Australian Feminist Studies, Vol. 17, No.

37, 2002

Beryl Henderson Prize Essay

Reections on Christine de Pizan’s ‘Feminism’

KEIKO NOWACKA

But whatever effect discouragement and criticism had upon their writing— and
I believe that they had a very great effect—that was unimportant compared
with the other difŽ culty which faced them … that is that they had no tradition
behind them, or one so short and partial that it was of little help. For we think
back through our mothers if we are women. It is useless to go to the great men
writers for help, however much one may go to them for pleasure.1
In A Room of One’s Own, Virginia Woolf’s exploration of the cause of the absence of female
authors prior to the nineteenth century leads her to the conclusion that on account of
the lack of access to the privileges of their male peers these women were unable to Ž ll
the ‘book shelves’, leaving ‘empty spaces’ which were only Ž lled by men writing about
‘Woman’. It is perhaps this short tradition of female authors that explains the great
interest shown in the writings and life of a Ž fteenth-century woman writer, Christine de
Pizan, who contradicts in every respect Woolf’s conclusion. Christine overcame the
‘formidable difŽ culties’ of not having a ‘room of one’s own’ and ‘Ž ve hundred pounds
a year’ by establishing a career in French courts as a proliŽ c female writer, writing on
commission as well as for pleasure.2 At the same time, despite not having a ‘mother to
think back through’, she was able to argue against the Professor Trevelyans of her period,
using the ‘great men writers for help’ instead.
While Benkor’s claim that if Christine had been a man “‘he”’ would have long been
considered the single most important literary Ž gure of the early Ž fteenth century’3
overstates Christine’s importance in the literary scene of her time, her literary career does
lend a certain degree of legitimacy to current depictions of Christine as one of the earliest
‘mothers to think back through’. Christine experimented with a variety of literary styles
and genres, ranging from courtly verse (for example, One Hundred Ballads), to political
treatises (The Book of the Body Politic), as well as the quasi-manifesto of female equality, The
Book of the City of Ladies. 4 In addition, during her lifetime her fame as an author extended
beyond the French courts, with Henry IV of England, for example, inviting her to his
court.5 Furthermore, the audience for her works did not cease with her death: from the
Ž fteenth to the nineteenth centuries her works were printed and referred to in numerous
intellectual debates, histories, anthologies, including Voltaire’s Essais de moeurs.6
In the twentieth century, the popularity and appreciation of Christine’s works have
escalated, for the most part propelled by feminist scholarship.7 It is in particular her Cité

ISSN 0816-464 9 print/ISSN 1465-330 3 online/02/010081-1 7 Ó 2002 Taylor & Francis Ltd
DOI: 10.1080/0816464022012347 0
82 K. Nowacka

which has attracted the greatest attention from scholars of the medieval period and
feminists alike. In the Cité, Christine comprehensively critiques the tradition of misogyny
underpinning literary and philosophical discourses while simultaneously reconstructing a
‘new’ canon of literature and history in which the contributions of women are included
and applauded. More striking, however, is her original argument for the intellectual and
moral equality of the sexes; it is the lack of education provided to women, and not their
‘natural inferiority’, that is the source of sexual inequality:
If it were the custom to send little girls to school and teach them all sorts of
different subjects there, as one does with little boys, they would grasp and learn
the difŽ culties of all the arts and sciences just as easily as the boys.8
This remarkable proclamation of the equality of the sexes by a Ž fteenth-century woman
has had, understandably, a magnetic appeal to modern feminist historians who have seen
in Christine’s complaints against the social injustices of her time a mirror image of
contemporary ‘gender wars’ and inequalities. 9 It is precisely this tendency to panegyrise
Christine as the ‘Ž rst proto-modern woman’,10 however, that forms the foundations of
recent critiques of the practices of ‘Christine studies’ by the feminist historian, Sheila
Delaney.11 For Delaney, Christine’s current association with these laudatory titles is more
re ective of a modern ‘desire’ to locate a ‘Disneyesque virginal mother Ž gure’ than an
accurate description of Christine’s career.12 Instead, she should be considered as a
‘reactionary’ and a ‘self-serving’ sycophant who was ‘very much in the rearguard of social
thought of the period’:
Christine tries to beat back the tide of social change, of protest and nascent
democracy, with her little broom of pious anecdotes and exhorta-
tions … Christine continues in her quiet neo-Platonic hierarchies and her
feudal nostalgia. 13
In other words, Christine should be disqualiŽ ed as a ‘mother to think back through’ on
account of her conservative views which were only incidentally and inconsistently
‘pro-woman’:14 for Delaney, the fact that a medieval woman was an author does not
immediately signify that her work is a feminist manifesto.
While this initial premise is valid, the question involving Christine’s credentials as a
feminist ‘mother’ is more complex than Delaney presents it. This is due to the imprecise
deŽ nition of feminism itself. As Beatrice Gottlieb has noted, the term ‘feminism’ is a
recent entrant into modern discourse: it Ž rst appeared in the Oxford English Dictionary in
1894. 15 In other words, ‘feminism’ was not a term that Christine herself would have been
conversant with. In addition, as the proliferation of different methodologies of feminism
today indicate, the deŽ nition of ‘feminism’ is continuously evolving.16 While Delaney
associates feminism with the ‘radical’ questioning of patriarchal discourses and social
structures,17 it can also have the implications of striving for the equality of the sexes or
expressing a ‘sensitivity to the plight of women’.18 For this reason, approaching Christine
via a modern feminist lens engages in an anachronistic analysis which would only lead
to the condemnation of Christine’s works on account of their failure to live up to current
feminist standards. Delaney’s point de depart, ‘what would radicalism actually mean in
early Ž fteenth century Europe’,19 should be replaced therefore with the more historically
sensitive questions: ‘what would feminism actually mean in early Ž fteenth-century
Europe’ and ‘did Christine’s career and ambitions consciously re ect it?’
A necessary starting point in answering these questions is an analysis of some of the
criteria set by Delaney herself. ‘Fifteenth-century feminism’, according to Delaney,
entailed an open criticism of the hierarchical structure of society in a ‘self-consciously
 Reections on Christine de Pizan’s ‘Feminism’ 83

modern age’ when ‘dissent from received norms was neither impossible nor unusual’. 20
Using this contentious premise, Delaney views Christine’s Ž nancial dependence on royal
patronage as a symbol of her class bias: Delaney asserts that she could have instead
engaged in trade or joined the ‘textile industry’ and her failure to choose these alternative
paths re ects her disdain for the ‘working woman’.21 This argument glosses over
Christine’s upbringing in the royal court of Charles V for whom both her father and her
husband worked: while she recognised the value of trade as vital for the well-being of the
‘body politic’, 22 to engage in it herself would have meant a lowering of her own social
status. In addition, while in the Livre de la Paix Christine condemns the peasants in the
Cabochian Revolution,23 as Mombello points out, this re ected the attitude of ‘beaucoup
de Parisiens’ who ‘voulaient seulement la tranquilité’.24 This does not signify that
Christine despised the poor but rather that she hated ‘le peuple insurgé mais su rendre
hommage au labeur des humbles’25 as her numerous calls for the cessation of nobles’
exploitation of their peasants indicate. 26 As both Margaret Zimmerman and Jacques
Krynen have argued, due to the background of the Hundred Years’ War and weak
monarchical rule, contemporary French political writers held a similar view as Christine
that a strong monarch was preferable to uncertain democratic rule in order to prevent
a further decline into social anarchy. 27 Christine’s belief in strong monarchical rule was
less therefore a re ection of her ‘self-serving sycophancy’ than a fear of new political
alternatives. Finally, the accusation of class bias ignores the religious tone of the time.
Christine’s acceptance of the validity of the social hierarchy was intertwined with
contemporary religious beliefs that the social order was divinely ordained.28 In short,
Christine was neither behind nor ahead of her time but instead ‘une témoins de son
temps’. 29 Delaney’s expectation that a ‘Ž fteenth century feminist’ should reject the
political hierarchy unfairly and anachronistically demands that Christine hold political
views that her male contemporaries did not express and, more signiŽ cantly, ignores the
absence of acceptable roles for women to contribute to, let alone critique, social mores
and structures. Quite paradoxically, then, Delaney’s critique engages in the same degree
of anachronistic historicism which she had accused the historians of ‘Christine studies’.
While Christine’s career was not directed at a ‘radical’ challenging of the prevailing
institutional structures of her time, her life choices are a departure from the contempor-
ary social models available to women. The options open to women of her social class in
this time were for the most part limited to a choice between marriage or the cloister. For
this reason, her decision to Ž nancially support her family through writing when, at the
age of 25, she became a widow and had to ‘take the helm of the captainless ship in
midstorm’30 was to a great extent atypical. Remarriage was not a desirable option for
Christine: ‘And remembering my troth and the love I had pledged him, I wisely resolved
never to have another.’31 In addition, the freedom to pursue her literary studies and the
potential risk of entering an unhappy marital alliance may have also further contributed
to her decision, as her advice to ‘young and elderly widows’ in The Treasure of the City of
Ladies suggests:
Since there is so much hardship for women in the state of widowhood, it could
seem to some people that therefore it would be better for them all if they
remarried. This assumption could be countered by saying that if in married life
everything were all repose and peace, truly it would seem sensible for a woman
to enter it again, but because one sees quite the contrary, any woman ought
to be very wary of remarriage.32
It is clear from her autobiographical comments in Part III of her Avision that Christine
84 K. Nowacka

