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An investigation of the occurrence of the word accessoire(s) in the works of Christine de Pizan affords another example of how Christine’s vocabulary in general reflects her situation at the interface of the use of vernacular and Latin in the Parisian circles which she frequented. Christine uses the word accessoire only twice in her works. As it is not a common word either in Old or Middle French, as the examples in Godefroy (Complément, v. 8, p. 21), Tobler-Lommatzsch (v. 1, col. 356), the Französisches etymologisches Wörterbuch (v. 24, col. 69a) and the online Dictionnaire du Moyen Français (afterwards cited here as DMF) show, it should be considered a Latinism. The first, as well as earliest, instance in Christine’s works is found at the opening of Autres ballades, 5: “Les biens mondains et tous leurs accessoires, / Chacun voit bien qu’ilz sont vains et falibles”. This example is typical of the use of the post-classical Latin term accessorium in legal and scholastic texts written after Pope Boniface VIII’s formulation of eighty-eight new “regulae juris” or rules of law, in his Liber Sextus Decretalium from 1298. Boniface, pope from 1294 to 1303, is probably best known for being denounced as a simoniac by Dante in Inferno, XIX. The forty-second new rule states “Accessorium naturam sequi congruit principalis” (“it is consistent that the accessory follows the nature of the principle”). These new regulae juris quickly attained the status of legal maxims, and in turn often reemerged as vernacular proverbs, as with the forty-third rule, qui tacit consentire videtur, which became in French qui ne dit mot consent, and in German wer schweigt, stimmt zu, As will be seen, while Boniface’s use of the term accessorium was not its first attribution in medieval Latin texts, an inspection of the pertinent classical and medieval Latin lexica and of the occurrences of the term accessorium in the online Brepols Library of Latin Texts confirms the importance of Boniface’s Rule 42 for all subsequent occurrences.

Evidence of the enormous international influence exerted by Boniface’s Liber Sextus Decretalium is found in the simple fact that it immediately produced a huge body of commentary from such famous canonists connected to Boniface’s curia as Jean Lemoine, Guido de Baysio and Giovanni d’Andrea. (Christine herself speaks of Giovanni d’Andrea and his daughter Novella in the Cité des Dames, II. 36, and it seems as though Christine’s ancestors in Bologna probably new Giovanni d’Andrea).

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