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A
From long lost Viking ships and kings buried in unexpected places to tales of murder, power, faith and the lives of ordinary people across medieval Europe and beyond. Join me, Matt Lewis, Dr. Elena Jarninger and some of the world's leading historians as we bring history's most fascinating stories to life. Only on History Hit with your subscription you'll unlock hundreds of hours of exclusive documentaries with with a brand new release every week exploring everything from the ancient world to World War II. Just visit historyhit.com subscribe.
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B
This episode is brought to you by Progressive Insurance. Do you ever think about switching insurance companies to see if you could save some cash? Progressive makes it easy to see if you could save when you bundle your home and auto policies. Try it@progressive.com Progressive Casualty Insurance Company and affiliates. Potential savings will vary. Not available in all states.
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C
We're lost. It feels like we're going round in circles. I'm going to ask that man for directions. Hi there. We're trying to get to the state fairgrounds.
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D
Well, you're going to take a left
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E
at the old oak tree at this here road.
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F
Nah, I'm just kidding.
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D
Let me get my phone out.
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C
How is their signal out here?
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E
T Mobile and US Cellular are coming together. So? So the network out here is huge.
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D
We get the same great signal as the city, saving a boatload with benefits.
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E
And there's a five year price guarantee too. Okay, here's the turn.
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C
Actually, can you pull up the way to a T Mobile store?
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E
America's best network just got bigger. Switch to T Mobile today and get built in benefits the other guys leave out. Plus our five year price guarantee. And now T Mobile is available at US Cellular stores in Hermiston. Best Mobile Network Based on analysis by Ooklo Speed test intelligence data second half of 2025 bigger network the combination of T Mobile's and US Cellular's network footprints will enhance the T Mobile network's coverage price guarantee on talk, text and data. Exclusions like taxes and fees apply. CT mobile.com for details.
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F
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D
hello, I'm Matt Lewis.
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A
Welcome to Gone Medieval. From History Hit, the podcast that delves into the greatest millennium in human history. We've got the most intriguing mysteries, the gob, smacking details, and latest groundbreaking research. From the Vikings to the printing press, from kings to popes to the Crusades, we cross centuries and continents to delve into rebellions, plots and murders to find the stories, big and small, that tell us how we got here. Find out who we really were with Gone Medieval
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D
I want you to picture a young widow in medieval Paris. Three children in her care, debts piling up. A courtroom battle over her late husband's
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estate dragging on for years.
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No patron, no power, no plan. Except one radical decision. She will make a living with her mind and her pen. This woman is Christine de Pisan, and she's about to become Europe's first professional female writer. At a time when women were seen as weak, silent and sinful, Christine picked up a pen and answered back. She wrote poetry for kings and queens. She debated scholars in public. She created allegorical cities where women ruled. She defended women's intelligence, morality, and dignity. Centuries before the word feminism even existed, when France was collapsing into civil war, she wrote one of history's first political biographies of a living woman, celebrating Joan of Arc as a national hero. Christine de Pisan's life itself reads like a drama. Born in Venice, raised in the glittering courts of France, married young, widowed, suddenly forced into lawsuits and poverty, she reinvented herself in a profession of that wasn't supposed to exist for women. She battled misogynistic literature in what historians call one of Europe's first literary debates. She outearned male writers. She built networks of patrons. She shaped royal propaganda and wrote more than 40 books. And then, after decades of speaking fearlessly, she fell silent, disappearing into a convent as France burned around her. So why should we care about Christine de Pisan? Because she asked questions we're still asking today. Who gets to write history? Who decides what women are allowed to be? Can words change a culture that doesn't want to listen. She refused to let the story of women be written by men who despised them. She showed that intellectual independence, especially for women, is not a given, it's to be fought for. My guest today is the wonderful Catherine Pangonis, a historian who is rewriting the voices of women into the historical narrative. A new book, A History of France in 21 Women, traces the lives of the women who made French history, from Eleanor of Aquitaine to Coco Chanel. Together, we're going to focus on just one of them today. Christine de Pisan, who built a city out of words, argued with medieval trolls, advised kings, praised a teenage warrior saint, and quietly invented a new way for women to live. Welcome to Gone Medieval. Katherine, it's great to have you with us.
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C
Thank you for having me back on the show.
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D
It's always a pleasure to welcome you back. And I'm really excited to learn a little bit more about Christine de Pisan. She's such a fascinating character. I don't know whether many people will necessarily have heard of her, but I think they're going to really enjoy learning more about her fascinating life. So I wanted to start us off at the beginning. Seems like a really good place to start. Christine. If people do know Christine de Pizan, they associate her mostly with France. But what do we know about her family? Because she's not born in France, is she?
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C
So, yeah, her birth name is actually Christina and she's born to a scholar, a doctor called Tommaso di Pisano in Venice in 1364, and his wife, who, to my knowledge, we don't actually have a record of her name, which is disappointing but unsurprising for the times. But, yes, when she's very young, her father is offered a place at the court of Charles V of France, who will later be known as Charles the Wise. He's the founder of the Bibliotheque Nationale as we have it today, and he really wants to transform the court of France into an intellectual centre in Europe. And with that in mind, he tried to invite the leading luminaries of the time to the court of France. So this is during the rise of humanism, the birth of the Renaissance. And so her father, Tommaso, is brought to Paris, and after a trial year at the court in Paris, he brings his wife and children along with him, and that's two sons and Cristina, and we're not sure exactly what point, but they francify their names. And so Cristina de Pisano becomes Christine de Pisan and becomes thoroughly francified, and her life and career then unfold in the court of France. In the Valois court.
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D
Yeah. Fascinating. And I guess there must have been something about Venice, then. Is there a reason that Charles is looking at Venice? Venice is presumably quite a cosmopolitan place at the time. Is Charles trying to tap into what's going on in Venice and drag that up to France?
