, Orlando University of Florida, Gainesville University of North Florida, Jacksonville University of South Florida, Tampa University of West Florida, Pensacola

edieval Narratives of Accused Queens Nancy B. Black

university press of florida Gainesville · Tallahassee · Tampa · Boca Raton Pensacola · Orlando · Miami · Jacksonville · Ft. Myers

Copyright 2003 by Nancy B. Black Printed in the United States of America on acid-free, recycled paper All rights reserved 08 07 06 05 04 03

6 5 4 3 2 1

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Black, Nancy B. Medieval narratives of accused queens / Nancy B. Black p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 0-8130-2640-7 (cloth : alk. paper) 1. Queens in literature. 2. Literature, Medieval—History and criticism. I. Title. PN682.Q42B58 2003 809'.93352351—dc21 2003054070 Frontispiece: Exiled Queen Osanne on a rudderless ship guided by an angel. From Miracles de Nostre Dame par personnages, B.N. fr. 820, fol. 139. Photo courtesy of Bibliothèque nationale de France, Paris. The University Press of Florida is the scholarly publishing agency for the State University System of Florida, comprising Florida A&M University, Florida Atlantic University, Florida Gulf Coast University, Florida International University, Florida State University, University of Central Florida, University of Florida, University of North Florida, University of South Florida, and University of West Florida. University Press of Florida 15 Northwest 15th Street Gainesville, FL 32611-2079 http://www.upf.com

Contents

List of Figures vii Preface and Acknowledgments xi List of Abbreviations xv List of Manuscripts xvii Introduction 1 1. The Empress of Rome 20 2. The Handless Queen 37 3. The Countess of Anjou 66 4. The Empress of Rome and the Handless Queen Dramatized 89 5. Constance and Her English Sisters 109 6. The Empress of Rome Revisited 138 7. Helen of Constantinople 167 Conclusion 186 Notes 195 Bibliography 221 Index 249

Figures

Frontispiece: Exiled Queen Osanne on rudderless ship guided by an angel. From Miracles de Nostre Dame par personnages, B.N. fr. 820

Following Chapter 3 From MSS of Gautier de Coinci, Miracles de Nostre Dame 1. Annunciation (B.N. fr. 1533) 2. Empress rejecting brother-in-law (B.N. fr. 1533) 3. Emperor departing; empress healing brother-in-law (B.N. fr. 25532) 4. Emperor departing (B.N. n. a. fr. 24541) 5. Empress healing brother-in-law (B.N. n. a. fr. 24541) 6. Eight-panel and four-panel miniatures depicting empress of Rome story (St. Petersburg, National Library of Russia, fr. f. v. XIV. 9) From Jean de Vignay, Miroir historial, in B.N. fr. 316 7. Emperor departing; empress imprisoning brother-in-law; empress condemned 8. Empress rescued from rape 9. Virgin appearing in dream; empress healing accuser; emperor’s brother confronted From Philippe de Remi, La Manekine, in B.N. fr. 1588 10. Vow at deathbed; search for queen’s double 11. Joy’s self-mutilation; Joy, mutilated, before her father 12. Burning at the stake

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Figures

From Jehan Maillart, Roman du Comte d’Anjou, B.N. n. a. fr. 4531 13. 14. 15. 16.

Girl and governess given bread by old woman Sergeants-at-arms about to throw countess and child into pit Count searching for wife and child Arrival of count, countess, and child in Anjou

From Miracles de Nostre Dame par personnages, B.N. fr. 820 17. Appearance of Virgin to sleeping empress of Rome 18. Reattachment of queen’s severed hand From Nicolas Trevet, Cronicles, B.N. fr. 9687 19. God as creator of the world From John Gower, Confessio Amantis, Morgan Library, M. 126 20. Empress of Rome scene accompanying Constance story Eton College Chapel, South Wall 21. 22. 23. 24. 25. 26. 27. 28.

Emperor’s leavetaking Empress about to be killed Empress rescued by earl Second false accusation Empress exiled on ship, visited in dream by Virgin Mary Cure of second accuser Cure of first accuser Empress renouncing world for convent

Norwich Cathedral, Bauchun Chapel Bosses 29. 30. 31. 32. 33. 34.

Empress as regent, riding Empress and baby Second accuser with knife Empress landing on island Empress gathering herbs Cure of leprous accuser

From Jehan Wauquelin, La Belle Hélène de Constantinople, B.R. 9967 35. Author presenting book to Philip the Good 36. Capture of armless Helen

Figures

37. 38. 39. 40. 41.

Birth of Helen’s twin sons Marriage of Helen’s son Brice Crucifixion of St. Amaury Descent from the cross of St. Amaury Battle against the Saracens

From Le rommant de la belle Helayne de constantinoble . . . , Paris, L’Arsenal, 4° B.L. 4345 42. Helen allegorized as France

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Preface and Acknowledgments

Medieval Narratives of Accused Queens identifies two principal types of fictional narratives, both of which feature a virtuous, noble heroine who, after numerous trials and tribulations, returns to royal status at the end of the narrative. Popular from the thirteenth to the fifteenth century, the tale type appears in Gautier de Coinci’s “Empress of Rome,” Philippe de Remi’s La Manekine, Jehan Maillart’s Roman du Comte d’Anjou, two plays from the Miracles de Nostre Dame par personnages, Trevet’s Cronicles, Gower’s Confessio Amantis, Chaucer’s “Man of Law’s Tale,” Hoccleve’s “Tale of Jereslaus’s Wife,” and Jehan Wauquelin’s La Belle Hélène de Constantinople, the principal works examined here. Whereas previous scholarly studies have privileged Chaucer’s “Man of Law’s Tale” and marginalized the analogues, my study focuses chiefly on the nonChaucerian texts. I seek explanations for the popularity of the tale type in the material evidence of manuscripts and illustrations, in evidence provided by related contemporary texts, and in relevant cultural debates within the local historical communities that produced and read them. The work should thus be of interest to a diverse group of medievalists, such as literary critics, art historians, and social historians. I have been aided in my work by three City University of New York PSC-CUNY Research Award Program grants. The first (1991–92) funded initial research on manuscripts at the Bibliothèque Nationale in Paris. The second (1995–96), combined with a City University of New York Fellowship Leave of Absence, enabled me to complete my research on manuscripts located in England, Brussels, Munich, Regensburg, and Vienna. The third (1998–99) provided financial support for publication costs associated with the illustrations. I am grateful to the former chair of the Department of English at Brooklyn College, Herbert Perluck, and the

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director of grants and research, Evangeline T. Egglezos, both of whom helped me obtain grant support. The current department chair, Ellen Tremper, has encouraged me by reading and commenting on the introduction to the book. During the years in which I have pursued my research, I have sought out conversations about narratives of accused queens with anyone who would listen. Among those who provided encouragement for this project most consistently are Joyce Coleman, Jacqueline de Weever, Judith Neaman, Lee Haring, and a former student, Mary Pagurelias. My initial interest in the “Man of Law’s Tale” stems from a National Endowment for the Humanities summer institute on The Canterbury Tales held at Storrs, Connecticut, in 1987 under the dynamic leadership of C. David Benson. The New York Hagiography Group, also known as Friends of the Saints, an informal research group that meets monthly in Manhattan, has listened to two of my presentations, and I am particularly grateful for the support provided by three members of this group: Jo Ann McNamara, Phyllis Roberts, and Pamela Scheingorn. In addition, Brigitte Cazelles, Jo Ann McNamara, and Nancy Regalado read and commented on portions of the manuscript that were published in an earlier format as articles. Joyce Coleman read and commented on chapter 5. Robert L. A. Clark, a reader for the University Press of Florida, and the meticulous copy editor, Ann Marlowe, provided invaluable suggestions for revision. The editors at the Press, Amy Gorelick and Jacqueline Kinghorn Brown, were a constant source of encouragement, efficiency, and clarity throughout the process of preparing the manuscript for publication. I wish to thank the publishers of three journals for permission to reprint material previously published as articles. A portion of chapter 1, originally published as “Woman as Savior: The Virgin Mary and the Empress of Rome in Gautier de Coinci’s Miracles,” Romanic Review 88.4 (1997): 503–17, is reprinted by permission of the Romanic Review. A portion of chapter 3, originally published as “The Politics of Romance in Jean Maillart’s Roman du Comte d’Anjou,” French Studies 51 (1997): 129–37, is reprinted by permission of the Society for French Studies and Oxford University Press. A portion of chapter 7, originally published as “La Belle Hélène de Constantinople and Crusade Propaganda at the Court of Philip the Good,” Fifteenth-Century Studies 26 (2002): 42–51, is reprinted by permission of Fifteenth-Century Studies. I also wish to credit and express my thanks to the following for permis-

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sion to reproduce the illustrations in this volume: the Bibliothèque nationale de France, Paris, for the frontispiece and figures 1–5, 7–19, and 42; the National Library of Russia, St. Petersburg, for figure 6; the Pierpont Morgan Library, New York City, for figure 20; Crown Copyright.NMR, National Monuments Record Centre, Swindon, England, for figures 21– 34; and the Royal Library of Belgium, Brussels, for figures 35–41. The research for this book could not have been completed without the aid of librarians in the manuscript rooms of libraries in the United States, England, France, Germany, and Belgium. Special thanks are due to the librarians at Brooklyn College, Columbia University, and the New York Public Library, and especially to Sherry Warman, the librarian in charge of interlibrary loans at Brooklyn College, and to her able assistant, Theresa Ferrara. My most faithful partner in research, travel, writing, and many other pleasures in life has been Michael L. Black, for whom the words of the Irish poet Thomas Moore are appropriate: “I love but thee.”

Abbreviations

B.N.

Bibliothèque Nationale (Paris)

B.R.

Bibliothèque Royale (Brussels)

CFMA

Classiques Français du Moyen Age

DBF

Dictionnaire de Biographie Française

DNB

Dictionary of National Biography

EETS

Early English Text Society

GEMOB Groupe d’Étude des Monuments et Oeuvres d’Art du Beauvaisis NBG

Nouvelle Biographie Générale

PMLA

Publications of the Modern Language Association

SATF

Société des Anciens Textes Français

TLF

Textes Littéraires Français

Manuscripts

Chaucer, Geoffrey, “Man of Law’s Tale” London, British Library, Harley 7333 Christine de Pizan, Le Livre de la Cité des Dames Brussels, B.R. 9393 London, British Library, Harley 4431 Paris, B.N. fr. 607 Paris, B.N. fr. 1178 Paris, B.N. fr. 1179 Florence of Rome Paris, B.N. n. a. fr. 4192 Gautier de Coinci, Miracles de Nostre Dame Paris, B.N. fr. 1533 Paris, B.N. fr. 22928 Paris, B.N. fr. 25532 Paris, B.N. n. a. fr. 24541 St. Petersburg, National Library of Russia, fr. f. v. XIV. 9 Gower, John, Confessio Amantis New York, Morgan Library, M. 126 Hoccleve, Thomas, Series Durham, Cosin V iii 9 Jean de Vignay, Miroir historial Paris, B.N. fr. 316 Mai und Beaflor Munich, Bayerische Staatsbibliothek, cgm. germ. 57 Maillart, Jehan, Roman du Comte d’Anjou Paris, B.N. fr. 765 Paris, B.N. n. a. fr. 4531

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Miracles de Nostre Dame par personnages Paris, B.N. fr. 819–820 Philippe de Remi, La Manekine Paris, B.N. fr. 1588 Trevet, Nicholas, Cronicles Harvard University, Houghton Library f. M. Eng 938 Paris, B.N. fr. 9687 Wauquelin, Jehan, La Belle Hélène de Constantinople Brussels, B.R. 9967 ———, La Manekine en prose University of Turin, L.IV 5; anc. gall. g I 2.

Introduction

Modern tourists pour into Windsor, twenty miles west of London, for a tour of the royal castle. Afterwards, a few of them will cross the Thames and walk along High Street to Eton College, where, since its founding by Henry VI (1440–41), the sons of wealthy aristocrats have been educated. The campus tour includes Eton Chapel, where visitors can view a remarkable set of fifteenth-century frescoes on the north and south walls of the nave. The frescoes, which depict scenes from several miracle stories of the Virgin Mary, include one of particular interest to this study, an accusedqueen narrative known as “The Empress of Rome.” That the frescoes exist at all today is something of a miracle in itself: they were whitewashed over in the sixteenth century, and then, three hundred years later, workers renovating the chapel scraped away an upper row of frescoes before being stopped by a knowledgeable local antiquarian. A description of the story told by the frescoes (which will be analyzed in detail in chapter 6) will provide a fitting introduction to this book. Medieval worshippers at Eton Chapel would have been able to interpret the visual narrative of the empress of Rome with ease, but the modern tourist needs a guidebook to decipher the story. The frescoes (figs. 21–28) are painted in a grisaille style so vivid that the pictures seem three-dimensional, as if carved out of stone. On the far left of the south wall of the nave, the emperor on horseback bids goodbye to the empress as he departs on a pilgrimage, leaving her in the care of his brother-in-law. Soon thereafter, in order to escape her “protector’s” sexual advances, the empress imprisons him in a tower. Just before the return of the emperor, she unwisely releases her brother-in-law, and he takes revenge by falsely accusing her of lecherous behavior during her husband’s absence. Without an inquiry of any kind, the emperor orders that the empress be taken off by two

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servants into the forest to be killed. Rescued in the nick of time by a passing earl, who is himself returning from a pilgrimage, she is taken into his household as governess to his child. Once again she is threatened by a man’s sexual advances, this time a knight in the earl’s household. When she refuses him, he takes revenge by killing the earl’s child and planting the bloody knife in her hand. She is subsequently exiled by ship, which breaks up during a storm, leaving her abandoned on a rock in the middle of the sea. The Virgin Mary appears and supplies her with a healing herb that enables her to cure people. Hearing of her reputation, they come from far and wide. Her two false accusers, both of whom have fallen victim to leprosy, also come to her for healing, the first depicted in the presence of other petitioners, the second in the presence of the emperor and the pope. Wisely, before she heals her accusers, she first extracts a public confession, not only purifying their souls but clearing her name in the process. In the end, although the emperor offers to return to her all her previous wealth and status, she opts to retreat from the world and enter a monastery. In the last of the eight frescoes, the empress, framed by the figures of St. Juliana and St. Winifred, kneels before the prioress of her new religious home. “The Empress of Rome” is one of two major types of narratives of accused queens that are the subject of the present study. The other, which I will call the “Constance story,” is best known to modern readers of medieval literary texts through Geoffrey Chaucer’s “Man of Law’s Tale.” Both narratives are characterized by a four-part structure in which the heroine falls twice from a position of high status and then twice recovers that status. Plot analysis of the two types of stories reveals a similar pattern: slander, reinstatement, slander, reinstatement. Folklore scholars categorize the two types of tales as “Crescentia” (the empress of Rome) and “The Maiden Without Hands” (Constance).1 As other scholars have noted, these narratives have characteristics typical of Greek romances, such as those Shakespeare employed in his late comedies. In them, a noble heroine, whether countess, princess, queen, or empress, lives a life of repeated disasters: incestuous fathers or lusty brothers-in-law; false accusations of misconduct, sometimes including a series of forged letters; repeated exiles, either by land or on a rudderless ship; evil, jealous mothers-in-law; murder or rape narrowly escaped. Most incredible, especially for modern readers, is the happy ending that marks these narratives, featuring a mass reunion of all family members, which often occurs in Rome. At the beginning of the period of their popularity in the Middle Ages,

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in the early thirteenth century, the two types of tales represented separate but parallel traditions, the Constance stories mainly occurring in secular contexts, the empress of Rome stories mainly appearing in religious contexts. However, during the course of the next two hundred years, “religious” and “secular” audiences became less sharply delineated, and motifs often intermingled, especially in England in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. Narratives of accused queens were particularly beloved by nineteenthcentury and early-twentieth-century critics. Now sometimes referred to as “old philologists,” these scholars left an important legacy to medievalists: collections of carefully edited texts, such as those printed by the Early English Text Society, the Textes Littéraires Français, or Les Classiques Français du Moyen Age. The texts they found and edited would be used in two ways. First, later critics viewed them as sources and analogues for the privileged literary text written by a major author, most notably Geoffrey Chaucer with his “Man of Law’s Tale.” Second, as more and more analogous stories were discovered, scholars found evidence of universal tale types and motifs, which in turn suggested a close connection between literature and folklore.2 The last major study of these stories, Margaret Schlauch’s Chaucer’s Constance and Accused Queens, written as her doctoral thesis at Columbia University in 1927, reflects these ideas. Her title focuses on Chaucer’s heroine, although her avowed intention is to move beyond “a certain number of close and obviously similar analogues to Chaucer’s Man of Law’s Tale and focus instead on “the similar themes of story-telling about accused queens in many types of folk-tales; to find out what light is shed on such themes by the study of primitive custom and belief; and to trace the modifications of these themes in medieval romance.”3 Schlauch’s association of “primitive custom and belief” with folk origins betrays her aesthetic and cultural biases, which assume a continuum of progressive historical development from “primitive custom and belief” toward more philosophically advanced and aesthetically sophisticated texts. Today social historians, among whom I include myself, reject such assumptions, preferring to view the relationships of all cultural texts—whether oral, artistic, historical, or literary—as evidence of nonlinear cultural negotiations transacted within a particular historical community. Given the frequency with which stories of accused queens were retold, the scarcity of female protagonists in medieval stories in general, and

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current scholarly interest in gender issues, it is remarkable that they have received so little attention. Under the influence of psychological studies such as Otto Rank’s The Incest Theme in Literature and Legend, a few scholars have studied the incest motif common to many of these tales.4 More recently Peggy McCracken, in The Romance of Adultery: Queenship and Sexual Transgression in Old French Literature, has explored the relationship between the common romance motif of the accused queen and the shifting political concepts of queenship in the twelfth to early fourteenth centuries. Literary scholars have generally ignored, however, the structural coherence formed by the narrative type. No scholar since Margaret Schlauch has studied narratives of accused queens as a cohesive story, as I propose to do here. I will utilize current literary, historical, and artistic methods to analyze selected narratives illustrating the two major types of stories of accused queens: those of the empress of Rome and those of Constance. I select representative texts from the period of their general popularity: that is, from the thirteenth to the fifteenth century in France, England, Germany, or the Low Countries. I base my selection on codicological and historical grounds. Most of the manuscripts I will discuss contain illuminations, glosses, rubrics, or other markers that provide clues to the interpretation or function of the narrative. Most of the manuscripts can be placed within a specific, localized historical setting that indicates their political or ideological function. Each chapter thus moves from text to art (or art to text) and thence to social life: that is, from description of text and art in specific manuscripts to placement of both within the social life of the culture that produced them. Are not the vicissitudes of these hapless heroines far removed from the realities of medieval social life? Can the fantastic voyages of Constance or the empress of Rome tell us anything about medieval culture? When viewed through the lens of nineteenth-century printed editions, where they lie buried next to a multitude of similarly undistinguished texts, they reveal little about the medieval culture that produced and used them (though the editions may say much about nineteenth-century cultural ideas). However, when viewed in manuscript format as they were seen and used by their patrons, readers, and compilers, they become interesting as artifacts of what was, long ago, a living community. The manuscripts provide material evidence of patrons’ interests and, because they are often accompanied by programs of illustration, the art itself becomes

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evidence of at least one reader’s response to the text. Furthermore, locating the manuscript within a specific historical setting and juxtaposing it to related contemporary texts can provide clues to its production, social use, and ideological purpose. By locating the major narratives of falsely accused queens from the French, English, and German traditions within particular, localized historical communities, I search for multiple histories and languages, or, as Gabrielle Spiegel terms it, “situated uses of language.”5 Consideration of these texts in relationship to other discourses from the same period and locale can lead to understanding of broader cultural ideas and tensions. The diffusion of manuscripts can sometimes show how these ideas spread and were reinterpreted by subsequent compilers. Gautier de Coinci’s miracle story of the empress of Rome—the source of the Eton frescoes and the subject of chapter 1—is a good example of how manuscript analysis alters our view of a text. It is the earliest example of an empress of Rome story written in the vernacular, and it appears within a Miracles collection popular in the Middle Ages. Viewed only in the context of its four-volume printed edition, the story seems, to a modern reader, merely one among many anthologized examples of fallible human beings rescued by the Virgin Mary. However, viewed within its manuscript context—elaborately coded through rubrics, illustrations, glosses, and music—it becomes a narrative privileged by its central position in the codex. In addition, the uses of the text within the Soissons monasteries of Saint-Médard and Notre-Dame and among the local northern French aristocracy can be traced through analysis of the treatise that follows it, references to named readers in the anthology, and its combination with other texts in later manuscript miscellanies. Finally, illustrations in later manuscripts demonstrate how the narrative spread the concept of a virtuous noblewoman—empowered by the Virgin Mary herself— throughout central and northern France. Medieval manuscripts were formerly the province of editors, who focused on the text and ignored the art, or of art historians, who focused on the art and ignored the text. More recently, scholars from a broad array of disciplines have adopted a more integrated approach to manuscript study. By amassing related artistic images and analyzing their cultural resonances, V. A. Kolve in his groundbreaking Chaucer and the Imagery of Narrative brought new understanding to major themes in the first five Canterbury Tales. John V. Fleming and a number of subsequent scholars

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have looked at programs of illustrations accompanying literary texts as evidence of one reader’s (that is, the compiler’s) interpretation of the text.6 Other scholars study manuscripts for evidence about how art was produced and consumed: Joyce Coleman’s Public Reading and the Reading Public provides evidence of the continuing popularity of oral performance of literature through the fifteenth century, Suzanne Lewis’s Reading Images argues that thirteenth-century English Apocalypse manuscripts were active agents of cultural change and the formation of ideology, and Andrew Taylor’s Textual Situations studies three medieval manuscripts and their complex relationships to their readers. My study belongs to these more recent types of integrated analysis of art and text. Although I continue to include analysis of programs of illustration for evidence of reader responses, I also move beyond this mode of analysis to examine the text as an agent of cultural change. This study thus contributes to knowledge of medieval manuscripts in general by describing and analyzing a body of seldom-studied vernacular codices. Although many of the illustrated manuscripts I describe are of lesser artistic quality than those to which art historians gravitate, they are nonetheless interesting as artifacts because they reflect the cultural interests of their authors, readers, and patrons. Viewed within their textual, artistic, and social contexts, narratives of accused queens provide evidence of medieval debates about such topics as the powerlessness of women, the perpetual lustiness of men, the nature of “good” women, slander as evidence of legal failure, economic discrepancies between rich and poor, and the purifying value of affliction.

Overview of the Principal Texts Before looking in greater detail at Gautier’s text in chapter 1, it will be useful to have an overview of the other texts to be considered in this book and the principal themes found within them. A few years after Gautier wrote “The Empress of Rome,” the great encyclopedist Vincent de Beauvais (d. 1264) included an abbreviated Latin prose version in his Speculum historiale. If the many extant manuscripts are reliable evidence of reading patterns, then both Gautier’s and Vincent’s stories circulated widely in Western Europe. Around 1250 another monk, Matthew Paris (ca. 1200–1259), working in England, introduced the story of a falsely accused queen into a Latin

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history of the founders of the Benedictine abbey of St. Albans. In the second half of the thirteenth century, a royal bailiff from Picardy who was either Philippe de Remi the father (d. ca. 1265) or Philippe de Beaumanoir, his jurist son (ca. 1250–1296), wrote the first extant verse romance of a falsely accused queen. In the early fourteenth century, Jehan Maillart (d. 1327), royal secretary to the king of France, rewrote the romance, setting it in the local French countryside and naming his heroine the countess of Anjou. Later in the fourteenth century, the Parisian confraternity of goldsmiths dramatized the miracles of the Virgin Mary, including two stories of unjustly accused noblewomen, one in 1369 similar to Gautier de Coinci’s Miracle and one in 1371 similar to Philippe de Remi/Beaumanoir’s romance. In England, Nicholas Trevet (ca. 1265–ca. 1334) told the story of Constance in his French prose Cronicles. His work became the chief source for Geoffrey Chaucer (1342/43–1400) and John Gower (1325/30–1408), both of whom accorded the story a position of importance in their collections of Middle English short stories. After Chaucer’s death, in the early fifteenth century, his friend Thomas Hoccleve (ca. 1368–ca. 1454) adapted a story of an unjustly accused woman from the Gesta Romanorum and called it “The Tale of Jereslaus’s Wife”; he included the story in a manuscript known as the Series, in which he provided a psychological study of his recovery from illness. Although France and England constitute the principal cultural and geographic loci for narratives discussed here, Germany, Burgundy, and the Low Countries also produced important related texts, some of which will be discussed in the chapters that follow. In Germany two early verse chronicles, the Kaiserchronik (mid-twelfth century) and Jansen Enikel’s Weltchronik (about a century later), provided historical settings for later narratives of accused queens: the courtly romance Mai und Beaflor (second half of thirteenth century), Hans von Bühel’s Königstochter von Frankreich (1400), and “Die Königen von Frankreich und der ungetreue Marschalk” (fifteenth century). Of these, I will discuss Mai und Beaflor in chapter 3 because of its close relationship to Philippe de Remi’s La Manekine.7 In the fifteenth-century court of Philip the Good, duke of Burgundy, we find two narratives of accused queens, both of them translations by Jehan Wauquelin of Old French verse romances: La Manekine and La Belle Hélène de Constantinople. And finally, a saint’s life of Geneviève of Brabant, popular in Germany and the Low Countries, be-

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came the basis for numerous accounts in popular and folklore formats that continued to be retold well into the nineteenth century. These, then, are the principal texts that constitute the focus of the present study. Although many more narratives of falsely accused queens have survived from the Middle Ages, I make no attempt to present a comprehensive chronology or survey. Instead, I have chosen especially influential or representative texts that can be studied profitably in their manuscript or local historical contexts. The reader who is interested in formulating a comprehensive list of narratives of accused queens may refer to the footnotes and extensive lists available in Schlauch’s Chaucer’s Constance and Accused Queens or Axel Gabriel Wallensköld’s “Le Conte de la femme chaste convoitée par son beau-frère.” The popularity of narratives of accused queens in so many cultural contexts raises the question of why medieval authors repeatedly turned to this narrative type. Three themes inherent in the tales appear to have attracted medieval poets: the noble female protagonist, the accusations leveled against her, and the afflictions she suffered. In retelling the story of accused queens, medieval authors project an image of women that lies between the two extreme views so often mentioned in cultural histories of the Middle Ages—glorification into immaterial abstraction (the virgin) and vilification as the personifier of lust (the whore). Because there are relatively few medieval stories featuring female protagonists,8 these stories stand out by presenting a positive image of a virtuous woman active in the world rather than cloistered in a convent or, like the Virgin Mary, elevated into heaven. Unlike the many misogynist texts of the time, these do not show marriage reducing the spiritual value of women. In fact, the virtuous heroines expose the failures of the powerful, lustful, dishonest men around them. And their suffering as noble victims sometimes becomes a metaphor for larger social injustices. In short, analysis of narratives of accused queens will help us to understand the complicated interactions between gendered stereotypes and innovative depictions of holiness. Why do the authors of these texts stress the nobility of the heroine, who is most often a queen, empress, princess, or countess? Although aristocratic status is conventional in romances, the royal status of the protagonists carries an additional semiotic meaning here. The queens and empresses provide a model of social and religious behavior, a behavior that is mainly passive, obedient, and chaste, hence seemingly gender-specific. However, in the inciting moments of the stories, all the royal heroines are

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presented with a conflict between obedience to man and obedience to God. The conflict is very like that described by Philippe de Beaumanoir in his Coutumes de Beauvaisis: “Everyone should know that a man should not obey his wife, nor a wife her husband, nor a vassal or an officer his lord, nor should any other persons obey each other in any case or with respect to any order, which is contrary to God, or to morality [bonnes meurs] so that it is a good reason for a woman to leave her husband when he wants her to sin [quant il li vuet fere fere], and good reason for others not to obey [partir de l’obeïssance] those who give them such orders.”9 In narratives of accused queens, in every case, when confronted with such a conflict between the laws of God and the laws of man, the heroines opt to follow divine law and defy the patriarchal ruler, even if this action results in a life of poverty and exile. Thus the narratives do more than model feminine behavior for dutiful wives. They advance the notion that adherence to a religious moral code is more important than blind obedience to patriarchal customs. Many of the manuscripts studied in this volume were designed for a royal audience. For example, the early-fourteenth-century Soissons manuscript of Gautier de Coinci’s Miracles de Nostre Dame (B.N. n. a. fr. 24541) includes Latin marginal glosses. Those accompanying “The Empress of Rome” focus the reader (or, more likely, the listener) on moral issues. Largely aphoristic or proverbial, the glosses heighten the importance of key themes, such as foolishness, lying, beauty, or marriage. They may have functioned as memorial devices to be used by a prelector to comment informally or preach more formally from the text.10 We know that this manuscript was written for Joan of Burgundy, wife of the French king Philip VI. It was apparently valued by its later owner, her son John II the Good, who took it with him to the battle of Poitiers. There it was carried off by the English, from whom it was later bought back for the royal library by Charles V. Eventually the manuscript came into the hands of the nuns of Notre-Dame at Soissons, where it may have been used for monastic reading, lectio divina. In sum, what we know about the audiences for this particular manuscript suggests that stories of fictional victimized queens disguised larger moral lessons. The regal status of the heroines also raises the possibility of a more direct relationship between fictional heroines and actual queens. In chapter 3, I will explore this possibility further, and review the histories of a few queens whose stories involved accusation. In only one fictional narrative,

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however, Jehan Maillart’s Roman du Comte d’Anjou (1316), have I found a direct connection between the heroine and a reigning queen. Nonetheless, in a more general sense, fictional depictions of powerful kings and queens provide an opportunity for political commentary and the construction of social ideals. Historians of queenship have documented the increasing role of the queen as intercessor and the importance of her chastity, both of which are prominent themes in narratives of accused queens.11 The queen is an important component of the royal hegemony, a fact sometimes emphasized in these stories through the metaphor of the chess game. An attack on or the removal of the queen—as here through slander— seriously weakens the position of the king. And so, while these narratives feature accused queens, the subject of the king’s power is also never far from the author’s mind. The second element of the narratives, the accusation—whether it occurs through slander or through forged letters—may be understood within the context of changes in the judicial system during the Middle Ages. The popularity of these narratives in the mid-thirteenth century coincides with the political reality of increased centralization of legal power in the hands of the king, a process that began in France during the reign of Philip Augustus (1180–1223) and in England during the reign of Henry II (1154– 89). During this time, legal customaries were also moving from oral to written form, and the systematic preservation of royal archives had begun. Narratives involving slander and forged documents would have been of particular interest to government officials, lawyers, and members of both the bourgeoisie and the nobility. Slander undermines the credibility of eyewitnesses, and forged documents undermine the legal validity usually granted written and signed documents. Therefore, the story of a falsely accused noblewoman can also be read as a case study in judicial injustice. When a woman, someone with limited rights, is slandered, a blow is struck at the very heart of the legal system, which depends upon truth-saying, oaths, and writs for the application of justice. During her exile, without the protection of a family or a court of law, she is subject to the mutabilities of the social and natural worlds, including the whims of men and unpredictable weather. The happy endings—when her innocence is proven, when the false slanderers are exposed, and when she is reunited with her family—are a kind of plea for trust in the judicial system, however senseless or unfair it may be at times.

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The noble female protagonists are always victims of social injustice— whether of forged letters, incest, slander, or the threat of rape. And, with the exception of Christine de Pizan, it is always a male author who tells the story of a falsely accused noblewoman. He makes use of the convention of female weakness to strengthen the positive and protective values of the patriarchal world. Like the conventional knight in shining armor, the male author assumes the role of protector toward the female victim. Chaucer’s Man of Law, for example, exclaims, “Allas! Custance, thou hast no champioun, / Ne fighte kanstow noght, so weylaway!”12 Chaucer’s narrator may be the best known today, but he was not the first to take up the falsely accused heroine’s cause: earlier authors such as Philippe de Remi and Jehan Maillart also used the narrative to defend the rights of a virtuous but victimized female. However, the male authors’ interest in royal women was no plea for equality under the law. Rather, it was recognition that even the noblest, wealthiest, most virtuous woman needed male protection. Finally, the narratives develop the theme of the redemptive value of affliction. Affliction occurs not once but twice in a double exile either on land or, more typically, by ship. A key symbol of the affliction of the exiled queen is the rudderless ship without sail, such as the one depicted in the frontispiece of this book. (In one German variation on the theme, the heroine is set adrift in a barrel.) The best-known example of the rudderless ship comes from Chaucer’s “Man of Law’s Tale,” in which, after the slaughter of her husband and all his newly converted Christian companions at the wedding feast in Syria, the heroine, Custance, is placed in a boat that drifts for “Yeres and dayes” until finally landing in Northumbria. Later, after her remarriage to the king of Northumbria, her new motherin-law falsely claims she has given birth to a monster, occasioning a second voyage on a rudderless ship, now accompanied by her child. The double reversal of fortune experienced by the falsely accused noblewoman is a narrative version of the medieval topos of the wheel of fortune: life’s reversals can be understood as the result of Dame Fortune’s sudden and unpredictable spin of her wheel. The proper human response to adversity, according to the philosophic view most prominent in the Middle Ages, that of Boethius, is to keep one’s sight on God: “Turn therefore from vice: ensue virtue: raise your soul to upright hopes: send up on high your prayers from this earth,” advises his Dame Philosophy.13 Mentioned explicitly in the narrative or not, Boethian philosophy is never far

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from the author’s account of the vicissitudes of such noblewomen. The consolation for their suffering lies in the constancy of their faith in God. The heroine’s inner virtue, her devotion to chastity, or to the primacy of God’s law over man’s desire, makes her a figure of religious constancy, or faithfulness to God. In the versions of Trevet, Gower, and Chaucer, her name is literally Constance or Custance, but even when she is called Joy or Hélène or simply the countess of Anjou, her Christian fortitude is never in doubt. Only through the force of her inner virtue and the protection of God (or his substitute, the Virgin Mary) does the heroine survive. The heroine’s suffering over a long period of time is explicitly referred to in one of the Latin glosses of Gautier de Coinci’s “Empress of Rome” found in the Soissons manuscript mentioned earlier. The glossator cites Isaiah 48:10: “Ecce excoxi te sed non quasi argentum elegi te in camino paupertatis” [See how I tested you, not as silver is tested, but in the furnace of affliction].14 Camino paupertatis (literally, the furnace of poverty) is a reference to the refiner’s fire, the furnace of suffering that purifies the soul.15 A similar allusion to camino paupertatis appears in a Cambrai manuscript of 1280 containing the “Gaudeat Hungaria” office for St. Elizabeth of Hungary, a figure often associated with fictional falsely accused queens. Found in the hymn “Pange Lingua Gloriosae” are the lines “In camino paupertatis / fide purgatoria, / propter fidem castitatis / spe consolatoria / fulget aurum caritatis, / purum omni scoria” [In the furnace of poverty, through purifying faith, because of the faith of chastity, and through consoling hope, the gold of charity shines pure of all dross].16 References to the furnace of affliction here and in the gloss to Gautier’s Miracles—a manuscript produced for an actual queen, Joan of Burgundy—suggest that medieval readers were well aware of the religious symbolism of suffering, slandered queens. In sum, the noble female victim, the social injustice that brings about her downfall, and her repeated suffering are constant themes in narratives of falsely accused noblewomen, themes that drew medieval poets again and again to retell the story with new variations. In addition, the popularity of these narratives can be explained by their close relationship to biblical stories, hagiographic texts, and other narratives of abused women, such as those told by Chaucer in his Legend of Good Women. Depicting the landscape of these related texts will be the subject of the remainder of this introduction.

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Other Narrative Models of Good Women During the last decade or two, scholars looking at representations of women in medieval texts have made us acutely conscious of the extent of misogynist thinking in the Middle Ages.17 So pervasive was antifemale sentiment that negative examples of women—Eve, Delilah, Xantippe— may still come to mind more quickly than virtuous ones. For example, Alcuin Blamires’ anthology of medieval texts, Woman Defamed and Woman Defended, presents more than two hundred pages of antifeminist texts before including a passage from Marbod of Rennes (ca. 1035–1123), whose description in “De Matrona” [The Good Woman] from his Liber decem capitulorum is one of the few positive characterizations contained in the anthology before those of Christine de Pizan in the fifteenth century. Yet even Marbod’s “Good Woman” is equivocal, since it is paired with a similar chapter titled “The Femme Fatale.”18 Nonetheless, images of good, virtuous women existed, and prototypes for many of them lie in biblical sources. To this day, in celebration of the death of a Jewish woman, the words of Proverbs 31:10 are spoken, known in their Latin form to Christian writers of the Middle Ages: “Mulierem fortem quis inveniet procul et de ultimis finibus pretium eius” [Who can find a virtuous wife? Her worth is far beyond ruby].19 Citation of the proverb, although an honor for the virtuous deceased woman, also implies that such women are rare, thus sending a corollary misogynist message. Among Christian biblical sources, the Virgin Mary is, of course, the ultimate virtuous woman, demonstrating in particular the virtue of chastity. In fact, not surprisingly, the rise in popularity of the cult of Mary corresponds to the rise in popularity of narratives of falsely accused noblewomen.20 My discussion of Gautier de Coinci’s Miracles de Nostre Dame in chapter 1 will demonstrate that readers and compilers of manuscripts saw the empress of Rome as a secular analogue to the Mother of God. Medieval authors are fond of enumerating the virtuous women of the Old Testament—Sarah, Hagar, Rebecca, Rachel, Esther, Judith, Anna, Naomi. Hagar, who was sent off into the wilderness with her son Ishmael, is compared by Molanus to one falsely accused noblewoman, Geneviève of Brabant, who is “velut altera Agar” [like a second Hagar]. Other Old Testament figures, however, show little similarity to medieval falsely accused noblewomen. Sarah and Rebecca, although noted in the Middle Ages for marital fidelity and wifely obedience respectively, are, in their

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narrative contexts, principally important as progenitors of male heirs. Esther and Judith are renowned for acts of courage, which, according to medieval interpreters, makes them seem less like women (less weak) and more like men (more virile). Unlike them, falsely accused medieval heroines are virtuous through consistent adherence to chastity and patience in the face of adversity, not through “manly” acts of courage. The chief virtuous woman from the Old Testament who serves as a model for medieval falsely accused noblewomen is Susanna. Her story appears in the Septuagint and Vulgate Bibles as chapter 13 of the Book of Daniel, a chapter that was later dropped from the Jewish and Protestant canons and relegated to the Apocrypha. The heroine, beautiful and virtuous, is the object of male lust. She repulses the sexual advances of the elders, who falsely accuse her of adultery with a fictive young man. Based on the oral testimony of the two elders, Susanna is condemned to death. At this moment Daniel comes to the rescue, causes the trial to be reopened, and personally examines the two men separately. Their false testimony is revealed when they contradict one another: one claims, in response to Daniel’s question, that Susanna lay with the young man under a scino [mastic tree] and the other that they lay under a prino [holm oak]. Daniel’s careful legal questioning links the story of false accusation to issues of proper judgment and justice, a theme developed in many medieval narratives. Although the biblical story does not follow the typical four-part narrative structure found in medieval stories of accused queens, several important themes found in the later works are introduced here. The elders, like so many later examples of unbridled male desire, abuse their power and misuse the judicial process to fulfill their lusts. The narrative is explicit in associating the elders with Babylonian wickedness: “de quibus locutus est Dominus quia egressa est iniquitas de Babylone a senibus iudicibus qui videbantur regere populum” (Dan. 13:5) [It was of them that the Lord had said, “Wickedness came forth from Babylon from elders who were judges and were supposed to govern my people”].21 According to rabbinical commentary, the elders lured Babylonian women by prophesying that they would give birth to prophets; according to patristic commentary, they lured Jewish women with the promise they would give birth to the Messiah.22 Because the elders are rich and have high standing in the community, their testimony is more valuable than that of a mere woman. When they

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threaten Susanna in the garden, the choice they give her is simple: submit to our wishes, or we will testify falsely against you. The crux of the narrative is the judicial scene itself in which, after the death sentence is pronounced, Daniel intervenes. He questions the elders in such a way as to reveal the falsum testimonium that both Susanna (Dan. 13:43) and Daniel (Dan. 13:49) have claimed. Susanna’s virtuous stance also is echoed in the later medieval narratives. She is unequivocal in her refusal to sin: “sed melius mihi est absque opere incidere in manus vestras quam peccare in conspectu Domini” (Dan. 13:23) [It is better to be at your mercy than to sin against the Lord]. The vivid Latin phrase in manus vestras is rendered literal when, as part of the judicial process, the elders place their hands on her unveiled head before giving their false testimony (Dan. 13:34). Typical also of the later narratives, Susanna trusts in God: “quae flens suspexit ad caelum erat enim cor eius fiduciam habens in Domino” (Dan. 13:35) [She looked up to heaven through her tears, for she trusted in the Lord]. Her trust in the divine is emphasized a second time when the author, after the announcement of the death penalty, has her pray to “Deus aeterne” and declare her innocence (Dan. 13:42–43). The sharp contrast between male evil and female goodness is, of course, typical of many hagiographic texts. Marbod of Rennes summarizes succinctly the clerical attitude toward early Christian female martyrs: “But under the New Law, since the glory of female purity in the virgin birth shone out, honoured throughout the world, history has been full of countless young women who have valued their chastity more than life, and in prevailing over enemies have given lessons to men that mental courage can be unmoved by torture. Among the number of those not inferior in their worth, Agnes, Fides, Agatha, Lucy, Cecilia, and Thecla conquered ruthless tyrants by their outstanding virtue.”23 The heroines of the Constance and empress of Rome narratives could also be said to value “their chastity more than life,” but with important differences. First, the falsely accused women are always married women, and hence represent chastity not as a synonym for virginity but in the sense of faithfulness to one spouse, or sexual continence. Second, they are not martyrs. They never actually give up their lives in defense of chastity. On the contrary, all the narratives conclude harmoniously with all conflicts resolved. Whether through a return to the secular married state or a retreat to a monastery, happiness is found at the end in this world, not in heaven. Although reminiscent of

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virgin martyrs and their conflicts with “ruthless tyrants,” narratives of falsely accused noblewomen do not normally fit the model of the lives of virgin martyrs. One exception lies in the life of St. Dympna (feast day, May 15). Dympna, the Christian daughter of a pagan king, was a virgin martyr, and her life includes the father-daughter incest conflict found in some medieval versions of the Constance stories. Her father falls in love with her because of her resemblance to her dead mother (a motif that is also found in La Manekine, Philippe de Remi’s thirteenth-century chanson d’aventure, as well as in numerous folktales).24 In order to escape his lust, Dympna flees with her confessor, St. Gerebernus, to Antwerp and then east to Gheel, where they settle as recluses near a church dedicated to St. Martin. Dympna’s father pursues them, tracing their path through the foreign coins they have used along the way. Once he finds the pair, he tries to persuade his daughter to return with him. When she refuses, he orders his men to kill his daughter and Gerebernus. They kill the confessor, but hesitate to kill Dympna, at which point the father himself cuts off her head.25 St. Dympna is particularly honored in Gheel as patron of the insane. Her popularity appears to stem from the discovery and translation of her relics and those of her confessor in the thirteenth century, events that were accompanied by miraculous healings of epileptics and lunatics. Gheel itself became a place of refuge and healing for the insane; even today it is known for its sanatorium and its tradition of care for patients in the homes of local residents.26 Although her vita does not utilize the fourpart narrative structure typical of medieval narratives of accused queens, features of this saint’s life probably influenced French narratives of falsely accused noblewomen, such as Philippe de Remi’s La Manekine and Jehan Wauquelin’s La Belle Hélène de Constantinople. A more likely source for influence of saints’ lives on the medieval narratives lies among the vitae of married saints. The life of Margaret, queen of Scotland (1045/46–1093), although devoid of false accusation, provides interesting parallels to some of the fictional narratives analyzed in this study: her life involved much suffering; she established a reputation for holiness; many events in her life took place in Hungary, Northumbria, and Scotland, locations often used in stories of the Constance type. Her English father, Edward Æthling, son of Edmund Ironside (ca. 980–1016), married Agatha, sister of the Hungarian queen. Margaret was born in

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Hungary and accompanied her father and mother to England in 1054. However, when her great-uncle Edward the Confessor died in 1066 and William the Conqueror arrived, she and her brother Edgard fled with their mother to Scotland. The king of Scotland, Malcolm III, married her in 1069/70. Queen Margaret gained a reputation for saintly acts. Her husband and son were killed at the siege of Alnwich in Northumberland in 1093, and she died of sorrow the next year. She was canonized by Innocent IV in 1251, her feast day established as June 10.27 Among other married saints, the examples of Cunegund and Elizabeth are particularly relevant to the present study. Both saints were canonized despite their married state and in part because of their efforts to live chastely. Cunegund’s childlessness led to stories that her marriage with Henry, emperor of Rome, was virginal.28 Elizabeth, despite her three children, preferred to sleep on the floor beside her husband’s bed.29 Still, even the marital chastity of these saints differs from the thematic treatment in the empress of Rome stories. The biographies of Cunegund and Elizabeth depict sexual abstinence in the company of a man, whereas in the Constance and empress of Rome stories chastity is imposed by physical separation of husband and wife, first by his absence on a pilgrimage or military campaign, and later, after the false accusation, by her forced exile. The lives of Cunegund and Elizabeth, besides presenting examples of marital chastity, each contain a narrative episode that might connect them with the Constance and empress of Rome tales. A popular story associated with the cult of Cunegund involves false accusation: when accused of adultery, she walked on hot plowshares and successfully cleared her name.30 Although the life of Elizabeth included no false accusation, she was driven from her household by her brother-in-law and forced to live a life of poverty. Despite these connections, one must finally conclude that the relationship between the lives of Cunegund and Elizabeth and the narratives of accused queens is slight. The life of one late medieval married saint, however, does follow closely the narrative pattern of empress of Rome tales. Geneviève is a Belgian saint, listed under her feast date of April 2 by Johannes Molanus in his Natales Sanctorum Belgii.31 Geneviève, the daughter of the duke of Brabant, was married to Siegfried, a Palatine count. He went off to war and left his pregnant wife under the protection of his military officer, Golo. Golo sought the sexual favors of Geneviève and, when she refused him, falsely accused her of adultery. Siegfried, upon his return, believed

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the testimony of Golo and ordered mother and child to be drowned. However, the executioners took pity on them and left them in the wilderness, forcing Geneviève to promise not to leave the spot and then taking the tongue of a dog back as proof of the execution. Mother and child found refuge in a cave, where a doe suckled the child. Six years later, Siegfried came upon the cave during a hunt, recognized his wife by an old scar, and was reunited with her. She extracted a promise from him, as a condition of her return, that he build a church dedicated to the Virgin Mary on the spot where she and the child had been protected “in tot aduersitatibus” [through so many adversities]. The church was promptly built and consecrated by Bishop Hidulphus of Trier (of whom no historical trace has survived), and Golo was drawn and quartered as a traitor. The pilgrimage church of St. Mary near Thür in Rheinland-Pfalz, traditionally associated with the story of Geneviève of Brabant, still exists.32 German scholars believe that the saint’s legend was written 1325–1425 as a “founding narrative” by one of the monks in the nearby monastery of Laach.33 In addition to the virtuous, chaste women found within the biblical and hagiographic traditions, two other chaste married women of fiction are relevant to this study: Lucretia and Griselda.34 Although the plots of their stories differ considerably from narratives of falsely accused noblewomen, their afflictions, the male abuse of power that causes their suffering, and their adherence to chastity in the face of adversity make them parallel figures. Christine de Pizan is one medieval reader who not only associates the stories of Lucretia and Griselda with one another but also associates them with the biblical Susanna and the empress of Rome (to whom she gives the name Florence). Christine’s pairing of the Griselda (II.50.1–4) and Florence (II.51.1) stories makes the connection between them explicit. She writes in her transition between the two stories that “the noble Florence, empress of Rome, endured great adversity with amazing patience and greatly resembled Griselda, marquise of Saluces, in strength and constancy of character.”35 Christine includes the stories of all four women—Susanna, Lucretia, Griselda, and Florence—in part 2 of her Book of the City of Ladies, in a section concerning the chastity of women. Beautiful women can be chaste, Christine argues, noting the vulnerability of such women to slander. Her first mention of the theme of slander occurs in the story of Susanna

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(II.37.1), after which appear the stories of Sarah, Rebecca, Ruth, Penelope, Mariannes, and Antonia, all of which demonstrate that many chaste women may be found in the world. Just before turning to the story of Lucretia (II.44.1), Christine addresses the issue of slander again by deploring the number of slanderers to be found in her own age: “I could find many examples for you of such beautiful women living quite chastely in a worldly setting, particularly at court and among young men. Even nowadays, rest assured, there are many of them. There is a great need for me to do this, regardless of what malicious gossips might say, for I do not think that in all times past there were so many evil tongues as there are today, nor so many men inclined to slander women without reason as there are today. And there is no doubt that if these beautiful, virtuous women about whom I have spoken to you, were living now, they would be viciously attacked out of jealousy, instead of winning the praise which the Ancients gave them.”36 Lucretia was a heroine because, according to Christine’s account, she helped rid Rome of the tyrant Tarquin (“Never again was there a king in Rome”). Furthermore, Christine claims that public outrage at Tarquin’s rape and Lucretia’s subsequent death led to the enactment of a law “whereby a man would be executed for raping a woman, a law which is fitting, just, and holy.”37 The biblical story of Susanna, selected saints’ lives, and the stories of women such as Lucretia and Griselda provide a rich context for analysis of the image of the “good woman” found in medieval narratives of falsely accused queens. Active in this world as wives, royal consorts, and progenitors of male heirs, the heroines of medieval narratives of accused queens are also saintlike figures who are patient in adversity, who trust in God, and who are, ultimately, recipients of divine favor. The analysis of their stories in the chapters that follow will demonstrate in greater detail how they contributed to the larger medieval debate about the nature of woman, adding to the arguments of those who, like Christine, would defend her virtue.

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1 The Empress of Rome

The fifteenth-century frescoes at Eton Chapel discussed in the introduction represent the culmination of three hundred years of interest in the empress of Rome within the western European narrative tradition. Whence came the interest in this fictional woman? A search for the earliest example among surviving manuscripts shows that there were several early Latin prose exempla circulating in France in the twelfth century. However, it was not until a Benedictine monk, Gautier de Coinci (1177/78–1236), translated one of these into Old French verse and included it in his compilation Miracles de Nostre Dame that the tale became well known.1 Analysis of selected manuscripts of Gautier’s Miracles is the starting point for understanding the popularity and cultural significance of the story in England and France. What little is known of Gautier’s life has been written by his editor V. Frederic Koenig.2 Gautier joined the Benedictine community of SaintMédard in Soissons as a monk in 1193; because the usual age for joining was fifteen or sixteen, he would then have been born around 1177 or 1178. Probably educated there and at the University of Paris, Gautier first served as prior in 1214 at Vic-sur-Aisne, location of the relics of St. Leocadia. Around 1218 he began to write the Miracles, which he continued to work on for many years. Three years before his death in 1236, Gautier was made a prior at Saint-Médard, and it was sometime during this period that he stopped adding to and rearranging his book.3 As finally conceived, Gautier’s text consists of two parts, each with a distinctive beginning and ending (prologues, epilogues, and songs, for example). It contains thirty-five miracles in part 1 and twenty-three miracles in part 2. Seventeen manuscripts of the complete anthology survive.4 The construction of Gautier’s book can be viewed as part of an effort

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to enhance the prestige of local religious institutions. Before the author began writing his Miracles, Soissons was already an important local site for the veneration of the Virgin Mary. Benedicta Ward, in Miracles and the Medieval Mind, tells the story of how the Virgin’s slipper was first used to effect a cure of a poor girl in the convent of Abbess Mathilda in the summer of 1128. The story of this and numerous successive miracles was told by Hugh Farsit, canon of Saint-Jean-des-Vignes, writing in Latin in 1143, shortly after the abbess’s death.5 Vic-sur-Aisne, where Gautier was prior while writing most of the Miracles, also possessed saintly relics, most notably the chemise of St. Leocadia. Near the center of his book, at the end of part 1, Gautier writes of a personal experience involving a theft of the relics. He had a vision of the devil, who was angered by what he had written in praise of the Virgin Mary. Later, when he was temporarily absent from Vic, thieves stole the relics of Leocadia, causing great suffering to Gautier until their discovery four days later in the Aisne River. His account of this adventure is followed by three songs to Leocadia.6 The earliest codices of Gautier’s Miracles do not include the story of the empress of Rome; they contain only the thirty-five miracles that, in later manuscripts, form part 1. When, however, toward the end of his life, Gautier added another twenty-three miracles to his work, thus occasioning the production of two-volume codices, “The Empress of Rome” was one of the stories added. In these later, two-volume manuscripts, the story is placed at the head of part 2, following the prologue, near the midpoint of the two-volume work. The middle of a narrative such as Chrétien de Troyes’s romance Le Chevalier au Lion (Yvain), as well as the middle of a codex such as this, bears special importance in the iconography and ordinatio used by manuscript compilers, a point we shall have opportunity to observe repeatedly in later chapters.7 Its prominent placement and its length (3980 lines) make the narrative comparable in importance to the better-known and more often studied story of Theophilus, which appears in a parallel position as the first miracle following the prologue of part 1. Whereas Theophilus is the archetypal sinner who makes a pact with the devil and is later rescued by the Virgin Mary, the empress of Rome represents “virtue rewarded.” Viewed within its manuscript context, the story of a weak man stands in sharp contrast to a story of a strong woman.8

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The narrative in which the empress appears plays a central role in Gautier’s anthology of miracle stories that has hitherto been unacknowledged by literary critics working from printed text. One narrative placed among fifty-seven others in the four-volume printed collection of Gautier’s anthology makes little impression upon the modern reader.9 However, a reader who studies the text through the medium of the extant manuscripts of Gautier’s Miracles will find that the story assumes greater significance within its artistic setting. Meaning is conveyed not only by the words, images, and internal structure of the written text but also by the placement of the narrative in the codex and by its relationship to illustrations, capitals, and other decorative features.10 The more ornately decorated the manuscript, the more obvious becomes the structural and thematic importance of “The Empress of Rome” in the work as a whole. However, even in the least ornate manuscripts, rubrics and initials decorated in blue and red ink announce the beginning of new sections, most notably the beginning of the prologues to parts 1 and 2 and the beginning of each miracle.11 In the more heavily illustrated manuscripts, an historiated initial or miniature is added at the start of each miracle and at the start of the prologues to parts 1 and 2. In most manuscripts, therefore, the location of “The Empress of Rome” provides the narrative with special thematic importance by virtue of its prominent structural position near the midpoint of the codex.12 The following analysis of illustrations and other decorative features of the story will demonstrate the prominence that medieval artists gave to the empress’s story.

The Illustrations in “Empress of Rome” Manuscripts Most illustrations of “The Empress of Rome” occur at the start of the narrative as a marker, that is, as part of the ordinatio that helps readers find their way among the fifty-eight narratives contained in the codices. At times, however, the illustration at the start of the prologue to part 2 also relates to the story of the empress. In one thirteenth-century manuscript, Paris, B.N. fr. 1533, the two illustrations emphasize the analogous relationship between the empress of Rome and the Mother of God. The first of these miniatures, the one at the start of the prologue to part 2, depicts the Annunciation (fig. 1). On the left stands an angel with beautiful wings that extend beyond the frame. The angel presents a scroll bearing the words “Ave Maria” to Mary, who stands on the right. In the

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middle, toward the bottom of the miniature, sits a vase in which faint traces of lily flowers are visible. Mary is dressed in a blue gown and red cloak. A white head-cover signifies her human role as a wife, and an accompanying halo conveys her religious authority. An illuminated initial A below the miniature continues the Annunciation theme. The second of these illustrations occurs at the start of the miracle of the empress of Rome (fig. 2). Here the initial A is repeated as an historiated initial and introduces the first line of the miracle: “A sages dit (et) / fet sauoir.”13 The initial thus accentuates the connection between the initial A at the opening of part 2 (“A saint Maart el / biau liuaire”) and the “Ave” in the angel’s scroll. The initial depicts the empress’s rejection of her brother-in-law’s sexual advances. She stands to the left, dressed in a red gown with a blue cloak—the reverse of what Mary wore in the preceding miniature, but with the same white head-covering found in the earlier depiction of the Virgin; instead of a halo, the empress wears a crown, symbolizing her royal status. She holds her cloak at her waist with her left hand; with her right hand she gestures with two pointed fingers, in what appears to be a sign of authority or command.14 Her position is clearly superior to that of the young man, who kneels before her on the right; his right hand covers his private parts, and his left hand is raised in what is a gesture either of listening or of refusal. Although a conventional feature of manuscript decoration, an animal head placed at the end of the bowed stroke of the letter A underlines the bestial forces being contained within the event. By being associated pictorially with the Virgin Mary—as a married woman who preserves her chastity—the empress becomes her apostle on earth. Other illustrations within the extant manuscripts of Gautier’s Miracles stress not only the empress’s chastity but also her ability to heal both physically and spiritually, reinforcing the analogy between her and the Virgin Mary made by the artist of B.N. fr. 1533. In two other illustrated manuscripts, the miniature at the start of “The Empress of Rome” depicts the noblewoman in the midst of her act of healing: the key icon is a chalice that she offers to the repentant sinner. The first of these, a thirteenth-century manuscript, Paris, B.N. fr. 25532, fol. 109v, contains a two-part miniature (fig. 3). The left compartment depicts the departure of the emperor on his pilgrimage; the right compartment shows the empress healing her brother-in-law in the presence of the pope and the emperor. The act of offering the chalice to the repentant brotherin-law seems ritualistic, recalling the role of a priest who serves “the body

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and blood” of Christ from a communion chalice. The pope and emperor— embodiments of church and state—frame the scene on left and right. Their presence adds to the ritualistic character of the depiction, confirms the validity of the empress’s healing action, but also establishes her subservience to pope and emperor. The second illustrated manuscript depicting the empress in the act of healing is the magnificent fourteenth-century Soissons manuscript, B.N. n. a. fr. 24541, which was illustrated by Jean Pucelle.15 “The Empress of Rome” is illustrated in two separate illuminations, instead of a single twocompartment miniature as in the preceding manuscript. The first miniature (fig. 4) occurs on fol. 112v at the start of part 2 prior to the prologue, and demonstrates Pucelle’s superior artistry. He depicts the emperor’s parting gesture with much more tenderness than the artist of the earlier manuscript, and a sense of movement is conveyed by the positions of the horses, which seem ready to ride out of the frame. From the point of view of a thematic analysis, however, the illustration at the start of the story itself on fol. 119 (fig. 5) is the more important miniature of the two. Again we find a representation of the scene in which the empress heals her brother-in-law, but Pucelle heightens the drama. The sinner—dressed only in white pantaloons, with breast and lower legs bare, signifying penitence—kneels before the standing empress, who holds to his lips the golden cup containing the healing draught.16 Framing the scene are the pope and emperor at the left, slightly behind the sinner, and two male observers to the right of the empress. Although the usual pattern in illustrated manuscripts of Gautier’s Miracles is to depict only one or two scenes from “The Empress of Rome,” evidence of more extensive illustration exists. A fourteenth-century manuscript, B.N. fr. 22928, contains miniatures with two, four, or six compartments. Unfortunately, the miniature illustrating “The Empress of Rome” has been cut out of the manuscript, perhaps an indication that it was especially beautiful and valued. Fortunately, another manuscript provides two multiple-compartment miniatures at the start of “The Empress of Rome.” This manuscript, the mid-fourteenth-century St. Petersburg Fr. F. v. XIV. 9, provides a total of twelve scenes for the story (fig. 6): a large eightcompartment miniature takes up two-thirds of the first column on folio 144r, at the end of the prologue to book 2; immediately following, in the first third of the second column, is another miniature, this one with four

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compartments. The first illustration depicts (1) the brother-in-law’s courting of the empress; (2) the suitor locked in prison, with the empress (an enormous key dangling from her wrist) kneeling and praying to a statue of the Virgin Mary; (3) the emperor’s return, with his brother-in-law whispering slanders in his ear as he, in turn, accuses his wife; (4) the empress about to be slain; (5) the arrival of a passing prince who interrupts the murder; (6) the departure of the prince and rescued empress; (7) the slaying of the prince’s child and placing of the bloody knife in the empress’s hand; and (8) her exile on a ship. The second illustration continues the narrative: (1) the Virgin Mary appears to the empress in her dream; (2) the empress heals the second false accuser; (3) the empress heals the first false accuser; and (4) in nun’s garb, the empress kneels before the pope and receives his blessing. The artist (or compiler) of these two miniatures was clearly more interested in the narrative flow of the story than were the other artists. Yet the significance of the healing episodes is not lost. By depicting both scenes instead of collapsing the two into one, the artist/compiler stresses their importance. The emperor and pope remain in the second of these scenes to lend authority to the act of healing, as well as to help readers distinguish the first scene from the second. These thirteenth- and early-fourteenth-century illustrated manuscripts provide ample evidence that their artists and compilers associated the story of the empress of Rome with chastity and healing, two important themes that the text emphasizes as well. A close analysis of this narrative and the audiences for whom Gautier wrote will demonstrate that the placement of the story at the head of part 2 of his anthology establishes, through the figure of the empress of Rome, a model of female authority analogous to that of the Virgin Mary herself. And finally, the sheer number of manuscripts, coupled with the fact that they originally belonged to the libraries of both religious houses and aristocratic courts, provides some idea of the breadth of Gautier’s audiences in the two hundred years following composition of his narrative.

