In 1380, the king offered Thomas accommodation in the Tour Barbeau, the equivalent of a few city blocks from the Hotel Saint Pol, just off the Seine, and in the house next to the Tour.83 Although we do not know where Thomas had lodged his family earlier, it is likely that they resided near the Hotel Saint Pol. The complex, bursting with human and animal life, housing roaming lions and other exotic animals, was the space Christine would have associated with the king. In addition, Christine would have been aware of the intellectual activity of which he was the center. She may have known Charles V’s library, the volumes of which resided in the various royal residences, with a special collection of precious volumes imparting the history of the Valois stored in the hold at Vincennes. The principal library, covering three floors of the Falconry Tower in the northwest corner of the Louvre, held a large collection.
The golden period that was the first fifteen years of Christine’s life ended with the king’s death. Philip and Louis of Bourbon, aided by Jean of Berry, took control of the government in the name of the young Charles VI, as we have seen. With their assumption of power, numerous courtiers lost their jobs. Christine observes in the Advision that when powerful men die, “the shake-ups and changes in their courts and territories are great.”84 Among the victims were the marmousets. Christine makes clear her affection for the marmousets in the Fais et bonnes meurs, singling out Jean de Montaigu for praise. She also describes Bureau de La Rivière as “wise, prudent, eloquent, a man with beautiful ways,” and notes that “many others of diverse status were graced by the king for their virtues of chivalry, wisdom, loyalty, intelligence or excellent service.”85
The marmousets were not the only courtiers to lose their jobs. Thomas’s prosperity ended with Charles V’s death. In the Advision, Christine writes that her father’s large pensions dried up, although the princes gouverneurs retained him “for wages sadly decreased and irregularly paid.” Thomas subsequently “fell from power and into illness.”86 The family must have hoped for better: just months before Charles V’s death, the Duke of Burgundy had awarded Thomas a hundred livres tournois “to recognize his services and strengthen bonds with him in the future.”87 Thomas was not completely neglected: in return for the “good and agreeable services” rendered to Charles VI and his father before him, on May 23, 1384, the new king awarded him two hundred francs in gold to help him to “maintain his estate.”88 But Philip seems to have shown no more interest.
With Charles V gone, the interest at court in astrologers, always controversial, seems to have diminished. Thomas in any case was a controversial figure. Philippe de Mézières ridicules him in book 2, chapter 67 of the Songe du vieil pelerin. Lynn Thorndike relates that Thomas had had both good and bad moments in his capacity as an astrological and medical advisor.89 As for his successes, at one point he had soil collected from the “centre and four quarters of France,” placing five lead statues of naked men marked with astrological signs and the names of the king of England face first on the spots from which the soil had been collected, on an astrologically auspicious date. The ritual was completed with a spell intoning that as long as the statues lasted, the English army would be defeated and chased from France.90 The spell seems to have done the trick. On the negative side, Thomas may have been accused of trying to poison the young king and the dukes of Burgundy and Berry. In a long letter of 1385 to the alchemist Bernard de Trèves, Thomas explains that he had prepared a medicine for the royals made of gold and mercury, designed to cure sickness and expel poison.91 However, something had gone amiss; the gift had been confiscated, possibly without the knowledge of the princes, and subjected to an examination that failed to grasp its importance. Thomas requests that Bernard intervene with the princes on his behalf.92 But the bulk of the letter is an alchemical “traité sur la pierre philosophale,” possibly included to boost Thomas’s credibility in light of the medical catastrophe. Bernard appears not to have delivered the help that Thomas solicited, for his long response, covering nearly thirty folios in the same manuscript, makes no mention of the request. Worse, he essentially refutes the efficacy of the method that Thomas outlines in his treatise.93 Christine mentions Bernard with scorn in the Advision.94 It is understandable that the Duke of Burgundy might have lost interest in a doctor he believed had tried to poison him, but this lack of appreciation for her father was another thing for Christine to hold against Philip.
Besides the early animosity that Christine betrays toward Philip as one of the princes gouverneurs, in concluding this case for a reexamination of Christine’s political views, it is also important to address the most tenacious argument in favor of the poet’s devotion to Philip: that after initially courting Louis of Orleans as a protector, the disillusioned Christine transferred her loyalty from Louis to Philip. The story entered Christine scholarship in large part through the 1927 biography and survey of her work by Marie-Josèphe Pinet.95 After Henry IV’s overthrow of Richard II, Christine’s son, Jean de Castel, who in 1399 had been taken into the household of the Earl of Salisbury, was held in England by the new king, Henry IV, who requested that Christine join her son at the royal court.96 Deeming Henry IV a usurper, Christine pretended that she would return to England with her son if he first were allowed to come to France for her. The ruse worked, and Jean, then about sixteen, was allowed to return in 1401 or 1402. However, this meant that he needed a new protector. Pinet’s case that Christine solicited the Duke of Orleans for a paid position for Jean at his court is based on (1) balade 20 of the Autres balades, which she reads as Christine’s initial request; (2) an autobiographical passage in the Advision (ca. 1405) in which the poet complains that although she had asked a great lord to retain her son, the young man was given only a unpaid position at his court; and (3) a further passage in the Advision where she notes that her son was in the household of the Duke of Burgundy.97 Pinet concludes that the lord who failed to come to her aid was Louis and that Christine therefore turned to Philip.
A break with Louis is not borne out in any of Christine’s subsequent works. It is necessary, then, to revisit Pinet’s interpretation. Here, it becomes clear that the assumption that balade 20 represents a request is not certain. It might be read as such, but within a gift-giving society it might equally well be read as a countergift, or thank-you present, for a service rendered, with the poet offering her son’s service in return for an unspecified favor.98 The Advision suggests what this might have been. Immediately following the story, which Pinet cites, of the lord who had failed to offer her son a wage, Christine describes receiving an invitation to live and write at the court of Giangaleazzo Visconti, Duke of Milan, father-in-law of Louis, adding that she, Christine, never sent her volumes to princes herself but that others did so on her behalf.99 Who would have sent her work to Giangaleazzo? In August 1401, the king, then lucid, sent the Maréchal de Boucicaut and Guillaume de Tignonville, chambellan and counselor of the Duke of Orleans, appointed prévôt of Paris the month before, as ambassadors to Giangaleazzo in Milan. They were to offer a royal princess for the Duke of Milan’s son in return for a promise to subtract obedience from the Roman pope.100 Louis, Giangaleazzo’s son-in-law and chief ally in Paris, was behind any French embassy to Milan. Thus it might have been during this trip to Milan that Christine’s work was made known to Giangaleazzo, resulting in an offer of patronage for her and a position for her son. This seems likely, because she presents a trio of writings, beginning in February 1402, to the queen, Tignonville, and Louis. Just after presenting the documents related to the quarrel over the Roman de la rose to the queen, Christine offered Tignonville the gift of a copy of the dossier, and, on February 14, 1402, she dedicated the Dit de la rose to Louis. A place in the Duke of Milan’s household for the young Jean would have been a boon, an apprenticeship in Italian-style Latin and culture to prepare him for a position in the French Royal Chancery or that of Louis of Orleans.101 Such an education would have been necessary: the Royal Chancery was an “essential administrative organ,” engaged not only with the redaction of official documents but also with diplomatic missions.102 Many of its members had university degrees, and, beyond French and Latin, they were required to know “customary and Roman law, in addition to the royal ordinances and the jurisprudence relevant to the kingdom.”103 Louis’s standards, too, were high, his court attracting, in different capacities, the