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C
Yes, exactly. So Italy. I mean, I think when we think of the Renaissance, the first country we think of is Italy. And this is the same for the ideas that underpin the Renaissance. So humanism is really taking hold in Italy at this point. It really is at the forefront of intellectual thought. And that's probably why the King of France, in looking to create a sort of, not necessarily a rival, but certainly a complementary intellectual center in Europe in Paris, he's looking to the cities of Italy for intellectuals.
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D
Yeah. And at the same time, he's asked to go to France. I think he also gets an approach from Hungary as well. Do we know why he chose France? What. What were the benefits of going to France rather than Hungary?
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C
Yeah, of course. So Tomato is in demand. He's built quite a reputation for himself as an academic, as a medical doctor, as a reader of astrology. So he is sought after as an advisor, as an intellectual within the different courts of Europe. And he does receive this offer from the King of Hungary. But it's the glittering reputation of Paris and indeed the prestige of the University of Paris that I think make him think this could be the right place to advance his career. And also the fact that Charles. Charles V really has this reputation as a monarch who really cares about philosophy, about ideas. I think that's very attractive to someone when deciding whose patronage to accept.
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D
Yeah. And how much of a contrast would Paris have been to Venice at this time? You know, Tommaso goes there, as you mentioned, for a year, and then Christine follows on afterwards. But I have an image of Paris, at least up until this time, as this kind of, you know, the grey, drab, slightly boring, very serious place. And you think about people like, you know, a couple of centuries earlier, Eleanor of Aquitaine going from Aquitaine and the. The flourishing culture down there to the. The slightly more dull Paris. Is. Is Paris like a. Is it a buzzing place? Is Charles trying to change Paris? Is it a dull place? When Christine gets there, it's beginning to
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C
buzz, I would say. I think it's definitely picked up in energy and certainly cultural energy, since Eleanor of Aquitaine went there and was disappointed with it, a population of about 150,000 people. But it is in this sort of dark period, after various crises so we are in the midst of the Hundred Years War. I mean, this is the backdrop to Christine's life. The war lasts more than 100 years. More like 110, 120. And so there isn't a single point in Christine's life where this conflict isn't playing out. There are periods of peace, periods of war, more intensive war, and periods of comparative peace when there are periods where the English are visiting Paris. So there's flux, there's ups and downs in the levels of conflict, but the war is always there, generally as an overarching presence. And in addition to that, we're not that long after the Black Death, which has, you know, really decimated Europe's population. So I wouldn't say Paris is yet a huge sort of a jewel in Europe. I wouldn't say it's the most exciting city, but it's on its way to becoming so. And it's. Yeah, it's reeling from recent conflicts, recent. Recent tragedies, but it's working hard to rebuild its reputation. It is attracting people from across Europe and across the world. So it's beginning to become the city that we think of it as today.
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D
Yeah. People like Tommaso must have seen the potential there, mustn't they? To. To have made that decision to uproot their family and move there. They must have felt like there was a. A change happening that they could tap into and. And build on.
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C
Exactly. And a sense of investment in culture and ideas, a sense of that there is a K willing to invest in exactly what Tommaso excels in. So I think that's what draws them there. And the fact that they're building this Royal Library that still survives in a form today, of course. I mean, following the revolution and other steps, the library has now become a public institution. It's no longer the Royal Library, but they are beginning this massive collection of manuscripts. They are investing in new literary works, as we. We'll see in our discussion. So it is this sense that this is a place where perhaps you can make it as a creative and as an intellectual.
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D
And Christine seems to have spent an awful lot of time around, you know, that library, the Louvre, around that environment. And her father doesn't seem to have particularly, you know, prevented her from accessing that kind of environment. There was no sense that, you know, you're a girl in your places over there. Her father seems to have been willing to let her get involved in all of that.
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C
Yeah, exactly. I mean, I think this is one of the most striking men I encounter in the book that I've written, which. The book I've written is a history of France in 21 women. So I'm looking at women over the centuries in France. And actually, although Christine is one of the earlier women, you know, she's in the 14th century, and so she's very much in the medieval period. Her father is perhaps one of the most interesting men we encounter in terms of pushing forward women's rights and helping to advance his daughter's career and education. Because, yes, he clearly educates her. He takes the time to educate her. And Christine is not only literate, but she's a gifted writer, as will emerge later. She does write autobiographically in her works. I mean, she doesn't write a specific autobiography, but she references her life and her childhood and her experiences repeatedly in her written work. And she does reference her father and she talks about how he educated her and how he was one of the most leading scholars in Europe and how she felt lucky to be gathering crumbs from the table of his career and his ideas. So she really is exposed young. She is given access to this library. I'm not sure exactly how that works. I can't imagine. I don't think many young women would give them this level of access. But for some reason, Christine is perhaps the Valois court regard it as an eccentricity or a foible of one of their most brilliant thinkers, but she is given access and she grows up with access to these libraries and these texts, perhaps being brought by her father, being shown this sort of thing. So she has a really rare access to education for a woman in the 14th century.
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D
I wonder if the French court are thinking, oh, it must be a weird Italian thing, we'll just let them get
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C
on with it, something like that. Maybe just. I mean, even today, academics do weird things, don't they? And you don't really. You just think it's better to let it go. So.
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D
And it's interesting that you mentioned later on, Christine will write about her childhood and will reflect that this is a thing that had a huge impact on her. She doesn't hide behind the fact that she was helped on her way by these things. She doesn't try to claim that she's emerged exploded onto the scene from nowhere. She is very clear that she was kind of trained and educated by her father to end up where she did, and that being around those. Those great minds that are beginning to congregate in Paris had a huge impact on her as a child, for sure.
