Danièle Cybulskie talks about Christine de Pizan and medieval France for Tudor Summit 2018.
Danièle has been sharing her love of the Middle Ages with readers worldwide for over a decade. Her book, The Five-Minute Medievalist, debuted at #1 on Amazon’s Canadian charts, and her featured articles at Medievalists.net, as well as in several international magazines, have reached over half a million readers, and counting.
A former college professor, Danièle teaches OntarioLearn’s The Middle Ages and the Modern World: Facts and Fiction, now being offered at nine Ontario colleges. She earned her MA in English literature from the University of Toronto, where she specialized in medieval literature and Renaissance drama.
Her mission is to make history fun, entertaining, and engaging, and to draw attention to our shared human nature across the centuries. When she’s not reading or writing, Danièle can be found drinking tea, practicing archery, or sometimes building a backyard trebuchet.
Check out her website at danielecybulskie.com.
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Transcript: Danièle Cybulskie on Christine de Pizan
Heather:
I’m so excited that you’re here talking about Christine de Pizan. She’s amazing and I’m just thrilled to have you here. So can you introduce her to those of us that might not be so familiar with her?
Danièle:
Sure, no problem. So, Christine De Pizan was a writer in the late 14th, early 15th century in France. She was a professional writer which was kind of unheard of for women at that time. She actually supported herself and her kids through writing. She wrote just over 20 works which is quite a lot at the time. From the time that she was widowed until things got too hard in Paris. She kind of retired to, she went to an abbey for a while. So, yes, she was writing right in the middle of the Hundred Years’ War when things were crazy in France. She’s writing for the court, it was pretty amazing.
Heather:
Yes, so can to tell me about how she became a writer because like you said that’s so unusual even I think for men at this period to just suddenly say: “Oh, I’m gonna be a writer” but especially for a woman to say that, and how that came about for her?
Danièle:
Yeah, sure. I think unless you were trained up in the church, it was kind of strange to say you were gonna be a writer. Christine was very unusual on that. She came over to France with her father. Her father was a doctor and an astronomer at the court of Charles V. Her father had let her learn some stuff, taught her some stuff, even though her mother was not into that. She didn’t think she would need any of that.
Christine loved to learn even though she says she was more interested in playing at the time. She grew up in the French court and her family was very, pretty wealthy because of her father’s position as an advisor to Charles V. Christine was 15, she got a bunch of marriage proposals but she accepted one that was from a court clerk named Etienne du Castel. She married him, and it was a love match. He was already established at the court as well. He was a clerk and her father was at the court too.
Then Charles V died and his son came to power as a child. Charles VI was all sorts of a nightmare when it comes to ruler because he had a lot of mental health difficulties and that was a very unstable time. Christine’s father lost his position. They didn’t have much money. Then her father died, and then it was just Etienne taking care of the whole family, so Christine, their three kids, and Christine’s mom. Then Etienne went away with the king and he died.
So, Christine was 25 years old, and her husband was dead, her father was dead. She had to take care of everyone by herself. The only thing she really knew how to do was to write. So she is this 25 year old widow, and she’s dealing with all her husband’s financial accounts. The only criticism she has of him ever is that he didn’t tell her enough about the finances.
She’s in court and she’s trying to get people to sponsor her to write. She started to write ballads and she writes a hundred ballads. People start to like this. She starts and tries to write books and people start to notice, and eventually she’s so well-known that Charles V’s brother, Philip of Burgundy actually asks Christine to write his brother’s, the king’s official biography. So she’s really made it at that point. She’s starting to have commissions and she’s starting to actually make money off writing.
So, she wouldn’t have done it if she hadn’t been a widow. She would’ve been established as a wife which she’s quite happy to do. But she said when Etienne died she transformed, she metamorphosized. She called herself a man after that in a poem that she wrote about that transformation. It is called The Book of the Mutability of Fortune. So, she was forced into it, but she was really well-suited to it as well.
Heather:
Did she ever have to pretend that she was a man? I’m thinking about later on with French writers, the famous story of George Sand and the 19th century people, women writing as men. Did she ever have to do anything like that or was she–
Danièle:
No. She would’ve never been able to get away with it because she was too well-known. She’s also pretty fierce, I don’t think she would’ve wanted to stick with somebody’s name. But she was really trying to build this up for herself, for her family. She wouldn’t have been able to get away with writing as a man.
