Title: The Book of the City of Ladies Author: Christine de Pizan Creation Date: 1405 Location: Paris, France Collection: Women Who Wrote When They Weren't Supposed To
Brief
The Book of the City of Ladies was completed in 1405 by Christine de Pizan, a Venetian-born writer working in Paris in the courts of late Valois France. By then she had been widowed for more than fifteen years and had turned necessity into a profession. Her husband, Etienne du Castel, died in 1389, leaving her with children, a dependent household, legal disputes, and little secure income. Instead of remarrying or disappearing into dependence, she wrote: lyric poems, allegories, political works, conduct texts, and presentation manuscripts for aristocratic patrons.
The book is one of the first systematic defences of women's intellectual, moral, and political capacity in European literature. Its immediate target is the misogynist tradition that circulated through clerical commentary, classical authorities, antifeminist satire, and courtly verse. Christine stages herself reading a vicious attack on women and falling into despair under the weight of so many male authorities. Three allegorical figures then arrive: Reason, Rectitude, and Justice. They instruct her to build a city whose stones are the lives of exemplary women.
That structure is brilliantly practical. Instead of offering a single abstract argument, Christine creates a counter-canon. She gathers queens, warriors, inventors, poets, philosophers, martyrs, wives, daughters, and saints, then places them inside a symbolic fortress where women's worth can no longer be dismissed as anecdote or exception.
Its importance lies not in modernity but in method. Christine accepts many medieval assumptions about virtue, hierarchy, and Christian order, yet she turns those assumptions against misogyny. She proves that a woman excluded from the universities could still master the learned tradition well enough to rebuild it.
The Prohibition
Christine wrote under prohibitions that were social, theological, institutional, and economic rather than merely personal. No statute needed to announce that women should not become public intellectuals; the culture had already organised authority to make the idea implausible. The Pauline command that women should not teach or hold authority over men was regularly cited to restrict female speech. Learned women could be praised as exceptional curiosities, but a woman instructing rulers, correcting male authors, and compiling political wisdom crossed a line.
The universities formed the strongest institutional barrier. Paris, Bologna, Oxford, and the great scholastic centres did not admit women as students or masters. Formal literary authority belonged to men trained in grammar, rhetoric, logic, theology, law, and medicine through institutions closed to Christine. Her father had educated her informally, and the French royal library gave her access to books, but she could not claim the credentials possessed by the men she answered.
The economic prohibition was just as real. A widow of her rank was expected to remarry, depend on male relatives, or enter a religious house. Professional authorship was uncertain even for men; for a woman supporting a household by commissioned manuscripts, it was almost unprecedented. She had to negotiate patronage, manage copyists and illuminators, and maintain aristocratic favour while defending women against the literature many aristocrats enjoyed.
The prohibition, then, was not silence alone. It was the insistence that women's learning should remain private, devotional, ornamental, or exceptional. Christine's offence was to make it public, argumentative, and useful.
The Strategy
Christine's strategy was to use the authorised machinery of medieval learning against the authorised slanders of medieval learning. Misogynist writers built their case by accumulating examples: Eve, Delilah, Jezebel, Medea, Clytemnestra, and every convenient story in which female desire or deception destroyed men. Christine understood that the method could be reversed. The same storehouse of scripture, classical history, mythology, chronicle, and hagiography contained women of wisdom, courage, invention, chastity, governance, and sanctity. Gathered together, they became evidence.
She also chose the safest and most powerful container available: allegorical vision. Late medieval readers knew the form from works such as The Romance of the Rose, Dante's Comedy, and many French dream-visions. By making Reason, Rectitude, and Justice her guides, Christine could speak with authority without presenting that authority as merely personal boldness. She appears as the humble questioner; the allegorical Ladies supply answers.
That humility is tactical, not weakness. Christine asks whether women have ever been learned, whether they can govern, whether they are naturally vicious, whether marriage suffers because of them. Each answer becomes a wall-stone in the city. She does not simply assert that women are capable; she stages capability as an archive.
Her sources include Boccaccio's De mulieribus claris, Vincent of Beauvais, Valerius Maximus, scripture, saints' lives, and classical material. But she revises the tone. Where male authorities often treat able women as unnatural exceptions, Christine treats them as proof that exclusion has distorted the record. She wins by refusing to abandon the tradition to those who misused it.