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C
But I would also say, I mean, and this is where it's always difficult dealing with medieval material because this is a point where fiction, nonfiction haven't really emerged as separate genres. And literature and history, again, really haven't solidified into distinctly separate genres. I mean, to what extent they have still, I mean, it's up for debate. But then they really hadn't. And it was definitely a literary convention for the, the author to be humble. So it is possible that Christine was more self motivated than we think because it was very much a literary convention for the author to be like, ah, I am unworthy of the words I write. I owe a great debt to such and such. My work would not be possible without the, you know, without the patronage of X and Y. But I do think in this case it's believable because otherwise it really, I think it really would have been impossible for her to have access to the education that she had. But at the same time, it's important to remember that for all she had this rarefied education, she was still very much a medieval woman. And that meant an arranged marriage in her mid teens. I mean, she was married off at 15, which still, I mean, think about disruptive to education. Like it's totally disruptive to education. But this was how things were. And although she had access to learning, she couldn't have a different path. There was no option really for her to remain single. I mean, unless she chose a convent, which we'll see she really isn't interested in for the most part of her life. So yeah, she was, she was still married off at 15 to a suitable man. But she was lucky in some ways because the man she was married to, it's likely they actually knew each other before they were married. And he wasn't that much older than her. I think he was probably 10 years older. So I mean, that still is a bit shocking by today's standards. You think of someone 25 marrying someone 15, but it's really not the worst we see in the Middle Ages. She's not marrying someone in their 40s or, you know, she's still marrying a young man and they really seem to have a love match and a love connection so that it's a successful marriage, except for the fact that she is unfortunately widowed 10 years later with three children. But that opens the doors to other avenues for her and maybe had her husband survived, although it seems he also encouraged her love of writing and reading, it's perhaps less likely had he survived that she would have gone on to have the literary career that she had because it was necessity that forced her hand.
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D
Yeah, yeah. And there's sort of a series of deaths, really, that then begin to change and form Christine's life. And the first one of those is Charles V, you know, the king who has fostered this environment in Paris and has brought her father over. He dies in 1380, is succeeded by Charles VI, who turns out to be a very different king. I mean, does that have an impact on Christine's father and on her role in Paris and on her view of Paris?
- [17:52]
C
Absolutely. Charles V is really the one who's investing in cultural life and intellectual life in Paris, and he has a vision. That's why he's Charles Lesage, Charles the Wise in history. But his son, who inherits, just doesn't have the same interests. Firstly, he is preoccupied with the Hundred Years War, which is intensifying. This is. This is true. He's got his mind on other things, but he's just not interested in the intellectual life in the same way. And we see this with the Bibliotheque Nationale, all the manuscripts and the careful collecting of her father. He just completely neglects it and things begin to go missing. And we actually see a disintegration of this library that he's put together. And then he's also, in addition to the other pressures on him, this. We need to remember that the successor of Charles the Wise is Charles the Mad. Charles Le Fou, Charles the Mad of France, who is famously very mentally unstable. We don't know exactly what mental illness, what diagnosis he might have had, but, you know, some of the more surprising symptoms of this are at points. He genuinely believes he's going to be made of glass and could shatter at any moment. So he has special padding sewn into his clothes and rods, like steel rods fitted or maybe iron, given the time. I'm not sure about my history of metals, but metal rods sewn into his clothing to add extra protection, prevent him from breaking. So he just isn't the same thinker, the same intellectual that his father was. And he doesn't invest in the intellectual life of the court anymore, which means her father's income plummets because he no longer has the same level of royal patronage. And it also means that Christine's position is far more precarious.
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D
Yeah. And kind of, you know, within a decade of Charles dying, we see both Tommaso dying, first of all, and then we see her, her husband Etienne, also dying. What. What impact do those deaths have on Christine? Because that's the two men on whom she has become reliant. This leaves her very much alone in the world. What impact does that change in her life have on her?
- [19:52]
C
Hugely. I mean, she has three children when. When Etienne dies. And it's actually possible that Etienne's. I mean, that it was the transition from Charles the Wise to Charles the Fou that made her have to make a marriage because she, as I say, her father's financial situation decreased rapidly, but she suddenly left a widow without her husband providing for her three children. And her father does die as well, very shortly afterwards. So all of a sudden, she has no male protector at the Valois court, and her brothers have by this point, returned to Italy. So she's left in France with an aging mother who's dying, dependent on her as well, and three children to feed. And she doesn't want to marry again quickly. This is usually what would happen at this stage. A woman with children and nunnery isn't really open to her anymore as an option. She has three children that she has to care for, and she doesn't want to rush into a new marriage because she was lucky in her first marriage, I think, even though she was very young. And there's no guarantee that she'll have that experience again, because marriage in the Middle Ages is a pretty short end of the stick for women. I mean, it's. I mean, it's a. It's. It's really a lucky dip in terms of whether you get a good husband or a bad one. And you have no legal rights within marriage. The idea of rape between a married couple, I mean, that wasn't even made illegal until the 20th century in Europe. It was certainly. There was no such thing as marital rape in the Middle Ages. And on top of that, women really did become sort of property of their husbands to a large degree. And it was totally down to the discretion of the husband, whether or not he was a tyrant or a supporter of his wife. So she. Even if she met someone nice, there was no, you know, marrying was going to be giving up a lot of her autonomy and putting her fate really in the hands of someone else. And that's not something she wants, especially with three children to look after. So this is what pushes her to writing, actually. She has to suddenly make a living for herself. And she is the first woman that we have on record who supports herself as a writer. So this launches her literary career and she begins to write and search for patrons and emerges as one of the great writers of the French court during this period.
- [21:53]
D
Yeah, and, yeah, this is why people should know, Christine, isn't it? This is a woman who takes all of those problems and turns them into a positive, takes all of those gifts that she's been given and creates a career for herself as the first female making a living from her pen. And she does it in really striking ways as well, which I want to get onto in a little bit. But I wonder if you could just talk to us a little bit about how does a woman in Paris in the 14th century go about getting into the writing and publishing industry? Nobody else is doing it. How does she make this happen?