The Empress of Rome as Model of Female Spiritual Authority With the exception of the Virgin Mary, the women who appear in Gautier de Coinci’s Miracles de Nostre Dame are usually, like the men, fallible human beings—a pregnant abbess, an incestuous mother, a nun who

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wishes to marry. As Brigitte Cazelles notes in La Faiblesse chez Gautier de Coinci, at the center of each miracle “n’est pas un héros sûr de ses pouvoirs et de ses droits, mais un personnage étonnamment dépouillé de toute ascendance, spirituelle ou corporelle” [is not a hero sure of his power and his rights, but a person surprisingly stripped of all lineage, spiritual or physical].17 However, “The Empress of Rome” provides an exception to the rule; in it, Gautier assigns a markedly different role to a highborn married woman. Far from being an example of faiblesse, the empress of Rome is a virtuous woman who is empowered to heal and save others. She takes on an aspect of sainthood—the ability to perform miracles—and, like the Virgin Mary, becomes an instrument for the salvation of sinners. The empress fits the model of sanctity described by Jo Ann McNamara in “The Need to Give: Suffering and Female Sanctity in the Middle Ages.” In the earlier medieval period, according to McNamara, women used their noble status and money to establish monasteries that became centers of charity. Later, by the early thirteenth century, when Gautier was compiling his collection of miracles, noblewomen began to follow a different model, which McNamara calls “voluntary poverty” and Elizabeth Petroff calls “evangelical poverty.”18 According to this new model, women gave up their wealth and, in imitation of the life of Christ, entered into a state of poverty. Marie d’Oignies (1177–1213) and Elizabeth of Hungary (d. 1231) provide examples of historical women who followed this pattern and who may have been known to Gautier. The saintly empress, in Gautier’s rendition, is repeatedly confronted with the dangers of lust. A series of male characters are introduced into the narrative and threaten her with sexual attacks. During the emperor’s absence, her brother-in-law makes advances. Then the servants, ordered to kill her, first try to rape her. After she is rescued by a prince and brought into his house as a governess, his cousin makes sexual overtures. When she refuses him, the cousin murders the prince’s son and falsely accuses her of the deed. Exiled by ship, she is threatened with rape by the sailors. In short, lusty men are ubiquitous in this narrative. The presence of so many libidinous males initially evokes the experience of female martyrs in the hagiographic tradition. The empress repeatedly undergoes the same ordeal: alone in a world of men, she has no protection in the face of their sexual desire, nor, when that desire is thwarted, against their false accusations of sexual misconduct or murder. Her holiness emerges through her persistent adherence to Christian vir-

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tues, in particular to chastity. Her suffering, which causes her to become detached from the secular world, simultaneously leads her toward union with the Divine. At the end of a series of misfortunes—two false accusations and four attempts to breach her chastity—near the midpoint of the narrative, the empress lies abandoned on a deserted island. Here, completely isolated from the “civilized” world, she encounters her darkest moment, and she copes by spending the night in prayer (2045–67), finding sleep only at the break of day. Her trust in the Divine is soon rewarded because, as the author reminds us, the Mother of God is ever watchful and awake to human misfortune (2092–94). The Virgin Mary appears in a burst of light, reassures the empress, and tells her that, when she awakes, she will find an herb that will cure all lepers.19 Clearly the Virgin Mary’s appearance after so many trials and tribulations is a reward for the empress’s devotion to chastity. The herb symbolizes the transformation of this inner virtue into a greater spiritual power, the power to perform miracles. The herb also, in a very practical way, allows the empress to bring about the restoration of her own good name, for, in the meantime, her two false accusers have fallen victim to leprosy, a disease often associated in the Middle Ages with lustfulness.20 In two separate episodes, they come to her to be cured. She is willing to cure them, but only after they have publicly confessed their sins, including the false accusations they had made against her. In this narrative, chastity is a key concept. So often does this heroine struggle against the threat of rape that she becomes the embodiment of chastity; indeed, the title given this work by several of the manuscripts emphasizes the importance of this virtue: “De l’empeeris qui garda sa chasteé contre mout de temptations.”21 In one codex from a Soissons convent, the miracle is paired with the only known translation into Old French of St. Jerome’s letter to Eustochium on chastity, an important document in the church’s campaign to gain control over sexual morality.22 One might think that the term “chastity,” as applied to the empress, would signify “conjugal chastity,”23 that is, her struggle for purity within marriage, or faithfulness to one partner. Indeed, the term carries these connotations at the start of the narrative; however, at its conclusion, “chastity” shifts its meaning dramatically. The shift in meaning can best be seen by contrasting the ending of Gautier’s narrative with those found in related texts. Most narratives of

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accused queens, including Christine de Pizan’s later analogue (Florence of Rome) in The Book of the City of Ladies, feature a happy ending marked by the reunion of husband and wife and the resumption of their roles as rulers.24 Clearly Gautier could have ended his work this way, for the emperor, abashed at his mistake and bemoaning the misery his wife has suffered, offers her more power and prosperity than she ever knew before (3366–79). However, Gautier’s empress rejects this offer.25 Her suffering, she explains, has made her a new person, a holy woman, “La sainte dame” (3380) who will dedicate her life to God and to the Virgin Mary. Speaking with newfound authority, she claims that whoever trusts in men, in friends, or in human kindness is foolish. In a long speech, which echoes Boethian ideas about Fortune, Destiny, and Providence, the empress explains that God provides the only sure point of stability: all else is subject to change and misfortune. In the end, Gautier has the empress abandon Rome, the symbol of all earthly power, for pursuit of heavenly paradise: Mais a un mot saichiez, biau sire, Que je vos cuit tout vostre empire. Cuite vos claim tout vo tresor, Tout vostre argent et tout vostre or. Saichiez le bien de verité Qu’en ma tres grant adversité, Qui tant fu grans et tant amere, A Dieu voai et a sa mere Et continence et chasteé. (3387–95) [But know this in a word, dear Sir, That I relinquish your entire empire. I relinquish all your wealth, All your silver and all your gold. Know this with certainty, That in my very great adversity, Which was so great and so bitter, I vowed to God and to his mother Continence and chastity.]26 Clearly “chastity” has become synonymous with sexual abstinence, thereby increasing the holiness of “la sainte dame,” who at the start of the narrative was a conventionally secular, albeit virtuous, heroine.

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Gautier’s text grants the empress authority akin to that of the Queen of Heaven herself. Unlike the “pale and passive” heroine of Chaucer’s “Man of Law’s Tale,” the empress of Rome is an active participant in the outcome of the narrative;27 she is not Everywoman whose suffering is emblematic of the human condition, as Chaucer’s Custance has been called.28 Rather, in the course of her adventures, the empress gains in authority, “authority” being used here in a traditional, political sense as “the right to command,” “domination,” or “the rightful governance of human action.”29 This right is authorized by the Virgin Mary herself, to whom the empress forms an analogue, for both have the power to save sinners from damnation and to effect miraculous cures. The authority Gautier grants his heroine, however, is short-lived. Once the false accusers have confessed their sins and been cured of leprosy, the empress is removed to her cloistered world, and no further mention of her healing powers is made. Adopting a life of poverty, she becomes a worker in God’s vineyard. His authority (and that of the church) replaces the authority of husband and emperor. Therefore, although Gautier presents a heroine who demonstrates, for a short period of time, considerable spiritual authority, this remarkable authority must ultimately be controlled within a cloistered setting. From this perspective, Gautier’s lusty male characters carry the message that the world is a dangerous place for women. Gautier’s empress of Rome presents an ideal of the “good woman” that fits the Benedictine ideals of his day. “Good” means guarding one’s chastity, trusting in the Divine, and rejecting the vanities of this world. Gautier borrows certain features from the hagiographic tradition—the Roman setting, the repetition of “temptations,” the devotion to chastity—but he embodies them in a woman whose holiness is evident during her lifetime, while she is still an actor within this material world. She achieves her holiness not through martyrdom but through her spiritual unity with the Divine. Ultimately her spiritual authority is subjected to the control of religious male authority within the confines of her cloister.

The Audiences for Gautier’s Text There can be little doubt that Gautier himself regarded this miracle as inspiration for nuns at Soissons and Fontevrault. Placed immediately following the story of the empress of Rome in Gautier’s two-volume collec-

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tion is a moral tract on chastity, “De la chasteé as nonains,”30 one of two moral tracts in part 2 (the other follows the epilogue and is a discourse on human misery and death). The tract on chastity is preceded by a seventysix-line prologue in which Gautier sends his “book” to Béatrix de Chérisi, abbess of Notre-Dame at Soissons, and Berthe, abbess of Fontevrault: “Livres, va t’en isnelement, / Salue moy mout doucement / L’abbeesse de Nostre Dame . . . Quant de Soissons departiras, / Cinc cenz fois salüer m’yras / L’abeesse de Fronteuvraut” (23–25, 43–45) [Book, go there quickly; greet for me very sweetly the abbess of Notre-Dame. . . . If you move beyond Soissons, greet five hundred times the abbess of Fontevrault]. On the most literal level, therefore, the tract that follows is intended for the nuns in these two abbeys. It is not entirely clear what Gautier means by his “book.” Does he mean the already circulating one-volume anthology (which would later be part 1), plus the new story of the empress of Rome? Or does he refer only to the story of the empress of Rome itself, a new miracle he is publishing separately? Probably he was sending the new miracle and its accompanying treatise to the nuns at some point before completing part 2 of his expanded anthology. Two pieces of evidence suggest that the story with its treatise once existed as a separate document: (1) the specific references within the treatise to “The Empress of Rome” (and to no other miracle), and (2) the addition, in the epilogue to part 2, of another dedication of the whole work to Robert de Dive, a friend of Gautier’s and prior of SaintBlaise at Noyon. In his tract Gautier expands on the virtue of chastity as defined at the end of “The Empress of Rome,” which is synonymous with sexual abstinence (or, as the rubric of two manuscripts states it, “De castitate sanctimonialium”). Because the treatise follows a miracle describing how the noblest, wealthiest, most powerful woman in the world gave up all to enter the religious life, readers are left with little doubt about Gautier’s interpretation of his text. He exhorts the nuns to hold to their vows and to flee the temptation of worldly desire. He makes specific reference to “The Empress of Rome” and expounds its moral:31 “Pour la douceur de Jhesu Crist / Fuiez et despisiez le monde, / Tenez le cuer et le cors monde / Si com la sainte empereris” (116–19) [For love of Jesus Christ, flee from and despise the world; hold the heart and the body pure, just as the holy empress did]. Gautier’s immediate readers for “The Empress of Rome” were the nuns

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of the abbeys of Soissons and Fontevrault, but over time the audience of the complete Miracles widened. In addition to his friend Robert de Dive, to whom he sends his book in the epilogue to part 2, local people mentioned by Gautier provide us with some idea of the broader audience and possible patrons. Gautier tells us that Count Raoul III of Soissons provided material for one of his miracles.32 Raoul’s wife, Adé de Grandpré, and Marguerite d’Avesnes, countess of Blois, are mentioned as particular friends of Gautier.33 It is possible that Adé, who was widowed in 1236, the year of Gautier’s death, and Marguerite, who was widowed in 1241,34 followed the path of the empress herself and ended their lives in a cloistered setting. “The Empress of Rome,” dramatically expanding on the concept of chastity, presents a model of a married holy woman and actively promotes a retreat from the world to a contemplative life. In this the narrative hardly stands alone among thirteenth-century religious texts. It bears much similarity to the vitae of real-life holy married women, such as those of St. Elizabeth of Hungary and St. Paula, both of which were translated into Old French in the thirteenth century.35 Gautier and the audience of his newly expanded work may have been familiar with the contemporary example of Elizabeth of Hungary. Elizabeth, who died in 1231, was canonized only four years later. Latin documents used in the canonization process, including a letter of her confessor, Conrad of Marburg, might have been available to Gautier.36 Although Gautier had ceased writing around 1233, Elizabeth’s fame would have spread before she died, and clerics in and around Paris are likely to have known about the saintly woman during her lifetime. Louis Karl, noticing that several thirteenth-century narratives of falsely accused queens describe the heroine as the daughter of the king of Hungary, argues that Elizabeth was the only historical figure who could fit the role. Although Gautier does not refer to his heroine as the daughter of the king of Hungary, in a rubric to one of his Latin sources she is described as such.37 Previous scholars have described the changing clerical attitudes toward married women in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries in western Europe. For example, Silvana Vecchio writes: “Wives were in the forefront of the renewed attention paid to women by ecclesiastical intellectuals at the height of the thirteenth century.”38 John Coakley has studied the role of Franciscans and Dominicans in the new acceptance of holy women into the religious life of the church.39 Vitae and letters of moral instruction

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provide numerous examples of secular noblewomen who, whether canonized or not, adhered to conjugal chastity and who, after the deaths of their husbands, entered the convent.40 Gautier thus wrote his narrative for a thirteenth-century culture interested in the sanctity of noble married women. While he may have intended his narrative of a falsely accused queen to reinforce the de contemptu mundi theme and promote the virtues of cloistered religious life for women, his text also gave greater spiritual authority to “the good woman,” who became capable of religious activity within the secular world. Both text and illustrations of extant manuscripts provide evidence of how later audiences read Gautier’s text, and the evidence suggests that the spiritual authority of Gautier’s empress was appreciated by these readers. Prior to Gautier de Coinci, in twelfth-century France, “the empress of Rome” was a common phrase that suggested an image of secular happiness and wealth acquired through a good marriage. Héloise writes in her first letter to Abelard: “God is my witness that if Augustus, Emperor of the whole world, thought fit to honour me with marriage and conferred all the earth on me to possess for ever, it would be dearer and more honourable to me to be called not his Empress but your whore.”41 Later in the same century, Chrétien de Troyes in his Arthurian romance Le Chevalier au Lion (Yvain) has the courtiers in Laudine’s court, admiring Yvain at his first public appearance, comment: “Certes, l’empererriz de Rome / seroit an lui bien marïee” [Certainly, the empress of Rome would be well married to him].42 Gautier de Coinci and subsequent artists/compilers of his text reshaped that image of the empress of Rome from a representation of the world’s wealthiest and most noble potential bride to that of a religious woman endowed with spiritual authority. Dressed as a conventional wife, offering the chalice to the repentant sinner, and framed by the figures of pope and emperor, the highest authorities of church and state, the empress of Rome provides a potent memorial device for later readers of Gautier’s text.

Other Retellings of “The Empress of Rome” in France Gautier addressed his Miracles to “roys et roÿnes, / Dus, duchoisez, contes, contessez, / Evesques, abbés, abbeessez, / Moinnes et clers, rendus, provoires, / Toutes nonains, blanches et noires” [kings and queens, dukes,

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duchesses, counts, countesses, bishops, abbots, abbesses, monks and clerks, friars, priests, all nuns, white and black].43 The inclusion of this story in seventeen complete and seven partial manuscript copies of Gautier’s Miracles de Nostre Dame indicates widespread appeal of the story in the Middle Ages. However, the manuscripts of Gautier’s story were not the only means by which the story of the empress circulated in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries. Not far from Soissons, and perhaps even during Gautier’s lifetime, another priest, Vincent de Beauvais (d. 1264), was reading Latin miracles of the Virgin Mary in the course of constructing his monumental four-part encyclopedia, the Speculum maius. Vincent includes “The Empress of Rome” in part 4, the Speculum historiale, a universal history of the world. Vincent’s history was an enormously popular work, as evidenced by the existence of 242 copies in European and American libraries.44 The earliest version of the work was probably completed by 1244, a mere eight years after the death of Gautier de Coinci.45 During a discussion of events that occurred during the reign of Tiberius Caesar, Vincent gives an account of the death and assumption of the Virgin Mary, followed by thirty-five miracles. “The Empress of Rome,” chapters 90 to 92 in book 7 of the Douai edition, is the longest of the miracles. By contrast to Gautier’s audience, Vincent’s was learned, educated in Latin, and probably largely male. By writing in prose and by placing the miracles within the context of historical events, Vincent provides a sense of veracity. These events actually happened, he says, and they are evidence of the saintliness and continuing spiritual power of the Virgin Mary. Although “The Empress of Rome” is longer than the other thirty-four miracles, it does not stand out in any other way in manuscripts compiled before the second quarter of the fourteenth century, when the text was translated into Old French by Jean de Vignay for the French royal family.46 Jean de Vignay’s Miroir historial is of greater importance for an understanding of the reception of narratives of falsely accused queens by secular audiences than is Vincent’s Latin text. The earliest extant Old French manuscript was produced about 1332–33 for the future John II the Good.47 In the years immediately following, 1333–35, another copy was produced for his mother, Joan of Burgundy, the wife of the reigning French king, Philip VI.48 Both of these early copies were heavily illustrated. The one produced for John II, the only complete manuscript of the two, contains 730 miniatures.

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Compared to Gautier’s sophisticated Old French verse, neither Vincent’s Latin text nor Jean de Vignay’s Old French prose are remarkable from a literary point of view.49 They represent a scaled-down approach to the narrative: within the context of a universal history, the story is only one of many lives of historical figures and descriptions of religious events. The Old French manuscripts are interesting, however, because of their patrons and programs of illustrations. The discussion here will focus on Paris, B.N. fr. 316.50 The opening author portraits draw an analogy, as Claudine ChavannesMazel has explained,51 between the patronage Louis IX gave to Vincent de Beauvais and the patronage Joan of Burgundy gave to Jean de Vignay.52 According to Chavannes-Mazel, the artistic parallel between Joan of Burgundy and Louis IX had political importance as part of an effort to defeat the claims of the English to the throne. If the royal line fell to a woman, then Queen Isabelle of England, daughter of Philip the Fair, might have a stronger right to the throne of France than Philip VI. However, as the author portrait suggests, Joan of Burgundy’s lineage also entitled her to the crown: “Philippe VI’s wife Jeanne de Bourgogne was directly related to Saint Louis since her mother Agnès was his daughter. In short, if a female lineage could convey the French crown as the English maintained, then Jeanne de Bourgogne had her own claim. . . . The depicting [in the frontispiece] of the actual commission of both text and translation instead of their presentation makes the typology even more clear: it not only shows the family tie of the two patrons, but actually parallels the deeds of the Queen with those of her holy predecessor.”53 In the context of an Old French manuscript produced for the French queen and in the context of political debate over succession, the illustrations of “The Empress of Rome” take on greater importance than in other contexts. In the Paris manuscript, one illustration is presented for each of the three chapters into which the story is divided (chapters 90–92 of book 8). Following the rubric at the start of chapter 90, on fol. 382, is a threepanel miniature (fig. 7) that extends across both columns. In the first panel, the emperor stands at the left, his right hand raised in a speaking gesture, directing the empress and his brother, who stand at the right, to guard his kingdom during his absence. The artist emphasizes the contrast in the ages of the two brothers (the emperor has long white hair and a white beard; his brother is a young boy, dressed modestly in a short tunic), suggesting the common literary topos of young boy and old man.54 The

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middle panel depicts a round tower on the right: the young man is being led into it by a servant who follows behind him; he, in turn, is directed by the empress, at the left, her right hand raised in a speaking gesture. Her posture echoes that of the emperor himself in the panels on either side. The third panel contains echoes of the first two: the emperor stands to the left, his right hand raised in a speaking gesture, as in panel one, but this time it is the empress who is led away to the right (supposedly to her death) by a servant. The second illustration (fig. 8) in B.N. fr. 316 follows the rubric for chapter 91 on fol. 382v; it is smaller, only one column wide, and treats only one moment in time. To the right, the two servants who have been ordered to kill the empress are attempting to rape her. She is seated on the ground and is being pushed back toward the ground; her crown looks as if it is about to fall off her head. On the left, three men on horseback arrive in the nick of time. The first (the only one whose horse is depicted) has his right arm extended with his hand in a commanding gesture, which succeeds in stopping the rape. The final illustration in the series of three (fig. 9) is found after the rubric for chapter 92 on fol. 383v. Like the first, it is a three-panel illustration covering both columns. The artist again conveys meaning through analogy: in panel one, the Virgin Mary stands to the left and points down to the sleeping figure of the empress, lying on the rock in the midst of the sea; in panel two, the empress stands to the left and offers the herbal drink to the leprous man seated on the right. The artist stresses—through the analogy drawn in panels one and two—the similarity between the Virgin Mary’s salvation of the empress and the empress’s cure of the leper, the very theme that is repeatedly expressed in the illustrations of Gautier de Coinci’s Miracles. Surprisingly, however, the empress is absent in the last panel of this illustration, which represents the cure of the false brother-in-law. In contrast to illustrations of the empress in manuscripts of Gautier’s Miracles, the artist of B.N. fr. 316 plays down the empress’s role in the final miracle. Panel three depicts seven male figures. The pope, seated on a throne on the right, is the dominant figure. Seated before him, in a bowed and repentant gesture, is the brother of the emperor. The emperor stands behind his brother and points down toward him in a directing gesture, evidently ordering him to confess all his sins, even those he might have committed against the emperor himself. A secular male figure stands on either side of

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the emperor, and a cardinal stands on either side of the pope. The absence of the empress from this final panel suggests that, in this retelling of the story, the restoration of justice, forgiveness, and repentence are actions that concern only men of government and church, not women. The series of illustrations conveys the idea that secular justice, though often lacking, will ultimately prevail, if church and emperor work together. At the start of the narrative, the emperor’s secular and religious lives are separate: his decision to go on a pilgrimage stems from his thoughts alone, and he seeks counsel neither from other members of his court nor from the pope. The text merely states: “Et il vint en pensee a lemperiere que il iroit loi(n)gca (et) la visiter les eglyses des sains” [And the thought came to the emperor to depart and visit the churches of the saints]. His first act upon returning from his pilgrimage is hasty, a judgment reached without the legal process one would expect in the early fourteenth century, such as gathering witnesses and formulating a verdict. Thus, the events depicted in the first three-part panel contrast sharply with those of the last three-part panel, where the emperor appears, with two counselors, in the presence of the pope, accompanied by his two cardinals as counselors. The confession of the emperor’s brother brings not merely narrative resolution but, more important, spiritual absolution for the sinner and justice to the falsely accused empress. Through the diverse media of Gautier’s Miracles, Vincent de Beauvais’s Speculum historiale, and Jean de Vignay’s Miroir historial, the story of the empress of Rome was widely diffused throughout Europe in the thirteenth and early fourteenth centuries. Vincent’s text was translated into German and Dutch,55 and in the fifteenth century the Miracles were translated into prose by Jean Miélot for Philip the Good, duke of Burgundy. “The Empress of Rome” also reappears frequently both in France and England in other genres. In France, it appears as one of forty narratives rewritten for the stage and performed in Paris by the confrérie of goldsmiths between the years 1349 and 1382, the subject of chapter 4. In England, influenced by the spread of the Gesta Romanorum and Christine de Pizan’s Book of the City of Ladies, the story becomes the subject of the frescoes in Eton Chapel and of a series of bosses in a chapel of Norwich Cathedral. Finally, the empress is rewritten as “Jereslaus’s Wife” in Thomas Hoccleve’s interesting psychological study known as the Series, discussion of which constitutes the principal focus of chapter 6.

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2 The Handless Queen

During the second quarter of the thirteenth century, around the same time that Gautier de Coinci was composing his Miracles de Nostre Dame, another Frenchman from the Beauvais region, Philippe de Remi, also composed a narrative of a falsely accused noblewoman, a chanson d’aventure titled La Manekine.1 The work survives in only one manuscript, Paris, B.N. fr. 1588,2 a codex that contains the collected poetic works of Philippe de Remi as well as an incomplete romance dated 1278, Le Roman du Hem by Sarrasin.3 Written in a single hand,4 the works of Philippe are accompanied by thirty-one illustrations. La Manekine, with its sixteen miniatures, is the first work in the codex, on fols. 2r–56v. The codex appears to have been assembled around 1300, the terminus post quem being 1278.5 Although the illustrations are in poor condition today, having been badly rubbed from overuse,6 they were originally quite impressive. The first two illustrations will serve to introduce the manuscript, the narrative, and its handless heroine. In the opening episodes of his chanson d’aventure, the author establishes an important thematic connection between marriage and issues of power, gender, and inheritance. On her deathbed, the heroine’s mother begs a boon from her sorrowing husband,7 a request that is couched in feudal language, replete with such words as “don,” “mes biens en gherredon,” “loialté,” “jur” and “asseür.” She insists that the king promise never to take another wife, so that her daughter may inherit Hungary. Even at death’s door, however, she is a realist, for she adds a proviso: if it should turn out that the king’s princes and counts will not allow their daughter and only child to inherit Hungary, then he may remarry—but only if he can find a woman who resembles his late wife. The opening, two-compartment miniature (fig. 10) depicts, in the left panel, the deathbed scene and, in the right panel, the subsequent counsel of the barons, who insist upon the king’s remarriage to insure a male heir.

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The miniature thus captures the struggle over inheritance with which the romance begins.8 The remarriage of the king of Hungary becomes increasingly problematic in the series of political machinations that follow and that lead eventually to the mutilation of the heroine—named Joy, with evident irony— and her exile. As her dying mother anticipated, the barons will not permit Joy to inherit. Hearing of the king’s vow to his dead wife, they send out twelve messengers in search of a woman who resembles the former queen, a search that proves unsuccessful. At an assemblage of the court on Christmas Day, a baron, having noticed how much the king’s daughter resembles her mother, makes a novel public proposal: the king should marry his own daughter and the clergy should arrange to legitimize the marriage. They present their proposal to the king, who at first refuses. However, a devilish notion takes hold in his mind, and he soon falls in love with his daughter. Despite a struggle with Reason, Lust (“Amours”) conquers both mind and body. He announces his intentions to his daughter and demands her obedience. Declaring her loyalty to the higher laws of God and accusing him of having made a “fol convent” with his wife, she rejects his advances. Caught between the demands of parental and divine obedience, Joy’s only route out of this bizarre situation is self-mutilation. As illustrated in the Paris manuscript (fig. 11) and amplified by the text, she goes into the kitchen, picks up a cleaver in her right hand, places her left hand on the windowsill, and chops the hand off; it flies out the window and falls into a stream below, where it is swallowed by a sturgeon. Joy’s amputation of her left hand, read on a literal level, marks her as unfit to be a queen; furthermore, this act so disfigures her that she no longer resembles her mother. It also takes away the essence of her being—her name—for it makes her Joy-less (as well as stateless). On a metaphoric level, her sacrifice demonstrates her obedience to a higher law than that of her father; in fact, her action may be understood as an acceptance of the sin of the father, paying penance for it with the loss of her hand.9 Although Philippe’s heroine is named Joy, not Constance, the tale follows the pattern of the secularized stories written a century or so later in England by Trevet, Gower, and Chaucer, who name their heroine either Constance or its variant Custance. Philippe’s story thus represents the earliest known example of the second type of accused-queen narrative under consideration in this book, the Constance type. Like the empress of

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Rome stories of the first type, medieval Constance stories also involve two exiles (usually by sea on a rudderless ship) and at least one false accusation. Sometimes the episode of the rebuffed lover who cuts the throat of the heroine’s companion and places the bloody knife in her hand is also present. And just as in the empress of Rome narratives, Constance stories always end with a happy reunion of husband with wife and child. The similarities, however, stop here. In Constance stories, the second exile is typically caused not by another lusty man but by an evil mother-in-law, jealous of the wife that her son has picked up out of nowhere. The treasonous acts of the mother-in-law are accomplished by means of two forged, slanderous letters, a motif that becomes a hallmark of these tales. An even more important difference between the two types of stories is that the heroine in Constance stories is always a virgin at the start of the narrative. Moreover, the inciting moment is sometimes, as in Philippe de Remi’s story, the desire of the father to marry his daughter, incredible as this motif may seem to modern readers. La Manekine, written in 8,590 lines of octosyllabic verse, incorporates not only the remarkable father-daughter incest motif but also the equally vivid motif of the cut-off hand. The title of the story, which means “mannequin,” is given in the last line of the manuscript. Derived from the Latin mancus (mutilated), it suggests the image of a wooden figure that lacks hands. It is also the pseudonym assigned to the heroine during most of the narrative—that is, during her exile from her native land of Hungary. Modern readers may have previously encountered this bizarre motif through study of fairy tales. Among the collection of tales assembled by the Grimm brothers in the nineteenth century, “The Girl Without Hands” (number 31) presents an analogue to the medieval tale.10 In this version, the protagonists are poor people, a miller and his daughter, rather than king and princess. The story has been sanitized of references to incest: instead, the devil tempts the father with a promise of riches if he will grant him what is standing behind his mill. Thinking that this is only his old apple tree, not his beautiful daughter, the miller agrees in writing to this exchange. When the devil arrives three years later to collect his prize, the virtuous daughter washes herself clean and draws a chalk circle around herself. As long as she remains clean, the devil cannot approach her. He orders the father to remove all water from her, but her tears cleanse her hands. The devil demands that the father cut off her hands, which he

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does. Again, her tears wash the stumps clean, and so when the devil arrives the third time to claim her, he must give up his power over father and daughter. The presence of this striking and evocative motif has prompted some scholars to adopt a psychological reading of both the folktale and the literary narrative. Alan Dundes, writing about “The Maiden Without Hands,”11 expands on the earlier Freudian interpretation of Otto Rank, for whom the cut-off hand symbolizes “self-inflicted punishment for masturbatory activity, which itself substitutes for sexual involvement with the father.”12 Thelma Fenster’s “Beaumanoir’s La Manekine: Kin D(r)ead: Incest, Doubling, and Death” also remains rooted in Freudian assumptions. For her the heroine represents “castration anxiety. . . . [She is] the vehicle through which the childish desire for the parent of the opposite sex is lived out and punished.”13 Surprisingly, both scholars place the blame for the incest on the daughter rather than the offending father, and hence see the hand as symbolic of “her sinning hand” (Dundes, my emphasis) or “as a self-inflicted punishment for forbidden desire, a castration performed on oneself” (Fenster).14 Rather than pursue the psychological approach—which, admittedly, if grounded in theories other than those of Freud, might shed light on the narrative—I will analyze the story in the context of the unique manuscript in which it is found, other medieval narratives of calumniated women, and the local historical community for which it was written (to the extent that knowledge of this exists).15 Read in this way, the mutilated heroine becomes an emblem of noble female victims caught in a power struggle between opposing governing forces. Her “lack” is due not to any deficiency of her own but rather to her father’s excessive, selfish, tyrannical behavior. Unlike the empress of Rome, who already possesses the highest secular authority available to a woman and who, by the end of the narrative, attains spiritual authority akin to that of the Virgin Mary herself, this daughter of the king of Hungary is a passive heroine, as symbolized by her handless state. Her body becomes the text upon which the tyranny of the father’s violence is written. In this chapter I will first address the knotty problem of authorship, then analyze the most prominent themes of the discourse within the context of the wider social debate about marriage and incest. Analysis of the unique manuscript and its remarkable program of sixteen illustrations will confirm my approach to reading the heroine’s handless state within a

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social context. A comparison to the analogous thirteenth-century German romance Mai und Beaflor will highlight the judicial perspective of Philippe de Remi, a feature largely ignored by the German writer in favor of exploration of the powers of minne. Finally, a comparison of Philippe de Remi’s verse Manekine to a prose translation made in the fifteenth century by Jehan Wauquelin will demonstrate the enduring popularity of the narrative in the Middle Ages.

Philippe de Remi and B.N. fr. 1588 In addition to La Manekine, Philippe de Remi was the author of another verse romance, Jehan et Blonde, a “Salus d’amours,” a “Conte d’amours,” and a number of other short poems, secular and sacred. In 1869 Henri Léonard Bordier identified the author as Philippe de Beaumanoir, a jurist (ca. 1250–1296) and author of an Old French customary, The Coutumes de Beauvaisis. However, after years of debate, the tide of scholarly opinion has turned, and it is now thought that the author of the literary works was not the jurist but rather his father, also named Philippe (d. ca. 1265), a man generally referred to in archival documents as Philippe de Remi.16 For purposes of clarity, I will refer to the father as Philippe père and the son as Philippe fils. Although there is no contemporary reference to Philippe père as a poet, other than the signatures on his works, there is considerable archival evidence concerning the roles of both father and son in feudal government. Without wishing to reopen the debate surrounding the identity of the author of La Manekine, I will summarize what is known about both figures in order to set the social context for analysis of the production and dissemination of the only extant manuscript of the romance, B.N. fr. 1588. Pierre de Remi, the father of Philippe père, was a knight who participated in the battle at Bouvines in 1214. He held enfeoffed land from the Abbey of Saint-Denis, for a document of 1222 reports that he returned a portion of that land to the abbey, and that when he died (probably in 1239), the rights to his remaining land would be transferred to his oldest son, Philippe.17 In the earliest documents the land was referred to as “terre Bernard” or “Remi” and was located in the county of Clermont, in the region of Beauvais, north of Paris. Philippe père is mentioned in a series of administrative acts written between 1239 and 1262. Documents from the years 1239, 1241, and

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1249 reveal that he was serving as bailli (administrator and judge) of the Gâtinais (administered at Lorris) for the counts of Artois, Boulogne, and Dammartin.18 After the death of Robert of Artois in 1250, when the Gâtinais reverted to the crown, Philippe may have been replaced by a bailiff of King Louis IX. Apparently Philippe continued to serve, however, in a judicial capacity for Robert’s widow, Countess Mahaut, at the court of Arras.19 In March of 1255 he is mentioned for the first time as “chevaliers sire de Biaumanoir.”20 Acts of 1257 and 1259 show that he was functioning as a judge at the countess’s court. A document of November 1262 mentions a second wife, Alice de Bailleul, and three children, Girart, Philippe, and Peronelle. He appears to have died by 1265, for an act of February 1265 transfers the land to the inheritor, his eldest son, Girart. Philippe fils, probably born in 1246 or 1247, is mentioned in numerous documents from 1279 to 1292, from which his career can be traced.21 He served as bailli of Clermont from May 1279 to May 1282, the period during which he wrote the Coutumes (it is dated 1283 in the manuscript’s explicit).22 He served as seneschal of Poitou from November 1284 to February 1288 and seneschal of Saintonge in 1287 and 1288. In 1289 he was sent on a mission to Pope Nicholas IV. Thereafter he was bailli of Vermandois in 1289–90 and again in 1292. He sat at the Parliament of Paris sometime in this period. Finally, he was bailli of Touraine from 1292 until 1296, the year in which he died. Philippe fils also married twice, but only the name of the second wife is known: Mabille de Boves, descended from a branch of the house of Artois, known to have been buried near Beaumanoir in 1306.23 If Philippe père was indeed the author of La Manekine and Jehan et Blonde, what then was the date of composition of the two romances? As so often is the case with medieval authors who fail to note the date in their works, we have very little evidence from the period to help us. Some scholars have speculated that Philippe’s duties as administrator and judge would have been too time-consuming to permit him to compose poetry after 1239; however, one short poem in B.N. fr. 1588, “Salus d’amour,” is signed “Phelippes de Baumanoir,” a title whose first documented use is in 1255. Barbara Sargent-Baur, the most recent editor of La Manekine, reviews the scanty evidence and scholarly opinions concerning composition of the two romances and concludes, on the basis of poetic style and theme, that the most likely period for their composition is the second quarter of the thirteenth century.24

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While details of the lives of the two Philippes help define a local historical community for which the work was written, the manuscript itself suggests a possible social function. Manuscripts containing the collected works of a single poet are unusual in the thirteenth century. Sylvie Lécuyer, in her edition of Jehan et Blonde, makes an intriguing suggestion about the possible purpose of the manuscript. Noting that a character in the Roman du Hem, Enguerran de Boves, was the brother of Mabille de Boves, Philippe fils’ second wife, she suggests that the manuscript was created by Philippe fils as a family memorial to honor his father and to bring prestige to the family name. In this case the terminus ad quem would be 1296, the year of Philippe’s death. She also notes that his elder brother named his daughter Joïe after the heroine of La Manekine, a fact that implies the family’s awareness of and interest in memorializing its poetic roots.25 Albert Henry, the editor of the Roman du Hem, also notes the connection between the fictional Enguerran de Boves and the real Mabille de Boves, wife of Philippe fils, but he draws a different conclusion, suggesting that the romance was written to commemorate an actual tournament held in Picardy in 1278, in which Mabille’s brother was a participant. His theory does not necessarily contradict the idea that B.N. fr. 1588 was a family memorial, if it was assembled after 1278: the poetic works connected with the Boves and the Beaumanoirs may have been consciously juxtaposed to celebrate the linking of the two families, perhaps at the time of the marriage or the birth of the firstborn. What is clear from the analysis of evidence about Philippe père and Philippe fils is that both men belonged to the lesser nobility and served as bailli. Thus, both men had an interest in law and administration of justice—themes that, through false accusation and forged letters, play an important role in La Manekine. The conflicting claims of church and state about issues of marriage, incest, and sexuality were important issues during the lives of both men, and they constitute one of the principal themes of the romance and its program of illustrations in B.N. fr. 1588. Joy (alias Manekine) is the first of a series of accused queens whose authors were secular men associated with government and the execution of the law. The author of the story of the countess of Anjou, subject of the next chapter, was private secretary and notary to Philip the Fair, king of France. And Joy’s more distant cousin, Chaucer’s “pale and passive” Custance, is narrated by the fictional Man of Law. An analysis of the text and its accompanying program of illustrations in B.N. fr. 1588 will dem-

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onstrate that the handless maiden represents an innocent victim of medieval legal processes undermined by slander and forged documents. Philippe de Remi’s connection with justice and the administration of law suggests that his narrative is best read within the context of important judicial debates of the thirteenth century, particularly those concerning marriage and incest.

La Manekine and the Medieval Marriage Debate The opening of the story, accompanied by its striking illustrations, announces the thematic focus of the romance: marriage and incest. Previous commentators on La Manekine have noted the author’s interest in marriage, but without developing the idea at any length. Thelma Fenster writes of “the conflict in the text between two modes of marriage, the lay, or aristocratic mode, and the religious one,” concluding: “Of course, the dispute is settled in favor of the church.”26 Meg Shepherd also perceives two views of marriage expounded in the narrative; unlike Fenster, she concludes that the author promotes a synthesis of marriage and chastity,27 a view that lies closer to my own. Until recently, however, the theme of incest has been of greater interest to Manekine scholars than that of marriage.28 Claude Roussel approaches the theme from a broad view of medieval French literature, distinguishing between two major types of narratives: those in which incest between father and daughter is consummated and those (like the Constance narratives) in which the incest in unconsummated. Elizabeth Archibald approaches the topic specifically from the point of view of narratives of falsely accused noblewomen, noting that the incest theme was at least as important as the false accusation and that it has “an ancient and lasting connection with the Accused Queen theme.”29 She argues for a new interest in incest stories in the years 1000–1200 that was related to (1) “the development of the theological doctrine of contritionism” and (2) “the church’s campaign to enforce the consanguinity laws.”30 Indeed, it is this connection between incest and the church’s new definitions of consanguinity and discussions of marriage in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries that provides the historical context for understanding Philippe de Remi’s narrative. The author of La Manekine uses the victimization of his mutilated heroine to expound a new ideal of marriage, one that answers a contemporary marriage debate between religious and secu-

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lar authorities in thirteenth-century France. That La Manekine reflects a conflict between exogamous and endogamous marriage has been noted before31 and is particularly evident in the inciting events at the start of the narrative. The search launched by the barons to find a suitable woman (who resembles the dead queen) represents a push toward exogamy, albeit unfulfilled. By contrast, the barons’ promotion of the king’s marriage to his daughter represents a push toward the opposite type of marriage. The subsequent events in the narrative clearly align the endogamous marriage with lustful, tyrannical behavior opposed to the laws of God. The text thus reflects the larger societal debate explored by Georges Duby in his studies of lay and ecclesiastical marriage customs in twelfth-century France. Duby has noted a strong impetus toward endogamous marriage under the lay model and an opposing impetus toward exogamous marriage under the ecclesiastical model,32 a conflict that was still visible in the thirteenth century. The debate on marriage had its origins in the Gregorian reform begun in the late eleventh century, when Gregory VII (r. 1073–85) campaigned against clerical marriage, ended double monasteries, and began to consolidate church power and wealth. In the next century Pope Alexander III (r. 1159–81), further eroding the power of male guardians, “made consent of the partners the sole valid ground for marriage.”33 During this century, undoubtedly accelerated by demographic changes and the influence of Gratian’s Decretals, dowry customs also changed. Susan Stuard explains that the Germanic practice of husbands giving gifts to wives was gradually replaced by the Roman custom of a gift from the bride’s family to the groom.34 Natalie Zemon Davis and Georges Duby describe a gradual shift from marriage as a principally secular affair, arranged by noblemen concerned with consolidating their power, to one in which the church increasingly exerted authority.35 Two aspects of the church’s growing control over marriage customs are particularly relevant to a discussion of La Manekine: the matter of spousal choice and the definition of incest. The church’s insistence on the legal need for consent by partners implies approval of marriage as a sacrament and suggests a positive role for marital affection within the Christian life. Indeed, there were a few writers who stressed the positive aspects of marriage,36 or who, like Jean de Meun in the Roman de la Rose, argued that sex was a part of natural law rather than a sin. Nonetheless, most theologians, including Thomas Aquinas,

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continued to view sex as sin and to expound ideas about marriage that were imbued with a deeply misogynist streak.37 It is all the more remarkable that a secular poet like Philippe de Remi should become, as I will argue below, an advocate for the right not only to choose one’s own partner but also for the enjoyment of sexual bliss within the bonds of marriage. The second of the marital changes most sought by the Church concerned a new definition of incest. The first two Lateran Councils (1123 and 1139) forbade marriage within seven degrees of relatedness. This requirement apparently proving too difficult to achieve in practice, the consanguinity rules were reduced a century later from seven to four degrees (Lateran IV, 1215). Although he finds the motives for this reform difficult to delineate precisely, James Brundage suggests that churchmen were motivated by a desire to control property: “Restricting the capacity of families to create extensive webs of interrelations through marriage helped to safeguard Church property from the legal claims of numerous relatives.”38 Two important definitions of incest operated in the thirteenth century, both of them relevant to an analysis of La Manekine. In its root sense, incestus means simply “unchastity.” Used in this sense, it appears in medieval penitentials as a branch of lechery.39 The second sense of incestus refers to any union within the proscribed degrees of relatedness. The term is used in this sense by a monk of Saint-Bertin in his genealogy for the count of Flanders: “Incest is worse than adultery.”40 The two definitions— a “close” family relationship and “unchastity”—merge when incestus is used, as it sometimes was by interpreters of the story of Adam and Eve, to refer to original sin, the carnal pleasure associated with Eve’s eating the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge.41 Throughout the period in which marriage theory was being codified and cleansed of contradictions by church lawyers, great tension persisted in the practices of both noblemen and churchmen. Although the consanguinity rules may have encouraged exogamous marriages (and the consolidation of church wealth and power), they also gave noblemen an excuse for annulling marriages. In the best-known case of many in the Middle Ages, Louis VII and Eleanor of Aquitaine were divorced on March 21, 1152, on the pretext of their relationship as cousins.42 Furthermore, marital choice was difficult to enforce in the face of powerful fathers concerned more with the consolidation of land than the de-

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sires of their young children. The struggle of Christina of Markyate (1096/ 98–1160), for example, to avoid marriage to the husband her parents had chosen for her is well known.43 It is difficult to imagine that young royal brides such as Elizabeth of Hainaut, married at age nine to Philip Augustus in 1180, or Marie of Anjou, married likewise at nine to the future Charles VII in 1413, had much choice in their marriages.44 The tensions that could arise between private affection and the conflicting political interests of church and family in marital issues can be illustrated by the real-life example of Eleanor (1215–1275), a sister of the English king Henry III, a woman whose story Philippe de Remi may have known.45 Another example of a royal child bride who could hardly have exercised meaningful consent to her marriage, Eleanor was married at the age of nine to William Marshal II, earl of Pembroke, aged thirty. When William died seven years later without heirs, a lifelong inheritance battle began over her right to the traditional “dower third.” The widow complicated matters by taking a vow of chastity with her governess, Cecily de Sandford, who was under the influence of Edmund of Abingdon, later archbishop of Canterbury.46 They dressed in homespun and wore the wedding rings of nuns, but remained lay figures. Cecily held to her vow until the end of her life, but Eleanor soon began dressing again like a lady.47 At age twenty-one, Eleanor met Simon de Monfort, second son of the notorious Simon who led the northern French army against the Albigensians. Two years later the couple were married secretly in the king’s private chapel at Westminster at Christmas, thus offending King Henry’s barons, the relatives of William Marshal, and the clerics who remembered Eleanor’s vow of chastity.48 Simon headed for Rome where, according to Matthew Paris, he obtained “by means of money . . . permission to enjoy his illicit marriage.”49 Hence, Simon de Monfort provides a thirteenthcentury example of a nobleman who was able to manipulate the Roman clergy to grant the permission he needed for the marriage to Eleanor. The disapproving tone with which Matthew Paris speaks of the pope here and in other passages in the Chronica majora echoes Philippe de Remi’s cynical attitude toward the clergy at the start of La Manekine. After the barons have been unable to find a woman who resembles the dead mother, one of them not only suggests the marriage of father and daughter but argues that it will be possible to obtain permission for this from the pope. Indeed, the churchmen present agreed:

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En l[a fin] li clerc s’acorderent Que il le r[oy] en prieroient Et sur a[us] le pecié penroient. A l’Apo[stol]e monterront Le gra[nt] pourfit pour quoi fait l’ont. (336–40) [Finally the clerics agreed That they would bid the king to do this And take the sin upon themselves. They would show the pope The large profit for which they did it.] The key word here, “pourfit,” already bore the double sense by the beginning of the twelfth century of both “advantage” and “gain” or “profit.”50 It seems clear that the author is suggesting that the lure of “profit” would lead the church to overlook the irregularity of father-daughter incest. The author’s cynicism about church politics may be surprising to modern readers, but evidence from numerous medieval chronicles of the bending of the church’s consanguinity laws suggests that the literary episode would not have been surprising to contemporary audiences. Although Jehan Maillart, at the beginning of the next century, omits reference to clerical approval of the incest from his narrative, this can be explained by the more significant absence of any reference to Rome or the pope, a silence to be understood in the context of the politics of the court of Philip the Fair. For Philippe de Remi, in the thirteenth century, Rome and the pope are still principal players in the fictionalized affairs of state. Despite the cynical tone in the opening scenes, the overall attitude of the author is conciliatory toward the church. Within his narrative, after the initial disastrous attempt to marry off the heroine, the author presents two more attempts to establish a marriage for Joy that satisfies the needs of both church and state. In the third and last attempt, in the presence of the pope, a synthesis is finally achieved, as I shall argue below.

The Construction of an Ideal Marriage The preceding discussion of thirteenth-century marriage theory provides a context for analysis of the opening events of La Manekine, where, through antithesis, Philippe has laid the groundwork for his principal

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theme—the construction of an ideal marriage. The incestuous marriage proposed by Joy’s father at the start of the story represents the worst marriage possible: there is certainly no consent by the daughter, and the king is a weak figure, both politically and morally corrupt, subject to the conflicting demands of his dead wife and his barons. By contrast, the marriage that Philippe constructs by the end of the narrative is based on the consent of both partners, involves marital affection tempered by the strictures of marital chastity, provides a dower for the queen, and consolidates the power of three countries—Hungary, Scotland, and Armenia— under the rule of one king. The marriage achieved at the end of the narrative represents an ideal merger of individual desire, secular exigency, and clerical morality. To see how Philippe develops his notions about marriage, we must first look briefly at the succeeding events in the story. Following Joy’s selfmutilation, her angry father condemns her to be burned at the stake; she is rescued by a seneschal who sets her adrift in a rudderless boat. Shortly after, she arrives in Scotland, and the king of that country places her under his protection and assigns her the name “Menekine” (and later as “la Manequine” and “la Manekine”) since she will reveal nothing about her background or heritage. After a period of courtship, she becomes the queen of Scotland. Soon after, however, following the birth of her son, she experiences another unfortunate reversal, a second setting adrift in a rudderless boat, which her evil mother-in-law brings about through false accusation and two forged letters. Finally, after seven years, her innocence is revealed, and she and her son, husband, and father are reunited in Rome. An Easter miracle, performed by the pope, restores her hand, which has been miraculously preserved by the Blessed Virgin Mary in the sturgeon that swallowed it. If the initial incestuous marriage proposal represents the nadir of morality, the second marriage proposal, made by the king of Scotland, is treated more positively. Although the heroine is mutilated, having lost her left hand; although she is unknown in Scotland, where her rudderless boat brings her; although she refuses to provide any details from her past, not even her name—nonetheless, our heroine quickly achieves respect from those around her for her inner virtue. The Scottish king takes her into his household, spends time in her company, and often engages her in the game of chess. Predictably, Manekine and the king fall in love. However, be-

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cause she intuits what will be the angry response of the king’s mother and because he realizes that it is dangerous to marry someone about whom he knows nothing, they attempt at first to keep their feelings for one another hidden. Only after the Queen Mother tries to prevent the couple from ever meeting again does the king acknowledge his love and ask Joy for her consent in this marriage. After the performance of the marriage in a secret ceremony, the king grants Manekine a dowry of Ireland and Cornwall and plans a public celebration two weeks later on Pentecost. One of the most remarkable features of Philippe’s depiction of this marriage is his positive attitude toward marital affection. He is very open about the delight the couple take in their physical union. There is none of Chaucer’s Man of Law’s coyness: For thogh that wyves be ful hooly thynges, They moste take in pacience at nyght Swiche manere necessaries as been plesynges To folk that han ywedded hem with rynges, And leye a lite hir hoolynesse aside.51 Commenting positively on the physical pleasure enjoyed by this married couple, Philippe links his heroine’s name with sexual joy: “Joïe autrestant senefie / Commë avoir d’amours la joie” (1780–81) [Joy also means to have the joy of love]. Joy thus includes the hugs, caresses, kisses, and tight embraces that accompany marriage. Does the marriage achieved here in the middle of the narrative represent Philippe’s ideal marriage? From a legal point of view, there is much that is positive. Manekine is given a choice to marry or not, she is provided with financial security through her dower lands, and the marital affection between Manekine and the king seems not only genuine but also approved by the author. However, despite its positive legal and emotional aspects, this marriage is politically unstable and involves no financial benefit for the people of Scotland. Although the marriage is certainly not immoral, as was the father’s incestuous proposal, it nonetheless exists only within the narrow context of a courtly tradition, outside of any significant religious or political context. In comparison to the marriage achieved at the end of the romance, this marriage seems limited, or perhaps it is best understood as merely an immature stage of marriage. Two images express its limited, secular nature: the chess game and the

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name “Manekine.” The chessboard evokes the courtly love tradition and alludes to earlier fictional love scenes: in Marie de France’s “Eliduc,” for example, Guilliadun plays chess in her room when Eliduc arrives to confess his love to her. In Jean de Meun’s portion of the Roman de la Rose, the association of parlor games, such as chess, with the games of love is made both by Fair Welcoming and the Old Woman. The author’s use of the image of the “mannequin” is more problematic: does the term refer to her missing hand? to wooden figures used in the training of knights for battle? to straw figures used in torture scenes in medieval drama? to her exemplary nature as a good woman? to the female sculpture with whom Pygmalion falls in love? Irene Gnarra cites evidence for all these possible meanings.52 The most important allusion, however, appears to be to the story of Pygmalion, a sculptor who carved and then fell in love with a statue of a beautiful woman, which Venus, out of pity, brought to life. When Manekine is handed over to the king of Scotland by the provost who found her on the shore, an explicit comparison between sculpting and the heroine’s powerless position is made. The provost says: Je cuic que si bele ne fust Faite de piere ne de fust. Or est vostre, s’en poés faire Du tout vostre bon, sans contraire, Qu’ele est d’espave chi venue. (1269–73) [I believe that none so beautiful Has ever been made of stone or wood; Now she is yours, and you can do with her Whatever you want, without opposition, For she has come here lost and afraid.] This passage suggests that the name Manekine is an appropriate expression of our handless heroine’s powerlessness: her refusal to say anything about her past or to reveal her name, and her resolve to depend solely on charity (“une dolente caitive”), blank out her past, making her a nonentity who must, as if by Pygmalion, be recreated. Later in the narrative, during the final reunion of the couple in Rome, the author presents his view of a fully realized marriage, one in which he achieves a synthesis of secular and religious marital ideals. Philippe does

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not retreat from his positive view of marital affection; however, in line with the recommendations of penitentials current in thirteenth-century France,53 he places some constraints on sexual joy. Because the reunion of Manekine and the king occurs during the week of Easter, the seneschal suggests that the couple postpone their sexual reunion until after Easter Day. This gesture of marital chastity is accompanied by additional blessings and miracles: coincidentally Manekine’s father arrives in Rome to make public confession of the wrongs he committed against his daughter; overhearing his confession, Manekine acknowledges her identity and regains the use of her former name. Joy the woman is reborn, and joy the emotion becomes universal. The connotations of her name are made apparent: personal happiness, physical joy, religious ecstasy, and heavenly reward. The final expression of religious joy comes with the performance of a miracle by the pope: he rejoins Joy’s hand, preserved in the belly of the sturgeon, to her stump. Only after this magnificent assemblage of royal persons united in their religious fervor in the presence of the pope does Philippe allow Joy and the king to celebrate their sexual joy, which he describes in some detail: Or sachiés bien que cele nuit Orent assés joie et deduit, Comme cil qui tant s’entramoient Et qui tant s’entredesiroient. Perdu s’entrestoient .vii. ans, Dont tante paine, tans ahans Eurent eu; or sont au port Venu de joie et de confort. Tant de joie ont que ne poroie Dire la moitié de leur joie. (7835–44) [Now know this: that on that night They had their fill of joy and delight, Like those who so love one another And who so much desire each other. They had been separated seven years, During which time they had had much pain, Much affliction. Now they have come into

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The harbor of delight and comfort. So much joy they have that I could Not relate the half of it.] Rather than being denied or satirized as it so often is in the misogynist literature of the period, marital affection is approved within the context of traditional patriarchal social and religious structures. Philippe’s narrative recreates Joy: in restoring her hand, he resurrects her body, but that body is ultimately to be used to legitimize a monarchy and insure a male genealogy. Thus, issues of inheritance remain central to the narrative, as can best be seen by the ending of the work. The reunion of heroine, husband, and father leads not only to the physical wholeness and restoration of the heroine but also to the consolidation of lands and the restoration of effective government. Following the dramatic events in Rome, the three protagonists proceed to Hungary. Joy’s father cedes rule of all his lands to the king of Scotland. Joy inherits Armenia through her mother’s line, and the couple travel there so that her husband may receive homage from the Armenians. After half a year in Hungary and half a year in Armenia, with peace established, the couple return triumphantly to Scotland, just in time for the Easter celebration. This year of royal visits, marked by ritual processionals and homage ceremonies, reaffirms and strengthens male authority in a secular world. The family reunion and subsequent political events conform to the church calendar. It is during the Easter season that Joy’s hand is miraculously restored, and it is at Easter that the family, their European lands pacified and consolidated, return to Scotland. The poet draws out the description of their homecoming by having the seneschal return to prepare a great celebration (and retell the story of the adventures of the last eight years, by way of summarizing the narrative). During the magnificent royal entry into Berwick, the crowd’s attention is drawn to Joy: “Quant il en li les .ii. mains virent, / Du biau miracle se saignierent / Et durement se mervillierent” (8434–36) [When they saw her two hands, they blessed themselves and marveled much at this miracle]. The Scottish people first hear about the miraculous events in Rome through the seneschal’s report and then witness with their own eyes the evidence of the miracle. The reattached hand legitimizes the foreign queen, and the family reunion reestablishes the patriarchal authority of husband and son, the present and future kings of Scotland.

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The Program of Illustrations In her essay at the start of Sargent-Baur’s edition of La Manekine, Alison Stones suggests that two Arras artists worked on B.N. fr. 1588: a master, who executed the opening illustration, and an assistant, who completed the remaining illustrations.54 Accompanying her essay are black-and-white photographs of all thirty-one illustrations in B.N. fr. 1588, to which I will make reference, choosing to reproduce only three key illustrations in this study.55 A summary of the sixteen illustrations of La Manekine will aid the reader in following my discussion of the thematic content of the program of illustrations: 1. fol. 2ab (two-panel miniature): Vow at deathbed (left); search for queen’s double (right) (fig. 10) 2. fol. 6b (two-panel miniature): Joy’s self-mutilation (left); Joy, mutilated, before her father (right) (fig. 11) 3. fol. 9a: Joy in boat with sail 4. fol. 10a: Joy brought by provost to Scottish king’s table 5. fol. 14a: Gossip at betrothal of king to Joy 6. fol. 15vb: Dance to celebrate the coronation 7. fol. 18va: Departure of king from Scotland 8. fol. 21a: Birth of Joy’s son 9. fol. 22vb: King receiving letter announcing birth 10. fol. 25va: Joy receiving bad news from king 11. fol. 27a: Burning at the stake (fig. 12) 12. fol. 28va: King’s return to Scotland 13. fol. 31va: Joy and child exiled on boat 14. fol. 36va: King’s departure from Scotland in search of his wife56 15. fol. 46va: King of Hungary’s confession to pope 16. fol. 55b: Return of family to Scotland in boat Whereas artists of religious manuscripts often copied the work of others or referred to model books for their images, artists of secular manuscripts were frequently required to invent new images to accommodate the narrative.57 Such was the case with the artists of La Manekine. Because they had no religious models to use as the basis of their illustrations, these

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artists needed to become readers and interpreters of the text to create new images. The overriding narrative theme that they focused upon in La Manekine was the conflict between private affairs and public responses, with a secondary interest in depicting the helplessness of the mutilated heroine when she is unsupported by male guardians. The contrast between private and public affairs is most evident in the opening illustration (fig. 10): in the private scene on the left, the dying wife extracts a vow from the king of Hungary; in the public scene on the right, the king confronts his barons. The public world also intrudes in two other illustrations of private scenes: on fol. 14a, two gossiping figures observe the private betrothal of the king of Scotland and Manekine; on fol. 21a, three scowling males observe the birth scene of Manekine’s son. The presence of a white glove, symbolizing feudal relationships and agreements, adds to the public, political nature of many of the narrative events depicted in the series of illustrations. In the right compartment of the illustration on fol. 2 (fig. 10), as the king commands his liegeman to seek a woman who resembles the former queen, the king holds a glove in his right hand; the man to whom he is speaking may also hold a glove in his left hand, symbolizing the feudal relationship and the command to act on the king’s behalf.58 In the betrothal scene on fol. 14a, the king of Scotland holds a glove in his left hand, symbolizing the new relationship he is about to forge with Manekine.59 Although the seventh illustration, on fol. 18va, which depicts the departure of the king of Scotland, is badly rubbed, it appears that the king holds a glove in his left hand and that the figure furthest left in the picture may also hold a glove in his right hand, signifying the transfer of responsibility for Manekine’s welfare to the seneschal.60 On fol. 22vb, in the ninth illustration, the receipt of the forged letter, a male figure to the far left holds a glove in his right hand. Gnarra believes that this glove “implies that the king must remain faithful to his marriage vows.”61 In the illustration on fol. 36va, the fourteenth in the program, showing the departure of the king of Scotland to search for his wife, the king also holds a glove in his right hand. Despite the deteriorated condition of the manuscript, the glove is still recognizable in a sufficient number of illustrations to suggest that it is an important symbol, one that contrasts dramatically with depictions of the handless heroine. The presence of the glove reminds readers that men can form bonds of feudal loyalty, ritualized through the exchange of gloves, whereas Joy, made handless by her father’s lust, is unable to form enduring

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bonds until the end of the romance, when her hand is miraculously reattached to her body. Joy’s handless state is most dramatically depicted in the illustration in which she is shown chopping off her hand (fig. 11, left compartment). It is also highlighted in the two illustrations of her exiles. On fol. 9ra, which depicts her in a boat with a sail (in contradiction of the text describing a rudderless ship without sail), her stump is raised in such a way as to emphasize the contrast to her good right hand. In the depiction of the second exile, on fol. 31va, this time in a boat without sail or rudder (as the text specifies), her good right hand holds her child. The visible stump thus again contrasts with the unmutilated hand. The rudderless boat without sails, surrounded by the sea, further emphasizes her powerless state. The two boat scenes form a vivid contrast to the final illustration, which shows the entire family in a similar boat on their return to Scotland. Unlike the prior two nautical scenes, the final one signifies not powerlessness but power regained. The image of the family reunited in the boat conveys the feudal legitimacy and political stability made possible by the exercise of patriarchal power. A miniature depicting the burning at the stake (fig. 12) remains a classic image of female helplessness. Although both Gnarra and Stones speak of this illustration as if it depicts a statue of mother and child, I can see nothing to distinguish the painting from that of a live woman and child. Hence, in my reading, the artist again diverges from the text, which states that a statue in her likeness is placed in the fire: “Ferai faire tout a sa guise / Une ymage a .i. ymagier, / Si bien comme il pora taillier” (3762–64) [I will have a sculptor make a statue in her likeness, as best he can carve]. It may be that the artist chooses to depict the mother and child, rather than a statue, in order to heighten the reader’s perception of Joy/Manekine’s helplessness. Readers of the manuscript are thus placed in the same position as those who, within the narrative, have gathered to view the burning of mother and child at the stake: both are momentarily fooled into believing that the murder actually takes place. The miniatures support my reading of the text as a document about the connections between marriage and the issues of power, gender, and inheritance. Just as the opening depiction of the deathbed of Joy’s mother suggests the lack of male issue from that marriage, so the scene of the birth of Joy’s son on fol. 21a reflects the fruitfulness of that marriage. Joy reclines on her bed in a scene reminiscent, if not a direct copy, of the mother’s

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deathbed scene. Whereas the earlier event left no male issue, the second assures the continuation of the king of Scotland’s lineage. Before closing this chapter, I would like to place La Manekine in the wider context of other medieval stories of falsely accused noblewomen, and in particular those of the Constance type. To do this, I will compare it first to a German verse narrative, Mai und Beaflor, also written in the thirteenth century, and then to a fifteenth-century adaptation into prose written by Jehan Wauquelin for a nobleman at the court of Philip the Good, duke of Burgundy. Although there is no known connection between La Manekine and Mai und Beaflor, the survival of two narratives so similar in plot but written in different languages and originating from separate geographic locales suggests that the story type may have been widely current by the second half of the thirteenth century. And the rewriting of Philippe de Remi’s narrative by Jehan Wauquelin, one of Philip the Good’s favorite translators, demonstrates the continuing popularity that stories of this type enjoyed through the late Middle Ages.

