Christine de Pizan (duh PEE-zahn) (13647-1430; earlier spelled “Pisan”) was the well-educated daughter and wife of men who held positions at the court of the king of France. Widowed at twenty-five, Christine decided to support her family through writing. She began to write prose works and poetry, sending them to wealthy individuals in the hope of receiving their support. Her efforts resulted in commissions to write specific works, including a biography of the French king Charles V and a book of military tactics. She became the first woman in Europe to make her living as a writer, a difficult profession for anyone in this era before the printing press.
Among Christine’s many works were several in which she considered women’s nature and proper role in society, which had been a topic of debate since ancient times. The following selection is from The Treasure of the City of Ladies (1405, also called The Book of Three Virtues), which provides moral suggestions and practical advice on behavior and household management. Most of the book is directed toward princesses and court ladies (who would have been able to read it), but she also includes shorter sections for the wives of merchants and artisans, serving-women, female peasants, and even prostitutes. This is her advice to the wives of artisans, whose husbands were generally members of urban craft guilds.
All wives of artisans should be very painstaking and diligent if they wish to have the necessities of life. They should encourage their husbands or their workmen to get to work early in the morning and work until late, for mark our words, there is no trade so good that if you neglect your work you will not have difficulty putting bread on the table. And besides encouraging the others, the wife herself should be involved in the work to the extent that she knows all about it, so that she may know how to oversee his workers if her husband is absent, and to reprove them if they do not do well. She ought to oversee them to keep them from idleness, for through careless workers the master is sometimes ruined. And when customers come to her husband and try to drive a hard bargain, she ought to warn him solicitously to take care that he does
Not make a bad deal. She should advise him to be chary of giving too much credit if he does not know precisely where and to whom it is going, for in this way many come to poverty, although sometimes the greed to earn more or to accept a tempting proposition makes them do it.
In addition, she ought to keep her husband’s love as much as she can, to this end: that he will stay at home more willingly and that he may not have any reason to join the foolish crowds of other young men in taverns and indulge in unnecessary
Several manuscripts of Christine's works included illustrations showing her writing, which would have increased their appeal to the wealthy individuals who purchased them. (Copyright © British Library Board)
And extravagant expense, as many tradesmen do, especially in Paris. By treating him kindly she should protect him as well as she can from this. It is said that three things drive a man from his home: a quarrelsome wife, a smoking fireplace and a leaking roof. She too ought to stay at home gladly and not go every day traipsing hither and yon gossiping with the neighbours and visiting her chums to find out what everyone is doing. That is done by slovenly housewives roaming about the town in groups. Nor should she go off on these pilgrimages got up for no good reason and involving a lot of needless expense. Furthermore, she ought to remind her husband that they should live so frugally that their expenditure does not exceed their income, so that at the end of the year they do not find themselves in debt.
Questions
1. How would you describe Christine’s view of the ideal artisan’s wife?
2. The regulations of craft guilds often required that masters who ran workshops be married. What evidence does Christine’s advice provide for why guilds would have stipulated this?
3. How are economic and moral virtues linked for Christine?
Source: Christine de Pisan, The Treasure of the City of Ladies, translated with an introduction by Sarah Lawson (Penguin Classics, 1985). Translation copyright © Sarah Lawson, 1985. Reproduced by permission of Penguin Books Ltd. For more on Christine, see: C. C. Willard, Christine de Pisan: Her Life and Works (1984), and S. Bell, The Lost Tapestries of the City of Ladies: Christine de Pizan’s Renaissance Legacy (2004).
Michelangelo's frescoes in the Sistine Chapel in the Vatican, commissioned by the pope. The huge ceiling includes biblical scenes, and the far wall, painted much later, shows a dramatic and violent Last Judgment. (Vatican Museum)
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