196 ROYAL SOCIETY OF CANADA 
Then Jean de Montreuil, wishing to convince Christine and the third 
person before mentioned of the great value of the tenets of Jean de 
Meung expounded in the Roman de la Rose, wrote, probably in 1401, a 
treatise in the form of a letter (document III) now lost, which he sent to 
his two opponents.! This correspondence with Gerson (if it be he) is 
not improbable, as we have several other letters of Jean de Montreuil 
addressed to him.? We subjoin herewith also three undated Latin 
letters® from his pen, which bear on our subject. 
Shortly afterward, Christine wrote a letter (document IV) to Jean 
de Montreuil (whom she calls “maistre Jehan Johannes”) refuting his 
arguments and again assailing the Roman de la Rose. 
Gontier Col,‘ secrétaire du roi, having heard of this letter of Chris- 
tine’s, sent her, in order to convince her of the unsoundness of her 
views regarding the poem, “un pou de trésor” (i.e., the work, Le trésor 


seems to have abandoned the church, for which he was originally intended, and to 
have gone into public life. In 1391 we find him secretary to Charles VI. and also 
to the duc de Bourgogne and the duc d’Orléans. He soon became chanoine de 
Rouen, and then prévét de Lille, a title which he liked. He undertook many em- 
bassies for the king of France: to England and Scotland, 1394; to Germany and 
Italy; to Pope Benedict XIII. at Avignon, 1404; to Rome (Jean XXIIL.), 1412 (where 
he learned to know I eonardo Bruni). In 1413 he went as ambassador of the king of 
France to the duc «¢ Bourgogne. In the civil war he attached himself to the party 
of Orléans and retused to leave Paris, with the result that it cost him his life in the 
massacre, June 12, 1418, of the party of the Armagnacs, which effected for a long 
time a stifling of the first Renaissance. 
From this we see that Jean de Montreuil was a man of action, but we know him 
also as a man of letters. He wrote De Gestis et factis memorabilibus Francorum, 
dedicated to Gerson, certain works in refutation of the claims of Edward III. to the 
French throne (cire. 1400), and a large number of letters. His latinity was above 
the average of his time, but he tried to treat Latin like a living language, 7.e., as a 
means of expression for all his ideas. 
He was charged with paganism because he inscribed the ten laws of Lycurgus on 
the portico of his house, and confessed that he preferred them to evangelical prin- 
ciples. Thisisin the spirit of the real Renaissance, divided between faith and reason. 
This dilemma, whatever may be said, separates the Middle Ages from the Renaissance, 
since each age gives a different answer to the question. Jean de Montreuil is already 
abandoning the ideas of the Middle Ages and recommending those of the Renais- 
sance. Therefore in this way he is an innovator and a precursor of the new time. 
His attitude in this matter is inseparably connected with that quarrel concerning the 
Roman de la Rose which, while it is the most ancient literary quarrel, is also really 
a moral and religious quarrel. (Cf. Lavisse, Histoire de France, 1908, t. IV. (A. 
Coville), and A. Thomas, op. cit.) 
1 Cf. A. Thomas, op. cit., p. 41-2. 
? Cf. A. Thomas, op. cit., p. 38. 
# v. Appendix. 
4 For a brief sketch of the life of Gontier Col, cf. M. Roy, Oeuvres poétiques de 
Christine de Pisan, t. II., pp. V-VI. 