But she says that it was the novelty of writing as a woman that made her as successful as she was. She’s kind of being a little bit too modest but there is something there that no one else was doing that at that time but, yes. She didn’t actually become a man in any sense of the word.
Heather:
She was writing right around the time the starting of the printing press, right? and I’m wondering how that influenced, if you can say anything about how that influenced how her writing was spread I guess or–
Danièle:
She died before the printing press. She died probably around 1430 because the last thing she wrote was about Joan of Arc. She was very, very excited about Joan of Arc. She probably didn’t see the end of that story. So, the printing process was about 50 years later. But then her work was one of the early things that went to print.
William Caxton printed a couple of the things that she wrote. They were put into English translation and they were disseminated as printed text in England and also elsewhere, in France as well. But she was writing in time of manuscripts. This is very interesting because as you can see from my shirt, she’s herself. She makes sure that there’s pictures of herself in these books. I’m surprised how it was made, but It was very unusual as well.
Heather:
That’s interesting! So she was really hands with the whole process, huh?
Danièle:
Yeah. She was really hands-on. Fair enough, because this was, this is all she had to work with. One thing that you might find interesting, talking a little bit about the Tudors, is that, her The Book of the City of Ladies which we can get into a little bit, I’ll explain it in one second. But City of Ladies is one book that was translated into English, and put into print around 1521, which was the time when some people speculated it might have been to kind of bolster Mary‘s position to the throne. Because at that time, Henry didn’t have any sons. It’s perfectly sound thinking it might’ve been to bolster Mary.
We know that Susan Groag Bell found that in the inventory of Henry VIII possessions, there were 6 panels of tapestry of City of Ladies which were found on Elizabeth’s garderobes. The Tudors knew about this book because there’s no other book called the City of Ladies. So there was people that were reading it. We know that the Tudors as well speak French, Anne Boleyn for sure. She was probably exposed to this book either in English or French. It’s weird that Henry had that tapestry, but it’s really awesome that it was in Elizabeth’s possession.
Heather:
Yeah. Now that’s interesting because I have kind of been put it in a question that I wanted to ask about Margaret of Austria. She was the who Anne Boleyn was at her court. She was this humanist renaissance– She was regent for a while and ruled in her own right. That’s who Anne was at her court. She sponsors a lot of musicians and all that kind of stuff. I just imagine Anne reading this book and being exposed to her work very early on when she was 12 or 13 years old and the impact that it had made on her. That’s interesting that even in 1521 when Anne was still not anything at that. So it wasn’t just because of Anne that her work was became known in England.
Danièle:
Right. I don’t know a lot about Margaret of Austria as I told you, but I did quickly look her up. I do know that some of Christine’s work was owned by her. So there’s a very good chance that Anne would’ve been exposed to Christine if not City of Ladies. So, I would say City of Ladies ‘cause I don’t think we’ve explained that yet.
Heather:
Right, yeah. Tell me about City of Ladies.
Danièle:
The book of the City of Ladies kind of came out of this argument that Christine had, an intellectual argument about this older poem called The Romance of the Rose. The Romance of Rose started out, it’s just kind of a nice poem about looking for love. The author writing that died, and someone else took it over and it became in a very misogynist book.
Around the time Christine was writing, people were “This book is great!” “It’s a great piece of literature!” And she couldn’t stand that. So she wrote a bunch of letters saying that “This book is terrible. Not only is it like dirty, but it’s also misogynist. It’s terrible.”
So she wrote this book called City of Ladies where it’s this dream, sort of vision where Christine is sitting in her study and she’s reading about other men’s ideas of women. She’s started thinking to herself “All this learned men are saying all women are terrible. It must be true.”
Then she’s visited by these three apparitions: Lady Justice, Lady Rectitude, and Lady Reason. They said “Christine, this is nonsense. Women are fantastic and let us show you how they’re fantastic.” So, the three apparitions, they built a city of arguments about how women are fantastic. This city is where women can intellectually live, and defend themselves against these arguments that men made.
The City of Ladies is all about examples from the bible, and from mythology, and from different arguments that men had made over the years that really say women are fantastic. She’s got Amazons in there. She’s got biblical ladies. It’s just amazing because all the arguments that are routinely set up against women in the middle ages, and now she set them up and she knocks them down.
It’s just a revolutionary book. When I came across it, I was absolutely floored. I’ve just had never read anything like this. Knowing things about, we were always told that women kind of just sat down and were quiet at this time. Not true at all. But then here is Christine, she’s put it in writing, and nobody actually persecutes her.
