• 1  A. Blamires, The Case for Women in Medieval Culture, Oxford, Clarendon Press, 1997 and G. K. McLeo (...)
• 2  All quotations from this text, hereafter abbreviated FW, are taken from the following parallel edi (...)

1At the heart of the woman debate is the question of what qualities are inherent to female nature, and whether these attributes are negative or positive.1 The prevalent view from classical antiquity through the Renaissance was that women were weaker than men not only physically but mentally and morally, too. The exception: a group of women known as viragos who could achieve feats worthy of men because they possessed a man-like spirit, despite being born as women. Giovanni Boccaccio praises viragos in De mulieribus claris (c. 1362) for overcoming not only their enemies but the flaws of female nature, and he initiates a pattern of measuring women against the standard set by men even before the catalogue begins when he compliments Andrea Acciaiuoli, Countess of Altavilla, in his dedication by observing that the root of “Andrea” [andres] is the Greek word for “men”. The learned Cornificia, he writes, exceeded the rest of her sex through uncommon talent and hard work [ingenio et vigiliis femineum superasse sexum] (Famous Women, lxxxvi, p. 352-5), and Dido earned a name meaning “man-like” through the bravery and cunning she demonstrated in founding Carthage, leaving behind her identity as Elissa much as she left her homeland of Tyre (FW, xlii, p. 168-9).2 Penthesilea (FW, xxxii, p. 128-31) and Zenobia (FW, c, p. 426-37) overcame the natural weakness of their female bodies to achieve greatness on the battlefield, and as for Artemisia, he reflects:

• 3  M. Franklin, Boccaccio’s Heroines: Power and Virtue in Renaissance Society, Aldershot UK, Ashgate, (...)

2In other words, the best kind of woman is essentially a man. The double standard creates an exasperating challenge if one seeks to prove female worth as Christine de Pizan does in Le Livre de la cité des dames (c. 1405) through the witness of examples. How can one earn respect for the sex if an accomplished woman can be redefined as unwomanly by token of her success? The mismatch of surface and substance provides a rhetorical strategy as well as an ideological dodge. As critics have noted, Boccaccio’s choice of Latin meant that his audience would primarily be composed of men despite ostensibly addressing his remarks to a female readership, and words of praise for an exceptional few women imply a less than flattering image of female nature generally speaking.3  

• 4  G. Angeli, “Encore sur Boccace et Christine de Pizan: Remarques sur le De mulieribus claris et Le (...)

3Critics have examined from a number of different angles the ways in which Christine refashions material from Boccaccio’s collection.4 She does so with tactics reminiscent of his own, citing his authority openly while silently rewriting aspects of his stories that can change the meaning of the narratives profoundly. She does more than catalogue superlative heroines, aiming instead to secure from their examples a strong defence of all women. How she redresses the notion of the man-like woman is important because their stories serve as material for the foundation upon which she builds the City of Ladies. Their stories invite the reader to look more closely at the role of women as partners in the charting of civilization, to the benefit of both sexes. Christine reclaims the Amazons in particular as feminine characters, and she shows throughout the book how women overcome disparate circumstances by using traits that she maintains are natural among women. They achieve feats that would be admirable among men, but they do so with their own strengths: ingenuity, adaptability and a capacity for patience.

• 5  S. M. Cohen, “Aristotle's Metaphysics”, Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Spring 2009 Edition), (...)
• 6  S. P. Marrone, “Medieval philosophy in context”, The Cambridge Companion to Medieval Philosophy, e (...)
• 7  M. D. Jordan, “Aristotelianism, medieval”, Routledge Encyclopedia of Philosophy, ed. E. Craig, htt (...)
• 8  M. H. Green, “‘Traittié tout de mençonges:’ The Secrés des dames, ‘Trotula,’ and Attitudes toward (...)

