Remembering Boethius

Writing Aristocratic Identity in Late Medieval French and English Literatures

Elizabeth Elliott

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2016
• Print ISBN:
  9781138118744
• eBook ISBN:
  9781317066729
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: Literary Criticism
• Index: Literature

Remembering Boethius explores the rich intersection between the reception of Boethius and the literary construction of aristocratic identity, focusing on a body of late-medieval vernacular literature that draws on the Consolation of Philosophy to represent and reimagine contemporary experiences of exile and imprisonment. Elizabeth Elliott presents new interpretations of English, French, and Scottish texts, including Machaut's Confort d'ami, Remede de Fortune, and Fonteinne amoureuse, Jean Froissart's Prison amoureuse, Thomas Usk's Testament of Love, and The Kingis Quair, reading these texts as sources contributing to the development of the reader's moral character. These writers evoke Boethius in order to articulate and shape personal identities for public consumption, and Elliott's careful examination demonstrates that these texts often write not one life, but two, depicting the relationship between poet and aristocratic patron. These works associate the reception of wisdom with the cultivation of memory, and in turn, illuminate the contemporary reception of the Consolation as a text that itself focuses on memory and describes a visionary process of education that takes place within Boethius's own mind. In asking how and why writers remember Boethius in the Middle Ages, this book sheds new light on how medieval people imagined, and reimagined, themselves.

Chapter 1
Boethian Counsel: Guillaume de Machaut’s Confort d’ami

Et vues tu clerement savoir,
Sans riens enclorre, tout le voir,
Dont viennent richesse et noblesse?
Resgarde eu livre de Boësse,
Que te dira, s’oïr le vues,
Que tous les biens que perdre pues
Sont de Fortune, qui moult tost
Le bien qu’elle a donné tout tost. (1901–8)¹

And would you know clearly, with nothing omitted, the whole truth of whence prosperity and nobility come? Look at Boethius’s book, which will tell you, if you wish to hear, that all goods that can be lost come from Fortune, who very soon takes back the good she has given.

Guillaume de Machaut’s Confort d’ami bears eloquent witness to the political resonance of The Consolation of Philosophy in fourteenth-century culture, establishing a parallel between the experience of Boethius and that of the late-medieval statesman, as it locates Boethius’s book within the tradition of advice to princes literature. Framed as an address to Machaut’s imprisoned patron, Charles II of Navarre, the Confort is not simply a response to Charles’s captivity at the hands of his father-in-law, Jean II, lasting from 5 April 1356 to 8 November 1357. Machaut’s poem is informed by the knowledge that Charles’s allies were working for his release, interweaving the comfort befitting the situation of a prisoner with advice on government appropriate to the position of a prince.²

Machaut’s ethical purpose is expressed in a practice of self-representation that identifies the poet as a counsellor whose remit encompasses the spiritual and bodily regulation of the prince: ‘te dirai que tu feras /Et comment to gouverneras /T’ame, ton corps et ta maniere’ [‘I shall tell you what you will do, and how you will govern your soul, your body and your conduct’] (1661–1663). The poet’s holistic approach to the discipline of his patron is less presumptuous than it might appear to modern eyes, reflecting the contemporary belief that the health of the body politic is intimately linked with the ethical health of its members, especially those who played an active role in public life.³ Machaut’s tone is appropriate to the conception of good counsel as an ideal that at once emphasised the retainer’s responsibility to offer candid advice, and identified a willingness to entertain such advice as the mark of a virtuous ruler.⁴ Employing the singular form of the second person pronoun, Machaut creates an ambience of Ciceronian friendship, evoking the Latinate tradition of advice to princes literature, and his stance combines a counsellor’s authority with a retainer’s deference, as he assures Charles, ‘soies assez sages /Pour toy garder, sans mes messages /Et sans mes confors recevoir’ [‘you are wise enough to look after yourself without receiving my messages or consolation’] (11–13). The poet’s role in offering comfort and consolation is presented not as a matter of his superior wisdom, but as the fulfilment of a debt owed to his lord: ‘sans riens retenir /Sui tiens, quoy qui’il doie avenir’, [‘I am yours without reserve, no matter what’] (25–6). As Claude Gauvard observes, the significance of such reciprocal bonds of love and friendship in Machaut’s social milieu is imaged in the poet’s conception of God as a being who ‘N’oublie onques ses bons amis /Eins les conseille et les conforte’ [Never forgets his true friends, but counsels and comforts them’] (64–5).⁵

