The Treasure of the City of Ladies Read online

  THE TREASURE OF THE CITY OF LADIES

  CHRISTINE DE PIZAN was one of the most remarkable and respected literary figures in the courts of medieval Europe, the more so for being the only professional woman writer of her time. She was born in Venice in 1365, but while she was still a child her family left Italy and went to the court of Charles V of France, where her father, Thomas de Pizzano, was court physician and astrologer. When she was fifteen years old she married the young nobleman and courtier Étienne de Castel. Her happiness was marred by the death of Charles V in 1380, which led to Thomas de Pizzano’s demotion, then by the latter’s illness and death only a few years later. In 1390 Étienne de Castel also died suddenly, leaving his young widow with three children, her mother and a niece to support. Christine de Pizan now turned to writing and soon secured an enviable reputation for her lyric poetry. She went on to write with great success on moral issues; two major concerns were the need for peace and the role of women in society, but she also wrote with authority on public affairs and the art of government, as well as producing a highly acclaimed biography of Charles V. Her output was vast and she incorporated many autobiographical details into her poetry, making it an invaluable record of medieval life. Much of her work survives in lavishly illuminated manuscripts, for she enjoyed influential patronage throughout her career. The outbreak of civil war in France prompted her to take refuge in a convent in 1418, where she remained until her death some time after 1429.

  SARAH LAWSON was born in Indianapolis in 1943 and studied at Indiana University, the University of Pennsylvania and Glasgow University, where she took a Ph.D. in English in 1971. She has lectured in China on modern British poetry and taught at Suzhou University in Jiangsu Province. She is a widely published poet, whose first collection was Below the Surface. Her memoir, A Fado for My Mother, is set in Indiana and Portugal. Her translation of René de Laudonnière’s contemporary account of sixteenth-century French explorations in the New World was published as A Foothold in Florida. Besides French, Sarah Lawson also translates from Dutch and Spanish. She lives in London.

  CHRISTINE DE PIZAN

  The Treasure of the City of Ladies

  or

  The Book of the Three Virtues

  Translated with an Introduction and Notes by

  SARAH LAWSON

  REVISED EDITION

  PENGUIN BOOKS

  Dedicated to the memory of

  my mother,

  Fern Reed Lawson (later Hadley)

  1902–81

  PENGUIN BOOKS

  Published by the Penguin Group

  Penguin Books Ltd, 80 Strand, London WC2R ORL, England

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  This translation first published 1985

  Revised edtion published 2003

  5

  This translation copyright © Sarah Lawson, 1985, 2003

  Introductions and Notes copyright © Sarah Lawson, 2003

  All rights reserved

  Except in the United States of America, this book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, re-sold, hired out, or otherwise circulated without the publisher’s prior consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser

  ISBN: 978-0-14-196101-9

  Contents

  Acknowledgements

  Introduction

  Introduction to the Revised Edition

  The Treasure of the City of Ladies

  PART ONE

  1. The beginning of the three Virtues’ book of instruction for ladies.

  2. The three Virtues urge all princesses and great ladies to come to their school. Their first teaching is to love and fear God.

  3. How temptations can come to a high-born princess.

  4. How the good princess who loves and fears Our Lord can resist temptations by means of divine inspiration.

  5. The good and holy reason and knowledge that comes to the good princess through the love and fear of Our Lord.

  6. Of the two holy lives, namely the active life and the contemplative life.

  7. The life that the good princess decides to lead.

  8. How the good princess will wish to cultivate all virtues.

  9. How the good and wise princess will make every effort to restore peace between the prince and the barons if there is any discord.

  10. Of the habits of pious charity that the good princess will cultivate.

  11. Of the moral doctrine that Worldly Prudence will teach the wise princess.

  12. The way of life of the wise princess, shown by the admonition of Prudence.

  13. Of the seven principal teachings of Prudence that any princess who loves honour must remember. The first is how to conduct herself towards her husband, in general and in particular.

  14. The second teaching of Prudence, which is how the wise princess conducts herself towards the relatives and friends of her husband.

  15. The third teaching of Prudence, which is how the wise princess will carefully watch over the welfare and upbringing of her children.

  16. The fourth teaching of Prudence, which is how the princess will maintain a discreet manner towards those who do not like her and are envious of her.

  17.The fifth teaching of Prudence, which is how the wise princess will try her best to be in favour with, and have the good wishes of, all classes of her subjects.

  18. The sixth teaching: how the wise princess will keep the women of her court in good order.

  19. The seventh teaching describes how the wise princess will keep a careful eye on her revenues and finances and on the state of her court.

