As a self-proclaimed Christian feminist, I had become concerned of the common perception that Christians that become feminists are somehow risking straying away from Christian faith and ethics. As a neonatal nurse, I’ve learned to strongly value beginnings and wondered if learning whatever good or evil feminism was originally intended for could offer more peace about my feminist convictions. While all ideologies are imperfect to some extent, I assumed that feminism deserved the same level of respect that other imperfect ideologies such as capitalism or conservatism have in Christian spaces. I’ve also realized it’s actually pretty hard to be anything other than the conservative woman I was raised to be so if there is something fundamentally flawed about feminism, I could just stop the whole empowered woman thing and go back to the awkward little conservative biblical womanhood dance that I know all too well. And ultimately, it seemed to me that a lot of the discussions about the biblical womanhood question are really just wrestling with this question but avoiding the “f” word like an elephant in the room during controversial conversations with your family on Thanksgiving. If the nature of feminism could just be confronted head on, we could decide whether there is even any point in all these debates trying to bring feminism into the church like a Trojan horse.
I try to be open minded when learning and was really preparing myself for a feminist origin story that surprised me. Maybe feminism was started with a vision in a hat like Mormonism with some woman saying God was telling her to sacrifice the body of her unborn child so she could become a goddess. Or maybe it was started by a movement of witches that were trying to seduce men to leave their marriages or the church to join orgies with immodestly dressed women. Either of those origin stories would fit the popular conservative narrative and validate that feminism is something that will lead only to sexual immorality, the murder of unborn children, the breakdown of the family, and the idolatry of power for women. I could happily move forward with life not trying so hard to develop a sense of confidence I don’t naturally have but feel is necessary in order to take responsibility for my life, faith and perspectives within communities that appreciate strong women.
What I found out is that before there was even first wave feminism leading the way to the women’s rights in the western world, there was something called “proto-feminism.” Now that we’re on the other side of four waves of feminism, this concept of proto-feminism has been differentiated from secular feminism because it doesn’t necessarily fit the secular agenda. Most notably, it is distinctively Christian. Before Simone de Beauvoir, Margaret Sanger, and Mary Wellstonecraft, there were medieval Christian women that even modern secular feminists admit laid the foundation for feminist theories. While there were many medieval Christian women that advocated for women, the most prolific writer who is the most well known among historians and feminists for developing arguments to advocate for women is Christine de Pizan. Her arguments are deeply connected with biblical ideas of the inherent dignity of women and the way in which women pursuing education, leadership, and roles of influence is in line with Christian values.
The Life of Christine de Pizan
Christine de Pizan was born in 1364 and moved to Paris as a child when her father became an advisor in the Courts of the royal family of France. Her father exposed her to learning and reading from an early age which was uncommon for young girls at the time. She married young and lived happily with her husband and three children before her husband died, leaving her widowed at the age of 25. Her father had died a year prior and she was left having to fight for her own inheritance due to legal challenges common to women in such positions in medieval France. In order to support herself and her family until she could earn back her rightful inheritance, she became a court writer. She was one of the first professional writers to build an entire living off of writing and was widely respected in Europe for her opinions on political and cultural issues. The country of France was on the brink of a civil war and Christine was admired by all sides of basically every political divide, receiving at different points of her life offers to join various courts both in France and England.
In addition to being a political writer, Christine de Pizan also initiated a public debate about the portrayal of romance in the popular book The Romance of the Rose. Christine argued that the imagery used in the book glorified rape and contributed to a perception of women that was undignified. The book was highly regarded within French culture and several of the men that she debated who defended its portrayal of women were clerics of the Catholic church. The Catholic church at the time was undergoing the leadership crisis of the papal schism where multiple people were claiming to be the pope. Jean Gerson, the Chancellor of the University of Paris and an influential leader within the church, was attempting to resolve this issue through the controversial idea of forming councils that would have power over popes to reinstate integrity within the broken leadership structure. Jean Gerson also took Christine’s side during the Romance of the Rose debate. Christine de Pizan has been revealed to have had a “very close intellectual relationship” with Gerson and there are many thematic overlaps between her writing and his sermons and writings.
As this was all occurring in just the mid-fourteenth century, the Catholic church’s leadership issues had yet to be exposed by Martin Luther that all of us good Protestants know started the Protestant movement. But from a different perspective of history, the nailing of the 95 theses to Wittenberg church came after Christine de Pizan and Jean Gerson were participating in what some might have considered just a superfluous, unnecessary debate about Christian leaders’ perceptions of women. Jean Gerson (but not Christine de Pizan) has been recognized by some church historians as planting early seeds of the Reformation that eventually made its way to Germany where the Germans did as the Germans do and took ideas and built it out into the regime that we now call Protestantism1.
After engaging in what is known by historians as the querelle des femmes and starting a movement of men advocating for women on the basis of Christian principles, Christine de Pizan wrote several literary pieces that are known as “proto-feminist” writings. She creatively depicted her vision for women in her most well known book The City of Ladies that draws from the imagery of Augustine’s The City of God. Rather than using the polemics of secular feminism, she demonstrates the elusive power of a humble self-awareness. She bridges divides between sacred and secular, telling the stories of biblical women, martyrs, and notable women in church history as well as the stories of pagan women to demonstrate the innate value of all women. She emphasizes the importance of virtue rather than gender as a determinant of human value and guides her readers through a discussion between characters such as Wisdom, Rectitude, and Justice to demonstrate why women are worthy of more than just being second class citizens.
Christine ends up having to leave her position in Paris during the French civil war and the battle between the French and the English. She resided outside of Paris for ten years in an abbey and lived long enough to see Joan of Arc miraculously save France after receiving heavenly visions. Christine presumably stopped writing during her ten year exile from Paris except for a poem she wrote in exuberant joy that after a lifetime of advocating for women, it was a woman that God used to saved their country. While Joan of Arc was not initially received well by many leaders of the Catholic church, Jean Gerson also wrote a tract validating the vision and actions of Joan of Arc even though he was generally quite conservative in his discernment of medieval female visionaries.
The Legacy of Christine de Pizan
Christine de Pizan has been widely admired by many scholars and has an almost cult following among academics (I too am a proud member of the North American Christine de Pizan Society as of this week). Since her impact crosses many disciplines, Christine de Pizan experts have been drawn to various elements of her life and works whether it be her brilliant political ideas, battle strategies, feminist theories, artistic talent, or rhetorical genius. I have had a few email exchanges with Oxford professors that are experts in late medieval French history and the writings of Christine de Pizan which has revealed to me that there is an abundance of scholarship surrounding her works except for her devotional writings which have received less attention.
When I discovered the life and writings of Christine de Pizan and the extensive impact she has been shown to have had on the culture of France, I found many connections with the state of the conversations surrounding women’s issues within American evangelicalism. In addition, I was fascinated by how the work of advocating for women exposed many of the fault lines within the medieval church were prophetic for the work of the Reformation but were also strongly committed to the unity and integrity of the Church. I began to wonder how different the course of church history could have been if there was more power in the voice of women surrounding church politics in ways that historians can only imagine retrospectively. While modern applications of church history related to gender seems either a battle between the male and female gaze to justify various stances on women in leadership, I wonder if learning from female voices in church history could restore the timeless value they offer to the church, challenging our perspectives and prejudices.
Dark fun fact for my fellow Hoosiers: Indiana has an extensive history in developing the eugenics ideas that the Nazis used as a basis for their regime