4The debate about female nature is part of a larger branch of philosophical enquiry concerned with defining what makes something uniquely itself, and not something else, whether it happens to be an animal (e.g. horse), plant (e.g. tomato) or non-living material (e.g. iron). Qualities only possessed by tomatoes, for example, that all tomatoes share, constitute their essence; secondary attributes that distinguish different types of tomatoes from each other are called accidentals.5 As one might expect, the question of human nature was considerably more complex than an analysis of tomato varietals. The Aristotelian foundation for medieval metaphysics generated considerable interest during the twelfth and thirteenth centuries as universities evolved into important intellectual centres and scholars gained access to new translations of Greek and Arabic texts.6 By the fifteenth century, the field had evolved into three main schools of thought under the intellectual leadership of Thomas Aquinas (c. 1224–1274), John Duns Scotus (c. 1265–1308) and William of Ockham (c. 1287–1347), whose philosophies variously emphasize or de-emphasize the notion of essential qualities depending upon the philosopher’s stance on ideal models and their practical expression.7 “Essentialism” is a model for defining being that should theoretically be neutral toward the objects of study, without value judgments, but its application to men and women led to conclusions that women constituted a lower order of being. Even those who accepted that men and women are essentially the same interpreted the discrepancy arising from accidentals to be detrimental in the case of women. At its most extreme, misogynists described the female as being misshapen in the womb, fundamentally different from men created in God’s image, and closer in kind to beasts.8

• 9  B. M. Semple, “The Critique of Knowledge as Power”, Christine de Pizan and the Categories of Diffe (...)
• 10  E. J. Richards, “Rejecting Essentialism and Gendered Writing: The Case of Christine de Pizan”, Gen (...)
• 11  R. Brown-Grant, “Christine de Pizan : Feminist Linguist avant la lettre?”, Christine de Pizan 2000 (...)
• 12  M. Brabant and M. Brint, “Identity and Difference in Christine de Pizan’s Cité des Dames”, Politic (...)
• 13  T. Fenster, “Possible Odds: Christine de Pizan and the Paradoxes of Woman”, Contexts and Continuit (...)
• 14  All Middle French quotations come from the following edition of Le Livre de la cite des dames, her (...)

5One aspect of Christine’s response, according to Benjamin Semple, is to note the limits of philosophy as a discipline of human thought that is constantly tested and subject to revision.9 To join this debate, she rejects the essentialist position that “men were essentially created to understand whereas women were essentially created to procreate”, as Earl Jeffrey Richards notes, claiming a place for women alongside men in the Field of Letters.10 Rosalind Brown-Grant shows how Christine disputes false dichotomies through demonstrations of logic, rhetoric and grammar, augmenting her arguments in the very way that she presents her case.11  It was not an idle exercise in argumentation for its own sake, however, and her goal is to move beyond an antagonistic stalemate. Margaret Brabant and Michael Brint see in Christine’s writing a desire “to sublate the dialectical oppositions of male and female by promoting a universalist ideal”, and suggest that La Cité des dames “offers a rich mosaic of power relations – relations that are based on inclusion rather than exclusion and on equality rather than privilege or violence”.12 Thelma Fenster considers how Christine leverages the “strength in weakness” convention, suggesting that ultimately “in its greater weakness, femina is better suited to represent the evanescence of human existence, the ready mortality of both female and male”.13 Reason identifies the soul as the true essence of all human beings, “laquelle ame Dieu crea et mist aussi bonne, aussi noble en toute pareille en corps femenin comme ou masculin | the whiche soule God made and put as good and as worthy and all even to the body of woman as of man” (I.9, Richards p. 78, cf. Curnow p. 652; Anslay sig. Dd6^v).14 This emphasis upon equality, scholars agree, stands at the heart of Christine’s reply to those who see women as essentially lesser beings.  

• 15  J. Summit pursues the line of reasoning that the men involved in the publication of the Cyte of La (...)
• 16  While the body of Adam has become the “moost noble matere that ever was made” (sig. Dd6^v), its sou (...)

7Anslay’s translation could be read as meaning that Adam’s body remained the most noble ever made, versus the most noble that had been made before Eve.15 The last phrase in the English version does not explicitly reference gender, consistent with the omission of “de l’omme” in London, British Library Royal MS 19.A.xix. Here, the two become one: God made her body from the body that God made, and the equal dignity of their souls is matched by the worthiness of bodies designed to match each other.16 Woman was not an afterthought, according to Reason: both sexes proceed from the same intention, at the same time, existing together in God’s mind even before He shaped Adam.

• 17  Christine de Pizan, Le Livre du corps de policie, ed. A. J. Kennedy, Paris, Honoré Champion, 1998; (...)