We have this idea that in the middle ages, when you put forth an idea that is controversial, people are just going to take you down. Burn you at the stake. But Christine was well-known, and the book City of Ladies was well-read and it was being transmitted and transmitted and transmitted. With that said, the last copy in English of it was in 1521 until the 80’s. Like in the 1980’s.
Men were not huge fans of this. But in time, there were lots of intellectuals that were reading it, and sharing it. So, the City of Ladies, is the one that came out 1521, possibly in support of Mary, we don’t know for sure. It could’ve easily been the one that Anne Boleyn was exposed to. It is the source of the tapestries that we were just talking about that were found in Henry VIII’s inventory. It’s funny because I don’t imagine Henry being a big fan of this book but lots of very, very strong women in Tudor court probably would’ve heard of it, if not read it.
Heather:
Yeah, and it’s interesting because this period in the 16th century in Europe had all of these powerful queens, regnant, regents. So it’s interesting to think that they might’ve all been reading some of this and been influenced by it throughout Europe as well.
Danièle:
Yeah, because there were copies of these exist, like I said to you, it was in manuscript form which meant that people were reading it by writing it out, which meant that they thought it was important to put that effort in. So It speaks to you how powerful her ideas were and how they were spread.
It’s funny, she was French in the middle of the Hundred Years’ War but she had come to get the attention of Henry IV who she was not really a big fan of. She had a son Jean, Etienne had taken over to England with the Earl of Salisbury as part of Richard II‘s court in 1397. If you know this period of history, 1397 is going to set up some alarm bells. So, he came over to the Earl of Salisbury and Richard is overthrown 2 years later. So, her son is 15, now at the court of Henry IV, and Henry says: “Christine you’re amazing, I’ve read your books. Why don’t you come over and be my court poet?”
Christine’s thinking like “This a usurpur. There is no way I’ll do it.” But she told him she would until he gave her her son back and she was like “Nope, I’m not staying here. Forget it” So she was well-known and respected enough that Henry IV wanted her to come to England but she was not having it. She was super well-known and like I said it was very unusual, amazing. Like you in your blog post called her a badass, and it’s definitely apt, I think.
Heather:
Yes, she’s a total badass. I love it. Can we just backtrack a little bit, like you say, there is this whole idea that women were just kind of subservient at this time. Can you talk to me a little bit about, I know you are a little bit earlier than the Tudor period but certainly influenced the Tudors and we see it. Just extend a little bit more just how women in real life were seen at this time.
‘Cause it always blew me away even in the Tudor period how women joined guilds and there’s all this stuff. They had jobs and they were doing things. There’s this whole myth that women just stayed at home and pumped out babies, and it wasn’t! They lived vibrant lives, and very created lives. Were entrepreneurs and everything like that. So, can you tell me a little bit about what the role of women in England and yeah, I’ll stop talking and let you talk now.
Danièle:
When you think about where our ideas about what women were doing comes from, it comes from clerks and people who were trained in the church. The church was a Catholic church at the time, before Henry. This is the time when very much, the thinkers, theological thinkers at the time thought women should be subservient. So that’s what they wrote about, how they should be. This is how they should be like.
But if you read anything outside these intellectual attacks, if you read medieval plays, or if you read read court documents, you’ll see that women are everywhere. They are talking back. They are going to court. They are taking over businesses that they had to. Christine writes a lot of things for widows because she knows what is like. She had to fight for her debts, her husband’s incurred for 14 years.
So if you look outside of what women should be like, you could actually see the ones who were in professions. They weren’t in guilds very much because they weren’t supposed to be. But often they were in the back of the shop, that they were doing a lot of the work, but not getting a lot of the credit, which is pretty familiar for that period.
But, yeah, women were doing all sort of things, but we don’t really see them. So it’s kind of interesting to read Christine’s work because she would pull them out to the front. For example, after City of Ladies, it was a best seller. So she wrote a kind of sequel called Book of the Three Virtues, where this three – Lady Rectitude, Lady justice, and Lady Reason come back and they tell her “Well, here’s what you can do as women of this time.”
So Christine gives advice or thru these apparitions gives advice on how she should live. She gives advice on how a princess should live, which is basically support your husband, and help him, and be kind of a moderator, helping him to be wise. For women of lower ranks, she’s saying do your best to find out what the accounts are. What the money is like in your house because you might need this later. Really be familiar with the business and things like that.
