Pisan, Christine De
PISAN, CHRISTINE DE (1364-6. 1430), 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 Etienne 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 d iiendre though she took the precaution to assure her readers (Cent balades, No. 50) 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 (b. 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 fails et bonnes mtsurs du sayge roy Charles 1 (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 Year's Day, 1404. It possesses an introduction of great autobiographical interest. In La Vision (1405) she tells her own history, by way of defence 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 favour 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 honour of women. Her Epttre au dieu d' amour (1399) is a defence 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 defence of the Roman de la rose. Christine wrote about 1407 two books for women, La Cite des dames and Le Livre des trois vertus, or Le Tresor de la cite des dames. She was devoted to her adopted country. During the civil wars she wrote a Lamentation (1410) and a Livre 1 See C. B. Petitot, Collection complete des memoires relatifs a I'histoire de France (ist series, vols. v. and vi., 1819, etc.).
de la paix (1412-1413), 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 honour of Joan of Arc. Of the circumstances of her death nothing is known but it probably took place about this time. Her Cite des dames contains many interesting contemporary portraits, and her Livre des trois vertus contains details of domestic life in the France of the early isth century not supplied by more formal historians.
Her poems were edited by Maurice Roy for the Societe des antiens Textes francais (1886, etc.), and her Livre du chemin du long estude, by Puschel (Berlin, 1887). There are monographs by Raimond Thomassy (Paris, 1838); E. M. D. Robineau (Saint-Omer, 1882); and Friedrich Koch (Goslar, 1885). It is possible that Jean Castel, who was chronicler of France under Louis XL, was Christine's grandson. Hoccleve imitated her Epttre au dieu d'amour, in his ' Letter of Cupid " (Chaucerian and other Pieces, ed. W. W. Skeat, 1897). A translation of her Epttre d'Olhea was made (c. 1440) by Stephen Scrope for his stepfather, Sir John Fastolf, and is preserved in a MS. at Longleat. This was edited (1904) for the Roxburghe Club by W. G. F. Warner as The Epistle of Othea to Hector, or the Bake of Knyghthode. The Moral Proverbs of Christyne de Pise, translated by Earl Rivers, was printed in 1478 by Caxton, who himself translated, by order ot Henry VII., her Livre des faitz d'armes, et de chevalerie, a treatise on the art of war, based chiefly on Vegetius. Her Cite des dames was translated by Brian Anslay (London, 1521).
Note - this article incorporates content from Encyclopaedia Britannica, Eleventh Edition, (1910-1911)
