Welcome back to The Deep Dive. We are doing something
a little different today. Usually when we talk
about the medieval period, specifically that
really gritty, dark stretch of the late 14th
century, we're looking at it through the eyes
of the guys with the swords, the kings, the knights.
the military strategist. Standard blood and mud
narrative. Exactly. It's the Hundred Years' War.
It's the aftermath of the Black Death. It is,
by all accounts, a terrible time to be alive
in France. It's a truly awful time. But today
we are looking at this exact same period through
a lens that, well, it feels like it shouldn't
exist. We are looking at it through the eyes
of a woman who didn't just survive this chaos,
but actually shaped the political and intellectual
landscape of Europe. And she's a complete anomaly.
I mean, if you look at the sociological data
of the 1400s, Christine de Pizan is a statistical
impossibility. A statistical impossibility. I
love that. Yes. She's the first woman in Europe
to make a living solely by her pen. We aren't
talking about a nun writing in a cloister for
the glory of God. And we aren't talking about
a queen writing letters. We are talking about
a working mother, an immigrant, a widow, who
built what was essentially a freelance publishing
empire. In the middle of a civil war. In the
middle of a civil war. It's insane. That is the
hook for me, the freelancer angle. Because when
you dig into these sources, the biographies,
the analysis of her manuscripts, you realize
she feels incredibly modern. So modern. She's
dealing with the gig economy. She's dealing with
mansplaining. She's dealing with the glass ceiling.
And she's doing it while the king of France is
going mad and the English are invading. It is,
at its core, a survival story. We often categorize
her as a feminist writer. And she certainly was
that, perhaps the very first. For sure. But before
she was an ideologue, she was a survivor. She
used her intellect as a weapon because, well,
it was the only thing she had left. So our mission
today is to unpack that weapon. We have a massive
stack of notes here covering her entire bibliography,
from her poetry to her military manuals and the
historical records of her life. It's a lot. It
is a lot. We're going to figure out how she pulled
this off, how she managed to tell knights how
to fight wars, and why in 2024 she was literally
dipped in gold, rising out of the Seine at the
Olympic opening ceremony. It is quite the journey.
And to understand how she ends up as a gold statue,
you have to understand where she started, because
she wasn't actually French. Right. She was an
outsider from day one. Right. Let's get into
the origin story. She was born in Venice, is
that correct? Yes. In 1364, born Cristina de
Pizzano, her father, Tommaso di Benvenuto de
Pizzano, was, I mean, he was a very big deal
in Venice. Okay. He was a physician, a counselor
of the Republic, and crucially, a court astrologer.
And being an astrologer back then wasn't like
writing horoscopes for the Sunday paper. This
was serious science, wasn't it? Oh, absolutely.
It was intertwined with medicine and governance.
In the medieval worldview, the microcosm of the
human body, was directly linked to the macrocosm
of the stars. So it's all connected. It's all
connected. Kings relied on astrologers to make
major political decisions to determine the health
of the state, even to time their military campaigns.
And Tommaso, her father, was so good at it that
he got headhunted. Headhunted by kings. That's
a good resume builder. He was a bidding war,
actually. The King of Hungary and King Charles
V of France both wanted him. And he chose France.
Camus chose France. So in 1368, when Christine
was just a toddler, maybe four years old, the
family packs up and moves to Paris. Talk about
a career upgrade, but also a massive culture
shock, I'd imagine. Moving from the Venetian
Republic to the Kingdom of France. It was a completely
different world. But this move is crucial for
understanding Christine. She grows up in the
royal court of Charles V. And this wasn't just
any court. No, this was an environment of intense
intellectualism. Charles wasn't just a warrior
king. He was known as Charles the Wise for a
reason. He founded the Royal Library at the Louvre.
He surrounded himself with translators, philosophers,
scientists. So she's growing up privileged, surrounded
by books. But she's still a girl in the 14th
century. Usually that means learning to sew,
not learning to read Latin. And this is where
her father comes in. Tommaso was surprisingly
progressive for his time. We have records that
suggest a bit of tension in the household about
this. Oh, really? Yeah. Christine's mother thought
she should focus on the distaff duties, you know,
spinning, weaving, managing a household, the
traditional female curriculum. The expected path.
