1Christine de Pizan, writing in her last letter from the Quarrel on the Rose, addressed to Pierre Col, concludes by commenting laconically on Jean de Meung’s specific misrepresentation of Nature. She associates Jean’s rhetorical practice in Nature’s speech with what she calls the proverb that «the glosses of Orléans destroy the text» (otherwise best known in Latin as glossa Aureliensis est quae destruit textum, a statement originally made by the jurist Franciscus Accursii1):

4How can we reconstruct the influence of the various schools of medieval rhetoric on Christine? From the five-part division found in the prose letters of Christine de Pizan, we might infer that Christine was familiar with the ars dictaminis that had been perfected earlier in Bologna.3 In any event, her immediate source for adopting this five-part division in her prose letters was most likely Bruentto Latini’s Livre dou Tresor where this format is recommended in place of Cicero’s six-part division4 and in place of Boncompagno’s proposed three-part division. On the other hand, Christine’s verse epistles, taking their cue from Petrarch’s cultivation of the genre, point to an almost opposing tendency that actively cultivated the revival of Classical lore otherwise neglected by the Italian schools. This double and perhaps conflicting point of departure shows how difficult and how necessary it is to situate Christine within the rhetorical practices of her time.

6The example of Hortensia shows us that Christine, following the aesthetics of Thomas Aquinas, linked the beauty of eloquence to its practical and epistemological effect on her hearers, or in Aquinas’ formula in the Summa, pulchrum autem respicit vim cognoscitivam.6 Beauty is not ineffable in Aquinas but directly linked to consciousness. We will see that Aquinas’ thought also shaped Christine’s application of rhetoric.

8By seeking to situate herself within a rhetorical tradition defined by Isidore of Seville’s Etymologiae and by Brunetto Latini’s Rettorica and Livres dou Tresor, Christine associated herself with the revival of Ciceronian rhetoric championed by Brunetto. Isidore was a practical compendium, with little direct connection to Cicero as such even though Book II of the Etymologiæ states that after its invention in Greece, rhetoric was translata in Latinum a Tullio videlicet,7 but Brunetto saw his rhetorical work squarely within a Ciceronian tradition. All medieval writers on rhetoric, with the exception of Boncompagno da Signa, paid enormous lip service to Cicero as the magister eloquentiae, to use the phrase of Geoffroi de Vinsauf. In practice, this tradition boiled down to a series of stylistic exercises, although in the 1140’s Thierry de Chartres wrote a commentary on Cicero’s De inventione, stressing the theme of the civilizing influence of letters. This largely formal and practical orientation left rhetoric open to sophistic abuses, and Christine, following Brunetto and Jean Gerson, and like Petrarch, saw rhetoric from a moralist perspective and assumed a clearly anti-sophistic position, which explains, in part, her critique of the Rose.

9In response to the extreme anti-Ciceronian stance taken by Boncompagno (who had claimed rhetorica compilata per Tulliam Ciceronem iudicio studentium est cassata8), Christine incorporates elements of Petrarchan humanism into her works (specifically in her return to the auctores, in her scepticism toward «courtly» values, her incorporation of political subjects into her work, her use of allegory and in her imitation of a periodic, though not Ciceronian, style). By contrast, Jean radicalizes the rhetorical teachings of the French schools in a sophistic manner when he departs in a fundamentally anti-rational way from earlier philosophical allegory written under their influence. Jean’s treatment of Nature exemplifies this departure. It is no coincidence that Christine’s critique of Jean focuses, among other things, on the speech of Nature. Jean’s deviation from the allegorical practices found in Alain de Lille’s De planctu Naturae and Jean de Hanville’s Architrenius corresponds to the separation of vernacular allegory from Biblical exegesis. Winthrop Wetherbee noted how Jean departs from Chartrian allegory in his elevation of sexual fulfillment as an end in itself as articulated in the speech of Nature.9 Yet this departure from Christian and Chartrian allegory was by no means inevitable or programmatic, as Christine’s preface to Lavision, with its careful attention to traditional patristic allegoresis, shows.

