The Intellectual Interests Reflected in Libraries of the Fourteenth and ...

270 PEARL KIBRE
translations into French made for his collection, which was regarded
as an extremely important one in the fourteenth century.
Included were not only such Latin works of antiquity as those by
Ovid, Vegetius, Valerius Maximus, and Livy, but also Aristotle's
Ethics and Politics, the Bible and glosses on it, St. Augustine's
Soliloquies and the City of God, Boethius' Consolation of Philosophy,
John of Salisbury's Polycraticus, Petrarch's Dialogues, and
a host of other works in astrology, chiromancy, and medicine.64 In
the library of John, duke of Berry, who deeded his library to Louis
XI, there were not only original compositions in French, but translations
as well of such standard Latin classical and medieval favorites
as those noted above. The translations of the former were,
however, in the ascendency.65 The library of Charles of Orleans
(1391-1465), whose chateau at Blois was the meeting place for the
poets Villon, Chastelain, and others, comprised a collection of books
almost entirely in French, many of them medieval favorites which
had been translated especially for Charles. These included among
others, French translations of the Bible, of Vincent of Beauvais'
Speculum historiale, James of Voragine 's Legends of the Saints,
and Bartholomew of England's treatise on the properties of things,
together with the ever present Consolation of philosophy of
Boethius, the pseudo-Aristotelian Problems, Ptolemy's Almagest,
and a number of Latin classics of antiquity in French translation.
There were books by Christine de Pisan, one of them dedicated to
Valentine Visconti,66 and several volumes which comprised French
romances, fabliaux, chronicles, and a work on chess. The inventory
of Charles' books, some of which had belonged to his father, Louis
d'Orleans, and others to his mother, Valentine Visconti, was made
while Charles was a prisoner in England."7 He had been captured
at the battle of Agincourt (1415), and was kept in England until
he was ransomed in 1440. Fear that the English would capture
Marie-Joseph Pinet, Christine de Pisan, 1364-1430, etude biographique et litteraire
(Paris, 1927).
64 Delisle, op. cit., I, 38, 41; Edward Edwards, Memoirs of Libraries, I, 388.
65 Delisle, Le cabinet des manuscrits, I, 56 ff.
66 P. Champion, La librairie de Charles d'Orleans (Paris, 1910); Le Roux de
Lincy, "La bibliotheque de Charles d'Orleans, a son chateau de Blois en 1427,"
Bibliotheqque de l'ecole des chartes, V (1843-44), 59-82; 71-72, nos. 23, 28; ef.
D'Adda, Libreria Visconteo-Sforzesca del Castello di Pavia (Milan, 1875), pp.
xxxix-xl.
67 Delisle, op. cit., I, 98 ff.; 105; 114-19.
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