8It would be premature to rally the citizens of La Cité des dames with a cry of liberté, egalité et fraternité, however. Sameness is not entirely desirable when applied to the model of the body politic, or the church as body of Christ, where the success of the whole requires contributions from different parts with diverse gifts.17 Christine maintains that while men and women share the same essence, each sex exhibits certain tendencies given to them by Nature, a categorical manner of difference intended to ensure the greater good when they work together. Part of the problem lies in perception of difference, rather than the rejection of it. Reason in I.10 goes through a list of behavioural patterns that misogynists identify as weaknesses, which she redefines in positive terms. If men claim that a woman is similar to a pretty rose with thorns underneath, that is exactly as it should be since the thorns maintain her virtue by pricking her conscience and ensuring she behaves in an honourable manner. If women are prone to weeping, surely this is no fault if their tears move others to compassion: Christ Himself was not ashamed to cry. If women are good company for children, it is because their gentle disposition is well suited to child minding, not because they are simpleminded. The qualities associated with women in La Cité des dames are consistent with a passage in L’Epistre au dieu d’Amours (1399), incorporated by Thomas Hoccleve in L’Epistre de Cupide (1402):

• 20  Fenster, art. cit., p. 363. See also Richards, art. cit, p. 107-8.

9As Fenster remarks, not all of the attributes sit easily with modern sensibilities, but they are held in high regard by Christine.20 The relative softness of the female body corresponds with an inner gentleness that is not man-like, but Christ-like, showing that women bear the image of God before and after His incarnation.

• 21  Fenster, art. cit., p. 362-3; B. M. Semple, “The Critique of Knowledge as Power”, Christine de Piz (...)
• 22  G. McLeod and K. Wilson, “A Clerk in Name Only – A Clerk in All But Name: The Misogamous Tradition (...)
• 23  See R. Brown-Grant, Christine de Pizan and the Moral Defence of Women: Reading Beyond Gender, Camb (...)

10Notable among these attributes is the quality of “simplece” discussed by both Fenster and Semple as a term recovered from the Field of Letters with a positive rather than a negative meaning; it does not imply limited intellectual ability in her writing but purity of intention.21 It could be the remedial virtue for sophistry when it sins by twisting something good into a conduit for causing harm. Writings meant to affirm a commitment to clerical celibacy evolved into a body of misogamous writing that maligned the wives with sharp misogyny, including Matheolus’s Liber Lamentationum, the late thirteenth century treatise that begins the narrator’s dark contemplation.22 Despite her extensive studies, she cannot fathom why so many authors disdain women and concludes that her own “simplece” must be the reason (I.1, Richards p. 44, cf. Curnow p. 619). Her virtuous intention as one with moral authority enhances, not weakens, the respectability of her intellectual credentials, as does her personal experience as one born in a female body.23 All three aspects of her being – intellectual, moral and physical – are aligned to reveal truth that readers have every reason to believe.

• 24  T. Fenster, “Did Christine Have a Sense of Humor? The Evidence of the Epistre au dieu d’Amours”, R (...)

15Identity is something to be discovered rather than assumed based on the statements of others. The narrator makes this mistake when she begins Matheolus’s book “en soubz riant”, anticipating a pleasurable diversion from her serious work because “maintes foys ouy dire avoye qu’entre les aultres livres cellui parloit bien à la reverence des femmes” (I.1, Richards p. 40, cf. Curnow p. 616-7). Fenster catches the author’s wink to the audience, who would know the true nature of the treatise, agreeing with Christine Reno that the initial scenes of La Cité des dames are full of wry humour.24 Anslay attaches a different mood to the moment when she picks up the book, conveying self-confidence instead of misunderstanding on the part of an author; in his version, she is “laughynge” at the foolishness of Matheolus and looking forward to contesting the work of a clerk who does “not speke well of the reverence of women” (Anslay sig. Bb1^r). What ensues is a case of mistaken identity when the fictional Christine fails to recognize Reason, Rectitude and Justice, crossing herself hastily in fear that they might intend to lead her astray, a misunderstanding that leads to more laughter: “Adonc celle, qui premiere des trois estoit, en sousriant, me prist ainsi a arraisonner | And then she whiche was the fyrst of the thre, in laughynge, began thus to reason with me” (I.2, Richards p. 46, cf. Curnow p. 622). Reason seeks to dispel the narrator’s lamentation with a humorous anecdote, which she offers with little preamble. Instead of telling Christine what to think, Reason prods her into figuring it out from the example put before her, just as the reader should make up his or her own mind based on the merits of the arguments that follow.