The expected path. But Tommaso, he saw she was
bright. He saw this spark in her. And he decided
to give her access to the intellectual life of
the court. He wanted her to have a real education.
That specific detail really stands out. The parent
who breaks the mold. If Thomas hadn't insisted
on that education, we wouldn't be having this
conversation. Not at all. She would have just
been another anonymous medieval wife. Precisely.
That education was a dormant asset. She didn't
need it immediately. She was being groomed for
marriage after all, but it was being banged for
later. She was reading the classics. She was
learning Italian and French. She was just absorbing
the political conversations of the court. So
she has this idyllic intellectual childhood.
And then, as was the custom. She gets married.
Yes. In 1379, she was 15 years old. She marries
a man named Etienne du Castel. And usually in
these historical deep dives, this is where we
hear about the terrible arranged marriage to
a much older grumpy guy. Yeah. But that wasn't
the case here, was it? Surprisingly, no. By all
accounts, it was a happy marriage, a love match
even. Wow. Etienne was a royal secretary and
notary, so he was also an educated man. He was
on the rise at court. Christine writes about
him later with genuine affection, calling him
her sweet friend. They had three children together.
It was good. So at this point, her life seems
set. She's a damoiselle of the court, comfortable,
happy, married to a man she actually likes, with
a father who is the king's right -hand man. It
was the dream. But as we know, the late Middle
Ages rarely lets anyone stay comfortable for
long. No. The 1380s arrive, and the wheel of
fortune turns downward. Sharply. We call it the
triple tragedy in the outline. Let's walk through
this because it's just hit after hit. It really
is. It starts in 1380 when King Charles V dies,
her father's patron. Okay, so that's a big deal
for the family. Huge deal. This is bad for Tommaso
because he loses his primary protector and his
source of income. The new king, Charles VI, is
young and the court dynamics change completely.
Tommaso loses influence and his salary becomes
irregular. The money starts drying up. It does.
Then, in 1388, Tommaso himself dies. So the patriarch
is gone. And apparently Tommaso was great at
science but bad at finance. He was terrible with
money. He lived large while the money was coming
in, you know, the big intellectual at court.
But he left very little savings. So suddenly,
the safety net is fraying. Christine and her
husband Etienne are now responsible for the whole
extended family. And then the knockout blow,
1389. 1389. Etienne de Castel goes on a mission
to Beauvais with the king. An epidemic breaks
out. It's likely the plague or similar fever.
It's always the plague. It's always the plague.
He contracts it and dies within days. Just gone.
Gone. Suddenly, at age 25, Christine is a widow.
But she's not just a widow. She is now the head
of a household. She has three small children.
She has her own widowed mother to support. And
she has a niece living with them. And no financial
safety net. Nothing. This is where the story
shifts from privileged court life to legal nightmare.
I read that she spent years in court just trying
to get the money her husband was owed. That's
right. For years, Etienne was a royal secretary,
which meant the crown owed him back wages. Significant
amounts of money. So there's money out there
that's technically hers? Technically. But trying
to collect that money as a widow was a bureaucratic
hellscape. She was hit with lawsuits from people
claiming Etienne owed them money. She talks about
this in her writings, the sheer humiliation of
having to navigate this male -dominated legal
system where nobody took her seriously. There's
this specific imagery she uses later, describing
herself waiting in ante rooms, being sneered
at by clerks, being given the runaround. It sounds
absolutely exhausting. She calls it a labyrinth.
She had to learn property law on the fly. She
was being cheated by asset managers who saw a
young widow and thought, easy target. She writes
about having to play the damsel in distress to
get anyone to listen to her while privately she
was hardening into steel. She had to become her
own lawyer. There's a specific detail in the
records where the way she is addressed in documents
changes. Yes, it's so telling. In June 1389,
there's a judgment concerning a lawsuit against
her by the Archbishop of Sens. In it, she is
formally called demoiselle and widow of Estienne
du Castel. So her identity is now defined by
loss. It marks this stark transition. She is
no longer defined by her father or her living
husband. She is a woman alone facing financial
ruin. And this is the catalyst. This is the moment
where she decides, I have to do something. She
didn't start writing because she just had so
many creative ideas bursting out of her, right?
