All Thinkers

Christine de Pizan

Christine de Pizan was a medieval Italian-French writer. She is widely considered the first woman in Europe to make her living as a professional author. She was born in 1364 in Venice. Her father, Tommaso da Pizzano, was a doctor and astrologer. When she was four, the family moved to Paris because her father had been invited to serve as court astrologer to King Charles V of France. Christine grew up in the French royal court. Her father supported her education, which was unusual for a girl at the time. She read Latin, history, philosophy, and poetry. She had access to the king's library, one of the best in Europe. At fifteen she married Étienne du Castel, a court notary. By all accounts the marriage was happy. They had three children. In 1389, her husband died of the plague. Christine was 25. Her father had also died the year before. She suddenly had to support her three children, her widowed mother, and a niece. She had no inheritance and no easy way to earn money. Most widows in her position would have remarried or entered a convent. Christine chose neither. She decided to write for a living. She found patrons among the French royal dukes. She wrote poems, biographies, advice books, political works, and history. By her death around 1430, she had produced over forty works. Her best-known book, The Book of the City of Ladies (1405), is one of the earliest defences of women in European literature. She is buried in the convent of Poissy, where she spent her final years writing in support of Joan of Arc.

Origin
Italy / France
Lifespan
c. 1364-c. 1430
Era
Medieval
Subjects
Medieval Literature Early Feminism Women's Writing French Literature Political Philosophy
Skills
Creative Expression Ethical Thinking Cultural Heritage And Identity Critical Thinking Research Skills
Why They Matter

Christine de Pizan matters for three reasons. First, she made it possible for a woman to live by her writing in medieval Europe. This was almost unheard of. Most women had no education and no way to earn money outside marriage or a convent. Christine, widowed at 25 with three children, chose to write professionally.

She found patrons

She produced book after book.

She supported her family

Her example showed that a woman could be a working author. Many later women writers, including Virginia Woolf five centuries later, recognised her as a key forerunner.

Second, she wrote one of the first sustained defences of women in European literature. Her most famous book, The Book of the City of Ladies (1405), responded to the long tradition of male writers attacking women as foolish or wicked. Christine took this tradition apart, point by point. She gathered stories of more than 100 capable women from history, scripture, and myth. She built an imaginary city of these women as a kind of intellectual fortress. Her arguments anticipate modern feminism by six centuries.

Third, she wrote across an unusual range of subjects. She produced books on politics, on warfare, on education for princes, on prayer, on chivalry, on the proper conduct of women at every level of society. She wrote in vernacular French rather than Latin, making her ideas accessible to non-scholars. She offered direct advice to kings and queens. In an age when most thinkers worked in narrow specialist fields, she ranged widely.

Key Ideas
1
Earning a Living by Writing
2
The City of Ladies (1405)
3
An Educated Woman in a Man's World
Key Quotations
"Just the sight of this book made me wonder how it happened that so many different men have been so inclined to express in their writings such wicked insults about women."
— The Book of the City of Ladies, opening, 1405
Christine begins her famous book with this honest moment. She has just been reading another book that attacks women. She is upset and confused. Why have so many male writers said such cruel things? She does not answer at once. She lets the question sit. The whole rest of the book is her careful response. For students, the line is a useful model. Important arguments often start with simple questions, honestly asked. Christine does not pretend to be unaffected. She admits the attacks have wounded her. Then she gathers her courage and her sources and answers.
"If it were customary to send little girls to school and to teach them the same subjects as are taught to boys, they would learn just as fully and would understand the subtleties of all arts and sciences."
— The Book of the City of Ladies, 1405
This is one of Christine's clearest claims about women's intellectual capacity. The argument is simple. Most women seem less educated than men because most women are not given the same education. If they were, they would do just as well. The point may sound obvious to modern readers. In 1405 it was a serious challenge to common assumptions. Many male writers thought women were naturally less capable of serious thought. Christine, herself well-educated thanks to her father, was living proof of the opposite. For students, the line is a powerful early statement of what we now call educational equality.
Using This Thinker in the Classroom
Cultural Heritage and Identity When introducing students to medieval women's writing
How to introduce
Many students think medieval women had no voices, no education, and no choices. Christine de Pizan complicates this picture. She was educated, opinionated, and earned her own living from her writing. Tell her story. She does not represent every medieval woman. Most really did have far less choice. But her existence proves that the picture of medieval women as silent and uneducated is too simple. There were exceptions, and the exceptions deserve to be known.
Creative Expression When teaching students how to argue through stories
How to introduce
Christine's City of Ladies argues for women's worth not by abstract reasoning alone but by collecting many specific stories of capable women. The pile of examples becomes the argument. Ask students to think of a claim they believe in. How many concrete examples could they collect to support it? The technique works far beyond medieval writing. Good arguments often combine general claims with rich specific cases. Christine's method is six centuries old and still works.
Ethical Thinking When discussing how to respond to insults
How to introduce
Christine read books that insulted women. She felt hurt. She did not respond with anger or shouting. She wrote a careful, patient, well-argued book that defended women using over a hundred specific examples. The book worked. It is still read 600 years later. Ask students: when have they been insulted? How did they respond? Christine's method (slow, patient, well-prepared) is one good model. It is not always available. But when it is, it can outlast quicker reactions.
Further Reading

