Women's Education in Early Modern Europe: A History, 1500Tto 1800 (Garland Reference Library of Social Science)

W OMEN’S E DUCATION IN E ARLY M ODERN E UROPE

S T U D I E S I N T H E H I S T O RY O F E D U C AT I O N VOLUME 7 G A R L A N D R E F E R E N C E L I B R A RY O F S O C I A L S C I E N C E VOLUME 1124

S T U D I E S I N T H E H I S T O RY O F E D U C AT I O N E DWARD R . B EAUCHAMP , S eries E ditor EDUCATIONAL PHILOSOPHY A History from the Ancient World to Modern America by Edward J.Power

RADICAL HEROES Gramsci Freire and the Politics of Adult Education by Diana Coben

SCHOOL AND SOCIETY IN VICTORIAN BRITAIN

WOMEN’S EDUCATION IN EARLY MODERN EUROPE

Joseph Payne and the New World of Education by Richard Aldrich

A History, 1500–1800 edited by Barbara J.Whitehead

DISCIPLINE, MORAL REGULATION, AND SCHOOLING A Social History edited by Kate Rousmaniere, Kari Dehli, and Ning de Coninck-Smith

JAPANESE AMERICANS AND CULTURAL CONTINUITY Maintaining Language and Heritage by Toyotomi Morimoto

ESSAYS IN TWENTIETH-CENTURY SOUTHERN EDUCATION Exceptionalism and Its Limits edited by Wayne J.Urban

GIRLS’ SCHOOLING DURING THE PROGRESSIVE ERA From Female Scholar to Domesticated Citizen by Karen Graves

W O M E N ’ S E D U C AT I O N I N E A R LY M O D E R N E U R O P E A H I S T O RY,

1500–1800

EDITED BY BARBARA J.WHITEHEAD

GARLAND PUBLISHING, INC. A M E M B E R O F T H E T AY L O R & F R A N C I S G R O U P NEW YORK AND LONDON 1999

Copyright © 1999 by Barbara J.Whitehead All rights reserved Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Women’s education in early modern Europe: a history, 1500–1800/ edited by Barbara J.Whitehead. p. cm.—(Garland reference library of social science; v. 1124. Studies in the history of education; v. 7) Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 0-8153-2467-7 (alk. paper) 1. Women—Education—Europe—History—16th century. 2. Women— Education—Europe—History—17th century. 3. Women Education—Europe— History—18th century. 4. Women—Education—Europe—History— 19th century. I. Whitehead, Barbara (Barbara J.) II. Series: Garland reference library of social science; v. 1124. III. Series: Garland reference library of social science. Studies in the history of education; vol. 7. LC2032.W66 1999 371.822'094–dc21 98–52002 CIP

Cover: woodcut portrait of Paula Gonzaga entitled De Claris Mulleribus, from the Lessing J.Rosenwald Collection of the Library of Congress. Reprinted from The Book of Fine Prints (Crown Publishers, 1937) by Carl Zigrosser.

Manufactured in the United States of America ISBN 0-203-90506-7 Master e-book ISBN

ISBN 0-203-90599-7 (Adobe eReader Format) ISBN 0-8153-2467-7 (Print Edition)

Contents

Series Preface Introduction Barbara J.Whitehead

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Chapter 1:Learning the Virtues: Convent Schools and Female Culture in Renaissance Florence Sharon T.Strocchia

3

Chapter 2:Equal in Opportunity? The Education of Aristocratic Women 1450–1540 Sharon D.Michalove

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Chapter 3:The Pattern of Perfect Womanhood: Feminine Virtue, Pattern Books and the Fiction of the Clothworking Woman Stacey Shimizu

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Chapter 4:The Rei(g)ning of Women’s Tongues in English Books of Instruction and Rhetorics Catherine R.Eskin

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Chapter 5:The Literacy of Jewish Women in Early Modern Italy Howard Adelman

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Chapter 6:To Educate or Instruct? Du Bosc and Fénelon on Women Colleen Fitzgerald

159

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Contents

Chapter 7:“Its Frequent Visitor”: Death at Boarding School in Early Modern Europe Carolyn C.Lougee 193 Chapter 8:‘A Knowledge Speculative and Practical’: The Dilemma of Midwives’ Education in Early Modern Europe Adrianna E.Bakos

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About the Editor and Contributors Index

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SERIES PREFACE

Garland’s Studies in the History of Education series includes not only volumes on the history of American and Western education, but also on the history of the development of education in non-Western societies. A major goal of this series is to provide new interpretations of educational history that are based on the best recent scholarship; each volume will provide an original analysis and interpretation of the topic under consideration. A wide variety of methodological approaches from the traditional to the innovative are used. In addition, this series especially welcomes studies that focus not only on schools but also on education as defined by Har vard historian Bernard Bailyn: “the transmission of culture across generations.” The major criteria for inclusion are (a) a manscript of the highest quality, and (b) a topic of importance to understanding the field. The editor is open to readers’ suggestions and looks forward to a long-term dialogue with them on the future direction of the series. Edward R.Beauchamp

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Introduction Barbara J.Whitehead

Until the twentieth century, the historical landscape was populated almost entirely by the Great Men of history—kings, scholars, and warriors. In the first half of the twentieth century the Annales school challenged this narrow view of the past. By redefining the subject matter of history away from the tyranny of “the event” and toward a history of daily life, these historians expanded the discipline to make room for the common man. In spite of such a seismic shift in historical focus, the absence in history of all but the exceptional woman persisted.1 Women could not find a place in history as long as the underlying assumptions of historians, assumptions that made men’s activities and values the measure of all things, endured. As Joan Kelly-Gadol notes, “throughout historical time, women have been largely excluded from making war, wealth, laws, governments, art, and science. Men, functioning in their capacity as historians, considered exactly those activities constitutive of civilization: hence, diplomatic history, economic history, constitutional history, and political and cultural history.”2 Women’s activities and their primary domain, the household, had no significance in such a strongly gendered approach to the past. The virtual absence of women in history was challenged in the 1960s, resulting in the rebirth of women’s history. From the start, women’s history questioned any definition of history that privileged men’s activities and values over women’s activities and values. History favoring a man’s perspective would always render women invisible as historians would be looking for women in men’s activities.3 Thus the primary goal of women’s historians has been to challenge both the underlying assumptions of history as well as the subject of history itself. What types of occurrences are worthy of historical study? What ix

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should be the focus of historical inquiry? Historians of women have answered these questions in such a way that there has been an extensive broadening of what is considered to be the subject matter of history. Just as traditional history excluded women by defining the historical subject matter from a man’s perspective, the traditional definition of education would exclude early modern women from the history of education. Early modern education, defined primarily as formal training in schools and universities with an emphasis on the learning of Latin, would be out of reach for nearly all women of that period. How could it be otherwise? Societal barriers prevented women from attaining such an education. Reflective of the widely held perceptions that “an eloquent woman was reputedly unchaste; a learned lady threatened male pride,”4 up to 90 percent of early modern women were illiterate. Women were officially denied entrance to universities until the nineteenth century. If the definition of what it is to be an educated woman is to be a woman educated like a man, then by definition there would be very few educated women in early modern Europe. Thus, any history of women’s education following such guidelines will be a history of exceptional women, those women who, in spite of institutional impediments, attained an educational training similar to that of a man’s. Such exceptional women existed, although their rarity is such that, as one historian estimates, only fifteen women in Renaissance England received a humanist education.5 Prior to the advent of women’s history, even those few exceptionally educated women went unnoticed, however, as historians of education preferred to discuss the education of men, the group that interested them.6 The first challenge, then, for feminist historians of early modern women’s education was to recover women’s intellectual heritage, to seek out the exceptional woman—the woman who, in spite of institutional barriers conspiring against her, was educated like a man. Three seminal studies of early modern women’s education undertook this task: Better Than Rubies: A History of Women’s Education (New York, 1978) by Phyllis Stock; Female Scholars: A Tradition of Learned Women Before 1800 (Montreal, 1980) edited by J.R.Brink; and Beyond Their Sex: Learned Women of the European Past (New York, 1980) edited by Patricia H.Labalme. These three works made it clear that even when using a maleoriented definition of education, there were always women who

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were educated. Their conclusions were undeniable: women have an intellectual history as well as a social one. Although all three books concentrate on formal education and scholarship, Stock takes tentative steps toward a redefinition of women’s education when she asserts that whoever controls the concept of the “ideal woman” determines the education of women. She recognizes that social forces determine what it means to be educated in any given society. In dividing up women’s education into six historical models, only one of which included intellectual training for individual fulfillment, career, or both, she acknowledges that women’s education historically meant something different from formal schooling. In spite of acknowledging, however, that women’s education was primarily informal and not defined as a humanistic training, Stock focuses on formal schooling and even denigrates some of the more prevalent types of education that women received, for example, calling the typical education of a noblewoman “superficial” and at a “low level” because it focused on the skills that would be most useful in her life, among them foreign languages, dancing, and needlework.7 In emphasizing formal schooling, especially the learning of Latin, Stock not only accepts a conventional definition of education, she perpetuates the questionable notion that what was appropriate schooling for men was also appropriate for women.8 Ultimately, Stock reinforces the narrow view of education that excludes most early modern women from the ranks of the educated. Similarly, both Brink’s and Labalme’s anthologies play the dual role of retrieving the exceptionally educated woman from the shadows of history and reaffirming the traditional limited definition of education. Although it is important to revive this past scholarly tradition of women and to reinforce the notion that indeed women do have an intellectual history, it is misleading and even dangerous to present the exceptional as in some way the standard of education for women. By accepting the exceptional as the standard against which all women will be measured, one commits a petitio principii, which leads to the false inference that most early modern European women were uneducated. The principle to be questioned is whether formal training in the humanities was required in order for a woman to be “educated.” In assuming that in order to be considered educated a woman in early modern times necessarily had to have formal schooling, the historian risks being ahistorical. Such a narrow definition of the word

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education implies that for all societies throughout all periods, there has been only one educational standard. On its face such a conclusion should be questioned, and now research has shown that the concept of education is fluid. In the last ten years, historians of education have forced a reassessment of what education meant in early modern times; they have called for a recognition of the impact of societal expectations and limitations on the education of the various groups that make up a society. As a result, they have created a much broader idea of what it means to be educated. Through their work, education has been redefined to mean a “preparation for carrying on societal roles.”9 Education is then the means by which a body of knowledge that is required of each social member to fulfill her obligations is passed on. In an age when the societal roles for men and women were rigidly separated, the education necessary to perform their duties would of necessity differ as well. As education throughout early modern times was adjusted to suit not only one’s gender and social class, but one’s position in the family as well, it would be inaccurate to make the assertion that within any given period there was one standard of education; rather there were a number of differing standards which varied with one’s status. In such a society, then, where one was educated the better to fulfill adult responsibilities, an educated nobleman who sought access to the upper ranks of the royal bureaucracy was considered educated when he had a humanist education, whereas his wife, who could never aspire to such a position, would have been considered educated if she could sew, dance play music, and run a household.10 Given that early modern society used different criteria for determining whether a man or woman was educated, two points become clear: early modern women were educated to the standards established by their societies; and any attempt to judge them by one humanist standard of education is bound not only to return false results, but to be ahistorical as well. This broader definition of education is not a literary convenience devised to provide a way to place women in the history of education, nor is it so general as to be meaningless. It is instead as true today as it was in early modern times; it describes more accurately what education actually does: prepare students for their place in the world. This definition is gender neutral as it does not hold either gender to the educational expectations created for the other. Just as some men needed a knowledge of Latin if they wished to move into church or government offices, some women, depending on class, needed a

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knowledge of household management, spinning, or needlework. As a government official would not be judged by his skill with needle and thread, a bourgeois woman would not be considered uneducated if she knew no Latin. Each person was judged by how well he or she had mastered the educational goals established for his or her own group and no other. The goal of this book is not to dismiss the importance of formal education for women but instead to present it as one of many types of women’s education found in the early modern world. Equal validity is given to informal education, vocational education, domestic education, and social education. By including a variety of types of women’s education, this volume acknowledges the broad spectrum of early modern women’s education. Although there are to be found here essays on more formal educational training in convents and boarding schools, there are also essays on midwifery, needlepoint, and domestic skills. Given the vast chronological period covered by these essays, this book does not aspire to be a definitive survey of early modern women’s education. Its goal is instead to illustrate the variety of ways in which women of different periods, countries, and classes were educated. What the contributions all have in common is that they attempt to show the social forces at work which determined what it was to be an educated woman in early modern Europe. In her opening essay, Sharon Strocchia directly links societal expectations to women’s education in Renaissance Florence. She makes it clear that in a society where women were expected neither to have a civic role nor to participate actively in commerce, what constituted an educated woman was the woman who had “learned the virtues” more than the woman who had learned to write. Her analysis of a previously unknown convent school in Florence brings new evidence to the discussion of the “relationship between female education and female culture.” Sharon Michalove furthers the discussion in her examination of the aristocratic household. She asks for a reappraisal of the relative importance of a domestic education given the significant role of the household in early English society. She concludes that in a world where aristocratic households served an important political function, the status of the women who ruled them, and consequently the status of the education of those women, must be elevated. The strong but subtle influence of society in acculturating women is highlighted in Stacey Shimizu’s analysis of early modern pattern books of

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needlepoint and lace making. Shimizu argues that the pattern books had a dual purpose. These books, while ostensibly providing needlework patterns, also contained an underlying lesson; they taught women how to behave. Through the pattern books, society’s expectations of proper behavior for women were inculcated in the needleworker. More than merely teaching needlework patterns, Shimizu contends, the books socialized women. The question then arises, what were society’s expectations for women’s behavior? Catherine Eskin challenges the notion that society spoke with one voice when it decreed that women should be “chaste, silent and obedient”.11 In her essay on Elizabethan books of rhetoric she discovers that a multiple response existed, a confused or mixed message on women’s place in rhetoric—not all eloquent women were silent, or encouraged to be. Howard Adelman continues with the theme of society’s ambivalent views of the educated woman. Focusing on Jewish women in early modern Italy, Adelman reveals the paradoxical attitude of the Jewish community toward women’s education: although some schooling was considered appropriate, the fear persisted that a literate woman would ultimately be an unfaithful woman. The complex development of societal attitudes towards women, and thus of what women’s education would consist, is mapped out in Colleen Fitzgerald’s analysis of two French seventeenth-century theorists of women’s education, Jacques Du Bosc and François de Salignac de la Mothe Fénelon. The shift from Du Bosc’s emphasis on éducation to Fénelon’s stress on instruction indicates not only a narrowing of the type of women’s education that was acceptable to society in the seventeenth century, but also a narrowing of what was considered to be acceptable behavior for seventeenth-century French women. Carolyn Lougee’s investigation of boarding schools takes a novel turn away from standard questions of curriculum and social status of students to look at issues of mortality at school. Her work opens a new area of discussion for those interested in woman’s education: the often serious health consequences of attending early boarding schools. The high death rate of girls in boarding school leads Lougee to conclude that historians need to reconsider the assumption “that family and school have been compatible and mutually reinforcing in modern history.”

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The last essay in this volume looks at an important area of women’s vocational education, midwifery. Adrianna Bakos correlates the decline of midwifery with new attitudes towards knowledge that resulted from the overwhelming impact of the scientific revolution. The scientific revolution, posits Bakos, devalued the use of “intuition” in medicine; thus, it effectively dismissed the type of knowledge used by mid wives. The work of the midwife consequently lost all value for science. Each essay in this book contributes to the redefinition of the subject of the history of education: education is to accomplish a social task, to define the worth, value, and responsibility of the individual in society. To be an educated woman was to have learned the skill necessary to accomplish her social task; when social forces changed the understanding of what the skill contributed to society, or devalued that skill entirely, then the history of woman shows her displacement. To be an “educated” woman was to fulfill a social idea; this was an idea valued by society, but nonetheless distinct from the definition of what it meant to be an educated man. Once this distinction is understood, then women’s rich education history can at last be understood and appreciated. NOTES 1. “The shattering and definitive criticisms that Lucien Febvre and the emerging Annales school leveled at the positivist school and its great leader, Charles Seignobos, reduced to ashes this naive conception of history subordinated to ‘the event.’… The new attention that the Annales school brought to bear on the material aspect of daily life—their interest in perceiving continuities but also points of divergence, without presupposing a continuity of law within nations and political formations—could have been the starting signal for the creation of women’s history. In fact, it was nothing of the sort. This new perception of the historian’s task gave rise to nothing but the most routine research centering on an exceptional female figure: the heroine.” Christian Fauré, “Absent from History,” trans. Lillian S. Robinson, Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society 7 (1981): 73–74. 2. Joan Kelly-Gadol, ‘The Social Relation of the Sexes: Methodological Implications of Women’s History.” Signs 1 (1976): 810. 3. See Gerda Lerner, The Majority Finds Its Past: Placing Women in History (New York: Oxford, 1979). 4. Patricia H.Labalme, ed., Beyond Their Sex: Learned Women of the European Past (New York: 1984), p. 4.

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5. Ellen Messer-Davidow, review of Reason’s Disciples: Seventeenthcentury English Feminists, by Hilda Smith (Chicago, 1982) in Signs 9 (1983): 143. 6. Jane Roland Martin, Reclaiming a Conversation: The Ideal of the Educated Woman (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1985), p. 2. 7. Phyllis Stock, Better Than Rubies: A History of Women’s Education (New York: Putnam, 1978), pp. 81–82. 8. Elizabeth S.Cohen, “On Doing the History of Women’s Education,” History of Education Quarterly 19 (1979): 153–54. 9. Martin, p. 5. Messer-Davidow writes that in early modern England, “liberal education was meant to prepare English gentlemen for Parliament, the pulpit, and the bar; for the management of private estates and public works; for the professions and scholarship. English gentlewomen were destined for the vocation of domesticity—household management, wifely obedience, devoted motherhood, modest sociability—and for Christian piety.” Messer-Davidow, 143–144. See also Nicolas Orme, Education and Society in Medieval and Renaissance England (London: Hambledon Press, 1989). 10. Alice T.Friedman, “The Influence of Humanism on the Education of Girls and Boys in Tudor England,” History of Education Quarterly (1985): 58. 11. See Suzanne W.Hull, Chaste, Silent and Obedient: English Books for Women, 1475–1640 (San Marino, Calif.: Huntington Library, 1982) for a defense of this position.

W O M E N ’ S E D U C AT I O N I N E A R LY M O D E R N E U R O P E

CHAPTER 1

Learning the Virtues Convent Schools and Female Culture in Renaissance Florence Sharon T.Strocchia

Education in Renaissance Italy operated along two sets of separate tracks: on the one hand, those distinguished by Latin and the vernacular; on the other, those created by gender. As historians have attended to the ways in which gender conditioned the acquisition and uses of learning in both Latin and vernacular modes, their inquiries have been hampered by the sparseness of local studies. This essay aims to enhance our understanding of how gender shaped vernacular education in fifteenth-century Florence, that most “Renaissance” of all Italian cities. Here I leave aside a statistical evaluation of literacy by gender, which Paul Grendler has attempted recently.1 Instead, I consider the means by which fifteenth-century Florentine girls acquired vernacular literate skills in convent schools, and how that learning was embedded in a larger set of educational practices Florentines called “learning the virtues.” At the heart of the discussion is a previously unknown convent school run by the Augustinian nuns of Lapo, located in the diocese of Fiesole on the northern edge of Florence. The rich administrative records kept by the nuns themselves afford an important point of entry into the relationship between female education and female culture, including the fundamental social norms that education aimed to reproduce. The first part of the essay locates the convent school of Lapo in the broader structures of Florentine schooling, then moves on to sketch the social profile of schoolgirls who attended it. The data 3

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derived from the Lapo school are checked against the records of another unknown convent school, that of San Niccolò dei Frieri, located on the opposite side of the city in the Oltrarno. The second part of the essay attempts to capture aspects of the learning experience for both nuns and their secular charges by looking at the nature of the curriculum and the purposes of convent education. The third and final part of the essay turns from reading to writing skills, and examines how girls’ graphic training was directed and often impeded by powerful contradictions within Florentine culture. For women as well as for girls, the learning and practice of writing highlighted the growing tensions between established gender expectations and the practical demands of urban life. By situating the education of girls in its social and cultural context throughout the essay, I hope to offer new information about convent schools and vernacular literacy while touching on the experience of growing up female in fifteenth-century Florence. THE CONVENT SCHOOL OF LAPO For both boys and girls born into merchant, banking, and professional families, vernacular education began at home with their mothers as their first teachers. Mothers who themselves had the rudiments of learning often taught the alphabet to their children, sometimes by shaping sweets in the form of letters.2 Since the standard method of teaching reading in schools as well as in homes was alphabetic, basic vernacular teaching required no special expertise beyond mastery of the alphabet. One of the most commonplace teaching texts used in elementary education was a vernacular anthology based on the psalter (saltero de’ fanciulli), which functioned both as a pedagogical tool and as a religious text designed to instill Christian values.3 Several fifteenth-century humanists such as Francesco Barbaro glorified this “most serious duty” of mothers to educate and form the character of their children, which Stanley Chojnacki has argued allowed some mothers of the Venetian patriciate to exert greater moral leverage within a patriarchal framework.4 Similarly, the Florentine bookseller Vespasiano da Bisticci praised the mother of Alessandra de’ Bardi “especially for the care she gave to the education of her family;” Vespasiano also cited the merits of Nanna Valori Pandolfini, calling her “the highest example of a good housewife,” as witnessed by “the excellent education she gave to her sons and daughters.”5

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After this common initiation into rudimentary language skills and basic religious values, however, the educational paths pursued by boys and girls quickly diverged. Around the age of seven, boys of the Florentine elite were removed from their mother’s supervision to take on more strenuous educational tasks, proceeding in cumulative cycles of study that advanced them from one level of learning to the next. Once boys had mastered vernacular language skills in reading and writing schools, they moved on either to study accounting practices in abbaco schools for about two years, from age ten or eleven to thirteen to fifteen;6 or they proceeded directly to the Latin grammar course that distinguished the truly “educated” from the merely literate. Paul Gehl has concluded recently that in the trecento Florentine educational tradition, there did not seem to be a preferred order of study for boys, nor were there fixed ages for starting the various school courses.7 Yet despite the flexibility of courses and ages at which boys enrolled, a firm educational establishment was nevertheless in place designed to teach boys both vernacular and Latin forms of literacy. The extent to which girls could utilize this establishment was subject to the strong task orientation of late medieval education, to culturally based gender restrictions, and to the contingent nature of girls’ schooling. In this bilingual culture with its two-track educational system, Latin learning functioned as the gateway to public and intellectual life; yet Florentine political arrangements acknowledged no legitimate public roles for women trained in Latin. Only in rare cases did girls learn Latin, either from private tutors, their fathers or brothers, or in a convent.8 Even vernacular education for girls in the fifteenth century was fraught with practical and ideological obstacles. One primary problem was the lack of a trained corps of female teachers who might instruct girls in a more acceptable gendersegregated environment. Giovanni Villani proudly noted the presence of female teachers (and students) in his 1338 survey of the Florentine educational system; both Gehl and Grendler cite the interesting case of the schoolmistress Monna Clementia, active circa 1304, to which Ronald Witt has added several additional examples.9 Yet definitive numbers for both female teachers and students are difficult to obtain since Florentines “preferred a private system of schools” that has left fewer documentary traces than in other Italian cities.10 Given the available evidence, it seems reasonable to infer that although it was not uncommon for upper-class families to employ a female teacher

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or governess to tutor girls privately at home, these individualized arrangements were disconnected from the educational structures in place for boys. Only rarely did girls study in neighborhood schools taught by men, and it was not until the Catholic Reformation that educational opportunities for girls expanded.11 Given the scarcity of female pedagogues and the cultural discomfort caused by sexually integrated classrooms in the fifteenth century, it is not surprising that most Florentine girls educated outside the home were trained in a convent setting. Middle-class Florentine fathers and mothers obviously felt safer sending their daughters engaged in even limited educational ventures to learn from celibate religious women in the regulated, morally secure environment of female religious communities. The merchant Giovanni Manzuoli is a typical case in point. In October 1476 Manzuoli sent his young daughter Maria to Suora Pippa Bonsi, a Franciscan nun at the convent of Santi Jacopo e Lorenzo. Suora Pippa promised to care for the girl and to teach her “the virtues,” in return for six florins annual board and compensation; but after two and a half years, as Maria was probably nearing the end of her training, the girl died in the convent (June 1479). 12 Female monasteries in Venice also delivered a rudimentary vernacular schooling to some wealthy Venetian girls, although the high level of violence and sexual activity in certain houses may have thrown both their safety and morality into question.13 Despite the numerous references in Italian convent records to this type of elementary schooling, it is nevertheless worth emphasizing that in the fifteenth century there were no female religious orders specifically directed toward teaching. Some Italian Dominican nuns enjoyed a rather elevated reputation for learning, but they were not necessarily celebrated as teachers.14 Whatever training Florentine girls received in convent settings depended on the skill levels achieved by the individual nuns who taught them, on the girls’ length of stay in the convent, and on the nature and type of resources enjoyed by a particular religious house. The convent school that forms the basis of this study underscores the haphazard, almost accidental character of female education in fifteenth-century Florence. The convent of Santa Maria del Fiore (commonly called Lapo after the name of its first benefactor) originated around 1335 as a small, informal community of women who opted to live together on a rocky summit in Fiesole, just outside Florence, without benefit of a formal monastic rule. In 1350 these eight female hermits,

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like many other semi-religious women of their day, were brought under official clerical supervision and chartered as an Augustinian convent.15 Sometime in the 1380s, the nuns relocated to a new site several miles closer to Florence on flatter terrain, thereby improving physical access to the community for urban residents. Even in its earliest days, the Lapo convent showed itself to be an unusually active center of literate activity, with high skill levels and standards. Beginning in 1355, virtually all of the internal administrative records of the house—account books, memoranda, little chits and notes, lists of nuns, and necrologies—were kept by the nuns themselves, several of whom came from upper-class urban families that probably enjoyed their own traditions of female literacy, and who likely taught their untrained peers and successors how to read and write. Throughout the late fourteenth century many of the nuns responsible for record keeping, such as the highly visible abbess Jacopa and several of her sister nuns, displayed well-developed graphic skills, writing in a meticulous if sometimes stiff Gothic book hand that was quite distinct from the rapid, often sloppy cursive (mercantesca) familiar to readers of domestic diaries and merchant accounts. This lofty tradition of literacy continued unabated throughout the fifteenth century. Perhaps the single most concentrated illustration of the nuns’ graphic skills can be seen in a contract of May 1431, in which all sixteen nuns authenticating the document as witnesses wrote out a standard legal formula and their personal names in their own hands.16 Yet despite this literate tradition at Lapo, the development of a convent school there grew out of simple economic need rather than by design. In their 1427 tax report, the nuns stated that “they do not harvest either enough grain, wine, or oil” to live on and could claim assets of only 2,089 florins; by 1438 the Lapo nuns reported that their assets had declined to 1,366 florins.17 Since these observant nuns, having renounced family wealth, lacked a sufficient property endowment, they were forced to support themselves primarily by the sale of various kinds of handiwork. Taking advantage of new consumption patterns for luxury goods emerging in the late trecento, the convent developed a thriving commercial exchange with an overwhelmingly female clientele that clamored for the colorful ribbons, silk purses, embroidered cuffs, linen sheets and undershirts, thread, yarn, fine carded wool, stuffed pillows, and assorted trousseau items the nuns produced.18 An eighteenth-century chronicler estimated

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that the Lapo nuns derived fifty to sixty florins per year in the late 1360s from their handiwork.19 Supplementing these earnings from craft production was income derived from the nuns’ use of their literate abilities. By the 1380s the house had a flourishing scriptorium with at least three active scribes— Sisters Vangelista, Bartolomea, and Maria—who produced books for sale. These nuns copied what were probably devotional books for other women, as well as various liturgical books such as psalters and breviaries for their own use. For instance, in 1403 the nuns copied a “little book,” most likely a book of hours, for a Monna Bernarda; Suora Vangelista sold one of her products to a Monna Caterina in January 1406; and Suora Bartolomea copied another book in 1410 for Pippa Bueri, one of the convent’s most active female patrons. The high quality of their work can be inferred from the numerous transactions and sale of several books in these years to the learned friar Maestro Domenico, a master of theology at the powerful Dominican house of Santa Maria Novella. The Lapo nuns also made their graphic skills available for practical purposes of an everyday kind, producing several “writings” (scritti) of unknown content for women such as Pippa Bueri, who could read but not write.20 Like other female religious communities in fourteenth- and fifteenthcentury Florence, Lapo offered an additional tier of graphic services beyond those provided by notaries, as nuns put their intellectual abilities and scribal skills to work for both the monastic community itself and for a wide range of monastic patrons. Through literate activities as well as commercial exchange, the Lapo nuns stood at the center of a vibrant network, in this case composed predominantly of women, that enabled them to serve neighboring areas in multiple ways, extend the social and spiritual reputation of their house, and traffic in the business of literacy. That the Lapo community enjoyed a thriving literate culture can be seen as well by the precocious use of one of the newest technical aides to literacy: eyeglasses. The Lapo nuns ordered four pair of spectacles for individual wear in 1385, some seventy years before these devices came into common use in Florence, Milan, and other Italian cities. Suora Vangelista apparently wore her glasses often enough in her work as a scribe to require replacement of one of the lenses in 1402, and other spectacles warranted repair over the next several years,21 It was these literate skills displayed by individual nuns, along with the convent’s blossoming commercial networks, their largely female

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clientele, and their economic need that help to explain the evolution of a school at Lapo around 1400. Economic need also explains the emergence of another convent school, that of the Hieronymite convent of San Niccolò dei Frieri, which began accepting pupils in the late 1440s. In their 1478 tax.ort, San Niccolò lamented that the convent was poor, plague-stricken, and forced to accept new novices yearly simply to survive on its meager endowment. Pupils provided them with a much-needed additional source of revenue, especially in the closing decades of the fifteenth century, when the pace of monastic expansion outstripped endowment income.22 The growth of convent schools as a partial response to economic hardship may help to explain why such elite, affluent houses as San Pier Maggiore and Santa Felicità never developed schooling as a regular, ancillary activity, despite the fact that they were populated by literate nuns.23 Neither Lapo nor San Niccolò were boarding schools in the modern sense of the term, since the convent’s main mission was never to deliver education but to engage in prayer and contemplation. These schools were small-scale operations, with the number of students limited by spatial considerations within the cloister, as well as by the population of nuns available to supervise young charges. Lapo always remained a small religious house; the convent claimed a total complement of only twenty-five nuns and servants in both 1427 and 1438, with that number rising to thirty by 1478. San Niccolò dei Frieri also claimed thirty “mouths” in 1478.24 Since there were probably no more than three to six pupils boarding at either Lapo or San Niccolò at any given time, the result was a very low ratio between students and tutoring nuns that ensured the personalized mentoring that was characteristic of monastic education. When, for instance, the Florentine merchant Luca da Panzano placed his two daughters in the Augustinian convent of San Baldassare at Coverciano to be educated for one year, he agreed to pay an annual fee of ten florins for each girl, plus an additional two florins as private compensation to the two nuns who taught and cared for them.25 By comparison, abbaco schools for boys averaged one teacher for every twenty-five to forty students in the late fourteenth and early fifteenth centuries; Gehl speculates that a hypothetical Florentine grammar master in 1350 might have as many as thirty to forty students.26 The intense mentoring of convent schools was further enhanced by the fact that they immersed pupils fully in a set of regulated routines around the clock. The convent setting, including the observance of

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cloister, enveloped girls in a total, holistic learning experience that contrasted sharply with the more bounded routines of their brothers, cousins, and other male counterparts, most of whom were day pupils.27 Their stay in the convent as pupils gave girls a first-hand experience of convent life, which may have forged a greater sense of affiliation with particular religious communities and ongoing bonds of patronage when the girls reached adulthood. Entering a convent school also introduced girls to the physical dislocation that might mark the rest of their lives. As wives and widows, privileged women often experienced a series of transfers from one household to another, depending on family circumstances.28 In this sense, convent schooling can be considered as an adolescent rite of passage for some girls, akin to what Walter Ong has called the “puberty rite” of Latin study for boys.29 The first documented instance of a student boarding at Lapo dates from July 1404, when the daughter of a Monna Pippa and Messer Ricciardo (whose surname remains tantalizingly absent from convent records) came to learn reading. Six months later, this young girl was joined by her two cousins; the nuns recorded that in January 1405, Monna Ghetta, Messer Ricciardo’s sister, “sent to us two of her girls to learn how to read.” Still another cousin came the following year (April 1406), this time the daughter of a Monna Lena and Messer Ricciardo’s brother Jacopo.30 Thus this initial corps of students was bound by a common educational experience and more deeply still by ties of kinship. Lapo was not the only school where education was something of a family enterprise. Kinship relations, whether between pupils themselves or between nuns and their students, structured girls’ schooling at other convents as well. For example, in 1410 Alessandra da Uzzano, daughter of a prominent political family, learned reading from the Benedictine nun Andrea Alessandri, who was related to her father Agnolo by marriage.31 In this sense, convent schooling was sometimes a literal extension of the familial education girls received in the home, with nuns assuming the place of mothers/teachers. Despite the monastic ideal of separation from the secular world, especially from the binding ties of family, Florentine convents continued to exhibit strong family flavorings characterized by the interpenetration of convent and family affairs throughout the fifteenth century. The first four pupils at Lapo were quickly joined by other girls who shared family ties among themselves, as well as preexisting connections to the convent. Between 1405 and 1412, the nuns

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accepted eight additional pupils, several of whom bore prestigious surnames, who came specifically to learn reading as well as moral virtues and practical skills.32 Presumably interest in the Lapo school spread by word of mouth through family circles, with the convent’s female clients and patrons as the primary contacts. In these early years of the school’s development, women were involved to a significant extent in sponsoring the education of their younger female kin. In June 1412, for example, Monna Piera Vecchietti paid part of the annual board for her niece Piera, who was already learning at Lapo; the following month Monna Piera “brought to us her other daughter Giovanna so she could learn how to read,” furnishing as down payment five florins’ worth of grain and red wine.33 Convent records identify six of the eight pupils boarding in this stretch of time by some form of female kinship affiliation. Unfortunately there is a significant gap in extant convent registers from 1412 to 1437, with only a few scattered notarial records surviving from these years. Despite these lost years, we can infer nevertheless that Lapo continued its previous educational activities unabated from the creation of a separate section treating pupils’ financial accounts when surviving records resume in 1437. Written in an elegant, formal book hand, the section opens with the following heading: “Here below we will make a record of all the girls we receive into our convent of Santa Maria del Fiore in order to nourish them, teach them to sew and to read and other things; and how much we ought to receive from each one, and who is obligated to pay. These things will be written by the hand of our own Sister-treasurers.”34 In fact, a well-established school had obviously taken shape during this interim. Although the exact number of students entering Lapo in these missing years cannot be determined, we do know that, over the next thirty years (1439–1468), at least fifty-four girls entered the convent as boarding pupils “to learn [how] to read, to sew, and the other virtues,” as one record put it.35 These pupils formed a distinct category in convent records, and should not be confused or conflated with those girls who were placed in temporary guardianship (serbanza) at Lapo because of exceptional household circumstances. Not surprisingly, most pupils came from the Florentine commercial and professional classes. Their social backgrounds ranged from old, prestigious merchant and banking families such as the Adimari, Bardi, Biliotti, Corsini, Pazzi, Pitti, and Strozzi, to a scattering of newer arrivals on the social scene such as the Ginori, to several girls

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descended from notarial families. Although all the girls were fairly well off financially and can be placed roughly in the upper third of Florentine ranks of wealth, they nevertheless did not represent the city’s richest households in any significant number. What is striking about the Lapo pupils, in fact, is their relatively heterogenous social mix within a broadly defined urban elite. The reasonable cost of convent schooling probably facilitated this mix. Families of Lapo students generally paid between sixteen and twenty florins per year for room, board, and instruction, just slightly more than the sum of fourteen florins set by tax officials in 1427 as the minimum annual cost of living. The rates at San Niccolò dei Frieri were cheaper still. In the 1480s the standard boarding fee for students there was one florin per month.36 Although the Lapo school did not cater to the city’s wealthiest households, it nevertheless attracted a sizeable number of pupils who shared family ties to the highest circles of the Florentine political and intellectual elite. Judging from these brilliant social connections, it seems likely that Lapo had in fact emerged as the premier girls’ school in the city by mid-century. Among the students educated at Lapo, for example, was Valenza Federighi, whose two-year stint in the convent (1445– 1448) was paid for by her mother Daniela and her uncle Benozzo, the bishop of Fiesole, Lapo’s home diocese. Preceding this bishop’s niece by a few months was Caterina, granddaughter of Leonardo Bruni, the great humanist and Florentine chancellor. Apparently Bruni was already well disposed toward the Lapo school even before Caterina came for a brief stay in 1444, since he lent the nuns a small sum of money the previous year, in part because his son Donato was a kinsman of the nun Lisa Ridolfi through marriage.37 Nera della Luna, a pupil at Lapo in the early 1450s, was the niece of an extremely active civic officeholder, artistic advisor, and Guelf party leader. Her brother Pandolfo eventually became treasurer of taxes earmarked for the renowned Pisan Studio. Continuing the family tradition at Lapo, Pandolfo later placed his own two nieces in guardianship there in the 1480s.38 The ability to attract girls with such lofty family connections must have given the Lapo school a real cachet across the city, which in turn may have reinforced a growing sense of elite class solidarity among participating families. As the Lapo school became better established in the mid-fifteenth century, schoolgirls brought with them a new set of social relationships beyond those created by kinship and marriage. Whereas family bonds

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had been the most visible link among the earliest students at Lapo, what figured more prominently among the girls by mid-century were ties of neighborhood. These changing alliances among schoolgirls— from ties of family to ones of class and locality—reflected and reinforced larger changes at work during the quattrocento, as Florentine society became increasingly stratified and dominated by the upper classes both within and across neighborhood enclaves. Households and families that shared a common, increasingly cohesive set of local and class interests might solidify their mutual support networks by placing daughters, nieces, and cousins together in the same institution, thus ensuring a similar upbringing and experience for the girls themselves while effectively concentrating the supervisory and patronage efforts of their families and guardians. Common neighborhood origins were especially pronounced in the cohort of girls entering Lapo in the 1450s, a pivotal decade in the transformation of urban social geography. Sharing the Lapo school as a common reference point in these years were several affluent neighbors living in the ward of the White Lion (Leon Bianco), located in the quarter of Santa Maria Novella in the western part of the city. Caterina Vernacci came from this sector, as did Nera della Luna, Alessandra Pescioni, and the sisters Tita, Piera, and Ginevra Vecchietti. The father of another Lapo pupil, Piera Venturi, rented a house in that ward from Niccolò Bordoni, whose own daughter Lucrezia had been a pupil at Lapo in the 1440s.39 Coming from just a few streets away in the same quarter were Lena Borgherini, Pippa Berti, and Lisabetta Carducci, who followed the path blazed a few years earlier by Costanza and Nanna Baldovinetti, fellow residents in the Viper ward.40 Because of the missing convent registers, it is not clear precisely when or how the association with this particular urban sector developed. The convent school that grew up at San Niccolò dei Frieri corroborates aspects of the Lapo evidence discussed thus far, and also takes the story of convent schooling forward into the late fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries, when the Lapo registers once again become thin. The Hieronymite convent of San Niccolò dei Frieri, founded in 1392 by five well-born, pious Florentine matrons, was located on Via de’ Serragli next to the Porta San Pier Gattolino (now Porta Romana). After the siege of Florence in 1530, the nuns relocated to a new foundation on Via San Gallo, which was known henceforth as San Giovannino de’ Cavalieri. The convent’s main claim to fame

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in educational history dates from the late sixteenth century, when it schooled the future saint Maria Maddalena de’ Pazzi as a young girl.41 Like Lapo, the school at San Niccolò developed largely by accident. The first pupils came to San Niccolò in 1446 when the nuns accepted the daughters of a Monna Caterina “to learn” (per inparare), probably because she was a kinswoman of the Hieronymite friar and convent ally Messer Giuliano Benini.42 Over the next three decades, the nuns took in a handful of pupils on a sporadic basis, including Nannina di Francesco, a farrier’s daughter, who came to learn reading and sewing in 1476.43 In the 1480s, however, the convent’s instructional efforts began to intensify, probably because of financial strain. Between 1482 and 1489, San Niccolò accepted sixteen girls as students, and an additional four as boarders.44 Kinship figured noticeably in this cohort of students, for which we have the most complete information, as it did in Lapo’s initial intake group. Among the sixteen students were two pairs of sisters, and one set of three sisters. The social profile of these sixteen girls resembled that of the Lapo student clientele as well. Of the sixteen, eleven came from families involved in various aspects of commerce and banking; two were a notary’s daughters and one was identified as a notary’s niece; one spicer/apothecary sent his daughter to be educated at San Niccolò; and one pupil was the daughter of a Hungarian of unknown occupation. At least one girl’s father was dead, and possibly those of three other students.45 Convent records are extremely sparse for the years from 1490 to 1506, making it impossible to gauge the consistency or pace of the school’s development. The nuns of San Niccolò must have continued their educational efforts at some level, however, for we know that there were five pupils learning at the house in 1507.46 Regular records resume in the 1510s and 20s, although their usefulness is diminished by the failure to distinguish consistently between pupils and boarders. The convent accepted nine girls as residents between 1515 and 1518, six from 1520 to 1522, eight girls in 1525, and eleven in 1529, for a total of thirty-four girls in fourteen years.47 There are several noticeable changes between these clusters of girls and those admitted in the 1480s. First is the more elite character of the student clientele. In 1516–1517 the nuns housed the daughters of a notary, a bookseller, and a physician, probably as boarders rather than pupils, but these were the last girls to come from such diverse backgrounds.48 From 1517 on, San Niccolò

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accepted girls only from well-established commercial families with long lineages. This change was a likely consequence of the convent itself becoming more uniformly upper class. In the 1470s, for instance, San Niccolò had enrolled as nuns the sister of an armorer, along with the daughters of a baker and a goldsmith (all of whom were delinquent with their monastic dowry payments). By 1525 a roster of twenty-four nuns listed the names of only extremely well-born Florentine women.49 The second change to be noted is the development of what appear to be increasingly distinctive cohorts or classes in the late 1520s and beyond. For example, San Niccolò admitted eight girls over the course of 1525, but there appear to be no further admissions until 1529, when the convent took in another eleven girls as students.50 During the siege of Florence in 1530, the nuns removed from the convent because of its proximity to the city gates and transferred to a house owned by the Bini, the natal family of the abbess Lucrezia Bini. Although pupils were given leave to return home during this time, ten students nevertheless remained with the nuns.51 Since at least four of these ten pupils were related to members of the San Niccolò community, their families may have decided that this was a safe course of action.52 Times of crisis simply highlighted the instrumental advantage of having a foothold in a female monastic community, which elite families normally enjoyed on a more everyday basis. Once the siege ended, the San Niccolò nuns began building a new convent but nonetheless immediately accepted two new pupils, complementing the five girls from “Casa Bini” who stayed on. As work on the new foundation progressed, the sisters of San Niccolò continued their educational tasks. Five students entered the makeshift house in 1531, and the nuns accepted girls at the rate of three to five per year through the 1530s.53 In the absence of a full-fledged study of the convent, however, it is difficult to know the extent to which this clustering of students was a response to larger urban problems and processes, such as political turmoil, famine, plague, and patronage, which made convent residence an attractive option for girls’ families in the uncertain years of the early sixteenth century, and the extent to which it may have represented an emerging educational policy. Despite the questions about schooling that must remain unanswered for the moment, we get a rare glimpse into the negotiations behind the acceptance of incoming students at San Niccolò in a convent record dated March 1,1482. On that day the brothers Francesco and Giovanbattista di Bernardo Quaratesi came

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to the house to request that their nieces, Agnola and Gostanza, be accepted as pupils, bringing with them the two girls. The brothers conferred with the convent’s representative, Suora Caterina Guidetti, who was acting on behalf of the ailing abbess Elena Bonsi. They agreed to the following terms: the Quaratesi brothers would pay one florin per month for each girl, obligating their heirs to continue payments in the event of their deaths, and would supply each girl with a pair of sheets; in return, the nuns promised to keep the girls, or one of them if the other was unwilling, and “to teach them the virtues, to train them, and to provide them with food and lodging” in keeping with the customary usage of the house. Suora Caterina then convened the chapter of nuns, which ratified the agreement and accepted the girls that same day. The agreement was open ended, and the document unfortunately does not note when their training terminated; nor does the record indicate the specific family circumstances that led the Quaratesi brothers to entrust their nieces to San Niccolò.54 But it seems likely that both kinship and geography played a role in their decision about where to educate these young girls. A strong family link had already been established by the girls’ great-aunt Agnola, who entered the convent as a novice in 1446, took vows in 1455, and was an active member of the community in 1477; whether Suora Agnola was still alive to facilitate negotiations in 1482 is unclear.55 Moreover, the location of San Niccolò in the Oltrarno sector of the city was an advantage for the Quaratesi, whose households were located on the same side of the river in the Scala ward.56 The data from San Niccolò are too sketchy to permit a solid comparison with Lapo in regard to the neighborhood origins of students, but a few examples indicate that the relative proximity of San Niccolò appealed to other Oltrarno families as well. Among the five pupils living at San Niccolò in 1507, two (Lodovica Rossi and Lena Bartolini) came from the Oltrarno quarter of Santo Spirito; two of the remaining three hailed from a section of the Santa Croce quarter near the river.57 It was in the close, intimate environment of the convent, peopled with a few familiar faces of kin or neighbors, that the schoolgirls of Lapo and San Niccolò spent some of their formative years. Convent records themselves make scant mention of the girls’ ages during their stay, but we can get some sense of ages from household tax returns, which sometimes provide such information. Determining ages for Lapo schoolgirls systematically, however, is unfeasible in the absence of a major tax return between 1427 and 1457 that might have caught

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most girls in its administrative net. These difficulties are further compounded by the practice, which became increasingly common among Florentine fathers in the mid-quattrocento, of either purposely omitting or outright falsifying their daughters’ ages in tax records in order to keep their marriage options open for a longer period, beyond the normative age of sixteen to eighteen for a first marriage.58 Such an omission marked the household return for the student Angelica Ginori, for example, whose two brothers listed their own ages but omitted hers. Similarly, the father of pupil Lisabetta Carducci noted his age as well as those of his four sons, while leaving blank those of his wife and four daughters.59 Judging from the available data, however, there appears to have been a fairly wide age range among the girls attending Lapo. Pippa Berti entered as a boarding pupil at age five in 1449; her tender years may have been rendered more acceptable to both her parents and the nuns by the fact that her cousin Tommasa had been a pupil at the school in 1445–1446.60Several other Lapo pupils were much older and could be considered adult women by both Florentine standards and those of our own day. The oldest pupil to attend Lapo was Maddalena Borgherini, whose stay from 1464 to 1468, from ages nineteen to twenty-three, was undoubtedly due to distressed family circumstances. To make a good marriage match, her family needed rapidly to accumulate a more respectable dowry than the paltry sum of twenty-two florins they had amassed in 1457, a process that was no doubt complicated by the death of her father shortly after filing his 1457 tax return.61 Family circumstances dictated other anomalies in the age patterns of pupils. In order to keep his two daughters together, Bastiano Mazinti enrolled them at San Niccolò dei Frieri at the same time in 1521, despite the fact that one girl, Marietta, was thirteen, and the other, Maddalena, was only two years old. The concurrent enrollment of siblings enjoyed several precedents at San Niccolò: Giovanni de’ Ricci enrolled all three of his daughters in 1486; the notary Ser Lodovico put in his two girls in 1488, as did Guidaccio Pecori and Gianozzo Gianfigliazzi in 1518 and 1520, although their respective ages are not known.62 The majority of girls, however, began their schooling between ages seven and nine, just slightly older than the normative age at which boys began their formal education, although that age depended on the ability of mothers to teach boys rudimentary language skills. This age at entry was also similar to the age pattern for girls entering

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convents as novices in the quattrocento, although most girls did not actually take their religious vows until several years later as teenagers.63 To cite only a few examples: Caterina, the illegitimate daughter of Bardo Vernacci and his former servant Giuliana, was eight years old when she entered Lapo for a year-long stint in 1457. Piera Venturi was about nine at the time she first boarded at Lapo in 1455, whereas Cosa della Casa began her stay around age twelve.64 For that majority of girls entering at seven to nine years old, convent schooling marked the end of their girlhood and the beginning of an abbreviated adolescence that would culminate in marriage within a few years. Childhood was not a well-developed concept in fifteenth-century Florence, but the stages of life of which it formed a part differed greatly by sex.65 When girls took up residence at the convent at the normative age, they also entered a transitional period in their lives that corresponded roughly to the age demarcations laid out in Florentine sumptuary rulings, which set the age of ten as a turning point in girls’ sumptuary status. The definitive communal sumptuary laws of 1384, which governed numerous forms of consumption and display, specified appropriate dress for females over and under the age of ten.66 For some privileged girls, convent education functioned as a rite of passage in an accelerated female life cycle, a rite that prepared girls both for an impending sexual maturity with added strictures and for an early break with their natal families in the form of marriage. In contrast, middle- and upperclass boys could look forward to a more prolonged adolescence, marked by hard work in learning a trade and its attendant skills, and terminating in marriage only at the relatively late age of thirty to thirty-two. These social facts of gender directed the young boys and girls of fifteenth-century Florence along decidedly different paths of educational and social experience. THE NATURE AND PURPOSES OF EDUCATION FOR GIRLS A number of elite Florentine families obviously wanted their daughters, sisters, nieces, and cousins to acquire some type of education beyond what their own households could provide. But what exactly were the girls at Lapo and other convent schools supposed to learn? And how was the quality of the educational experience in the convent related to the purpose of female education itself?

