The Book of the City of Ladies

by Christine Pizan

  MANTO: daughter of the seer Tiresias; lived in Thebes during the reign of Oedipus. I.31, I.32.

  MANTUA: city in northern Italy near to which the poet Virgil was born. I.31.

  MARCHE, COUNT OF LA (John of Bourbon): (d. 1393) husband of Catherine of Vendôme and father of Anne of Bourbon. II.68.

  MARCHE, COUNTESS OF LA (Catherine of Vendôme): (d. 1411) married John of Bourbon, Count of La Marche, in 1364; mother of Anne of Bourbon. She inherited the lands of Vendôme and Castres on the death of her brother (before 1375). I.13.

  MARCHES: province on Adriatic coast of Italy. I.9.

  MARCIA: (1st century AD) Roman painter better known as Lala of Cyzicus. I.41.

  MARCIANA (Saint Marciana): (d. early 4th century AD) virgin and martyr of Rusuccur traditionally thought to have been killed in Caesarea, Mauretania, during the persecution of Diocletian. III.8.

  MARCIUS (CORIOLANUS) (Gnaeus Marcius Coriolanus): Roman aristocrat who captured the town of Corioli in 493 BC; son of Veturia. II.34.

  MARCUS AGRIPPA (Marcus Vipsanius Agrippa): (c. 64–12 BC) Roman military leader, husband of Julia and father of Agrippina. II.18.

  MARGARET, SAINT: date unknown. Virgin and martyr who probably existed only in pious fiction and whose cult flourished from the ninth century AD. One of the most popular saints in the Middle Ages. III.4.

  MARIAMME: beautiful Hebrew woman married to Herod the Great in 37 BC. II.42. See HEROD ANTIPATER.

  MARINA, SAINT: of doubtful existence and date unknown. Virgin traditionally thought to have been disguised as a monk (Brother Marinus) by her father Eugenius in order to smuggle her into a monastery. Very popular saint in the Middle Ages; her story was probably based on that of Saint Pelagia of Jerusalem, as Marina is a Latin translation of the Greek name Pelagia. III.12. See also EUPHROSYNA.

  MARINUS, BROTHER: see MARINA, SAINT.

  MARK ANTONY (Marcus Antonius): (c. 82–30 BC) Roman statesman and general, husband of Octavia and father of Antonia. Reputed to have led a dissolute youth, his most famous love affair was with the Egyptian queen Cleopatra, with whom he ruled Egypt for some years although he was never officially king. II.42, II.43.

  MARPAS IA: a queen of the Amazons. I.16.

  MARTHA: woman of Bethany; sister of Lazarus the leper. I.10. See also MARY MAGDALENE.

  MARTIAL, SAINT: (3rd century AD) bishop of Limoges who, according to legend, was sheltered by Susanna. III.18.

  MARTINA: (Saint Martina) (?3rd century AD) virgin and martyr traditionally thought to have been persecuted by the Emperor Alexander. III.6.

  MARY: Blessed Virgin and mother of Christ; elected by Christine and the three Virtues to be Queen of the City of Ladies. I.9, II.2, II.4, II.30, II.51, III.1, III.19.

  MARY MAGDALENE: repentant prostitute and follower of Christ; Christine follows medieval tradition in confusing her with Mary, sister of Martha of Bethany. I.10, III.2.

  MAS SYLIA: region on the north African coast. I.46.

  MATHEOLUS (Mathieu of Boulogne): author of the Liber Lamentationum Matheoluli (The Book of the Lamentations of Matheolus) (c. 1295), a satirical diatribe against wives and women in general. Christine probably read this text in the French translation known as the Lamentations (c. 1371–2), by Jean Le Fèvre de Ressons, an attorney at the Parliament of Paris and a poet. Le Fèvre wrote a refutation of Matheolus, the Livre de Leesce, which was circulated with copies of his translation. I.1, I.2, I.8, II.19.

  MATTHEW, SAINT: (1st century AD) tax-collector chosen by Christ to become an apostle; one of the four Evangelists. III.18.

