Italian-born French poet and scholar, a medieval feminist and probably the first professional woman writer since antiquity. Christine de Pizan's most famous work is Le Livre de la cité des dames (1405, The Book of the City of Ladies), which defended the capabilities and virtues of women against misogynist writings of the day. Its sequel, Le Livre des trois vertus (1405), examined women's roles in medieval society and gave moral instructions. Her works cover a wide range of subjects, including literary debates, courtesy manuals, lyric poetry, biographies of kings, and treatises on chivalry.

Then Lady Reason responded and said, "Get up, daughter! Without waiting any longer, let us go to the Field of Letters. There the City of Ladies will be founded on a flat and fertile plain, where all fruits and freshwater rivers are found and where the earth abounds in all good things. Take the pick of your understanding and dig clear out a great ditch wherever you see the marks of my ruler, and I will help you carry away the earth on my own shoulders." (from The Book of the City of Ladies by Christine de Pizan, translated by Earl Jeffrey Richards, foreword by Marina Warner, New York: Persea Books, 1982, p. 16)

Christine de Pizan (sometimes written de Pisan) was born in Venice. The exact date of her birth is not known and little is known of her early life and education, except what she wrote in her autobiogtaphical L'Avision de Christine (1405). Some of her poems seem to be autobiographical, but on the other had, she has cautioned her readers that "some people could misjudge the fact that / I write love poems about myself." Never forgetting the country where she was born Christine referred to herself in Livre des Fais d'armes et de chevalier (1408-09) as a "femme ytalienne," but he allegiance lay with France and her history, which was inseparable from her own and her family's fate. What becomes of her political loyalties, in the Great Schism of the Western Church she supported Avignon Pope Clement VII, sided by Charles V of France (1338-1380).

Christine's father, Tommaso di Benvenuto Pizzano (Thomas de Pizan), was an Italian academic. When Tommaso was appointed astrologer and physician to the French king Charles V, the family moved in 1368 to Paris. At the court Christine learned Latin and she was allowed to use the large library, where she broadened her education by reading books of philosophy. Christine grew up surrounded by luxury and knowledge.

Education was one of Christine's favorite topics – schools and universities were mostly closed to women. She mentions in Le Livre de la cité des dames (translated as The Boke of the Cyte of Ladys by Brian Anslay in 1521) that her father encouraged her to study, but her mother followed the common custom of women and wished to keep her "busy with spinning and silly girlishness." The court library was her university.

At the age of fifteen Christine was married to Étienne de Castel, an ambitious official in the royal government, who gained the position of court secretary. Their marriage was a happy one. Charles V died in 1380 and Tommaso lost his royal patronage. Ten years later both Étienne and Tommaso died. Christine, heartbroken, was left with three children, an elderly mother, a niece, and a large household. There were also her husband's debts, which she had to pay. Her first poems, in which she expressed her loneliness, were composed to the memory Étienne. "Alone am I, and alone would I be," starts one of her frequently anthologized ballads.

Alone am I and alone would I be
Alone by lover left suddenly.
Alone am I, no friend or master with me,
Alone am I, both sad and angrily,
Alone am I, in languor wretchedly,
Alone am I, completely lost doubtlessly,
Alone am I, friendless and so lonely.
(from One Hundred Ballads, completed before 1402, translated by Charity Cannon Willard, The Writings of Christine de Pizan, selected and edited by Charity Cannon Willard, New York: Persea Books, 1994, p. 41)

Christine's verses were well-received. Instead of trying to better her position by marrying, she decided to earn her living as an author. Like Hildegard of Bingen, Julian of Norwich, and Marie de France, also Christine succeeded against seemingly impossible odds. Between 1393 and 1412 she wrote about three hundred ballads, and many shorter poems. Her early lyric poetry was written for the amusement of the Valois court.