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Although convent records do not lay out a detailed curricular program, the nuns repeatedly emphasized in various formulae, headings, and financial entries that they were responsible for teaching their young charges three things: reading, sewing, and “the virtues” (le virtù). Although each of these three facets of education had a distinct aim, together they formed an interconnected ensemble with a unified overall purpose: the moral formation of the individual. Convent schooling for women was directed first and foremost to moral education, with the acquisition of literate and practical skills subsumed in, and subservient to, a lasting moral training. This type of education limited women’s preparation for future participation in political and intellectual fields, especially as humanism revolutionized education for boys; yet at the same time this conservative moral education forwarded the creation of a distinctive female culture that united family, community, and convent life. Moreover, as female literacy was still a contested notion in fifteenth-century Florence, it was the reassuring moral training in which reading was embedded at convent schools that helps account for both the success of these establishments and the gradual enlargement of the female reading public. “Learning the virtues” provided the key to all other aspects of female education. This ambiguous phrase that crops up repeatedly in convent records as a central feature of the girls’ program wove together several different threads of activity. The first objective of “learning the virtues” was to obtain an elementary religious education. In vernacular schools and probably convent schools as well, children learned the fundamentals of the Christian faith by chanting and memorizing various prayers such as the Our Father and Hail Mary; they also acquired reading skills in this way. The founders of catechism schools in the sixteenth century considered an elementary religious education and learning how to read as synonymous activities.67 The mother of Alessandra de’ Bardi, Vespasiano’s paragon of virtue and proper upbringing, joined these religious and reading activities in a domestic rather than a convent setting, which set her daughter firmly in the “ways of right living.” Sometime after Alessandra’s birth circa 1411, her mother “taught her reading, then the office of the Madonna, which she was obliged to repeat every day and to return thanks to Almighty God, and to the glorious Virgin Mary seven times in seven hours.”68 Given the conservative nature of the vernacular educational tradition, especially for girls, with the same monastic formulas used

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to describe the nuns’ educational charge in 1525 as in 1405, it seems unlikely that this purpose of convent schooling changed much over time, although its social context surely did. Yet “learning the virtues” also invoked another, more social goal, that of instruction in a set of behaviors considered essential to proper female conduct. “Learning the virtues” meant learning a disciplined control of the body that ran the gamut from table manners to prayer gestures, from physical deportment to modesty of speech. Portions of this gestural code were obviously quite new and stood at the heart of a revolution in manners that transformed Europe in the early modern period. Yet much of this behavior had a long monastic heritage that was appropriated for secular uses in the fifteenth century. In fact, what made the female educational program of the fifteenth century so distinctive was the convergence of long-standing monastic virtues with new civic and humanist ideals of female deportment. Female culture in both the convent and the city during the quattrocento revolved around the common values of self-discipline, composure, obedience, modesty, and silence.69 Lay women were enjoined by such early fifteenth-century humanists as Leonardo Bruni and Francesco Barbaro to practice an economy of movement and to limit their verbal expression; overt displays of emotion, such as required by the traditions of mourning for example, were to be studiously avoided by women of respectable social status.70 The way one used one’s physical body became an increasingly important way of representing the self socially as the fifteenth century advanced. Florentine girls were given intense exposure to and training in the social “virtues” of silence, discipline, modesty, and obedience by their immersion in convent schooling. Convent records make clear that pupils and wards were obliged to live according to the dictates of convent life (vita comune), following the same habits and practices as the nuns.71 Nuns modeled a variety of behaviors to their young charges, engaging in a kind of educational practice for which the continuous coresidence of teachers and students was vital. Learning by example was the cornerstone of education in fifteenth-century Italy, whether in the vernacular or Latin mode. By adhering steadfastly to monastic routines and regulations, nuns showed their pupils how to walk at a measured pace with a dignified bearing while keeping their eyes down, hands still, and mouths closed. As they went about their daily lives, nuns acted as crucial exemplars for girls learning by imitation. Whether as novices, boarding pupils, or wards, girls were

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taught to tame their own wills and conform them to the wills and needs of others. All members of the community were to observe silence on demand, according to the rules of cloister, thereby instilling in young charges the twin virtues of obedience and silence much touted by both Barbaro and Vespasiano. The objective of this kind of behavioral grooming went beyond the purely personal. Inculcating good manners and morals in young female students had beneficial effects on the households those girls would create in the future, thus impacting the domestic units that both Barbaro and Vespasiano saw as microcosms of the state. The positive effects of good manners and household management in turn rippled out to the city at large, contributing to civic honor and well-being, as the Florentine government itself testified when it praised the educational efforts of the Annalena nuns in a 1456 provision.72 The continuum between the prized values of urban and monastic female culture was articulated explicitly by various fifteenth-century Florentine commentators. As part of the revaluation of the secular life, the Dominican Giovanni Dominici, author of the Regola di governo di cura familiare written between 1401 and 1403, portrayed a “good” bourgeois wife as a special kind of nun who fiercely protected the resources and reputation of her household, much as a devoted nun would act on behalf of her community.73 Four decades later the well-connected bookseller Vespasiano da Bisticci regularly drew analogies between the best of secular female behavior and convent life. According to Vespasiano, the exemplary widow Caterina Alberti Corsini, who herself served as a role model for Alessandra de’ Bardi in her widowed years, kept her house “like a well-ordered convent,” and always dressed in a modest, self-effacing manner.74 Vespasiano also noted the tremendous importance of deportment for adolescent girls of high rank, who appeared in the public eye at family feasts and on noteworthy civic occasions. Once again Vespasiano singled out Alessandra de’ Bardi, who at age fourteen “was known for her good manners and carriage.” Her fine bearing, along with her modesty, grace, beauty, and dexterity, earned her the privilege of serving sweetmeats to a group of imperial ambassadors at a huge reception in the Piazza della Signoria in 1428, and her skilled accomplishment “even in the smallest things” elicited praise from the ambassadors themselves.75 One of the best expressions of the virtues to be mastered by all “honest” women, lay or religious, is contained in a late trecento

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Florentine version of the Augustinian rule that governed the convent of Lapo and other Augustinian and Dominican nunneries. In discussing the conditions under which nuns might leave the house, which was still permissible on occasion in the late fourteenth century, this document bursts forth into a passionate excursus about the dangers the physical senses posed to “honesty” and chastity. To nuns, as well as to the pupils and boarders who shared their daily lives, the senses were portrayed as the enemies within. The rule, which was intended to be read on a weekly basis to the assembled monastic community, continually reminded religious women and their charges about the dangers inherent in their own bodies. According to this rulebook, the greatest threat in the realm of the senses came from the eyes; if the eyes were the windows to the soul for many Renaissance poets and writers, they were also the fastest road to trouble for moralists. The rulebook admonished nuns in no uncertain terms to guard their eyes faithfully, particularly when outside the cloister, thereby avoiding the long looks that both created and betrayed sexual attraction. “Don’t regard anyone with your eyes,” read the rubric; rather, nuns and other honest women should strive to “keep them fixed and firm” at all times. To do otherwise, the rule announced, would be to risk inflaming the carnal appetites of men, who would fall helplessly into sin because their weakened wills simply could not resist the greater lustfulness of women. “And don’t claim that you have honest souls if you have dishonest eyes,” the rubric continued, “because a dishonest eye is at the center of a dishonest heart.”76 Vespasiano merely reiterated and expanded these themes when he proposed that the whole purpose of female education was to gain control of the five senses.77 Other commentators drawing from the Christian and humanist traditions signaled their agreement with this advice. In the early quattrocento the popular preacher San Bernardino urged Florentine widows to behave like Jewish widows, who not only buried their goods with their husbands, but their eyes as well. Bernardino’s repeated refrain regarding women’s use of their eyes was to “keep them modestly cast down.”78 In his treatise on the Christian life (Opera a ben vivere) written for Dianora Tornabuoni Soderini in mid-century, Antoninus, the saintly archbishop of Florence, created an extended metaphor of the body as a closed garden, whose entrances were the physical senses. Antoninus echoed scriptural authorities when he reminded his readers that “‘[s]he who guards her senses

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cares for and protects her soul.’ And the prophet also says: ‘Death enters through the window, that is, through the eyes.’”79 The Venetian humanist Francesco Barbara discoursed in similar terms about the composure and deportment appropriate for well-born, honest women. Barbaro enjoined wives to “evidence modesty at all times and in all places. They can do this if they will preserve an evenness and restraint in the movements of the eyes, in their walking, and in the movement of their bodies; for the wandering of the eyes, a hasty gait, and excessive movement of the hands and other parts of the body cannot be done without loss of dignity, and such actions are always joined to vanity and are signs of frivolity.”80 Given this close match between monastic, humanist, and civic values, the socialization convent schools offered appealed to middling and upper-class households not merely because it passively protected girls’ chastity and reputation, but because it actively formed the character of future wives and mothers around such core values. In the emphasis on behavioral prohibitions and closures of expression, there was little practical distinction in this aspect of the training of novices, who were destined to become nuns, and those pupils who were destined instead to become wives, except for the terminus to their education. Even the girls held in serbanza experienced a similar, formative immersion in monastic routines and values, with the expectation that they would absorb these important behavioral lessons. As the nuns of San Niccolò noted when Gianozzo Gianfigliazzi placed his two daughters Albiera and Cassandra in serbanza in 1520, “we are keeping them to teach them all the virtues that are required of a secular girl.”81 Although we do not possess reliable figures for the number of girls placed in guardianship in convents scattered throughout the city over the course of the fifteenth century,82 it is certain that convent “education” in the sense of moral training and socialization affected the lives of a much larger group of girls than did the acquisition of literacy alone. The polyvalent phrase “learning the virtues” refers to the profoundly blurred functions and goals of convent schooling in its broadest sense. Convents as sites of socialization pulled in multiple categories of girls, offering a powerful model in later years for a wide range of custodial institutions for women.83 However central the code of social virtues may have been to female culture, mastering it in practice was obviously no easy task. It seems that learning proper deportment and self-discipline was especially

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difficult for some girls. After seven years of training in “the service of God” at the Dominican house of San Jacopo di Ripoli, the young novice Lisabetta Strozzi lamented in a letter to her brother Matteo: “I am constantly worn out from practicing and learning the virtues that seem so necessary to our peers.”84 Convent records also reveal that some female students and novices did not always take to heart behavioral lessons about seemly conduct. One can only wonder, for example, about the kind of schoolgirl antics that caused Cosa Chellini to be sent home for two weeks in 1443 after she “cracked open her head” as a pupil at Lapo. Nor was it likely that the teenage nun Maria Vettori was engaged in very decorous behavior either when she incurred a similar injury at San Pier Maggiore in 1471, or that the young novice Caterina Ramaglianti displayed ideal monastic composure when she fell and broke her leg at the same house many years earlier.85 That these scattered incidents cohered into a more general pattern is demonstrated by the complaints voiced in visitation records throughout the sixteenth century. Ecclesiastical supervisors of Venetian convent schools, for example, continually grumbled that boarders were rambunctious, disruptive, and undisciplined.86 It is in this context of a holistic moral education, with mature celibate women mentoring young girls, that we must situate the acquisition of vernacular literate skills at convent schools. Although the virtues of discipline and decorum became increasingly obvious to middle-class households, there were long standing cultural admonitions against teaching girls to read, since literacy not only opened up a world of knowledge but a world of danger both economic and moral in nature. The late trecento moralist Paolo da Certaldo staunchly maintained, in fact, that only girls destined for the monastic life should learn how to read.87 In keeping with this advice, a few students entering Lapo probably had already been designated by their families to take the veil, or were soon pressured to do so. Ginevra, one of two sisters sent to the convent by their mother Monna Ghetta in 1405, remained in the house after her seventeen-month stint as a pupil, and took vows as a nun in 1412. Her sister, however, left the convent to pursue a secular life.88 Similarly, Nera della Luna learned reading along with the other “virtues” as a boarder at Lapo from January 1452 to September 1453; the following year, she entered the affluent Benedictine house of San Pier Maggiore as a novice and took vows as Suora Francesca.89 The pupil Lodovica Rossi, who first boarded at San Niccolò dei Frieri in 1507, became a member of that

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community in 1510.90 Convent schooling introduced girls like these to monastic routines, functioning perhaps as a trial period to test their suitability, while giving them the basic reading skills necessary to perform the opus dei, the set of liturgical offices that stood at the heart of monastic life. It should be noted, however, that reading ability was not fixed as a formal entrance requirement for choir nuns until the Tridentine reforms. Yet the vast majority of female pupils were clearly destined for marriage rather than the cloister, especially by mid-century. Although Paolo da Certaldo’s prohibitions on reading were reiterated and even embellished in the fifteenth century, his advice seems to have been more frequently ignored than followed in practice. Meeting the perceived moral dangers of female literacy head on was a set of competing practical and social pressures for the enlargement of women’s reading skills in fifteenth-century Florence. The Florentine elite were among the first to indulge in the new fashion for book collecting that was burgeoning throughout Italy by mid-century, which made books more available to female readers while placing literacy in a more favorable light as an assertion of status. Literacy enjoyed not only a status value but an instrumental one as well: it gave adult women the ability to manage and protect personal and family property, whether in the form of dowry, real estate, or banking networks. The experience of literate Alberti women, who maintained a vibrant banking enterprise during the exile of their kinsmen in the 1410s and 1420s, demonstrated unequivocally the positive aspects of female literacy for the continued livelihood of individual women, their households, and joint business ventures.91 Other motivations or justifications for female literacy were also at work. The pronounced presence of students at both Lapo and San Niccolò who were drawn from notarial households probably indicates an appreciation of literacy stemming from notarial culture that merged with the status concerns of notaries as a professional group. The problem that continued to plague parents and guardians in the fifteenth century was less the acquisition of literacy per se than uncontrolled reading on the part of future wives and mothers. Once girls had acquired literate skills, it was difficult to control the nature and content of their reading material, as well as the uses to which they might put their knowledge. Vespasiano once again sounded the alarm for conservative Florentines, while indicating what constituted appropriate reading. He admonished good mothers to forbid their

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daughters “to read such books as the Cento Novelle, the novels of Boccaccio or the sonnets of Petrarch, which, although they are polished, are not wholesome for the pure minds of young women who should consider naught but God and their own husbands.” Since girls were “by nature prone to frivolity,” Vespasiano recommended that they “should be led to read the Lives of the holy fathers, history and other books fitting for the regulation of their lives.” 92 Inappropriate reading might also have economic as well as moral consequences, at least according to one famous Florentine humanist. One of the characters in Leon Battista Alberti’s treatise on the family (Della famiglia), written circa 1432, warned husbands to protect their family and business papers from the prying eyes of their wives. Here Alberti assumed both that merchant wives could read and that they might use such information to benefit their natal kin against their own husbands.93 For parents and guardians who sought to protect both the monies and personal interest invested in their daughters or wards, one of the more satisfying solutions to this problem was to wrap the acquisition of reading skills in the safe moral cocoon of the “virtues” instilled by a convent education. Such a moral education presumed to guide girls in the proper ways of living and to avoid the dangerous use of their eyes that reading itself posed. Learning the virtues was not simply a way to impart a final finish to girls moving upward on the social ladder. Rather, it was the very nature of convent schooling itself that enabled girls’ families to accept the risks of literacy within the matrix of learning desirable lifelong behaviors. With this cultural context in mind, we can turn now to actual reading instruction and other elements of the convent curriculum. Instruction in reading holds great interest for the history of literacy, especially since historians have argued that the conditions of literacy in a given society are better evaluated in terms of readership than in terms of writing abilities.94 To reconstruct actual teaching methods and reading habits in the convent, however, we must take our cues from various features of convent life and from common educational practices. Virtually all learning in the fifteenth century was based on sight-sound drills, so that Lapo students probably began by sounding out letters first voiced by a nun, then following along in the text of their abridged psalter, which performed the dual role of reading primer and devotional text.95 Having mastered the alphabet, students proceeded to develop their reading abilities; the standard practice in

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both Latin and vernacular schools was to read first for recognition, then for meaning. Robert Black characterizes the conventional sequence of learning to read Latin as “alphabet, syllables, text without meaning, text with meaning, and possibly by memory.”96 This phonetic method described the way at least one young novice at the newly founded Florentine convent of Le Murate reportedly learned her letters in the early quattrocento. Standing at the sequestered iron grate where nuns normally heard Mass, the girl repeated the letters called out and signalled by the convent chaplain from an unnamed book; “and thus miraculously she learned [to read] in almost impossible fashion, seeing it must have been difficult to perceive the letters from that distance.” Apparently some girls had greater difficulty learning to read in this way, which must have been an extraordinary technique made necessary by the absence of literate nuns in this new observant Benedictine house. According to the monastic chronicle, a year or two later another young girl in the same convent prayed fervently before an image of the Virgin to grant her the grace needed to master this difficult skill.97 Once nuns were literate, their monastic routines merged the newer mode of “silent reading,” which facilitated private devotions, with older modes of reading aloud (primarily in the form of scriptural readings during mealtimes), which continued to play an important role in learning, leisure, and sociability in the secular world of early modern Europe.98 Nuns probably aimed to impart a very basic skill level to their pupils, although some Florentine girls clearly grew up to become more practiced, accomplished readers as well as avid book owners. Many fathers who educated their daughters at Lapo probably set their sights no higher than did the wealthy merchant Tommaso Guidetti, who in 1513 sent his eleven-year-old daughter Maddalena to a secular woman teacher to learn how “to read the little book [of Our Lady?] or part of it.”99 In fact, one of the Lapo pupils, the notary’s daughter Francesca di Ser Bartolomeo, eloquently captured the thinness of this curriculum for someone obviously hungering for more substantial fare. Perhaps buoyed by a schoolgirl’s budding sense of self, Francesca informed the nuns in 1454 that she was leaving Lapo after just over two years as a student “because she had nothing more to learn from staying here.”100 We get another perspective on what were probably rudimentary skill levels from the relatively brief length of time girls stayed at Lapo. Since boarding fees were involved, the nuns often recorded

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the exact movements of their pupils with the precision characteristic of many Florentine financial records. For instance, Abbess Jacopa and her sisters reported that the two daughters of Monna Ghetta, who were among the nuns’ first formal students entering in 1404, “stayed here seventeen months and fifteen days,” learning to read. A half-century later, Ginevra Buonafe entered Lapo on May 29, 1454 for primary schooling, staying on for fifteen months until August 1455. Overlapping with Ginevra was Francesca di Ser Bartolomeo, who spent two years, two months and fifteen days at Lapo; her fees were discounted “for the time she lived at her own house.”101 These experiences proved to be more or less the norm. The majority of girls generally spent between one and three years in the convent. Of the cohort of eleven girls entering Lapo in the 1440s, seven stayed for two and one-half to three and one-half years; three took up residence for nine to fifteen months, and one boarder, Lucretia Bordoni, spent the better part of a decade as a boarding pupil.102 Similar patterns obtained in the cohort of sixteen students entering Lapo in the 1450s. Of this group, one girl stayed less than a year; four girls resided there from one to two years; another four stayed on for two to three years; four more from three to four years; and three students remained for four to six years, not including short breaks. Some of the longer terms were linked to a girl’s exceptionally young age. For example, Monna Caterina Vecchietti placed her three daughters in Lapo simultaneously (September 1453). Tita, the eldest, boarded at Lapo for three years; Piera, the middle girl, stayed for just shy of four years; and the youngest, Ginevra, lived at Lapo for four years and ten months.103 Perhaps because of recurrent visitations of plague, the school at San Niccolò dei Frieri in the 1480s and early 1490s had a faster turnover rate than did Lapo, although several girls put in respectable stints as pupils there nonetheless. Cassandra di Messer Francesco Canigiani spent approximately thirty-four months as a student at San Niccolò between 1488 and 1493, overlapping her stay with that of Francesca Cavalcanti, who resided at San Niccolò for fifteen months. They shared part of their educational experience with Tommasa and Francesca, daughters of the notary Ser Lodovico, whose father paid for exactly one year to the day for their education.104 Yet the striking variations in this pattern argue against any notion of a standardized curricular program, especially since a few girls spent very short periods of time in the convent. Piera Venturi

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came to Lapo in March 1455 in order “to learn,” yet stayed only six months, and the spicer’s daughter Tita di Damiano resided at San Niccolò for only three months in 1488 before “she returned to her father’s house;” Tita entered the house just as Caterina, a notary’s niece, left after two and a half months of residence.105 Schooling sessions for girls staying for a year or more were frequently disrupted by visits home, whether because of personal illness or other family contingencies. Cosa Salvestri, a contract broker’s daughter, claimed illness in order to return to her father’s house for three months in 1443, telling the Lapo nuns she needed greater medical care than the sisters could provide. A few other girls flitted in and out of the convent on various occasions, especially as their impending marriages drew near. After two full years at Lapo, for instance, Nanna Baldovinetti left the convent in September 1442 “to have her trousseau made” (per andare a vestirsi); she was away for twenty-five days, returned to Lapo for three weeks, then left again for another ten days before settling in at the convent for her final year of girlhood. Nanna’s copupil Fioretta Bardi, who entered Lapo at almost exactly the same time, followed a slightly accelerated version of this scenario, exchanging convent life for the marriage bed in November 1442. The three Ricci girls at San Niccolò experienced a similarly fragmented education between 1486 and 1493. In addition, many of the girls took regular annual vacations to be reunited with their families, often in their country houses, which gave them a short reprieve from monastic supervision and ensured that girls destined for marriage would remain sufficiently attached to secular things. In 1442, after nine and a half months in the convent, Checcha Biliotti interrupted her stay to go “in villa” for two months and four days; the following year, she spent a similar vacation period at the house of a kinsman before leaving Lapo for good shortly thereafter.106 Despite the checkered nature of this education, we should not assume that girls learned nothing or were unable to improve their level of literacy altogether. Some students may have had a basic alphabetic training beforehand that facilitated their learning. Moreover, vernacular education stressed the use of familiar texts and vocabulary as well as repetitive formulas, such as those found in the popular psalters. Vernacular schools in the secular sphere basically taught children by means of books that adults read, so that there was greater continuity within the reading public and more coherent

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textual communities.107 Furthermore, as already noted, the intensive instruction and individual tutoring in convent schools probably gave better results. Finally, secular masters might also emphasize the quick acquisition of literacy by clients hungering for this ability. The Venetian writing master Giovanni Antonio Tagliente claimed in his 1524 “how-to” manual designed to teach vernacular reading to adults, mainly artisans and women, that they could learn this skill “in a period of two months more or less (depending on the intelligence of the learner).”108 Supplementing reading education at the Lapo school was instruction in sewing and embroidery, which was geared specifically toward matrimonial and domestic functions and also carried a strong moral charge. The Lapo nuns were well equipped to teach their students the arts of spinning, weaving, sewing, and embroidery, since so much of their own livelihood depended on a mastery of these skills. Similarly, the nuns of San Niccolò dei Frieri reminded the Florentine tax officials in 1478 that each one of them had to work at different practical tasks to support the community.109 Obviously these needle arts had a real practical value for future wives and mothers as well as for nuns, and even some girls in serbanza were intended to learn these crafts. For example, the notary Ser Antonio di Ser Battista put his daughter Ginevra in guardianship in San Niccolò in 1485; there “the aforesaid nuns were to teach her how to sew and every other licit and honest practice according to the customs of that convent.” The two daughters of the widowed merchant Luca da Panzano spent four years together as boarders in a convent, during which time they occupied themselves by preparing their own trousseaus.110 Vespasiano praised the utility of handiwork when elucidating the excellent upbringing of the young Alessandra de’ Bardi, whose life was intended to serve “as a model to all the women of our city, especially mothers with daughters to rear.” Alessandra’s mother “taught her all that a gentlewoman ought to know, the control of a household, and especially needlework of all kinds in silk and in all kinds of stuff.” Vespasiano further emphasized the moral dimension of needlework, which kept women’s hands from falling idle, thus reducing the temptation for women to gossip, be meddlesome, or otherwise do the “devil’s work.”111 Taken together, the moral training, reading education, and practical skills girls learned in convent schools combined to form an attractive option for parents and guardians seeking to enhance their

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own status as well as the potential marriage prospects of their charges. Female education in the broad sense of the term, in fact, may have gained greater acceptance in the fifteenth century precisely because of its relation to the marriage market, which was one of the most powerful driving forces in Florentine social life. The stamp of privilege and social graces conveyed by even a rudimentary education probably expanded the marital horizons otherwise commanded by a modest dowry, especially one that could not keep pace with the spiral of dowry inflation already in motion by 1425. For many of the Lapo schoolgirls at least, education acted as an increasingly valuable, if intangible, commodity that could be factored into a marriage portfolio. Put another way, female education became an additional asset to marrying well. We can glimpse the potential market value of female education by looking at the straitened finances or unusual circumstances in which numerous households of Lapo pupils found themselves, despite their otherwise solid social position. Although the father of the elevenyear old pupil Piera Venturi did not stipulate the exact amount of her dowry, he nevertheless lamented that her two half-sisters enjoyed no dowry assets whatsoever “except the grace of God and the hope of their kinsmen.” In 1457, when Piera was in school, Giovanni was able to claim assets of only 1,296 florins against debits of 1,585 florins. The family’s financial situation was further complicated by the fact that part of his wife’s dowry in the amount of two hundred florins had not yet been returned from her first husband’s family, even though he had been dead for more than eight years.112 Lucrezia Bordoni offers another problem case. The limited earning power of her household was implicit in its very composition. In 1457 the Bordoni household consisted of a twenty-seven-year-old brother, who headed the group; Lucrezia’s forty year-old widowed mother Tommasa; and five additional siblings, four of whom were under age seven.113 Other special family circumstances made convent schooling an attractive option, since it met the multiple, diverse needs of patrons so well. Bardo Vernacci said he placed his eight-year-old illegitimate daughter Caterina in Lapo “in order to learn some of the virtues,” thereby providing her with a training that might ease some of the stigma of her bastardy, afford her appropriate female role models, and enhance the meager marriage prospects awaiting a dowry of only 140 florins.114 The cultural value of convent training surely made

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sense to someone like Bardo Vernacci, who fathered the child with his servant Giuliana. Sending Caterina to the Lapo school may have also eased tensions within the household, for Vernacci married, released his lover-servant, but failed to produce any legitimate children with his new wife. In some situations, convent schooling may have facilitated the social integration and future marriageability of even well-off “foreign” girls like the two Neapolitan cousins Gostanza and Maddalena Miraballe, who were exposed to Florentine speech patterns, customs, and habits as Lapo boarders from 1448 to 1454. The fathers of several other Lapo schoolgirls were dead. For example, Monna Nanna Zati, married to the patrician Filippo Adimari, assumed sole financial responsibility for the education of her three daughters at Lapo circa 1440, no doubt because they were the product of her first marriage to Andrea Macinghi.115 Clearly convents such as Lapo and San Niccolò functioned as both schools and holding grounds for girls on the verge of marriage. As one example, the 1457 tax credit for Cosa della Casa was revoked in her natal household because, right after completing two years board at Lapo, “she had married” at age fourteen.116 The case of Pippa Berti, descended from a notarial family, is even more instructive. Pippa began her student life at age five; by 1457, when she was thirteen years old, Pippa was already engaged to Giovanni Piccardi and was simply waiting for her dowry bond (in the modest sum of 224 florins) to mature when she turned seventeen to consummate the agreement.117 The success of Florentine convent schools should be attributed not only to the attractive nature of their curriculum, but also to their ability to accommodate so many different family circumstances. FROM READING TO WRITING While Florentine families acceded to the growing pressures favoring women’s reading education, the acquisition of writing skills was more deeply problematic. Although the Lapo nuns themselves, along with other members of female religious communities, possessed highly developed graphic abilities, the extent to which the nuns transmitted these skills to their pupils remains open to question. Neither the accounts of Lapo nor San Niccolò dei Frieri explicitly mention the teaching of writing, in contrast to the standard formulas encoding the basic educational practice for boys, which specified instruction in both reading and writing.118 The separation of reading and writing

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skills had a long precedent in medieval educational practice, with training in reading being far more prevalent than a graphic education.119 We know that even some avid female readers in the fifteenth century never learned to wield a pen. For example, the widow Pippa Bueri, one of the most dedicated patrons of Lapo’s convent and scriptorium in the early quattrocento, had to ask her brother Raimondo to file her 1427 tax return because, as he said, Pippa “did not know how to write.” Margherita, wife of the wealthy merchant of Prato Francesco Datini, learned to write only at age forty through the good graces of her husband’s trusted friend and correspondent, the notary Lapo Mazzei.120 Maddalena, the owner of a Roman delicatessen who kept her own account book from 1523 to 1537, bade her customers to enter their debits and credits but presumably could not write herself.121 This condition has often been termed by historians as “semiliteracy.” If we frame the problem of reading and writing in genderspecific terms, however, literate abilities like Pippa Bueri’s may be more accurately dubbed “split literacy,” in that these skills were often deliberately unhooked for women, regardless of their class. In this regard women inherited a type of literacy and vernacular education that was common for many readers, both male and female, in the earlier medieval period, in which reading without writing was judged to be entirely sufficient. In fifteenth-century Florence, several purely functional factors worked against women’s graphic education, whether at Lapo or elsewhere. Florence had a whole cadre of trained, professional notaries, as well as a long legal tradition that insisted on notarizing important documents. As we have seen, women might also turn to convents for graphic assistance with personal memoranda or informal yet confidential property arrangements. Yet the chief obstacles to women’s graphic training were less functional than cultural in nature. It was writing far more than reading that provoked the strongest criticisms against female education. Although reading might be tolerated to protect family interests and to encourage religious practices, writing defined active agents of communication who represented their own experience with fixed words, and it gave individuals a means to pursue personal ends. As Armando Petrucci has noted, the relationship between who owns the power of writing and who controls power over writing is a critical element in establishing cultural relations of power and authority more generally.122

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Popular wisdom in the fifteenth century viewed writing as a distinctly male activity: as one Tuscan proverb proclaimed, what the needle was to a woman, the pen was to a man. Invectives against women’s graphic training were kept fresh in the eye of the vernacular reading public by the immensely popular treatise the Fior di virtù, newly printed in Florence in 1491 with resounding success.123 Used as a reading primer in sixteenth-century Venetian schools, the Fior di virtù rehearsed various arguments pertaining to vices and virtues in scholastic fashion.124 Chapter 7, titled “Women,” is one of the longest sections in the work and treats the opinions of assorted philosophers and wise men on women’s worth, including old misogynist shibboleths such as the following: “Of a woman who was learning to read, Sallust said: The venom of the serpent is united with the venom of the scorpion.’…And Avicenna said of a woman who was learning to write: ‘Do not multiply evil with evil.’”125 Despite the long history of such invectives, they were given new force by changing historical circumstances as printing and other processes transformed the urban reading public. These deep cultural prohibitions against women’s possessing graphic abilities, even of a mundane vernacular sort, continued to have currency into the sixteenth century. As one example, the political enemies of the standard-bearer Piero Soderini severely criticized him around 1510 for allowing his wife, Argentina Malaspini, to write letters to magistrates in and out of the city on behalf of her personal clients.126 The tone of their criticisms makes clear that Argentina’s epistolary activities posed a double gender violation both to the traditions of writing and to established public roles in republican Florence. Paradoxically, in courtly situations high-born women letter writers were far more conspicuous and less transgressive than they were in Florence by this time. Nevertheless, important countercurrents worked continually to erode these traditional views throughout the fifteenth century. As was the case with reading skills, writing abilities provided an important axis of social differentiation to an urban elite constantly on the lookout for ways to distinguish itself, whether by conspicuous consumption or by cultural production. Like reading, writing gave propertied women another tangible asset to aid them in carrying out their central tasks as household managers. Writing as a medium of exchange also enabled privileged Florentine women to maintain a wealth of social relationships and networks, particularly with other

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women, as friends, kin, neighbors, patrons, and clients, or to communicate with their husbands away on business.127 Moreover, changes in the Florentine political arena, especially after 1470, favored behind-the-scenes action to which well-placed women could gain access by means of discreet letters of petition and recommendation. We know little about the process and pace by which these practical considerations affected long-standing cultural impediments to women’s graphic training. But by the middle of the sixteenth century, it was possible for the north Italian friar Fra Sabba Castiglione to ask quizzically: what foolish man would not want to marry a girl who was capable of reading and writing well?128 Throughout the fifteenth century, the proper relationship of a woman to the pen remained a contested issue in Florence that pulled into its orbit broader understandings of gender and power. Reflecting this conflicted situation, the Lapo records contain only furtive and often contradictory clues about the kind of graphic instruction nuns may have given their pupils. On the one hand, convent accounts are littered with expense entries for the purchase of ink, paper, and notebooks for various girls, suggesting that they may in fact have been taught a bit of writing. These same convent records also document obliquely the fact that a number of the pupils’ own mothers or aunts knew how to write. In the mid 1440s, for instance, Nanna Zati attested to the boarding agreement for her daughter Caterina in her own hand, as did Maria, mother of the pupil Adola Machiavelli.129 On the other hand, however, convent records do not mention explicitly graphic instruction, as already noted. The profound ambivalence about the relationship between women and writing is perhaps best summed up in the figures of writing nuns themselves. These religious women constantly stood before the Lapo schoolgirls as powerful authorizing models of literate abilities and activity, yet ones who could freely wield their pens only within the confines of nunneries separated from the secular world. Precisely how some Lapo students threaded their way through the cultural injunctions against writing as they moved into adulthood remains a question for future research. In fifteenth-century Florence, convent schools, like the communities that housed them, fulfilled a range of functions and answered the disparate needs of families and patrons. These schools were as much sites of socialization as they were nodes of literacy, and whatever popularity convent schools enjoyed stemmed from the inextricable

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binding of these activities. The flexibility of convent schooling permitted individual households to negotiate the arrangements that best suited their situations, while at the same time safeguarding the honor of girls and their families. Attending convent school functioned for some as an adolescent rite of passage that afforded girls a brief experience outside the confines of family life, but one that was possible only within the highly regimented routines followed behind convent walls. Having passed through this rite successfully, students took away with them the basic skills that represented mature womanhood: reading (and perhaps writing) abilities, along with fundamental lessons in deportment, sewing, manners, and moral behavior. The extent to which monastic expansion in the late fifteenth century enabled a corresponding expansion of female schooling requires further exploration. Yet the available evidence already makes clear that in teaching students “the virtues”—those behaviors in keeping with conventional gender expectations, as well as those that slyly subverted them—convent schools played a significant role in the formation, expression, and transmission of important aspects of female culture in fifteenth-century Florence. NOTES My thanks to Paul Gehl for his exceptionally helpful comments on an earlier draft, and to the Emory University Research Committee for generously supporting archival research. 1. Paul Grendler, Schooling in Renaissance Italy: Literacy and Learning, 1300–1600 (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1989), p. 78, estimates the overall literacy rate for the Florentine male population in 1480 at thirty to thirty-three percent, with female literacy varying tremendously by social class. Grendler’ s figures have been scrutinized recently by Ronald Witt, “What Did Giovannino Read and Write? Literacy in Early Renaissance Florence,” I Tatti studies 6(1995): 83–114 2. Christiane Klapisch-Zuber, “Le chiavi fiorentine di barbablù: 1’apprendimento della lettura a Firenze nel XV secolo,” Quaderni storici 57 (1984): 765–92, at p. 770. 3. Piero Lucchi, “La santacroce, il salterio e il babuino: libri per imparare a leggere nel primo secolo della stampa,” Quaderni storici 38 (1978): 593–630. 4. Stanley Chojnacki, “‘The Most Serious Duty’: Motherhood, Gender, and Patrician Culture in Renaissance Venice,” in Refiguring Woman: Perspectives on Gender and the Italian Renaissance, ed. Marilyn

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Migiel and Juliana Schiesari (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1991), pp. 133–54. 5. Vespasiano da Bisticci, The Vespasiano Memoirs: Lives of Illustrious Men of the XVth Century, trans. William George and Emily Waters (London: G.Routledge & Sons, 1926), pp. 445, 447. 6. Grendler, pp. 72–73, 308–9. 7. Paul F.Gehl, A Moral Art: Grammar, Society, and Culture in Trecento Florence (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1993), pp. 3, 22– 23. Gehl counters the view of Grendler that abbaco preceded grammatica, showing by means of several examples that “abbaco could precede, follow, or interrupt the Latin grammar course” (p. 22). 8. Margaret L.King, “Book-Lined Cells: Women and Humanism in the Early Italian Renaissance,” in Beyond their Sex: Learned Women of the European Past, ed. Patricia Labalme (New York: New York University Press, 1980), pp. 66–90, and “The Religious Retreat of Isotta Nogarola (1418–1466): Sexism and its Consequences in the Fifteenth Century,” Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society 3 (1978): 807–22; on the impediments to women’s humanist learning, see also Anthony Grafton and Lisa Jardine, From Humanism to the Humanities: Education and the Liberal Arts in Fifteenth- and Sixteenth-Century Europe (London: Duckworth, 1986), pp. 29–57. 9. Gehl, pp. 20, 220; Klapisch-Zuber, pp. 775–76, cites only one example of a female teacher between 1350 and 1500. Grendler, p. 90, offers the case of a five year-old Florentine boy who learned to read from “mona Chosa” in 1480. See also Witt, p. 86. 10. Gehl, p. 87. 11. Grendler, pp. 96, 102. 12. Unless indicated otherwise, all manuscript references are to the Archivio di Stato, Florence. Acquisti e Doni. vol. 293, unfoliated. Translations are my own unless stated otherwise. 13. Grendler, pp. 44–45; Guido Ruggiero, The Boundaries of Eros: Sex Crime and Sexuality in Renaissance Venice (New York: Oxford University Press, 1985), esp. pp. 71–85. 14. The first female order with a specific mission to teach girls was the Ursulines, founded by Angela Merici in Brescia in 1535 and approved by Paul II in 1544. After the Council of Trent (1545–1563), a number of other female religious orders took up the charge of educating girls; see Gian Ludovico Masetti Zanini, Motivi storici della educazione femminile (1500–1650), 2 vols. (Bari and Naples: M.D’Auria, 1980–1982), and R.A.Houston, Literacy in Early Modern Europe: Culture and Education, 1500–1800 (London: Longman, 1988), esp. pp. 21–22. On the learned traditions of Dominican nuns, see Raymond Creytens, O.P., Cultural and

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Intellectual Heritage of the Italian Dominican Nuns (Summit, NJ: The Monastery, 1977). 15. To my knowledge, there is no published study of the convent. The brief history presented here has been pieced together from convent manuscripts, especially Santa Maria del Fiore, Diplomatico, documents dated December 12, 1335, June 28, 1344, and October 13, 1350; and from Emanuele Repetti, Dizionario geografico fisico storico della Toscana (Florence: Coi Tipi A. Tofani, 1833–46), 2:112–13. The convent should not be confused with the Florentine cathedral, which also bears the name Santa Maria del Fiore. Around 1399 a group of observant Franciscan friars occupied the former dwelling of the Lapo hermit women, marking the first such observant house in Tuscany. The convent of Lapo is still a functioning religious community, now living under the Benedictine rule, but the school is no longer extant. My thanks to Richard Goldthwaite and Judith Brown for helping me locate the convent’s present site. 16. Conventi Religiosi Soppressi (hereafter abbreviated as Conv. Sopp.). 150. vol. 80, unfoliated, under date May 7, 1431. 17. Catasto. vol. 193, fols. 15v-16v; Catasto. vol. 602, fol. 651r/v. 18. Payments for these items are scattered throughout Conv. Sopp. 150. vol. 17. 19. Acquisti e Doni. vol. 246, p. 6. 20. Conv. Sopp. 150. vol. 17, fols. 16r, 17v, 20r, 22r, 23r/v. The Dominican master settled his account with Sisters Maria and Bartolomea “for all the books they wrote for him” in February 1407. Pippa Bueri’s 1427 tax return is in Catasto. vol. 45, fol. 436r/v. 21. Conv. Sopp. 150. vol. 20, fols. 66r, 133v, 162r. On the use of spectacles, first invented in Tuscany between 1280 and 1285, see Vincent Ilardi, “Eyeglasses and Concave Lenses in Fifteenth-Century Florence and Milan: New Documents,” Renaissance Quarterly 29 (1976): 341–60. Judging from Ilardi’s examples, the use of spectacles by the Lapo nuns is among the earliest documented references that have surfaced to date. 22. Records of pupils in the convent of San Niccolò dei Frieri are found in Conv. Sopp. 133. vols. 39, 41, 60, 64, 66; San Niccolò’s tax report is in Catasto. vol. 989, fols. 321r-322v. 23. San Pier Maggiore and Santa Felicità had the two highest property values among Florentine convents; Gene A.Brucker, “Monasteries, Friaries, and Nunneries in Quattrocento Florence,” in Christianity and the Renaissance: Image and Religious Imagination in the Quattrocento, ed. Timothy Verdon and John Henderson (Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press, 1990), pp. 41–62.I am currently writing a history of these two houses and several other nunneries in fifteenth-century Florence. 24. For Lapo, see Catasto. vol. 193, fols. 15v-16v; vol. 602, fol.

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651r/v; vol. 988. fols. 76r-78v. The tax return for San Niccolò dei Frieri is in Catasto. vol. 989, fols. 321r-322v. 25. These figures for Lapo and San Niccolò are somewhat smaller but still consonant with those cited by Grendler, p. 98: “In general, six to twelve girls between the ages of 7 and 16 lived and learned in typical female monasteries with thirty to one hundred nuns, lay sisters, and novices, all across Italy.” For Luca da Panzano’s agreement for his daughters’ education, see Carlo Carnesecchi, “Un fiorentino del secolo XV,” Archivio storico italiano, ser. 5, vol. 4 (1899): 160. Although the Lapo records say little about actual instructional methods, one entry indicates a probable tutorial arrangement, when the pupil Lena is referred to as the disciepola of Suora Filippa in February 1410; Conv. Sopp. 150. vol. 20, fol. 160r. 26. Grendler, p. 72; Gehl, p. 221. 27. Grendler, esp. pp. 29–35, 96–100. 28. This pattern of translocation is best documented by Christiane Klapisch-Zuber, “The Cruel Mother’: Maternity, Widowhood, and Dowry in Florence in the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Centuries,” in her Women, Family, and Ritual in Renaissance Italy, trans. Lydia Cochrane (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1985), pp. 117–31. 29. Walter J.Ong, “Latin Language Study as a Renaissance Puberty Rite,” in his Rhetoric, Romance, and Technology (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1971), pp.113–41. 30. Conv. Sopp. 150. vol. 17, fols. 13r, 14r/v, 16r/v. 31. San Pier Maggiore. vol. 52, fol. 83r. The old, wealthy Benedictine house of San Pier Maggiore received fourteen florins from Agnolo in May 1410 “per discretione delle spese della allesandra sua figliuola e stata nel munistero a inparare allegere circha di [blank] mesi.” Suora Andrea Alessandri, the girl’s teacher, was the sister of Monna Nanna, who was married to Agnolo’s brother Niccolò. 32. Conv. Sopp. 150. vol. 17. The girls were identified as follows: the daughter of Simone della Fioraia; Tancia, daughter of Pero Baldovinetti and Monna Bicie; Lena, niece of Monna Margherita, who was a kinswoman of Antonio di Santi; Dora, daughter of Jacopo del Bene and Monna Lena; the niece of Monna Caterina, the widow of Messer Salice; the daughter of Gentile Altoviti; Giovanna, daughter of Monna Piera di Ugo Vecchietti; and Piera, niece of Monna Piera Vecchietti. 33. Conv. Sopp. 150. vol. 17, fol. 24v. 34. Conv. Sopp. 150. vol. 56, fol. 37r. “Qui apresso faremo ricordo di tutte le fanciulle riceremo nel nostro munistero di sancta maria del fiore per alimentare ensegnare cucire e leggiere e altre cose e di quanto dobbiamo avere delluna e chi ane sara obligato le quali saranno scritte di mano delle nostre chamarlinghe.”

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35. This information is culled from Conv. Sopp. 150. vols. 39, 44, and 56; quote taken from vol. 56, fol. 98r. 36. Conv. Sopp. 133. vols. 64, 66. 37. Conv. Sopp. 150. vol. 56, fol. 45r; vol. 44, fols. 57r, 86r/v. 38. Conv. Sopp. 150. vol. 56, fol. 95r; vol. 45, fols. 1r, 2r. For Pandolfo’s position as treasurer, see San Pier Maggiore. vol. 78, fol. 69r. Among the many positions held by Francesco della Luna, Nera’s uncle, from 1418 to 1446 were those of standard-bearer of justice, the city’s highest political office (1418), supervisor of the civic foundling hospital (the Innocenti), advisor for the placement of the altar in the cathedral, and judge for the lantern destined to grace the cathedral cupola; see Diane Finiello Zervas, The Pane Guelfa, Bmnelleschi, and Donatello (Locust Valley, NY: J.J.Augustin, 1988), pp. 217–18. 39. Catasto. vol. 818, fols. 114r-117r, 164r-165r, 168r-171v, 342r343v, 568r-569r, 702r-703v. 40. Catasto. vol. 811, fols. 68r-69v, 170r-172v, 376r-377r, 551r552v. 41. The founding of the convent is noted in Acquisti e Doni. vol. 293, unfoliated; the five founding members were Piera Viviani, Margherita Cambi, Francesca da Panzano, Giovanna di Ser Filippo, and Francesca Ricci. One of the convent’s nuns, Suora Maria Esaltata Ridolfi, reconstructed a history of the house circa 1746 using original documents; see Conv. Sopp. 133. vol. 60, esp. pp. 1–4 for the convent’s origins and tutelage of Pazzi. 42. Conv. Sopp. 133. vol. 39, fol. 79r. 43. Conv. Sopp. 133. vol. 66, fol. 75v. 44. Conv. Sopp. 133. vols. 60, 64, 66. 45. The eleven students belonging to merchant/banking families were: Agnola and Gostanza Quaratesi, whose father was probably dead; Ippolita, daughter of Monna Margherita Velluti, whose father was also probably dead; Maria, Gostanza, and Betta di Giovanni de’ Ricci; the daughter of Messer Luca Cavalcanti; Simona di Zanobi Marinai; Francesca, the daughter of the deceased Salice Cavalcanti; Cassandra di Messer Francesco Canigiani; and Ermellina of unknown surname and probably deceased father, who I have included in this group because her schooling was sponsored by Bernardo Corbinelli. The notarial girls were Tommasa and Francesca, daughters of Ser Lodovico, and Caterina, niece of Ser Andrea Mini. The spicer’s daughter was Tita di Damian; the foreigner was Agnola, daughter of Niccolo dell’Ongheria. 46. Conv. Sopp. 133. vol. 41, fols. 75v-76r, 78r; vol. 60, p. 24. 47. These figures are compiled from Conv. Sopp. 133. vol. 60, pp. 28, 30–31, 33–35; vol. 66, fols. 169r, 172v, 180r/v, 181r, 182r.

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48. Conv. Sopp. 133. vol. 66, fols. 169r, 172v. The girls were Cosa di Ser Bartolomeo Mei, Maria di Filippo Cartolaio, and Alessandra di Maestro Fruosino. One reason to suspect that these girls were boarders rather than pupils is their absence from the notizie of students contained in Conv. Sopp. 133. vol. 60, which does not include names of girls held in serbanza as far as can be checked against extant records. 49. Conv. Sopp. 133. vol. 66, fols. 59v, 60v; the 1525 roster is contained in Conv. Sopp. 133. vol. 71, fol. 23r. 50. Conv. Sopp. 133. vol. 60, pp. 30–31. The 1525 cohort included Lucrezia Salviati, Oretta da Panzano, Francesca Pitti, Camilla Antinori, Camilla de’ Medici, Alessandra Malegonelle, Lucrezia Nerli, and Lisabetta Pazzi. 51. Conv. Sopp. 133. vol. 60, p. 36, lists the ten remaining students as Alessandra Scarlatti, Camilla de’ Medici, Lucrezia Antinori, Maddalena Franceschi, Vaggia Ugolini, Caterina Capponi, Caterina Pitti, Fiametta Simoni, Lucrezia Altoviti, and the daughter of Messer Roberto da Gagliano. 52. As compared with a roster of nuns attesting to a contract dated February 8, 1525, given in Conv. Sopp. 133. vol. 71, fol. 23r. The kindred nuns were Piera Scarlatti, Bartolomea and Laudomina Simoni, Margherita Franceschi, and Domitilla Ugolini. 53. Conv. Sopp. 133. vol. 60, pp. 38–41. 54. Conv. Sopp. 133. vol. 66, fol. 91r. The nuns bound themselves to accept the girls “e alle decte insegnare virtu amaestrarlle e a quelle provedere del victo e dogni domicilio” in keeping with convent customs. Both Quaratesi brothers recorded their agreement with this pact in their own hands in the actual convent register. Additional details to this story are provided in Conv. Sopp. 133. vol. 60, pp. 17–18. 55. For Agnola’s entry, see Conv. Sopp. 133. vol. 39, fol. 79v; for her vows, Conv. Sopp. 133. vol. 40, fol. 59r; for her continued presence in 1477, Notarile Antecosimiano. G590 (1475–79), fol. 167r, contract dated 8 July 1477. Suora Agnola Quaratesi is not listed among the nuns attesting to a contract on January 23, 1480, although the omission of her name from this list may indicate simply her physical absence from the proceedings, rather than providing conclusive evidence of her death; see Conv. Sopp. 133. vol. 71, fol. 1r. 56. For the Quaratesi residences in Scala, see Biblioteca Nazionale, Florence. II. I. 127, fol. 6r. 57. Conv. Sopp. 133. vol. 60, p. 24. 58. Anthony Molho, “Deception and Marriage Strategy in Renaissance Florence: The Case of Women’s Ages,” Renaissance Quarterly 41 (1988): 193–217. 59. Catasto. vol. 811, fols. 68r-69v; vol. 820, fols. 513r-515v.

