This manuscript could be something like a guideline for young knights during 15th Century. Contains instructions and best practices for young knights with spiritual and moral poems. The codex contains around 100 chapters, each consisting of extreme lavish and detailed illustrations and verse texts. Original title for this codex is “Epître d’Othea”, by Christine de Pisan, a Venetian-born woman of the medieval era who strongly challenged misogyny and stereotypes prevalent in the male-dominated medieval culture. As a poet, she was well known and highly regarded in her own day. A brave woman. She composed around 41 pieces during her 30 year career (1399–1429).
Christine de Pizan (also seen as de Pisan) (1363 – c. 1430)
Christine de Pisan was a surprise for me, never heard about her. Wikipedia has a brief biography here. I discovered during my investigation that her most successful literary works are The Book of the City of Ladies and The Book of the three virtues. City of Ladies is my personal target for another post because serves as her response to Jean de Meun's The Romance of the Rose -another delightful codex-: Christine combats Meun's misogynist beliefs by creating an allegorical city of ladies. She defends women by collecting a wide array of famous females throughout history. These women are "housed" in the City of Ladies, which is actually Christine's book. As Christine builds her city, she uses each famous woman as a building block for not only the walls and houses of the city, but also as building blocks for her defense of female rights.
The codex is decorated with about a hundred masterful miniatures. One of these contains the dedication of the work and shows four figures, identifiable as Philip the Good, Charles the Brave, and the two noble bastards David and Anton of Burgundy. I attach some high-res samples below,
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