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C
It is a little bit of a mystery, I have to say, but I think the point is that she has connections to the copyists, to the bookmakers, she has connections to the intellectuals at the court. So this is her start. And she won't be accepted as a writer straight away. So she starts her career as a copyist, so copying other manuscripts. And I think that there is evidence of women working in these roles already, because, you know, throughout Europe we do have nuns and convents copying and writing manuscripts. This is not unheard of, women having these roles, but it's usually within religious orders. So that barrier also is already a little bit porous. There are ways through for women into the this world. And we also have evidence, I mean, later in her work, Christine will write about collaborating with other female bookmakers, people who contribute to the book manufacturing process, such as the illuminator, the artist, a woman we know as Anastasia. So we know that women are working in these workshops. And I think she just offers her services. I think she calls up her contacts, not on the phone, but by letter and by dropping in, of course. And she says, look, I'm in this position, I've got a talent, I'm willing to work. Give me a shot. And I think they begin to first with copying, and then little by little, her confidence builds and she begins to slip in original works, which gradually attract some praise and attract notice, and then she can begin to attract her own patrons. But she starts softly, softly as a copyist, before aspiring to writing original works.
- [23:58]
D
And I think, again, that's a really interesting approach, isn't it? Because she's not expecting to go in at the top. She's accepting that she's going to have to start at the bottom, put in the hard graft to learn the trade. And she's learning the writing trade, the copying trade, the publishing trade. She's learning how all of those things work, which are all things that are going to benefit her later. So it's striking that she's willing to do that she doesn't aim to go in straight to the top as a bestselling author in Paris, but also that the environment exists in which she is allowed to do that. You know, men aren't laughing her out of the room when she's wanting to do these things.
- [24:32]
C
We don't know, but that's the thing, we don't know if they are laughing or out of the room. What I would say is that it's a small world, bookmaking manuscript making in Paris. It's a small world, it's a small community. And she would have gone in with a certain level of respect as the daughter of Tommaso di Pisano and being a court lady. Being a court lady will make all the difference and she will be connected. So I think that's. That she has her foot in the door in that sense, and then I think her work has to speak to herself. But truthfully, we don't know how many people she approached for this work and how many times she was turned down before she was given the opportunity. But I think given her high status and the fact that I think she really was talented, she wouldn't have been given these positions if it didn't make financial sense for those commissioning her. So I think she went in with connections, the right level of polish and real talent and persuaded people to give her this chance. And somehow she made it her own. And what's really remarkable is that she managed to retain sort of court status while sort of doing semi menial work as a copyist. But she did, she managed to balance the two.
- [25:40]
D
And I wonder, you know, she seems to me, and I don't know if you think this is fair, but she seems quite good at playing the game of patronage of. And presumably that's her court connection. She understands how that machinery works and how you have to get access to the right people who are willing to give you money for an enterprise like this to actually get off the ground. So is she pulling on all of those things that she learned? Is she good at playing that game of getting patronage which launches her business?
- [26:07]
C
Yeah, I mean, I think she's quite smart in that her main patrons at the beginning are women. And I think that's the card she can play. I think she wouldn't initially have attracted patronage from great male patrons. So she writes for Queen Isabeau, the wife of Charles vi, and then also for Queen Blanche of Castile, who become her main patrons. And she dedicates a lot of her work to them. And I think it's meaningful for them to have works dedicated to them by a female writer. And as we'll see when we get into a bigger discussion of her work, I mean, she writes a lot in defense of women. I mean, the female sex is often admonished in literature of the time. I mean, and this is biblical precedent. I mean, the virgin whore dichotomy is biblical. And we see this in many of the works emerging during the medieval period. Even original works that seem a little bit secular in tone, they've got like deep, they're deeply rooted in religion and religious stereotypes of women. And also some of them are highly critical, which is insulting to the Queen as well. I mean, even though the Queen is very much a part of this system and is very much, okay, she's in a top position, but it's still a system of oppression. So I think the fact that she wrote books that defended the female sex and dedicated them to the queens was a smart move and secured patronage for her. But she did have, and then later she did have important male patrons as well. But her first serious patrons were Queen Isabeau and Blanche of Castile.
- [27:36]
D
And the other thing that she seems to do, which feels like a really smart business decision, again, a little bit of a no brainer maybe, is that she writes predominantly in French rather than Latin. And presumably that again, is a business move to open up her audience.
- [27:52]
C
Yeah, of course. I mean, I think it's, again, it's controversial, but it's happening in Italy as well. So we, you know, with, with the Renaissance and with humanism, we have a sort of a marked switch to writing in the vernacular. So we have this with Italian poets. And then I think Christina's following in their footsteps and is saying that she wants to write things which have a wider appeal. And also I think it is a way of stepping a little bit away from religious tradition as well, to write in the vernacular rather than Latin.
- [28:19]
D
And one of her first kind of big moves, I guess, is to publish something that is in opposition to Le Roman de la Rose, one of the big blockbuster hits of the time. Everybody loves this romance. It's, it's really widespread. And Christine kind of writes this big objection to it. So I wonder if, to start off with, can you tell us a little bit about what Le Roman de la Rose is, why it's so important? And then also why does Christine target it? Why does she object to it?
- [28:48]
C
Yeah, of course. So the Roman de Rose was one of the best known and widely circulated texts in 14th century France. And it's a poem begun by someone called Guillaume Dolores and extensively expanded by a guy called Jean de Montreal. And it's an allegorical dream vision, but it presents women in a really, really misogynistic light and chiefly, as I've mentioned, as seductresses and schemers. And it had a huge reach. So There were over 100 copies in circulation, which doesn't sound like a lot now, but in the time before, like large scale printing, when manuscripts were made by hand, this is huge, this is a huge circulation. And so this sort of slander of women is sort of the most talked about manuscript of the time. And Christine takes it upon herself to sort of set the record straight. And in 1402 she writes Le Dit de la Rose, the Tale of the Rose, which is this sort of acid tongued rebuttal to what's been said about women in the Roman de la Rose. And Simone de Beauvoir writes that this is the first time a woman takes up a pen to defend her gender, to defend womankind. And then in response to Christine's work, La Dit de la Rose, we have another member of the French court, a court secretary called Jean de Montreuil publishing something a Praise of the Roma de la Rose, Le Roman de la Rose, and then subsequently Jean de Montreuil and Christine de Pizan become locked in this sort of heated literary, intellectual debate about essentially the role of women and the quality of the original Raymond de la Rose. And this results in Christine publishing La Carrelle du Roman de la Rose, which is the Quarrel of the Romance of the Rose. And this is this bold, open dispute with a male scholar, which is really sort of unheard of at this time. The idea of a woman entering into an intellectual debate with a male scholar of the court and doing so in a very public way, because she publishes it and everyone can read it. More than this, given that she had a readership sort of large enough to ensure the circulation of this text, it demonstrates that people actually wanted to, to know what she thought and that her opinion mattered. And that's sort of, that really is, that's, that's trailblazing for sort of writing an intellectual life at the time.
