Part 2

Although without any claim to be reckoned among the best of her works, it is at least admirable in motive. Ostensibly it is addressed by the Goddess of Prudence or Wisdom to her _protégé_ Hector with the object of inciting him to the attainment of true knighthood by the practice of virtue, the name of the goddess being clearly no more than the Greek vocative ὦ θεά, commonly used in Homer in speeches addressed to Athena.[37] The plan of the work is somewhat peculiar. The epistle proper, which purports to be Othea’s own, is in verse, and is divided into a hundred “textes,” each of which after the first five consists of a single quatrain. These hundred “textes” serve as a medium for instilling into the mind of the pupil as many moral precepts or rules of behaviour, wrapped up in an allusion to some story from mythology, from the history of Troy or, very rarely, from other sources, without the least regard for chronological propriety. Othea indeed anticipates the charge of anachronism by claiming at the outset (p. 6) the divine prerogative of prophecy, by which means she obviates the incongruity of drawing lessons for Hector from the circumstances of his own death (p. 105), from the story of Cyrus and Queen Tomyris (p. 63), and even from the vision of Christ shown by the Sibyl to the Roman emperor Augustus (p. 113). Perhaps the most glaring anachronism is the reference to the fate of “Thune” (p. 110). It has been suggested in a note on the passage that this is a corruption in the MSS. for “Thyre” or Tyre; but the rhyme both in the French and English versions requires “Thune,” and possibly the allusion is to the much vaunted expedition of Louis, Duke of Bourbon, against Tunis in 1391. If so, this is a single instance of a reference to an event in more recent times. The “textes,” however, are not left to stand alone, being invariably followed by a “glose” and an “allégorie,” both of which are in prose and often of some length. The bulk of the work therefore is really a commentary by Christine herself upon Othea’s supposed teaching. Thus, in the “glose” she amplifies and explains the allusion in the “texte,” and as a rule points its application by a maxim from an ancient philosopher; and, having done this to her own satisfaction, she next dilates in the “allégorie” on its more spiritual meaning, which she illustrates by a passage from one of the Fathers or some later theologian, and finally by a more or less appropriate verse from Scripture. These last citations are from the Latin Vulgate, and from the fact that the translator omits them it may be inferred that he was either ignorant of Latin or intended to supply them from the Wycliffite English version. In this way Christine works through the Virtues and Vices, the Articles of the Creed, the Ten Commandments, the properties and influences of the seven planets, and so forth; and the whole forms a curious and ill-assorted medley, which is not without interest as a reflection of the taste of the time, but which contains, it must be confessed, little either to attract or to edify the modern reader.

No critical edition of the original work has yet appeared, and the preface to a translation is hardly the place in which to enter minutely into its composition. Apart, however, from the Latin Vulgate and the theological writers whose names may be found in the index, there are three sources from which the matter appears to be mainly derived. Christine’s classical mythology, it is clear, comes almost entirely from the Metamorphoses of Ovid, but whether she had recourse to the original or to a moralized mediæval adaptation is a question not so easily determined. There is a work of the latter kind in French verse and of prodigious length, fourteen MSS. of which are known, including one in the British Museum (Add. MS. 10,324). By some misunderstanding it was formerly attributed to Philippe de Vitry, Bishop of Meaux (1351–1362). Modern criticism, however, has proved that it was really written by Chrétien Legouais, a Friar Minor, for the queen of Philip IV., Jeanne de Champagne, who died in 1305.[38] There was a copy in the library of Christine’s patron, the Duke of Berry,[39] but it was apparently acquired in 1403, after the “Épître d’Othéa” was written. Although it is quite possible that she had a direct knowledge of this poem, she is more likely to have used a moralized prose paraphrase of the Metamorphoses by the Benedictine Pierre Bersuire, who in his second edition, written at Paris in 1342, laid Legouais under contribution. Bersuire wrote in Latin, which language Christine certainly understood, and how soon his work appeared in French it is difficult to say. In the Berry Library there were three MSS. of the Metamorphoses apparently in vernacular prose,[40] any one, if not all, of which may have been Bersuire in a French version. There is also a French prose version in Brit. Mus. Royal MS. 17 E. iv. in company with the “Épître d’Othéa” itself, but the MS. is not earlier than the latter part of the 15th century. This version is closely connected with that printed at Bruges in 1484 by Colard Mansion, who supposed the original author to have been, not Bersuire, but Thomas Waleys or de Galles. The two are, however, not quite identical, and the former possibly represents an older version, which Mansion revised for printing. But whatever the particular form of Ovid’s Metamorphoses which Christine utilized, her naive interpretations of his mythological tales are no doubt largely her own. In this respect she was certainly not in advance of her age. In the usual euhemeristic fashion she regarded the classical deities and demigods as men and women who by the “prerogative of some grace” had raised themselves above their fellows and were for this reason accorded divine honours; or, on the other hand, they were mere inventions of the poets, who, for instance, by inverting the process by which the planets were named from the gods, made gods of the planets. A fair sample of her method may be seen in the story of Perseus (p. 15). This hero, whose name, by the way, our English translator changed into that of the better known Arthurian Sir Perceval, was a “moult vaillant chevalier,” his steed Pegasus was “bonne renommée” or fame, which carried his name into all lands, and his deliverance of Andromeda teaches the aspirant to knighthood the duty of relieving all women in distress. So much may be learnt from the “glose”; but in the “allégorie” Pegasus becomes the spiritual knight’s good angel, “qui fera bon rapport de lui au jour de jugement,” while Andromeda is his soul, which he frees from the power of the fiend.

