ABSTRACT
Burgeoning French humanism at the end of the fourteenth century gave the classical Amazons a new popularity. It has been assumed that they had a favorable effect on the reception of Joan of Arc at the court of Charles VII. From an anthropological point of view, the Amazons threatened the right order of the universe by refusing the destiny assigned them. As William Blake Tyrrell states: "Amazon customs reverse a polarity whose ideal is the adult male." The Amazons, although not regular members of any catalogue tradition, were most assimilable in terms of their depiction by male authors to the category of vice. At Poitiers one arresting reference to the Amazon image, a sixteen-line poem beginning "Virgo puellares," may suggest that Charles' commissioners held fewer scruples relating to the bad s example of the Amazons than did Deschamps. The Amazons, even purified in the medieval tradition itself the result of their rigorous and systematic military training.
