The Book of the City of Ladies

by Christine Pizan

  ‘She was greatly honoured by the Romans for her courage; even the king who had taken her as a hostage paid homage to her bravery and was highly amused by her exploit. The Romans decided that, in order to preserve the memory of her deed for posterity, they would have a statue made of her. This statue, which depicted a maiden astride a horse, was put up on a tall plinth at the side of the road that led to the temple, where it remained for a very long time.

  ‘The foundations of our city are now complete. Let us move on to our next task, which is to erect a high enclosure wall the whole way round.’

  27. Christine asks Reason if God has ever blessed a woman’s mind with knowledge of the highest branches of learning, and Reason’s reply.

  Having listened to what Reason said, I answered, ‘My lady, God truly performed wonders by endowing these women you’ve just been telling me about with such extraordinary powers. But, if you don’t mind, please tell me if, amongst all the other favours He has shown to women, God ever chose to honour any of them with great intelligence and knowledge. Do they indeed have an aptitude for learning? I’d really like to know why it is that men claim women to be so slow-witted.’

  Reason’s reply was: ‘Christine, from what I’ve already told you, it should be obvious that the opposite of what they say is true. To make the point more clearly for you, I’ll give you some conclusive examples. I repeat – and don’t doubt my word – that if it were the custom to send little girls to school and to teach them all sorts of different subjects there, as one does with little boys, they would grasp and learn the difficulties of all the arts and sciences just as easily as the boys do. Indeed, this is often the case because, as I mentioned to you before, although women may have weaker and less agile bodies than men, which prevents them from doing certain tasks, their minds are in fact sharper and more receptive when they do apply themselves.’

  ‘My lady, what are you saying? If you please, I’d be grateful if you would expand on this point. No man would ever accept this argument if it couldn’t be proved, because they would say that men generally know so much more than women.’

  She replied, ‘Do you know why it is that women know less than men?’

  ‘No, my lady, you’ll have to enlighten me.’

  ‘It’s because they are less exposed to a wide variety of experiences since they have to stay at home all day to look after the household. There’s nothing like a whole range of different experiences and activities for expanding the mind of any rational creature.’

  ‘So, my lady, if they have able minds which can learn and absorb as much as those of men, why don’t they therefore know more?’

  ‘The answer, my dear girl, is that it’s not necessary for the public good for women to go around doing what men are supposed to do, as I informed you earlier. It’s quite adequate that they perform the tasks for which they are fitted. As for this idea that experience tells us that women’s intelligence is inferior to that of men simply because we see that those around us generally know less than men do, let’s take the example of male peasants living in remote countryside or high mountains. You could give me plenty of names of places where the men are so backward that they seem no better than beasts. Yet, there’s no doubt that Nature made them as perfect in mind and body as the cleverest and most learned men to be found in towns and cities. All this comes down to their lack of education, though don’t forget what I said before about some men and women being more naturally endowed with intelligence than others. I’ll now go on to prove to you that the female sex is just as clever as the male sex, by giving you some examples of women who had fine minds and were extremely erudite.’

  28. Reason begins to speak about ladies who were blessed with great learning, starting with the noble maiden Cornificia.

  ‘The parents of the noble maiden Cornificia used a clever trick to send her to school along with her brother Cornificius when they were both young children. This little girl applied her extraordinary intelligence so well to her studies that she began to take a real delight in learning. It would have been extremely difficult to stifle this talent in her, for she refused all normal female occupations in order to devote herself to her books. After much dedication, she soon became an excellent and learned poet not solely in the field of poetry itself but also in philosophy, which she just drank in as if it were mother’s milk. She was so motivated to excel in all the different disciplines that she soon outshone her brother, himself no mean poet, in all branches of scholarship.

  ‘Moreover, she was not content simply to study the theoretical side of learning but wished to put her own knowledge into practice. Taking up her pen, she composed several distinguished works which, at the time of Saint Gregory, were held in great esteem, as he himself indicates in his writings. The great Italian author Boccaccio says of Cornificia in his book: “What a great honour it is for a woman to put aside all feminine things and to devote her mind to studying the works of the greatest scholars.” He confirms what I’ve been telling you when he goes on to say that those women who have no confidence in their own intellectual abilities act as if they were born in the backwoods and had no concept of what is right and moral, letting themselves be discouraged and saying that they’re fit for nothing but fussing over men and bearing and bringing up children. God has given every woman a good brain which she could put to good use, if she so chose, in all the domains in which the most learned and renowned men excel. If women wished to study, they are no more excluded from doing so than men are, and could easily put in the necessary effort to acquire a good name for themselves just as the most distinguished of men delight in doing. My dear daughter, see how Boccaccio himself echoes what I’ve been saying and note how much he approves of learning in a woman and praises them for it.’