faced considerable economic hardships after the death of both her husband and her
father due to the ‘hard-heartedness’ of ‘pitiless people’,33 a situation which could have
been relieved through remarriage. Her choice to remain a widow and not enter a
convent could be interpreted therefore as the lived out expression of her belief in
women’s ability for self-governance: ‘some women who wish to remarry say that it is no
life for a woman on her own. So few widows trust in their own intelligence that they
excuse themselves by saying that they would not know how to look after themselves.’ 34
It is, moreover, her decision to pursue a career as a writer that is the clearest indicator
of her conscious non-conformity to the acceptable social models open to women. This
choice was remarkable in two respects. First, Christine adopted the identity of an author
in the absence of any comparable cultural precedent, that is, without a tradition of
‘mothers’ to follow. Her representation as a distinctively female author is stressed
throughout her corpus through intra-textual references to her earlier works35 and, more
forcefully, through her use of the Ž rst-person authorial voice, ‘je, christine’.36 Secondly, her
incursion into the public realm of intellectual debates was a ‘novelty’, as she herself
recognised. 37 Although she states that ‘seclusion and quiet’ ‘suited [her] best’,38 it is clear
through her role in the ‘querelle’ that she was also not satisŽ ed with remaining in her study
and that indeed, instead, she actively sought (and fought) for her voice to be heard.
Despite her reputation as a poet, the patronising response of her critics in this literary
debate to the participation of a ‘woman’ illustrates the obstacles that Christine faced in
order to be taken seriously as a literary critic. Gontier Col dismisses Christine’s criticisms
of the Rose, considering that she responds ‘comme femme passionnee’39 In other words,
Gontier Col is implying that she did not possess the authority as a woman to criticise ‘le
tres … hault philosophe et en toutes les vii ars liberaulx clerc tres parfont’.40 Her failure to recognise
the Rose’s literary merits, according to Col, is brought about by her reading and
responding ‘like a woman’ instead of ‘correctly’ reading as a man for, as Schibanoff
argues, ‘male readers, according to the topos are not offended nor troubled by literary
misogyny’.41 Christine’s refusal to capitulate thus demonstrates the extent to which she
successfully and consciously created a new ‘space’ for her distinctive female voice to be
heard in intellectual discourses. In her way of life and in her belief on the intellectual
parity of the sexes at least, Christine was clearly not ‘beating back the tide of social
change’.
To a great extent, Christine’s choice of a public literary career over the options of
remarriage or the monastic life can be explained by her ambition to be a humanist.
DeŽ ning Christine as such involves numerous problems of deŽ nition with a term
traditionally reserved to describe educated men of the Italian Renaissance,42 a period
unfavourable to women.43 Although the term ‘humanist’ was coined in the nineteenth
century, it has its roots in the sixteenth-century term describing a teacher of the liberal
arts, ‘humanista’, which itself was derived from the classical concept of the studia
humanitatis . 44 The ‘humanist movement’ has been deŽ ned as the comprehensive study and
imitation of Latin and Greek classics, an ‘age of Cicero’ in which the classical ideal of
eloquence and wisdom as symbols of the ‘perfect man’ were revived, and renewed
interest in the ‘dignity of man’ and his privileged place in the universe formed the kernel
of intellectual endeavour.45 The studia humanitatis was seen as the vehicle through which
the Renaissance ideal of the ‘dignity of man’ was attainable: education was directed at
cultivating and instilling virtue within the individual whose later civic participation would
lead to the improvement of society as a whole.46
The synonymity between ‘humanism’ and the Renaissance has increasingly been
questioned by historians of different periods who have detected in their area of
 Reections on Christine de Pizan’s ‘Feminism’ 85

specialisation ‘humanist’ characteristics which equal, if not surpass, those of the Renais-
sance. R.W. Southern has argued, for example, that the period between 1100 and 1320
was ‘one of the great ages of humanism in the history of Europe; perhaps the greatest
of all’. 47 The stripping away of the Renaissance context from ‘humanism’ has resulted in
a proliferation of compound deŽ nitions such as ‘Christian humanism’, ‘medieval human-
ism’, ‘vernacular humanism’, together with its more ambiguous, quasi-synonymous
relationship to ‘humanitarianism’ in modern times. 48 Amidst this profusion (or ‘con-
fusion’),49 one theme uniting these various ‘humanisms’ can, however, be discerned. This
is a strong concern and respect for the ‘dignity of man’ and the human condition.50 In
addition, it is the public commitment to promoting these ideals that is one of the chief
characteristics of a ‘humanist’: indeed, a shared feature in the careers of ‘undisputed’
humanists such as Leonardo Bruni is the employment of their education in the liberal
arts as a resource and medium with which they have sought to encourage moral reform
of individuals and the polis.51 The ‘canon’ of male humanists from Cicero to Erasmus
who, although separated by centuries, are linked by these above qualities and especially
by their level of education, raises the question then whether Christine’s classiŽ cation as
a ‘female humanist’52 is valid or whether, instead, this label is another product of
anachronistic historicism criticised by Delaney.
Admittedly, Christine does not meet the primary criteria of a ‘humanist’: she was not
trained in the studia humanitatis nor was her education adequate enough for her to
compose in Latin, let alone know Greek. Yet, despite this, she does display other notable
qualities of a ‘humanist’. These qualities were embodied in her belief that ‘worthy’
literature, history and education in general led to the moral reform of the individual
which would, by extension, beneŽ t society—a motif that underpinned and deŽ ned her
later works and ambitions. Moreover, it is her concern for la condition féminine in particular
that highlights her profound public commitment to improving ‘humanity’ through
restoring the ‘dignity’ of women. Importantly, her literary career coincided with the early
stages of French humanism. The generation of intellectuals who rose to public promi-
nence in the period between 1380 and the Ž rst decades of the 1400s are considered as
the Ž rst ‘protagonistes de l’humanisme français’. 53 Notable Ž gures include Jean de
Montreuil and Jean Gerson, who were also involved in the querelle on the Romance of the
Rose with Christine.54 Although in uenced by the ongoing dialogue with Italian human-
ists, humanism in France, in particular in Paris, developed in tandem and not in
imitation of the intellectual movements in Italy.55 This is clear in the different character
that French humanism developed. For example, an important feature of this period was
the promotion of vernacular translations of medieval Latin and classical texts during the
reign of Charles V and, to a lesser extent, during the reign of Charles VI. 56 These
translations thus brought into circulation a body of canonical texts which were more
easily accessible to those who did not possess sufŽ cient Latin training. 57 A by-product of
these developments was the stimulation of national pride due to the new prestige of the
French language: although Latin did not lose its privileged status, French became
increasingly associated with national pride in intellectual circles during this period. 58
Christine was a beneŽ ciary as well as an active participant in this French humanism.
The beneŽ ts can be seen primarily in her heavy use of vernacular translations of
Latin texts: the metaphor of the body politic in the Book of the Body Politic, for
example, was derived from Denis Foulechat’s translation of John of Salisbury’s
Policraticus.59 This propensity to rely on vernacular translations rather than on the original
text has fuelled the ongoing debate on the nature of her education, the necessary
prerequisite for a ‘humanist’. 60 Her references to her early education conŽ rm that she
86 K. Nowacka

