Page:EB1911 - Volume 15.djvu/323

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JEALOUSY—JEANNIN

coloured of the sub-family, and the common blue jay[1] of Canada and the eastern states of the Union, Cyanurus cristatus (fig. 2), is one of the most conspicuous birds of the Transatlantic woods. The account of its habits by Alexander Wilson is known to every student of ornithology, and Wilson’s followers have had little to do but supplement his history with unimportant details. In this bird and its many allied forms, coloration, though almost confined to various tints of blue, seems to reach its climax, but want of space forbids more particular notice of them, or of the members of the other genera Cyanocitta, Cyanocorax, Xanthura, Psilorhinus, and more, which inhabit various parts of the Western continent. It remains, however, to mention the genus Cissa, including many beautiful forms belonging to the Indian region, and among them the C. speciosa and C. sinensis, so often represented in Oriental drawings, though doubts may be expressed whether these birds are not more nearly related to the pies than to the jays.  (A. N.) 


JEALOUSY (adapted from Fr. jalousie, formed from jaloux, jealous, Low Lat. zelosus, Gr. ζῆλος, ardour, zeal, from the root seen in ζέειν, to boil, ferment; cf. “yeast”), originally a condition of zealous emulation, and hence, in the usual modern sense, of resentment at being (or believing that one is or may be) supplanted or preferred in the love or affection of another, or in the enjoyment of some good regarded as properly one’s own. Jealousy is really a form of envy, but implies a feeling of personal claim which in envy or covetousness is wanting. The jealousy of God, as in Exod. xx. 5, “For I, the Lord thy God, am a jealous God,” has been defined by Pusey (Minor Prophets, 1860) as the attribute “whereby he does not endure the love of his creatures to be transferred from him.” “Jealous,” by etymology, is however, only another form of “zealous,” and the identity is exemplified by such expressions as “I have been very jealous for the Lord God of Hosts” (1 Kings xix. 10). A kind of glass, thick, ribbed and non-transparent, was formerly known as “jealous-glass,” and this application is seen in the borrowed French word jalousie, a blind or shutter, made of slats of wood, which slope in such a way as to admit air and a certain amount of light, while excluding rain and sun and inspection from without.


JEAN D’ARRAS, a 15th-century trouvère, about whose personal history nothing is known, was the collaborator with Antoine du Val and Fouquart de Cambrai in the authorship of a collection of stories entitled Évangiles de quenouille. They purport to record the narratives of a group of ladies at their spinning, who relate the current theories on a great variety of subjects. The work dates from the middle of the 15th century and is of considerable value for the light it throws on medieval manners.

There were many editions of this book in the 15th and 16th centuries, one of which was printed by Wynkyn de Worde in English, as The Gospelles of Dystaves. A modern edition (Collection Jannet) has a preface by Anatole France.

Another trouvère, Jean d’Arras who flourished in the second half of the 14th century, wrote, at the request of John, duke of Berry, a long prose romance entitled Chronique de la princesse. It relates with many digressions the antecedents and life of the fairy Mélusine (q.v.).