Using her contacts to the royal household, Christine received commissions from patrons, sometimes to write accounts of their amatory exploits. "It was a great pity," said the autor and critic Ford Madox Ford, "for in such real poetry as she had time to write, she left very beautiful and delicate things behind her." (The March of Literature: From Confucius to Modern Times by Ford Madox Ford, London: George Allen and Unwin, 1938, p. 385) The patronage system promoted the work of celebrated writers. In social hierarchy, salaried court poets were above artists, and it was not uncommon that poets aspired to be teachers of their patrons.

Christine de Pizan was the most prolific woman writer of the Middle Ages, equally adept in prose and poetry. Moreover, she became an expert in book production – Christine was one of the first vernacular writers to supervise the copying and illuminating of her own books. She From 1399 until her death (c. 1429) she wrote more than twenty books. In general, her works were formally experimental and innovative. Christine's prose style, modelled on Latin, was more complex than her ballads, which often come close to the intimate and subtle spirit of contemporary paintings.

Christine's son Jean Castel returned from England after his patron, Sir John Montague, was killed in January 1400. About this same time she started to write primarily in prose. Christine's poetry includes love lyrics, a patriotic glorification of Joan of Arc, and philosophical poems. Her first long work was Epistre d'Othéa (c. 1400, The Letter of Othéa); while writing it she read Ovid's Metamorphoses. The allegorical story, one of her most popular works, described the moral and spiritual education of a young knight. She also wrote treatises on education, warfare, religion, philosophy, and history. Some texts were intended as manuals of good government for the Dauphin, the future Charles VI (1368-1422).

In several works Christine attacked misogynist opinions of the day. She founded a poetic Order of the Rose to reward knights who defended the honor of women. Some feminist critics have castigated her for failing to advocate reform of the social order or to demand equal rights for women. Le Livre des trois vertus (1405) has frequently been attacked for holding the traditional view of women as "second class citizens".

When chivalric poetry had idolozed women as superior beings, the vagrantes, wandering clerics and scholars, differed from troubadours mainly in that they spoke of women with contempt, and in fact they created whole anti-feminist and anti-romantic literature. L'Épistre au Dieu d'amours (written in 1399) was Christine's answet to the famous Roman de la Rose (The Romance of the Rose), in which Jean de Meun (or de Meung, c.1250 - c.1305) satirized the artificial glorification of women. The cause was taken up by another poet, Martin LeFranc, provost of Lausanne, in Le Champion des Dames (1440-42). With her vigorous polemic against Jean de Meun, Christine initiated France's first literare debate, known as the "Quarrel of the Rose," in her letters to Jean de Mountreuil, an early humanist scholar, and Gontier Col, First Secretary and Notary to King Charles VI. Her major concern was not social, but moral – the entire femine sex is not full of every vice – and intellectual rights.

Refuting the tendency to lay responsibility for male chastity on to women, Christine argued that it is up to the lover to find an honourable woman to love. Jean de Montreuil refused to reply to Christine directly. She continued the debate in The Book of the City of Ladies, based in part on De claris mulieribus (1360-74, Concerning Famous Women) by the Italian writer Boccaccio. It was first translated into French as Des cleres et nobles femmes in 1401, but Christine may have read Boccaccio in the original; she new Latin. The title of the book referred to St. Augustine's City of God, but as an utopia the City of Ladies was related to Plato's Atlantis and anticipated Thomas More's Utopia (1516), Francis Bacon's New Atlantis (1629), and Tommaso Campanella's City of the Sun (1637). Boccaccio maintained that women who achieve greatness have managed to transcend their sex and act like men. "Let slothful women be ashamed, and those who wretchedly have no confidence in themselves, who, as if they were born for idleness and for the marriage bed, convince themselves that they are good only for the embraces of men, giving birth, and raising children, while they have in common with men the ability to do those things which make men famous, if only they are willing to work with perseverance." (Concerning Famous Women by Giovanni Boccaccio, translated, with an introduction and notes, by Guido A. Guarino, New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1963, p. 188) Christine argued that there is a difference between women who are famous by chance and those women who have earned their fame by hard work. Moreover, "the dangerous life of foolish love ought to be avoided by women who possess any learning whatsoever, for it os quite harmful to them." (The Book of the City of Ladies, p. 204)