- [31:13]
A
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- [32:15]
B
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- [33:06]
D
Yeah, and again, just such a striking moment that is easy to gloss over. This idea that you've got this woman who is entering the world of publishing and writing, who is trying to make a living from her own pen, which no one has done before, but is also picking very public fights with male intellectuals and perhaps to the surprise of some men at the time, holding her own. But that she is able and willing to do this is also pioneering at the time. It's easy for us to. I guess it's just easy for us to think this had always happened or that it suddenly happened out of nowhere. But you have to have that first person who does it, and Christine is that first woman who takes that step to say, hang on, you can't just keep writing this misogynistic nonsense about women all of the time because it's not true. And here is a rebuttal and she doesn't shy away. Then when they come back at her, she's willing to stand her ground and fight for what she believes in. It's just such a striking moment that is easy to gloss over.
- [34:04]
C
No, she's really a remarkable person and it's hard to imagine how she was actually able to do this and the framework that allowed her to. I think it was, you know, having the patronage of the Queen The Queen clearly liked her. And Queen Isabeau had power because for obvious reasons, given, like, given the challenges of her husband, et cetera, and she had influence. And I think also it was a sense of being in the right place at the right time, but also being fiercely intelligent and unafraid. I mean, and it was also that she really, she was a single woman, which was unusual, which perhaps gave her more leeway, because as a widow, she had far more rights than she would have ever had as a wife or as a daughter. So she was sort of in control of her own destiny at this time. And I think she sort of. She probably leaned into the idea, a proto idea that, you know, all press is good press. And what she really wanted was to get her name out there and attract patronage. And this really did that. You know, this preceded her big commissions by the Queen. So she does capitalize on the moment and the sense that actually, at this point, people, for whatever reason, are ready to listen to her and she doesn't shy away from it.
- [35:14]
D
Perhaps Christine's most famous piece of work is the Book of the City of Ladies. So I wonder if you could just tell us a little bit about when that arrives and kind of what is the book?
- [35:24]
C
Yeah, so this is one of her most important books. And I think if you go into a bookstore in England and if they have one book to do with Christine de Pizan, it will probably be the Book of the City of Ladies. It's an allegorical text in which she creates this metaphorical city filled with women, and she's guided through it by three female figures. Lady Reason, Lady Rectitude and Lady Justice. And Christine places herself at the center of the narrative, studying the writings of the 13th century cleric Matthiolus, who blamed women for men's unhappiness. And as she's sort of wrestling with this text and getting more and more hot under the collar reading about all this rubbish written about women, Reason, rectitude and justice all appear to her. And they instruct her to challenge misogyny, correct these awful narratives around women and. And build this symbolic city where virtuous women can live, underpinned by wisdom. And the work sort of takes us on a tour of the great women of mythology and history. So Christine, traveling through this world, guided by these three female figures, she meets Sappho, she meets Dido, Queen of Carthage, she meets St. Catherine of Alexandria, these famous, brilliant women of history. She also meets Lucretia, she meets the Amazons, she meets Queen Blanche of Castile, and she gives these Women voices arguing for their intellectual and moral equality with men, while also advocating for women's education and celebrating the contributions these women have made to society and history and the world that she inhabits. So through this work, Christine offers glimpses into the lives of mythological and historical women and biblical women. And for me, it's very interesting to see how these. These historic and mythological figures are perceived in the Middle Ages. So she gives us. She tells. It's a great work of storytelling because all of the women she chooses have great stories associated with them. But it also shows us how these stories are being told in the Middle Ages and which women are seen as heroines and which aren't, you know, noticeably. We don't really have Madea sort of thing being held up as a heroine because that's. That's not the case even then. So it's interesting to see who is palatable to medieval readers. And she also, in addition to the storytelling, she sort of gives this great example of defending the female sex and of defending the reputations and celebrating the achievements of women.
- [37:48]
D
Yeah. And the book sort of details the physical building of the city. And to what extent is Christine, in this, taking on the role of a man and saying, you know, there's nothing that a man can do that a woman can't? Because you would traditionally, again, you would associate that idea of being an architect and a builder with being solely male professionals. But she puts herself at the center of the book as the woman who is designing and building this city.
- [38:12]
C
Yeah. Who's sort of raising it up with her mind. And I think that's the whole thing. I think this is both. This. I mean, it really is. It's deeply allegorical, deeply metaphorical, because she's doing that just in the act of doing the writing, isn't she? So she's already. She's this. It's this sense that. It's a sense both in the physical acts of writing and in the meat in the substance of the text. She's putting herself in a traditionally male role, and she's putting herself being guided by women and as presenting herself as the narrator and the viewpoint of which we're going through the city. Again, she's taking on a traditionally male role. So she's inverting expectations on every level and really keeping women center stage in every aspect of this document.
- [38:54]
D
And the book is very clearly a challenge to. To men, to the misogyny of the world in which she lives and demonstrates that women can build a world and exist in that world. So there is a Challenge to the men around her. Is there an extent to which the book is also a challenge to women to say, look, we have all of these precedents, we have all of these incredible women around. We could build something. But if I build the city, I need women to come to it?
- [39:19]
C
I think yes and no. I mean, I think the truth is that very few women are literate at this time in the same way that Christine is.
- [39:26]
F
So.
