Music in the “Cité” of Christine de Pizan
The founding of new cities was not a medieval custom. Famous kings in antiquity had already created them, naming them eponymously: Alexandria, after the Macedonian King Alexander the Great; Constantinople, after Emperor Constantine; Recopolis after the Visigoth King Recaredo. Eventually, imaginary cities were also created. In the early sixteenth century, Thomas More created the island of Utopia, and Campanella did the same with the City of the Sun, as well as Bacon with Bensalem a century later. However, the idea had already been developed in a much more original way by a woman at the beginning of the fifteenth century. When Christine de Pizan (1364-1420) finalized the third and last part of her book Le Livre de la Cité des Dames in 1405, she had created and invented a city, in the etymological sense of the word, which signifies the creation or the discovery of something. The author had been able to see and visualise this imaginary city, which is the first step for something to become real, as taught by Saint Anselm not long before, although in a different context. This city, conceived, created and designed by a woman born in Venice and raised in Paris from a very young age, was surprisingly not named after the author. She called it, simply but significantly, the City of Ladies, a powerful landmark within a decisive movement which helps to explain the history of Europe and our history up to the present day: the Querelle des Femmes (Complaint of Women), a revolutionary process which breaks away from the traditional accounts of patriarchal history. This movement focused on aspects and views ignored by the gentlemen who monopolized the various Truths which have been assumed and replicated by our culture. By systematically questioning the division of society in gender roles and its unfair hierarchy, it may be considered the first sign of feminism in the Western world. Augustine wrote The City of God to defend Christianity from pagan danger. Christine wrote The City of Ladies to defend women ( “to you, ladies, maidens, women of all conditions... those who have died, those who are still alive and those who will come in the future,” lib. 2 ch. LXIX ) from patriarchy.