  29. About Proba the Roman.

  ‘Proba, a Christian lady of Rome married to Adelphus, was equally brilliant. This lady had such a fine mind and so dedicated herself to learning that she excelled in the seven liberal arts16 and became a remarkable poet. She devoted much time to studying works of poetry, especially those of Virgil, which she learnt entirely off by heart. After having read through these texts with particularly close attention and having pored at length over their meaning, the idea came to her of reworking parts of them in order to put Holy Scripture and stories from the Old Testament into elegant and complex verse. The writer Boccaccio says of her project: “Not only was it admirable that the mind of a woman should have conceived of doing such a thing, but it was even more splendid that she put her idea into action.” Fired with enthusiasm, Proba threw herself into bringing her task to completion. She worked her way through the writings of Virgil, his Bucolics, Georgics and Aeneid, sometimes borrowing entire passages from her sources, and at other times only short extracts. With marvellous skill and artistry, she composed whole stanzas from her source material and then reorganized and linked them together, all the while respecting the rules, conventions, structure and metre of the Latin original and without making a single mistake. The completed text was such a magnificent piece of work that no man could have done better. Her book began with the story of creation and then continued with stories from the Old and New Testaments, right up to the account of the Apostles receiving the Holy Spirit. Her reworkings of Virgil corresponded so closely to the Scriptures that whoever was unaware of how it was really written would have taken Virgil for a prophet, if not for one of the Evangelists.

  ‘Boccaccio was so impressed by Proba’s efforts that he declared her to be worthy of the highest accolades for having demonstrated such a full knowledge of the divine works of Holy Scripture, which is very rare, even amongst many of the theologians and clerks of today. It was this lady’s wish that her book, the fruit of her labours, should be called the Cento. Though this work could have taken a man his whole lifetime to complete, she in fact went on to write several other fine and notable books. One of these, a poem based on the writings and verse of the poet Homer, was also called the Cento because it consisted of a hundred stanzas.
So, in praise of this lady, we can sum up by saying that she not only knew Latin but had an excellent knowledge of Greek as well. As Boccaccio himself asserts, it should give women great delight to hear about Proba and her achievements.’

  30. About Sappho, who was an extremely fine poet and philosopher.

  ‘No less learned than Proba was Sappho, a maiden from the city of Mytilene. This Sappho was physically very beautiful, and also charming in her speech, manner and bearing. However, the finest of her attributes was her superb intellect, for she was a great expert in many different arts and sciences. Moreover, she was not only familiar with the writings and treatises of others but was herself an author who composed many new works. The poet Boccaccio pays tribute to her, describing her in these delightful terms: “Sappho, spurred on by her fine mind and burning desire, devoted herself to her studies and rose above the common, ignorant herd, making her home on the heights of Mount Parnassus; in other words, at the summit of knowledge itself. Through her extraordinary boldness and daring, she won the good will of the Muses; that is, she immersed herself in the arts and sciences. She thus made her way through the lush forest full of laurels, may trees, delicious-scented flowers of different hues and sweet-smelling herbs which is the place where Grammar, Logic, Geometry, Arithmetic, and noble Rhetoric dwell.17 She travelled down this path until she eventually came to the deep cave of Apollo, god of knowledge, where she found the bubbling waters of the spring of Castalia. There she took up a plectrum and played lovely tunes on the harp with the nymphs leading the dance; that is to say, she learnt the art of musical chords as well as the rules of harmonics.”

  ‘This description of Sappho by Boccaccio should be understood to refer to the depth of her learning and to the great erudition of her works which, as the Ancients themselves pointed out, are so complex that even the most intelligent and educated men have difficulty in grasping their meaning. Her books, which are exquisitely written and still popular today, offer an excellent model for those of later generations who want to perfect the art of writing verse. She invented many new forms of song and poetry, including lays, sorrowful complaints, strange love laments and other poems inspired by different emotions which are beautifully wrought and are now called Sapphic poems in her honour. On the subject of this lady’s works, Horace recalls that a book of her verse was found under the pillow of the great philosopher Plato, Aristotle’s teacher, when he died.

  ‘To cut a long story short, Sappho was so famous for her learning that her native city decided to dedicate a prominent bronze statue to her in order to honour her and record her achievements for posterity. She earned herself a place amongst the greatest poets whose glory, according to Boccaccio, far outshines the mitres of bishops, the coronets and crowns of kings and even the palm wreaths and laurel garlands of those who are victorious in battle. I could give you many more examples of brilliant women, such as the Greek woman Leontium, an excellent philosopher, who dared to put forward clearly reasoned arguments against Theophrastus, a thinker who was highly regarded in his own time.’

  31. About the maiden Manto.

  ‘You can take it from me that if women have been able to learn and gain mastery of the sciences, they are equally capable of excelling in the arts, as you’ll soon find out. According to the ancient beliefs of the pagans, people used to try and see what the future would bring by interpreting the patterns made by birds in flight, by the flames of a fire, and by the entrails of dead animals. This was regarded as a proper art or science and was held in great esteem. One maiden who was a particularly skilful mistress of this art was the daughter of Tiresias, high priest of the city of Thebes – or bishop, as we would say now – because priests of these pagan faiths were allowed to marry.

