Christine de Pizan was born in Venice, Italy, on 1 September 1364, later becoming Europe's first known professional woman writer.
Christine de Pizan (born Cristina da Pizzano) was born in Venice, Italy, on 1 September 1364. This date is a scholarly reconstruction based on contemporary records and later biographical work, though some sources give only the year or month.
She was the daughter of Tommaso da Pizzano, a physician and astrologer who would soon be recruited to serve at the French royal court. Christine's Venetian origins and Italian humanist education distinguished her culturally from the court she would later dominate as a writer.
Her birth in a prosperous Italian merchant and scholarly milieu, rather than the French aristocracy, is significant context for understanding her later achievements: she entered French court life as an outsider, both by nationality and eventually by gender-defying profession, and would go on to become one of the most prolific and historically important women authors of medieval Europe.
Her early exposure, through her father, to learning and scholarly culture uncommon for girls at the time laid crucial groundwork for her unprecedented later career as a professional writer supporting her family through her pen alone.