She wrote to eat. Exactly. It was a hustle, a
desperate hustle. She needed income. Yeah. And
she took stock and realized that the one asset
she had, thanks to her father and her upbringing,
was her education. She could write. So let's
talk about that hustle. Because becoming a professional
writer in 14th century Paris isn't like uploading
an e -book to Amazon. Not even close. How did
the book trade actually work back then? It was
a very transitional period for books. We were
moving from the era of continuous rolls to the
bound codex books as we recognize them today.
So actual books with pages. Right. And there
was a rising demand for these books among the
nobility. They were building private libraries
as status symbols. But there were no publishers
in the modern sense. You needed a patron. You
needed a rich duke to pay you to write the book.
Precisely. It was a gift economy. You would write
a book, have it beautifully bound and illustrated,
and present it to a prince or a duke. In exchange,
they were expected to give you a gift of money.
Oh, expected. Expected. It wasn't a salary. It
was a reward. That sounds incredibly unstable.
What if the duke didn't like it or just forgot
to pay you? That happened constantly. And Christine
was incredibly savvy about this. She didn't just
attach herself to one person. She realized the
political landscape was volatile, so she maneuvered
between different factions. So she didn't put
all her eggs in one basket. No way. She wrote
for the Duke of Orleans. She wrote for the Duke
of Burgundy. She wrote for the Duke of Barrie.
She diversified her client base. She was a freelancer.
She was the ultimate freelancer. And she knew
how to market herself. This part is genius. She
would take a work she had written, write a new
prologue dedicating it to a specific duke, and
present it to him as a gift. And then? Then she
might take the very same text, write a different
prologue for a different noble, and present it
to them. That is brilliant. Here you go, Duke
Philip. I wrote this just for you. Just, you
know, ignore the fact that I gave a copy to Duke
Louis last week. Essentially, yes. It was about
maximizing her intellectual property. And she
started with what was popular. In 1393, she began
writing love ballads. OK, so she starts with
the pop hits. Exactly. These are trendy. They
were emotional. They caught the attention of
the court. Her collection, St. Balad's, was a
hit. It was about a grieving widow, which was
obviously autobiographical, but it's stylized
enough to be entertaining. So she gets her foot
in the door with the romance stuff, but she doesn't
stay there. She quickly pivots to much more serious
subjects. Philosophy, history, politics. She
realized that to be taken seriously and to secure
the bigger payouts, she needed to write serious
books. One of the works that really stands out
from this early period is The Letter of Othea
to Hector. Yes, this came out around 1400. And
it's a fascinating text. It's a mix of mythology
and statecraft. What's the premise? The premise
is that Othea, the goddess of wisdom, is tutoring
the Trojan hero, Hector. Okay, I see what she's
doing there. It's a Trojan horse, unintended.
On the surface, it's a collection of mythological
stories, very entertaining, very visual. But
deeply, it's a treatise on how to be a good leader.
And the gender dynamics are key here. She's using
a female goddess to teach a male hero how to
be a leader. Exactly. And the subtext is clear.
Christine is Othea. She is the woman with the
wisdom, teaching the men of the court how to
govern. And she didn't just write the text. She
managed the entire production. Let's touch on
that production aspect, because she wasn't just
sitting alone in a room writing. She was running
a business. She was. By this point, she had scribes
working for her to copy her texts. She hired
illuminators. the artists who painted the gold
leaf in the miniatures in the margins. So she's
like a general contractor for luxury goods. That's
a perfect way to put it. We know she employed
a specific illuminator who art historians now
call the master of the apetra dosea. Wow. She
was incredibly particular about how the books
looked because she knew the visual appeal was
what sold them to the Dukes. That is such a boss
move. She's running a production house. But while
she's building this business, she also starts
getting involved in some pretty heated literary
beefs. We have to talk about the Romance of the
Rose controversy. Oh, yes. This is a defining
moment for her. So, for context, the Romance
of the Rose was the blockbuster of the Middle
Ages. Like the Harry Potter of its day. Bigger,
probably. It was started by Guillaume Deloris
and finished by Jean Domen. It had been around
for over a century. Everyone read it. But it
wasn't exactly respectful toward women, was it?
