Christine de Pizan

Daughter of King Charles V's court astrologer Tommaso da Pizzano, Christine was raised in the royal intellectual milieu in Paris. Widowed at age twenty-five with three children, she took up her pen to support her family, producing poems, political treatises, and biographies commissioned by royal dukes.

In The Book of the City of Ladies (1405), Christine erected an allegorical citadel populated by virtuous and intellectual women throughout history, directly attacking misogynistic satire like the Romance of the Rose. In 1429, she wrote the historic Ditié de Jehanne d'Arc, the first and only literary tribute to Joan of Arc written during Joan's lifetime.