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WorkChristine de Pizan

Le Livre des fais et bonnes meurs du sage roy Charles V

(lit.: The Book of the Deeds and Good Conduct of the Wise King Charles V)

A portrait of Charles V of France as the model of a wise king, drawn by a woman who had grown up at his court.

by Christine de Pizan452 passages held

  • French, the original language
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First published
(aged 40)
Original language
French

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Overview

In 1404 Philip the Bold, duke of Burgundy and for years the effective ruler of France, asked a poet to write the life of his dead brother, King Charles V. The choice had a reason. Christine de Pizan had grown up at that king's court, where her father served as physician and astrologer, and she could still question men who had waited on him, among them his chamberlain and his valet. Philip died on 27 April 1404 and never saw the book. She finished it that year all the same. The book is in three parts, on the king's nobility of heart, his chivalry and his wisdom, and it argues a case more than it keeps a chronicle. The first describes his day hour by hour: rising, prayer, council, meals, recreation, an ordered life divided between study and business. Charles V, who reigned from 1364 to 1380 during the long war with England, was no battlefield commander, so the second part has to explain how such a king can be called chivalrous; her answer is that he chose able captains and planned well, and that a ruler's courage shows in judgement. The third part makes learning a royal virtue. In 1404 the reigning king, Charles VI, was subject to attacks of madness, and a portrait of a steady, studious ruler read as advice to whoever would govern next. Part of the text was printed between 1739 and 1743 by the abbé Lebeuf, a historian of Paris, and the whole in 1936–40 by the archivist Suzanne Solente. Historians of the reign still draw on it for the king's household and habits, while reading its praise as a model held up to his successors.

Key concepts

What are the four graces of chivalry?

Good fortune, sense, diligence and strength. Christine holds that all four must be present together, because where one fails the others lose their force. The list matters for what it leaves out. Nothing in it requires a knight to strike blows with his own hand, so a king who plans a war, picks its captains and sees it supplied can meet the definition from his palace.

How does the book tell wisdom apart from prudence and art?

By what each one knows. Wisdom, following Aristotle, is knowledge of causes and first principles, and its highest object is God. Prudence is good judgement about what to do, shown in how the king provided for the realm. Art is the knowledge of making, which Christine finds in his buildings. A person who knows why a thing is so ranks above one who only knows from practice that it is so.

What is the common good in this portrait of a king?

It is the welfare of all the king's subjects taken together, and the measure by which every power in the book is judged. Knighthood exists to hold and defend it, a prince's prudence is his provision for it, and a ruler's only real happiness lies in being able to do good to others. Christine also reports that Charles held his subjects by love, and earned being both feared and loved.

Why does every saying of the king come with an ancient story?

Because the book argues by example. A remark of Charles is set beside a matching case from antiquity, so that his judgement is seen to agree with the wisest of the past. His reply about a man wrongly executed is paired with Socrates, who told his wife he would sooner die undeserving than deserving. The pairing turns a courtier's memory into a lesson a later prince can use.

Themes of the book

What this book returns to, gathered into themes and ordered by how much of the text each one occupies.

A king's day, kept in order

What does a ruler's timetable have to do with his justice? The first part argues that nobility is a habit of the heart, visible in how a day is spent.

Nobility of heart is defined at the outset by three marks: aiming at high things, loving good conduct, and acting with prudence. The king's day is then shown hour by hour, from a cheerful rising between six and seven through prayer, council, audience and study, as evidence that he had all three. His justice, mercy, sobriety and measured giving are proved the same way, by witnessed scenes. Lordship, he is quoted as saying, is more burden than glory, and its one happiness is the power to do good to others.

  • kingship
  • virtue
  • justice
  • political ethics
  • common good
  • charity
  • religion
  • hospitality
  • ceremony
  • diplomacy
  • political authority
  • virtue ethics
  • law

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Chivalry without the sword

Can a king who stays in his palace be called a knight? The second part redefines chivalry so that the answer is yes, and then has to defend the redefinition.