With regard to the many personages and incidents from Trojan history introduced into the work, Christine’s authority was evidently a French prose romance which in a 15th century copy in the British Museum (Add. MS. 9,785) is entitled “La vraye ystoire de Troye.” Its origin has been traced in an instructive article by M. Paul Meyer entitled “Les premières compilations françaises d’histoire ancienne.”[41] It appears to be founded upon the well-known romance of Troy in French verse by Benoît de Ste. More and to have been composed before 1287, and it was employed, instead of Dares Phrygius as was previously the case, in the second edition of the compilation known as the “Histoire ancienne jusqu’à César.” There is, however, no reason to doubt that what Christine worked from was the “Vraye histoire” itself.

The third authority of which she habitually made use was of a different character, supplying her, not with mythological or legendary tales, but with moral maxims, one of which, as we have already remarked, she generally quoted at the end of each “glose.” These maxims are derived from a singular work known as “Dicta Philosophorum,” and consisting of long strings of apophthegms attached to the names of various ancient sages. They begin with Sedechias, of whom it is said “primus fuit per quem nutu Dei lex precepta fuit,” and besides Homer, Solon, Hippocrates, Pythagoras, Diogenes, Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, Alexander of Macedon, and Ptolemy, they include Hermes Trismegistus and such strange and evidently corrupted names as Tac, Salquinus (or, as it is written in some MSS., Zaqualquin), Rabion (or Sabion), Assaron, Longinon, Magdarges, Texillus (or Thesillus) and others, some of which have a distinctly oriental appearance. The Arabic original in fact exists in a work written by Abu-’l-Wafá Mobasschir ibn-Fátik al Káïd, an emir of Egypt, in 1053.[42] Sedechias appears there as Adam’s son Seth, and some other of the above names may be dimly recognized in Sab, ancestor of the Sabæans, Lókman, Maháda Gis, and Basilius. From the heading of the Latin version in the MS. from which it has been published,[43] it seems that the work was first translated from Arabic into Greek, and then again from Greek into Latin, the last version being by John de Procida, famous for the prominent part he took in the revolution which freed Sicily from Charles of Anjou and the French in 1282. Christine de Pisan, however, apparently employed a popular French version made from the Latin for Charles VI. by one of his chamberlains, Guillaume de Tignonville, who was afterwards Provost of Paris (1401–1408) and died in 1414. As a copy of it at Paris was written in 1402,[44] it was certainly completed before then, and the probability is that it preceded the “Épître d’Othéa” by several years. It possesses a special interest from the fact that an English version of it had the honour of being the first book actually printed in this country. This was the famous _Dictes and Sayengis of the Philosophres_, which Anthony Wydeville, second Earl Rivers, translated from a copy of De Tignonville’s work lent to him when he was going on a pilgrimage to Compostella in 1473, and which Caxton issued from his newly established press at Westminster in 1477.[45] Neither of them seems to have been aware that another English version was in existence, which dated from 1450.[46] This is still preserved in two MSS. in the British Museum, but has never been printed. The late 15th century copy in Add. MS. 34,193 (ff. 137–201) has the advantage of being complete, but it bears no evidence of origin, having neither title nor preface and ending merely with the words “Hic est finis libri moralium philosophorum.” Harley MS. 2,266, on the contrary, though it is mutilated at the beginning and elsewhere, fortunately has the following colophon:

“This boke byfore wretyn is callid in Frensh lettris Ditz de Philisophius and in Englysh for to sey the doctryne and þe wysedom of the wyse auncyent philysophers, as Arystotle, Plato, Socrates, Tholome and suche oþer, translatid out of laten in to frensh to (_sc._ for) kyng Charles the vi^{te} of Fraunse by Wyllyam Tyngnovyle, knyght, late provest of the cyte of Parys, and syth now late translatyd out of frensh tung in to englysh the yere of oure Lord m^lccccl. to (_sc._ for) John Fostalf, knyght, for his contemplacion and solas by Stevyn Scrope, squyer, sonne in law to the seide Fostalle. Deo gracias.”