For a first introduction, Earl Jeffrey Richards's English translation of The Book of the City of Ladies (Persea Books, revised edition 1998) is widely available and readable. Rosalind Brown-Grant's Penguin Classics translation (1999) is also excellent. For Christine's life, Charity Cannon Willard's Christine de Pizan: Her Life and Works (1984) remains the standard biography. The British Library's online manuscript of Christine's collected works (Harley MS 4431), beautifully illuminated, is freely available and gives a strong sense of how her books actually looked.

Key Ideas
1
Responding to The Romance of the Rose
2
Allegorical Method
3
Books for Princes and Princesses
Key Quotations
"Not all men, especially the most learned, share the opinion that it is bad for women to be educated."
— The Book of the City of Ladies, 1405
Christine makes a careful point. She is not attacking all men. She knows that some men, often the most thoughtful ones, support women's education. Her argument is with a particular tradition of misogynist writing, not with the male sex as a whole. This careful distinction was strategic. It allowed her to keep male patrons and allies. It also reflected her actual experience. Her own father had encouraged her education. Her husband had supported her writing. Her best male friends in the literary world defended her work. For students, the line is a useful model of how to make a strong argument without making sweeping enemies. Precision in who you criticise is itself a skill.
"Sit down, dear daughter, and be ready to learn."
— Lady Reason speaking to Christine in The Book of the City of Ladies, 1405
In the book, the figure of Reason appears to Christine and gives her this gentle command. The image is striking. A woman is being told by Reason herself, pictured as a wise lady, to sit down and learn. The whole tradition that suggested women should not engage in serious learning is being quietly turned upside down. Reason takes the form of a woman. Reason chooses to teach a woman. The picture itself is an argument. For students, the line is an example of how Christine works through images as much as through direct argument. Showing matters as much as telling. The reader sees Reason teaching a woman, and the lesson lands without any need for direct attack on the opposite view.
Using This Thinker in the Classroom
Critical Thinking When studying early debates about women's equality
How to introduce
Many students assume that arguments for women's equality only began in the 1700s with Mary Wollstonecraft, or even later with the suffragette movement. Christine de Pizan was making structured, careful arguments for women's worth in 1405. Discuss what this means. Ideas about women's equality have a longer history than is often taught. Wollstonecraft built on traditions that Christine helped start. The roots of feminism go further back than many textbooks suggest.
Research Skills When teaching students how a single voice can change a debate
How to introduce
Around 1401-1402, Christine took on famous male intellectuals over the misogynist content of The Romance of the Rose. She wrote letters arguing her case. She held her ground. The Quarrel of the Rose became one of the first recorded literary debates in European history. Discuss with students how a single careful voice can shift a public discussion. Christine had no institutional power. She had good arguments and the patience to make them. Sometimes that is enough to change a conversation.
Further Reading

For deeper reading, Christine's other major works are increasingly available in English. The Treasure of the City of Ladies (also known as The Book of the Three Virtues), her practical follow-up, is available in several translations. The Book of the Body Politic and The Book of the Deeds of Arms and Chivalry have also been translated. For criticism, Maureen Quilligan's The Allegory of Female Authority (1991) is a major scholarly study. Renate Blumenfeld-Kosinski's Selected Writings of Christine de Pizan (1997) gathers shorter pieces with helpful introductions.