Not at all. Especially the second half written
by Jean de Moon. It was a satire, yes. But it
depicted women as seducers, as manipulative,
as objects. It was deeply, deeply misogynistic.
It used coarse language. And the establishment
loved it. The intellectual elite defended it.
It was a classic. It was an allegory. Until Christine.
In 1402, she basically calls it out. She says
it's vulgar, immoral, and slanderous. And she's
not just complaining to her friends. She takes
this public... She engages in a letter -rating
campaign against some of the most powerful intellectuals
in Paris, including royal secretaries like Jean
Montreuil and Gontier Cole. So these are the
big dogs? These were the literary bros of the
15th century. They were defending the book, saying
it was satire, it was high art, and they... Christine
just didn't get it. And they must have loved
that, a woman telling them their favorite book
is trash. Oh, they were furious. Their responses
are preserved and they are so condescending,
they basically pat her on the head and say, oh,
you sweet little woman, you just don't have the
intellect to understand Master Jean de Moon.
But she didn't back down. No, she doubled down.
She used this brilliant rhetorical strategy called
antiphrasis. Okay, what's that? She would start
by belittling her own style, saying, oh. I'm
just a woman of small understanding. My pen is
clumsy. Disarming them? Totally disarming them.
And then she would dismantle their arguments
with surgical precision. She cited the church
fathers. She cited classical philosophy. She
asked a very simple, cutting question. Does this
book make men better? Does it make them more
moral? No. It encourages them to treat women
like cattle. It's the Columbo method. Just one
more thing, and then she destroys you. It is.
And Simone de Beauvoir later credited this moment,
this debate, as the first time a woman publicly
took up her pen in defense of her sex. Wow. It
was the birth of the querelle des femmes, the
woman question. And this leads directly into
her most famous work, The Book of the City of
Ladies, published in 1405. This book is incredible.
This is essentially a response to all that misogyny
she was fighting. It is. If the Romance of the
Rose controversy was the battle, the City of
Ladies was the fortress she built afterwards.
I love that analogy. The concept is brilliant.
Christine describes herself sitting in her study,
just depressed. She's read so many books written
by men saying that women are wicked and flawed.
And she starts to internalize it. She wonders,
is God a mistake maker? Why are women so terrible?
Which is heartbreaking, honestly, that feeling
of the weight of the culture just crushing her
self -esteem. It is. But then, three allegorical
figures appear to her. Reason, rectitude, and
justice. The dream team. The dream team. These
three luminous ladies tell her, Christine, wake
up. These men are wrong, and we are going to
help you build a city. A literal city. A symbolic
city. A fortress built to protect and appreciate
women. And the building blocks of this city are
the stories of great women from history. So she's
building it out of stories. Yes. She goes through
history, biblical, classical, contemporary, and
pulls out every example of a strong, virtuous,
intelligent woman she can find. She brings in
everyone, saints, queens, warriors. And she engages
in some amazing revisionist history. My favorite
example is Medusa. Oh, the Medusa bit is crucial.
Because usually Medusa is the monster, right?
Snakes for hair, turns men to stone. Right. A
villain to be slain by Perseus, the ultimate
monster. Christine reimagines her. She portrays
Medusa not as a monster, but as a beautiful woman
who was harmed by men and whose story was twisted
by them. How does she explain the whole turning
men to stone thing? She argues that her power
was actually just her incredible beauty and intellect
that stunned men into silence. They were petrified
by her brilliance. She completely flicks the
script. Completely. She argues that the only
reason negative stereotypes about women persist
is because women have been excluded from the
conversation. If you don't write your own history,
someone else will write it for you. Exactly.
And she uses theological arguments, too. She
says men and women are both created in God's
image, so they both have souls capable of goodness.
It was a systematic dismantling of sexism using
the very religious and logical tools that men
use to enforce it. And she didn't just leave
it at high -level allegory. She also wrote a
sequel, right? A more practical guide. Yes. The
Treasure of the City of Ladies, also known as
the Book of Three Virtues. And what was that
one about? This is the practical guide. If city
ladies was the theory, treasure was the practice.
