It is evidently a transitional document.
[Illustration:
PSALTERM. ET OFFICIA
14TH CENT.
_Brit. Mus. Harl. MS. 2897, fol. 184_]
[Illustration:
HEURES, ETC.
14TH CENT.
_Brit. Mus. Harl. MS. 2952, fol. 22_]
The works of Christine de Pisan, the popular--one may fairly say
fashionable--authoress, were perhaps among the best known and most
widely read while Caxton was setting up his press at Westminster, as she
was among the most welcome guests at the Courts of Charles VI. and
Philip of Burgundy. She was the daughter of a distinguished Venetian
savant, Thomas de Pisan, who had come at the invitation of Charles le
Sage to Paris as "Astrologue du Roi." At the age of fifteen Christine,
who was as beautiful as she was accomplished, became the wife of a
Picard gentleman named Estienne Castel. Two years afterwards the death
of the King brought trouble upon her father, and with it sickness and
despondency. Then followed sorrow upon sorrow. Whilst she was herself
still burdened with the cares of early motherhood her father died, and
within nine years from her marriage the sudden death from contagion, of
her husband, to whom she was most fondly attached, left her a widow with
two little children dependent upon her, and with only what she herself
could earn as a means of livelihood.
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