Situación actual de “la Familia”

The first major piece of evidence used by Mudge and Wimsatt to argue for Isabeau of Bavaria’s ownership of the compilation are Granson’s acrostics on the name Isabel. Unfortunately, when taken by themselves, these Granson acrostics cannot tell us much of anything. Arthur Piaget’s suggestion that this Isabel must be none other than Isabeau of Bavaria has since been disproved by Normand Cartier, who shows that there were several women with this extremely popular name with whom Granson did or could have come into contact during his peripatetic life, so that identifying the acrostics with a single historical figure is manifestly impossible.57 That said, the high degree of

conventional love imagery in these lyrics—distance from one’s beloved, lovesickness, the lady’s excellence among women, etc—makes them indeed highly adaptable to this popular name, so that perhaps they could have been repurposed to indicate Isabeau of Bavaria, or later read as indicating her, even if they did not do so originally.

56

Wimsatt, Ch, 88-89. On Granson’s life, see Piaget, Grandson, and Braddy, Chaucer, and on his duel and death, Berguerand, Le Duel.

57 _{See Arthur Piaget, “Oton de Grandson, Amoureux de la Reine,” Romania 41 (1935): 72-82 and}

Grandson, 156-64, and Normand R. Cartier, “Oton de Grandson et sa princesse,” Romania 85 (1964): 1-16. It is important also to note that, having been born in ca. 1370, Isabeau of Bavaria could hardly be the addressee of some of Granson’s earlier acrostics (on amorous themes), which, as we shall shortly see, may be firmly dated to the early 1370s.

40 The other major piece of evidence taken by Mudge and Wimsatt to support the association of the manuscript with Isabeau of Bavaria is the motto “Droit & ferme” that is written across the top of its first folio in a hand different from any of the others found in the manuscript (Image 2 in Appendix II). Citing for his evidence Henri Tausin’s

Supplément au dictionnaire des devises historiques et héraldiques, where “Droit &

ferme” is listed as the motto of the “royaume de Bavière,” Mudge claims that this motto belongs to the royal house of Bavaria and therefore suggests an association with

Isabeau.58 There is, however, no clear indication anywhere in Tausin’s work of his sources for the provenances of the different mottos. It is also unclear what “Bavière” signifies in this context, as four Bavarian branches of the Wittelsbach dynasty emerged by 1392: Bavaria-Ingolstadt, ruled by Isabeau’s father and, later, her brother; Bavaria- Landschut, ruled by one of her uncles; Bavaria-Munich, ruled by another one of her uncles; and, lastly, Bavaria-Straubing, ruled by a separate branch of the Wittelsbach house that also held Holland, Zeeland and Hainault.59 I have not so far been able to identify to which precise branch the motto belongs, nor have I found it present in any documents with a known connection to Isabeau.

I have, however, found another manuscript, Paris, Bibliothèque de l’Arsenal fr. 2872, with the exact same phrase, “Droit & ferme,” written on its final folio in a hand strikingly similar to that used for the motto in the Pennsylvania manuscript. In this second manuscript, the hand writing the motto is also different from the main hand in the

58

Henri Tausin, Supplément au dictionnaire des devises historiques et héraldiques, (Paris: Lechevalier, 1895), 130.

59 _{Wimsatt also attributes the motto to Isabeau of Bavaria in Ch, 3, without providing any additional} explanation, as do Connolly and Plumley, “Crossing.”

41 manuscript (Image 3 in Appendix II).60 Arsenal fr. 2872 is a compilation of astrological and scientific treatises, copied by a single scribe in a late fourteenth-early fifteenth- century French bâtarde hand similar, though not identical, to those of the Pennsylvania manuscript. One of the works included in the Arsenal document is a French translation of

the Liber novum judicum by Robert Godefroy, astronomer to Charles V, completed in

1361, as well as a treatise on alchemy by the late thirteenth-early fourteenth century alchemist and astrologer Arnaud de Villeneuve. The Bibliothèque de l’Arsenal has a later fifteenth-century manuscript, MS 2889, containing a French translation of another

botanical treatise by Arnaud de Villeneuve, which specifies, in its colophon, that this translation had been executed at the bequest of Isabeau of Bavaria. The connection of Godefroy with Charles V’s court and Isabeau’s manifest interest in Arnaud de Villeneuve renders it plausible that Bibliothèque de l’Arsenal, MS fr. 2872, with the same motto written in a remarkably similar, possibly identical, hand, might also be connected with her, though we cannot be certain.

