Prudence, Mother of Virtues: The Chapelet des vertus and Christine de Pizan

The fourteenth-century treatise called the Chapelet des vertus survives in fourteen manuscripts and sixteen printed editions, including seven incunables. Descended from an earlier French treatise, the Fleurs de toutes vertus, which in turn was descended from a still earlier Italian treatise, the Fiore di virtù, the derivative Chapelet was the form in which later medieval France knew this material. A simple collection of philosophical, patristic, and biblical quotations arranged topically by the individual virtues and vices, it circulated among members of the royal family and important courtiers in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. The Chapelet des vertus achieved its greatest impact, however, through its use by the French poet and essayist Christine de Pizan in the composition of her Epistre Othea. She was perhaps drawn to it by the Chapelet’s emphasis on prudence, a favorite theme of Christine’s. Her clever manipulation of this resource reveals an aspect of Christine’s scholarly methods previously unknown.