Ode to Christine de Pisan
by Paulette Demers Turco
     Medieval poet, author, feminist, 1364-1430

You traveled from Venice, Italy, when only four,
with your father to Paris, France,
where he would serve the King as doctor and astrologer.
Your favorite place to be–to sit, or play, or dance,
soon read–was in your father’s massive library,
filled with shelves of scholarly Medieval tomes written
in French, Italian, and classic Greek and Latin.
And with each manuscript,
you became equipped
to learn continually, though women were denied a seat at any university.

In love at fifteen, you wed Etienne, the notary,
the French King Charles the Vth’s royal secretary.
So young, you soon became a mother of three,
but too soon widowed–your husband killed
by the plague that had claimed your father
just one year before. You would support your mother
and children, not knowing what was to be,
polite yet consistently strong-willed,
you studied law, wrote skillfully
to hopefully inherit your husband’s estate, his back-owed salary.

In mourning your loss of your Etienne in heaven above,
you penned one hundred ballads of your enduring love–
poems sought by many titled women, their courtiers–
declaring you would never wed again.
King Charles VI appointed you the Writer for the Monarch.
Still, you spoke out with your pen in The Tale of the Rose,
via allegory showing virtues of exemplary women,
defending women from the common male misogyny.
Court patrons funded your forty-one works of poetry and prose–
your crowning masterpiece of poetry,
Le Ditié de Jehannes d’Arc, The Tale of Joan of Arc.
We honor you–the first European woman to become a professional writer.


 

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