There is, moreover, an interesting visual parallel between the Pennsylvania

manuscript and Bibliothèque de l’Arsenal, MS fr. 2872. In addition to the motto “Droit & ferme,” the Pennsylvania manuscript has on the same folio, and nowhere else in the manuscript, an inhabited initial: the pale outline of a little face comes out of the decoratively elongated first initial of the right-hand column (Image 2 in Appendix II). The Arsenal manuscript has, scattered throughout its contents, similar (though better executed) inhabited initials of faces, palely sketched and emerging out of decoratively

42 elongated initials and decorative ascenders (Image 4 in Appendix II). The parallel could be simple coincidence, but the identical date range of both manuscripts, their use of similar hands, and the identical motto, written in what may be the same hand in both codices, argue in favor of a possible association between the two.

While there is, unfortunately, little concrete evidence to connect the Pennsylvania manuscript to Isabeau of Bavaria, its three hands do correspond to the type of French batârde hand that was regularly used for copying manuscripts of secular work in this period more generally and that was specifically employed at the court of Charles VI as well as the courts of his immediate family members. For example, John of Berry’s late- fourteenth-century copy of the Roman de la Rose, now Paris, BnF, MS fr. 12595, as well as an early fifteenth-century copy of LeLivre de cent ballades of the Seneschal d’Eu, now Paris, BnF, MS fr. 2360, are also executed in the same kind of hand.61 Paris, BnF, MS fr. 22452 and Paris, BnF, MS fr. 20615, both collections of several royal ordinances and letters copied for Charles V, Charles VI, Philippe the Bold and Isabeau, ranging in date from 1375 to 1417, are executed in hands virtually identical to those in the

Pennsylvania manuscript.62 A similar French Gothic batârde hand is also used to copy the so-called Queen’s Manuscript (London, British Library, MS Harley 4431) presented by Christine de Pizan to Isabeau herself, as well as Paris, BnF, MS fr. 22935, a work entitled

61 _{These areavailable fully digitized online; John of Berry’s Rose: http://gallica.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/} btv1b60002167; and Le Livre de cent ballades:

http://gallica.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/btv1b9059203d.r=Le+Livre+des+cent+ballades+par+JEAN .langEN. 62 _{Paris, BnF, MS fr. 22542 is available fully digitized online:}

43

Le Miroir du Monde with a colophon indicating that it was commissioned for Isabeau.63

Isabeau’s own will (Paris, BnF, MS fr. 6544, dated 1411) and her household accounts (Paris, BnF, MS fr. 10370, dated 1420-22), are also copied in hands virtually identical to those of the Pennsylvania manuscript (compare Image 5 with Image 1 in Appendix II).64

Looking more closely at the physical characteristics of the Pennsylvania

manuscript against those of manuscripts that we know are related to the late fourteenth- early fifteenth-century French royal court sheds some further light on the origins of the compilation. The manuscript’s three scribes conform to a uniform layout and decoration program: they rubricate each poem with an indication of its sub-genre (balade, rondeau, lay, virelay, complainte, chanson royal, pastourelle, serventois), offering no authorial attributions of any kind; they abbreviate refrains after their first instance to one or two words; they decoratively indent abbreviated refrains for virelais and rondeaux; and they rubricate envoys to ballades.65 Large pen-work decorated initials occur regularly

throughout the manuscript, along with some decoratively elongated ascenders in the first lines of text columns; the size of the initials and ascenders becomes more pronounced and

63 _{These manuscripts are available fully digitized online; Pizan’s manuscript:}

http://www.bl.uk/manuscripts/Viewer.aspx?ref=harley_ms_4431_f001r; and Le Miroir:

http://gallica.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/btv1b8452548m.r= Miroir+du+monde.langEN. On the Queen’s Manuscript being an autograph of Pizan herself, see Gilbert Ouy and Christine M. Reno, “L’Identification des

autographes de Christine de Pizan,” Scriptorium 34.2 (1980): 221-38, and Sandra Hindman, “The Composition of Christine de Pizan’s Collected Works in the British Library: A Reassessment,” British Library Journal 9.2 (Autumn 1983): 93-123.

