Christine presenting her manuscript to King Charles VI of France. Detail detail
Illuminated Manuscripts
British Library
Christine de Pizan
Her father was the court astrologer to Charles V. An astrologer at that time being a far different profession than today, more proto-scientist than con-artist, as viewed and as practiced.
"Charles V's library was if not the best, then one of the best, in Europe. Such a position would explain her father's reputation, Christine's access to books, Christine's knowledge of both the printing trade and the best craftsmen in the trade, and Christine's entree into the circles of the rich and powerful..."Married at fifteen, by her own account most happily, she was widowed at 25. Her husband had encouraged her to continue the education begun at court by her father. She may have been the best-educated woman in Europe at that time.
To support herself and her three children she began to write. Considered the first woman to do so, she was a professional author for the rest of her life, highly successful and renowned throughout literate Europe, such as it was, in the early 15th century.
"Christine was a champion of her own sex. In her Dit de la rose (1402) she describes an order of the rose, the members of which bind themselves by vow to defend the honour of women."Christine at Distinguished Women
a Word List for her extant works
Links on Medieval Women at Haverford University's Feminae