The truth of the statement here made may be accepted without hesitation, nor is its interest confined to the translation of the “Dis des Philosophes” to which it is attached, for, as will be seen below, it also materially helps to determine the similar origin of the English version of Christine de Pisan’s “Épître d’Othéa,” which we now have to consider.

If the rubricator had done his work, no doubt the “Epistle of Othea to Hector” would have had this title prefixed in conformity with the MSS. of the French original. As it is, the text begins abruptly without a word of heading three lines from the bottom of the first page, and the only preliminary indication of its nature is furnished by the inscription “The Booke of Knyghthode,” written, apparently by a somewhat later hand, on the old vellum cover, which now serves for a fly-leaf. This alternative title is peculiar to the English version, and is extracted from the translator’s dedicatory preface, to which source we are also indebted for a clue to his identity and the knowledge of the circumstances under which the translation was made. The anonymous patron, “noble and worshipfull among the ordre of cheualrie,” to whom the preface is addressed was obviously a person of some consequence. He was of knightly rank and had won great renown in France and elsewhere[47] abroad, having spent most part of his life in “dedys of cheualrie and actis of armis.” He was now, however, sixty years of age, and was compelled by failing strength to seek retirement, and he is thereupon somewhat pointedly reminded that it behoved him to devote the remainder of his days to conflict with those spiritual enemies that war against the soul. If this were all, it might have applied to more than one veteran of the protracted French war which began in 1415; but, when the writer goes on to speak of himself (p. 2) as “I, yowre most humble son Stevyn,” there can hardly be a doubt that, as in the case of the above-mentioned translation of the “Dis des Philosophes,” we have to do with that famous old warrior Sir John Fastolf, K.G., and his stepson[48] Stephen Scrope, esquire.

The briefest summary of Fastolf’s military career[49] will suffice to show how closely it accords with the writer’s description. Son of a Norfolk squire and born in or about 1378, he appears to have begun active service early in the reign of Henry IV. with that king’s second son, Thomas, afterwards Duke of Clarence. In 1401, though a mere lad of fourteen, Thomas of Lancaster, as he was then called, was appointed his father’s Lieutenant in Ireland. Fastolf was in his train there in 1402, if not before, and on 14th April, 1406,[50] he had from him a grant of the office of joint Chief Butler of Ireland during the minority of the Earl of Ormonde. He was still in Ireland when he married Millicent, daughter of Robert, Lord Tiptoft, and widow of the Deputy Lieutenant, Sir Stephen Scrope. The marriage took place on 13th January, 1409, only four months after the death (4th September, 1408) of the lady’s first husband,[51] whose son and heir Stephen was a minor ten or twelve years old at the time.[52] Besides other advantages, it gave Fastolf the control over lands of his wife and stepson in Yorkshire, at Castle Combe in Wiltshire, and elsewhere, and he seems to have exercised it with little regard to any one’s interest except his own. His earliest service in France probably dated from 1412. He figures in the long muster-roll of esquires who joined the expedition under Clarence in August of that year,[53] and before its close he had become Lieutenant of the castle of Bordeaux.[54] With the accession of Henry V. his energy and undoubted talent for war found ample scope. His contract in June, 1415,[55] to serve the king with ten men-at-arms and thirty archers was speedily followed by Henry’s invasion of France and the siege of Harfleur. Evidently it was not long before he attracted notice, for when the town surrendered on 22nd September he was at once put in command of it under the king’s uncle, Thomas Beaufort, Earl of Dorset.[56] This did not prevent him from displaying his prowess a month later at Agincourt; and he was again active in the sieges of Caen and Rouen and in other operations during Henry’s second invasion of Normandy in 1417–1419. Hardly any name in fact of secondary rank more frequently recurs in the chronicles and documents of the war for a quarter of a century. Already knighted before 29th January, 1415–6,[57] he was made a knight banneret in 1423 and a Knight of the Garter in 1426; and, only to mention a few of the posts conferred upon him,[58] in 1420 he was made Governor of the Bastille of St. Antoine at Paris, in 1422 Master of the Household to John, Duke of Bedford, Regent of France, and in 1423 Lieutenant of Normandy and Governor of Anjou and Maine. In the minor battles and sieges which made up so much of the desultory warfare of the time he was everywhere conspicuous. On 2nd March, 1423, with the Earl of Salisbury, he recovered Meulan; on 17th August, 1424, he shared in the victory at Verneuil and took the Duke of Alençon prisoner; on 11th October in the same year he captured Sillé le Guillaume, from which he acquired the title of baron; on 2nd August, 1425, again with Salisbury, he received the surrender of Le Mans[59]; and on 12th February, 1429, when in command of a convoy of much needed supplies for the English camp before Orleans, he signally defeated a far stronger force of French and Scots at Rouvray St. Denis in the famous “Battle of the Herrings.” Up to this point, so far as is known, he had met with almost uninterrupted success; but after the advent of Jeanne Darc had caused the raising of the siege of Orleans, when the English were routed and Lord Talbot was taken prisoner at Pataye on 18th June following, he barely succeeded in escaping from the field. Unfortunately for his fame with posterity, the charge of cowardice on this occasion made against him in Monstrelet’s Chronicle was repeated by Hall and Holinshed and has been perpetuated in the “First Part of Henry VI.”[60] The effect of the charge at the time was, however, transient at most, and there is no need to dwell upon it here, either on its own account or in its bearing upon the question whether he was the original of Shakespeare’s Sir John Falstaff. It is contradicted by the chronicler Wavrin, who fought in the battle under him, and it is out of keeping with his whole career; moreover, Talbot, who was his bitterest accuser, was already on ill terms with him and, having flouted his advice just before the battle, in his chagrin at defeat was perhaps only too ready to make him a scapegoat. The Regent Bedford’s action in the matter is significant; for, although Fastolf was at first badly received by him, after a formal inquiry he was again taken into favour and the Garter, of which he is said to have been deprived, was restored to him in spite of Talbot’s protests. Nor was less use made of his services afterwards. Thus, between 1430 and 1434 we find him Lieutenant of Caen and of Alençon and Captain of Fresnay, and in 1431 he relieved Vaudemont and captured the Duke of Bar. As late as 1435 he is spoken of as Governor of Anjou and Maine,[61] and until the Duke of Bedford’s death on 14th September of that year he continued at the head of his household, being so described both in a list of the Regent’s retinue in 1435 and in a highly interesting report on the conduct of the war which he himself drew up about the same time.[62] Bedford’s confidence in him to the last is also clear from the fact that he named him one of the executors of his will. Notwithstanding the loss of so powerful a patron and his own advancing years, Fastolf was plainly in no hurry to put off his armour; for, with the exception of occasional visits to England as before, he remained abroad for at least five years longer. His retirement is generally fixed in 1440, but there is evidence of his being in Maine in the following year.[63] On 12th May, 1441, the Duke of York, Bedford’s successor as Regent, granted him a yearly pension of £20 for his services,[64] and probably therefore it was not very long before or after that date that he finally turned his back upon the country from whose unhappy distractions he had won fame and fortune.

