Christine de Pizan
The Woman Who Invented the Author
In the winter of 1389, a young Venetian-born widow sat alone in Paris with three children, an ageing mother, a young niece, and no income. Her husband had died of plague on a royal expedition. Her father, the court astrologer Thomas de Pizan, had died two years before. The courts were slow, the debts were mounting, and no guild would accept a woman. Christine de Pizan did something no European woman had done before her: she picked up her pen, not as a pastime or a religious vocation, but as a trade. Over the next thirty years she produced more than forty works of poetry, biography, political theory, and moral philosophy — sustaining herself, her household, and her literary reputation through skill and will alone. She was the first professional writer in the modern sense that Europe had ever produced, and she was a woman.
“I am not the first, and I will not be the last, to be slandered through no fault of my own.”
c. 1364–c. 1430
Born in Venice to a Bolognese physician and astrologer. Raised at the court of Charles V in Paris. Widowed at approximately twenty-five. Died at the convent of Poissy, date unknown — the last record of her is a poem written in July 1429.
41+
Christine produced at least forty-one known works across thirty years: lyric poetry, dream allegories, political treatises, a military manual, a royal biography, conduct books for women, and a celebrated feminist manifesto. Her military handbook was so authoritative it was printed by William Caxton in 1489 — without mentioning its author was a woman.
48 copies
Her L'Épître Othéa (Letter of Othea to Hector) survives in forty-eight manuscript copies — an extraordinary circulation for any medieval author. The Queen's Manuscript, presented to Queen Isabeau of Bavaria around 1410–1415, contains 130 illuminated miniatures and is one of the most sumptuously illustrated books of the entire Middle Ages.
11 years
In 1418, after the catastrophe of Agincourt and the Burgundian seizure of Paris, Christine withdrew to the convent of Poissy. She published nothing for eleven years. Then, in July 1429, she broke her silence with a jubilant poem celebrating the victories of Joan of Arc — the only contemporary literary tribute to Joan written during her lifetime.
First professional female writer in European history; author of The Book of the City of Ladies
Defining Events
The Book of the City of Ladies
Christine's masterpiece — a systematic refutation of two thousand years of misogynist literature. Visited by three allegorical figures (Reason, Rectitude, and Justice), Christine builds a metaphorical city populated with illustrious women from history, mythology, and sacred texts. The book is the first sustained feminist argument in Western literary history, written in the vernacular so any literate woman could read it.
The Querelle de la Rose
The first organised literary debate on gender in European history. Christine attacked Jean de Meun's massively popular Roman de la Rose as obscene and misogynist, exchanging letters with three senior royal secretaries who defended it. She then collected the entire correspondence and presented it to Queen Isabeau — effectively publishing the argument on her own terms. Simone de Beauvoir called it "the first time a woman took up her pen in defence of her sex."
The Tale of Joan of Arc
After eleven years of silence at Poissy, the sixty-five-year-old Christine broke into jubilant verse at the news of Joan of Arc's victories at Orléans and the coronation of Charles VII at Reims. Her Ditié de Jehanne d'Arc — sixty-one octaves written in barely a month — is the only literary celebration of Joan composed during her lifetime by another author. Christine saw in Joan a living vindication of everything she had argued about women's capacity.
Timeline
Born in Venice
Christine is born in Venice, probably in the Pizzano district from which her family takes its name. Her father, Tommaso di Benvenuto da Pizzano, is a physician, astrologer, and professor at the University of Bologna — a man of real scholarly standing, though not great wealth. No baptismal record survives. Christine's birth year is estimated from internal evidence in her own writings.
To the Court of Charles V
Christine's father is appointed court astrologer and physician to King Charles V of France — one of the great intellectual monarchs of the medieval period. The family relocates to Paris. Christine is approximately four years old. She will spend the rest of her life in France. At the royal court she has access to Charles V's legendary library — one of the largest collections of books in medieval Europe — and her father encourages her to read everything in it.
Marriage to Etienne du Castel
At approximately fifteen, Christine marries Etienne du Castel, a royal notary and secretary. By her own account it was a genuine love match, unusual in an era of arranged marriages. Etienne rose steadily in royal favor, and the couple enjoyed a decade of happiness, producing three children. Christine later described this period as the only truly carefree years of her life.
The Death of Charles V
King Charles V dies, and with him the security of Christine's world. Her father had served under royal patronage for twelve years; his position and income immediately become precarious. The new king, Charles VI, is twelve years old. France will spend the next four decades lurching toward catastrophe under his chaotic reign.
Three Deaths
In the space of three years Christine loses everything. Her father dies around 1387, leaving no estate. Her husband Etienne dies of plague in 1389 or 1390 during a royal expedition to Beauvais. Christine is left a widow at approximately twenty-five — responsible for three children, her widowed mother, and a young niece, with no income, no guild to join, and no male protector. She spends the next several years fighting in court to recover salaries still owed to her late husband from the royal treasury. The legal system offers her almost nothing.
