Impressive People: Stories of Remarkable Lives - Sykalo Eugen 2025
Christine de Pizan – Medieval poet who became Europe’s first professional female writer — and wrote The Book of the City of Ladies
On a crisp autumn morning in 1405, Christine de Pizan sat at her writing desk, her ink-stained fingers trembling with both purpose and defiance. The small room where she worked was quiet except for the scratch of her quill against parchment, but outside her window, the bustling streets of Paris sang a different story: market traders haggling over eels, the clatter of hooves on cobblestones, and the occasional cry of a town crier delivering royal decrees. In the midst of this chaos, Christine was building a city—not with bricks or mortar but with words. Her masterpiece, The Book of the City of Ladies, would be a fortress for women’s dignity, a declaration that they too deserved respect, autonomy, and a voice.
Christine de Pizan was not supposed to be here. By every medieval metric, her life should have crumbled long before she could fashion herself as Europe’s first professional female writer. Born in 1364 in Venice, Christine was the daughter of Tommaso di Benvenuto da Pizzano, a scholar who relocated the family to Paris when she was a child. There, her father became a court astrologer to Charles V, ensuring Christine an unusually privileged education for a girl of her time. She was fluent in multiple languages, well-read in the classics, and possessed an early knack for poetry. Life, at first, seemed charmed.
Then it wasn’t. At 15, Christine married Etienne du Castel, a court secretary who adored her and encouraged her intellect. Their life together promised stability and, perhaps, happiness. But by the time Christine was 25, her world collapsed. Etienne died of the plague, leaving her a widow with three young children to support. To make matters worse, her father had also died, and the French court, embroiled in its own upheavals, abandoned her family financially. Christine, suddenly alone in a man’s world, faced the brutal reality that survival meant reinvention.
She turned to what she knew best: words. While other widows in her position might have retreated into convents or remarried hastily, Christine picked up her pen. It began modestly, with courtly love ballads commissioned by wealthy patrons. Her verses, delicate yet piercing, quickly garnered attention. But as Christine matured, so too did her literary ambition. The poetry of love gave way to essays on morality, governance, and—most controversially—women’s rights.
The late Middle Ages was not known for its feminist enlightenment. Women were, at best, ornamental. At worst, they were scapegoats for society’s ills. Eve’s daughters, after all, had caused the Fall. The idea of a woman publicly refuting such narratives was unthinkable—until Christine dared to think it. Her pen became her sword, slashing through centuries of misogyny.
Perhaps the most startling moment in Christine’s career came in the early 1400s when she launched a literary feud with Jean de Meun, the long-dead author of The Romance of the Rose, a wildly popular allegorical poem that depicted women as seductresses, liars, and fools. In a series of letters and essays, Christine dismantled his work with precision. She argued not only for the dignity of women but for the moral responsibility of literature itself. Her words were razor-sharp, yet they carried the weight of lived experience. Christine wasn’t just theorizing—she was fighting for her life.
And then came The Book of the City of Ladies. Imagine a medieval Simone de Beauvoir meets SimCity. In this allegorical text, Christine constructs a literal city where the virtues, accomplishments, and wisdom of women stand as its foundation. She populates this city with historical and mythological heroines—Heloise, Sappho, the Virgin Mary—creating an intellectual utopia that defied every patriarchal norm of her time. “Here,” she seemed to say, “is what the world could look like if women were seen not as temptresses or caretakers but as thinkers, creators, and leaders.”
The book was an instant sensation. It was copied, debated, and revered, cementing Christine’s status as an intellectual heavyweight. But even as she enjoyed this success, Christine remained painfully aware of her precarious position. Being a woman in letters was a tightrope walk, and every word she published risked her reputation.
By the time Christine retired to a convent later in life, Europe had descended into chaos. The Hundred Years' War raged on, and France was splintering under the weight of political infighting. Yet even in these turbulent years, Christine found reason for hope. In 1429, she penned a poem celebrating Joan of Arc, another woman who defied her era’s expectations. It would be her final work, a fitting tribute to a kindred spirit who also wielded an unconventional weapon: belief in her own worth.
Christine de Pizan died around 1430, her name largely forgotten for centuries. But in the fragments of her letters, the meticulously copied manuscripts of her books, and the faint yet undeniable echoes of her influence, she left behind a blueprint—not just for writing, but for living with courage.
Today, Christine’s story feels almost cinematic. A widowed mother-turned-intellectual firebrand. A woman who, in the face of systemic erasure, etched her name into the annals of history with ink and conviction. Her life, much like her writing, refuses to fit neatly into the confines of her era. She was, and remains, ahead of her time.