  MAUSOLUS: king of Caria, who reigned 377–353 BC; husband of Artemisia who built the Mausoleum in his memory. I.21, II.16.

  MAXENTIUS (Marcus Aurelius Valerius Maxentius): Roman emperor who reigned AD 307–12, traditionally thought to have persecuted Saint Catherine. In fact, he was renowned in antiquity for his tolerance of Christians. III.3.

  MAXIMIAN (Marcus Aurelius Valerius Maximianus): (c. AD 250–310) Roman emperor who persecuted Christians. III.7, III.9, III.16.

  MAXIMILLA: according to legend, Greek woman who took the body of Saint Andrew down from the cross. III.18.

  MEDEA: sorceress, daughter of Aeëtes and Eidyia, not Perse as Christine erroneously states. Fell tragically in love with Jason, whom she helped to win the Golden Fleece. I.32, II.56.

  MEDUSA (GORGON): beautiful girl transformed by Athene into a snake-haired monster who turned to stone anyone who looked at her directly; eventually killed by the Greek hero Perseus. II.61.

  MENALIPPE: a queen of the Amazons who fought with Hippolyta against Hercules and Theseus. I.18.

  MENELAUS: king of Sparta whose wife, Helen, was carried off to Troy by Paris. II.61.

  MERCURY: Roman god of messages and commerce; later identified in mythology with the Greek god Hermes. I.33.

  MEROË, ISLAND OF: ancient Nubian capital on a large spit of land on the east bank of the Nile. I.12.

  MESOPOTAMIA: country in Asia Minor between the Rivers Tigris and Euphrates. I.20.

  MESSINA: city on the north-east corner of Sicily. II.60.

  METABUS: king of the Volscians and father of Camilla. I.24.

  METAMORPHOSES: see OVID.

  METAPHYSICS: see ARISTOTLE.

  MICON: (5th century BC) Athenian painter and sculptor; father of Thamaris. I.41.

  MILAN, DUKE OF (Gian Galeazzo Visconti): (1351–1402) married to Isabelle of France, daughter of John II of France and Bonne of Luxembourg, in 1360; father of Valentina Visconti, Duchess of Orleans. II.68.

  MINERVA: Roman goddess of war, commerce and industry; later identified in mythology with Athene, the Greek goddess of wisdom. I.4, I.34, I.38, I.39. See also PALLAS.

  MIRACLES DE NOTRE DAME: (finished c. 1227) popular collection of stories pertaining to the Virgin Mary written by Gautier de Coinci (c. 1177–1236), a Benedictine monk and author of other religious works. II.51.

  MIROIR HISTORIAL: universal history, part of vast Latin encyclopedic work, the Speculum Maius, by Vincent of Beauvais (c. 1190–c. 1264), a Dominican friar and important scholar. Translated into French in 1333 by Jean de Vignay, a monk of the order of Saint-Jacques-du-Haut-Pas in Paris, for Jeanne of Burgundy, Queen of France. Christine’s major source for Part III of the City of Ladies. III.9.

  MITHRADATES (Mithradates V Euergetes): (152/1–120 BC) king of Pontus and father of Berenice (Laodice). I.25.

  MITHRADATES (Mithradates VI Eupator Dionysius): (120–63 BC) king of Pontus, husband of Hysicratea and father of Drypetina. II.8, II.13, II.14.

  MORDECAI: Jewish palace official at the court of King Ahasuerus; adoptive father of Esther, not her uncle, as Christine erroneously states. II.32.

  MOSES: greatest leader of the Jews and their major law-giver, who rescued them from captivity in Egypt. II.30.

  MUSES: the nine Greek goddesses who originally presided over music and poetry in general. A special province was later assigned to each of them: Calliope (epic poetry and eloquence), Clio (history), Erato (love poetry), Euterpe (flute-playing), Melpomene (tragedy), Polyhymnia (mimic art), Terpsichore (lyric poetry and dance), Thalia (comedy), and Urania (astronomy). I.30.

  MYTILENE: one of the chief cities on the island of Lesbos off the coast of Asia Minor; birthplace of Sappho. I.30.

