Christine de Pisan was a prolific writer in medieval France. Although she was born in Italy in 1365, she grew up at the French court after her father became Charles V’s astrologer. She married Estienne de Castel, the future court secretary, when she was fifteen. However, when her father and husband died, Christine was left a 24-year-old widow with three children and no one to support her financially. She began working as a scribe to support her family, and soon started to write independently.
Christine’s writing was very diverse, including both poetry and prose and on topics ranging from courtly love to military strategy, but she is remembered today for her work celebrating women. For instance, her L’Épistre au Dieu d’Amours criticized the way Jean de Meun’s popular poem Le Roman de la Rose portrayed women as indecisive and conceited. In her most famous work, Le Livre de la Cité des Dames, Christine countered male philosophers’ portrayals of women as inherently sinful by describing heroic and virtuous women from history and legend.
Christine de Pisan wrote 15 different major works in only 11 years, but in 1418, she fled Paris to escape the English forces and joined her daughter at a convent in Poissy. She focused on religion rather than writing until 1429, when she wrote her last work, Le Ditié de Jehanne d’Arc (The Song of Joan of Arc), the only French-language text about Joan of Arc written during her lifetime. Christine died in 1431, probably before Joan’s execution (Ulrich).
Christine and Joan lived in the middle of the Hundred Years’ War, a long, off-and-on war between France and England. The war started in 1337 due largely to disputes over the French royal succession, but by the late fourteenth century, both England and France were more focused on internal conflicts than on fighting each other. In 1407, John the Fearless, the duke of Burgundy and cousin of the French king Charles VI, had Louis, the duke of Orléans and another cousin, assassinated. This assassination sparked a civil war between the Burgundians and Orléans’ supporters, known as Armagnacs. Meanwhile, Henry V became king of England, realized he could use the French civil war to benefit England, and allied with the Burgundians. This alliance was powerful; by 1422, they had captured all of France north of the Loire River, plus Acquitaine. Then, however, Henry V and Charles VI both died, leaving their sons Henry VI and the Dauphin Charles to fight over the throne (“Hundred Years’ War”). This was where Joan of Arc came in.
Joan of Arc was born in 1412 in Domrémy, a village right between the Burgundian and Armagnac territories of France. Growing up, she believed she heard the voices of Saint Catherine of Alexandria, Saint Michael, and Saint Margaret of Antioch telling her to lead the French army to victory against the English. In May 1428, at 16 years old, Joan travelled to Vaucouleurs in hopes of joining the Dauphin, but the captain of the garrison sent her home. In January 1429, she tried again and successfully convinced the captain to let her join the Dauphin, wearing men’s clothes and joined by six men-at-arms. When Joan first met Charles at Chinon, he disguised himself as a courtier, but she recognized him and said she wanted to fight the English and have Charles crowned at Reims, where French monarchs were traditionally crowned. She was then sent to Poitiers and questioned by theologians for three weeks before returning to Chinon.
Meanwhile, the English had besieged Orléans since October 1428. On April 27, 1429, hundreds of French troops left Blois for Orléans, and on April 29, Joan and the French commander La Hire joined arrived with more supplies. Initially, Joan and the other troops waited for reinforcements before attacking. On May 4, however, Joan joined a battle at an English fort east of Orléans, and the French successfully captured the fort. The fighting continued over the next few days, and the French took more forts. The English retreated on May 8, and Joan left Orléans on May 9.
When Joan next saw Charles, she encouraged him to travel to Reims and be crowned as soon as possible, despite his counselors’ advice to first recapture Normandy. After retaking several towns on the Loire River and routing the English at Patay, Joan, Charles, and the French army finally left for Reims on June 29. They arrived on July 16, and Charles was crowned King Charles VII on July 17.
