192 ROYAL SOCIETY OF CANADA 
Naturally (and this is also an indirect testimony to the influence 
of the Roman de la Rose) there were those who found matter for serious 
complaint in the work of Jean de Meung, who in the second part placed 
the work of Guillaume de Lorris on a basis of profound philosophical 
import. As we shall see, Gerson, Chancellor of the University of Paris, 
saw the danger to morals in the average man’s reception of a poem which 
tended to free him from all restraint. Christine de Pisan, too, with a 
much narrower range of thought, assails with singular energy and with 
the courage of her convictions a book which contains so many attacks 
on her sex. 
If we analyse critically the influence of the second part of the Roman 
de la Rose we shall see that its fundamental purpose or idea (whether 
altogether so intended by Jean de Meung or not does not matter) was to 
disseminate in a popular form the philosophy of the Latin writers. 
To Jean de Meung must be given credit for the manner of the work, the 
handling of the material, but for the subject matter he is indebted to 
Plato, Aristotle, Cicero, Horace, Juvenal, ete., and especially to the 
De Consolatione Philosophie of Boethius, the De Nuptiis of Theophrastus, 
the De Planctu Nature of Alain de Lille, and to the Ars Amatoria and 
Metamorphoses of Ovid.! As a popular exposition of the favorite 
doctrines of Latin philosophy, as an encyclopedia of knowledge on almost 
every subject, good and evil, the nature of government, the Church, 
society, morals, manners, women, etc., etc., the Roman de la Rose was 
admired by the bourgeois, the average man. At a time when learning 
was only for the favored few, it is not much wonder that those who had 
formerly been excluded from the magic pale treasured a work which 
opened wide for them the portals of mental advancement. 
It is this freedom or expression, so novel because so bold in the age 
in which he lived, that makes him characteristically French; while the 
objects to which it was directed, the attempt to be encyclopedic, and 
the constant appeal to a clear and uncompromising reason, lead us to 
agree (as far as such comparisons will hold) with Gaston Paris that Jean 
de Meung is the Voltaire of the Middle Ages. In this sense, too, he may 
be regarded as representing the Aufklürung which was logically required 
to prepare the way for the new and larger enthusiasm of the Renaissance. 
About twenty-five years after Jean de Meung finished his master- 
piece, another work was written which vehemently supported his attacks 
on women and marriage. This was the Lamenta of Matheolus, 
translated into French about the middle of the fourteenth century by 
* Cf. E. Langlois, Origines et Sources du Roman de la Rose, Paris, 1890, p. 130 
sqq. 