The imaginary City of Ladies is fortified and closed off with strong gates. It is built with enormous blocks of stone, "stronger and more durable than any marble with cement could be": they are famous women, from Artemisia ("she possessed strong virtue, moral wisdom, and political prudence") to Zenobia ("she won several battles") and from Dido ("she founded and built a city called Carthage") and Semiramis ("reinforced and rebuilt the strong and cruel city of Babylon") to Minerva ("from her knowledge provided humanity with so many necessary objects, like woolen clothing"). They are also the inhabitants of the city. Women who lack virtue are not allowed to enter inside its walls.

Christine divided the book in three parts. After finishing the work Christine continued with stories of women from all levels of society. The tale of her own life was basis for the allegorical L'Avision de Christine (1405), which has been the principal source of information of her life. At the request of the regent, Philip the Bold of Burgundy, she wrote the official biography of Charles V, Le Livre des Fais et bonners meurs du sage roy Charles V (1404). In its second part, entitled "Chivalry," she portaryed the king as a man who qualified as a military leader in spite of his poor health and unwillingness to lead troops in a battle.

Following the defeat of the French by the English at Agincourt in 1415, and the occupation of the country, Christine entered the Dominican convent at Poissy, where her daughter was a nun. Her last known composition is Le Ditié de Jehanne d'Arc (The Song of Joan Arc, 1429), which celebrated the victory of Joan of Arc over the English at Orleans. It was the only French-language eulogy written during Joan's lifetime, only two weeks after her crowning of the dauphin in Reims. Joan was not only an answer to her prayers of peace, she was the embodiment of the feminine essence of Divinity. Martin Le Franc, praised Christine and her work in Champion des Dames.

Christine's books remained popular after the invention of printing. Geoffrey  Chaucer's granddaughter Alice de la Pole, Duchess of Suffolk (1404-1475), owned copies of several of her books. Noteworthy, Christine wrote under her own name, without fabricating a protective autre (like George Eliot and George Sand did), and even cited herself from one book to another. In the 15th century her works were featured in French printing along with other writings of the court circle, including Pierre Michault's Doctrinal de la Court, and the Abuzé en cour, attributed to King René, Jean d'Arras' Mélusine, the Procès de Bélial, and works of Alain Chartier.

It has been claimed that Christine de Pizan, who surmounted many of the obstacles faced by women, and her father possibly gave Shakespeare historical models for Helena and her father in the play All's Well That Ends Well (1602-1604). Her Les cent histoires de Troye (translated by R. Wyer as C. Hystoryes of Troye) was known to English readers, as well as The Morale Prouerbes of Cristyne, Boke of the Fayt of Armes and of Chyualrye, and other works. 