Four things make true chivalry, Christine says: good fortune, sense, diligence and strength, and if one is missing the others go dead. Critics look at whether the king's limbs were at rest and see a man who sat at home; she judges by results. Charles sent his formal defiance to England, made Bertrand du Guesclin constable, kept armies supplied and won back most of what a forced peace had given away. Chivalry itself she compares to a chain of joined links, made to hold and defend the common good.

  • chivalry
  • military strategy
  • warfare
  • leadership
  • courage
  • military ethics
  • loyalty
  • political leadership
  • deception

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Learning as a duty of kings

Is a king's library an ornament or an instrument of rule? The third part calls Charles a true philosopher and means it as a political claim.

Wisdom is sorted here in Aristotle's terms, as knowledge of causes and first principles, and the king is measured against each kind: philosopher, astrologer, a man of understanding, prudence and art. He gathered books and kept the best scribes at work, called learned men from as far as Bologna, built, and honoured the university. His remembered sayings carry the practical side, such as his ruling that hiding one's mind is wise against the wicked and a vice when it waits to do harm. A realm is well governed by someone who has learned to think.

  • wisdom
  • knowledge
  • education
  • patronage
  • political counsel
  • prudence

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Within this work

passages held
452
distinct concepts
593
by passages held, corpus-wide
#164

What this book thinks together

The wheel takes this book’s leading concepts and shows how often they come up together. The wider the band between two, the more of its passages speak of both. Among them, most often together: “diplomacy” and “hospitality”.
Concept co-occurrence, strongest first 8 concepts, joined by 21 pairings. 91 pairings reach beyond these concepts and are not drawn.
ConceptPaired conceptShared passages
diplomacyhospitality14
educationvirtue8
prudencevirtue8
educationkingship7
kingshipvirtue6
leadershipprudence5
hospitalitykingship4
justicekingship4
diplomacykingship3
leadershipvirtue3
diplomacyleadership2
hospitalityleadership2
justiceleadership2
kingshipleadership2
kingshipprudence2
diplomacyeducation1
diplomacyjustice1
diplomacyprudence1
educationprudence1
justiceprudence1
justicevirtue1

Works held

The author's work in order, this book marked in place. Your-language title first, the original beneath it where the two differ; side chips show which full texts are held.

  1. 1399 The God of Love's Letter (Épître au dieu d'Amours)

    Her first long poem and her first defence of women, written in 1399. Its complaint returns in her letters on the Romance of the Rose and again in The Book of the City of Ladies.

     FR
  2. 1402 Debate of the Romance of the Rose (Les Epistres du débat sus le Roman de la Rose)

    Letters, gathered into a dossier by Christine herself in 1402 with her opponents' side included. They stand between the poem of 1399 that first attacked Jean de Meun and The Book of the City of Ladies of 1405.

     FR
  3. 1404 Le Livre des fais et bonnes meurs du sage roy Charles V you are here FR
  4. 1405 The Book of the City of Ladies (Le Livre de la cité des dames)

    The book she is most read for today, finished by 1405. It gathers the arguments of her earlier poem and letters against Jean de Meun into a single allegory, and its three ladies return in the sequel.

     EN
  5. 1405 The Treasure of the City of Ladies (Le trésor de la cité des dames de degré en degré et de tous estatz)

    The sequel to The Book of the City of Ladies, finished the same year, 1405: the first book defends women by example, and this one tells them what to do. It was the more often printed of the two in the century after her death.

     FR
  6. 1405 The Vision of Christine de Pizan (L'avision de Christine)

    One of three books dated 1405, with The Book of the City of Ladies and its sequel, and the last of her allegories. It is the one in which she tells her own story.

     FR
  7. 1410 The Book of Deeds of Arms and of Chivalry (Le Livre des fais d'armes et de chevalerie)

    A manual in four parts, compiled around 1410 from Roman and recent authorities on war and its law. It belongs with her late books of political advice for the French court, and it stands furthest from the subjects she is now read for.

     FR
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