The French army spent the next month in Île-de-France and Champagne, relatively close to Paris. At the end of July, Charles and the Duke of Burgundy agreed on a two-week truce, and on August 2, Charles decided to retreat to the Loire. The towns in the area which were loyal to the Armagnacs, such as Reims, feared this meant Charles had given up on taking Paris and was leaving them vulnerable to the English and Burgundians, but Joan wrote to Reims explaining the truce and her hope that the Duke of Burgundy would surrender Paris when the truce was over. On August 6, however, the English blocked Charles’ army from crossing the Seine, breaking the truce. The fighting continued through August, and the French took several towns north of Paris, but they did not attempt to take Paris itself. On August 28, the Armagnacs and Burgundians agreed on a four-month truce in all land north of the Seine. The French attacked Paris on September 8, but they were unsuccessful and retreated to the Loire.
Joan continued to fight for Charles VII until the Burgundians captured her in May 1430. She was imprisoned in Rouen, interrogated, and tried for 70 different charges, most of which involved blasphemy. When she was convicted, she agreed to sign a form of abjuration, which reduced her sentence from execution to imprisonment. The vice-inquisitor ordered her to wear women’s clothes, but a few days later, the judges found her wearing men’s clothes. On May 29, the judges and assessors agreed that she had relapsed, and they over to the secular authorities for execution. Joan of Arc was burned at the stake on May 30, 1431 (Vale and Lanhers).
Christine de Pisan claimed to have written Le Ditié de Jehanne d’Arc on July 31, 1429, although some modern scholars debate whether that date is accurate. Overall, the poem is a celebration of Joan of Arc and her mission. Christine begins by expressing her joy at Charles VII’s coronation and telling the reader that she will use the poem to explain how the tide of the war turned and Charles was crowned. She then addresses Charles directly, telling him that God sent Joan to help him regain France and that he is destined for great things. Then, she turns to the main topic of the poem: praising Joan. She repeatedly claims that God sent Joan to save France and gave Joan her strength. She refers to the French victory at Orléans as a “miracle,” and warns the English and their supporters that Joan is destined to “destroy” them. Christine goes on to say Joan will lead Charles to the Holy Land, where they will defeat the Saracens and Joan will “wear the crown.” According to Christine, Joan’s true purpose is not simply to defeat the English, but to save Christianity as a whole. Christine reminds the reader that Joan led Charles to Reims for his coronation. She then claims that Joan and the French army will inevitably take Paris, and advises the Burgundians to surrender rather than fight Joan (de Pisan).
Although Le Ditié de Jehanne d’Arc was the only text about Joan written in her lifetime in French, there were several contemporary texts about her written before La Ditié in other languages, and those texts provide important context regarding Christine’s reasons for writing and the way she describes Joan. One such text is De Quadam Puella, which was published in March or early April. It presents various arguments for and against the idea that Joan was sent by God to save France and leaves the reader to draw their own conclusions. De Quadam Puella was originally attributed to Henry of Gorckheim, but many modern scholars believe the real author was Jean Gerson. Gerson probably wrote it in response to a request from his colleagues Pierre de Versailles and Gerard Machet (Cornford 80-83). After Orléans, the Archbishop of Embrun, Jacques Gelu wrote the Dissertatio, a treatise to Charles in Joan’s favor (Cornford 89-90). Later in May, De Mirabili Victoria was published. While De Mirabili Victoria was clearly pro-Joan, it was not as strongly in her favor as the Dissertatio. Most modern scholars believe that like De Quadam Puella, De Mirabili Victoria was written by Jean Gerson (Cornford 95). Although De Mirabili Victoria did urge Charles to follow Joan’s lead, it was also fairly widely distributed, suggesting that it was also meant to persuade other people that Charles should follow Joan (Cornford 97-98).