For further reading: Christine de Pisan: étude biographique et littéraire by Marie-Joseph Pinet (1927);  'Christine de Pizan' by Suzanne Solente, in Revue d'histoire litteraire de France, 40 (1974); The Order of the Rose: the Life and Ideas of Christine de Pisan by Enid McLeod (1976); 'The Franco-Italian Professional Writer: Christine de Pizan' by Charity C.annon Willard, in Medieval Woman Writers, ed. by Katharina M. Wilson (1984); Christine de Pizan: Her Life and Works by Charity Cannon Willard (1984); Christine de Pizan's "Epistre d'Othea" by Sandra Hindman (1986); 'Mothers to Think Back Through: Who Are They?' by Sheila Delany, in Medieval Texts, Contemporary Readers, ed. by Laurie A. Finkle and Martin B. Shichtman (1987); Allegory of Female Authority by Maureen Quilligan (1991); Politics, Gender, and Genre: The Political Thought of Christine de Pizan, ed. by Margaret Brabant (1992); Christine de Pizan and the Categories of Difference, ed by Marilyn Desmond (1998); The Love Debate Poems of Christine De Pizan by Barbara K. Altmann (1998); Christine de Pizan and the Moral Defence of Women: Reading beyond Gender by Rosalind Brown-Grant (2000); Christine de Pizan 2000: Studies on Christine de Pizan in Honour of Angus J. Kennedy, edited by John Campbell and Nadia Margolis (2000); Christine De Pizan and Medieval French Lyric, ed. by Earl Jeffrey Richards (2000); Myth, Montage, and Visuality in Late Medieval Manuscript Culture: Christine De Pizan's Epistre Othea, ed. by Marilynn Desmond, et al. (2003); An Introduction to Christine de Pizan by Nadia Margolis (2012); Christine de Pizan and the Fight for France by Tracy Adams (2014); Approaches to Teaching the Works of Christine de Pizan, edited by Andrea Tarnowski (2018); Female Authorship, Patronage, and Translation in Late Medieval France: from Christine de Pizan to Louise Labé by Anneliese Pollock Renck (2018); Diamant obscur: interpréter les manuscrits de Christine de Pizan by Sarah Delale (2021); Christine de Pizan: Familie, Herkunft und sozialer Hintergrund by Nikolai Wandruszka (2023); Christine de Pizan: une conseillère des princes by Norbert Campagna (2023); Poet, Mystic, Widow, Wife: The Extraordinary Lives of Medieval Women by Hetta Howes (2025)

Selected works:

• L'Épistre au Dieu d'amours, 1399 (The Letter of the God of Love)
  
• Epistre d'Othéa, 1400
  - The Epistle of Othea to Hector; or, The Boke of Knyghthode (tr. from the French of Christine de Pisan, with a dedication to Sir John Fastolf, K.G., by Stephen Scrope, ed., from a manuscript in the library of the Marquis of Bath, by George F. Warner, 1904) / The Epistle of Othea to Hector (edited from the Harleian manuscript 838 ... by James D. Gordon, 1942) / The Epistle of Othea (translated from the French text of Christine de Pisan by Stephen Scrope; edited by Curt F. Bühler, 1970) / Christine de Pizan’s Letter of Othea to Hector (translated with introduction, notes, and interpretive essay by Jane Chance, 1990) / Othea's Letter to Hector (edited and translated by Renate Blumenfeld-Kosinski and Earl Jeffrey Richards, 2017)
  
• Dit de la Rose, 1402
• Cent Ballades d'Amant et de Dame, Virelyas, Rondeaux, 1402
• Le Chemin de longue estude, 1403
• Le it de la Pastoure, 1403
• Le Livre des Fais et bonnes meurs du sage roy Charles V, 1404
• Le Livre de la cité des dames, 1405
  - The Boke of the Cyte of Ladys (translated by Brian Anslay, 1521) / The Book of the City of Ladies (translated by Earl Jeffrey Richards, 1998; with an introduction and notes by Rosalind Brown-Grant, 1999) / The City of Ladies (translated by Rosalind Brown-Grant, 2006) 
• Le Livre des trois vertus à l'enseignement des dames, 1405
• L'Avision de Christine, 1405
  - Christine's Vision (translated by Glenda K. McLeod, 1993) / The Vision of Christine de Pizan (translated from the French by Glenda McLeod, Charity Cannon Willard; with notes and interpretive essay by Glenda McLeod, 2005)
  
• Le Livre de la Prod'homie de l'homme, 1405-1406
  
• Le Livre de Prudence, 1406-1407 (The Book of Man's Integrity)
  
