In 1429, Christine wrote the Ditié de Jehanne d'Arc, the only poem about Joan of Arc composed during Joan's own lifetime.
In 1429, Christine de Pizan — by then retired from active court life at the convent of Poissy — composed Ditié de Jehanne d'Arc (The Tale/Ditty of Joan of Arc), a jubilant poem celebrating Joan of Arc's dramatic military successes, including the lifting of the Siege of Orléans and the coronation of Charles VII at Reims.
This work holds a unique place in literary and historical record as the only known poem about Joan of Arc written during Joan's own lifetime, making it an invaluable contemporary testimony to the extraordinary impact Joan had on French morale during the darkest years of the Hundred Years' War. Christine, who had spent her career defending women's capabilities and virtue, saw in Joan a living vindication of everything she had argued in works like the City of Ladies — proof that a woman could achieve feats of extraordinary courage and leadership traditionally reserved for men.
The poem is notable for its genuine emotional intensity and its framing of Joan as a divinely sent savior of France, reflecting both religious fervor and patriotic hope at a pivotal moment in the war. It also marks a poignant convergence of two of medieval history's most remarkable women, one chronicling the other's rise in real time.
This poem is historically invaluable both as literature and as primary historical evidence, and it represents Christine's final and perhaps most emotionally resonant contribution to French letters.