La nef des dames vertueuses (review)

Judy Kem's recent edition of La nef des dames vertueuses provides critics with a precious tool for dealing with the principal themes of public debate in the Renaissance, as reflected in the literature of this period. This edition is based on the edition princeps of 1503, which Kem found to be less fallible than the two previous editions published during the sixteenth century.

In a concise (albeit enlightening) introduction, Kem retraces Champier's life, thus contextualizing his book. Married to Bayard's niece, Champier was well-known as both a physician and a humanist disciple of the Platonic tradition. Kem also gives a synthetic analysis of the nature of Champier's feminism, explaining how taking the defense of women brought him to praise them and to take a clear stance in the quarrel of women, turning him from a former misogynic into a (true?) feminist.

Inspired by Sebastien Brant's La Nef des fous (The Ship of Fools) and its tremendous success, Symphorien Champier wrote La Nef des princes (1502) and then dedicated his book La nef des dames vertueuses (The Ship of the Virtuous Ladies) to Anne de France and Suzanne de Bourbon in 1503 in Lyon.

His book is divided into four parts in which Champier argues about the excellence of women, much in the tradition of Christine de Pisan's La cité des dames and Boccaccio's De claris mulieribus. While the book remained in oblivion for four centuries, the international fame it brought to its author justifies this new edition. Indeed, the time has come for making accessible to readers this work, which preceded for example Agrippa de Nettesheim, representing a precious source to add to the flourishing wave of feminist writings of the Renaissance, which were recently published. The first part entitled "Les louenges fleurs et deffenssoir des femmes" ("Flowers of Praise and Defense of Women"), offers a collection of famous women's biographies from Greek and Roman antiquity, followed by the Old and New Testament. It also includes women not yet sanctified as belonging to recent and heroic history of France, such as Joan of Arc, Blanche of Castille, and others.

The second part of the book, dedicated to Suzanne de Bourbon, deals with the proper behavior that ladies and princesses should adopt in marriage. Marriage is described from all its possible aspects: why marry? How should a woman choose her husband? When is the proper time for a girl to marry? What qualities are to be found in a woman? As a physician, Champier deals with sexual relations, fertility, and sterility, but he also comments on the social and economic behavior in marriage —how a lady should use her wealth, for instance —or gives advice on the education of children. His approach aiming to describe and comment on all the aspects of marriage is highly interesting because it brings together different types of discourses: medical, moral, and religious, as well as other social discourses.

The third part, dedicated to Anne de France, offers Champier's translation of the sybilline prophecies, to which he adds his commentary and compares the prophecies of the sybills with those of the biblical prophets. The fourth part of the book, devoted to true love inspired by Plato and dedicated to Anne de France, Duchess of Bourbon and Auvergne, is highly inspired by Marsilio Ficino's commentary on Plato's Symposium. In this chapter, although Champier claims that women are inferior to men, he nevertheless suggests that women should be viewed as temporarily equal, a suggestion that was to play an important role in the Querelle des femmes.

One may hope that this new and very professional edition of a rare text will allow critics to better evaluate the importance of Champier's contribution to an old debate. Furthermore, the study of this key text could shed some light on the way it has nurtured the question of marriage and...