It was advice for women of all estates. Princesses,
merchants' wives, peasants. All estates. So not
just for the nobility. No, that's what's so important.
She's talking to everyone. What kind of advice?
How to survive. How to manage your money, how
to deal with your husband, how to navigate the
social perils of the 15th century. She was very
pragmatic. For example, she told wives of merchants
to understand their husband's business accounts.
Oh, that's smart. She said, don't just leave
it to him. If he dies, you need to know where
the money is. She was speaking from her own traumatic
experience. Of course. And she was a huge advocate
for education. A massive advocate. She explicitly
argued that if you sent little girls to school
and taught them the same subjects as boys, they
would learn just as fully. Which was a radical
statement in 1405. Hugely radical. She was arguing
for nurture in a world that believed everything
was about nature. She also practiced what she
preached regarding female competence. In the
text, she mentions a female manuscript illustrator
named Anastasia. Yes, this is such a great detail.
She describes Anastasia as the most talented
illustrator of her day, specifically for painting
flower borders and backgrounds in manuscripts.
She's giving another professional woman a shout
out. It's a lovely moment of professional solidarity.
Christine is making sure that another talented
woman's name is recorded in history. So she's
firmly established as this intellectual heavyweight.
She's the voice of women in Europe. But the world
outside her study is getting worse. Much worse.
France is sliding into chaos. It was. And you
really have to understand the political context
to get her later work. King Charles VI, the son
of the wise king she grew up with, was suffering
from severe mental health crises. This is the
king who thought he was made of glass. Yes. He
would have these breakdowns where he didn't know
who he was or he thought he was made of glass
and would shatter if touched. A glass king. That
is a terrifying metaphor for the state of the
nation. It created a massive power vacuum. And
when there's a vacuum, people rush to fill it.
Specifically, two rival factions of the royal
family. The Armagnacs and the Burgundians. Exactly.
It was essentially a civil war between the king's
brother, Louis of Orleans, and the king's cousin.
John the Fearless of Burgundy. And Christina's
right in the middle of this. She knows these
men. They are her patrons. She was terrified.
She viewed France as this sacred entity founded
by Trojan descendants. She wanted stability above
all else. She believed in a strong monarchy.
So she pivots again. She pivots again. She stops
writing just about women and starts writing political
theory. In 1407, she writes The Book of the Body
Politics. Right. And here she uses that classic
medieval metaphor of the body to explain society.
The king is the head, the nobles are the arms,
the people are the legs. And the message is?
The message is that for the body to function,
every part needs to do its job. If the arms attack
the head, the body dies. She favored hereditary
monarchy because she looked at the Italian city
-states, which were more Republican or run by
guilds, and she thought, that's chaotic. That's
not profitable for the common good. She wanted
order above all else. She was desperate for order.
In 1407, things got much worse. John the Fearless
had Louis of Orleans assassinated in the streets
of Paris. Oh, just out in the open. Out in the
open. The Cold War turned hot. So Christine wrote
the Book of Peace in 1413, addressing the Dauphin,
the heir to the throne, urging him to end the
civil war. She quotes the Bible, every kingdom
divided in itself will be made desolate. But
the peace didn't hold. And this leads to what
I think is the most surprising part of her entire
bibliography. She writes a manual on warfare.
The Book of Feats of Arms and of Chivalry, published
in 1410. A woman. Writing a manual on how to
wage war. In 1410, that seems wildly out of her
lane. It is audacious. So audacious. And she
acknowledges that in the preface. She apologizes
to Minerva, the goddess of war, basically saying,
I know I'm a woman, but I have to do this because
the men are doing it wrong. I love that. So how
did she even know this stuff? He's never held
a sword. She was a researcher, a meticulous researcher.
She interviewed knights. She read the classical
texts, specifically Vigisius' De Re Militari,
which was the standard Roman military text. So
she did her homework. She did. But she didn't
just translate Vigisius. She updated him for
her time. She wrote about modern siege warfare,
about the use of cannons, about logistics and
supply lines. What kind of stuff is she covering?