  NATHALIA (Saint Nathalia): (4th century AD) noblewoman of Nicomedia and wife of Saint Adrian; killed in Argyopolis, near Constantinople. III.16.

  NATURE: personification commonly used in medieval literature to symbolize the agent of God who creates all living things. I.8, I.9, I.14, I.27.

  NEBUCHADNEZZAR I I: king of Mesopotamia who reigned 605–562 BC and who subjugated and enslaved the Jews through his general, Holofernes. II.31.

  NEPTUNE: Roman god of the sea; later identified with the Greek sea-god Poseidon. I.4, I.47.

  NERO (Nero Claudius Caesar): (AD 37–68) Roman emperor who reigned AD 54–68. His many victims included his mother Agrippina and his tutor Seneca. II.22, II.27, II.43, II.48, II.49, III.18.

 
; NICAULA: legendary empress of Arabia, Ethiopia, Egypt and the island of Meroë. I.12.

  NICOSTRATA (CARMENTIS): according to legend, nymph and prophetess associated with divine incantation and poetry who taught the indigenous population of Latium to use writing and to whom a shrine was later erected at the Porta Carmentalis in Rome. Mother of Evander. I.33, I.37, I.38, II.5.

  NIMROD: first great king mentioned in the Old Testament who ruled over a vast area of Assyria and Babylonia. I.15, I.31.

  NINEVEH: ancient Assyrian city on east bank of the River Tigris; according to legend, named after King Ninus. I.15, II.53.

  NINUS: king of Nineveh and Babylon and husband of Semiramis. I.15.

  NINUS: son of Ninus and Semiramis. I.15.

  NIOBE: queen of Thebes, daughter of Phoroneus and mother of Apis. I.36.

  NOVELLA: (early 14th century) learned daughter of Giovanni Andrea of Bologna. II.36.

  OCEAN: according to early Greek cosmology, the great river supposed to encircle the earth and into which all other streams and rivers flow. I.16.

  OCTAVIA (Claudia Octavia): first wife of the Emperor Nero, whom she married in AD 53 and who divorced her in AD 62. II.48.

  OCTAVIAN (Augustus or Gaius Julius Caesar Octavianus): (63 BC–AD 14) first emperor of Rome, adopted son of Julius Caesar and father of Julia. II.18, II.49.

  ODENAETHUS (Septimius Odenaethus): (3rd century AD) king of Palmyria and husband of Zenobia. I.20.

  ODOACER: first barbarian king of Italy who reigned 476–93 AD and was overthrown by Theodoric. I.22.

  OEDIPUS: son of King Laius and Queen Jocasta of Thebes who unwittingly killed his father and married his mother. On discovering what he had done, he tore out his own eyes. I.31.

  OLYBRIUS: Christine conflates two different characters of the same name: the prefect traditionally thought to have persecuted Saint Margaret; and the second-century AD proconsul who martyred Saint Regina. III.4.

  OLYMPIAD: name given to ancient games which took place in the Peloponnesian city of Olympia. I.41.

  ON PHILOSOPHY: unidentified text which, according to Christine, denigrates women. I.8.

  ON THE SECRETS OF WOMEN: a thirteenth-century work on gynaecology often attributed in the later Middle Ages to Albert the Great (c. 1190–1280), a famous Swabian philosopher and theologian. I.9.

  OPIS (OPS): Roman goddess of abundance and wife of Saturn. I.47, II.61.

  ORCHOMENOS: principal city of the Greek region of Boeotia; later eclipsed by Thebes. II.24.

  ORITHYIA: a queen of the Amazons. I.18, I.19.

  ORLEANS, DUCHESS OF (Valentina Visconti): (d. 1408) daughter of the duke of Milan; married to Louis, Duke of Orleans, in 1389. II.68.

  ORLEANS, DUKE OF (Philip of France): (d. 1375) fifth son of King Philip VI; married in 1344 to Blanche of France (1327–92), daughter of Jeanne of Evreux and Charles IV. I.13.