  20. How the wise princess ought to extend largesse and liberality.

  21. How good princesses who for some reason cannot put the foregoing advice into effect may be excused.

  22. Of the behaviour of the wise princess who is widowed.

  23. Of the same: advice to young widowed princesses.

  24. Of the behaviour that ought to be instilled into a young newly married princess.

  25. How the wise lady or maiden lady who has charge of a young princess ought to maintain the good reputation of her mistress and the love of her husband.

  26. Of the young high-born lady who wants to plunge into a foolish love affair, and the instruction that Prudence gives to her chaperon.

  27. An example of the sort of letter the wise lady may send to her mistress.

  PART TWO

  1. This begins the second part of this book, which is addressed to ladies and maidens, and first, to those who live in the court of a princess or a great lady. The first chapter describes how the three ladies, that is, Reason, Rectitude and Justice, recapitulate briefly what has been said before.

  2. Four points are described: two good to adopt and the other two to avoid, and how ladies and maidens at court ought to love their mistress. This is the first point.

  3. This explains the
second point that is good for women of the court to observe, which is how they ought to avoid too many friendships with men.

  4. The third point, which is the first of the two to be avoided: the envy that reigns in court and from what it comes.

  5. More of this same teaching to women: how they will take care not to have the vice of envy among themselves.

  6. The fourth point, which is the second of the two that are to be avoided. How women of the court ought to be careful to avoid committing slander. What gives rise to slander, its causes and occasions.

  7. Of the same: how women of the court ought to be very careful not to speak evil of their mistress.

  8. How it is unbecoming for women to defame each other or speak evil.

  9. Of baronesses and how to know what is seemly and appropriate for them.

  10. How ladies and young women who live on their manors ought to manage their households and estates.

  11. This describes those who are extravagant in their gowns, head-dresses and clothing.

  12. Here Christine speaks against the pride of some women.

  13. The proper behaviour for ladies in religious orders.

  PART THREE

  1. How everything that has been said before can apply to one woman as much as to another. Of the system and control that a woman of rank ought to maintain in her household.

  2. This describes how women of rank ought to be conservative in their clothing, and how they can protect themselves against those who try to deceive them.

  3. Of the wives of merchants.

  4. Of young and elderly widows.

  5. Of the instruction for both girls and older women in the state of virginity.

  6. How elderly ladies ought to conduct themselves towards young ones, and the qualities that they ought to have.

  7. How young women ought to conduct themselves towards their elders.

  8. Of the wives of artisans and how they ought to conduct themselves.

  9. Of servant-women and chambermaids.

  10. Of the instruction for prostitutes.

  11. In praise of respectable and chaste women.

  12. Of the wives of labourers.

  13. Of the condition of poor people.

  Notes

  Glossary of Names

  Bibliography

  Acknowledgements

  I wish to thank the authorities of the Bibliothèque Nationale in Paris and the British Library in London for their help and cooperation in allowing me to see various manuscripts and early printed versions of Le Livre du Trésor de la Cité des Dames in their possession. I also wish to thank Dr Monika Jafri and Katherine Ivens, who have given me their support and advice and have shared their enthusiasm for Christine with me, and Alastair Pettigrew and Hazel Brothers, who have helped me with their interest and encouragement.

  Introduction

  There cannot have been many writers who have been publicly ‘discovered’ as often as Christine de Pizan (1365–1430?). In her own lifetime and for the century after her death she was a respected writer on moral questions, education, the art of government, the conduct of war, and the life and times of Charles V. She was a skilled poet and a courageous fighter for justice. Although she was an early and outstanding femme de lettres in France and the first professional woman writer in Europe, by the seventeenth century hardly anyone had heard of her. She was discovered briefly in the early 1600s and there was a plan to publish some of her works, but the scheme came to nothing. In the eighteenth century she was discovered again by Jean Boivin de Villeneuve, who published an account of her life in 1717. Voltaire had heard of her, but thought her name was Catherine. In 1786 Louise Guinement de Kéralio included extracts and summaries of Christine’s writings in her ambitious series of the best work of women authors in France. Raymond Thomassy praised her enthusiastically in 1838 in his Essay on the Political Writings of Christine de Pisan, and fifty years later there was a flurry of scholarship devoted to Christine when her lyric poetry was finally printed and the letters in the Querelle (debate) of the Romance of the Rose were edited. But by 1911 a feminist scholar, Rose Rigaud, was complaining that there were still no modern editions of Christine’s major prose works. Some of the titles she wished to see in accessible editions remain unedited and unpublished to this day.

  Since the early part of the twentieth century Christine de Pizan seems to have been poised on the brink of recognition and ‘classic’ status without ever quite joining the pantheon. Although in her own lifetime her contemporaries apparently judged her writings on their merits, some later critics have been misled by their own prejudices. In 1924 one male historian of French literature dismissed Christine as a mediocre bluestocking. Another modern French anthologist speaks slightingly of her prolixité toute feminine (a very odd remark to make about a writer of the Middle Ages, when prolixity was the fashion). Still another editor of a recent survey of scholarship of medieval French literature remarks dismissively that most of the interest in Christine has been shown by members of her own sex, as though that discredits the whole enterprise.