Is it just hit them with the pointy end? Oh,
no, it's sophisticated. Yeah. She discusses the
just war theory, the idea that war should only
be waged by sovereign kings to protect their
subjects or execute justice. So not for personal
gain. Right. It cannot be for personal gain or
vengeance. Yeah. And she talks about the laws
of war, how to treat prisoners, why you shouldn't
kill noncombatants. She even had opinions on
trial by combat, right? She hated it. She opposed
trial by combat because she didn't believe that
winning a fight proved you were right. It just
proved you were stronger or luckier. That's a
very logical modern take. It is. She was very
practical. She admitted that war involves, and
I'm quoting here, raping, killings, forced executions,
and arsons. She didn't romanticize it, even though
she was writing about chivalry. She saw it as
a grim necessity that needed strict regulation.
Now, here is a detail that made me angry when
I read it. This book was good. It was useful.
It was so useful that it was printed and used
for a long time, but her name didn't always stay
on it. This is a classic example of erasure.
It's infuriating. The book was printed later
in the 15th century by a publisher named Antoine
Verar, and in some editions, Verar just stripped
her name off it. Or, even worse, he would claim
it was a translation of a male author. Because,
God forbid, a knight takes military advice from
a woman. Exactly. Even William Caxton, the famous
English printer, published it in 1489 for King
Henry VII. It was considered a standard manual.
But the fact that a woman wrote it was often
obscured because it undermined the authority
of the text in the eyes of men. They wanted the
knowledge, but not the author. Ugh. So she tries
to save France with her pen. She writes about
peace. She writes about war. But the situation
in France just keeps getting worse. It does.
It gets much, much worse. In 1415, the French
suffer a devastating defeat at the Battle of
Agincourt against the English. Agincourt. A generation
of French nobility is wiped out by English longbows.
The mud, the blood. It was a national catastrophe.
And Christine is getting older at this point.
She's seen decades of this endless war and chaos.
She's tired. You can feel it in her writing.
In 1418, she published his letter concerning
the prison of human life. The tone here is very
different from her earlier work. How so? It's
pessimistic, deeply pessimistic. She views the
soul as being trapped in the body, trapped in
this hellish existence on Earth. It was written
as a consolation for women who had lost family
members in the war. But you can feel her own
despair bleeding through. And then the war comes
to her death step, literally. In 1418, the Burgundians
capture Paris. It's a bloodbath in the streets.
Christine flees. Where does she go? Historians
believe she retreated to the Dominican convent
of Procy. Her daughter was a nun there. And she
effectively retires from public life. She stops
writing. She just goes silent. For 11 years,
Paris is occupied by the English. The Burgundians
have taken over. It seems like everything she
fought for is lost. Silence for 11 years. She's
in the convent watching her country fall apart.
The king of Bourges, the disinherited Dauphin,
is hiding in the south. It looks like the end
of France. It really does. But then, 1429. A
miracle happens. Or at least what Christine perceives
as a miracle. A young peasant girl from nowhere
named Joan of Arc appears. Joan of Arc. She claims
to hear voices from God. She convinces the Dauphin
to give her an army. She lifts the siege of Orléans.
It's an unbelievable turn of events. And Christine
picks up her pen one last time. She does. After
11 years of silence, she breaks it to write The
Tale of Joan of Arc, or Didier de Chahand Arc.
And she gets it published just days after Charles
VII's coronation in Rheims, which Joan made happen.
What's the vibe of this last work? Is she still
pessimistic? Not at all. The optimism is back
with a vengeance. She is ecstatic. She sees Joan
as the fulfillment of ancient prophecies. From
Merlin the Sibyl Bede. She sees her as a destined
savior. Yes. But more importantly, she sees Joan
as the ultimate validation of her life's work.
It's poetic, isn't it? The first professional
woman writer ends her career by celebrating the
first female military leader to save France.
It is the perfect bookend to her life. It's almost
too perfect, she writes. What honor for the female
sex. It is perfectly obvious that God has especially
chosen her. She felt vindicated. All those arguments
she made in the city of ladies about women being
capable of greatness. Joan was the living proof.