64 _{Isabeau’s accounts are available fully digitized online:}

http://gallica.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/btv1b9063223k.r=Comptes+de+la+reine+Isabeau+de+Bavi%C3%A8re.lang EN.

65 _{On the development of visual cues on the page to facilitate reading and their movement from scholastic} manuscripts to manuscripts of secular texts and the relationship between the visual organization of material on a page to the organization of multiple materials within a bound volume, see Malcolm B. Parkes, “The Influence of the Concepts of ‘Ordinatio’ and ‘Compilatio’ on the Development of the Book,” Scribes, Scripts and Readers: Studies in the Communication, Presentation and Dissemination of Medieval Texts

44 more delicately executed over the course of the compilation, but no illumination or ink other than red and black is used (Images 6, 7, 8 in Appendix II).

Only the final scribe deviates from this general visual program and only when he gets to the final quire of the manuscript. When he takes over from the main scribe in the middle of quire 11, his rubrics and the decorated initials continue to look the same as those done by previous scribes. The third scribe does immediately introduce a new visual feature into his portion of quire 11: he does not rubricate the word “Lenvoy,” which marks out the envoy, but only draws a red dash through the “L”. In quire 12, however, the third scribe begins a subtly different visual program: he decoratively indents alternating lines, not just refrains, in rondeaux, and, most significantly, he draws enormous initials with far more extensive decoration in the text and in the rubrics than elsewhere in the manuscript. He is also leaving 4-5 lines of space for rubrics, as opposed to the previous sections of the manuscript that largely leave only 1-3 lines. The third scribe’s initials are in a similar style to the work of the previous scribes but have been executed with far greater care and are of a distinctive type, known in French as initiales

cadelées, found nowhere else in the anthology (Images 9 and 10 in Appendix II). The

third scribe is also using a much darker ink for the text and a brighter red ink for the rubrics than everyone else. Despite these visual differences, however, this quire is not physically separate from the rest of the manuscript: the preceding quire has a catchword and its final text, the unattributed balade Puis que je voy que ma belle maistresse, carries over across the quire break. Quire 12 is thus part of the whole manuscript’s second booklet and looks broadly visually similar to the folios before it, and yet it seems to be of

45 a slightly higher quality than the rest of the collection, though, interestingly, it contains some of the poorest parchment. It also appears that someone, possibly the third scribe, then went back and added some extra ornamentation, in the form of dentellation and flourishes, to the other scribes’ decorated initials in order to make all the initials appear more visually uniform (Image 11 in Appendix II).

These visual features, along with the inhabited initial on the first folio and the flourish work on the “Droit et ferme” phrase, constitute the manuscript’s only decoration. No space and no guide marks have been left for any additional illuminated initials, borders or miniatures. Instead, the decorated initials, though executed with care and finesse, are in the same ink as the rest of the text and have clearly been drawn in by the scribes themselves as they copied the texts. The rubrics are also being done by the scribes themselves: there are indications of what is to go into the rubrics still visible in the

margins, but the hands of the rubrics match and are keyed to the three hands in the manuscript’s main text.

This manuscript was, in other words, created as a completed product by its scribes, with no recourse to outside rubricators or illustrators. Its total absence of any specialized decoration militates against the supposition that this manuscript was an expensive presentation copy for Isabeau, or any other member of the royal family in this period. Other extant presentation copies executed for Isabeau, like Pizan’s Queen’s Manuscript, or the afore-mentioned Miroir du monde that identifies her as the intended audience and owner of the volume (Paris, BnF, MS fr. 22935), have lavish full-page frontispieces, miniatures, decorated borders, and luxurious historiated initials. At the

46 same time, the Pennsylvania manuscript’s use of multiple scribes, all evidently working together towards a uniform and sophisticated visual program, likewise argues against this manuscript’s being just a personal copy for private use, on the model of what might be called a household or commonplace book, such as, for example, Paris, BnF, MS naf 6221. A compilation of formes fixes lyric by Machaut, Deschamps, and others, broadly similar to the Pennsylvania manuscript in content, this latter volume is executed in a single, cramped French cursive hand; it boasts no decoration, narrow top and bottom margins, whole sections that are struck through, as well as random blocks of missing text, suggesting that it is a single person’s private poetry album of sorts.66 Our manuscript instead seems to occupy some kind of transitional space between a luxurious presentation copy destined for a wider courtly audience and the private lyric compilation destined for personal use.