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60. Catasto. vol. 811, fols. 551r-552v; Conv. Sopp. 150. vol. 44, fols. 72r, 73r, 74v; vol. 56, fols. 44v, 89v. 61. Catasto. vol. 811, fols. 170r-172v. 62. Conv. Sopp. 133. vol. 60, p. 28; vol. 64, fol. 79v; vol. 66, fols. 108v, 180r, 180v. 63. Klapisch-Zuber, “Chiavi,” pp. 770–72; Richard C.Trexler, “Le célibat à la fin du Moyen Age: Les religieuses de Florence,” Annales: Economies, sociétés, civilisations 27 (1972): 1329–50. There has been some confusion in the literature about this point because of the time lag between a girl’s entrance as a novice and her actual profession as a nun. Anthony Molho, “‘Tamquam vere mortua:’ Le professioni religiose femminili nella Firenze del tardo medioevo,” Società e storia 43 (1989): 1–44, at p. 13, takes issue with Trexler’s conclusions, but bases his disagreement on evidence derived for age at profession, not age at entrance. Molho, Table 8, concludes that of 294 girls enrolled in the Monte delle doti who became nuns between 1430 and 1499, nine (3.1%) professed before age ten; seventy (23.8%) professed between ages eleven and fourteen; and 215 (73.1%) took vows at age fifteen or older. 64. Catasto. vol. 818, fols. 168r-171v, 568r-569r; vol. 825, fols. 487r-489r. 65. Christiane Klapisch-Zuber, “Childhood in Tuscany at the Beginning of the Fifteenth Century,” in her Women, pp. 94–116. 66. Statuti del comune di Firenze. vol. 34, esp. fols. 3r, 4r. For instance, only females over ten years of age could wear a gilded silver crown or tiara; but only girls under ten could wear embroidery or pearls on their hoods. Similar notions of girls’ stages of life prevailed elsewhere in Italy. In fourteenth-century Lucca, girls under the age of nine could legally wear more extravagant clothes, and Genoa passed a ruling in 1449 that required girls at the age of twelve to put away the jewelry given them as children; see Diane Owen Hughes, “Sumptuary Law and Social Relations in Renaissance Italy,” in Disputes and Settlements: Law and Human Relations in the West, ed. John Bossy (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1983), pp.69–99, at pp. 93–94. 67. Grendler, pp. 339–40. 68. Vespasiano, pp. 446, 449. 69. On the history of these virtues for women, see Michela Pereira, “L’educazione femminile alla fine del Medioevo: Considerazioni sul De Eruditione Filiorum Nobilium di Vincenzo di Beauvais,” Quaderni della Fondazione Giangiacomo Feltrinelli 23 (1983): 109–23. 70. Francesco Barbaro, “On Wifely Duties,” in The Earthly Republic: Italian Humanists on Government and Society, ed. Benjamin G.Kohl and Ronald G.Witt (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1978), pp. 189–228; on the restriction of customary mourning by

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women in the quattrocento, see Sharon T.Strocchia, Death and Ritual in Renaissance Florence (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1992). 71. See for example Conv. Sopp. 133. vol. 66, fol. 108v. 72. Giuseppe Zippel, “Le monache d’Annalena e il Savonarola,” Rivista d’ltalia 4 (1901): 231–49, esp. pp. 234–36. Although Annalena became the site of a well-known convent school in the sixteenth century, little is known about educational activities there in the fifteenth century. I have been unable to locate pertinent internal administrative records for the quattrocento. Zippel, p. 236, also suggests intriguingly that the residence of girls in convents, whose cloisters, refectories, and churches were often refurbished or expanded in the fifteenth century, helped to disseminate new, Renaissance-style aesthetics and ideas of beauty. 73. Maria Ludovica Lenzi, Donne e madonne: L’educazione femminile nel primo Rinascimento italiano (Turin: Loescher, 1982), p. 38. 74. Vespasiano, pp. 460–61. 75. Vespasiano, pp. 449, 451–52. 76. San Jacopo di Ripoli. vol. 25, fol. 5r/v. “Gli occhi vostri sera guaderanno alcuno in nessuno si ficchino et fermino…. Et non dite che voi abbiate gli animi casti se voi arete gli occhi disonesti imperoche ‘1 disonesto occhio e messo del disonesto cuore.” 77. Cited by Klapisch-Zuber, “Chiavi,” p. 780. 78. Quoted in Margaret L.King, Women of the Renaissance (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1991), p. 60. 79. Excerpts from this text are printed in Lenzi, pp. 58–63, quote at pp. 59–60. 80. Quoted in King, Women, p. 40. 81. Conv. Sopp. 133. vol. 66, fol. 180r: “[S]iamo tenute dinsegnare loro tutte levrtue [sic] che si richiediono a una fanciulla secholare.” 82. Klapisch-Zuber, “Chiavi,” p. 790 n. 78, cites seventeen examples of girls noted as held in serbanza by their families between 1358 and 1528. Klapisch bases her work on family ricordanze, however, not convent records, which give a much higher count. See also the remarks on boarders by Grendler, pp. 96–98. 83. On this point, see Sherrill Cohen, The Evolution of Women’s Asylums Since 1500: From Refuges for Ex-Prostitutes to Shelters for Battered Women (New York: Oxford University Press, 1992). 84. Acquisti e Doni. vol. 293, unfoliated. “Credo vi dovete rammentare che gia e sette anni compiuti ch’io entrai qua al servizio di dio in compagnia di sante venerabili madri, e piu contenta sono stata l’un di che l’altro e sonmi affaticata sempre di esercitarmi e imparare le virtu che a nostri pari si richiede.” 85. These incidents are documented in Conv. Sopp. 150. vol. 44, fol. 70r; and San Pier Maggiore. vol. 75, fol. 40v; vol. 52, fol. 48r respectively.

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86. Grendler, p. 98. 87. Cited by Zippel, p. 235. 88. Conv. Sopp. 150. vol. 17, fols. 16r, 24v. 89. Conv. Sopp. 150. vol. 56, fol. 95r; Archivio Arcivescovile, Florence. San Pier Maggiore. Unnumbered volume titled “Feste, Ufizi, e Mortori, 1351–1466,” fol. 140r. 90. Conv. Sopp. 133. vol. 60, pp. 24–25. 91. Susannah Foster Baxendale, “Exile in Practice: The Alberti Family In and Out of Florence, 1401–1428,” Renaissance Quarterly 44 (1991): 720–56. 92. Vespasiano, p. 462. 93. See the discussion of this text by Klapisch-Zuber, “Chiavi,” p. 776.I do not share her conclusion, however, that well-off Florentine fathers decided that it was generally better to leave their daughters in ignorance rather than to confront these risks. 94. Eric A.Havelock, Origins of Western Literacy (Toronto: Ontario Institute for Studies in Education, 1976), pp. 18–19; and more generally Harvey J.Graff, The Legacies of Literacy: Continuities and Contradictions in Western Culture and Society (Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 1987). 95. Lucchi; Robert Black, “The Curriculum of Italian Elementary and Grammar Schools, 1350–1500,” in The Shapes of Knowledge from the Renaissance to the Enlightenment, ed. Donald R.Kelley and Richard H.Popkin (Dordrecht, Netherlands: Kluwer Academic Publishers, 1991), pp. 137–63, esp. pp. 140–41. 96. Black, p. 155. 97. Biblioteca Nazionale, Florence. II. II. 509 (Chronicle of Murate convent written by Suora Giustina Niccolini, 1597). fols. 6r/v, 9r, quote at fol. 6r/v. “Et cosi miracolosamente imparò quasi con modo impossibile, parendo dificile che potesse di quivi scorger lettere.” The first event supposedly took place circa 1423–1424, the second in 1425. 98. Paul Saenger, “Silent Reading: Its Impact on Late Medieval Script and Society,” Viator 13 (1982): 367–414; Roger Chartier, “Leisure and Sociability: Reading Aloud in Early Modern Europe,” in Urban Life in the Renaissance, ed. Susan Zimmerman and Ronald F.E.Weissman (Newark: University of Delaware Press, 1989), pp. 103–20. 99. Carte Strozziane. ser. 4. vol. 418, fol. 61v. It is not clear exactly what text Guidetti had in mind. Grendler, p. 353, discusses the popularity among readers of the “Little Office”; Black, p. 141, notes that Margherita Datini wanted to obtain a “little book” containing the office of Our Lady for her daughter Tina in 1393. Guidetti may have been referring to one of these popular devotional texts.

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100. Conv. Sopp. 150. vol. 56, fol. 95v. “Disse non ci aveve piu a stare a inparare.” 101. Conv. Sopp. 150. vol. 17, fol. 16r; vol. 56, fols. 95v, 98r. 102. Conv. Sopp. 150. vol. 44. 103. Conv. Sopp. 150. vols. 39, 56; Vecchietti girls at vol. 39, fols. 7r, 14r/v. 104. Conv. Sopp. 133. vol. 64, fol. 70v; vol. 66, fols. 108v, 110v. 105. Conv. Sopp. 150. vol. 56, fol. 100r; Conv. Sopp. 133. vol. 64, fols. 69v, 70v. 106. Conv. Sopp. 150. vol. 44, fols. 65r/v, 66r, 69r, 71v; for the Ricci girls, Conv. Sopp. 133. vol. 64, fols. 79v, 83v, 85v, 88v, 91v, 94v; vol. 66, fols. 100v, 104v–105r, 112v, 124v, 127v. 107. Grendler, p. 304; on textual communities, see Gehl, p. 4. 108. Anne J.Schutte, “Teaching Adults to Read in Sixteenth-Century Venice: Giovanni Antonio Tagliente’s Libro Maistrevole” Sixteenth Century Journal 17 (1986): 3–16, at p. 3. 109. Catasto. vol. 989, fol. 322r. 110. Conv. Sopp. 133. vol. 66, fol. 97v: “Ele decte donne le debbono insegnare cucire e ogni altro exercito lecito e honesto secondo el costume di decto munistero.” For the Panzano girls, see Klapisch-Zuber, “Chiavi,” pp. 777–78. 111. Vespasiano, pp. 446,461,462. 112. Catasto. vol. 818, fols. 168r–171v. 113. Catasto. vol. 818, fols. 342r–343v. 114. Catasto. vol. 818, fols. 568r–569r. 115. Conv. Sopp. 150. vol. 56, fols. 25v, 86v–87r; vol. 44, fol. 63r. 116. Catasto. vol. 825, fols. 487r–489r. 117. Catasto. vol. 811, fols. 551r–552v. 118. Grendler, pp. 75–77. 119. Graff, pp. 34–35,71–73. 120. Catasto. vol. 45, fol. 436r/v; for Margherita Datini, see Le lettere di Margherita Datini a Francesco di Marco (1384–1410), ed. Valeria Rosati (Prato: Cassa di Risparmi e Depositi, 1977). 121. Armando Petrucci, “Scrittura, alfabetismo, ed educazione grafica nella Roma del primo Cinquecento: da un libretto di conti di Maddalena pizzicarola in Trastevere,” Scrittura e civiltà 2 (1978): 163– 207, esp. p. 166. 122. Armando Petrucci, “Pouvoir de 1’écriture, pouvoir sur 1’écriture dans la renaissance italienne,” Annales: Economies, sociétés, civilisations 43 (1988): 823–47. 123. The Florentine Fior di Virtù of 1491, trans. Nicholas Fersin (Washington, DC: E.Stern, 1953), 24–29, lists fifty-seven Italian

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incunabula editions, the first circa 1471, plus at least thirteen editions in the sixteenth century. 124. Paul Grendler, “What Zuanne Read in School: Vernacular Texts in Sixteenth-Century Venetian Schools,” Sixteenth Century Journal 13 (1982): 41–53, esp. pp. 44–47. 125. Fior di Virtù, pp. 16–17. 126 H.C.Butters, Governors and Government in Early SixteenthCentury Florence, 1502–1519 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1985), p. 96. 127. See, for example, the letter signed by Maddalena Cibo, wife of Lorenzo di Piero de’ Medici, in Medici Avanti il Principato. 106, fol. 44, and the multiple letters of Clarice Medici, wife of Filippo Strozzi, in Carte Strozziane. ser. 3. vol. 49. 128. Cited in Grendler, Schooling, p. 88. 129. Conv. Sopp. 150. vol. 44, fols. 72v, 74r.

CHAPTER 2

Equal in Opportunity? The Education of Aristocratic Women 1450–1540 Sharon D.Michalove

In late medieval and early modern England, were upper-class women educated? The consensus seems to have been no. 1 Historians such as Clara McMahon and Retha Warnicke have labeled upper-class women as ill- or uneducated. In her 1947 study, Education in Fifteenth-Century England, Clara P.McMahon starts her section on “class education” with the statement that “the systems of instruction were clear-cut and definite to the point of being narrowly utilitarian” and continues with her definition of chivalric education, observing that “noble-born boys and girls were trained for social leadership and the management of the great estates to which they would eventually fall heir.” No one would argue these points. She goes on to say, however, that “chivalric education came to be a shallow, meaningless system of training that wasted many precious years of the child’s life. It should be remembered, too, that the refinements and traits of gentility inculcated in the well-born held true only for members of their own class….”2 We are now moving from the realm of description to value judgment. The standards of humanistic education have been used by modern historians to judge the schooling of the aristocracy of late medieval England and to find it wanting. It is true that the education of most of the aristocracy did not follow the new humanistic curriculum. Likening humanism to “real” education in the fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries, therefore, is a false equation. For example, Retha Warnicke, discussing women in Tudor England, states, “It is 47

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unreasonable to suggest that, because it had several learned women, Tudor society as a whole encouraged its gentlewomen to become well educated.”3 Warnicke is making the assumption that early Tudor society generally defined “well educated” in the same way that Sir Thomas More defined it. He had educated his daughters to read Latin and Greek, and had them learn logic, mathematics, astronomy, and how to write scholarly treatises. More typical of an aristocratic girl’s education was that suggested by the Spanish humanist Juan Luis Vives, who, as a member of Katherine of Aragon’s court, drew up a plan of education for the queen’s daughter, Mary. Vives, concerned with inculcating morality as the main goal of women’s education, suggested a curriculum for the aristocratic woman. When she shall be taught to read, let those books be taken in hand that may teach good manners. And when she shall learn to write, let not her example be void verses nor wanton or trifling songs but some sad sentences, prudent and chaste, taken out of holy scripture of the sayings of philosophers, which by often writing she may fasten better in her memory….4

This was not an atypical education for a woman who was expected to run a household and an estate. As Warnicke admits, “The wife’s first duty, whether as a duchess or as a goodwoman, was housewifery, a task that was far more formidable than cleaning and dusting and keeping order.” 5 A classical education might be a nice accomplishment, but knowing about provisioning, attending to the illnesses of the household, protecting the estates in the absence of fathers, brothers, and husbands, and dealing with legal matters were vital to the smooth running of estates. These practical “accomplishments” were important components in the socialization, which was education, of an upper-class Englishwoman in the fifteenth century. Embroidery, for example, “was highly commended by moralists as a means of keeping ladies from idleness and, when it involved the making of vestments for clerics, contributing to the well-being of society.”6 It was not seen by contemporaries as a vacuous, timewasting occupation. When education is defined using the paradigm of sociologist Christopher Hurn as the “more or less deliberate process of transmitting the culture of the adult world to the young,”7 the

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response to the question of whether women were educated becomes not only self-evident, but also clearly contradicts the conclusions of Warnicke and McMahon. Such a redefinition also logically leads to a series of more fruitful questions that allows the researcher to delve deeper into the actual education of elite women in fifteenth- and sixteenth-century England, such questions as: How were women educated? Why were women educated? Was it to preserve societal norms? Was it to cope with new social conditions as the nature of society changed? Was the purpose to make them active participants or passive recipients? Was the point merely to enhance their value on the marriage market? What did women do with their education? What were their spheres of influence—and did their education broaden or circumscribe this sphere? Most of these questions point up the connection between education and socialization that Hurn argues for in his definition. It is this socialization process that is the hallmark of aristocratic education in late medieval England. This paper will concentrate on the household education of upper-class women and how this education shaped and socialized women for the integral role that they played in late medieval and early modern English society. POWER AND INFLUENCE THROUGH HOUSEHOLD MANAGEMENT The argument that all women are, and historically have been, relegated to the margins of society may be based more on the perceptions of historians or on the lack of writings about women than on an analysis of women’s positions in any particular society. In any society, only a minority of its members have real influence, regardless of whether they are male or female. Even though legal discrimination may technically be involved, in many societies women have played a crucial, perhaps central, role despite these limitations. Theoretical exclusion does not always mean exclusion in reality. In her wide-ranging study of women in the Middle Ages, Shulamith Shahar, who writes about marginalized women in the medieval world, states, “Nor is it within the scope of this work to discuss the many women who, as the sisters, mothers, wives and mistresses of kings and great feudal lords, and having a strong character, were able to manipulate developments from behind the scenes.”8 It is precisely these women and their gentry counterparts who are being discussed here. These women have always

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been considered exceptional, and perhaps they were. On the other hand, perhaps they are merely the most visible in a group of powerful, influential women, and as Shahar admits, the chroniclers just never wrote about all of them.9 I would argue that in the period under consideration, roughly 1450 to 1540, elite women were key figures in the proper ordering of the upper-class household and, by extension, were at times as powerful as their households. Barbara Harris provides rich evidence of the prominence of elite women in England in the early sixteenth century. Arguing for the centrality of the household, she asserts that “women moved unselfconsciously into the world of politics as they fulfilled their responsibilities as wives, mothers, and widows; when they did so, they engaged with surprising frequency in activities that even the dichotomies of contemporary social paradigms would recognize as political and public.”10 For example, although Elizabeth Woodville may not have advised Edward IV on his war with France, her control of the king’s ear led to rich patronage and marriage prizes for her family, exacerbating the tensions among prickly nobles and causing rents in the already fragile fabric of elite English society that led to a renewal of civil war. Margaret of York’s patronage of Perkin Warbeck and other forms of meddling in English politics from her base at the Burgundian court caused upheavals in English politics and forced the English crown to pursue expensive military campaigns during the early years of Henry VII’s reign. As the king’s mother, Margaret Beaufort, countess of Richmond, was influential in placing councilors in the household of her son, Henry VII. She was, however, more than just the mother of a king. As a great heiress, Margaret was also influential in her own right at the court of Edward IV while her son was in exile in Brittany. Rather than marginal figures, these women were central to the political process of English society. In the wider world, as Harris demonstrates, women were as likely to arrange patronage positions for their clients as their husbands were,11 and they could also take a leading role in judicial matters. In 1503, a reading at the Inner Temple indicated that both married and single women could serve as justices of the peace.12 In the 1530s, Anne, Lady Berkeley, was a member of a commission appointed to look into a riot in one of her parks. She heard evidence as a member of the panel and found the defendants, including two of her brothers-in-law, guilty. More unusual, Margaret Beaufort held a special commission to administer justice in the north of England near the end of the reign of her son, Henry VII.13

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If the court was the heart of the late medieval English state, embodied in the person and personal rule of the monarch, then the household was the locus of the upper class. It is here that women gained their position in society. In the fifteenth century, the household grew in importance at the same time that a money economy enabled it to become static rather than peripatetic. Both of these changes encouraged the enlargement of the household and made it both the “main unit of economic activity” and the “foundation of political alignment” in fifteenth-century England.14 This dramatic growth in the size, complexity, and importance of the household allowed the householder the opportunity to provide the elaborate hospitality that was a fundamental characteristic of courtly society.15 The growth in size and the attendant complexity of the household provided increased opportunities for women to hone their managerial skills and to influence their society. Today the word housewife carries connotations of unskilled labor, but in medieval England elite households were more like businesses. The household consisted of the house itself, which was usually a castle or substantial manor, plus the lands of the estate and all the residents of the house and, to a certain extent, the tenants on the estate. The lands might also include farms, forests, and rivers. The livelihood of the family depended on the careful management of the estate, and the wife of the landowner was vital to the process. In fact, for the wealthiest landowners, the multiplicity of estates, frequently in different counties, meant a multiplicity of households— the main household in the main manor, a traveling household, and skeleton staff in the houses on the ancillary estates. Jennifer Ward points out that many noblewomen would also have had households of their own, which were a subset of the larger household.16 In the fifteenth-century household, the lady of the house was extremely important. This importance, far from being a twentiethcentury construct, was recognized at the time. William Harleston of Suffolk obviously felt that his nephew was left adrift in trying to manage his household affairs after the death of his wife in 1480. Harleston wrote to his nephew, “For God’s sake beware now…after the decease of my good lady your wife, and stable [i.e. stabilize] your household now sadly and wisely with a convenient fellowship, so as you may keep you within your livelihood….”17 The wife was responsible, at least in this household, for making sure that her husband did nothing imprudent to waste their assets, such as buying

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too much land, starting ambitious building projects, or going to law, which were all notorious eaters of money. Although hospitality, too, was a large expense, its provision was an important obligation in late medieval society. Weddings and christenings were particularly significant events in terms of cementing kinship and peer group bonds. Christmas was one of the most important events, the ultimate expression of good lordship. The hospitality went on for all twelve days and tenants were feasted as well as friends and family.18 The opportunities for service in a moderately sized household would have been excellent on these occasions, as the following extract from the household accounts of Dame Alice de Bryene for 1412–1413 shows. Sunday 1 January. The lady with her household. Visitors: William Sampson with his wife and servant, Edward Peyton with his servant, William Langham with his servant, the wife of Robert Dynham with her son, John Teyler with his son, Richard Scrivener, the bailiff of the manor with the hervest-reeve and 8 paid labourers, Margaret Brydbek, 1 harper, Agnes Whyte, for the whole day; Agnes Rokwode with her 2 sons, daughter and maid, the Vicar of Acton with his servant, Richard Appylton with his wife and servant, Thomas Malcher, with 300 tenants and other strangers, for 1 meal. Pantry: 314 white loaves and 40 black loaves, of which 104 white and 14 black loaves were from the new baking; wine from what remained; ale from stock. Kitchen: 2 pigs, 2 swans, 12 geese, 2 carcasses of mutton, 24 capons and 17 rabbits. Purchases: beef, 8s 2d; veal 3s; 5 piglets, 2s 4d; 12 gallons of milk, 18d. Stables: hay from stock for 18 horses of the lady and visitors; 2 bushels of oats for provender for the same. Sum total of purchases: 15s. Number of messes [2–4 people per mess]: breakfast, 30; dinner, 160; supper, 30. Total: 200 [220].19

This was a feast day, but even on a nonholiday, such as December 16, there were twenty-six messes or a minimum of fifty-two

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people; on January 29, a Sunday, there were forty-four messes or a minimum of eighty-eight people.20 Sundays were typically occasions for providing hospitality within the country community. In addition to Sundays, other events for which hospitality was provided included the great feast days of the church, churchings, and funerals.21 All of these occasions would have meant that the mistress of the household would be busy organizing and overseeing the elaborate preparations. Hospitality in late medieval England had several functions. It was an opportunity for the host to demonstrate good lordship and for the retainers, clients, and neighbors to show reciprocal loyalty. In addition, hospitality could show Christian charity. The provision of hospitality, however, could also have a political motivation. The earl of Oxford summoned his retainers to a feast to meet with Henry VII as a form of service. The large and influential Neville family used the feast that marked the elevation of George Neville as archbishop of York in the 1460s as a chance for a competitive display that reinforced the status of the family in relation to the rest of the English nobility.22 A royal visit was another important way in which hospitality could be used to demonstrate status. Since women were vital to the provision of hospitality, they were a central part of the family nexus of power, which was reinforced by the use of hospitality. HOUSEHOLD AS SCHOOL “[T]he lady affected the society and economy of the world around her,” Ward asserts. “She provided employment for a considerable number of people…. The household constituted the hub of the lady’s life and activities, enabling her to bring up her family, run her estates, live a full social life, and carry out her religious obligations.”23 These skills were learned by emulating the family and serving members of the household. Written descriptions give some indications of what might be learned in this way. For example, in the early fifteenthcentury vernacular poem, “How the Goodwife Taught Her Daughter,” a mother explains to her daughter how to run a proper household. And wisely govern your house and your servants; Be you not too bitter nor too kind with them,

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Sharon D.Michalove But look well what most needs to be done, And set your servants thereto both quickly and soon. For ready when needed Is a task already done, My dear child. And if your husband is from home, let not your servants go idle, But look well who does much or little, And he that well does, pay him well his reward, And he that does otherwise, treat him as a base person. A task already done Will another speed, My dear child. And see that everything is well when they leave their work, And take the keys into your care, see that they are not forgotten; And beware to whom you show trust, and spare for no cunning, For much harm has befallen those that are not wise. But, daughter, see that you are wise, and do as I teach you, And trust no more than yourself for any fair words, My dear child. And if you shall be a rich wife, be then not too hard, But welcome pleasantly your neighbours that come to you With food, drink, and honest cheer, such as you may offer to them, To each person according to their status, and help the poor who need. And also, whatever may come to pass, Please well your neighbours that live beside you, My dear child.24

Children were taught how to serve at table, how to enter a room, and how to behave when a social superior demanded attention. For example, in F.Seager’s Schools ofVertue, children are instructed how to serve at table. So treatably speaking That the hearers therof Grace being said, Saying “much good Of stature then It shall become thee In bringing to it For thy parents upon Dishes with measure

as possible thou can, May thee understand Low curtsey make thou May it do you.” if thou be able, to serve the table Such meat as shall need that time to feed. thou oughtest to fill,

Equal in Opportunity? Else may thou happen On their apparel which for to do Spare trenchers with napkins To serve afterward, Be circumspect; Of necessary things As bread and drink, The voiders with bones At hand be ready, To fetch or take up,

55 thy service to spill Or else on the cloth, would move them to wroth. have in readiness If there come any guest. see nothing do want; that there be no skant, see there be plenty; Oft see thou empty. If any do call, If ought fortune to fall. 25

The lesson goes on to explain how to seat the guests according to rank, how to eat correctly, and how in general to behave in the household or at court. Children who were not properly schooled to participate in polite society would not be able to gain the rewards of that society, including positions at court and other forms of patronage, as well as suitable marriage partners. Although this education could be provided in the parental household, that approach was not common. Sending children to other households for their education and then taking in yet other children to provide education was common practice throughout England in the fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries. This practice occasioned comment from at least one visitor to England. The want of affection in the English is strongly manifested towards their children; for after having kept them at home till they arrive at the age of 7 or 9 years at the utmost, they put them out, both males and females, to hard service in the houses of other people, binding them generally for another 7 or 9 years. And these are called apprentices, and during that time they perform all the most menial office; and few are born who are exempted from this fate, for every one, however rich he may be, sends away his children into the houses of others, whilst he, in return, receives those of strangers into his own. And on inquiring their reason for this severity, they answered that they did it in order that their children might learn better manners26

The commentator, a Venetian visitor to the court of Henry VII, makes little distinction between elites and artisans. Sending children to other households would have been common among members of both

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classes. Although the education provided would have differed markedly, its hallmarks of practicality and socialization would have been common to the learning of both artisan and aristocrat. The visitor might profess shock that the English sent their children to other households to be educated, but this method not only created a tie between households but also brought children into contact with the larger society. The Venetian believed that this method of educating the young resulted from a lack of parental affection. He thought that the proof that the English did not love their children was the fact that their children did not return home after their years of service. He says, “if the English sent their children away from home to learn virtue and good manner, and took them back again when their apprenticeship was over, they might, perhaps, be excused; but they never return, for the girls are settled by their patrons, and the boys make the best marriages they can….”27 Foreign as this concept seems to have been to the Venetian, this was the point of sending children to other households—to form the ties that would produce patronage opportunities and advantageous marriages. The fifteenth-century letters of the Paston family of Norfolk are filled with discussions about placing children, especially daughters, in various households. On April 3, 1469, Margaret Paston wrote to her son Sir John, “Also I would ye should purvey for your sister [Margery] to be with my Lady of Oxford, or with my Lady of Bedford, or in some other worshipful place….”28 Sir John, being at court, would have the contacts necessary to find a place for his sister. Dame Alice de Bryene had pages in her household who were possibly sons of gentry families in the neighborhood. In both of these examples, the young people being placed would receive an education through service, and, parents hoped, the chance for good marriage prospects as well.29 Some families were renowned for the education they provided through household service, and the chance of placing a child in one of those households was eagerly pursued. Lady Maud Parr’s household was one of these. Thomas, Lord Dacre wrote to his sonin-law Lord Scrope, that he could not do better than to have his son Henry’s education completed in Lady Maud’s household. He wrote, “For I assure you, he might learn with her as well as in any place that I know, as well nurtured as French and other languages….”30 Lady Maud’s daughter Katherine, the last wife of Henry VIII, was noted for her erudition. The Howard duchesses of Norfolk were also known for the number of girls they educated and patronized in

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their household. Agnes, the wife of the second duke, had Elizabeth Kny vett of a leading Norfolk gentry family in her care, as well as four of her own grandchildren—Katherine Howard, Henry VIII’s fifth wife, plus three daughters of her daughter Katherine, who was countess of Bridgewater and the wife of Henry Daubeney, earl of Bridgewater. Elizabeth, the wife of the third duke, included one of her brother’s daughters in her household. Margaret, the wife of the fourth duke, asked to have Elizabeth Cornwallis, the daughter of one of duke’s clients, to stay in the Norfolk household. Many other examples could be given of girls educated in the households of great noblewomen. Two granddaughters, two greatgranddaughters, and gentlewomen from the families of Cholmeley, Cheyney, and Densell were members of the household of Margaret Pole, countess of Salisbury. Perhaps the most striking case of the importance and value of household education is that of Margaret Beaufort. Although girls such as three of the unmarried daughters of Edward IV and two granddaughters of Margaret’s half-brother, Sir John St. John, were among the children educated in her household, more unusual is the number of young men educated there. These included Edward, third duke of Buckingham (Margaret’s ward) and his brother Henry; Ralph, fourth earl of Westmorland; Margaret’s stepson, James Stanley bishop of Ely; Hugh Oldham and William Smyth, who also became bishops; and Nicholas Vaux, Lord Vaux of Harrowden.31 The education in a household such as that of Margaret Beaufort was a sought-after form of favor. Her household servants sometimes went on to serve at the royal court, especially during the reign of her son, Henry VII, but also in the reign of Edward IV, with whom she managed to maintain cordial relations. Other protégés were sent for university educations. The willingness to take children into a noble household was also part of the medieval idea of hospitality. Late medieval and early modern English society placed great emphasis on the importance of hospitality and gift giving. Largesse was a signifier of rank and position. The household was the focus of the power and influence of elites, and the hospitality provided and the gifts given were the currency of power and influence. As Felicity Heal notes, “Strategies of elite influence would demand…that ‘lyberalyte…[is] most convenyent…[for] a prynce to use with all his hole intent.’” The volatility in the upper ranks of society, where one-fourth of the noble houses died out every quarter of a century, encouraged its

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members to affirm their status through hospitality.32 Heal, discussing hospitality in early modern England, reminds us that a liberal, open hospitality, tied to good lordship, enhanced the honor and reputation of the family and was a hallmark of early modern English culture.33 Of course, these sentiments were also powerful in motivating social conduct in late medieval England. The household was seen as society in miniature where “the true principles of order could be articulated.”34 Of all the households in England offering education, the royal household was unsurpassed for the schooling that it provided, not only for the king’s children but for others at court,35 the “king’s henchmen, the children of chapel,…the clerks of the almonry, and other men, and children of court disposed to learn…, if they be ordinate masters within this court.”36 The education provided at court consisted of two parts—noriture and lettrure. Noriture consisted of etiquette, athletics, dancing, music, the composition of poetry, and other artistic and physical achievements. Lettrure stressed reading and writing in French, English, and Latin, the study of practical rather than imaginative literature, and fostered the study of grammar and history. History was emphasized because it was considered to be entertaining, encouraged the honoring of ancestors, and provided practical examples of good and bad conduct.37 Education in an elite household would have followed, if possible, the model of education at the royal court. The wealthier the family, the more the likelihood that an expensive education could be provided. The social refinements that were the core of this education were important in creating the future relationships formed among the elite class. Hunting and hawking were especially important, and women seem to have been involved in both of these activities. Bonds would have been formed among men who would have discussed “local and national politics, family affairs, marriage….”38 In the early sixteenthcentury Dialogue between Pole and Lupset, Thomas Starkey has Cardinal Reginald Pole, his patron, criticize these aspects of noble education. Pole complains that “first & most principal of all ill customs used in our country commonly after my judgment is that which touches the education of the nobility, whom we see customarily brought up in hunting & hawking dicing & carding eating & drinking & in conclusion in all vain pleasure pastime & vanity….”39 Lupset argues that the education and display of the nobility serves to enhance the honor of England, whereas Pole maintains that they are the cause of the beggary of England. Starkey, a humanist educated in Italy, is

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here giving Pole the humanist viewpoint also embraced by Thomas More. But the elites would have continued to see the importance of maintaining a community of honor that encompassed hospitality, gaming, and hunting, among other activities. Hunting, condemned by Pole, was integral to the development of bonds among neighbors. The section on hunting in The Boke of St. Albans (1486) may have been written by a woman, Juliana Berners, offering further proof that women were involved in many of the same leisure activities as men. Margaret Tudor, the daughter of Henry VII, shot a buck in Alnwick park while on her way to Scotland to marry James IV. Margaret was fourteen years old at the time.40 Women may have been silent while hunting, but it is more likely that they would have given their opinions on politics and marriage, just as their husbands did. This social part of education, the noriture, was perhaps even more important than the lettrure. As Maurice Keen says, “The chase could offer pleasures and excitement for the whole household, high and low…. To be a good hunter, to know the fine points and the rituals of the art of venery, could play its part too in…the ways by which a noble or gentleman maintained his ‘worship’ and earned respect among both his equals and his servants.”41 Women as participants may have reaped some of the same benefits. With this picture of household and court in mind, it is now possible to look at an example of the daughters in one specific family and to see what kinds of education they might have had, how they exhibited their educational interests, and how well their education prepared them for their social roles. HONOR LISLE AND THE LISLE FAMILY As an example of the educational preoccupations of an upper-class English family in the early sixteenth century, the Lisle family stands as an excellent exemplar, not only because their preoccupations were so typical of the gentry and the aristocracy, but also because so much of their correspondence has survived. Muriel St. Clare Byrne’s sixvolume edition of the Lisle letters is an invaluable source for the historian who is interested in upper-class education. The following account will rely on her monumental collection. Although the focus will be on Honor Lisle, née Grenville, and her daughters Philippa, Anne, Katharine, and Mary by her first husband, James Basset, the education of her sons and of her stepchildren will also be discussed.

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Honor’s own household education was different from the education she provided for her children and stepchildren. Her change in social status meant not only that the children needed placement in more elevated households but also that, although she was an adult, her own education had to be continued. The chief method of her continuing education was through correspondence with the Lisles’ man of business, John Husee. Although Husee was in England and Honor Lisle was in Calais, his educative advice was still in the context of household matters, in this case Honor’s own rather than a patron’s household. The emphasis, however, was on how, through her household, Honor Lisle would be able to provide service, gain patronage, and exert influence. Honor Lisle’s concerns focused on properly educating her children, promoting their careers, and assisting her husband’s career. The Lisles walked the tightrope of Henry VIII’s possible displeasure as well as the difficulties in administering an area as sensitive and important as Calais. Honor Lisle, through the teaching of John Husee, became well versed in producing the letters, tokens, favors, and gifts that lubricated the political and social realities of the sixteenth century. Despite having no official political role, Honor had to deal with the political machinations of Thomas Cromwell, curry favor with the queen (first Anne Boleyn, then Jane Seymour), fight legal battles over her son’s inheritance and her husband’s property, walk a fine line on religious matters (she was not too successful in this), and run a large household where princes and poor scholars demanded bounty. She created her own networks—one of women who could help her in placing her children advantageously and advise her on court intrigue, religious matters, and the like, and one of men who could manage business for her on the properties in the southwest of England and at court. Husee said of his mistress, “she doth conduct herself at all times with right honest and virtuous demeanour….”42 Honor Grenville Basset Lisle was from a well-placed gentry family of Cornwall. She was related to many of the prominent families in the southwest of England, including the Godolphins, Arundells, Killigrews, St. Aubyns, and Champernownes. Her year of birth is a matter of speculation, but Byrne puts it as around 1493–1495.43 Honor would have grown up in a substantial but provincial household. In his Survey of Cornwall, Richard Carew describes typical Cornish elite society:

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They keep liberal, but not costly builded or furnished houses; give kind entertainment to strangers; make even at the year’s end with the profits of their living; are reverenced and beloved of their neighbours; live void of factions amongst themselves (at leastwise such as break out into any dangerous excess); and delight not in bravery of apparel; yet the women would be very loath to come behind the fashion, in newfangledness of the manner, if not in costliness of the matter, which might perhaps overempty their husband’s purses. They converse familiarly together, and often visit one another. A gentleman and his wife will ride to make merry with his next neighbour; and after a day or twain, these two couples to a third; in which progress they increase like snowballs, till through their burdensome weight they break again.44

Honor had a dowry of two hundred pounds when she married Sir John Basset of Umberleigh, Devon, in 1515. She was a much younger second wife as Sir John was a widower of fifty-three. Basset had two daughters by his first wife, Elizabeth Dennis, Anne and Thomasine; Honor presented him with three sons, John, George, and James, and four daughters, Philippa, Katharine, Anne, and Mary. Honor Lisle was not brought up to rule over a “semi-royal” household. Her second husband, who was an illegitimate son of Edward IV, was a man known for his extravagant life style. He was generous to a fault and was usually insolvent. Honor had to spend a great deal of her time trying to sort out the family’s financial predicaments while still making sure that her children had the right clothes to make the proper impression in the world and that the hospitality in Calais—which was a focal point for English diplomatic and foreign-trade activities—was on the lavish scale expected of the governor and his wife. In 1533, Honor wrote to Henry, Lord Montague, complaining that entertaining in Calais was very expensive. Montague advised her to attempt to bridle her husband’s natural tendencies to extravagance. “Madame, I perceive by your letter that Calais is somewhat chargeable, as I reckoned alway it should be somewhat, to such a free stomach as my Lord hath. Therefore, for the love of God, look upon it in the beginning, now: for I assure you everything here is harder than it was at your departing; and so like to continue” (Lisle Letters, 1:492). Honor had to make sure that the proper gifts were sent to the proper people in order to maintain the network of influence so necessary to maintain a position in Tudor England. She also needed to secure the futures of her children and stepchildren, and gifts were

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also used to ensure that result. For example, she sent a cheese to Sir William Kingston, wine to Lord Hereford, fish to the French families that educated her children, and quail to Queen Jane Seymour. All of this took money that the Lisles seldom had and a flair that Honor developed despite her provincial upbringing. Although educated to be a gentlewoman capable of practicing the usual social graces such as dancing, playing at cards, reading, riding, archery, and nursing the sick, Honor was not a scholar. In addition, she was rather outspoken and somewhat lacking in discretion in her comments, traits that may indicate her lack of education in courtliness.45 Hers was a forceful and decided personality. As Byrne describes her, for the first time in the century, in a detailed, connected narrative, we can see and hear the typical Tudor gentlewoman of race and character asserting herself on a substantial scale, expressing her vitality, her energy, her wisdom, and shrewdness through the lives of husband and children. A woman with decided views of her own, a good business head, a great sense of the responsibilities implied by her position, and a readiness, matched by capacity, to play her part socially in her husband’s career….46

As far as her early education is concerned, though nothing is actually known, we may speculate that she was educated in the household of either a relation or a family connection, an arrangement she made for her own children. Byrne states that, not unexpectedly, she did not know Latin, and perhaps, surprisingly, never learned French, even after living in Calais for seven years. She could read, however, and she was able to write, if with difficulty. Her books consisted of Bibles and devotional texts. But she also seems to have had some education in business and legal matters, as she was able to deal with the estate stewards on the matters of rents, leases, fines, and so forth. She was also able to secure the rights of her son, John Basset, to his inheritance.47 The education and advancement of her children was one of Honor’s chief concerns. Occasionally Lisle did something for one of the boys or received a letter about his children from the French families with whom they were lodged, but Honor and Husee were the most directly involved. Honor wrote to Husee and the various guardians with instructions, and she received the bills. In Calais, Frances Lisle and Philippa and Katharine Bassett stayed with the Lisles; Anne and Mary were sent to noble French families. The evidence seems to

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indicate that Frances may have been able to write, and Philippa may have been able to read, since she received two letters from her sister Mary. The receipt of saddles shows that riding was a skill that they had mastered, but only Mary seems to have had musical training (Lisle Letters, 3:8–9). Mary was educated in the household of a Madame de Bours. On March 13, 1536, Mary wrote to her mother, describing some aspects of the schooling she was receiving in the de Bours household. The spinet-player who taught me at Guechart Madame de Bours hath contented for that which he hath done; and she hath taken another in this town. Also, I have given the schoolmaster who taught me to read and to write ten sols only, while waiting to hear from you. My said lady of Bours as yet hath not had my dress of satin mended, because to this hour she hath been right occupied with her affairs. She will have it repaired for Easter, and also will look about her to find some good spinet. I am greatly indebted to the said lady, who taketh always much pains for me (Lisle Letters, 3:164).

Mary also wrote to her sister Philippa on the same day, explaining how she would be able to teach her, if they were together. “My good sister and friend, I greatly desire to hear good news of you and of my other sisters. If I might have my wish I would be every day an hour with you, that I might teach you to speak French” (Lisle Letters, 3:164). Along with her letter, Mary sent gifts for various family members, including a gospel for her sister Katharine. On March 24 of the same year, Mary sent her mother a gospel and a needle case. She had most likely made the needle case herself. These gifts indicate the importance of giving books that aided in personal devotion as well as the importance of the skill of needlecraft, which was considered an essential part of the education of an upper-class woman. While Mary was being educated in the de Bours household, Anne was in the de Riou household. The de Riou family was related to the de Bours family, as Madame de Bours was the sister of the Sieur de Riou. On May 11, 1534, six months after arriving at the de Riou household at Pont de Remy, Anne wrote to her mother, “Madame, I must not omit to advertise you of the goodly entertainment made me by Monsieur and Madame. Had I been their natural daughter thy could not better nor more gently have entreated me.” She goes on to ask for “some demi-worsted for a gown, and a kirtle of velvet, and also some linen to make smocks, and some hosen and shoes”

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(Lisle Letters, 3:142–43). Like Mary’s letters, Anne’s are usually filled with requests for clothing and jewelry. Mary spends very little time discussing what she might be learning. Proper clothing, however, was a major issue for both Mary and Anne (and generally for women of that class) during their time in France and later when they were serving at court. As far as other aspects of Anne’s education were concerned, the primary purpose of her French education was to learn the French language and French manners, which she did during her three years with the de Riou family. We also know that her religious education was not neglected; she went on a pilgrimage with Madame de Riou to the Holy Tear of Our Lord, a famous relic at the Abbey in Vendôme (Lisle Letters, 3:159–60). John Basset, the “Diamant of Devonshire,” received both a similar and a very different sort of education from that of his sisters. Husee himself was very much involved, especially when John went to London to study. Byrne describes Husee’s attentions to John’s education and welfare as “always hovering.”48 As the heir to the contested Basset estates, John Basset began his education in the household of Richard Norton, a justice of the peace in Hampshire and a good friend of Arthur Lisle. Although he would have learned the arts and graces necessary for the eldest son and heir, evidently his Latin was poor. As a result, John was sent to the village of Colemore, to the crammer William Bremelcum. On March 11, 1534, while still at Bremelcum’s establishment, John sent his mother a letter in Latin, so we know that he was expected to learn the language. Since the letter is not in his handwriting, however, there is no indication of John’s true proficiency (Lisle Letters, 4:69–73). In 1535, after his education in both the Norton household and at the crammer had been completed, John was sent to Lincoln’s Inn to finish his education. On April 15, 1535, Husee wrote to Honor Lisle, “Mr. Basset is, lauded be God, merry, and a toward gentleman, applying his learning very well…. I have also given Bremelcum iij yds. and di m. for his study gown” (Lisle Letters, 4:28). Antony Wayte, who met Basset in London, wrote to Lady Lisle, This bearer and I went to Lincoln’s Inn to have seen and spoken with Mr. Basset, your son, but we found him not. He was then gone into the country with Mr. Danastre to recreate himself from his studies. And needeth not my bare counsel, for by the goodness of his own nature he more gently behaveth himself, and otherwise followeth the

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ways of virtue than either by me or any other I suppose he may be exhorted or advertised (Lisle Letters, 4:29).

These reports, and others commending John’s progress and reassuring a concerned mother that he had not been exposed to the various sicknesses rampant in London, presumably satisfied Honor’s anxiety about John’s receiving a proper education. Honor Lisle was concerned with not only the education of her own children, but also with the education of other young people. In an age where the household still provided the main form of education for the upper classes, this is not surprising. She took young gentlewomen into her household for training and “she did not hesitate to reprimand the young gentleman-waiters if she disapproved of their behaviour.” That does not mean that she was overly harsh in her correction. Thomas Raynsford, whom she had chastised for excessive gaming, said that she was “his special good lady.” Sir Thomas Elyot commended her for her excellent way of correcting his friend of his fault in dicing.49 In late 1532, Lady Weston wrote to Honor Lisle about taking a young woman into her household. In her letter she says of her protégé, “she is a good maid, both sad and wise, and true of hand and tongue…. Her father is one Christopher More, a gentleman which my Lord knoweth well. This maid was brought up with my lady Bourchier” (Lisle Letters, 1:330). The unfortunate girl had formed a liaison with a young gentleman of the household, but he was penniless and it was impossible for them to marry. Lady Weston’s husband insisted that they both be expelled from the household. But Lady Weston obviously had a high opinion of the girl and wanted to place her in a suitable environment. She continued, “Madam, this gentlewoman can do any manner of service ye put her to: either to wait upon your ladyship, or to wait on my lord’s daughters and yours, and to bring them up well, and [to] teach them right good manners…” (Lisle Letters, 1:330). Obviously the girl’s unfortunate attachment was not considered a moral hindrance to her seeking work as a governess. This type of situation may have been very common. Certainly in the Paston letters, concern over unsuitable attachments of daughters to family servants is much in evidence. Margaret Paston tries unsuccessfully to prevent the marriage of her daughter, Margery, to the family bailiff, Richard Calle. She is also much concerned over her daughter Anne’s predilection for another

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Paston servant and arranges for Anne to be placed in a London household so that a more suitable match might be found for her. Although we know nothing about Honor Lisle’s early education, except through inference, it could fairly be said that the Lisle man of business, John Husee, was a kind of tutor to both of the Lisles and in some sense to the children as well. While he did not teach reading or writing, dancing or music, Husee was the authority on politic behavior, on the right gift to give to any particular person—on what had to be done in order to keep up one’s proper position in Tudor England. Husee was the primary correspondent in the Lisle Letters, and when he was not passing on the political news of the day or giving reports of John Basset’s health and progress at Lincoln’s Inn, he did not hesitate to advise his master and mistress on what obligations must be met. When the matter of placing Katharine Basset had to be settled, Husee stated, “And as touching Mrs. Katharine, we cannot here see that your ladyship can do so well for her anywhere else; for the matter that your ladyship doth write of is not so much to be doubted; for the Duchess [of Suffolk] is both virtuous, wise and discreet” (Lisle Letters, 4:70). Husee was discreetly rebuking Honor Lisle for her hesitation in placing her daughter in the duchess’s household. A striking example of this ongoing education concerns the matter of the gift of quail to Queen Jane Seymour. From court, Sir John Russell wrote to Arthur Lisle on May 20, 1537, that “the King commanded me to write to you for some fat quails, for the Queen is very desirous to eat some but here be none to be gotten” (Lisle Letters, 1:141). In a society where reward and punishment flows from the monarch, these requests are truly commandments. Calais was the usual English source for quail, which were considered a great delicacy. The birds were very fragile, so shipping them was difficult, and these quail had to be “fat.” The Lisles started sending quail, Husee admonishing them about the fatness and also cautioning them not to send too many at a time, alive, to Dover. On June 12, he wrote to Honor Lisle, yesternight I killed part of the quails, and this morning the rest; but surely, madam, there were not past vij of them that were fat, and some of very lean, so I chose ij dozen of the best and took them with me…. But those that your ladyship shall hereafter send must be picked out, one by one, for surely, madam, those that your ladyship sent first were as good as these, except it were vij of them which were very good (Lisle Letters, 4:146–47).

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On July 10, Husee is still complaining about the quality of the quail. It may seem a little matter, but pleasing the king could bring future preferment, while alienating the king could begin a grudge that could lead to dire consequences. Henry VIII was a king very fickle in his favors and favorites. Therefore on July 17, Husee writes, “Touching the ij dozen quails, I wrote your ladyship that I presented them unto Mr. Sulyard forasmuch as they were not to present the queen’s Highness. If your ladyship will send any let them be culled out, one by one, and do your ladyship see them yourself, for if they be not all of one sort like, and very fat, they are not to present” (Lisle Letters, 4:153). All this matter of quail was to help assure a much more important result—Honor Lisle was trying to place one of her daughters at court as one of the queen’s gentlewomen. Clearly fat quail were considered one way to earn the queen’s favor. Apparently such favor was earned, as Anne was chosen in September to be a Maid of Honor. As a teacher, Husee was persistent if not always patient with his pupil. Certainly he was not afraid to chide Honor if he felt that she was not performing her duties adequately. It was Husee who was able to take in hand a countrywoman and educate her in the ways of the court. While he was never entirely successful in making Honor and Arthur Lisle understand the political implications of their actions, in moderating Honor’s outspokenness on the subject of religion, or in giving the Lisles a true appreciation for what was happening in an unstable court, he never stopped his educative efforts. Honor’s early training and background made her receptive to much of his teaching, but Husee was the most important teacher that Honor had. Honor Lisle was a businesswoman, not merely in running households, but also in at least one commercial venture. She was the “owner” of the Sunday of Porchester, a trading vessel.50 As the owner, she paid out the wages, checked the accounts, and received the profits. Byrne speculates that the reason for the investment was that it was the best way to obtain fish for Lent and food for the winter. If she did not make any money from the venture, she was able to procure a sufficient supply of herring for her household at less than market price (Lisle Letters, 1:340–42). Elite women in late medieval and early modern England are seldom portrayed as successful entrepreneurs. Honor was able, as many other less well-

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documented women undoubtedly were as well, to learn to trade as a means of enhancing the quality of life of her family. And what of the children she so carefully trained and placed? Her son John Basset, who had been schooled at the Inns of Court, died in 1541. George was a landowner in Cornwall and served in Parliament in 1563 and 1572. He died in 1580. Philippa and Mary both married and lived in Devonshire. James Basset faithfully served his patron Bishop Stephen Gardiner and was committed to the Tower in 1551 for his refusal to give up his Catholic faith. After his release he married Mary Roper, the granddaughter of Thomas More, who had been educated in the tradition of scholarship that was a hallmark of the More circle. James was a gentleman of the Privy Chamber to Mary Tudor and his wife was one of the queen’s gentlewomen. He served in Parliament for the county of Devon in 1555 and again in 1558, but he died in November 1558, while still in his early thirties. Katharine Basset was taken into the household of Anne of Cleves after the divorce and presumably stayed there until her marriage in 1547 to Henry Ashley, Esq., of Hever, Kent. Anne was maid of honor to Anne of Cleves, Katharine Howard, and Katharine Parr. Retiring in the first year of Edward VI’s reign, she was appointed as a Lady of the Privy Chamber to Mary Tudor, riding in the coronation procession. She married Walter Hungerford, a member of the nobility. Although she outlived some of her children, as a mother and as an educator Honor could be proud that her children were successful. George and James had good careers and the girls married, and that was the hope of fond parents in sixteenth-century England. Honor Lisle was a countrywoman who, in a mostly fortunate second marriage, became a woman of consequence. Through her position as the wife of Arthur Lisle, she was able to provide a good education for her younger children as well as to find them prestigious appointments at court. For all the education that Husee afforded Honor and Arthur, however, the elder Lisles were not able to learn completely from his lessons. In 1540, Lisle was falsely accused of treason and later executed, presumably because of his connection with the now-disgraced Cromwell. Honor returned to her first husband’s estate in Cornwall, where she died in 1566.