Mai und Beaflor Mai und Beaflor exists in two manuscripts from the Middle Ages: a latethirteenth- or early-fourteenth-century manuscript, Munich, Bayerische Staatsbibliothek, cgm. germ. 57, and a fifteenth-century paper manuscript in Fulda. The former is of greater interest for the clues it provides about the author and the story’s earliest known audiences. The codex consists of three works: Mai und Beaflor (fols. 1–52v, incomplete at the end), Heinrich von Veldeke’s Aeneis (fols. 53–134v), and Otte’s Eraclius (fols. 134v–165, incomplete at the end). Mai und Beaflor was once a separate manuscript, which was subsequently bound together with the other works, no later than the sixteenth century. There were two scribes, one for fols. 1–52v, the other for fols. 53–166, both apparently writing at about the same time. The only decoration consists of alternating blue and red initials. Judging by the language, the author was probably from Bavaria, Franconia, or Austria. Its editors date the composition of the work to the second half of the thirteenth century on the basis of rhymes, references to the Crusades, and the poet’s evident knowledge of other German writers such as Wolfram von Eschenbach and Gottfried von Strassburg.62 The first identifiable owner of the manuscript was Johann Jakob Fugger (1516–1575), a well-known patron of the arts in Augsburg and

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owner of a large library. He was in the service of Albrecht V, duke of Bavaria (r. 1550–79) after 1565. The second known owner was Maximilian I, duke of Bavaria (r. 1597–1623), whose ex libris of 1618 is still to be seen on the codex, along with the later device he used as princeelector (r. 1623–51).63 Unfortunately, nothing is known of the author or owners of the manuscript prior to the sixteenth century. Both Heinrich von Veldeke (fl. last quarter twelfth century) and Otte (fl. ca. 1210) wrote courtly romances within the “matter of Rome” tradition popular in Germany through the thirteenth century. Their respective works Aeneis and Eraclius were based on French originals, and most commentators have assumed that the same is true of Mai und Beaflor. By including the newer work in the same codex, the compiler has aligned it with the older tradition. Mai und Beaflor is an historical romance set in earlier Christian times in Rome (Beaflor’s homeland) and Greece (Mai’s homeland). Intended both to entertain and to provide moral instruction, the narrative contains an inscribed aural audience, as is evident from the phrase “nu hoeret” [now listen]. As in other verse romances, dialogue plays an important role, especially the laments over the frequent adversities encountered by both hero and heroine. Descriptions of courtly festivities (“hôchzît”) play a prominent role, according to a typical pattern of a visit to church, followed by a tournament, a feast, and a dance. The author tells his readers at the start of his narrative that he is writing the story at the behest of “eines werden ritters” [a worthy knight] who told it to him on the basis of a prose chronicle he had read (3.11–16). Previous commentators have doubted the accuracy of this statement, preferring to read the reference to a prose chronicle as a conventional bid for veracity and authenticity.64 However, a case can be made for the truthfulness of the author’s statement, for stories of falsely accused queens are often found in historical chronicles. For example, the story of the empress of Rome first appears in German in the twelfth-century Kaiserchronik,65 where, within the chronological order of the text, it immediately follows the discussion of the reign of Emperor Eraclius. Another German story of the Handless Queen type, about the daughter of a Russian king, appears in a later history, from the last quarter of the thirteenth century, Jansen Enikel’s Weltchronik.66 The generic context of the chronicle for narratives of falsely accused queens seems to have been well established by the middle of the thirteenth century.

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Danielle Buschinger, in her 1988 article “Skizzen zu ‘Mai und Beaflor,’” has provided a detailed comparison of the romance to analogous stories within the Maiden Without Hands tradition (principally La Manekine, Jansen Enikel’s Weltchronik, and the Roman du Comte d’Anjou), and she has clearly established the influence of earlier courtly romances on the work. Without repeating her argument, I would like to compare La Manekine and Mai und Beaflor to demonstrate how changes in the plot create a more conventional thematic focus on courtly love (minne) in the latter work. In both narratives a king and queen have only one child, a daughter; the queen dies while the daughter is still young; the father falls in love with the daughter, and as a consequence she is put out to sea in a boat. She lands in a foreign country, where she meets and marries the king of that land, over the objections of his mother. While the king is absent, the heroine gives birth to a son. The mother-in-law alters letters announcing the birth as well as letters in response from the king; this results in the queen’s return (with her son) to the boat in which she had earlier arrived. Upon the return of the king, the treason of the mother-in-law is discovered, and she is punished. The heroine and her son arrive in Rome, where she is eventually reunited with her repentant father and her husband. Buschinger notes parallel struggles against parental power experienced by Beaflor (against her father) and Mai (against his mother), with the attendant psychological implications. The economy of the plot, which contrasts the scenes in Rome with those in Greece and brings all the characters back to Rome, heightens the thematic and psychological parallels between the two settings and between the development of the two protagonists. Each child must free him- or herself from the domination of the parent before achieving full social and personal maturity.67 Although the basic plots of La Manekine and Mai und Beaflor are similar, there are many differences in narrative motifs used to carry out the action: there is no mutilation; a trusted senator and his wife take over care of the daughter after her mother’s death; there is no deathbed promise to the mother; the heroine is enclosed in her boat with rich clothing, a crown, and enough food for two to three months; the foreign country to which the heroine comes is Greece, not Scotland; all the characters in Mai und Beaflor are given names, none of which agree with names in La Manekine; Beaflor’s husband goes off to help his uncle in Spain fight the Saracens; when he discovers his mother’s treachery, he kills her with his own sword.

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These narrative motifs result in important thematic differences between the two texts. Whereas the French text is concerned with inheritance and consanguinity, the German text is more interested in the power of love: “ei Minne, waz dû wunders kanst!”(12, 13) [ah, love, what wonders you can perform!]. Incest has only one meaning in the German text, that of “unchastity.” The issue of consanguinity does not arise, for there is no power struggle, as in La Manekine, among the dying mother, the barons, and the father. Here the father, named Teljôn, is clearly in control. His only problem is the existence of a beautiful, marriageable daughter. Her beauty makes her the object of desire of many men before the thought ever enters his own mind. Even before the mother’s death, Beaflor’s beauty is acknowledged: the father is proud of her and brings her out in public to be displayed at court festivities (13.12–15). Only after the mother’s death does the king’s desire for his daughter emerge, here explained as a kind of distorted minne: Ei süeziu Minne, nû sich! daz geschach gar wider dich, daz er in dînem bilde wolt machen dir ein wilde unde an sîner tohter begân. Minne, daz was dir getân. ez moht niht heizen minne: der tievel im die sinne genzlich hete erblendet und in an minnen geschendet. (21.31–40) [Alas, sweet Love, look at yourself now! That happened completely contrary to you, that he in your image wanted to turn you into chaos and started on his daughter. Love, this was done to you. It should not be called love: the devil completely blinded his senses and destroyed him through love.] Unlike the distorted sense in which the term is used to describe the

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king’s desire, minne returns to its proper sense in the courtship of Mai and Beaflor: “Mit zühten saz er bî ir, / biz im enzündet wart sîn gir / von der strengen Minne” (56.27–29) [He sat by her courteously until his desire was kindled by powerful Love]. Mai proves himself so courteous, in fact, that Beaflor asks if he knows French (rhyming the words “kurtois” and “franzois”), and when he answers in the affirmative, French becomes the language of their courtship. Theirs is a love that conquers all adversity, suffered both by heroine and by hero. The title’s emphasis on the couple rather than the heroine reflects the author’s interests and places the romance in the tradition of other romances bearing the names of their lovers, such as Flore und Blanscheflur by Konrad Fleck (ca. 1220).68 Volker Mertens also sees the love theme as the primary interest of the author. He approaches the text from the point of view of three different models of identity: one drawn from the aristocratic realm (inherited right to rule or to marry one of that class), another from the religious realm (spiritual status obtained through acknowledgment of sin and repentance), and the third from the secular philosophy of love. Although the first two models play a role in the narrative, Martens argues that the secular love model constitutes the main force in the motivation of the plot and construction of the characters’ identities: it is “die wichtigste identitätskonstituierende Kraft.”69 Within the Holy Roman Empire, then, the Handless Maiden has been turned into a story of courtly romantic love, with a corresponding reduction in the prominence of the pope and the church. Because there is no mutilation (and no sturgeon to swallow the hand and preserve it), there can be no miracle in Rome. The pope’s role is reduced to baptizing Beaflor’s son, hearing the confession of Beaflor’s father, crowning Mai and Beaflor as the new emperor and empress of Rome, and conducting the celebratory mass. Although the role of the pope is reduced, Rome itself remains an important symbol. Rome is the center of political action, the city to which all roads lead, the place where those who have lost their family and inheritance come for reunion and political regeneration. Symbolically, Rome connects all the narratives analyzed thus far: not only La Manekine and Mai und Beaflor but all the empress of Rome stories analyzed in chapter 1 as well.

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La Manekine en prose In contrast to the difficulties encountered in identifying the authors of Mai und Beaflor and the verse La Manekine, it is easy to ascertain the author, patron, and earliest owner of the fifteenth-century prose translation of La Manekine. The author, Jehan Wauquelin (d. 1452), provides his name in the final chapter of his work. A well-known translator working principally for Philip the Good, duke of Burgundy, Wauquelin produced at least eight important manuscripts for the duke between 1445 and 1452.70 La Manekine en prose, however, was written not for Philip himself but for one of his most important councillors, Jean de Croy.71 Jean de Croy, elected to the Order of the Golden Fleece in 1431, served Philip the Good until the duke’s death in 1467 and then continued to serve his successor, Charles the Bold, who made him count of Chimay in 1473.72 One particularly interesting aspect of the reappearance of this text in the court of the Burgundian dukes is the fact that Jehan Wauquelin also produced another important narrative of a falsely accused queen, another handless queen, La Belle Hélène de Constantinople, this one for Philip the Good himself. Study of it later, in chapter 7, will lead more deeply into the politics of the Burgundian court and the question of why narratives of falsely accused queens were popular there. Here I will confine myself to three ideas: to show that there is a direct connection between Philippe de Remi and the de Croy family, to explore the archaeology of the only extant manuscript, and briefly to compare the verse and prose texts. The connection of the verse La Manekine with the de Croy family can be established by the earlier of two indications of ownership on fol. 2 of Paris, B.N. fr. 1588. In the lower margin is written in a sixteenth-century hand: “Cest le Romant du Hen apparten. a monseigneur Charles de Croy prince de Chimay sgr d’Auesnes Waurin Lillers” [This is the Romance of Hen belonging to milord Charles de Croy, prince of Chimay, lord of Avesnes, Wavrin, and Lille].73 Charles de Croy was the grandson of Jean de Croy, the patron of the prose translation, and it is extremely likely that he inherited the book through his father’s line, that B.N. fr. 1588 was once a part of Jean de Croy’s library, and that it was the actual text used by Jehan Wauquelin as the basis for his prose translation. The unique manuscript of La Manekine en prose, housed in the library of the University of Turin (L. IV 5; anc. gall. g I 2), was probably executed at Mons, where Wauquelin lived. In the codex, besides the narrative of the

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falsely accused noblewoman, are two Old French saints’ lives associated with Flanders: that of Saint Druon (Drogo) of Sebourg (d. 1186) and Saint Waudru (Waldetrudis), patron saint of Mons (d. 686).74 Its most distinctive feature, however, is what is missing from it: La Manekine en prose was once accompanied by illustrations, possibly by as many as fourteen. Unfortunately, prior to Hermann Suchier’s edition of the text in 1884, someone cut out the miniatures, leaving many gaps in the narrative. Judging by the artwork in other texts by Wauquelin, the illustrations would have been of very high quality. If the de Croy family owned a copy of both verse and prose texts, one might expect to find that the program of illustrations of Wauquelin’s text corresponded to that found in the verse manuscript. But the situation is more complex and tenuous than that. Suchier’s printed text of the prose Manekine indicates gaps in the text at fourteen places that may have contained an illustration and/or an historiated initial, rather than the sixteen that would be expected if they had been based on the unique manuscript of the verse La Manekine. However, the editor’s system of noting the gaps is not very clear, making the archaeology of this particular text on the basis of the printed version extremely difficult. The situation is further complicated by the fact that the University Library at Turin suffered a disastrous fire in 1904.75 The Turin prose Manekine was one of the many manuscripts damaged. Although it has been “restored,” it is still in a deplorable state. A microfilm copy reveals that the beginning of the romance was destroyed.76 During restoration, folio numbers were added to the bottom of each full recto, but these numbers do not correspond to the folio numbers in Suchier’s edition. The pages of the restored manuscript are also out of order. Hence, examination of a microfilm copy of the extant fragments of the work sheds no light upon the original program of illustrations. The subject matter of some of the illustrations may be guessed at through comparison with the program of illustrations of the verse story in B.N. fr. 1588. Of the fourteen gaps, seven correspond to subject matter illustrated in the earlier manuscript: Joy cutting off her hand; Joy in her rudderless ship; a betrothal scene; a marriage scene; the seneschal telling Joy she is condemned to die; the burning at the stake; and the confession of the king of Hungary before the pope. Yet the remaining gaps bear no such correspondence. Although the data are extremely tenuous, it seems likely that the program of illustrations in the Turin manuscript did not

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simply reproduce those of B.N. fr. 1588, but rather created a new program specific to the demands of Wauquelin’s patron. We have, therefore, only the printed edition (with its narrative gaps) upon which to base an analysis of La Manekine en prose. The editor of the prose translation wrote that Wauquelin follows the poem closely (“suit pas à pas le poème”) with the exception of adding names to the key characters.77 While this conclusion is generally correct, there are a few changes worth noting, especially additions that Wauquelin made in his own voice that might indicate his purposes. Although the beginning of the text is missing, there is enough present in chapter 1 to indicate that Wauquelin added a prologue in which he not only praised his patron but also recommended histories as models for chivalric behavior. Wauquelin also speaks in his own voice at the end of the romance, if only briefly: to name his patron and himself, accompanied by a modesty topos and brief prayer of thanks that he was able, with God’s help, to finish the work.78 As is typical of prose renderings of verse romances, details are added to increase the verisimilitude of the story. The king of Hungary is given the name Salomon. His wife, daughter of Henry, king of Germany (not the king of Armenia as in the verse version), is named Gisle and given extensive praise. Wauquelin adds a brief genealogy of Hungarian kings (end of chapter 2). Joy’s name is “Joiie,” and when later in the story she is renamed “Manequine,” he provides a Latin etymology.79 Passages are shortened, such as the inner debate of the king of Scotland or the descriptions of tournaments.80 In other places, first-person speech or dialogue is turned into indirect speech or third-person narrative.81 Another noteworthy addition Wauquelin made is the insertion of Latin phrases, followed by translation into French, at key points in the narrative.82 These lend a moral tone to the narrative that emphasizes the purpose of the heroine’s suffering. For example, just after describing Joiie’s beauty and virtue and just prior to the assembly of Hungarian barons to persuade the king of Hungary to remarry, he anticipates her future suffering by introducing the phrase “Non coronabitur nisi qui legitime certaverit” [No one will be crowned without having legitimately struggled against evil]. The metaphor of the furnace of affliction, “Tanquam aurum in fornace probavit electos dominus” [Just as gold in a furnace, so the Lord tested his chosen ones], an echo here of Isaiah 48:10, is also found among the Latin phrases. The cumulative effect of the Latin phrases is to

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remind the reader of the guiding hand of God that has led Joiie from sorrow to joy and through suffering to redemption.83 The existence of the Turin manuscript, mangled though it is, demonstrates the persistent popularity of narratives of falsely accused queens among the nobility of Europe. As will become clear in the next chapter, the fictional stories resonated because they often seemed analogous to the actual fate of living queens and princesses. Riches and high social status could not guarantee a life free of slander, misfortune, and suffering. The fictional narratives provided a means of explaining the apparent injustice of suffering by a noblewoman both beautiful and virtuous.

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3 The Countess of Anjou

Near the opening of Jehan Maillart’s Roman du Comte d’Anjou, in the inciting moment of the narrative, the count of Anjou plays a game of chess with his daughter.1 The young woman plays chess expertly, and she quickly reduces her father’s forces to a rook and a bishop. Instead of concentrating on the game, however, the count turns his mind to incestuous thoughts about his daughter. Although she warns him that he is about to lose his rook, he replies that he is thinking about something quite different from chess: he is in a state of ecstasy, captivated by her beauty and by the devilish thoughts that have formed in his mind. He begs her not to have fear, but to pity him and grant him his wish: “Il couvient qu’avecques vous gise / Et de vous aie le deduit / Naturel que delit deduit / Est nomméz d’amis et d’amie” (372–75) [I must lie with you and have that natural joy that pleasure brings, called “of lover and loved one”]. In this scene, sex becomes an extension of the game of chess, thus making explicit the political ramifications of the incest motif so often found in narratives of falsely accused queens. The daughter’s brazen moves within the game of chess are countered by the father’s outrageous moves within the game of love. The metaphor of the chess game is central to an understanding of fourteenth-century French narratives of persecuted noblewomen.2 Read in the context of other uses of chess game imagery in literature of the thirteenth and early fourteenth centuries, it is a figure associated with political power struggles. Read in the context of French politics during and immediately after the reign of Philip the Fair (r. 1285–1314), the chess game becomes a means of admonishing male rulers to pay attention to the affairs of the realm. And finally, read in the context of other stories of calumniated women, the chess game becomes a paradigm for the appropriation of female protagonists by male authors to advance their own agenda. This

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agenda excludes women from ruling but promotes noble marriages in order to obtain political stability and male heirs. Throughout the present study, I have been repeatedly asking why medieval authors are so interested in constructing stories with a highborn married woman at their center, and why they subject these women to abuse from incestuous fathers, jealous mothers-in-law, and lecherous suitors. Maillart’s text is one of the clearest examples I have found of how reading these texts within local historical and manuscript contexts can uncover the political agenda that lies behind the fiction. This “calumniated woman” becomes a pawn, not only in the hands of the fictional men around her, but also in the hands of her male author. Maillart uses his heroine to expose the lust and greed of aristocrats, to reinforce the central administrative authority of the king of France, and to reconstruct the reputation of an actual falsely accused queen, one of the daughters-in-law of Philip the Fair. The increased political relevance of fourteenth-century narratives of falsely accused noblewomen is evident also in another text, which will form the subject of the succeeding chapter. Known as the Miracles de Nostre Dame par personnages, it is a collection of forty plays that includes several featuring persecuted heroines and two that fit specifically the types investigated in this study: the empress of Rome (number 27) and the Handless Queen (number 29). The collection of plays records annual productions put on by the Parisian confrérie of goldsmiths between the years 1339 and 1382, with interruptions for the years 1354 and 1358–60, when the right to produce plays was temporarily revoked. Naturally, the transferral of falsely accused queen narratives to a new genre and audience alters the nature of their political message: the figure of the persecuted queen becomes a means of criticizing the injustices and moral depravity of the ruling classes. Before I begin the analysis of Maillart’s Roman and the Miracles de Nostre Dame par personnages, however, it will be useful to think more generally about historical examples of falsely accused noblewomen. Medieval chronicles contain a number of cases of actual noblewomen who were defamed, accused of adultery, or even murdered, as part of larger political moves. Before proceeding further, and in order to set an historical context for my analysis of the literary texts, I will review a few of the most prominent of these cases.

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Falsely Accused Noblewomen in Historical Documents Biographical dictionaries, general histories, and scholarly articles on European queens reveal the names of many queens, princesses, and other noblewomen who faced slanderous accusations: Judith, second wife of Louis the Pious (ninth century); Richarde, wife of Charles the Fat (also ninth century); Uta, wife of Arnulf of Carinthia (ninth); Emma, queen consort of Lothair, king of France (tenth); Cunegund, empress and wife of Emperor Henry II (eleventh); Emma, queen consort of Cnut I, king of England (eleventh); Blanche of Castile (thirteenth); Marie of Brabant, queen consort of Philip III, king of France (thirteenth); Marguerite, Joan, and Blanche, the three daughters-in-law of Philip IV, king of France (fourteenth). In fact, it would seem that slander, for royal women, was something of an occupational hazard and that the more powerful the noblewoman, the more likely she was to face accusations of adultery or treason.3 The stories of accusations, and especially acquittals by means of trial by fire or hot irons, may have no factual basis, even when found in purportedly historical documents such as annals or chronicles.4 Often a later chronicler or court romancer invents the episode to dramatize her life or enhance the reputation of a particular court or monastery. Bertha, the wife of Pepin the Short and mother of Charlemagne (eighth century), receives only brief treatment from Charlemagne’s contemporary historian Einhard, who makes no mention of abuse or accusation.5 In the later Middle Ages, however, Bertha becomes a legend through the efforts of Adenet le Roi, renowned thirteenth-century poet of Brabant. In Berte aus grans piés, a poem of 3,486 alexandrines, Adenet creates a romance that bears some similarity to narratives of falsely accused queens.6 Bertha becomes Berte, the daughter of the king and queen of Hungary, Flore and Blanchefleur. In the story, Berte’s servant Aliste substitutes for her in the marital bed on the wedding night. Instead of discarding the ruse the next morning, however, she maintains her disguise, accuses Berte of being the imposter, and has her exiled to a forest. Nine and a half years later, the rightful queen is discovered by Pepin and restored to her proper role. Unlike the story of Berte, the story of the tenth-century French queen Emma is supported by contemporary historical documents.7 Emma was accused on two separate occasions, both closely connected to political power struggles of the time. Her marriage to Lothair, one of the last Carolingian kings of France, had been arranged by Emperor Otto I as a

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means of cementing political relations between the Franks and the Germans. Emma, born about 948, was the daughter by a previous marriage of Adelaide, Otto I’s wife. Emma appears to have had good relations with her husband; she traveled with him to Ghent in May 966, Langres in August 967, Compiègne in May 974, Douai and Reims in 976.8 But in 976 she was accused by Charles of Lorraine, her brother-in-law, of an adulterous relationship with the royal secretary Adalbero, surnamed Ascelin, who had recently been appointed bishop of Laon.9 Another Adalbero, the powerful archbishop of Reims, convened a council to hear the case, which resulted in a declaration of Emma’s innocence and the exile of Charles of Lorraine. Emma continued to play a prominent political role, mediating conflicts with the Holy Roman Empire and advising her young son, Louis V, after the death of her husband in 986. Her son, however, came under the influence of Charles of Lorraine, and she was accused a second time of adultery with Adalbero, bishop of Laon, and of treason as well. She and Adalbero were chased from court and took refuge in the territory of Hugh Capet. After the death of Emma’s son in a hunting accident in 987, Hugh Capet was crowned king, and Emma and Adalbero returned to Laon. Charles of Lorraine, however, contested the succession and launched two sieges of the city, finally succeeding in capturing it, along with Emma and Adalbero. After Hugh Capet made an unsuccessful counterattack, Adalbero escaped, but Emma was not freed until December of 988, possibly after the payment of ransom.10 In the next century, across the Channel, another Queen Emma was also caught in a complicated web of political intrigue that resulted, according to her biographers, in banishment and a trial by burning plowshares. The daughter of Richard I, duke of Normandy, Emma became queen by her marriage to Athelred II the Unready in 1002. She produced two sons, Alfred and Edward, and a second marriage to King Cnut I of Denmark produced Cnut II, who succeeded to the throne of Denmark in 1036. In an attempt to secure the throne of England to the sons of her first marriage, Emma incurred the ire of Godwin, earl of Wessex, who had Alfred assassinated. While Emma and Edward fled to the protection of the count of Flanders, Cnut II attacked England and placed himself on the throne. After Cnut II’s death in 1042, Edward, later to be known as Edward the Confessor (r. 1042–66), ascended the throne of England.11 Amid such uncertainty about the rightful successor to the throne, it can

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hardly be surprising that historical accounts of Emma are varied, if not inconsistent. According to Pauline Stafford, manuscript C of the AngloSaxon Chronicle, which views Edward as the rightful heir, sees Emma as a threat to the succession. It speaks of “the deprivation and driving out of a queen, Emma, in the bitterness of winter” and of her temporary fall from power in 1043, but it makes no mention of false accusation or of a trial by burning plowshares.12 The false accusation is the invention of the twelfthcentury chivalric chronicler Richard of Devizes. In the Annals of Winchester, Richard constructs the image of a powerful queen, “regent for Cnut during his absence,” who becomes involved in a struggle between Godwin—whose daughter Edith would marry Edward the Confessor in 1045—and Edward himself.13 According to the Annals, after Edward promised to marry Edith in return for Godwin’s support of his regency, he then plotted, under the influence of Robert, archbishop of Rouen, against Godwin and Emma. Stafford’s retelling of the story makes clear that this event was dramatized to enhance the history of Winchester itself: The story builds to its dramatic climax on the floor of the cathedral. From all over England great crowds gathered; the king and his great men assembled, only Robert was missing, feigning illness and poised at Dover ready to flee. The queen was brought from Wherwell the day before, and spent a prayerful vigil before the tomb of St Swithun. During her wakeful night she slept long enough for the saint to appear to her and promise his aid. Next morning she was brought before her son, and invoked God as witness to her innocence. Putting aside her outer garments, she was led by two weeping bishops to the burning ploughshares. The crowds wailed and called upon St Swithun. Emma prayed to the God who liberated Susannah and the children in the fiery furnace; then walked across without harm, hurt or sensation. Edward fell prostrate and begged her forgiveness. He was beaten by the rods of the bishops, and given three blows by his sorrowing mother. The bishop and queen were restored, the tears of the crowd turned to laughter, and both queen and bishop rendered due recognition to the role of St Swithun in their deliverance by each granting him nine manors, one for each ploughshare.14 The dramatic scene links the falsely accused Emma to the biblical Susanna, it may echo stories of the deliverance of Cunegund from false accusation,

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and it certainly enhances the fame of both the local saint and the cathedral of Winchester. A fuller understanding of the relationship of false accusations to political events in the lives of medieval queens would require detailed analysis of the historical documents available for each queen, a task that is beyond the scope of this study. It should be clear, however, from the examples given of the two Emmas, that public accusation is often associated with usurpation of royal power or a weak line of succession. Of the many examples of historical queens whose lives were troubled by accusations of adultery or other treasonous acts, the best-known and most relevant to the present study involved Marie of Brabant, second wife of Philip III, and Blanche, Marguerite, and Joan, the three daughters-inlaw of Philip IV. Marie of Brabant (d. January 10, 1321) was the oldest daughter of Henry III, duke of Brabant, and Alix of Burgundy.15 Her father was a friend of Thibaut of Champagne, himself the author of some poems, and the patron of Adenet le Roi, author of Berte aus grans piés. Philip III, after the death of his first wife, married Marie on June 20, 1275. She was crowned in the Sainte-Chapelle, an event described in detail in the Chroniques de St. Denis. In 1276 the dauphin Louis, Philip’s oldest son by his first wife, died suddenly, and Marie was accused by the king’s counselor La Brosse of having poisoned Louis. Certain accounts say she was imprisoned, but defended by her brother Jean, duke of Brabant. Others say that Philip III consulted the Beguine of Nivelle, Elisabeth of Spalbeek, who said: “Dites au roi de ne pas croire les mauvaises paroles qu’on lui dit contre sa femme; car elle est bonne et loyale envers lui et envers tous les siens” [Tell the king not to believe the evil gossip that is being spoken about his wife; for she is good and loyal toward him and all his kin].16 Marie appears to have been caught in power plays between her supporters (the barons) and the supporters of La Brosse. La Brosse was finally arrested and hanged on June 30, 1278; the brother-in-law of La Brosse, the bishop of Bayeux, fled to Rome. Interestingly, the best-known reporter of this affair, Dante Alighieri, believed that Marie had been guilty and La Brosse the falsely accused person. He writes in the Purgatorio: “I mean Pier de la Brosse (and may the Lady of Brabant, while she’s still in this world, watch her ways—or end among a sadder flock).”17 The three daughters-in-law of Philip IV provide an even stranger story of accusations of adultery and treason in high places. In the last year of his life, Philip IV accused the wives of two of his sons, Louis and Charles, of

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adultery and the wife of his middle son, Philip the Long, who would later reign as Philip V, of concealing the affairs. Thus with one stroke he wiped out any chance of continuing the royal line through the birth of a male heir. All three women were thrown into prison, where Marguerite of Burgundy (the wife of Louis) and Blanche of Burgundy (wife of Charles) sooner or later died. The third, Joan of Burgundy (not the later Joan of Burgundy who was married to Philip VI), was cleared of charges within the year and reigned alongside Philip V as queen of France (1316–22). The dramatic story of accusations of adultery and treason in Paris in 1314 provides an immediate historical setting for Jehan Maillart’s Roman du Comte d’Anjou, written in 1316. Further exploration of the historical events and the fictional and chronicle texts inspired by it will enable better understanding of the political ramifications of narratives of falsely accused noblewomen.

Le Roman du Comte d’Anjou Since Maillart’s story, completed just two years after the death of Philip IV, is not well known, let us preface discussion of it with a brief plot summary. Following the chess game described at the beginning of this chapter, the young woman, seeing the persistence of her father, agrees to fulfill all his desires if only he will wait for a day. She thus gains enough time to flee on foot with her governess. Her life in exile is one of poverty, which the author frequently contrasts with the life of luxury she left. The two women are taken in by a poor woman in Orleans, and they begin to embroider for a living. Meanwhile the count of Anjou, impatient to see his daughter on the morning of the wedding, kicks at the door of her room to wake her up; he soon discovers her flight and, filled with lust and rage at losing her, suddenly dies. The tranquil if poverty-stricken life of the two women is interrupted when the son of a bourgeois begins to lust for the heroine and threatens to take her by force. The two women flee to Lorris, where a chatelain takes them in and orders them to teach his two daughters how to embroider. One day the count of Bourges arrives on a visit, discovers the mysterious maiden who embroiders so finely, and eventually marries her. She soon becomes pregnant. While her husband is absent on an expedition, she gives birth to a son. A letter sent to announce the birth is intercepted by the count of

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Bourges’s aunt, the countess of Chartres, who replaces it with a counterfeit letter that says a monster in animal form, rather than a beautiful son, has been born. The count of Bourges writes back to say that mother and offspring should be held until his return, but this letter too is altered to read that mother and child are to be destroyed. Just as they are about to be thrown into a pit, the baby smiles and melts the heart of one of the executioners. Mother and child are allowed to flee, and they head toward Etampes. The mayoress of Etampes rescues them, despite the disapproval of her boorish husband. She sends them to the bishop at Orleans, who has a reputation for helping the poor. Meanwhile the count of Bourges returns home, learns what has happened, and pledges a life of poverty and fasting until he finds his wife and son. Eventually husband, wife, and son are reunited in Orleans in the presence of the bishop, who turns out to be the heroine’s uncle. The happy couple return to Bourges, and the count appeals to the king of France to punish the countess of Chartres. With the king’s approval, the count launches an attack on his aunt, and she is finally called to justice and burned at the stake. The count and countess of Bourges make ritual visits to all their lands and are joyously received by their subjects. Maillart stresses that his work is “Une aventure veritable” instead of a “mençonge” or “fable.” He provides details about the territories and wealth of the count of Anjou, although he coyly states that he does not know the count’s name (85). The story is set in Orleans, Lorris, Bourges, and Etampes—that is, in territory securely within the administrative control of the king of France. There is no mention of the pope, nor are there any miracles as in the earlier romance La Manekine. The final recognition scene involves only the heroine, her husband, and her uncle, the bishop of Orleans. Authorization for the punishment of the evil aunt, the greedy countess of Chartres, rests in the hands of the king of France. The localization of setting thus suggests that Maillart’s narrative is best read within the context of French politics during the reign of Philip the Fair. What is known about Maillart’s position in Philip IV’s government also suggests that his narrative should be read in this political context. In an age in which due process was increasingly dependent upon written documents, Maillart’s role was an important one, that of personal scribe, or notary, to the king of France. Joseph Strayer explains that in the 1290s a new policy was developed to insure the authenticity of royal documents:

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“every document issued in the king’s name must carry at the bottom the name of the notary who wrote it and the name of the official who ordered it written.”18 The name most often found on documents warranted by Philip the Fair was “Jehan Maillart,” and his name rarely appeared on documents warranted by others.19 Maillart was, therefore, the personal scribe of the king. Nor was Maillart the only chancery official who wrote fiction as well as official historical documents. Better known is another of Philip’s notaries, Gervais du Bus, whose Roman de Fauvel was reworked by Chaillou de Pesstain to produce the magnificent manuscript B.N. fr. 146.20 Chaillou in 1316–18 interpolated parts of Maillart’s story into this manuscript of the Roman de Fauvel, proof that Maillart’s tale was well known, at least within chancery circles. Both Maillart and Gervais du Bus, then, were part of an administration that was sharply critical of corruption and that advocated sexual morality. Two important crises during the reign of Philip the Fair demonstrate royal interest in these two concerns: the king’s arrest of the Templars on October 13, 1307, and his accusation of adultery leveled against his daughters-in-law in 1314. Although Philip’s arrest of the Templars was probably motivated by a desire to confiscate their riches, the actual charges against them spoke of heresy, unchasteness, and sodomy.21 Maillart’s fellow notary and chancery writer Gervais du Bus, in the Roman de Fauvel, praised Philip for his persecution of the Templars, claiming that “[t]he king did God’s work as a true descendant of St. Louis; he labored mightily to make the pope see the truth; he performed his duty as a prud’homme.”22 Philip’s accusations against his daughters-in-law in the last year of his reign were also apparently part of this campaign to restore sexual morality to the royal line. Strayer explains that the lovers of Marguerite and Blanche “were executed with atrocious tortures in the market square at Pontoise, while the ladies were put in prison. Jeanne, the wife of the younger Philip, proved her innocence and was released, but the other two died in captivity.”23 Viewed against this background of two crises during the reign of Philip IV, Maillart’s text can be read as promoting values consistent with those of the royal administration. Maillart castigates the evils of lust (embodied in the incestuous father) and greed (embodied in the countess of Chartres who counterfeits letters to slander the heroine); he celebrates the heroine’s chastity and willingness to endure poverty; he magnifies the role of the

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king in maintaining justice within his realm; he eliminates the authority of the pope; and his story teaches, through example, the proper relationship of nobles to the king. Moreover, Maillart’s fictional work appears to have been aimed at a male audience, consistent also with the chancery context in which it was written. Maillart records in the epilogue to his poem that he wrote the story at the request of Pierre de Chambli, “seigneur de Wirmes,” and chamberlain to Philip IV. Strayer explains that the Chambli family was one of the richest among Philip’s officials.24 Consistent also with the theory of a male audience is the first illustration in B.N. n. a. fr. 4531, which depicts the author reading his work to a group of men. Reading the episode of the chess game against other uses of the image in thirteenth- and early-fourteenth-century literature demonstrates how the metaphor reinforces Maillart’s masculine political agenda. Maillart’s predecessor in telling stories of calumniated women, Philippe de Remi, also makes use of the chess game, but as the setting for the growing love of the king of Scotland for the heroine, not as the instrument of the father’s love of his daughter, as in Maillart’s text. In the earlier narrative, the motif is confined to a few lines of text and is clearly a metaphor for erotic love.25 By contrast, Maillart uses the scene as the principal backdrop for the father’s lust for his daughter; he greatly expands on the scene and brings to it the connotations not only of erotic desire but also of a power struggle between father and daughter. The association of the chess game with political power struggles was most firmly established by its use in Jean de Meun’s continuation of the Romance of the Rose (ca. 1275), written about forty years before Maillart completed his text in 1316. This chess game figure is particularly noteworthy because it concerns the House of Anjou.26 In a long speech to the lover at the start of Jean de Meun’s continuation, Reason invokes ancient stories and contemporary events to prove that, paradoxically, when Fortune turns her wheel and thrusts men from riches and power, she actually benefits them. The contemporary events to which Reason refers are the overthrow of King Manfred of Sicily by Charles, count of Anjou, and the subsequent capture and beheading of Manfred’s son Conradin. The history of Sicilian politics in the period 1266–68 is thus retold through the metaphor of chess: this count of Anjou, unlike the fictional count in Maillart’s story, is the successful player who checkmated a king and his son.27 In addition to these two important uses of the motif, the chess game

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was common in admonitory literature of the period. Also contained within the Fauvel manuscript mentioned above (B.N. fr. 146) is Geffroi de Paris’s poem to Philip V that speaks of the king as “le roys d’escheis.”28 If you keep in the company of good people, the author argues, no one will be able to checkmate you. The significance of the chess motif is enhanced by noting that the word “eschequier” means both “royal treasury” and “chess board” and that “eschec” means both “booty” and “check.”29 The same author uses the chess image in his later poem “Un Songe” to interpret the difficulty that Philip IV had in managing his kingdom; he dreams that, while people were out hunting in the forest, the king played at chess; had the king chosen the more active role of hunter, he might not have found himself checkmated: Le Roy la chace bien ouet, Mes au jeu des eschez jouet, Et tant joua,—mentir ne quier,— A celui jeu de l’eschequier Que pour la prise de sa gent, Que le jeu aloit damagent, Un plain eschec li fu geté, Dont il fu tout coy areté.30 [The king hears the hunt perfectly well, But continues to play the game of chess, And he played so much—I don’t want to lie— At that same game of checking That, because of the capture of his men Whom the game was hurting, He was thrown a clear checkmate By which he was calmly stopped.] Within a political system that requires male dominance and excludes women from ruling,31 the near capture of the count of Anjou’s rook by his daughter must be read as a sign of his ineffectiveness as a ruler, a reading that is reinforced by the knowledge that the medieval rook stood for justice.32 His feeble, sexually depraved attempt to reestablish male dominance through incest only emphasizes his political impotence. The futility of his actions is expressed by the angry act of kicking his daughter’s door and by his subsequent speedy death. Perhaps the violence of the father’s

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act is to be read as a metaphor for rape; certainly the fact that this scene is illustrated in B.N. n. a. fr. 4531 suggests that a metaphoric reading is appropriate.33 Proper political governance is not established in Maillart’s text until after the punishment of the evil aunt, who counterfeits letters and causes the heroine’s troubles in the second half of the story. During this thousandodd-line episode, the calumniated heroine falls from view, and Maillart’s political agenda—submission to the centralized authority of the king of France—is finally revealed. A lengthy process of bringing the countess of Chartres to justice is initiated; she herself is described as “desloial” and a “traïtresse.” The count of Bourges counsels with his barons, who advise him to go to the king for administration of justice (6789–6856). At the royal court, the count pleads his case, and the countess is called upon to appear personally in court (6857–6903); when she fails to appear, the king meets with his advisors, and they decide to allow the count to wreak vengeance upon his aunt (6904–68). The count returns to Bourges, speaks well to his barons of the king, and makes preparations for war (6969– 7050); the countess hires mercenaries and makes preparations for the defense of Chartres (7051–7121). War ensues, but eventually the countess is captured (7122–7593). She pleads for mercy, but to no avail. She is thrown in prison, and the count sends four messengers to the king to ask that he be allowed to determine her punishment and receive her lands. Only after written permission is received does the count have the countess burned at the stake (7594–7856). The prosecution of the countess of Chartres reverses any sympathy that might have been evoked earlier in the narrative for the plight of women within a patriarchal system. The story demonstrates to its male readers that a woman in power is dangerous and not to be tolerated.34 The male justice system, backed by military force, prevails at the end of this narrative. The heroine is reduced to her role of wife and mother: that is, while the count of Bourges receives homage from the residents of his newly acquired lands, Chartres and Anjou, his wife devotes herself to acts of charity. In a couplet near the end of the story (8021–22), the former heroine is explicitly contrasted with the countess of Chartres: rhyming the words “traïtresse” and “mestresse,” the author states that the count of Bourges’s wife is no “evil traitress” as was the countess of Chartres. “Loyal mistress” is the domesticated title our heroine is granted at the end of the narrative.

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Yet this is not the whole story. Closer examination of the relationship of the romance to the works of other chancery poets working during the same period as Maillart, and of the events occurring during the two years following the death of Philip the Fair, reveals a more specific political message embedded in the narrative. It is extremely probable that Jehan Maillart had in mind the historical example of one of Philip the Fair’s daughters-in-law, namely the case of Philip the Long’s wife Joan, the only one of the three women who was acquitted of the initial charges—in other words, the only one of the three who, by the gauge of later chroniclers, was falsely accused. Seen from this point of view, Maillart’s text becomes part of a movement to rehabilitate Joan of Burgundy, who in 1314 sat in prison as one of Philip the Fair’s accused daughters-in-law and whose reputation had been sufficiently restored by 1316, the year in which Maillart completed his romance, to allow her to assume the role of consort to the new king of France, Philip V.35 We have already seen that Maillart was one of several chancery authors who, through their narrative poetry, provided counsel during a time of political instability. B.N. fr. 146 establishes close relationships among Gervais de Bus, Chaillou de Pesstain, Jehan Maillart, and Geffroi de Paris through the interweaving of their works. Also included in this manuscript is La Chronique métrique, attributed to Geffroi.36 The editors of the facsimile edition of Chaillou’s text explain that Gervais, Maillart, Chaillou, and Geffroi were all part of the same group of clercs or clergie who were “attentive to the welfare of France and critical of those who sought to encroach upon royal authority.”37 La Chronique métrique is particularly interesting for establishing the political relevance of Maillart’s narrative of a falsely accused noblewoman. Although it incorporates earlier materials, it was probably begun around 1313 and finished toward the end of 1316 or early in 1317.38 Rich in detail for the years 1313–16, it not only provides an account of the accusations leveled against the daughters-in-law of Philip the Fair (5868–6070), it specifically addresses the case of Joan of Burgundy, wife of Philip the Long. In a fourteen-line speech in her own defense, she asks who her accusers are, claims to be a “preudefame,” and asks to be allowed either to defend herself or to call upon another defender (6017–30). The author is careful to explain that it was Philip the Fair who cleared her name just before he died (6047–57), thus legitimizing the legal process that would acquit her.

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Nowhere does the turbulence of the period from 1314 to 1316, and the historical role of the accusations against the three royal daughters-in-law, become more apparent than in another chronicle of the same period, the account rendered in the straightforward prose of Les Grandes chroniques de France. In fact, following the arrests of the Templars in 1307, there appear to have been an increasing number of accusations and public hangings and burnings at the stake. In 1310, for example, Marguerite la Porete was burned at the stake, along with a Jew who had converted and then subsequently renounced Christianity.39 Again, in 1313 the archbishop of Troyes, who had been suspected of arranging the death of Joan of Navarre, wife of Philip the Fair, was cleared through the confession of a Lombard by the name of Noffle, who was subsequently hanged.40 In the midst of royal attempts to maintain control over potential murderers and suspected heretics looms the figure of Enguerrand de Marigny, who at the end of the reign of Philip the Fair was the most powerful man in France: “coadjutor et gouverneur du royaume de France principal.”41 Shortly after the death of Philip the Fair, Enguerrand was arrested and charged with forty-one acts of deceit, fraud, and theft of the French treasury. Included among the charges are three that are of particular interest to our understanding of the case of Joan of Burgundy: XVI. Derechief, que li roys envoia à la contesse d’Artois unes lettres es queles il li mandoit certaines besoingnes; et Engerran mist dedens une anniexe et li mandoit le contraire et que il la garantiroit devers le roy de touz poins. XVII. Derechief, que madame d’Artois li donna XLm livres que la vile de Cambray li devoit d’une amende, et que li rois ne li voloit donner congié de lever l’amende desusdite; et Engerran la leva tout outre. XVIII. Derechief, que il donna le conseil de madame de Poitiers prendre ensi comme il fu fet.42 [XVI. Again, that the king sent to the countess of Artois sealed letters in which he authorized certain assistance to her; and Engerran amended them and authorized the contrary and that he would guarantee it before the king in all points. XVII. Again, that the lady of Artois gave him 40 thousand pounds that the town of Cambray owed as a fine, and that the king did not want to give permission to raise the above-mentioned fine; and that Engerran raised it on his own.

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XVIII. Again, that he gave the advice to arrest the lady of Poitiers, as was done.] In other words, he was accused of having altered letters destined for the countess of Artois, of having pocketed money the countess had given him from the town of Cambrai, and of having recommended that the wife of Philip the Long, count of Poitiers and heir presumptive to the throne, be arrested. What makes these allegations particularly interesting is that Mahaut, countess of Artois, was the mother of the falsely accused countess of Poitiers, Joan of Burgundy. Enguerrand de Marigny was executed on April 30, 1315. According to Les Grandes chroniques, that was the same day that Marguerite, Louis’s accused wife, died in prison. However, the Chronique métrique provides a different account. According to its author, Louis X was about to take pity on Enguerrand when he received a letter from Marguerite that changed his mind. It was to be read only after her death, and the author does not disclose its contents: Mes a son mourir si ala Q’unes letres closes bailla A son confesseur; et li dist Qu’il les baillast, sanz contredist, Aprés sa mort au roy de France, Et de lui prist foy et fiance Qu’il le feroit; et il si fist. Et ce fu ce qui desconfist Engerran et mis l’a a mort; De cel ancusement est mort. La furent les choses nommees Qu’encor n’estoient revelees; Ne le roy nel savoit encores, Mes le lieu et le temps fu lores Qu’au roy feüst tout revelé. Mes a touz n’est pas espelé, Car estre porroit trop grant honte; Si n’en fait on nombre ne conte Par dehors, mes les cuers le sevent, Dont c’est merveille qu’il [ne] crevent. (7161–80)

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[But before her death it happened thus That she sent secret letters To her confessor; and she said That he should send them, without questioning, After her death to the king of France, And she begged assurance That he would do it; and this he did. And this was what was the undoing Of Engerran and caused his death; Of this accusation he died. There were things claimed there That still have not been revealed; Neither did the king yet know it, But there came a place and time When all was revealed to the king. But it was not spelled out to everyone, For it would have been too great a shame; And one does not speak about it much outside, But the hearts know it, And so it is a wonder that they do not break.] Shameful indeed must have been the accusations in the letter, for they caused Louis to change his mind about the fate of Enguerrand and condemn him to death. After the deaths of Marguerite and Enguerrand, Louis was free to take a new wife and ascend the throne. He wasted no time: he married Clemence of Hungary three months later, on July 31, 1315, and he was crowned king on August 3. Unfortunately, Louis’s reign was short: he died less than a year later (on the Saturday after Pentecost, 1316). His pregnant wife later gave birth to a son, John, but the child lived only a few days. The younger Philip, whose wife Joan of Burgundy had been acquitted two years earlier of the charges against her, was crowned at Reims on January 9 (1317 our dating; 1316 old dating). The coronation took place over the protests of some who felt that another Joan, the daughter of Louis X and his disgraced first wife, Marguerite, should rule. Philip’s right to power was reinforced by a declaration of Parliament in 1317 that henceforth no woman might rule in France.43

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Maillart’s fellow chancery poet Geffroi de Paris, in his poem “Du Roy Phelippe qui ores regne,” written shortly after the accession of Philip the Long to the throne, sums up the events of the past three years and makes specific reference to Joan of Burgundy, the falsely accused queen: Li temps est couru et passez Que trois Roy nous sunt trespassez: Phelippe, Loys, et Johan. Or avons-nous le quart oen: Phelippe, de Loys le frere, Qui sa raison y avoit clere, Et droit à son droit retournée, Royne, sa fame espousée, Qui premier estre le devoit, Or l’est-elle,—chascun le voit. Dex les aime,—c’est veritez,— Et apres,—c’est adversitez Qu’au commencement Deux leur moutre,— Pais et honour aront tout outre, Et si demouront souverain.44 (1–15) [The time has gone and passed In which three of our kings died: Philip, Louis, and John. Now this year we have the fourth: Philip, the brother of Louis, Who expressed himself clearly, And justly returned her rights to her, His queen, his wedded wife, Who deserved to be it from the start, Now she is—everyone sees it. God loves them—it is true— And after—it is adversity That God shows them at the start— Peace and honor they will have moreover, And so, they will remain in power.] Clearly, Geffroi wants to reaffirm the right of Philip and Joan to reign, yet his lines move back and forth between the time of their adversity and their

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present condition in a way that reflects the political instabilities of the previous two years. What, then, may be concluded about the relationship between Maillart’s poem and the specific political events of 1314–16? Maillart tells us that he began his poem in 1313, working on it intermittently until its completion three years later. Although the accusations against the three princesses occurred after he began his poem, they may have provided new relevance to it and inspired him to finish. In any case, 1316, the date he provides for completion of the poem, is the same year in which Geffroi de Paris composed the poem just quoted and the same year in which Philip the Long was crowned. Given the events outlined, it is hard to ignore the political relevance of a narrative in which a countess is restored to her noble position. The chancery poets were interested in political stability and the smooth succession of kings within a patriarchal line of descent. In painting the picture of a falsely accused noblewoman restored to power, Maillart creates a heroine whose experience is analogous to that of Joan of Burgundy, and he establishes an ideal of moral chasteness of which his former king, Philip the Fair, would have heartily approved. The creation of a roman à clef referring to specific contemporary events represents one political use made of a narrative of a calumniated woman. As shall be demonstrated in the next chapter, a different kind of political use could be made by exploiting the theme of paupertatis inherent in this and other narratives of innocent persecuted maidens. What is most interesting to observe, however, before moving on to the second half of the century and a new text, the Miracles de Nostre Dame par personnages, is the sensitivity of the artist of the Roman du Comte d’Anjou to this theme. As the analysis below will demonstrate, the contrast between wealth and poverty—visible as the countess twice moves from royal chambers to exile in the course of the story—is already exploited in both text and illustrations in the Roman du Comte d’Anjou.

The Program of Illustrations The unique manuscript of the Roman du Comte d’Anjou is housed in Paris, B.N. n. a. fr. 4531. Consisting of ninety-seven folios and written in two hands,45 it contains four works: the Roman du Comte d’Anjou (fols. 4–63), Le Traité d’Amours or Clef d’Amours (fols. 63v–88), De la Chasteleinne de Vergy (fols. 88–94v), and a “Dialogue Between a Knight and a

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Lady” (fols. 95–97v, incomplete at the end). The codex originally contained thirty-four miniatures, twenty-seven of these for the Roman du Comte d’Anjou, five for the Clef d’Amours, one at the start of the Chasteleinne de Vergy, and one at the start of the “Dialogue.” One of the illustrations of the Roman has been cut out, leaving twenty-six illustrations of the Roman visible today. These are: 1. fol. 4ra: The author reads his book to a group of men 2. fol. 5va: Count of Anjou and daughter playing chess 3. fol. 7vb: Girl consoled by governess 4. fol. 9ra: Girl and governess fleeing at night 5. fol. 12ra: Girl and governess given bread by old woman (fig. 13) 6. fol. 14va: Count throwing himself against his daughter’s door 7. fol. 16ra: Count of Anjou dying of sorrow 8. fol. 17va: Girl and governess leaving for Orleans 9. fol. 20vb: Chatelain and wife taking in the girl and governess 10. fol. 24vb: Marriage of girl to count of Bourges 11. fol. 27vb: Countess of Bourges giving birth and sending letter to count 12. fol. 28ra: Countess of Chartres ordering letter altered 13. fol. 29va: Messenger delivering letter to count of Bourges 14. fol. 31va: Messenger bringing the chatelain letter from count 15. fol. 34rb: Sergeants-at-arms about to throw countess and child into pit (fig. 14) 16. fol. 36vb: Countess and child taken in by the mayoress of Etampes 17. fol. 38vb: Countess and child arriving at the hospital 18. fol. 43ra: Count searching for wife and child (fig. 15) 19. fol. 44ra: Count speaking with the mayoress of Etampes 20. fol. 45vb: Count searching for wife in Orleans 21. fol. 47va: Count finding wife and son at hospital 22. fol. 48va: Count, countess, and child before the bishop of Orleans 23. fol. 51vb: Count, countess, and child arriving in Lorris 24. fol. 53ra: Countess rewarding those who helped her

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25. fol. 54vb: Count asking permission of king to attack countess of Chartres 26. fol. 60va: Countess of Chartres burned at stake (illustration missing) 27. fol. 61va: Arrival of count, countess, and child in Anjou (fig. 16) A logical question to ask in approaching an analysis of this program of illustrations is whether the author or compiler had any knowledge of La Manekine. The text’s editor, Mario Roques, points out that Pierre de Chambli, the patron of the work, lived in the same region as Philippe de Remi. He notes the presence of a number of similarities in descriptions of prayers, banquets, and marriages, but also admits that they could easily be attributed to the literary fashions of the day rather than direct imitation.46 While there is no evidence that Maillart was familiar with the earlier text, it is tempting to read the Roman from the perspective of that work. The most striking difference is in the elimination of any miraculous or fantastic elements and the location of all events within regions of France under the control of the king. Certainly the compiler of the 1316 manuscript did not know, or at least did not make use of, the earlier program of illustrations. None of the illustrations are in any way analogous, not even the depictions of the birth of the new male heir, a conventional subject among medieval illustrators. The initial impression gained from a comparison of the two programs of illustrations is that the artist of La Manekine is more original and more adept; the two-panel illustrations at the start of the earlier manuscript, for example, are more complex than any illustrations found in B.N. n. a. fr. 4531. The composition of the illustrations of the Roman is simpler, and the execution of the figures is less refined. The Roman illustrator was not an outstanding medieval artist. Yet the illustrations, examined in relationship to the text, succeed in illustrating the life of poverty that the countess was forced to endure, and hence provide evidence of how one person interpreted the work. The very simplicity of the illustrations underscores the theme of poverty. This theme is present in the text through descriptions of the countess’s life in exile that contrast with descriptions of the riches of court life. It is interesting to note that Maillart’s lush descriptive passages, in which an abundance of food or musical entertainment is described, are the very passages to which the interpolator of the Fauvel manuscript was drawn

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and which he incorporated into B.N. fr. 146. They seem to be something of a hallmark of Maillart’s style.47 The most explicit visual contrast between riches and poverty (fig. 13) occurs just after the countess and her governess have approached the house of an old woman and begged for bread. Toward the bottom of the first column on 12r, the countess and her governess are depicted receiving bread from an old woman. The two women who have just come from the court mirror one another, each carrying all her earthly possessions in a simple valise. In fact, there is little difference in dress between them and the old woman who stands at the door of her house and gives them a piece of bread. After tasting the coarse, moldy black bread, the countess draws the comparison, in a complaint, to what she used to eat: Lasse, dolente! Tel vie pas apris n’avoie, Quant je chiéz mon pere mennoie, Mes viandes chieres et fines, Chapons en rost, oisons, gelines, Cynnes, paons, perdris, fesanz, Herons, butors qui sont plesans. . . . (1104–10) [Alas, woe is me! Never such a life did I suffer When I was governed by my father. My meat was fine and costly then, Roasted capons, geese, woodhen, Swans, peacocks, partridge, pheasant, Herons, bitterns that are pleasant. . . .] This passage, which begins at the top of the column following the illustration, forms a sharp visual contrast to the poverty depicted in the image. Moreover, it is part of a longer passage that was interpolated by Chaillou de Pesstain into the Fauvel manuscript.48 Another moment in which the illustrator succeeds in depicting the poverty of the countess is also the moment in which she faces the greatest danger to her life. A letter from the count, altered by his evil aunt, has commanded that the heroine and her son be thrown into a pit. In the artist’s rendition of the scene (fig. 14), the pit dominates the center of the

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miniature. The countess now is dressed in a mere shift, extending just below her knees. The governess is no longer present to comfort her. Instead she is surrounded by four men, one of whom (the furthest to the right) is in the act of grabbing her arm, as if to shove her into the pit. The countess continues to be depicted in her shift in the next four illustrations in which she appears, suggesting the extreme poverty to which she is driven, which forces her to seek public aid at a Hôtel-Dieu. The dress of the count during his pilgrimage to search for his wife also echoes the theme of poverty. Fol. 43ra (fig. 15) depicts the departure of the count to seek the countess. The viewer’s attention is focused on his pilgrim’s dress: his simple tunic is decorated with what appear to be leaves, or what may be intended to depict patches, and his legs are wrapped in crude stockings. He holds the conventional pilgrim’s staff in his right hand. Admittedly, his dress is less distinctive in the next two illustrations, also part of his journey. Clearly he is dressed better than the others, for the sergeant-at-arms, by raising his stick, seeks to shoo him away from the poor people seeking alms, as if suspecting him of being an imposter (fol. 45vb).49 All the illustrations of the count and countess of Bourges during their wanderings contrast to the pictures of them at the end, after the family has been reunited and reestablished in their governing roles. The contrast is particularly clear in two entry scenes near the end of the romance. In the entry into Lorris, the countess rides on horseback and is dressed in a striking red cloak (fol. 51vb). In the final illustration of the work, the arrival in Anjou, the women are given a carriage for transport (fig. 16), emphasizing their return to privileged status and to the comforts of material possessions (fol. 61va). The artist of the Roman highlighted an important aspect of the narrative—the contrast of wealth and poverty. That this theme is prominent should not come as a surprise, for the contrast has been inherent in all the narratives of falsely accused noblewomen discussed thus far and especially so in the text of the Roman. More “realistic” than the other narratives, it throws its heroine, with each rotation of the wheel of fortune, from a life of privilege and comfort into one of exile and poverty. My analysis of the Roman du Comte d’Anjou has demonstrated the way one writer used the medieval narrative of a calumniated noblewoman to carry a political message. Although I have found no other fictional account of a calumniated woman that has such a precise relationship to

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historical events at the time the narrative was written, the potential has been established. In the next chapter, the subject of poverty will be explored more extensively in order to provide a context for understanding the dramatized versions of “The Empress of Rome” and “The Handless Queen” produced in Paris by the confrérie of goldsmiths in the second half of the fourteenth century. There the poverty will be associated not merely with personal deprivation of the heroine but also with the injustices that the wealthy classes imposed on the bourgeoisie and lower orders.

From MSS of Gautier de Coinci, Miracles de Nostre Dame. Reproduced by permission of the Bibliothèque nationale de France.

1. The Annunciation. B.N. fr. 1533, fol. 135v.

2. The empress rejecting her brother-in-law. B.N. fr. 1533, fol. 140v.

3. The emperor departing; the empress healing her brother-in-law. B.N. fr. 25532, fol. 109v.

4. The emperor departing. B.N. n. a. fr. 24541, fol. 112v.

5. The empress healing her brother-in-law. B.N. n. a. fr. 24541, fol. 119.

Reproduced by permission of the National Library of Russia.

6. Eight-panel and four-panel miniatures depicting the empress of Rome story. Fr. f. v. XIV. 9, fol. 144.

From Jean de Vignay, Miroir historial (B.N. fr. 316). Reproduced by permission of the Bibliothèque nationale de France.

7. The emperor departing; the empress imprisoning her brother-in-law; the empress condemned. Fol. 382.

8. The empress rescued from rape. Fol. 382v.

9. The Virgin Mary appearing in a dream; the empress healing the accuser; the emperor’s brother confronted. Fol. 383v.

From Philippe de Remi, La Manekine (B.N. fr. 1588). Reproduced by permission of the Bibliothèque nationale de France.

10. Vow at the deathbed; the search for the queen’s double. Fol. 2.

11. Joy’s self-mutilation; Joy, mutilated, before her father. Fol. 6.

12. Burning at the stake. Fol. 27.

From Jehan Maillart, Roman du Comte d’Anjou (B.N. n. a. fr. 4531). Reproduced by permission of the Bibliothèque nationale de France.

13. The girl and her governess given bread by an old woman. Fol. 12.

14. Sergeants-at-arms about to throw the countess and child into a pit. Fol. 34.

15. The count searching for his wife and child. Fol. 43.

16. Arrival of the count, countess, and child in Anjou. Fol. 61v.

From Miracles de Nostre Dame par personnages (B.N. fr. 820). Reproduced by permission of the Bibliothèque nationale de France.

17. Appearance of the Virgin Mary to the sleeping empress of Rome. Fol. 53.

18. Reattachment of the queen’s severed hand. Fol. 84.

From Nicolas Trevet, Cronicles (B.N. fr. 9687). Reproduced by permission of the Bibliothèque nationale de France.

19. God as creator of the world. Fol. 2.

From John Gower, Confessio Amantis. Reproduced by permission of the Morgan Library, M. 126.

20. The Empress of Rome scene accompanying the Constance story. Fol. 32v.

From Eton College Chapel, South Wall. Reproduced by permission of Crown Copyright.NMR.

21. Panel 1. The emperor’s leavetaking and his brother lured into the tower.

22. Panel 2. The empress about to be killed.

23. Panel 3. The empress rescued by an earl.

24. Panel 4. The second false accusation.

25. Panel 5. The empress exiled by ship and the appearance of the Virgin Mary.

26. Panel 6. The cure of the second accuser.

27. Panel 7. The cure of the first accuser.

28. Panel 8. The empress renouncing the world for convent life.

From Norwich Cathedral, Bauchun Chapel Bosses. Reproduced by permission of Crown Copyright.NMR.

29. The empress as regent, riding.

30. The empress and the baby of her rescuer’s wife.

31. The second accuser, with a knife.

32. The empress landing on island.

33. The empress directed by the Virgin Mary to gather herbs.

34. The cure of the leprous accuser.

From Jehan Wauquelin, La Belle Hélène de Constantinople (B.R. 9967). Reproduced by permission of the Royal Library of Belgium.

35. Wauquelin presenting his book to Philip the Good. Fol. 8.

36. Capture of the armless Helen. Fol. 180v.

37. The birth of Helen’s twin sons. Fol. 47v.

38. The marriage of Helen’s son Brice. Fol. 177v.

39. The crucifixion of St. Amaury. Fol. 155v.

40. Descent from the cross of St. Amaury. Fol. 157.

41. Battle against the Saracens. Fol. 63v.

From Le rommant de la belle Helayne de constantinoble. . . . Reproduced by permission of the Bibliothèque nationale de Paris.