JEAN DE MEUN, or De Meung (c. 1250–c. 1305), whose original name was Jean Clopinel or Chopinel, was born at Meun-sur-Loire. Tradition asserts that he studied at the university of Paris. At any rate he was, like his contemporary, Rutebeuf, a defender of Guillaume de Saint-Amour and a bitter critic of the mendicant orders. Most of his life seems to have been spent in Paris, where he possessed, in the Rue Saint-Jacques, a house with a tower, court and garden, which was described in 1305 as the house of the late Jean de Meung, and was then bestowed by a certain Adam d’Andely on the Dominicans. Jean de Meun says that in his youth he composed songs that were sung in every public place and school in France. In the enumeration of his own works he places first his continuation of the Roman de la rose of Guillaume de Lorris (q.v.). The date of this second part is generally fixed between 1268 and 1285 by a reference in the poem to the death of Manfred and Conradin, executed (1268) by order of Charles of Anjou (d. 1285) who is described as the present king of Sicily. M. F. Guillon (Jean Clopinel, 1903), however, considering the poem primarily as a political satire, places it in the last five years of the 13th century. Jean de Meun doubtless edited the work of his predecessor, Guillaume de Lorris, before using it as the starting-point of his own vast poem, running to 19,000 lines. The continuation of Jean de Meun is a satire on the monastic orders, on celibacy, on the nobility, the papal see, the excessive pretensions of royalty, and especially on women and marriage. Guillaume had been the servant of love, and the exponent of the laws of “courtoisie”; Jean de Meun added an “art of love,” exposing with brutality the vices of women, their arts of deception, and the means by which men may outwit them. Jean de Meun embodied the mocking, sceptical spirit of the fabliaux. He did not share in current superstitions, he had no respect for established institutions, and he scorned the conventions of feudalism and romance. His poem shows in the highest degree, in spite of the looseness of its plan, the faculty of keen observation, of lucid reasoning and exposition, and it entitles him to be considered the greatest of French medieval poets. He handled the French language with an ease and precision unknown to his predecessors, and the length of his poem was no bar to its popularity in the 13th and 14th centuries. Part of its vogue was no doubt due to the fact that the author, who had mastered practically all the scientific and literary knowledge of his contemporaries in France, had found room in his poem for a great amount of useful information and for numerous citations from classical authors. The book was attacked by Guillaume de Degulleville in his Pèlerinage de la vie humaine (c. 1330), long a favourite work both in England and France; by John Gerson, and by Christine de Pisan in her Épître au dieu d’amour; but it also found energetic defenders.

Jean de Meun translated in 1284 the treatise, De re militari, of Vegetius into French as Le livre de Vegèce de l’art de chevalerie[2] (ed. Ulysse Robert, Soc. des anciens textes fr., 1897). He also produced a spirited version, the first in French, of the letters of Abelard and Hèloïse. A 14th-century MS. of this translation in the Bibliothèque Nationale has annotations by Petrarch. His translation of the De consolatione philosophiae of Boëtius is preceded by a letter to Philip IV. in which he enumerates his earlier works, two of which are lost—De spirituelle amitié from the De spirituali amicitia of Aelred of Rievaulx (d. 1166), and the Livre des merveilles d’Hirlande from the Topographia Hibernica, or De Mirabilibus Hiberniae of Giraldus Cambrensis (Giraud de Barry). His last poems are doubtless his Testament and Codicille. The Testament is written in quatrains in monorime, and contains advice to the different classes of the community.

See also Paulin Paris in Hist. lit. de la France, xxviii. 391–439, and E. Langlois in Hist. de la langue et de la lit. française, ed. L. Petit de Julleville, ii. 125–161 (1896); and editions of the Roman de la rose (q.v.).


JEANNETTE, a borough of Westmoreland county, Pennsylvania, U.S.A., about 27 m. E. by S. of Pittsburg. Pop. (1890), 3296; (1900), 5865 (1340 foreign-born); (1910), 8077. It is served by the Pennsylvania railroad, and is connected with Pittsburg and Uniontown by electric railway. It is supplied with natural gas and is primarily a manufacturing centre, its principal manufactures being glass, table-ware and rubber goods. Jeannette was founded in 1888, and was incorporated as a borough in 1889.


JEANNIN, PIERRE (1540–1622), French statesman, was born at Autun. A pupil of the great jurist Jacques Cujas at Bourges, he was an advocate at Dijon in 1569 and became councillor and then president of the parlement of Burgundy. He opposed in vain the massacre of St Bartholomew in his province. As councillor to the duke of Mayenne he sought to reconcile him with Henry IV. After the victory of Fontaine-Française (1595), Henry took Jeannin into his council and in 1602 named him intendant of finances. He took part in the principal events of the reign, negotiated the treaty of Lyons with the duke of Savoy

  1. The birds known as blue jays in India and Africa are rollers (q.v.).
  2. Jean de Meun’s translation formed the basis of a rhymed version (1290) by Jean Priorat of Besançon, Li abreyance de l’ordre de chevalerie.