In addition to having the same subject, De Quadam Puella, Dissertatio, De Mirabili Victoria, and Le Ditié de Jehanne d’Arc also have similar references to Biblical figures. For instance, De Quadam Puella gives Deborah, Esther, Judith, David, and Daniel as Biblical precedents for God choosing weak people, like Joan, to fight stronger powers, like the English (Cornford 81). Likewise, in the Dissertatio, Gelu mentions Judith and Esther as examples of other women God chose to “[exercise] vengeance” (Cornford 90). De Mirabili Victoria offers Deborah, Judith, Judas Maccabaeus, and Saint Catherine as similar examples (Cornford 96). In Le Ditié, Christine compares Joan to Moses, Joshua, Gideon, Esther, Judith, and Deborah, and in each case, Christine concludes that Joan is stronger, more virtuous, and more blessed. It is interesting that in addition to the general theme of finding Biblical precedent and justification for Joan’s mission, these four texts also list similar Biblical figures. In particular, of the three women Christine lists, Judith is mentioned in all three Latin texts, and Esther and Deborah are each mentioned in two. It is possible that those women were simply the most similar to Joan, and the authors decided to mention them independently. However, Christine knew Gerson, the probable author of both De Quadam Puella and De Mirabili Victoria, so it is also possible that he influenced her writing (Cornford 81-82).
Another way Le Ditié resembles the Latin texts is that it was a form of propaganda. After all her writing about great women, particularly in La Livre de la Cité des Dames, it is no surprise that Christine was excited about Joan of Arc, but Le Ditié also had a political agenda. Christine urged Charles to attack Paris, and she urged the Burgundians to surrender. Christine dated Le Ditié to July 31, 1429, but in reality, it would not have made sense for her to urge Charles to recapture Paris at that time. For one thing, Charles had arrived on the outskirts of Paris only two days earlier, and it seems unlikely Christine would even have known he was not going to attack Paris by July 31. She almost certainly would not have had time to write an entire poem. For another thing, July 31 was during the truce with the Burgundians, and even if Charles were to attack Paris, he would have waited until the truce ended. The convent where Christine lived was relatively close to Paris, and Charles’ sister was there as well, so Christine would probably have known about something as significant as the truce. Urging Charles to attack Paris would have been useless at the end of July, and Christine would have known that. It is more likely that she wrote Le Ditié in late August or early September, when the French army had retreated from Paris (Cornford 77-78). By dating the poem earlier, Christine made her descriptions of Joan’s success in battle seem prophetic and emphasized the idea that Joan and Charles were destined to succeed.
Although La Ditié de Jehanne d’Arc is a celebration of Joan of Arc and her mission, Christine de Pisan, like others who wrote about Joan at the time, also had a political motivation. Through techniques like Biblical references and dating the poem earlier than it was actually written, she framed Joan as a Christian hero and urged Charles to follow her lead and take back Paris.
References
“Christine, de Pisan.” Merriam Webster’s Encyclopedia of Literature, Merriam-Webster, 1995. Literature Resource Center, http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A148916262/LitRC?u=mlin_w_mounthc&sid=LitRC&xid=3416c17d. Accessed 10 Feb. 2019.
Cornford, Benjamin. “Christine de Pizan’s Ditie de Jehanne d’Arc : Poetry and Propoganda at the Court of Charles VII.” Parergon, vol. 17, no. 2, 2000, pp. 75-106, https://www.researchgate.net/publication/265961846_Christine_de_Pizan’s_Ditie_de_Jehanne_d’Arc_Poetry_and_Propaganda_at_the_Court_of_Charles_VII. Accessed 10 Feb. 2019.
de Pisan, Christine. “The Song of Joan of Arc.” Translated by Ben D. Kennedy. Maid of All Heaven, http://www.maidofheaven.com/joanofarc_song_pisan_contents.asp. Accessed 12 Mar. 2019.
“Hundred Years’ War.” Encyclopӕdia Britannica, 22 Feb. 2019, https://www.britannica.com/event/Hundred-Years-War. Accessed 16 Mar. 2019.
Ulrich, Laurel Thatcher. “Three Writers.” Well-Behaved Women Seldom Make History, New York, Random House, 2007.
Vale, Malcolm G.A. and Lanhers, Yvonne. “Saint Joan of Arc.” Encyclopӕdia Britannica, 14 Sept. 2018, https://www.britannica.com/biography/Saint-Joan-of-Arc. Accessed 10 Feb. 2019.