(ca. 1364–ca. 1430). France’s first woman of letters was in fact born in Italy, where her father, Tommaso de Pizzano of Bologna, was employed by the Venetian Republic. Soon after Christine’s birth, her father was appointed astrologer and scientific adviser to the French king Charles V, so the family established itself in Paris in the shadow of the French court. Christine’s early taste for study was interrupted by marriage at sixteen to Étienne du Castel, a young notary from Picardy, who was soon given a promising appointment to the royal chancellery. This happy marriage was interrupted ten years later by the husband’s unexpected death, leaving Christine to support three children and a widowed mother. She found herself in a world that had little respect for women, where she was cheated at every turn. She found comfort in study and in writing poetry to express her grief and she soon discovered a talent for writing verse in the fixed forms popular in her day.
Her writing brought her into contact with the court of Louis of Orléans, to whom she dedicated several works, beginning with a narrative poem, the Épistre au Dieu d’Amour (1399), which makes fun of fashionable young men who pretend to fin’amor while reading Ovid and Jean de Meun. This work was followed by other narrative poems: the Dit de Poissy (1401), Le Débat des deux amants, Livre des trois jugemens, and Dit de la pastoure (1403). These eventually led to even more ambitious allegorical poems, the semiautobiographical Chemin de long estude (1402–03), which also commented on society’s current troubles and proposed an international monarchy, and a lengthy account of the role of Fortune in universal history, the Mutacion de Fortune (finished at the end of 1403).
It was also to Louis of Orléans that Christine dedicated an equally ambitious work in poetry and prose, the Épistre Othea (ca. 1400) combining a commentary on classical mythology with advice to a young knight. It was one of her most popular works. As the duke was unwilling to find a place in his household for Christine’s son, Jean du Castel, after 1404 no further works were dedicated to him. At about this same time, Christine was commissioned by the duke of Burgundy, Philip the Bold, to write a biography of the late king, the Faits et bonnes meurs du sage roy Charles V (1404), her first work entirely in prose.
Slightly earlier, her views on Jean de Meun and the Roman de la Rose had involved Christine in a debate with members of the royal chancellery, Jean de Montreuil and Gontier and Pierre Col, who admired Jean de Meun’s erudition, whereas she saw his unfortunate influence on society’s attitudes toward women. Christine did not start the debate, as was formerly thought, but she moved it from a private theoretical discussion to a wider audience by giving copies of the letters it inspired to the queen and the provost of Paris (1402), a gesture that added to her literary reputation and marked her first important defense of her sex against traditional misogynistic literature. It also inspired her to compose three later works: the Dit de la Rose, a long poem written in the midst of the debate; the Cité des dames, inspired largely by Boccaccio’s De claris mulieribus, in a certain sense a rewriting of it from a feminine point of view; and the Livre des trois vertus (1405), offering advice to women of all classes in an interesting commentary on contemporary French society.
The year 1405 marked a turning point in France’s affairs, an open break between the political ambitions of the dukes of Orléans and Burgundy, inspiring Christine to write a letter to the French queen, Isabeau of Bavaria (October 5), begging her to act as savior of the country. The letter had little effect on the queen, but it focused Christine’s attention on matters of public interest, inspiring the Livre du corps de policie (1407), on the ideal of the perfect prince, the first of several works directed to the dauphin Louis of Guyenne. These also included the Livre des fais d’armes et de chevalerie (ca. 1410), based on Vegetius and on Honoré Bouvet, outlining the essentials of military leadership and stressing international laws to govern warfare. With affairs in France steadily worsening, in 1410 she addressed a letter to the elderly duke of Berry, King Charles VI’s uncle, begging him to act to save the country. A civil uprising, the Cabochien revolt, led her to appeal once more to Louis of Guyenne in the Livre de la paix (1412–14). This prince appeared to be developing qualities of leadership, but his untimely death (December 1415) added to France’s chaos following the defeat at Agincourt. This disaster inspired Christine’s Épistre de la prison de vie humaine, addressed to Marie de Berry, duchess of Bourbon, but speaking to all women who had suffered losses at Agincourt and indeed to widows and bereaved women of all wars.
As violence in Paris increased, Christine sought refuge in a convent, probably the abbey of Poissy, where her daughter had been a nun for many years. There, she wrote the Heures de contemplation de Notre Dame, possibly at the time of her son’s death in 1425. Her hopes for France were unexpectedly renewed by the appearance of Jeanne d’Arc, who inspired her final poem, the Ditié de Jehanne d’Arc, written shortly after the coronation of Charles VII at Reims in July 1429.
The date of Christine’s death is unknown, but Guillebert de Mets, writing memories of Paris in 1434, refers to her in the past tense.
Although not French by birth, Christine wrote many pages inspired by her concern for France; as the mother of three children, her views on education of the young were considerably in advance of her times; as a woman obliged to make her own way in an unfriendly society, she courageously raised her voice in protest against traditional misogyny. She is an unusually interesting witness of her times. Her works were printed and read well into the 16th century, providing for her the earthly fame she, like other early Renaissance writers, so greatly desired.
