Christine De Pasan

Christine de Pasan, depicted at left, giving a lecture

Today's history lesson concerns Christine (or Cristina) de Pasan (or de Pazan), who is notable for being one of the first women to make a living as a writer. She should be more famous as a feminist icon.

Born in Venice in 1364, Christine's father believed in equal education for girls and boys, so she was brought up literate. Her father became court astrologer for Charles V of France, and while Christine was educated, she was also married off at fifteen, though the marriage was said to be happy one.

But her husband died when she was 25. Ordinarily, she would have remarried, but instead she worked to raise money for her three children. She managed something called a scriptorium (what a great word), where manuscripts were created, and also wrote poems and ballads. She was favored by Charles and his son, Charles VI, and during the Hundred Years' War with England was inspired to write a tome on Joan of Arc, which was the only book about her written during her short lifetime.

Christine's most famous work is The Book Of The City Of Ladies, written in response to Jean de Meun's Roman de la Rose and its statements about women. The book creates an allegorical city of famed women, such as Mary Magdalene, the Queen of Sheba, Zenobia, Sappho, Dido, Madea, and many others. In some ways it was the forerunner to Judy Chicago's The Dinner Party (which features a place setting for Christine).

Christine was way ahead of her time. He philosophy was that the inferior status of women was not biological, but cultural. She also wrote that men didn't want women to be educated "because it displeased them that women knew more than they did."

She stopped writing in 1415 and died in 1430. In some ways she seems like a woman who went back in time from a more enlightened future.