42. Helen allegorized as France. Paris, L’Arsenal, 4° B.L. 4345 (Rés.), title page.

4 The Empress of Rome and the Handless Queen Dramatized

Two remarkable witnesses to the popularity of medieval stories of falsely accused queens are found in a collection of forty plays produced in Paris in the second half of the fourteenth century. They are part of a magnificent two-volume codex, often referred to as the Cangé manuscript (Paris, B.N. fr. 819–20), in which an illustration marks the start of each play.1 Of the seven plays featuring persecuted heroines,2 two adapt the narratives of falsely accused queens, in the sense in which the term has been defined in this study. The plays were produced annually by the confrérie (confraternity) of goldsmiths in Paris between the years 1339 and 1382, except during the years 1354 and 1358–60, when no plays were permitted.3 The first, number 27, is an abbreviated version of the empress of Rome narrative and the second, number 29, follows the pattern of the Handless Queen. The direct source of number 27 is not Gautier de Coinci’s Miracles, as one might expect after reading the discussion in chapter 1, but rather an analogous abbreviated Old French version from the Vie des Pères. Philippe de Remi’s La Manekine, the subject of chapter 2, is the source of number 29. The juxtaposing in one manuscript of representatives of the two types of narratives of falsely accused queens provides clear evidence that both these stories were known in the late fourteenth century and thought of as having related themes and plots. Analysis of the plays affords the opportunity to see how the two narrative types were adapted to meet the demands of a new genre and the needs of a bourgeois audience whose locale and métier are known. In three important articles about the Miracles de Nostre Dame par personnages contained in B.N. fr. 819–20,4 Graham Runnalls, through

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detailed detective work, describes his discovery of erased passages in the rubrics preceding the plays, which include the phrase (or a variant of) “joue au puy des orfevres a paris l’an” and a date.5 As a result, the dates of twenty-one plays can definitely be established, including number 27, the story of the empress of Rome, produced in 1369.6 Runnalls also determined that the plays were produced one a year, with the exception of the years indicated above; hence, play number 29, the story of the Handless Queen, was produced in 1371. The last play in the collection was produced in 1382, a date recoverable from the manuscript; the following year Charles VI “cancelled the guilds’ right to assemble in public.”7 The mere fact that the plays were produced during a period of political turbulence in Paris raises questions concerning the relationship of the works to the political and social events of the time. Do the plays contain political commentary? Was the cessation of the plays in 1354, in 1358– 60, and in 1382 merely a part of the general crackdown on public gatherings, or was it a response to specific political commentary within the plays? Placement of the plays within their local historical context and an analytical comparison of the plays with their sources constitute the heart of this chapter. I will demonstrate that the plays reflect tensions between social classes that were a political reality during the last half of the fourteenth century in Paris.8 They highlight injustices associated with the ruling classes, and they evoke sympathy with human suffering through the figure of the persecuted queen. The social criticism is subtle, however, not so strong that it could be considered overtly subversive. Ultimately, the happy endings and the relationships among social classes established at the end of the plays indicate that social hierarchies are accepted, maintained, and reinforced. It is likely that the cessation of the plays was due to a general need to police crowds rather than to specific political commentary contained in them. The production of the manuscript itself, an expensive volume and possibly a royal gift, suggests close associations between the goldsmiths and the king. Although there are no records of its presence in any library prior to its arrival in the library of Châtre de Cangé in the eighteenth century, Runnalls speculates that the manuscript was produced for the entry of Isabelle of Bavaria, wife of Charles VI, into Paris in 1389. He cites Froissart’s description of the event, including the presentation of numerous objects made of silver and gold. Runnalls also points to Charles VI’s inter-

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est in drama, citing three occasions when the king attended a performance: a “mystère de la Passion” at his own residence in 1381, a “play of the Resurrection” at Easter 1390, and a play about “Griselidis” written by Philippe de Mézières and performed in 1395.9 Any judgment of the social criticism contained in the plays must take into account “the rapid return to favour” of the guilds between 1387 and 1394.10

Paris: 1339–1382 It may be surprising that plays continued to be produced annually throughout some of the most intense periods of crisis in France in the fourteenth century: the defeat of the French at Crécy in 1346, the repeated occurrences of the Black Plague, especially in 1348–49, the imprisonment of the powerful nobleman Charles of Navarre by John II in 1356, and the capture of John II by the English at Poitiers that same year.11 However, these larger events of French history are less important than local Parisian events in setting the tenor of the times and explaining the cessation of performances in 1354, 1358–60, and after 1382. In Paris during the period in which the forty plays were produced, a number of important events occurred: a struggle between the States-General and the king over control of taxes; a rise in the influence of the bourgeoisie, led in Paris by the provost Etienne Marcel and other less famous non-nobles; the continuing political machinations of Charles of Navarre, released from prison by the dauphin during John II’s captivity; and the French peasant revolts known as the Jacquerie. The mistakes of John the Good (r. 1350–64) and excessive taxation were principal causes of the popular uprisings during these years. John has been described as avaricious, feeble, easily angered, paranoid, and a man more interested in tournaments and festivities than in practical affairs of state. A more recent assessment based on contemporary witnesses, however, shows a king “benevolent, capable of pity, conscious of his dignity, intelligent, a lover of letters, the courage demonstrated at Poitiers always admired, although unexpected. Alongside these qualities, two principal faults: the sudden flashes of anger noted by Froissart, and the overly pronounced taste for hunting for which Petrarch reproached him.”12 Whatever John’s personal attributes, he made a number of unsound decisions during his reign. Among them were the command to murder his constable Raoul de Brienne, the imprisonment of his rival Charles of Navarre, and

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the attack on the English at Poitiers, which led to the resounding defeat of the French and the king’s own capture in 1356. Rising prices resulting from the Black Plague and the enormous financial drain of the Hundred Years’ War necessitated higher taxes. The reform goal of the general assemblies—the States-General—held after 1343 was “an end to the anarchy that characterized the royal currency.”13 The assembly of 1347 achieved some changes: in government personnel, monetary stability, and the imposition of general tax contributions from the entire country to support the army. But the Black Death intervened, and reform was not taken up again until 1355.14 For a more royalist view of the political events of the period, Raymond Cazelles looked at the abundant written records of meetings of the Conseil (royal council), to which the ultimate responsibility for political decisions was entrusted.15 The years 1354 and 1357–58, years that correspond to the interruptions in performances of the goldsmiths’ plays, were peak years for frequency of meetings. These years in turn correspond to important political events: in 1354 the assassination of John II’s constable Raoul de Brienne, ordered by the king himself, and the revolts of Charles of Navarre; in 1357–58 the confusion following the capture of John, followed by the Paris revolts led by Etienne Marcel.16 Although Cazelles’s study ends with 1360, the final ban on plays in 1382 is also easy to place in relation to popular uprisings. In this year, riots in all the large towns were immediately repressed, with enormous bloodshed. Charles V himself accompanied his knights in repression of a Flemish revolt in the battle of Roosebeke on November 27, 1382.17 The well-known story of Etienne Marcel brings us closer to the local social and historical setting of the Miracles de Nostre Dame par personnages in Paris in the 1350s. When Marcel called for a general strike, the king was a prisoner in England and the dauphin ruled in his stead. A large assembly met and called for drastic economic reforms—the Great Ordinance of March 1357—to which the dauphin temporarily agreed. But the dauphin soon rescinded his support, and on February 22, 1358, a riot ensued. The dauphin escaped from Paris and raised the alarm among the nobles, accusing Marcel of being allied with Charles of Navarre. When the peasants northeast of Paris—the Jacques—later joined the fray, Marcel’s cause was doomed, and the provost was assassinated in July 1358.18 The events sketched here took place a bare decade before the production of plays 27 and 29 in 1369 and 1371, and the threat of losing the right

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to assemble and produce the annual play could never have been far from the minds of the confraternity members. After another decade, 1382 would mark the end of all plays produced by the goldsmiths, at least according to the surviving records. The existence of the manuscript itself, created after the plays ceased to be performed, is the best indication that, despite the ban on performance, interest in the plays continued well into the next century.

Production of the Plays Runnalls identifies a specific audience for the plays: the artisan and bourgeois members of the Paris confrérie of goldsmiths.19 He explains that the right to establish guilds and confréries was granted only to large, influential, wealthy groups of workers, for it was “a great privilege, granted only by the king.”20 The right to assemble once a year was “an essential part of every guild’s statutes.”21 Rivalry among guilds led to greater and greater expenditures for annual gatherings and to more and more elaborate festivities, including dramatic performances. Among the Parisian guilds, the goldsmiths were especially influential and wealthy. Although the forty plays in the Cangé manuscript constitute the chief record of plays being performed by confréries prior to 1380, thereafter “a relative wealth of documents is available” from other regions of France.22 Runnalls writes: “From these valuable reports, we can conclude that on the feast day of the confrérie, a religious play was often performed, that a competition of chants royaux or serventois was held, and that the winner of the contest was couronné.”23 Turning to specific records of the goldsmiths of Paris, he adds these details: that the patron saint of the Parisian goldsmiths was St. Eloi, and that the plays were produced “soon after” his feast day, December 1.24 In the fourteenth century the Parisian goldsmiths were located around the Châtelet fortress,25 where they founded the Church of St. Josse at the corner of rues Quincampoix and Aubry-leBoucher in the fourth arrondissement.26 If they were the guild for which the plays were written, then a room adjacent to the church or a nearby private house was probably the site of the performances of plays 27 and 29.27 The selection of the “miracle” as the genre for the plays was appropriate for the glorification of the Virgin Mary. Every play includes a scene in which the Virgin, like the deus ex machina of ancient drama, intervenes in

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the human world. Included among the plays in B.N. fr. 819–20 are stories from a variety of sources: romance, versified or prose miracles, chansons de geste, and saints’ lives. No matter what the generic origin, the narrative material is refashioned into a limited number of performable episodes and settings, including the resolution of conflict through the intervention of the Virgin. On the basis of internal textual evidence in the forty plays and the dramatic practices of earlier centuries, Dorothy Penn attempted to reconstruct the staging of the goldsmiths’ plays.28 Although her ideas are highly speculative, her broad conclusion is probably correct: that an increasing complexity of staging can be discerned from the earliest to the latest plays and that the two plays of interest here, numbers 27 and 29, were among the more elaborately staged, requiring a greater number of mansions and mechanical devices than earlier plays. Penn is also probably correct in stating that the plays were performed in a closed room rather than outdoors, for a stage direction for number 39 mentions a sale,29 and Runnalls’s study of plays produced by later confréries confirms the practice of indoor performances. However, Penn’s claim that the plays were performed on a stage forty by twenty feet, with a raised platform representing heaven in the foreground at stage right and a mansion representing a house in the foreground at stage left, is a theoretical reconstruction. She further envisions various mansions, one for each major setting, arranged across the back of the stage. Thus, her sketch of the staging for “The Empress of Rome” contains six mansions: hermitage, palace, palace or temple, house or inn, hermitage, and chapel.30 In the center of the stage was a representation of a body of water on which, she speculates, a mechanical ship would operate. According to her, the staging for number 29 would have been similar. It would indeed be gratifying if such precise descriptions of the staging of late-fourteenth-century guild plays existed. Unfortunately, Penn’s ideas remain mere possibilities. With this general introduction to the plays contained in B.N. fr. 819– 20, I move to the specific texts about falsely accused queens, numbers 27 and 29. In both these plays, the cast of characters is greatly expanded from that found in their sources, permitting representation of social classes other than the aristocracy. Comparison of the dramatic texts with their narrative sources reveals the addition of themes of social conflict and political injustice. The principal themes in number 27, “The Empress of Rome,” are the injustices perpetrated by representatives of the ruling

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classes (both brother-in-law and emperor), the empress’s ability to heal, and the loyalty and honesty of the lower classes. In number 29, the Handless Queen story, the injustices of the rulers—here the king of Hungary and the pope—are depicted even more strongly. The suffering of the victim is made vivid through the dramatic image of the amputated hand. Although one obvious effect of both plays is to glorify the Virgin Mary, I suggest that a subtler, more subversive theme is disguised within the stories of falsely accused queens: the plays provide a way to comment on the ineffectiveness, the injustice, and the moral depravity of the ruling class without offending. Through the powerful image of a suffering, impoverished queen, the nobles are moved to have pity and exercise noblesse oblige.

Miracle of the Empress of Rome (Number 27) The dramatized “Empress of Rome” has as its principal source an Old French octosyllabic poem contained in a collection of stories known as the Vie des Pères.31 The dramatist has made many changes to this short narrative source, but verbal correspondences between certain speeches in the play and dialogue contained in the Vie prove that it, or a similar version, was its source.32 Both the play and the narrative source differ from Gautier de Coinci’s story of the empress by reducing the number of episodes to one false accusation and one exile, although there are verbal echoes of Gautier’s “Empress of Rome” that demonstrate that the author of the play was familiar with Gautier’s text as well.33 The rubric introducing the play, “Here begins a miracle of the Virgin Mary about the empress of Rome, whom the brother of the emperor falsely accused in order to murder her, since she would not submit to his sexual demands; and who later became a leper, and whom the empress cured after he confessed his misdeed,”34 announces two important themes that the author develops dramatically: healing achieved through religious devotion, and injustices committed by those responsible for governing. In contrast to Gautier de Coinci’s Miracle, where the theme of sickness and healing is not mentioned until the final section of the narrative and where it never concerns the emperor himself, sickness becomes an issue in the play and its source, the Vie, early on. In both these texts, at the start of the narrative the emperor is depicted as suffering from an illness. In the Vie, the emperor makes a pact with God: if he is cured, he will make a

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pilgrimage to Jerusalem. In the play, the empress brings about his cure through her prayers. The power of prayer to heal—indeed, the religious context in general— is much stronger in the play than in the source. In the first major scene, the empress goes to a moustier (monastery or church), where she listens to a sermon on the Song of Solomon 6:10: “Que est ista que progreditur quasi aurora consurgens, pulcra ut luna, electa ut sol, terribilis ut castrorum acies ordinata?” [Who is she that looks out as the morning light, fair as the moon, clear as the sun, and terrible as an army ready for battle?].35 The answer is, of course, the Virgin Mary, but the sermon first discusses Old Testament figures of Mary—Judith, Hester, Susanna, and the queen of Sheba—before answering the question. The empress demonstrates that she has taken the sermon to heart, for afterwards she kneels and prays to Mary for the cure of the emperor. When next seen on stage, the emperor has, in fact, been cured. The theme of healing is treated ironically later in the play when the brother-in-law becomes lovesick for the empress and takes to his bed. When the empress comes to visit him, she innocently asks if there is not something “Qui a santé vous ramenast / Et qui garison vous donnast” (527–28) [Which might return you to health and provide a cure]. She attempts to ease his pain with comforting words, assuring him that she is his friend and loves him. She, however, speaks in a general sense, whereas he interprets her words as a sexual promise. In a later speech, she takes offense at his literal interpretation of her promise and tells him that, if he continues to press his advances upon her, he will become her enemy (636–51). The theme of healing, prominent in the second half of the play, is highlighted by the artist of B.N. fr. 820. The miniature (fig. 17) introducing the play depicts the sleeping empress, dressed in a long pink gown edged at the bottom with a white band, lying down in the foreground on a large rock in the middle of a blue sea. The Virgin Mary kneels beside her crowned head: she appears to cradle the head of the empress in her hands, but in fact she touches the crown with her right hand and places the green herb either under or next to the empress’s head with her left hand. Representing the protecting presence of the heavenly figures, two angels kneel behind the Virgin Mary. While the artist has selected for illustration the central icon of the narrative text, the empress’s abandonment on an island, it is the symbols of salvation—the comforting pres-

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ence of the Virgin Mary and the straight green stalks of the herb—that are retained in the reader’s memory. Within the narrative, the central dramatic scene on the rock, which occurs shortly after the midpoint of the play (1063), is made vivid through dramatic tension and dialogue. The author builds up suspense for the abandonment of the empress on the rock by expanding a prior scene in which the three men designated to kill her debate her case, speak with her, and observe her kneeling in prayer to the Virgin. Abandoned on the rock, the empress again prays to Mary. Her prayer is followed by a colloquy in heaven among God, the Virgin Mary, and Saint John (with a rondel) and then by the Virgin’s appearance before the empress (with the rondel repeated). By expanding the number of heavenly figures and including music to accompany their appearance, the dramatist creates a world apart and demonstrates how God intervenes in human affairs. By the end of the scene, the empress holds in her hand the green herb that will, as Mary promised, cure lepers. The final two scenes of the play present the empress’s cure of the count who rules the country where she lands—an act that establishes her reputation—and then the cure of her brother-in-law, which leads directly to the recognition scene. Again, the herb is a central prop, symbolic of spiritual strength and the healing power of faith. Perhaps costumes were also devised to represent the leprous skin of the count, which, after confession and drinking of the herb, becomes “aussi nette / Con s’elle fust née nouvelle” (1581–82) [as clean as if it were newborn]. Unlike the cure of the count, the confession and healing of the brotherin-law take considerable time. The dramatist has to assemble the pope, two cardinals, and the emperor before the brother-in-law can be persuaded to confess. Even then, he first tries to get away with a partial confession. He is healed only after publicly confessing to his brother that his accusation of the empress was false. Equal in importance to the theme of healing in the play is the theme of the injustices committed by the fictional rulers. At the heart of the dramatist’s treatment of this theme is the false accusation by the brotherin-law and the emperor’s hasty response. There is no justice in a world that permits the death sentence on the basis of one man’s accusation. Corruption among the ruling classes is also suggested by the illnesses of the emperor and brother-in-law. Although the audience is not told the nature of the emperor’s illness, nor is it directly associated with any of the seven

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deadly sins, nonetheless his illness suggests, when read metaphorically, that something is amiss in the Roman empire. Likewise, the initial ailment of the brother-in-law, seen from a secular point of view, is lovesickness; within the religious context established by this play, however, the illness also suggests lust. The fact that he succumbs to leprosy at the end of the story also provides evidence of his lecherous nature, since leprosy was a disease often associated with sexual excess in the Middle Ages.36 A closer look at the depiction of social strata in the play makes the critique of the ruling classes more evident. The playwright creates a cast of twenty-four characters (not counting the chorus of priests) from a story that originally contained nine (not counting the people on the ship who rescued the empress from the rock). By increasing the number of characters, the author is able to represent different levels of society and to show how their perspectives on the action differ one from the other. The first words of the play, spoken by the empress, define the peak of the secular hierarchy: “Mon chier seigneur, Dieu tout puissant / Vostre santé soit acroissant / Ainsi conme je le desir!” (1–3) [My dear lord, may God almighty bring you good health, as is my dearest wish!]. That is, the empress is obedient to her husband and lord, as both are obedient to God. One of the more important additions the playwright makes to his source is a new scene with the pope before the emperor’s departure from Rome on his pilgrimage. After the emperor has announced to his wife and the brother-in-law his plans for the pilgrimage, he visits the pontiff to obtain his blessing. In all other versions of “The Empress of Rome” known to me, however, the pope appears only at the end of the narrative, to legitimize the miraculous cure of the brother-in-law and to witness the reconciliation of emperor and empress. The addition of the pope has a twofold effect: it reinforces the religious context, which was already heightened by the sermon and the empress’s prayer at the start (and perhaps by the location of the production in a church, or in an adjacent room); it also expands the social hierarchies. By seeking out the pope, the emperor acknowledges that he owes allegiance to another powerful man on earth. Sometimes, it must be admitted, the additional characters have no role but to move the principal characters from one place to another. Thus, the first sergeant-at-arms clears the way for the empress and the emperor to pass into the church or return to the palace. At other times, however, supporting characters, representatives of the classes that serve the nobility—knight, sergeant-at-arms, lady’s maid, squire, tower guard, messen-

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ger—provide an opportunity for dialogue and commentary on the action. For example, the empress’s maid Ysabel, the first knight, and the empress speak together in praise of the sermon. Later, when the empress has imprisoned her brother-in-law, the servant classes are puzzled and ask questions. Baudoin, the squire serving the brother-in-law, finds himself in a particularly precarious situation: he first asks the tower guard, Gobert, why his master has been imprisoned, but Gobert is unable to say why, only that he has been ordered to allow no visitors and to make sure the man does not leave prison. Baudoin questions another man, Brun, the first knight, who in turn asks the empress for an explanation. Although she does not explain why she has imprisoned her brother-in-law, she assures them that he will be cared for and given whatever he wants to eat and drink. She asks Baudoin not to be annoyed but to serve her loyally, something he seems to do easily enough. By expanding the dialogue among the secondary characters, the author highlights the assertive act the empress has committed in imprisoning her brother-in-law. He had been designated to act as regent (whereas in Gautier’s text she is left in charge), but she has upset that hierarchy. The serving classes remain calm and loyal, but the empress will pay for her daring act: by naively releasing her brother-in-law from prison just before her husband arrives home, she permits the false accusation to be made. The lower classes are frequently depicted as loyal helpers of the highborn classes. A noteworthy representative of this role is the innkeeper (“l’ostesse”) who aids the empress after her rescue from the rock in the middle of the sea. The sheer number of members of the serving classes that appear in the play and the opportunities granted them to hold opinions, react, and speak is noteworthy. If, as Runnalls has suggested, the actors were taken from the ranks of the confrérie, one can imagine that their presence on stage would take on even greater allusiveness than their appearance on the printed page. In chapter 1, in the discussion of Gautier de Coinci’s “Empress of Rome,” I stressed the image of the empress, particularly at the end of the narrative, as an emblem of sanctity analogous to that of the Virgin Mary herself. In Gautier’s Miracles, the noble actions of the empress, especially her abandonment of the material world for a spiritual one at the end of the story, throw into question the legitimacy of the empire itself. By contrast, this play presents the empress as a more worldly than saintly figure. The expanded scenes surrounding the imprisonment of the brother-in-law at

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the start of the play depict her as a thoughtful, commanding figure who functions effectively in this world. The final healing scene of the play likewise presents her as more worldly than saintly. Although the healing scenes in the play and the Gautier miracle are similar—the empress and brother-in-law are surrounded by the legitimizing figures of the pope and the emperor of Rome—the effect in the two versions is quite different. By adding two cardinals to the scene, the dramatist adds additional witnesses and authority to the act of healing. Their presence here—like the pope’s presence early in the play—emphasizes the power of the church rather than that of the empress herself. The clearest sign of the empress’s worldly character occurs in the last scene: the empress returns to being an empress, rather than rejecting the vanities of this world for the spiritual life of the monastery, as in Gautier’s version. Along with all the other characters in the play, the empress is called to a banquet in the pope’s palace. The pope has ordered his “clercs” to come as well and “bien chanter,” and the play ends with the singing of their first motet of the banquet. Actors and audience undoubtedly moved together from theater to dining room, from a view of the world onstage to participation in the basic human activities of eating, drinking, and making merry. As the stage dissolved into semireality, the members of the confraternity moved into the metaphorical “home” of the pope, thus aligning themselves with his authority. At the end of the play, the patriarchal hierarchies have been reestablished.

Miracle of the Daughter of the King of Hungary (Number 29) The source of the second play about a falsely accused queen contained in B.N. fr. 819–20 is Philippe de Beaumanoir’s La Manekine, which it follows quite closely.37 There are, however, some important divergences: the dramatist drops the opening deathbed scene of the heroine’s mother; he expands two lines mentioning possible papal approval of the incestuous marriage in the romance to an entire scene of a hundred lines; he omits the lovesickness of the king and proceeds more quickly to the mother-in-law’s hatred and treason; he expands the childbirth scene, a mere nine lines in the romance, and emphasizes the heroine’s suffering; he omits the scene with the fishermen at Rome; and finally he adds a whole scene set in heaven, with a rondel to mark the boundaries between heavenly and earthly space.38

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There are no definite verbal correspondences between the two works. Thus, the author may not have had a text of La Manekine before him; instead, he may have worked from his memory of the plot, or from a summary. However, one internal reference proves the author knew La Manekine. In the play, after the treasonous mother-in-law has had the second false letter written, she remarks: “La manequine male joye / Ara, se fas ce que queroie” (1519–20) [The mannequin will scarcely have joy, and this achieves what I want]. In La Manekine, as we saw in chapter 2, Joy is the name given at birth to the daughter of the king of Hungary, and Manekine the name given her when she arrives in Scotland. In the play, the heroine is called neither Mannequin nor Joy. The author keeps her nameless until her arrival in Scotland, when she gives her name as Berthequine (689). This name likewise evokes the source, with the suffix “-quine” recalling “Manekine.” The name Berthe may also refer to Adenet le Roi’s thirteenth-century romance Berte aus grans piés, another story of a calumniated queen. And there may be further allusiveness, lost to modern readers. The Handless Queen play focuses even more strongly than the empress of Rome play on the social injustices of the rulers, embodied in the depictions of the king of Hungary, the pope, and the mother of the king of Scotland. Furthermore, the suffering of the heroine is intensified by her handless state and by the insertion of a scene describing her pains at the birth of her son. The play explores the injustices of the ruling classes by introducing the figure of the pope and making him responsible for the proposed incestuous marriage between the king of Hungary and his daughter. In Philippe de Remi’s La Manekine, it is the clergiés of the king who suggest and justify the incestuous marriage. There, the Hungarian king begins to lust after his daughter only after the idea has been planted in his mind by his advisors. They are guided by considerations of political expediency, and the involvement of the pope is indirect.39 Thus, in the narrative source, the pope has little to do with the marriage plan. The king is caught between his vow to his dying wife—to marry only someone who resembles her—and the dissatisfaction of his barons with the lack of a male heir. In the play, by contrast, the pope is made responsible for the moral corruption embodied in the proposed incestuous marriage. A new scene in the papal palace places responsibility for the incestuous marriage squarely on the pope and his counselors. He is first seen summarizing the request of

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the king for the benefit of his two cardinals, then raising the question “Ce peut il faire sanz mesprendre / Contre la foy?” (196–97) [Can he do this without sinning against his faith?]. Finally, after listening to the cardinals’ responses, he grants permisson for incest in the first degree. By the fourteenth century, the campaign of the church against incestuous marriages, defined as those within the fourth degree, was well established. How then to interpret a dramatic representation of a pope who permits father to marry daughter? Should the scene be read as a mockery of papal policy? As a questioning of the infallibility of the pope? As one more example of the church’s obsession with incestuous marriages? As seen in earlier renditions of falsely accused queen narratives, criticism of the pope is nothing new. In fact, criticism of the pontiff seems more acceptable than criticism of the French king. Moreover, close analysis of the dialogue in this scene reveals a good deal of irony about how morality works for people in high places. The pope operates, at the start of the play, not from a moral high ground but from political expediency. The pope is presented as a ruler who consults his advisors, but also as a ruler who treats those of royal rank differently from those of lesser ranks. A rather superficial debate between the two cardinals is part of the scene. The first cardinal argues: Il n’est pas personne conmune En tant conme il est roy, c’est une; Ains est un homme singulier, Si que a tel pot tel cuillier. Je tien qu’il duit bien c’on li face Plus qu’a homme d’autre estat grace. (199–204) [He is not an ordinary person In that he is the king, that is one thing; Rather he is an uncommon man, And “to such a pot, such a spoon is fitting.”40 I maintain it would be right to forgive him More than a man of another estate.] The second cardinal notes that holding to the vow made to his dead wife is important and that a male heir, in order to avoid having a foreign king step in and rule Hungary, is of paramount importance. While acknowledging the criticism of the pope inherent in this remark-

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able scene, it is worth noting also that papal spiritual authority is ultimately reaffirmed in the play. The final scene, in which the pope effects the miracle of reattaching the queen’s hand, makes this clear. “Cy touche le pappe la main au braz” [the pope brings the hand in contact with the arm] reads the stage direction, and the miracle is immediately apparent. The pope cries out: “Royne des cieulx, de Dieu mére, / Vezci miracle trop appert: / La main s’est rejointe, et n’y pert / Goute c’onques partist du braz” (2481–84) [Queen of Heaven, Mother of God, here is a miracle made evident: the hand is reattached, and it looks as if it never left the arm]. The artist of B.N. fr. 820 has illustrated this final miracle (fig. 18). In it, seven figures surround a baptismal font. It is an interior scene, indicated by an arch above and by a blue and gold diapered background and green floor. Four figures are more prominent than the other three. The pope, dressed in a long white tunic, an open red cape, and a tiara, stands directly behind the font. The handless queen stands in front at the left side of the font (as viewed by the reader). The pope holds up his right hand in a sign of blessing. In his left is the queen’s hand, miraculously preserved and serendipitously recovered just in time for the reunion scene. He extends the wrist toward the stump of the left hand of the queen; clearly it is mere inches (and seconds) from being reattached. The queen, dressed in a long blue gown with a white border at the bottom and what appear to be white dangling elbow pieces wrapped around her arms, appears small and frail in contrast to the six men ranged behind her. Of the two kings observing the miracle, the one just behind her, dressed in a long red cape with white ermine collar, seems more prominent and older than the other, and is thus likely to be the king of Hungary. The second king stands to the right, as the reader views the scene, farther from the queen. He looks rather skeptical and has his hand raised in what may be a gesture of disbelief or surprise. None of the other three male figures is dressed as a cardinal; they seem merely unidentifiable court figures. What is the effect of the miniature on the reader? Literally, it identifies the miracle performed in the play, but it also presents a positive image of the pope and shows that the injustices, corruption, and immorality evident at the start of the play have been resolved by the end. Whatever criticism of the ruling classes, royal and papal, was seen at first is no longer applicable. The miniature that accompanies the permanent, written record

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of the performance memorializes the joyous ending and the return to proper hierarchical rule. Because the injustices of the ruling classes described in the play pertain to both secular and religious rulers—the king of Hungary and the pope—the author’s criticism of the ruling classes is stronger in this play than in “The Empress of Rome.” The theme is amplified also by the playwright’s depiction of the mother of the king of Scotland, whose treasonous actions are developed dramatically. In the narrative, the depiction of the mother-in-law’s substitution of letters, from the birth of the male child to the reading of the king’s response, constitutes 6.8 percent of the narrative (580 lines out of 8590). In the play, the same series of scenes takes up 515 lines out of a total of 2542, or about 20 percent of the text. By giving a larger number of lines to the falsified letters, the author emphasizes the mother-in-law’s treasonous actions. Moreover, the first false letter is read aloud at the midpoint of the play, again emphasizing its prominence. Close analysis of the letters and comparison to the parallel letters in La Manekine will demonstrate the care with which they have been written. They are phrased so as to magnify their treasonous (and dramatic) content. In the first letter, written from Scotland to announce the birth of a beautiful male child, the playwright has made the queen herself the speaker in the letter rather than the seneschal in whose care she was placed. It is useful to compare the opening of the letters in La Manekine and the play. In the earlier work, the letter begins with the epistolary convention of a subordinate writing to his superior: Au Roi d’Escoche, son signour, A cui Diex doinst joie et honnour, Mande salus et amistié Li senescax qu’il a laissié Pour garder sa tere et sa fame. (2997–3001) [To the King of Scotland, his lord, May God give him joy and honor, The seneschal whom he left behind To keep his land and his wife Sends greetings and friendship.]

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The play, on the other hand, presents a simple first-person address of a wife to her husband: Mon treschier amy Et seigneur, je me reconmans A vous, et de saluz vous mans Tant com je puis, et fas savoir Que vous avez un nouvel hoir Masle. (1246–51) [My very dear friend And lord, I commend myself To you and send you greetings Such as I can, and let you know That you have a new heir, A boy.] This simple but emotionally effective wording is changed by the treasonous mother-in-law into more formal address, thus violating both the private and public relationships of the king and queen. A similar contrast is set up later in the play between the letter of response from the king and the false letter, composed by the treacherous mother-in-law, that replaces it. The king’s response to the news (false, of course) that his wife has borne a monster is relatively mild, bidding his seneschal guard mother and child until his return. The mother-in-law’s directive, contained in the second false letter, is brief and harsh: point ne tardez, Ces lettres veues, que n’ardez La Bethequine et sa portée Sanz attendre heure ne journée. (1499–1502) [do not delay, Having read this letter, to burn La Bethequine and her son Without waiting an hour or day.] The brutal tone is particularly evident when contrasted with the simple, honest tone of the queen’s original letter. The playwright has explored the corruption in two royal houses, the

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Hungarian and the Scottish. The former, dominated by the incest motif, is more obviously sexual than the second, in which the jealousy of the mother-in-law dominates. In neither scene, however, are the personal sins and foibles as prominent as the political issues of inheritance and continued stability. The repentance of the king of Hungary and his voyage to Rome, for example, are treated perfunctorily: his presence is almost forgotten in the reunion and miracle scene before the pope at the end of the play. I have noted that the play minimizes the suffering of the heroine during her voyages by sea (indeed, it is not even clear that a ship or body of water was necessary in the staging of the play). Instead, the suffering of the victim is made vivid through the image of the amputated hand and by the expansion of the childbed scene to include her cries at the pain of birth. Literally, her body becomes the locus of her suffering, graphically perceptible by the audience, who would see a stump where her hand had once been. During the birth scene, they hear her cry out three times in pain before the child is born: Que feray je? Diex, les rains! Diex! Confortez moy, dame des cielx: Trop sans d’angoisse. (1019–21) [What can I do? God, my loins! God! Comfort me, heavenly Mother: I suffer too much.] Diex, le ventre! Diex, les costez! Trop sens d’angoisse et grant ahan. (1028–29) [God, my belly! God, my sides! It’s too much pain and suffering.] E! mére au tresdoulx roy celestre! Or sui j’a ma fin, bien le voy. Doulce vierge, confortez moy, Je vous en prie. (1042–45) [Ah! mother of the sweet king of heaven! Now is my end, I can see it. Sweet virgin, comfort me, I beg you.]

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Human suffering is captured in these birth scenes and throughout the play in the image of the mutilated queen. Like the Mother of God herself, sorrowing at the foot of the cross, the falsely accused queen becomes an emblem of the loss, pain, and suffering that are part of life on this human stage. The popularity of the persecuted heroine motif within the codex— it is found in seven of the forty plays—suggests that she is meant to evoke pity and encourage a charitable stance among the guild members and their noble audience toward the many poor visible around them. The figure of a virtuous noblewoman becomes an apt image of more general human suffering. When the persecuted heroine occurs in other plays within the collection, the accompanying miniatures often depict noblewomen in precarious positions, in need of the Virgin Mary’s aid. Within the first volume of the manuscript—those plays written between 1339 and 1364—there are two such miniatures. Although play number 4 is not, strictly speaking, a persecuted heroine story, the miniature shows the Virgin Mary rescuing the queen, who has killed her husband’s seneschal, from being burned at the stake. In number 12 the marquise of Gaudine, falsely accused by the uncle of her husband, is depicted seated in a horse-drawn cart, on her way to be burned at the stake. In the second volume, the number of plays and miniatures depicting persecuted heroines increases. In addition to the two stories of falsely accused queens discussed above, play number 28 concerns a queen of Spain. Although the miniature does not depict the heroine’s difficulties, the plot—involving an absent husband, a lecherous uncle, and the false accusation of adultery—contains motifs familiar from “The Empress of Rome.” The story of Pepin’s wife Berthe (number 31) is accompanied by a miniature similar in concept to the one accompanying number 29: Berthe is depicted asleep in a forest, with the Virgin Mary standing before her. The miniature accompanying number 32, the story of King Thierry and his wife Osanne, which is reproduced in the frontispiece of this book, depicts the classic Constance plight—a woman alone in a rudderless ship, this one guided by an angel who swoops down from heaven and pulls it by a rope. And finally, number 37 presents the story of Ysabel, who flees to Constantinople dressed as a man in order to escape an incestuous marriage with her father. The image of the furnace of affliction (camino paupertatis) from Isaiah 48:10 seems never to have been far from the mind of the medieval writer

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or artist of narratives of falsely accused queens. Poverty and affliction are directly connected for them in ways that are less familiar to many twentieth-century readers, for whom affliction is more likely to be thought of as emotional or physical rather than as economic distress. In fourteenthcentury Paris, however, the contrast of rich and poor was easy enough to see. Usually congregating near the walls or gates of the city, the poor contrasted sharply with the great wealth of mercantile Paris, a contrast that, as Michael Camille has demonstrated, is visible in the margins of other early fourteenth-century works such as The Life of St. Denis.41 Social conditions in the fourteenth century, especially in large cities like Paris, were such that “wealth lived side by side with the greatest deprivation.”42 As Robert Clark has shown, the confraternities had a special concern for charity in response to urban poverty. They associated the suffering of the poor with the suffering of Christ on the cross, and feeding the poor was a duty associated with their annual meetings.43 In French the adjective pauvre (from the Latin pauper) was used first to refer to a person’s condition; later the noun povreté (from the Latin paupertas) referred to a class of individuals that could evoke either pity or fear.44 Stories of falsely accused queens, with heroines who spend a large portion of their time onstage in a condition of poverty, were undoubtedly intended to evoke the emotion of pity as well as to stand as a metaphor for more general human suffering.45 The life of poverty experienced by the falsely accused noblewomen of fiction, unlike that found in the illustrations Camille studied, is not marginalized or ridiculed; rather, it is used to support a positive image of spiritual purity, the opposite of male lust and tyranny. The life of poverty experienced by fictional falsely accused queens refines their souls and brings them to greater spiritual depth. Later in the Middle Ages, the narrative components of the empress of Rome stories (more overtly religious) and the Constance stories (more overtly secular) intermingle, and the identification of poverty with positive spiritual qualities becomes even stronger, undoubtedly aided by the rising influence of the mendicant orders.

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5 Constance and Her English Sisters

The name Constance is first used in association with stories of falsely accused queens in the fourteenth century in England. Nicholas Trevet’s Anglo-Norman prose Cronicles (written before 1334) contains the earliest story in which the heroine is named Constance, and this text has long been acknowledged by scholars as the source of two later verse narratives: John Gower’s story of Constance in the Confessio Amantis (ca. 1385) and Geoffrey Chaucer’s “Man of Law’s Tale” in The Canterbury Tales (ca. 1390), in which he uses the variant form Custance. These three narratives have received considerable attention from scholars seeking to identify Chaucer’s sources and, by comparison to its source, to demonstrate Chaucer’s superior artistry. Although this traditional literary critical approach promotes appreciation of Chaucer’s tale, it has had a deleterious effect on appreciation of Trevet and Gower. For example, Edmund A. Block’s 1953 article “Originality, Controlling Purpose, and Craftsmanship in Chaucer’s Man of Law’s Tale” thoroughly analyzes the relationship between Trevet’s and Chaucer’s texts in order to prove the aesthetic superiority of the latter. His essay devotes merely one paragraph to Gower’s story,1 although many of the changes Block attributes to Chaucer may have first been made by Gower. In fact, most scholars today believe that Gower wrote his version of the story of Constance first, Chaucer then using both Gower and Trevet as sources.2 Block’s article is marred by a series of disparaging remarks about Trevet’s “pedestrian story,” his “meandering, factual, prosaic account,” and his “dull factuality and preciseness.” In short, he views Trevet’s story of Constance as the “drab original” of Chaucer’s more accomplished production.3 Instead of reading Trevet’s and Gower’s stories of Constance as sources

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for Chaucer’s tale, I propose to consider each narrative separately. A balanced analysis of the three works side by side within their manuscript contexts and within the context of earlier Continental treatments of falsely accused queens will demonstrate how each author exploited the rich lode of thematic possibility inherent in this narrative type. Trevet, working within the generic requirements of a prose chronicle and shaping his narrative for a royal female patron, created a saintly “founding mother” of Britain. Gower, working within the generic requirement of an anthology of stories with an allegorical frame, wrote an extremely economical exemplum of detraction, envy, and backbiting in order to promote the moral development of his royal male patron, Richard II. And Chaucer, also working within an anthology of stories—albeit with a more complicated narrative frame—probed the spiritual depth of his heroine and dramatized the affective aspects of the narrative. As in the previous chapters, I shall work not merely from the evidence of printed texts but also from that provided by manuscripts. In fact, for Trevet, there is no printed edition of the entire Anglo-Norman prose text, only an edition of the Constance story itself.4 My analysis of Trevet’s story in its fuller manuscript context will rely upon two manuscripts: Paris, B.N. fr. 9687 (fourteenth century), and an English translation at Harvard University, Houghton Library f. M. Eng 938 (fifteenth century). In order to understand the artistic and narrative contexts in which Gower’s text was read by later readers, I shall discuss Morgan Library M. 126 (fifteenth century), one of two heavily illustrated manuscripts of Gower’s Confessio Amantis. And finally, in considering the complex narrative frame given Chaucer’s tale, I shall utilize the Latin glosses found in certain manuscripts and considered by some scholars to be authorial.

Nicholas Trevet’s Cronicles Nicholas Trevet (1258–ca. 1334), a teacher at Oxford in the early fourteenth century, wrote three works, two (the Annales and Historia) in Latin and the third (the Cronicles) in Anglo-Norman. These works “were widely read and disseminated in the Europe of his day.”5 The Cronicles were written for Mary of Woodstock, daughter of Edward I and Eleanor of Castile, sister of Edward II, and a nun at Amesbury, a Benedictine house dependent on Fontevrault. Mary died in 1332, possibly before the work could be presented to her.6

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As the title of his work indicates, Trevet is a chronicler, interested in placing Constance within a temporal frame that begins with the creation of the world and ends with events concerning Mary of Woodstock’s Plantagenet relations. Both Chaucer and Gower understood Trevet as a source of historical events and personages. As V. A. Kolve explains, Chaucer’s first audiences “would not have thought the story of Custance a fiction at all: they would have perceived it as history.”7 In fact, at the start of the Constance story in the Confessio Amantis, Gower refers directly to his historical source when he names his heroine for the first time: “Constance, as the Cronique seith / Sche hihte.” At other places in the Confessio Amantis, Gower also stresses the usefulness of an “ensample” drawn from “a Cronique.”8 The association of narratives of falsely accused queens with chronicles and other historical accounts extends beyond these three English writers. One of the earliest narratives of falsely accused queens appears in the midtwelfth century in the Middle High German Kaiserchronik.9 Another German version, dealing with the daughter of the king of Russia, is contained within Jansen Enikel’s Weltchronik (completed after 1277).10 In England, too, a story of a falsely accused queen—although not a Constance story—can be found before Trevet in Matthew Paris’s historical narrative Lives of the Two Offas.11 And finally, the related story of the falsely accused empress of Rome received wide distribution through Vincent de Beauvais’s Speculum historiale.12 Although Gower and Chaucer may not have known these specific texts, the fact that narratives of falsely accused queens often appear within historical narratives firmly associates Constance with this genre. Study of Trevet is hampered by the lack of a printed edition of the Cronicles. In fact, it is typical of the Chaucerian emphasis in Trevet scholarship that the latest scholar to be working on an edition is a Chaucerian. Robert Correale’s edition of the entire Cronicles will be based on Paris, B.N. fr. 9687 (ca. 1340–50), the copy believed to be closest to the one Chaucer used.13 In my study of Trevet, I have gone directly to this text to understand the function of the story of Constance within the larger work. The artistic layout of the Anglo-Norman manuscript provides clues about how the compiler fashioned it for its patron, Mary of Woodstock. I shall also look, in my study of the role of the story within the larger chronicle, at the fifteenth-century Middle English translation at Harvard, which includes a continuation that brings the Cronicles to 1413.

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In both Anglo-Norman and Middle English contexts, the tale “calls attention to itself” by its length, its “narrative complexity,” and its position “at approximately the physical center” of the manuscript.14 The story also plays a pivotal role in the transition from pagan to Christian rulers. Constance’s father is Tiberius Constantine, and the estoire begins with the seemingly innocuous but typical transitional phrase “Tyberie Constantin . . . engendra de sa femme Ytalie vne fille Constaunce” (165) [Tiberius Constantine . . . begat through his wife Italia a daughter named Constance], establishing him (and his daughter) as part of the chain of rulers linking Adam to the current royal family. This plain, prosaic beginning belies the importance of the Constance narrative that follows. Its principal subject is the attempt to convert two pagan nations, unsuccessful in the case of the sultan, successful in the case of the king of Northumbria (thereby leading to the establishment of Christianity in England). An only child, Constance at the start of the estoire fits the model of early Christian virgin martyrs such as Catherine, Faith, and Cecilia. She is learned in the seven liberal arts, speaks several languages, and preaches to the pagan merchants who arrive at the port of Rome: “lour prescha la fey Cristienn” (165) [she preached the Christian faith to them]. Trevet emphasizes, to a much greater extent than Gower or Chaucer, the acts of conversion and the alliance of nations. Thus the marriage of Constance to the barbarian king is part of the Roman king’s effort to convert the “estraunges barbaryns” (166). In keeping with Trevet’s historical focus, the prose story of Constance is actually better motivated and more convincing as a representation of history than either of the later verse stories. In Gower and Chaucer, one never learns how the Romans knew about the catastrophic events that occurred at Constance’s wedding feast (and hence that they should send a navy over to take revenge), whereas Trevet states: “Mes treis vallez Cristiens eschaperent . . . e vindrent a Rome e counterent al emperor la mescheaunce e le traisoun e la mort sa fille Constaunce” (167) [But three Christian servants escaped . . . and came to Rome and told the emperor about the misfortune and the treason and the death of his daughter Constance]. Nor, in the verse retellings, does one ever learn how Constance communicated with the Northumbrian inhabitants, whereas Trevet states that they spoke Saxon, one of the languages Constance had been taught as a young woman in Rome. The actions of Domild, the second evil motherin-law, are also better motivated in Trevet’s story. For her, Constance is a

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foreigner of unknown lineage. She has preached a new religion and is so appreciated for her virtue that she is celebrated in song, inciting the mother-in-law’s envy: “E mout lui encrut sa ire lez chaunssounz que lez puceles de la terre fesoient e chauntoyent de lui” (172) [And it greatly angered her, the songs the local young women composed and sang about her]. The episode of the attempted rape during Constance’s second exile is also more explicable in Trevet, from the point of view of narrative verisimilitude. The scene of her landing at the castle of a pagan admiral contrasts with the way Elda and his wife Hermengild received her at the end of her first exile. The lusty steward, one Thelous, seems hospitable at first: he takes her and her son, Morice, to the admiral, who has pity on her. When she insists on continuing to live on the ship rather than with the pagans, Thelous acts as her protector, brings her treasure, appears to listen to her Christian teachings, and helps her sail away. Once on the high seas, however, when he succumbs to the temptation of bodily lust, Constance lures him to the deck and pushes him over, with no help from God as in Gower and Chaucer. In addition to better motivation of the actions of the characters, Trevet’s precise details about names, dates, food, letters, and places help convey the sense of truthfulness so typical of medieval prose historical narratives. All the important characters, with the exception of the sultan’s mother, are named, and exact dates are given for arrivals and departures. For example, Constance arrives in Northumbria in the eighth month of the fourth year of her exile, on Christmas Eve. Details are provided about the provision of food and length of the first exile: the sultan’s mother “fist estorer vne neefs de vitaile, de payn quest apele bisquit, e de peis e de feues, de sucre et de meel e de vyn pur sustenaunce de la vie de la pucele pur treis aunz” (167–68) [had a ship stored up with food: a bread called biscuit, and peas and beans, sugar and honey and wine to sustain the life of the girl for three years]. When Domild falsely accuses Constance, the text of the falsified letters is quoted in full, lending an additional air of verisimilitude. After the reunion of the family at the end of the estoire, Alla dies in England a mere nine months later; soon thereafter Constance is called back to Rome to aid her dying father, who dies two weeks after her arrival. She herself dies a year later (584 a.d.) on St. Clement’s Day. Trevet also names several important burial sites. Constance is placed beside her father in St. Peter’s Church in Rome. Elda, having accompanied Constance to Rome

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and died on the way home, is buried in the Church of St. Martin at Tours. Alla, who died in Winchester, is buried there in the Church of St. Amphibel. Trevet provides his most vivid “realistic” touches when Alla returns from his campaign abroad. During his journey home, before he learns what has happened in his absence, he faces the rebellious behavior of his people: aghast at his inexplicable decision to cast out wife and child, the Northumbrians “femmes e enfauntz deuestuz par despyt luy moustrerent lour derere” (176) [women and children exposed themselves out of spite and displayed their rear ends to him]. Later, when Alla finds out what really happened, he stands over his mother with sword in hand. Although she confesses and asks forgiveness, he refuses: “Qar de moy, ne de ma femme, ne de moun enfaunt vous ne nauiez pite, ne ioe de vous ia pite naueray” (176–77) [because you never had pity, neither for me, nor for my wife, nor for my infant, I shall never have pity for you]. As she lies naked in her bed, he cuts off her head and chops her up into pieces. As V. A. Kolve has argued for Chaucer’s heroine, Trevet’s Constance and her rudderless ship may be read not only literally but also allegorically to represent “a journey of the Ship of the Church bringing the true faith to ‘hethenesse.’”15 In fact, in Trevet the theme of conversion is stronger than in Chaucer. His Constance plays an exemplary role as a Christian who leads others to convert; his heroine points to the spiritual inheritance that leads directly from heroine to patron, Mary of Woodstock. By positioning the story of Constance in such a prominent place in his narrative, Trevet suggests that the qualities of intelligence and virtue attributed to Constance, as well as her devotion to the Christian faith, are equally applicable to his patroness. Preceded and followed by other conversion tales, Trevet’s story shows Constance setting in motion a whole series of conversions, beginning at the age of thirteen with the Syrian merchants visiting Rome. Later the sultan himself converts to Christianity in a move that is more than a pragmatic means of obtaining Constance’s hand in marriage. It is also, as Trevet tells the story, a first step in the establishment of a peace treaty between East and West in which the West has much to gain: twelve Saracen children as hostages, open trade borders, access to the Holy Land (Mount Calvary, Bethlehem, Nazareth, and the “vale of Iosophat”), rule over Jerusalem, open access for Christian missionaries and permission to preach, and the destruction of pagan temples.

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In Northumbria, Constance’s ability to convert is closely related to her inner virtue, as may be seen in her interactions with Hermengild. Hermengild perceives Constance’s virtue but despairs of being able to emulate her, while Constance roots her personal attributes in her Christian faith: “‘. . . qe vous ne freez a ma volunte, dount vous serrez mesme tiel come ioe suy.’ Et Hermyngild lui respoundi: ‘A ceo,’ dist ele, ‘ja ne purray ioe ateyndre, quar vous etez en terre sauntz peer en vertue.’ Et Custaunce lui respount: ‘A ceo poez vous venir, si crere voudrez en celi dieu quest seignur de toute vertue’” (169) [“. . . if you do as I ask, you shall be the same as I am.” And Hermengild answered her: “That,” she said, “I can never achieve, for you are so virtuous you have no peer on earth.” And Constance answered, “You may achieve it, if you will believe in that god who is lord of all virtue”]. A lengthy description follows of the Christian teachings provided by Constance to Hermengild. Later, while Elda, Hermengild, and Constance are walking along the sea one day, a blind man approaches and asks to be cured. Hermengild’s newfound inner virtue allows her to effect the miracle, which in turn becomes a means of converting Elda. After these conversions, a Welsh bishop is summoned to baptize them and others in the region. Unlike Gower and Chaucer, Trevet has these conversions occur before the king of Northumbria (Alla) ever enters the picture, making them the direct result of Constance’s saintly behavior. With the help of the divine retribution taken on the slanderous knight, the conversions of King Alla and all his retainers soon follow. The conversions cease only when Constance is set adrift a second time. She now takes on a more passive role, that of obedient servant, more concerned for the welfare of her friends and the greater good of Northumbria than for her own life. Constance, then, from start to end of her stay in Northumbria, acts as an early Christian missionary. In fact, this literary ancestor of Mary of Woodstock becomes, as Christopher Baswell has called her, “a founding mother” of Northumbria, whose conversions preceded those of Augustine and thus constitute, he argues, a usurpation of male power.16 The importance of Constance as a spiritual ancestor for Mary of Woodstock is made explicit through the artistic layout of B.N. fr. 9687, which emphasizes historical continuities and reinforces the reader’s sense of the “providential Christian view of history.”17 Its frontispiece, page layout, and genealogical charts link the creation of the world to the current royal family—the family of the patron of the manuscript, Mary of Woodstock.18

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Upon opening B.N. fr. 9687, the reader notes that the left-hand page (fol. 1v) is devoted entirely to the title and dedication, written in large Gothic bookhand, with an illuminated and lightly foliated initial: “(C)i comencent les cronicles q(e) frere Nichol / Triuet escrit a ma dame marie sa fillie moun / seignour le roi Denglet(ere)e Edward le filtz / Henri” [Here begin the chronicles that brother Nicholas Trivet wrote for milady Marie, the daughter of milord the king of England, Edward, the son of Henry]. A title page of this sort, an unusual use of precious vellum in a medieval document,19 suggests that the compiler wished to call attention to the royal patronage of the document. The connection of Mary of Woodstock to the royal male genealogy—to her father and grandfather—is a theme highlighted throughout the manuscript. Opposite the title page is a handsomely ornamented page, which probably was the original opening page of the work (fig. 19).20 Within an historiated initial P is the standing figure of God, as creator of the world, with long hair and beard. Before him is a circular image of the world, which is partially mapped in. The sea, in the lower half, is visible; in the upper portion, land is depicted on the left and air on the right. God holds calipers in his hand with which to measure out or partition the world. The text, written here as throughout the manuscript in two columns (which vary between thirty-nine and forty-two lines), is enclosed in a chainlike border. On the top and bottom are small framed spaces with red faces of devils; on the left and right borders are larger framed spaces, three to a side, each with a full-length figure of a king bearing, in all but one case, a book, scepter, or sword. And in the lower left space, directly above a devil’s head, is a head of a man with beard and long hair. Although the individual kings depicted in the border have not been identified, it is evident from their dress that they are members of successive generations of the British royal family and not to be confused with the patriarchs with whose reigns the book begins. The chain of kings symbolically captures one aspect of the manuscript: the sense that time proceeds in a continuum, directed by God, from the beginning of the world to the kings of England. The running heads contained within the ordinatio reinforce this impression: “Gestes des apostres” [Deeds of apostles] or “Gestes des apostoilles” [Deeds of popes] on versos and “Emp(er)ours (et) Rois” [Emperors and kings] on rectos.21 The sense of the continuity of history from one generation to the next,

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from king to son, is even more clearly expressed in a section at the end of the work titled “Genealogy,” in which the lineage of the royal family is traced back to Adam and Eve.22 The repetitive text—”edward fu le fitz le roi / henri le qart qi fu le fitz le roi joha(n) / q(i) fu le fitz le roi henr(i) le secound / q(i) fu le fitz . . .” [Edward was the son of King Henry the Fourth, who was the son of King John, who was the son of King Henry the Second, who was the son . . .]—takes up only forty-one lines of text, but B.N. fr. 9687 contains a chart as an additional visual aid.23 The name of each male ruler is inscribed within a circle, with a notation to the right (“ffilius . . .”) indicating the name of his father. Beginning with Cerdicius, the first West Saxon king in England (fol. 108r), crowns are added atop the circles. The kings of England are thus outlined in order of their reign. Ancillary circles and connecting lines clarify the bloodlines.24 Unlike the text, the chart is modified on the last two pages (fols. 109v and 110r) to emphasize a queen of particular importance to the ancestry of Mary of Woodstock. Thus, Emma is listed as the wife of Athelred and mother of four rulers, Knut, Haraldus, Hardeknoutus, and Edwardus. On the same page, to the left of the main line of descent, are listed other noblewomen: Agatha, wife of Edwardus, and Margareta (St. Margaret), wife of Malcolmus and mother of Edgarus, Alexander, Darus, and Matilda (who was mother of another Matilda, empress of the Holy Roman Empire). On the last page of the chart, the main line of descent flows from Henry I down to Trevet’s monarch Edward III (r. 1327–77), with the empress Matilda and her husband Emperor Henry V given a special place of prominence to the left of Henry II of England (r. 1154–89). The compiler of the Paris manuscript is appealing to the tastes of the royal patron, as the attention to female ancestors in the genealogy demonstrates. Trevet’s text also “seems to be careful of the feelings of his patroness,” as Ruth Dean has noted.25 Into the year 1294 he inserts the story of an earlier event, Mary’s entry into the convent with her grandmother Eleanor, widow of Henry III, and into the year 1306 he inserts a genealogy of the children of Edward I, which includes an account of all his daughters, among them Mary. Dean explains: “When he comes to Mary herself in this account he comments on her choice of vocation—if one can call the family arrangements a choice or a vocation—praising it with a quotation from the Bible.”26 Constance, viewed as centrally placed in Trevet’s larger historical narrative and within the manuscript context of B.N. fr. 9687, becomes a far

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more interesting heroine than earlier scholars have given her credit for being. She plays a pivotal role in the transition from pagan to Christian history as well as within the narrower context of Plantagenet genealogy. It is little wonder that both Gower and Chaucer found her story worth retelling in the context of their anthologies written two generations later.

John Gower’s Confessio Amantis John Gower (1325–1408), a contemporary of Geoffrey Chaucer and possibly a lawyer, was best known in his day as a poet and scholar.27 A polylingual writer, he wrote his Vox Clamantis in Latin, his Mirour de l’omme in Anglo-Norman, and his Confessio Amantis in Middle English (with Latin glosses). As with Trevet, his reputation among modern readers has suffered greatly by comparison to Chaucer. Of the forty-nine extant manuscripts of the Confessio Amantis, I have chosen Morgan M. 126 to discuss because it is the only manuscript that contains an illustration of the story of Constance and because it is an example of the first recension, written for Richard II.28 The text, therefore, is one with which Geoffrey Chaucer, writing his story of Custance around the same time, may have been familiar. Of the many manuscript settings for narratives of falsely accused queens examined thus far, the layout of Gower’s text, as viewed through the manuscript format of M. 126, most closely resembles that of Gautier’s Miracles de Nostre Dame, particularly as read in the Soissons manuscript. In both manuscripts, stories drawn from diverse sources are arranged in a volume designed for presentation, for use in public readings, and/or for private study.29 Like Gautier’s collection, Gower’s is probably meant to be read a section at a time and not necessarily in the order in which the stories are presented. Both texts can be read much like the Bible: one can move around from one section to another, according to the tastes, desires, or needs of the audience or the requirements of the moment. The organizational aids in the manuscript have, therefore, the primary purpose of increasing the ease with which the reader can find a particular story or section.30 The audience of M. 126 was apparently expected to recognize the tale of Constance from the illustration provided at the start of the narrative, fol. 32v (fig. 20). Curiously, however, the miniature does not illustrate the story of Constance, but rather that of the empress of Rome.31 Moreover,

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it is an illustration of the empress of Rome unlike any other I have seen. To the right, elegantly dressed, the empress bends over a small bush, which represents the healing herb that the Virgin Mary has granted to her. Behind this scene an earlier moment is depicted in which she stands in a rudderless ship, her hands folded in prayer, anticipating her landing on the island. Dominating the middle and left portions of the miniature is a scene that appears to depict a future moment in the narrative: a large ship with sails has landed on the island. A plank extends from the side of the ship to the land, and on the plank stand three men. All three men are elegantly dressed: the middle figure has his hands folded in prayer, and the two outer figures have their hands raised, with palms open outward. These gestures suggest that the three male figures are repentant slanderers—although only two are mentioned in Gower’s text—approaching the empress as the person who will hear their confessions and bring about their spiritual salvation and physical healing.32 The confusion of the empress of Rome and Constance stories by the artist or by whoever provided instructions to the artist is not difficult to understand, for one can find other instances in which features of the two types of stories intermingle in narratives written prior to the end of the fourteenth century. In fact, as will be demonstrated in the next chapter, the empress of Rome becomes the dominant story of the two types known in England by the fifteenth century, primarily because of the emerging popularity of the Gesta Romanorum. Influence of the Gesta also provides an explanation for the three men depicted in the Morgan illustration. In the Gesta version, the empress cures three, rather than two, men who have behaved treacherously toward her. Thus, the most elegantly dressed figure nearest the ship is probably the brother-in-law. The figure in the middle is probably the knight who killed the earl’s child and left the bloody knife in the empress’s hand. And finally, the least elegantly dressed of the three, who stands nearest the shore, is probably the servant whom the empress rescued from the gallows.33 Before turning to a discussion of the Constance story introduced by this illustration, it will be useful to summarize the narrative structure into which the story is placed. Gower’s prologue, as presented in the first recension, includes his dedication of the work to Richard II, an analysis of the three estates (rulers, churchmen, and commoners), a description of Nebuchadnezzar’s dream (Dan. 2:31–45), and an interpretation of that dream according to the four

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ages of man. In the prologue, Gower presents himself as a man dismayed by the division and war that characterize his age, as a man desirous of peace. The prologue ends with an evocation of the image of Arion’s harp as a symbol of peace. Gower implies that his own book, which will be about love (as he states at the start of book 1), will play an analogous role to Arion’s harp: by teaching men to love correctly, peace and harmony may be reintroduced to the world.34 In book 1, Gower sets up the allegorical frame for his collection of stories, a dialogue between the author/lover and the goddess of love’s confessor, Genius. One day in May, the narrator tells us, he goes out into the woods, sorrowing because he is “further fro my love / Than Erthe is fro the hevene above” (105–6). After he swoons from sorrow, a vision of the god and goddess of love appears. The god of love angrily passes him by, but the goddess of love stays to talk to the lover, introducing her priest, Genius, to take the lover’s confession. From this point until the end of book 6, the stories are arranged according to six of the seven deadly sins, through which the Confessor leads the Lover: book 1 (pride), book 2 (envy), book 3 (wrath), book 4 (sloth), book 5 (avarice), book 6 (gluttony). In books 7 and 8, the exploration of deadly sins is abandoned for new themes: how Aristotle was taught and a discussion of the virtues of a good ruler (truth, largesse, justice, pity, and chastity) in book 7; the laws of marriage, examples of incest, and a conclusion in book 8. The Confessio Amantis ends when Venus appears to the lover/ author, points to his age and “hoary locks,” and tells him to abandon the pursuit of love. Although Cupid and his company entreat on his behalf, she hands the lover/author a mirror in which to look at himself, and he is cured. He asks for absolution and permission to be excused from Venus’s court. She commands him to go off and pray for peace, which he does. Interested both in instructing and in entertaining his royal patron—his stories are “Somwhat of lust, somewhat of lore” (prol. 19)—Gower writes what is essentially a book of advice to princes. Elizabeth Porter, in her essay “Gower’s Ethical Microcosm and Political Macrocosm,” speaks of “Gower’s concern for the well-being of England and his self-appointed role as ‘mentor for royalty.’”35 She traces Gower’s concept of ethics to his reading of two works, both “mirrors for princes”: the pseudo-Aristotelian Secretum Secretorum and Giles of Rome’s De Regimine Principum, both of which emphasize the need for ethical self-governance of the individual, what she calls “personal kingship.”36 Embedded in Gower’s narrative

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structure is the concept, borrowed from Giles, that ethical self-governance leads to the ability to function effectively in two communities: the household or family and the state. Porter’s analysis explains the importance Gower has placed on love relationships and especially, in book 8, on marriage “as the natural end and aspiration of the good man who practices ‘honeste love.’”37 Into this literary setting, Gower inserts the story of Constance, taken from Trevet’s Cronicles. The story is included in book 2, whose overall theme is the deadly sin of envy, itself subdivided into five types: sorrow for another man’s joy, joy for another man’s sorrow, detraction, deceit (personified as False-Semblant) and supplantation. The tale of Constance is found within the subdivision of “detraction” or “bakbytinge.”38 Unlike Trevet, Gower has little interest in time and narrative flow, or the progress of history. He cuts out a long section at the start of Trevet’s narrative on Roman governance and the succession of emperors from Tiberius Constantine to Morice, son of Alla and Constance. He is less precise than Trevet about the years Constance spent at sea. Rather than exploring historical continuities, Gower is interested in the exemplary features of the narrative. By “exemplum” is meant “a narrative or a little story, a fable or a parable, a morality or description that could serve for proof to support a doctrinal, religious or moral exposition.”39 Extremely popular by the late fourteenth century, exempla allowed their authors to explore the ethical significance of the particulars of a narration.40 Because his exemplum illustrates the vices of false speech, Gower, in adapting Trevet’s narrative to his new literary setting, shifts focus from Constance to the figures of evil—the two mothers-in-law and the two false knights. He highlights these four characters by cutting irrelevant information from Trevet and by introducing transitions that announce the evil being illustrated. Thus, in introducing the first evil mother-in-law, he omits Trevet’s lengthy description of the process of converting the sultan of Syria, the negotiations for marriage, and the favorable peace treaty. Instead Gower proceeds directly to the mother-in-law: “Bot that which nevere was wel herted, / Envie, tho began travaile / In destourbance of this spousaile / So prively that non was war” (639–42). He makes the mother-in-law’s thinking explicit by directly quoting her thoughts, then showing by contrast what she actually said to her son, also presented in direct speech. Her thoughts and words are accompanied by the narrator’s commentary—

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that is, by words and phrases that emphasize her falsity: “thus sche hath compassed / Be sleihte how that sche may beguile / Hire Sone” (650–52); “Sche feigneth wordes in his Ere” (654); and “sche drowh / With false wordes that sche spak / Covine of deth behinde his bak” (674–76). Gower does not seem very interested in the motivation of the knight who kills Hermengild and falsely accuses Constance of the crime. Merely five lines of verse are devoted to saying that he lusted after her, saw nothing would come of it, and started to hate her. Another three lines mention his envy: “Of hire honour he hadde Envie, / So that upon his tricherie / A lesinge in his herte he caste” (811–13). More important for Gower than motivation is the dramatization of the scene in which the knight swears on the Bible and receives retribution from heaven: “And thus hire innocence / He sclaundreth there in audience / With false wordes whiche he feigneth” (863–65). False words have taken on a new and stronger connotation than in the scene with the sultan’s mother-in-law, for the knight has committed the obvious crime of slander. The third example of envy and backbiting is Domild, the mother of King Alla. As before, false words have legal connotations. Domild has falsified documents and counterfeited the king’s seal, which constitutes treasonous behavior. It is not surprising that, where Trevet quoted only the first letter and described the second indirectly, Gower presents both letters in full, for they stand as legal evidence of “contrefet” documents (981, 1040). The fourth example of evil, a knight who threatens to rape Constance, is more problematic. Clearly motivated by lust, he works by night, alone, coming to Constance’s ship. He is described as “badde,” a “fals knyht.” Curiously, however, Gower makes no other mention of false words, or envy, or backbiting. In fact, if anyone uses false words in the scene, it is Constance, who lures him to the deck, saying she will do as he wishes, but who then prays to God to save her, and is rewarded by seeing him thrown overboard. Perhaps Gower is contrasting the pure words of prayer with the “white lie” she tells to lure him on deck. The other major change that Gower makes in adapting Trevet’s story to the Confessio Amantis is his characterization of Constance. Like Chaucer, Gower omits any reference to her learning or her knowledge of many languages, mentioning only that she “was so ful of feith” that she converted the merchants to Christianity. As other scholars have noted, both Chaucer and Gower make Con-

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stance more passive than does Trevet, as can be seen in Gower’s treatment of her reactions to the disasters she encounters. In Trevet, after the slaughter of the sultan and all but three of the Christians, she stands up to the pagans and refuses to change her faith (167). By contrast, Gower has her weeping and crying: “No wonder thogh sche wepte and cride” (702).41 More significant are the changes Gower makes at her second exile. Trevet, through the second falsified letter, motivates the exile by explaining that Alla believed that if Constance stayed in Northumbria, her presence would cause war. Because Constance thinks that the exile is necessary to preserve peace, she accepts her sacrificial role willingly. It is the people observing her exile who weep, rather than herself. Gower, however, alters the content of the second letter to indicate that Constance must leave because she is a “fairy.” He introduces a shipboard scene in which she kneels in prayer and asks God to take pity—“Tak of thi wofull womman rowthe” (1060)—on her and her son. She then weeps, swoons, and falls into a deathlike trance. For Gower, Constance therefore becomes someone who suffers injustice and who is to be pitied. She is the victim of those who use deceitful words, who plot behind the backs of rulers, who engage in treasonous actions. The tale is written to evoke pity and to demonstrate that justice must be done. The message, for Gower’s royal patron, is that an exemplary king will look out for detractors (and avoid detraction himself). He will, like Alla, be bound in love to his queen, but he will also be smarter than Alla, having gained from the wisdom of this tale, and not be taken in by jealous relatives or backbiting advisors. Although the word “governance” is never used within this particular story, the word and its cognates are used often elsewhere in the work and represent an important theme. Several prominent uses of the term in the prologue provide insight into the role Gower envisioned for a just ruler of England. By governing well, such a ruler brings peace to his countrymen. In evoking a former ideal age, Gower writes: “The poeple stod in obeissance / Under the reule of governance, / And pes” (prol. 107–9). At the end of this section, in advising that a just king listen to his advisors, Gower introduces the word again:42 Bot thilke lord which al may kepe, To whom no consail may ben hid, Upon the world which is betid,

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Amende that wherof men pleigne With trewe hertes and with pleine, And reconcile love ayeyn, As he which is king sovereign Of al the worldes governaunce, And of his hyhe porveaunce Afferme pes betwen the londes And take her cause into hise hondes, So that the world may stonde appesed And his godhede also be plesed. (prol. 180–92) Gower’s image of the just ruler links love, governance, and God’s will (“porveaunce”); when the three are in balance, peace will reign, and God will be pleased. Philippe de Remi and Jehan Maillart were the first to see the potential of the Constance-type story to provide lessons for rulers. Gower, writing several generations later across the Channel, has not missed the theme. However, the generic requirements of his exemplum impose an economy of words, minimal character development, and little expansion of potential themes such as marriage or poverty, suffering or spiritual growth. Gower cannot be faulted for omitting the themes developed by the romance writers. In its own way, his tale fits admirably within the literary context he has created for it.