did not undertake the studia humanitatis. Of her later self-education more is known due to
Christine’s description of her ‘path of study’. This consisted of history ‘from the
beginnings of the world’ to her own time, poetry, some ‘scientiŽ c learning’, but, quite
signiŽ cantly, not ‘the obscure sciences, whose language I could not understand’.61 While
this may indicate that Christine’s knowledge of Latin was minimal, the recent rediscovery
of the preface of her Avision conŽ rms that although she may not have been able to
compose in Latin she did have at least a reading knowledge of it.62 In this preface,
Christine’s exegesis of the multiple levels of meaning of her allegorical poetry demon-
strates the in uence of Boccaccio’s Genealogia deorum gentilicem. As the Ž rst vernacular
translation was begun at the end of the Ž fteenth century, this implies that she must have
read it in the Latin.63 Furthermore, as Willard points out, in her Livre de la Paix and in
her Avision, she quotes and translates Latin passages into French.64
Christine’s lament at her limited education in the Avision65 is explained by both her
great love of learning and by the high moral beneŽ t for the individual and society she
saw as its direct consequence. This respect for education is evident in the prayer that she
composed for the students and masters of the University of Paris,66 and her ‘complaints
of youth’ who do not realise ‘what good is to be found in the delight of knowledge, and
the evil and ugliness in ignorance’. 67 The most important dimension of the high value she
places on education, and which resembles the views of the Italian humanists, is her belief
that there is an intrinsic nexus between the ‘path of study’, the acquirement of ‘pure
truth’ and the moral development of the individual. In the Cité, Christine argues that
‘there’s no doubt whatsoever that such forms of knowledge corrects one’s vices and
improves one’s morals’. 68 In addition, her recommended programme of education was
not limited to Christian literature: as the numerous examples of pagan ‘citizens’ in the
Cité illustrate, the classical past can also provide important lessons on virtue for the
present. In short, for Christine, education should be encouraged, to both sexes, due to
its positive cognitive effect on the individual: ‘For by it, you can understand the choice
of virtue and the avoidance of vice as it counsels the one and forbids the other.’ 69
To a great extent, these beliefs were the deŽ ning features of Christine’s career,
ambitions and message. Indeed, these ideas shaped the manner in which she sought to
improve contemporary socio-political problems as her political treatises, letters and
dedications of her works to her noble patrons exemplify. Her concern for the state of
France is a principle theme running throughout her later career, with the discernible
growing desperation and pessimism paralleling the decline of France’s fortunes in
the Hundred Years War as well as the in-Ž ghting between the Armagnacs and the
Burgundians. 70 Christine’s strategy to improve this political situation was through the
moral education of individuals in power, pointing out the outcomes of their decisions,
reminding them of their obligations to the rest of the ‘body politic’ and providing counsel
on the correct path to take, basing her arguments on historical precedents, philosophical
maxims, classical authorities and biblical passages. In the Book of the Body Politic, Christine
stresses the Prince’s responsibility as the ‘head’ to take care of all the ‘members’ of the
‘body politic’ using extensively Valerius Maximus, Aristotle and examples from Roman
history to substantiate her arguments. This method is repeated in her letters to members
of the nobility. 71 Her letter writing can be seen as a ‘humanist’ activity for, as Kristeller
notes, the letter was ‘really nothing but a treatise … with a personal tone’.72 That
Christine had mastered this genre is evident through the inclusion of her letter to Queen
Isabeau (5 October 1405) in dictaminal formularies as it was deemed a ‘model of the ars
dictaminis’.73 In her letter to Queen Isabeau, she appealed to the queen to use her political
in uence to ensure peace;
 Reections on Christine de Pizan’s ‘Feminism’ 87

My Excellent and Most Revered Lady, you could be told inŽ nite reasons for
the causes which must move you to pity and to negotiate peace, and your good
sense does know them. Thus I will Ž nish my epistle, begging your worthy
majesty that she receive it well and that she be favourable to the teary request
of mine written on behalf of your poor subjects, the loyal French people. 74
Her commitment to improving the state of France through her writings was more
positively expressed in her Ž nal composition. In Le Ditié de Jehanne d’Arc, Christine linked
the divinely ordained military success of Joan to the privileged place of France in the
universal spiritual hierarchy; ‘For by the blessings He bestows/It’s clear how He
approves of France’.75 Indeed, although this poem has been seen as a feminist panegyric
akin to those found in the Cité,76 its anti-English diatribe and exaltation of France
suggests that it was intended instead to inspire patriotic fervour.77 As can be seen,
Christine hoped that the effect of her words, with the help of the examples taken from
a variety of classical, biblical and philosophical texts, would educate and inspire those in
power to bring about reform and peace to assist the ‘poor French subjects’.
Quite signiŽ cantly, although Christine’s humanism shared similar traits with those of
her contemporaries, it was differentiated by her concern for the dignity of both man and
‘woman’. Her humanism and her feminism were thus not mutually exclusive but rather
complimentary aspects of the same message of moral reform. This ‘gendered’ humanism
can be seen Ž rstly in the manner in which she positions herself as an authoritative female
voice within the canon in the Cité and in her other works. Christine imbues her authorial
identity with a universal legitimacy through the ‘almost subversive’78 act of compilation:
she rewrites the narrative of her sources in conformity to the rhetorical demands of her
own text. Her authority is further supplemented by the stress on her ‘true knowledge’,
which is based on both experience and reason, 79 unlike that of the ‘envious slanderers’
whose arguments are founded on their physical deformities or moral licentiousness.80 Her
re-gendering of the canon is the principle theme of the Cité in which the less  attering
aspects of the tales of the ‘illustrious ladies’ taken from Boccaccio’s De Claris Mulierbus are
either omitted or rewritten in order to conŽ rm her argument on the invaluable
contribution of women to civilization.81 For example, in Boccaccio’s account for
Semiramis’ success as the product of her ‘feminine wiles’, ‘manly spirit’, ‘abandon of
womanly pursuits’: her ‘accomplishments’ were ‘not only praiseworthy for a woman but
would be marvellous even for a vigorous man’.82 She is also condemned for ‘constantly
burning with carnal desire’ that led her to an incestuous relationship with her son:
It is believed that this unhappy woman, constantly burning with carnal desire,
gave herself to men. Among these lovers, and this is something more beastly
than human, was her own son Ninus … Oh, what a wicked thing this is!83
The negative stereotypes traditionally linked in misogynist discourses to women such as
‘feminine wiles’ and ‘carnal desire’ are confronted and reformulated in Christine’s Cité
where Semiramis is the Ž rst ‘foundation stone’. 84 Christine does not present her success
as antithetical to woman’s ‘nature’, as Boccaccio did, but rather as an example of Lady
Reason’s earlier assertion that ‘just because all women are not as physically strong and
courageous as men generally are, this does not mean that the entire female sex is lacking
in such qualities’.85 In addition, her incest, while shameful if she had been a ‘Christian’,
is excused as ‘no other man than her son was worthy of her’ and due to the absence of
written law forbidding the sexual relationship: ‘since she was so proud and honourable,
if she had thought she was doing anything wrong … she would have refrained from doing
as she did’.86 In short, in the process of ‘rewriting’ Boccaccio and the other auctores in the
88 K. Nowacka

Cité, Christine is consciously seeking to position herself in the canon as an authoritative

