troubadour, often paraphrasing information culled from the poems. About a hundred such
biographies have come down to us, all but two anonymous.
The 15th century witnessed the development of the secular biography proper. There is
no doubt that the impetus came, at least in part, from the immense success of Boccaccio’s
De casibus virorum illustrium (1355–60). The purpose of this collection of lives of men
and women from Adam to such contemporaries as Charles I of Anjou or Philippa of
Catania is moral as well as biographical. As the casus of the title indicates, Boccaccio
wished to offer a moral commentary on the fickleness of Fortune. The immensely popular
De casibus was translated by Laurent de Premierfait at the beginning of the 15th century
as Des cas des nobles hommes et femmes, further contributing to the popularity of the
biographic-moral genre.
In 1405, Christine de Pizan (ca. 1364-ca. 1430) composed in prose her Livre de la Cité
des Dames (1405), containing a long “catalogue” of illustrious ladies of all epochs.
Christine was inspired by Boccaccio’s De claris mulieribus (completed after 1362). Her
book, again, is not a pure biography (if such a thing exists) but chiefly a defense of
women from misogynous attacks. Christine also wrote the Livre des fais et bonnes meurs
du sage roy Charles V (1404), in which she uses historical sources and court documents
as well as personal reminiscences. The main purpose is not so much historical as
biographicopanegyric. Largely panegyrical also is the Livre des fais du bon messire
Jehan le Maingre, dit Bouciquaut, composed anonymously between 1407 and 1409,
during the life of the protagonist. This lengthy prose panygeric has occasionally been
attributed to Christine de Pizan, but this identification is generally rejected. The main
purpose of this biography seems to be to exalt the chivalric ideal of the times.
The century ends with a far more realistic portraiture of Louis XI and other nobles in
the Mémoires (completed in 1498) by Philippe de Commynes. The realism and vivacity
of the biographical elements in this work foreshadow the triumph of biography during the
Renaissance.
Peter F.Dembowski
[See also: CHRISTINE DE PIZAN; COMMYNES, PHILIPPE DE; EINHARD;
GUERNES DE PONT-SAINTE-MAXENCE; GUILLAUME LE MARÉCHAL,
HISTOIRE DE; HISTORIOGRAPHY; JOINVILLE, JEAN DE; VIDAS AND RAZOS]
Christine de Pizan. The Book of the City of Ladies, trans. Earl Jeffrey Richards. New York: Persea,
- [La Cité des Dames still awaits a modern critical edition.]
Egan, Margarita, trans. The Vidas of the Troubadours. New York: Garland, 1984.
Joinville, Jean de. Vie de saint Louis, ed. Noel L.Corbett. Sherbrook: Naaman, 1977.
Lalande, Denis, ed. Le livre des fais du bon messire Jehan le Maingre, dit Bouciquaut. Geneva:
Droz, 1985.
Laurent de Premierfait. Laurent de Premierfait’s Des cas des nobles hommes et femmes. Book I,
Translated from Boccaccio, ed. Patricia May Gathercole. Chapel Hill: University of North
Carolina Press, 1968. [The whole of Des cas still awaits a critical edition.]
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