Good role models are hard to find. In most places where we look, we see celebrities glorifying “sexual liberation” (a promiscuous hook-up culture), expressing “nice” opinions about shifting cultural winds (virtue-signaling political correctness), and admonishing everyone to just “do you” (be narcissistic).
Bombarded with a bewildering number of conflicting messages along with glamorous, but unrealistic, social comparisons, young people of both sexes (but especially females) are suffering from record rates of depression, anxiety, and other mental illnesses today..
One woman, renowned in her day, had advice of a different kind to offer. And in support of her views, she rallied all of the most famous women in history behind her.
An Unprecedented Career Choice
Christine de Pizan was born in Venice in 1364 but spent most of her life in France. Her father, a court astrologer and physician to King Charles V, taught her to read and write and encouraged her love of study—an uncommon practice for women at that time.She had a happy but brief marriage to a royal secretary. When her husband died of the Black Death (bubonic plague), Pizan was left with an extended family to care for and, in order to make ends meet, took a job in Paris copying manuscripts. After doing this for several years, she began writing her own books, which found an audience and earned her aristocratic patronage. Pizan is thought to be the first woman in France, and perhaps all of Europe, to successfully make a living from her pen alone.
Pizan wrote dozens of literary works spanning every genre popular at the time. Of all these, the one that she is most remembered for is “Le Livre de la Cité des Dames” (”The Book of the City of Ladies“), a biographical catalog of famous women. What sets it apart—not only from previous books in this genre, but all others authored before hers—is that she sets out to defend women from arguments that women were inferior to men.
The book begins with Pizan sitting in her study surrounded by books, wondering “why on earth it was that so many men, both clerks and others, have said and continue to say and write such awful, damning things about women and their ways.” As she is “sunk in these unhappy thoughts,” she has a vision in which three majestic ladies—personifications of Reason, Rectitude, and Justice—appear to her. They task her with building a City of Ladies (in book form) that will house examples of women who have made important contributions to civilization.
The Foundations: Cornificia
In laying the foundations of her city, Reason describes to Pizan certain women of great ability and achievement. When Pizan asks Reason if there have been any women whose minds are equal to those of men, Reason answers that, although women have weaker bodies, “their minds are in fact sharper and more receptive when they do apply themselves.”Reason provides an example: the life of Cornificia, a noblewoman of the late Roman Republic. If you are like most modern people, you have never heard of Cornificia. But she was a remarkable woman who, Pizan tells us, “refused all normal female occupations in order to devote herself to her books.”
Through her unwavering scholarship, Cornificia drank in philosophy and other disciplines “as if it were mother’s milk,” and became one of the foremost poets of her time. Cornificia illustrates how one can overcome obstacles through effort and mental dedication.
The Walls: Cassandra
To build the city walls, Rectitude gives Pizan instances of virtuous women who devoted themselves to others. One of these women is Cassandra, the daughter of King Priam of Troy, a prophetess who foresaw the fate of her fellow Trojans and tried to warn them of the imminent fall of their civilization.Cassandra’s story is a tragic one. In Aeschylus’s play “Agamemnon,” she is cursed by the gods: Although Cassandra is given the gift of foresight, no one believes any of the truths she utters. She even has a vision of her own death and the deaths of all of the drama’s principal characters, but she is unable to prevent them. And yet she does not let up and continues to tell everyone what was going to happen.
In our own day, we can certainly think of many truth-tellers who are ridiculed and persecuted for having the courage to be honest. While their situations are not enviable ones, we should admire the sacrifice they make for their loved ones and countrymen through their refusal to be silent in the face of tyranny.
The Towers: St. Catherine
In building the city’s high towers and turrets, Justice provides Pizan with examples of women who remained steadfast in their religious beliefs. One of these women is St. Catherine, a faithful woman who was loved by Roman Emperor Maxentius.The story goes that when Maxentius came to Alexandria to offer a pagan sacrifice, the young Catherine approached him to address the error of his ways. In response, Maxentius assembled 50 philosophers to debate Catherine, who defeated them in argument and convinced them to convert to Christianity. Maxentius, in a rage, ordered the philosophers to be burnt to death, but they emerged from the fire unscorched. Later, the emperor offered Catherine his hand in marriage. She refused, and he ordered her to be beheaded. When she was martyred, it is said that milk, rather than blood, poured from her wounds, and an oil that flowed from her tomb cured illnesses.
As was the case with Cassandra, St. Catherine’s life was, ultimately, not a happy one. But it still inspires others. She demonstrates a principle also held by Socrates: that it is better to suffer evil than to do evil. Although suffering brings pain, the sufferer remains free of spiritual corruption and can be held up as a moral example for others. And if evildoers do not receive just retribution in life (as Maxentius later did), then they will be fairly dealt with in the afterlife—both in the spiritual one and in the earthly one, where their memories will be vilified.
A City of Spirit
While Pizan advocated for women’s moral equality with men, she was not championing legal equality or calling for a revolutionary restructuring of society. Moreover, the types of virtues that she upheld—chastity, piety, humility, and devotion to family and country—are antagonistic to most of the so-called “virtues” that are dominant in our mainstream culture.Pizan’s city of the spirit is, ultimately, one that is meant to “accommodate all deserving women”—not only of the past, but of the future, as well. In the final chapter, she addresses those yet unborn, “My beloved ladies, I beg you not to abuse this new legacy like those arrogant fools who swell up with pride when they see themselves prosper and their wealth increase.”
But for those who “love virtue, glory, and a fine reputation,” the City of Ladies remains a place where women of all places and times are forever welcome.
