First published in Lyons in 1503, and republished in Paris in 1515 and 1531, Symphorien Champier's Ship of Virtuous Ladies, dedicated to Anne of France and her daughter, Suzanne of Bourbon, consists of a verse prologue and four separate books, all ostensibly written in defense of women. Anne of France, also known as Anne of Beaujeu, was the most powerful woman in late fifteenth-century France, ruling alongside her husband, Pierre of Bourbon, as a de facto regent from 1483 to 1491, during the minority of her brother Charles VIII. She has attracted critical attention in scholarship in French in recent years, most notably Aubrée David-Chapy's Anne de France, Louise de Savoie, inventions d'un pouvoir au féminin (2016). Her own Lessons for My Daughter, written for Suzanne, appeared around the same time as Champier's Ship of Virtuous Ladies and has been translated into English by Sharon L. Jenson (2004). In 1503, the year of her father's death, Suzanne was contemplating marriage; 1515 marks the first regency of another powerful woman, Louise of Savoy. Todd W. Reeser's translation into English of Champier's text follows Judy Kem's critical edition in French (2007).

Champier, who had studied medicine in Montpellier (like François Rabelais a few decades later) and has been called a medical humanist, was no doubt seeking Anne's patronage. In his prologue, he relates that Lady Prudence appeared to him in a vision, calling upon him to record women's “worthy deeds” (32) and “to praise the habits, the key virtues, and the character that a lady should have in order to live nobly” (35). This work is, therefore, designed both to celebrate and to instruct. In book 1, Champier offers a catalogue of exemplary women, from classical antiquity through biblical and early Christian times. Book 2 consists of advice about marriage and contains an anti-Semitic digression urging women to avoid taking medicine from Jewish doctors and to choose their apothecaries carefully. Book 3, not included in this edition, focuses on the Greek sibyls, demonstrating women's prophetic power. In book 4, Champier encourages men and women to value divine love above sensual pleasure.

In his introduction, Reeser poses a key question raised by the inclusion of this volume in the Other Voice in Early Modern Europe series—namely, “Is Champier an ‘Other Voice’?” (19). He notes that Champier's Ship of Princes (1502) had appeared just a year earlier and contains passages addressing women's corruption and malice. He suggests that with the Ship of Virtuous Ladies Champier may simply be engaged in a rhetorical exercise and that the female figures he exalts may actually be “male projections of gender that aim to solidify masculinity clandestinely” (19). In Down Girl: The Logic of Misogyny (2018), Kate Manne argues that misogyny is a structural system that both condemns women who transgress norms upholding men's power and rewards women who adhere to these norms. From this perspective, the two Ships are complementary. Women praised in the Ship of Virtuous Ladies tend to embody patriarchal ideals, displaying beauty, chastity, and devotion as wives (e.g., Penelope, Hypsicratea, and Alecestis), mothers (Berenice, Tamyris), and daughters (Harpalice, Claudia, Michal). To be sure, there are many exceptions. Among others, Champier praises Penthesilia, Marpesia, and Orithiya for their military valor, Sappho and Cornificia for their poetry, Aspasia and Cornelia for their learning, Carfania and Maesia for their rhetoric, and Tamaris and Marcia for their painting. And yet, he often describes such women as having become like men, commenting that “beneath her female sex [Maesia] wore masculine courage” (53) and that Orithiya “display[ed] the qualities of a man” (56). A gendered system distinguishing masculine from feminine virtues remains stable and unchallenged.

Reeser's translation is clear and elegant, with meticulous documentation noting how Champier draws and diverges from his sources, especially Giovanni Boccaccio, Jacobus de Voragine, and Marsilio Ficino—but not, interestingly, Christine de Pizan (as Reeser points out). Neither feminist nor contestatory, Champier's Ship of Virtuous Ladies is nonetheless a fascinating example of a text that aims to appeal to powerful women even as it defines and limits the scope of their power. It will be warmly welcomed by anyone interested in tracing the evolution of ideas about gender and power in early modern Europe.