Page:The Book of the Duke of True Lovers - 1908.djvu/17

Rh of the world's many famous women, and one who, by her life and work, created an ideal for woman-kind—that of sweetness and strength. Born in Venice in 1363, she was, when five years of age, taken by her mother to Paris, to join her father, Thomas de Pisan, who had been summoned thither by the king, Charles V., to serve as his astrologer, in which service he remained until the king's death. The Court of Charles V. was, in spite of the constant warfare that troubled his kingdom, at once most cultured and refined, and it was in such surroundings that Christine was brought up. At the age of fifteen she was married to the king's notary and secretary, Étienne de Castel, a gentleman of Picardy, who, however, died some ten years later, leaving her with three children to provide for. Like many another, she turned to letters as both a material and a mental support. She wrote not only purely lyrical poetry, of extraordinary variety and abundance considering that the subject is almost invariably the joys and sorrows of love, sometimes, as she tells us, expressing her own sentiments, sometimes those of others at whose request she wrote, but she also wrote sacred and scientific poems, and moral and