10Christine’s expectation from allegory might be judged conservative or even reactionary if we take the Rose as the standard against which late medieval allegory must be measured. If we compare the allegory of the Rose to that of Dante’s Commedia, as Christine did, Jean’s allegory emerges as shallow and sophistic (consistent with the difference that she sees between sçavant and sage in Le Livre des Trois Vertus, p.150 and in Le livre de la paix, p.70). Unlike Jean, whose endless play foregrounds form at the expense of content, Christine drew a sharp distinction between poetic form and philosophical truth, as for example in Lavision, when she notes that «Aristote […] impugna Thales et les autres poetes, non mie impugna en tant comme pouetes mais en tant que ilz semblent philosophes et sont hors de verité».10 Besides faulting his allegorical technique, Christine objects to Jean’s anti-rationalism, his elevation of sexual pleasure as an end in itself (this sexual solipsism being the logical consequence of Jean’s lyrical subjectivity), and his slander of women. These tendencies feed Jean’s nationalism which in turn provoked Petrarch. Christine and Petrarch, in one sense, were disputing the same assumptions underlying Jean’s poetic philosophy. Not only does Christine not accept Jean’s sophistry, she will follow the example of Hortensia and plead la cause des femmes.

12In the Mutacion de Fortune (vv. 7937-7964) Christine translates almost verbatim Isidore’s crucial differentiation between rhetoric and dialectic: rhetoric is like an open hand, and dialectic like a closed fist.11 Here Christine cites Varro, Isidore’s source, rather than Isidore himself. Yet Isidore was not only a quarry of classical loci for Christine, but also an authority for the link between rhetoric and the liberal arts themselves. As she notes:

13This rhetorical attitude dovetails nicely with the link between rhetoric and grammar –eloquence and linguistic correctness– and reappears in the anecdote of Hortensia cited above in which eloquence is defined as the combination of bien prononcier and toute ordre de parleure.13

14That Isidore was a constant source for Christine is further apparent in the crucial passage on antiphrasis cited near the beginning of the Cité des Dames to point out the deficiencies of the allegory of the Rose.14 Christine invokes antiphrasis without mentioning Isidore’s name, but a rapid inspection of other rhetorical writers will show that Donatus and Isidore alone used the term.15 In criticizing the Rose, Christine specifically singles out its portrayal of marriage, the same topic that she had cited in her letter to Pierre Col in which this portrayal is associated with the gloses d’Orliens.

15Moreover, Isidore is the likely source for the section in the Cité des Dames, III.1.2 which lists the names of the Virgin. This praise of the Virgin is reminiscent of the topos of nomina Christi, first explained by Isidore in Etymologiae VII.2: the section on the nomina Christi is followed by other chapters treating names of the apostles, the angels, and in VII.10 one finds a short passage on the names of the Virgin. The innumerable medieval hymns relating the names of the Virgin postdate Isidore, of course, and could just have easily inspired Christine,16 except that Petrarch adduces the topos of the nomina Christi as an argument for the theological nature of poetry, a contention that Christine also uses. Petrarch had observed: Parum abest quin dicam theolgiam esse poeticam de Deo: Christum modo leonem modo agnum modo vermem dici, qui nisi poeticum est? (Le Familiari, X 4,1),17 whereas Christine uses the phrase pouetes theologisans twice in Lavision (p. 119). While her source for this terms could have been either Dante or Petrarch, or both,18 an affinity with Petrarch’s Christian humanism is at least present.

18In the Cité des Dames, Christine makes a single and rather negative reference to Cicero consistent with the tone of the story of Leontium. In I.9.3, Christine asks: «Dame, selon que j’entens de vous, femme est moult noble chose, mais toutevoyes dit Tulles que homme ne doit servir nulle femme, et que cellui qui le fait s’aville, car nul ne doit servir plus bas de lui» (p.78). The response comes swiftly: «Cellui ou celle en qui plus a vertus est le plus hault, ne la haulteur ou abbaissement des gens ne gist mie es corps selon le sexe mais en la perfeccion des meurs et des vertus» (p.80). Le livre de la paix echoes this passage, except there Christine directly cites Cicero. Significant at this point is that Christine does not associate the connection between rhetoric and virtue with Cicero. In other words, the shift in Christine’s use of Cicero comes somewhat later in her career. In the Livre du Corps de policie, Christine follows a practice of cluster quotations, where she first cites Aristotle or Seneca, and then Cicero, all on the same topic, so that it seems apparent that she was probably using Thomas Hibernicus’ Manipulus Florum or some other anthology organized by topics.19

22Christine mentions Petrarch only once by name, in the Cité des Dames, and this single allusion led earlier scholars to discount Petrarch’s influence on Christine, even though Mathilde Laigle, as early as 1912, pointed out that Christine’s father must have known Petrarch in Venice during the period between May 1362 and 1365.20 Let us review the evidence for Christine’s knowledge of Petrarch’s works.