• 25  M. Quilligan, The Allegory of Female Authority: Christine de Pizan’s Cité des Dames, Ithaca NY, Co (...)
• 26  K. Brownlee, “Le projet ‘autobiographique’ de Christine de Pizan: histoires et fables du moi”, Au (...)

17Anslay’s English translation closely follows the version in BL Royal MS 19.A.xix where the scribe has written “au ressembler” instead of “au resveiller”, an error that brings the disguise forefront of the episode, but the timing is important, too. The fool should come to his senses when he wakes up, just as the fictional Christine should cast off the melancholy that tangled up her thinking in the first chapter. Laughter is the natural antidote for the narrator’s gloom. However, the underlying point is meant in earnest: why would she believe what misogynists say about women, when as a woman she knows the truth? Maureen Quilligan sees the fable as turning the tables on male writers who lack Christine’s authority on gender issues as a woman herself.25 In Kevin Brownlee’s reading, the mini-fabliau undercuts the premise that men are of a higher order than women.26 The companions, and by extension the misogynists they represent, are the ones who look foolish when we see through the ruse. Unlike the companions who sabotage the fool, the Virtues reassure Christine that they have come to help, and that together they have serious work to do.

• 27  Artemisia’s chapter is I.21 in late redactions of the City of Ladies; BL Royal MS 19.A.xix and the (...)

19Military aggressors find themselves blindsided in several stories when they make the mistake of believing that superior force means assured victory. In I.17, Cyrus assembles his army with the intention of adding Scythia to his impressive empire, anticipating little challenge from the remote nation. Thamiris receives advance notice from her spies and makes the tactical decision to leave the border undefended, drawing the invaders into the country’s mountainous terrain before forcing the engagement on terms of her choosing. Cyrus’s army becomes trapped in ravines with no way to advance, and no way to retreat as her concealed forces spring the ambush from the advantage of higher ground. Thamiris uses the land to repel an overland invasion; Artemisia likewise turns back a naval invasion by using the two ports of Halicarnassus to trap the Rhodesian navy.27 Christine writes that officials, acting on her instructions, feign signs of welcome to draw the foreign ships into the main harbour while her own fleet launches unseen from another location, circling around to blockade the entrance of the main harbour, seizing the ships of their enemies who have no way out to open sea: the would-be conquerors are conquered instead. Artemisia goes further, putting her sailors aboard the seized ships and sailing them back to Rhodes, where the false welcome at Halicarnassus undergoes an ironic turn. This time, the Rhodesians extend a genuine welcome to what they recognize by sight as their own ships, discovering too late that Artemisia has fooled them. The cleverness of the ploy claims victory not once but twice, through unexpected means. Sheer bravery goes a long way, too. Rectitude tells Christine how Judith effected a stunning military reversal during a siege of her city even though she was not herself a military commander, and had only one female attendant as back up when she infiltrated the enemy camp (II.31). They see no threat in the women; their beauty disguises the strength of resolve motivating them. Judith patiently orchestrates events so that she has access to Holophernes when he is at his most vulnerable, without guards, asleep and alone in his own bed. Taking out the leader, with her tactical strike, sends the power of his army into disarray. In all three examples, the men gauge strength based on what they see, overlooking weaknesses of their own. The role reversal of powerless and empowered takes antifrasis to a degree that affects entire societies, not just a handful of men in a mill.

• 28  B. A. Hanawalt, The Wealth of Wives: Women, Law, and Economy in Late Medieval London, Oxford, Oxfo (...)