Geoffrey Chaucer and the “Man of Law’s Tale” No other narrative of a falsely accused queen has been as extensively studied as the story of Custance written by Geoffrey Chaucer (1333/34– 1400) for The Canterbury Tales. Critical opinions of the narrative are often sharply divided. Some critics, such as Hope Phyllis Weisman and Saul Brody, read it as a satire of sentimental, overblown rhetoric; others, such as V. A. Kolve and Edward A. Block, read it as a serious exploration of Christian piety. Many critics are puzzled by the tale, some simply dislike it, and others view it as a failure.43 One of the major critical issues concerns the voice of the Man of Law, Chaucer’s narrator.44 Readers have noted apparent contradictions in the introduction to the tale. First, in the proem, the narrator claims he will speak in prose and then proceeds to use rhyme royal in his prologue and

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tale.45 Second, his complaints in the prologue about the miseries of poverty contradict the tale’s praise of Custance’s ability to endure poverty. Furthermore, the section on the miseries of poverty misrepresents the philosophical stance of Chaucer’s source. Given these contradictions, readers have been puzzled by how much authority to give the voice of the Man of Law. Simply using words such as “voice” and “authority” when speaking of the Man of Law raises larger critical issues about whether Chaucer’s tales should be read dramatically or rhetorically. George Lyman Kittredge’s lectures at Johns Hopkins University in 1914, subsequently published as Chaucer and His Poetry, popularized the method of reading Chaucer’s tales as if they were dramatic monologues or expressions of the personality of the narrator. C. David Benson was one of the first critics to question this approach and suggest that the tales were better read as “experiments in poetic variety.”46 Although I will utilize words such as “voice,” “authority,” and “narrator” in the analysis that follows, my assumption is that Chaucer is experimenting with rhetorical styles and framing techniques, not consciously creating a dramatic monologue. His portrait of the Man of Law in the general prologue stems from estate literature, the dialogue with the Host appears to be a Chaucerian invention, the prologue is a translated passage from Lotario dei Segni’s De miseria condicionis humane, and the tale itself is a retelling of Trevet’s and Gower’s stories.47 That is, Chaucer juxtaposes texts drawn from a variety of rhetorical and manuscript sources. I will argue that, although Chaucer undercuts the authority of his own narrator, the tale nonetheless carries a serious spiritual message. The author’s stance toward the Man of Law is much like that toward the Pardoner and the Wife of Bath: although all three narrators are morally weak, nevertheless their tales convey moral and spiritual truths. By reading the “Man of Law’s Tale” against the background of Chaucer’s sources and of manuscript glosses that may be authorial, I will show how Chaucer both developed the rhetorical flourishes of his narrator and simultaneously probed the depth of Custance’s spirituality. Chaucer’s literary construct, the narrator, misreads the significance of “his” own tale. Chaucer the author understands and highlights the spiritual significance of the story of Custance, a story of a person’s spiritual growth through poverty and suffering. Unlike Chaucer’s Man of Law, Trevet’s narrator is a chronicler, a recorder of events, who weighs and evaluates evidence. For example, at the

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start of the narrative, he compares what “som Cronciles seyen”—that Morice was the husband of Constance—to what “the olde Cronicles of Saxons sayeth”—that Morice was the son of Constance. By comparison, Gower’s narrator, a personification of Genius, also referred to as the Confessor, is better developed. Gower presents him as an older man who speaks to the Lover as “Mi goode Sone” (570). It is clear from the introduction to the tale that he wants to teach the Lover a lesson and warn him of the dangers of “wicke speche.” Once the story has begun, there is no further characterization of the narrator. His moralizing voice is heard when he speaks of the effects of “envie” and “false wordes,” but he makes no asides; he does not distract from the unfolding of the plot that illustrates his moral point. Chaucer’s narrator, on the other hand, is amply characterized even before the story begins, first in the general prologue, then in the proem and prologue to the tale. The general prologue (I.309–30) paints the Man of Law as an important person (“ful riche of excellence” and “of greet reverence”), thoroughly versed in the law (“In termes hadde he caas and doomes alle”), and able to use his knowledge to material advantage (“So greet a purchasour was nowher noon”). He is a man of worldly stature, expected to speak with authority. When the Man of Law is allowed to speak in the proem to the tale, the language Chaucer gives him reaffirms this expectation. First, he is established as a master of the legal profession: within six lines of verse, he utilizes nine words or phrases with specific legal meaning (II.39–44). Having established his authority as a lawyer, he then attempts to establish it also as an author and reader of fiction. While ostensibly playing for time and trying to think of a tale to tell as the Host has requested, the Man of Law draws a comparison between himself and Chaucer and Gower, the leading literary figures of his day. He not only places himself in the company of these illustrious figures but, by speaking disparagingly of them, suggests that he is their superior. At this point he has overstretched himself, and what was authority becomes rhetorical excess. When the Man of Law begins the prologue to his tale, he speaks in “high style,” using as his source a Latin text, not a frivolous verse tale from Ovid but a serious prose treatise by Lotario dei Segni, who became Pope Innocent III in 1198. Having rejected the voices of Chaucer and Gower, he opts for the highest authority of all, the pope: “O hateful harm, condicion of poverte! / With thurst, with coold, with hunger so

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confoundid!” (II.99–100). The elevated tone and the content of the passage, however, undercut the Man of Law’s authority. Quoting Innocent III out of context, he seriously misreads him, for De miseria condicionis humane bemoans the miseries of the rich as well as those of the poor, the point being that all life on earth is miserable. The appearance of the theme of poverty at the start of the tale also suggests that Chaucer may have wanted to do more than undercut his narrator: he may have been highlighting allusions to poverty inherent within the tale. When using the word “poverty,” Chaucer may have in mind the camino paupertatis, the image from Isaiah 48:10 of the furnace of affliction so often associated with earlier narratives of falsely accused queens.48 As has been seen in earlier tales, the exiles of the falsely accused queen represent periods of suffering and poverty through which the heroine’s soul is refined. Read this way, Custance’s “Yeres and dayes” on her rudderless ship depict the personal, spiritual refinement that comes through an encounter with deprivation and misery. A further undercutting of the Man of Law concerns the very choice of the tale of Constance, which suggests his naïveté in literary matters. He says he wants to tell a story that Chaucer has not already told, thus implying that originality is a mark of good literature. But Chaucer gives him a tale that has already been told by both Trevet and Gower. Then he says he wants nothing to do with stories of incest, yet Chaucer gives him a story that in most of its analogues—though not in the direct sources used by Chaucer—has incest as its theme. Thus, throughout the proem and prologue to the tale, the Man of Law is presented as an untrustworthy voice when it comes to literary affairs or “the sentence of the wise” (II.113).49 Aside from putting the story in the mouth of a proud and pretentious narrator, Chaucer accepts many of the changes Gower made in retelling Trevet’s text. Like Gower, he rejects Trevet’s idea of a learned heroine, a “founding mother” of Britain, and opts for the pathetic figure tossed on the sea of misfortune. But instead of stressing the evil figures in the story as Gower did, Chaucer highlights Custance’s inner virtue and gives her spiritual depth, as can be seen through analysis of the key scenes and dialogue devoted to her. The formal structure of the narrative keeps the focus on Custance’s spiritual strength. In modern printed editions, the “Man of Law’s Tale” is usually divided into three parts. Although only a few manuscripts use these divisions,50 the textually important Ellesmere manuscript is among

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them. The Ellesmere division emphasizes a formal arrangement inherent in Chaucer’s narrative. The two exiles of Custance, the first from Syria, the second from Northumberland, surround a central trial scene, a scene that is original with Chaucer. Within this structure, Chaucer shows us Custance in five important scenes: (1) when she leaves Rome; (2) when she is set adrift from Syria; (3) when she is on trial before Alla; (4) when she is set adrift from Northumberland; and (5) when she is reunited with her family in Rome. These scenes constitute “framed pictures,” or what Stephen Manning calls “closeup shots.”51 The structural positioning of these scenes may be seen in the diagram below.

Diagram 1. Positioning of Framed Scenes I: lines 134–385=252 lines 134–259=126 lines 260–322=63 lines 323–385=63 lines

opening marriage negotiations farewell of Custance plotting of mother of Sowdan

II: lines 386–875=490 lines 386–437=52 lines 438–511=74 lines 512–609=98 lines 610–693=84 lines 694–819=126 lines 820–875=56 lines

treachery of Sowdanesse setting adrift from Syria rescue by Constable, miracle, and murder of Hermengyld trial scene treachery of Donegild and exchange of forged letters setting adrift from Northumberland

III: lines 876–1162=287 lines 876–899=24 lines 900–952=53 lines 953–987=35 lines 988–1120=133 lines 1121–1162=42 lines

return of Alla attempted rape and miracle Roman senator reunions conclusion

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Each of the scenes in boldface in the diagram focuses on Custance, each includes direct speech, each is designed to evoke an emotional response from the reader, and each occupies a structurally important place in the story. By including Custance’s words at key moments in the narrative, Chaucer provides access to her spiritual understanding and development. From scene to scene, we can trace a progressive deepening of her spirituality, except in the last section, where she is returned to her worldly status.52 The pivotal scene in part 1 (II.260–322) is set off from the rest of the tale by the narrator as a means of manipulating the emotional response of his audience. The Man of Law’s announcement of the start of this new scene (“The day is comen of hir departynge”) first slows down the pace of the narrative; then he immediately repeats his announcement more dramatically (“I seye, the woful day fatal is come”), as if to make certain his audience does not miss this new turn in his narrative. Thereafter he takes two stanzas to set up the scene, he allows Custance to speak for another two stanzas, he comments on her situation in four highly rhetorical stanzas, and finally he returns in his last stanza to the scene of departure itself. He regains his narrative thread with a “Farewel, faire Custance!” of his own; the final line, “And turne I wole agayn to my matere,” announces the end of the scene. This whole narrative pattern—staging of the scene, dialogue, comments, and return to the narrative—calls attention to the human drama in Custance’s farewell speech: “Fader,” she seyde, “thy wrecched child Custance, Thy yonge doghter fostred up so softe, And ye, my mooder, my soverayn plesance Over alle thyng, out-taken Crist on-lofte, Custance youre child hire recomandeth ofte Unto youre grace, for I shal to Surrye, Ne shal I nevere seen yow moore with ye. Allas, unto the Barbre nacioun I moste anoon, syn that it is youre wille; But Crist, that starf for our redempcioun So yeve me grace his heestes to fulfille! I, wrecche womman, no fors though I spille!

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Wommen are born to thraldom and penance, And to been under mannes governance.” (II.274–87) This speech, the heart of the framed scene, evokes Custance’s youthful simplicity and humility and contrasts those qualities with the political machinations of men (merchants, sultan, and the emperor of Rome) that have constituted the principal subject matter of the tale thus far. With a shock, it plunges the reader into the human, emotional impact of these machinations, the “mannes governance” of which she speaks. The contrast between this glimpse of Custance—weeping (“what wonder is it thogh she wepte”), powerless (“For wel she seeth ther is noon oother ende”), and obedient (“I moste anoon, syn that it is youre wille”)—and the previous negotiations between nations is significant. The contrast is felt not only in the Man of Law’s comments on Custance’s plight but also in her own words: “wrecched child” contrasts with “fostred up so softe”; her mother, her “soverayn plesance,” she never expects to see again; her own life is nothing in the face of “thraldom,” “penance,” and “mannes governance.” The next scene focused on Custance occurs after the slaughter in Syria and just before her exile on the rudderless ship (II.438–511). Stripped of family, friends, and possessions, “allone” but for “A certein tresor that she thider ladde,” she speaks not to anyone in this world but to Christ (through the metonymy of the cross). Her speech (“with ful pitous voys”) is a prayer: “O cleere, o welful auter, hooly croys, Reed of the Lambes blood ful of pitee, That wessh the world fro the olde iniquitee, Me fro the feend and fro his clawes kepe, That day that I shal drenchen in the depe. Victorious tree, proteccioun of trewe, That oonly worthy were for to bere The Kyng of Hevene with his woundes newe, The white Lamb, that hurt was with a spere, Flemere of feendes out of hym and here On which thy lymes feithfully extenden, Me kepe, and yif me myght my lyf t’amenden.” (II.451–62) Custance’s discourse has shifted significantly from her earlier, more worldly, farewell speech to her parents. This deeply spiritual prayer is a medita-

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tion between herself and the “croys of Crist.” Although she stands in the midst of slaughtered Christians in a pagan land, about to be placed on a “ship al steerelees,” she seems instead to be standing before an altar, meditating on the suffering of Christ and the redemptive promise of the Crucifixion. The starkness of the imagery, its contrast of red blood to white lamb, of the water of baptism to the drowning water of the sea, presents a powerful comment on the depth of her faith. The next scene in which Custance speaks is her trial (II.610–93). As we’ve noted, the scene is original with Chaucer. Both Trevet and Gower place the discovery of the knight’s slander and his divine punishment before Alla arrives and meets Custance. Chaucer, however, rearranges the plot to allow Alla to appear before the confrontation between accuser and accused and thus to play a central role as judge and promoter of earthly justice. By placing the trial scene at the center of the tale, Chaucer increases its dramatic effect. The simile used to describe Custance when she is brought before Alla— “For as the lomb toward his deeth is broght, / So stant this innocent bifore the kyng” (II.617–18)—echoes the Christian imagery Custance herself used in the previous framed scene, in her prayer upon being set adrift from Syria; it suggests her religious depth, her innocence, and the salvation possible for believing Christians. Her innocence is also confirmed by the reaction of “the peple,” who cannot believe the accusation and who serve as witnesses to her virtue. Alla listens to the testimony of these witnesses and decides “he wolde enquere / Depper in this, a trouthe for to lere” (II.629–30). The narrator’s call for someone to protect her— ”Allas! Custance, thou hast no champioun” (II.631)—suggests both the urgency of her predicament and the possibility of divine intervention. Indeed, Custance relies on divine powers to protect her. Her actual words, presented in the stanza immediately following, are not “testimony” in a worldly, judicial sense, but again a prayer, this time a prayer for help addressed directly to God and the Virgin Mary: “Immortal God, that savedest Susanne Fro false blame, and thou, merciful mayde, Marie I meene, doghter to Seint Anne, Bifore whos child angeles synge Osanne, If I be giltlees of this felonye, My socour be, for ellis shal I dye!” (II.639–44)

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Through this prayer, Chaucer emphasizes both her innocence and her spiritual strength. She is present at the trial, but she is detached from the events. Her sight is elsewhere, on God. Chaucer also focuses throughout the trial scene on the reaction of Alla and his subjects to this false accusation of Custance. In his initial description of Alla, he highlights the quality of “pitee”: “The kynges herte of pitee gan agryse” (II.614). Later this concept is again evoked when describing Alla’s reaction to Custance’s prayer: “This Alla kyng hath swich compassioun, / As gentil herte is fulfild of pitee, / That from his eyen ran the water doun” (II.659–61). The frequency of the words “pitee” and the closely allied term “routhe” in this scene suggests that the narrator wants his audience to have the same reaction as Alla. The Man of Law’s most effective rhetorical piece, which begins with the question “Have ye nat seyn somtyme a pale face . . . ?” (II.645 ff.), invites his listeners to have pity, and immediately thereafter he pretentiously exhorts royal women everywhere—“O queenes, lyvynge in prosperitee, / Duchesses, and ye ladyes everichone” (II.652–53)—to “Haveth som routhe on hire adversitee!” (II.654), just as Custance has “routhe” on the false knight (II.689) at the end of the scene. The setting adrift of the heroine from Northumberland (II.820–75) provides another occasion for Custance to speak. Here, Chaucer first repeats the central emotion and image from the previous trial scene—the “deedly pale face” of Custance and the weeping of the witnesses to her misfortune. As in previous scenes, Custance’s discourse begins with prayer, but here it is a simple less-than-one-line prayer—“Lord, ay welcome be thy sonde!” Surprisingly, she then turns to the people around her and speaks directly to them about the source of her strength—“He that me kepte fro the false blame / . . . and eek fro shame / In salte see . . . / In hym triste I, and in his mooder deere, / That is to me my seyl and eek my steere” (II.827–33). Custance has thus transformed the central image of her suffering, the ship with its sail, into the source of her strength. Assuming the powerful role of witness and preacher, she is ready to tell others about her faith. Chaucer adds additional depth to his heroine by likening her condition, as Charles Muscatine long ago pointed out, to that of the sorrowing Mary.53 However, she both is and is not the sorrowing Mary. She is a mother, and in that sense to be likened to Mary. When Custance speaks to her child, covering its eyes with her kerchief, she is humanized, she be-

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comes the protective mother, sorrowing for its fate. But she is unlike Mary in that, as she herself says, her suffering is in no way as great as Mary’s, nor does her story have the same importance for Christians. “Pitee” and “routhe,” words that were so important in the last scene, now take on added meaning.54 Earlier, Chaucer was interested in depicting Alla’s “pitee,” a “pitee” of this world that would result in worldly justice, but in this scene he emphasizes the possibility of divine “routhe” or “pitee.” The reference to Mary’s role in bringing forth the Christ child to save those “damned ay to dye” suggests that divine “pitee” is possible. Custance’s prayer to Mary, with its alliteration on “routhe,” suggests her need for divine protection: “Thow haven of refut, brighte sterre of day, / Rewe on my child, that of thy gentillesse / Rewest on every reweful in distresse” (II.852–54). Custance asks why her child is guilty. In her parting words—“Farewel, housbonde routhelees!” (my emphasis; II.863)—she implicitly contrasts the child’s innocence with his father’s guilt. The final scene in which Custance appears (II.988–1120) is the longest and most complex.55 It consists, after a brief narration of Alla’s decision to make a pilgrimage to Rome, of three parts: the reunion of father and son (II.1002–43), the reunion of husband and wife (II.1044–71), and the reunion of daughter and father (II.1079–1120). Because the reunion of husband and wife is the most poignant of the three scenes, Custance remains a central focus of the narrative. However, her discourse is reduced. In fact, in the reunion with Alla she is rendered speechless: “And she, for sorwe, as doumb stant as a tree, / So was hir herte shet in hir distresse, / Whan she remembred his unkyndenesse” (II.1055–57). A little later, in the speech to her father, she returns to the earlier role of a daughter seeking protection: “I am youre doghter Custance,” quod she, “That whilom ye han sent unto Surrye. It am I, fader, that in the salte see Was put allone and dampned for to dye. Now, goode fader, mercy I yow crye! Sende me namoore unto noon hethenesse, But thonketh my lord heere of his kyndenesse.” (II.1107–13) Custance has been returned to the world of social life and political realities. Her final speech bears little evidence of the spiritual depth revealed during her afflictions. It signals a return to her hierarchical placement in a social role beneath those of both father and husband.

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The running motif of “pitee” and “routhe” also finds closure in this final section. During the reunions there are plenty of tears—swooning, weeping, “pitee,” sobbing, complaints—but this time they are tears of joy rather than of woe. In fact, there is so much weeping that the narrator excuses himself from describing any more: “I pray yow alle my labour to relesse; / I may nat telle hir wo until to-morwe, / I am so wery for to speke of sorwe” (II.1069–71). After reuniting the emperor with his daughter, he excuses himself again: “Who kan the pitous joye tellen al / Bitwixe hem thre, syn they been thus ymette? / But of my tale make an ende I shal; / The day goth faste, I wol no lenger lette” (II.1114–17). Indeed, in a tale in which the deeper, more spiritual meanings of suffering and sorrow have already been explored, more of such worldly weeping and wailing would be superfluous. Through the way he arranges his material and focuses on the speeches of Custance, Chaucer suggests that readers have something to learn from the example of her fortitude and reliance on God. Where the Man of Law sees a figure to pity and uses florid speech to evoke compassion for her among his fictive audience, Chaucer places this florid speech in contrast with her simple prayers and suggests that she provides an exemplary way to respond to worldly misfortunes. Where the Man of Law exploits Custance’s plight to demonstrate the fallibility of “mannes governance,” Chaucer suggests that the only true salvation lies in God. Just as Dame Philosophy in the Consolation of Philosophy teaches Boethius to keep his sight on God, so Custance teaches what it means to live such a life, centered on God. She knows this philosophy, as Eugene Clasby has argued,56 through experience. Chaucer provides his readers with another clue to the meaning of the story through his use of Innocent III’s treatise. While writing the “Man of Law’s Tale,” Chaucer was reading, and was perhaps even in the process of translating, De miseria condicionis humane.57 Innocent III’s work is sometimes referred to by the title De contemptu mundi, drawing a connection to the topos that bears the same name—that is, life itself is misery, and man is but a speck of dust, conceived in sin, nurtured in the womb by impure blood, and born with wailing and distress. In each of its discourses, the same point is made from a new perspective. If the poor live in misery, so too do the rich. All work, all success, all wealth, is but vanity. Men should humble themselves, mortify their bodies, and abstain from earthly pleasures in the hope of future glory and fear of eternal punishment.

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When the Man of Law quotes from this text to bemoan the miseries of poverty in the prologue to the tale, he neglects to mention Innocent’s parallel point—that the rich are equally miserable. Robert Miller is surely correct when he argues that the narrator presents a secularized form of Innocent III’s philosophy. However, Miller falls into the fallacy of equating Chaucer’s voice with that of the Man of Law when he draws the rather remarkable conclusion that “Clearly Custance is personally no exemplar of patience in adversity, nor of Christian Fortitude; indeed, her woes reveal her as a figure suspiciously inconstant.”58 The Man of Law misinterprets De miseria condicionis humane by reading into the story of Custance only the variableness of Dame Fortune and the idea that woe often follows hard upon joy. This does not mean, as Miller concludes, that Custance represents inconstancy. It simply means that the Man of Law has limited understanding of “his” own tale and of the concept of constancy it explores. At other places in the narrative, readers are made aware of allusions to Innocent III’s text, unfiltered through the Man of Law’s voice. When, in the proem to the tale, the Host looks up at the sun’s position in the sky, he does more than announce the time through a rhetorical circumlocution.59 Read metaphorically, his words sound a tempus fugit theme that fits well with Innocent’s disparagement of worldly pleasures: time is short, and all need to set their lives right so as to be ready for death when it comes. Readers of Chaucer’s manuscripts (or of modern printed texts that include the marginal glosses) can also use the Latin glosses in the margins to aid in their interpretation of the text. The “Man of Law’s Tale” contains nine important Latin glosses that may be authorial, and of these, five are passages taken from De miseria condicionis humane. The effect of reading all nine glosses is to heighten the universal meaning of the story of Custance.60 The four glosses not taken from De miseria condicionis humane all present a geographical or astronomical view of the world and hence force readers to broaden their understanding of the specific events presented in the tale. For example, when Custance is first introduced, the Roman people (“the commune voys of every man”) praise her and offer a prayer: “I prey to God in honour hire susteene, / And wolde she were of al Europe the queene.” In the margin at line 161, the seemingly innocuous gloss “Europa est tercia pars mundi” [Europe is a third part of the world] forces the reader’s eye from Custance (and the Roman people who want her to be

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queen of Europe) to a broader, more universal view in which Europe is only one-third of a larger world. A more obvious example occurs in the next gloss, at line 197, where the Man of Law has just referred to the heavens as a book God has authored, in which are written the birth and death of all human beings. The gloss provides the original passage from Bernardus Sylvestris’s Cosmographia, which lists ancient stories that have been written in the stars.61 The reader is thus encouraged to view the events of the story from a more universal or divine perspective. The glosses drawn from Innocent III’s treatise provide the Latin original for the particular passage included in the Middle English text. Three of the five, at lines 421, 771, and 925, accompany the rhetorical apostrophes associated with the Man of Law’s voice, the first stressing the commonplace that woe follows hard on joy, and the other two declaiming the evil effects of the sins of drunkenness and lust. The final two glosses accompany contiguous text at the conclusion of the tale, at lines 1132 and 1135, and refer again to the notion that joy lasts but a short time and that the seven deadly sins are to be avoided. Although the five glosses from De miseria condicionis humane present no new information, their presence, along with the previous four, heightens the authority of the Middle English text. The mere presence of the Latin passages validates the secular story by suggesting an ordinatio more usually reserved for biblical or patristic texts. A similar argument has been made for the effect of the Latin glosses of Gower’s Confessio Amantis,62 and it may be that Chaucer wanted to develop this aspect of his manuscript in subsequent productions. Stephen Partridge suggests that Chaucer was influenced by the ordinatio of Eustache Deschamps’s Le double lai de la fragilité humaine, as it is found in Paris, B.N. fr. 20029, in which the French paraphrase of passages from De miseria condicionis humane are written in the left column and the Latin in the right.63 If Partridge is correct, then perhaps Chaucer at the end of his life sought to control the format of manuscripts of the Tales and oversee the compilation of a codex with glosses throughout. In summary, analysis of the relationship between author and narrator, the presentation of Custance (and especially her prayers), and the uses made of De miseria condicionis humane and other religious texts demonstrates that Chaucer understood the rich lode of ideas inherent in the story of Custance. Although his immediate inspiration came from Trevet and Gower, and although all three English authors named their heroine Con-

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stance or its variant Custance, Chaucer may also have been influenced by contact with Constance’s Continental relations. Narratives of the empress of Rome, in which spiritual development of the heroine is a central theme, would have been available to Chaucer through Vincent de Beauvais’s Speculum historiale, through Gautier de Coinci’s Miracles de Nostre Dame, and through the widely circulated Gesta Romanorum. The prevalence of both literary and artistic depictions of the empress of Rome in England in the next century, subject of the next chapter, makes such influence likely, although not provable. Each of the three English authors considered in this chapter adapted the story of Constance to his own generic and thematic ends, and I have argued that Trevet’s and Gower’s stories need to be analyzed within their own generic and manuscript contexts, rather than in comparison to Chaucer. Nonetheless, neither Trevet, Gower, nor any of the other authors considered in this book succeeds as admirably as Chaucer in simultaneously exploring the spiritual depth of his falsely accused, often exiled, and longsuffering heroine and relating the story to the major philosophical ideas of his time.

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6 The Empress of Rome Revisited

The empress of Rome, as presented by the Benedictine priest Gautier de Coinci, rejects, in the finale to the miracle, all the secular authority and wealth available to her. After experiencing the vicissitudes of this world and the greater spiritual authority granted her by the Virgin Mary, she retreats to the cloister to devote her life to God. The dichotomy between noble marriage, with its attendant wealth, and the cloister, with its rejection of worldly things, is starkly laid out in versions of “The Empress of Rome” found within the miracle tradition during the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries in France. As I have argued in chapter 1, the empress is presented within this tradition as a deeply religious woman with spiritual authority akin to that of the Virgin Mary herself. The wide distribution of manuscripts of Gautier’s Miracles de Nostre Dame and of the abbreviated retelling by Vincent de Beauvais in his Speculum historiale suggests that the story was well known throughout western Europe in the Middle Ages. And yet, except for the single empress of Rome play considered—composed for the confraternity of Parisian goldsmiths in 1369 and probably known only within a local, narrowly circumscribed audience—there were no major retellings until the fifteenth century. As the preceding chapter demonstrated, most fourteenth-century English narratives of accused queens were of the Constance type, involving an evil mother-in-law and an exchange of falsified letters. In the next century, however, storytellers in England were intrigued not with Constance but with the empress of Rome.1 The empress’s healing powers and holiness attracted the interest of fifteenth-century storytellers—both artists and writers. Two major artifacts, the frescoes at Eton Chapel, which I described briefly at the start of this book, and a set of thirty-two bosses on the roof of the Bauchun Chapel at Norwich Cathedral, follow Gautier’s narrative closely. In fact,

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they reinforce our sense of the sanctity of the empress by bringing her story literally into a religious setting—chapels dedicated to the Virgin Mary. When the narrative reappears in fifteenth-century England, it shows signs of having been influenced by two parallel traditions: secular romances centered on a related heroine, Florence of Rome, and collections of clerical exempla known as the Gesta Romanorum. A new ending to the tale accompanies this merger of traditions. Instead of rejecting imperial wealth and authority for life in the cloister, as in Gautier’s narrative, the empress, in some renditions, returns to the world and accepts her place beside the emperor, a change first found in play 27 of the Miracles de Nostre Dame par personnages. The new narrative ending suggests that fifteenth-century authors, although certainly not ignorant of the more religious conclusion used by Gautier de Coinci and Vincent de Beauvais and still found in the Eton Chapel wall paintings, now view the empress of Rome in a new light. Their adoption of an idealized queen who chooses to remain in the world suggests a new ideal of female piety and perhaps an attempt to reach out to a broader audience. The secularized narrative ending is found in two important retellings in the fifteenth century, one by Christine de Pizan in her Book of the City of Ladies, and the other in Thomas Hoccleve’s Series, the two written texts that I will focus on in this chapter. Both authors incorporate the brief story of the falsely accused heroine into a manuscript that has a coherence and purpose of its own and expands its thematic potential. Although basing her story more closely on Gautier’s version than on the secular romance, Christine nonetheless names her heroine Florence of Rome and incorporates the tale into an extended defense of women and their virtues. Hoccleve, basing his story on an analogous tale and allegorization found in the Gesta Romanorum, refers to his heroine simply as “Jereslaus’s wife,” denying her a name of her own. He incorporates the narrative into a partly autobiographical manuscript that, in admirable particularity and depth, explores a process of physical and spiritual healing. This chapter will first examine the two artifacts from Eton and Norwich, then review the Florence of Rome and Gesta Romanorum traditions, and finally analyze in detail the treatment of the story by Christine de Pizan and Thomas Hoccleve. The renewed vitality of narratives of accused queens in fifteenth-century England will lead directly to the final chapter of this book and a discussion of the other locus of interest in

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narratives of falsely accused queens in the fifteenth century, the court of Philip the Good, duke of Burgundy.

Two English Artistic Representations It is surprising that more representations of the empress of Rome in architecture, sculpture, or tapestry have not survived, and it may be mere coincidence that, outside of manuscript illumination, only two major artistic representations, both found in England, both from the fifteenth century, exist today. However, their appearance in this time and place may also reflect a renewed interest in female sanctity. The emergence of women as spiritual leaders in late medieval England is exemplified by the production of what Sheila Delany calls the “first all-female hagiography in any language,” Osbern Bokenham’s Legends of Holy Women, completed at Clare Priory in 1447.2 Delany recalls other examples of texts that explore female piety in fifteenth-century England: John Lydgate’s Life of the Virgin Mary, the nine lives of female saints written by Nicholas de Bozon, and the autobiographical writings of Margery Kempe and Julian of Norwich. Examples of female piety in fifteenth-century England may also be seen in surviving documents from the lives of contemporary historical queens and other noblewomen. The wills and household records of Cecily Neville, mother of Edward IV and Richard III, studied by C.A.J. Armstrong, provide evidence of Cecily’s daily private and public devotions.3 Her first cousin Margaret Beaufort, mother of Henry VII, not only followed a daily routine of masses and devotional reading but also actively engaged in charity: she provided for poor people, nursed the sick, and gave numerous gifts of objects and money to religious and educational establishments. The piety of English noblewomen might be said to reach its apex in Elizabeth of York, wife of Henry VII, known as “the good.” Her offerings and almsgiving were generous, she sent priests on pilgrimages on her behalf, and she supported various religious guilds and other establishments.4 It is, then, within the context of models of female sanctity in late medieval England that the emergence of artistic depictions of the empress of Rome can best be understood. A closer look at the frescoes at Eton Chapel and the bosses at Norwich will demonstrate the ways in which the story was adapted to new religious settings and used to present an ideal of a noble, spiritually clean woman who overcomes adversity.

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The frescoes were painted in the second half of the fifteenth century, sometime between 1477 and 1487, and then were whitewashed over in 1560.5 They were rediscovered during renovation of the choir stalls in 1847. Unfortunately, workers had scraped clean the upper half of the upper rows before someone knowledgeable about art stopped them. In the same year, pencil drawings of scenes 1–3 and 6–8 were made by R. H. Essex.6 Wall paintings depicting stories from the Miracles de Nostre Dame originally occupied both the south and north walls of the chapel. Montague James’s reconstruction of the themes of each panel shows an upper and lower level of panels on each side, with eight scenes in each section.7 Three of the four sections devote one panel to each miracle, but in the lower section of the south wall, the section of interest here, all eight panels depict one miracle, that of the empress of Rome. In each group of eight, the panels are separated—or, on the ends, flanked—by depictions of fulllength figures standing in trompe-l’oeil niches. Around the empress of Rome panels—all of which have been restored and may be viewed today—the nine framing figures are all female saints. Greater importance is clearly attributed here to the story of the empress of Rome than to any other individual miracle. This accords with the prominence of the Virgin Mary herself, whose Assumption was depicted in the first panel (reading from east to west) in the series above the empress of Rome story. She may also have been depicted as the first fulllength figure on the upper north wall. The prominence given to the empress of Rome here reflects that found in Gautier de Coinci manuscripts on the Continent and supports my argument in chapter 1 that readers saw an analogous relationship between her and the Virgin. And the fact that two of the eight panels are devoted to the empress’s healing powers—the healing of each of her false accusers—emphasizes her saintlike qualities, as does the framing of each scene by female saints. Six of the eight panels devoted to the empress’s story present pairs of closely related scenes, whereas the other two panels (6 and 7) depict a single moment. The series is read from left to right, with two exceptions noted below. The full-length figures on either side of each panel seem like sculptures placed in architectural niches, and the figures within each panel convey a remarkable sense of movement. In the first scene (fig. 21), as the emperor on horseback bids goodbye to the empress, his horse seems to leap out from the panel toward the

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observer. Three companions on horseback behind him provide added depth to the scene. On the far right section of the same panel we see a doorway to a palace or, more likely, the tower into which the brother-inlaw is attempting to lure the empress, but within which he himself will shortly be imprisoned. The scenes in panels 2 and 3 are closely related in subject matter, even seeming to mirror one another. By reversing the order of actions depicted in the second panel and asking that the actions now be read from right to left, the artist succeeds in placing violent scenes in the left forefront of both panels. In panel 2 (fig. 22) the action depicted on the right precedes that depicted on the left: the empress is first taken off into the forest by two servants who are about to kill her; then, on the left, the more important and more violent moment is depicted, with five men grouped near the kneeling empress, one of them holding his right hand high in a clenched fist, poised to descend and kill her. In panel 3 (fig. 23), which is to be read in the more normal fashion, from left to right, the artist again places the violent scene in the left forefront, where he depicts the interruption of the execution scene. A standing male, presumably one of the earl’s servants, is about to bring his sword down on the back of the empress’s executioner, who is down on one knee but still holds a sword in his right hand. On the right, the earl on horseback offers his hand to the now standing empress at the moment of her rescue. The fourth panel (fig. 24) concerns the second false accusation of the empress. On the left, she lies in bed with the earl’s child beside her. The curtains are parted, and the rejected lover is in the act of cutting the child’s throat. The right-hand scene in this same panel shows the empress, clothed and crowned, standing and talking to three men, who are presumably telling her she is to be exiled. The left side of the fifth panel (fig. 25) depicts her exile in a ship, with two steersmen. Just as in the depiction of the departing emperor in panel 1, the artist is particularly effective here in conveying the sense of movement of the ship on a stormy sea, the prow of the ship seeming to jump out at the viewer at the midpoint of the picture. To the right and in the background, the empress sleeps on a rock, with the green herb at her feet; above, the Virgin Mary is depicted on a cloud, as she appears to the empress in a dream.

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Like panels 2 and 3, panels 6 and 7 mirror one another by placing the key players in reverse positions. Both panels are devoted to the empress’s healing powers; as a unit, they counter the violent scenes depicted in panels 2 and 3. In panel 6 (fig. 26) the second false accuser kneels, facing the viewer’s left, before the crowned empress, who looks down toward him. Behind her are three other sick or maimed people, indicating the fame she has acquired for her healing powers. To the far right are two highborn men, presumably the earl and a companion. In panel 7 (fig. 27) the kneeling first accuser is facing right this time, and the standing empress facing left, holding the curing herb up to his mouth. Behind them and looking on are the emperor and a companion (midpoint and right) as well as the pope and a cardinal (far left). One other figure bends over in back of the kneeling accuser. The final scene, panel 8 (fig. 28), depicts the refusal of the empress to return to her worldly status and her decision to enter a monastery. On the right she parts from the emperor and his companion, probably his brother; at the left she kneels before the prioress of her new religious home. This eight-panel series heightens the importance of the empress’s afflictions and her resulting spiritual refinement. The appearance of saints in the architectural niches bordering each of the eight scenes contributes to the viewer’s sense of the empress’s piety. Reading from left to right, the female saints are: St. Catherine, St. Barbara, St. Apollonia, an unidentified saint, St. Ursula, St. Dorothy, St. Lucy (?), St. Juliana, and St. Winifred.8 All the female saints in the niches are virgin martyrs, and most are noblewomen. Their presence emphasizes three characteristics of the empress: her high status, her chastity, and her ability to endure hardship. A specific relationship of individual saints to the scenes they adjoin is more difficult to argue. In a few instances, the artist seems to link the framing saints and the empress herself, the most obvious being St. Barbara and St. Ursula. St. Barbara, who appears to the right of the first panel, holds her tower emblem in her right hand, extending it so that the emblem is superimposed over the tower into which the brother-in-law is leading the empress. St. Ursula stands beside the exiled empress in her ship, in such a way that one can scarcely avoid thinking of the numerous depictions of St. Ursula aboard ship with her many virgin companions en route to Cologne for their martyrdom. Other saints are less firmly connected to specific aspects of the em-

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press’s story. St. Catherine, placed at the start of the series, carries in her right hand an open book rather than the usual wheel, but whether it implies anything more than a customary association with wisdom is unclear; she also holds a very large sword in her left hand, which may suggest the theme of justice. St. Apollonia, the third figure, holds a closed book under her right arm as well as her traditional forceps gripping a tooth in her left; again there is little relationship to the scenes on either side of her, other than the general willingness to be martyred. St. Dorothy and St. Lucy (if indeed it is St. Lucy) are appropriate as frames for the healing scenes. St. Dorothy’s emblem, her basket of flowers and fruit from heaven, signifies divine favor. St. Lucy is also associated with the power of healing, for St. Agatha revealed to her during a vision that she had the power to cure her mother. The relationship of St. Juliana to the empress is uncertain, though it is intriguing to read in the Golden Legend that she was hung by the hair for refusing marriage, a motif associated with the empress in the Gesta Romanorum and Florence of Rome traditions. Finally, St. Winifred, a late Welsh saint, is associated with a healing spring at Holywell that Lady Margaret Beaufort, Henry VII’s mother, had enclosed in a stone building.9 Thus, while it is impossible to argue for a specific connection between each individual saint and the scene that she frames, there are sufficient references in the layout to suggest that the artist wanted to relate saintly attributes to events in the story of the empress. Doing so heightens the piety of the empress by showing her to be inspired by the virgin martyrs, while not actually a virgin martyr herself. Her choice is not virginity, nor is it martyrdom, but rather retreat from the world into a cloistered environment, a path that was followed by many noblewomen during the Middle Ages. Like Eton Chapel, the Bauchun Chapel at Norwich Cathedral is dedicated to the Blessed Virgin Mary. Built in 1327–29, originally with a wood roof, it “opens off the third bay of the south aisle” of the presbytery.10 The bosses were added later when a new stone vaulted roof was installed, probably as the consequence of a fire in 1455.11 They were the gift of William Sekyngton, one of the lawyers of the court, who was buried in the chapel when he died in 1460. The chapel was used as the consistory or bishop’s court until 1965. For the patron of the bosses to have been a lawyer and for the story of the empress of Rome to be depicted in a build-

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ing utilized for judiciary proceedings seems particularly appropriate, given the emphasis on slander and false accusation in the tale. The principal focus of the sculptures, however, is to glorify the Virgin Mary, whose Assumption and Coronation in Heaven are depicted in the two central bosses. Her life after death forms the nexus around which the empress’s story is told in thirty-two surrounding bosses. As in so many manuscript contexts, the saintliness of the empress of Rome evokes that of the Virgin, and both figures have been literally lifted up to the “heavens” of the chapel. Since the bosses are very difficult to see with the naked eye, one might wonder why so much effort was expended on the sculpture. Helen Sherman, whose dissertation concerns another series of bosses found in the nave of the cathedral, suggests two reasons: that they principally serve to glorify God rather than speak to man, and that they are “part of the Gothic tendency to spread decoration into all available spaces.”12 The bosses are also difficult to study on the basis of previously published photographs. Although Montague Rhodes James’s monograph The Sculptured Bosses in the Roof of the Bauchun Chapel of Our Lady of Pity in Norwich Cathedral is outdated and riddled with error, it is the only complete description that has been published to date, and so I will make use of his numbering system and diagram of the arrangement of the bosses in the discussion that follows.13 Two depictions of the Virgin Mary are centrally placed, where they are most likely to be seen with the naked eye: the Assumption sits at the center of the south bay bosses, the Coronation at the center of the north bay bosses.14 Of forty-seven bosses in all, two depict the Virgin Mary and thirteen depict angels, leaving thirty-two bosses whose subject matter is drawn from the story of the empress of Rome.15 The numbering used by James in his diagram and accompanying list does not imply any narrative chronology. In fact, he concluded that “their order is mere disorder. One is tempted to suppose that the bosses were all sculptured first, and that the workmen fitted them in according to their own convenience.”16 Nonetheless, the artist has succeeded in working within the medium of sculpted stone to draw a parallel between the lives of empress and Virgin. The earthly story of the empress and her accusers frames that of the Virgin and her elevation into heaven. Both stories, by virtue of being depicted in the roof vaulting, are transported to a “heavenly” space.

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Because it is difficult to discern any order in the placement of the bosses, I will confine my discussion to a few noteworthy features of six bosses: Empress as regent, riding (fig. 29, James no. 26) Empress and baby (fig. 30, James no. 25) Second accuser with knife (fig. 31, James no. 22) Empress landing on island (fig. 32, James no. 29) Empress directed by Virgin Mary to gather herbs (fig. 33, James no. 7) Cure of leprous accuser (fig. 34, James no. 5) In most bosses, the empress is immediately recognizable by her unusually tall conical crown, a triple crown such as those used elsewhere to depict the pope.17 The crown is unlike any known to me from other depictions of the empress. Although its size undoubtedly aids the viewer as a means of distinguishing her from the other figures, it also suggests that in the Middle Ages the empress of Rome was a well-known figure, associated not only with false accusation and healing powers but also with religious authority. The height of her crown may also express her authority as regent during her husband’s absence. One boss in particular succeeds admirably in conveying her imperial status. Here (fig. 29) she rides a horse sidesaddle, facing the viewer. Her position on horseback reminds the viewer of her wealth and power to rule. Her authority is also accentuated by the riding crop or scourge held in her left hand.18 The selected bosses contain key visualizations of episodes from the story of the empress. Nonetheless, some scholars in the past, including James, have made the error of assuming this story to be that of Constance.19 The scenes of the heroine receiving a baby in trust from her rescuer’s wife (fig. 30) and of the rescuer’s nephew leaving the bloody knife in her hand while she sleeps (fig. 31) might lead one to this conclusion. However, the depiction of the heroine arriving at an island on her ship (fig. 32), gathering herbs (at the direction of the Virgin Mary) and placing them in a glove (fig. 33), and finally curing the leprous brother-in-law (fig. 34)20 leave no doubt that the story depicted here is that of the empress of Rome, not Constance. What might have inspired the bishop at Norwich Cathedral to approve the construction of roof bosses on this theme? Is there anything about the history of Norwich during the second half of the fifteenth

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century that suggests a context for this sculpted narrative? Although a full exploration of these questions lies beyond the scope of the present study, I would like to suggest one possibility. Joanna Chamberlayne, in her article “Crown and Virgins: Queenmaking during the Wars of the Roses,” describes a traditional preference among English royalty to choose virgin queens. Elizabeth Woodville, wife of Edward IV, was a noteworthy exception to the practice. The queen was a widow, the mother of two children, and five years older than her new husband when Edward IV married her secretly in 1464.21 Chamberlayne tells us: “Royal image makers adopted two strategems in dealing with Elizabeth’s unconventional status. The first was simply to ignore the fact that she did not conform. The second was to construct her motherhood in strikingly Marian terms, so distancing her from ordinary women.”22 She provides us with a number of examples of the second strategem: depictions of the queen in virginal white and gold clothing, or with the blue cloak associated with the Virgin Mary, or with the loose blond hair associated with virgins.23 I cannot prove that the choice of the empress of Rome’s story for the Bauchun Chapel bosses was related to a desire to please the reigning king and queen of England. We know that Elizabeth Woodville visited Norwich in 1469, but the bosses may not have been completed this early.24 The long, loose hair of the empress visible in three of the bosses reproduced here (figs. 29–31), however, is unusual and fits with the pattern Chamberlayne has described of depiciting English queens as virginal (even if they were not). What we can be certain of is that the empress of Rome’s chastity and healing powers had already been associated with the Virgin Mary for two hundred years before Elizabeth Woodville was crowned queen of England in 1465. Any artist who wanted to associate the royal figure with the Virgin Mary would quite naturally look to the story of the empress of Rome. Especially in light of the criticism she faced after her secret marriage, neither Elizabeth Woodville nor Edward IV would have been displeased by an implied association of the queen with the empress of Rome.

Florence of Rome Narratives Stories of Florence of Rome fit poorly with the methodology of this book because they all are written by anonymous authors, exist in single manuscripts, and cannot be easily associated with a particular locale or histori-

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cal context. However, knowledge of this tradition is necessary for a full understanding of the achievement of Christine de Pizan in her retelling of the tale in The Book of the City of Ladies. Judging by extant manuscripts, Florence of Rome first appears as an Old French chanson in the late thirteenth century. The chief manuscript, copytext for the printed edition edited by Axel Gabriel Wallensköld, is B.N. n. a. fr. 4192, which consists of 6410 alexandrines.25 Another French version in quatrains (B.N. Notre-Dame 198) comes from the fourteenth century, and a second version in alexandrines (B.N. fr. 24384) appears in the fifteenth century. The story was translated into Spanish in the fourteenth century (Bibl. de l’Escurial h.j.12) and into English in the fifteenth century (Cambridge, University Library MS. Ff. II. 38). Carol Falvo Heffernan’s summary of the plot, provided in the introduction to her edition of the English text, will provide a basis for a comparison of the story to the miracles. The summary is equally applicable to the Old French chanson:26 Garcy, the old king of Constantinople, moved by tales of Florence’s beauty, decides to sue for her hand. After consulting with his barons and Florence, his daughter, King Otes of Rome rejects the offer made by Garcy’s emissaries. The returning messengers are full of news about glorious Rome and beautiful Florence. Angry at his rejection, Garcy declares war on Rome and sets sail with an army. Battle begins despite Florence’s last-minute offer to marry Garcy in order to save the lives of Roman knights. Mylys and Emere, sons of the King of Hungary, come to King Otes’s assistance. Florence and Emere fall in love, and are betrothed. While Emere is engaged in war in Constantinople, his brother Mylys—to whose care Florence is entrusted —tries to win Florence’s love after giving a false account of Emere’s death. Mylys is put in prison, and then released when news of Emere’s return reaches Florence. She and Mylys ride out to meet Emere. While in the woods, the wicked Mylys renews his assaults on Florence’s virtue and hangs her by the hair from a tree after being rebuffed once again. Sir Tyrry rescues Florence from the woods and brings her home, where his steward, Machary, attempts to seduce Florence. He too is rejected, and takes revenge by murdering Tyrry’s daughter and putting the bloody knife in the hand of sleeping Florence. Tyrry takes pity on Florence and sends her into exile in a

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forest. After still further adventures and attempts to compromise her virtue, Florence arrives at a convent where she is received by the nuns, one of whom she heals of a serious disease. Her fame spreads. One by one, all of her persecutors come to her for healing. Before helping them, she makes them confess their crimes against her, and is reunited in the end with Emere. As this summary suggests, Florence of Rome narratives typically contain two parts,27 of which the first represents a major addition to the earlier empress of Rome narratives. The wooing of the heroine and the description of the subsequent military campaigns between Constantinople and Rome constitute nearly half of both the Old French and English versions. The second part contains a number of features in common with empress of Rome narratives: (1) Mylys’s wooing of Florence, (2) her refusal to succumb to his advances, (3) his imprisonment, (4) his revenge, (5) her rescue by a passing nobleman, (6) an attempted seduction by a member of his household, (7) the latter’s revenge (by killing the nobleman’s daughter and placing the bloody knife in Florence’s hand), (8) her exile, (9) her fame as a healer, and (10) her cure of her accusers. In the past, scholars have treated empress of Rome stories as if they were the indisputable source of extant versions of Florence of Rome. However, too often source and analogue studies stress similarities in plot structure but ignore differences in names, motifs, themes, and social contexts. As a corrective to the work of earlier source and analogue scholarship, which stressed the plot similarities between empress stories and Florence stories, I should like to stress the differences. It seems likely that there were two separate traditions, which occasionally influenced one another or overlapped. Because Florence is an unwed daughter, the author of the chanson is able to introduce, as in so many other medieval romances, three suitors for her hand: old King Garcy of Constantinople and the two sons of the king of Hungary. This opening is very different from that found in the story of the empress of Rome as presented by Gautier, Vincent, and Jean de Vignay: there she is happily married and mature enough to be entrusted with the care both of the empire and of her brother-in-law. The violence of men is emphasized in the chanson (as it is also in the empress of Rome narratives)—to be sure, during the military campaigns between Constantinople and Rome, but also in Mylys’s treatment of Flo-

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rence. If a significant iconographic scene in stories of the empress of Rome is her exile on a rock in the middle of the sea, then here it is the hanging of Florence by her hair from a tree. Mylys’s attempted rape (laisse 146), the prelude to the hanging scene, is the cause of long complaints by Florence. When, finally, Mylys has had enough, Il la prist par les tresces, soz l’arbre la mena, Le grele de ses manches sor les mains li cola; Tant doloreusement li leres les lia Que la tige de l’arbre par derriere enbraça. Une branche i ot grose que vers terre enclina, Par les tresces l’i pent, tant forment la pena C’onques pié qu’elle eüst a terre ne tocha Fors seul l’ortoel devant, ou elle s’apuia. (4110–17) [He grabbed her by the hair, and led her under a tree. He bound her with the narrow part of her sleeves; The thief tied them so cruelly That she embraced the trunk of the tree behind her. There was one large branch that hung down toward the ground, And he hung her by the hair from it; thus he tormented her So that her foot could not touch the ground Except for her big toe, which she leaned on.] Despite her situation, she continues to answer back to him and twice she calls him traitor (4121, 4135). After the first response, he beats her with branches so badly that “Sa blanche char en fu sanglante et derompue” (4127) [her white flesh became bloody and torn]; the second time, “a poi que ne se tue” (4139) [he very nearly kills her]. Like the empress, Florence is presented as virtuous, chaste, and longsuffering. However, she is primarily a secular character, a woman with a kingdom who needs a virtuous man of great prowess beside her. True, her ability to heal starts when she arrives at a convent (which bears the name Biau Repaire), but her religious experiences lack depth. She endures no dark night of the soul on a rock in the middle of the sea. Her ability to heal others is unexplained: there is neither a vision of the Virgin Mary nor the gift of a miraculous herb. Most significantly, at the end of the chanson she does not reject the world for life in a convent. Instead she is reunited with her lover. When she lifts her veil to reveal herself to Emere, he rejoices and

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immediately proposes they go to Rome (6385). Without hesitation Florence responds: “Sire . . . a vostre volenté!” (6386) [Sir . . . as you will!]. She quickly takes leave of the abbess (6387), and they attend mass in Rome, followed by a feast and the engendering, directly thereafter, of a male heir (6406).

Christine de Pizan’s Rewriting of Tradition The Book of the City of Ladies contains, in part 2, an abbreviated story of the empress of Rome, to whom she gives the name Florence. Like other narratives of famous women included in her anthology, Christine’s account of the virtuous Florence is designed to counter the negative images of women often presented by male authors. The story of Florence comes immediately after that of Griselda and, like it, illustrates female courage in the face of adversity, as the first sentence makes clear: “Se Griselidis, marquis de Saluce, ot vertueuse force et constance, assez l’en retray la noble Fleurence, empereris de Romme, qui par merveilleuse pacience porta grant adversité” [Just as Griselda, marquise of Saluce, was so virtuous and constant, so also was the noble Florence, empress of Rome, who through incredible patience endured great adversity].28 Christine’s story mixes elements from the miracle and chanson traditions.29 On the one hand, she names her heroine Florence, and her ending follows the chanson tradition in reuniting the heroine with her husband at the end of the story. It also omits the voyage on the ship and her abandonment on the rock—though neither does it include hanging her by the hair from a tree—and the pope is absent from the final healing scene. On the other hand, she borrows nothing else from the chanson tradition. In all other respects, her plot follows closely that of empress of Rome stories found in collections of miracles. Emphasizing the relationship to the miracle tradition, Christine cites the Miracles de Nostre Dame as her source. Since she had access to books in the royal library, a likely source is the miracle contained in Jean de Vignay’s Miroir historial, produced for Joan of Burgundy, wife of Philip VI of France. Despite significant differences between the two texts, there are a few verbal correspondences that suggest she used the queen’s manuscript.30 Nonetheless, she appears to have written an entirely new tale, one that differs in significant ways from any known empress of Rome or Florence of Rome narrative. Christine is a master of brevitas, the art of con-

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densing a story. She rewrites a religious narrative into a secular context and makes her changes fit perfectly with her feminist agenda. Her narrative has about 60 percent fewer words than the narrative of Jean de Vignay. Typical of her technique is the way she introduces Florence. After speaking first of Griselda and of Florence’s likeness to her, she turns next to a description of Florence. She reduces Jean’s three-sentence presentation of the heroine to one crisp line: “Ceste dame estoit de souveraine biauté, mais encore plus chaste et vertueuse” (910) [This lady was beautiful above all others, but even more chaste and virtuous]. Virtuous women are the focus of Christine’s narrative rather than the emperor, who is not mentioned until sentence four. Other changes to the plot of the miracle serve to readjust the focus of the narrative onto the virtues of women. Christine eliminates two instances of attempted rape from the miracle. In the first instance, the heroine simply begs the killers designated by the emperor to leave her alive, and they do. The second instance occurs after she is falsely accused of the murder of the prince’s son. Again, Christine simply speaks of her heroine’s exile and arrival at a convent. There is nothing about being put on a ship, no attempted rape by the sailors, no rock on which she is abandoned. Contrary to what Chaucer does with his stories of persecuted women in the Legend of Good Women, Christine resists the temptation to make this a story of male perversity. Her glorification of women does not depend upon the vilification of men. Another significant change from the Miroir is that, where Jean’s emperor entrusts his empire and his brother to his wife, Christine’s emperor entrusts both the empire and wife to the brother-in-law. The unambiguous effect of this change is to place the blame for what happens in the hands of the men, but again without piling up example upon example of masculine perversity. Perhaps her change also represents a modernization of the narrative, for in the fifteenth century—nearly a century after the French reaffirmed that a woman could not rule—it would be difficult to imagine an empress entrusted with affairs of state. A desire to eliminate ambiguity in motivation may also be at the heart of another change: where Jean de Vignay’s emperor goes to visit the churches of saints, Christine’s emperor leaves his wife to go on a military campaign. The empress is the virtuous one in this exemplum of female virtue, not the emperor. Although Christine’s account is brief, she is interested in the motivation of her characters’ actions. Thus, the brother-in-law is tempted by the

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devil; the empress imprisons the brother-in-law because she fears he will rape her; she releases him from prison because she never imagines he will slander her and because she wants to keep the brother-in-law’s treason a secret; the prince and his wife reduce her death sentence to exile because they recognize her exemplary life and virtues; the emperor does not recognize her in the final confession scene because he thinks she is dead. Each of these fictional moments becomes part of a world of reasonable, motivated actions. Christine eliminates much of the emotion highlighted in Jean de Vignay’s account. There is nothing about the empress agreeing to meet the brother-in-law and acceding to his sexual demands “par faintise” [by pretending]. Nor is there anything about the shocking appearance of the brother-in-law when, after being released from prison, he runs out to meet the emperor. Reporting his speech in the third person, without the tears that accompany Jean’s first-person account, Christine moves directly to his calumnies. The reaction of the emperor is also toned down and consequently made more inexplicable and unjust. He does not collapse on the ground in grief; instead, without the least explanation, he condemns her to death without so much as seeing her. As my discussion in chapter 1 of the rubrics and miniature accompanying the Miroir historial made clear, Vincent de Beauvais and Jean de Vignay stress the parallelism between the emperor who goes off on a pilgrimage and returns to condemn his wife to death and the prince (or baron) who serendipitously arrives just in time to rescue the empress from rape by her would-be killers. Christine appears to be more interested in the parallelism between the two final scenes of confession and healing, and here the conciseness of her prose aids in highlighting the parallel. When the false accuser of murder arrives, the empress announces that she can cure him only if “il recongneust son pechié publiquement” (912) [he would acknowledge his sin in public]. After he does so, the prince becomes furious and wants to see him punished, “[m]ais la noble dame tant l’en pria qu’elle l’apaisa vers luy et le gary. Et ainsi luy rendi bien pour mal, selonc le commandement de Dieu” (912) [but the noble lady urged him to make peace with his brother and then cured him. And so she repaid his evil with good, according to God’s commandment]. Similarly, when the false accuser of adultery arrives to be cured, she announces: “que il couvenoit qu’il se confessast publiquement, autrement elle ne le pourroit garir” (913) [that he must make confession in public, otherwise she could not cure

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him]. This time the slanderer tries to hold something back, but eventually he confesses completely. The emperor becomes furious and wants to kill him, but “la bonne dame se magnifesta et paciffia l’empereur vers son frere. Et ainsi recouvra Fleurance par le merite de sa pacience son estat et sa felicité, a grant joye de l’empereur et de toutes gens” (913) [the good lady appeared and pacified the emperor toward his brother. Thus, Florence recovered her estate and happiness by merit of her patience, to the great joy of the emperor and all the people]. By reducing the healing scenes to their bare-bones elements, Christine emphasizes the act of repaying evil with good. Following the teaching of Jesus, her heroine exemplifies the Golden Rule, not merely the ability to endure adversity or to be patient. Likewise, in her reconstruction of the story of Florence of Rome, Christine’s writing reflects this Christian virtue. In answering the misogynist writings of men, Christine neither uses angry words nor speaks in a spirit of revenge. Instead, she answers satiric portraits of scheming, lying, cheating, depraved women with multiple exempla of constancy, mercy, peacefulness, and justice. Her portrait of the empress of Rome reshapes the virtuous, but ultimately cloistered, heroine presented by Gautier, Vincent de Beauvais, and Jean de Vignay into an image of female piety working within the world.

