Born: 1364
Birthplace: Venice, Italy
Died: c. 1430
Cause of death: unspecified

Gender: Female
Religion: Roman Catholic
Race or Ethnicity: White
Sexual orientation: Straight
Occupation: Poet

Nationality: Italy
Executive summary: Le Livre des trois vertus

Christine de Pisan (or Pizan), French poet of Italian birth, was born at Venice in 1364. When she was four years old she was brought to her father, a councillor of the Venetian Republic, in Paris, where he held office as astrologer to Charles V. At fifteen Christine married Étienne du Castel, who became Charles's notary and secretary. After the king's death in 1380 her father lost his appointment, and died soon after; and when Christine's husband died in 1389 she found herself without a protector, and with three children depending on her. This determined her to have recourse to letters as a means of livelihood. Her first ballads were written to the memory of her husband, and as love poems were the fashion she continued to write others -- lais, virelais, rondeaux and jeux à vendre -- though she took the precaution to assure her readers that they were merely exercises. In 1399 she began to study the Latin poets, and between that time and 1405, as she herself declares, she composed some fifteen important works, chiefly in prose, besides minor pieces. The earl of Salisbury, who was in Paris on the occasion of the marriage of Richard II with Isabella of France (1396), took her elder son, Jean du Castel (born 1384), and reared him as his own; the boy, after Salisbury's death (1400), being received by Philip of Burgundy, at whose desire Christine wrote Le Livre des faitz et bonnes moeurs du sayge roy Charles (1405), valuable as a first-hand picture of Charles V and his court. Her Mutation de fortune, in which she finds room for a great deal of history and philosophy, was presented to the same patron on New Years Day, 1404. It possesses an introduction of great autobiographical interest. In La Vision (1405) she tells her own history, by way of defense against those who objected to her pretensions as a moralist. Henry IV of England desired her to make his court her home, and she received a like invitation from Galeazzo Visconti, tyrant of Milan. She preferred, however, to remain in France, where she enjoyed the favor of Charles VI, the dukes of Berry and Burgundy, the duchess of Bourbon and others.

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 honor of women. Her Épitre au dieu d'amour (1399) is a defense of women against the satire of Jean de Meun, and initiated a prolonged dispute with two great scholars of her time, Jean de Montreuil (d. 1415) and Gonthier Col, who undertook the defense of the Roman de la rose. Christine wrote about 1407 two books for women, La Cité des dames and Le Livre des trois vertus, or Le Trésor de la cité des dames. She was devoted to her adopted country. During the civil wars she wrote a Lamentation (1410) and a Livre de la paix (1412-13), but after the disasters of the campaign of Agincourt she retired to a convent. We have no more of her work until 1429, when she broke her silence to write a song in honor of Joan of Arc. Of the circumstances of her death nothing is known but it probably took place about this time. Her Cité des dames contains many interesting contemporary portraits, and her Livre des trois vertus contains details of domestic life in the France of the early 15th century not supplied by more formal historians.

Husband: Étienne du Castel

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