representative of ‘Truth’ based on her gendered experience, her reason and her ‘purer’
knowledge of the past. Moreover, at the same time, she is re-gendering the canon to suit
her pro-feminine textual strategies and politics. As Blanchard says, this is an act of
‘appropriation and confrontation’ with the historical and literary past in which the
established canon is revisited and revised. 87
An instrumental component of this relationship between her humanism and her
feminism is the in uence of Dante’s poetics. As Richards has pointed out, Christine was
at ‘home in both Italian and French literary traditions’.88 It was, however, Dante’s
Commedia and his ‘poetics of sublimation’ that had the most signiŽ cant impact upon
Christine’s moral outlook and humanist project. 89 In the Commedia, the Pilgrim’s love of
Beatrice leads him through an allegorical journey through the Afterlife in which he
attains moral and universal truths. Although employing the language of courtly love,
Dante introduces an additional level of meaning and purpose to the lover’s quest: ‘love’
must lead to the moral improvement of the individual. The move away from the
traditions of courtly love discourse is manifest in Inferno V where Francesca and Paolo are
punished for their adultery, provoked when they were both ‘seduced’ by their reading of
the story of Guinevere and Lancelot: while their love led them to sin, that of the Pilgrim’s
led him to the attainment of higher spiritual truths. In other words, Dante’s poetics had
a dual function: it encouraged the reader to look beyond the literal surface and seek the
hidden truths and, secondly, it advocated a socially responsible discourse that linked
language to behaviour and morality.90
Christine’s debt to Dante’s poetics can be detected in her conception of the relation-
ship between literature, misogyny and morality.91 Although she began her literary career
composing ‘gay love poems’,92 her later poetry and prose re ect her growing dissatis-
faction with the genre of courtly love due to its frivolous character and its negative
depiction of women: her writings, in uenced by Dante’s poetics, become ‘essentially
humanist with a courtly veneer’. 93 Like Dante, she manipulated the language of courtly
love as a means to subversively expose its superŽ ciality and inherent misogyny. In the
Epistre au Dieu d’Amours, Christine, through the persona of Cupid’s secretary, vocalises a
vitriolic denunciation of the works of the esteemed authors Ovid and Jean de Meun:
And then he called the book The Art of Love,
Although it doesn’t teach the terms or ways
Of loving well, but quite the opposite.
The man who would behave as in that book
Will never love, however he is loved.
Because of that its title’s misconceived,
Its subject is The Art of Great Deceit,
Of False Appearances— I dub it that!94
This critique of courtly discourse through the use of its own symbols is intensiŽ ed in the
Dit de la Rose, where Christine becomes the Ž rst-person protagonist who is commissioned
by Loyauté, the messenger of the ‘God of Love’, to establish a society called the ‘Order
of the Rose’ whose duty it was to protect women from misogyny:
Above all other calumny
It’s talk of women basely done,
Defaming them, that Love hates most.95
The basis of Christine’s critique of misogyny is her belief that it distorts the Truth and
slanders half of humanity. Herein is the essence of Christine’s ‘humanist’ message. For
 Reections on Christine de Pizan’s ‘Feminism’ 89

Christine, misogynist discourses cemented the negative essentialist objectiŽ cation of

‘Woman’96 and had a pernicious effect on the male reader, for it encouraged the
mistreatment of actual women: they are ‘an exhortation to vice, a comfort to dissolute
life, a doctrine full of deception, the way to damnation’.97 As she argues in the querelle,
misogynist works such as the Romance of the Rose should not be praised because they are
‘contributing nothing to the general or personal good’ unlike the ‘eloquently expressed,
closer to the truth’ books written by ‘Aristotle, Seneca, St. Paul and St. Augustine’ which
‘teach how to pursue virtue’.98 Her textual construction of a ‘City of Ladies’ was thus
motivated by her desire to exorcise the misogynist model of ‘Woman’ from the canon (a
gesture represented by the ‘dirt’ cleared in the ‘Field of Letters’) and replace it with
different models of women united only by virtue, who were, like Dante’s Beatrice, agents
of moral reform and exempla of virtue for contemporary women to aspire to—a genealogy
of virtuous ‘mothers to think back through’. In short, paralleling her view that education
should lead to virtue, Christine’s attack on misogyny rests on her belief that it leads to
‘vice’ and to the denial of the ‘dignity’ of half of humanity.
The expression of her humanist ethics (which were intertwined with her pro-feminine
arguments) appears strikingly modern and remarkable, especially considering that she
was writing in the Ž fteenth century.99 Yet Christine has ‘disappointed’ 100 modern
feminists and historians when in her Trésor she appears to renounce the Cité’s feminist
outlook and accept the status quo, thereby justifying Delaney’s claim that Christine was
a ‘prétendu féministe’.101 The Trésor is a supplement to the Cité with the three Virtues,
Ladies Reason, Rectitude and Justice, commanding ‘Christine’ to write down ‘lessons of
wisdom’ for the citizens of the ‘City’ to follow.102 These ‘lessons’ are focused on the
management of the household, the duties of the wife and mother within the family, and
personal moral conduct. The source of modern ‘disappointment’ in Christine, then, is
her acceptance of traditional social roles for women and her failure to push for greater
social reform which would advance the position of women in the socio-political
hierarchical structure. 103 To a great extent, this ‘disappointment’ is an anachronistic
misreading of both the Trésor and the Cité. For, although Christine does not advocate
radical social reform, this does not signify that she was not interested in improving the
condition of women in her time. 104 For Christine, this was achievable not through the
dismantling of the established institutional hierarchy but through the teaching of moral
values, based on classical and biblical exempla, to individuals which would improve the
relations between the sexes and the treatment of women by men. The Trésor’s ‘lessons’
and the Cité’s illustrious citizens are thus interrelated and not self-contradictory parts of
Christine’s same message to men and women: through the moral conduct of both sexes
and the fulŽ lment of their socially complimentary roles, social harmony would prevail
that would beneŽ t individuals and society: ‘He endowed each sex with qualities and
attributes which they need to perform the tasks for which they are cut out.’105 As Lorcin
argues, Christine went further than any other social commentator of her day in this
‘instruction manual’ to advance the condition of women—she addressed women accord-
ing to their social class, 106 rather than in the undifferentiated category of ‘Woman’, she
placed a high value on traditional feminine tasks such as sewing, she advocated that
wives be equally involved in the Ž nancial and legal affairs of the household and she
offered a model of conduct which would not only lead to virtue but which would also
refute slanderous attackers.107
Moreover, when these above views and her career are compared to those of other
intellectual women of the late Middle Ages, the extent of her achievements as a
‘Ž fteenth-century feminist’ and a ‘female humanist’ appear less ‘disappointing’. Despite
90 K. Nowacka

the disparity of social contexts, the experiences of educated women in the later Middle
Ages were shaped by similar notions on the acceptable parameters of female behaviour.
This can be seen in a comparative analysis of the experiences of Christine with those of
Hélo¨õ se and the Italian women humanists. It is the ways in which these women
confronted these misogynist discourses and concomitant social constraints that provide a
heuristic yardstick against which Christine’s ‘feminist’ and ‘humanist’ credentials and
success can be measured.
To a great extent, Hélo¨õ se’s correspondence with Abélard encapsulates the struggle
between conventional male constructions of ‘Woman’ and women’s resistance to the
imposition of these proposed models that lies at the heart of Christine’s critique of the
Romance of the Rose. 108 Throughout his letters to Hélo¨õ se, Abélard repeats some of these
contemporary conventional ecclesiastical views of ‘Woman’, as his discussion on the
signiŽ cance of the Black Bride imagery in the Song of Songs illustrates. 109 In contrast, and
perhaps in response to Abélard’s deŽ nition,110 in Hélo¨õ se’s critique of the Benedictine
Rule, she points to the paradoxes and inequities of the literal adherence to a rule
established for men in the eighth century which ignored the different spiritual and
material needs of the twelfth-century nun:
For if in certain respects he (Benedict) is obliged to modify the strictness of the
Rule for the young, the old and weak, according to their natural frailty or
inŽ rmity, what would he provide for the weaker sex whose frailty and inŽ rmity
is generally known?111
Like Christine’s arguments in the Cité, Hélo¨õ se’s arguments are based on feminine
experience and authoritative classical, biblical and patristic references. 112 It is ironic that
although Hélo¨õ se had the ‘highest level’ 113 of education (including the ability to read and
compose in Latin), was encouraged by her uncle Fulbert to study114 and who may even
have attended public lectures at the schools in Paris,115 ultimately, the audience for her
learning was private and limited to a monastic context. That is, in contrast to Christine,
whose own study did not match the intellectual feats of Hélo¨õ se but who nevertheless
publicly displayed her learning, Hélo¨õ se did not exercise this learning in a public arena,
accepting instead to enter a convent.
Hélo¨õ se’s education does raise, however, the interesting question as to why she was not
a ‘citizen’ in Christine’s Cité.116 To a great extent, this absence can be explained by her
reputation as a virago during her lifetime and in Christine’s time.117 Despite the laudatory
appearance of this term, it was a double-edged sword, for, although it expressed approval
for Hélo¨õ se’s ‘worthy determination to study the arts’, it was also based on the
anti-feminine premise that she had ‘surpassed all women’ and had transcended the
stereotype of the naturally frivolous female. She had become ‘in the minds of men’ an
‘honorary’ male rather than an exemplary female. The source for Christine’s knowledge
of Hélo¨õ se was Jean de Meun’s Romance of the Rose.118 In the Rose, Hélo¨õ se’s arguments
against marriage are cited to justify the Jealous Husband’s misogynist views. More
signiŽ cantly, Hélo¨õ se’s education is presented as teaching her ‘how she best could curb
her woman’s nature’. 119 In other words, Hélo¨õ se was praised by Jean for transcending the
‘natural’ inferiority of the feminine sex via her education, which was gendered male. This
unequal relationship between women and the masculinised ‘Field of Letters’ that this
portrait of Hélo¨õ se represented thus disqualiŽ ed her from Christine’s Cité. Tainted by
Jean’s portrayal, Hélo¨õ se was seen by Christine, quite ironically, as the venerated symbol
of the misogynist clerical tradition rather than as a perfect exemplum of the afŽ nity
between women and the intellect. 120
 Reections on Christine de Pizan’s ‘Feminism’ 91

