Glorifying God: The Theological Notion of Women in Christine de Pizan's Livre de la Cité des Dames

Abstract

In the lives of holy women that constitute Part III of the Livre de la Cité des Dames (1405), Christine de Pizan (1365-c.1431) interpreted 1 Corinthians 11.1-15 and composed a theological anthropological notion of the human person that affirms that women and men alike are made in the image of God and the glory of God. In this passage of his letter to the Christian community in Corinth, the Apostle Paul taught on theological anthropology and ethics. Christine placed herself within the Augustinian tradition of scriptural interpretation and read the Pauline verses allegorically. Christine reordered and rewrote the lives of women saints in order to make the case for women as glorifying God, meaning both being the glory of God (i.e., representing God) and praising God. In the context of medieval intertextuality, Christine's descriptions of hair, head-coverings, and fathers each add to the author's biblical interpretation and theological argumentation. Christine's argument for women as created in the image of God and the glory of God is both about the basic relationships in the order of creation (Creator and created human being and human being and human being) and the capacities of human beings for intellect, virtue, and apostolic work in the world including teaching. Her exegetical and theological argument is inseparably anthropological, ecclesiological, and political.