 |
|
Christine's Italian father was astrologer
to Charles
V, and she spent a pleasant, studious childhood at the French court.
At 15 she married Étienne du Castel, who became court secretary.
Widowed after 10 years of marriage, she took up writing in order to support
herself and her three young children. Her first poems were ballads of lost
love written to the memory of her husband. These verses met with success,
and she continued writing ballads, rondeaux, lays, and complaints in which
she expressed her feelings with grace and sincerity. Among her patrons
were Louis I, duke d'Orléans, the Duke de Berry, Philip II
the Bold of Burgundy, Queen Isabella of Bavaria, and, in England, the 4th
Earl of Salisbury. |