WAS CHRISTINE DE PIZAN AT POISSY 1418-1429?

Abstract

In her ground-breaking work on Christine de Pizan, Marie-Josephe Pinet surmised that Christine de Pizan spent the last years of her life in the royal priory of St Louis at Poissy.1 The evidence for her claim is a marginal note found in a copy of William Worcester's Boke of Noblesse.Notandum est quod Cristina [fuit] domina praeclara natu et moribus et manebat in domo religiosarum dominarum apud Passye prope Parys; et ita virtuosa fuit quod ipsa exhibuit plures clericos studentes in universitate parisiensi, et compilare fecit plures libros virtuosos, utpote Liber Arboris Bellorum, et doctores racione eorum exhibiciones attribuerunt nomen autoris Christinae, sed aliquando nomen autoris clerici studentis imponitur in diversis libris; et vixit circa annum Christi 1430, sed floruit ab anno 1400.2(It is to be noted that Christine, a lady distinguished in birth and behaviour stayed at the house of nuns at Passy near Paris, and she was so virtuous that she provided exhibitions for many student clerks at the university of Paris and had several virtuous books compiled like the book of The Tree of Battles, and because of these bursaries the doctors assigned the name of Christine as author, but sometimes the name of a clerical student is placed as author in several books; and she lived around the year 1430, but she flourished from the year 1400.)3Pinet admits that this note does not prove that Christine spent her declining years at Poissy but then goes on to say, 'this note is by William Worcester, secretary to John Fastolf, who frequendy resided in Paris, during the English occupation. It was then common knowledge that Christine lived at Poissy.'4 Since Pinet adopted this surmise it has been accepted by Christine's most influential biographer and often repeated.5 Scholars of Christine regularly announce it as fact that Christine spent her last days at Poissy, and, because of it, some have developed a particular interest in the Royal Domincan Priory of St Louis.It is the aim of this article to show that far too much credence has been placed on Pinet's conjecture. She says that the note shows that it was common knowledge that Christine was at Poissy. But no such conclusion can be drawn. For one, it has been too quickly assumed that this note is by William Worcester, and even if this is the case, it would be just as likely that Worcester simply took as the source for his claim that Christine stayed at Poissy her poem, the Dit de Poissy, which tells how she stayed in this priory in 1401, when she visited her daughter who was a nun there. The note does not indicate when Christine stayed at Poissy, and is in so many ways unreliable that it should not be given great weight. It suggests that L'Arbre des batailles (The Tree of Battles) was among the works attributed to her, but this was a false attribution, since the work was written by Honorât Bovet, and merely quoted by Christine. It effectively denies her the authorship of her works. Even worse, the nineteenth-century editor of the Boke of Noblesse commented that the marginal addition is in 'an old, but more modern handwriting, than the original manuscript', as can be confirmed by consulting the original.6 So one cannot even assume that its author was Worcester. Moreover, there are many independent reasons for thinking that it is unlikely that Christine was at Poissy from 1418 to 1429. Having established that we have litde reason to place great faith in Pinet's surmise, in the second part of this article I examine Christine's Ditie de fehanne dArc in order to determine whether it can provide us with any clues as to where she might have been when she wrote it.My first reason for doubting whether Christine spent the years 1418-29 at Poissy has to do with the improbability of her having gone there, given the political circumstances at the time she left Paris. My second is the lack of corroborating evidence in places where one would expect it. This is compounded by the fact that it is difficult to square the date of the production of the Ditie de fehanne dArc, and the information it contains, with residence at Poissy. …