The Gesta Romanorum Gesta Romanorum manuscripts, in both Latin and Middle English, were readily available to writers and preachers in fifteenth-century England. In his study of Hoccleve, Jerome Mitchell provides a convenient overview of the popular Gesta Romanorum, which were known by the mid-fourteenth century. He defines three groups or families: (1) an Anglo-Latin family, most completely represented by the fifteenth-century Brit. Mus. MS. Harl. 2270; (2) a family of Latin and German manuscripts that lie behind a German text printed at Augsburg in 1489; and (3) a family of continental manuscripts that form the basis of three Latin texts printed in the 1470’s.31 The texts in the third group have been edited by Hermann Oesterley, including an account (number 249) of the empress of Rome in which the emperor’s name is given as Octavianus.32 I will refer to this as the Continental version. However, the Anglo-Latin text Harley 2270, which tells a

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similar story (number 101) but gives the emperor the name Menelaus, is of greater interest here, for Mitchell believes that it was the source of Hoccleve’s versification.33 An English translation of this text found in British Museum, Harley 7333 (number 69), where the emperor is named Merelaus, is also relevant to understanding both Hoccleve’s sources and the extent of knowledge of empress of Rome stories in fifteenth-century England.34 The Gesta Romanorum, in both their Continental and English forms, present a different story from that found in earlier vernacular versions, such as those by Gautier de Coinci and Vincent de Beauvais. In the Gesta, instead of being condemned to death by the returning emperor, the empress is hung by the hair from a tree by her brother-in-law—a motif we have also seen in Florence of Rome narratives. She is taken into her rescuer’s household to bring up a daughter, rather than a son. After her charge is murdered and she is discovered with the bloody knife in her hand, she is exiled and travels alone until she finds a man, about to be hanged, whom she rescues and takes on as her servant. The servant betrays her to a shipowner who lusts after her, thus introducing another attack on her chastity not found in earlier vernacular versions. There is no intervention by the Virgin Mary and no magical herb: she simply lands at an abbey after a shipwreck (caused by her prayer to God to save her from the lechery of the shipman) and lives a holy life for many years, becoming noted for her healing powers. The confession scene at the end brings all four accusers and betrayers together simultaneously: the brother-in-law suffers from leprosy, the knight who killed the earl’s daughter is deaf and blind, the servant who betrayed her is “haltyng,” and the shipmaster is “halfe out of mynde.”35 After making a full confession, the brother-in-law, the focus of the final recognition scene, is cured of his leprosy. The role of the other three is simply to supply part of the story of the empress to her husband, who has accompanied his brother for the cure but knows nothing about what happened to his wife. The information they provide leads into the final recognition scene between husband and wife. Unlike in Gautier’s ending, the empress returns with her husband to Rome, where they live happily until death parts them. The most important change in the Gesta Romanorum is the addition of a moralizing or application in which the principal figures of the narrative are allegorized. The emperor is said to represent Jesus Christ, the wife represents the soul, and the brother-in-law represents man, to whom God

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gives the care of His empire—that is, both body and soul. Although the empress is the central figure in the story, the brother-in-law is the focus of the moralizing. He is principally depicted as a sinner, imprisoned in the prison of penance, to whom the emperor, or Jesus Christ, returns from the Holy Land. Other secondary figures are also allegorized: the earl who rescues the queen is “a prechour, or a discrete confessour, in þe forest of þis wordle,” who brings the soul to his house (“hooly chirche”) to nourish his daughter (“conscience”); the second accuser is “pryde of life”; and the master of the ship is “þe wordle,” which causes many to be deceived.36 The moralizing reinforces the clerkly quality of the Gesta Romanorum and raises the question of how the exempla were used in the fifteenth century. Generations of modern readers, who first encountered the stories in the 1876 translations of Charles Swan and Wynnard Hooper, have acquired the idea from their subtitle that the Gesta were “Entertaining Moral Stories; Invented by the Monks as a Fireside Recreation, and Commonly Applied in Their Discourses from the Pulpit: Whence the Most Celebrated of Our Own Poets and Others, From the Earliest Times, Have Extracted Their Plots.” Modern scholars essentially agree with Swan and Hooper as to the use made of the Gesta by poets and preachers.37 English writers such as Gower, Chaucer, Lydgate, and Hoccleve drew on the collection for stories to retell in the vernacular, and there is also significant evidence of the use of Gesta in sermons.38 The Middle English translation of both the story and the moralizing follows very closely its Anglo-Latin counterpart in Harley 2270,39 but the prose is livelier, the dialogue is usually direct, and the story is filled with interesting details. Because of the additional dialogue and detail, the Gesta Romanorum found in England are longer than their Continental counterparts. A good example is the inclusion of a touching metaphor spoken by the empress after her husband’s announcement of his upcoming departure: “And in your absence I shal be like a turtle dove who has lost her mate.”40 The Middle English compares favorably to the rather stilted and formal Continental Latin version, which seems to want to get as quickly as possible to the moralizing. It is easy to see why the Anglo-Latin/Middle English story would appeal to Hoccleve and become the basis of his versified retelling. The fifteenth-century manuscript containing the Middle English prose translation of “The Empress of Rome,” Harley 7333, is interesting to this

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study because it contains three accused queen stories and hence demonstrates interest in the tale type by readers in fifteenth-century England. Among its contents are “The Man of Law’s Tale” (fols. 60–65v), which is part of numerous selections from among Chaucer’s works; Gower’s tale of Constance (fols. 122–126), titled “The tale of constaunce, what fell of Envye & Bakbytinge”; and, among some seventy narratives from the Gesta Romanorum, the story “Merelaus þe emperour” (fols. 201–202v).41 According to Manly and Rickert, Harley 7333 was written at Leicester at the Abbey of St. Mary de Pratis, where there was a noted scriptorium. They write: “Although Leicester is about a hundred miles from London, the use of Shirleian texts shows a contact with the metropolis which would be expected in a great religious house. Moreover, during the last years of Henry VI’s reign—the very years in which Ha3 [Harley 7333] seems to have been begun—London, in a sense, went to Leicester. It was several times the place of meeting for Parliament and the Council, and Henry VI spent Christmas in 1459–60 in the Abbey. . . . Such occasions would have given opportunity for the picking up of such different types of text as are found in Ha3.”42 The manuscript was owned by John Shirley (1366?– 1456), a London stationer who appears to have acted as publisher, bookseller, and literary agent,43 and whose hand is recognizable in six manuscripts,44 including this one. Although it has been suggested that Shirley ran a lending library, A.S.G. Edwards believes that his “so-called lending library may . . . be more accurately seen as a case of samples.”45 If Harley 7333 was such a sample, this would explain the fact that it lay for many years unbound.46 A London merchant or nobleman ordering a book for private use may have been able to examine a manuscript such as this at Shirley’s establishment, from which he could then pick and choose his desired texts for recopying and binding.47 Of course, it is unlikely that one of Shirley’s customers would have selected the three narratives of accused queens that are of interest to this study. Each tale is presented as part of a larger collection of narratives— The Canterbury Tales, the Confessio Amantis, or the Gesta Romanorum. Nothing in the manuscript highlights the three stories of falsely accused queens or connects them to one another. Nonetheless, the occurrence of the three stories in the same manuscript demonstrates the frequency with which such a narrative could be encountered by readers in fifteenth-century England.

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Thomas Hoccleve Thomas Hoccleve retold the Gesta story in verse, framing it imaginatively within a larger analysis of psychological and physical healing in his book the Series, probably written before 1421. His tale, which he called “ffabula de quadam Emperatrice Romana,” is most often referred to today as “The Tale of Jereslaus’s Wife.” Although the reputation of Hoccleve (ca. 1368– 1426?) has risen in the last thirty years,48 his versification of “The Empress of Rome” has received little attention. John Burrow has laid the literary critical groundwork for its analysis by exploring the structural and thematic coherence of the Series.49 Beyond this, there are only three other extensive treatments of the story: Jerome Mitchell briefly compares it to what he believes was Hoccleve’s Latin source, the Anglo-Latin Gesta Romanorum found in Harley 2270;50 Penelope Doob considers it in relation to the larger theme of conventions of madness in Middle English literature;51 and Ethan Knapp reads the story against the bureaucratic culture in which Hoccleve worked.52 Hoccleve was part of a small group of writers and booksellers in the early fifteenth century who took particular interest in the stories of Constance and the empress of Rome. His narrative, viewed from the perspective of empress of Rome stories that preceded it and placed within its narrative context in the Series—for which an autograph manuscript exists—suggests that (1) the author was interested in the power relationships set up between the empress and her brother, (2) he was interested in the relationship between physical and spiritual health, and (3) he was conscious of both male and female members of his audience and incorporated praise of potential patrons, Humphrey, duke of Gloucester, and Joan Beaufort, countess of Westmoreland, into his book. “The Empress of Rome,” which I shall henceforth refer to by the name common among Hoccleve scholars, “The Tale of Jereslaus’s Wife,” plays a central role in the Series. The story enables Hoccleve to take his account of his personal crisis to a new spiritual level by linking illness and spiritual uncleanness. Beginning as an autobiographical account of Hoccleve’s recent illness and recovery, the Series, as found in the autograph manuscript, Durham University, Cosin V. III. 9, includes these sections: (1) a prologue; (2) “Complaint”; (3) “Dialogue with a Friend”; (4) an envoi; (5) “The Tale of Jereslaus’s Wife,” with four linking stanzas, and a prose moralizing; (6) “Learn to Die,” with three linking stanzas; (7) a prose version of the ninth

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lesson for All Hallows’ Day; (8) a linking prologue to “The Tale of Jonathas” (another story from the Gesta Romanorum), with its prose moralizing; and (9) a one-stanza envoi. Burrow explores how the creation of Hoccleve’s book simultaneously promotes a return to sanity and the restoration of the author’s literary reputation: “Hoccleve sees the writing and publication of his latest book as an important stage in the process by which he may finally be rehabilitated after his illness and its long aftermath. Furthermore, the book itself seems to trace the steps of such a rehabilitation. It is not tightly constructed, but the order of its parts is more significant than may at first appear. It begins in solitary alienation, and it ends with the reassumption (albeit hesitant) of a social role proper to a man of fifty-three. The structure of the work, though imperfect, does something to articulate the author’s deepest concern.”53 Hoccleve’s “deepest concern,” as I read the Series, is to show that his illness was a step toward his own spiritual development, and that the attentive reader of the Series—whether male or female—can participate vicariously in a similar experience. “The Tale of Jereslaus’s Wife” marks a crucial stage in such a reader’s consciousness of the relationship between illness and spiritual growth. One of the most interesting parts of Hoccleve’s work is the relationship he sets up between himself and the friend with whom he periodically converses, producing dialogues that serve to link the various parts of the Series and to provide psychological insight into illness. At the beginning of the work, the poet is melancholy; the autumn opening—contrasting, as Burrow notes, with Chaucer’s spring opening in The Canterbury Tales— reminds the author “that stablenes in this worlde is there none.”54 In his private meditation, the “Complaint,” he bemoans the fact that, despite his apparent recovery from illness, his friends still avoid him, apparently either believing him to be still ill or, if recovered, susceptible at any time to a relapse. Within the “Complaint,” the poet describes how he found consolation in a book; without directly saying so, he is suggesting that the book he is writing can also provide consolation to its readers. “Consolation” here is used in the Boethian sense of spiritual guidance: the book the poet consulted contained a dialogue between Reason and a complaining man (the first of several mises en abyme contained within the Series).55 Reason urges the complaining man to look at the suffering of others, citing Isaiah 48:10, the “furnace of affliction” passage often referred to earlier in this study:

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Gold purgyd is / thou seyst, in the furneis, for the fyner and clenner / it shall be; of thy disease / the weyght and the peis bere lyghtly / for god, to prove the, scorgyd the hathe / with sharpe adversitie; not gruche and sey / “why susteyn I this?” (358–63) Reason assures the complaining man depicted within the book that Hoccleve—another complaining man—also used reading as a means of consolation during his illness. Both men are resolved my giltes to repent[e], and hens-forwarde / to set myne entent[e], vnto his deitie / to do plesaunce, and to amend / my synfull governaunce. (403–6) The vision of both men takes a crucial turn away from the mutabilities of this world toward God and a better form of personal “governaunce.” The appearance of a friend at his lodging in the next section marks the beginning of a new social position and a new stage in his recovery. The friend provides social contact and serves as a literary critic and poetic advisor. After Hoccleve has read the “Complaint” to his friend, the latter advises the poet not to publish it. It is a sign of the poet’s emotional stability that he refuses to take this advice. The poet argues instead that he is not ashamed of God’s punishing strokes (stanza 8), that he wants people to know that Jesus healed him (stanza 9), and that he wants to “make an open shryfte” (stanza 12). The writing of his book thus becomes a form of religious confession, again suggesting that the attentive reader too can follow the path outlined by the poet. However, Hoccleve’s friend is not a particularly attentive reader. Too rooted in the concerns of this world, he cannot fully understand what Hoccleve is attempting to achieve in the Series. Much like Chaucer’s Host in The Canterbury Tales, he becomes a foil to the reader of Hoccleve’s book, who is wiser and can see where the author is leading. Thus, when Hoccleve tells his friend that he plans to include in this work a tract called “Learn to Die,” the friend thinks of practical matters of patronage rather than the spiritual value of a work that explores the mutability of this world and its riches. He worries that Hoccleve will again be plunged into illness by working too hard on such a melancholy subject. But Hoccleve

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once more rejects his advice, and the friend accepts defeat, saying he was, after all, only testing to make certain Hoccleve was emotionally stable enough to be writing. The friend next asks Hoccleve if he does not owe a book to Humphrey, duke of Gloucester, and if, in fact, he is intending this one for him. When Hoccleve answers in the affirmative, the friend suggests that he write something that will make the duke happy—“My noble lordes herte / with / to glade” (548)—and that will appeal to women. The friend, having misinterpreted Hoccleve’s earlier work, his Letter to Cupid, as an antifeminist work,56 suggests that Hoccleve needs to improve his reputation among women. The author plays along: he accepts the friend’s suggestion that he translate into English verse the story of the empress of Rome from the Gesta Romanorum. He also decides to dedicate his entire book to Joan Beaufort, countess of Westmoreland, as the final stanza of the Series tells us: Go, smal book / to the noble excellence Of my lady / of Westmerland / and seye, Hir humble seruant / with al reuerence Him recommandith / vn-to hir nobleye; And byseeche hire / on my behalue, & preye, Thee to receyue / for hire owne right; And looke thow / in al manere weye To plese hir wommanhede / do thy might. Humble seruant to your gracious noblesse T: Hoccleue. “The Tale of Jereslaus’s Wife” thus accomplishes two things: it shows that Hoccleve is fully conscious of his audience and the power of his words to move both male and female members within it, and it brings into the orbit of his own experience a well-known story of physical and spiritual regeneration. Readers have often been puzzled that Hoccleve would change course from the original idea of writing the book for Humphrey, duke of Gloucester. However, since Joan Beaufort was the duke’s aunt, Hoccleve may have had both patrons in mind. Certainly the eleven-stanza section in praise of Humphrey would not be out of place in a book designated for his aunt.

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The tale is written, then, with a female audience in mind and as part of an ostensible effort to improve the poet’s status with women. As Jerome Mitchell has shown, Hoccleve follows his source closely, whether that was the Anglo-Latin version, Harley 2270, or a Middle English translation such as that found in Harley 7333. Nonetheless, in versifying a prose story, Hoccleve is clearly interested in enhancing themes present in the Series and in amplifying the dramatic potential of the narrative. Given his sensitivity to both male and female readers, it is interesting to see how Hoccleve depicts the emperor of Rome and his wife at the start of the tale. Instead of merely mentioning the empress as “a faire woman, and full of werkis of mercy” (“que erat pulcra et operibus misericordie plena”), Hoccleve in stanza two explains more generally the relationship between beauty and virtue in a commendable woman. And for þat beautee in womman, allone Withouten bontee, is nat commendable, Shee was ther-to / a vertuous persone, And specially pitous & merciable In all hir wirkes / which ful couenable And pertinent is / vn-to wommanhede: Mercy causith / good renon fer to sprede. (8–14) When, shortly after, Hoccleve describes the emperor’s decision to travel to the Holy Land, he has a different division of power in mind from that of his source. In both Latin and English prose versions, it is clearly the empress who is to rule in her husband’s absence: “and þ(er)fore I ordene and sette þe in my stede, for to rule and gou(er)ne þe Empire, in worship to me, and p(ro)fite to my peple” (“vnde principaliter constituo te dominam tocius imperii mei ad ordinandum quod mihi et meo populo sit vtile”). Hoccleve departs from his source here: he makes the empress principally Of al thempyre / me absent / “lady,” (27–28) and commits to her the ambiguous “charge special” (30) of people and land. Whereas his source makes no mention of a role for his brother, Hoccleve’s emperor gives the brother power: Steward of it / to rule & gouerne al That to me and my peple, greet & smal,

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Profitable is / by Conseil & assent Algate of thee / and thyn auysament. (32–35) This change is more than a bow to male superiority or a reflection of social conventions of the early fifteenth century; by putting the brother in charge, he can later link the brother’s incestuous desire to corruption of power (stanzas 10 and 11). The most important function of “The Tale of Jereslaus’s Wife” in the Series, however, is not to play up to the literary tastes of male and female patrons but to explore further the relationship between disease and spiritual corruption.57 Like Gautier de Coinci’s empress, Hoccleve’s spiritually clean heroine is able to restore the men around her to health, if they make a total and also public confession. Because there are a total of four men in the English texts who abuse the empress, rather than two, the climactic recognition scene at the end of the story magnifies the number of men the empress cures, and hence magnifies her spiritual powers. At the end, all four deceitful men appear for healing: the brother-in-law, the false knight who killed the earl’s daughter, the thief-servant, and the captain of the ship. One by one, each of the four makes public confession, and because each has a link to the other’s story, the truth about the real identity of the empress gradually emerges. By including “The Tale of Jereslaus’s Wife” in his book, Hoccleve has found a way to move the theme of illness and spiritual health beyond the merely personal to a more universal level. He is no longer the only one who has found a return to health to be a sign of God’s grace. The two stories from the Gesta Romanorum included in the Series both address the theme of sickness and health and introduce other persons cured of illness. In addition to the four men cured by public confession in “The Tale of Jereslaus’s Wife,” there is the protagonist of the second Gesta tale, “The Tale of Jonathas.” It tells a story of a man who finds two kinds of water and fruit, one that destroys the flesh and one that cures it. Hoccleve’s originality is also evident in the way in which he treats the moralizing of “The Tale of Jereslaus’s Wife.” Although a typical feature of the Gesta Romanorum, moralizings are not found in other narratives of falsely accused queens. By including a moral at the end, Hoccleve calls attention to the tale’s allegorical meaning. The moralizing is introduced in an ingenious fashion: Hoccleve’s friend returns for a four-stanza dialogue in which he reads the narrative Hoccleve

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has written and remarks on the absence of the moralizing. Hoccleve responds that his source did not have one, so the friend offers to go home and fetch his own copy so that Hoccleve can include it, for “of þat tale it is parcel” (20). By pointing to the existence of a manuscript in which the moralizing is lacking, the author neatly highlights its inclusion in his own book. The addition of the allegorical explication permits appreciation of the tale on a new level, as Hoccleve moves the reader from a literal to a more explicitly religious interpretation. The reader learns that the story no longer concerns simply the governance of Rome or the emperor’s virtuous wife or a series of spiritually depraved men. Rather, it defines a broader relationship between God and men: the emperor is analogous to Jesus Christ, the wife represents the soul of all human beings, and the brotherin-law is “man / to whom god committed and bytook the cure and the charge of his Empire / þat is to seyn, of his body / & nathelees principally of the soule” (175). The preachy tone of the moralizing also anticipates the increasing role of priestly intercession and ritual in Hoccleve’s next two pieces, “Learn to Die” and a section of the All Hallows’ Day service called “The Joys of Heaven.” The former consists of a dialogue between a disciple and Wisdom.58 In order to teach the disciple how to die, Wisdom asks him to imagine the state of a young man unready for death whom death approaches—another mise en abyme that reflects Hoccleve’s state during his illness. Included in “Learn to Die” is a complaint made by this imaginary person (stanzas 15–21), which mirrors the complaint of Hoccleve earlier in the Series. The disciple listens to the complaint and acts as a friend, mirroring the role of Hoccleve’s friend earlier. After witnessing the death of the young man, the disciple is so upset that he again seeks Wisdom but, not finding him (or her), resolves to repent and change his life. Wisdom thus plays the role of priest, first in guiding the disciple to the imagined scene and then, through withdrawal, forcing repentance. Providing a vivid description of the promised heavenly city, the service for All Hallows’ Day follows. It might seem that Hoccleve’s spiritual journey is complete at this point. Indeed, Hoccleve tells his friend, who reappears in the prologue to the last piece, “The Tale of Jonathas,” that he intended to end the Series here. The friend begs him, however, to write a piece about the wiles of wicked women as a warning to his fifteen-year-old son. Hoccleve protests that a story of an unchaste woman will undo all the

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good work of his previous tale, but the friend facilely and humorously responds that To goode wommen shal it be no shame, Al thogh þat thow / vnhonest wommen blame. (62–63) Reasoning that only unchaste women will blame the author, he effectively eliminates the possibility of a negative response by any woman. The return to the themes of patronage and Hoccleve’s attitude toward women is deceptive here, as is the incipit of the story that follows, “fabula de quadam muliere mala.” Although it happens to contain a depiction of a wicked woman, the second Gesta story, “The Tale of Jonathas,” is not about a wicked woman at all. Rather, it is a story of a man who loses his three magic treasures—a ring (“feith”), a brooch (“the holy goost”), and a carpet (“parfyt charitee”)—to a wicked woman and then recovers them, in part through his own repentance, in part by curing a king, and in part by punishing the wicked woman. The story is much closer to a parable than the earlier tale; it is, in fact, similar to the parable of the mustard seed (Matt. 13:31–32). Hence, the moralizing can easily be anticipated by the reader and needs no introduction or explanation as it did at the end of “The Tale of Jereslaus’s Wife.” Hoccleve has succeeded in weaving two Gesta stories into his fully conceived and completed book. He exploits and appropriates both the feminist and spiritual aspects of the empress of Rome story in a way that no author did before. The narrator’s progress from illness to health is echoed by the progress of the book itself. The Series provides a schema for readers to follow to recover their own physical and spiritual health. With the creation of the Series, Hoccleve carried to a new stage the traditions established in England by Gower and Chaucer of compiling stories into a codex that is imaginatively and coherently constructed.59 Before I leave the fifteenth century and bring this study to closure, there remains to be discussed one major thread in this account of narratives of accused queens. It is a thread that takes us back across the Channel to the lands of a powerful duke of Burgundy, Philip the Good. In earlier broad discussions of Constance and empress of Rome stories, such as those by Schlauch or Wallensköld, I encountered frequent passing references to analogous tales called Helena stories or La Belle Hélène (sometimes accompanied by the phrase “the as yet unedited”) but without finding any in-depth study. Fortunately, the relevant texts featuring “the beautiful

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Helen” have recently been published, facilitating analysis. In my final chapter, therefore, I will turn to a new setting and a new falsely accused heroine. Study of “la belle Hélène,” the mother of St. Martin and grandmother of St. Brice, will move this study of medieval narratives of accused queens toward an appropriate close.

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7 Helen of Constantinople

La Belle Hélène de Constantinople, a long fictional narrative set during the early period of Christianization of France and Burgundy, exists in two principal versions: a fourteenth-century chanson de geste of more than 15,000 lines of verse, and a prose translation completed by Jehan Wauquelin in 1448 for Philip the Good, duke of Burgundy. Wauquelin’s translation, as it appears in Brussels, Bibliothèque Royale 9967, is the focus of this chapter. Believed by art historians to have been produced between 1460 and 1467, it contains twenty-six magnificent illustrations by Loyset Liédet.1 La Belle Hélène de Constantinople has led a phantom existence in medieval scholarship. Although often mentioned in footnotes, it has never been studied in depth.2 With only plot summaries or fragments of the work available, scholars could undertake no serious literary analysis. Recently, however, the path to critical understanding of the work was opened by the appearance of critical editions of the fourteenth-century verse romance and Wauquelin’s fifteenth-century prose version.3 Even in its newly printed formats, La Belle Hélène is not easily approached by modern readers. First, the Helen of the title is not, as might be expected, either the beautiful Helen of Troy or St. Helen, mother of the emperor Constantine and finder of the True Cross. This Helen is a lesserknown one, the mother of twin boys: the first, named Lion before his baptism, is the future St. Martin, bishop of Tours, whose feast day is November 11; the second, named Bras (or Arm) before his baptism, is Brice, the father of St. Brice, the successor of St. Martin as bishop of Tours. The plot that lies at the basis of La Belle Hélène and holds the numerous battles and subplots together is closely related to literary stories of the Constance type and to the type of folk tale known as “The Maiden With-

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out Hands.” The closest analogue to her story in French literature is Philippe de Remi’s La Manekine, a story that Jehan Wauquelin also translated into prose for another member of Philip the Good’s court (see chapter 2). Although the plot follows the familiar outline of Constance or Handless Queen stories—mutilation, flight from incest, marriage to a king, the birth of a son (in this case, twin boys), an evil mother-in-law, falsified letters, exiles and reconciliations—the heroine’s sufferings play a role secondary to the chivalric exploits of the men in her family. The historical time frame of the story is difficult to determine with any precision. The anonymous author of the fourteenth-century chanson de geste says that the story takes place after the Crucifixion, the vengeance of Vespasian (69–79), and the rule of Titus (79–81), and during the reign of Pope Clement (88–97), whereas Jehan Wauquelin writes that the events take place two or three hundred years after the Crucifixion.4 However, the presence of the Frankish king Clovis (465–511) as a character in the narrative might lead one to place the story in the late fifth or early sixth century. The central role of St. Martin (ca. 316–397) suggests the fourth century. Suffice it to say that the time period dealt with is an indeterminate early Christian era that is filled with anachronisms and has little correspondence to actual historical fact. The story belongs to what is commonly referred to as historical fiction or, as the anonymous author of the chanson de geste puts it, “histoire moult vraie” (843). Ruth Morse, in her important essay “Historical Fiction in Fifteenth-Century Burgundy,” analyzes why the prose genre remains so inaccessible to modern audiences, and many of her points are applicable to the chanson de geste as well. Modern scholars are confused by the presence of fantasy and invention in works that purport to be history, and they have trouble making a generic distinction between historical romance and “romantic” history.5 The problem is exacerbated by the absence of medieval theoretical works to describe the conventions of history; nonetheless, the chief characteristics of the genre can be extracted from the available texts. According to Morse, medieval authors of historical fiction sought examples of moral virtue that would guide present and future leaders. In the interest of producing “morally good narratives” that were “quasi-historical,” fantasy was tolerated, if not encouraged.6 Morse lays out the general characteristics of the genre: dependence of the authors on earlier “versions of the past written either in prose or verse”; a setting in “an anachronistic past”; a plot that follows the exploits

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of one aristocratic hero; a multiplicity of episodes to produce lengthy narratives; little characterization; and dialogue that is a public “statement of position,” often characterized by considerable rhetorical skill but rarely an exploration of inner thoughts or emotions.7 La Belle Hélène possesses most of these characteristics. Since historical fiction was written to provide guidance to present and future leaders, it is useful to interpret La Belle Hélène through the specific, local historical setting for which it was produced. Of the extant verse and prose versions of the story, only one, Brussels, B.R. 9967, can be associated with a specific historical setting. I will argue that the narrative glorifies Burgundy and promotes Philip’s ideal of a unified Christian world. Christian heroes, their battles, and the many ancillary stories of saints and their relics encourage a revival of chivalric ideals, ideals that Philip promoted at his court through the establishment of the Order of the Golden Fleece and sponsorship of numerous tournaments. The duke’s political efforts, which included unifying the lands under his power and promoting peace between England and France, culminated in his decision, announced at the famous Feast of the Pheasant in 1454, to launch a new crusade for Constantinople, lost to the Turks the year before. The crusade never took place, for Philip could not persuade the king of France to join his efforts. Nonetheless, the crusading spirit, which was palpable in the Burgundian court, is reinforced in La Belle Hélène de Constantinople with its stories of thirty years of battles against the pagans. Study of the manuscript’s author, its twenty-six illustrations, its patron, its source (the verse chanson de geste), and contemporary texts produced for the same court will demonstrate how Wauquelin adapted the Constance-type story to appeal to its aristocratic, politically ambitious patron.

Jehan Wauquelin and His Text Jehan Wauquelin, born in Picardy, spent most of his life in Mons, the capital of Hainaut, where he worked as editor and translator from 1439 to 1452. The accounts of the Church of Sainte-Waudru, whose canonesses favored artists and writers, first record him as transcriber of liturgical manuscripts in 1439.8 The same accounts, when noting his death on September 7, 1452, describe him as “en son tempz translateur et varlet de chambre de Mgr le duc de Bourgoigne” [during his life translator and valet de chambre of monseigneur the duke of Burgundy].9

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He is regularly mentioned in records of the Burgundian court, first as a “clercq” who was paid for “certains livres et histores.”10 In 1448—now with his own clerk, Jacques du Bois, also from Mons—he was paid for producing three works.11 In the same year, he began to be paid annually by Philip.12 During his lifetime Wauquelin produced a number of other prose translations for Philip the Good or for members of his court: Histoire d’Alexandre, Geoffrey of Monmouth’s Historia Regum Britanniae, the Chroniques de Hainaut by Jacques de Guise,13 Philippe de Remi’s La Manekine, Girart de Rousillon, and the Chronique des ducs de Brabant by Edmond de Dynter.14 Although the date 1448 appears in the prologue to La Belle Hélène, the Brussels manuscript is believed to have been produced in the years 1460– 67. The discrepancy can be explained by positing a now-lost earlier copy of the text. In other words, Wauquelin probably presented a less luxurious copy of La Belle Hélène to Philip at the earlier date. This text may then have been given to another workshop where the artist, Loyset Liédet, was asked, in the course of producing a more luxurious version, to include twenty-six illustrations.15 In the prologue to La Belle Hélène, which is not drawn from his source, Wauquelin explains his undertaking. The text is written “pour esmouvoir et inciter les cuers des endormis à aucune bonne incitacion et promouvement. . . . Par laquelle hystoire, au plaisir de Nostre Seigneur, se pouront ou au moings devront esmouvoir tant nobles comme non nobles en proesse et valeur de bonne renommee, car pour l’un et l’autre sexe, c’est à dire pour homme et pour femme, au gré de Jhesucrist, elle sera salvable et proffitable” (13–14) [to move and incite the hearts of those asleep to some good change and forward movement. . . . By which history, by the grace of Our Lord, both nobles and those not noble could or at least should be moved to deeds of prowess and fame, for it will be salutary and profitable to both sexes, that is to say to men and to women, according to the desire of Jesus Christ]. Later, about two-thirds of the way through his narrative, after the capture of Jerusalem, Wauquelin inserts a digression that again points to the relationship between his narrative and heroic feats of courage: comme je disoye au commencement de ceste hystoire, se doivent tous nobles hommes qui l’onneur de proesse et de bonne renommee vueillent acquerir et ensuir, quant ilz ont temps et lieu, eulx occuper

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en lectures de bons enseignemens decorees et vertueusement composees, car ilz y peuent aprendre et retenir et sur ce eulx adviser et endoctriner, en fuyant les baves et mensonges de pluseurs baveurs et jengleurs qui de nul bien ne servent, mais de faire perdre temps et bien d’onneur et de valeur. (289) [as I said at the beginning of this history, all noble men who want to acquire and obtain the honor due to prowess and renown, when they have time and occasion, ought to turn to readings that are rhetorically embellished and effectively organized, for they can learn from them, retain them, model themselves after them and so instruct themselves, avoiding the chatter and lies of innumerable gossips and scoffers who serve no use but to waste time and lose the possibility of acquiring honor and virtue.] Reading texts or hearing them read aloud (for Wauquelin refers to both reading and listening) are means of directing one’s life toward profitable and honorable ends. Reading (or listening) combats laziness and inspires action. Wauquelin clearly assumes a direct relationship between literature and deeds. For a more complete understanding of how La Belle Hélène provided examples of noble behavior “pour homme et pour femme,” let us analyze the text and illustrations in B.R. 9967.

The Story and Illustrations in the Brussels Manuscript The famous portrait of Philip the Good by Roger van der Weyden and presentation miniatures such as the one in this Brussels manuscript16 enable readers, more than five hundred years later, to visualize the man: an elegant figure, thin, dressed in the black garments of mourning that— upon learning of the assassination of his father, John the Fearless, in 1419—he vowed to wear for the remainder of his life. At the center of the miniature (fig. 35, fol. 8), Jehan Wauquelin kneels and hands the completed book to the standing duke. To the left and behind the duke are nine advisors, three of whom bear the collar of the Order of the Golden Fleece, as does the duke himself. To the right stands the bouteiller, ready to serve refreshments from the table beside him, on which his left arm rests. In the back of the room a young couple sit in a window alcove. A jester is just entering the room from the outside, and another couple follow him.

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The illustration captures a transitional moment between all-male and mixed-gender courtly activities. The tapestry hanging over the duke and his advisors frames the male space on the left; beneath it, the male figures are positioned hierarchically. In the background, the jester represents the entertainment soon to be offered to both male and female members of the court. The book itself, placed near the center of the foreground, will also bring the two groups together and provide another medium for both instruction and entertainment. The principal function of the manuscript within the Burgundian court was to promote a masculine chivalric ethos and to stir up enthusiasm for the duke’s planned crusade to recapture Constantinople. The development of a chivalric ethos and the promotion of war are, of course, part and parcel of the same thing, and the notion that manuscripts produced at the court of Philip the Good functioned as crusade propaganda is hardly a new idea.17 Nonetheless, study of this particular manuscript, viewed within the specific historical community for which it was produced, permits insight into aspects of Burgundian ideology hitherto unexplored. The devaluing of certain aspects of the narrative—the feminine model of virtue, the sanctity of St. Martin—is as instructive as the valuing of others, such as the martyrdom of the fictional St. Amaury and the military victories of King Henry of England. At first glance, La Belle Hélène seems to have little to do with crusade propaganda. The story begins with the incest motif common in narratives of the Constance or Handless Queen type. The heroine’s father, Antoine, emperor of Constantinople, is inflamed by love for his daughter, and the pope has actually granted him permission to marry Helen in exchange for his help in fighting off pagans who are attacking Rome. In order to avoid the odious marriage, Helen flees by ship and, after a brief stay in an abbey in Flanders, lands in England. There she meets and quickly marries a nonhistoric king Henry, despite the objections of his mother. King Henry soon leaves on a military campaign, and during his absence Helen gives birth to twin boys. Helen’s evil mother-in-law falsifies letters announcing the birth as well as a series of letters in response from the king. The duke of Gloucester, who rules during the king’s absence, is commanded by letter to burn Helen and her children at the stake. He cuts off her right arm as proof that he has killed her, but shortly thereafter, moved by pity, he decides to substitute his own niece and burn her at the stake instead; Helen is exiled by ship with

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her two children, one of whom, the eponymous Bras, wears his mother’s arm tied around his neck. After landfall on an island named Constance, the children are abducted by a wolf and a lion, then rescued by a hermit, who raises them with the help of a doe. Helen flees from the many attempts to find her that have been initiated by her sons, her husband, and her father, who—unbeknownst to her—has now abandoned his lustful desires and joined his armies to those of the pope and the kings of England and Scotland. Finally, after thirty-four years, Helen is found and reunited with her family. Her other son, Martin, miraculously restores her arm to her body. Dramatic as the sufferings of Helen are, they nevertheless play a secondary role in the narrative to the chivalric exploits of men. The story is set in a Europe still mainly pagan, which Turks and Saracens periodically invade. Cities such as Boulogne-sur-Mer and Bordeaux are captured from the pagans, and one by one their rulers are converted to Christianity. A high point in the fighting occurs in Jerusalem, which the Christians successfully rescue from the Saracens. This battle is followed by others in Burgundian lands—Courtrai, Bruges, Douai. Helen’s two sons, Martin and Brice, sometimes fight alongside their father, the king of England. At other times, the king of Constantinople (their grandfather) and the king of Scotland join the English king in battle. The battles are described in great detail, as are the conversion ceremonies of the defeated pagan leaders (if they are not killed in battle).18 The illustrations that accompany this story in the Brussels manuscript also emphasize military exploits and the conversions of pagans. Of the twenty-six, Helen, the putative heroine, appears in only four.19 More prominent are the fourteen depictions of Christian heroes engaged in combat, which emphasize military exploits to defend Christian sites and to spread Christianity to non-Christian lands. The first of these, the defense of Rome against the pagan Bruyant (fol. 9), marks the start of the narrative proper and establishes the tone of much of the story. In this early Christian historical setting, the enemy, the dangerous “other,” who invades Rome, the center of Christian spiritual life, is the pagan (also known as the Saracen or the Turk). It is he who threatens the peace, stability, and harmony created by Christian rulers. Within the historical setting of the romance, the principal Christian rulers are Henry, king of England, and Antoine, emperor of Constantinople, both of whom offer aid to the pope throughout the narrative. Fifteenth-century readers are undoubtedly ex-

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pected to draw the analogy: for them, the chief defender of peace in Europe is Philip the Good, whose “just” and “wise” rule are suggested by the calm interior scene of the first illustration, the presentation portrait. The emphasis on battle scenes in the program of illustrations should not be surprising, given the patronage of the powerful duke, a man devoted to consolidating Burgundian power in the Low Countries, to establishing a chivalric ethos among his courtiers, and to launching a Christian crusade against the Turks. Nonetheless, what is absent from the program of illustrations is as significant as what is present. Although Helen presents a model of chastity, humility, and Christian fortitude, the compiler/ illustrator of the Brussels manuscript has little interest in her story. Only one miniature, the next to last (fig. 36, fol. 180v), evokes her suffering by displaying her handless left arm. The other three show her in her social roles as royal wife and mother. The marital bed, so prominent in the depiction of Helen giving birth to her sons (fig. 37, fol. 47v), defines her principal social function: the continuation of the male line. The emphasis on this female role—conveyed visually through the image of the marital bed—is repeated in a later miniature, heightening its semiotic importance. The second bed occurs in an illustration (fig. 38, fol. 177v) of the secret marriage of Helen’s son Brice to Ludie, the sister of the king of Scotland, in the presence of the bishop of Tours and Antoine. The text specifically states that Brice should follow the “order of marriage,” despite his desire to remain chaste, like his twin brother Martin. While Martin displays the depth of his Christian faith through his acts of charity and the performance of repeated miracles, Brice continues the hereditary line that will produce the future St. Brice. The bed, so like the one in Helen’s birth scene, reminds us that the principal function of women in this text is to produce male heirs. Noticeably absent from the program of illustrations is any visual reference to St. Martin of Tours, despite the fact that the text retells the famous story of the sharing of his coat with a beggar and provides numerous accounts of his generosity, to the point of recklessness, in dispensing food and drink to the poor—food that is always miraculously restored. Most surprising is the absence of any visual reference to the restoration of Helen’s arm by Martin, a climactic event in the narrative. Although the spread of Christianity is the goal of all the battle scenes, and the dramatic baptisms of pagans are depicted in three illustrations, the artist’s religious allusions do not include the story of St. Martin.

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In order to understand the absence of visual references to St. Martin, historical information on three aspects of Philip the Good’s court will be useful: his promotion of a chivalric ethos, his crusade interests, and his relations with England and France.

Chivalric Ethos and Crusade Fever at the Court of Philip the Good The duke’s interest in the establishment of a chivalric ethos at his court is evident in the court festivities he sponsored.20 Among the best known are his founding of the Order of the Golden Fleece, part of the celebrations of his marriage to Isabelle of Portugal in 1430, and the Feast of the Pheasant in 1454, when he announced his plans for a crusade to recapture Constantinople, lost to the Turks in 1453.21 No one better exemplified Burgundian chivalric behavior than Jacques de Lalaing, lord of Bugnicourt (ca. 1421–1453), who was inducted into the Order of the Golden Fleece at the chapter meeting held in Mons in 1451.22 In the years preceding his election to the order, Lalaing played an active role at court, traveling to foreign parts as a representative of the duke and staging pas d’armes to display Burgundian military prowess. The author of his heroic biography, “Le Livre des faits du bon chevalier messire Jacques de Lalaing,” tells us that, preparatory to a trip to Scotland in 1448, Lalaing composed a letter to James Douglas, asking him to seek permission from King James II of Scotland for a pas d’armes. Lalaing’s letter, after being admired and approved by Philip the Good and his councillors, was taken by a herald to Scotland, where, according to the account, it was answered with equal formality and ritual. In December a group of Burgundians finally sailed from Flanders, where they were at first received with some distrust. After assurances of the peaceful nature of the exploit were accepted, preparations for the tournament commenced. The Scottish king presided, and the biographer provides a detailed description of the feats of arms. The champions parted friends, and great festivity reigned, with honor given to all.23 The biography says no more. However, it is extremely likely that beneath all the fanfare, Lalaing or his companions had a more important diplomatic role: arranging the betrothal of Marie of Guelders, the grandniece of Philip the Good, to James II, king of Scotland (b. 1430; r. 1437– 60), whose sister Margaret was the wife of Louis XI of France. The marriage of Marie and James took place soon thereafter, in 1449. In the court

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of Philip the Good, therefore, Jacques de Lalaing was the apotheosis of Burgundian chivalric ideals: diplomat, expert horseman, soldier, letter writer, orator, and loyal servant of the duke. The duke surrounded himself with men like Lalaing. He shrewdly used his military and diplomatic powers to consolidate his control over Namur (purchased in 1420), Hainaut (conquered in 1427), Brabant (conquered in 1430), Holland and Zeeland (fought for from 1424 to 1433), and Luxembourg (conquered in 1443). According to his biographers, the years between the consolidation of his territories and the announcement in 1454 of his intention to conduct a crusade were the apogee of his reign.24 The duke’s interest in the Holy Land and the idea of conducting a crusade did not, however, begin with the fall of Constantinople in 1453. As early as 1435, at the conclusion of the Treaty of Arras that reestablished the Franco-Burgundian alliance, the duke declared his intention to attack the Turks. Philip sent representatives to the Council of Ferrara in 1438–39, at which event the Greek and Latin churches were temporarily reconciled. Further crusade plans were made in 1443: he had been negotiating to send ships to the Orient, and in the summer of that year he was visited by an ambassador of Emperor John VIII, who insisted that ships be sent without further delay. Philip sent seven ships, three commissioned in Nice by the duke of Savoy and commanded by Geoffroy de Thoisy, and another four leased from Venetians and placed under the command of Waleran de Wavrin. The first fleet had brilliant success in fighting back the sultan of Egypt at Rhodes. Later the two fleets joined with Hungarian land forces and tried, but failed, to take Nicopolis in 1445.25 There was, according to the Belgian historian Paul Bonenfant, a subsequent cooling of interest in crusades until 1451. In that year, at the chapter of the Golden Fleece held in Sainte-Waudru-de-Mons, the chancellor of the order, Jean Germain, exhorted the knights to mount a crusade. The French king, Charles VII, however, did not approve, and a revolt by the citizens of Ghent frustrated Philip’s plans. Constantinople fell into the hands of the Turks on May 29, 1453. Perhaps because Philip’s credibility as a Christian leader needed reinforcement, he organized the Feast of the Pheasant on the following February 17 at Lille, where he and more than a hundred others made dramatic public announcements of their intention to leave on a crusade.26 Soon after, on April 23, 1454, Frederick III convoked a diet at Regens-

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burg to organize the affair. In what historian Richard Vaughan has described as “the only important journey he ever made outside his own territories,” Philip traveled to Regensburg.27 Frederick was, at the last minute, unable to appear. Nonetheless, the duke began to make preparations for a crusade, which included marrying his son Charles to Isabelle of Bourbon. The new pope, Calixtus III, called for departure in March 1456, and Philip apparently intended to obey, for he sent his two most important councillors, Antoine de Croy and Nicolas Rolin, to France to ask Charles for the banner of France. In spite of these efforts, Charles refused to participate, claiming to be still at war with the English.28 In the face of this crusading spirit at the Burgundian court, what political message might Philip and his courtiers have extracted from readings of La Belle Hélène de Constantinople? First, the major heroes—the kings of England and Scotland along with the emperor of Constantinople—provide fictional models for living fifteenth-century rulers: they engage in the defense of Rome, convert numerous pagan towns in Europe to Christianity, and capture Jerusalem. Second, the exemplary nature of the principal players is reinforced by the presence of numerous other heroes who fight in the cause of Christianity and sometimes provide prehistories of saints. Noticeably absent is any king of France, except for a brief mention of the conversion of Clovis. The overall picture gained from reading the fictional narrative is of a unified Christian world, in which all major rulers—except the French—cooperate to spread Christianity. The absence of a French king in the fictional text echoes the absence of Charles VII in fifteenthcentury crusade plans organized by the duke of Burgundy. It is within the context of Franco-Burgundian relations, then, that we can understand the absence of St. Martin in the illustrations. By the fifteenth century, St. Martin had acquired, along with St. Denis, the status of national saint for the French.29 Instead of highlighting this saint, the compiler or artist chose to depict the martyrdom of a fictional saint named Amaury, king of Scotland, who had fought many battles alongside Antoine and Henry. While excluding St. Martin, the Brussels manuscript includes two important illustrations of the crucifixion and descent from the cross of Amaury (figs. 39 and 40, fols. 155v and 157), the most important in a series of depictions of converted pagan kings.30 The compiler presents as the chief model of sanctity a fictional figure, one whose route to sainthood imitates that of Jesus himself. The similarity between Amaury’s deposition from the cross and depictions of Christ’s

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deposition, a popular theme among Flemish artists, is striking.31 Politically, the choice of the martyred fictional Amaury honors the Anglo-Burgundian rather than Franco-Burgundian alliance. Except for the absence of French representatives, the program of illustrations presents a portrait of political unity among monarchs—Byzantine, English, and Scots—all engaged in the battle against non-Christians. Such political unity represents, of course, an ideal, not at all recognizable in the actual behavior of European monarchs in the period of the manuscript’s production, 1460–67. Analysis of the depiction of the English king Henry further clarifies the political implications of the narrative and its illustrations. Of the fourteen illustrated battle scenes, one of the most important (fig. 41, fol. 63v) portrays a battle against the Saracens just outside Rome. Henry, aided by the pope, defeats a pagan king and adopts his coat of arms. In the vivid moment of battle depicted here, Henry grips the pagan’s shield on which three leopards rampant are prominently displayed. The transfer of this coat of arms from infidel to English hands not only announces the defeat of the enemy but also establishes the chief visual sign associated with the English for the remaining illustrations. English banners displaying the three leopards are visible in six of the subsequent miniatures: the capture of Bordeaux (fol. 107), the naval battle before Jerusalem (fol. 146), the hanging of Malotru at Courtrai (fol. 166v), the capture of Bruges (fol. 167v), the return of a messenger to the Christian camp near the tower of the giant (fol. 169v), and the assault on the tower of the giant (fol. 171v). In a manuscript produced for the Burgundian duke, the artist has emphasized the English participation in the spread of Christianity. A partial explanation of this bias can be deduced from a comparison between the fictional ideal Henry and the actual Henry who sat on the throne of England. The fictional Henry of the narrative—like the duke of Gloucester, his loyal counselor—was undoubtedly intended originally as a stock character rather than as a specific historical figure; indeed, the three leopards have been associated with English kings as far back as Henry II.32 However, based upon events in their own times, audiences often build a network of associations with stock characters. Since the actual king of England during the period in which manuscripts of the story were being produced was also, coincidentally, a Henry (Henry VI), it is likely that a Burgundian audience would have compared the fictional and historical figures.

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In 1448, when Wauquelin first completed his translation of the text, Burgundian readers might have predicted that the current English ruler, Henry VI, would follow in the footsteps of his fictional namesake. Henry had attained his majority only in 1442, he had married Margaret of Anjou in 1445, and expectations for continuing peace with France were high. The old factions that had developed during Henry’s minority seemed to have dissipated.33 However, a reader of the fictional narrative in 1464 would make a very different comparison between the real and the fictional Henry. The peace with France had been broken early in 1449, and Henry VI faced civil revolt the next year. Not only did he never gain adequate control over the government of England, but the onset of a debilitating illness in 1453 dashed any such hopes. His wife, Margaret of Anjou, who gave birth to a son shortly after the onset of Henry’s insanity, struggled to maintain power in the face of increasingly menacing Yorkist armies. By 1464, Henry was in retreat in Scotland, and the impoverished Margaret was on the Continent seeking aid from Philip the Good.34 From the Burgundian point of view, any hopes of a strong English king to lead a crusade to recapture Jerusalem were over. Therefore, Henry VI provides an example of an actual English nobleman whose story lacks the happy ending of La Belle Hélène. During public readings of the fictional story, Philip was perhaps reminding his courtiers that crusading knights, if they were to be found in Europe at all, were more likely to be found at the Burgundian court than in either the English or French arenas.35 The powerful duke of Burgundy was promoting what he regarded as ideal princely behavior. However, the crusade so hoped for by Philip the Good, although supported by the pope and the Holy Roman emperor, never took place. At the end of the fifteenth century, the divisions between Burgundy and France on the one hand and between France and England on the other prevented the formation of a unified Christian army. La Belle Hélène remains, nonetheless, a vivid witness to the power of crusading ideals in the late Middle Ages.

Persecuted Queens at the Court of Philip the Good If reading La Belle Hélène against the backdrop of Anglo-Burgundian relations has been fruitful in understanding the depiction of King Henry,

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it might also be useful in understanding the secondary role of Helen. What relationship exists between the persecuted heroine and Henry VI’s queen, Margaret of Anjou? Would such an analogy help us to understand the interest of the Burgundian court in narratives of falsely accused queens, not only La Belle Hélène but also La Manekine, both texts translated from verse to prose by Jehan Wauquelin? Margaret of Anjou was the contemporary female figure of greatest interest at the Burgundian court during the final years of the reign of Philip the Good. The descriptions of her misfortunes by the official court historian, Georges Chastellain, supplemented by those of Matthieu d’Escouchy and English writers, provide some understanding of the Burgundian interest in the suffering figure of “la belle Hélène.” In 1444 the marriage of Margaret, daughter of King René of Anjou, to Henry VI was engineered by Charles of Orleans and was part of a peace treaty between England and France called the Truce of Tours. Georges Chastellain writes of the hopes for peace that accompanied the marriage ceremonies. Margaret was accorded all the honors of a queen at her betrothal and proxy marriage in France, as well as at a second marriage ceremony and coronation held in England the next year. A description of the celebrations in London on May 30, 1445, in honor of her coronation is found in the English Chronicles of London Bridge. It paints a vivid picture of the luxuries that a fifteenth-century queen might expect: [S]he was met at several places by many persons of rank, with numerous attendants having their sleeves embroidered, or decorated in the most costly manner, with badges of beaten goldsmith’s work; and especially by the Duke of Gloucester, who received her with 500 men habited in one livery. At Blackheath, according to custom, the Mayor, Sheriffs, and Aldermen, clothed in scarlet, attended her with the several City companies, all mounted and dressed in blue gowns, having embroidered sleeves and red hoods: and in this manner Queen Margaret and her followers were conducted through Southwerk and the City.36 How different was the life Margaret led a mere eighteen years later in 1463 when she traveled destitute, with a small group of female attendants, from Scotland to Flanders to humble herself before Philip the Good and beg his assistance. Georges Chastellain devotes thirty-seven pages of his Chronique (printed format) to a narrative of her stay in Flanders. He

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stresses her poverty and the shocking circumstances of a woman who once rode at the top of the wheel of fortune, who now has been thrown down among the most miserable: Sy en tint-on diverses murmures contre elle, en multitude de bouches, et sauvages interprétations plusieurs sur la nature de son infortune. Car y descendoit povre et seule, de biens disetteuse et toute désolée; n’avoit ne credence, ne argent, ne meubles, ne joyaux pour engaiger. Avoit son fils, ne son royal habit, ne estat; et sa personne sans décoration appartenant à royne. Vestoit son seul corps d’une seule robbette, dont n’avoit point de change. Avoit sept femmes sans plus pour compagnie, et dont le parement estoit du mesme de leur maistresse, jadis une des pompeuses du monde, et maintenant la plus povre.37 [Thus one heard various rumors spoken against her, from many mouths, and many crude interpretations about the nature of her misfortune. For she arrived poor and alone, indigent and completely wobegone; she had neither credit, nor money, nor furniture, nor jewels to pawn. She had her son, but no royal clothing, no sign of status; and her body was without ornament belonging to royalty. She was clothed only in one little dress, with nothing to change into. She had seven women, no more, for company, whose dress was the same as that of their lady, once one of the most sumptuous in the world, and now the most impoverished.] Thanks to Georges Chastellain’s interest in her, Margaret of Anjou became a symbolic figure at the Burgundian court. Writing both as sympathetic friend and as skilled rhetorician, he treated her extensively not only in the Chronique but also in a separate work, Le Temple de Bocace, an allegory written in imitation of Boccaccio, which he dedicated to her and which featured her as a main character.38 For the Burgundian court, Chastellain’s works provide insight into the appeal of a story of a noblewoman who experiences misery and poverty. Although similar arguments can be drawn on the basis of Le Temple de Bocace, it is sufficient here to discuss the account in the Chronique, which provides three interesting reader reactions to her story. In the first of these, Chastellain describes her arrival in Flanders, including conversations she had with Agnes, duchess of Bourbon and sister

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of Philip the Good, who came to Saint-Pol to comfort Margaret and offer her aid. The two women speak together “comme deux soeurs” [like two sisters], and Margaret recounts her adventures, her story framed by Agnes’s reactions. At the start, the author states that the story evoked much sympathy from Agnes (“moult y prit de pitié”) and that fictional stories of misery and poverty provide no comparison to the real thing: “nulles semblables ailleurs ne sont trouvées en livres, tant en cas de povreté et de misérable estroite faim comme de danger et de péril de mort par maintes fois entre les mains de ses ennemis” [nothing similar can be found in books, no such case of poverty and of miserable starvation as well as of danger and near death that she experienced several times in the hands of her enemies].39 At the end of the story, Chastellain returns to Agnes’s reaction: Laquelle y prit grand pitié, et disoit: que certes, sans oncques avoir passé l’estroit de la mort, fortune oncques de si haute princesse comme elle, n’avoit esté de plus dure affaire, et qu’à cause de ce, si Dieu ne la relevoit en luy changeant son malheur, elle devroit estre mise au livre des nobles femmes malheureuses, l’outre-passe de toutes.40 [She had great compassion at this and said: certainly, except for the constraint of death itself, fortune had never affected more harshly such a highly placed princess as she, and because of this, if God did not lift her up by ridding her of her unhappiness, she deserved to be inscribed in the book of unhappy noble women, surpassing them all.] The power of a story of misery—a tragedy in the medieval sense of a story of a noble person who falls from a high place—is to move the hearer or reader into a state of compassion (“pitié”). What is especially interesting in this reaction is the way in which the real story of an actual woman and her child is transferred, through the telling, into a story fit for an anthology of fictional tales, a “livre des nobles femmes malheureuses.” The second reader reaction to Margaret’s plight is found within her own account of her miseries. The story of a “brigand” who threatened her and her son with death provides a mise en abyme of another sympathetic response to her noble suffering. Margaret tells Agnes how, with the aid of a squire, she had at first escaped robbers who attacked her party. How-

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ever, in a nearby forest, the brigand appeared and threatened them, occasioning a long, pleading speech from Margaret. The robber, despite his lack of inherited nobility, reacted sympathetically to her tears: voyant ses larmes et son desconforté semblant, ensemble et qu’elle estoit royne du pays, prit une amère pitié en luy; et suscité du SaintEsprit qui l’amolist en coeur, prit mesmes à plorer avecques elle et de soy ruer à ses pieds, disant: qu’ains mourroit de mille morts et d’autant de tourmens, premier qu’il abondonnast le noble fils et ne le menast au port de salut, maugré tous hommes. Et priant mercy à la royne de ses meffaits, comme si elle portast sceptre en Londres, voua à Dieu et à elle de non jamais rentrer en celuy estat et d’amender sa vie en observation de miséricorde.41 [seeing her tears and feeling her discomfort, as well as that she was queen of the country, strong pity filled him; and enjoined by the Holy Spirit that softened his heart, he himself began to cry along with her and fling himself at her feet, saying: that he would die a thousand deaths and as many torments before he would abandon the noble boy and not lead him to a safe harbor, despite other men. And begging mercy of the queen for his misdeeds, just as if she carried the royal scepter in London, he vowed to God and to her never again to return to this former position but to amend his life by charitable acts.] The third reader reaction to Margaret’s retelling of her miseries comes from Chastellain himself. He calls the story an “exemple” for noble men and devotes two pages to drawing the moral of the tale.42 “Now listen to this,” he writes. “You men, see yourselves reflected here, you princes and kings.” For the author, the story of Margaret of Anjou demonstrates how quickly sorrow can follow on joy, how vital it is to avoid pride during prosperity. In the two long apostrophes with which this section ends, Chastellain sounds very much like Chaucer’s Man of Law, reminding his audience that all material possessions are transitory, that all is vanity. The inscribed audiences of Margaret of Anjou’s story in Chastellain’s text responded with compassion and pity for the sudden changes in fortune she experienced and the miserable poverty she endured. Wauquelin highlights the same themes in La Belle Hélène. When, two-thirds of the way through, the heroine hears a false report of the death of her husband

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and father and decides to travel to Rome, Wauquelin amplifies his text with commentary on the poverty she was suffering: “Helas! quelle royne, qui ainsi va querant son pain! O! faulx traictres, que ne vous fent le cuer quant vous oyez telles pitiés! Bien estes maudis de Dieu de ainsi traÿr par vostre faulce couvoitise les vaillans princes et princesses!” (292) [Alas! poor queen, who thus begs for bread! O hypocritical traitors! how could you not be moved when you hear of such misfortune! you are certainly damned by God for being so false, on account of your cheating avarice, to princes and princesses of great virtue!]. In order to heighten her suffering and evoke the reader’s pity for her, Wauquelin draws out his heroine’s adventures. After her arrival in Rome, the pope, who suspects she might be the Helen for whom Antoine and Henry are searching, questions her to find out where she comes from. She denies that she is Helen, for she believes that Antoine and Henry are seeking her in order to burn her at the stake. Instead she tells the pope that she has met Helen in Tours. When the pope offers her money for more information, Wauquelin says, she becomes more suspicious. Even contemporary readers might be surprised. Wauquelin explains: “Si fait moult à esmerveillier . . . mais il fault respondre que c’estoit proprement l’ordonnance divine qui la vouloit esprouver, comme l’or en la fornaise” (302) [One should certainly be surprised . . . but the answer is that it was precisely the divine will that wanted to put her to the test, just like gold in the furnace]. While the pope is the immediate referent of “l’ordonnance divine,” and the passage can be read as a cynical comment on papal avarice, it should also be read in a more general sense as referring to God, who has caused Helen to suffer in order to prove her worth in the furnace of affliction. We should not be surprised to find reference to that furnace. The image has been closely associated with narratives of accused queens since the Latin gloss to Isaiah 48:10 was first placed in the Soissons manuscript of Gautier de Coinci’s “Empress of Rome.” Thomas Hoccleve uses the image in his “Complaint” to describe the way physical disease had led him to spiritual maturity. Even when not explicitly referred to, the image of affliction as a furnace that tempers and refines lies beneath all the narratives considered in this book: the long suffering of a virtuous noblewoman refines her soul and makes her an example of constancy and fortitude to men and women alike. Stories about Helen of Constantinople do not end with Wauquelin’s

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translation in the fifteenth century for the Burgundian court. The story also circulated in France in printed editions, a number of which have survived. The earliest one is dated 1496, there are at least five editions from the sixteenth century, and a last edition was produced in 1730. One of these books, printed in Lyon by Olivier Arnoullet in 1528, provides a fitting coda to this chapter on the Burgundian uses of the beautiful Helen, for in it the heroine, mother of the French patron saint Martin, has been reclaimed for France. Presented in thirty chapters and accompanied by seventeen illustrations, the text is considerably shorter than in the prose manuscript of Wauquelin. The illustration on the title page demonstrates succinctly the proFrance orientation of the book (fig. 42). The principal figure is a crowned woman, seated on a throne. On the back of the throne appears the word “France”; in a vertical scroll on the left are the words “Le Populaire” and in a vertical scroll on the right is the word “Noblesse.” At her feet lies a man and below him the word “Maleur.” The noblewoman’s skirt, with its fleur-de-lis pattern, again evokes France. Her outstretched hands rest on the shoulders of two children (a boy on her right and a girl on her left), each of whom holds a musical instrument. The illustration suggests that the noblewoman depicted here is both the beautiful Helen and France. She is the heroine, the most admirable of noblewomen, whose story is being popularized through the printed word. She is also an allegorical figure representing France itself, who will conquer evil, encourage music, and promote harmonious peace. Through the medium of this printed edition, the duke of Burgundy’s dreams of a crusade have finally been appropriated for the glory of France.