Key Ideas
1
Working Within the Tradition
2
Joan of Arc and Christine's Last Poem
3
Lost and Found
Key Quotations
"Solitary is the home where there is no woman; rare is the household where the woman is not the foundation."
— Paraphrased from The Treasure of the City of Ladies, 1405
Christine often emphasised the practical, daily importance of women in households of every social class. Without women, homes did not function. Yet women's daily work was rarely acknowledged in serious literature. Christine wrote about it. Her Treasure of the City of Ladies, the practical follow-up to the City of Ladies, advised princesses and peasants alike on how to manage their households well. The work was not glamorous but it was central. For advanced students, the line points to a kind of feminism Christine practised that is sometimes overlooked. Defending women included taking seriously the work most women actually did. Recognising domestic labour as real labour, with its own skills and standards, was part of what she fought for.
"Oh blessed Maid, were the praises of all good clerks heaped upon you, you would deserve more."
— The Tale of Joan of Arc, 1429
Christine wrote this near the end of her last known work, the long poem about Joan of Arc completed in July 1429. Joan was a young peasant woman who had led French armies to crucial victories against the English. Christine, in her sixties, was thrilled. After decades of arguing in books that women were capable of greatness, she saw a real woman doing something heroic on a national scale. The line praises Joan in the warmest terms. Christine probably died before Joan's capture and burning in 1431. So her last word on Joan is one of full celebration. For advanced students, the poem is a moving close to a long career. The arguments she had made in dozens of books were being confirmed in her own time, by a young woman who was herself living the kind of capable womanhood Christine had defended.
Using This Thinker in the Classroom
Cultural Heritage and Identity When discussing how reputations rise and fall over centuries
How to introduce
Christine was widely read in her lifetime and for a century after. Then she was largely forgotten for over 300 years. Late twentieth-century feminist scholars recovered her work. Today she is taught again. Discuss with students why important writers can disappear and reappear. Cultural attention shifts. New questions make old voices newly relevant. Many other writers, especially women and writers from outside the dominant tradition, are still waiting to be rediscovered. Recovery is not automatic. It takes effort.
Ethical Thinking When discussing how to make change from inside a tradition
How to introduce
Christine did not reject medieval Christianity or medieval social hierarchy. She worked within them. She quoted the Bible, accepted the Church, accepted that most women would marry. Within these acceptances, she argued strongly for women's intellectual equality and worth. Discuss with students: when can change happen by working inside a tradition? When is breaking out necessary instead? Both can be valid strategies. Christine's example shows that careful work from within can move a culture in important ways. Other thinkers have judged that revolution was needed. Real political and ethical wisdom often involves judging which strategy fits which moment.
Common Misconceptions
Common misconception

Christine de Pizan was a modern feminist born too early.

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What to teach instead

She was a medieval Christian woman who worked within the categories and assumptions of her time. She accepted religious authority, social hierarchy, and the centrality of marriage for most women. Within these acceptances, she argued for women's intellectual equality and dignity. Reading her as a fully modern feminist misses her actual texture. She made some arguments that anticipate modern feminism, but she also held views that modern feminists would reject. Honest reading takes her on her own terms, in her own century.

Common misconception

Christine de Pizan was the only educated medieval woman.

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What to teach instead

She was unusual but not unique. Other medieval women writers and thinkers existed: Hildegard of Bingen in the 12th century, Marie de France in the late 12th century, Julian of Norwich in the late 14th century, and many less famous nuns, abbesses, and noblewomen. The popular image of the totally silent medieval woman is too sweeping. Christine stands out partly because she lived by her writing professionally. But she was part of a longer tradition of educated medieval women, not its only example.

Common misconception

The Book of the City of Ladies is a dry academic argument.

