Christine used allegory, history, and political counsel to defend women's intellectual and moral capacity and to argue for just government during the crises of late medieval France.
Intellectual setting
Widowed with dependents, Christine became a professional writer amid the Hundred Years' War, French court factionalism, and debates over the Romance of the Rose.
Key ideas
City of Ladies
By assembling exemplary women from sacred and secular history, she counters misogynist literary traditions and imagines a symbolic community of women's achievement.
Counsel and political order
Rulers need prudence, justice, and attention to the common good; factional violence and poor counsel endanger the realm.
Legacy
She is a major precursor of European feminist thought and an important witness to women's authorship, vernacular humanism, and medieval political theory.