The Price and the Legacy
The price of Christine's achievement was the life that made it necessary. Widowhood forced her into public authorship, but it also exposed her to lawsuits, financial insecurity, and the fragile economics of patronage. Her success did not remove dependence; it professionalised it. She had to write for dukes, queens, princes, and court factions in a France increasingly fractured by the madness of Charles VI and the Armagnac-Burgundian conflict.
The City itself was not an isolated gesture. Christine followed it with The Treasure of the City of Ladies, often called The Book of the Three Virtues, a practical companion for women of different ranks. The two works together show the range of her ambition: one builds the theoretical fortress, the other instructs women how to live within hostile social structures.
Her later years were marked by political catastrophe. After Agincourt in 1415 and the violence that consumed Paris, she withdrew to the Dominican convent at Poissy, where her daughter was a nun. For years she wrote little or nothing. In 1429, hearing of Joan of Arc's victories, she returned briefly to poetry with The Tale of Joan of Arc, recognising in the young peasant commander the living vindication of women's public capacity. It was probably her final work.
Her legacy is now unavoidable. The City circulated in French and translation, fell from fashion as allegorical prose lost favour, and was restored by modern scholarship as a foundational work of women's literary history. Christine did not invent women's achievement. She built a structure strong enough to make denial look foolish.
The Reading
One day, sitting in my study as was my custom, surrounded by many volumes of diverse authors, I lifted from among them a little work that had come into my hands. I had not sought it for pleasure, but because one hears so many things repeated that curiosity itself becomes a summons. I opened it and found there such sharp blame of women, such railing, such venom dressed as learning, that my heart grew heavy within me.
I set it aside. Yet the words did not leave me. They gathered with others I had read: philosophers, poets, clerks, moralists, all speaking with the confidence that comes from being long believed. They said women were light, false, foolish, greedy, vain, unstable, enemies of reason, corrupters of men, unfit for counsel, unfitted by nature for good. So many had said it, and so loudly, that I turned against myself and wondered whether they could all be mistaken. It seemed impossible that so many famous men, learned in so many sciences, should have spoken falsely unless women truly were such poor creatures as they claimed.
Then I grieved, not only for women in general but for myself, who had been born in a female body. I asked God why He had made me in such a low vessel, if low it was, when my mind did not desire wickedness and my conscience did not find in itself the crimes they laid upon us. I sat with my head bowed, ashamed of what I had not done, wounded by accusations made before I was born.
While I was in this thought, a great light shone before me. I raised my eyes and saw three ladies standing in my chamber, noble beyond earthly rank, crowned and robed with splendour. Their faces were grave and gracious. I trembled, for I did not know whether they were sent to rebuke or comfort me. The first held a mirror clear as truth. The second bore a straight ruler, shining as though it had never bent. The third carried a vessel of fine gold.
The first spoke and called me daughter. She asked why I had let foolishness overcome me when I had been given wit enough to distinguish error from judgement. Could I not see that those who blame all women from hatred of some, or from envy, or from their own corrupted lives, do not speak for truth? She told me she was Reason, sent to draw me from the ditch into which false authority had pushed me. Her companions were Rectitude and Justice. Together they had come by divine command to help me build a city, strong and fair, where worthy women might dwell secure forever.
At this I marvelled, for I was no mason and had no stone. Lady Reason smiled and told me that the stones would be the lives of women whom slander had buried or misnamed. My labour would be to dig them up, clean them, set them in order, and raise walls no enemy could overthrow. The ground, she said, must first be cleared of the black earth of lies.
So I took the tool she gave me and went to work in the field of my own mind. She guided my hand. First we removed the claim that women are naturally without understanding. "Tell me," I asked her, "have there been women learned in the sciences and arts?" Then she answered with names, each name a stone.
She showed me women who had loved wisdom: Sappho, noble in poetry; Cornificia, whose eloquence deserved remembrance; Proba, who shaped sacred matter from Virgilian verse; Hortensia, who spoke before the Roman rulers with such force that men were compelled to hear her; Novella of Bologna, learned in law. She showed me that where women had been taught, they had learned; where they had been permitted to speak, they had spoken well. If there were fewer famous women than men, this proved not defect but deprivation. A field not sown cannot be blamed for failing to bear wheat.