She even goes as far as to speak to the prostitutes and say you don’t have to put up with the red light. There other things that you can do. She explains, you can be a laundress or you can be a servant or you can do these things. And you can sort of read in Christine’s work, even see where were the women. They were doing all these things.
They are not really mentioned as being done in the sermons because the sermons are very much for like, you stay home and take care of things. But is not really kind of explaining what they do necessarily. So yeah, women were busy at this time. Don’t let anyone tell you that they were always quiet and not giving their opinions because they were. In fact, that’s the source of the many stories, many folktales and stuff, that women were being too mouthy. They have opinions, they’re human beings.
Heather:
So her work had started to spread and you said Paris has got too hot for her. What was the first reaction to her? Tell me a little bit about that.
Danièle:
Yeah it wasn’t in reaction to her at all, but what was happening in France at that time was that because Charles VI was ill, he was frequently absent from being King. So there were lots of people that would take his place and fight over the regency. It was that, and also kind of the blood feud that was happening between the House of Burgundy and the House of Orléans and so, those guys were fighting all the time. And they were shifting alliances with the English as well ’cause the English were still a threat.
Around 1418 is when she kind of disappears and that’s because the Burgundys are taking over Paris. They were allied with Henry V, the English King at that time. It was not the time for a French patriot to in Paris, especially one that was kind of aligned with the Dauphin. So it was not the place for her to be politically.
We think that she probably retired to a convent where her daughter was. So Christine had 3 children, one daughter, and two sons. One of her sons died. So her daughter was a nun, a Dominican nun in Poissy. Then Jean du Castel we know he was in England for a while. He died when he was 25. So she probably went to stay at Poissy with her daughter. It was a just a political thing, it never had to do with Christine.
Heather:
I see. Okay, and this is the time of Joan of Arc and Agincourt in couple of years before then, so at this point, it looks as if the English are still really a threat then at that point.
Danièle:
At that time English were kind of ascendance, but the tide turns ten years later. But Christine wrote about Agincourt and just what a devastating time that was for the French aristocracy. She wrote kind of letter of consolation to another noble woman. So at that time, Charles VI had to acknowledge that Henry V was being charged and so she had to get out of Paris.
And then ten years later, just over ten years later, Joan of Arc came in. Things were looking good for the French for the first time. So Christine took up her pen for the first time in a decade and wrote this song praised to Joan, not knowing what was around the corner. But yeah, when she disappeared it was a bad time for the French.
Heather:
Yeah. I see. Okay. For people who aren’t familiar with the timeline, this is like getting in the War of the Roses, but the early beginning. Can you walk me through a little bit of the English timeline since this is Tudor-themed?
Danièle:
Yeah. So, okay. Oh my gosh, this is the end of my period. Let me just–
Heather:
Yeah, well, so, we have Henry V, The Conqueror. Then it’s his son. How was that related because Henry VI’s grandfather was the one who had some mental issues, and that’s Charles or–
Danièle:
Charles VI, yeah. So what happened with Henry V married Charles’ daughter. I think her name is Catherine. I might get that wrong. Anyway, marry Charles’ daughter, and so their son Henry VI inherits some of these difficulties. It’s one of those things where people are not exactly sure what the difficulty was.
So Henry VI had a lot of times when he’s fine and then he has times when he’s not. Then people started to get restless over this. Then there was civil war over it. Maybe someone else should be King, and that’s when Edward IV takes over. Eventually, Edward has Henry killed.
After Edward, comes his son, his son from the Princes in the Tower. They were killed and then his brother Richard III takes over. Richard III was defeated by the first Tudor, Henry Tudor. Then he married Elizabeth and brought the two houses together, which is the white and the red.
Heather:
Just thinking about the relationship with England at this period too. Sometimes there’s this stereotype that people just stayed on their little serfdom, their little fief, their little area, and they never went anywhere. I just wondered how the French people and the English people interacted? Of course, there was war. But was there trading relationships? Did English people ever visit France? Did they go to the beaches? Did they went on pilgrimages and things like that? Can you talk a little about, other than the war, which of course, the war is a major part of it. What the relationship would’ve been like between ordinary people at that time period?
Danièle:
Sure, there was a huge relationship between England and France and this goes back to the Norman’s taking over England and for a lot of the Medieval period, much of what is now modern France is owned by English. I mean Eleanor of Aquitaine brought a whole bunch of that over back when she married Henry II. So they just owned a lot of it. There was lost and there was gain, lost, gain.