- [39:26]
C
So I don't think she's thinking of sort of mass reach to sort of women across. Across the country in that sense, But I think yes, to her female readership, which certainly does exist, namely in the forms of the queens and ladies of the court. This is kind of a rallying cry of, look what women can do. Like, don't be afraid to sort of step into your power and hold your ground? I think she is definitely saying this, and she's very much described. She is. She is. She's a proto feminist because she's really arguing for male, female equality. But at the same time, she's still bringing some sort of, you know, sort of quasi misogynistic values to her work because she's quite. She's very critical of fallen women still sort of thing. So she doesn't sort of make excuses for women, sort of who are at the bottom of the social hierarchy, women who engage in sex work, that sort of thing. So it's not like a completely feminist text in the modern way, but for the time, it's highly progressive. And yes, I think it is. It is designed to showcase the talents and abilities of women and to call on women to not be. Let themselves be passed over and to sort of stand strong and reject these criticisms and these stereotypes about their gender.
- [40:33]
D
What kind of contemporary impact does this have? So we've seen her work around the Roman de la Rose causing a stir and causing people to counter her argument and engage with her intellectually. Do we know what impact the City of Ladies has as well?
- [40:48]
C
Not in the same way as the Corel de la Roman de la Rose. Not in the same way as her work around this big debate. It doesn't provoke a huge intellectual debate in the same way. I think its impact is more in cementing her as a key figure of the literary establishment and as a trailblazing writer. Because these books are popular, there are multiple copies of them, which is significant. So there are some in France, there are some in England, and I think the fact it cements her status and reputation as a scholar and as a writer more than ruffling feathers and I think the works sort of stand alone. They're not directly criticizing another scholar, so it doesn't invite heat in the same way. And I think they're so well crafted, so beautifully written and so perfectly in line with the sort of literary convention of the time. And she really nails it, I'd say. And of course, they're dedicated to. To the Queen. So I think with that comes a layer of legitimacy. And also, yeah, their main impact is in demonstrating that Christine de Pizan is a serious, serious scholar and a serious writer, and the work is really celebrated and copied, crucially.
- [41:58]
D
And she goes on to build on that with another book, which is often referred to as the Book of the Three Virtues. And that feels like it's a little bit more along the lines of practical advice for women about how to implement the kind of. The ideas, the changes that Christine is championing. Is that fair?
- [42:14]
C
Yeah, it's more where the City of Ladies is sort of more philosophical in character. This book, which is this manuscript, which is produced at roughly the same time, and it's a hyper busy year for Christine, actually. They both come out, they're Both completed in 1405. This sort of companion work is more practical and instructional in tone, rather than designed to be something really contemplated. In it, Christine addresses the community of women with the stated objective of instructing them on the means of achieving virtue and sort of taking the position that women are capable of taking and of embodying the emotions and the qualities that women are so clearly able of embodying. So humility, diligence, moral rectitude, and also championing female education and sort of encouraging women to become worthy residents of the City of Ladies. The manuscripts are really intended to go hand in hand, one sort of as the sort of aspirational vision piece and the other as sort of the guide to how to get there.
- [43:12]
D
Yeah.
- [43:13]
C
So. And it's dedicated to Princess Margaret of Burgundy, which is, again, a strategic choice, and linking her to one of the most noble families in France and sort of ensuring the prestige and the future circulation of the manuscript. And it's got a striking legacy because it became an important reference point for women in the 15th and 16th centuries. So it's still being consulted long after her death. And that's probably because of the appeal of the instructional tone. I mean, there are a lot of allegorical, dream, vision type poems produced at the time in Latin, Italian, in French and English. But this idea of sort of a handbook on how to be a great woman is quite appealing and it has this lasting, lasting Value and legacy.
- [43:53]
D
Yeah, it's a kind of female version of the mirror for Prince's idea that this is how you go about being the best you can be in the world. And does Christine, does she extend her, her advice and her thoughts on politics to kind of trying to advise men as well? Does she restrict herself to talking to women or does she ever try to engage with men and tell them how they should do their jobs better as well?
- [44:15]
C
Yeah, I mean, she knows her audience. So I think. And it's an interesting, I mean it's an interesting trajectory. I mean, I think women. And so still today, actually, female authors can often sort of find their way in writing about women because even today in publishing, I think that women, I mean, it's certainly what I've done. Actually women are more likely to get publishing contracts for writing about women because, okay, this is a subject that women are better placed to write about. So I think she sort of savvily assessed that at the time, but then also knew that most of her markets, as it were, would be men because very fewer women are in a position to be patrons of the arts than men and fewer women are educated to read than men. So she does expand to writing for both audiences. She begins to have male patrons as well. And so she does write several texts that are directed more to a male audience. And a great example of this is the Book of the Deeds of Arms and of Chivalry, which is sort of a comprehensive treatise on military strategy and the ethics of chivalry, which is, it gives us like, it's a great example of sort of the breadth of her knowledge and her work. But this text is really, is really aimed at male readers in a male dominated court.
- [45:42]
B
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- [46:34]
D
Yeah, and again, really striking to find a woman offering military advice to men during an ongoing war with England at this time. It's something that you would Imagine the medieval world would really, really struggle with. But there is Christine doing it.
- [46:48]
C
Yeah. And I think it's because she's established this reputation for herself as a brilliant writer and a thinker. And I think the work, I mean, these works has probably taken more as the point of view. They're written from a person of the court and a high ranking intellectual at the court and people somehow willing to overlook the fact that she's a woman. But, you know, we don't know how many men seriously took her advice. But yes, she certainly, she had a patron for this work and it was produced and copied, so it certainly had some reach.
- [47:20]
D
And then kind of in the 1410s, in a moment which coincides with during the Hundred Years War, the kind of English occupation of Paris and the fresh assaults coming from Henry V in England, Christine seems to kind of disappear from view. We don't see any more work from her for a while. Do we know what happens to her during this period?
