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  • “She is the Second St. Clare”:The Exemplum of Jehanne de Neuville, Abbess of Longchamp, in a Fourteenth-Century Defense of Women by Jehan Le Fèvre1
  • Linda Barney Burke (bio)

“She is the second St. Clare.” These words were inscribed by poet Jehan Le Fèvre as a tribute to his neighbor and living contemporary, the fourteenth-century Minorite sister Jehanne de Neuville (ca. 1326-1400), abbess of Longchamp from 1375-87. By invoking the example of Clare, the first Franciscan woman religious, to adorn his thirty-five-line portrait of Jehanne, Le Fèvre produced a conventional and orthodox encomium to both women. The context, however, is decidedly secular and even surprising (though not exactly unique) for this type of material.

This essay will begin with a translation and discussion of Le Fèvre’s tribute to Jehanne de Neuville and two other nuns of her abbey, in relation to their literary and historical context. It will follow with a look at specifically Clarissan ideals (or their revision) in the monastic vocation as lived by Jehanne and her companions at Longchamp. Le Fèvre’s reverential understanding of Clare will be shown to reflect not so much the lady herself of historical record, but “the early development of the Franciscan charism”2 as brought [End Page 325] about by her spiritual descendants, especially Isabelle of France, sister of Louis IX and founder of Longchamp. This review of the documentary evidence on Jehanne and her abbacy will help to elucidate the specifically female contribution to medieval Franciscan spirituality, both as expressed in the contemplative life of the cloister, and in necessary engagement with the brutality of a surrounding country at war. Finally, I will discuss the polemical purpose of her story as told by Le Fèvre: a “modern example”3 to support his defense of women against the claims of the misogynistic tradition, specifically its scurrilous satire on women religious. For Le Fèvre, the values especially associated with enclosed Franciscan women, as personified by Jehanne and her sisters, serve as living proof that these cruel allegations are just not true. Close study of the passage in its context reveals how carefully the author selected the details of her portrait for their consistency with his profeminine themes and exempla as developed throughout the course of the poem.

The cameo saint’s life of abbess Jehanne appears in Le Livre de Leësce, (1380-87),4 or The Book of Gladness as I [End Page 326] translate the title,5 a poem of just under 4,000 lines by the semi-employed lawyer and sometime poet Jehan Le Fèvre (ca. 1326-?).6 In the same passage, two of her nuns, Jehanne des Gueux II and Marguerite la Musie, are also singled out for praise.

Jehanne de Neuville in context

Le Livre de Leesce/Book of Gladness is the direct sequel, retraction, and rebuttal to its companion poem, Le [End Page 327] Fèvre’s translation into French (ca. 1380)7 of the notoriously misogynistic Latin Lamentations (1290 or 1291)8 by Mathew of Boulogne, or “Matheolus,” as both the author and his book were derisively labeled.9 To understand The Book of Gladness, it is necessary first to review its predecessors, beginning with the Latin Lamentations, a first-person narrative presented as its author’s life story. Mathew (Mahieu in his native dialect) was a prosperous cleric until he married Perrenelle, a beautiful young widow. This marriage to a widow rendered him “bigamous” according to the recent edict by Pope Gregory X, even though he was married only once. Beyond the trauma of losing his benefice and thereby his rank in society, the life of a husband is a torment to Mathew. His household with children is misery and chaos; worse still, Perrenelle is now old, ugly, and quarrelsome. Placing the blame on women as a class for his painful reversal of fortune, Mathew writes the Latin Lamentations both as a catharsis for his pain, and in the hope of dissuading his fellow men from falling into the snare of matrimony. (How much of this story is historically true, and how much due to literary convention, is...

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