The First Poems
Facing destitution and finding no other path, Christine begins writing poetry — first, she says, as an expression of grief, then as a calculated attempt to earn a living. Her lyric ballads circulate at court and attract the attention of the aristocracy. By 1399 she has assembled enough material for her first collected works and has secured commissions from multiple noble patrons, including Philip the Bold of Burgundy and Louis I of Orléans. She has invented a career.
The Letter to the God of Love
Christine publishes her <em>Épître au Dieu d'Amour</em> — the first of her explicitly pro-woman works. In it, Love's court condemns men who slander women in literature, singling out the Roman de la Rose for particular censure. It is, as Simone de Beauvoir later observed, the first known instance of a woman taking up her pen in defence of her sex. Christine is approximately thirty-five.
The Querelle de la Rose
After Christine publicly criticises Jean de Meun's portion of the immensely popular <em>Roman de la Rose</em>, the royal secretary Jean de Montreuil writes a letter rebuking her. Christine responds. Brothers Gontier and Pierre Col join in defence of the Rose. The correspondence flies back and forth for two years. Christine collects every letter of the exchange, writes a preface, and presents the entire dossier to Queen Isabeau of Bavaria — effectively publishing the first organised literary debate on gender in European history, on her own terms.
The City of Ladies
At approximately forty-one, Christine completes her masterpiece: <em>Le Livre de la cité des dames</em>. Framing the book as a dream-vision in which she is visited by three allegorical figures — Reason, Rectitude, and Justice — who commission her to build a metaphorical city populated with illustrious women from history and legend, she systematically dismantles centuries of misogynist literature. The same year she completes its companion volume, <em>Le Livre des trois vertus</em> (Book of Three Virtues), a practical conduct manual for women of every social rank.
The Book of Deeds of Arms
Christine completes <em>Le Livre des fais d'armes et de chevalerie</em> — a military manual drawing on the Roman strategist Vegetius, advising commanders on siege warfare, troop management, and the law of war. It is one of the most unusual documents of the entire Middle Ages: a woman's guide to warfare, so authoritative that William Caxton printed an English translation in 1489 without mentioning the author's name or sex.
Withdrawal to Poissy
Paris has become a city of terror. The Burgundians have seized the capital; Armagnac partisans are being massacred in the streets. Christine withdraws to the royal convent of Poissy, northwest of Paris, where her daughter Marie has lived as a nun for years. She ceases to publish. For eleven years she will be silent — writing nothing for public circulation while France tears itself apart around her.
In Praise of the Maid
News reaches Poissy that a young woman from Domrémy has broken the English siege of Orléans and marched Charles VII to his coronation at Reims. Christine de Pizan, sixty-five years old, writes her last known work in barely a month: the <em>Ditié de Jehanne d'Arc</em>, sixty-one exultant octaves celebrating Joan's victories. It is the only literary tribute to Joan written during her lifetime by another author, and Christine saw in it a vindication of everything she had spent thirty years arguing. Then she falls silent again, and history loses her.
Key Figures
Etienne du Castel
Christine married Etienne at approximately fifteen, and in a world where marriages were transactions, theirs was something rarer: a partnership of affection. He was a royal notary and secretary, competent, rising, and — by Christine's own account — genuinely kind. She describes him in poem after poem with undisguised grief after his death: 'In you is all my joy, in you all my happiness, in you my heart, in you my life.' His death from plague in 1389 or 1390 left Christine with three children and no income — but also, eventually, with the freedom to build a literary identity no married woman of her era could have sustained.
Queen Isabeau of Bavaria
Wife of the increasingly unstable Charles VI, Isabeau of Bavaria was one of Christine's most important patrons and the recipient of the Queen's Manuscript (Harley MS 4431) — a near-complete collection of Christine's works in a single sumptuously illuminated volume, produced around 1410–1415. Christine presented the manuscript to Isabeau in a ceremony depicted in the famous frontispiece, which shows Christine surrounded by her books in the queen's reception chamber. Isabeau gave Christine access, prestige, and protection in a court that was growing more dangerous by the year.
The Legacy of Christine de Pizan
Christine de Pizan died sometime around 1430 — the date is unknown because the convent records at Poissy were later lost or destroyed, and she simply vanishes from the historical record. She was widely read and respected during her lifetime, forgotten for four centuries, and rediscovered by feminist scholars in the late nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Her works survive in more manuscripts than almost any other medieval author. Her military manual shaped the theory of just warfare. Her City of Ladies was the first systematic feminist argument written in a European vernacular. Her final poem for Joan of Arc remains one of the most electrifying documents of the entire Middle Ages.
She was not the first woman to write. But she was the first to make writing her profession, her livelihood, and her identity — sustaining herself and her dependents through skill alone, in a world that had no category for what she was. That she managed this is astonishing. That she managed it so brilliantly, for so long, and with such range and ambition, is one of the stranger and more moving facts in the history of literature.
Read her story in her own words in the first-person ePub — from the widow's study to the City of Ladies.
Get the Full First-Person Biography
Read Christine de Pizan's story told in their own voice — 8 chapters of cinematic, first-person narrative.