CHRISTINE DE PISAN
one living at the beginning of the fifteenth century, and brought up, as Christine had been, at a magnificent Court, it shows rare independence and breadth of thought to have grasped and proclaimed with such firmness and clearness as is displayed in her treatise the germ of the policy of all modern civilised nations—that a middle-class is essential to bring into touch those placed at the opposite extremes, the rich and the poor.
To Christine belongs an honour beyond that of having been a patriot and a champion of her sex—the honour of having revealed Dante to France.[1] Scattered up and down her writings are many allusions to the Divina Commedia, showing how real a place it must have filled in her soul's life. She especially recommends it for profitable study in the place of the "hateful" Romance of the Rose, concerning which she gave the warning to her son:—
Se bien veulx et chastement vivre,
De la Rose ne lis le livre.
Like Dante, sad and lonely—"souvent seulete et pensive, regretant le temps passé"—like him she also realised the thirst for knowledge as an ever-present want of the soul, and that its ultimate perfection is only to be attained by following after virtue and knowledge. Although, as regards profundity, her conception of the world and of life cannot be compared with that of her
125
- ↑ A. Farinelli, Dante e la Francia, vol. i. p. 192, 1908.