I asked then why so many men had written otherwise. Reason held up her mirror, and in it I saw not only women as they were, but men as they were when they wrote in anger, disappointment, lust, jealousy, pride, or idle wit. Some had been injured by one woman and revenged themselves upon all. Some repeated what they had heard because repetition is easier than judgement. Some wished to warn men away from vice and found it convenient to paint vice with a woman's face. Some, having bodies subject to desire, blamed the body they desired rather than their own disorder. The mirror did not excuse them; it explained the crookedness of their sight.
"Daughter," Reason said, "no craftsperson judges a whole forest by one warped branch. No physician condemns all humours because one patient is fevered. Yet these men, who claim logic as their own estate, have done worse with women. They gather faults as though gathering taxes and then call the heap nature." At this I felt shame fall from me in pieces. The shame had not been mine, though I had carried it.
Then Reason brought forward inventors and founders. She named Minerva, wise in arms and arts; Ceres, who taught the cultivation of grain; Isis, honoured among the Egyptians for letters and order; Arachne, remembered for the craft of weaving; women who discovered dyes, gardens, laws, medicines, and useful labours. Whether poets had wrapped some of these histories in fable did not destroy their meaning. Even the old tales, when honestly read, confessed that women had helped civilise the world.
The foundations rose.
Next I asked about rule, for men often say that women are unfit to govern and that a kingdom under female counsel must fall into disorder. Reason answered with queens and captains. Semiramis enlarged Babylon and held an empire with courage. Tomyris defeated Cyrus when he came against her people. Zenobia governed Palmyra with prudence and magnificence. Dido founded a city and gave it laws. Blanche of Castile held France for her son with such wisdom that no honest person could deny her strength. If men call such women monstrous, it is only because achievement looks unnatural to those who have declared it impossible.
These stones were large and heavy. They required both hands. For governance is not a small matter, and those who deny women counsel often do so while depending daily on women's prudence in houses, estates, marriages, inheritances, and the education of children. Reason showed me how often a realm, like a household, survives because a woman holds together what male violence or folly has endangered. She did not say every woman governs well; she said ability is not born with a beard. Prudence, courage, memory, moderation, and justice are virtues of the soul, and the soul has no sex by which truth may be weighed.
When the foundations had been laid deep and broad, Lady Rectitude took up her ruler and called me to build the walls and houses. She wished to answer those who accuse women of inconstancy, cruelty, lust, ingratitude, and every vice by which households and realms are said to be destroyed. "Ask," she told me, "and I shall give you examples enough."
So I asked whether women had been faithful. She answered with wives who followed husbands into exile, who guarded honour in poverty, who chose hardship rather than betrayal. She showed me Artemisia, whose grief raised a wonder of the world for Mausolus; Hypsicratea, who cut her hair and rode armed beside Mithridates; Argia, who risked death to bury Polynices; many others whose love was neither weakness nor foolish dependence but constancy joined to courage.
She warned me also against another injustice: men praise fidelity when it comforts them and mock it when it gives women strength. If a wife endures hardship, they call her useful; if she speaks from the authority endurance has earned, they call her proud. Rectitude measured such double dealing and found it wanting. A virtue cannot be honoured only while it is silent. If women have kept faith in adversity, then their faithfulness is not servility but moral force. The house built from such stones had windows facing both love and judgement.
I asked whether women loved their children. Rectitude nearly rebuked me, for the evidence was everywhere, but she answered still. She spoke of mothers who shielded sons from tyrants, daughters who saved fathers, widows who kept households together when fortune had broken them. She showed me that daily virtue leaves fewer monuments than battle, yet without it no city, kingdom, or lineage stands.
Here the city filled with sounds less celebrated by chroniclers: the cry of a child soothed through the night, the scraping together of bread in lean times, the counsel whispered before a dangerous journey, the hand that tends a sickbed until dawn. These are not trumpets, yet kingdoms are made possible by them. Rectitude said that historians often love the deed done once in public more than the labour repeated every day in private. Therefore private labour must be gathered too, lest the city honour only women who resembled men in public acts and forget those whose courage had no herald.
I asked about chastity, because men who praise their own licence often accuse women of the corruption they solicit. Rectitude brought forward virgins, wives, widows, and martyrs who had guarded their bodies and consciences at great cost. Yet she did not praise ignorance or imprisonment. Her ruler measured rightly: virtue belonged to the will, not to the lock placed on a door by suspicious men.
The walls rose higher. Streets appeared. Houses stood ready, each made from a life rescued from contempt. I saw that the city was not built from flattery. There had been bad women, as there had been bad men; no wise person would deny it. But to take the sins of some and make them the nature of all is not judgement. It is malice pretending to be philosophy.