  ORTIAGON: king of the Galatians whose wife killed the Roman general who had raped her. II.45.

  OTHO (Marcus Salvius Otho): (AD 32–69) profligate Roman emperor overthrown by Vitellius after a reign of only a few months. II.49.

  OVID (Publius Ovidius Naso): (43 BC–AD 17) Latin author exiled from Rome after he offended the Emperor Augustus, not castrated as Christine erroneously states. I.9, II.1, II.54, II.57.

  — Art of Love: witty manual on the art of seduction. I.9, II.54.

  — Metamorphoses: fifteen-book encyclopedia of legends about figures from classical mythology who changed their form; provided the chief subject-matter for medieval commentators on mythology. II.57.

  — Remedies of Love: witty manual on the art of ending love affairs. I.9.

  PALATINE, MOUNT: chief of the seven hills of Rome; traditionally thought to have been the site of the first Roman settlement. I.33, II.5.

  PALLAS: ruler of Arcadia, a kingdom in the Peloponnese; father of Nicostrata. I.33.

  PALLAS: surname of the Greek goddess Athene who was later identified with the Roman goddess Minerva. I.34, I.39.

  PALMARIA: island in the Gulf of Genoa to which early Christians were frequently exiled. III.15.

  PALMYRIA: city-state in Syria which, from the second century AD onwards, enjoyed the protection of successive Roman emperors. I.20.

  PAMPHILE: Greek woman traditionally thought to have invented the art of growing and spinning silk. I.40.

  PANAGO, COUNTESS OF: sister of Gualtieri, Marquis of Saluzzo (Decameron X, x). II.50.

  PAPHNUTIUS: (? 5th century AD) father of Saint Euphrosyna. III.13.

  PARIS: son of Priam and Hecuba; abductor of Menelaus’s wife, Helen. II.61.

  PARNASSUS, MOUNT: sacred mountain in Greece, north of Delphi; home of Apollo and the Muses. I.30.

  PAUL, SAINT (Saul): (d. c. AD 65) persecutor of Christians after Christ’s crucifixion. Converted and became the chief apostle of the Gentiles; beheaded in Rome during the persecution of Nero. II.35, II.48, III.18.

  PAULINA: see BUSA.

  PENELOPE: wife of Ulysses who faithfully awaited her husband’s return from Troy during his twenty years’ absence. II.41.

  PENTHESILEA: queen of the Amazons who came to the aid of Troy after the death of Hector. Killed by Achilles, not by his son Pyrrhus, as Christine erroneously states. I.18, I.19.

  PERSE: ocean-nymph and mother of Circe, not of Medea, as Christine erroneously states. I.32.

  PERSIA: country lying in the fold of the southern Zagros mountains, Asia Minor, which expanded into a vast empire under Cyrus the Great. I.17, II.1, II.6.

  PERSICA: see SIBYLS.

  PESSINUS: Phrygian mother-goddess whose name Christine confuses with the place in Asia Minor from which her statue was taken to Rome in 204 BC, during the Second Punic War. Her correct name is Cybele. II.63.

  PETER, SAINT: (d. c. AD 64) leader of the Apostles, who was crucified in Rome during the persecution of Nero. I.10, II.48, III.18.

  PETRARCH (Francesco Petrarca): (1304–74) important Tuscan humanist author who wrote in both Latin and Italian; probably knew Christine’s father at the University of Bologna. The work to which Christine is alluding here is his monumental work about overcoming the vicissitudes of Fortune, the De Remediis Utriusque Fortunae (Remedies for Fortune Fair and Foul), finished c. 1366. II.7.

  PHARAOH (Abimelech): king of Egypt who stole Sarah from her husband Abraham. II.38.

  PHARAOH (?Rameses II): king of Egypt mentioned in Exodus who enslaved the Jews; father of Thermutis, who rescued Moses. I.3.

  PHILIP, DUKE OF BURGUNDY (Philip the Bold): (1342–1404) fourth son of John II of France; married to Marguerite of Flanders in 1369; father of John the Fearless. II.68.

