Search Results for: Christine M Du Bois

This series is an academic article that I wrote on the life of Christine de Pizan, an extraordinary woman of the medieval era.

During the lifetime of Christine de Pizan (1364-1430),[1] women were not well respected.[2] However, Christine managed to carve out a unique spot for herself among authors of poetry and rhetorical letters. Along her journey, she also became an unlikely champion of women, women’s roles, and the honorable treatment of women. Unlikely champion because Christine came from a privileged, comfortable background and was discouraged from stepping outside of traditional female roles by her mother.[3] I am going to show that Christine’s background peculiarly gave her the gifts to become not only a gifted author, but the unlikely champion of women. Then, a brief exploration of the misogynistic attitudes present during her lifetime that called forth a response and thrust her into the role of France’s first woman of letters.[4]

Christine de Pizan was born in Venice, Italy.[5] At the time she was born, the city was just recovering from two horrific events – an earthquake followed by the first outbreak of the bubonic plague in 1348.[6] It was thought that these events were punishments from God for Venice’s wickedness at warring with its neighbors and with Genoa.[7] Venice was a port city that was among the first cities hit by the plague due to its status as a maritime trader.[8] As the downfall of Venice was seen to be attributable to the movement of the planets and stars (earthquake), astronomy and astrology were respected and revered sciences.[9] The potential for ad4vanced study in these fields is what drew Tommaso da Pizzano to Venice.

Tommaso da Pizzano arrived in Venice in 1357 from Bologna. He had been studying there towards his degree of doctor in medical studies which would have included studying astrology.[10] Bologna had a reputation as an intellectual center of Europe, a book production center, and a center of secular thought.[11] That is the rarified air that Christine de Pizan’s father came from. Here, Tommaso met Christine’s mother, they married and soon had Christine. It is also in Venice that Tommaso became acquainted with Petrarch, one of the most influential poets[12] of his day.[13] Here the thoughts of Bologna-based on Aristotle’s writings-collided with Petrarch’s thoughts that were grounded in Plato.[14] Plato believed that women had a place in society—they had strengths that differed from men, but strengths none-the-less. Aristotle, however, had a much more subservient view of women.

In the Republic, Plato argues that women must be assigned social roles in the ideal state equal to those of men. Only one generation later, Aristotle, in his Politics, returns women to their traditional roles in the home, subserving men. Plato’s position in the Republic is based upon his view that “women and men have the same nature in respect to the guardianship of the state, save insofar as the one is weaker and the other is stronger.” Nature provides no such equality in Aristotle; in the Politics he flatly declares, “as regards the sexes, the male is by nature superior and the female inferior, the male ruler and the female subject.”[15]

I must say that Plato was not perfect on women, but he was more charitable in his views that Aristotle. Women, for Plato, degenerated from perfection while for Aristotle, they were inferior by nature.[16] Christine de Pizan was born into an environment more influenced by Petrarch and Platonic thought than by the University center’s reliance upon Aristotelian thoughts on women.

Tommaso soon re-established his family in Bologna because of the prestige that being at University brought him.[17] However, he was soon invited to join the courts of both Paris and Hungary. He chose Paris.[18] He left his family for two years in Bologna while he established himself at the French court of Charles V. This allowed him to have the prestige of being at court and being near the University of Paris. In December 1368, Charles V “received at the Louvre the newly arrived family of Tommaso, now transformed into Thomas de Pizan.”[19]

In the courts of Charles V, Christine was given quite a lot of freedom. Charles V has a propensity for intellectual interests.  He cultivated contacts with the University of Paris and built an impressive library. He contracted Nicole Oresme to translate the entire works of Aristotle into French.[20] Christine had access to the king’s library and to his personal study.[21] She later recalled the king with fondness saying, “In my youth and childhood, with my parents, I was nourished by his hand.”[22] Christine was enthralled with intellectual pursuits from a young age.[23] Her father encouraged her in her studies (he had very liberal views on the education of women) while her mother was more traditional.[24] Christine managed to walk a line between her two parents—tending to her traditional roles as a female and pursuing intellectual curiosities at every opportunity.