20For women, rhetorical abuse by misogamists such as Matheolus is hard to laugh away when one looks more closely; out of sight in the home, she describes domestic abuse as real and difficult to escape: “Dieux ! quantes dures bateures, sanz cause et sans raison, quantes laidenges, quantes villenies, injures, servitudes et oultrages y sueffrent maintes bonnes preudefemmes [...?] | Ha, God, howe many harde betynges without cause and reason – howe many vylanous wronges and outragyous bondages suffreth many of these good and worshypfull women [..?]” (II.13, Richards p. 254, cf. Curnow p. 818; Anslay sig. C4^v). The topic comes up again when she tells Rectitude how family members might try when they learn that a daughter is the victim of domestic abuse to extricate her from the situation, but historical records confirm that it would have been very difficult to dissolve a marriage during the Middle Ages.28 Christine writes, moreover, that women will many times choose to stay with abusive husbands, “et ce sont choses que on voit tous les jours, mais chascun ne considere pas | And these thynges be sene all daye, but all people consydereth it not” (II.23, BL Royal MS 19.A.xix, fol. 92^r; Anslay sig. E4^v), phrased rather awkwardly by the translator. Christine reworded the sentence slightly in later redactions: “et ce sont choses que chacun jour on voit, mais chacun n’y vise” (II.23, Richards p. 278, cf. Curnow p. 841). She does not spin a happy ending to these anecdotes. Reason belittles the misogynists with her story about the fool in the mill, but she is not dismissing the importance of redressing their wrongs. Christine gives considerable space to narratives in La Cité des dames extolling marriages where the women find a happy ending beside men who wronged them deeply. She affirms a conservative, pre-feminist view that wives should submit to their husbands’ authority. It is important to realize that the author is not, however, saying that one should just look the other way; she asks the reader to look more closely. The depiction of women in the Roman de la Rose is one part of a wider problem that she seeks to redress in La Cité des dames by re-envisioning a positive value for women, as women, in her reshaping of Western ideological tradition.

• 29  V. DiMarco, “The Amazons at the End of the World”, Discovering New Worlds: Essays on Medieval Expl (...)
• 30  M. C. Seymour, “Mandeville, Sir John (supp. fl. c. 1357)”, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography(...)

22In the oldest versions of the myth, the Amazons are not “man-like” women because they are not civilized enough to be part of mankind, lacking necessary characteristics that elevate people above amoral creatures. Justin (d. 165 AD) depicts them as aggressive warmongers who came to power after killing the men in their nation. Clement of Alexandria (d. 215 AD) likens them to beasts with no regard for marriage, seeking out men for sex during a certain season of the year and killing any male offspring they might have. Orosius (fl. 414) repeats this unflattering portrait in historical writings that circulated among medieval readers and survive in more than 200 manuscripts.29 The strong women denature themselves physically to become more man-like in their devotion to warfare. Traditionally, they remove the left breast from noble girls to facilitate holding a shield, and the right in the case of commoners, to give them a clear draw of the bow. For those appalled by their barbarism, the Amazons were fortunately a distant threat in Scythia, far from the familiar world of medieval Europeans. Their land is included among the marvels seen in Mandeville’s Travels (c. 1357), attributed to a fictional English knight; it first appeared in France but was translated into Latin and eight vernacular languages, including English four times over.30 As monstrous as they might seem to be, they stand as sentinels before Alexander’s Gate to keep it secure against the hordes of monsters, protecting all of Europe. They stay right at the outer edge of civilization but display few of the essential characteristics for the definition of a civilized man, who possesses a sense of natural order and moral virtue.

• 31  K. Lochrie, Heterosyncrasies: Female Sexuality When Normal Wasn't, Minneapolis, University of Minn (...)
• 32  Ruth Morse notes that Guido’s “Latin prose repeated and legitimated Benoît’s inventions (and was w (...)
• 33  Christine embraces but does not invent this, as Quilligan implies in “Translating Dismemberment”, (...)

23New additions to the legend over time took a new perspective as they incorporated the Amazons into accounts of the Trojan War. An alliance between the Amazons and the Trojans held tremendous imaginative potential, and it rehabilitated not only their character but also their cultural standing since Europeans traced their heritage to Troy in foundation myths as the origin of Western nobility. The focus in these episodes rests on the Amazons’ man-like aptitude for martial activities, and it is at this point that they become viragos. Dictys’ putative account of the Trojan War from the Greek point of view (fourth century AD) tells how Penthesilea fought on the Trojan side as a mercenary keen to fight; Dares, supposedly telling events from a Trojan perspective (sixth century AD), says instead that romantic feelings motivated her participation after Hector’s death and precipitated her combat with Pyrrhus, inspiring men on the battlefield with her man-like accomplishments.31 The Amazons’ stature rose in the twelfth century with Benoît’s courtly revision of the legend and Guido delle Colonne’s Historia destructionis Troiae (1287), making available a more genteel depiction of the female warriors. Penthesilea joins the Trojan War for the sake of honour and demonstrates feats of arms that would do credit to a knight.32 They can participate in chivalric society as admirable viragos, without shame, but they stand apart from the natural parameters of female behaviour. Addressing a delicate point, Benoît reports that Amazon women raise their male children for a year and then send them to their fathers for a suitable upbringing. The more barbarous account of infanticide continued circulating in other works.33 Boccaccio would have known both the classical and the courtly traditions, and he acknowledges differing opinions about Penthesilea’s involvement in the Trojan War, describing her motive as wishing to have a child by Hector (FW, xxxii, p. 128-31). He reports that Amazons killed their male offspring (FW, xi-xii, p. 52-3), following the classical tradition, as one would expect in the context of his Latin compendia of lives.