Heather:
And that’s kind of when the Hundred Years’ War starts, isn’t it? There were certain claims to the throne that they had and lands–
Danièle:
Yeah. There were relatives all over the place from this back and forth. Things like marriages, there are people who are related. So they are going back and forth to visit each other. There’s trade, like you said, there’s pilgrimage, which is a huge thing. People often moved a lot more than we think. There was constant contact between the two. The Royal Court of England was speaking French until about Richard II, when he was more into English and that’s kind of when Charles was becoming famous and things like that.
But yeah, there was a huge relationship between the two. It went back for centuries. So the literature that they were reading in France, they would get in England. England to France maybe not so much because people in France were not speaking English as much as people in England were speaking French. And that’s again back to the Norman Conquest and things like that. But yeah, they were crossing all the time.
Heather:
Yeah, I just think it’s interesting because a theme, what I’ve noticed about the talks that I’ve recorded so far, there’s a lot of myth-debunking going on at the moment and some of these locks. And I’m trying to kinda go with that theme and see some of the different myths that people have about these certain times in history and these people.
Just had a conversation this morning about Katherine Howard not being a tart, so that was fun to kind of debunk the Katherine Howard tart myth. So, I’m just trying to think about, when you think about the Joan of Arc period or the Hundred Years’ War period, and the archers and all that kind of stuff, there’s this idea that, I don’t know, I imagine Monty Python and the Holy Grail and stuff like that – “Carrying two coconut shells and he’s banging them together,” “There’s a lovely field over here.”
Danièle:
I know. To be a medieval historian is to debunk constantly. But actually, the Holy Grail is pretty good in that a bunch of those people knew a lot of stuff about middle ages, especially Terry Jones. The more you learn about the middle ages, the funnier that is. In fact in Oxford, they had cups that were made with coconut shells. Kathleen Kennedy is working medieval coconut shells. So it’s another illustration of how wide the trade networks were. They were going as far as Africa.
Heather:
They seriously had coconut shells?
Danièle:
Yes, Kathleen Kennedy is working on a book about medieval coconuts right now. It’s not out yet but if you find her on Twitter, you can ask her.
Heather:
Yeah, so what’s the airspeed velocity of an unladen swallow, l coconuts and all of that?
Danièle:
I can’t answer that one for you, but–
Heather:
Well you can drop about the coconuts. So taking back to Christine, why is she worth knowing about now in the 21st century, and studying her? What does she bring to us now 600 years later?
Danièle:
Okay, the biggest reason to read Christine is that it’s putting another person back into place that we just skip over too much. People in the medieval fields know Christine now. She’s pretty well known among medieval historians but the public at large doesn’t know about her at all. She’s at least as important as someone like Chaucer. We need to put the women back into history, so that’s number one.
The next reason is to really get a better understanding of, I think, the middle ages as well because if people are creating these type of arguments, that is well-reasoned, this is something that we don’t think people in the middle ages could do. We tend to think that they were dumb and wandering around gathering filth, which is not true.
So if you haven’t read kind of an intellectual argument, something like the City of Ladies is easy. It also gets that the way that medieval people could put together an argument based on sources that they would read. It could really give you an idea of how well-read they could be.
Then another reason is that many of these issues are still around. So it’s immediately familiar to women especially. All of these things have been kind of thrown at us for thousands of years. You can see her dealing with them one at a time. So it’s kind of hugely empowering.
It’s a little bit disturbing to know that we’re still dealing with many of the same issues. But you can really feel Christine just dealing with this and having that confidence to say “No, I know that everyone else says this is true, but it’s really, really not.” So that’s kind of empowering.
Then the last thing is to really get an idea of what a medieval woman, what her life could have been like. So she didn’t get into her biography as much in there, but in her other works, especially Christine’s Vision, that one takes the form of a complaint.
A lot like the Consolation of Philosophy, in fact, it’s where she based it on. She explained the things that she saw through in her life, and that Philosophy consoles her. But you can see what she’s gone through in her life. So you can get an idea of a woman in time, in her own time, in her own words, which is a rare thing.
There are lots of reasons to read Christine. All the reasons. Start with the City of Ladies because it’s just a powerful book. But she should be well-known to us now because she was well-known at her time. We need to start putting women back into history because we’ve skipped over them for way too long.