23She cites Petrarch by name in the Cité des Dames, II.7.121, and she uses Petrarch’s rather than Boccaccio’s version of the Griseldis story in the Cité des Dames, II.50 (De oboedentia ac fide uxoria mythologia, included in Philippe de Mézières’ Livre de la vertu du sacrement du mariage). In Le Livre des Trois Vertus, III, xi, she also alludes, without explicit reference, to Petrarch’s I Trionfi (1374) as signaled by Charity Cannon Willard (p.218). In addition, other evidence for Petrarch’s influence on Christine has been presented by Gilbert Ouy, Angus Kennedy, Lori Walters and myself.22 We must also consider the following potential links to Petrarch: the only model I know of for verse epistles was Petrarch’s epistolae metricae; and as Lori Walters has shown, Christine’s Cent Ballades are heavily influenced by Petrarch’s own lyrics, which recalls Petrarch’s influence on Gerson’s bucolic play in verse. I suspect that if we re-examine Christine’s «pastoral» poetry, we might begin to detect Petrarch’s influence on Christine in a manner consistent with Petrarch’s influence on Jean Gerson, as Gilbert Ouy has ascertained. A new picture also emerges when one also realizes that prior to Christine and Gerson, only Petrarch had criticized the Rose: while Petrarch attacked Jean de Meung’s nationalism, Christine and Jean Gerson criticized Jean’s anti-rationalism, which went hand in hand with his nationalism. Christine and Jean Gerson must have felt a certain Petrarchan legitimation when they launched their critique of Jean de Meung. If Gerson thought of himself as an «émule de Pétrarque,» to use Ouy’s felicitous phrase, can we not transfer this designation to Christine as well?23

24I wish to argue that the debate on the Rose constituted the beginning of a much larger literary quarrel conducted by humanists regarding the fate of the Latin studium. The first volley in the quarrel was a verse epistle written around 1340 by Petrarch to Guido Gonzaga in which Petrarch, citing the authority of Cicero, claimed that Italian eloquence (which included for him all Latin literature) surpassed that of all other languages, and he singled out the most popular vernacular work of his day, the Roman de la Rose, as proof of his point.24 In the same verse epistle, Petrarch goes on to argue that the works of Catullus, Ovid and Propertius –identified by their respective birth-places– demonstrate the unchallenged superiority of Italian letters. Petrarch’s selection of Catullus, Ovid and Propertius contrasts with Jean’s invocation of Tibullus (v. 10478), Gallus, Catullus and Ovid (v. 10492), hardly a coincidental overlapping. Petrarch is, unfortunately, as adamant a literary nationalist as Jean, although Jean is never as blunt as Chrétien de Troyes about the French appropriation of the studium.25 Petrarch’s judgment of the Rose and its reception leaves little doubt that he believed that contemporaries saw the Rose as pre-eminent proof of French literary superiority, a claim he refused to accept. Petrarch again cites Cicero in his Apologia as his authority for the unsurpassed nature of Italian eloquence. The passage from Cicero to which Petrarch alludes both in his letter to Guido Gonzaga and in his Apologia is the opening of the De finibus bonorum et malorum, in which Cicero defends his writing in Latin rather than Greek. Dante had alluded to the same passage as well in Convivio, I.xi.12-14, so it is clear that Cicero’s defense of Latin against Greek in Dante’s hands becomes a defense of the vernacular against gramatica and in Petrarch’s a defense of Italian as the successor of Latin.26

25Petrarch’s nationalism hardly squares with his better known moralism.27 Yet we must face the difficult questions raised by Petrarch’s literary nationalism, since it was in one sense directly provoked by Jean’s claims. When Christine compares Dante and Jean, she did so in full cognizance of the nationalist values championed by Jean. Thus the Quarrel of the Rose is actually part of a greater pan-European discussion –lasting well into the sixteenth century– summarized in Petrarch’s famous remark oratores et poetae extra Italiam non querantur. Christine’s response to Jean and to Petrarch shows how her philosophy of rhetoric attempted to preserve the cosmopolitan context of literary creation. Both Petrarch and Jean are alike in their nationalism, both assign their respective nations transcendental values at variance with the nominal ideal of Christian universalism.

27In one of the more fiery passages of Europäische Literatuar und Lateinisches Mittelalter, Ernst Robert Curtius follows Gorce in making this connection.29 I do not wish to exaggerate Jean’s alleged Averroism, since recent Rose scholarship has tended to emphasize Jean’s orthodoxy.30 In reviewing the scholarship on the question, however, the issue is in fact a narrow one. Gorce never overstates his evidence, he never argues for Jean’s full-blown adherence to Averroism, only that certain propositions of the condemnation of 1277 seem to single out prominent aspects of the Rose. Christine’s attacks on the portrayal of Nature in Jean de Meung may be further evidence for the influence of Thomas Aquinas on her thought.

