Prior to the 14th century, medieval European Christian scholars like Cardinal Lothario thought humans were lovely creatures, motivated purely by passion. By the late 1300s, this conception of humanity began to radically change with the rise of humanism, the idea that people have personal agency and that their reasoning skills allowed them to interact with the world differently from other animals. Humanists like Christine de Pisan, Pico della Mirandola, Jan Van Eyck, and Johannes Vermeer explicitly emphasized wisdom, reason, and science in their works. The rise of Renaissance-era humanism elevated intellectual character traits like reason, wisdom, and creativity to the same level of importance as moral traits like virtuosity and goodness, which …show more content…
A couple hundred years later, c. 1400 C.E., Christine de Pisan published “The Book of the City of Ladies,” which discusses the many good qualities she sees in women both past and present. This work contains much evidence for a shift in beliefs on the nature of humanity. Notably, Christine’s definition of the character traits of a good woman includes wisdom and sensibility, unlike Lothario’s characterisation of humanity. She describes Lady Busa as “wise” and “valiant,” Valentina Viscounti as “sensible in her conduct, and virtuous in all things.” Christine said that Queen Blanche spoke to Thibault “so judiciously” that he was “amazed by her enormous goodness and virtue” and surrendered to her after starting a war with her son. Repeatedly, Christine frames wisdom and sensibility as being of equal value to virtuosity and goodness, directly acknowledging humans’ capacity to make choices based on conscious reason, rather than emotion-fueled …show more content…
Pico della Mirandola’s 1486 work “On the Dignity of Humankind” describes humans as a “creature [made] to think on the plan of his great work, love its infinite beauty, and stand in awe at its immenseness.” Like Christine, Pico places both emotion and reason in positions of equal importance. According to Pico, humans are “of indeterminate and indifferent nature,” whose power is contained in their “intellect and judgment.” Thus, God gave humans the choice to attempt to understand the world more fully, or to live amongst the beasts. Furthermore, Pico tells readers “to you is granted the power, contained in your intellect and judgment, to be reborn into higher forms, the divine.” Not only is reason a gift from God, it is a pathway to becoming a “higher form” of being. This places divine importance on scientific thought, which people began to explore in both literary and visual artworks. One example of an artist’s exploration into science includes the realistic convex mirror in the background of Jan Van Eyck’s Marriage
Christine De Pizan’s work in The Book of The City of Ladies pioneers a new genre of feminist literature that exposes a time period from the perspective of its female population. Due to this, De Pizan justifiably earns the title of a revolutionary author. However, to say that De Pizan revolutionized the conditions of women in the medieval ages and onward is an overstatement. In her book, De Pizan critiques sexist arguments in order to defend women against misogyny. The change that De Pizan presented in medieval culture was gradual because she was attempting to amend people’s perspectives on women rather than offer any institutional rectifications. She worked to establish that women can be just as mighty as men, and thus, they are not innately inferior. However, her goal was not to ensure that women have equal access to exercise and pursue their virtuous roles. Therefore, if observed
The achievement of gender equality is one of the most important movements for advancement of society. In the High Middle Ages, however, it was even more challenging to bring such sensitive debate. Christine de Pizan, a highly educated and religious woman, chose an unusual pathway for a woman in her era that she became a writer to support her family. Christine’s work, “The Treasure of the City of Ladies,” could be seen as feminist because she offered a broad view of how an ideal artisan’s wife should be.
In Christine Stansell’s City of Women, the main issue discussed is “the misfortunes laboring women suffered and the problems they caused” (xi). Throughout the book, Stansell delves into the different aspects that affected these female New Yorkers’ lives, such as inadequate wages, societal stigmas about women laborers, and the hierarchal class system, within antebellum America. She argues that since the nation’s founding, in 1789, the bedrock of these tribulations working women would be mercilessly exposed to was gender inequality. Women’s opportunities and livelihoods were strongly dependent on the dominant male figure in their life, due to the fact that in that period there was very few available and accepted forms of employment for women. Stansell claims, “Paid work was sparse and unstable. Laboring women were confined within a patriarchal economy predicated on direct dependence on men” (18). As the work continues, she illustrates these women’s desires to break away from their reliance on men, as well as the avenues they took to achieve this desired independence. To help solidify her
Pico della Mirandola’s “Oration on the Dignity of Man” captures the essence of the humanist movement. He writes that God gave man the ability to make of himself what he wills. Although man is capable of depraved acts, he also possesses the profundity to distinguish him as a holy being. Pico praises the goodness of mankind when he writes, “man is rightly called and judged a great miracle and a wonderful creature indeed”.... ...