In offering consolation and counsel to his imprisoned patron, Machaut plays the part of Philosophy in a contemporary iteration of The Consolation of Philosophy. Yet, in giving this role to a particular individual, rather than a personified abstraction, Machaut’s adaptation of Boethian philosophy does not remain bound to the contingent world, as Sarah Kay argues.⁶ Within the Confort, the particular becomes a conduit for the universal, as the poet defines himself as a compilator of biblical exempla, mediating divine authority for his patron’s benefit:

Par exemples te vueil prouver,
Qui sont contenu en la Bible
Et qui sont a nous impossible,
Qu’adés cils qui en Dieu se fie,
S’il a raison de sa partie
Et s”il l’aimme, sert et honneure,
Adés son fait vient au desseure. (46–52)

[I shall prove to you by examples, which are contained in the Bible and which are impossible to us, that he who trusts in God, if he has reason on his side, and if he loves, serves and honours him, will always triumph at last.]

Machaut’s role in interpreting traditional authority is emphasised as the poet positions himself as a faithful translator, arguing ‘Dou latin ou je l’ay veü /L’ay mis si pres com j’ay peü’ [‘From the Latin I have seen, I have put it down as nearly as I was able’] (415–16, cf. 644–6). This posture of fidelity to the source text reflects a conception of scripture that incorporates those readings accumulated within the commentary tradition, however, as Machaut’s analysis of his own account of the book of Daniel suggests:

Je n’en say plus ne n’en di el
Fors tant que pluseur docteur dient,
Qui en l’Escripture estudient
Diligemment (430–33)

[I know no more, nor say anything, except that which many doctors say, those who study scripture diligently]

Machaut’s interpretation of his scriptural materials conforms to contemporary standards of textual fidelity; his approach embraces the common adaptive methods of abbreviation and expansion, as Palmer’s examination of the Confort’s relationship to its sources demonstrates.⁷

The poet’s deferential stance and the initial presentation of the Confort as a repository of scriptural authority belie his interweaving of biblical exempla with Boethian philosophy and with secular narratives drawn from pagan mythology. In the quotation opening this chapter, Machaut invokes the Consolation as complement to the lesson of the Confort, implying that the poet perceived no conflict between his textual materials. For the Confort’s most recent editor, R. Barton Palmer, however, Machaut’s incorporation of Old Testament narratives such as the miraculous survival of Shadrach, Meshak and Abednego in the fiery furnace is a tactic that ‘insists on a justice which will be experienced in history, on a righting of wrongs in the here and now’; it ‘imagines God acting in time, making sure that the guilty and not the innocent are punished, awarding success to the righteous’.⁸ From Palmer’s perspective, the presence of these narrative elements within the Confort not only places a highly favourable construction upon Charles’s own prospective release, but it also prevents the full expansion of the Boethian argument within Machaut’s poem. As Palmer argues, Boethian logic affirms that ‘the pursuit of political success is mistaken since this goal is only partially good, one that cannot help leading to disappointment and ruin’, and culminates in the renunciation of worldly power.⁹

Yet Palmer’s argument neglects the Consolation’s reiteration of the Platonic dictum that philosophers have a duty to pursue civic virtue, involving themselves in government to prevent the ascendance of the wicked, rather than because political power constitutes an end in itself (1.pr.4). As Philosophy’s iconographic attribute, the ladder, implies, while contemplative philosophy was more highly regarded than its practical counterpart, the inferior discipline is not worthless, but serves as a basis for further development.¹⁰ The interlocutor’s recognition that political power is a contingent good whose pursuit cannot lead to self-sufficiency does not entail a complete repudiation of political activity. Under arrest, and perhaps already condemned to death, Boethius is at liberty to embrace contemplation, but an appreciation of the spiritual and personal hazards attached to public life would not otherwise negate the moral obligation to cultivate civic virtue. Philosophical wisdom might instead be understood as facilitating political action, in fostering the capacity to distinguish true from false values. Such a reading of Boethius is implicit in Machaut’s plea to the reader:

Je te pri que tu te conseilles
A bonnes gens et que tu veilles
A faire le commun pourfit,
Einsi com Boësses le fit
Et com maint philosophe firent
Qui mainte doleur en souffrirent
Et furent chacié en essil.
L’escripture le dit, mais cil
Qui ce faisoient, verité
Destruisoit leur iniquité. (3749–58)

[I implore you to be advised by good people and aspire to work for common profit as Boethius and many other philosophers did, suffering great pain in doing so, and being hunted into exile. Scripture says that, for those who do so, truth will destroy their iniquity.]