And that was intentional, I mean, the fact that she wasn’t translated again until the 1980’s is kind of ridiculous. Even in the Tudor period, when her stuff was being printed, the men who were translating it were saying “Well this book is attributed to Christine but that’s because she gathered clerics around her. So she’s kind of like a Patroness. It’s not really Christine but we’re saying it was.” Well it definitely was her. Her picture is in the book. Lots of reasons to read her. Just to put her back in her time where she belongs.
Heather:
Yeah, that’s so great. I’ve learned so much about her. So, people should start with City of Ladies. What else is there? What are other resources? How can people learn more about her?
Danièle:
Most of her stuff is kind of in academic editions. But if you just go to Amazon, for example, and put in Christine de Pizan you have a whole bunch of things that are accessible to you. There are paperbacks and the price is not too bad which is good. So I think this is mainly because they are trying to get more people to read Christine, especially students, so the prices are not too bad. You can find her easily now if you know to look for her. And I think she’s popping out, I think in your book. She’s popping out in Alison Weir’s novels as well, so that’s fantastic.
Heather:
Yeah. So, tell me then, I wanna give you an opportunity to talk about you and your work and how people can learn more about you and connect with you and everything like that. So, tell me something about you.
Danièle:
Right, so I write under the name of The Five Minutes Medievalist, which is kind of accidental. I started writing a blog, which was to make everyone else Medievalist in five minutes but it stuck to me. So I write as the Five Minutes Medievalist. Many of my articles are on Medievalist.net. You can see there the stuff I’ve written. It’s mostly stuff that I’ve come across that I find as interesting, that I think will draw people into history. That’s what I write. I have my own website which is danielecybulskie.com, which I hope we can put in notes because I know my name is difficult to spell.
Heather:
No, I’ll have a link right below this video. So, there will be links.
Danièle:
So, I’m doing a few things, I’m writing survival guides. My first one was The Five Minutes Medievalist to Surviving a Zombie Apocalypse, which I hope we’ll help people connect “now” to “then” and really understand people back then.
I’m also coaching authors to help them get their history right because people want authentic history in their novels now or TV, so I’m doing that a little bit. Right now, I’m frantically writing a book for Pen and Sword Press, which will be out next year. Right now, the working title is Life in Medieval Europe: Fact and Fiction. All that stuff is on the website, you can find it there.
Heather:
Also, because somebody, when I posted about you speaking here, or you were on the roster when I posted the roster, somebody said “What is a Medieval coach?” So can you just tell me a little bit, like if somebody is writing a historical fiction novel, for example, they can come to you to check their history?
Danièle:
Yeah, so I’ve built it as a coaching model because I feel like it is more collaborative. I feel like a lot of people who are writing novels, they want to work through ideas instead of being told their history. So, I’ve made it so whatever you need I can offer. So if you just need some references, I can give them to you. If you need to solve a plot point in a way that works, I can do that. If you need someone to just go through your manuscript and just make sure that the history works, then I’m there for that as well.
So I’ve made it a coaching model in case you’re like “I have this thing, I need the plot to go here, but I don’t know how to do it in a way that is authentic.” We can work that out together. So that’s why it’s called a coaching model.
Heather:
Now, that’s great. I just wanted to give you a chance to explain that a bit. For all the budding historical fiction novelists out there, check that out.
Danièle:
Yeah. It saves you the work of having to do it yourself, right? So that’s the idea.
Heather:
For sure. Well, I’ve learned so much, thank you so much for sharing about Christine and Medieval France. It’s really great to have this kind of background. Because it’s interesting, sometimes you want to put people in this bubble. There’s like a 16th century bubble but it was formed by what had happened in the past. And certainly, I just love this idea of Christine’s work being in all these libraries of like, Louis of Savoy, and all these different people.
Danièle:
Yeah. She, like I said, she was really well-known. I didn’t realize before I started refreshing on Christine before I talked to you but there was this tapestry in the Tudor court. It was in Elizabeth’s garderobe. That was kind of amazing, to me specially, because it was in their inventory when Henry VIII died. So Elizabeth was a young girl. To have this tapestry of the City of Ladies for her is amazing. They needed to give me the chance find that out.
Heather:
That’s great, I’m going to try to find, I guess there’s probably images of that I can put here.
Danièle:
The tapestries doesn’t exist anymore. Never been found but there’s a book about it.
Heather:
Okay so I will hunt that down and put that in the link down here. Awesome! Thank you so much for sharing about Christine and Medieval France with us. I really appreciate it. You’ve been very generous with your knowledge, and time, and everything.
Danièle: My pleasure, thanks for having me!
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