And the Hi, I'm Peter Adamson, and you're listening to the History of Philosophy Podcast, brought to you with the support of the Philosophy Department at

Kings College London and the LMU in Munich, online at History of Philosophy.net.

Today's episode, We built this city, Christine de Bizan.

Cast your mind back, if you will, to the last of our episodes on medieval philosophy.

That is when we first met Christine de Bizan. It's fitting that she should appear in both the medieval and the Renaissance series,

since she could hardly be more suitable to represent the transition from one age to the other

and to undermine any notion that that transition was a sudden cultural shift as opposed to a gradual evolution.

Her lifetime went from the 14th to the 15th century, geographically and in self-identity, she spanned Italian and French culture, she drew on

medieval ideas even well foreshadowing such paradigmatically renaissance figures as Machiavelli.

Like other female authors of the Middle Ages, she wrote in the vernacular and not in Latin. Unlike those other authors, she was not a bigine, a nun, or an anchorite, but an independent secular intellectual.

In that earlier episode we saw Christine attacking the misogyny and scandalous content of a 13th century text, The Romance of the Rose.

This suggests a literary bent, something borne out of the rose. This suggests a literary bent something borne out by her writing career which began with the composition of poetry, but her writings ranged widely, including moral advice, political works, an influential treatise on chivalry and conduct

in war, and further attempts to defend the honor of the female gender.

This multifaceted career was made possible by aristocratic beginnings.

She called herself Christine de Pizan in honor of her father Tomasso, who held from the Italian town Pizano.

At the nearby University of Bologna, Tomasso served as professor of astrology until he was summoned by the French King Charles 5th, when Christine was only four years old.

It was in this setting that Christine grew up, absorbing

the cultivated and urbane values of Charles's court, which boasted a massive library and supported

the translation of Aristotle and other classical authors into French.

Unfortunately for Christine, this auspicious beginning was followed by a series of personal and political disasters.

Within the decades spanning from 1380 to

1390, the King, Christine's father, and her husband all died, setting off

...