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What to teach instead

The book is creative, vivid, and often funny. It uses dialogue between Christine and three allegorical figures. It tells dozens of memorable stories about famous women. It is structured as the building of an actual city. Modern readers sometimes assume medieval philosophical books are heavy and tedious. Christine's book is closer to a richly illustrated tour through women's history, with arguments built around stories. It rewards reading aloud.

Common misconception

Her writing was forgotten because it was not very good.

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What to teach instead

It was popular in her lifetime and for over a century after. The Book of the City of Ladies was translated into English as early as 1521 and printed multiple times in the 1500s. It fell from view in the 17th and 18th centuries because cultural attention shifted, especially as women were increasingly excluded from serious literary recognition. The pattern of women writers being widely read and then forgotten is repeated across centuries. The forgetting reflects later prejudice, not the quality of the original work.

Intellectual Connections
Anticipates
Mary Wollstonecraft
Wollstonecraft's A Vindication of the Rights of Woman (1792) is often called the founding text of modern feminism. Christine de Pizan made many of Wollstonecraft's central arguments almost 400 years earlier: that women's apparent intellectual inferiority is a result of their lack of education, that women are fully capable of serious thought, that society is poorer for excluding them. Reading them together shows that the case for women's intellectual equality has a long history. Wollstonecraft did not have to invent the argument. She built on a tradition Christine had helped start.
Complements
Julian of Norwich
Julian of Norwich, the English mystic, was Christine's near contemporary. Both were women writing in the late 14th and early 15th centuries. Both wrote in their own vernacular languages (English for Julian, French for Christine) instead of Latin. Both produced original work that has become part of women's intellectual history. Their differences are illuminating. Julian wrote as a religious mystic from her cell. Christine wrote as a working professional in the royal court. Together they show two very different paths medieval women could take to serious writing.
Complements
Hildegard of Bingen
Hildegard, writing two centuries before Christine, was a German abbess, composer, theologian, and natural scientist. She wrote on theology, medicine, music, and visions. Christine wrote on women, politics, and warfare. Both produced work that influenced their cultures during their lifetimes. Both were largely forgotten and then rediscovered in the 20th century. Reading them together shows the range of work medieval European women could do when they had access to learning, even though such women remained the exception rather than the rule.
In Dialogue With
Aristotle
Aristotle's writings were central to medieval European thought. He had argued that women were less rational than men. Christine knew this tradition and pushed back against it directly. She used Aristotle's own methods (careful argument, accumulation of examples, appeal to nature) against his conclusions about women. The strategy was sophisticated. She did not try to overthrow Aristotle. She used his tools to argue against parts of his thought. For students, the case shows how a serious thinker can engage critically with a major authority without dismissing them entirely.
Develops
Sappho
Sappho, the ancient Greek poet, was one of the few classical women writers whose work survived into the Middle Ages, even if mostly in fragments. Christine knew of her and included her among the great women in The Book of the City of Ladies. Christine's whole project of building a tradition of women writers depended on figures like Sappho being remembered. Each woman in Christine's city was a stone in the wall. Sappho was one of those stones. Reading them together shows how literary tradition is built across centuries by women claiming earlier women as ancestors.
Anticipates
Mirabai
Mirabai, the 16th-century Indian devotional poet, lived a century after Christine in a very different cultural setting. Both women, however, used writing to claim space that society had not given them. Mirabai used religious devotion to step outside the constraints placed on Rajput princesses. Christine used patient argument and royal patronage to step outside the constraints placed on French widows. Their methods and contexts were very different. Their basic situation, of women claiming public voice in a culture that mostly denied it, has interesting parallels.
Further Reading

For research-level engagement, the journal of the International Christine de Pizan Society publishes ongoing scholarship. Nadia Margolis's An Introduction to Christine de Pizan (University Press of Florida, 2011) is the major recent academic guide. Earl Jeffrey Richards has written extensively on Christine throughout his career. Sarah Lawson's translation of A Medieval Woman's Mirror of Honor gives access to The Treasure with scholarly apparatus. The Cité des Dames Project at Liverpool John Moores University maintains an extensive online resource for advanced study.