• 34  For a discussion of Hippolyta’s traditional relationship with Theseus, see K. Hamaguchi, “Domestic (...)

27The text implies that Queen Orithya might have prevailed against the Greek army, but she decided to withhold her forces pending the release of the ransomed noblewomen. Hercules engages in a negotiation with her ambassadors, making requests respectfully rather than dictating terms. His request for a suit of Amazon armour is interesting for several reasons. Boccaccio relates how Hercules was tasked with retrieving a special belt from the Amazons as one of his labours, which the hero secures from Orithya in exchange for the release of Menalippe; Theseus carries off Hippolyta, and the Amazon queen can do nothing to avenge the loss. Christine alters the quest with a piece of clothing as its goal, into a quest for peace between two formidable empires. Hercules asks for the armour as a sign of respect for their military prowess, a token with added symbolism since the invention of armour is a female accomplishment credited to Minerva, a gift to all knights from a woman whose intellect made possible the protection of many men. It also puts a twist on the romance convention that a lady give a token to the champion who wins her favour. Theseus requests permission to marry Hippolyta from Orithya, via the intermediary of Hercules, and soon the peace between the two empires is sealed with wedding celebrations. The accord stands in marked contrast to the enmity triggered between Greece and Troy by a ruptured marriage: in the one case, hostilities continued for ten years; in the other, peace is ensured in a day. The two nations see eye-to-eye, and on a personal level Theseus sees Hippolyta as a desirable match, not just a war prize.34 Christine reinforces a positive relationship between heroic Amazons and men held in high esteem by the classical tradition, even as they submit to worthy men in a manner that conforms with medieval social conventions.

• 35  See R. L. Krueger, “Uncovering Griselda: Christine de Pizan, ‘une seule chemise’ and the Clerical (...)

29She integrates them with narratives of other women whose strength of spirit manifests itself in societies where men ordinarily control political and military power. Christine’s Fredegunde inspires pity among the people of France for her infant son, their king, rallying them to uphold the integrity of their nation until he grows into strength; she rides amid the French troops to the edge of the enemy camp, concealed by branches and greenery, carrying off a surprise attack that eliminates the threat to their kingdom (I.13, I.23). Lilia earns praise when she halts the retreat of Theodoric by lifting her smock, declaring he has nowhere to flee except to the womb, which shames him so much that he re-engages in the fight and carries the day on the battlefield (I.22). Her gesture is the inverse of Griselda’s request for a simple smock to cover the womb that bore Walter’s children when all else is stripped away in compensation for the virginity she gave her husband, which she could never recover (II.50).35 Hypsicratea shows extreme devotion to her husband Mithridates by accompanying him on all of his expeditions, not as a fierce combatant, but disguised as a solider so that she could serve and comfort him as she would at home (II.14). Berenice, as a mother in profound grief, exacts vengeance upon her brother-in-law for the death of her sons (I.25); Christine alters the story of Argia from Boccaccio’s account by adding an ending worthy of the Amazons, in which she leads a contingent of women to exact retribution for her husband’s death, capturing and killing the inhabitants of a nearby city (II.17). Triaria fights viciously side by side with her husband through a bloody slaughter (II.15), and Antonia devises a strategy to help her husband Belisarius overcome the Vandals, then leads part of his force when they carry it out victoriously (II.29). The Amazons are integrated with women who share similar bravery in times of warfare because they are loyal to men who matter greatly to them.  

• 37  L. Monnas, Merchants, Princes and Painters: Silk Fabrics in Italian and Northern Paintings, 1300-1 (...)

