OF SIX MEDLEVAL WOMEN 



from Christine's pen that it is no easy task to 

 make a fair selection. One of the most significant, 

 since it deals with a subject which permeated 

 mediaeval thought, and on which she was wont 

 to dwell, is La Mutation de fortune ', " Fortune 

 more inconstant than the moon," says Christine. 

 In it she writes with her heart in her hand, as it 

 were, telling first of the sore havoc Fortune has 

 wrought amongst those most dear to her. Yet 

 though her own heart has been torn on the 

 Wheel of Fortune, she stands before her fellow 

 sufferers like some figure of Hope pointing up- 

 ward, where, she says, wrong is surely righted. 

 And thus she turns to the world in general, not 

 in the spirit of the pessimist, but rather in that 

 of the philosopher. She well knows that 

 Fortune is no blindfolded goddess turning writh- 

 ing humanity on a wheel, but a something 

 rooted in ourselves, and she has pity for " la 

 povre fragilite humaine." Though so inde- 

 pendent and advanced in thought, she is still 

 found clinging in her writings to mediaeval forms. 

 As a setting for her thoughts on Fortune's 

 changes, she makes use of the favourite simile of 

 a castle here the Castle of Fortune as re- 

 presenting the world, wherein the rich and the 

 poor, the strong and the weak, jostle one another. 

 She criticises all men, from the prince to the 

 pauper, but not women, since these have been 

 sufficiently criticised and decried. It is like the 

 prelude to a Dance of Death. Then she tells of 

 the paintings on the walls of this imaginary 



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