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A REDEFINITION OF SCHOOL Schools existed in the late Middle Ages and some girls attended them—especially dame and petty schools intended for the lower classes. Elite girls might spend some time in a convent school. But the household itself functioned as a school for most upper-class children. Although a noble household might not look much like a school to the eyes of a late-twentieth-century person, the household served a vital educational function for the upper classes. The household contained teachers—grammar masters, huntsmen, chaplains, musicians—but instruction was also provided by the lord and lady of the manor. Since education was equated with socialization, the fact that society expected all adults to be teachers of children is not surprising. The household was the primary purveyor of this function to elites. Although higher education was not an option for aristocratic women, their household education was very much like that of men. If Nicholas Orme is correct in his assumption of the lack of a specific educational consciousness in regard to training upper-class children, this factor may have worked to women’s advantage.51 Upper-class women were members of literate society whether or not they could participate directly, despite the advice of Philippe de Novare in The Four Ages of Man, “Teach women neither letters nor writing.”52 Parents considered their daughters’ education as important as that of their sons. For example, John Smyth, the Lisle family auditor, died in 1543, leaving provisions in his will for the education of all his children. His sons, Thomas, William, and Giles, “‘shall be brought up honestly and diligently at school’ till they have the Latin tongue, and be then put to the law, or auditing, or some other office ‘towards the law.’” Frances and Dorothy, his daughters, were “to be ‘brought up virtuously and honestly in learning’ until they marry.” Smyth had earlier been able to place his brother with the Lisles in Calais (Lisle Letters, 1:346–347). With their brothers, aristocratic women were educated for the positions they would hold in society. Like their fathers, brothers, and husbands, they managed estates, read religious and secular literature, participated in courtly pastimes, pursued legal cases, and oversaw the education of their own children as well as the children of other families. The practical rather than theoretical basis that seems to have been inherent in late medieval thought about

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education meant that the training upper-class women received had to suit them for the obligations that society would impose. Their education, though varying from household to household, would have had certain elements in common. These subjects would have included instruction in dancing, music, riding, archery, household management, serving at table, and eating correctly. The skills imparted would enable a woman to manage her own household when she married, giving her the opportunity to exert power and influence within her society. NOTES 1. Studies of education in late medieval and early modern England have proliferated in the last thirty or so years. Taking their lead from A.F.Leach, the first modern investigator of English medieval and early modern education, historians such as Joan Simon, Jo Ann Hoeppner Moran, John Miner, and Michael Van Cleave Alexander have explored various aspects of education in the late medieval and early modern period. These studies range from the particular to the general and deal with both the lower and upper classes. To a large extent, however, they concentrate on schooling, rather than the less formal household education of the upper classes. Currently, much of the research is being undertaken by scholars engaged in literary criticism, who have had valuable insights into women’s education from a textual point of view. Arthur Francis Leach was a prolific author whose classic study on education is The Schools of Medieval England (London: Methuen, 1915). He has provoked a great deal of debate among educational historians including Joan Simon, Education and Society in Tudor England (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1966); Joan Simon, “A.F.Leach on the Reformation,” British Journal of Educational Studies 3 (May 1955): 128–143 and 4 (November 1955): 32–48; Joan Simon, “A.F.Leach: A Reply,” British Journal of Educational Studies 12 (November 1963): 41–50; John N.Miner, “Schools and Literacy in Later Medieval England,” British Journal of Educational Studies 11 (November 1962): 16–27; John N.Miner, The Grammar Schools of Medieval England: A.F.Leach in Historiographical Perspective (Montreal: McGillQueen’s University Press, 1990); W.N.Chaplin, “A.F.Leach: A ReAppraisal,” British Journal of Educational Studies 11 (May 1963); 99– 124; W. N.Chaplin, “A.F.Leach: Agreement and Difference,” British Journal of Educational Studies 12 (May 1964): 173–83; and P.J.Wallis, “Leach—Past, Present and Future,” British Journal of Educational Studies 12 (May 1964): 184–94.

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Recent authors on education include Jo Ann Hoeppner Moran, The Growth of English Schooling 1340–1548: Learning, Literacy, and Laicization in Pre-Reformation York Diocese (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1985) and Michael Van Cleave Alexander, The Growth of English Education 1348–1648: A Social and Cultural History (University Park, PA: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1990). 2. Clara P.McMahon, Education in Fifteenth-Century England (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1947), p. 123. 3. Retha Warnicke, Women of the English Renaissance and Reformation (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1983), p. 4. 4. Juan Luis Vives, “A Cautious Curriculum for Noblewomen,” in Education in Tudor and Stuart England, ed. David Cressy (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1975), p. 106. 5. Warnicke, p. 6. 6. Nicholas Orme, Education and Society in Medieval and Renaissance England (London: Hambledon Press, 1989), p. 173. 7. Christopher J.Hurn, The Limits and Possibilities of Schooling (Boston: Allyn and Bacon, 1993), p. 4. 8. Shulamith Shahar, The Fourth Estate: A History of Women in the Middle Ages, trans. Chaya Galai (London: Methuen, 1983), p. 9. 9. Shahar, p. 10. 10. Barbara J.Harris, “Women and Politics in Early Tudor England,” The Historical Journal 33:2 (1990): 260. 11. Harris, pp. 267–68. 12. Bertha Putnam, Early Treatises on the Practice of the Justices of the Peace in the Fifteenth and Sixteenth Centuries (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1924), pp. 194–96. 13. Harris, p. 269. 14. Household size is notoriously difficult to estimate. Kate Mertes says that the membership was fluid and some nominal household members had households of their own. (Kate Mertes, The English Noble Household 1250–1600 [Oxford: Blackwell, 1988], p. 5.) This was certainly true in the royal household. The esquires and knights of the body took service in rotation in three-month intervals, going back to their own estates meanwhile as eyes and ears for the king in the country. Maurice Keen estimates that a well-to-do knight or esquire might have twelve to eighteen household members, but might have more if they could afford it, like the Mountfords of Warwick, who had twenty-seven servants. On the other hand, great households would be much larger. Margaret, duchess of Clarence, had a traveling household of “19 knights, 25 esquires, 45 yeomen, 19 grooms, 13 pages, and 11 sumptermen in charge of the baggage; there were 10 priests and 4 choristers in the party.” (Maurice Keen, English Society in the Later Middle Ages 1348–1500 [London:

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Allen Lane, 1990], p. 166.) John Smyth, the historian of the Berkeley family, thought that the Berkeleys’ kept at least three hundred servants in the early fourteenth century, and Edward IVs Black Book suggested that a duke’s household should number about 240. Felicity Heal agrees with Mertes’ figures of 150 members of a noble household at the end of the fifteenth century, with sixty-five as an average for the gentry. (Felicity Heal, Hospitality in Early Modem England [Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1990], p. 47.) Also see David Starkey, “The Age of the Household: Politics, Society and the Arts c. 1350-c. 1550,” in The Context of English Literature: The Later Middle Ages, ed. Stephen Medcalf (London: Methuen, 1981). 15. Felicity Heal, “Reciprocity and Exchange in the Late Medieval Household,” in Bodies and Disciplines: Intersections of Literature and History in Fifteenth-Century England, ed. Barbara A.Hanawalt and David Wallace (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1996), pp. 182–83. 16. Jennifer C.Ward, English Noblewomen in the Later Middle Ages (London: Longman, 1992), p. 51. 17. Keen, pp. 170–71. 18. Heal, Hospitality, pp. 74–81. 19. Jennifer C.Ward, trans. and ed., Women of the English Nobility and Gentry 1066–1500 (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1995), pp. 181–82. A group of two or four people served together formed the mess, so called from the amount of food served to the group. 20. Ward, Women of the English Nobility, pp. 181–82. 21. Churching in particular was an important ritual for women. It marked the end of the days of enforced exile from church of the newly delivered mother and signified her purification. In 1466, after the birth of Elizabeth of York to Edward IV and Elizabeth Woodville, an elaborately formal ceremony was held after the churching as a way of legitimizing the Yorkist ascendancy and Edward’s controversial marriage. Eight duchesses and thirty countesses stood in silence as the queen, who was attended by her mother Jacquetta, and her sister-in-law Margaret, was seated. A threehour meal was served to Elizabeth, Jacquetta, and Margaret, while the duchesses and countesses stood in silent attendance. Dancing followed the meal. For a complete description of this event, see The Travels of Leo Rozmital through Germany, Flanders, England, France, Spain, Portugal and Italy 1465–1467, trans. and ed. Malcolm Letts (Cambridge: University Press, 1957), pp. 44–48. 22. Heal, Hospitality, pp. 86–87. 23. Ward, English Noblewomen, pp. 68–69. 24. P.J.P.Goldberg, trans. and ed., Women in England c. 1275–1525 (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1995), pp. 100–102.

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25. F.Seager, “The Schoole of Vertue,” in Early English Meals and Manners, ed. Frederick J.Furnivall (London: Kegan Paul, Trench, Trübner, 1868), p. 230 [spelling modernized]. 26 Charlotte Augusta Sneyd, ed., A Relation or Rather a True Account, of the Island of England; with Sundry Particulars of the Customs of These People, and of the Royal Revenues under King Henry the Seventh about the Year 1500 (London: J.B.Nichols, 1847), pp. 24–25. 27. Sneyd, p. 25. 28. James Gairdner, ed., The Paston Letters (Gloucester: Alan Sutton, 1983) 5:15–16 [spelling modernized]. 29. Eric Acheson, A Gentry Community: Leicestershire in the Fifteenth Century, c. 1422-c. 1485 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992), p. 177. 30. Quoted in Harris, p. 262. 31. Harris, pp. 269–70. 32. Heal, “Reciprocity,” pp. 194–95. The embedded quotation is from Thomas Starkey, A Dialogue between Pole and Lupset, ed. T.F.Mayer (London: Offices of the Royal Historical Society, University College London, 1995), p. 86. 33. Heal, Hospitality, p. 13. 34. Heal, Hospitality, p. 33. 35. Sneyd, p. 20. 36. A[lec] R[eginald] Myers, ed., The Household of Edward IV: The Black Book and the Ordinance of 1478 (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1959), pp. 137–38 [spelling modernized]. 37. Richard Firth Green, Poets and Princepleasers: Literature and the English Court in the Late Middle Ages (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1980), p. 73. 38. Keen, p. 186. 39. Starkey, p. 86 [spelling modernized]. 40. Orme, pp. 173–74. 41. Keen, p. 185. 42. Muriel St. Clare Byrne, ed., The Lisle Letters (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1981), 3:144. 43. Byrne, I, 305. 44. Richard Carew, Survey of Cornwall (1602) quoted in Lisle Letters, 1:306. 45. Byrne, 1:29–30. 46. Byrne, 1:31. 47. Byrne, 1:32. 48. Byrne, 4:29. 49. Byrne, 1:37.

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50. Technically, as a married woman she did not own property, but she was the owner in fact if not in law. 51. Orme,p. 157. 52. Danielle Régnier-Bohler, “Literary and Mystical Voices,” in A History of Women, vol. 2, Silences of the Middle Ages, ed. Christiane Klapisch-Zuber (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1992), p. 442.

CHAPTER 3

The Pattern of Perfect Womanhood Feminine Virtue, Pattern Books and the Fiction of the Clothworking Woman Stacey Shimizu

A young queen with a ringing name,…a devoted wife to a husband with whom she was not in love,…had formulated a vow as a sign…. [S]he thought of a writing comprehensible to everyone, to which everyone would draw near with excitement and be moved. She imagined some kind of undefined universal book, from whose perfection no language was excluded, to whose tones no ear could be deaf…. The writing required a sheet of linen…. —Marta Morrazoni, The Invention of Truth

The “universal book” comprehensible to all conceived of by this unnamed (and fictional) queen is the Bayeux Tapestry, a lateeleventh-century linen embroidery that tells the story of the Norman Conquest.1 The metaphoric association of cloth and clothwork with texts—and with language in general—is part of the fabric of Western culture. We speak of “spinning yarns,” of “tissues of lies,” of “embroidering facts” in their retelling. Indeed, our word “text” derives from the Latin verb texo, texere, meaning “to weave.” The young queen’s vision of the textile as text is the flip side of this linguistic commonplace, a reverse metaphor. Or is it a metaphor made literal? Questions arise as to which is the literal process and which the linguistic trope, as to where one leaves off and the other begins. “Is weaving,” as Ann Bergren asks, “a figurative speech or is poetry a figurative web?”2

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Text and textile are inextricably intertwined, seen variously as commensurate, comparable and complementary. What distinguishes the two is gender: language use has been seen as masculine, with the power to speak, to write and to create a text being viewed as a male prerogative. In contrast, clothwork—from spinning to decorative finishing—has traditionally been categorized as “women’s work,” as craft rather than art. Historically, this gender divide has not been immutable, as witnessed by the prominence of men in medieval cloth working guilds and by women authors from Sappho to Christine de Pizan.3 What is important here, however, is not so much the historical reality as the perception, the fiction, that pens are for men and pins (or needles) are for women. This essay examines not the facts of women’s cloth production, but rather the myth and ideal of the spinning, weaving, sewing woman. Specifically, this essay concentrates on early modern images of the cloth working woman, with particular reference to books of needlepoint and lace-making designs, and to the image of Penelope, the weaving woman par excellence, as she appears in Robert Greene’s Penelopes Web of 1587. The images of women working at looms or bent over a needlework frame were didactic images, employed to illustrate an ideal of womanhood. Clothworking provided a sort of litmus test of femininity and virtue: a weaving woman was seen as domestic, silent, submissive and chaste—and hence feminine. Pattern books sought not only to educate women in a domestic craft, but also to craft them into the cultural image of the ideal woman, and the value of clothworking, according to these and other texts, lay not so much in the production of textiles as in its role in the production of feminine women and good wives. PATTERN BOOKS AND THE FEMININE IDEAL “But can she spin?” —King James I

In early modern Europe there emerged a new type of book: the pattern book. These books of needlework, lace, and cutwork design were first published in early sixteenth-century Italy and Germany, though single pattern sheets were produced in Germany in the late fifteenth century. Written by men, pattern books were slim volumes consisting of collections of designs, a standard title page, and dedicatory epistles.

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Occasionally they contained additional text in the form of poetry on the virtues of needlework or on women famed for their needlework skills. A very few of them also included some technical instructions.4 The intended audience was the domestic embroiderer, or rather embroideress, as the audience was clearly female. In the late Middle Ages, embroidery was a profession carried out by individual artisans, guilds, and religious workers in convents and monasteries; the early modern period ushered in the era of domestic needlework. The immediate purpose of these volumes was to instruct women in a requisite domestic skill. As Giovanni Bruto said in his guide on women’s education, women must “not onely…learne all maner of Nedle woorke, meete for a Maiden: but also all that whiche belongeth to the Distaffe and Spindle.”5 A truly well-educated woman was not necessarily one well read or knowledgeable in foreign languages, but was rather one familiar with all areas of cloth working. It is said that when a learned young woman was praised before James I for her knowledge of Latin, Greek and Hebrew, he asked: “But can she spin?”6 Of the various cloth working skills, needlework was held to be the most gentle and feminine, and as such was central to the definition of femininity and feminine accomplishment. Pattern books, in teaching this most feminine skill, also inculcated in women the cultural definition of femininity.7 Essentially wordless, these books nonetheless were meant to edify women morally, to instill in them such qualities as industriousness, obedience, silence, and chastity. One of the primary benefits of engaging women in needlework was that it kept them busy and productive. Idleness was thought to lead women astray, whereas industry was a fundamental virtue. John Taylor’s The Needles Excellency of 1631, one of the most popular English pattern books, features an engraving of Industrie embroidering under a garden tree accompanied by Wisdome, who holds in her hands a book (perhaps meant to represent Taylor’s own), while Follie attempts to lure her away. Pattern books, which targeted the amateur embroideress, praise industry, which was seen to reflect on a woman’s suitability as a wife. “Our English housewife,” wrote Gervase Markham, “after her knowledge of preserving and feeding her family, must learn also how, out of her own endeavours, she ought to clothe them outwardly and inwardly.”8 Tasks like spinning and weaving produced the cloth necessary to clothe the family and furnished the household itself with bed linens, tablecloths and napkins.9

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Clearly, there is a distinction between utilitarian tasks like spinning and sewing and the ornamental use of the needle taught by pattern books. For women, the wearing of ornaments signaled vanity, which implied a lack of virtue. Charles Germaine de Saint-Aubin, the designer to Louis XV, writes in a footnote to his L’Art du brodeur, 1770, that “Diodorus of Sicily tells us that Zaleuque, lawgiver to the Locri, only allowed women who wished to make commerce of their charms the use of embroidery.”10 The production of embroidery, however, reflected well on a woman’s husband. The wearing of embroidered clothing was traditionally limited to the aristocracy. Sumptuary laws restricted the use of ornamental cloth in part to prevent the flow of money from the country, but also to protect class divisions.11 Though several centuries separate early sumptuary laws from Saint-Aubin’s “law,” what is consistent is a distrust of female ornament. As Ann Rosalind Jones argues, although self-adornment denoted wealth and aristocratic standing, it was also at odds with the sixteenth-century celebration of middle-class domesticity.12 Pattern books bridged the split between what Jones calls “regal display and domestic simplicity” by shifting the focus from the wearing of embroidery to its production.13 In this way, needlework combined virtue with social position: the act of embroidering exemplified a woman’s domesticity and virtue, but it also made a statement about the wealth of the household because the production of ornamental needlework required leisure time—and so reflected doubly well on the husband.14 The productivity embodied by needlework is also closely connected with another feminine virtue, arguably the ultimate virtue: chastity. In discussions touching on femininity or women’s education, qualities such as industry, modesty and obedience were, to borrow a phrase from Ruth Kelso, considered “chaste habits.”15 Chastity was the ground on which women’s honor stood, and these habits were seen to help women acquire and preserve their chastity. For example, pattern books vaunted industry and directed it inward, in the service of the home. But clothwork, as women’s work, also took place in the home and separated women from society.16 The private, isolated woman was seen to be a chaste woman, just as a “public woman” was a prostitute. Even at the end of the nineteenth century Mrs. Bury Palliser was able to write in her History of Lace: “Not twenty years since, in the more remote provinces of France, a lady who quitted her house daily would be remarked on. ‘Elle sort beaucoup’

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[she goes out a lot], folks would say, as though she were guilty of dissipation.”17 The myth of Lucretia, featured in the frontispiece to Giovanni Ostans’ pattern book La vers perfettione (1567), offers a prime example of the conflation of cloth work and chastity: Collatinus’ wager that his wife is the most chaste is proved by finding her at home spinning among her maids. Skill with the needle was not only the defense of chastity, but was also the proof.18 Of the numerous chaste habits inculcated by needlework, the most important was silence. As John Taylor writes in “The Praise of the Needle,” the introductory poem to The Needles Excellency: And for my Countries quiet, I should like, That Women-kinde should use no other Pike. It will increase their peace, enlarge their store, To use their tongues lesse, and their Needles more, The Needles sharpenesse, profit yeeldes, and pleasure, But sharpenesse of the tongue bites out of measure.19

Silence was one of the prime virtues to which women should aspire, in part because of the metonymic association of chaste speech with chaste action, or perhaps more importantly between unchaste speech and unchaste action. (Think, for example, of Chaucer’s Wife of Bath.) Needlework, ostensibly a solitary activity undertaken in the home, created an enforced silence in women and an enforced chastity.20 The absence of words from the design pages of the pattern books acted as a visual reminder of the dictum of silence. Of course, a chaste woman was not necessarily a nonsexual woman. Married women could be chaste; indeed, society demanded it of them. We are all familiar with the image of the expectant mother churning out strings of knitted baby booties—the image of domesticity, femininity, and chaste sexuality. Marcia Welles, in her discussion of the mythical weaver Arachne, writes that it is her fate “to reproduce rather than produce; to recreate rather than to create.”21 Welles sees this as a form of sterility; in truth, it is more a form of chastity, a model of faithfulness to another’s authority. Pattern books themselves are figures for the type of productivity open to women—reproductivity. Written exclusively by men, these books trained women to follow male authority by repeatedly recreating male-authored designs.22 “Then prettie maidens view this prettie booke/Marke well the works that you herein doe finde,” advises

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Giovanni Ciotti in A booke of curious and strange inventions (1596).23 Women were literally to mark the patterns as they used them, the method of design transfer being to prick holes in a pattern, pin it to the fabric and then “pounce” it with a bag of powdered charcoal, chalk, or pumice before inking in the design.24 Women literally marked their patterns as they used them, but as they did so they were also to attend closely to the lessons named in and embodied by the books— “to marke them well.” That pattern books were essentially wordless but for the dedications and occasional poems is significant. The lack of technical instruction suggests that what is of import is not the product of the needle, not the embroidery or lace itself, but rather the act of using the needle. Taylor’s “Praise of the Needle” contains a rather exhaustive list of embroidery stitches—from “Ferne-stitch. Finnystitch, New-stitch, and Chain-stitch,” to “Bred-stitch, Fisher-stitch, Insh-stitch, and Queen-stitch,” from Spanish-stitch, Rosemary-stitch, and Moresestitch,” to “Whip-stitch, Back-stitch, & the Crosse-stitch” He also lists possible subjects for embroidery (“Flowers, Plants and Fishes, Beasts, Birds, Flyes, and Bees,/Hils, Dales, Plaines, Pastures, Skies, Seas, Rivers, Trees;/There’s nothing at hand, or farthest sought,/ But with the Needle may be shap’d and wrought”) and objects that can be fashioned (“…Caules, Bands, Ruffs, Kuffs,/…Kirchiefes, Quoyfes, Chin-cloutes, or Marry-Muffes,” to name but a very few).25 Nowhere, however, does he tell women how to go about actually making something. Instead, Taylor, like other pattern book authors, tells women how to be women, how to be feminine. PENELOPE’S EXAMPLE “Child, you know you’ll have the truth from me. Fifty all told there are, your female slaves, trained by your lady [Penelope]…in service, wool carding and the rest of it, and taught to be submissive…” —Homer, Odyssey XXII.420–4

Domesticity, obedience, silence, chastity—in sum, the definitive qualities of femininity—all are implied by skill with the needle. Pattern books contained not only the designs that taught women how to embroider, they also contained patterns of femininity in the form of

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fictional and historical women. The powerful women to whom these books were dedicated were always praised for their embroidery skills. This flattery was, of course, a political move on the part of the authors: the dedication accorded the patron mastery over both the author and the subject at hand. This gesture confirmed not only their skill with the needle, however, but also their femininity and nobility, since embroidery “beseemth Queenes of great renowne,/And Noble Ladies of a high degree.”26 In a sense, the three things are elided: nobility entailed virtue; attainment of true feminine virtue conveyed a certain nobility to a woman; and both qualities were linked with needlework in these books. The dedications to noble women established exempla that other women were to emulate. By patterning herself after Catherine de Médicis or Lady Isabell, dowager of Rutland, a reader could come closer to the feminine ideal and hence ennoble herself: “For many maidens but of base degree,/By their fine knowledge in this curious thing/…are esteemed among the noblest sort,” the reader was told.27 The authors invoke the female readers’ desire to improve their class standing; but by characterizing “nobility”—or social position—in terms of virtue (which was itself signified by one’s command of the needle), female social climbing was nicely diffused, the transgressive desire sublimated into the creation of the ideal woman. Taylor’s The Needles Excellency includes a collection of six poems “in the Honourable memory of Queens and great Ladies, who haue bin famous for their rare inuentions, and practise with the Needle.”28 Taylor’s catalogue of virtuous women and the multiple patronesses of his and other pattern books play an integral role in promoting the feminine ideal The invocation of these famed needlewomen evokes another popular Renaissance genre: books of female exempla— biographies of remarkable or noble women, as well as collections modeled after Boccaccio’s De claris mulieribus (1362), such as Thomas Hey wood’s Gunaikeion (1624), and George River’s Heroinae (1639). Robert Greene, arguably one of the most popular prose writers in early modern England, produced in his Penelopes Web his own version of the exempla book, in which he weaves together the themes of clothwork and feminine virtue.29 Penelopes Web revolves around the figure of Penelope and the pall she weaves in Ulysses’ absence. The plot follows her and her three servants over the course of three nights as they unweave each day’s labor. As the narrative opens, Penelope proposes to “beguyle

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the night”—and so to stay awake as they work—by telling stories about good wives, and in so doing she might also “profile [her maids’] mynds by some good and vertuous precepts” for when they eventually marry.30 What is presented in the main narrative as a secondary excuse for the rehearsing of inset stories is, in fact, Greene’s primary objective. As he writes in his address to the “Ladies of England,” he “seeke[s] to set downe the duetie of a wife, and to deliver principles to such purpose.”31 The story of Penelope provides the structural setting and narrative frame for the true subject at hand, a discussion of the three fundamental feminine virtues: obedience, chastity, and silence. Indeed, Greene indicates as much in his title: Penelopes Web: Wherein the Chrystall Myrror of faeminine perfection represents to the viewe of every one those vertues and graces, which…curiously beautifies the mynd of women,…In three several discourses also are three especiall vertues, necessary to be incident in euery vertuous woman, pithely discussed: namely Obedience, Chastitie, and Sylence…. The stories told by Penelope reveal how Greene brings together elements of the female exempla and clothwork: each of the three “comical histories” told as the women (un)weave Penelope’s cloth features a woman who embodies one of the virtues essential to the good wife. The first night’s tale, for example, concerns the virtue of obedience and recounts the history of Barmenissa, wife of Saladyne, sultan of Egypt. In brief: Saladyne, under the influence of his concubine, forsakes Barmenissa, divorcing her and sentencing her to a life of toil and poverty; Barmenissa, however, endures her husband’s tyrannies obediently and through her constancy is able to win back her place as his wife. An interesting detail in this tale, and one reflective of the centrality of clothwork to the definition and exhibition of feminine virtue, is Barmenissa’s means of support when cast out by her husband—needlework: Lady Barmenissa, who had fallen from a Crowne to a Cottage, and from a Scepter almost to a Scrip, still salued her want with labour and her pouertie with patience, bearing as princely a mind in aduersitie, as she did in prosperitie, neither grudging at iniurie, nor gaping after reuenge: stayed thus upon this vertuous foundation, [she took] her work in her hand (for the vse of her needle was her yerely reuenues)…,32

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Her choice of occupation illustrates her demure and obedient nature, revealing her patient acceptance of her husband’s decision. Her willingness to work with the needle reveals not only her humility and grace under pressure, but since she learned “to vse the Needle and the Wheele, that [she] might eschue ydlenesse in [her] youth” on the orders of her father, “the great Chan of Tartaria” it also signals her virtuous and aristocratic upbringing.33 Jones argues that a conflict in Greene’s narrative between the romance genre, with its aristocratic characters, and the valorization of the bourgeois wife, between social rank and social climbing. Jones seems to see in the depiction of Barmenissa working with “the Needle and the Wheele” an attempt to countrify the noble women and so to valorize domestic virtue over nobility of birth.34 I see more an elision of noble birth with nobility of character, which in the end has much the same result. Of all the cloth working skills, needlework was held to be the most aristocratic, in part because it was the least practical. Barmenissa’s early training in embroidery shows nobility of birth; her willingness to work, to use her needle to provide an existence, shows her nobility of character. As for her use of the wheel, although embroidery was “the most unquestioned housewifely art for the gentlewoman of any rank,” weaving was still a fit task for a lady; as Carroll Camden writes, “even if she is too ladylike to be seen in the kitchen, yet it is quite proper for her to handle ‘the wheeles, loombes, & other instruments that appertaine to weauing.’”35 Barmenissa and obedience are the first night’s subject. On the second, the discourse centers on chastity, and the third night’s theme is the wifely virtue of silence. As the women listen to Penelope’s tales, they unweave the day’s work on the loom, and their conversations revolve around the chosen theme, generously laced with classical references to women famed for the evening’s virtue: Ariadne, Lucretia, Octavia, Portia, Zenobia, and sundry vestal virgins, to name but a few. In this way the (un)weaving of the cloth and the metaphorical weaving of feminine paradigms are juxtaposed, complementing and facilitating one another. The unfolding of the narrative, the “spinning of tales,” follows the unraveling of the cloth, and the virtues examined and, it is hoped, instilled in the maids (and the reader) are the virtues exemplified not only by the stories, but by Penelope herself. Penelope is Greene’s most remarkable example of virtue in a book filled with exempla. She is quite likely the most famous weaver of classical mythology, a paradigm of wifely virtue; the myth of her

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weaving at her loom by day and unweaving the day’s work each night to forestall her suitors illustrates the connection between clothwork and feminine virtue. Penelope’s work at her loom preserves her chastity by temporarily placating the suitors who have overrun her household, helping her to avoid their demand that she marry. Although the story is well known, let me quote Penelope’s description of her deception: “Ruses served my turn to draw the time out—first a close-grained web I had the happy thought to set up weaving on my big loom in hall. I said, that day: ‘Young men—my suitors… let me finish my weaving before I marry, or else my thread will have been spun in vain….‘ ........................................................................... I reached their hearts that way, and they agreed. So every day I wove on the great loom, but every night by torchlight unwove it; and so for three years I deceived the Akhaians.”36

This web not only appeases the suitors, temporarily fending off their demands that she remarry, but it also keeps Penelope literally separated from them. The few times in the Odyssey that she ventures into the great hall with the men, Penelope is swiftly sent away by Telemakhos with the admonition to return to her chambers and “to take up [her] own work, the loom and the distaff.”37 Her web becomes a wall separating her from the suitors: metaphorically by allowing her to “stonewall” them, and literally by enclosing her in the privacy of her chamber. The act of (un)weaving announces and safeguards Penelope’s virtue, but the very fabric she crafts is itself also a sign of obedience. “It is a shroud I weave for Lord Laertes,” she writes,”when cold death comes to lay him in his bier./The country wives would hold me in dishonor/if he, with all his fortune, lay unshrouded.”38 Penelope relies on feminine obedience to delay the suitors; she calls on them to acknowledge her virtue by allowing her to carry out her duty to Laertes. As his daughter-in-law, she is under obligation to ensure that he is shrouded when death claims him; not to do so would be imprudent of her and would tarnish the virtue that she and the suitors value so highly. When she says, “Let me finish my weaving before I

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marry,/or else my thread will have been spun in vain,” she speaks literally of the work she has already done. The words also work metaphorically, however, with the thread being her reputation for virtue. Penelope’s ruse is successful precisely because it plays upon the cultural value of virtue; and it succeeds for so long—three years, going on four—because weaving, as women’s work, is inaccessible to men, both in that it takes place in private and in that it is not in the scope of their knowledge. Weaving, as women’s work, is beneath men’s notice except for the virtues it signifies. To put it bluntly, the suitors do not discover her ruse because they never bother to look at the product of her loom. Penelope’s web symbolizes her virtue but, in another sense, her loom works to create her virtue. She exemplifies the virtuous weaver, and her weaving, in turn, makes her an exemplum of virtue. The suitors, seeing her at her loom, interpret her weaving of Laertes’ pall as a sign of her obedience. Seeing her (un)weaving, the readers and Odysseus—that is, those who understand the deception—recognize in the action the wifely virtue. As she weaves and unweaves the shroud, she is engaged in the task that comes to define her—and to define her as virtuous. Through her work at the loom Penelope becomes the paradigm of the chaste and faithful wife, and this is what Greene shows the reader. As Georgianna Ziegler writes, the “verbal tapestries of Obedience, Chastity and Silence” that Greene’s Penelope constructs represent the ideal wife, of which she herself is a figure; “Penelope constructs herself through her words as she deconstructs the fabric or ploy which enables her to maintain that chastity which is the core of her identity.”39 The nature of Penelope’s “web” is never made clear in Greene’s narrative, and so we lose sight of her ostensible daughterly obedience. What comes to the fore are her chastity and fidelity. She is the perfect wife, and Greene’s explicit purpose is to teach women to become good wives. THE SHUTTLE’S SEDUCTION Day after day she sat in a basket chair on the stones beneath the pretty white iron spiral staircase, sewing among her roses…. She drove men demented.” —Jane Gardam, “Dead Heat”

The meaning of embroidery—and of clothworking in general—does not lie in the textile, but in its creation, and whatever meaning that

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sewing, spinning or weaving conveys is predicated on a male audience. Women’s embroidery says little to women, but it says volumes to men about women. Paradoxically, books such as Greene’s Penelopes Web and pattern books, which seek to make women into “good wives” like Lucretia and Penelope, make virtuous women desirable, or make women virtuous and so make them desirable, thus threatening the very chastity they seek to instill. One of the more striking pattern-book frontispieces makes visible the implicit male viewer: Giovanni Ostans’ La vers perfettione (1567), opens with an engraving of Tarquin watching Lucretia at work among her maids. The myth of Lucretia is another classical tale of the chaste wife whose virtue, like Penelope’s, is exemplified by her clothwork. According to both Livy and Ovid, Collatinus’ wager that his wife is the most chaste is proved when only chaste Lucretia is found at home, spinning with her maids, while the other wives are “draped with garlands, keeping their vigils over the wine.”40 The myth of Lucretia, however, shows more than the male gaze: it also shows the paradoxical allure of virtue. To the Roman soldiers, finding Lucretia so industriously engaged is indisputable proof of her chastity, just as Penelope’s suitors see her work at the loom as confirmation of her virtue; and, as with Penelope, the sight of her at work is interwoven with desire for her. As I argued above, Penelope is able to deceive her suitors because she bases her deception on virtue and the value it holds for the Akhaians. They desire her, but they do so in part because she is virtuous. The connection between desire and virtue—especially virtue as represented by clothwork—is made more explicit in the Lucretia myth, since Tarquin conceives his fatal lust for Lucretia when he spies her chastely spinning among her maids. As Shakespeare wrote in his Rape of Lucrece, “Happ’ly the name of ‘chaste’ unhapp’ly set/This bateless edge on his keen appetite.”41 According to Ovid, Lucretia’s gestures of wifely devotion even enhance her beauty, further firing Tarquin’s lust. Early modern authors did not acknowledge the seductiveness of chastity, an allure women cannot control. Lucretia, after all, could not prevent her own rape and did nothing to encourage it. To hold women responsible for the sexual appeal of virtue would be to label them seductresses for not being seductive, would damn them as unchaste for seeming chaste. Not to hold women culpable, however, would be to acknowledge that seduction lies in the eyes of the beholder; that is, women’s chastity has value for, appeals to, and is

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endangered by men. Rather than seeing the male viewer as seducers or rapists, these authors suggested that the danger lay in the product, that women were in danger of being seduced by fine fabrics, rich embroidery and extravagant display. It is fine for a woman to make decorative objects, to spin, weave or sew utilitarian clothing, to embroider for her husband and his household, but not for her to want to ornament herself with the work of her hands. A woman thus seduced by clothes was seen to invite seduction by men. Pattern books provide an example of this displacement of desire and seduction, voicing the concern that women’s fascination for decoration will lead them astray. According to a common proverb, “Things farrefet[far fetched] and deare bought are good for Ladies.” Of course, the “farrefet and deare bought” things are goods—such as the imported silks,42 metallic threads and precious jewels used in embroidery. Women, according to this oft-repeated proverb, are naturally attracted to the ornate, costly decorativeness of embroidery. Taylor even calls his works farrefet in an attempt to attract women readers. He lists the various countries from which his patterns have been collected: Spain, France, Germany and Sweden, and such farflung places as Russia, China and “beyond the bounds of faithlesse Mahomet.” He then concludes, “Thus are these workes, Farre fetcht, and dearly bought,/And consequently good for Ladies thought.”43 Taylor, however, also makes clear that physical ornamentation is not, nor should it be, the prime purpose of embroidery: “Thus hoping that these workes may haue this guide,/To serue for ornament, and not for pride:/To cherish vertue, banish idlenesse,/For these ends may this booke haue good successe.”44 Authors like Taylor feared that women would attend not to the act of clothworking, which instills, embodies and teaches feminine virtue, but to the product, that women will read into the cloth a license to indulge their farrefet tastes. The authors wanted women to understand that embroidery is a superficial ornament; the only true ornament a woman needs is her virtue.45 As Giovanni Bruto wrote in The necessarie, fit and conuenient education…: Our Matrone shall shewe to our Maiden how foule, filthie, unsemely and disorderly a thyng it is, for any woman (beeyng abroade and seying theim that are bravest attired) how to tricke and trim up them selves after the moste newest and gallantest fashion, to sette out their

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Greene asserts as much in Penelopes Web, which he says “represents to view every one of those vertues and graces, which more curiously beautifies the mynd of women, then either sumptuous Apparell, or Jewels of inestimable valew….”47 Of course, this attitude, though converting men’s desire for chaste women into women’s unseemly and unchaste desire for physical adornment, reproduces the same paradox mentioned before: chastity, which pattern-book authors and others sought to instill and preserve, is imperiled by the very thing they hold up as a defense and token of virtue. Although authors like Taylor and Greene use women’s seemingly innate affinity for clothwork as the vehicle for their didactic messages, women’s putative fascination with embroidery, ornamentation and things farrefet—the flipside of their native talent— threatens to lead them astray. TEXT AND TEXTILE Though I yield that poesy may not only be abused, but that being abused, by the reason of its sweet charming force it can do more hurt than any other army of words, yet shall it be so far from concluding that the abuse should give reproach to the abused, that contrariwise it is a good reason that whatsoever being abused doth most harm, being rightly used…doth most good…. Truly a needle cannot do much hurt, and as truly (with leave of ladies be it spoken) it cannot do much good. —Sir Philip Sidney, An Apology for Poetry

Early modern authors construed the farrefet thing to be not only the ornamented cloth or imported goods, but also the word. Indeed, women’s love of luxury goods was often connected with language use and linguistic elaboration.48 George Puttenham uses the concept of the farrefet to describe the trope metalepsis in his Arte of English Poesie, 1589, suggesting that “the deuiser of this figure, had a desire to please women rather then men: for we vse to say by manner of Prouerbe: things farrefet and deare bought are good for Ladies….” Bartholomew Hore, using the same adage, couples women’s tastes for imported luxury goods with neologisms and linguistic

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elaboration in a prefatory poem to Henry Cockeram’s The English Dictionarie, 1604.49 This conflation of desires—women’s love of luxury goods and verbal ornament—plays itself out in early pattern books as well. A.F. Kendrick, an early twentieth-century art historian, sees the elaborateness of early modern embroidery mirroring the fashion for euphuism and the “playfulness” of courtier poetry.50 Edward Strange, a contemporary of Kendrick, sees the same connection and argues that it directly affected the content of pattern books. He writes, “There was one…accomplishment [other than needlework] in which women of culture delighted, and the taste had its effects on [pattern books]. This was the making of verses of the formal sort.”51 On the surface, Kendrick and Strange’s assertions suggest that textiles are comparable to texts, that women’s pins are like men’s pens. Or, as Giovanni Ciotti wrote in his pattern book, whereas men exercise their ingenuity, wit, and intelligence with the pen, women,”with the needle, in silk and gold…may reveal their own sharp and pregnant wit.”52 Even as early modern authors assert equivalency, however, they privilege writing and trivialize women’s “wit.” Sidney’s argument in defense of poetry illustrates this move: pens and needles are comparable, even if gender exclusive, but men’s pens have power. And implicit in Sidney’s argument is that they have power because they alone have meaning.53 To apply this unequal equality to pattern books, we see that, although women’s decorative clothwork is juxtaposed with and seen as comparable with men’s writing, the presence of the didactic, if ornamental, poetry is an assertion of the need for male vocalization to convey meaning. Women are meant to learn from the act of embroidery how to be good women; however, the presence of the didactic poetry suggests that women cannot or will not understand the message implicit in the work, that the message must be made explicit. The assumption that women delight in “verses of the formal sort” helps explain the presence of poetry in pattern books. Women, particularly those who could not afford truly “farrefet and deare bought” things, would be drawn to pattern books. The male authors used the “playfulness” of courtier poetry to reproduce the flamboyance of embroidery and to get the female audience to attend to their didactic lessons on feminine virtue. That is, the style of the verse catered to their taste, while the content educated them on the

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virtues of needlework; both women’s needles and men’s pens exhibit the same style, but the latter was necessary to convey meaning. Greene’s Penelopes Web, too, maintains that men’s texts and women’s textiles are inherently the same yet essentially different, and it also affirms the need for male-mediated interpretation to locate meaning in Penelope’s work. Greene, however, is more subtle in his textual mediation, in the ways he conflates textile and text. He connects weaving as a virtue in women and his own weaving of virtuous women into a text of exempla, connects Penelope’s web and Penelopes Web. First, he fuses the women’s weaving with their speaking by making the acts simultaneous and complementary: as they unweave the day’s work on the loom, the women tell the tales that constitute the book itself. Greene writes about one of the maids, she “appl[ied] as well her fingers to the web as her tongue to the tale.”54 The two body parts here effect separate actions, but both actions exemplify and teach the same lessons about wifely virtue, and both actions result in one text—Penelopes Web. Second, and more important, Greene casts himself as a clothworker, as a second Penelope. In his dedicatory letter, he writes: “I hope your Ladiships wil vouchsafe of Penelopes Web, at least for the vertue of the woman that first wrought it, though the Cloath workers arte haue giuen it so bad a glosse.”55 We see here the ease with which the text/textile metaphor is employed and the way in which the two are seen as equivalent. Greene calls himself a clothworker, a weaver of tales and female exempla. In employing this metaphor, he also obliquely points to the conventional gendering of text and textile. Her web loses its gloss or sheen in his hands because he, as a man, lacks her skill. For as Rozsika Parker has noted, clothworking was seen to be suited to the female hand, with its slender, nimble, and eminently feminine fingers.56 Part of the gender division at work in texts and textiles is the distinction between art and craft.57 In conflating his work with Penelope’s and treating her web as text—he does, after all, say that she first created the work now in the readers’ hands—Greene seems to elevate her homely craft to an “arte.” This elevation, however, is self-serving, since “the Cloath workers arte” refers specifically to his text. Greene condescends to call himself a clothworker, pretends to be a second Penelope, but in truth he sees himself as a second Homer, and the “cloth” whose gloss he mars is the Odyssey, noting that “some may object that Homers pen deawed

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[dewed]forth such sugred eloquence, as beseemed the discourse of Vlysses trauailes: whereas my harsh style and methode make the Web that of it selfe was as soft as Seres wooll, be as rough as Goates hayre.”58 Clearly, the real web of interest here is not Penelope’s. Of course, it makes sense that Greene focus on Homer’s web, on Homer’s text: Penelope, as we know, has no web because she unravels it. What she does have are her actions, and Greene does gloss—that is, does interpret—these. Whatever meaning Penelope’s web has is bound up not in the nonexistent fabric but in the act of unweaving. Greene interprets the act, translating it into text, because as action it has meaning only to men—that is, men impute meaning to the action. In order for women to learn virtue, which is Greene’s objective, he must change the meaningless textile into meaningful text. CONCLUSION That fictional and unnamed queen with whom I opened this essay dreamed of a “universal book,” a tapestry “comprehensible to everyone” and “from whose perfection no language [would be] excluded.” What I have tried in some way to show here is that the early modern imagination would have found it impossible to conceive of such a fabric. Although texts and textiles were metaphorically intertwined then as they are now, the representation of each was gendered and politicized. The products of women’s hands, rather than being a way to surmount language barriers, were seen at best to be utilitarian and useful in keeping women chastely occupied, at worst to be a lure to women’s indiscriminate tastes, and in general to be empty of explicit content. Kay Staniland, in her book on embroidery, asserts that the dearth of woven and embroidered artifacts is the result of their being “especially fragile and vulnerable objects.” Those that survive do so because they are prized, and are thus preserved. They are cherished, however, because they are “symbols of wealth, status and power”: that is, they are preserved because they are signs in the patriarchal order.59 Pattern books exhibit a fragility similar to textiles themselves. Very few pattern books survive intact because their use entails their destruction: the myriad pin-pricks required to transfer the designs reduces them to tatters. In the end, all that survives are the written portions, the poems, dedicatory epistles,

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and frontispieces: the didactic lessons of the poems, the illustrious exempla of patronesses and mythical/historical women, the iconographic representations of Industrie at her needle. Even Penelope, the paradigmatic wife and weaver, is left without a web, whereas Homer’s and Greene’s survive. The majority of textiles are allowed to disappear because it is the act of clothworking, rather than the product, which is significant, which carries meaning in the masculine order. In this system, where clothworking signifies feminine virtue, women and the products of their needles and looms are forgotten, ignored, and allowed to fade. What survives is the male fiction of the virtuous weaver/needleworker and the image of the feminine ideal. NOTES 1. Marta Morrazoni, The Invention of Truth, translated by M.J.Fitzgerald (New York: A.A.Knopf, 1993), pp. 4–5. Legend has it that the Bayeux Tapestry was created by Mathilda, wife of William the Conqueror (or alternately by the English Mathilda, daughter of Henry I). It is generally accepted today, however, that the embroidery— “tapestry” is a technical misnomer—was commissioned by William’s halfbrother, Odo, Bishop of Bayeux and later the Archbishop of Canterbury, and embroidered in Canterbury. Morrazoni leaves her queen nameless though we are clearly to associate her with the French Mathilda, playing off and on the tradition, though she indicates both through her title and the brief exposition following the story that her foray into “history” is an exercise in fiction. For more information on the Bayeux Tapestry, see David M.Wilson, The Bayeux Tapestry (New York: Thames and Hudson, 1985). 2. Ann L.T.Bergren, “Language and the Female in Early Greek Thought,” Arethusa 16 (1983): 72. 3. Women, too, had a role in the professional creation of textiles. See Merry E.Wiesner, “Spinning Out Capital: Women’s Work in the Early Modern Economy,” in Becoming Visible: Women in European History, ed. Renate Bridenthal, Claudia Koonz, and Susan Stuart, 2nd ed. (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1987), pp. 221–49, and “Spinsters and Seamstresses: Women in Cloth and Clothing Production,” in Rewriting the Renaissance: The Discourse of Sexual Difference in Early Modern Europe, ed. Margaret W.Ferguson, Maureen Quilligan, and Nancy J.Vickers (Chicago: Chicago University Press, 1986), pp. 191–205. See also Alice Clark, Working Life of Women in the Seventeenth Century (New York: Routledge, 1992).

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4. Kay Staniland, Embroiderers, Medieval Craftsman Series (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1991), p. 64. The scarcity of surviving pattern books makes it difficult to state with certainty the general length of the books or the number of patterns included. Of the ones I have seen (in photographic reproduction) and those to which I have found detailed reference, Richard Shorleyker’s A Schole-House for the Needle (1624), with thirty-four pages of designs, and John Taylor’s The Needles Excellency (1640), with thirty-one pages of designs, were the lengthiest. For a list of pattern books published throughout Renaissance Europe, see Edward Strange, “Early Pattern Books of Lace, Embroidery and Needlework,” in Transactions of the Bibliographic Society ([England], n.d.), VII, 209–46. 5. Thomas Salter, The Mirrhor of Modestie (an uncredited translation of Giovanni Michele Bruto’s La institutione di vne fanciulla nata nobilmente [1555]), ed. Janis Butler Holm (New York: Garland, 1987), pp. 123–24. Although for many years Salter was thought to be the author of this work, it is a translation/plagiarism of Bruto’s La institutione, which was translated into English under his own name as The necessarie, fit and conuenient Education of a yong Gentlewoman in 1598. I have chosen to cite Salter’s work, rather than the credited translation, because it was published first—almost twenty years before The necessarie…Education’, inasmuch as Mirrhor is a translation, however, I have chosen to attribute the comment to Bruto in the body of my essay. 6. Quoted in Patricia Crawford, “Women’s Published Writings 1600–1700,” in Women in English Society 1500–1800, ed. Mary Prior (New York: Methuen, 1985), p. 215. 7. Ruth Kelso, Doctrine for the Lady of the Renaissance (Urbana, IL: University of Illinois Press, 1956), p. 46. 8. Gervase Markham, The English Housewife: containing the inward and outward virtues which ought to be in a complete woman (1615), ed. Michael R. Best (Quebec: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 1986), p. 146. 9. Carroll Camden, The Elizabethan Woman, revised ed. (Mamaroneck, NY: P.P. Appel, 1975), pp. 140–41. 10. Charles Germaine de Saint-Aubin, L’Art du brodeur (1770), trans. Nikki Scheuer (Los Angeles: Los Angeles County Museum of Art, 1983), p. 15. 11. Under Edward III, for example, those with an income of less than 400 marks per year were forbidden to wear garments embroidered with jewels; those below the rank of knight with an income of less than £200 were forbidden to wear any embroidery.

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12. Ann Rosalind Jones, “Nets and Bridles: Early Modern Conduct Books and Sixteenth-century Women’s Lyrics,” in The Ideology of Conduct: Essays on Literature and the History of Sexuality, ed. Leonard Tennenhouse and Nancy Armstrong (New York: Methuen, 1987), pp. 53–57. 13. Jones, p. 53. 14. For a discussion of how embroidery reflected on the prosperity of a household, see Rozsika Parker, The Subversive Stitch: Embroidery and the Making of the Feminine (New York: Routledge, 1989), pp. 11, 63–4. Parker’s text is an excellent survey of women’s embroidery across the centuries, including information on women’s participation in Brodeur companies, analyses of embroidered images, and discussions of needlework’s connection with the feminine, especially in Victorian England. 15. Kelso, p. 38. According to Kelso, Stephano Guazzo, in his Dialoghi piacevoli del Sig. Stefano Guazzo (1586), says that many books tell us how to raise a girl and so he need do no more than enumerate the means by which honor is acquired and chastity preserved: namely sobriety, industry (avoidance of idleness), modest speech, and avoiding occasions for sexual dalliance. 16. For an interesting discussion of domestic space and female chastity in Shakespeare, see Georgianna Ziegler, “My Lady’s Chamber: Female Space, Female Chastity in Shakespeare,” in Textual Practice 4, no. 1 (1990): 73–90. 17. Fanny (Mrs. Bury) Palliser, History of Lace, revised, rewritten and enlarged by M.Jourdain and Alice Dryden (London: Low, 1910), p. 9. 18. Parker, p. 75. An interesting play on the needle’s power to prove chastity and the biblical aphorism about the “eye of the needle” is St. Wilfred’s Needle in Ripon. St. Wilfred’s Needle is a narrow passage in the crypt of Ripon Cathedral through which women were forced to pass as a test of their chastity. (Cf. OED, “needle,” sb 2:6b, 1617: “Ripon had a most flourishing Monastery, where was the most famous needle of the Archbishop Wilfrid. It was a narrow hole by which the chastity of women was tried.”) An added twist to this legend is the fact that Ripon Cathedral was built by Archbishop Odo. 19. John Taylor, “In Praise of the Needle,” The Needles Excellency (1631), 12th ed. (London, 1640), Al-Alv. 20. Jones notes the connection between domesticity and silence in her study of marriage manuals. “The good wife was constructed as the woman who stays indoors,” she writes, “guarding her chastity as she guards the other property of her husband. As her body is locked within the walls of the house, her tongue is locked in her mouth…“ (p. 52).