  ‘This lady, who was called Manto, flourished during the reign of Oedipus, King of Thebes. Being gifted and intelligent, she acquired a complete knowledge of pyromancy, the art of divining the future from fire. This art was invented a very long time ago by the Chaldaeans, though others claim that it was Nimrod the giant who discovered it. In her time, there was no man alive who could outdo Manto in interpreting the significance of the movements, colours and sounds made by the flames of a burning fire. She was also adept at reading the shapes made by the veins of animals, the gullets of horses and the entrails of beasts. Her powers were so great that many believed she could conjure up the spirits and make them tell her all that she wanted to know. It was during this lady’s lifetime that the city of Thebes was destroyed because of a quarrel between King Oedipus’s sons. She therefore went to live in Asia where she had a temple to Apollo built which subsequently became very famous. She later died in Italy where, in her honour, a city was named after her. This city of Mantua, which was the birthplace of the poet Virgil, is still there to this day.’

  32. About Medea, and another queen named Circe.

  ‘Medea, who is mentioned in many history books, was no less skilled or knowledgeable than this Manto. An extremely beautiful lady with a tall, slim body and a very lovely face, Medea was the daughter of Aeëtes, King of Colchis, and his wife Perse. In learning she surpassed all other women, for she knew the properties of every plant and what spells they could be used for. Indeed, no art had been invented that she hadn’t mastered. Intoning a song that she alone knew, Medea could make the sky go cloudy and black, draw the wind out of the dark caverns in the depths of the earth, stir up storms, cause rivers to stop flowing, brew up all kinds of poisons, create fire out of nowhere to burn whatever she wished, and perform many other marvels besides. It was she whose powers of sorcery helped Jason to win the Golden Fleece.

  ‘Like Medea, Circe too was a queen. Her island lay off the coast of Italy. This lady was so well versed in the art of casting spells that there was nothing she couldn’t do in this domain. She knew how to make up a potion that could turn men into wild animals or birds. This is borne out in the story of Ulysses, who was returning home to Greece after the destruction of Troy when Fortune whipped up a storm and tossed his ships through the boiling seas until he came to the harbour of the city ruled by this Queen Circe. Since the wily Ulysses had no wish to land on this island without first asking the queen’s express permission, he sent some of his knights to her to ask if she would allow him to come ashore. Unfortunately, Circe thought they had come to harm her and so gave his men this potion to drink which immediately turned them into swine. Ulysses lost no time in going to see her and making her change them back again into their proper form. A similar tale is told about Diomedes, another Greek prince, who, on arriving in Circe’s harbour, saw all his men changed into birds, the form which they still have today. These uncommonly large and fierce creatures, which are very different in shape from other birds, are known by the inhabitants of the region as “the birds of Diomedes”.’

  33. Christine asks Reason if any woman has ever invented new forms of knowledge.

  I, Christine, on hearing Reason’s words, took up this matter and said to her, ‘My lady, I can clearly see that you are able to cite an endless number of women who were highly skilled in the arts and sciences. However, I’d like to ask you if you know of any woman who was ingenious, or creative, or clever enough to invent any new useful and important branches of knowledge which did not previously exist. It’s surely less difficult to learn and follow a subject which has already been invented than it is to discover something new and unknown by oneself.’

  Reason replied, ‘Believe me, many crucial and worthy arts and sciences have been discovered thanks to the ingenuity and cleverness of women, both in the theoretical sciences which are expressed through the written word, and in the technical crafts which take the form of manual tasks and trades. I’ll now give you a whole set of examples.

  ‘First of all, I’ll tell you about the noble Nicostrata, whom the Italians called Carmentis. This lady was the daughter of the king of Arcadia whose name was Pallas. She was extraordinarily intelligent and endowed by God with special intellectual gifts, having such a vast knowledge of Greek literatur
e and being able to write so wisely, elegantly and with such eloquence that the poets of the time claimed in their verse that she was loved by the god Mercury. They similarly thought that her son, who was in his day equally renowned for his intelligence, was the offspring of this god, rather than of her husband. Because of various upheavals that occurred in her native land, Nicostrata, accompanied by her son and a whole host of other people who wanted to go with her, set off for Italy in a large fleet of ships and sailed up the River Tiber. It was here that she went ashore and climbed up a great hill which she named Mount Palatine after her father. On this hill, where the city of Rome was subsequently founded, she, her son and her followers built themselves a castle. As she found the indigenous population to be very primitive, she laid down a set of rules for them to observe and encouraged them to live a rational and just existence. Thus it was she who first established laws in this country that was to become so famous for developing a legal system from which all known laws would be derived.