Widowed Venetian scribe who built a city of ladies
Christine de Pizan, born Cristina da Pizzano in Venice in 1364, became France's court writer after plague killed her husband in 1389. Patronized by Orléans, Burgundy, and Charles VI's troubled reign, she penned early feminist prose including The Book of the City of Ladies.
Christine was born in Venice in 1364 as Cristina da Pizzano. Her father Tommaso, called Thomas de Pizan in France after the family's home village of Pizzano near Bologna, was a physician, astrologer and Venetian councillor who accepted a post as astrologer to Charles V; the family joined him in Paris in 1368. In 1379 she married Etienne du Castel, a notary and royal secretary, and had three children. Her father died in 1388 and her husband succumbed to plague a year later, leaving her to provide for her mother and children.
Knotted lawsuits over salaries still owed to her husband steered her toward writing for the court. By 1393 her love ballads were winning wealthy admirers, and her close control over how her books were made, together with a shrewd handling of patrons, has earned her the title of Europe's first professional woman of letters. Scrolls were giving way to bound codices and a book trade was growing to stock noble libraries, so she relied on no single sponsor, dedicating work to Isabeau of Bavaria, Louis of Orléans and Marie of Berry among others. From 1392 the mental breakdowns of Charles VI left the monarchy adrift and the royal family feuding.
Her Letter of Othea to Hector of 1400, first offered to Louis of Orléans, shows the goddess of wisdom coaching the Trojan hero in statecraft, and she reissued it with fresh prologues for later patrons. In 1402 she attacked Jean de Meun's Romance of the Rose for casting women as nothing but seducers, and in 1403 she wrote a dream allegory in which she journeys beside the Cumaean Sibyl. A 1404 life of Charles V, commissioned by Philip the Bold, held him up as the model ruler. The year 1405 brought her City of Ladies, peopled with learned and royal women such as Queen Zenobia, and a companion book of guidance for the dauphine Margaret of Nevers.
When John the Fearless ordered the killing of Louis of Orléans in 1407, France lurched toward civil war. Christine produced a manual on warfare and chivalry in 1410, written in French so soldiers without Latin could use it, and the royal treasury paid her 200 livres for it early in 1411. Her final major work, The Book of Peace of 1413, pressed the young dauphin Louis of Guyenne to rule wisely and seek reconciliation. Her advice books for princes and knights were still being printed in the sixteenth century.
Source: Christine de Pizan