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21. Marcia L.Welles, Arachne’s Tapestry (San Antonio: Trinity University Press, 1986), p. 12. 22. According to Staniland, most of the designs in the pattern books were quite conventional and modeled after medieval works and designs (p. 64). Women played a much larger creative role in medieval embroidery, particularly of religious artifacts (see Staniland, p. 8; Parker, pp. 42–49), and thus it might be that the designs featured in Renaissance pattern books were originally created by women. However, the designs in these books are also, in a sense, male-authored because in selecting certain designs the authors decided what was suitable for women. This act of editing stamps the designs with their “authority.” 23. Quoted in Louis B.Wright, Middle-Class Culture in Elizabethan England (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1935), pp. 109–10. Edward Strange attributes A booke of curious and strange inuentions, called the first part of Needleworkes (1596) to William Barley, although it is a translation of Giovanni Ciotti’s pattern books. Oddly, Strange lists Ciotti separately as the author of The first part of Needleworkes. The poem from which this line is taken also appears in Richard Shorleyker’s A Scole-House for the Needle (1624). 24. Saint-Aubin describes this process in detail in his L’Art du brodeur. The Embroiderer next has a pattern made on which the design is then pricked…. When the design and outline of the garment are totally pricked, one then places the pattern on top of the material to be embroidered, taking care to match up the corners of the design and those of the fabric. Using a pounce bag, one lightly rubs a small amount of the fine powder over all the marks made in the pricking process so that it will pass through the tiny holes in the pattern [created by the pinpricks]; and by this technique the design is traced onto the fabric beneath. Before pouncing, one should secure the pattern to the fabric with a number of pins or weights, so that it will not shift its position and end up making a double row of pounce marks. To remove incorrect marks, one has to lightly brush the fabric clean with a clothes brush or rap it on the reverse side with a switch. This, however, might damage the material. After the design is adequately pounced, one removes the paper pattern delicately; and, if need be, the same operation is repeated on the other sections of the fabric. One follows the outline of the pounce marks as exactly as possible with a

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An illustration of this process can be found in the frontispiece to Alessandro Paganino’s Libro Primo de rechami, 1527. 25.Taylor, A2, Alv. 26. Ciotti, quoted in Wright, pp. 109–10. 27. The poem in full reads: This worke beseemeth Queenes of great renowne, And Noble Ladies of a high degree: Yet not exempt for Maids of any Towne, For all may learne that thereto willing be: Come then sweet gyrles and hereby learne the way, With good report to liue another day. For many maidens but of base degree, By their fine knowledge in this curious thing: With Noble Ladies oft companions be, Sometimes they teach the daughter of a King: Thus by their knowledge, fame, and good report, They are esteemed among the noblest sort. Then prettie maidens view this prettie booke Marke well the works that you herein doe finde, Sitting at worke cast not aside your looke, They profit small that haue a gazing minde: Keepe cleane your Samples, sleep not as you sit, For sluggishness doth spoile the rarest wit. (Wright, pp. 109–10) In its entirety, the poem makes much more apparent the social climbing aspirations of its readers, as well as its own interest in improving them. 28. Taylor, A2v-A3v. 29. Penelopes Web is a strange hybrid in terms of genre. It resembles books of exempla in that Penelope herself is to serve as a model of the “duties of a wife,” as Greene puts it, and in the lists of virtuous women scattered throughout the narrative. It is, however, more than an exempla book. Although the prose romance was arguably Greene’s forte, Penelopes Web is not itself a romance. However, it does have romance elements, particularly the second inset story about Cratyna and her cross-dressing escapades to preserve her chastity. The frame and inset tale structure has obvious parallels with the novella; indeed, Greene borrowed plots from Boccaccio and other Italian novella writers for this and other books.

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The main difference in Greene’s use of the novella is the distinctly moral twist he put on the tales. As Wright writes: “Probably the best disguised of the Italian novelle were presented to unsuspecting readers in the numerous stories that Robert Greene inserted in his nicely moralized frameworks. None could surpass him in giving a virtuous twist to short stories, and he proved as proficient in adapting Italian novelle to the taste of Elizabethan readers as he was at domesticating Greek romance” (p. 404). 30. Robert Greene, Penelopes Web: Wherein the Chrystall Myrror of faeminine perfection represents to the viewe of every one those vertues and graces, which more curiously beautifies the mynd of women, then either sumptuous Apparell, or lewels of inestimable valew: the one buying fame with honour, the other breeding a kynd of delight, but with repentance. In three several discourses also are three especiall vertues, necessary to be incident in euery vertuous woman, pithely discussed: namely Obedience, Chastitie, and Sylence: Interlaced with three severall and Comical Histories (London, 1587), in The Complete Works in Prose and Verse of Robert Greene, ed. Alexander B. Grossart (New York: Russell & Russell, 1964), 5:62. 31. Greene, p. 146. 32. Greene, p. 177. 33. Greene, p. 185. 34. Jones, pp. 55–6. 35. Kelso, p. 46; Camden, pp. 140–41. 36. Homer, Odyssey 19.137–152. Unless otherwise noted, all Homer quotations are from the Robert Fitzgerald translation of the Odyssey (New York: Doubleday, 1963). References to this and all other classical texts will be given in book and line form. 37. Odyssey 1.356–357, 21.350–351. This particular quotation comes from Richmond Lattimore’s translation of the Odyssey (New York: Harper & Row, 1967). For reasons unknown, Fitzgerald omits these lines from his translation although they appear in the original (all’ eis oikon iousa ta s’ autes erga komize,/iston t’ hlakathn te). 38. Odyssey 2.99–102. 39. Georgianna Zeigler, “Penelope and the Politics of Women’s Place in the Renaissance,” in Gloriana ‘s Face: Women, Public and Private in the English Renaissance, ed. S.P.Cerasano and Marion Wynne-Davies (Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1992), p. 32. 40. Ovid, Fasti, trans. Sir James George Frazer (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1976), 2.739–40. 41. William Shakespeare, The Rape of Lucrece, in The Riverside Shakespeare, ed. Harry Levin, et al. (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1974), 2:8–9. Shakespeare is not the first to see Lucrece’s chastity as part of her

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allure; indeed, the seductiveness of her virtue is described in classical sources of the myth. Livy writes, “It was there that Sextus Tarquinius was seized with a wicked desire to debauch Lucretia by force; not only her beauty, but her proved chastity as well, provoked him” (Ab urbe condita, trans. B.O.Foster [Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1976], 1.57.10.). Ovid offers a more vivid description, both of Lucretia’s virtue and of Tarquin’s desire. The men find Lucretia laboring to fashion a cloak for Collatine, and they eavesdrop as she expresses her wifely concern and fear for Collatine’s safety. “She ended weeping, dropped the stretched yarn, and buried her face in her lap. The gesture was becoming; becoming, too, her modest tears; her face was worthy of its peer, her soul…. Meantime the royal youth caught fire and fury, and transported by blind love he raved. Her figure pleased him…pleasing, too, her words and voice and virtue incorruptible.” [Fasti II.755–65.] Clearly, Lucretia’s beauty plays a role in Tarquin’s lust, but both classical authors yield virtue and beauty equal power to inspire desire. Lucretia’s beauty may fan Tarquin’s desire, but her virtue sparks the flame. 42. English silk weavers petitioned Henry VI in 1455, seeking to protect their trade against foreign imports. According to the Rolls of Parliament, Henry VI, as per the petition, forbids in Statute 33 the importation of “any merchandise…touching or concerning the mystery of silk women, (girdels which come from Genoa only excepted,)” a statute which was reenacted in succeeding reigns (Alice Clark, Working Life of Women in the Seventeenth Century [New York: Routledge, 1992], p. 139). 43. Taylor, A2. 44. Taylor, A2v. 45. A woman’s clothes should be “to the enhancement of her modesty, humility, and chastity,” and so “should not be over-delicate, but clean, unadorned with jewels, and unperfumed” (Kelso, p. 47). 46. Salter,p. 115. 47. This is taken from the complete title to Greene’s novella. 48. For a detailed and insightful examination of the relationship between the feminine and the vernacular, and their role in the standardization of the English language, see Juliet Fleming, “Dictionary English and the Female Tongue,” in Enclosure Acts: Sexuality, Property, and Culture in Early Modern England, ed. Richard Burt and John Michael Archer (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1994), pp. 290–325. 49. George Puttenham, The Arte of English Poesie (1598; facsimile reproduction of a 1906 reprint, with introduction by Baxter Hathaway, Kent, OH: Kent State University Press, 1970), N1 (p. 193). The Hore quotation appears in Fleming, p. 308. Puttenham’s full definition of metalepsis is as follows: “But the sence is much altered and the hearers

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conceit strangely entangled by the figure Metalepsis, which I call the farfet, as when we had rather fetch a word a great way off then to vse one nerer hand to expresse the matter aswel and plainer. And it seemeth the deuiser of this figure, had a desire to please women rather then men: for we vse to say by manner of Prouerbe: things farrefet and deare bought are good for Ladies….” 50. A[lbert] F[rank] Kendrick, English Embroidery (New York: C. Scribner’s Sons, 1904), p. 73. Puttenham’s description of metalepsis certainly calls to mind euphuisms, and indeed Lyly himself repeats in Euphues (1579), that eponymous text, the farrefet adage. As for Kendrick, a prolific scholar of medieval and Renaissance embroidery, while his observations about the mirroring of texts and textile strikes me as valid, he makes some rather remarkable and arguably condescending assertions about Elizabethan tastes, or rather Elizabeth’s tastes. “The Queen was well content for her portrait to be made,” he writes in English Decorative Fabrics of the Sixteenth to Eighteenth Centuries ([London: F.Lewis, 1934], p. 18), “though she was not always satisfied with the artist’s efforts. Indeed we should be warranted in the belief that the due representation of the sartorial frippery of the time would please her better than a good likeness.” Elizabeth proclaimed in 1563 that artists wishing to portray her must obtain a special license and copy an established image; unlicensed images were to be destroyed. The number and variety of surviving images, however, suggested to Kendrick that “painters who wished to make pictures of the Queen suffered little interference so long as they made due allowance for her bizarre taste in dress” (pp. 19–20). 51. Strange, p. 211. 52. This quotation appears in Kelso, p. 46. The OED has two separate entries for “pregnant,” the first deriving through Old French and meaning “pithie, lively, [or] ripe,” and the other deriving ultimately from the Latin pregnans, meaning “with child.” However, the OED includes under the second entry figurative uses of pregnant, including the phrase “pregnant wit,” referring to fertile imaginations and inventiveness. Oddly, these figurative uses appear earlier than the literal use of pregnant to mean “with child.” Although the denotative and connotative history of “pregnant” is rather complex and convoluted, the word choice here, applied specifically to women, underscores the metaphoric association between clothwork and procreation. 53. Philip Sidney, An Apology for Poetry, ed. Forrest G.Robinson (Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill, 1970), p. 60. 54. Greene, p. 154. 55. Greene, p. 143. 56. Parker, pp. 8–9. 57. Parker, p. 9.

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58. Greene, p. 142. Thomas Nash, in The Anatomie of Absurdity, calls Greene the “Homer of Women”—a very apt characterization, and one with which Greene himself would likely agree since he clearly positions himself as a Homer for his time by comparing, with the requisite humility, his text to Homer’s. The Odyssey, like the Iliad, is concerned with masculine virtues: whereas the Iliad’s ethos is that of war, the Odyssey’s might be called that of the quest. Greene becomes “the Homer of women,” in part, because he retells the Odyssey from the female perspective—from Penelope’s perspective—and consequently translates Homer’s epic of masculine virtue into an examination of female virtue. His choice of prose further “feminizes” Homer, removing not only the epic matter, but also the epic meter. 59. Staniland, p. 4.

CHAPTER 4

The Rei(g)ning of Women’s Tongues in English Books of Instruction and Rhetorics Catherine R.Eskin

Noble Princes, and renowmed [sic] Ladyes, could teares discouer tragedies, and sighes report sorrowes, I would weepe more and speake lesse…but since the cause requireth termes not teares, discourse and not sighes (if so you shall vouchsafe mee fauourable attention) I will open that vnto you, which will make the marble heart melt to heare it. —Thomas Lodge, Euphues Shadow, the Battaile of the Sences For as for maydes to be eloquent of speche, that is to say great bablers, is a token of a lyght mynde and shrowde conditions. —Juan Luis Vives, The Instruction of a Christen Woman

Claetia, in the first quotation above from Thomas Lodge’s Euphues Shadow, 1592, begins her tale by excusing herself; she claims that the extraordinary circumstances of her sorrow require “discourse and not sighes.”1 The second quotation, from Juan Luis Vives’ The Instruction of a Christen Woman (1529)2 suggests the reason that Claetia needs to excuse herself: the only permissible public speech for woman in the Renaissance is an “eloquence of silence” comprising tears and sighs rather than words. Margaret W.Ferguson, with Maureen Quilligan and Nancy J.Vickers, notes that the Renaissance entertained a “paradoxical and powerful cultural notion that ‘women achieve the fame of eloquence,’ as Francesco Barbaro put it, ‘by silence.’”3 Vives equates the feminine use of the 101

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tongue with both empty verbosity and promiscuity. 4 Other Renaissance authors share his view; conduct manuals and books on the instruction of women constantly remind maiden and matron alike to bridle their tongues or risk social censure. But identifying such a stern attitude about the dangers of women’s speech as the norm does not accurately represent the full range of possibilities in a society as complex as Elizabethan England. There is, instead, a variety of behaviors, imagined as well as real, prescribed in books on education. Not only the extreme view, but also more lenient attitudes towards woman’s tongue are clearly available in late Elizabethan culture. The preoccupation of Tudor writers on rhetoric with controlling speech may be traced to the linguistic and proverbial association of language with the feminine: lingua, the Latin word for tongue, is feminine, and “fatti maschii, parole femine” (women are words, men deeds) is a common proverb suggesting that men should never be rhetoricians.5 This association of language with the feminine is central to its subsequent association with unruliness. In response, for the sake of maintaining order, the Elizabethan male rhetorician is instructed to control the unruly tendencies of language. Writers on rhetoric employ the figure of woman’s speech as a negative example to instruct would-be rhetoricians in the pitfalls of eloquence. In the process of using female speech as a bad example, however, they acknowledge, albeit indirectly, the power of a woman’s voice. Ultimately, the insistence in Renaissance rhetorical treatises on the disorderliness of the female voice testifies to the real power that male writers saw and feared in that voice. Ironically, by censuring women’s speech, they actually provided models for women to use, thus increasing dramatically the range of behaviors available to them. Models and opportunities for women to enjoy the power of speech were not, however, easily discernable. In the present essay, I will first establish that Renaissance eloquence was seen as a source of power for male rhetoricians; second, show how woman’s speech had to be disenfranchised within male rhetorical discourse for the dual purpose of making language (which, as we have seen, was historically connected with the feminine) masculine, and depriving woman of this masculine rhetorical power; and third, reevaluate the Renaissance books of instruction for women in order to reveal

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the latent or potential power they offer women by their endorsement of a range of available verbal behaviors. These three objectives come together through a common link: the key to achieving power through speech is education. THE ELOQUENT MAN: “NOT ONELY A SINGULER MAN, BUT HALFE A GOD” Rhetoric, the art of words, was defined during the Renaissance as first and foremost an oral art. Thomas Wilson, whose Arte of Rhetorique went through eight editions between 1553 and 1585, describes eloquence as a godlike power. “For he that is among the reasonable of all most reasonable, and among the wittie, of all most wittie, and among the eloquent, of all most eloquent: him thinke I among all men, not onely to be taken for a singuler man, but rather to be coumpted for halfe a God.”6 The “man” who possesses reason, wit, and eloquence is more than just a “singuler man.” The decidedly male orator leaps not only beyond his station in the established Tudor class hierarchy, but also beyond human limitations. Henry Peacham, whose Garden of Eloquence (1593), was designed to assist the orator by giving him instruction in the figures of rhetoric, also assigns godlike power to the orator, a power that is distinctly political: “what he commendeth is beloued, what he dispraiseth is abhorred, what he perswadeth is obeied, & what he disswadeth is auoided: so that he is in a maner the emperour of mens minds & affections, and next to the omnipotent God in the power of perswasion, by grace, & diuine assistance.”7 While Peacham pays deference to the theologians by claiming that the orator’s power is achieved “by grace, & diuine assistance,” he still likens the power of the orator to that of “omnipotent God.” By doing so, he also equates the power of eloquence with the ultimate power of rule: divine right. When the orator becomes, in Peacham’s terms, “the emperour of mens minds,” the emphasis on divine power shifts to a power that is distinctly human: political power. We may conclude from this shift, as the authors of these rhetorics might have hoped, that the power of speech is also a pathway to political power. According to Wayne Rebhorn, “Renaissance handbooks emphasize the connection between rhetoric and ruling: rhetoric becomes ideological as it is granted a distinctly political character and purpose.” Public speaking allows for the increased exposure of the rhetor not only to academic,

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but also to popular audiences. Increased exposure combined with adequate skill allowed the orator to become a political force, so that having the power of rhetoric meant having the power to rule. Again, Rebhorn asserts that “rhetoric can be an instrument of politics for the Renaissance because it is essentially equivalent to politics: the rhetorical exchange between orator and audience constitutes the very act of governing. To persuade, in short, is to rule.”8 Rhetoric is presented as the precondition for success in politics during the Renaissance. In order to succeed in it, the speaker, whether lawyer or courtier or nobleman, must have the ability to persuade people, and only rhetoric is imagined as allowing him to do that. The study of rhetoric offers its adherents powerful tools, as Peacham informs us when he discusses figures of speech: “they [the figures] are as martiall instrument both of defence & inuasion; and being so, what may be either more necessary, or more profitable for vs, then to hold those weapons alwaies readie in our handes.”9 The metaphors here invest rhetoric with martial power. The words “defence” and “inuasion” suggest physical, forceful actions. Rhetoric can be used as a weapon to fend off invaders or make attacks in the same way that a sword can be used on the battlefield: words become swords. This imagery locates rhetorical power within a distinctly masculine arena: war. Cicero’s De oratore, a privileged text during the Renaissance, makes ample use of martial metaphors when describing the power of the orator. “[S]o potent is that Eloquence, rightly styled, by an excellent poet, ‘soulbending sovereign of all things,’ that she [Eloquence] can not only support the sinking and bend the upstanding, but, like a good and brave commander, can even make prisoner a resisting antagonist.” Here again we see the political sovereignty of the possessor of Eloquence; and we also see the orator’s identification with the “good and brave commander.” Cicero uses a similar metaphor when he suggests that the orator should “be shaped in regard to both his words and his thoughts in the same way as persons whose business is the handling of weapons are trained in style.” By using martial metaphors, Cicero achieves two ends: he bestows physical strength on the nonphysical act of speaking, and he presents eloquence as masculine, in spite of its feminine gendering. Words become “weapons…wherewith you can defend yourself, or challenge the wicked man.” Like Peacham, Cicero insists that rhetoric is an “act.” His discomfort with the feminized gender of Eloquence

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may help explain his persistence in the use of masculine terms. Cicero’s vision of rhetoric as “penetrating,” “intimidating,” and capable of entrapping an audience in a physical sense reveals, however, his anxiety that a life devoted to words may not be masculine enough.10 In the Renaissance, as Peacham’s claim above indicates, rhetoricians also characterize eloquence as not only physically, but emotionally powerful. Thomas Wilson claims that “such force hath the tongue, and such is the power of Eloquence and reason, that most men are forced, euen to yeeld in that which most standeth against their will.” The power of language can force other men to “yeeld” in an argument in the same way a knight might yield to his opponent. Wilson uses the example of “Pirrhus King of Epirates” who, “through the eloquence of his tongue, wonne more Cities vnto him, then euer himself should els haue beene able by force to subdue.”11 Although rhetoric is equated with physical power, ancient and Tudor rhetoricians insist that it be restricted to words. As Wilson puts it, “Rhetorique is an Arte to set foorth by vtterance of words, matter at large, or (as Cicero doth say) it is a learned, or rather an artificiall declaration of the mynd, in the handling of any cause, called in contention, that may through reason largely be discussed.”12 Wilson’s definition specifies verbal declaration as the means of communication, and, moreover, identifies the “artificiall” nature of a persuasive utterance. This artifice includes the organization of a speech and the planned public nature of its presentation. Rhetoric, in its ancient development, is the system by which persuasive speech may be learned. This “system” is one—as the production of Aristotle’s Art and Cicero’s Orator attest—that prescribes the proper training of its practitioners. System means order, and order guarantees success. In three books, Aristotle delineates and defines this system, introducing particular methods of handling specific rhetorical situations. Three different kinds of orations are part of this systemization: judicial or courtroom, deliberative or political, and epideictic or demonstrative. In accordance with this systemization, Aristotle also lists the parts of the speech itself: the exordium (or introduction), the narration or proposition (what the orator will prove), the proof, and the conclusion. This specialized and systematic method of breaking down the speech into four parts demonstrates the rigor of the method necessary for successful production of a speech.

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Based on Aristotle’s initial formalization of the rules of rhetoric, the requirements grow in number from Cicero down to the Elizabethans. Cicero’s “handbooks,” De inventione and De oratore, together with the pseudo-Ciceronian Rhetorica ad Herennium list the different parts of a speech, adding two more to Aristotle’s four: the division (of the subject matter) and the refutation of adversaries. Cicero’s additions reflect his courtroom bias, and by extension, rhetoric’s social context—rhetoric does not exist in a vacuum. The social nature of rhetoric is also evident in the plethora of books from the sixteenth century that set out to instruct the would-be rhetor on the proper organization of a speech. To Cicero’s enlarged list of six elements, Wilson adds a seventh: the “proposition.” By adding to the list already enlarged by Cicero, Wilson makes an already formidable set of requirements more formidable. The longer the list, the more necessary formal training becomes. The formalization and imposition of particularized requirements for rhetoric mystifies both its practice and its production.13 It is this mystification that produces, in many ways, its exclusivity—only certain members of the population can hope to master this “mystery” and find entrance into the guild it creates.14 As Richard Rainolde points out in The Foundacion of Rhetorike, 1563, those who can master the stringent requirements of rhetoric will be set free: “Rhetorike is like to the hand set at large, wherein euery part and ioint is manifeste, and euery vaine as braunches of trees sette at scope and libertee.”15 Rainolde’s rhetoric here fits the aspiring population of learned men and marginalized scholars in the Renaissance who hoped to find power and “libertee” through their use of language. Ironically, it places the newly empowered orator in a double bind: he both wishes to subvert the established order so he can rise above his station, and he is impelled to maintain that order so he can participate in it at that higher station to which he has aspired. Speech also functions as an outlet for these men: it is a necessary human action that allows release and reflects the very soul of the speaker.16 As Peacham states: Now lest so excellent a gift of the diuine goodnesse (as wisedome here appeareth to be, and is) shold lye supprest by silence, and remaine hid in darknesse, almightie God the deepe sea of wisedome, and bright sunne of maiestie, hath opened the mouth of man, as the mouth of a

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plentifull fountaine, both to powre forth the inward passions of his heart, and also as a heauenly planet to shew foorth, (by the shining beames of speech) the priuie thought and secret conceites of his mind.17

Knowledge is the ultimate good, but it is useless, “hid in darknesse,” if it is not expressed through speech. The ability to release ideas in a controlled manner is a heavenly gift imparted to “man.”18 Elizabethan educators, who used the structure (and sometimes the contents) of rhetorical manuals in their textbooks, also stress the importance of speech as release. Richard Mulcaster, who devotes several chapters in his book on education to the importance of speaking, explains that it is important for health, citing “auncient Physicians” and contemporary knowledge that “sundry superfluities [are] expelled” by the use of the voice. Further, he explains that “people by talking be cleared, [and] their mindes awaked.”19 This release is important for the proper functioning of both the mind and the body. The release of knowledge through speech is essential, according to Wilson, Peacham, and Mulcaster, yet it can also be problematic. Although the communication of knowledge is important to both the individual and the proper functioning of society, it can also undermine order. To “powre forth the inward passions” or expell “sundry superfluities” could be construed as an unruly action, a matter of a lack of self-control. Patricia Parker suggests, in her discussion of certain rhetorical tropes, that they testify to an “unsettling lack of control over language” and thus reveal “the sense of a treachery potential within language itself, or in the subversive uses to which it could be put.”20 The source of that treachery, both literally and metaphorically, is the subversive tongue, which appears both good and bad in the minds of Renaissance humanists. The title of Erasmus’ treatise of 1525, Lingua, sive de linguae usu ac abusu (The Tongue, or On the Use and Abuse of the Tongue), demonstrates this ambivalence perfectly. The tongue is often associated with the garrulity of women—an association which calls into question the honor or manliness of the rhetorical discipline. The effeminacy associated with the tongue and oratory on a more general level caused, according to Parker, “anxieties of effeminacy which attended any man whose province was the art of words.” Yet Parker demonstrates

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that, in the tradition of Plutarch’s De garrulitate, talkativeness is not necessarily a completely female trait: [I]n a way that signals Erasmus’s awareness of the misogyny that would only too readily assume “the use and abuse of the tongue” to treat of one sex in particular, he remarks at the outset that he would have addressed himself “especially to women,” since they are most “commonly…reproached” for the evils of the wanton tongue, but cannot because men’s tongues are so untamed “that women appear subdued and restrained in comparison.”

Erasmus spends considerable time giving examples of the excesses of the male tongue, but the “excess of speech or overabundance of the lingual—is repeatedly coded as ‘womanish’ or feminine.”21 The feminine grammatical gendering of lingua in Latin and the accepted convention of the inability of women to bridle their tongues links the tongue to woman.22 But it is “the extremes of which the tongue is capable,…its status as simultaneously the best and worst of bodily instruments,” which are the root of the tongue’s ambivalent position. The tongue is ultimately “the foundation of civil order and that which threatens it.”23 Although we seem to be working with two kinds of anxiety, the association of the tongue with the feminine and the problem it creates for maintaining order, they essentially imply one another. Women’s tendency to unruliness is a threat to order, and threats to order are generally linked to the feminine. This association becomes even clearer when we remember that the fear of effeminacy and disorder in speech stems from the more basic association quoted early in this section of words with women: “[f]atti maschii, parole femine” or women are words, men deeds.24 This proverbial statement may help explain the repeated attempts of rhetoricians to identify rhetoric as masculine and as physical aggression. As we saw above, Renaissance rhetoricians often counter the separation between action and speech by claiming that the orator’s most prestigious ability is his power to overcome adversaries and compel his audience to act.25 The fear that words effeminize the male who fights with them instead of with weapons does, however, produce real anxiety.26 This anxiety reflects the fearful aspects of speech as release. That is, to speak means to lose control. Moreover, by analogy the unruly tongue

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is thus also associated with sexual promiscuity. Control over the tongue is easily lost, and a loss of control in this area implies greater indiscretion. The danger is pointed out in Steffano Guazzo’s Civile Conversations (1581) as Maister Anniball Magnocavalli warns his companion to speak less and listen more: “Seeing then to stay the tongue, and use the eare, are the hardest things that may bee, it behooveth our patient to frame him selfe to brydle his appetyte, withstanding his owne will, and inuring himselfe by little and little, to keepe the mouth more shut, and the eares more open.” 27 Magnocavalli’s admonishment reveals the necessity of a “brydle” for wanton “appetyte.” Men must know how to control their urges for release: the urge to speak as well as their sexual urges. The opening of the mouth is an invitation to sexual relations which the “loud and babbling harlot” of Proverbs 7 makes manifest. Yet this female “harlot” is also related to men by Erasmus: “If you see any man with an uncontrolled tongue, think of him as a harlot.”28 This image of male speech (I will touch on its relation to female speech below) is particularly emphasized in books of instruction for the prince. Guazzo’s discussion of the need for bridling the tongue lasts for almost five pages. Sir Thomas Elyot, in his Book Named the Governor, 1531, spends considerable time discussing the “wanton and unclean” uses of the tongue. Antonio de Guevara, too, in his Diall of Princes, 1557, speaks of the “light…tongue.”29 Warnings to bridle the tongue or face dire consequences, however, are much stricter and more frequent for woman. She is more often the object of scrutiny when it comes to the tongue and much more likely to receive censure, even within texts written for male instruction. As my discussion of rhetoric has indicated, the place where woman and rhetoric intersect is invariably a site of ambivalence. Words and the tongue are consistently seen as threatening to order because of their association with the feminine. As Parker reminds us, “the proper discipline or placement of words is intimately allied with questions of social regulation.”30 The anxiety that the feminine inspires in male rhetoricians is a motivating factor for the regulation of the discipline of eloquence. THE POWER OF RHETORIC: “SHE NEEDETH IT NOT” Vives begins his Instruction of the Christen Woman by describing the beginning of an orator’s education: “Fabius Quintilian in his

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boke where he doth instruct and teche an oratour, wylleth his begynnyng and entrance to be taken from the cradell, and no tyme to be slacked vnapplyed toward the ende and purpose of the faculte entended.”31 There is a certain irony in the fact that Vives uses the example of an orator—a career he denies to women—to open his book on women’s education. Although Vives implies that the educational rigor required of boys and orators should also be applied to female students,32 male educators demand gender exclusivity. The exclusion of woman is often specifically codified in the prescribed education of boys in the Renaissance. Elyot advises: “After that a childe is come to seven years of age, I holde it expedient that he be taken from the company of women, savynge that he may have, one yere, or two at the most, an auncient and sad matrone attending on hym in his chamber.”33 Women are not part of the educational elite. Their role, if any, is as handmaidens to the scholar. The separation of the male student from the female is often expressed in linguistic terms. Latin was the learned language of the sixteenth century, and it was here that women were cut off first from education and, hence, from rhetoric. According to Walter Ong, Latin was an educational necessity: if you wanted to keep up with academic and scientific developments, you needed to be fluent. “The cleavage between the vernacular world and the Latin world did not coincide with the division between literacy and illiteracy, but it did coincide with the division between family life and a certain type of extrafamilial life and with a division between a world in which women had some say and an almost exclusively male world.” The linguistic separation of vernaculars available to women from Latin retained for male use clearly inhibits the female from pursuing any kind of advanced education. Ong further explains the academic separation of women from men by claiming that although women (who were educated at home) might be able to read and write, they were denied “any effective direct access at all to the learned world” because of their lack of Latin language training.34 By cutting off access to Latin, the educational system effectively cut off women from the only education that was valued in Renaissance society. It is a division that makes manifest both the anxiety of male educators who fear female competition and the patriarchal insistence on the restriction of women to the private sphere. The separation was justified by male educators in terms of women’s role in the social order. For example, educational tracts

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concerned with the querelle des femmes take up the topic of woman’s social function and worth.35 Although these tracts are designed as defenses of woman, they generally praise her in a rather paternalistic fashion. “[W]omen are perfect at least for the task they were designed for: looking after the house takes neither strength nor courage.”36 The male defender defines woman’s role as confined to the home, and also claims that her role is to be decidedly passive in any wider social context. lan Maclean claims that the use of commonplaces, or exempla, designed to keep her in the home often contributed “to the continuing belief in female inferiority,” especially in terms of physical abilities.37 This notion, deriving from the theological censures of St. John and St. Paul and the philosophy of Aristotle, is reinforced in late Elizabethan England in spite of popular figures such as Long Meg of Westminster and Moll Cutpurse.38 The female characters explored in books of illustrious women are primarily subservient wives or obedient daughters. Whether maids (young, unmarried girls) or wives, Renaissance women were presented in normative discourse as under the complete control of their fathers or husbands.39 A woman was supposed to be the subordinate of her husband or father because he was “head” of the Elizabethan household.40 In Renaissance society at large, the woman’s place as wife hinders her from realizing any mobility or enjoying much autonomy. According to Maclean, because of the institution of marriage, women had no chance to improve their “theoretical or real status” in Elizabethan society.41 Lawrence Stone points out the legal implications of marriage when he claims that “the husband and wife became one person in law—and that person was the husband.”42 Meanwhile, Suzanne Hull claims that a woman’s “ultimate goal on earth” was to find a marriage partner.43 In a book written for the education of a prince, de Guevara counsels women on the duty they owe their husbands: [T]o the great dames, and Princessys, and to all other wyues (synce that necessarilye they ought to eate, to drinke with their husbandes, and that they ought to sleape, to treate, to be conuersaunt, to talke, and finallye, to liue and die with their husbandes) that they should vse much diligence to beare with theyr condicions: for to say the truth, the wife ought in al thinges to folow the condicions of her husband, and the husband in something, to beare with the condicions of his wife.44

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Woman’s agency is denied in this passage. She is to live and die according to the “condicions” of her husband. In addition, the assumption that women had a choice in their marriage is not historically accurate. In fact, most women (and men), at least in the upper classes, were forced to marry in Renaissance England, and generally wedded those mates imposed on them by their parents.45 Vives, in his Instruction, informs the maid that she should not “talke, where her father and mother be in communication, about her mariage: but leaue all that care and charge holly vnto them: whiche loue her as well as herselfe dothe.” In marriage choice, as well as marriage as an institution, women were legally and socially denied voice. Marriage decisions were not the province of women in part because these were considered public decisions. As Vives explains when he introduces his Instruction, “women yet may be enfourmed with few words….[but because] men must be occupied both at home and forth abrode, both in theyr owne matters and for the common weale,” their educational needs are much greater.46 This statement implies that woman’s place was separate from public matters. By stressing the public nature of rhetoric and eloquence, the Renaissance writers reinforce the belief “that rhetoric is one thing that women should not be taught.”47 As Leonardo Bruni says, it “lies absolutely outside the province of women.”48 Parker informs us that “[i]t was the public nature of rhetoric—taking women outside their proper ‘province’ or place—which disqualified them, in a long tradition dating from as ancient an authority as Aristotle’s strictures that women were not only silent but identified with the property of the home and with the private sphere, with a private rather than a common place.”49 Thomas Salter, in his Mirrhor of Modestie Meete for all Mothers and Auncient Matrones (1579?), concurs with the decision to seclude women: the “Maiden [is] to be kept from the companie of many, for alwaies there is more to be feared in a greate companie then in a small.”50 Constance Jordan, in her study of Giovanni Boccaccio’s De mulieribus claris, sees women’s exclusion as a method of avoiding the threat that they posed to public order. According to Jordan, ”[w]hat was at issue, finally, was not so much whether women were capable of civic virtue [and, hence, decision making] but rather whether it was desirable for them to cherish and to foster these kinds of abilities as a class.” Her readings of Boccaccio’s text allow us to realize what was often at stake in defenses of women: woman’s selfexpression quite clearly “jeopardizes male sexuality.” When men are

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forced to silence women, though, they are, in effect, “testifying to a limitation of their control over women.”51 In order to circumvent meeting these hierarchical problems head on, men preferred to seclude women in the home. Effectively cut off from the outside world, women were also cut off from the means of obtaining success in rhetoric: education. The double male anxiety due to their facility with and connection to words and to their potential power to undermine order was part of the reason that male rhetoricians effectively inhibited women’s ability to produce ordered speech through rhetorical training. By separating woman from rhetoric, male rhetoricians attempted to maintain the masculinity of rhetoric and to remove the subversiveness of the female tongue. What emerged in the end, however, was a latent or potential power for woman. Women are always already present within rhetorical discourse: not one Renaissance rhetoric can avoid describing elements of bad rhetoric as “womanish” or “effeminate.” In their derision of woman, male rhetoricians indirectly admit the power of female speech. Woman is implicated in rhetoric as disruption, as a power that inevitably undermines order. WOMEN’S EDUCATION: “THEIR EXCELLENCIE COMMANDES IT” What my discussion of the rhetorics and Latin education for men suggests is that women were excluded from formal education. Yet such an absolute statement is contradicted—or at least complicated— by the existence of books of education for women. In order to explore more fully the educational opportunities that did exist for women in the sixteenth century, we may look to the books of instruction designed for them. Manuals of education for women prescribed roles and educational practices/goals. These texts provide justifications for their rules: relying on religious, political, and utilitarian examples, they present the normative ideals of Renaissance society and define woman’s place in it. The genre is prescriptive, not descriptive. Though conservative in outlook, as we shall see, these books differ greatly from the prescriptive rhetorics written for men in their views on speech and rhetoric. I will begin this section by describing the ways in which educational values from the rhetorics are reframed when they reach books on the instruction of women. Then I will map the

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range of educational possibilities offered to women, focusing on the issues of liberal, rhetorical, and Latin-language training. Although a range of attitudes toward speech existed in general educational works that addressed women’s education, books written specifically for women during the Renaissance share a common anti-rhetorical bias. Anti-rhetorical sentiments appear elsewhere in Tudor literature, but no genre is so unfailingly derogatory about eloquence as tracts on female education. In prescriptive literature for women, the power of speech that is celebrated by the rhetorics of the sixteenth century is denied. Normative discourse for women condemns rhetoric as effeminate and weakening. Salter, in his Mirrhor of Modestie, spends considerable time railing against the uselessness and danger of eloquence. He ends his tirade by citing the example of Sparta, which so long as it outlawed eloquence, “thinkyng the use of it more meete for effeminate and wanton idle men,” maintained its glory and position in Greece.52 The Italian text which is the basis of Salter’s Mirrhor, Giovanni Michele Bruto’s The Education of a Yong Gentlewoman (“officially” translated into English in 1598), voices this anti-rhetorical stance, along with an attack on philosophy. [S]ome men peraduenture would suspect that I…[attack philosophy and rhetoric as dangerous] in dispraise of learning, which in no sort is my intent, I could produce infinite of examples, wherby I might easily prooue it, I could name Rome the imperial seat of the world, & victorious ouer al strange nations, and shew that for the space of 600 years & more, it was without the exercise of learning, & kept from it, by the publick ordinance of Philosophers, as an obstacle against honest & vertuous life. And to the contrary, when yee studie of Philosophie and eloquence flourished most in the Cittizens thereof, it lost her libertie, and in the end fell into seruitude, and obedience of one man.53

These rather contradictory statements from Bruto are designed to make a distinction between learning, which in and of itself is not necessarily dangerous, and the “exercise of learning,” which is clearly so. Yet what he does is demonstrate that when eloquence and learning flourish “most,” they are no longer controllable. When education spreads to the common “Cittizens”—which may include women—it is liable to become unruly. When the “Cittizens” are able to practice “eloquence,” the result is “seruitude.”

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We may rightly assume that the location of anti-rhetorical statements in a book of instruction for women is no accident. Male authors would prefer to keep the power of rhetoric contained, and to keep women contained as well. And they do not address the problem as one of potential power directly or obviously; instead they offer the eloquence of silence as the ideal for women because of the danger open speech may pose to their reputation. This approach is clearly an attempt at intimidation to keep women from recognizing and using their potential power. The strict Salter sees any kind of public conversation as dangerous for women. “I would not have her that will attire her minde by this Mirrhor, to be a babbler or greate talker, but to consider that alwaies muche babbling and speaking is occasion of many faultes.” Nature, according to Salter, has designed humans so that the “toung [is] enclosed as with a hedge within twoo rowes of teeth, where contrarie shee hath leaft our eares open.” We have already discussed how the tongue’s ambivalent nature is a threat to the maintenance of order. Here, Salter uses a “hedge” and two orderly “rowes of teeth,” to contain its potential for evil. Using a politically-charged method of containment—the hedge was the favored instrument for enclosing common lands—Salter envisions a literal and figurative exclusion of women’s voices.54 Yet even Salter sees the unavoidability of woman’s speech on particular occasions where single and married women alike are cautioned to use their tongues “soberly and discretly.”55 Salter also offers more advice: “where it behoveth her to shewe her vertue, she shall be readie but not to bolde, and by a sodaine blushyng, whiche immediatly will ouerspread her lillie cheekes with roseat read, she shall shewe that she beareth in her breaste a reverente hart…a cherefull countenaunce, and a well tempered grauitie.”56 His focus on the maiden’s physical posturing is carefully designed to disqualify her speech. Salter does not advise her about the content of what she will say, only about its presentation. Without content, the maiden does not produce “genuine” speech. Instead, she is only the formless object of a male gaze which does not heed her words, only herself as ornament. In order to avoid remaining ornamental and to impose form on language, women need a general education, a boon stricter authors are not willing to grant her. Salter unequivocally denies that it is prudent to educate women: “and whereas some parentes bee of opinion that it is necessarie for Maidens, to bee skilfull in Philosophie

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Morall and Naturall, thinkyng it an honour unto theim to be thought well learned, I for my part am the contrarie because that by the same, they are made to understande the evelles immynente too humaine life…which knowledge is not requisite to be in young women.” Salter continues by adding that “the evell use of learnyng hath more often tymes beene cause of discommodytie and domage, then the right and laudable use of it hath beene of profitte and benyfite.” Women, “beyng fraile of Nature,” should be kept from such potentially dangerous material to avoid certain moral destruction.57 It is better to forgo education in the name of household harmony. The potential for subversive and unruly behavior in the educated woman is too risky. Salter and Bruto locate their anxieties about disruption and subversion in the figure of the learned woman: “some that amonge a few learned Ladies, will alledge peraduenture Cornelia to bee excellent, shee that was Mother unto the twoo Gracchi noble Citezens of Rome, and yet that Ladie…taught her Sonnes to be no less sedicious and violent, then eloquent and learned.”58 The appropriate role of woman, motherhood, is here corrupted by her learning. Instead of instilling “virtue” in her children, her instructing them in eloquence— female eloquence—debases and defiles them. Renaissance physicians and educational writers believed the disposition of the mother and nurse affected that of the child. The violence of Cornelia’s subversion is then passed on to her children. The parallel structure of Salter’s sentence reveals his reasoning: by placing “eloquent and learned” alongside “sedicious and violent,” Salter concludes that sedition follows eloquence as surely as violence follows learning. To Salter’s statement, Bruto adds the following: “[s]o shee [Cornelia] instructed her daughter (as some graue and learned Authors suspect) to kill her husband, in whome consisted the magnificence and maiestie of the Empire.” Thus learned women represent not only a verbal threat, but a physical and political one as well. These two conservative authors describe their nightmares about feminine power in an effort to contain the actors (or actresses) of their dreams. Their vision of Cornelia—as mother who corrupts her children in part because of her learning—is used as a negative example to scare women and men. In order to avert the catastrophe of female power, Bruto advises that a father should “rather haue his daughter vnlearned and shamefast, then suspected of her honestie and excellent in the studie of philosophie and of great renowme among the lerned;”59 and Salter

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concludes that a husband “had rather love a Mayden unlearned and chast, then one suspected of dishonest life, though never so famous and well learned in Philosophie.”60 Both authors also use the threat of sexual slander if the maid pursues an education. Male education in sixteenth-century England, as I have explained, centered on the pursuit of classical languages, whereas for women, academic proficiency in Latin was taboo: its link to diplomatic and public pursuits made it exclusively the province of men. This is particularly evident in Bruto’s discussion of Latin for women: “To the gentlewomen of Lelius there is no greater commendation given, then that of speaking the Latine tongue with as sweet and pleasant stile, which I denye not is permitted to a gentlewoman of noble house, who neuer the lesse without instruction of diuers masters, beeing brought vp in a good and honourable house; will but perfitly speake her own natural speech.”61 He recognizes the need of noblewomen to communicate with their male Latin-speaking guests—the international diplomatic language was, after all, Latin—but suggests that in-depth study is unnecessary. It should be noted, too, that this treatise was written about the education of a noble Italian girl. He ends this passage with the soft injunction that it would be more “natural” for her to speak her vernacular. Salter, for his English, bourgeois audience, does not even mention the possibility of a woman’s learning or speaking Latin. Vives’ treatise occupies a place somewhere in the middle of the continuum of books concerned with women’s education. On the one hand, he strictly prohibits women from practicing eloquence, in much the same way that Salter and Bruto do, but, as we will see, he is much more lenient in his approach to their education in general. First, however, Vives warns women that verbal and public power is ultimately a trap. Participation in public discourse would call woman’s chastity into question: If thou talke lyttel, in company folkes thynke thou canste but lytell good: if thou speke moche, they reken the lyght: if thou speke vncounyngly, they counte the dull wytted: if thou speke counnyngly, thou shalte be called a shrewe: if thou answere nat quickly, thou shalt be called proude, or yll brought vp: if thou answere, they shall say thou wylt be sone ouer comen: if thou syt with demure countenance, thou arte called a dissembler: if thou make moche mouynge, they wyll call the folishe: if thou loke on any syde, than

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wyll they say, thy mynde is there: if thou laugh whan any man laugheth, though thou do hit nat a purpose, streyght they wyll say thou hast a fantasye vnto the man and his sayeng, and that hit were no great astry to wynne the.

The real danger of a woman’s speaking, according to Vives, is that society is unforgiving in its judgments of women. Vives’ prescriptions are designed to present the threat of social censure as real and imminent: “bycause as ofte as a mayde goth forth amonge people, so often she cometh in iudgement & extreme perel…. For nothynge is more tender, than is the fame and estimation of women, nor nothynge more in danger of wronge.” Once judged, a woman is marked as “lyght” and “shrowde” in a lasting way. When she goes out, “let her prepare her mynde and stomake none other wyse, than if she went to fyght.”62 Vives’ denial of female eloquence is not wholly humanitarian (concerned with protecting women from the effects of public censure): he claims that public speech is just not the province of women. “As for eloquence…a woman nedeth it nat.” Because of his insistence on the primacy of the private sphere for women, Vives justifies his denial of rhetoric to women on utilitarian as well as humanitarian grounds. Since a woman is not destined to work in the public sphere, it is pointless to train her in such matters. “Take from a woman her beautie,… eloquence, sharpenes of wytte, [and] gyue her chastite, and that hast gyuen her all thynges.” A woman’s responsibility is to preserve her sexual purity, not improve her eloquence. Chastity even becomes woman’s speech in examples such as the biblical Susana. “The holy woman Susan helde her peace, and ouercame her enemies: for she defended nat her selfe with resonynge of wordes, nor with speche of any atturney, but the holy woman her selfe holdyng her tonge, her chastite spake for her.”63 Vives also believes strongly in the private role of women, as the opening of his Instruction demonstrates: “[w]han she is of age able to lerne any thyng, let her begynne with that, whiche perteyneth vnto the ornament of her soule, and the keypyng and ordryng of an house.” He sees domestic education as so important that he “wolde in no wyse that a woman shuld be ignorant in those feates, that muste be done by hande: no nat though she be a princes or a quene.”64 Vives is much more liberal, however, when he broaches the subject of academic study. It is here that he gains his position midway between

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the restrictive and more concessionary ends of the spectrum. He gives a patient (though somewhat selective) encouragement to women that seems genuine: Of maydes some be but lyttel mete for lernyng: Lykewyse as some men be vnapte, agayne some be euen borne vnto hit, or at list nat vnfete for hit. Therfore they that be dulle are nat to be discoraged, and those that be apte, shuld be harted and encoraged. I perceyue that lerned women be suspected of many: as who sayth, the subtyltie of lernynge shulde be a norishment for the maliciousnes of their nature. Verely I do nat alowe in a subtile and crafty woman suche lernyng, as shulde teche her disceyt, and teche her no good maners and vertues.65

Vives gives women of varying talents the opportunity to study. He does echo the expressed fear of “subtle and crafty” women from Salter and Bruto, but he does not deny all women education because of it. There are clearly fundamental problems with Vives’ statement if we attempt to label him a feminist in the modern sense, but judged as a sixteenth-century educator, Vives is more tolerant than restrictive in his thinking because he allows women a more general education. Vives’ middle position emerges more clearly when we compare him to Bruto and Salter. The anti-rhetorical tirades of these stern educators are replaced by more complex references in Vives’ work. He takes the same example of Cornelia that was used by Salter and Bruto and revises both the story and its conclusions: “we shall fynde no lerned woman that euer was yll: where I coude brynge forth an hundred good, as Cornelia the mother of Gracchus, whiche was an example of al goodnes and chastitie, and taught her children her owne selfe.” Vives’ vision of Cornelia is gentle. His reading does not vilify her as a mother, or condemn her for instructing her children. Within his text, which, as I pointed out above, denies eloquence to women, Vives’ example of Hortentia, a lady noted for her eloquence, is somewhat contradictory: “Hortentia the doughter of Hortentius thoratour, dyd so resemble her fathers eloquence, that she made an oration vnto the iuges of the cite for the women: whiche oration the successours of the tyme dyd rede, nat onely as a laude and preyse of womens eloquence, but also to lerne counnyng of hit, as wel as the Cicero or Demonsthenes orations.”66 Although we may look at Vives’ use of extraordinary women as the exception that proves the rule,67 we might also explain this aberration as a more general frustration

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with the current condition of education. On the page immediately following his discussion of Hortentia he laments that, “in saynt Hieronymes tyme all holy women were very wel lerned. Wolde god that now a dayes, many olde men were able to be compared vnto them in counnynge.” Higher learning, according to Vives, can help keep woman chaste and pious. “[T]he mynde, set vpon lernynge and wisdeome, shall nat only abhorre from foule lust…. But also shall leaue all suche lyght and tryflynge pleasures,” as singing and dancing.68 Here, as elsewhere, Vives generally pines for an age that respected education as highly as he does. Early examples of works endorsing real education for women are conspicuously class based. Royal women, such as Queen Mary, Queen Elizabeth, and Lady Jane Grey, were frequently held up as highly educated women who did know classical languages. In royal houses, the norm of exclusion from education was violated for obvious political reasons. This was often true, also, in noble houses, such as that of Sir Thomas More. More supervised, often personally, the Latin education of all of his children. His three daughters and one son were educated together at home by the same tutors. More even took wards into his home for education, most notably Margaret Giggs, and insisted that they, too, receive the same vigorous instruction. Rhetoric was an important part of the curriculum: More even looks forward, in a letter to his favorite daughter Margaret, to setting a “scholar to dispute with [her], who is slow to believe, yea out of all hope or conceit, to find [her] able to be answerable to [her] master’s praises.”69 Richard Hyrde, who was a tutor to Margaret More, writes in the introduction to his translation of Vives’ Instruction that the boke [The Instruction] whan I redde, I wisshed in my mynde that eyther in euery countre women were lerned in the latin tongue, or the boke out of latin translated in to euery tonge: and moche I maruelled, as I often do, of the vnreasonable ouersyght of men, whiche neuer ceace to complayne of womens conditions. And yet hauying the education and order of them in theyr owne handis, nat only do litell diligence to teache them and bryng them vp better, but also purposely withdrawe them fro lernyng, by whiche they myght haue occasyons to waxe better by them selfe.70

Hyrde is well aware of the censures against educating women in Latin and the liberal arts, and he expresses his outrage at male

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educators, who presumably have the education of women in their hands, that do not take their charges seriously. The irony, of course, is that Hyrde probably knew that the overwhelming majority of the male population preferred to keep women ignorant. Hyrde also takes up the topic of Latin education for women in the preface to Margaret More Roper’s translation of Erasmus’ Precatio dominica in septem portiones distributa or Treatise Upon the Pater Noster in 1524. I have heard men put great doubt whether it should be expedient and requisite or not, a woman to have learning in books of Latin and Greek. And some utterly affirm that it is not only nother necessary nor profitable, but also very noisome and jeopardous…[as it would] instruct them also with more subtilty and conveyance, to set forward and accomplish their froward intent and purpose. But these men that so say, do in my judgement, either regard but little what they speak in this matter, or else, as they be for the more part unlearned, they envy it and take it sore to he[a]rt, that other[s] should have the precious jewell, which they nother have themselfe, nor can find in their hearts to take the pain to get…[for] women be not onely of no less constancy and descretion than men, but also more steadfast and sure to trust unto than they.71

As a resident tutor to Margaret, Hyrde writes the preface to her work with the full knowledge of her exceptional education. This passage does not envisage the inclusion of women in all male pursuits; his goal is only to make them capable of understanding the academic movements of his time—movements unavailable to women because they could not understand Latin. Richard Hyrde asks: “[W]hat is more frutefull than the good education and ordre of women, the one halfe of all mankynd?”72 His role as an educator of at least one woman, Margaret More Roper, strengthens his ethos as an educator of women. That same ethos, however, may undermine the humanist commitment to more advanced study for women by revealing it as somewhat self-serving. If the other “halfe of all mankynd” were to take up studies, there would clearly be more work for the likes of Hyrde. The final Renaissance educator to be discussed did not write exclusively about the education of women. Richard Mulcaster, “[a]s headmaster of two of London’s best grammar schools, Merchant Taylors’ (1561–1586) and St. Paul’s (1596–1608), for nearly forty

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years, earned a national reputation.”73 This reputation, we may assume, meant that his ideas on education may have represented a fairly broad spectrum of opinion in English society.74 He begins his treatise by claiming that girls, as well as boys, should be set to learn: “I will vse no other argument, then both nature and reason, custome and experience and plaine shew of euident profit shall recommend to my countrie, without either manifest appearaunce, or secrete suspicion of a fantasticall deuise.” His claim is based on four general observations. And to proue that they [women] are to be trained, I finde foure speciall reasons, wherof any one, much more all may perswade any their most aduersaire, much more me, which am for them with toothe and naile. The first is the manner and custome of my countrey, which allowing them to learne, wil be lothe to be contraried by any of her countreymen. The second is the duetie, which we owe vnto them, whereby we are charged in conscience, not to leaue them lame, in that which is for them. The third is their owne towardnesse, which God by nature would neuer haue giuen them, to remaine idle, or to small purpose. The fourth is the excellent effectes in that sex, when they haue had the helpe of good bringing vp: which commendeth cause of such excellencie, and wisheth vs to cherishe that tree, whose frute is both so pleasaunt in taste, and so profitable in triall. What can be said more? our countrey doth allow it, our duetie doth enforce it, their aptnesse calls for it, their excellencie commandes it.