The experiences of the Italian women humanists of the Renaissance further emphasise
the difŽ culty for highly educated women to utilise and display their learning in a public
forum. Like Hélo¨õ se, certain Italian women from wealthy noble families during the
period of the Renaissance received an education identical to their male counterparts and,
as in the case of the Nogarola sisters, were also taught by some of the most proliŽ c
humanist teachers of the time.121 While the education of women had been seen by
historians of the Renaissance as indicative of the ‘spirit of equality’ that characterised the
humanist movement,122 the experiences of women such as Isotta Nogarola (1417–1461/
8) indicate that, while encouraged to pursue the studia humanitatis during their youth, they
later became differentiated from their male peers on account of their gender and were
dissuaded from advancing to higher levels of education, 123 or from using their learning
in a public forum. The frontiers of ‘acceptable’ learning for women are clearly
manifested in Leonardo Bruni’s letter to Battista da Montefeltro Malatesta (1383–1450)
in which he outlined for her a programme of study ‘most Ž tting to a woman’:
To her neither the intricacies of debate nor the oratorical artiŽ ces of action and
delivery are of the least practical use, if indeed they are not positively
unbecoming. Rhetoric in all its forms,— public discussion, forensic argument,
logical defence, and the like, lies absolutely outside the province of woman.124
The education of women and men, ostensibly identical in its ambitions and content, was
nevertheless motivated by different objectives. The education of women was directed to
their ‘cultivation’, the inculcation of virtue and their moral education: in other words, to
assist them to achieve the fullest potential of their gender—as a ‘charming’ lady in the
court,125 as a wife and as a mother.126 For men, on the other hand, the studia humanitatis
was inextricably linked to the task of improving the ‘dignity of man’ and humanity
through public service.127 This relationship between education and the ‘dignity of man’
was not therefore synonymous with that of education and the ‘dignity of women’. The
women humanists who showed an interest in pursuing their studies past a certain age and
in a public setting, were labelled (like Hélo¨õ se) viragos, treated as ‘sexual predators’,128 or
mythologised as Amazons; they were seen as ‘not quite male, not quite female … learned
women belonged to a third amorphous sex’.129 In addition to the constraints placed on
the extent and public display of their learning, women such as Isotta were ridiculed by
other women and, as King argues, ‘conquered from within’.130 That is, not only were
many of these women compelled to abandon their studies and choose between the
traditional options available to women, marriage or the cloister, 131 they had also accepted
the misogynist maxim that women were naturally inferior. This is exempliŽ ed in Isotta’s
debate with Ludovico Foscarini, ‘Of the Equal or Unequal Sin of Adam and Eve’, in
which she defends Eve. Her argument is based on an almost contradictory premise that
Eve was less guilty than Adam on account of women’s ‘natural ignorance’ and her ‘desire
for knowledge of good and evil’. 132 As Kelly and Schibanoff have argued, the rising
literacy of women during the Renaissance, while auspicious in many respects, also
‘subjugated women to male cultural authority and misogyny of texts’, 133 thereby causing
them to ‘regret’ their gender, as Isotta’s argument re ects.134 In short, despite the
‘precocious learning’ 135 of their youth, the Italian women humanists of the Renaissance
were unable to transcend the traditional gender stereotypes or create a space in the male
‘Field of Letters’ for the learned female scholar and voice: the ‘appropriate’ position of
educated women remained their ‘book-lined cells’.
It is when compared to the experiences of Hélo¨õ se and the Italian women humanists
that the extent to which Christine had successfully negotiated the misogynist prescripts
92 K. Nowacka

of her time in her views and in her lifestyle is evident. For, although Christine did not
receive the same level of education as the above viragos, she was, on the other hand, able
to successfully breach the public/private threshold and use her learning as the instrument
to articulate her concerns on the status of women, morality and the contemporary state
of politics and society. Paradoxically, despite her limited education, she was in this
respect a more successful ‘humanist’. Furthermore, while she did not question the
patriarchal social structure, she did argue for the ‘Field of Letters’ to be open and fair
to both sexes: unlike Bruni’s claim that rhetoric was ‘unbecoming’ to women, the
examples of erudite and prophetic women in the Cité136 in conjunction with her own
public career, suggest that, for Christine, the female voice possessed an equal claim to
be heard in intellectual public debate: ‘Now see, like a real man I have to be … Though
‘twould please me more than a third/To return as woman and be heard’.137 Finally,
unlike the above women who chose between marriage or the cloister and were
‘conquered from within’, by her lifestyle and by her opinion that women complimented
and were equal to men, it is clear that Christine was ‘more a friend to women’138 of her
own time than Delaney has given her credit for.
In a recent article, Barbara Newman identiŽ ed three prevalent ‘sins’ in modern
feminist historiography which are pertinent to the present debate in ‘Christine studies’ on
the merits of Christine’s identiŽ cation as a ‘female humanist’ and as a ‘feminist’.139 These
are the ‘temptation to idealise, the temptation to pity, and the temptation to blame’.
Paradoxically, despite Delaney’s critique of historians’ ‘temptation to idealise’ Christine
as the Ž rst ‘feminist’ and ‘female humanist’, her own ‘temptation to blame’ Christine for
not being ‘radical’ enough in her feminism is the product of the same anachronistic
historicism. The presentist agendas that have in uenced the approaches to Christine
have, to a great extent, resulted in a misinterpretation of her career, ambitions and
achievements as a humanist and as a feminist. Indeed, in regards to Christine, the
‘temptation to pity’ is more difŽ cult. She eschewed the traditional social models available
for women, debated against the great intellectuals of her time, undertook a re-gendering
and revision of the literary canon and was publicly committed to improving contempor-
ary social and political problems based on her belief that it is through the education of
individuals that moral and social reforms were achievable. Her desire and approaches to
restoring the dignity of women to ‘humanity’, the clearest expression of the way in which
her ‘feminism’ was deeply embedded within her humanism, may be ‘disappointing’ and
conservative according to modern standards but it is as a humanist and as a feminist
operating in the Ž fteenth century— without a tradition of ‘mothers to think back through’
or a ‘room of one’s own’— that her success and failures should be judged and
understood.

NOTES
1. V. Woolf, A Room of One’s Own (The Hogarth Press) London, 1991, pp. 70–1.
2. For a biography of Christine de Pizan, see C.C. Willard, Christine de Pizan: Her Life and Works (Persea
Books) New York, 1984.
3. E. Benkor, ‘The Coming to Writing: Auctoritas and Authority in Christine de Pizan’, Le Moyen Français,
1994–5, pp. 35–36, 33–48, 33.
4. Christine de Pizan, The Book of the City of Ladies, R. Brown Grant (trans.) (Penguin) Harmondsworth, 1999.
Numerous anthologies contain excerpts of this principle work— see Charity Cannon Willard (ed.), The
Writings of Christine de Pizan (Persea Books) New York, 1993; M. Thiébaux (trans.), The Writings of Medieval
Women, 2nd edition (Garland) New York and London, 1994. Hereon referred to as Cité.
5. See ‘Christine’s Vision’, in Willard, Writings of Christine de Pizan, p. 19.
 Reections on Christine de Pizan’s ‘Feminism’ 93