• Livre du Corps de Policie, 1407
  - Body of Polycye (tr. 1521) / The Book of the Body Politic (edited and translated by Kate Langdon Forhan, 1994)
• Livre des Faits d’armes et de chevalerie, 1410
  - Boke of the Fayt of Armes and of Chyualrye (translated and printed by William Caxton, 1489) / The Book of Deeds of Arms and of Chivalry (translated by Sumner Willard; edited by Charity Cannon Willard, 1999)
  
• Livre de la Mutation de la fortune, 1410
  - The Book of the Mutability of Fortune (edited and translated by Geri L. Smith, 2017)
  
• Livre de la Paix, 1413
  - The Book of Peace (edited, translated, and with an introduction and commentary by Karen Green, et al., 2008) 
• Le Ditié de Jehanne d'Arc, 1429
• The Morale Prouerbes of Christyne, 1478 (tr. A. Woodwill; in Chaucer, Here Begynneth the Boke of Fame, 1526)
  
• Les cent histoires de Troye: l’Epistre de Othea, deesse de prudence, enuoyee a lesperit cheualereux Hector de Troye, auec cent hystoires, 1499-1500
  - C. Hystoryes of Troye (tr. R. Wyer, 1540? 1549?)
  
• Oeuvres complètes, 1981 (ed. G. Raynard)
  
• Œuvres poétiques de Christine de Pisan, 1886-96 (3 vols., edited by Maurice Roy)
• Livre des Fais et bonnes mœurs du sage roi Charles V, 1936-41
• Christine de Pisan's Ballades, Rondeaux, and Virelais, 1965 (edited by Kenneth Varty)
• The "Epistle of Othea" translated from the Fench text of Christine de Pisan by Stephen Scrope, 1970 (ed. C. F. Bühler)
  
• The Writings of Christine Pizan, 1992 (edited by C.C. Willard)
• Pizan: The Book of the Body Politic, 1995 (edited by Kate Langdon Forhan)
• The Selected Writings of Christine De Pizan: New Translations, Criticism, 1997 (edited by Renate Blumenfeld-Kosinski)
• The Vision of Christine de Pizan, 2005 (translated from the French by Glenda McLeod, Charity Cannon Willard; with notes and interpretive essay by Glenda McLeod)
  
• The Book of Peace, 2008 (edited, translated, and with an introduction and commentary by Karen Green ... [et al.])
  
• Le livre du duc des vrais amants, 2013 (publication, traduction, présentation et notes par Dominique Demartini et Didier Lechat)
  
• Le livre des epistres du debat sus le Rommant de la rose, 2014 (édition critique par Andrea Valentini)
  
• Les sept psaumes allégorisés, 2017 (édition critique, introduction et notes de Bernard Ribémont et Christine Reno)
  
• Heures de contemplacion sur la Passion de Nostre Seigneur Jhesucrist, 2017 (édition critique par Liliane Dulac et René Stuip; avec la collaboration de E.J. Richards. Avec, en appendice, Petit traictié de la mort et passion de Nostre Seigneur Jhesucrist / attribué à Jean Gerson)
  
• The Book of the City of Ladies and Other Writings, 2018 (edited, with an introduction, by Sophie Bourgault and Rebecca Kingston; translated by Ineke Hardy)
  
• Christine de Pizan: The God of Love's Letter and The Tale of the Rose: A Bilingual Edition, 2020 (edited and translated by Thelma S. Fenster and Christine Reno; with Jean Gerson, A poem on man and woman; translated from the Latin by Thomas O'Donnell; foreword by Jocelyn Wogan-Browne)
• Book of the Body Politic / Christine de Pizan, 2021 (edited and translated by Angus J. Kennedy)
  
• Le livre des fais d'armes et de chevalerie, 2021 (édition critique par Lucien Dugaz)
  
• Le livre des épîtres du débat sur le Roman de la rose, 2022 (traduction et présentation par Andrea Valentini)
  
• The Boke of the Cyte o Ladyes: Brian Anslay's Translation of 1521 in Modernized English, 2024 (edited by Christine Reno and Karen Robertson)