A woman doing what all the men could not. Sadly,
Christine didn't live to see the end of Joan's
story. No. Christine died around 1430. Joan was
captured and executed in 1431. So Christine likely
died believing that Joan had won and that France
was saved. It seems so. She missed the tragic
ending, which is perhaps a small mercy. She died
with hope. So Christine passes away, but her
books did die with her. Let's talk about her
legacy. She wasn't just forgotten, was she? Not
immediately, no. Her advice books remained in
print until the 16th century. Powerful women
read them. Like who? Anne of France, who was
regent, used Christine's work as a guide. Queen
Elizabeth I of England, one of the most powerful
women in history, had copies of the City of Ladies
and Feats of Arms in her library. I read that
Elizabeth I even had tapestries featuring scenes
from the City of Ladies. She did. Imagine that.
Visuals of a city built by women hanging on the
walls of the Virgin Queen. That is direct influence.
Christine helped shape the queens who came after
her. But then as time goes on, the erasure starts
to happen. It does. As we moved into the 17th
and 18th centuries, the Enlightenment, the literary
canon, narrowed, and women were pushed out of
the history of political thought. So how was
she remembered? Christine was dismissed. She
was labeled a blue stocking, a minor poet, or
just a curiosity. You know, oh, look, a medieval
woman who could write. How quaint. Her political
and military insights were completely ignored.
Until the modern era. The revival really kicks
off in the 20th century. You have scholars like
Mathilde Legle and later, of course, Simone de
Beauvoir rediscovering her. And Judy Chicago?
Yes. Judy Chicago, in her famous artwork The
Dinner Party in 1979, gave Christine a place
setting at the table. Scholars started to realize,
wait, this isn't just a poet. This is a political
theorist. This is a military strategist. And
we have to mention the 2024 Paris Olympics because
that felt like a huge mainstream moment for her.
It was. That was such a huge moment. During the
opening ceremony, there was that segment honoring
10 pioneering French women with gold statues
rising out of the sand. And Christine de Pizan
was one of them, holding her books. From a convent
in Poissy to a gold statue in front of the whole
world, that is quite a journey. It is. And it
validates her mission in a way. She wanted to
be remembered. She wanted women to be remembered.
She built the city of ladies so that women wouldn't
be forgotten. And in the end, she became the
cornerstone of that city. So let's unpack this.
What does all this mean for us today? What's
the big takeaway? I think the biggest takeaway
is her resilience and her use of intellect as
a weapon. She was in a hostile world, legally,
financially, culturally. She didn't have a sword.
She didn't have political office. She had a pen.
And she wasn't afraid to use it. And she used
it to carve out a space for herself and for other
women. She forced the men of her time to listen
to her. She engaged them on their own turf theology,
law, military strategy. And she beat them at
their own game. And she recognized the power
of storytelling. She understood that if you let
a culture tell you that you are less than for
long enough, you start to believe it. The way
she almost did at the start of City of Ladies.
Exactly. So she created a counter -narrative.
The City of Ladies was a safe space for the female
mind. She showed that representation matters.
It really makes you think about the stories we
tell today. It absolutely does. Okay, I have
a thought experiment for you and for everyone
listening. Christine built her city of ladies
using the figures of her time saints, mythological
queens, Amazons. Right, her heroes. If we were
to build a modern city of ladies today, an allegorical
city to protect and validate the contributions
of women, or really any marginalized group, who
would be our architects? Who are the modern reason,
rectitude, and justice? That is a powerful question.
And, you know, to build on that, does the fact
that she had to reimagine Medusa to... take a
figure known as a monster and reveal her as a
survivor. Does it sound familiar? It sounds incredibly
familiar. We are still having these cultural
conversations today about how we treat women
in media, how we interpret their stories. Think
of movies like Wicked or Maleficent telling the
story from. The witch's perspective. Christine
de Pizan started that conversation 600 years
ago. She certainly did. And that is where we
are going to leave it for today. Thank you for
joining us on this deep dive into the life of
the incredible Christine de Pizan. Keep reading.
Keep questioning. See you next time.