  PHILIP, KING (Philip VI): (1293–1350) king of France who reigned 1328–50; husband of Blanche of Navarre and father of Philip, Duke of Orleans. I.13.

  PHOEBUS: see APOLLO.

  PHOENICIA: country forming a narrow strip along the coast of Syria. I.46, II.61.

  PHORCYS: sea-deity and father of Medusa. II.61.

  PHORONEUS: king of Argos and brother of Io (Isis). I.36.

  PHRYGIA: region of north-west Asia Minor. II.1.

  PHRYGICA: see SIBYLS.

  PLATO: (427–347 BC) founder of Greek philosophy and teacher of Aristotle in Athens. I.2, I.30.

  PLAUTILLA: according to legend, Christian woman who gave her veil to Saint Paul when he was being led to his death. III.18.

  PLUTO: Greek god of the underworld. I.35, I.47.

  POLYNICES: son of Oedipus and Jocasta; brother of Eteocles, husband of Argia, and son-in-law of Adrastus. II.16, II.17.

  POLYXENA: daughter of Priam and Hecuba who was sacrificed by Achilles’s son Pyrrhus on his father’s tomb in order to appease his ghost and invoke favourable winds to send the Greek ships back to Greece. II.61.

  POMMIERS, AMANIEU DE: (mid to late 14th century) Gascon lord who fought for Charles V against the English in the Hundred Years War. II.67.

  POMPEIA PAULINA: (1st century AD) wife of Seneca. II.22.

  POMPEY (Gnaeus Pompeius Magnus): (106–48
BC) Roman general and consul; elderly husband of Julia, and later of Cornelia. Defeated by Julius Caesar and killed in Egypt. II.8, II.14, II.19, II.28.

  PORTIA: (d. 43/42 BC) daughter of Cato Uticensis; married to Brutus in 45 BC. II.25, II.28.

  PRIAM: king of Troy. I.19, II.5, II.61.

  PRISCUS: (4th century AD) governor of Bithynia traditionally thought to have arrested and martyred Saint Euphemia. III.8.

  PROBA (Faltonia Betitia Proba): (4th century AD) Christian poetess and wife of Clodius Celsius Adelphius. Composed a lost epic on the civil war between Constantine II and Magnentius. I.29, I.30.

  — Cento: (c. AD 360) text on the creation of the world and the life of Christ which reworked 694 verses from Virgil to demonstrate the parallels between his text and parts of the Old and New Testaments. Also the name of another text by Proba which supposedly reworked verses from Homer. I.29.

  PROBLEMATA: see ARISTOTLE.

  PROVERBS, BOOK OF: see SOLOMON.

  PROVINS: town south-east of Paris. II.65.

  PTOLEMIES: name of the Macedonian kings of Egypt. I.20.

  PTOLEMY (Ptolemy XIII): (63–47 BC) younger brother of Cleopatra and king of Egypt at the time of the treacherous murder of Pompey. II.28.

  PUBLIUS: (4th century AD) Roman nobleman who wanted to marry Saint Anastasia and to prohibit her visits to the Christian martyrs. III.14.

  PYGMALION: king of Phoenicia and brother of Dido. I.46.

  PYRAMUS: lover of Thisbe of Babylon. II.57, II.58.

  PYRRHUS (Neoptolemus): son of Achilles and Deidamia; Greek hero in the Trojan war who killed Penthesilea and ordered the sacrifice of Polyxena. I.19.

  PYTHIUS: (4th century BC) architect from Priene who designed the Mausoleum at Halicarnassus and created the statue of the chariot on top of the pyramid. II.16.

  QUINTUS HORTENSIUS (Quintus Hortensius Hortalus): (114–50 BC) famous Roman orator who became consul after 69 BC; a colleague of Cicero; father of Hortensia. II.36.

  QUINTUS LUCRETIUS (Quintus Lucretius Vespillo): Roman statesman who served as consul under Pompey in 48 BC and under Augustus in 19 BC; husband of Curia. II.26.

  RAVENNA: Italian city on the Adriatic coast. I.22.

  REASON: first of the three Virtues who visit Christine. Part I, passim.