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Conclusion

This study began by posing a series of questions about the popularity of narratives of falsely accused queens from the thirteenth through the fifteenth century. What features of this often retold story—so foreign to our own attitudes about gender, justice, and destiny—appealed to medieval writers? What uses were made of the story within particular cultures in different times and places in the Middle Ages? What clues do the material artifacts provide about the role of these literary productions in the lives of authors, patrons, and readers? In the introduction I pointed to a few recurrent features of the narrative that had resonance in other literary texts and among the cultural ideas of the Middle Ages: the victimization of the heroine found not only in narratives of accused queens but also in hagiography, the biblical story of Susanna, and collections of stories about good women; the accusation itself, which challenges the assumptions of a legalistic era and points to the injustices suffered by women (and, by implication, other marginal members of society); and finally, the afflictions suffered by the queens and other noblewomen studied here, Job-like sufferings that model a spiritual path of fortitude and constancy. I also suggested that a deeper understanding of these themes would be found by examining a few key texts in manuscript format, within local historical milieus, and read, whenever possible, against other texts from the same period and locale. This analysis has led us on a considerable journey: to Picardy, north of Paris, where Gautier de Coinci’s Miracles de Nostre Dame and Philippe de Remi’s La Manekine were written in the thirteenth century; to Paris, where, in the next century, the illustrated manuscript of Jehan Maillart’s Roman du Comte d’Anjou and the Cangé manuscript of the Miracles de Nostre Dame par personnages were compiled; across the Channel to England where, still in the fourteenth century,

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the stories of Constance and Custance were written by Trevet, Gower, and Chaucer; then, in fifteenth-century England, to the autograph manuscript of Hoccleve’s Series and the artistic representations of the empress of Rome at Eton Chapel and Norwich Cathedral; and finally back again across the Channel to Flanders, to the court of Philip the Good and the most magnificent manuscript of them all, La Belle Hélène de Constantinople. What then have we learned? First, the tour of manuscripts and other cultural artifacts demonstrates that authors of these texts were many steps removed from the “folk” or popular origins that earlier scholars associated with the stories. The desire to establish connections between folklore and literature motivated many of the early scholars who edited and analyzed these stories in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, including Margaret Schlauch. However, the medieval authors of these stories do not, as Marie de France does in the prologue to her Lais, make reference to oral sources. When sources can be identified, as in the case of the two plays from fourteenth-century Paris, the sources are other written texts. Moreover, the sophisticated literary style and the rich manuscripts in which the texts were presented to their patrons place them squarely within a written literary and cultural tradition. Second, this study confirms the validity of treating empress of Rome and Constance stories as two related components of a larger group of performative texts, rather than as separate traditions or independent motifs. The whole narrative pattern—inciting moment, first fall from grace or exile, first return to social status, second fall from grace or exile, and second return to social status—is what appealed to medieval authors and established the context for presenting the life of the heroine, the falsely accused noblewoman. Because these stories do not fit easily into traditionally defined genres, such as epic or romance, previous scholars have had difficulty finding a literary context in which to analyze and appreciate them. As a result, the stories were often viewed as marginal or unsuccessful literary productions. When viewed as a group of related and often intersecting texts, however, they gain in stature and significance. As we have seen, writers from monastic, courtly, bourgeois, and clerkly levels of society, like Chaucer’s Man of Law in the prologue to his tale, all went searching for a good story to adapt to new audiences and new political circumstances. Whether they named their heroine Joy, Constance, Hélène, or left her unnamed, these writers often chose a narrative with the familiar four-part structure: exile, return, exile, return. They shaped the story to fit

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a variety of genres and social contexts: an anthology of miracles, a collection of exempla, a universal history, a theatrical production, a free-standing chanson d’aventure for courtly entertainment, a chronicle, part of a framed collection of short stories, an historical romance to promote the political ambitions of the patron, or a semiautobiographical meditative book. Defined as a coherent narrative type and freed from associations with “folk” narratives, these stories constitute a significant body of literature that was influential in the Middle Ages. Third, the heroine of these tales becomes an important figure in our understanding of how women were depicted in the Middle Ages. Falsely accused queens and other noblewomen embody and promote a concept of female virtue, even holiness, at work in this world. Without needing to become a saint—that is, to be martyred—these heroines model a life of quiet dignity in the face of adversity. The daughter of the king of Hungary resists the physical violence of her father because she believes that the law of God is a higher law than the commands of father or feudal lord. The violence she does to her own body, like the weaving created by the mute Philomela, records paternal tyranny and evil desire. The empress of Rome, as depicted by Gautier de Coinci, also speaks powerfully through her actions. Her placement of the lusty brother-in-law in prison is an assertive act, a turning of the world of power and gender relations upside down, an act for which she later pays dearly. Her rejection of worldly riches at the end of the miracle demonstrates that her spiritual growth has made her superior to the emperor, who is still bound to worldly goods and desires. The stories of the empress of Rome, Joy, the countess of Anjou, Constance, and Hélène should all be seen as part of a group of related narratives that counterbalance negative depictions of women in the Middle Ages. They offer an alternative to the image of woman as object of romantic love repeatedly found in medieval romances and lyrics. They construct an image of a secular woman with power and influence who is good, and also chaste in her marriage. This image contrasts with the powerful figures of Guinevere and Isolde who, although successful in eluding punishment in their trials by fire, are known by all to be guilty of the accusations leveled against them. In contrast, the authors of narratives of accused queens, including Christine de Pizan, promote the image of a virtuous woman who is guided by deep faith in God and adherence to principles of chastity. For feminists of our own age, it is a conservative and sometimes disturbing image, associated with a passivity that permits violence to be

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executed on the body. However, for the writers of the Middle Ages, it was a new and powerful image that tempered the many misogynist depictions prevalent at the time. Fourth, this book has demonstrated that narratives of accused queens were often agents of social change. Gautier de Coinci reinforces the model of a noblewoman who, in the later years of her life, consciously chooses a religious life, retreating from marriage to the cloister. Philippe de Remi comments ironically on the church’s definitions of incest and yet constructs an ideal marriage consistent with church doctrine. Jehan Maillart alludes more directly to political events of his day and presents a narrative that, together with other clerkly texts being produced in Paris around the same time, rehabilitates the reputation of an actual queen. The patron (or patrons) of the Miracles de Nostre Dame par personnages probably sought, through the gift of the manuscript, to regain royal favor and reestablish the reputation and legal rights of the confraternity of goldsmiths. Christine de Pizan sought, like the Wife of Bath who threw her fifth husband’s misogynist text into the fireplace, to discredit the antifemale writers of her own time. The term “governance,” as used by Gower and Chaucer, helps us understand both the personal and the political uses made of narratives of accused queens. The term is used in two senses: of striving for personal discipline and integrity, and of striving for social and political stability. Gower uses the story of Constance to illustrate backbiting, a subcategory of the deadly sin of envy. The connection to personal behavior is obvious, but the story also illustrates the political consequences of envy: Domild’s envy of Constance leads to her falsification of royal letters, a treasonous act. Chaucer presents Custance as humble and self-disciplined in her speech. An example of fortitude and constancy, she always keeps her sight on God and never wavers in her faith. She stands in sharp contrast to the pompous Man of Law, whose speech drips with melodrama and selfrighteousness. Chaucer does not draw the political implications of his example within the “Man of Law’s Tale” itself; the reader of The Canterbury Tales must wait for the “Clerk’s Tale” and the “Wife of Bath’s Tale” for development of the political implications of the theme of governance. Finally, an image that has informed this work often is the image of the furnace of affliction from Isaiah 48:10. Hoccleve develops the image more fully than any other writer of narratives of accused queens because he internalizes the process of affliction, associating illness not merely with

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the false accusers in the story but also with the readers of accused-queen narratives. Hoccleve’s readers, including the narrator who is himself an inscribed reader and compiler of texts, could find healing of their own physical and spiritual sickness through the message provided by “The Tale of Jereslaus’s Wife,” in combination with the other texts presented in the Series. Hoccleve’s work becomes a manual for guiding the meditation of lay readers and leading them toward spiritual health. The popularity of narratives of falsely accused queens does not end with Hoccleve or Philip the Good or the fifteenth century. Stories of falsely accused, virtuous women persisted in European countries through the nineteenth century. Of course, discussion of the texts produced after 1500 goes beyond the scope of this book, but I will conclude by sketching a few of the uses that were made of accused-queen narratives after the end of the Middle Ages. They constitute a rich lode of subject matter for future studies and will provide a fitting ending for the present work. Three accused women mentioned in this study were the subject of plays and other popular narratives in the early years of printing and into the nineteenth century. Susanna’s story was dramatized in the Middle Ages as part of the story of Daniel, where it appears in a fifteenth-century collection of mystery plays, Le Mistère du Viel Testament. The editor of this text, Baron James de Rothschild, lists numerous plays, pantomimes, and operas produced between 1470 and 1867 in French, German, English, Dutch, Latin, Spanish, Italian, Danish, and even Czech and Ladin.1 Narratives about Helen of Constantinople continued also to have appeal through the nineteenth century. At the Bibliothèque Nationale in Paris, I was able to examine five early printed editions produced in France in the sixteenth century; there are undoubtedly others to be discovered.2 In the printed editions I saw, the story is abbreviated, and there are usually only a few illustrations, some of these quite perfunctory. In the eighteenth century, Helen’s story was widely distributed through the Bibliothèque Bleue, a series of chapbooks produced in Troyes.3 The most popular of the three accused queens whose stories continued to be retold after the Middle Ages is the Belgian saint Geneviève of Brabant, known in German-speaking countries as Genoveva. I mentioned her only briefly in the introduction to this book, for her story does not appear to have been widely known in the Middle Ages. But after 1500 her story became so widespread in Europe that it is remembered even today.

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I first became aware of the popularity of stories of Geneviève of Brabant quite by accident. Since there are so few extant medieval documents about her, I was unprepared to encounter her during a vacation in the FrancheComté region of France. Imagine my surprise when, walking through the Musée Comtois in the Citadel in Besançon, I discovered several display cabinets containing large marionettes of Geneviève and her son, of her husband Siffroi (Siegfried), and of the villainous slanderer Golo. I later discovered a full version of her story in the Natales Sanctorum Belgii by Johannes Molanus and published in Louvain in 1595. My translation follows: In the diocese of Trier, the death of the palatine Genoveva. This daughter of the duke of Brabant, like a second Susanna, was distinguished in her own time for her chastity, her patience, and not least her devotion toward the Mother of God, through whose intervention she conceived a masculine child with Siegfried, the palatine of the Holy Roman Empire before he departed to the barbarian nations with an enormous war apparatus. On his departure, he entrusted his wife along with his estate to the very strong soldier Golo for protection. But the soldier, first with flattery and by means of fictitious letters about the death of her husband, and then by various molestations, attacked her chastity: to her recently returned husband he said that everything was fine [lit., in accordance with his hopes] except for the marriage couch stained by adultery. For which reason, he suggested she be drowned with her son. And soon her husband, stirred by anger, decreed that this happen. But the servants left her in the woods, and in place of her tongue they took the tongue of a certain dog to Golo. In the meantime, this second Hagar wandered about in solitude with her son and lived in caves, sustaining herself on water and herbs. From her advocate the Mother of God, however, she received many consolations. Through her patronage also, a certain doe presented her swollen teats to her little son. After six years and three months the husband, in the midst of a hunt on the day of Epiphany, recovered his wife and his son; by means of a scar from a wound obtained in Brabant and by other signs and words, he recognized her with loud crying. She, however, did not wish to go back together with her husband, unless he would first promise to

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build a church on the spot to the Mother of God, who had taken care of her in so many adversities. This act was accomplished very quickly. Once it was constructed, Bishop Hidulphus consecrated it: and the building was called Frauenkirche. She survived, not by enjoying a luxurious life, but in her accustomed abstinence all the way up to the last day [of her life], the second of April. Her soul ascended into heaven, but her body was buried in the aforementioned church, where God, for the sake of his mother, caused many splendid things to happen. In contrast, Golo perished by being torn apart by four wild bulls.4 As I soon discovered upon further research, many plays, operas, and other dramatic works have been written about her, from Les Soupirs de Sifroi, ou L’Inocence reconnue, a tragedy written by Pierre-Corneille Blessebois in 1675, to Robert Schumann’s opera Genoveva (first produced in Leipzig’s Stadttheater on June 25, 1850), Jacques Offenbach’s opéra bouffe Geneviève de Brabant (1868), and Erik Satie’s oratorio of the same name for voice, chorus, and piano (composed in 1899 and published in 1930).5 The most important document for transferring the story of Geneviève to popular culture, however, was the same series of chapbooks that reproduced the story of Helen of Constantinople, the Bibliothèque Bleue.6 Printers of chapbooks in Troyes produced numerous editions from 1655 to 1832 in a version of the story written by the Jesuit René de Ceriziers, first printed in 1638 and titled L’Innocence reconnuë.7 The Bibliothèque Bleue also produced a “Cantique de Sainte Geneviève” that was included in some editions of Ceriziers’s narrative.8 My favorite popular retelling of Geneviève’s story is found in a broadside, reproduced by Imagerie Pellerin of Epinal. According to Molanus, one of the consolations presented to Geneviève by the Virgin Mary was “a certain doe [who] presented her swollen teats to her little son.” Expanding on this single phrase, the broadside devotes seven out of its twenty illustrations to the compassionate aid provided by the doe, highlighting the human aspects of the animal. Finally, in a scene filled with sentimentality, the broadside shows the doe dying of sorrow at the foot of the tomb of Geneviève. Or, as the “Cantique” puts it, to the tune of “Que Devant”: La pauvre Biche veut par ses souffrances Le prouver par un miracle nouveau,

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Puisqu’elle est morte, Quoiqu’on lui porte, Sans boire ni manger sur le Tombeau.9 [The poor doe wants through her own suffering To provide proof by another miracle, Since she soon dies on the grave, No matter what is brought to her, Without eating or drinking.] The existence of the marionettes in the Musée Comtois in Besançon can be explained as an offshoot of the circulation of the story through chapbooks and broadsides. An extensive network of peddlers distributed books throughout many regions of France,10 and this appears to have fed into local theatrical productions. In Besançon the theatrical traditions centered on the celebration of the birth of Jesus and the arrival of the three kings in Bethlehem. The development of a traveling theater of marionettes came about in the nineteenth century through the talents of an impoverished local peasant. Jean-François Brun (1822–1891) began, with the blessing of the local priest, to craft marionettes and organize theatrical productions on religious subjects. In the 1850s he and his family began to travel outside of his home parish of Chaucenne to a network of towns in the Jura region. In 1860 he built a portable merry-go-round to accompany his “mechanical theater,” and the family continued to circulate in the region until around 1865, when the travels diminished and the family established themselves permanently at Voray-sur-l’Ognon. The war of 1870 interrupted performances, but travels of the group were again recorded from 1877 to 1890. A year later, the founder of the group died.11 The written text used by the troupe appears to be a copy of a chapbook, adapted to the needs of actors. Action occurs in seven acts and a total of eight scenes. According to the excerpt provided in Jean Garneret’s La Crèche et le théâtre populaire en Franche-Comté, Geneviève has the last word, and so it seems appropriate that she speak the last word for all the accused queens explored in this study:12 Cher époux, si vous n’aviez pas tant aimé la gloire, de longs jours me seraient peut-être promis encore; mais ne la maudissez pas, cette gloire, nous sommes aussi fragiles qu’elle. Votre fils . . . parlezlui quelquefois de sa mère, qu’il s’instruise à l’école de mes malheurs

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et de vos vertus et si le ciel lui donne un jour une épouse, qu’elle n’éprouve pas le même destin dont fut accablée la vôtre. [Dear husband, if you had not loved Glory so much, I might have been granted more days on earth; but don’t call down curses on her, this Dame Glory, for we are just as fragile as she is. Your son . . . talk to him now and then about his mother, that he may be instructed by her misfortunes and by your virtues. And if heaven grants him a wife one day, let her not experience the same fate by which your wife was abused.]

Notes

Introduction 1. Aarne, Types of the Folktale, 247–48, 300. See also S. Jones, “Innocent Persecuted Heroine Genre.” 2. Däumling, Studie über den Typus; Puymaigre, “Fille aux Mains Coupées”; Schick, “Urquelle der Offa-Konstanze-Sage”; Schlauch, Chaucer’s Constance and Accused Queens and “Historical Precursors”; Stefanovicœ, “CrescentiaFlorence-Sage”; Wallensköld, “Conte de la femme chaste” and “L’origine et l’évolution.” 3. Schlauch, Chaucer’s Constance and Accused Queens, 7. 4. See especially Archibald, “Flight from Incest” and “Incest in Medieval Literature”; Benson, “Incest and Moral Poetry”; Rank, Incest Theme; Roussel, “Aspects du père incestueux.” 5. Aers, for example, warns against viewing the Middle Ages as a period “unified by Christian faith and a common moral theory.” He argues for establishing the meaning of discourse within “the social relations of a specific community”; see Community, Gender, and Individual Identity, 4–6. Similarly, Spiegel, in her critique of new historicist approaches, advocates “remembering that texts represent situated uses of language”; see The Past as Text, 24. 6. Fleming, Roman de la Rose; Hindman, Christine de Pizan’s “Epistre Othéa”; Eberle, “Miniatures”; Braeger, “Illustrations”; Salter and Pearsall, “Pictorial Illustration”; Walters, “Creation” and “Illuminating”; Black, “Language of the Illustrations.” 7. See Classen, “Kontinuität und Aufbruch.” 8. Among those that do have female protagonists are stories of virgin martyrs and chaste married women in collections of saints’ legends. Women disguised in male clothing occasionally appear as adventurous heroines in romances, as for example in the Roman de Silence by Heldris de Cornuälle. The lives of famous ancient (and a few medieval) women are collected in Boccaccio’s Concerning Famous Women and Chaucer’s Legend of Good Women. Christine de Pizan wrote two collections of stories about women, Book of the City of Ladies and Treasure of the City of Ladies, as well as a life of Joan of Arc.

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9. Beaumanoir, Coutumes de Beauvaisis, trans. Akehurst, 598. 10. Black, “Analysis and Transcription.” 11. Hence, my study of literary queens complements historical studies of queenship, such as Facinger, “Study of Medieval Queenship”; Stafford, Queen Emma and Queen Edith and Queens, Concubines, and Dowagers; Chibnall, “Empress Matilda”; Huneycutt, “Idea of the Perfect Princess” and “Public Lives, Private Ties.” 12. Chaucer, The Riverside Chaucer, II.631–32. In quoting Chaucer, I follow the custom of providing the fragment number (in Roman numerals) and line numbers (in Arabic). 13. Boethius, The Consolation of Philosophy, trans. Cooper, 120. 14. Biblia Sacra Iuxta Vulgatam Versionem, 2:1146. All quotations from the Latin Vulgate Bible are from this edition, cited by chapter and verse. English versions are from The New English Bible with the Apocrypha, unless otherwise noted. 15. See also Wisd. of Sol. 3:6: “tanquam aurum in fornace probavit illos” [Like gold in a furnace, he proved them]; my translation. 16. Haggh, Two Offices, 23. The translation is my own. 17. See, for example, Bloch, Medieval Misogyny; Wilson and Makowski, eds., Wykked Wyves; and Ranke-Heinemann, Eunuchs for the Kingdom of Heaven. 18. “The Femme Fatale” is Blamires’ translation of “De Meretrice.” Alternate translations are “The Whore” and “The Bad Woman.” See Woman Defamed and Woman Defended, 100–103. 19. My translation. 20. A story of the accusation of the Virgin was known in the Middle Ages; see Lost Books of the Bible, 31–32. The Church of St. Martin in Vic (Indre) has a fresco depicting the scene in which Annas the scribe accuses Mary of fornication; see Kupfer, Romanesque Wall Painting, 30–32, 120–47, 193–98. 21. In Jer. 29:21–23, God condemns the elders Ahab and Zedekiah to death for their adulterous behavior. 22. Braverman, “Rabbinic and Patristic Tradition,” 261. 23. Translation by C. W. Marx, quoted in Blamires, Woman Defamed and Woman Defended, 231. 24. As, for example, in Perrault’s “Peau d’Ane”; see Tatar, Off with Their Heads!, 128–30. 25. Acta Sanctorum, 14:477–79. 26. Attwater, Penguin Dictionary of Saints, 109–10. 27. See Vie des Saints, 6:182–85; Wall, “Queen Margaret of Scotland”; Huneycutt, “Idea of the Perfect Princess.” 28. D. Farmer, Oxford Dictionary of Saints, 115–16. 29. Jacobus de Voragine, The Golden Legend, 2:305. 30. The story is depicted in a sixteenth-century relief in Bamberg Cathedral; see D. Farmer, Oxford Dictionary of Saints, 115–16. 31. Molanus, Natales Sanctorum Belgii, 65r–65v. See also the entry on Geneviève under her feast date, April 2, in the Acta Sanctorum, 9:57.

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32. Dehio et al., Handbuch der deutschen Kunstdenkmäler, 6:862–63. 33. Schneider, Légende de Geneviève de Brabant, 14–20, presents the most recent summary of the work of the earlier German scholars; see also Seuffert, “Legende von der Pfalzgräfin Genovefa”; Golz, Pfalzgräfin Genovefa. 34. Boccaccio included the story of Lucretia in his De Claris Mulieribus (1355– 59), using as his source Livy’s Historiarum ab Urbe Condita, 1:57–58; see Boccaccio, Concerning Famous Women, 101–103, 255. Chaucer cited Livy but used Ovid (Fasti, 2:685–852) as his source; see The Riverside Chaucer, 1070. The earliest written source of the Griselda story is Boccaccio’s account in the Decameron (1353); see Bronfman, Chaucer’s Clerk’s Tale, 7. 35. Christine de Pizan, Book of the City of Ladies, trans. Richards, 176. 36. Ibid., 160. 37. Ibid., 162.

Chapter 1. The Empress of Rome 1. The earliest miracles of the Virgin Mary date from the beginning of the twelfth century. See Mussafia, “Studien” and “Ueber die von Gautier de Coincy benützten Quellen.” Mussafia lists two possible Latin sources for Gautier’s version of “The Empress of Rome,” B.N. lat. 14463 and B.N. lat. 18134. He suggests that further textual study of the Latin sources needs to be carried on by a younger scholar. 2. See Koenig’s four-volume edition of Gautier de Coinci, Miracles, 1:xviii–xxx. 3. Ibid., 1:xxv, xxix–xxx. 4. In addition to the description of manuscripts in Koenig’s introduction, see Ducrot-Granderye, “Etudes,” which remains indispensable to manuscript study of Gautier de Coinci’s works. 5. Ward, Miracles and the Medieval Mind, 142–45. 6. Following Koenig’s numbering system (Gautier de Coinci, Miracles, 1:ix–xiii), this section is I Mir 44. Duys, “Books Shaped by Song,” 238–45, provides an excellent discussion of the Leocadia cycle in the construction of the manuscript. 7. On the importance of the midpoint in medieval narratives, see Uitti, “Chevalier au Lion (Yvain),” 207–8, 223; Huot, From Song to Book, 72. 8. That the story of Theophilus is much better known to modern scholars than “The Empress of Rome” is undoubtedly attributable to its later treatment by Rutebeuf (ca. 1260) as well as by the artist of the north portal of the Cathedral of Notre Dame in Paris. The neglect of “The Empress of Rome” by modern scholars may be attributable in part to its omission from the first edition of the Miracles, that of Poquet, Miracles de la Sainte Vierge. 9. The story is in Koenig’s edition of Gautier de Coinci’s Miracles, 3:303–459, the text from which I quote by line number, hereafter cited in the text. 10. Dragonetti, Vie de la lettre, argues for the importance of text, capitals, and illustrations in his discussion of Paris, B.N. fr. 12576, a manuscript that contains Chrétien de Troyes’s Perceval.

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11. Of the seventeen extant manuscripts containing both parts 1 and 2 of the Miracles, four have no illustrations (Blois, 34; British Museum, Harley 4401; Paris, B.N. fr. 817; Vatican Library, Palatin latin 1969), three have an illustration at the start of the prologue to part 1 (Paris, B.N. fr. 986 and 1530 have an historiated initial A, while Paris, B.N. fr. 2163 has two full-page miniatures added at a later date), and ten (Paris, B.N. fr. 1533, 1536, 1613, 22928, 25532 and B.N. n. a. fr. 24541; Brussels, B.R. 10747; Paris, Arsenal 3517–18; St. Petersburg, National Library, fr. f. v. xiv 9; Besançon, 551) have historiated initials and/or miniatures, usually with an attempt to illustrate at the start of each new miracle and prologue. 12. There are two exceptions that test the rule. In Paris, B.N. fr. 1536, in which all but one historiated initial has been cut out, another miracle is inserted between the prologue to part 2 and “The Empress of Rome.” In the most richly illustrated manuscript of all, Paris, B.N. n. a. fr. 24541, the Soissons manuscript, the midpoint occurs not at the beginning of the prologue to part 2 but earlier, at fol. 105, the beginning of I Mir 44 (Koenig’s numbering); the preceding fol. 104v is blank. 13. When I cite from a manuscript directly, I use parentheses to indicate expanded abbreviations. 14. For interpretations of gestures, see F. Garnier, Signification et symbolique, 167, 171, 185. 15. Avril, Manuscript Painting, 20. 16. F. Garnier, Grammaire des gestes, 265–66. 17. B. Cazelles, Faiblesse, 6. See also her useful summary of “The Empress of Rome” in appendix 2, 169–71, and her comments on that story, 51–52, 71, 75–78, 109–11, 150–51, 153–54. 18. McNamara, “The Need to Give,” 208; Petroff, ed., Medieval Women’s Visionary Literature, 174. 19. According to the classification of dreams provided by Macrobius, Commentary, trans. Stahl, 90, the empress experienced an oraculum, in which “a parent, or a pious or revered man, or a priest, or even a god clearly reveals what will or will not transpire, and what action to take or to avoid.” 20. See Brody, Disease of the Soul. A reader for the University Press of Florida adds that leprosy is not always viewed as a sexual disease. In the Amicus and Amelius story, it occurs as punishment for a false oath. 21. “De l’empeeris qui garda sa chasteé contre mout de temptations” is the rubric found in B.N. fr. 986, Koenig’s copytext for lines 1–34, which are lacking in his principal copytext, B.N. fr. 22928. The chastity of the empress is mentioned in the rubric in two other manuscripts: “De l’empereris de Romme qui garda chasteé en mout de temptations” (B.N. n. a. fr. 24541) and “De imperatrice que per multas temptaciones castitatem servavit” (B.N. fr. 817). 22. B.N. fr. 22928, assigned siglum L by Ducrot-Granderye, “Etudes,” 63–66, is the primary copytext for Koenig’s edition of “The Empress of Rome.” 23. The term comes from Vecchio, “The Good Wife,” 113.

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24. Christine de Pizan, Book of the City of Ladies, 178. 25. Gautier is following his source here, if, indeed, B.N. lat. 14463 is his source. 26. The translations are my own. 27. Krause, “Virgin, Saint, and Sinners,” 45, rightly points to the ambiguities that arise from Gautier de Coinci’s commentary within the text: “[The] portrait of empress as mendicant exemplifies the patristic teaching that for a woman to become saintly she must become like a man.” 28. Delany, Writing Woman, 37. 29. K. Jones, Compassionate Authority, 22, 23, 161. Rackin’s comments on authority in the context of Shakespeare’s history plays are also relevant; in “Genealogical Anxiety and Female Authority,” 325, she defines authority as “the right to exercise power.” 30. II Chast 10. 31. See also lines 680 ff. 32. II Mir 24, 662. 33. II Mir 22, 16; II Epi 33, 128. 34. See handwritten notes on an inserted folio (Av) of Paris, B.N. fr. 986. 35. The earliest life of St. Elizabeth of Hungary in Old French was written by Rutebeuf between 1258 and 1270, while St. Jerome’s fifth-century Latin account of the life of St. Paula was first translated into Old French around 1290; see B. Cazelles, ed., The Lady as Saint, 152, 274. 36. Ibid., 151. 37. “Le nom de l’héroine est à remarquer dans la rubrique du ms. Cambridge MM, 6, 15, fol. 149: De Ysabella imperatrice qualiter beata V. M. post multas tribulationes apparuit ei in insula”; see Karl, “Florence de Rome,” 168 n. 1. 38. Vecchio, “The Good Wife,” 106. 39. Coakley, “Friars as Confidants” and “Gender.” 40. Dalarum, “The Clerical Gaze,” 30. 41. Letters of Abelard and Heloise, trans. Radice, 114. 42. Chrétien de Troyes, Chevalier au Lion (Yvain), lines 2066–67, my translation. 43. II Epi 33, 112–16. 44. For a list of manuscripts, see Duchenne, Guzman, and Voorbij, “Liste des manuscrits.” 45. Voorbij, “Version Klosterneuburg,” 111. 46. Stones, “Prolegomena.” 47. Leiden, Un. Libr. Voss G. G. Fol. 3A, and Paris, Arsenal 5080. 48. B.N. fr. 316 and Baltimore, Walt. Art Gall. W 140, of which books 9–16 are missing; see Chavannes-Mazel, “Problems in Translation.” 49. Jean de Vignay’s text follows the Latin source quite closely, except for occasionally placing direct speech into indirect discourse; the text remains unedited. 50. B.N. fr. 316 represents the text from which all other manuscripts of Jean de Vignay’s translation derive; however, each of the nine extant programs of illustrations for books 1–8 is original, with the exception of the author portraits. 51. See figs. 1 and 2 in Chavannes-Mazel, “Problems in Translation,” 365–66.

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52. The opening illustrations in the two earliest manuscripts are remarkably similar, although other illustrations differ from one another. 53. Chavannes-Mazel, “Problems in Translation,” 362. 54. Curtius, European Literature, 98–101. 55. See Weigand, “Elements”; Biemans, “Tradition manuscrite.”

Chapter 2. The Handless Queen 1. The most recent edition is Roman de la Manekine, ed. and trans. Barbara N. Sargent-Baur, with contributions by Alison Stones and Roger Middleton. See also the editions by Gnarra, Manekine, and Suchier, Oeuvres poétiques. The citations hereafter are from Sargent-Baur’s edition and cited by line number in the text. The translations are my own unless otherwise noted. 2. Although only one manuscript of Philippe de Remi’s works exists today, it is possible that another codex, also illustrated, was once known in England; see Carolus-Barré, “Psautier de Peterborough.” 3. The contents of the manuscript are: La Manekine (fols. 2r–56v), Jehan et Blonde (fols. 57r–96r), “Salus d’amours” (fols. 97r–103v), “Conte d’amours” (fols. 103v–107r), “Le conte de fole largesse” (fols. 107r–109v), “Oiseuses” (fols. 109v–110v), “Lai d’amours” (fols. 110v–112v), “Ave Maria” (fols. 112v– 113v), “Fatrasie” (fols. 113v–114v), “Salus a refrains” (fol. 114v), and Le Roman du Hem by Sarrasin (fols. 115r–147v). Stones, “Manuscript,” 7, also lists a cover sheet added at the start of the volume and taken from another manuscript. There is a folio missing at the start of the Roman du Hem. For editions of Jehan et Blonde, see Philippe de Remi, Jehan et Blonde, Poems, and Songs, and Lécuyer, Jehan et Blonde. For the critical edition of Roman du Hem, see Henry. 4. Gnarra, Manekine, viii, and Stones, “Manuscript,” 4, posit a new scribe after the end of fol. 9vb. 5. Stones, “Manuscript,” 2, writes “c. 1300.” See her n. 2 for dates proposed by other scholars. In a private note to the author, Jonathan Alexander expressed the opinion that, based upon the style of the illustrations, the manuscript must have been produced very close to 1300. 6. Any discussion of the program of illustrations must be accompanied by a statement about the deplorable condition of the miniatures. In her analysis of the illustrations, Gnarra noted the deterioration from the time of Bordier’s description (1873) to her own (1988); I observed further deterioration during my study of the manuscript, first examined in 1990 and later in 1995. Because the illustrations are so badly worn, numerous discrepancies exist among the published descriptions of the miniatures: Bordier, Philippe de Remi, 353–57; Gnarra, Manekine, 441–48; Stones “Manuscript,” 8–18. 7. “Vous pri que me donés .i. don / De tous mes biens en gherredon” (119–20) [I ask that you grant me a boon as a reward for my good works]. 8. See Gnarra, Manekine, 442–43, for an interpretation of this illustration.

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9. Gnarra, Manekine, 395. For an interesting psychological analysis of the cut-off hand, see Fenster, “Beaumanoir’s La Manekine.” 10. Grimm and Grimm, Complete Grimm’s Fairy Tales, 160–66. 11. Dundes, Folklore Matters, 112–50. 12. Quoted, ibid., 141. 13. Fenster, “Beaumanoir’s La Manekine,” 45. 14. Feminist critics of Freudian theories, such as Brownmiller, Against Our Will, 315–17, 320–22, have demonstrated the fallacy of transferring responsibility for sexual abuse from the offender to the victim. For further critique of Freud, see also Masson, The Assault on Truth. 15. Clark, “A Heroine’s Sexual Itinerary,” reviews the psychological approaches of Rank and Fenster and draws an interesting comparision between La Manekine and Yde et Olive. Bennewitz, “Vater-Tochter-Inzest,” analyzes the incest motif within the Middle High German tradition. 16. Sargent-Baur has reviewed the evidence in great detail: see her “Dating the Romances”; Philippe de Remi, Roman de la Manekine, 70–91. 17. Bordier, Philippe de Remi, published the historical documents supporting these facts. These documents should be supplemented by reference to Colloque, ed. Bonnet-Laborderie; see also Lécuyer, Jehan et Blonde, 9–17; Gnarra, Manekine, xv–xxi; Philippe de Remi, Roman de la Manekine, 70–82. 18. Bordier, Philippe de Remi, 12. 19. Colloque, 23–24; Gnarra, Manekine, xviii; Lécuyer, Jehan et Blonde, 10–11. 20. Bordier, Philippe de Remi, 99. Beaumanoir was used as the name of his property for the first time in a document of 1249 (ibid., 17). 21. Ibid., 25. 22. Ibid., 33–34. 23. Ibid., 36–39. 24. Philippe de Remi, Roman de la Manekine, 91. 25. Lécuyer, Jehan et Blonde, 17. 26. Fenster, “Joïe mêlé de Tristouse,” 350. 27. Shepherd, Tradition and Re-creation, 23, writes that while “the romance dramatizes the choice between marriage and chastity, alternating between conjugal love and celibacy, its ultimate synthesis is . . . a view of marriage that unites human affection—expressed in the worldly language of the lyric—with the ideals of moderation and procreation.” 28. See Roussel, “Aspects du père incestueux”; Benson, “Incest and Moral Poetry”; Archibald, “Flight from Incest” and “Incest in Medieval Literature”; Picherit, “Légende.” 29. Archibald, “Flight from Incest,” 259. 30. Archibald, “Incest in Medieval Literature,” 5. 31. Gnarra, Manekine, 443, 448. 32. Duby, Medieval Marriage, 8, 17. 33. Stuard, “The Dominion of Gender,” 162.

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34. Ibid., 161. 35. Natalie Zemon Davis, “Introduction,” vii–xv; Duby, Medieval Marriage. 36. Leclercq, Monks on Marriage, 25–38. 37. Brundage, Law, Sex, and Christian Society, 185–87. 38. Ibid., 192–93. 39. Benson, “Incest and Moral Poetry,” 105; Archibald, “Incest in Medieval Literature,” 5. 40. The monk is cited by Duby, The Knight, the Lady, and the Priest, 172. 41. Archibald, “Incest in Medieval Literature,” 6 and n. 24. 42. Duby, Medieval Marriage, 55. 43. See Life of Christina of Markyate, ed. and trans. Talbot. 44. Duby, Medieval Marriage, 73–74; L’Hermite-Leclercq, “Feudal Order.” 45. Gies and Gies, in Women in the Middle Ages, devote a chapter to Eleanor de Montfort, to which my discussion is indebted; they suggest that Philippe de Remi based Jehan et Blonde on the affair of Eleanor and Simon. To be sure, they assume that the author of Jehan et Blonde and Manekine is the same man (Philippe fils) who wrote the Coutumes de Beauvaisis, an attribution that is very much in dispute. But even if Philippe père was the author of the two romances, he was as likely as his son to have been familiar with the unusual marriage of Eleanor and Simon and to have used it as a basis for Jehan et Blonde. One should not, however, overlook possible literary precursors, such as the story of Rivalin and Blanchefleur in the Tristan sagas. 46. Powicke, King Henry III, 204. 47. Gies and Gies, Women in the Middle Ages, 123. 48. Powicke, King Henry III, 204. 49. M. Paris, Chronica majora, ed. Luard, 3:479–80: “Romanam curiam adiit, quam speravit pecunia circumvenire, ut illicito matrimonio liceret gratulari.” 50. Greimas, Dictionnaire de l’ancien français, 504. The early twelfth-century source is the Cambridge Psalter; see also Tobler and Lommatzsch, Altfranzösisches Wörterbuch, cols. 1509–11. 51. Chaucer, The Riverside Chaucer, II.709–13; hereafter cited in the text. 52. Gnarra, Manekine, 389, 392, 401, 417–18. 53. Brundage, Law, Sex, and Christian Society, 162. 54. Stones, “Manuscript,” 31. 55. Ibid., figs. 1–31, found following p. 39. 56. Stones’s description (ibid., 11) is somewhat misleading: “The king (returning to Berwick), stands flanked by a courtier before a boat with an orange mast and white sail, and addresses a group of five men.” The king goes to Berwick to outfit a ship that will take him away from Scotland in search of his wife and son. 57. Alexander, Medieval Illuminators, 114. 58. Other illustrations of the symbolic glove are a depiction of Hugh Capet pardoning the count of Flanders, in the Grandes Chroniques de France, Paris, Bibliothèque Sainte-Geneviève, Ms. 782, fol. 219v (reproduced by Hedeman,

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The Royal Image, 28), and Tristan giving the glove of battle to Morold, depicted in a Sicilian quilt of 1395 (reproduced by Whitaker, Legends of King Arthur, 107). 59. Gnarra’s statement, Manekine, 444, that the king holds the glove in his right hand is an error. 60. Gnarra writes (ibid., 445): “It is impossible to decipher the contents of this illustration, which shows five people, with the queen at the center and the king to the right of her with his left hand on his belly. The woman to the far right clasps her hands below her waist.” However, judging by the length of the garments, there is only one female figure, Manekine, who stands at the right side of the picture. The shorter garments belong to male figures: the king at Manekine’s right side is turned partially toward the three male figures to his right; he gestures with his right hand and holds a glove in his left. This interpretation agrees with the text below the miniature: “‘Dame,’ dist li rois a s’amie, / ‘Ves en chi .iii. ou je me fie / Plus qu’en tous les hommes du mont’” (2575–77) [“Lady,” the king said to his beloved, “here are three men I trust more than any others in the world”]. Thus, the three male figures are the seneschal and two knights who are advisors (see 2541–46). 61. Ibid., 446. 62. The only edition of Mai und Beaflor was published anonymously [ed. Pfeiffer and Vollmer] in 1848. The columns are numbered, with line numbers starting anew for each column, a system retained here in the parenthetical references. The translations are my own. 63. Petzet, Die Deutschen Pergament-Handschriften, 94; Allgemeine Deutsche Biographie, 8:183. 64. Mertens, “Herrschaft, Busse, Liebe,” 393. 65. “Kaiserchronik eines Regensburger Geistlichen,” ed. Schröder, 289–314. 66. Enikel, Jansen Enikels Werke, ed. Strauch, lines 26677–27356. 67. Buschinger, “Skizzen,” 31–32. 68. Ebenbauer, “Beaflor-Blanscheflur.” 69. Mertens, “Herrschaft, Busse, Liebe,” 404; compare the analysis of Kasten, “Ehekonsens und Liebesheirat,” who explores the theme of marital consent and love in Mai und Beaflor. 70. Doutrepont, Littérature française, 23 (for dates) and 492 (for list of works); see also Suchier, Oeuvres poétiques, 1:xcj–xcij. 71. Wauquelin names his patron in chapter 65. Suchier, Oeuvres poétiques, published his edition of La Manekine en prose with his edition of Philippe de Remi’s complete works; see 1:267–366. The name of Jehan de Croÿ is found on 365. 72. Suchier, Oeuvres poétiques, 1:xcvj; see also Vaughan, Philip the Good, 99– 100, 177, 196, 337 ff. 73. The other indication of ownership is written in a later hand: “Donné a la Biblioth(èque) du Roy par M. Watcans / Chanoine de Tournay le 26 Janvier 1715”; fol. 1 is reproduced in facsimile by Bordier, Philippe de Remi, plate 6.

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74. The complete list of contents is: (1) fols. 1–71, “Le livre du roi Pontus”; (2) fols. 72–125, “Comment le roy Salomon de Hongrie fu mariez a la fille de l’empereur d’Alemagne”; (3) fols. 126–37, “Vie de S. Valdrut”; (4) fols. 137– 44, “Vie de S. Druon de Sebourcg”; (5) fols. 145–65, “La vengance mesire Jhesu-crist faite par Vespasien”; (6) fols. 166–72, “Un traité d’astrologie”; (7) fols. 173–275, L’image du monde of Gautier of Metz. For a fuller description of the manuscript, see Wahlgren, Renseignements, 21–22; Pasini, Codices, 2:462. 75. See Manoscritti danneggiati. 76. The first full page of microfilm corresponds to Suchier’s fol. 75r, which is numbered (inexplicably) 73r on the microfilm. 77. Suchier, Oeuvres poétiques, 1:xciv; see also C. Harvey, “Jehan Wauquelin.” 78. The moral Philippe de Remi drew at the end of his romance (8529–90) is shortened by Wauquelin. 79. Suchier, Oeuvres poétiques, 1:300. On other changes in names, see C. Harvey, “Jehan Wauquelin,” 348. 80. See Suchier, Oeuvres poétiques, 1:303, 318. Other places where Wauquelin condenses are found at 332, 335, 340–41, 360, 365. 81. As, for example, ibid., 1:290 (bottom), 299 (top), or 314. 82. Ibid., 1:274, 290, 334, 341, 357, 363. For a full and interesting discussion of the use of Latin glosses by Wauquelin, see Rouillard, “Reading the Reader.” 83. Other additions of interest occur at Suchier, Oeuvres poétiques, 1:274 (bottom), 281, 286, 318, 356. Wauquelin omits the episode of sexual joy between the king of Scotland and Joiie that Philippe de Remi described after their reunion.

Chapter 3. The Countess of Anjou 1. Maillart’s Roman du Comte d’Anjou exists in two manuscripts; a third manuscript, purchased in 1413 by Jean, duke of Berry, has been lost. The more important of the two existing manuscripts is the early-fourteenth-century illustrated B.N. n. a. fr. 4531; the second manuscript, B.N. fr. 765, a fifteenthcentury paper manuscript, is noteworthy for its change of title, “Le Romant de la comtesse d’Anjou.” According to Langlois, Vie en France, 260, the lost manuscript had the title “La Patience de la comtese d’Anjou.” The Roman, edited in 1931 by Mario Roques (CFMA, 67), is cited by line number in the body of this chapter. The translations are my own. 2. For discussions of medieval practices in playing chess, see Murray, Short History of Chess; Golombek, Chess: A History; Eales, Chess, 39–70. 3. Bak, “Queens as Scapegoats,” 223. 4. The entry on Emma, wife of Athelred and later Cnut I (11th c.), in the DNB draws a sharp line between legend and fact that seems old-fashioned today: “The legend that she was accused of unchastity, and cleared herself by the ordeal of hot iron, has no foundation in fact.” Such a sharp distinction be-

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tween reality and fiction reflects older mimetic theories of the relationship of life to historical accounts. 5. Einhard, Vita Karoli Magni, ed. and trans. Firchow and Zeydel, 77. 6. Adenet le Roi, Berte aus grans piés, ed. Henry. 7. Sassier, Hugues Capet, 12–13, offers an analysis of the primary sources; see also Coolidge, “Adalbero, Bishop of Laon.” 8. DBF, vol. 12, cols. 1256–57. 9. Sassier, Hugues Capet, 161–62. 10. Ibid., 192–94, 221; Coolidge, “Adalbero, Bishop of Laon,” 29. Five letters of Emma from the period of her second accusation are preserved: see Letters of Gerbert, trans. Lattin, 119–20, 135, 159–60, 167–68, 183–84. 11. DNB, 17:360–61. 12. Stafford, Queen Emma and Queen Edith, 9–10. 13. Ibid., 20. 14. Ibid., 20–21. 15. NBG, vol. 20, cols. 675–77. 16. Ibid., col. 676. I am indebted to Walter Simons for information about Marie of Brabant and Elisabeth of Spalbeek. See Simons and Ziegler, “Phenomenal Religion,” 117 n. 3. For historical documents, see Grandes Chroniques de France, ed. Viard, 8:61–64, 75–77; de Gaulle, “Documents historiques”; Guillaume de Nangis, Chronique Latine, 1:250 ff. 17. Dante, Divine Comedy, trans. Mandelbaum, 48. 18. Strayer, Reign of Philip the Fair, 21. See also Favier, Philippe le Bel. 19. Strayer, Reign of Philip the Fair, 23. For more information about Maillart, see also Pegues, Lawyers of the Last Capetians. 20. Le Roman de Fauvel has been reproduced in facsimile, with an introduction by Edward Roesner, François Avril, and Nancy Freeman Regalado. See also Mühlethaler, “Fauvel au pouvoir.” 21. Strayer, Reign of Philip the Fair, 291, writes: “That the Templars were unchaste and that they often engaged in homosexual practices goes without saying.” Other scholars are more skeptical of the charges against the Templars; see Cheney, “Downfall,” and Barber, Trial of the Templars. 22. Strayer, Reign of Philip the Fair, 290. 23. Ibid., 19. 24. Ibid., 61. 25. In La Manekine the chess game provides the setting in which the king of Scotland falls in love with the heroine. Description of the game is confined to eleven lines of text (1380–90), and the scene is not illustrated as it is in Maillart’s text. The idea that the game is a metaphor for erotic love was originally developed by Blakeslee, “Lo dous jocx sotils.” See also Foehr-Janssens, La Veuve en Majesté, 229–40. 26. Romance of the Rose, trans. Dahlberg, 128–31. 27. Jean de Joinville, in his Histoire de Saint Louis, also mentions that this count

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of Anjou incurred the anger of his brother Louis IX because of his proclivity to gamble at “games of dice”; see Memoirs of the Crusades, trans. Marzials, 236, 239. Chess was sometimes played with dice and was quite commonly played for money, so when St. Louis outlawed games of chance in 1254, chess was included among them; see Jonin, “Partie d’échecs,” 486. See also Fleming, “Poetic Gambit,” for an earlier source of the Romance of the Rose episode. 28. Storer and Rochedieu, eds., Six Historical Poems, 54, line 34. 29. Ibid., 62, note to lines 64 ff.; Eales, Chess, 51–52. 30. The poem is edited and translated by Storer and Rochedieu, Six Historical Poems, 61–72. The lines quoted here are 61–68; the translation is my own. 31. The question of whether a woman could rule in France was at issue in 1316, the year Maillart completed his chanson d’aventure and the year in which Philip V had himself crowned king of France, thus passing over Joan, daughter of Louis X. The “law” that no woman might rule in France was passed by an assembly convened in 1317; see Tuchman, A Distant Mirror, 44. This law caps a gradual loss of power by French queens during Capetian rule; for a discussion of earlier changes in the power of queens, see Facinger, “Study of Medieval Queenship.” For later examples of queens as intercessors, see Strohm, Hochon’s Arrow. 32. John of Wales, in his Communiloquium, describes rooks as “intinerant justices who travel over the whole realm, and their move is always straight, because the judge must deal justly” (quoted in Golombek, Chess: A History, 67). 33. I am indebted to a former student, Mary Pagurelias, for her suggestion that “the door represents the daughter’s being closed sexually to the father.” 34. That the “wicked woman” in this narrative comes from Chartres may be a contemporary allusion to an actual struggle to establish royal jurisdiction in Chartres in the years 1286–90; see Strayer, Reign of Philip the Fair, 242–45. 35. I thank Nancy Regalado for suggesting that I develop the relationship between Maillart’s text and the events of 1314–16 further than I had done in an early version of this chapter. 36. Geffroi de Paris, Chronique métrique, ed. Diverrès. Hereafter I will cite from this edition by line number. The translations are my own. 37. Le Roman de Fauvel, 8. 38. Geffroi de Paris, Chronique métrique, 10–11. 39. Grandes Chroniques de France, 7:278. 40. Ibid., 7:293–95. 41. Ibid., 7:289. 42. The specific charges are not included in the main text of the Grandes Chroniques as edited by Viard; they are, however, included in a long footnote, 8:308– 13, the source of which is B.N. f. fr. 10132, fols. 396–397v. The translation is my own. 43. Tuchman, A Distant Mirror, 44. 44. The poem is edited and translated by Storer and Rochedieu, Six Historical Poems, 53–57. The lines quoted here are 1–15; the translation is my own.

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45. The Roman is written in Hand A; Hand B begins on fol. 63v with the second work in the codex. 46. Maillart, Roman, xii n. 1. 47. Roques, “L’Interpolation de Fauvel.” 48. For a list of other passages from the Roman that were incorporated into B.N. fr. 146, see Maillart, Roman, 256–58. 49. Planche, “Omnipresence,” 272. For an analysis of Maillart’s depiction of local geography, food, and the conditions of poor and wealthy, see, in addition to the article above, Planche’s “Table comme signe.”

Chapter 4. The Empress of Rome and the Handless Queen Dramatized 1. See Clark, “Cangé Manuscript,” 61–119, for a complete codicological description. 2. Paris and Robert, eds., Miracles de Nostre Dame par personnages. The seven persecuted heroine stories are numbers 12, 27, 28, 29, 31, 32, and 37. Konigson, “Structures élémentaires,” provides a structural analysis of four of these plays. See also Krause, “Falsely Accused Heroine,” 170, who categorizes ten plays as stories with falsely accused heroines. 3. Runnalls, “Mediaeval Trade Guilds” and “Erasures.” He distinguishes between the guild, “a professional body” and the confrérie, “a religious society.” The latter, he says in “Mediaeval Trade Guilds,” 262–63, was “more concerned with the cultural and religious side of life, and which tended, more than the guild proper, to play an important rôle in theatre of the late Middle Ages.” 4. In addition to the two articles cited above, see Runnalls, “Manuscript.” 5. The erased passages were originally reported in Miracles de Nostre Dame par Personnages by Rudolf Glutz, who succeeded in recovering some of the erasures. Runnalls’s work supersedes that of Glutz. 6. Runnalls, “Mediaeval Trade Guilds,” 258. 7. Ibid., 261. 8. In using the term “class,” I do not mean to imply “a crude class-struggle reductionism” such as Rodney Hilton warns against in Class Conflict, ix. 9. Runnalls, “Manuscript,” 18–19. 10. Ibid., 17. 11. For a useful summary of the major events of the fourteenth century, see Duby, France in the Middle Ages, 269–87. 12. R. Cazelles, “Jean II le Bon,” 9, writes: “Ceux qui l’ont connu soit directement soit par témoignage direct nous montrent le roi Jean bienveillant, accessible à la pitié, conscient de sa dignité, intelligent, ami des lettres, le courage montré à Poitiers restant toujours admiré, mais comme inattendu. A côté de ces qualités, deux défauts principaux: des colères soudaines notées par Froissart, un goût trop prononcé pour la chasse reproché par Pétrarque.” 13. Henneman, Royal Taxation, 19. 14. Ibid., 13–14, 20, makes a useful distinction between consent and counsel in describing the function of these gatherings. The king needed the support of the

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people to collect the taxes, but he sought their counsel, not their consent. “Counsel,” in feudal terms, means he expected the assembled people to agree to whatever he had decided to do in advance. The new, more democratic idea of “consent” implied that the assembled people had a voice in determining the decision to tax or not to tax, or how and when to tax. 15. R. Cazelles, “Mouvements révolutionnaires,” 280. 16. Ibid., 283. 17. Langlois, “Chapter Two,” 126. 18. Ibid., 138–39. 19. Runnalls, “Mediaeval Trade Guilds,” 284. 20. Ibid., 260. 21. Ibid., 261. 22. Ibid., 271. Clark, “Charity and Drama,” 359, mentions a play performed in Paris by the Pèlerins Saint-Jacques in 1324 or 1325. 23. Runnalls, “Mediaeval Trade Guilds,” 272. 24. Ibid., 278. 25. More recently, Clark has argued that the manuscript was produced by the Confrérie Notre-Dame-de-l’Annonciation, located in the village of BlancMesnil outside Paris. He writes in “Cangé Manuscript,” 78, that “there were at least two other confraternities having close ties to the goldsmiths in the fourteenth century.” He questions why a Marian manuscript would be produced by a guild devoted to St. Eloi, and he notes the importance, particularly in the serventois, of the cult of the Annunciation (113). 26. Runnalls, “Mediaeval Trade Guilds,” 287 n. 32. 27. Ibid., 286. 28. Penn, Staging; see Clark’s comments on Penn, “Cangé Manuscript,” 68–69. 29. Penn, Staging, 12–13. 30. Ibid., 82. 31. Lecoy, ed., La Vie des Pères, 1:184–209, which I cite by line number in the note below. Lecoy’s edition is based on B.N. fr. 24301, a manuscript from the thirteenth century. The story was previously edited by Wallensköld, “Conte de la femme chaste,” 151–61. Wallensköld’s edition is based on the thirteenth-century manuscript B.N. fr. 1546, fols. 29ra–33ra. In the note below, I provide the line references to Wallensköld’s edition in square brackets. 32. Thus, for example, the source’s reference to “mestresse et dame” (5767 [100]) is echoed in the play, “maistresse sur vous et dame” (147), where the rhyming pair of the source (feme/dame) also appears in the play (dame/femme). In the brother-in-law’s love complaint, there are stronger verbal correspondences at lines 5830–31 [161–62], 5834 [165], 5836–37[167–68], 5843 [174], 5869 [198], 5871 [200], corresponding respectively to lines 377–78, 380–81, 385– 86, 392, 410, 412 of the play. Similarly, in the brother-in-law’s declaration of love, lines 5905 [234], 5909 [238], 5920–21 [249–50] of the source correspond to lines 553, 550–51, 565–66 in the play, and in the empress’s rejection,

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lines 5934 [263], 5936–37 [265–66], 5940–41 [269–70], 5944–45 [273–74] correspond to lines 636, 639–40, 645–46, 649–50 in the play. 33. I am indebted to Gretchen V. Angelo for this information. She mentioned the borrowings from Gautier de Coinci in her unpublished paper “Words and Flesh.” 34. “Cy conmence un miracle de Nostre Dame de l’empereris de Romme que le frére de l’empereur accusa pour la fere destruire, pour ce qu’elle n’avoit volu faire sa voulenté; et depuis devint mesel, et la dame le garit quant il ot regehy son meffait”; Paris and Robert, Miracles de Nostre Dame par personnages, 4:239. All quotations are from this edition and are cited hereafter by line number in the text; the translations are my own. 35. The sermon follows line 33 of the play and is found on folio 52 recto and verso in the manuscript. 36. Brody, Disease of the Soul. 37. Suchier provides a useful comparison of the romance and play in Oeuvres poétiques, 1:lxxxvii–xc. See also C. Harvey, “La Manekine,” for an analysis of changes in names and treatment of scenes. 38. For other minor differences between the play and the romance, see Suchier, Oeuvres poétiques, 1:lxxxix–xc. 39. The Hungarian clerks say they will convince the pope to grant dispensation: “A l’Apo[stol]e monterront / Le gra[nt] pourfit pour quoi fait l’ont” (339–40) [They would show the pope the large profit for which they did it]. Undoubtedly “grant pourfit” was understood as both political and material and hence contains an implied criticism of papal greed. Later, the words of the advisors to the king gently mock arguments used by the church to justify the sexual act: “Car on doit bien faire un meschief / Petit pour plus grant remanoir” (358–59) [For one can commit a little sin to escape a greater one]. 40. I thank Robert Clark for help translating this proverbial phrase. The sense is: “To a royal man, give royal treatment.” 41. Camille, Image on the Edge, 129–52; see esp. fig. 69. 42. Geremek, Margins of Society, 77. 43. Clark, “Charity and Drama,” 363–64. 44. Mollat, Poor in the Middle Ages, 1–2. 45. The use of poverty to evoke feelings of pity can also be found in the Griselda play written by Philippe de Mézières in 1395; see the edition by Groeneveld, “Die älteste Bearbeitung.”

Chapter 5. Constance and Her English Sisters 1. Block, “Originality, Controlling Purpose,” 600–601. 2. Several articles partly redressed the previous inattention to Gower’s story: Wetherbee, “Constance”; Nicholson, “Chaucer Borrows from Gower” and “Man of Law’s Tale”; Correale, “Chaucer’s Manuscript” and “Gower’s Source.” 3. For other negative comments by Block, see “Originality, Controlling Purpose,”

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576, 581, 586, 600, 612. Nor is the more recent article by Miller, “Constancy Humanized,” 51, entirely free of disparaging remarks, as is evident, for example, in his reference to Trevet’s “wooden chronicle.” 4. When citing Trevet’s story of Constance in Anglo-Norman, I will use the edition by Margaret Schlauch in Bryan and Dempster, Sources and Analogues, 165– 81; for citations from other sections of the Cronicles, I transcribe B.N. fr. 9687. 5. Rose, “Edition,” xl. 6. Ibid., xlii. The Anglo-Norman text exists in eleven manuscripts, the earliest of which is dated ca. 1335–40; see Dean, “Manuscripts,” 97, for dating of the earliest manuscript. 7. Kolve, Chaucer and the Imagery of Narrative, 298. See also Wynn, “Conversion Story,” 260, who traces Trevet’s story to an Arabic history. 8. Gower, Works, ed. Macaulay, vols. 2 and 3. The story of Constance is to be found in vol. 2, bk. 2, 146–73. The lines quoted here are 597–98 and 1613–14, respectively. When quoting from Gower, I cite this text and provide line numbers in parentheses. 9. See “Kaiserchronik eines Regensburger Geistlichen,” 289–314. 10. Enikel, Jansen Enikels Werke, 520–32. 11. Matthew Paris, “Vitae duorum Offarum.” 12. For discussion of Vincent de Beauvais, see chapter 1. According to Matheson, “Two Fifteenth-Century Versions,” at least two other Constance stories are known. The first version is in Middle English and taken from an expansion of the Brut, Lambeth Palace Library MS. 84; the second is in Latin, the “Legenda de Constancia,” Bodleian Library MS. Rawlinson D. 358. 13. Correale, “Gower’s Source,” 152. His edition is being prepared for publication as part of the Chaucer Library series. 14. Rose, “Edition,” lxx. The story of Constance appears on fols. 62v–69v of fols. 2r–114r in the Anglo-Norman text and on fols. 52r–59r of fols. 9r–91r (excluding the Brut expansion) in the Middle English text. The decoration of 62v is not particularly elaborate: the page is marked by the usual rubrics, an illuminated initial “(L)an” with light foliation and a rubric in the right margin, “Tyberie / Constantin.” For an additional argument for the centrality of the story within the ordinatio of the manuscripts, see ibid., lxxi; Barefield, “Women’s Power,” 28. The translations of Trevet are my own. 15. Kolve, Chaucer and the Imagery of Narrative, 316. See also Wynn, “Conversion Story.” 16. Baswell, “Founding Mothers.” 17. Hanning, Vision of History, 16. 18. For the suggestion that Mary of Woodstock may have been involved in the production of the manuscript, see Barefield, “Women’s Power,” 28. 19. An examination of the gatherings suggests that this folio, perhaps with the four blank folios preceeding it, was added after the entire text had been completed. 20. This page bears the current folio number 2 and an earlier folio number, AO, written in the same ink as the text in the upper right corner.

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21. The earlier running heads vary according to the book of the Bible used as a source; the running heads for “Des apostres” begin on fol. 39v; the running head “Gestes des apostres emp(er)ours (et) rois” is first found on fol. 41v; at fol. 50v a regular pattern of using “Gestes des apostoilles” on versos and “Emp(er)ours (et) Rois” on rectos begins and continues until fol. 114. 22. “Genelogie” is a rubric written in the left margin of column a on fol. 107r. The genealogical chart begins with Adam and Eve at the bottom of the same column. 23. One other manuscript of Trevet’s Cronicles, dating from the third quarter of the fourteenth century, contains the chart: Oxford, Bodleian Library, Rawlinson B. 178 [11545], fols. 1–66; see Dean, “Nicholas Trevet, Historian,” 345, and “Manuscripts,” 97. 24. The text moves backward from Edward I to Adam, but the visual charts move in chronological order from Adam to Edward I. 25. Dean, “Nicholas Trevet, Historian,” 345. 26. Ibid., 346. 27. Fisher, John Gower, 1–36. 28. For the patron of Morgan M. 126, see Gower, Works, 2:xxi. A copy of the third recension, Oxford, New College 266, housed at the Bodleian Library, originally contained an illustration of the story of Constance, which has been cut out; see ibid., 2:clxi. 29. According to the typed notes available at the Morgan Library, M. 126 was produced in England in the second half of the fifteenth century and illustrated by an Anglo-Flemish artist. It contains 106 illustrations, which are usually used to introduce individual narratives, and at least three miniatures from the original program are missing at 48v, 171v, and between 72v and 73. Eberle, in “Miniatures,” 313, 318, states that there are 110 illustrations, whereas the Morgan notes state “79 miniatures . . . 12 small oblong miniatures of the signs of the Zodiac and 15 small oblong landscapes illustrating the stars,” which makes a total of 106 illustrations, a count that I have confirmed. The manuscript is heavily decorated with illuminated initials, foliated extenders, and rubrics, and all three elements of ornamentation accompany each miniature (unless it is placed at the end of a column). In addition, calligraphic flourishes are found at the top line of many pages. Latin prose summaries, which in other manuscripts (as in the printed text) are written in the margin, are here presented as part of the text. Written in red ink, they sometimes appear before the illustration, and hence at the start of a narrative; at other times they are simply merged within the text. 30. Eberle, “Miniatures,” 329, reaches a similar conclusion about how Morgan M. 126 would have been used. 31. Eberle does not discuss this particular miniature; Kolve, Chaucer and the Imagery of Narrative, 306, accepts it as an illustration of the Constance story. I am indebted to Frances Barasch for pointing out that Kolve’s attribution is incorrect.