His arguments are well reasoned and presumably were already in general circulation in Elizabethan culture. Education in his text is not completely gender balanced; men are still to be given first place in education because of their destined public roles. But Mulcaster opens up a place for women, or, as I have been implying, identifies a place that may have already been available to many women.75 Mulcaster suggests that women can and should be trained in the same subjects as men. Although he asks that they only be trained “so much as shall be needefull,” he includes at least four basic subjects for girls: “reading well, writing faire, singing sweete, playing fine, beyond all cry and aboue all comparison, that pure excellencie in things but ordinarie may cause extraordinarie liking or else in skill of languages annexed to these foure.” These subjects are similar to the ones set out for boys by Mulcaster, although Latin is conspicuously absent in the list for girls. Also like their male counterparts, women

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may hope to use education to “passe beyond the boundes…of their birth.”76 Mulcaster sees this as a double-edged sword. Although education may allow a woman to rise in the social scale if she is able to find a husband of higher rank, it may also cause problems if “she matcheth lowe, but within her owne compasse.”77 A woman can never be more learned than her husband. For our purposes, the most important subject that Mulcaster includes in his school for girls is rhetoric. He points out that “those faculties also, which do belong to the furniture of speache, maybe verie well be allowed them [women] bycause toungues be most proper, where they do naturally arme.” Mulcaster would also endow women “with some Logicall helpe to chop, & some Rhetoricke to braue.”78 Mulcaster’s rhetorical training of girls certainly seems exceptional. He represents the far end of the continuum that I have described in this section. The contradictions that emerge among educators of women during this period document the historical generalization that we find the most belligerent comments occurring just at the most dramatic moments of change. Ruth Kelso claims that “[t]he available schemes [for women’s education] range all the way from negation to something comparable to what was generally agreed upon for boys,” although the more enlightened views that existed usually pertained to women in the upper reaches of society.79 Salter and Bruto occupy the conservative end of the spectrum, while the more enlightened views of certain humanists who allowed, even urged the education of women, occupy the other end.80 Janis Butler Holm claims that modern Renaissance critics’ “penchant for creating an artificial order when tolerance for the motley might bring us closer to the understanding we seek,” helps open the topic of education to revision.81 Although Elizabethan society was religious, hierarchical, and patriarchal, it was undeniably an enigmatic culture that was constantly transforming or refashioning itself.82 That refashioning is discussed by Joan Kelly-Gadol in her essay “Did Women Have a Renaissance?”83 Relying primarily on Italian examples, Kelly-Gadol claims that the changes that marked the Renaissance period were disempowering for women. She looks at several different aspects of women’s lives, including the “cultural roles of women in shaping the outlook of their society, and access to the education and/or institutions necessary for this,” and finds that women’s “access to power was indirect and provisional.” In terms

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of education, she claims that the advent of education of women by men, who imposed a “patriarchal and misogynous bias,…spelled a further decline in the lady’s influence over courtly society.” In her discussion of Baldassare Castiglione’s Courtier, in particular, she concludes that charm, which was identified as a woman’s leading virtue, rendered her docile.84 Kelly-Gadol’s findings are very convincing, and yet her attack on charm, and her subsequent claim that because of it women lacked spirit, seems entirely too generalized. Charm may, in Castiglione’s descriptions and illustrations of it, become eloquence, and hence, power. CONCLUSION The “motley” that emerges from this short overview of women’s education in England during the sixteenth century allows critics to question the notion that Renaissance culture simply preferred a chaste, silent and obedient woman. I mention this figure here in order to demonstrate that it corresponded, in fact, to only one view among many. There was simply no single attitude about Elizabethan women and their education. The range of attitudes toward female education and speech that I have documented should make it clear that the Renaissance did accept this idea of the female voice and, by extension, of female agency. The very existence of this continuum also reveals institutionalized resistance to female stereotypes. Although the majority of Renaissance books of education for women were sadly restrictive, some male educators represented countermovements against entrenched patriarchal structures. This group resisted the overwhelming pressure to conform to established views of women. So, although the title of Suzanne Hull’s ground-breaking book— Chaste, Silent and Obedient—accurately describes the patriarchal ideal of woman, it is wrong to see this as the only attitude circulating during the Renaissance. Janis Butler Holm suggests that “we may begin to wonder what relation the printed treatise in fact may bear to dominant cultural attitudes toward women’s education.”85 How much of the treatise on woman’s education of, say, Salter, is wishful thinking, and how much is cultural fact? This is a question that we, as twentieth-century scholars, cannot hope to answer definitively. But we can make assumptions based on the evidence we do have. What that evidence seems to suggest is that Elizabethans did accept some forms of female eloquence as well as an eloquence of silence.

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NOTES I would like to acknowledge the help and support of the following people in the writing of this essay: Wayne A.Rebhorn, Jr., Majorie C.Woods, and Christopher M.Holcomb. 1. Thomas Lodge, Euphues Shadow, the Battaile of the Sences (London, 1592), D3. 2. Juan Luis Vives, The Instruction of a Christen Woman, 1529, trans. Richard Hyrde, in Distaves and Dames: Renaissance Treatises for and About Women, ed. Diane Bornstein (Delmar, NY: Scholars’ Facsimiles and Reprints, 1978 [1529]), [S4v]. 3. Margaret W.Ferguson, with Maureen Quilligan and Nancy J.Vickers, eds., Rewriting the Renaissance: The Discourses of Sexual Difference in Early Modern Europe (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1986), p. xxx. 4. Margaret Patterson Hannay, Silent But for the Word: Tudor Women as Patrons, Translators, and Writers of Religious Works (Ohio: Kent State University Press, 1985), p. 4. Hannay claims that the proverb “An eloquent woman is never chaste” influenced many of the women who tried to write during the Renaissance, discouraging them from admitting that they were authors. 5. Patricia Parker, “On the Tongue: Cross Gendering, Effeminacy, and the Art of Words,” Style 23 (1989): 449. The Grande Dizionario della lingua Italiana (1968), 5:85 lists Alvise Sargédo (Venizia, 1616–1688) as saying, sometime during the 1660s, “I fatti che sono maschi, no le parole, che sono femmine, persuadono, e convincono gl’Ottomani” (“Facts, which are male, and not words, that are female, would persuade and convince the Ottomans”). 6. Thomas Wilson, The Arte of Rhetorique, 1560, ed. G.H.Mair (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1909), A7v. Wilson’s statement may be interpreted by modern readers as encompassing all of “mankind,” but his insistence on “reason” as one of the hallmarks of a good rhetor tends to limit the rhetor to the masculine for a Tudor audience. 7. Henry Peacham, The Garden of Eloquence, 1593, intro. William G. Crane (Gainesville, FL: Scholars’ Facsimiles and Reprints, 1954 [1593]), AB4v. For much of my argument regarding rhetoric as political power, I am indebted to Wayne A.Rebhorn’s “The Emperour of Mens Minds’: The Renaissance Trickster as Homo Rhetoricus,” in Creative Imitation: New Essays on Renaissance Literature in Honor of Thomas M.Greene, ed. David Quint, Margaret W.Ferguson, G.W.Pigman III, and Wayne A.Rebhorn, Medieval and Renaissance Texts and Studies 95 (Binghamton, NY: Center for Medieval and Early Renaissance Studies, State University of New York at Binghamton, 1992), pp. 31–65. Since the first writing of my essay, Rebhorn has produced an excellent resource for scholars of Renaissance rhetoric:

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The Emperor of Men’s Minds: Literature and the Renaissance Discourse of Rhetoric (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1995). 8. Rebhorn, pp. 45 and 52. 9. Peacham, AB4. 10. Cicero, De oratore, trans. E.W.Sutton and H.Rackham (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1988), pp. 187, 159, 25, 27, and 261. 11. Wilson, A6, A2, and [A2v]. 12. Wilson, p. [1]. 13. It may be argued that increased formalization simplifies the “art” by making explicit some of its rules for production. I would counter this notion by claiming that so many rules make the topic more intimidating and more time consuming to master. 14. In academic curriculum, the history of rhetoric is not always glorious; it does emerge triumphant, however, in the sixteenth century. Rebhorn notes: “Subordinated to dialectic in the late medieval period, rhetoric became the chief of the liberal arts with the revival of ancient culture in mid-fourteenthcentury Italy, and during the next three centuries continued to maintain an elevated position in the culture despite attacks from Neo-Platonists and anti-Ciceronians, ‘reformation’ at the hands of Ramus and his followers, and rejection by advocates of the plain style” (p. 43). My use of the “guild” metaphor here should not imply that rhetors saw themselves as “artisans.” On the contrary, rhetoricians saw themselves as elevated, socially, above the common rabble. 15. Richard Rainolde, The Foundacion of Rhetorike (New York: Da Capo Press, 1969 [1563]), Alv. Note that the image of the hand is used to differentiate between rhetoric and logic; rhetoric is represented as the open hand and logic as the closed fist. 16. Antonio de Guevara, in his Diall of Princes, trans. Sir Thomas North (New York: Da Capo Press, 1968 [1557]), 2:25, fol. 122, cites Pythagoras as declaring that all dumb citizens should be driven from the city because “he whiche had no tonge, had no soule.” Vives, in his De ratione dicendi in Opera omnia, ed. Gregorio Majensio (Valencia, 1782), 2:130, similarly declares: “oratio ex intimis nostri pectoris recessibus oritur ubi veins ille ac purus homo habitat, et imago est animi” (“speech arises from the most intimate recesses of our hearts where that true and pure man lives, and is the image of the spirit”); I owe this citation and its translation to Rebhorn, p. 46. 17. Peacham, AB3. 18. Note, also, how all of the images and metaphors in this passage may also refer to ejaculation. Such a reading strengthens my claim that rhetoric, and speech more generally, is perceived as a strictly male release. 19. Richard Mulcaster, Positions…for the training up of children (New York: Da Capo Press, 1971 [1581]), pp. 55, 56, and 62.

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20. Patricia Parker, Literary Fat Ladies: Rhetoric, Gender, Property (New York: Methuen, 1987), p. 101. 21. Parker, “Tongue”, pp. 445–46, and 447. 22. Lynda E.Boose discusses the literal bridling of women in “Scolding Brides and Bridling Scolds: Taming the Woman’s Unruly Member,” Shakespeare Quarterly 42.2 (Summer 1991): 179–214. 23. Parker, “Tongue,” p. 446. 24. Parker, “Tongue,” p. 449. Note, too, that Aristotle is strongly responsible for this conception in Renaissance thought: “his notion of women as fundamentally inferior to men underlay the arguments of many learned treatises limiting the activities of women to family life.” Constance Jordan, “Feminism and the Humanists: The Case of Sir Thomas Elyot’s Defence of Good Women,” in Rewriting the Renaissance, ed. Margaret W.Ferguson, et al. (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1986), p. 249. Jordan also spends considerable time discussing Aristotle’s role in forming Renaissance attitudes about the nature of women in her book Renaissance Feminism: Literary Texts and Political Models (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1990), especially pp. 29–41. 25. Note Rebhorn, in “Emperour,” who claims that the oration “is a transaction which moves the auditor to do something. In other words, it not only has an effect on attitude and disposition, but on action in the world” (p. 35, author’s emphasis). 26. Parker, in Literary Fat Ladies, also points out that words are, by themselves, formless. It is the orator who imposes form: an action that may also separate him from the feminine nature of language. See her Chapter 7. 27. Steffano Guazzo, The Civile Conversation of M.Steeven Guazzo, trans. George Pettie, intro. Sir Edward Sullivan (New York: Knopf, 1925 [1581]), p. 120. 28. Parker, “Tongue,” p. 447, author’s emphasis. 29. Guazzo, pp. 120–125; Sir Thomas Elyot, Boke Named the Governour, ed. Henry Herbert Stephen Croft (London: Kegan Paul, Trench, 1883 [1531]), l:29; De Guevara, fol. 101v. 30. Parker, Fat Ladies, p. 100. 31. Vives, The Instruction of a Christen Woman, Cl. 32. For more information on Vives’ attitudes about education in general, see Carlos G.Noreña, Juan Luis Vives (The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1970), especially pp. 176–96. 33. Elyot, 1:35. 34. Walter J.Ong, Rhetoric, Romance and Technology: Studies in the Interaction of Expression and Culture (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1971), pp. 114, 119, and 120. These general statements are, of course, contradicted by the royal tradition of training some high noblewomen in Latin. This exception, however, tends to prove the rule.

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35. The querelle des femmes is a tradition that dates back to the late medieval period, becoming more and more popular during the period under discussion. It is characterized by highly elaborate rules of argumentation— some of the treatises associated with it may be seen as exercises in rhetorical skill rather than personal opinions about women during the period. Most arguments were “stock” for the period: misogynistic attacks generally included physiological and theological assertions of the inferior status of women; defenses focused on exemplary female figures in order to claim that not all women were weak, dependent or, on the other side, dangerous. For more information on the querelle, see note following. 36. Linda Woodbridge, Women and the English Renaissance: Literature and the Nature of Womankind, 1540–1620 (Urbana, IL: University of Illinois Press, 1984), p. 19. Woodbridge also claims that the distinction between the “male supremacist” and the open misogynist is crucial in discussions of women in the Renaissance: “open misogyny has always been less difficult for women to deal with than has well-intentioned paternalism” (p. 43). 37. Ian Maclean, The Renaissance Notion of Woman: A Study in the Fortunes of Scholasticism and Medical Science in European Intellectual Life (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1980), p. 83. 38. There is always a difference between how woman is presented and constructed and how women actually are. Woodbridge asks (p. 3): “What, for example, does the popularity of the Patient Grissill story tell us about certain periods of literary history? Does this story reflect a world populated by submissive wives? Or is it a male wish-fulfillment fantasy peculiar to a world where hardly any real wives are submissive?” 39. J.A.Sharpe, in his Early Modern England: A Social History, 1550– 1760 (London: Edward Arnold, 1987), p. 57, claims that conduct “books are more useful in telling us about the expectations which a section of opinion held about [family] matters than contemporary reality: nevertheless, they do provide a fairly clear idea of what these expectations were.” 40. Louis Adrian Montrose, “‘Eliza, Queene of Shepheardes,’ and the Pastoral of Power,” English Literary Renaissance 10 (1980): 156, informs us that although there was a female on the throne, for the Queen “to marry would be to relinquish the anomalous but very real power that she enjoys as a maiden queen in a masculine and patriarchal world.” Sharpe softens this view by adding that although “the husband was considered to be the natural head of household…. Husbands were to assert their authority as sparingly as possible” (p. 69). 41 Maclean, p. 85. 42. Lawrence Stone, The Family, Sex and Marriage in England, 1500– 1800, abridged ed. (New York: Harper Torchbooks, 1979), p. 136. Stone’s claims have come into question, although legal records from the period continue to support his assertion.

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43. Suzanne W.Hull, Chaste, Silent & Obedient: English Books for Women, 1475–1640 (San Marino, CA: Huntington Library, 1982), pp. 47– 48. Sharpe adds that for both sexes, remaining unmarried was a “dismal prospect” (p. 69). 44. De Guevara, fol. 84v. 45. Stone points out that “there were large financial and political stakes in marriage” (p. 127), and, for this reason, one defender of parents’ rights in deciding the marital fate of their children likened filial obedience to the sanctity of private property: “‘Children are so much the goods, the possessions of their parents, that they cannot, without a kind of theft, give away themselves without the allowance of those that have the right in them’” (p. 128). Stone further claims that “[t]he three objectives of family planning were the continuity of the male line, the preservation intact of the inherited property, and the acquisition through marriage of further property or useful political alliances” (p. 37). Arranged marriages were, of course, most common in the upper reaches of society. 46. Vives, The Instruction of a Christen Woman, R4 and B2. 47. Parker, Fat Ladies, p. 104. 48. Leonardo Bruni, De Studiis et Litteris, trans. W.H.Woodward, in Vittorio da Feltre and Other Humanist Educators: Essays and Versions, ed. E. Rice (1879; reprint, New York: Bureau of Publications, Teachers College, Columbia University, 1963), p. 126, cited in Parker, Fat Ladies, p. 104. 49. Parker, Fat Ladies, p. 104. 50. Thomas Salter, The Mirrhor of Modestie (1579), in A Critical Edition of Thomas Salter’s The Mirrhor of Modestie, ed. Janis Butler Holm (New York: Garland, 1987), p. 129. 51. Constance Jordan, “Boccaccio’s In-Famous Women: Gender and Civic Virtue in the De mulieribus Claris,” in Ambiguous Realities: Women in the Middle Ages and Renaissance, ed. Carole Levin and Jeanie Watson (Detroit: Wayne State University, 1987), p. 29, author’s emphasis, and p. 32. 52. Salter, p. 93. 53. Giovanni Michele Bruto, The Necessarie, Fit and Conuenient Education of a Yong Gentlewoman (New York: Da Capo Press, 1969 [1598]), E6v. The discovery of the fact that Salter’s text is a nearly verbatim copy of Bruto’s should be attributed to Ruth Kelso, Doctrine for the Lady of the Renaissance (Urbana, IL: University of Illinois Press, 1956), p. 43. Her discovery was overlooked for almost thirty years. 54. Salter, pp. 129, and 131–33. For further discussion of how the enclosure acts relate to women, see Richard Burt and John Michael Archer, eds., Enclosure Acts: Sexuality, Property, and Culture in Early Modern England (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1994). See also, Boose, especially pp. 191–92.

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55. Salter, p. 131. Salter’s insistence that women act “soberly” is based in the Renaissance belief that speech and sexuality were connected: “the talkative woman is frequently imagined as synonymous with the sexually available woman, her open mouth the signifier for invited entrance elsewhere” (Boose, p. 196). 56. Salter, p. 137. 57. Salter, pp. 91, and 99. 58. Salter, pp. 95–97. 59. Bruto, F4, and F6. 60. Salter, p. 99. Note that this passage, directed at a father in BrutoBruto’s treatise was written for Lord Sylvester Cattaneo, the father of Marietta Cattaneo-is redirected at the husband in Salter. In Salter, it may serve as a warning to women: if they pursue academic studies (or any studies for that matter), they may put their marriage chances in jeopardy. He also may convince fathers and husbands to avoid teaching women or marrying learned ones. 61. Bruto, F4. 62. Vives, The Instruction of a Christen Woman, N2v, N2, and N3. 63. Vives, E2, G4v, and O4. The biblical Susana was also the subject of a romance by Robert Greene, ironically titled The Myrrovr of Modestie (London, 1584). In Greene’s text, however, Susana “cried out vnto the Lorde with a loude voice” (B8). Although she does not speak directly to the assembly, she does not remain completely silent. We might notice, too, that Greene’s book was dedicated to a woman: Margaret, Countess of Darby. 64. Vives, C3, and C3v. Vives’ patron, Katherine of Aragon, requested the Instruction to help her organize the education of her royal daughter, Mary. 65. Vives, D2-D2v. 66. Vives, D3, and D4. Hortentia also appears in Boccaccio; according to Jordan, “Boccaccio’s In-Famous Women,” pp. 29–30: “The Roman Hortensia is praised for arguing in the Senate against a tax levied on Roman women ‘with such an inexhaustible and effective eloquence that to her admiring audience she appeared to have changed her sex and spoken as her father, [the orator] Hortensius reborn’ (84:332).” Note here that Boccaccio attempts to change her sex within this epideictic discourse, a tactic that Vives does not employ even though he makes reference to other male orators within his discussion. 67. Ian Maclean, Linda Woodbridge, and Constance Jordan all discuss the problem that citing examples of “good women” tends to undercut the whole sex. 68. Vives, The Instruction of a Christen Woman, D4v, and Elv.

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69. Sir Thomas More, from Cresacre More, Life of Saint Thomas More (c. 1631), ed. Rev. Joseph Hunter, 1828, cited in Foster Watson, Vives and the Renascence Education of Women (New York: Longmans, Green and Co., 1912), p. 186. (Letter undated, but believed to belong to the year 1521.) 70. Hyrde, The Instruction, A2v–A3. 71. Richard Hyrde, as quoted in “Richard Hyrde on the Education of Women,” in Foster Watson, Vives and the Renascence Education of Women (New York: Longmans, Green and Co., 1912), pp. 162–63. 72. Hyrde, The Instruction, A2v. 73. Richard L.DeMolen, from his introduction to Richard Mulcaster, Positions…for the training up of children, 1581, in Richard Mulcaster’s Positions (New York: Teacher’s College Press, 1971), p. 1. 74. It is interesting to note here that among his students were Thomas Kyd, Thomas Lodge, and Edmund Spenser (DeMolen, p .5). 75. Mulcaster, pp. 7, 167, author’s emphasis. Like Hyrde, Mulcaster may also be accused of self-interest in the training of women; after all, he did run two of the biggest schools in London. Some women may have been educated in schools, but they were not being sent to school in large numbers. 76. Mulcaster, pp. 179, 180, and 179. Hull claims that “[t]he majority of books for women…provided ladders to respectability and acceptance, a contribution toward the upward mobility that was possible in the Renaissance” (p. 139). 77. Mulcaster, p. 179. 78. Mulcaster, pp. 181, 182. 79. Kelso, p. 58. We might recognize that this class-based educational ethic was applied to boys as well as girls. 80. Valerie Wayne’s “Some Sad Sentence: Vives’ Instruction of a Christian Woman,” in Silent But for the Word: Tudor Women as Patrons, Translators, and Writers of Religious Works, ed. Margaret Patterson Hannay (Kent, Ohio: Kent State University Press, 1985), pp. 15–29, argues that although Vives (and most Renaissance humanists) offered an education that was “exceedingly narrow and confined,” it was still “one of the best [educational options] available” (p. 28). Others have argued that the humanists did not offer a truly egalitarian solution to educational inequalities; i.e., see Constance Jordan, “Feminism and the Humanists.” See also Gloria Kaufman, “Juan Luis Vives on the Education of Women,” Signs 3 (1978): 891–96, who claims that “Vives’ feminist remarks are easily matched by his antifeminist dicta” (p. 891); and Janis Butler Holm, “The Myth of a Feminist Humanism: Thomas Salter’s The Mirrhor of Modestie,” in Ambiguous Realities: Women in the Middle Ages and Renaissance, ed. Carole Levin and Jeanie Watson (Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1987), where she debunks the notion of a neat category of “feminist” for all humanists. 81. Holm, p. 204.

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82. For more on Renaissance fashioning, see Stephen Greenblatt, Renaissance Self-Fashioning: From More to Shakespeare (Chicago: University Of Chicago Press, 1980). These issues are also addressed in Frank Whigham, Ambition and Privilege: The Social Tropes of Elizabethan Courtesy Theory (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1984). 83. Joan Kelly-Gadol, “Did Women Have a Renaissance?” in Becoming Visible: Women in European History, eds. Renate Bridenthal and Claudia Koonz (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1977), pp. 137–64. 84. Kelly-Gadol, p. 139, author’s emphasis, pp. 149,152, 151, and 150. 85. Holm, p. 204.

CHAPTER 5

The Literacy of Jewish Women in Early Modern Italy Howard Adelman

In the Jewish community, educational attainments long served as an important route to public prominence for men, although many men could not avail themselves of these intellectual opportunities. But for women, Jewish tradition, like Christian society,1 contained conflicting attitudes towards their literacy. The Torah provided no clear guidance when it ambiguously commanded: “you shall teach them to your banim,” a word that could mean either “sons” or “children” (Deuteronomy 6:7 and 11:19). In later rabbinic tradition, on the one hand, some verses in the Mishnah and the Talmud opposed the religious education of girls because learned women became sexually decadent, women were incapable of intellectual accomplishments, or serious learning would distract women from their domestic duties. For example, in the Mishnah it was reported that “Rabbi Eliezer says: Everyone who teaches his daughter Torah, it is as if he taught her lechery” (Sofa 3:4). Elsewhere the Talmud admonished: “Women are simple minded” (Kiddushin 80b–81a) and “There is no wisdom for woman except the spindle” (Palestinian Talmud, Sotah 3:16a). Thus, the Talmud ruled that the verses in Deuteronomy meant “‘You shall teach them to your sons’ and not to your daughters” and adduced other proofs from the Bible against teaching women (Kiddushin 29b). On the other hand, verses can be found that support the education of Jewish girls. For example, the Mishnah reported, “Ben Azzai says: A man ought to give his daughter a knowledge of the Law” (Sofa 3:4). In the Talmud,despite evidence of widespread female knowledge of at least the laws of cleanliness 133

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and uncleanliness (Sanhedrin 94b), only one major female scholar, Beruriah, is known.2 In post-Talmudic medieval Jewish tradition, however, Beruriah, as reported by the French Rabbi Shlomo Itzhaki (Rashi, 1035–1105, on Avodah Zarah 18b), served as an example of a woman intellectual who became sexually promiscuous, like Pope Joan in medieval French Christian tradition.3 Nevertheless, medieval rabbis, such as Rabbi Isaiah of Trani the younger (c. 1220–1280), continued to read the Torah texts to mean that the teaching of Torah to girls was optional, not forbidden.4 Renaissance rabbinic opponents of women’s literacy were motivated, in part, by traditional concern with insuring the sexual purity, feminine qualities, and domestic role of Jewish women. Nevertheless, they saw some literacy as necessary for women to conduct religious life, to run the household, to supervise the family business, to raise Jewish children, and to serve as a decorative ornament that enhanced the public prestige and honor of the entire family. Evidence shows that some Jewish girls in Italy did receive as part of their basic education some level of literacy. What was taught varied. Some women did attain advanced skills in Italian and even in Hebrew; a few, enough to work in the publishing industry; and a couple, to write their own published books. Like findings about the literacy of Christian women in Italy, examples of educated women can be based only on anecdotal findings that offer no sense of absolute or relative statistical proportions.5 AMBIVALENT ATTITUDES TOWARD JEWISH WOMEN’S LITERACY IN ITALY Throughout the early modern period, the ambivalent attitude of Jews towards the education of Jewish girls in Italy was based on the seemingly unresolvable tension between the necessity of literacy to run a Jewish home and the sexual dangers of advanced learning. Thus writing in his 1646 Kisaot leveit david Judah Asael del Bene of Ferrara wanted girls to learn to read, to write, and to do basic arithmetic, but he did not want them to learn another language for what he saw as the sexual dangers involved: In this matter girls are not included among the boys. It is enough for these women of ours to learn the order of the prayers and our pure clear writing, an amount sufficient to be able to place in the record

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books what is necessary for the needs of the house in terms of income and expenses. And enough with this; it is already too much from one who attributes importance to the curriculum of the women. It would be a destructive curriculum to teach daughters more than this amount. Their advanced study of another language would be dangerous, lest their passions become inflamed.6

Samuel Archivolti (1515–1611) was a prominent Paduan rabbi who, although instructing Jewish girls, displayed this same ambivalence about the education of women.7 In a dialogue he wrote on the teaching of Torah and wisdom to women he reiterated the idea that education was a threat to the honor of a woman: “The words of a woman are pure, more precious than pearls,” writes Archivolti, “she desires to attend lessons, there her judgment is precious, taking counsel with the wise, but she fears lest her honor will become lightly esteemed because of this in every city.”8 Archivolti also raised the notion of an educated woman becoming a man, vehayit leish,9 a concern shared by Christian men.10 Leon Modena, a prominent Venetian Jewish preacher and teacher (1571–1648), also reflected significant ambivalence about teaching girls. Although his teaching duties in Venice included teaching girls as well as boys, he never provided for the instruction of his own daughters, who probably could not read or write.11 When his daughter Esther was born he blessed her, following the formula common for girls: “May she grow up to be married and have children,”12 omitting the hope, included in blessings of newborn boys, that she would also pursue Torah study.13 His other daughter Diana, therefore, although her marriage had been faltering for a while, had to rely on her husband, Judah Saltero Fano, to maintain a correspondence with her father—ironically, one of the greatest masters of Hebrew letter writing in Italy, if not all of Jewish history.14 Abraham Yagel (1553-c. 1623), a rabbi, teacher, and scholar from the Reggio area, reflected similarly contradictory sentiments about the education of women in his 1606 Eshet hayyil (“A Woman of Valor,” cf. Proverbs 31:10–31). Here Yagel appears to sanction the acquisition, if not the expression, of wisdom by women, but fears their becoming like men. [H]er voice must never be heard in public being a screaming virago (kolanit) (cf. Ketubot 7:6; 72b) like all the women who want to be

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like men who raise their voices to speak assertively (ledaber gevohah) like cocks croak, raising their voice so their tongue becomes a sharp sword. But she does not dare to open her mouth except with wisdom “as words of the sages are heard quietly” (Ecc. 9:17).15

Having accepted the prejudices of the period, however, Yagel soon made it clear that he encouraged women to acquire wisdom only for ornamental and aesthetic purposes, writing, “So that in order that we do not think that she is like one of the blacks (hashehoriim) who do not have the mind or heart to speak because of the weakness of their intellect and the grief of their heart and their natural fear that the little that they speak, their words will be rebuke and absurd thoughts (Eshet hayyil, 15a).” Thus, based on Proverbs 31:26, “She opens with wisdom and the teaching (torat) of kindness is on her tongue,” Yagel urged the woman to arrange her words in a splendid way and with great kindness so that she would find favor with all who saw her, as her speech would be acceptable to all who heard her. In describing her words not only as pearls and precious objects, but as words of Torah more precious than fine gold, Yagel presented woman’s words as an ornament and conceded that she must have access to the study of at least some Torah to be successful in her decorative role (Eshet hayyil, 15a). Yagel thus rebuked women involved in ascetic religious practices such as daily prayer, fasting, placing ashes on their heads, wearing sackcloth, or denying themselves earthly pleasures. Even though he admitted that the intentions of these women were good and holy, he declared that their single-minded devotion to God was a dereliction of their duties to their husbands and their homes (Eshet hayyil, 18b–19a). Another Hebrew commentary on Proverbs 31, Shevah hanashim, “In Praise of Women,” by David ben Judah Messer Leon (c. 1465c. 1536), an Italian rabbi and intellectual who later settled in Constantinople, constitutes a further example of the ambivalent attitudes toward the education of women.16 Many aspects of this perhaps inaccurately titled discourse about women appear similar to Yagel’s. Following Proverbs closely, Leon praised the good wife for her wisdom in conducting business and buying land, her diligence in doing housework and spinning, and for her charity and showing herself to be enlightened (Shevah hanashim, 116b–118a). However, he regarded her ability to speak intelligently as secondary to her moral qualities and her domestic diligence. Nevertheless, when she

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engaged in intellectual matters, her words should be informed by Torah, although, following the Talmud, he asserted that “women are simple minded” (Shevah hanashim, 118a). Elsewhere, David ben Judah described the actual educational attainments of Jewish women in his day.17 In Eyn hakoreh, his commentary on Moses Maimonides’ Guide for the Perplexed, he wrote that the Palestinian Talmud allowed women to study Greek, not for studying philosophy and other forms of wisdom, because, again quoting the Talmud, “women are simple minded,” but for the ability to speak wittily, which would serve as an ornament. In a manuscript version of this work, an accompanying Hebrew marginal comment described the humanistic educational attainments of some upper-class women, Christian and Jewish, in Italy during the sixteenth century.18 Just as members of the court hired tutors for their daughters, so did the leaders of the Jewish communities and the aristocratic Jews. Their daughters were taught poetry and rhetoric, including Boethius, Terence, Ovid, Cicero, Petrarch, and Dante, and histories of Carthage and Troy. These statements are confirmed by many other contemporary descriptions of the humanistic curriculum as it was pursued by Christian women, some of whom studied classical Greek and Latin, although there were some attempts to limit their access to Dante and Petrarch, among others, who were seen as lascivious.19 The marginal note also indicates that when these educated women spoke among themselves, using witty language in the form of images, allusions, parables, and riddles, drawing upon the vast array of books they had studied, their secretive discourse baffled anybody who was unaccustomed to the study of classical texts and to the use of literary language. When describing the range of rhetorical activity by women, David ben Judah referred to these women humanists almost consistently by using masculine verbs and suffixes, connecting in a less than subtle, but perhaps accidental, manner the literary attainments of women and contemporary concerns with their masculinization. This text, like the others mentioned above, shows the reactions of Jewish men to educated women. The men wanted women only to adorn themselves and to serve their families; they were afraid of educated women because using the esoteric language of learning, such women might develop relationships outside of the family, although not necessarily sexual ones, and perhaps even become males, or at least too much like them for comfort.

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Fear of education’s enabling women to participate in discussion and to enter into relationships outside the family appears in other texts that express concern over women revealing their husbands’ secrets to other women.20 One example of how Jews absorbed these attitudes from non-Jewish sources can be seen in a manuscript by Leone Romano (Rabbi Yehudah ben Moses Haphilosoph, or Leone de Sere Daniel, 1292–1350), who translated into Hebrew De regimine principum of Aegidius Colonna, also known as Giles of Rome (1247– 1316).21 Romano selected and translated selected passages about women who reveal their husbands’ secrets (II, I, 21). These discussions reflected the realization by men that the woman’s tongue constitutes a source of power and men’s fear that if women were allowed a serious education, they might create alliances with each other and reveal their husbands’ secrets to other women.22 Italian Jewish preachers also explicated the ideal woman based on textual exegesis, philosophical terminology, contemporary social norms, and personal fears.23 One of the earliest extant Jewish sermons from Italy was preached by Moses ben Joab of Florence in about 1456 at the betrothal of Abraham Montalcino to an unnamed woman.24 He preached that because of her nature woman suffered from a serious lack of imagination, the faculty by which one is able to free and bind concrete impressions and words “wherein there is no light” (Isaiah 8:20). She is constitutionally incapable of imagining material things or understanding the spiritual because she cannot rise above her lowly position—hardly an endorsement for women’s education. In a similar vein, Samuel Judah Katzenellenbogen (1521–1597), a leading rabbi in Padua and Venice, preached a sermon showing the limits that men attempted to place on women’s education.25 He constructed this sermon around the biblical verse “Assemble the nation, the men, the women, and the children…in order that they may obey and in order that they may learn and fear the Lord their God and observe to do all the words of this Torah” (Deuteronomy 31:12) and the rabbinic midrashic comment of Rabbi Eleazar ben Azariah, “If the men come to study and the women come to obey, why do the children come? To give reward to those who bring them…“ (Hagigah 3a). Katzenellenbogen raised the possibility that this interpretation was wrong because it violated the parallel order of the biblical verse by connecting the men, who were listed first, with learning, listed second, and the women, who were listed second,

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with obeying, listed first. Therefore, following the parallelism of the text, “that they may obey” could refer to the men and “that they may learn” could refer to the women because women may need to learn more so that they can conduct themselves properly in the fulfillment of commandments. He then ruled out this possibility by returning to the original wording of the midrash and arguing that Rabbi Eleazar ben Azariah had assigned both the men and women their duties according to what was suitable and necessary for each: Men should study Torah, but not women; it is not their way. As proof he referred to the Mishnah: “Rabbi Eliezer says: Everyone who teaches his daughter Torah, it is as if he taught her lechery” (Sofa 3:4). Eleazar ben Azariah had warned women to be obedient because, according to the Talmud, “They are simple minded” and they tend to trivialize many things. Women must obey their teachers even if they do not approve of what they are told to do. Immanuel Francese (1618–1710), a Florentine rabbi and a Hebrew poet, expressed hostility toward women’s learning in his poem “Against Women who Pursue Religious Studies.” To teach the religion of God to the female Is like putting a treasure in the furnace,… And pairing thoughts of a woman with the secret of God, Is like putting a black woman in the bosom of a distinguished man,… When she wears the garment of Torah and its mystery, for an adulterous man she will be naked. She plans her evil designs for lechery and her study in the law of being fruitful and multiplying. Thus the Torah whines in the mouth of a woman… There is no wealth like a foolish woman who is impoverished in the Torah of God and from all understanding, who only teaches her son the Shema [Deut. 6:4]… With a pure heart she makes her prayers, in every language without deceit, Thus she obtains from God her requests and her supplications will always be desirable. So we have investigated and found it indubitably true, and the proof is Beruriah.26

Continuing the theme of the good woman and the bad woman, Frances asserted that it was the religious studies of the evil that

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inspired the bad woman, whereas the good woman’s primary concern was fostering the piety of her sons. Francese’s poem reflects men’s fear of women’s studying and anxiety over the possible opportunities it could bring them, both in the domestic and in the public spheres. The vague characterization of Beruriah, the quintessential educated woman, heightens the sense of ambivalence expressed towards women. It is not clear if she represents a woman who prays with a pure heart, based on the Talmudic teachings about her, or a woman who does not, based on the later teachings about her alleged promiscuity. The ambiguity is heightened because for other Italian Jews, such as the rabbi, Hebrew poet, and historian Gedaliah ibn Yahya (1515–1587), Beruriah personified the virtue of Quality or Character (Tekhunah or Oualita).27 These rabbis reflected the contemporary Renaissance notion that “an eloquent woman is never chaste.”28 Rabbi Moses Provençal (1504–1576) of Mantua treated a case that highlights contemporary concern that literate young women might be led to erotic excesses by their ability to read. A married man suspected that his wife had become pregnant by one of their servants. He became jealous, insulted her, and abused her. The suspected servant soon left their house but, before doing so, expressed the hope that his mistress would find a way to leave her husband and to marry him. The servant then wrote love letters to her in which he described their past intimacies together, suggesting not only her infidelity but also her literacy.29 Her brother intercepted one of these letters and gave it to her husband, either as an accomplice to help her to establish infidelity as grounds for a divorce or as a man more loyal to another man than to his sister. Her husband confronted her with the letter as proof of her adultery, to which she happily confessed. Provençal, however, would not accept without witnesses her letter or her confession. Such a case, however, could not have happened without assumptions about the literacy of women and, perhaps, its pernicious influence on their sexuality.30 LITERACY AMONG JEWISH WOMEN Despite—or rather, because of—the ambivalent attitude towards the teaching of Jewish girls in Italy, some did receive instruction, though exactly what was taught, by whom, and to whom varied. Available documents indicate a range of educational opportunities and attainments. Most daughters seemed to have studied at home. For

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example, in 1480 Hakham ben Yehiel Cohen Falcon was so intent on studying with his daughter at home one afternoon that when his wife grabbed some valuables and carried out her threat to leave him, it took him a while to realize that she had left.31 Other parents arranged for their daughters to be taught by professional teachers, including many of the leading rabbis.32 The casualness with which teachers recorded the names of female students in their records indicates that educating girls may not have been unusual, at least at the elementary level.33 As among Christian women,34 some Jewish women served as teachers of young girls in Italian and even in Hebrew, at least the fundamentals of reading. One Christian woman came into the ghetto of Venice to teach “the Old Testament” to seventy to eighty Jewish girls.35 Toward the end of the seventeenth century and into the eighteenth century, more evidence is available showing the number of women who served as teachers; usually they taught girls but sometimes also even boys.36 For the most part, they taught in their own houses and not in a school. Women teachers and women noted for their learning in the Jewish community were often—but not always—conspicuously identified as widows,37 showing that, as in the Christian community, learning was not necessarily seen as compatible with marriage. In fact, a scribe felt it necessary to note in the community record book that one woman teacher “…served her husband properly as appropriate.”38 The Hebrew subjects that women taught youngsters consisted of the recognition of Hebrew letters and the correct reading of the Bible in Hebrew, including the chant. The study of translation and commentary, however, was reserved for the first-year male teacher. Nevertheless, the main objective of study for young girls, even when they were required to study Hebrew as was the case in Rome, was their domestic duties, and the main place for study was at home, theirs or their teacher ‘s.39 In Italy some women reached very high levels of educational attainments. Fioretta (Bat Sheva), the wife of Solomon Modena, was very learned in Torah, Mishnah, Talmud, Midrash, Jewish law, especially Maimonides, and kabbalistic literature, such as the Zohar.40 Fioretta’s sister, Diana Rieti, was equally well versed.41 Late in her life Fioretta set out to live in Safed, a struggling community of mystics in Palestine, but died on the way there.42 Her grandson, Aaron Berekhiah, a rabbi and kabbalist of Modena (d. 1639), described how she spared no expense to find for him the best teachers possible, traveling with him from city to city and supporting him in the process.

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Fioretta was not unique; among Jews, especially when fathers and grandfathers were preoccupied, mothers and grandmothers regularly supervised the education of the young men in their family.43 Women who attained a certain level of learning, including the ability to read the Bible, to participate in and to lead women in the three traditional daily services, to pray privately, to teach others, albeit young children, and to conduct business, earned the title rabit or rabanit44 a title of distinction found in classical rabbinic literature for a woman who participated in rabbinic discussions.45 At times, however, the title could simply have referred to a rabbi’s wife or to a wealthy woman.46 The title in the synagogue identified leaders of the women at prayer, who could not be counted as part of the male quorum and had to sit in their own section of the synagogue— usually the balcony. In Verona, in 1586, after years of quarrels among the women about selection of seating in the synagogue, three men were chosen to assign seats to the women. Women who sat at the head of the first several benches were designated as rabanit, usually also with the title of marat, “madam,” or almanat, if widowed. Some women, who often sat at the far end of the bench, were called karat, the bride, and were probably much younger. The back rows were headed by women who had the title marat but not rabanit47 The seating plan represented a hierarchical structure in which the older, more educated women led the others. Women thus participated in many aspects of traditional daily Jewish worship, including some often associated only with males. One sixteenth-century manuscript Hebrew prayerbook from Mantua began with a revised morning blessing which instead of the traditional “…has not made me a woman” reads “…made me a woman and not a man.”48 One document mentions women in Italy praying while wearing tephilin (phylacteries), the traditional ritual leather straps on the arm and head, “like Michal,” King David’s wife who, according to rabbinic literature, wore tephilin49 In Rome, Anna d’Arpino had the masculine job title of shaliah taibbur, “representative of the community,” and functioned, as did men who led the service, in this capacity on sabbaths and holidays for at least two and a half years.50 In the synagogue and at home, women who did not understand Hebrew may have used the translations of the worship service that appeared in Judeo-Italian during the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, a likelihood enhanced by the fact that these works were

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sometimes dedicated to women, although the dedications were in Hebrew. 51 Reflecting a generally low level of Hebrew accomplishment among Jews in general and Italian Jews in particular, many men in Italy also did not know enough Hebrew even to pray and who needed such translations.52 Indeed, Samuel Aboab (1610–1694), a Venetian rabbi, discussed a situation in which men wanted to pray publicly in the vernacular because they did not know Hebrew and could not find enough men who did in order to form a prayer quorum. Aboab referred similarly to a group of women in Salonika who did not know Hebrew so they too prayed together in the vernacular.53 Sitting together, without men, not only did the women have their own leaders and texts, but they also joined together to disrupt the prayers of the men as a form of protest. For example, when the Torah was taken out of the ark, Modenese women would loudly curse the men who had done them wrong and would ask for vengeance against them. This practice, denounced by the rabbis, illustrated to them the connection between women’s religiosity and learning and their disobedience to their husbands.54 The existence of many manuscript collections of private Hebrew prayers specifically designed for Jewish women in Italy constitutes evidence of the widespread use of Hebrew in private rituals by women. The instructions before each prayer are in Italian, indicating that the women may have read but not understood Hebrew. These prayers treat the rituals associated with women, especially baking hallah (Sabbath loaves), lighting sabbath candles, immersing in the ritual bath after menstruation, and marking transitions through the critical stages of pregnancy from conception to returning to synagogue after the child was born.55 The rituals specifically associated with women were also treated extensively in special tractates circulated in Judeo-Italian manuscript or published in Italian.56 Women were also included in the formularies found in other Hebrew books from Italy. For example, the deathbed confession was published with alternative female Hebrew verb forms, and magic books included Hebrew formulas and incantations to meet women’s medicinal needs in matters such as conception, birth control, abortion, birth, and lactation.57 In the sixteenth century Jewish women teachers also practiced healing and birthing, an association that is reinforced by the large number of texts for women in childbirth, some involving, despite rabbinic protest, the woman in labor holding a Torah scroll to ease her delivery.58

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Evidence of the literacy of Jewish women may be preserved in collections of letters made by teachers who specialized in Hebrew composition. Some Hebrew letters attributed to women writers offer tempting evidence of women’s literacy and evidence of women’s own words. For example, in one Hebrew letter a woman wrote to reprimand her son for his lack of diligence as a student and his poor letter-writing skills.59 Another simple Hebrew letter of a girl to her father asked for music lessons, a feature of the education of Jewish girls at the time.60 Hebrew letters by women, however, clearly show signs of having been dictated to a male amanuensis.61 Although the actual number of letters by women is relatively small, references to correspondence between young boys and their mothers, sisters, and other female relatives appear in letters by others, without always indicating in what language it had been conducted.62 These include Hebrew letters purportedly written by young boarding-school boys to both their mothers and their fathers, presumably because both of them could read Hebrew.63 Similarly, in some letters young men wrote to their fiancées in Italian or in Hebrew.64 In one letter a boy noted that his mother and sister had written him in ketav libonah, a Talmudic expression for ancient Hebrew script, and rebuked him.65 Indignant at being censured, he wrote to his brother-in-law. In describing the letter he had received, he connected their act of writing with manliness. Referring either to the pen or to a male amanuensis, he wrote that “they grabbed the wing of a man,” vehehziku bikhnaf ish.66 It is important to bear in mind that all these letters could have constituted merely imaginary classroom drills dictated by the teacher for his class or exercises written by students for their Hebrew teachers and not actual letters sent among family members and friends as claimed. Nevertheless, even if they had been imaginary exercises, they could surely reflect the social reality of the teachers or students who invented them. From other evidence, such as the archives in Milan, it is apparent that some Jewish women understood Hebrew, such as one who was able to approve a Hebrew contract made between her husband and another man.67 Another reflection on the state of women’s literacy in the Jewish community is one wealthy Jewish widow’s Hebrew prenuptial agreement with her second husband. In this document she agreed to provide him with the tosefet, the sum that was usually provided by the man’s family, and to pay him to support her children at his table. At the bottom of this agreement she signed

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her name in Italian, “Smeralda Jona,” using her maiden name. Her fiancé, however, who contributed little to the marriage except for his father’s consent that should he die she would not be held hostage to her husband’s brother, signed in Hebrew.68 In addition to serving as teachers and writers, some educated Jewish women in Italy found opportunities to work, also at home, as scribes and printers. As early as the thirteenth century a few Jewish women in Italy copied Hebrew treatises.69 Signora Sarah of Pisa, a supporter of the messianic pretensions of David Hareuveni in the sixteenth century, copied for him a biblical manuscript to which she added, in either Hebrew or Italian, the inscription, “Never be angry or hasty.”70 Jewish women also used their literacy skills in publishing. Many of those who did so assisted their husbands, probably working at home. The colophons of some books mention their contributions. Perhaps the first, Estellina Conat, wife of Abraham ben Solomon Conat of Mantua and Ferrara, a physician and a printer of Hebrew books as early as 1475, set (kotevet, in the female form) the book Behinat olam by Jedaiah Penini (Mantua, c. 1477), with the help of a youngster named Jacob Levi, as she noted in the Hebrew colophon. The relative importance of literacy for Jewish women is seen in a sixteenth-century contract for a Jewish girl who would serve in the home of a Jewish family.71 The woman of the house, Simhah, must teach the young charge how to read Hebrew and Italian, “according to the ability of the teacher [hamelamedet, in the feminine form] and the student.” In addition to teaching her needlework, to the extent that she was able to do so, she must instruct her in “all the needs of the house that are suitable to be known by every enlightened woman” including sweeping, mopping, making beds, washing dishes, dancing, kneading, rolling, baking, salting, porging (meat), cooking, roasting, and playing music (niggun). Literacy, therefore, was naturally embedded in the larger domestic context of a Jewish woman’s education. This contract has much in common with the arrangements by which Catholic families sent daughters, especially those whose mothers had died, to be educated in convents. Like those of young Catholic women, many of whom entered monasteries on a long-term basis without taking vows, this Hebrew contract invoked virtues that sound more like those of a monastery than of Jewish family life: silence, humility, and thriftiness. Like young Catholic women living in convents, the

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young unnamed charge received firm supervision that protected her virtue as well as providing her with some education. 72 PUBLISHED WOMEN WRITERS Jewish women in Italy did write and publish works of their own. Retrieving this work, however, involves overcoming many obstacles. For example, a Jewish woman, Giustina Levi-Perotti of Sassoferrato, supposedly sent the great poet Francesco Petrarch (1304–1374) a sonnet in 1350 to which he replied with one of his own, “La gola e ‘1 sonno e T otiose piume.” The poem, however, is now widely considered a forgery from the sixteenth century. Even if there had been no such Jewish woman poet in the time of Petrarch and the poem was forged later in the name of a Jewish woman, such an assertion shows that there must have been enough Jewish women writing Italian poetry during the sixteenth century for such a claim to have been believable.73 At least two sixteenth-century Jewish women did become distinguished, published Italian authors. Debora Ascarelli of Rome, wife of Joseph Ascarelli, gained recognition for her Abitacolo dealt Oranti, rhymed translations of liturgical poetry from Hebrew to Italian, completed about 1537 and published in Venice in 1601 and again in 1609.74 This may be the first published book written by a Jewish woman.75 The most accomplished, therefore the least typical, Jewish woman of this period in terms of education and literary productivity was Sara Copia Sullam (1592–1641). The details of her life, possibly unique, show the opportunities and dangers in the life of at least one woman of wealth and talent. Born to a prominent Italian Jewish family in Venice, Sara received an education that included instruction in at least Italian and Spanish. She married Jacob Sullam, an important figure in the communal affairs and business activities of the Venetian Jewish community. After reading L’ Ester, an Italian drama by the Genoese monk Ansaldo Ceba (1565–1623), in May of 1618 Sara wrote him of her admiration and spiritual love for him, beginning a lengthy correspondence that was literary, polemical, and titillating. Sara also gathered around her a salon (accademia) of men of arts and letters who gave her lessons in exchange for which she provided financial backing as well as intellectual conversation. These men

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included Numidio Paluzzi (1567–1625), a syphilitic Roman writer and poet who was Sara’s teacher; Alessandro Berardelli, a Roman painter, poet, and close friend of Paluzzi; Baldassare Bonifaccio (1586–1659), a poet, priest, and legal scholar, who was also in correspondence with Paluzzi; Giovanni Basadonna; Giovanni Francesco Corniani (1581–1646), a writer, poet, and noble who served on the very important Venetian magistracies of the esecutori contro la bestemmia (the prosecutors of blasphemy) and the avogaria del commune (the state’s attorney);76 perhaps Giovanni Maria Vanti (d. 1641), a priest and writer,77 and Leon Modena, the rabbi and writer. Gradually many of these male admirers betrayed and humiliated her in the way that men of letters often treated talented women during this period, including accusing them of plagiarism and withholding their work from publication.78 In 1621 Bonifaccio published a treatise on the immortality of the soul in which he claimed publicly, based on a conversation they had engaged in two years earlier, that Sara did not believe in this doctrine, a view considered basic to Judaism and Christianity and the denial of which would expose her to great danger as a heretic from the Jewish and Christian authorities alike. After reading this charge, Sara sat down and in two days wrote a strong defense of her views and an attack on Bonifaccio’s claims and methods. She published this as Manifesto di Sarra Copia Sulam hebrea Nel quale e’ da lei riprovate e detestata I’opinione negante l’Immortalita’ dell’Anima, falsemente attribuitale da SIG. BALDASSARE BONIFACCIO, (The Manifesto of Sara Copia Sulam, a Jewish woman, in which she refutes and disavows the opinion denying immortality of the soul, falsely attributed to her by Signor Baldassare Bonifaccio). In this manifesto Sara castigated Bonifaccio for using her as a foil for what she presented as his illconceived arguments and upbraided his character, logic, and style. She chastised him for attacking a woman who was somewhat educated but not a professional scholar. The breadth of her education is evident throughout the work, however, with her references to Aristotle, Josephus, Dante, Hebrew and Jewish knowledge, and the Old and New Testaments. Bonifaccio rebutted her charges by accusing Sara of having a rabbi, unnamed, write the Manifesto for her. Thus Bonifaccio not only betrayed her with accusations of heresy but also denigrated her originality as a writer by accusing her of plagiarism.

