Le Mortifiement de vaine plaisance by René d’Anjou (review)

Following his edition and translation of René d’Anjou’s Regnault et Jehanneton (Geneva: Droz, 2012), Gilles Roussineau has now produced an edition and translation of the Mortifiement de vaine plaisance, an austere meditation on the perils confronting the soul anxious to make peace with God and be saved, but whose efforts are thwarted by the heart immersed in life’s pleasures and vanities. René wrote this short prose text in 1455 and dedicated it to Jean Bernard, Archbishop of Tours. Roussineau recalls in his Introduction that René, then forty-six, had suffered many hardships, having lost his wife, Isabelle de Lorraine, in 1453. (He then married the very young Jeanne de Laval in 1454, a new and joyful union that is celebrated in Regnault et Jehanneton.) Despite René’s title of king, he knew he was not likely ever to regain the Kingdom of Sicily and Naples; hence, Roussineau argues, he wrote this pious didactic work preaching detachment from all gratifications an aristocratic life may offer, such as power, riches, beauty, and love. Very likely inspired by the devotio moderna, and infused with a profound piety for the Passion of Christ, the Mortifiement is an allegorical text. It can be read as the first part of a diptych that would be completed in 1457 by the Livre du cœur d’amour épris, the protagonist of which was to be the heart; whereas in the Mortifiement the heart is only the object of the soul’s despair. Given to two allegorical ladies, Contriction and Crainte de Dieu, the heart is brought to the three theological virtues, also allegorized, who nail him to the Cross. He is then pierced by the lance of Grace Divine and purged of his impure blood. Tamed and repentant, he can be reunited to the soul with whom he will live in harmony from then on — or maybe not if one reads the Livre du cœur as a continuation of the Mortifiement. This allegorical narrative is told by the acteur, who witnesses the soul’s despair, the arrival of the ladies, and the crucifying of the heart. Yet often the narrative turns into a play with the characters dialoguing while the acteur disappears altogether. Interestingly, when teaching the soul, Crainte de Dieu resorts to parables, called similitudes, which she then carefully and systematically glosses, thus reinforcing the allegorical apparatus. As in the Livre du cœur, though much more parsimoniously, René inserts lyrical passages amid his prose. Finally, again like the Livre du cœur, the text of the Mortifiement was from the beginning intended to be illuminated by Barthélemy d’Eyck and René himself decided which scene of his allegory was to be represented. Twelve manuscripts have been preserved. Eight are beautifully illuminated (eight or nine miniatures each) by the most pre-eminent artists of the time, among them Loyset Liédet and Jean Colombe; some of these miniatures are reproduced in the book. Roussineau must be commended for providing a reliable, informed, and accessible edition of the Mortifiement, and Droz is to be commended, too, for the new format of its Textes littéraires français series, which allows for a translation and images alongside the original text.