An open library of thought
Answer the authorities with reason, history and experience.
Christine weighs the testimony of books against what she knows of real women, treating learned consensus as an argument to be examined rather than a verdict.
Opening the City of Ladies, a reading of Matheolus makes her doubt her own sex until Reason urges her to trust what she knows.
Women’s lesser learning, Christine argues, comes from lack of schooling and from custom, not from any natural incapacity of their minds.
Reason claims that if daughters were sent to school like sons, they would learn and understand the arts and sciences just as well.
Prudence adapts virtue to rank, resources and circumstances, teaching each woman to protect her household, reputation and dependants with foresight.
A lady left in charge of her lands while her husband is away should know the law, the accounts and the defense of her castle.
Christine pictures the realm as a living body in which prince, knights and common people depend on one another, so that harming any estate injures the whole.
The prince, as the head, must care for merchants, artisans and laborers, who sustain the body as the belly, legs and feet do.