194 ROYAL SOCIETY OF CANADA 
etas dorea, which to his old man’s fancy had existed when he was a 
youth. 
Eustache Deschamps (1338?-1415) naturally belongs on the side of 
Jean de Meung (whose disciple he may be said to be )with numerous 
ballades and his long poem against marriage, Le Miroir de Mariage.' 
In the works of Deschamps we find the epicureanism combined with 
genuine democratic feeling that we notice in the work of his master. 
Le Miroir de Mariage is not mentioned here, however, because it had a 
direct bearing upon our controversy. It seems not to have been known 
to Christine de Pisan or to her allies. It does nevertheless afford addi- 
tional evidence of the far-reaching influence of the Roman de la Rose. 
We remark that up to this point the great popularity of the Roman 
de la Rose had carried everything before it. Its influence upon literature 
was supreme. It was the masterly work which terminated the middle 
ages. But there was to be a reaction against its doctrines, and we come 
now to the first public challenge of the work of Jean de Meung, at the 
beginning of the fifteenth century. 
Christine de Pisan was not the first woman to resent the insinua- 
tions against the feminine sex contained in many parts of the Roman de 
la Rose, if we are to believe the rather doubtful legend? concerning the 
ladies of the court who were going to whip the author, but she is certainly 
the first woman-writer to champion publicly the cause of her sex, 
insulted, as she believed, by the ungallant Jean de Meung. She is still 
as interesting to us by her character, her fate, and the influence of her 
spirit on her time, says Wieland in a little known essay,* as she once 
was to her contemporaries by her personal qualities and her works. 
In 1399 she wrote her Epistre au dieu d’ Amours* (which for convenience 
of reference we call document I of the debate) which asks, why is it 
that women, formerly so esteemed and honored in France, are now 
attacked and insulted not only by the ignorant and base, but also by 
the educated, the noble, the priestly classes? 
This poem naturally encountered opposition among the partisans of 
Jean de Meung, but Christine found powerful allies in Jean Gerson, 
1 Cf. Oeuvres complètes d’Eustache Deschamps, pub. by the Marquis de Queux de 
Saint Hilaire and Gaston Raynaud, Paris, 1878-1903. 
? The same story is told of Guilhem de Bergedam, a Provençal poet who lived 
before Jean de Meung. Cf. F. Michel: Roman de la Rose, t. I., p. xv-xvi, and M. 
Méon: Roman de la Rose, t. II., p. 230 note. 
3 Ueber Christine von Pisan und ihre Schriften, in Der Teutsche Merkur, 1781, 
pp. 200-229. 
*Ed. M. Roy: Oeuvres poétiques de Christine de Pisan (in Soc. des anc. textes 
frang.) t. II., p. 1 sqq. 