33He wagers 5000 florins that Ambrogiuolo, another man in the group, would not succeed in his boast that he could seduce Bernabo’s wife. This would have been an astonishing amount of money. A dowry among members of the ruling class in mid-fifteenth century Florence would typically have been about 1000 florins.37 Ambrogiuolo quickly discovers from local reports that Zinerva is indeed beyond reproach, yet determined not to lose, he bribes an old woman into asking her to safeguard several chests of valuables in her household for a few days. Zinerva does so without knowing that Ambrogiuolo has hidden himself inside, giving him the opportunity to steal into her bedchamber while she is sleeping, noting the furnishings of the room and the details of her body. He also steals an embroidered purse, and once the old woman reclaims the chests, Ambrogiuolo rides back to the group of merchants with a story of success. He claims that she gave him the purse as a love token, and he accurately describes details of her private chamber to Bernabo. When he mentions a small mole on her left breast, Bernabo believes that Ambrogiuolo did indeed sleep with his wife. He pays the wager and sends word for Zinerva to be put to death before he returns home. Yet she proves that she could indeed serve as well as a man: the merchant virago leaves in masculine clothes with a new identity, and as Sicurano she proves to be a shrewder businessman than her husband had been.

• 38  V. L. Bullough, “Cross Dressing and Gender Role Change in the Middle Ages”, Handbook of Medieval S (...)
• 39  R. M. Dekker and L. C. van de Pol, The Tradition of Female Transvestism in Early Modern Europe, Ne (...)
• 40  O. Blanc, “Vêtement Féminin, Vêtement Masculin à la Fin du Moyen Age: Le Point de Vue Des Moralist (...)
• 41  S.-G. Heller, Fashion in Medieval France, Woodbridge UK, Brewer, 2007, p. 7.
• 42  C. Kovesi, “Women and Sumptuary Law”, Fashion: Critical and Primary Sources, Late Medieval to Rena (...)
• 43  K. Ashley, “Material and Symbolic Gift-Giving: Clothes in English and French Wills”, Medieval Fabr (...)

34V. L. Bullough writes that attempts by women to disguise themselves in male clothing were “tolerated in the medieval period, even encouraged […] because it was assumed such women were striving to become more male-like and therefore better persons”.38 Historical studies show that women with few alternatives might try to pass for a boy as a means of attaining safer, better paying and more virtuous work opportunities than the alternative for women of prostitution.39 Clothing was not however a trivial matter since attire conveyed a great deal of information about status within a community, and sumptuary laws variously attempted to regulate economic consumption, hierarchical privilege and moral standards. Women’s predilection for frippery became a standard jibe in misogynist literature, but fashion was initially a male preoccupation, consistent with their greater access to income; production once carried out at home by women developed into a serious business enterprise among international merchants, with lucrative centres of textile production in Flanders, France and Italy.40 Sarah-Grace Heller argues that medieval regulations for clothing “reveal shifts in fabric prices, income thresholds, and consciousness of the complex social ladder”.41 Fashion was by definition always changing, and regulations against one type of ornament could be cleverly eluded by adopting a different ornament instead.42 Clothes were not lightly discarded, however. The fact that Griselda’s father kept her worn, old clothing is a sign of acceptance and change in life status, but it is also speaks of frugality among people who had few alternative clothes to wear. Whether Zinerva acquired the clothing by charity (in Boccaccio’s version) or as her first earned payment from another woman (in Christine’s version), the willingness of others to give her clothing represents for a reader familiar with the material culture her worthiness in the eyes of the people who help her.43

• 44  This study was supported in part by a summer sabbatical grant from the Baylor University Provost’s (...)

37Christine tells stories that reinforce one another in subtle as well as overt ways to redress the view in Boccaccio’s writing that admirable women achieve success in masculine pursuits because they possess a masculine spirit. She reclaims legendary viragos as being admirable for the intelligence they use in achieving victory against superior force in the case of Thamiris and Artemisia. The Amazons and Zenobia are eventually overcome in military tests of strength, but their honourable conduct carries greater importance as the foundation for their renown. She refashions Boccaccio’s idea of a contemporary virago in a mercantile world by emphasizing how the attributes of a good wife deserve commendation, not condemnation. The reader might hear Reason’s laughter again, considering the similarities between Bernabo and the fool in the mill. He is too quick to believe what a companion tells him is truth, based upon physical signs rather than the inner conviction of what he knows to be true about his wife. Ambrose repeats the story of how Bernabo foolishly put his wife to death, as if it were a good joke. Sagurat, however, is no fool. Her success reverses a power dynamic when the audience discovers that women are more than they first seem. When Ambrose retells his story, with Sagurat at hand to correct it, the truth becomes clear. Similarly, Christine retells stories of Boccaccio’s viragos to reveal, as a woman, the essential truth of female nature.44