Nor did Rectitude permit me to despise ordinary women while praising famous ones. "Look well," she said, "for a city built only for queens would be a palace, not a city." So places were made for merchants' wives who kept accounts honestly, for craftswomen who taught apprentices, for servants who guarded their honour in households where power was not kind, for widows who defended children in courts and markets, for girls who loved learning though no master invited them. Their names were not always preserved, but their kind was known to God. A wall may contain many stones whose individual marks are hidden, yet without them the tower falls.
Then Lady Justice came with her golden vessel to raise the towers and bring in the highest company. She led me to contemplate holy women, those whom even the Church that often restricted women's speech had been forced to honour. Above all she placed the Virgin, queen of heaven, whose humility did not lessen her dignity and whose obedience became the gate through which salvation entered the world. Around her came Catherine, learned and steadfast before philosophers; Margaret, Barbara, Agnes, Lucy, Cecilia, Ursula, and the great multitude of martyrs who would not yield conscience to fear.
Justice showed me women in cloisters, deserts, hospitals, courts, and poor houses, each serving according to her station. Some instructed by speech, some by example, some by endurance, some by government, some by writing. The vessel she carried gave each her due. No woman needed to become a man in order to be honoured. She needed only to be measured by truth rather than by hatred.
The highest towers shone not because they were far from earthly life, but because they showed what earthly life might become when measured rightly. Catherine's learning did not make her less holy. Cecilia's song did not make her less steadfast. The mothers, virgins, widows, queens, and martyrs did not all live one pattern. Their diversity was itself a rebuke to slander, for slander loves one shape and one accusation. Justice gave each woman her own chamber. To one, the chamber of learning; to another, rule; to another, faithful labour; to another, contemplation; to another, fearless speech before death. No chamber erased the rest.
As the city rose, I understood why it must have walls. It was not built to hide women away. The walls were defence against those who had long entered the garden of memory to trample what they did not plant. Inside this city, women could be named without being mocked, praised without being called exceptions, remembered without apology. The gates were high, but they opened to every woman of virtue: queens and artisans, virgins and wives, scholars and servants, women living, dead, and yet to come.
I asked whether men might enter. The Ladies answered that truth excludes no honest soul. This city was not raised from hatred of men, as some would maliciously say, but from love of justice. Good men who honour women according to reason may stand as friends before its gates; unjust men may look upon its walls and learn that contempt is not wisdom. Yet the dwelling itself belongs to women because women had so long been denied a secure place in the stories by which human worth is remembered.
I looked back towards the study where I had sat in sorrow, and I saw how narrow it had seemed when I believed myself alone among hostile volumes. The books had not changed, but their authority had. They were no longer a prison. They were a quarry. From the same ancient matter that men had used to make chains, we had cut stones for walls.
Then the Ladies charged me to finish faithfully. They told me not to fear mockers, for mockers grow bold where no answer has been built. Let those who accuse women bring their charges to the gate; there they will find Reason keeping watch. Let those who measure crookedly come with their rulers; Rectitude's line is straighter. Let those who deny women's worth appeal to heaven; Justice holds the balance.
So I wrote and laboured, stone upon stone, name after name, not because women require lies in their favour, but because truth itself had been denied them. A city made of praise alone would fall. This one stands because its stones are evidence. Its towers are memory. Its queen is holiness. Its streets are wide enough for all who were told there was no place for them in history.
When I had done what I could, I commended the city to noble women and humble women alike. Let them enter and dwell there. Let them defend it by good works, wise speech, learning, courage, and mutual loyalty. Let no woman despise herself because some clerk has sharpened his pen against her sex. Let her look instead upon these walls and know that she belongs to a lineage older and stronger than slander.
For the city is not dream alone. It is made wherever a woman reads against contempt and believes the evidence of her own soul. It is made wherever memory restores a name. It is made wherever one woman, finding the old authorities arrayed against her, takes up the stones they dropped and builds.
This post is part of Women Who Wrote When They Weren't Supposed To, a series on women writing against the constraints of their time. See the full collection →
The Penguin Classics edition, translated by Rosalind Brown-Grant, is the most accessible modern English edition for general readers and students, with a clear introduction and notes.
Christine de Pizan, The Book of the City of Ladies, translated by Rosalind Brown-Grant, Penguin Classics.
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