The identification of Boethius and scripture as complementary authorities and models for human behaviour renders explicit the judgement implied in Machaut’s assimilation of biblical exempla with Boethian philosophy. Boethius’s function as an exemplary instance of the active pursuit of common profit, despite the suffering it incurs, suggests the particular value of a Boethian conception of fortune for the politician. The sense that Machaut’s version of Boethianism is in sympathy with the Consolation perhaps finds a reflection in the manuscript transmission of the Confort: one of Machaut’s most copied narrative poems, in MS A 95, Bern Bürgerbibliothek, the Confort is adjacent to the Livre de Boece de consolacion by Renaut de Louhans, an arrangement which may indicate a perceived relationship between the two works, as Jacqueline Cerquiglini argues.¹¹

Rather than implying that God will intervene in the present time to preserve the innocent from temporal punishment, Machaut’s Old Testament narratives are located in the age of miracles, as examples ‘qui sont a nous impossible’ [‘which are impossible to us’] (48). If these instances of divine intercession offer proof ‘that loyal servants of God always win in the end’, or that, like Balshazzar, ‘bad kings are punished’, it does not follow that judgement will be enacted in contemporary life, as Palmer maintains.¹² Conscious that Charles was soon to be released by his allies, Machaut compiles biblical narratives that serve as interpretative models for his patron’s future experience. By implication, his fate is to be understood as a temporal analogue for the miraculous intercessions found in scripture that foreshadow a heavenly kingdom of perfect justice. As Martha Wallen argues, the Old Testament narratives that Machaut recounts correspond to different possible outcomes of Charles’s imprisonment, and their potential significance: the possibility of Charles’ innocence is imaged in the unjust persecution and subsequent release of Daniel and Susanna. Balshazzar’s destruction reflects the worst consequences of sin, while the experience of Manasseh suggests that repentance has the power to effect liberation from a bondage at once physical and spiritual.¹³ Wallen identifies Machaut’s insistence upon a correlation between biblical typology and the personal history of Charles of Navarre as atypical, however: as Palmer argues, such a correspondence ‘would not have been generally accepted by theologians of the time’.¹⁴ Yet, reading the parallels established between Charles’s experience and Old Testament narratives in terms of an extension of typology to secular history is unnecessary: biblical passages were often used as a source of personal guidance, as in the practice of sortes Biblicae, where a text selected at random is taken as a source of private direction.¹⁵ In the Confort, Machaut makes the selection for Charles, and this biblical material remains available for a similar form of interpretation. If Charles’s allies were successful, he would be aware of the temporal origins of this aid, but could still follow Machaut’s biblical protagonists in reading his situation as an imperfect reflection of God’s providential plan for the faithful in the afterlife. Like Daniel, following his ordeal in the lions’ den, the newly liberated Charles might return to public life, but if he fails to recognise the inadequacy of worldly power in contrast to that of the divine, he can expect to endure the permanent destruction imaged in Balshazzar’s fate.

Such a reading is corroborated in the Confort, since, despite the significance the po...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Dedication
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• Acknowledgements
• Introduction Remembering Boethius
• 1 Boethian Counsel: Guillaume de Machaut’s Confort d’ami
• 2 Consolatory Vision: Translating Boethius in Guillaume de Machaut’s Remede de Fortune
• 3 Boethian Discipline: Desire and Restraint in Guillaume de Machaut’s Fonteinne amoureuse
• 4 Memory, Desire and Writing in Jean Froissart’s Prison amoureuse
• 5 Redeeming Memory: Thomas Usk’s Testament of Love
• 6 Textual Authority and the Making of a Model Prince: James I of Scotland and The Kingis Quair
• Conclusion
• Works Cited
• Index