  It seems possible that if Christine had been merely a remarkable medieval writer instead of a remarkable medieval woman writer she might not have had to be discovered and rediscovered quite so many times. She might have been an accepted classic long before this, taking her place beside the other writers who represent that period. She is still best known as a lyric poet, perhaps because her poetry was edited as long ago as 1886 by Maurice Roy, but her prose works remain largely neglected. A few of her poems can be found in anthologies of French poetry, and a few paragraphs from her Letter to the God of Love may appear in textbook collections of medieval prose, but for such a prolific writer of such importance in her own time she is astonishingly under-represented in modern anthologies and editions. Some of her works, like The Treasure of the City of Ladies (last printed in 1536 in French), have never been issued in a modern French edition and have never been translated into English before. Christine’s work is now in an exciting category of literature that is ‘classic’ in the sense that it is worth reading as a representation of the life and experience of another epoch, but not quite yet ‘classic’ in the sense that it is widely known and quoted.

  Christine’s Life

  Much is known of Christine de Pizan’s family and early life, thanks to her autobiographical writings. Her father was Thomas de Pizzano, a noted physician and astrologer in Bologna. He married the daughter of his colleague, Thomas Mondini. Both Thomas Mondini and his son-in-law became counsellors to the government of Venice, and it was there that Christine was born in 1365. The reputation of Thomas de Pizzano grew to such an extent that he received invitations from Louis I of Hungary and Charles V of France to come to their courts. Thomas chose France because of the humanist reputation of its king, his splendid court, and the fame of the University of Paris. Thomas visited the court of Charles V, leaving his wife and children in Bologna. After a year, the king refused to let him leave but offered to pay the travelling expenses of his family to join him in Paris.

  One December day, as Christine recounts it in The Vision of Christine, Thomas’s little daughter, dressed in the exotic clothing of Lombardy, was presented at the Louvre to the kindly Charles V, whose biography she was to write nearly thirty-five years later at the request of his brother Phillip the Bold, Duke of Burgundy.

  Christine de Pizan spent the rest of her life in France, in spite of invitations she had at the height of her fame from Henry IV of England and the Duke of Milan to grace their courts. The education she had at the hands of her enlightened father must have been unique for a girl in the fourteenth century. She could read French and Italian and probably Latin, although she seems to have relied on French translations of Latin authors. Later, when she applied herself to a period of serious independent study, she already had the tools of literacy at her disposal.

  Her father enjoyed great success at the French court. In addition to being the physician and astrologer to the king, he became a trust
ed adviser on state matters. His advice does not seem to have been notably shrewd, but Charles V thought him indispensable. The king showered him with gifts and promises of gifts in addition to his salary as court astrologer; during the lucrative 1370s Thomas was presented with money, property and annual incomes.

  When Christine reached marriageable age, she was much sought after because of the royal favour shown her father. The choice of a husband was made by Thomas, not Christine, but nevertheless the marriage was, or turned into, a love-match. In 1380, at fifteen, she married Etienne de (or du) Castel, a young nobleman from Picardy. He was a promising courtier and became the king’s secretary and notary. At the end of the 1370s, just when the families of de Pizan and de Castel were enjoying an apparently secure prosperity, disaster struck. Charles V died at forty-four on 16 September 1380. Christine later wrote: ‘Now the door to our misfortunes was open, and I, being still quite young, entered in.’ The various pensions provided by the king were abruptly withdrawn and Thomas’s salary was cut. His family had lived well but now they fell on hard times. In her literary work Christine often uses the popular medieval image of Dame Fortune and her wheel; one may be enjoying great prosperity and good luck, but with a half revolution of the wheel even kings may descend to the depths of misery. For Christine it was an allegorical expression of her own reality, not merely a literary device.

  Thomas de Pizan himself died, after much ill-health, some time between 1385 and 1390. Étienne de Castel, now the head of his father-in-law’s household, travelled to Beauvais with King Charles VI in the autumn of 1390 and there caught some sort of contagious disease and quickly died. Now, at twenty-five, a grief-stricken widow with three children, her mother and a niece to support, Christine saw her position on Fortune’s wheel drop to its lowest level. Later, when she began to write, she feelingly described the plight of the widow and the problems of protracted lawsuits concerning inheritance.

  Faced with debts and living expenses for six, what was Christine to do? What ways of making a living were open to a woman in 1390? Remarriage would have been one way out, but for whatever reason, Christine did not choose it. Entering a convent (as she was later to do in her fifties) would have kept a roof over her head, but it would not have benefited the rest of her family.