It is at this stage of his life that we get a glimpse of him in the dedication of the “Epistle of Othea.” From its language this was written soon after he finally returned home; in fact it gives his age, no doubt somewhat loosely, as sixty, whereas even in 1440 he was probably sixty-two. During the greater part of the period which elapsed before his death on 5th November, 1459, he seems to have resided chiefly in Southwark, where he was within easy reach of a summons to the King’s Council, of which he was a member; and there is something attractive in the picture which Stephen Scrope’s words suggest of the war-worn old soldier beguiling his leisure with literary studies. Nor are the “Epistle of Othea” and the “Sayings of the Philosophers” the only two translations made at his “commaundement” and for his “contemplacion and solas.” In 1481 Caxton printed an English version, rendered from the French of Laurence de Premierfait, of Cicero’s “De Senectute.”[65] On the question of its authorship I shall have some remarks to make further on; but meanwhile it deserves notice that its preface states that it “was translated and thystoryes openly declared by the ordenaunce and desyre of the noble auncyent knyght Syr Johan Fastolf of the countee of Norfolk banerette, lyuyng the age of four score yere, excercisyng the warrys in the Royame of Fraunce and other countrees, ffor the diffence and vnyuersal welfare of bothe royames of englond and ffraunce by fourty yeres enduryng, the fayte of armes hauntyng, and in admynystryng justice and polytique gouernaunce vnder thre kynges, that is to wete Henry the fourth, Henry the fyfthe, Henry the syxthe, and was gouernour of the duchye of Angeou and the countee of Mayne, Capytayn of many townys, Castellys and fortressys in the said Royame of ffraunce, hauyng the charge and saufgarde of them dyuerse yeres, ocupyeng and rewlynge thre honderd speres and the bowes acustomed thenne, and yeldyng good acompt of the forsaid townes castellys and fortresses to the seyd kynges and of theyr lyeutenauntes, Prynces of noble recomendacion, as Johan regent of ffraunce Duc of Bedforde, Thomas duc of excestre, Thomas duc of clarence & other lyeutenauntes,” etc.