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32. F. Garnier, Signification et symbolique, 176–77. 33. An alternative reading could be made: if the artist is depicting the more usual empress of Rome story in which there are two accusers, then the first figure on the left could be the knight who accuses her of murdering the earl’s child and the other two figures could be the brother-in-law and the emperor himself (the most elegantly dressed figure closest to the ship). 34. Both Nebuchadnezzar’s dream and the image of Arion harping are illustrated in M. 126. 35. Porter, “Gower’s Ethical Microcosm,” 135. 36. Ibid., 138. 37. Ibid., 139. 38. British Library, Harley 7333, also includes Gower’s “Tale of Constance.” The rubric introducing the story says that it is of “envie and bakbytinge” (fol. 122). 39. Runacres, “Art and Ethics,” 108, translates a definition by J. Th. Welter; see nn. 5, 7. 40. Ibid., 134. 41. Gower also omits Trevet’s analogy between the sea voyages of Noah and of Constance, and he cuts the discussion of her virtue and its role in converting Hermengild. 42. For other examples of uses of this word in the prologue, see 579–84 and 786– 801. 43. Weissman, “Late Gothic Pathos”; Brody, “Chaucer’s Rhyme Royal Tales”; Kolve, Chaucer and the Imagery of Narrative; Block, “Originality, Controlling Purpose.” Other approaches to the “Man of Law’s Tale” have stressed its relationship to the medieval concept of pathos; see Bestul, “Man of Law’s Tale”; Guerin, “Chaucer’s Pathos”; R. Frank, “Canterbury Tales III” and “Pathos.” 44. Among the critics who have discussed the narrator are David, The Strumpet Muse, 118–34; Wurtele, “‘Proprietas’”; Dinshaw, Chaucer’s Sexual Poetics, 88–112; Dor, “Crusading Virago”; Spearing, “Narrative Voice.” 45. I follow Cooper, Oxford Guides, 123, in referring to the introduction as having two parts: the proem and the prologue. 46. Benson, Chaucer’s Drama of Style, 20. More recently, Spearing, “Narrative Voice,” 716–25, attacks the critical assumption of “dramatic consistency” among Chaucerian critics writing about narrative voice and argues for a text inhabited by multiple perspectives or “subjectivities.” Jordan, “Heteroglossia,” 83, also warns against trying to “resolve the many dissonances in this text.” 47. Miller, “Constancy Humanized,” argues that Chaucer has secularized the philosophy of Innocent III and placed it in the mouth of his “middle-class” narrator, the Man of Law. 48. For example, when Jehan Maillart contrasted the rich life of the countess of Anjou with her poverty in exile, it was these very passages that Chaillou de Pesstain excerpted for inclusion in his Roman de Fauvel, suggesting that medi-

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eval audiences were attuned to the association of falsely accused queens and poverty; see chapter 3 herein. 49. Astell, “Apostrophe,” contrasts the high style of the Man of Law’s apostrophes with the simple style of Custance’s prayers and argues that the contrast results in satire of the narrator. 50. Manly and Rickert, eds., Text of the Canterbury Tales, 3:533, write: “MSS showing internal divisions of the tale are few. E1 Dd Ra1 divide the story into three parts with divisions at 385 and 875. Ad3 and Fi doubtless made the same division. They both marked the second part as ending after 875, but leaves are out in Ad3 and the division after Part I is lacking in Fi.” 51. Manning, “Chaucer’s Constance,” 14, does not refer to a specific scene in his use of the term “closeup shot.” Rather, he speaks more generally of the Man of Law’s “fluctuation of the distance between closeups and long shots.” 52. Other critics who have analyzed Custance’s speeches include Astell, “Apostrophe,” and Dawson, “Custance in Context.” 53. Muscatine, Chaucer and the French Tradition, 193. 54. Gray, “Chaucer and ‘Pite.’” 55. Critics have previously noted that a reunion scene of this sort is a hallmark of the Greek romances upon which this story of Custance is based; see Schlauch, Chaucer’s Constance and Accused Queens, and Clogan, “Narrative Style,” 226. 56. Clasby, “Chaucer’s Custance,” 223. 57. See Chaucer, “Prologue to the Legend of Good Women” (The Riverside Chaucer, G 414–15), where he lists among his works “Of the Wreched Engendrynge of Mankynde / As man may in Pope Innocent yfynde.” The work referred to, De miseria condicionis humane by Lotario dei Segni, the future Pope Innocent III, has been edited for the Chaucer Library by Robert E. Lewis. 58. Miller, “Constancy Humanized,” 68. 59. Curtius, European Literature, 275–78. 60. The glosses are found at lines 161, 197, 295, 309, 421, 771, 925, 1132, 1135. For an edition of the glosses, see Partridge, “Glosses.” The glosses are translated in Patricia Eberle’s notes to the “Man of Law’s Tale,” The Riverside Chaucer, 854–63; see also Manly and Rickert, Text of the Canterbury Tales, 3:492–96. Caie, “De miseria as a Gloss,” 175, suggests that the function of the glosses is “to guide the reader and to ensure that the narrator’s rhetorical powers and partial quotations from his sources do not blind the reader.” 61. By reading the narrative text alongside the gloss, readers can view the changes Chaucer made to his source to fit the voice of the Man of Law. As Eberle points out in her notes to The Riverside Chaucer, Chaucer adapts his source so that only the negative examples of “strif” and “deeth” are included in the tale, with the effect that the narrator comes across once again as a man of limited understanding of texts. The Man of Law bemoans the “dulle” wit of men who cannot read the stars, but he himself cannot read Bernardus Sylvestris cor-

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rectly, or so the gloss suggests. The other two glosses not from De miseria condicionis humane (at lines 295 and 309) also provide information from Chaucer’s sources on the subject of how to read the stars; see Eberle’s extensive discussion in The Riverside Chaucer, 858–60. 62. Joyce Coleman graciously shared with me her paper “Speaking in Glosses.” See also Emmerson, “Reading Gower.” 63. Partridge, “Glosses,” 2:19–24.

Chapter 6. The Empress of Rome Revisited 1. This is not to say that retellings of the Constance story ceased entirely in fifteenth-century England. As noted, Lister M. Matheson has studied two— Lambeth Palace Library MS. 84 and Bodleian Library MS. Rawlinson D. 358; see Matheson, “Two Fifteenth-Century Versions.” 2. Delany, ed. and trans., Legend of Holy Women, xxviii. 3. Armstrong, “Piety of Cecily.” 4. Crawford, “Piety,” 51–53. 5. James, “Wall Paintings,” 4; Martindale, “Wall-paintings,” 151 n. 11. 6. James, Frescoes. James examined the records of Eton College to find out who was working there in the second half of the century and found that the patron of the project appears to have been William Waynflete, bishop of Winchester and former provost of the college. James determined that painters were working in the chapel from 1479 to 1480; in 1482–83 a master painter “was resident for the summer quarter”; in 1484–85 “a painter was resident all the year, and painters (in the plural) were at work”; in 1485–86 a painter named Gilbert was present; and in 1486–87, while a painter named William Baker was present, “the work was finished” and the painters were paid £8 7s 4d; see “Wall Paintings,” 2–4. 7. Ibid., 36. 8. Ibid. 9. Attwater, Penguin Dictionary of Saints, 361. 10. Fernie, Architectural History, 183. 11. The dating of the bosses is unclear. James, Sculptured Bosses, ii, says they were installed in the mid-fifteenth century; Whittingham, Bosses and Misericords, 13, writes: “Presumably the carvers moved on to this vault in about 1475 after completing the nave.” Atherton et al., Norwich Cathedral, 375, 460, contains contradictory information about the dates. 12. Sherman, “Ludus Coventriae,” 17–18. 13. James, Sculptured Bosses, 3. 14. The difficulty of studying the bosses from written sources is compounded by the creation of another numbering system by Whittingham, Bosses and Misericords, 12. 15. Barasch, “Norwich Cathedral,” 63. 16. James, Sculptured Bosses, 6. Although I believe that this conclusion bears reexamination, it is beyond the scope of this study to attempt it.

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17. Ibid., 2. 18. Barasch, “Norwich Cathedral,” 69, believes that this boss represents the emperor and his wife reunited and returning to their palace. However, the conical headpiece is consistently used to identify the empress, and the emperor would not ride sidesaddle. 19. Although in his introduction he clearly refers to the textual source of the bosses as “The Empress of Rome” (as found in Vincent de Beauvais), James, Sculptured Bosses, 1, adds the confusing statement “it is identical in its main features with Chaucer’s Man of Lawe’s Tale”; see also Cave, Roof Bosses, 201, for the same error. Barasch, “Norwich Cathedral,” corrects this error. 20. Barasch, “Norwich Cathedral,” 70–72, presents an alternate reading, suggesting that this boss depicts the dying empress in the presence of the Virgin Mary. 21. Chamberlayne, “Crown and Virgins,” 47. 22. Ibid., 60. 23. Ibid., 60–62. 24. For reference to Elizabeth Woodville’s visit to Norwich, see Atherton et al., Norwich Cathedral, 247. 25. Florence de Rome, ed. Wallensköld, vol. 2, from which I quote hereafter by line number in the text; the translations are my own. A second manuscript, used by Wallensköld in the establishment of his text, is owned by the d’Arcy Hutton estate, and a third, badly mutilated copy is at London, British Museum Lansdowne 362. 26. Heffernan, ed., Le Bone Florence of Rome, 17. 27. Schelp, Exemplarische Romanzen im Mittelenglischen, 114–33. 28. The French quotations are taken from the unpublished edition of her work by Curnow, “Critical Edition,” 910–13, and hereafter cited in the text by page number; the translations are my own. 29. Christine de Pizan, Book of the City of Ladies, xliv. Of the twenty-five complete manuscripts of Christine’s work, five were supervised by the author herself. In these, both the rubric and the first sentence of the tale refer to the heroine as Fleurence de Romme. 30. For Christine de Pizan’s use of the Miroir historial, see Curnow, “Critical Edition,” 193–96. 31. Mitchell, Thomas Hoccleve, 44. 32. Oesterley, ed., Gesta Romanorum, 648. 33. Published in appendix A of Wallensköld, “Conte de la femme chaste,” 111–16. 34. Herrtage, ed., Early English Versions, 311–22. 35. Ibid., 317. The maladies of the offending men are slightly different in the Continental Latin of Oesterly, Gesta Romanorum, 652: the knight is “epilenticus et claudus,” the untrustworthy servant is “cecus et surdus,” and the shipmaster is “ydropicus ac scabiosus.” 36. Herrtage, Early English Versions, 319–21. 37. The notion of “Entertaining Moral Stories” for “Fireside Recreation” is based on a passage in the Anglo-Latin Gesta; see Owst, Literature and Pulpit, 153.

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38. Ibid., 153–56, 207–9, and Herrtage, Early English Versions, viii. Herrtage, xviii, cites “numerous quotations from it [the Gesta Romanorum] in the Sermones Dominicales of John Felton,” compiled in 1431. On the use of moralizings in sermons, see Wenzel, Preachers, 206 and n. 118. 39. Both the translation and its Anglo-Latin original differ in some details from the Continental Latin version printed by Oesterley. For example, the empress is the daughter of the king of Hungary, a detail that is very likely the result of contamination from Handless Queen or Constance-type narratives. 40. My translation of the Middle English phrase; Herrtage, Early English Versions, 312. The phrase in the Anglo-Norman version is “Ego vero ero sicut turtur in vestra absentia”; see Wallensköld, “Conte de la femme chaste,” 111. 41. For a complete codicological description of the manuscript, see Manly and Rickert, Text of the Canterbury Tales, 1:207–18. 42. Ibid., 1:216. 43. Edwards, “Lydgate Manuscripts,” 20. 44. Boyd, Chaucer and the Medieval Book, 95. 45. Edwards, “Lydgate Manuscripts,” 20. 46. Manly and Rickert, Text of the Canterbury Tales, 1:210. 47. Toward the end of his life, Shirley “was tenant of a large house and four shops rented from St. Bartholomew’s Hospital”; see Boyd, Chaucer and the Medieval Book, 95. 48. Mitchell, “Hoccleve Studies,” 59, writes: “If Hoccleve the bureaucrat, scribe, poet and man died in ca. 1448, 1437, 1430, or 1426 (the last-named date being most probable), Hoccleve scholarship is alive, well, and thriving as never before. Moreover, Hoccleve’s literary reputation has never been higher.” 49. Burrow, “Hoccleve’s Series.” 50. Prior to Mitchell’s dissertation (Duke University, 1965), published in revised form as Thomas Hoccleve: A Study in Early Fifteenth-Century English Poetic, it was believed that Hoccleve’s source for his retelling of the empress of Rome was the Continental Latin Gesta Romanorum, published by Oesterley in 1872. Mitchell is correct in asserting that Hoccleve’s source was an English story and not the Continental text, but he identifies Hoccleve’s source as the Anglo-Latin text found in British Museum, MS. Harl. 2270, and does not discuss possible use of the English prose translation found in Harley 7333 (Thomas Hoccleve, 44–47, 86–91), though he is aware of this text, which he cites in 45 n. 42. My study of the texts indicates that Hoccleve might have been working from an earlier version of the text found in Harley 7333, or that he might have been using both the Latin and Middle English texts. 51. Doob, Nebuchadnezzar’s Children, 208–31. 52. Knapp, The Bureaucratic Muse, 159–83. 53. Burrow, “Hoccleve’s Series,” 268. 54. There are two editions of the Series: Hoccleve’s Works, ed. Furnivall and Gollanz, 93–242, here line 9; and Pryor, “Thomas Hoccleve’s Series.” Both use the slash [/] for Hoccleve’s virgula indicating a pause. Hereafter I quote the

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Furnivall edition by line number for the tale and page number for the moralization in the text. 55. Burrow, “Hoccleve’s Series,” 260. 56. Mitchell, Thomas Hoccleve, 55. 57. Doob, Nebuchadnezzar’s Children, 213, notes that it is “likely that the denouement of the story, with its emphasis on the disease produced by sin and on confession as a cure” led Hoccleve to translate the tale. 58. See Nolcken, “‘O, why ne had y lerned for to die?’” 59. Knapp, The Bureaucratic Muse, 181, views the dialogue and self-conscious compilation in the Series as “a projection of the labor in the Privy Seal into the world of poetic composition.”

Chapter 7. Helen of Constantinople 1. B.R. 9967, a beautiful, costly manuscript, consists of 188 folios on fine vellum in a single gothic bâtarde hand, with illuminated initials at the start of each of its 153 chapters (except the prologue). These elements of the ordinatio are accompanied by rubrics and numerous gold paraphs on either red or blue background. For discussions of the manuscript, see Librairie de Philippe le Bon, 159–60; Pantens, Manuscrits à peintures, 1460–1486, notice 25; Pinchart, “Miniaturistes,” 481; Smith, “Artistic Patronage”; Gheyn, Catalogue. For black-and-white reproductions of the illustrations discussed here, see Gheyn’s L’Ystoire de Helayne. 2. Frocheur, “Notice” and Belle Hélène de Constantinople; Ruths, Die französischen Fassungen; Krappe, “Belle Helaine”; Koopmans, “Aspects”; Verhuyck, “Et le quart est à Arras.” The discussion of La Belle Hélène in Smith, “Artistic Patronage,” 137–38, contains errors in the interpretation of the text. 3. For a list of the manuscripts and early printed books of both verse and prose versions, see Verhuyck, “Les manuscrits du poème.” The critical edition of the verse text La Belle Hélène de Constantinople is edited by Claude Roussel. Jehan Wauquelin’s Old French prose text La Belle Hélène de Constantinople is edited by Marie-Claude de Crécy. Hereafter Roussel’s edition will be cited by line number and de Crécy’s edition by page number; my translations. 4. Roussel, La Belle Hélène, 18–22; Wauquelin, La Belle Hélène, 15. 5. Morse, “Historical Fiction,” 48. 6. Ibid., 52. 7. Ibid., 56–57. 8. Matthieu, “Jehan Wauquelin,” 337. 9. Doutrepont, Littérature française, 22. 10. Ibid., 23. 11. Ibid., 29. 12. “60 livre de 40 gros la livre, ou cent-vingt livres tournois payable les premiers jours des mois de mai, septembre et de janvier sur la recette générale de Hainaut”; Matthieu, “Jehan Wauquelin,” 353–54. 13. Ibid., 340–41.

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14. Wauquelin, La Belle Hélène, xxxiii–xxxv. 15. Liédet lived in Hesdin, “la ville des ‘escripvains’” (Doutrepont, Littérature française, 35). The manuscript is mentioned in the court inventory of 1467. Court records tell us that Liédet was paid in November 1470 for a new cover in white leather to replace the original yellow leather one (ibid., 38 n. 3). 16. The original of Roger van der Weyden’s portrait is lost, but there are several copies; see Bonenfant, Philippe le Bon, 17. Among other depictions of the duke in manuscripts is fol. 1 of Wauquelin’s Chroniques de Hainault, Brussels, B.R. 9243; see also J. Coleman, Public Reading and the Reading Public, frontispiece. 17. Smith, “Artistic Patronage,” 114–59. 18. In fact, so precise are the details that, at one point in the narrative (Wauquelin, La Belle Hélène, 289), the author tells us that a tactic used by Amaury of Scotland to take Jerusalem was repeated by Thomas d’Aubemarle (Thomas de Marne or Marle) during the First Crusade. 19. Helen is depicted on fols. 39, 47v, 180v, 182v. 20. The best modern biography of Philip is Richard Vaughan’s Philip the Good. Bourassin, Philippe le Bon, relies heavily on the earlier biographies by Bonenfant and Ingham. 21. Philip was the first European aristocrat to keep official chroniclers; in addition to his official chronicler Georges Chastellain, numerous other contemporary historians have left important records of the activities of Philip’s court. For a list of available chronicles, see the bibliographies in Vaughn’s and Bourassin’s biographies. 22. Bourassin, Philippe le Bon, 391–93, provides a useful “Liste des Chevaliers de la Toison d’Or promus au temps de Philippe le Bon.” 23. “Livre des faits,” trans. Beaune, 1304–12. 24. Vaughn uses the term in the subtitle of his biography of Philip the Good; see also Bonenfant, Philippe le Bon, 82. 25. Bonenfant, Philippe le Bon, 78–79. 26. Ibid., 79–81. 27. Ibid., 81, describes his journey as triumphal. Bonenfant’s assessment is confirmed by the primary source cited in Vaughan, Philip the Good, 299–302. 28. Bonenfant, Philippe le Bon, 81–82; Philip, apparently embarrassed by Frederick’s absence, used the pretext of illness to avoiding attending himself. Nonetheless, Philip sent his approval for a plan to raise an army of 200,000 men, and promised to go on the crusade himself if he was able. 29. S. Farmer, Communities of Saint Martin, and Reames, “Saint Martin,” document the growth of the legend of St. Martin in France from the first vita, written by the bishop’s disciple Sulpicius Severus (ca. 396), up to Jacobus de Voragine’s Golden Legend (ca. 1260). 30. See the baptism of Craimbaut and his daughter (fol. 71), the baptism of Amaury (fol. 86), and the baptism of Malore and companions of the giant (fol. 174).

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31. Châtelet, Primitifs hollandais, 241. 32. J. Harvey, Plantagenets, 74 33. DNB, 9:510–11. 34. Chastellain, Oeuvres, 3:285–86. 35. For the role of public reading at the court of Philip the Good, see J. Coleman, Public Reading and the Reading Public, 118–21. 36. [Thomson], Chronicles of London Bridge, 275. 37. Chastellain, Oeuvres, 4:279. The translations of Chastellain are my own. 38. Other evidence that the real story of Margaret was transformed into a literary event is the account of a “représentation” held in the town of Hesdin in 1463/ 64. Chastellain tells us that seven crowns were represented: the king of France; King Edward of England; Queen Mary, mother of King Louis; the king of Aragon; the king of Norway and Denmark; Margaret, queen of England; and finally the emperor of Rome, in whose honor the show was organized (ibid., 4:427). 39. Ibid., 4:299–300. 40. Ibid., 4:307. 41. Ibid., 4:306. 42. Ibid., 4:307–9.

Conclusion 1. Le Mistére du Viel Testament, 1:lxvj–cxj. 2. The five early printed editions I examined were: (1) B.N. Rés. Y2 708: Paris, Veufve Nicholas Chrestien, s.d.; (2) B.N. Rés. Y2 760: Paris, Veuve Jean Bonfons, s.d.; (3) B.N. Ms. Room: Rothschild 4(6,71); Paris, [veuve Jehan Treperel, ca. 1510, according to spine and computer entry]; (4) L’Arsenal, 4° B.L. 4345 (Rés.): Lyon, Olivier Arnoullet, 1528; (5) L’Arsenal, 4° B.L. 4346 (Rés.): Paris, Nicolas Bonfons, 1586; see Wauquelin, La Belle Hélène, xx– xxiii. 3. Morin’s Catalogue Descriptif, 215–16, 397–99, 486, lists eleven extant copies of editions printed in Troyes in the eighteenth century. 4. Molanus, Natales Sanctorum Belgii, 65r–65v. I wish to thank Roger Dunkle, professor of classics at Brooklyn College, for help with this translation. 5. According to the New Grove Dictionary of the Opera, Schumann based his libretto on Ludwig Tieck’s Leben und Tod der heiligen Genoveva (1799) and Friedrich Hebbel’s Genoveva (1840). Other plays and operas about Geneviève include: Geneviève, ou l’innocence reconnue, tragédie chrétienne, attributed to René de Ceriziers and François d’Aure (1669); Geneviève de Brabant, mélodrame en 3 actes by César Ribié (1804); Geneviève de Brabant, opera-bouffe en 3 actes et 9 tableaux by Hector Crémieux (1868); Geneviève de Brabant, légende dramatique, en 5 actes by Charles Ségard (1902). 6. For a list of extant copies of L’Innocence reconnuë printed by the Bibliothèque Bleue, see Morin, Catalogue Descriptif, 264–69. The NBG also lists an edition under another title: Vie admirable de Geneviève de Brabant, 193–247.

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7. For a printed edition, see Bollème and Andriès, eds., Les Contes bleus, 237–335. 8. The printed text of the “Cantique” may be found in Bollème, ed., La Bible bleue, 161–64. I have not been able to learn if this song was ever printed with the melody; Bollème says that the song is to be sung to the tune “Que Devant.” The Imagerie Pellerin in Epinal may well have printed a broadsheet of the song, but it is not included in the 1982 collection of Epinal songs Rondes et chansons. 9. Bollème, La Bible bleue, 164. 10. Fontaine, History of Pedlars, 189–93. 11. Garneret, Crèche, 191–200. Although rich in detail, this study unfortunately does not include scholarly apparatus. 12. Ibid., 206.

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Index

Aacelin, Adalbero, 69 Abelard, 32 Abuse, sexual, 201n.14. See also Lust; Rape, attempted Accusations, 8, 10–11, 39 Accused-queen narratives: and Christian female martyrs, 15–16; and critics, 3, 201n.14; function of, 4; in historical narratives, 111, 113–14; origins of, 5–8; and other discourses, same period, 5; plays based on, 89–108; by secular men, 43–44; themes in, 8–12 (see also Themes); uses of, after Middle Ages, 190. See also Narratives, accused-queen Adalbero (archbishop of Reims), 69 Adam and Eve, story of, 46 Adé de Grandpré, 31 Adenet le Roi, 68, 71, 101 Aeneis (Heinrich von Veldeke), 57, 58 Affliction, 8; furnace of, 127, 159 (see also Isaiah 48:10); medieval authors and artists and, 108; redemptive value of, 11– 12. See also Suffering Against Our Will (Brownmiller), 201n.14 Agatha, Saint, 117, 144 Agnes (duchess of Bourbon), 181–82 Albrecht V (duke of Bavaria), 58 Alexander, 117 Alexander, Jonathan, 200n.5 Alexander III, 45 Alfred, 69 Alix of Burgundy, 71 Alla: in Chaucer’s tale, 131–32, 133; in Gower’s Confessio Amantis, 121–23; in Trevet’s Cronicles, 113, 114, 115

Allegories: in Gesta Romanorum, 155–56; in Hoccleve’s work, 164 Amaury (king of Scotland), 177–78, 218n.18 Anglo-Saxon Chronicle (Stafford), 70 Anjou, House of, 75 Anna, 13 Annales (Trevet), 110 Annals of Winchester (Richard of Devizes), 70 Annunciation, 22–23 Antoine de Croy, 177 Antoine (emperor of Constantinople), 172, 173 Antonia, 19 Apocrypha, 14 Apollonia, Saint, 143, 144 Aquinas, Thomas, 45–46 Archibald, Elizabeth, 44 Arion’s harp, 120 Armstrong, C.A.J., 140 Arnoullet, Olivier, 185 Arnulf of Carinthia, 68 Art and text, integrated study of, 5–6 Athelred II the Unready, 69, 117 Audience: female, 162; for Gautier de Coinci’s text, 29–32; reaction, 182–83; royal, 9 Barbara, Saint, 143 Baswell, Christopher, 115 Bauchun Chapel, 144–45, 187 Baudoin, 99 Beaufort, Joan (countess of Westmoreland), 158, 161

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Beaufort, Margaret, 140, 144 Beaumanoir, Philippe de. See Philippe de Beaumanoir (Philippe fils) “Beaumanoir’s La Manekine: Kin D(r)ead: Incest, Doubling, and Death” (Fenster), 40 Beauvais, Vincent de. See Vincent de Beauvais La Belle Hélène de Constantinople (Wauquelin), 7; and Chastellain’s Chronique, 180–84; discussion of, 167–85; illustrations of, 171–72, 173– 75, 187; produced for Philip the Good, 62; and St. Dympna, 16; story of, 171–73 Benson, C. David, 125 Berte aus grans piés (Adenet le Roi), 68, 71, 101 Bertha, 68 Berthe, 107 Berthequine, 101 Black Plague, 91, 92 Blamires, Alcuin, 13 Blanche of Burgundy, 68, 71, 72, 74 Blanche of Castile, 68 Blessebois, Pierre-Corneille, 192 Block, Edmund A., 109, 124 Boccaccio, 195n.8 Boethius, 11, 134 Bois, Jacques du, 170 Bokenham, Osbern, 140 Bonenfant, Paul, 176 The Book of the City of Ladies (Christine de Pizan), 28, 151–54, 195n.8; chastity in, 18–19; and Florence, 148; and secular ending to empress story, 139; and spread of empress story, 36 Bordier, Henri Léonard, 41 Boves, Enguerran de, 43 Boves, Mabille de. See Mabille de Boves Bozon, Nicholas de, 140 Bras, 173 Brice, Saint, 166, 167, 173, 174 Brienne, Raoul de. See Raoul de Brienne Brody, Saul, 124 La Brosse, 71 Brownmiller, Susan, 201n.14 Brun, 99

Brun, Jean-François, 193 Brundage, James, 46 Brut, 210n.12 Bühel, Hans von, 7 Burgundy, 7–8 Burrow, John, 158–59 Bus, Gervais du. See Gervais du Bus Buschinger, Danielle, 59 Calixtus III, 177 Camille, Michael, 108 Camino paupertatis, 12, 107–8, 127. See also Affliction; Isaiah 48:10 Cangé manuscript, 89, 186, 208n.25 The Canterbury Tales (Chaucer): and Constance stories, 109; in Harley 7333, 157; Kolve’s analysis of, 5; political implications of, 189; versus Series (Hoccleve), 159, 160; study of, 124 “Cantique de Sainte Geneviève,” 192–93 Capet, Hugh, 69, 202n.58 Catherine, Saint, 112, 143, 144 Cazelles, Brigitte, 26 Cazelles, Raymond, 92 Cecilia, Saint, 112 Cecily de Sandford, 47 Cerdicius, 117 Ceriziers, René de, 192 Chaillou de Pesstain, 74, 78, 85–86, 212n.48 Chamberlayne, Joanna, 147 Chambli, Pierre de. See Pierre de Chambli Characters: allegorized, 155–56; motivation of, 112–13, 152–53; supporting, 98–99 Charlemagne, 68 Charles V (king of France), 9, 92 Charles VI (king of France), 90, 176 Charles VII (king of France), 47, 177 Charles (count of Anjou), 75 Charles de Croy, 62 Charles of Lorraine, 69 Charles of Navarre, 91–92 Charles of Orleans, 180 Charles the Bold (duke of Burgundy), 62 Charles the Fat, 68 Chastellain, Georges, 180–83, 218n.21 Chastity: Christine de Pizan on, 18; devo-

Index tion to, 12, 14–19; in Gautier de Coinci’s text, 27–28; illustrations of, 23, 25; in Maillart’s text, 74; and married women, 17; moral tract on, 30–31 Chaucer, Geoffrey: anthology by, 110; and Christine de Pizan, 152; Constance story and, 2, 3; framed scenes in tale of, 128– 34; and governance, 189; and Gower’s Constance story, 118; influence of empress narratives on, 137; Legend of Good Women, 12, 152, 195n.8; literary critics and, 3; as protagonist’s protector, 11; and Trevet, 7, 109, 111, 113, 114; use of Gesta Romanorum by, 156. See also “The Man of Law’s Tale” (Chaucer) Chaucer and His Poetry (Kittredge), 125 Chaucer and the Imagery of Narrative (Kolve), 5 Chaucer’s Constance and Accused Queens (Schlauch), 3, 8 Chavannes-Mazel, Claudine, 34 Chess, game of: in Communiloquium (John of Wales), 206n.32; and gambling, 205n.25; in La Manekine (Philippe de Remi), 49, 50–51; in Le Roman du Comte d’Anjou (Maillart), 66–67, 75–76 Le Chevalier au Lion (Yvain) (Chrétien de Troyes), 21, 32 Chivalry, 175–76 Chrétien de Troyes, 21, 32 Christ, 130 Christina of Markyate, 47 Christine de Pizan: and antifemale writers, 11, 188, 189, 195n.8; and empress story, 36, 139; Florence of Rome story by, 148, 151–54; and happy endings, 28; and pairing Griselda with Florence, 18 Chronica majora (Paris), 47 Chroniclers, official, 218n.21 Chronicles of London Bridge, 180 Chronique (Chastellain), 180–84 Le Chronique métrique (Geffroi de Paris), 78, 80–81 Chroniques de Hainaut (Jacques de Guise), 170 Chroniques des ducs de Brabant (Edmond de Dynter), 170

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Chroniques de St. Denis, 71 Clark, Robert, 108 Clasby, Eugene, 134 Class Conflict (Hilton), 207n.8 Classes, lower, 99 Les Classiques Français du Moyen Age, 3 Clemence of Hungary, 81 Clement, 168 Clergy, 47–48 “The Clerk’s Tale” (Chaucer), 189 Clovis, 168 Cnut I (king of Denmark), 68, 69 Cnut II, 69 Coakley, John, 31 Coinci, Gautier de. See Gautier de Coinci Coleman, Joyce, 6 Commentary (Macrobius), 198n.19 Communiloquium (John of Wales), 206n.32 Concerning Famous Women (Boccaccio), 195n.8 Confessio Amantis (Gower): characterization of Constance in, 122–23; and Chaucer, 125, 126, 131; discussion of, 118–24; in Harley 7333, 157; illustration in, 212n.33; manuscript of, 110, 211n.29; and Trevet, 109, 111, 115, 121–23 Confession, 153–54 Confraternities, 89, 108 Confrérie, 89 Conradin, 75 Conrad of Marburg, 31 Consolation of Philosophy, 134 Constance: accusations of, 39; and La Belle Hélène, 167–68; chastity of, 17; and Christian female martyrs, 112; and confusion with empress story, 119; in Cronicles, 7; exile in, 39; in Gower’s Confessio, 122–23; as a historical figure, 112; within Holy Roman Empire, 61; Mai und Beaflor as, 59; La Manekine (Philippe de Remi) as, 38–39; in Miracles de Nostre Dame par personnages, 67; other versions of, 210n.12; stories about, 2, 3, 109–37; story of, as secular text, 3; and transition of rulers, 112

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“Conte d’amours” (Philippe de Remi), 41 “Le Conte de la femme chaste convoitée par son beau-frère” (Wallensköld), 8 Conversion, 114–15, 212n.41 Cornuälle, Heldris de, 195n.8 Correale, Robert, 111 Corruption, spiritual, 163 Cosmographia (Sylvestris), 136 Council of Ferrara, 176 Coutumes de Beauvaisis (Philippe de Beaumanoir), 9, 41 La Crèche et le théâtre populaire en Franche-Comté (Garneret), 193–94 “Crescentia,” 2. See also Empress of Rome story Critics, 3, 201n.14 Cronicles (Correale’s edition), 111 Cronicles (Trevet): Chaucer and, 125–26, 131; discussion of, 110–18; as first Constance story, 7, 109; Gower and, 121–23 “Crown and Virgins: Queenmaking during the Wars of the Roses” (Chamberlayne), 147 Croy, Antoine de, 177 Croy, Charles de, 62 Croy, Jean de, 62 Crucifixion, 168 Crusade fever, 176–79 Cunegund, Saint, 17, 68, 70–71 Cupid, 120 Cut-off hand motif, 39. See also The Handless Queen story; Mai und Beaflor Dame Philosophy, 134 Daniel, 14, 15 Daniel, Book of, 14 Dante Alighieri, 71 Darus, 117 D’Aubemarle, Thomas, 218n.18 D’Avesnes, Marguerite, 31 Davis, Natalie Zemon, 45 Dean, Ruth, 117 De contemptu mundi. See De miseria condicionis humane (Lotario dei Segni) Decretals (Gratian), 45 Dedication, 119–21

De la Chasteleinne de Vergy, 83 Delany, Sheila, 140 Delilah, 13 “De Matrona” (Marbod), 13 De miseria condicionis humane (Lotario dei Segni), 125, 127, 134–36 De Regimine Principum (Giles of Rome), 120–21 Deschamps, Eustache, 136 D’Escouchy, Matthieu, 180 Detraction, 121–22 “Dialogue Between a Knight and a Lady,” 83–84 “Die Königen von Frankreich und der ungetreue Marschalk,” 7 Dive, Robert de. See Robert de Dive D’Oignies, Marie, 26 Domild, 112–13, 122 Doob, Penelope, 158 Dorothy, Saint, 143, 144 Le double lai de la fragilité humaine (Deschamps), 136 Douglas, James, 175 Duby, Georges, 45 Dundes, Alan, 40 “Du Roy Phelippe qui ores regne” (Geffroi de Paris), 82 Dympna, Saint, 16 Dynter, Edmond de, 170 Early English Text Society, 3 Eberle, Patricia, 213n.61 Edgard, 17 Edgarus, 117 Edith, 70 Edmond de Dynter, 170 Edmund of Abingdon, 47 Edward Æthling, 16 Edward I, 117 Edward III, 117 Edward IV, 140 Edwards, A.S.G., 157 Edward (the Confessor, son of Emma), 17, 69, 70 Edwardus, 117 Einhard, 68 Elda, 113–14, 115 Eleanor de Montfort, 202n.45

Index Eleanor of Aquitaine, 46, 47, 117 “Eliduc” (Marie de France), 51 Elisabeth of Spalbeek, 71 Elizabeth, Saint (of Hungary), 12, 17, 26, 31, 199n.35 Elizabeth of Hainaut, 47 Elizabeth of York, 140 Eloi, Saint, 93 Emere, 148, 149, 150–51 Emma: queen of England, 69–70; queen of France, 68–69; reality versus fiction, 117, 204n.4 “The Empress of Rome” (Gautier de Coinci): as addition to codices, 21; and fifteenth-century storytellers, 138–47; illustrations in, 22–25; importance of, 21, 22; Latin glosses in, 9; retellings of, 32–36; suffering, 12; text of, versus play, 99–100; versified by Hoccleve, 158 “The Empress of Rome” (Jean de Vignay), 34–36 Empress of Rome story: artistic representations of, 140–47, 187 (see also Eton Chapel); chastity in, 17; and Chaucer, 137; and Constance story, 119; dramatized, 89, 94–100; versus Florence of Rome story, 149–51; in Gesta Romanorum, 154–57; illustrations of, 118–19, 200n.52; in Miracles de Nostre Dame par personnages, 67; as religious text, 3; as a type, 1–2, 3 England, 6–7, 139, 186–87 Enguerrand de Marigny, 79–81 Enguerran de Boves, 43 Enikel, Jansen, 7, 58, 111 “Entertaining Moral Stories” (Swan and Hooper), 156 Envy, 121 Eraclius (emperor), 58 Eraclius (Otte), 57, 58 Eschenbach, Wolfram von, 57 Essex, R. H., 141 Esther, 13, 14 Eton Chapel, 1–2, 140–44, 187, 214n.6 Eve, 13, 46 Exile: in La Belle Hélène, 172–73; in Constance stories, 39; as empress story

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theme, 2; in Eton frescoes, 142; in Gower’s Confessio, 123; in Trevet’s Constance story, 113 La Faiblesse chez Gautier de Coinci (Cazelles), 26 Faith, Saint, 112 Farsit, Hugh, 21 Feast of the Pheasant, 169, 175, 176 “The Femme Fatale” (Marbod), 13 Fenster, Thelma, 40, 44 Fiction, historical, 168–69 First Crusade, 218n.18 Fleck, Konrad, 61 Fleming, John V., 5–6 Florence of Rome: versus empress of Rome story, 149–51; and Eton frescoes, 144; first appearance of, 148–49; and Griselda, 18; influence of, 139; narratives about, 147–51 Flore und Blanscheflur (Fleck), 61 France, 5, 7, 186 France, Marie de. See Marie de France Frauenkirche, 192 Frederick III, 176–77 Freudian interpretation, 40, 201n.14 Froissart, 90, 91 Fugger, Johann Jakob, 57–58 Furnace of affliction, 127, 159. See also Affliction; Isaiah 48:10 Furnace of poverty, 12, 107–8. See also Isaiah 48:10 Garcy (king of Constantinople), 148, 149 Garneret, Jean, 193–94 “Gaudeat Hungaria,” 12 Gaudine, marquis of, 107 Gautier de Coinci: Chaucer and, 137; depiction of empress by, 188; and Eton Chapel frescoes, 141–44; versus Gesta Romanorum, 155; heroine of, 154; Latin glosses of, 9; and manuscript analysis, 5; Miracles de Nostre Dame, 20–36; religious theme of, 186; and social change, 189; and suffering, 12; text of, versus play, 99–100; and the Virgin Mary, 13 Geffroi de Paris, 76, 78, 82–83

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Geneviève de Brabant (opera, Offenbach), 192 Geneviève de Brabant (oratorio, Satie), 192 Geneviève of Brabant, 7–8, 13, 17–18, 190–94 Genius, 120, 126 Genoveva. See Geneviève of Brabant Genoveva (opera, Schumann), 192 Geoffrey of Monmouth, 170 Geoffroy de Thoisy, 176 Germain, Jean, 176 Germany, 7–8 Gervais du Bus, 74, 78 Gesta Romanorum: Chaucer and, 137; discussion of, 154–57; and empress story, 36, 119, 139; and Eton frescoes, 144; in Harley 7333, 157; Hoccleve and, 7, 158, 216n.50; versions of, 216n.39 Giles of Rome, 120–21 Girart de Rousillon, 170 “The Girl Without Hands” (Grimm), 39–40 Gisle, 64 Glove, white, 55, 202n.58, 203n.60 Glutz, Rudolf, 207n.5 Gnarra, Irene, 51, 56 Gobert, 99 God, 97, 131, 155–56 Godwin (earl of Wessex), 69, 70 Golden Legend, 144 Goldsmiths, confraternity of, 89 Golo, 17, 18, 191–92 Gottfried von Strassburg, 57 Governance, 77, 189 Gower, John: as anthology author, 110; and Chaucer, 127; and Gesta Romanorum, 156; and governance, 189; in Harley 7333, 157; heroine of, versus Trevet’s, 123; manuscript of, 211n.29; and Trevet, 7, 109, 111, 113, 212n.41; works of, 118 “Gower’s Ethical Microcosm and Political Macrocosm” (Porter), 120 Les Grandes Chroniques de France, 79–80, 202n.58 Grandpré, Adé de, 31

Gratian, 45 Great Ordinance of March 1357, 92 Greed, 74 Gregory VII, 45 Grimm, 39 Griselda, 18, 151, 152, 209n.45 “Griselidis” (Philippe de Mézières), 91 Guinevere, 188 Guise, Jacques de, 170 Hagar, 13 Handless Maiden story, 59 The Handless Queen story, 67, 89, 95, 100–108 Hans von Bühel, 7 Haraldus, 117 Hardeknoutus, 117 Harley 7333, 156–57, 216n.50 Healing: and confession, 153–54; in “The Empress of Rome” (Gautier de Coinci), 23–24, 25, 27; in “The Empress of Rome” (play), 96–97, 100; and Eton frescoes, 143; in Florence of Rome story, 150; in Hoccleve’s tale, 163; with prayer, 96–97; and “The Tale of Jereslaus’s Wife,” 190 Heffernan, Carol Falvo, 148 Heinrich von Veldeke, 57, 58 Heldris de Cornuälle, 195n.8 Helen of Constantinople, 184–85, 190 Héloise, 32 Henry, Albert, 43 Henry I, 117 Henry II (emperor), 17, 68 Henry II (king of England), 10, 117 Henry III (duke of Brabant), 47, 71, 117 Henry V (emperor), 117 Henry VI, 1, 157, 178–79, 180 Henry VII, 140 Henry (fictional king of England), 172, 173, 178 Hermengild, 113, 115, 122, 212n.41 Heroines: fictional, 9–10; narrative, versus Christian female martyrs, 15–16; virtues of, 12 Hester, 96 Hidulphus (bishop of Trier), 18, 192

Index Hilton, Rodney, 207n.8 Histoire d’Alexandre (Wauquelin), 170 Histoire de Saint Louis (Jean de Joinville), 205n.27 Historia Regum Britanniae (Geoffrey of Monmouth), 170 Historia (Trevet), 110 Historical documents, 68–72 “Historical Fiction in Fifteenth-Century Burgundy” (Morse), 168 History, continuity of, 116–17 Hoccleve, Thomas: and affliction, 189– 90; discussion of, 158–65; and empress story, 139; and Gesta Romanorum, 154–55, 156, 216n.50; introduction to work of, 7; and suffering, 184; and “The Tale of Jereslaus’s Wife,” 36 Holiness, 8 Holy Roman Empire, 61, 69 Hooper, Wynnard, 156 Humphrey (duke of Gloucester), 158, 161 Hundred Years’ War, 92 Illustrations: in La Belle Hélène, 167, 170, 173–75; in Confessio Amantis (Gower), 212n.33; in “The Empress of Rome” (Jean de Vignay), 34–36; in Gower’s Constance story, 118–19; in Handless Queen play, 103–4; in La Manekine en prose (Wauquelin), 63– 64; in La Manekine (Philippe de Remi), 37–38, 54–57, 200n.6; in Le Roman du Comte d’Anjou (Maillart), 83–88; similarity between, 200n.52; in Trevet’s story, 115–16 Imagerie Pellerin, 192 Incest: and blame, 40; definition of, 45– 47; in the Handless Queen play, 101–2, 106; in La Manekine (Philippe de Remi), 39, 44, 47–48, 49; representation of, 206n.33; in Roman du Comte d’Anjou (Maillart), 66; and St. Dympna, 16; as theme, 2, 4 The Incest Theme in Literature and Legend (Rank), 4 Inheritance, theme of, 37–38, 53

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Injustice: judicial, 10–11, 14–15; social, 10–11, 97–98, 101–3, 104 Innocent III, 126, 127, 134–36. See also Lotario dei Segni Innocent IV, 17 Isabelle of Bavaria, 90 Isabelle of Bourbon, 177 Isabelle of Portugal, 175 Isabelle (queen of England), 34 Isaiah 48:10, 107–8, 127, 159, 184, 189– 90. See also Affliction; Furnace of poverty Ishmael, 13 Isolde, 189 The Jacquerie, 91 Jacques de Guise, 170 Jacques de Lalaing, 175–76 Jacques du Bois, 170 James, Montague Rhodes, 141, 145, 146 James II (king of Scotland), 175 Jean de Croy, 62 Jean de Joinville, 205n.27 Jean de Meun, 45, 75 Jean de Vignay, 33, 34–36, 151, 153, 154 Jean (duke of Brabant), 71 Jeanne de Bourgogne (wife of Philip V), 74. See also Joan of Burgundy (wife of Philip V) Jeanne de Bourgogne (wife of Philip VI), 34. See also Joan of Burgundy (wife of Philip VI) Jehan et Blonde (Lécuyer), 43 Jehan et Blonde (Philippe de Remi), 41 Jesus Christ, 155, 156, 164 Joan of Burgundy (wife of Philip V), 74; charges against, 79–80; and “Du Roy Phelippe qui ores regne” (Geffroi de Paris), 82; as historical figure, 68, 71, 72; and Le Roman du Comte d’Anjou (Maillart), 78, 83 Joan of Burgundy (wife of Philip VI): and Miracles de Nostre Dame (Gautier de Coinci), 9, 12; and Vignay, 33, 34 Joan of Navarre, 79 John, Saint, 97 John II (the Good), 9, 33, 91–92

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John of Wales, 206n.32 John the Fearless, 171 John VIII (emperor), 176 Joiie, 64. See also Joy Joinville, Jean de, 205n.27 Joy, 38, 43–44, 48, 49, 52, 56 Joy, sexual, 52–53, 204n.83 “The Joys of Heaven” (Hoccleve), 164 Judicial system, 10–11 Judith, 13, 14, 68, 96 Juliana, Saint, 143, 144 Julian of Norwich, 140 Kaiserchronik, 7, 58, 111 Karl, Louis, 31 Kempe, Margery, 140 Kittredge, George Lyman, 125 Knut, 117 Koenig, V. Frederic, 20 Kolve, V. A., 5, 111, 124 Königstochter von Frankreich (Hans von Bühel), 7 Lais (Marie de France), 187 Lalaing, Jacques de, 175–76 Lateran Councils, 46 Latin glosses: Chaucer’s, 135–36; Gautier de Coinci’s, 9; Gower’s, 136; Wauquelin’s, 64–65 “Learn to Die” (Hoccleve), 164 Lécuyer, Sylvie, 43 “Legenda de Constancia,” 210n.12 Legend of Good Women (Chaucer), 12, 152, 195n.8 Legends of Holy Women (Bokenham), 140 Legends of King Arthur (Whitaker), 203n.58 Leocadia, Saint, 21 Leprosy, 27, 98, 198n.20 Letters, forged, 2, 10–11, 104–5, 172 Letter to Cupid (Hoccleve), 161 Lewis, Suzanne, 6 Liber decem capitulorum (Marbod), 13 Liédet, Loyset, 167, 170 The Life of St. Denis, 108 Life of the Virgin Mary (Lydgate), 140

L’Innocence reconnuë (René de Ceriziers), 192 Lives of the Two Offas (Paris), 111 Lost Books of the Bible, 196n.20 Lotario dei Segni (later Innocent III), 125, 126. See also De miseria condicionis humane (Lotario dei Segni) Lothair (king of France), 68 Louis V, 69 Louis VII, 46 Louis IX (king of France), 34, 42, 206n.27 Louis X, 80–81 Louis (dauphin), 71 Louis the Pious, 68 Lover, 126 Low Countries, 7–8 Lucretia, 18–19 Lucy, Saint, 143, 144 Ludie, 174 Lust: dangers of, 26–28; in “The Empress of Rome” (play), 98; in Gower’s Confessio, 122; in La Manekine (Philippe de Remi), 38, 101; in Le Roman du Comte d’Anjou (Maillart), 72, 74, 75; Susanna and male, 14; as theme, 2; and white glove, 55; women as personification of, 8 Lydgate, John, 140, 156 Mabille de Boves, 42, 43 Machary, 148 Macrobius, 198n.19 Mahaut (countess of Artois), 42, 80 “The Maiden Without Hands,” 2, 167–68. See also Constance Maillart, Jehan: and clergy, 48; and governance, 77; governmental position of, 73–75; historical connection and, 10; and narratives from France, 7; political message of, 77, 78; and poverty, 212n.48; as protagonist’s protector, 11; and social change, 189; specific political events and the Roman, 83, 206n.35. See also Le Roman du Comte d’Anjou (Maillart) Mai und Beaflor, 7, 41, 57–61, 59 Malcolm III (king of Scotland), 17

Index “La Manekine,” 49. See also Joy La Manekine en prose (Wauquelin), 62– 65; introduction to work of, 7 La Manekine (Philippe de Remi), 7, 200n.5; authorship of, 41–43; and La Belle Hélène, 168; condition of miniatures in, 200n.6; discussion of, 37–65; as dramatized story, 89; versus the Handless Queen play, 100–101; illustrations in, 54–57; incest motif in, 16; letters in, 104–5; and Mai und Beaflor, 59–61; and marriage, 44–48, 48–53; prose translation of, 62–65; and Le Roman du Comte d’Anjou, 85; translated by Wauquelin, 170 “La Manequine,” 49. See also Joy Manfred (king of Sicily), 75 Manning, Stephen, 128 “The Man of Law’s Tale” (Chaucer): author as protector in, 11; as Constance story, 2, 3; conversions in, 115; discussion of, 124–37; framed scenes in, 128– 34; in Harley 7333, 157; literary critics and, 3; personal use of, 189; and Trevet, 109 Marbod of Rennes, 13, 15–16 Marcel, Etienne, 91, 92 Margareta (Saint Margaret), 117 Margaret of Anjou, 179, 180 Margaret (queen of Scotland), 16–17 Marguerite d’Avesnes, 31 Marguerite la Porete, 79 Marguerite (of Burgundy), 68, 71, 72, 74, 80–81 Mariannes, 18–19 Marie de France, 51, 187 Marie d’Oignies, 26 Marie of Anjou, 47 Marie of Brabant, 68, 71 Marie of Guelders, 175 Marigny, Enguerrand de, 79–81 Marriage: affection in, 50; ideal, 48–53; incestuous, 101–2; medieval debate about, 44–48; spousal choice and, 45–47 Marshal, William, II (earl of Pembroke), 47

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Martin, Saint, 166, 167, 168, 173, 174, 177 Martyrs, Christian female, 15–16, 112 Mary of Woodstock, 110, 114, 115, 116 Matilda, 117 Matthieu d’Escouchy, 180 Maximilian I (duke of Bavaria), 58 McCracken, Peggy, 4 McNamara, Jo Ann, 26 “Menekine,” 49. See also Joy Menelaus, 155 Merelaus, 155 Mertens, Volker, 61 Meun, Jean de. See Jean de Meun Mézières, Philippe de. See Philippe de Mézières Middle Ages: models of good women, 188–89; uses of accused-queen narratives after, 190; view of, 195n.5 Miélot, Jean, 36 Miller, Robert, 135 Miracle of the Daughter of the King of Hungary (play), 100–108. See also The Handless Queen story Miracles and the Medieval Mind (Ward), 21 Miracles de Nostre Dame (Gautier de Coinci): Chaucer and, 137; Christine de Pizan and, 151; discussion of, 20– 36; distribution of, 138; and Eton Chapel frescoes, 141; and Gower, 118; Latin glosses in, 9; and manuscript analysis, 5; the Virgin Mary in, 13 Miracles de Nostre Dame par personnages, 67, 89–91, 92, 139, 207n.5 Miroir historial (Jean de Vignay), 33, 34– 36, 151–52, 153 Mirour de l’omme (Gower), 118 Le Mistère du Viel Testament, 190 Mitchell, Jerome, 154–55, 158, 162, 216n.50 Molanus, Johannes, 13, 17, 191, 192 Monfort, Simon de, 47 Montfort, Eleanor de, 202n.45 Moralizing, 155–56, 163–64, 165, 204n.78 Morice, 113, 126

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Morold, 203n.58 Morse, Ruth, 168–69 Muscatine, Charles, 132 Mylys, 148, 149–50 Naomi, 13 Narratives, accused-queen: from Burgundy, 7–8; Chaucer and, 137; from England, 6–7; Florence of Rome, 147–51; from France, 5, 7; function of, 4; from Germany, 7–8; in Harley 7333, 157; historical, 111, 113–14; interpretation of, 4; from Low Countries, 7–8; models of good women in, 13–19, 188–89; secularized ending in, 139; types of, 2–3; uses of, after Middle Ages, 190 Narrator, Chaucer’s, 124–27, 213n.61 Natales Sanctorum Belgii (Molanus), 17, 191–92 Nebuchadnezzar, 119 “The Need to Give: Suffering and Female Sanctity in the Middle Ages” (McNamara), 26 Neville, Cecily, 140 Nicholas de Bozon, 140 Nicholas IV, 42 Noblewomen, historical, 68–72 Norwich Cathedral, 144–47 Nuns, 29–31 Octavianus, 154 Oesterley, Hermann, 154, 216n.39 Offenbach, Jacques, 192 Old Testament, 13–15 Oraculum, 198n.19 Order of the Golden Fleece, 169, 171, 175 “Originality, Controlling Purpose, and Craftsmanship in Chaucer’s Man of Law’s Tale” (Block), 109 Osanne, Queen, 107 Otes (king of Rome), 148 Otte, 57, 58 Otto I (emperor), 68 Pagurelias, Mary, 206n.33 Paris, 91–93 Paris, Geffroi de. See Geffroi de Paris

Paris, Matthew, 6–7, 47, 111 Partridge, Stephen, 136 Paula, Saint, 32, 199n.35 Penelope, 18–19 Penn, Dorothy, 94 Pepin the Short, 68, 107 Pesstain, Chaillou de. See Chaillou de Pesstain Petrarch, 91 Petroff, Elizabeth, 26 Philip III (king of France), 68, 71 Philip IV (king of France), 68, 71, 76. See also Philip the Fair Philip V (king of France), 72, 76, 78. See also Philip the Long Philip VI (king of France), 9, 34 Philip Augustus (king of France), 10, 47 Philippe de Beaumanoir (Philippe fils), 7, 9, 42, 43 Philippe de Mézières, 91, 209n.45 Philippe de Remi (Philippe père): and chess game, 75; and de Croy family, 62; and the Handless Queen play, 100– 101, 104–5; and incest motif, 16; life of, 41–42; and La Manekine, 37–65; and social change, 189; translation of work by, 170 Philip the Fair: court politics of, 48; and France’s throne, 34; and Maillart, 73– 75; Maillart and, 66–67, 78. See also Philip IV (king of France) Philip the Good (duke of Burgundy): analogy of, 174; biographies of, 218n.20; and chivalric ethos, 176–79; court of, 140, 187; and crusade fever, 172, 175– 76; and Jehan Wauquelin, 62, 167, 169, 170; and Margaret of Anjou, 180; and persecuted queens, 179–85; portrait of, 171; translation of Miracles for, 36 Philip the Long, 72, 78, 81, 82, 83. See also Philip V (king of France) Philomela, 188 Pierre de Chambli, 75, 85 Pity, 132–34 Pizan, Christine de. See Christine de Pizan Plays, 89–108 Pope, 61, 98, 101–3, 209n.39

Index Porter, Elizabeth, 120–21 Poverty: in Chaucer’s tale, 127; contrasted with rich life, 212n.48; furnace of, 12, 107–8 (see also Isaiah 48:10); in Maillart’s Roman, 74, 85–87; and medieval authors and artists, 108; and spiritual purity, 108 Power struggles, political, 66–72; in Les Grandes Chroniques de France, 79; and Maillart’s Roman, 75, 83; in Paris, 91– 93; and women as dangerous, 77 Prayer, 96–97 Protagonist, noble female, 8–10, 195n.8 Public Reading and the Reading Public (Coleman), 6 Pucelle, Jean, 24 Purgatorio (Dante), 71 Pygmalion, 51 “Que Devant,” 192 Queens, historical, 9–10, 179–85 Queenship, 4, 196n.11 Rachel, 13 Rank, Otto, 4, 40 Raoul de Brienne, 91, 92 Raoul III (count of Soissons), 31 Rape, attempted, 2, 113, 122, 150. See also Lust Readers, reactions of, 182–83 Reading Images (Lewis), 6 Reason, 159–60 Rebecca, 13–14, 18–19 Regalado, Nancy, 206n.35 Reinstatement, 2 Relics, saintly, 21 Remi, Philippe de. See Philippe de Remi (Philippe père) Reunion, 51–52, 150–51, 213n.55 Richarde, 68 Richard I (duke of Normandy), 69 Richard II, 110, 118, 119 Richard III, 140 Richard of Devizes, 70 The Riverside Chaucer (Eberle), 213n.61 Robert (archbishop of Rouen), 70 Robert de Dive, 30, 31

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Robert of Artois, 42 Roi, Adenet le. See Adenet le Roi Rolin, Nicholas, 177 The Romance of Adultery: Queenship and Sexual Transgression in Old French Literature (McCracken), 4 Romance of the Rose (Jean de Meun), 75. See also Roman de la Rose (Jean de Meun) Roman de Fauvel (Chaillou de Pesstain), 74, 85–86, 212n.48 Roman de Fauvel (Gervais du Bus), 74 Roman de la Rose (Jean de Meun), 45, 51. See also Romance of the Rose (Jean de Meun) Roman de Silence (Heldris de Cornuälle), 195n.8 Le Roman du Comte d’Anjou (Maillart): chess game in, 66–67; historical connections of, 10; illustrations in, 83–88; manuscripts of, 204n.1; plot summary of, 72–73 Le Roman du Hem (Sarrasin), 37, 43 Roques, Mario, 85 Rothschild, James de, 190 Roussel, Claude, 44 Rulers: continuum of, 116–17; Gower on, 123–24; injustice of, 97–98, 101–3, 104; transition of, 112 Runnalls, Graham, 89–91, 93, 94, 99 Rutebeuf, 199n.35 Ruth, 18–19 Saints, 16–18, 21. See also Martyrs, Christian female; individual saints Salomon (king of Hungary), 65 “Salus d’amours” (Philippe de Remi), 41 Sanctity, female, 140 Sandford, Cecily de, 47 Sarah, 13–14, 18–19 Sargent-Baur, Barbara, 42 Sarrasin, 37 Satie, Erik, 192 Schlauch, Margaret, 3, 8, 187 Schumann, Robert, 192 The Sculptured Bosses in the Roof of the Bauchun Chapel (James), 145

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Secretum Secretorum, 120 Sekyngton, William, 144 Self-mutilation, 38, 49 Series (Hoccleve): as autobiography, 158– 61; and empress story, 36; empress story in, 139; and furnace of affliction, 189– 90; introduction to, 7; and “The Tale of Jereslaus’s Wife,” 158 Sheba, queen of, 96 Shepherd, Meg, 44 Sherman, Helen, 145 Shirley, John, 157 Sickness, 95–96 Siegfried, 17–18, 191 Siffroi. See Siegfried Simon de Monfort, 47 “Skizzen zu ‘Mai und Beaflor’” (Buschinger), 59 Slander, 2, 10–11, 18–19, 131 Social change, 189 Social criticism, 90 Song of Solomon 6:10, 96 Les Soupirs de Sifroi, ou L’Inocence reconnue (Blessebois), 192 Speculum historiale (Vincent de Beauvais), 6, 33, 111, 137, 138 Speculum maius (Vincent de Beauvais), 33 Spiegel, Gabrielle, 5 Spiritual authority, 25–29, 40, 138 Spiritual strength, 127–33 Stafford, Pauline, 70 Staging, 94 Stake, burning at, 56 Stones, Alison, 54, 56 Strassburg, Gottfried von, 57 Strayer, Joseph, 73–74, 75 Stuard, Susan, 45 Suchier, Hermann, 63 Suffering, 100, 101, 106–7, 108, 183–84. See also Affliction Susanna: in Bible, 14–15; in Book of the City of Ladies (Christine de Pizan), 18–19; and Emma (queen of England), 70; in “The Empress of Rome” (play), 96; story of, 190; victimization of, 186 Swan, Charles, 156

Swithun, Saint, 70 Sylvestris, Bernardus, 136, 213–14n.61 “The Tale of Jereslaus’s Wife” (Hoccleve): discussion of, 161–63; as empress story, 36; healing in, 190; and heroine’s lack of name, 139; introduction to, 7 “The Tale of Jonathas” (Hoccleve), 163, 164–65 Tarquin, 19 Taxes, 91, 92 Taylor, Andrew, 6 Templars, 74 Le Temple de Bocace (Chastellain), 181 Text and art, integrated study of, 5–6 Textes Littéraires Français, 3 Texts: hagiographic, 15–18; overview of principal, 6–12 Textual Situations (Taylor), 6 Thelous, 113 Themes: in accused-queen narratives, 8– 12; of conversion, 114–15, 212n.41; of detraction, 121–22; in “The Empress of Rome” play, 94–95; of envy, 121; of exile (see Exile); of forged letters, 2, 10–11, 104–5, 172; of greed, 74; in the Handless Queen play, 95; of healing (see Healing); of incest (see Incest); of inheritance, 37–38, 53; of injustice (see Injustice); of lust (see Lust); of pity, 132–34; political lessons as, 124; of poverty (see Poverty); of reunion, 51– 52, 150–51, 213n.55; of slander (see Slander); of suffering (see Suffering); in Wauquelin and Chastellain’s works, 183–84 Theophilus, story of, 21 Thibaut of Champagne, 71 Thierry, King, 107 Thoisy, Geoffroy de, 176 Thomas d’Aubemarle, 218n.18 Thomas Hoccleve: A Study in Early Fifteenth-Century English Poetic (Mitchell), 216n.50 Tiberius Caesar, 33 Tiberius Constantine, 112 Titus, 168

Index Le Traité d’Amours (Clef d’Amours), 83 Treason, 104–5 Treasure of the City of Ladies (Christine de Pizan), 195n.8 Trevet, Nicholas: and Chaucer, 127; and Gower, 123, 212n.41; as source, 7, 109; works of, 110–11 Tristan, 203n.58 Troyes, Chrétien de. See Chrétien de Troyes Truce of Tours, 180 Turbulence, political, 79–81 Tyrry, Sir, 148 “Un Songe” (Geffroi de Paris), 76 Ursula, Saint, 143 Uta, 68 Vaughan, Richard, 177 Vecchio, Silvana, 31 Veldeke, Heinrich von. See Heinrich von Veldeke Venus, 120 Vespasian, 168 Vie des Pères, 89, 95 Vignay, Jean de. See Jean de Vignay Vincent de Beauvais: and Chaucer, 137; and distribution of empress story, 111; empress story by, 6; heroine of, versus Christine de Pizan’s Florence, 154; and Louis IX’s patronage, 34; and parallelism, 153; retelling of empress story, 138; Virgin Mary account by, 33 Violence, of men, 149–50 Virgin Mary: accusation of, 196n.20; and Bauchun Chapel, 144, 146; and Chamberlayne’s article, 147; Chaucer

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and, 131, 132–33; and Eton Chapel frescoes, 1, 141, 142; in Gautier de Coinci’s narrative, 1, 2, 27, 138; in Geneviève story, 192; and Gesta Romanorum, 155; glorification of, 93–94, 95; help from, 5, 12, 107; illustrations of, 22–23, 25, 35; in La Manekine (Philippe de Remi), 49; miracles of, 7, 21, 197n.1; in play, 96–97, 99–100; and spiritual authority, 29, 40; as ultimate virtuous woman, 13; in Vincent de Beauvais’s work, 33 Virtue, 12, 212n.41 Vox Clamantis (Gower), 118 Waleran de Wavrin, 176 Wallensköld, Axel Gabriel, 8, 148 Ward, Benedicta, 21 Wauquelin, Jehan, 7, 16; and La Manekine en prose, 41, 62–65; and La Belle Hélène, 167–85 Wavrin, Waleran de, 176 Waynflete, William, 214n.6 Weisman, Hope Phyllis, 124 Weltchronik (Enikel), 7, 58, 111 Weyden, Roger van der, 171 Whitaker, 203n.58 “The Wife of Bath’s Tale” (Chaucer), 189 William the Conqueror, 17 Winifred, Saint, 143, 144 Wisdom, 164 Wolfram von Eschenbach, 57 Xantippe, 13 Ysabel, 99, 107

Nancy B. Black is professor of English at Brooklyn College, City University of New York. She has published articles in Studies in Iconography, Romanic Review, French Studies, Fifteenth-Century Studies, and TEXT, and is the editor and translator of The Perilous Cemetery (L’Atre Périlleux) (1994).