In medieval literature, the role of women often represents many familiar traits and characteristics which present societies still preserve. Beauty, attractiveness, and grace almost completely exemplify the attributes of powerful women in both present and past narratives. European medieval prose often separates the characteristics of women into two distinct roles in society. Women can be portrayed as the greatest gift to mankind, revealing everything that is good, pure, and beautiful in a woman's life. On the other side of the coin, many women are compared to everything that is evil and harmful, creating a witch-like or temptress quality for the character. These two aspects of European culture and literature show that the power of women in medieval narrative can be portrayed through both evil and good, and more often than not, power is derived from the latter.
During this time period women were not respected at all and were belittled by all med in their lives. Even though men don’t appreciate what women they still did as they were told. In particular, “Women have an astoundingly long list of responsibilities and duties – th...
Both Castiglione’s The Courtier and Christine de Pizan’s The Treasure of the City of Ladies advise women in the proper way to behave and conduct their lives, but do so aimed towards both a different audience and in different ways. The Treasure of the City of Ladies takes the approach of appealing to a broader range of women and addressing a wider array of subjects. In contrast, The Courtier is aimed mainly towards men and occasionally towards women, and always those of high status. The reasons behind these differences trace back not just to the execution of the books but to the different genders of the authors and the motivating factors behind the writing of them. When comparing both works to one another, The Treasure
visit the just and exhort them to do what is right, to give to each
“Each ought to maintain her proper place in society and, along with this, her particular lifestyle,” writes Christine de Pizan. Described by many as a protofeminist, de Pizan holds true to the modern feminist standing that women deserve more than they are given. In her writing, The Book of the City of the Ladies, she describes six different types of women in society. It is important to look at the time in which she wrote the piece, in the late fourteenth and early fifteenth century— a time when women had no voice. Through extraneous methods, de Pizan forges her own voice and ultimately brings women to be viewed as more than just things. Though de Pizan never argues that women are equal to men in any way, she gives women a place that they belong.
Humanism is a stance of thought conferring to the major importance to people rather than heavenly or mystical matters. Humanists believe that trauma is the possible importance and goodness of human beings and pursue exclusively on balanced habits of resolving human problems; “The Renaissance stressed the natural and the human. It emphasized the pleasures of life, glorified the human body, and celebrated education” (139). In the Renaissance era, most of the humanists were Christian. There were well-known scholars that were attracted in conserving and learning from traditional texts and have precise translations of the Bible. In the Renaissance era and the age of humanism, The Ecstasy of St. Teresa by Gian Lorenzo Bernini was a debated sculpture
During the renaissance, there was a renewed interest in the arts, and the traditional views of society came into question. People began to explore the power of the human mind. A term often used to describe the increasing interest in the powers of the human mind is humanism. Generally, humanism stresses the individual's creative, reasoning, and aesthetic powers. However, during the Renaissance, individual ideas about humanism differed.
The first source, Christine de Pizan’s book ‘The Treasure of The City of Ladies’ contains a handful of sections on how differing demographics of women, elderly, young, property owning, should behave in order to cultivate a virtuous character and play the role of mediator between conflicting parties. It should be mentioned that this is definitely a prescriptive source, not an accurate portrayal of what was actually happening at the time, simply an ideal of what the author wanted to be happening and potentially observed. The document addresses women of middle and lower class in how they should be forging relations with both other women and men as a demographic. It has been contended that medieval shared “striking” similarities in experiences with class despite other cultural differences. Christine herself was a famous intellectual in the 13th c...
They must be treated well, but are never taken seriously, as they “are used to worrying over trifles” (1389). This extended irony serves as a reminder that just like the dead bird and untidy house, women, needless to state, can be just as significant and deft as men, if given the same opportunity, and held to the same
M. H. Abram's A Glossary of Literary Terms defines Renaissance Humanism, stating that some of the key concepts of the philosophy centered around "the dignity and central position of human beings in the universe" as reasoning creatures, as well as downplaying the "'animal' passions" of the individual. The mode of the thought also "stressed the need for a rounded development of and individual's diverse powers... as opposed to merely technical or specialized training." Finally, all of this was synthesized into and perhaps defined by their tendency to minimize the prevalent Christian ideal of innate corruption and withdrawal from the present, flawed world in anticipation of heaven. (p. 83)
Many diverse ideas flourished during the European Renaissance which had a lasting impact on the world. Humanism is a worldview and a moral philosophy that considers humans to be of primary importance. The aspect of humanism first thrived in 14th century Italy, and later spread north in the 15th century. Initially humanistic ideas about education were quickly adopted by the Italian upper class. The Italian ideas and attitudes towards life and learning impacted nobility in other parts of Europe. They were able to accept and adapt to this new lifestyle. Humanism during the Renaissance helped to spread ideas about the basic nature of human beings, how people should be educated to become well rounded individuals, and how education impacts an individual’s life.