6. See G. McLeod, The Reception of Christine de Pizan from the Fifteenth Century Through the Nineteenth Centuries:
Visitors to the City (Edwin Mellen Press) Lewiston, 1991, Appendix II.
7. R. Brown-Grant, Christine de Pizan and the Moral Defence of Women: Reading beyond Gender (Cambridge
University Press) Cambridge, 1991, p. 2.
8. Pizan, Book of the City of Ladies, part I, chapter 27, p. 57.
9. For example, Willard claimed that ‘it is surprising to Ž nd her attacking many of the same attitudes in
society which have more recently aroused the animus of Simone de Beauvoir or the members of the
present generation devoted to women’s liberation’. Willard quoted in M. Ignatius, ‘A New Look at the
Feminism of Christine de Pizan’, Proceedings of the PaciŽc Northwest Council on Foreign Languages, vol. 29, 1978,
pp. 18–21, 18.
10. M. Quilligan, The Allegory of Female Authority: Christine de Pizan’s ‘Cité des Dames’ (Cornell University Press)
Ithaca, New York, 1991, p. 1.
11. S. Delaney, “‘Mothers to Think Back Through”: Who are They? The Ambiguous Example of Christine
De Pizan’ in L.A. Finke and M. Schichtmann (eds), Medieval Texts and Contemporary Readers (Cornell
University Press) Ithaca, New York, 1987, pp. 177–97. See also her reply to her critics in S. Delaney,
‘History, Politics and Christine Studies: a Polemical Reply’ in M. Brabant (ed.), Politics, Gender and Genre:
the Political Thought of Christine de Pizan (Westview) Boulder, 1992, pp. 193–206.
See C. Reno’s reply to Delaney, ‘Christine de Pizan: At Best a Contradictory Figure?’ in Brabant (ed.),
Politics, Gender and Genre, pp. 171–91. Also E.J. Richards, ‘Christine de Pizan: the Conventions of Courtly
Diction, and Italian Humanism’ in E.J. Richards et al. (eds), Reinterpreting Christine de Pizan, (University of
Georgia Press) Athens and London, 1992, pp. 25–27; Quilligan, Allegory, pp. 264–70; Brown-Grant,
Reading beyond Gender, ‘Conclusion’.
12. Delaney, ‘History, Politics and Christine Studies’, p. 203.
13. Delaney, “‘Mothers to Think Back Through”’, p. 188.
14. A view she maintained and elaborated upon in her reply to her critics in ‘History, Politics and Christine
Studies’.
15. Gottlieb, ‘The Problem of Feminism in the Fifteenth Century’ in J. Kirschner and S. Wemple (eds),
Women of the Medieval World: Essays in Honor of John H. Mundy (Basil Blackwell) Oxford, 1985, pp. 337–64,
337.
16. See E. Gross, ‘What is Feminist Theory?’ in E. Gross and C. Pateman (eds), Feminist Challenges: Social and
Political Theory (Allen & Unwin) Sydney, 1986, pp. 190–204.
17. Delaney, “‘Mothers to Think Back Through”’, p. 183.
18. Gottlieb, ‘Problem of Feminism’, p. 338.
19. Delaney, “‘Mothers to Think Back Through”’, p. 183.
20. Delaney, “‘Mothers to Think Back Through”’, pp. 185–7. In ‘History, Politics and Christine Studies’,
Delaney acknowledges the Marxist in uences and overtones present in her arguments but states that ‘I
am just a little uncomfortable that people think that is all there is to it’, p. 196.
21. Delaney, “‘Mothers to Think Back Through”’, p. 189.
22. Christine de Pizan, The Book of the Body Politic, K. Langdon Forhan (trans.) (Cambridge University Press)
Cambridge and New York, 1994, part III, chapter 8, p. 103.
23. A principle target of Delaney’s criticisms— see “‘Mothers to Think Back Through”’, p. 185.
24. G. Mombello, ‘Quelques aspects de la pensée politique de Christine de Pizan d’après ses oeuvres
publiées’ in F. Simone (ed.), Culture et politique en France à l’époque de l’humanisme et de la Renaissance
(Accademia della Scienze) Turin, 1974, pp. 43–153, 133.
25. Mombello, ‘Quelques aspects de la pensée politique’, p. 153.
26. For example, The Book of the Body Politic, part III, chapter 10: ‘Of all the estates, they are the most
necessary, … It is a sin to be ungrateful for as many services as they give us! And really it is very much
the feet which support the body politic’, p. 107. See also O. Oexle, ‘Christine et les pauvres’ in M.
Zimmerman and D. de Rentiis (eds), The City of Scholars: New Approaches to Christine de Pizan (Walter de
Gruyter) Berlin, New York, 1994, pp. 206–20.
27. M. Zimmerman, ‘Vox Femina, Vox Politica: The Lamentacion sur les maux de la France’ in Brabant (ed.),
Politics, Gender and Genre, pp. 113–28, 115–16; J. Krynen, Idéal du Prince et Pouvoir Royal en France à la Fin
du Moyen Age (1380–1440): Etude de la littérature politique du temps (Editions A & J Picard) Paris, 1981.
In her address to the Prince in the Book of the Body Politic, Christine recommends that he ‘make himself
available to his subjects … He will not fear nor despise the pitiful supplications of the people, but kindly
condescends to the requests for mercy and justice.’ She also advises the Prince to surround himself with
good ministers and advisers to assist in the administration of the state (part I, chapter 10, p. 18). This
would appear to contradict Delaney’s claim that Christine advocated an absolutist state.
94 K. Nowacka

28. Gottlieb, ‘Problem of Feminism’, p. 354.

29. Mombello, ‘Quelques aspects de la pensée politique’, p. 153.
30. ‘Christine’s Vision’, p. 10.
31. ‘Christine’s Vision’, pp. 9–10.
32. Christine de Pizan, The Treasure of the City of Ladies, S. Lawson (trans.) (Penguin) Harmondsworth, 1985,
part III, 4, p. 159.
33. Treasure, part III, 4, p. 158.
34. Treasure, part III, 4, pp. 159–60.
35. For example, Book of the City of Ladies, part I, chapter 8, p. 18: ‘You yourself have made these points
elsewhere in your writings.’
36. Quilligan, Allegory, p. 12.
37. ‘Christine’s Vision’, p. 14.
38. ‘Christine’s Vision’, p. 15.
39. Gontier Col to Christine de Pizan, VI, E. Hicks (ed.), Le Débat sur le Roman de la Rose (Editions Honoré
Champion) Paris, 1977, p. 23. English translation found in La Querelle de la Rose: Letters and Documents, J.
Baird and J. Kane (trans.), pp. 60–1.
40. Gontier Col to Christine de Pizan, VII, Hicks (ed.), Débat, p. 23.
41. S. Schibanoff, ‘Taking the Gold out of Egypt: the Art of Reading as a Woman’ in E. Flynn and P.
Schweickart (eds), Gender and Reading: Essays on Readers, Texts and Contexts (Johns Hopkins University Press)
Baltimore, 1986, pp. 83–106, p. 85.
42. See, for example, J. Burckhardt, The Civilization of the Renaissance in Italy, S.G. Middlemore (trans.)
(Penguin) Harmondsworth, 1990, pp. 135–9.
43. See J. Kelly, ‘Did Women Have a Renaissance?’ in Women, History and Theory (University of Chicago Press)
Chicago and London, 1984.
44. O. Kristeller, Renaissance Thought: the Classic, Scholastic and Humanistic Strains (Harper Torchbooks) New
York, 1961, p. 9.
45. Kristeller, Renaissance Thought, pp. 14–15; Burckhardt, Civilization; E. Gilson, ‘Le Message de
l’Humanisme’ in Simone (ed.), Culture et Politique en France, pp. 3–9.
46. W.K. Ferguson, Renaissance Studies (University of Western Ontario) London, Ontario, 1963, p. 106.
47. R.W. Southern, Medieval Humanism (Harper Torchbooks) New York and Evanston, 1970, p. 31.
48. Kristeller, Renaissance Thought, p. 8; R. Allen, ‘Draining and Filling: a Few Benchmarks in the History of
Humanism’ in R. Allen (trans., ed.), Desiderius Erasmus: The Praise of Folly and Other Writings (W.W. Norton)
London, 1989, pp. 326–38.
49. Kristeller, Renaissance Thought, p. 9.
50. Other predominant traits related to the latter that could be added are the recognition of the ‘dignity of
nature’ and the primary place of ‘man’ within the hierarchical order of the universe. Southern, Medieval
Humanism, pp. 31–2.
51. Ferguson, Renaissance Studies, p. 96.
52. See, for example, Richards, ‘Courtly Diction and Italian Humanism’, p. 257; M. Ignatius, ‘A New Look
at the Feminism of Christine de Pizan’, Proceedings of the PaciŽc Northwest Conference on Foreign Languages, vol.
29, 1978, pp. 18–21; Margolis, ‘Poetess as Historian’, p. 370.
53. G. Ouy, ‘La dialectique des rapports franco-italiens et l’humanisme en France au XIVe et XVe siècles’,
Rapporti culturali ed economici fra Italia e Francia nei seccoli dal XIV al XVI, Rome, 1979, pp. 1337–56.
54. Jean Gerson argued on the side of Christine whilst Jean de Montreuil was her ‘adversary’.
55. G. Ouy, ‘Paris, l’un des principaux foyers de l’humanisme en Europe au début du XVe siècle’, Bulletin
de la Societé de l’Histoire de Paris et de L’Ile de France, nos 94/95, 1970, pp. 71–98.
56. Fenster, ‘Perdre son latin’, pp. 94–5. For example, Nicholas Oresme translated Aristotle’s Ethics and Politics
during the 1370s and Nicholas de Gonesse completed the translation of Valerius Maximus in 1404.
57. In her Chemin de Longue Estude, Christine implies that Charles V promoted the translations of Latin texts
on account of his own limited knowledge of Latin. See Fenster, ‘Perdre son latin’, p. 93.
58. Fenster, ‘Perdre son latin’, p. 96.
59. K. Langdon Forhan, ‘Polycracy, Obligation and Revolt: the Body Politic in John of Salisbury and
Christine de Pizan’ in Brabant (ed.), Politics, Gender and Genre, pp. 33–52, 35. See also E. Hicks, ‘A Mirror
for Misogynists: John of Salisbury’s Policraticus (8.11) in the Translation of Denis Foulechat (1372)’ in
Richards et al. (eds), Reinterpreting Christine de Pizan, pp. 77–107
60. See, for example, Fenster, ‘Perdre son latin’, pp. 92–3; C.C. Willard, ‘Christine de Pizan: From Poet to
Political Commentator’ in Brabant (ed.), Politics, Gender and Genre, p. 21.
61. ‘Christine’s Vision’, p. 17. Avision, p. 163.
 Reections on Christine de Pizan’s ‘Feminism’ 95

