Publication Date
2025
Publication Title
Public Law & Legal Theory
Abstract
Although the announced theme of Book 2, Chapter 36 of the Livre de la cité des dames is “against those men who claim it is not good for women to be educated,” a clear subtheme is filiation, since each of the three learned women on whom the chapter focuses – Hortensia, Novella, and Christine herself – is educated by her learned father. As it happens, the three women also have in common that they used their learning to defend their sex, but, interestingly, the chapter only discusses this “support for the cause of women” with respect to one of them, Hortensia. As to Novella, Christine recounts only the story that became canonical, of her delivering lectures on law as her father’s substitute, hidden behind a curtain lest her beauty distract his students. In Jehan le Fèvre’s Livre de Leesce, however, Novella takes on a more prominent role, “show[ing] publicly in open audience through her great learning that woman is equal to man … argu[ing] her case so well there that no man could refute it.” (Livre De Leesce/Book of Gladness 1130-55). Especially since the Livre De Leesce was the translator’s apologetic postscript to the French translation of the Lamentations of Matheolus, which Christine credits as inspiring her to write the City of Ladies by way of refutation, there is reason to wonder whether Christine knew that Novella, too, was said to have defended women, and if so, why she did not mention this.
This paper will consider what might be at stake for Christine in highlighting her own originality and divine inspiration rather than any possible genealogical predecessors. Finally, it will briefly consider what rhetoric in the forum (as exemplified by Hortensius and his daughter Hortensia) and canon law scholarship in the university (as exemplified by Giovanni d’Andrea and his daughter Novella) contribute to the defense of women, and conclude that, however useful these styles of argument may be, Christine as a writer can build a more secure and lasting foundation for women’s defense than her predecessors who were confined to oral argument.
Number
25-50
Recommended Citation
Case, Mary Anne, "The Reception of Novella, Daughter of the Bolognese Jurist Giovanni d'Andrea, in Christine de Pizan's City of Ladies" (2025). Public Law and Legal Theory Working Papers. 25-50.
https://chicagounbound.uchicago.edu/public_law_and_legal_theory/970