- [47:37]
C
Yes and no. She does go quiet for a while, although she will create another great work which we should definitely discuss shortly before the end of her life. But she's forced to flee Paris during the Burgundian siege. So although she's had Burgundian patrons, although this is the nature of the Hundred Years War, peace and peace can exist. And during peaceful periods in the war, Christine accepts the patronage of English aristocrats. Her son actually goes into the household of the Earl of Salisbury, who is one of her key patrons at one point during one of the periods of peace. And likewise, one of her important books is dedicated to a lady from the House of Burgundy. But yes, then when in the 1410s, Paris is besieged by Burgundian forces, she has to flee. And it's at this point that she withdraws to a monastery, to a nunnery rather, and spends the rest of her life there, outside Paris, which has really become her home. But still, she still obviously has access to materials because then at the end of her life she will pen the ditty of Joan of Arc, which is, I think my favorite of her manuscripts, of my favourite of her works, because, I mean, in the book that I wrote, Joan of Arc is the figure that I write about after Christine de Pizan. So it's this perfect bridge and I think the fact that Christine writes about her, it emphasizes the impacts of Joan of Arc on women and thinkers at the time. What the symbolic impact of this peasant girl who rose from complete obscurity to being at the right hand of the king is incredibly interesting and also that Christine chooses to write about her is very interesting. She writes about her in a very moving way. And it also gives us a glimpse of. Into sort of Christine's fatigue with the Hundred Years War that has been the consistent backdrop to her life and how she sort of sees Joan as maybe this figure who will deliver France. And then. Well, and then, for better or worse, Christine dies before Joan's downfall. So she's alive when Joan's career is very interesting. It's sort of a tragic Arc, you know, rising to these lofty peaks of, you know, helping to crown the dauphin rounds and lifting the siege of Orleans. And then she has a series of defeats and of failures which sort of take the shine off her halo. And Christine sort of lives to see those, but she dies with hope because Joan is not yet captured. Joan has obviously not yet been executed. So the work composed by Christine about Joan of Arc, it's incredibly hopeful in tone. It's incredibly optimistic. And so it's sort of. It's a shame because we know what happened next, but it's amazing to read it with that tone and those. Those nuances.
- [50:13]
D
Yeah. And it feels like such a moment for Christine when she blazes back out of obscurity and begins writing again, because there is this moment where, almost like the France that she's envisaged is being bought into being by Joan of Arc. You've suddenly got this woman who is, for all intents and purposes, leading the nation and showing them how it should. And it's almost like that's everything that Christine has been writing about for the previous 20 years or so is suddenly embodied in Joan of Arc. And you can almost imagine her being, you know, roused from her chair in the nunnery and thinking, I've got to write again because this is exactly what I wanted to happen. And now it's coming true.
- [50:53]
C
Yeah, I mean, you've said it way better than I did, Matt, but that's a fantastic view of it, because that's exactly. I mean, why has she stopped writing? I mean, she's probably depressed. Like, the world that her father came to Paris to see built has been unraveling for most of Christine's adult life. So it's sort of the promise of her childhood has sort of not been delivered upon because Charles V's work, making Paris this luminary center, has been sort of dismantled and degraded by the reign of Charles the Mad. And. Yeah. And Christine spent her whole life writing about what women can do and what women can be. And here you have Joan embodying it and taking it a step further. I mean, she's a woman who is saintly. She literally becomes a saint, the patron saint of France, but also powerful and motivational. And she sort of shakes the dauphin to action. You know, she shakes Charles the Mad into being crowned, into becoming the king of France, and sort of sees you unifying this country. So that's exactly it. And after these sort of dark years of having to flee Paris, it's the sense that they're on the road to recovery and that maybe the vision will come true after all. And you think about the City of Ladies, while Joan of Arc is the greatest resident, and if Christine were writing 100 years later, I think Joan would have been the queen of the City of Ladies. And it's sort of exemplified in exactly this poem she writes. The sun began to shine again in 1429 because it is the sense of the light emerging after these sort of years of disappointment and darkness. And, yeah, it's like that sense that she's suddenly galvanized to pick up her pen again. And it's almost like Joan has inspired her to return to her mission and to return to her vision. She creates this one last work which she managed to complete before she dies around 1430. And then, sadly, Joan is burned two years later. But at least Christine wasn't there to see yet another miserable defeat and the destruction of this woman who carried all this hope.
- [52:53]
D
Yeah. Yeah. I mean, the idea that the sun began to shine again in 14:29 feels like Christine is explicitly talking about. For France and everything else, but maybe also personally for her. Like you say, she's been in this kind of darkness for so long, and suddenly Joan of Arc has, I'm gonna say, turned on a light, but obviously not, you know, lit a lamp in her personal life.
- [53:11]
C
Yeah. France is her country. I mean, it's. You know, I don't often relate histories to the present, and I've got this sort of dual focus in my work between, frankly, France and the Middle East. And I spent a lot of years living in Lebanon. And, you know, the people. Lebanon's been in a state of war and being bombed and, you know, for decades. The civil war and then various, you know, obviously periods of peace, but it's never really ended. And I think, you know, there is this great weariness. And at some point, people do begin. The weariness overtakes them. And I. You get this sense of Christine as well. It's. And Christina's fighting on multiple fronts. You know, she's fighting for her place as A female writer. And for some reason, when she was writing La Dit Delarose, people were listening to her. For some reason, when she was writing the Book of the City of Ladies, people were listening to her. But, you know, her life was complicated. Securing patronage was complicated. She had Burgundian patronage, English patronage, French patronage, and all these forces are at war with each other. So balancing all of that is huge. Also, asserting herself as a female intellectual writer is a constant struggle. And then, of course, you have the struggle of being in a country that is constantly at war and having to flee the city she built her family, her life and her career in and retreat to a monastery, which is something she never wanted. So I think there is a real sense of the clouds are hanging low, not only over France as a whole, but also over Christine personally. And Joan arrives as this figure of hope and so really inspires her to write again.