62. C. Reno, ‘Preface to Avision-Christine in ex-Phillips 128’ in Richards et al. (eds), Reinterpreting Christine de
Pizan, pp. 207–27.
63. Reno, ‘Preface to Avision-Christine’, p. 226.
64. Willard, ‘From Poet to Political Commentator’, p. 21.
65. ‘My possibilities were greatly diminished when you did not let me keep those two until I had advanced
in learning. You harmed the very character of my soul! And now I hunger in mind and spirit for that
which I am no longer able to possess: the knowledge of you sweet Philosophy!’ ‘Christine’s Vision’, p. 16.
In the City of Ladies, she blames her mother’s ‘opposition’ and her insistence that Christine should learn
to ‘spin like other girls’ which prevented her from ‘gleaning’ more ‘grains of knowledge’ from her father.
Part II, chapter 36, p. 141.
66. ‘May Thou keep the clerks, masters, and students of the noble and honoured University of Paris, Thy
theologians and others, whatever Faculty they are from. Likewise preserve all the other universities of
Christendom under Thy holy protection, give them strength to endure the labor of studies and
understanding of sciences in order to make proŽ table use of them to teach the ignorant and the common
people’. Quoted in Gabriel, ‘Education Ideas of Christine de Pizan’, p. 19.
67. ‘Christine’s Vision’, p. 16.
68. Pizan, Book of the City of Ladies, part II, chapter 36, p. 141.
69. Pizan, Book of the Body Politic, part III, chapter 4, p. 96.
70. Mombello, ‘Quelques aspects de la pensée politique’, p. 153.
71. Richards, ‘Seullette’, p. 159.
72. Kristeller quoted in Richards, ‘Seullette’, p. 159.
73. Richards, ‘Seullette’, p. 162.
74. ‘Epistre a la Royne’ [‘Epistle to the Queen’] in J. Wisman (trans., ed.), The Epistle of the Prison of Human Life
with an Epistle to the Queen of France and Lament on the Evils of the Civil War (Garland) New York and London,
1984, p. 81.
75. ‘Poem of Joan of Arc’, T. Fenster (trans.) in Willard (ed.), Writings of Christine de Pizan, p. 355.
76. A. Barr, ‘Christine de Pisan’s Ditié de Jehanne d’Arc: a Feminist exemplum for the Querelle des Femmes’, Fifteenth
Century Studies, vol. 14, 1988, pp. 1–12.
77. R. Brown-Grant, ‘Hee! Quel honneur au feminin sexe!: Female Heroism in Christine de Pizan’s Ditié de Jehanne
d’Arc’, Journal of the Institute of Romance Studies, vol. 5, 1997, pp. 123–33, 132.
78. J. Blanchard, ‘Compilation and Legitimatio n in the Fifteenth Century: Le Livre de la Cité des Dames’ in
Richards et al. (eds), Reinterpreting Christine de Pizan, pp. 228–49, 240–3.
79. For example, ‘I began to examine myself and my own behaviour as an example of womanhood.’ Pizan,
Book of the City of Ladies, part I, chapter 1, p. 6.
80. Pizan, Book of the City of Ladies, part I, chapter 8, p. 18.
81. Also see K. Brownlee, ‘Christine de Pizan’s Canonical Authors: the Special Case of Boccaccio’,
Comparative Literature Studies, vol. 32, no. 2, 1995, pp. 244–61 for Christine’s rewriting of the Griselda story
in the Cité, taken from Boccaccio’s Decameron as a strategy to undermine his De Claris.
82. Boccaccio, Concerning Famous Women, G. Guarino (trans.), pp. 4–6.
83. Boccaccio, Concerning Famous Women, G. Guarino (trans.), p. 6.
84. For a Freudian analysis of the signiŽ cance of Semiramis as the ‘Ž rst foundation stone’, see Quilligan,
Allegory, pp. 70–84. For Delaney’s critical reading of Christine’s rewriting of the tales of Semiramis and
Dido, see Delaney, “‘Mothers to Think Back Through”’ in which she argues that Boccaccio expressed
more pro-feminine accounts.
85. Pizan, The Book of the City of Ladies, part I, chapter 14, p. 34.
86. The Book of the City of Ladies, part I, chapter 15, p. 37.
87. Blanchard, ‘Compilation’, p. 244.
88. Richards, ‘Conventions of Courtly Diction’, p. 257. She was the second person in France to refer to
Boccaccio’s De Claris Mulieribus (after Philip de Mezières) and was familiar with the works of Petrarch (e.g.
Proemium, De remediis utriusque fortunae). It is possible that she had access to Petrarch’s works through the
sermons of Jean Gerson. See N. Mann, ‘Petrarch’s Role as Moralist in Fifteenth Century France’ in
A.H.T. Levi (ed.), Humanism in France at the End of the Middle Ages and the Early Renaissance (Manchester
University Press) New York, 1970, pp. 6–28.
89. S. Huot, ‘Seduction and Sublimation: Christine de Pizan, Jean de Meun and Dante’, Romance Notes, vol.
25, 1985, pp. 361–73. Also see A. Slerca, ‘Dante, Boccace, et le Livre de la Cité des Dames de Christine de
Pizan’ in L. Dulac and B. Ribémont (eds), Une Femme de Lettres au Moyen Ages: Etudes autour de Christine de
Pizan (Paradigme) Orleans, 1995, pp. 221–31. Also see E.J. Richards, ‘Christine de Pizan and Dante: a
Re-examination’ Archiv für das Studium der neueron Sprachen und Literaturen, 222, no. 137/1, 1985, pp. 100–11.
96 K. Nowacka