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Another apparent example of the belittlement of Sara’s writing skills arose from her correspondence with Ceba. Shortly after Ceba’s death in Genoa in 1623, Marcantonio Doria edited and published a version of Ceba’s letters to Sara but did not include any of her correspondence to him. On the surface this omission of her letters appears to have been a case of Ceba or Doria betraying Sara as a writer and active member of the correspondence. Recently, however, a letter from Sara Copia Sulam to Isabella della Tolfa, the wife of Marcantonio Doria, was discovered in an archive in Genoa.79 In this letter, dated January 8, 1622, Sara wrote to Isabella, after already having written to Doria, to request that she be sure that Doria not publish Ceba’s letter of November 1, 1619 to her. This letter, the only one of Sara’s extant, probably in her own hand, raises the likelihood that her side of the correspondence was omitted perhaps not because of a desire shown by some male writers to hide the talents of a woman but rather to protect her because an exposé of the thoughts she expressed in her letters may have posed a danger to her. This letter also highlights the wide-ranging nature of Sara’s activities and raises the possibility that more correspondence of hers may be extant. Around this difficult time, Sara’s teacher Paluzzi also became involved in a plot which further damaged Sara’s reputation as a writer. Paluzzi—along with a laundress, a black marrano maid from Granada—and the painter Berardelli, concocted letters that elicited from Sara costly gifts that, instead of being transported magically to Paris as promised, only ended up in Paluzzi’s room. When Sara learned the truth, she had Berardelli charged before the Signori di Notte al Criminal on July 8, 1625—unfortunately the records of this case cannot be found—and also fired Paluzzi as her teacher. Berardelli and Paluzzi then circulated the accusation that Sara had stolen Paluzzi’s writings and passed them off as her own. First, they published the charge in a pamphlet, Le Satire Sarreidi. Then, after Paluzzi’s death on July 29, 1625, Berardelli repeated the accusation in his introduction to a 1626 collection of Paluzzi’s poetry, Rime del Signor Numidio Paluzzi all’illustre ed eccellentissimo signore Giovanni Soranzo.80 Unfortunately no copies of either slanderous work against Sara are extant. Many oblique references to defenses on her behalf have been preserved, however, in a recently published manuscript, the Codice di Giulia Soliga, named after an unknown woman whose role in Sara’s defense is

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not certain. The main feature of this extremely complex literary creation involves a trial of Paluzzi and Berardelli on Mount Parnassus before Apollo. In the course of this imaginary trial appear several unpublished sonnets by Sara, along with references to the facts of the case purportedly based on the records of the actual Venetian criminal trial, and defenses of Sara placed in the mouths of some of the greatest women writers of Italy. These include Vittoria Colonna, marchesa of Pescara and one of the first published women poets (1492– 1547); Veronica Gambara of Correggio, another early woman poet (1485–1559); and the comic Isabella Andrini of Padua. They are assisted by two women writers from ancient Greece, Sappho of Lesbos (c. 600 b.c.) and Corinna (c. 600 b.c.), and two male authors with much to say about the role of women in Renaissance society, Pietro Aretino (1492–1556) and Baldassar Castiglione (1478–1529). As a Jewish woman writer who had both captivated and bested Christian clerics in public, Sara served as an ideal target for accusations that would undermine her accomplishments as a woman and a Jew. Her detractors tried to make Christian men appear responsible for her attainments. Her defenders, however, clearly saw Sara in the tradition of women writers of the Renaissance and created for her a distinguished panel of female defenders. Her Jewishness, noted regularly in their defense of her, certainly did not constitute an obstacle to her receiving a fair hearing before Apollo.81 Sara’s literary career was unique. It was clearly fraught with danger, as she mingled with many men and titillated them with sexually provocative writing. Yet she was able to protect not only her own honor but that of her husband and her community. In fact her literary accomplishments seemed to have enhanced Jewish standing in the ghetto of Venice. CONCLUSION Jewish men, therefore, viewed women’s literary accomplishments as they viewed women’s clothing. Women’s clothing was highly charged because it had the potential to reflect positively on the status of the entire family in the community but also provided the woman an opportunity to attract excessive attention to herself, possibly at the expense of the honor of the family. Similarly, women’s literary accomplishments were highly charged because they could

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both reflect favorably on the status of the entire family in the community and provide a woman with ideas and opportunities that could hurt the honor of the family. As they tried to control women’s manner of dress with sumptuary laws, Jewish men tried as well to control their education. 82 At each step of women’s literary accomplishments, whether it was learning to read or actually writing and publishing their ideas, men’s ambivalence or outright hostility hampered their progress. Advanced educational and literary accomplishments for Jewish women in Italy were unusual but not impossible and, like those of Catholic women, constituted a private matter and a testimony to the effectiveness of private instruction among the Jews of Italy and their concern with the honor of the family as reflected in the education of women. Jewish woman could enter intellectual activity at home, in correspondence with Christian and Jewish humanists, at gatherings of literary salons, and in the publication of their own works.83 The Jewish community had the same dilemma as Catholic society in Italy, namely, that literary pursuits would draw women away from their domestic responsibilities, but at the same time women’s illiteracy, especially in Italian but also in more advanced subjects, would be counterproductive for the family and the community. Thus, Jewish women pursued studies in Italian more than in Hebrew texts, although a few mastered Hebrew. The generally poor state of Hebrew knowledge among Italian Jewish women, however, cannot be separated from the wider lack of knowledge of Hebrew on the part of most, but certainly not all, Italian Jews. One can only speculate what the effects on Hebrew literacy and Jewish culture would have been had newborn daughters been blessed with the hope that they, too, would grow up to study Torah. NOTES This chapter is adapted from my forthcoming work, Jewish Women in Early Modern Italy. Aspects of this paper were presented at a conference on the Jews of Italy at Harvard University in 1989 and published in the Shlomo Simonsohn Jubilee Volume (Tel Aviv: Tel Aviv University, 1993), pp. 9–23. The Smith College Committee on Faculty Compensation and Development supported my gathering research materials for this project. In addition to Barbara J. Whitehead for her excellent revisions, I would like to thank Arnold Adelman and Benjamin Ravid, for their many valuable suggestions.

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1. Judith Baskin, “Some Parallels in the Education of Medieval Jewish and Christian Women,” Jewish History 5 (1991): 41–52; see also Warren Zev Harvey, “The Obligation of Talmud on Women According to Maimonides,” Tradition 19 (1991): 122–30; Arthur M.Silver, “May Women be Taught Bible, Mishnah, and Talmud?” Tradition 17 (1978): 74–85; Nathan Morris, The Jewish School: An Introduction to the History of Jewish Education (New York: Jewish Education Committee Press, 1964), pp. 24–34. 2. On Beruriah, see David Goodblatt, “The Beruriah Traditions,” Journal of Jewish Studies 26 (1975): 68–85 and Rachel Adler, “The Virgin in the Brothel and Other Anomalies: Character and Context in the Legend of Beruriah,” Tikkun (November/December 1988), pp. 28–32, 102–105. 3. On Pope Joan, see Bonnie S.Anderson and Judith P.Zinsser, A History of Their Own (New York: Harper & Row, 1988), 1:193, who relate the legend of Pope Joan dying ignominiously in the gutters of Rome after giving birth on the way to her elevation. Constance Jordan, in Renaissance Feminism (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1990), pp. 39– 40, tells about Joan’s flight and exile. 4. Isaiah Trani (Aharon), Meat devash, ed. David Sasson (Oxford: University Press, 1928), pp. 22, 29, cited in Simhah Assaf, Mekorot letoledot hahinnukh beyisrael (Tel Aviv: Devir, 1930–1943), 2:95. 5. Peter Burke, The Historical Anthropology of Early Modern Italy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987), p. 129. 6. Judah Asael del Bene, Kisaot leveit david (Verona, 1646), fol. 26b; cited in David Kaufmann, “The Dispute about the Sermons of David del Bene of Mantua,” Jewish Quarterly Review o. s. 8 (1896): 516 and Assaf, 2:137. 7. Giuseppe Jarè, “Samuele Archivolti rabbino di Padova,” II Corriere Israelitico 3 (1864): 14–16, 48–50. 8. Samuel Archivolti, Maayan ganim (Venice, 1553; Jerusalem: Kedem, 1971), fols. 44a–48a; cited in Assaf, 4:28–29. 9. Based on Deuteronomy 24:2, this could also mean “she should become a man’s wife,” an observation made to me by Judith RomneyWegner. 10. Margaret L.King, “The Religious Retreat of Isotta Nogarola,” Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society 3 (1978): 808. 11. Leon Modena, Midbar yehudah (Venice, 1602), 3a–4b. 12. For other citations from 1569, see Budapest-Kaufmann A 82.3 (Jerusalem film no. 2964), p. 281. Some of these also ask for the daughter to grow up to love and to fear God. 13. Leon Modena, The Autobiography of a Seventeenth-Century Venetian Rabbi: Leon Modena’s “Life of Judah”, ed. Mark R.Cohen (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1988), p. 103; Sefer Haye yehudah,

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ed. Daniel Carpi (Tel Aviv: Universitat Tel-Aviv, 1985), p. 56. Further evidence of the formula for males that includes the study of Torah is found in the above-mentioned Kaufmann-Budapest manuscript, A 82.1, p. 3. 14. Modena, “Life of Judah;’ pp. 137, 139, 153, 157, 158. 15. Abraham Yagel, Eshet hayyil (Venice, 1605–1606), 24 fol. 15a. On Yagel, see David Ruderman, Kabbalah, Magic, and Science (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1988), especially p. 16, and A Valley of Vision: The Heavenly Journey of Abraham ben Hananiah Yagel, ed. David Ruderman (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1990), especially pp. 64, 197, cf. pp. 33, 185–89, 193–99.1 would like to thank David Ruderman for drawing attention to the similarities of the two texts by Yagel and to the Klau Library, Hebrew Union CollegeJewish Institute of Religion, Cincinnati, for making a copy of Eshet hayyil available to me; see my “Finding Women’s Voices in Italian Jewish Literature,” in Women of the Word: Jewish Women and Jewish Writing, ed. Judith Baskin (Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1994), pp. 50– 69. 16. Biblioteca palatina, Parma codice de Rossi, 2651 (1395), fols. 89a–121b (Jerusalem microfilm no. 13566); another version of this manuscript, no. 782 in the library of Baron H.von Günzburg (Jerusalem microfilm no. 48049), is described in A.Neubauer, “David Messer Leon,” Israelietische Letterbode 10 (1884–1885): 106–111 and “Petrarque à Avignon,” Revue des études juives 10 (1885): 94–97. On David ben Judah, see Hava Tirosh-Rothschild, Between Worlds: The Life and Thought of Rabbi David ben Judah Messer Leon (Albany: State University of New York University Press, 1991), pp. 62–77, and “In Defense of Jewish Humanism,” Jewish History 3 (1988): 31–57. 17. I am grateful to Binyamin Richler, Director of the Institute for Microfilmed Hebrew Manuscripts at the Jewish National and University Library in Jerusalem, for sharing with me a draft of his exciting manuscript discoveries, which he will publish as “Hinnukhan vesihatan shel benot ashirin beitaliah bimei harenesans,” in Kiryat sefer. 18. Parma 3546, fol. 128. 19. Paul F.Grendler, Schooling in Renaissance Italy: Literacy and Learning 1300–1600 (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1989), pp. 88, 93. 20. On the fear that wives would reveal their husbands’ secrets, see Carla Freccero, “Economy, Woman, and Renaissance Discourse,” in Refiguring Women: Perspectives on Gender and the Italian Renaissance, ed. Marilyn Migiel and Juliana Schiesari (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1991), p. 202. 21. Biblioteca medicea laurenziana, Plut. 1.22, fols. 8a–7b (Jerusalem

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microfilm no. 17643). This manuscript is described by Umberto Cassuto, “Manoscritti ebraici della R.Biblioteca Laurenziana in Firenze,” in Festschrift fürAron Freimann zum 60. Geburtstage (Berlin: Soncino, 1935), pp. 17–21; cf. Del Reggimento de’ Principi di Egidio Romano (Firenze: Felice Le Monnier, 1858), pp. 157–58. 22. See Jordan, p. 4; Lisa Jardine, Still Harping on Daughters: Women and Drama in the Age of Shakespeare (New York: Columbia University Press, 1989), p. 107. 23. On Jewish preaching in Italy, see David B.Ruderman, ed., Preachers of the Italian Ghetto (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1992). 24. Umberto Cassuto, Un Rabbino Fiorentino del Secolo XV (Florence: n.p., 1908), pp. 29–33; Revista israelitica 4 (1907): 225–229; cf. Marc Saperstein in Preachers of the Italian Ghetto, pp. 24, 32. 25. Samuel Judah Katzenellenbogen, Shenem asar derashot (Venice, 1594; Lemberg: Bi-defus N.H.Grushman, 1811), no. 1, fols. 2a–5a; cf. Gedaliah Nigal, “Derashotav shel r. shmuel yehudah katzenellenbogen,” Sinai 36 (1972): 79–85 and Marc Saperstein, Preachers of the Italian Ghetto, pp. 30–31. 26. Jacob Francese, “Neged nashim ha-oskot belimmudei kodesh,” ed. Pnina Navè Levinson, Kol shire yaakov frances (Jerusalem: Mosad Byalik, 1969), pp. 347–349. 27. Gedalja ibn Jachja, Shevah hanashim, cited in Adolf Neubauer and Moritz Steinschneider, “Zur Frauenliteratur,” Israelitische Letterbode 10 (1884): 142; see my “Images of Women in Italian Jewish Literature in the Late Middle Ages,” in Proceedings of the Tenth World Congress of Jewish Studies (Jerusalem: World Union of Jewish Studies, 1990), Division B, 2:99–106. 28. King, p. 809; Grendler, p. 87. 29. Cf. Isaac Lampronti, Pachad Yitzhak (Lyck, 1866), 5:13a–16a. 30. The more legible version is Ms. Jerusalem 8* 1999, no. 114 (Ms. Livorno, Talmud Torah, in Carlo Bernheimer, Catalogue des manuscrits et livres rares hébraiques de la bibliothèque du talmud torah de Livourne (Livorno: Commune di Livorno, 1914), no. 23; another version is available in the Jewish Theological Seminary of America (JTSA) 7214, no. 114. For the published summary, see Isaac Lampronti, Pahad yitzhak (Jerusalem, 1986), 5:cols. 430–431, a critical version of the original volume three (Venice, 1753, reprinted in Benei Barak, n.d.), fols. 63b–64a; see under “Gillui arayot.” See Burke, p. 129; Grendler, p. 88. 31. Joseph Colon, Sheelot uteshuvot (Venice, 1519; Jerusalem: Makhon torani-sifrati Oraita, 1988), no. 160. 32.Assaf,2:121.

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33. On female students, see Livorno Cod. 111 Mnd., cited in Bernheimer, cols. 55–56. 34. Grendler, pp. 90–93. 35. Brian Pullan, The Jews of Europe and the Inquisition of Venice (Totowa, NJ: Barnes and Noble, 1983), p. 161. 36. Assaf, 2:171, 174, 197, 198, 199, 209, 210, 222, 237. Kenneth B.Stow and Sandra Debenedetti Stow, “Donne ebreé a Roma nell’età del ghetto: affetto, dipendenza, autonomia,” La Rassegna mensile di Israel 52 (1986): 94. 37. Yacov Boksenboim, ed., Iggerot melamedim (Tel Aviv: Universitat Tel Aviv, 1985), Iggron III, no. 89: “veishah ahat shelomedet mehakevudah zugati m.b.t. beshemonim perahim”; ibid., no. 189. 38.Assaf,2:197. 39. Stow and Stow, p. 94. 40. Aharon ben Mosheh, Ma ‘avar yabbok (Mantua, 1636; Zhitomir: Birdefus ha-chim Hanina Lipa, 1851), fol. 7a; Assaf, 4:54. 41. Modena, Hayyei yehudah, fol. 5b. 42. On Fioretta, see also Abramo Pesaro, “Le donne celebri Israelite,” Il Vessilo Israelitico 29 (1881): 33–34. 43. Boksenboim, Iggerot melamedim, “Iggron I,” no. 12, 52, 53, 54; Iggerot belt carmi, ed. Yacov Boksenboim (Tel Aviv: Universitat Tel Aviv, 1983), nos. 119, 120,256. 44. Aaron Z.Aescoly, ed., Sippur david hareuveni (Jerusalem: haHevrah ha-Erets Yisreelit le-historyah ve-etnografyah, 1949), pp. 115, 117, 119, 151, 193, 194, 223, text 57, 82; cf. Cecil Roth, The Jews in the Renaissance (Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society of America, 1959), pp. 52–53, and Assaf, 4:112–113. For background, see Shlomo Simonsohn, “Shilihuto hasheniyah shel david hareuveni beitaliah,” Tzion 26 (1961): 198–207. See also Boksenboim, Iggerot beit carmi, no. 129. 45. See also Hayyim Joseph David Azulai, Shem hagedolim (Vilna: Bi-defus Y.R.Rom, 1853), fols. 80a–b and, in Latin, “rabess,” or “rabisse…in officio rabinatus,” see David Nirenberg, “A Female Rabbi in Fourteenth-Century Zaragoza?” sefarad 51 (1991): 179–182. 46. Aescoly, p. 39; cited also in Adolf Neubauer, ed. Medieval Jewish Chronicles: Seder hehakhamim vekorot hayamim (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1893; Jerusalem, 1967), 2:154; Assaf, 2:112–13. Boksenboim, Iggerot beit carmi, no. 129; Yacob Boksenboim, ed., Iggerot rabbi yehudah aryeh mimodena (Tel Aviv: Universitat Tel Aviv, 1984), no. 231. 47. Yacob Boksenboim, ed., Pinkas kehal veronah (Tel Aviv: Universitat Tel Aviv, 1989), 2:403–405. 48. Jerusalem Ms. 8* 5492, copied by Abraham Farisol, see Shalom Sabar, “Bride, Heroine and Courtesan: Images of the Jewish Woman in Hebrew Manuscripts of the Renaissance in Italy,” Proceedings of the

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Tenth World Congress of Jewish Studies (Jerusalem, 1990), Division D2, pp. 63–70. 49. Alexander Marx, “R.Yosef ish arli betor moreh verosh yeshivah besienna,” Sefer hayovel likhvod levi ginzberg lemelat lo shivim shanah (New York, 1945), p. 294; cf. Louis Ginzberg, Legends of the Jews (Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society of America, 1939), 6:274, note 134. 50. Stow and Stow, p. 81. 51. Umberto Cassuto, “Les traductions judeo-italiennes du rituel,” Revue des études juives 89 (1930): 260–80. 52. See my article “Another More nevukhim: The Italian Background and the Educational Program of Leon Modena’s More nevukhim bikhtivah bilshonenu hakadosh” in From Ancient Israel to Modern Judaism… Essays in Honor of Marvin Fox, ed. Jacob Neusner, Ernest Frerichs, Nahum Sarna (Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1989), 3:89–110. 53. Samuel Aboab, Devar shemuel (Venice, 1702; Jerusalem: n.p., 1983), no. 321. 54.Azriel Diena, Sheelot uteshuvot, ed. Yacov Boksenboim (Tel Aviv: Universitat Tel Aviv, 1977), no. 6. 55. For example, see Nina Cardin, Out of the Depths I Call to You (Northvale, NJ: J.Aronson, 1992) and about tkhines, see the extensive work of Hava Weisler, for example, “Prayers in Yiddish and the Religious World of Ashkenazic Women,” in Jewish Women in Historical Perspective (Detroit: Wayne State University Press), pp. 159–81; and Devra Kay, “An Alternative Prayer Canon for Women: The Yiddish Seyder tkhines” in Zur Geschichte der jüdischen Frau in Deutschland, ed. Julius Carlebac (Berlin: Metropol-Verlag, 1993), pp. 49–96. 56. In manuscript, see Jechiel Kohen Manoscrivi’s 1565 “Sefer hokhmat nashim,” described by Moritz Steinschneider, “Die italienische Litteratur der Juden,” Monatsschrift für Geschichte und Wissenschaft des Judenthums 42 (1898): 520–21, no. 173 in the Segre-Amar manuscript collection, Jerusalem 38* 5834 and cited in the UCLA Ms. 779 box 4.7, fols. 33a–34b (Jerusalem no. 32360). I am grateful to S. Segre-Amar for permission to copy this manuscript and to Binyamin Richler for bringing it to my attention; in print see Mitzvot nashim melamdot: Precetti d’esser imparati dalle donne hebree (Venice, 1616; Padua, 1625; Venice, 1711); cf. JTSA Mic. 6887, from 1607. 57. Modena, Life of Judah, p. 91 and Tzori lanefesh (Venice, 1619). 58. Diena, Sheelot uteshuvot, no. 8: “veyorah bah ahat mehamorim” and no. 9. 59. Boksenboim, Iggerot beit carmi, no. 198. 60. Boksenboim, Iggerot beit carmi, no. 73. On music, see below and Don Harrán, “Madame Europa, Jewish Singer in Late Renaissance

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Mantua,” in Festa Musicologia: Essays in Honor of George J.Buelow, ed. Thomas J. Mathiesen and Benito V.Rivera (Stuyvesant, NY: Pendragon Press, 1995), pp. 198–204; Benjamin Ravid, “Curfew Time in the Ghetto of Venice,” in Society and Crusade: Studies in Honor of Donald C.Queller (Champaign and Urbana: University of Illinois Press), forthcoming, notes 66–68; Meyer Kayserling, Die Jüdische Frauen in der Geschichte, Literatur und Kunst (Hildesheim: F.A. Brockhaus, 1879), p. 320; Moritz Steinschneider, Hebraische Bibliographic (1872), 15:93, who quotes S.Romanin, Storia documentata di Venezia (Venice: P.Naratovich, 1853– 1861), p. 357. 61. Boksenboim, Iggerot melamedim, Iggron III, no. 166; idem., Iggerot beit rieti (Tel Aviv: Universitat Tel Aviv, 1987), nos. 52, 53, 54. 62. Boksenboim, Iggerot beit carmi, nos. 178, 209; Diena, Sheelot uteshuvot, no. 110; Boksenboim, Iggerot melamedim, Iggron I, no. 36; Assaf, 2:106. 63. Boksenboim, Iggerot melamedim, Iggron I, nos. 49, 51. 64. Cecil Roth, “Lettere d’amore di un ebreo italiano del 1500,” La Rassegna mensile di Israel 1 (1925): 38–46; Franz Kobler, Letters of Jews Throughout the Ages (New York: East and West Library, 1952), pp. 378–79; Boksenboim, Iggerot beit carmi, pp. 332–36. 65. Boksenboim, Iggerot beit carmi, no. 276. 66. Boksenboim, Iggerot beit carmi, no. 276. 67. Shlomo Simonsohn, The Jews in the Duchy of Milan (Jerusalem: Israel Academy of Sciences and Humanities, 1982–1984), 4:no. 3175. See Burke, p. 129. 68. JTSA Mic., 3305, p. 8. 69. Leonello Modona, “Sul nome di una scrittrice ebrea,” I1 Vessilo Israelitico 35 (1887): 314–16. 70. Aescoly claimed that the inscription in a manuscript given to David Hareuveni by Sarah, the grandmother of Yehiel of Pisa, was in Hebrew, but there is no evidence for this in the text, pp. 57, 119. 71. See my article “Servants and Sexuality: Seduction, Surrogacy, and Rape: Some Observations concerning Class, Gender, and Race in Early Modern Italian Jewish Families,” in Gender and Judaism: The Transformation of Tradition, ed. Tamar M.Rudavsky (New York: New York University Press, 1995), pp. 81–97. 72. On the role of convents in the lives of women at risk, see Sherrill Cohen, The Evolution of Women’s Asylums Since 1500 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1992) and Grendler, pp. 96–100. 73. The proofs for Giustina Levi-Perotti’s work being a forgery from the sixteenth or seventeenth century are found in Medaro Morici, “Giustina Levi-Perotti e le petrarchiste marchigiane: contribute alia storia delle falsificazioni letterarie nei sec. XVI e XVII,” Rassegna nazionale

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21 (16 Augusto 1899): 662–95; see also Mario Emilio Cosenza, Biographical and Bibliographical Dictionary of the Italian Humanists and of the World of Classical Scholarship in Italy, 1300–1800 (Boston: G.K.Hall, 1962), 3:2668–69. I am grateful to Cheryl Tallan for bringing these citations to my attention. Kayserling, Die jüdische Frauen in der Geschichte Literatur und Kunst, p. 158; Giosuè Corducci and Severino Ferrari, Le Rime di Petrarca (Firenze: G..C.Sansoni, 1910), pp. 9–10, includes the poem attributed to Giustina Levi-Perotti’s influence, but the notes make it clear that her existence had been questioned as early as 1888. 74. Pellegrino Ascarelli, Debora Ascarelli Poetessa (Rome: Sindicato italiano arti grafiche, 1925); see also Pesaro, “Alle Donne celebri Israelite,” pp. 34–37 and 67–68. 75. Roth, p. 57. 76. See Sara’s letter to Bonifaccio, January 10, 1619, published with her Manifesto. 77. Emanuele Antonio Cicogna, “Notizie intorno a Sara Copia Sulam, coltissima ebrea veneziana del secolo XVII, Venezia,” Memorie del Regio Istituto Veneto di Scienze. Lettere et Arti, 12, part 2 (1865): 237. 78. Cf. Christine de Pisan and Margaret Lucas Cavendish, see Natalie Zemon Davis, “Women Historical Writers,”Beyond their Sex: Learned Women of the European Past, ed. Patricia Labalme (New York: New York University Press, 1984), pp. 159, 165; and more recently, Perri Klass, “Turning My Words Against Me,” New York Times, Sunday April 5, 1987, sec. 7, pp. 1, 45–46. In another case of correspondence between a woman and a man, Isotta Nogarola and Ludovico Foscarini, all his letters have been preserved but only one of hers. See King, p. 813. 79. Carmela Reale Simioli, “Tracce di letteratura ligure (1617–1650) nelle carte napoletane dell’Archivio Dorio d’Angri,” Accademie e biblioteche d’ltalia 49 (1981): 321–339; Archivio di Stato di Napoli, Archivio da Marcantonio Doria, fs. 688, fol. 12a. 80. Cicogna, “Notizie,” pp. 232–235; Moise Soave, “Sara Copia Sullam,” Il Corriere Israelitico 15 (1876–7): 220–21; Carla Boccato, “Nove Testimonianze su Sara Copia Sullam,” La Rassegna mensile di Israel 46 (1980): 272–75; Leonello Modona, Sonetti editi e inediti (Bologna: n.p., 1887), pp. 21–27; Johannes Christian Wolff, Bibliotheca hebraea (Hamburg and Leipzig, 1727), 3:1162. 81. Since 1973, Carla Boccato of Venice has been publishing in Italian an important series of researches on Sara Copia Sullam, mostly in La Rassegna mensile di Israel. Boccato’s most recent and most extensive piece on Sara which contains a vast bibliography on Sara listing all of her own articles is in “Sara Copia Sullam, La poetessa del ghetto di

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Venezia: episodi sue vita in un manoscritto del secolo xvii,” Italia 6 (1987): 104–218; see also, Don Harrán, “Doubly Tainted, Doubly Talented: The Jewish Poet Sara Copia as a Heroic Singer,” in Musica Franca: Essays in Honor of Frank A.D’Accone, ed. Irene Aim et. al. (New York: Pendragon Press, 1996), pp. 367–422. 82. On sumptuary laws, see Howard Adelman, “Rabbis and Reality: The Public Roles of Jewish Women in the Renaissance and Catholic Restoration,” Jewish History 5:1 (1991): 27–40. 83. Grendler, pp. 93, 94.

CHAPTER 6

To Educate or Instruct? Du Bosc and Fénelon on Women Colleen Fitzgerald

The querelle des femmes is a convenient rubric that incorporates all aspects of the debate concerning the status, ability, and value of women in early modern Europe. The tradition and format of the querelle was that of rhetoric, and in the early part of the seventeenth century it was preoccupied with a reassessment of older arguments.1 The sources for the three stances represented in the debate—the superiority of men, the superiority of women, the equality of women and men—were the same: biblical, classical, and philosophical texts. Both the rhetoric and the debate as a purely intellectual exercise were being challenged by pragmatic realities. The success of Isabella of Castile and Elizabeth I of England in the previous century presented a new pattern, and although Salic law was a fact in France, a female regent in practice overrode it.2 This moved the querelle beyond an argument of philosophy, manners, or religion to a pragmatic assessment of the role of women and how they should be educated. Jacques Du Bosc (1600–1669) was a participant in the querelle des femmes. François de Salignac de la Mothe Fénelon (1651–1715), though not directly concerned with the debate, dealt with the subject, and his views can be seen as an extension of the debate. The issues each writer addressed—and ultimately, their view of the place of women in seventeenth-century French society—further our understanding of the life of women in the period. The differences in their work, which spans fifty years, can be read as indicators of shifting opinion regarding women among a particular audience. Both 159

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Du Bosc and Fénelon wrote on women’s education for the leisured, educated classes: the aristocracy and the haute bourgeoisie. Du Bosc was essentially concerned with women’s interior life, not with reshaping women’s place in society. In his writings he neither specified particular actions nor gave instructions, but assumed that his readers were capable of drawing their own conclusions and incorporating them into their lives. Fénelon, on the other hand, with his detailed descriptions of conversations, scenarios, and anecdotes to be used in educating young women, revealed a very different underlying attitude. He did not trust his readers to make independent judgements. A woman needed to know only enough to perform her allotted functions. In her reading and other matters of education she would be subject to her confessor. She was not a dévote, a mystic, or a scholar, but a Christian of simple and sound belief. She should not question her status or the duties that fell to her. These two approaches represent two conflicting educational philosophies: education versus instruction. Education implies a deep and profound development of the individual, recognizing her freedom to develop a facility with language that will serve in the complex social, intellectual, and religious debates of the day. This was the view adopted by Du Bosc. Instruction suggests a more rigid and rule-bound development, focusing less on natural grace than on appropriate behavior. This was clearly Fénelon’s position. Implicit in the advocacy of these positions is a shift in the expectations that their society had of women. Du Bosc’s and Fénelon’s support for disparate ideals are apparent in each man’s most influential works, L’Honneste femme3 (1632) by Du Bosc and the Traité de l’éducation des filles4 (1687) by Fénelon. THE CONTEXT OF THE WORKS Du Bosc was born about 1600 and died in 1669. A Franciscan, he entered the frères mineurs de 1’observance, known in France as the cordeliers, probably in Paris at the cordelier monastery in the Faubourg Saint Marcel.5 After ordination, he received his Bachelor of Theology degree from the Sorbonne, with which the cordeliers were traditionally associated. Du Bosc was mentioned in the memoirs of the Jansenist scholar Godefroi Hermant in 1657 as conseiller et prédicateur ordinaire du roi.6 Holders of this position, chosen by the grand aumônier, had the

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honor of preaching before the king. The office recognized the authority of their teachings on religion.7 In the same passage, Hermant noted that, “though he was the author of L’Honneste femme, he was not judged virtuous enough to be a bishop, nor significant enough to oblige Port Royal to respond to him in writing.”8 Whether his failure to win the miter was a result of his writing on women’s concerns, lack of ability or social status, or simply too much competition is open to debate. Hermant’s alignment with Jansenism and Du Bosc’s opposition to it make the observation suspect; how better to undermine the integrity of an opponent than by casting aspersions on his ability? Du Bosc is said to have left his friary around 1630 and returned in 1640. This has been the cause of some controversy, though it is obvious that Chapelain’s explanation of it was highly questionable.9 There was some speculation that he spent the time as a libertin, though any association with that group does not seem to have continued after his return to the monastery, nor is it borne out by the opinions expressed in Le Philosophe indifferent (1643), his principle philosophical work, or in later editions of L’Honneste femme.10 The alternative explanation—that the years were spent in a monastery— is at least as likely, for the practice was not uncommon. We do know that in 1653 Du Bosc visited Rome with a friend, François Mullard, who also left his Capuchin monastery and was later readmitted to the Friars Minor.11 Louis Moreri states, without documentation, that Du Bosc died in Guyenne in 1661, though his last work was published in 1664 and could not have been posthumous, as it deals with an event that occurred in that year.12 The only contemporary record of his death is an unpublished notation, dated 1669, in which he is described as a “noble man and ecclesiastical writer,” and as a person praised by king, queen, and pope. It is apparent from this cordelier necrology that his confrères thought well of both his abilities and his character.13 Du Bosc’s L’Honneste femme was published in 1632, and soon became a popular guide to women’s behavior. The introductory letter to the 1634 English edition recounts the response of the critics, and informs the reader that the approval of Madame de Combalet had prompted Du Bosc to reissue the work; the first edition was flawed, he said, because he was unable to supervise the typesetting.14 A second section was added after 1634, and by 1635 a third section was included. At least eight further editions had been issued by 1643.15

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The third section of the 1643 edition contains an additional dedication to “Son Altesse Royale Madame Christine de France Princesse de Piedmont Duchesse de Savoye et Reyne de Cypre.” The variety of additions to the introductory material indicates that Du Bosc and the publisher believed the work to be both important and lucrative. Published in English in 1639 as The Compleat Woman, it was retranslated and published until well into the eighteenth-century in England and Holland as well as in France.16 Of Fénelon much has been written.17 Of most interest to this analysis is the time he spent at the Nouvelles Catholiques, a secular order founded in 1634 by Jean François Gondi, Archbishop of Paris, and the Compagnie de la Propagation de la Foi.18 Letters patent were granted in 1637 to the foundation to aid in the conversion of Huguenot girls—some the daughters of mixed parentage, others removed from Protestant homes for the purpose of conversion. In June 1678, not yet twenty-seven, Fénelon was appointed superior and spiritual advisor of the convent. His duties would have included presiding over general meetings and decisions regarding personnel, as well as examining candidates for the order to determine their acceptance, rejection, or transfer. He also would have supervised the election of the superior, named preachers, confessors, and chaplains, and had financial control, receiving donations and reviewing accounts annually. The constitution of the convent required that he be responsible for spiritual direction. In practice, this was not the case,19 though he would have been apprised of the reading that was encouraged: the Chrétien Intérieur of Bernière, the Imitation of Christ of Thomas à Kempis, and works by François de Sales, Theresa of Avila, and John of the Cross.20 From December 1685 to July 1687, Fénelon was part of a missionary campaign in Aunis and Saintonge, near La Rochelle. The purpose of the mission was an extension of the work of the convent. Fénelon formally relinquished his position at the convent in August 1689.21 Fénelon’s Traité was written in 1685 and published in 1687.22 It is assumed that it was written primarily for the instruction of the nine daughters of the due and duchesse de Beauvillier, though it would almost certainly have been published in any case. It surely grew, in part, out of Fénelon’s experience with the Nouvelles Catholiques and in the mission field,23 and it was the means by which he could be judged for the position of précepteur of the young due de Bourgogne. Opposition to his appointment—there were accusations of

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Jansenism—were countered by the quality of the Traité itself, the support of M. Tronson, and the patronage of the due de Beauvillier.24 De Beauvillier’s pleasure in and approval of the work were obviously instrumental in determining Fénelon’s ultimate success; on September 3, 1689 Fénelon took up his duties as précepteur.25 With the duc de Beauvillier as gouverneur, he was responsible for the education of duc de Bourgogne. In this position, he produced a program of studies for his charge as well as a body of correspondence with the sousprécepteur Abbé Fleury on the subject of education.26 Fénelon did not develop as an educator in isolation. Madame de Maintenon was then engaged in the establishment of St. Cyr and, after coming to court in 1689, Fénelon developed a friendship with her.27 He counseled individuals and the community of St. Cyr in correspondence and as a preacher.28 His other works devoted to education were Télémaque, 29 Avis à un Dame de Qualité sur l’éducation de Mademoiselle sa fille,30 and the Lettre a Louis XIV,31 These works demonstrate the breadth of Fénelon’s style and knowledge. They were all written after the Traité and are extensions and elaborations of the opinions expressed in the Traité. Jacques Du Bosc and François Fénelon, each a product of his own time, presented differing views of how women should be educated and, more important, wrote of the purpose of that education. When we examine both their texts and their motives, the differences in their approach and reasoning will become clear. L’HONNESTE FEMME Du Bosc accepted the importance of the context of society, though he concentrated primarily on the individual’s contribution to the shaping of that context. That he was principally concerned with a leisured, educated class is apparent; he assumed that his readers had the leisure to read. But though his conclusions are initially directed at a narrow segment of society,32 they are in no manner limited to these few. He addressed the work specifically to women, yet he also invited men to learn from it. His prescriptions are clearly intended to apply to everyone and every class, since such behaviors are, in principle, open to all, and most convincingly grounded in his understanding of law and nature. Du Bosc goes far beyond the compendium of manners in this work; he based his ideals not on a restricted social necessity but rather on

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his comprehensive understanding of grace. In Du Bosc’s view, ideal behaviors shaped by non-Christian cultures would not damage the structures of society, but serve to reinforce them. In addressing public, social, and political roles, Du Bosc was attempting to demonstrate how his particular vision integrated a variety of authorities.33 In examining L’Honneste femme, one begins to see what could be called Du Bosc’s social vision and the place of the individual within that vision. He viewed the world and his society from a vantage point that was neither exceptional nor exclusive, and which consequently provides the reader with a sounding of the temper of the times, apparent in his descriptions of admirable and ideal behaviors as well as of those behaviors he condemns. An examination of his judgements and arguments is therefore useful in giving depth and clarity to the whole period.34 It is worth remarking that, although throughout this work the issue of estate or status is frequently addressed, it is not necessarily traditional social ranking that Du Bosc emphasized. Rather, it is a status based on heroism or virtue that, in turn, incorporates his understanding of grace. Du Bosc did not advocate that women should become leaders or public figures, but he did argue that they have the capacity to outstrip conventional or archetypical male leaders. The heroism and honneste of women is not an unnatural expression, but rather an expression of the essential relationship between nature and gracefulness. Throughout the introductory epistle, Du Bosc articulates his beliefs concerning the relationship between society and the ethics embodied in Christianity. The first, integral to his approach and subtly demonstrated throughout the book, was the certainty that true Christian behavior and the secular world are not mutually exclusive. One can and should live in the world, without disdain for society. In this Du Bosc attempted to reach beyond the teaching of François de Sales,35 who was concerned primarily with private, devotional life. Du Bosc, in contrast, placed women in the salon, and advises on the kind of conversation and behavior expected in what could only be described as a secular environment: “It is true that nothing is more important than to know the art of agreeableness, and to make oneself liked in company: we all have an inclination to society.”36 Like de Sales, he grounded behaviors in the virtues of Christianity. The inclination to society that Du Bosc observed was the means by which an individual could express virtue and overcome vice, and so achieve a fuller understanding and recognition of the grace-filled life.37 By

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citing neither doctrine nor tradition as proofs, Du Bosc illustrated the essential correctness of that tradition according to natural law, which he understood to be a primary foundation of authority. That is to say, although natural law is primary from the viewpoint of nature or human experience, “divine” law is nonetheless primary from the point of view of its comprehensiveness, as he had argued in Le Philosophe indifferent?38 Natural law, formulated to provide a rationale for pre-Christian concepts of virtue, incorporated innate or implicit knowledge of reason and justice. Humanity, created by God, is, according to Du Bosc, naturally reasonable, naturally just.39 This understanding of natural law, and of the hierarchy of Mosaic and finally Christian law, supports Du Bosc’s belief in the important duchesse d’Aiguillon that “God, demonstrating in the same race, the position of women in society. He writes in the dedication to the wonders of women, as well as those of men, would have both in Court, to make them appear in the same time and theatre as the greatest ornaments of our age” (L’Honneste femme, n.p.). His direct references to honnêteté further support this position.40 It is apparent that Du Bosc’s approach to the intrinsic value and education of women is predicated on several principles: that by nature and grace women are capable of achieving virtue, and that this is not only possible but desirable in the day-to-day world. He further contends that, as educated, graceful (in the fullest sense of the word) women take their place in the world, they are able to shape it, thus contributing to the context of their lives. In this he attempts to integrate secular and religious cultural authorities. His advocacy of education and self-awareness is a bid to free women from servitude and enable them to develop a conscious moral sense. In his view, there is a connection between gracefulness in action and the virtue of honnêteté. L’Honneste femme is by definition free because her educated inclinations (i.e., her developed nature) bring her actions within her own power. The 1658 edition provides further evidence for this position, for it included an avertissement, giving his reason for adding a third part to the work: “I wish to expose to [women] the impertinence as well as the malice of those who wish to persuade them that Devotion is tiresome in Society and disagreeable in conversation …” (L’Honneste femme, n. p.). In other words, he condemned those who would enforce a strict demarcation between the religious and the secular life. He insisted that the purpose of his work was to

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demonstrate the natural complementarity of religious expression and normal social intercourse and, beyond this, to argue that external life should be permeated by meaningful interiority. He goes on to point to women’s warm reception of de Sales’ work, noting that men have been less receptive to it and hoping that his own text will fare better. He recognized the prevalent distinctions made between men and women but observed that, as far as essentials were concerned, external distinctions were minor, noting that “this difference of sex concerns almost nothing except the exterior; therefore it is of so little importance that I would have made myself ridiculous if I had tried to discuss in detail dress, airs, curtseying or hair…” (L’Honneste femme, 1:4). Du Bosc was criticized for using honneste in the title, for some considered it an exclusively male term. Honnêteté is a complex term so nuanced that there is difficulty assigning a single definition to it. Maurice Magendie described it as the most comprehensive attribute with regard to politesse,41 incorporating a quality of morality as well as civility. Du Bosc’s usage intimates that honnêteté also incorporates a measure of wisdom, and especially of sanctity. The grafting of wisdom and sanctity onto virtue to produce the honneste homme or femme was undoubtedly the product of a range of elements: the questioning attitude of the so-called New Philosophy, the impact of Neoplatonic humanism, and the effect of the reforming Church. In this context the wider notion of honnêteté enabled Du Bosc to speak on several levels simultaneously. In the avertissment Du Bosc asserts that, even in pagan times, the importance of religion in women’s education was necessary: “those who want to shape the virtuous woman in any century have wanted her to be of the religion of her country” (L’Honneste femme, n. p.). In his own time Christianity, believed to be the one true religion, was all the more necessary. It was not, however, the only source of inspiration. In his own thinking he drew from both pagan and Christian traditions: Jerome, de Sales, Seneca, and Plutarch (L’Honneste femme, n. p.). Implicit in his arguments is a second debate, that of the rigorists and the casuists. Reaching beyond the example of de Sales, Du Bosc advocates a society that, although founded on Christian principles, is also open to le monde. Recognizing that his readers would be engaged in the world, Du Bosc attempts to define the world in terms of the sacred. De Sales, in contrast, advocated a certain distancing from the world and its temptations.