The closest visual analogues that I have been able to find for the Pennsylvania manuscripts are in courtly secretarial documents. The afore-mentioned manuscript of Isabeau’s accounts (Paris, BnF, MS fr. 10370), provides an interesting basis for comparison: like our manuscript—and particularly like its final quire—Isabeau’s

accounts are written in a clear, neat French bâtarde hand that is, in fact, strikingly similar to that of our first scribe, and its section headings, unrubricated but differentiated instead through use of a textura script, feature those same kinds of large, well-executed, but not illuminated initiales cadelées, written in by the scribe himself (Images 12 and 13 in Appendix II). Another set of accounts from the reign of Charles VI (Paris, BnF, MS fr.

47 7843), dated to the 1390s, demonstrates yet more examples of these kinds of scribally ornamented initials similar to the kinds we find in the Pennsylvania Manuscript (Image 14 in Appendix II).67

Indeed, various documents from the reign of Charles VI, as well as of Charles V—accounts, letters, ordinances, all copied by royal secretaries—possess this same kind of visual format: decorative ascenders in first lines of text, large initials with some flourishes, but little else in terms of ornamentation, and they are all, again, written in French batârde hands that are both similar to each other and to those in the Pennsylvania manuscript. On the basis, then, of visual evidence from manuscripts linked to key figures of the French royal court in the final decades of the fourteenth century and the opening decades of the fifteenth century, I suggest that the Pennsylvania manuscript is unlikely to be the “livre des balades Messire Othes de Granson” for which Isabeau had

commissioned two finely-wrought golden clasps. This anthology is hardly a presentation copy, but a far simpler production, possibly the work of several royal secretaries

operating at the royal French court in this time period, and it is therefore unlikely to have been outfitted with such a costly binding.68

But why would a manuscript containing the work of so many distinguished poets of the period not have been made as a presentation copy, particularly if Isabeau was interested enough in Granson and the Livre de cent ballades of the Seneschal d’Eu, which is also a collection of formes fixes lyrics, to have ordered the latter from a bookmaker and

67 _{This manuscript is available fully digitized online: http://gallica.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/btv1b9060567v.} 68

We note that Paris, BnF, MS fr. 20026, a mid-fifteenth-century copy of Alain Chartier’s work made for Charles d’Orleans and his wife, Marie de Clèves, also features simpler decorated initials made by the scribe himself, but this work does still have a lavish, multi-colored frontispiece; this is also available fully digitized online: http://gallica.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/btv1b8451111w.r=alain+chartier.langEN.

48 outfitted the former with two golden clasps? For what, in other words, may this particular document have been intended? One possibility is that the Pennsylvania manuscript represents some sort of draft copy stage. In addition to multiple manuscript commissions, Isabeau’s accounts also demonstrate her ongoing interest in retooling and refurbishing books already in her collection. Throughout her accounts we see entries of payments to various scribes and bookmakers for various commissions of covers, bindings, and clasps. These additions seem to be motivated in some cases by aesthetics—like the golden clasps commissioned for the Granson collection in 1401—but in others by more practical needs. Also in 1401, for example, she had a small book of hours cleaned, whitened (blanchy), and bound with gold-embossed leather.69 In 1416, Isabeau commissioned a cut of blue, reinforced (renforcié) satin to add as a second layer to an existing cloth wrapping for a book of hours.70 In 1402, a scribe named Gervasoit de Deuil cleaned, gathered and re- copied both the text and the musical notation (“rescript et renoté”) of two breviaries for

the queen’s chapel, for which he also made a leather binding, a protective wrapping and two latten clasps.71 In other words, Isabeau clearly cared for her book collection and went back to it, refurbishing old books, adding both costly and protective elements to them, and significantly, as we can see from the last example, getting them recopied.