90. Huot, ‘Seduction and Sublimation’, p. 369.

91. Richards, ‘Conventions of Courtly Diction’, pp. 251–2.
92. ‘Christine’s Vision’, p. 15.
93. Richards, ‘Conventions of Courtly Diction’, p. 263.
94. ‘Letter of the God of Love’ in Willard (ed.), Writings of Christine de Pizan, p. 148.
95. ‘The Tale of the Rose’, T. Fenster (trans.) in Willard (ed.), Writings of Christine de Pizan, p. 167.
96. Richards, ‘Rejecting Essentialism and Gendered Writing: the Case of Christine de Pizan’ in J. Chance
(ed.), Gender and Text in the Later Middle Ages (University of Florida Press) Gainseville, 1996, pp. 96–131,
p. 97.
97. Christine de Pizan to Jean de Montreuil, Letter VI, in Querelle, Baird and Kane (trans.), p. 55.
98. Christine de Pizan to Jean de Montreuil, Letter VI, in Querelle, Baird and Kane (trans.), p. 55.
99. See Richards, ‘Rejecting Essentialism’, p. 123, who likens Christine’s arguments to Joan Scott.
100. C.C. Willard, ‘The Manuscript Tradition of the Livre des Trois Vertus and Christine de Pizan’s Audience’,
Journal of the History of Ideas, vol. 27, 1966, pp. 433–44, 440.
101. See Delaney, “‘Mothers to Think Back Through”’, p. 189; and Ignatius, ‘A Look at the Feminism’, p. 18.
102. Pizan, Treasure of the City of Ladies, ‘Prologue’, p. 32.
103. Delaney, “‘Mothers to Think Back Through”’, pp. 191–2.
104. Delaney argues, for example, that Christine was ‘less a friend of women than of the powers that be’.
“‘Mothers to Think Back Through”’, p. 193.
105. Pizan, Book of the City of Ladies, part I, chapter 10, p. 29.
106. See R. Blumensfeld-Kosinski, ‘Christine de Pizan’s Advice to Prostitutes’, Medieval Feminist Newsletter, no.
27, Spring 1999, pp. 9–15.
107. M. Lorcin, ‘Le Livre des Trois Vertus et le Sermo ad Status’ in L. Dulac and B. Ribémont (eds), Une Femme
de Lettres au Moyen Age: Etudes autour de Christine de Pizan (Paradigme) Orleans, 1995, pp. 139–49, 145.
108. See, for example, R.H. Bloch, Medieval Misogyny and the Invention of Western Romantic Love (University of
Chicago Press) Chicago and London, 1991, especially ‘Introduction’ and chapter 1.
109. Hélo¨õ se, Letters of Abélard and Hélo¨õ se, B. Radice (trans.) (Penguin) Harmondsworth, 1974, pp. 138–9. For
a different view, see M.M. McLaughlin, ‘Peter Abélard and the Dignity of Women: Twelfth Century
“Feminism” in Theory and Practice’ in R. Louis, J. Jolivet and J. Chatillon (eds), Pierre Abélard, Pierre le
Vénérable: Les Courants Philosophiques Littéraires et Artistiques en Occident au milieu du XIIe siècle (Editions du
Centre National de l Recherche ScientiŽ que) Paris, 1975, pp. 469–511.
110. P. McCracken, ‘The Curse of Eve: Female Bodies and Christian Bodies in Hélo¨õ se’s Third Letter’ in B.
Wheeler (ed.), Listening to Hélo¨õ se: the Voice of a Twelfth Century Woman (St Martin’s Press) New York, 2000,
pp. 217–32.
111. Hélo¨õ se, Letters of Abélard and Hélo¨õ se, p. 163.
112. This argument is also echoed in her earlier correspondence with Abélard. See C. Mews, ‘Philosophical
Trends in the Epistolae duorum amantium: the First Letters of Hélo¨õ se and Abélard’, pp. 35–52; and J. Ward
and N. Chiavaroli, ‘The Young Hélo¨õ se and Latin Rhetoric: Some Preliminary Comments on the “Lost”
Love Letters and their SigniŽ cance’, pp. 53–119, both in B. Wheeler (ed.), Listening to Hélo¨õ se: the Voice of
a Twelfth Century Woman (St Martin’s Press) New York, 2000.
113. E. McNamer, The Education of Hélo¨õ se: Methods, Content and Purpose of Learning in Twelfth Century France (Edwin
Mellen Press) Canada, 1992, pp. 51–8.
114. Historia Calamitatum, p. 66.
115. Ward and Chiavaroli, ‘The Young Hélo¨õ se and Latin Rhetoric’, p. 62.
116. See L. Brook, ‘Christine de Pizan, Hélo¨õ se and Abélard’s Holy Women’, Zeitschrift für Romanische Philologie,
vol. 109, 1993, pp. 556–63; see also Richards, ‘Seullette a part’, pp. 140–2.
117. Peter the Venerable in Letters of Abélard and Hélo¨õ se, pp. 277–8. Hugh Metel, a monastic contemporary of
Hélo¨õ se, also echoed these sentiments. See Charrier, Hélo¨õ se, p. 283. For further examples of the
widespread praise of Hélo¨õ se’s intellectual endeavours, see P. Dronke, Abélard and Hélo¨õ se in Medieval
Testimonies (University of Glasgow Press) Glasgow, 1976, p. 22.
118. Richards, ‘Seulette’, p. 141. Jean de Meun was also the Ž rst person to translate the correspondence of
Hélo¨õ se and Abélard.
119. Romance of the Rose, H. Robbins (trans.) (E.P. Dutton) New York, 1962, pp. 60–1, 178.
120. Richards, ‘Seulette’, p. 141. Christine refers to Hélo¨õ se in the Querelle.
121. M. King, Women of the Renaissance (University of Chicago Press) Chicago and London, 1991, p. 165.
122. Burckhardt, Civilization of the Renaissance in Italy, part V, pp. 250–1.
123. O. Kristeller, ‘Learned Women of Early Modern Italy: Humanists and University Scholars’ in Patricia
Labalme (ed.), Beyond their Sex: Learned Women of the European Past (New York University Press) New York,
1980, pp. 91–116, 99–102.
 Reections on Christine de Pizan’s ‘Feminism’ 97

124. Leonardo Bruni d’Arezzo, ‘Concerning the Study of Literature— A Letter Addressed to the Illustrious
Lady, Baptista Malatesta’ in W.H. Woodward (ed.), Vittorino da Feltre and Other Humanist Educators
(Teachers College, Columbia University) New York, 1963, pp. 123–33, 126.
125. J. Kelly, ‘Did Women Have a Renaissance?’ in Women, History and Theory (University of Chicago Press)
Chicago and London, 1984, p. 33. See also the ‘querelle de femmes’ between Signor Gaspare and MagniŽ co
Giuliano in Book Three of Castiglione’s The Courtier: ‘I am quite surprised,’ said Signor Gaspare with a
laugh, ‘that since you endow women letters, continence, magnanimity and temperance, you do not want
them to govern cities as well, and to make laws and lead armies, while the men stay at home to cook
and spin’, G. Bull (trans.) (Penguin) Harmondsworth, 1976, p. 216.
126. King, Women of the Renaissance, p. 164.
127. A. Grafton and L. Jardine, ‘Conclusion: the Perfect Orator’ in A. Grafton and L. Jardine, From Humanism
to the Humanities: Education and the Liberal Arts in Fifteenth- and Sixteenth-century Europe (Duckworth) London,
1986, pp. 210–11.
128. Jardine, From Humanism to the Humanities, p. 41.
129. King, ‘Book-lined Cells’, p. 75.
130. King, ‘Book-lined Cells’, p. 74.
131. See M. King and A. Rabil, ‘Introduction’ in M. King and A. Rabil (eds), Her Immaculate Hand: Selected
Works by and about the Women Humanists of Quattrocento Italy (Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies)
Binghamton, New York, 1983, pp. 16–18, for a biography of the women humanists. Also, King,
‘Book-lined Cells’, p. 67.
132. ‘Of the Equal and Unequal Sin of Adam and Eve’, King and Rabil (trans.) in Her Immaculate Hand, p. 64.
For a comparison between Christine’s treatment of the Fall and Eve with Isotta’s argument in the debate,
see T. Fenster, ‘Simplece et sagesse: Christine de Pizan et Isotta Nogarola sur la culpabilité d’Eve’ in L. Dulac and
B. Ribémont (eds), Une Femme de Lettres au Moyen Age: Edutes autour de Christine de Pizan (Paradigme) Orleans,
1995, pp. 481–94.
133. Kelly, ‘Did Women Have a Renaissance’, p. 35; Schibanoff, ‘Taking the Gold out of Egypt’, p. 100.
134. King, ‘Book-lined Cells’, p. 72.
135. King, ‘Book-lined Cells’, p. 70.
136. See Quilligan, Allegory, pp. 214–20.
137. ‘The Mutation of Fortune’, p. 127.
138. Delaney, “‘Mothers to Think Back Through”’, p. 193.
139. B. Newman, ‘On the Ethics of Feminist Historiography’, Exemplaria, vol. 2, no. 2, October 1990,
pp. 702–5.