ABSTRACT
The rough details of Cristine or Christine de Pizan's life are sufficiently well known for a short sketch to suffice here. Christine's mother was a Venetian, and it is in Venice that her parents were living at the time of her own birth in 1364. When Christine was 15, an age where this was normal for girls at the time, she was married to a young Picard gentleman, Etienne de Castel. Christine's life spanned an important part of the Hundred Years' War. Consequently, Christine saw war and peace above all as a function of statecraft, that is of poor or good governance, and the virtues and vices of princes. Her fear of popular uprisings, while leading her to pronounce firmly against any democracy or rule of the entire citizenry of a polity in her Book of the Body Politic, did not blind her to the need to address just grievances, and to avoid strife by governing fairly and justly.