28In light of the growing evidence for Christine’s knowledge of Aquinas, it is useful to revive the old Averroist question. Liliane Dulac and Christine Reno recently demonstrated how conversant Christine in Lavision was with Thomas Aquinas’ commentary on the Metaphysics of Aristotle (1272).31 Christine’s incorporation of Aquinas’ commentary on Aristotle’s Metaphysics in the life of Charles V is also well known. In two separate essays I have shown how Christine’s depiction of her own birth in the Mutacion de Fortune was influenced by Aquinas’ discussion de producione mulieris in the Summa and that Christine was profoundly familiar with Aquinas’ De ente et essentia (1256).32 Now, Aquinas’ attacks on Averroism in Contra gentiles, III.136, laid the groundwork for the two decrees against Averroism in the 1270’s which coincide with the completion of Jean de Meung’s portion of the Rose (since Félix Lecoy established 1268 as a terminus a quo and 1278 as a terminus ad quem, these decrees would confirm his dating). On balance, therefore, I would suggest that Christine had these anti-Averroist writings of Aquinas in mind when she criticized Jean’s portrayal of Nature. Christine’s knowledge of these works might help explain the prominence of arguments about Nature and women at the beginning of the Cité des Dames. There may even be a vague allusion to the Contra gentiles at the beginning of the Cité des Dames where Christine, besides spending a great deal of time talking about how Nature created men and women, comments on the love between them. Aquinas speaks of the viri et mulieris conjunctio which seems to be echoed in the passage «car il n’est ou monde nul si grant ne si fort lian comme est cellui de la grant amour que Nature par voulenté de Dieu met entre homme et femme» (p. 66).

29Ciceronian rhetoric is conspicuously absent in the Roman de la Rose, with one telling exception. Guillaume’s opening alludes to the Somnium Scipionis from Cicero’s De re publica, Liber VI as it had been preserved in the fourth-century commentary of Macrobius but Guillaume never even mentions Cicero’s name.33 While Cicero’s De amicitia is an important source for Ami’s speech, the only mention of Cicero’s rhetoric is an ironic reference in –of all places again– the speech of Nature, more properly Jean de Meung’s reworking of Alain de Lille’s De planctu Naturae, (what Jean Gerson called corrumpuement estraitte du grant Alain, [Hicks, p.80]) before her confession to Genius. Genius’ response to Nature, given before he hears Nature’s «confession,» comprises in extraordinarily compact and virulent form one of the most misogynist parts of the entire Rose.

30When Christine specifically speaks of Nature in her letter to Pierre Col, she must have had in mind this passage34 with its direct reference to Cicero («si con Tulles le nous remembre/ou livre de sa Rethorique,/qui mout est sciance autantique»). Jean’s allusion to Cicero’s Rhetoric might explain why Christine during the early part of her career viewed Cicero as a misogynist.

33What ultimately is so disturbing, so subversive about the Rose is its much praised hermeneutical indeterminancy –its Cheshire cat quality. It is not simply, as David Hult describes the situation with Gui de Mori’s redaction of the Rose that the Jean «leaves himself open to an infinite number of future textual variants, all of which will depend on the viewpoint of each new reader».35 By equating absolute textual indeterminacy with the relativizing implications arising from the different reader responses, Hult probably overstates a central tenet of reception aesthetics and ignores the fact that Jean is not consistently ironic throughout his part of the Rose. No, the Rose, for all its flights into ineffability, is not entirely devoid of stable meaning,36 as Jean’s hardly modest self-election as the successor of the Latin lyric love poets demonstrates. The most prominent and consistently stable meanings that otherwise also emerge are Jean’s nationalism, his lyrical subjectivity, and his abuse of women in the name of rhetorical form.

36The discussion of translatio studii in the Rose and in other medieval French authors has often risked turning into an endorsement, rather than a critical assessment, of the topos itself. Christine’s use of the topos had nothing in common with Jean’s nationalism.37 It is time for critics of the Rose to stop ignoring or endorsing the cultural nationalism underlying the Rose, a facet of its «meaning» that remained fairly stable.38 Is the meaning of the translatio studii topos at the midpoint of the Rose a proleptic justification of «French» literature or of a «national» literature at the expense of all other literatures? Brunetto’s and Dante’s silence regarding their indebtedness to the Rose surely stems in part from their literary cosmopolitanism. Dante speaks of «us, for whom the world is our homeland just as for fish the sea» (nos cui mundus est patria velut piscibus æquor), whereas Jean de Meung wants to be a big fish in a small French pond.