- [54:36]
D
Yeah. Is it stretching it too far? Because we're talking about Christine and how impressive she is and how much of a trailblazer that she is. Is it stretching it too far to think that she, to some extent, helped to set the scene for Joan because she's trying to change the way that people think about women and their role, And Joan comes along into a court full of men who must have been aware of Christine's work. And is it stretching it too far to think that maybe there's something going on in the background there where they're thinking, oh, you know, we've got this idea that women might be able to do this kind of thing. Maybe we should give Joan a chance. So is it too much to say that Christina's perhaps laid a little bit of the groundwork or the foundation for Joan?
- [55:15]
C
I mean, that's not a stretch, because that's quite broad. That's quite low key as a statement. That's okay. I think that the idea. The idea that the men were reading and listening to Christine's. I think we can't necessarily take that for granted. That, like I said, I think maybe, you know, Charles Vi, I'm not sure how much time he had for these things, but his wife certainly did. And maybe his wife was talking to him about this and showing him these texts, and he would certainly have looked at them. But whether or not it made a huge impact on what he thought women could do, I'm not sure, because Joan went way further than Christine ever thought a woman would go in her writing. You know, Christine is never saying that. I mean, aside from, like, the brush with the Amazons and talking about female queenship. She's not talk. I mean, what Joan did was extraordinary. This is a teenage girl from the countryside who rides into battle leading troops and gets wounded and sort of puts fat and sand on her wounds and gets up and keeps fighting. I mean, it's really remarkable. And she's sort of inspired by heavenly vision. So I think Joan goes way further than Christine was even suggesting women should go in her work. And so I'm not sure I would say that there's a direct impact between Christine's writing and the space coming for Joan. Because I think Joan and her visions would have succeeded even without Christine's work in that sense. I think France needed a hero, a heroine even. There were these prophecies about a virgin coming to save France. And I think she came with a dark time and she spoke persuasively. I mean, you look at Joan's trial records, the way she speaks is persuasive. It's like she's a shockingly competent and compelling speaker. But yet at the same time, we have had these books by women coming before Joan's thing. And I think it's sort of more soft power than direct influence. But yeah, I don't think it's a stretch to say that Christine slightly cleared the path a little. But I wouldn't overstate it because I think Joan's remarkable quite qualities would have spoken even without Christine's earlier works on women. Yeah. And also I think the thing is, Christine's works, while they found an audience at the time, we can't overstate. You know, they did sort of fall out of fashion for a while. It's not like Christine doing this suddenly meant there were loads of female writers and loads of female leaders. It's not true. Christine remained unique for a long time. There weren't. It wasn't that Christine doings broke down the barriers and loads more women started receiving education and writing. This didn't happen. So I think she had this sort of. She burned her work had influenced an audience for this short while. But then I think that did retreat. And I think as we've talked about, there was this period where she was writing less when she's in exile in the abbey. And I think her influence probably did diminish in that time. And that's the 10 years before Joan burst onto the scene. But we shouldn't discount the impact that her work had had on the court in the decades but before.
- [58:17]
D
Yeah, I'm just getting carried away with how cool Christine is there.
- [58:20]
C
Yeah, of course.
- [58:21]
D
And what would you say, does Christine de Pizan have a lasting legacy today? You know, what impact can we see her having in the world in the years and centuries after her death?
- [58:31]
C
Yeah. I mean, she's been really unearthed as this icon, as this iconic proto feminist, which is important. I mean, Simone de Beauvoir's written about her. Yeah. And she was included in the dinner party art instead installation by Judy Chicago, who made sort of 39 place settings at a triangular table for the great women of history. And Christine is at that table. So her. And as. And as an inspiration to female writers, she's huge because she was the first woman to make a living as a writer, which is inspirational to all of us trying to do something similar. And she did a very good job of it. So she does have an important lasting legacy, even though she was forgotten for a while. And. And crucially, I talk about this in my book, because I was writing the book and the chapter on Christine as Paris was hosting the Summer Olympics. And there was this section in the opening ceremony called Soroete Sisterhood, where these golden statues of women were unveiled along the banks of the Seine. And one of them is Christine, who is unmistakable in her strange, medieval, two pointed headdresses. So I think, you know, she really has a lasting legacy as an icon in sort of the journey of women's empowerment over time in Europe and beyond. Yeah. And she'll always be someone. A figure that I'm fascinated by, and I particularly love her because there are many pictures of her writing. So she led by example in terms of building's career and writing about women, and she made sure she was portrayed doing it. So her works are very clearly attributed to her and filled with illustrations, not only of her writing, often with a little dog next to her, which I particularly like, but also giving instructions to her son and giving instructions to men. So she. Both in her words and in the visual representations of her, she presents herself as a powerful figure and that. That has impact and that. That has had legacy, for sure.
- [60:17]
D
Yeah. Wonderful. I mean, everyone should go away and read your book, A History of France in 21 women, but maybe go away and read Christine de Pisan after that as well.
- [60:25]
C
Oh, absolutely. And I think the time is right for a biography, a very good biography of Christine de Pisan, and watch this space because it's very much on my. On my radar.
- [60:35]
D
Oh, exciting. I'll look forward to that. Well, thank you so much for joining us. It's been an absolute pleasure to talk to you again and to. To get to know Christine de Pisan a little bit better.
- [60:43]
C
Thank you so much, Matt. It's been a pleasure.
- [60:48]
D
Well, I hope you enjoyed this episode. I know I did. Christine is such a fascinating woman. There are episodes in our back catalogue all about Joan of Arc too. If you'd like to revisit any of those and find out the story of the Maid of Orleans in more detail. There are new installments of Gone Medieval every Tuesday and Friday. So please come back to join Elena and I for more from the greatest millennium in human history. Don't forget to also subscribe or follow us on Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts and tell all of your friends and family that you've gone medieval. You can sign up to History Hit to access hundreds of hours of original documentaries with a new release every week and all of History Hits podcasts ad free. Head to history hit.com subscribe go on, you know you want it. Anyway, I better let you go. I've been Matt Lewis and we've just Gone medieval with History Hit.
- [62:02]
B
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- [62:22]
F
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