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“Games, dances, parties, ceremony and theatre are all things that in themselves are not at all evil,” he wrote. Instead, ”[t]hey are neutral and can be well or badly used. At the same time they are dangerous and it is even more dangerous to be attached to them.”42 Du Bosc agrees to some extent, but his rationale differs. L’Honneste femme is an ethical work, addressing manners and morals, but Du Bosc is also a theologian, and though addressing secular life and its trials, he is constantly aware of the theological implications of his statements.43 Part One of L’Honneste femme divides naturally into three sections. The first establishes a basis from which all activities may be measured, namely the skills of reading and conversing. Du Bosc argues that, for women, it is not only permissible but necessary to read and reason (L’Honneste femme, 1:1). Reading is a primary skill that enables other skills, conversation and contemplation, to be brought into play. As reading is the mother of knowledge, judgment is the father. Reading is necessary for the acquisition of manners and fecundity of thought; it serves as a distraction, and makes “la solitude moins ennuyeuse.” Du Bosc then stresses conversation, recognizing it as an essential skill and a principal means of communicating. Far more than entertainment, conversation is a fundamental means of acquiring knowledge and presenting oneself to the world. Consequently, discretion in one’s manner and expression is as necessary as virtue. But conversation is a complex skill. On the one hand, people can be criticized for being too simple and straightforward in their speech. On the other, if they have conversational skills, they can be seen as too manipulative (L’Honneste femme, 1:30). Du Bosc cites three qualities that Socrates wished for in his disciples—discretion, silence, and modesty—pointing to their opposites as proof of their necessity: imprudence, babble, and impudence. These virtues, however, should not be taken to excess (L’Honneste femme, 1:31–32). Du Bosc recognizes that discretion is far more difficult than eloquence. Keeping secrets, hearing good advice, or gaining knowledge are not possible when one is babbling. The most telling comparison he makes is to butterflies—an analogy that is still current—for those who are unable to focus on a single topic, but flit from one idea to another.44 As he did in the chapter on reading, Du Bosc moves from proving the value of virtue to pointing out the dangers of vice. Without

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prudence or practical intelligence, virtue fails. Those who have no means of judging individuals or conversation fall prey to conversation of the looser sort. Du Bosc stresses the danger of conversation with vicious or evil persons, citing the examples of Alcibiades, St. Mary the Egyptian, and finally Eve (L’Honneste femme, 1:39, 40). The second section of Part One of L’Honneste femme deals with the behaviors that women should strive for and the difficulties they will encounter in doing so. Du Bosc here calls himself a casuist, not only for women but for a right-minded attitude to life. Disdaining extremes, he supports neither the libertines who question everything nor those who live entirely by the dictates of society. He recognizes that reputation may not accurately reflect character, since the reputation of an individual is based on the response of others to his or her behavior. On the other hand, Du Bosc feels we should not cease to care about reputation, for some people model their lives on example rather than on prudence (L’Honneste femme, 1:65). His refusal to identify any virtue as specifically feminine or masculine is repeated in the chapter “Du Courage.” Of women, he observes that “[t]he histories are full of their noble actions for the conservation of their country, for the love of their husbands, and for the religion of their ancestors” (L’Honneste femme, 1:89). Courage does not involve seeking out dangerous situations; that is simply rashness. Rather, courage is a virtue of freedom, unforced, and with a good measure of prudence. Women are particularly disposed to courage as they have the appropriate temperature, neither too hot nor too cold. He illustrates his argument with numerous examples, such as that of Theoxene,45 who chose suicide and infanticide over submission. In this she exhibited great courage. Nonetheless, he is quick to condemn suicide. Theoxene acted admirably within her preChristian context, but there is a distinction between mindless resolve and courage (L’Honneste femme, 1:96). Suicide in the face of adversity, which we read of in the ancients, is for Christians an act of despair. His final observation in this section is that women, whether through resolution or Three Marys of the New Testament (L’Honneste femme, 1:97). courage, are more constant than men, for they have the example of the In a rather convoluted argument, Du Bosc presents inconstancy and in all things, including matters of the soul, for even a well-deserved constancy as equally virtuous. He equates inconstancy with flexibility and openness to change (L’Honneste femme, 1:97). Change is

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necessary loyalty could be equated with obstinacy (L’Honneste femme, 1:98). Constancy must be guided by prudence. In a later chapter, “De la Prudence et de la Discretion,” he claims that prudence is the touchstone of all virtue: “it is the virtue which for [women] is most necessary and which gives them more authority” (L’Honneste femme, 1:106). The graceful and harmonious link between the best elements of constancy and inconstancy is practical intelligence, or phronêsis in the Aristotelian and prudentia in the Thomistic traditions.46 For Aquinas, prudence is the major integrating virtue insofar as it is capable of providing both the most comprehensive and the most down-to-earth view of reality.47 Significantly, Du Bosc believes that this virtue is the most authoritative, for it is the arbiter of the organic structure of the soul’s life. That women are capable of exhibiting prudence leads him further to question their exclusion from government. For the soul is without gender, and capable of prudence despite the physical attributes of the body. This chapter contains the crux of his argument and was also one of his motives for writing the book. He has, to this point, articulated desirable behaviors and attitudes not by isolating them as atomistic instances of conduct or as responses to prescribed rules, but rather by situating them in the context of the virtues founded on prudence, which appears to be the self-determining basis for free, spontaneous, intelligent, and responsible action. At every turn he has called on prudence to be the arbiter (L’Honneste femme, 1:101) Prudence guides reading, conversation, and the development and improvement of one’s humor. A prudent woman guards her tongue, and so demonstrates discretion, silence, and modesty in conversation. She chooses her reading with care and discrimination; she moderates her temperament and balances her humors. Behavior is guided not by an external set of rules, but by precepts much more subtle.48 The final section of Part One addresses behavior in society. Du Bosc’s manner of exposition, presenting both sides, is again convoluted. This was, perhaps, his means of introducing complexity of argument to his readers. It might also have been a reaction to the multitude of stresses in the society of the time, notably the tension between the extremes of the popular aristocratic ideal and that of balanced moderation. The reader is never certain whether Du Bosc is unable or simply reluctant to set down absolute rules. In light of his later work, it is more likely that it was a conscious decision, for setting absolute rules would have restricted choices and, consequently,

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the value of those choices. Nevertheless, the work is decidedly clumsy as he attempts to meet the expectations of the devout as well as the reader predisposed to le monde. “Des Habits ou des Ornamens” takes a different view from that which might be expected of a moralist. Du Bosc feels that to resist fashion would be foolish. Idealization of the ancient world, taken to its logical extreme, he argues, would result in people emulating Adam and wearing animal skins. Beauty is a gift from God and must be recognized as such, for it may indicate a natural disposition to the good (“and certainly this must be a sign of the inclination we have of goodness” [L’Honneste femme, 1:127]). Everyone is drawn to beauty as to the good (a common Neoplatonic view that Du Bosc mentions specifically at the beginning of the chapter). Contrary to the view of “le vulgaire” there is no opposition between beauty and virtue, for “truly if virtue is necessary for the establishment of sovereign authority, beauty at least seems suitable to it” (L’Honneste femme, 1:127). Here again the interrelation of beauty, virtue, authority, and sanctity (which for Du Bosc is a function or consequence of grace and nature in cooperation) is stated explicitly. At the same time, he recognizes at the opposite pole the danger of beauty and, using the polite analogy of a town under siege, blames not the beauty but the spirit for falling to the enemy. This allusion to illicit seduction, or the failure of the spirit, as it were, to organize the flesh vitally, is also an apt analogy for society. By abandoning the guidance of authority, society was in danger of falling prey to isolation, fragmentation, and vice. In the chapter titled “De la Bonne Grace,” he argues that women seem to possess grace naturally, and that social grace is necessary for harmonious life in society. “The soul is not more necessary for life than good grace is in order to please,” writes Du Bosc. “Grace gives brilliance to beautiful women and compensates for the lack of beauty in others. When one possesses this charming quality, all that one undertakes is becoming and pleasant” (L’Honneste femme, 1:144). Although grace is a natural quality, at the same time it has règles and loix (rules and laws) for just as “the beauty of the body depends in some way on that of the mind,” so the laws of grace are intimately linked to morality (L’Honneste femme, 1:145). To preserve bonne grace, one must know how “to rule the movements of the soul as well as those of the body” (L’Honneste femme, 1:145). He next argues that the most important rule is to avoid not only unnatural artifice

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and constraint, but also to avoid the striving for impossible excellence or expending too much effort, for in such cases, no matter how worthy, hate and not love is the result. Naïveté, by which he seems to mean unaffected natural simplicity, is the best guideline. “As constraint displeases [even] in the finest actions, naturalness pleases in the least [most ordinary] ones” (L’Honneste femme, 1:146). For naïveté is a reflection of the “good grace” that does everything “par nature et sans étude”—naturally and effortlessly. This profound simplicity eliminates vanity. For Du Bosc, the opposite of simplicity is duplicity: “to rule the movements of the soul as well as those of the body” (L’Honneste femme, 1:145). He finds the source for this in the excessive desire to please, which is often the fault of the environment. If women are educated to be merely decorative, they are little better than slaves. The conclusion of Part One, “De l’Amitié, et de l’amour d’inclination et d’eselection,” draws together the principal threads of the book in his treatment of love. Again, contrary views are presented through example and analogy: eselection is generative and constant like the sun; inclination is reflective and variable like the moon. The intensity and passion of both approaches are defined and defended. Du Bosc recognizes the intensity of desire that inclination produces and deals at length with the irresistible nature of passionate love. Love, however, is also dangerous and can lead to regret. Conversely, esclection, grounded in considered and dispassionate judgment, lacks fervor. Du Bosc’s solution is again to combine the two in a moderated balance as he did when addressing grace in “de la Bonne Grace” (L’Honneste femme, 1:183). As grace was the product of nature and a reflective morality, love is best understood as both natural affection and esteem based on reflection.49 He concludes by situating the whole discussion in the larger context of self and love in which the Jewish and Christian traditions are implicitly united in the images of the Ark of the Covenant and an unspecified episcopal authority who appears to be St. Augustine. “As the Ark was between the two Cherubim; so God must be between two hearts which love each other,” writes Du Bosc. “He should be the knot of our amities, to make them strong and reasonable. And to speak like that great Bishop, who has written so divinely of this matter; Love is the more laudable on earth, as it resembles that in Heaven.”50 In both this chapter on love and the earlier chapter on grace, Du Bosc addresses social graces and sexual love, but he is at pains to

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demonstrate that they are both grounded in a wider meaning of both grace and love. Just as prudence guides the development and expression of grace, so too the moral character of the lover and the loved one are integral to a true and lasting love. Du Bosc believed women to be as capable as men of controlling their passions and coming to an intelligent basis for moral and virtuous behavior. The argument in this work is often tenuous and convoluted, but it is unlikely that it presented a major difficulty for integration into contemporary life. Its efficiency is rather to be seen in its providing a rationale for the development of behaviors within a larger context than simply that of manners or apparent frivolities. Du Bosc’s implicit thesis appears to be that there are no independent mores outside of the context of what it means to be human, and that this essential humanity must naturally include different sorts of related gracefulness that lead to prudence, friendship, and love. He is clearly challenging a narrow, fragmented view of society, as well as the view that limits authority to the nature of man alone. He effectively argues that if we are to get a proper grasp of nature, we must first extend this concept to everything in human nature, and second, provide an articulated understanding of how such nature fits into a coherent account of cultural, moral, intellectual, and spiritual behaviors. If one reads only the early edition, the assessment of the work as primarily a book of manners may seem to hold true, for Du Bosc’s advocacy of reading, conversation, and moderated behavior are more easily seen as social accomplishments alone. In the later editions, however, he provides a larger context (presumably developed in light of his philosophical work Le Philosophe indifferent). By 1647 he had added two further sections, each as long as the original text. These sections are reiterations and expansions of the same ideas, but serve to bind those ideas more closely to his understanding of right behavior. As we have seen, right behavior is far more than social nicety. In the later editions, Du Bosc added an explicit theological dimension, which in his view augments his notion of the authority of the moral, intellectual, and spiritual dimensions, for he grounds his analysis on natural law fulfilled in divine revealed law. As a consequence, appropriate social law (the venue of manners) explicitly becomes an integral reflection of both natural and divine law. Here the analysis employed elsewhere to illustrate the relations between nature and grace are pressed into similar service: to demonstrate first the necessary compatibility between civilité and la piété de Dieu,

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and second, the organization of the life of the soul under the authority of Christian vertu, which, as we have seen throughout, is informed or infused by grace (note that the word infuse is, as elsewhere, prominently employed in the passage below). Although Du Bosc admits that gallantry, airs, and studied posture are necessary in social life, they are only, so to speak, “les ongles & les cheveux” of the honest man and the honest woman. In order to gain real respect, one must have prudence, which is based on reflective morality, for “as neither man nor woman can acquire this esteem with prudence, in the same way it is impossible for those to have prudence without probity, or probity without morality. This is the foundation of all my arguments, and must be that of all their intentions” (L’Honneste femme, 2:40–41). It is obvious that the morality of which Du Bosc speaks is grounded in Christian virtue, which should permeate all behavior. The necessity of obedience, based on Christian teachings, to societal stability is paramount, for, according to Du Bosc, Christian teachings validate the whole. He was aware of the pressures on society that were undermining traditional hierarchical structures and sought to entrench these structures by reasserting the importance of their foundation: empowering grace. “The light of grace compensates for the eclipses of reason; it averts vagrant and wandering stars; it gives it expression and limits which do not remove its freedom but only its uncertainty; which do not act against it but encourage it” (L’Honneste femme, 2:241). Recognizing these things, he counseled neither the rejection of pleasure nor the austerity of Jansenism. In this he was echoing Richeome and de Sales: our humanity is a gift to delight in, not something to be rejected as unholy. And, like these two, he sees the realization of the gift through an educated mind complemented by a mature, developed spirituality. Du Bosc proposes a role for women that may appear superficially to be the same as that enshrined in tradition, that of a chaste and graceful individual, but it is a role nonetheless with a different basis. He proposes an intelligent, informed acceptance of duty and responsibility instead of a mindless acceptance of what is imposed. The end may be much the same, for Du Bosc seldom mentions, and never questions, the occupation of his readers, and though he raises the possibility of women in public life he does not dwell on it. He envisions, however, a society in which all actions are to be well thought out and all tasks undertaken voluntarily without coercion by either

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political or religious authority. That L’Honneste femme was so well received is an indication of, if not the popularity of his views, certainly the popularity of the issues he raised. That this work was reprinted so often suggests that his view of the ability and promise of women was well received. TRAITÉ DE L’ÉDUCATION DES FILLES In the Traité de l’ éducation des filles, Fénelon sets out his view on the appropriate education of girls by describing what should be encouraged and what should be forbidden. In doing so, he clearly aligns himself with instruction rather than éducation. He delineates current patterns of behavior and the means of encouraging a young woman to resist those which are unsuitable. He lists occupations that should concern mothers, and occupations they should avoid. Using examples and fictional conversations, he sets out a plan for guiding a child through the various stages of development to her appropriate station in life. He first presents a justification for the work, arguing for the validity of education for women, the areas where emphasis ought to be laid, and the dangers of neglect. He follows this by stressing the importance of early childhood training and the means of teaching, emphasizing example and the content of instruction. He then turns to the faults of young girls, particularly vanity, and describes the appropriate duties of women and how these ought to be carried out. He also notes in passing the paucity of governesses and the methods whereby a body of trained women might be created. He concludes the work with a paraphrase of Proverbs 31 on the virtuous wife. Interestingly, he does not choose the oft-quoted passages of Saint Paul that place women in subjugation to their husbands.51 Superficially, then, this is a work concerned with how young women of the lesser nobility might be trained to their personal benefit. In the process of drawing up the plan, however, Fénelon presents a means of merging the proposals of an educated womanhood, as espoused by Mademoiselle de Scudéry and others, with traditional modes of feminine behavior. The work effectively outlines a means of reforming a society he saw as frivolous and decadent. Fénelon’s ideal of reform is based on the inculcation of the three theological and four Platonic, or cardinal, virtues: faith, hope, and charity; justice, fortitude, prudence, and temperance, as defined by and through expressions compatible with the teachings

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of the Catholic Church. That he places this reform in the hands of women, and did so with obvious confidence, is a measure of the important though subservient role he accorded them.52 The work is ostensibly directed at mothers and assumes that they themselves had been properly educated and are in agreement with most of his views. The work also serves, however, as a gentle admonition to women who fall below his ideal and provides the means for them to change their manner. The result, then, is not simply a guidebook for parent or governess, but a measure of all female behavior. Those chapters dealing with methods and content of instruction are applicable not only to daughters; Fénelon himself was later to use these means in his role as précepteur to the duc de Bourgogne, and so the implications of the work reach beyond the ideal behavior of young ladies to the whole of society. In addressing these aims, Fénelon produced a work that is both entertaining and spirited. Clearly, he had faith in the ability of children and an understanding of their needs. He offers a means of forming their characters not by discipline or fear, but through charity, justice, prudence: in short, by living a virtuous life according to the teachings of the Church. He recommends Le catéchisme historique, by his friend the Abbé Fleury, as a straightforward guide to the teachings of the Church, for an understanding of these teachings was necessary for the direction of education and daily life. He begins by recounting the great expenditure of money and energy on the schooling of boys: the colleges, masters, methods of language instruction, the many learned researches. Ignorance is shown to be a great curse, for with ignorance comes indolence. Mothers, burdened with the care of the household, have little time for training their daughters properly, and if no arrangements are made, daughters can easily slip into a vain and indulgent life. When little is demanded, less is forthcoming: “For girls, they say, there is no need to be learned, curiosity makes them vain and affected; it is enough that they will one day know how to manage their homes and to obey their husbands without question.”53 Although he does not agree with this portrait of contemporary women, Fénelon does dismiss the capacity of women for understanding politics, military matters, jurisprudence, philosophy, and theology as a “natural weakness.” Theology, beyond a basic understanding of what is necessary to live a Christian life, is forbidden. He justifies the neglect of women’s education hitherto by citing the ridiculousness of the précieuses.54 If the education of women

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produced the précieuses, self-indulgent women whose behavior upset the norm, it was not worth pursuing. He seems to view flirtation as a perversion of the natural end of love between man and woman— marriage—and thus a debasement of the sacrament of the church. The inference is that women, when ill educated or left with no direction, do not have the strength of mind to choose wisely. Nature has, however, compensated them, for in place of strength of mind they have other virtues: devotion, wisdom, diligence, industriousness, and thrift. Fénelon argues for their strengths and the necessity of developing them. “A woman who is wise, industrious and devout is the soul of a great house,” he writes; “she orders temporal life and salvation. The very men who have all the public authority could, by their own deliberation, do nothing if women did not aid them in their fulfilment” (Traité, p. 473). The world view on which the whole work was based is illustrated in these short passages. Through them the reader is able to glimpse a means, a purpose, and an order, but it is a rigidly defined and circumscribed order. In short, Fénelon placed women in the context of an ideal Christian society, not as drudges or pawns, but as instruments that shape the future of society. The instruction of women, then, is essential; not only is the future in their hands, but so is the present because of their natural authority in the home, which Fénelon sees as central to society, to the nation, and to the world. Defining education, he writes that “We must be content to follow and to aid nature” (Traité, p. 476). Rigor in conduct and morality is at the core of his view, for without a clear objective, education can be disastrous. The seduction of romances, then popular, created a false impression of the world—Fénelon felt they were read without discernment55—which led in turn to disappointment and to a neverending dissatisfaction with the responsibilities and reality of day-today living. Flippant judgements were the result of an incomplete and ill-founded education, as were meandering conversations whose only purpose was the exhibition of wit and false vitality. Fénelon also addressed the method and content of instruction. The physiological assumptions made of the mechanics of acquiring knowledge are part and parcel of this method.56 He recommended a simple diet, regulated activity, and the avoidance of overstimulation, both physical and intellectual.57 It was essential to guard against too much talking, though one should take the trouble to answer questions

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“precisely, and to add now and then some small comparisons to clarify what has been said” (Traité, p. 476). His familiarity with children is apparent in his portrayal of their constant activity and unending questions, and in his advice to mix work with pleasure and to make lessons informal. Every opportunity, however, should be taken to strengthen the child’s sense of duty and reason, for answering questions is an effective means of instruction (Traité, p. 479). He stresses the importance of example, for children have the urge to imitate, and so must be shown behavior that is admirable. But that is not enough. Governesses and parents must also reject evil. In this early stage, while children’s brains were still “soft,” he advised selectivity in what was presented to them. One must try to give them the best examples. If they saw bad behavior, one was not to criticize the individual but merely point out the folly of such actions. Under no circumstance was mockery allowed. Even those who were admirable people, but unappealing, should be held up as examples (Traité, p. 478). He encouraged the use of analogy, or parable, calling it the “indirect method of instruction.” Later, as the preceptor to the duc de Bourgogne, he composed many fables and dialogues to be used in the same manner. In this way, any subject could be made attractive.58 Telling the stories of the Old and the New Testament was a means of motivating curiosity and love for the traditions of the church. Bible stories were a natural means of illustrating the virtues (Traité, p. 485). Fear, a last resort of the educator, should be used sparingly, as it alters the natural disposition of the child. He advised flexibility and recommended that teachers should threaten little, punish less.59 In the first six chapters, Fénelon justifies his interest, elaborates his methods, and outlines the manner of his approach. The core of the work, Chapters Seven and Eight, articulate the foundation for the behavior he judged to be natural and correct. Whereas the preceding chapters establish that children could be taught to reason correctly by direction and example, this chapter states his rationale: the purpose of life is to express one’s love for the Creator, as a Christian true to the teachings of the Catholic Church. The essence of this was “the contempt of this life and the love of the other,” so it was imperative that a wise teacher keep the image of Christ, as redeemer, before her pupils constantly (Traité, p. 492).

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Chapter Seven begins with the introduction of metaphysical ideas, again using analogy as the most effective means of teaching. The centrality of God must be impressed upon the child. As early as she is capable of understanding, the concept of a created universe should be introduced and, shortly thereafter, the concept of grace. The tone is consistently positive, offering solutions rather than simply condemning ill-conceived practice. He condemns learning by rote without understanding. He also questions living a tradition, however sacred, without some attempt at a reasoned understanding of the sources and purpose of that tradition. Analogies and sample conversations are used throughout the text as aids to understanding. These chapters refer not only to girls, but to boys as well, for boys were under the direction of their mothers until the age of six or seven.60 The remainder of the work is concerned exclusively with young women. The fault Fénelon principally condemns is dishonesty. Coyness, pettiness, affectation, and false modesty all spring from dishonesty and, as God is truth, to trifle with truth is to trifle with God. To counteract this deceit in manners he counsels prudence: “The basis of wisdom consists of saying little, of being more diffident with oneself than with others, and under no circumstances in conversing falsely or sowing discord” (Traité, p. 496). He advocates a sympathetic understanding on the part of the educator to encourage honesty and to overcome a mean and base spirit. The expression of boredom, or dislike of a book, or even the rejection of a chosen confessor should be allowed, for it encourages honesty. He recognizes that girls are subject to a particular set of expectations, and have no recourse if they fail to meet them. If one must continually express satisfaction where none exists, the growth of deceit is only to be expected: “Young women prize delicacy: and how can they not value it, since they know nothing of prudence, and it is usually the first thing they learn by example?” (Traité, p. 495–96). Vanity of self and of dress Fénelon saw as symptomatic of larger flaws in society. Though speaking of a particular subject—the vanity of girls—he allows himself a short tirade on a greater evil, condemning the great flurry of activity of both those of “basse naissance” and of the nobility to acquire great wealth, or simply maintain the façade of great wealth. This quest he saw as one of the forces undermining a stable and sane society. The adornment of women was simply a result of this trend, which he condemned along with its symptoms.

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Read superficially, Fénelon sounds like an apologist for women, attempting to explain their foibles. He certainly catalogues all the vices traditionally ascribed to women—long-windedness, craftiness, seductiveness. But he also attempts to identify the true causes of these vices; learned behavior, limited options, and defined expectations are restraints to the development of the individual. A case in point is the passage on adornments. La mode, Fénelon writes, is a reflection of the mindlessness of some women. Badly educated, they have nothing greater than their vanity to occupy themselves. Their constant changing is not a search for perfection or grace, but a matter of caprice, motivated explicitly by mindless entertainment, implicitly by blatant seduction or a desire to flaunt their station or their wealth. Fénelon then moves to the opposite extreme and depicts the ideal. By describing the responsibilities of mothers, he provides not only a standard for women using the book as a guide for their daughters but, by gentle implication, a standard of their own behavior. He clarifies his assessment of women and their place and, by extrapolation, reveals his vision for all society. He lists the primary concerns of a wife and mother: the education and care of children, caring for the extended family within the household, managing the physical needs of the household, and managing the leases and rents. Her responsibility for and to people, even to servants, outranks her responsibility to property, and so women are judged capable of shouldering the responsibility for the souls under their direction. As both overseers and servants, they are the center of that community. A curious woman might find these limits restrictive, but Fénelon assures the reader that she would be wrong. He points out that the breadth and value of women’s duties often go unrecognized, and briefly reiterates the responsibility of this role, emphasizing the variety of knowledge and skills necessary: “What discernment she must have to understand the nature and aptitudes of each of her children, to find the proper approach to discover their humor, their propensities, their talent, and to check their natural passions, persuade them with good maxims and cure their errors!” (Traité, p. 499). With this statement, Fénelon neatly sets out a pattern that he uses to trace the appropriate functioning of French society. Despite his admonitions for enabling and educating womanhood, he retreats to a hierarchical view of society. The individual is born to a place and a station, and while there she has limited flexibility in her future

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occupation (marriage, the convent, spinsterhood); once chosen it is to become a vocation. Order on the individual estate, for example, is linked to the good order of the country and, by implication, to a universal order. He compares managing a household to running a small republic and warns against becoming too rigid, or too efficient, for one then runs the risk of becoming avaricious. “Often one gains to know when to lose,” he cautions;” it is order and not simply savings that makes the greatest profits” (Traité, p. 500). One should be motivated as much by charity as by prudence. What one saves in economizing can be given in charity, the virtue of which extends beyond material goods. As one should not be petty over a poorly folded cloth, neither should one become condescending to another regarding manners, for it is unjust to assess individuals by anything other than their virtue and character. Refinement and polished manners may hide a dishonest and unjust spirit. The skills he advocates for women include literacy, mathematics, the principles of law and, with caution, Latin, music, and painting. This syllabus, unlike the traditional trivium and quadrivium for boys, is certainly pragmatic, though the level of skill expected is comparatively high: correct pronunciation, a legible, well-formed hand, and proper spelling. In the matter of the law, compromise is recommended. The complexities of the legal system are illustrated, and Fénelon cautions against surrendering one’s power to men of business. The greatest wisdom, he writes, is the prediction and avoidance of difficulties. Fénelon also broaches the difficulty of educating for appropriate leisure activities. Latin, for the purpose of reading the Divine Office, is encouraged, whereas the romance languages, because they may inflame the passions, are discouraged. Music and poetry pose a problem. Citing Plato and the Spartans as having condemned music, Fénelon counters with the Christian tradition of sacred music: it is permissible, he argues, only if the imagination is not stirred too much (Traité, p. 503). Design, serving a more functional purpose, is allowable, but with the same reservations as the other arts. These studies, if undertaken, were to be pursued with instruction and supervision. Fénelon obviously understood the spirit of the young and the timeless seduction of forbidden fruits: “the more this which encourages love is sweetened and enveloped, the more dangerous it seems to me” (Traité, p. 503). The forbidden fruits he speaks of are overly emotional music and the poetry and novels that made of love

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something quite different from what a girl could expect from a marriage. To forbid these activities was also discouraged, for “condemnation will agitate passion; it is better to give order to this torrent than to attempt to stop it” (Traité, p. 503). Passion is natural to humanity, but it must be channeled into appropriate paths and always controlled. Education must be geared to the future station of the student. One must be content with one’s place and not yearn for the activities of urban life, or the calm of rural life, if marriage does not take one there. If the religious life is the chosen vocation, the girl should be accustomed to silence and prepared for the life she will lead. This is especially true in the education of governesses, though any capable of carrying out his instructions must have been rare indeed. Fénelon’s suggestions for finding a governess are predictable, as are the means of training one. A sensible, God-fearing woman of easy temperament should be chosen from among one’s own staff, the servants of friends, or a well-run convent. The Traité and Fleury’s Catéchisme historique are both simple enough for such a woman to understand. Fénelon offers the possibility of training a number of such women, who would in turn train others, and he expresses his hope that traditional and secular communities will make use of his work. He recognized that only with the cooperation and example of the parents could anything approaching a sound education be attained. Throughout the work Fénelon uses an even, conciliatory tone, but in the penultimate passage his criticism of uncaring parents and the damage they do their children is severe: “One sees, in most homes, such confusion, such chaos, such a mass of servants who are so wrong-headed, such division among the masters. What a hideous school for children!…a mother who spends her life gaming, at the theatre, and in indecent conversation” (Traité, p. 505). The concluding passage is the portrait of woman given in Proverbs 31. True to his own vocation as priest, Fénelon successfully merges traditional Christian belief with accepted seventeenth-century practice. He presents the means whereby a properly trained woman could take her place as a necessary, though subservient, member of the family and of the community. Though reading, conversation and learning were encouraged, these were to serve as a means to enhance a woman’s abilities in her assigned role. Beneath a veneer of humanism lies a rigidity that Du Bosc would certainly have rejected.

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Bound by the inequities of sex, woman returned, under the benign but dictatorial eye of Fénelon, to the role of chatelaine. CONCLUSION The texts of Du Bosc and Fénelon can be seen as examples of trends prevalent in their respective periods; as such, they provide a matrix. An effective comparison of Fénelon’s and Du Bosc’s views on the abilities and consequent status of women can therefore be made by identifying specific attitudes in their work. The primary comparison must be ability, for on ability rest other assumptions. Du Bosc and Fénelon each attempted to prove, by documentation and argument, that women possessed the capabilities necessary for greater achievement. Initially, then, there seems to be more agreement than disagreement between the two. Both implicitly accepted that women had souls and, as such, were full members of the Church. Both accepted that women had the capacity for greater achievement than they were able to exercise in areas that were both spiritually and socially important. Both saw women as an intricate and essential part of society, serving a necessary function as spouses, mothers, and educators. Both the Honneste femme and the Traité were attempts to indoctrinate women to a truly Christian way of life as the authors understood dogma, tradition, and contemporary practice. For both, the vision of a Christian society overrode any other consideration, and within this vision women held a place of esteem. Neither has any overt wish to oppress or repress women. The principal difference, then—at least superficially—lies in their definitions of “greater achievement.” This distinction is clearly expressed in their respective proposals for women. Du Bosc proposed education, whereas Fénelon proposed instruction. The implications for society in this distinction were immense. In the first instance, education, the authority is ultimately internal. In the second instance, instruction, authority is external. Du Bosc was essentially concerned with the interior life of women, not with reshaping their place in society. The position he advocated, however, could not but transform that place. His method was not to specify particular actions or give instructions; he trusted individual readers to use their own judgment. The individual Du Bosc described, however, would change the very face of society. Rather than depending on the traditions and forms of society, he would scrutinize

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those very traditions, and what was examined rationally and intelligently and found wanting would be rejected. Du Bosc encouraged the development of a unique interior life founded on reading, conversation, and thought. He continually stressed the importance of the rational self that was founded on prudence: the prudence that precedes other behaviors. This state was one arrived at through observation and reflection. But the observation must be balanced, just as the thought must be informed, by reading, conversation, and meditation. This presupposed a maturity of mind and discernment that was a manifestation of the soul. He advised a cautious selection of reading under the advice of a trustworthy guide. He was careful to point out that those who established themselves as authorities were not necessarily so; knowledge and wisdom are not always concurrent. In this respect and others, Fénelon was quite different. His detailed descriptions of conversations, scenarios, and anecdotes reveal his underlying attitude. Fénelon did not trust his readers to make independent judgments and, though he encouraged reading, he would restrict it and subject women to their confessors. He prescribed a limited education. A woman needed to know enough to perform her allotted functions. Fénelon’s Antiope, described in Télémaque, 1699, was all that he would wish for in a woman: wise, virtuous, industrious, modest. She is not a dévote, a mystic, or scholarly in dogma, but a woman of simple and sound belief.61 Fénelon spoke often of class and the importance of living accordingly, reaching neither for a higher estate nor allowing oneself to fall. Initially, this seems at odds with his views on the brotherhood of man, though he reconciled the two ideas by defining the responsibilities of wealth and status. He condemned luxury, arguing that the essential function of the aristocrat was to care for those in his jurisdiction. The model Fénelon used for society was the traditional patriarchal family in which there is a single source of authority and obedience to that authority is essential, a model he also used in his description of the state. The Traité is an apt reflection of the ossification of society and, in the face of challenges to religious, political, and cultural norms, an attempt to restrict the role of women. It remains to identify, or at least to speculate, why this change in perception occurred. The fifty years between the publication of L’Honneste femme and the Traité de l’éducation des filles were momentous in French history. Perhaps the cause of this shift can be

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found in the conflicts of the intervening years, many of which involved simple, if violent, impositions of authority. Paramount among these were the will of the Crown and the will of the French church. This imposition of authority was grounded in tradition and in France reached its apex after 1661. At the beginning of the personal reign of Louis XIV, France entered a period of internal political stability, but not without cost. The political reaction to the Jansenists, the imposition of the Formulary in 1661, was one demonstration of power. The repression of the Huguenots, which began anew in 1655 and culminated in 1685, was another. These events were, however, more than simply demonstrations of power. They were also a means of imposing order—the king’s order—on society. This preoccupation with order was pervasive. The Christian Brothers were refining their simultaneous method of teaching and their standardization of texts. The regulation of clerical training through the seminaries was being instituted. Colbert’s reform of legal procedure and the demand for an ordered economy was another indication of both the necessity and the desirability of order. Society as a whole began to order itself, sometimes adopting past patterns, sometimes devising new ones. The place of women in society, a major discussion theme in the early part of the century, examined the possibilities for women. Although there was some change in public acceptance of the educated woman, feminists such as Du Bosc recognized the value to the society as a whole in women taking up public or extradomestic roles. Fénelon, on the other hand, saw this as a threat. He was part of a society that lived in a time when political and spiritual aspirations were closely linked and, overtly, society endeavored to identify itself with the religious ideal. The need for an integrated society, state, and religion was understood to be necessary for survival. Fénelon presented a set of instructions that, if assiduously followed, would result in a “correct” (i.e., socially acceptable) education appropriate to one’s station in life. Du Bosc took his cue from the tradition of Christian humanism that attempted to merge the celebration of man’s and woman’s ability in the physical world with the celebration of the divinity of God. For Fénelon, fifty years later, this proved impractical. Religious inclination, political aggression, and more rigid elitism precluded it. Submission to divine will was externally expressed by submission to society.

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NOTES 1. Joan Kelly identifies a progression in the feminist argument beginning with the intellectual dialectic, followed by a sense of cultural awareness of gender formation, and finally an attempt to transcend the status quo. This progression of the development of the querelle and of the personal “consciousness raising” of the feminist movement is argued in “Early Feminist Theory and the Querelle des Femmes 1400–1789,” Sign 8 (1982): 4–28. Ian MacLean, on the other hand, sees little new in the first half of the seventeenth century: “Feminism and Literature in France 1610–1652”(D. Phil, dissertation, Oxford University, 1971), p. 81. 2. The regencies of Marie de Médicis and Anne of Austria, together with the insight of Catholic reformers, lent the role of women’s education new importance. Other women held power as well: Isabelle of Austria, Christina of Sweden, Chrestienne of France. For a discussion of the implications of the power held by these women as well as Marie de Médicis and Anne of Austria, see Micheline Cuénin, “Les Femmes aux Affaires (1598– 1661),” XVIIe siècle 144 (1984): 203–10. 3. Jacques Du Bosc, L’Honneste femme divisée en trois parties. Revue, congée & augmentée en cette quatriesme Edition (Paris, 1658). 4. François de Salignac de la Mothe Fénelon, “Traité de L‘éducation des filles” in Fénelon on Education, trans. H.C.Barnard (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1966). 5. Henri-Jean Martin, Livre pouvoirs et société à Paris au XVIIe siècle (1598–1701) (Genève: Droz, 1969), p. 40. 6. Godefroi Hermant, Mémoires de Godefroi Hermant (Paris: Librairie Plon, Plon-Nourrit, 1906), 3:600. 7. Claude Augé, Nouveau Larousse Illustré (Paris: Larousse, n.d.), 7:9. 8. Hermant, 3:660. This passage refers to the dedication to Mazarin of L’Église outragée…(1657). Hermant reports that Du Bosc hoped for a change in his position, but is not specific as to what his position was or what he hoped to achieve. The Jansenist debate was pivotal to Du Bosc’s later life, and critical to his life’s work. His early writing on women can be addressed independently. For a fuller treatment, see Colleen Fitzgerald, “Authority in Ancien Régime France: The Understanding of Jacques Du Bosc” (Ph.D. dissertation, University of Saskatchewan, 1996). 9.“[D]efrocked by debauch and refrocked by ambition. He meditates no less than the mitre and to leave all the monks behind. It cannot be denied that he has wit and style.” Jean Chapelain, December 16, 1630, Lettres de Jean Chapelain de l’Academie Française, ed. Tamizey de Larroque (Paris: Imprimerie nationale, 1880), 1:738. 10. Paul Colomies, La Bibliothèque choisie, nouvelle edition augmentée

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des notes de Messieurs Bourdelot, de la Monnoye et autres (Paris, 1731), p. 238. 11. R.Aubert, Dictionnaire d’histoire et de géographie ecclésiastique (Paris: Letouzey et Ane, 1977), 18: col. 896. This view is supported by Colomies, whose account states that Du Bosc, with the permission of the pope, spent these years in a monastery with monks of various orders. Colomie, p. 239. Little more is known of Mullard than his name and this trip with Du Bosc. 12. Louis Moreri, Le Grand Dictionnaire historique (Ann Arbor, MI: University Microfilms, 1958), p. 95. Paul Rousselot, Histoire de l’éducation des femmes en France (Paris: Didier et cie., 1883), 1:259, n. 2. 13. “[V]ir nobilis, scriptor ecclesiasticus.” AN LL 1526 Vedures Obituaires Cordeliers 1440–1600. These sentiments are also evident in the fulsome letters of approbation that were written for inclusion in his later works; see especially Le Triomphe de S.Augustin…(1654). 14. On April 1, 1636, Du Bosc signed a contract with the bookseller Metruas selling his privilege, or copyright, for 150 livres tournois. R.Zuber, Les Belles Infidèles et la formation du goût classique (Paris: A.Colin, 1968), pp. 64–65. 15. Catalogue Général des livres imprimés de la Bibliothèque Nationale (Paris, 1910), 42:738. 16. National Union Catalogue (Mansell, 1971), pp. 59, 39. 17. Numerous biographies have been written, notably that of James Herbert Davis, Jr., Fénelon (Boston: Twayne Publishers, 1979). Among the older, though still useful, biographies are Paul Janet, Fénelon, trans. Victor Leuliette (New York: Kennikat Press, 1970 [1914]) and Viscount St. Gyres, François de Fénelon (New York: Kennikat Press, 1970 [1901]). 18. François de Salignac de la Mothe Fénelon, Correspondance de Fénelon, 9 vols., ed. Jean Orcibal (Paris: Klincksieck, 1979–1987), 1:155; Jeanne-Lydie Goré, L’ltinéraire de Fénelon: Humanisme et spiritualité (Paris: Presses universitaire de France, 1957), p. 94. Another of Fénelon’s uncles, and a benefactor, Antoine Marquis de Fénelon, was a member of the Compagnie. See also Davis, p. 16. 19. Fénelon, Correspondance, 1:156. 20. Fénelon, Correspondance, 1:159, n. 24. 21. Fénelon, Correspondance, 1:158. 22. Barnard, Fénelon on Education, p. xvi. 23. Barnard, p. xviii. It is assumed by Barnard that the Traité was written during Fénelon’s tenure at the Nouvelles Catholiques. 24. Fénelon, Correspondance, 1:193–5. 25. Fénelon, Correspondance, 1:193–195. 26. The Abbé Fleury was an important influence on Fénelon’s development. Fleury had just published Du choix et de la méthode des études,

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in which he addressed specifically the question of women’s education. His section on the subject was similar to Fénelon’s intent and manner, though very brief. In many of the letters he speaks of the importance of spiritual formation, which he believed to be the foundation of all education. Traité du choix et de la méthode des études in Oeuvres de l’Abbé Fleury (Paris: A. Desrez, 1837). The section on women’s education is Part II, XXI, 57–58. See especially Correspondance, 2:50–53, to the comtesse de Gramont; to an official at Nouvelles Catholiques; to a new convert. 27. Fénelon, Correspondance, 1:232–3. 28. Fénelon, Correspondance, 1:235. 29. Written in 1693–1695 and published in 1699, Télémaque was written specifically for the duc de Bourgogne. The point has been made that Fénelon was appointed not only to educate the child but to act as “directeur de conscience politique” and that Télémaque was the means by which this was to be accomplished. See R.Chartier, M.M.Compère and D.Julia, L’Education en France du XVIe au XVIIe siècle (Paris: Société d’édition d’enseignement supérieur, 1976), p. 176. It can thus be seen as a fictional working of the advice in Examen de conscience sur les devoirs de la royauté which was published in 1711. 30. First published in 1715 as an addendum to the Traité, the letter is undated. It has been assumed that it was written to the duchesse de Beauvillier, but the fact that the woman addressed has only one daughter, not nine, is strong argument against this. 31. Written between 1692 and 1695, the Lettre was first published in 1785 and authenticated only in 1825. It was written anonymously and likely meant for Mme. de Maintenon and Mme. de Beauvillier. See Henri Guillemin, ed., Lettre à Louis XIV (Neuchâtel: Ides et calendes, 1961), pp. 59–60, n. 1. 32. It has been pointed out that the work was aimed at “an elite social group, and not for what we would call today the general public.” Margaret Belcher, “The Compleat Woman: A Seventeenth-Century View of Women,” Atlantis 2 (1977): 16–21. 33. Nannerl Keohane argues, “Someone’s private reason must be made trump in order that society may function; someone’s private reason must be raised to the status of public reason…anyone can be given authority to produce a solution, and this delivers us from the chaos of conflicting opinions that tears society apart. Therefore, in politics the first virtue of the citizen is obedience.” Although Keohane refers here specifically to politics, I would argue that the integration of religion and politics in Du Bosc’s view enables her understanding to be broadened to include religion as well. The chaos of conflicting religious beliefs in this period was easily as damaging as political conflict. Nannerl O.Keohane, Philosophy and the State in France: The Renaissance to the Enlightenment (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1980), p. 109.

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34. Keith Luria has argued effectively that the so-called CounterReformation was far more than an imposition of a standard of belief and behavior which allowed more extensive control of the population by the elites. Luria presents the process of cultural change, of which religion was a part (the substantial part, in Luria’s view) as an interaction. This interaction involved all sectors of society, and varying interests and agendas. Keith Luria, Territories of Grace: Cultural Change in the Seventeenth-Century Diocese of Grenoble (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1991), pp. 2–3. Thus, in light of Luria’s argument for the abandonment of archetypes and the acceptance of complexity, Du Bosc’s views can be said to be founded in his experience as a Frenchman, his education, his interactions with an educated elite as a well as his perspective as a cleric. The preoccupation with the place of women can be seen as an attempt by society to accommodate the framework of French society. In many ways, this was one among many adjustments of traditional understandings of authority. The challenge that the querelle des femmes posed to this framework necessitated some shifting of perspective as to the role of women. That a segment of society attempted to adjust its views in response to this challenge rather than re-impose older, more restrictive understandings of women’s role is a further indicator of conflicting understandings of authority. 35. François de Sales was both a church diplomat and a spiritual advisor to numerous individuals and orders. His Introduction à la vie dévote (1609) had a profound effect on personal formation. Written specifically for a woman and enormously popular, it must be given a prominent place in the study of women generally in seventeenth-century France. 36. Du Bosc, L’Honneste femme, 1:185. English translations are my own. 37. “[T]the principal purpose of conversation is to gain a reputation for wit and judgment: it is for this reason that one needs to have something other than good humor, and for this reason as much as any other, to address virtue.” Du Bosc, L’Honneste femme, 1:30. 38. Jacques Du Bosc, Le philosophe indifferent (Paris, 1643), 1:80–84. 39. Lucien Febvre argues that this assumption was not Du Bosc’s alone but one that was generally current. The Problem of Unbelief in the Sixteenth Century: The Religion of Rabelais, trans. Beatrice Gottlieb (1942; reprint, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1982), pp. 290–91. 40. Elizabeth C.Goldsmith, Exclusive Conversations: The Art of Interaction in Seventeenth-Century France (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1988), p. 20. 41. Maurice Magendie, La Politesse mondaine et la theories de l’Honnête en France au XVII siècle de 1600 à 1660 (Paris: Les presses universitaires de France, 1925), p. xxxix.

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42. François de Sales, Introduction à la vie dévote (Paris: n.p., 1920), p. 67. 43. The tradition of blending day-to-day occurrences with a theological perspective is already evident in the work of de Sales, and before him in the work of the Jesuit Richeome. Richeome’s first work, Très humble remonstrance et requête des religieux de la Compagnie de Jésus, au roi trés chrestien de France et de Navarre, Henri IV (1598), is an example of the reconciliation between, and the integration of, ethics and theology. For, as Henri Bremond remarks, “Avant eux, d’autres renaissants avient oblige Platon et Virgile à parler chrétien” (Histoire littéraire du sentiment religieux en France [Paris: Librairie Bloud et Gay, 1935], 1:28). The reasoning can easily be labeled as casuistry, but that is too facile a resolution for questions of morality. Condemned by some as sophistry, it was also, however, an effective means of reconciling austere religious prescriptions with le mondain. 44. Du Bosc, L’Honneste femme, 1:36. The original analogy comes, of course, from Aristotle, Psyche. 45. Theoxene was the wife of Porus, whose kingdom in India was conquered by Alexander the Great in 327 BC. On Alexander’s death, Theoxene and Porus traveled to Athens but en route were taken by mercenaries. Theoxene chose death rather than slavery. 46. Prudence, as understood in traditional occidental Christianity and as Du Bosc uses the term, is not akin to moderation or avoidance, but is rather the virtue that precedes all other moral virtues, in the sense that the integration of all the other virtues cannot occur without prudence, or practical intelligence, or intelligent insight into what is really the case (as opposed to false opinion or illusion about what is going on). Prudence therefore organizes moral life in accordance with the most complete grasp of reality possible in the circumstances. Prudence, in this sense, is concerned with the practical transformation of our knowledge of reality from perception to concrete realization of the good; that is, from cognition to practical response. The transformation is completed through the process of deliberation, judgment, and decision. The elements necessary to arrive at prudent decisions are memoria (memory), docilitas (openess), and solertia (responsiveness). Magnanimity, or greatness of soul, therefore, is achieved only when the action and the means by which that action is determined are prudent. Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics: Translation with Commentaries and Glossary, trans. Hippocrates G.Apostle (Grinnell, Iowa: Peripatetic Press, 1975), Bk. Z 5–13, 105–14. Joseph Pieper, The Four Cardinal Virtues: Prudence, Justice, Fortitude, Temperance (South Bend, IN: University of Notre Dame, 1959), pp. 10–16. 47. For Aquinas’s views on prudence, see Sentences. III 33.2.3; Summa Theologica la IIae q.58, a4; q.64, al; q.66, a3 ad 3; IIa IIae q.47 a 6 ad 3; q49 a 1–8; De Virt. Card. 1ff, 3.

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48. Prudence also goes far beyond this in protecting women in an area where they are susceptible. Sexuality is never directly mentioned in the text, but Du Bosc occasionally refers to it obliquely, using the analogy of the walled town. He comes as close as he is able, without offending his readers, to stating his belief in this matter: to become l’honnête femme (as he has defined it) will enable her to protect her “virtue” more readily. 49. Du Bosc, here and previously, developed this understanding of prudence (incorporating practical intelligence as a mediator against excess or defect in the perception of reality) as foundation for the employment of any virtue. He uses the metaphor of dawn preceding daylight to express the need for prudence as precedent to love: “Just as the dawn precedes the sun, knowledge must precede love.” L’Honneste femme, 1:173. 50. Du Bosc, L’Honneste femme, 1:184. The reference is to Exodus 25:18–21, where the construction of the Ark of the Covenant is detailed. The cherubim were to be of beaten gold and placed, facing one another, at either end of the ark. The allusion here is, of course, that as the Ark held the covenant between the Hebrews and God, God is the covenant between two hearts. 51. Ephesians 5:32, I Timothy 2:11; see also I Corinthians 2:39, 7:11. Biblical justifications for this stance are discussed in detail in Charles Paris, Marriage in Seventeenth-Century Catholicism (Tournai: Desclee, 1975), p. 55. 52. This sentiment is also found in Fénelon’s early correspondence. See Fénelon, Correspondence, 2:51, 53. 53. Fénelon, Traité de l’education des filles in Oeuvres de Fénelon Archevêque de Cambrai précédées d’études sur sa vie, ed. M.Amié-Martin, 2 vols. (Paris: Firmin Didot frères, 1852), p. 473. 54. Ian Maclean describes the précieuse as “exist[ing] in a universe in which love is deified…the love of the world of the novel, where the lover has infinite patience…where marriage is always just out of sight.” lan Maclean, Woman Triumphant: Feminism in French Literature 1610–1652 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1977), p. 152. 55. Jules Lemaitre, Fénelon (Paris: Fayard, 1910), p. 84. The romances he identifies as currently popular were Lancelot, the Roman de la Rose, and Tristan. 56. “The matter of their brain is soft and hardens in time…this softness of the brain takes all impressions easily…. It is true, too, that this moistness and softness, together with great heat, is the cause of its agile and continual movement.” Fénelon, Traité, p. 476. 57. Fénelon echoes the writing of Vives in this passage and in many others. See Ruth L.Kuschmierz, “The Instruction of a Christian Woman: A Critical Edition of the Tudor Translation” (Ph.D. dissertation, University of Pittsburgh, 1961), p. 215. The debt that Fénelon owed to earlier writers

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cannot be underestimated. Vives’s text was translated by Pierre de Changy in 1542, and there are many indications that Fénelon read it. Lemaitre, p. 83. 58. M.Daniélou, Fénelon et le duc de Bourgogne étude d’une education (Paris: Bloud & Gay, 1955), p. 87. 59. “Fear is like the extreme solutions which are used in serious illnesses; they purge, but they change the temperament, and wear the organs: a soul led by fear is always weaker.” Fénelon, Traité, p. 480. 60. Pierre Goubert, The French Peasantry in the Seventeenth Century, trans. Ian Patterson (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986), pp. 53–54. 61.Lemaitre, p. 92.

CHAPTER 7

“Its Frequent Visitor” Death at Boarding School in Early Modern Europe Carolyn C.Lougee

Perhaps the most familiar, vivid, and affecting characterization of an early European school for girls is Charlotte Brontë’s description of Lowood Institution in Jane Eyre (1847). In Brontë’s novel, this charitable school in the English countryside was, for the orphan Jane who spent eight uninterrupted years there, both a godsend and a torment. It was a godsend because, over time, acceptance and support from the community of girls and women encouraged the frightened ten-year-old entrant to grow into the accomplished, self-directed young woman who would confidently set forth into the world “to seek real knowledge of life amidst its perils.” It was a torment because in order to leave at all, Jane had to survive an environment whose deliberately imposed physical hardships conduced not only to the girls’ spiritual annihilation but to the loss of their lives. Poor quality food (burned porridge for breakfast, rancid fat and strange sheets of rusty meat for dinner), inadequate portions that left the girls always hungry, insufficient clothing, severe corporal punishment: these privations, designed as means “to render [the girls] hardy, patient, self-denying,” implemented the desire of the founder, Mr. Brocklehurst, to dehumanize and martyr the girls by frustrating their physical needs. Physical hardship was, then, integral to the school’s purpose, and death at school was the result: “disease had thus become an inhabitant of Lowood, and death its frequent visitor.” As Jane would later reminisce: “semi-starvation and neglected colds had predisposed most of the pupils to receive infection: forty-five out of the eighty girls lay ill at one time….[A few girls] were fortunate 193

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enough to have friends and relations able and willing to remove them from the seat of contagion. Many, already smitten, went home only to die; some died at the school, and were buried quietly and quickly.”1 In Jane Eyre, the ordeal of Lowood is one in a succession of trials that symbolize stages of spiritual growth in an allegorical pilgrimage. Brontë’s characterization of Lowood is, however, more than a literary device in her novel: it is, as Brontë herself maintained, historical and autobiographical: “the Lowood part…is true.”2 It set in fictionalized context the psychological and physical abuse that Charlotte and her three sisters had actually experienced in the Clergy Daughters’ School at Cowan Bridge in the North of England. In that school, to which they had been sent in 1824 after their mother’s death, two of Charlotte’s sisters contracted fatal illnesses, and Charlotte herself developed health problems from which she would suffer her whole life long.3 Brontë’s friend and biographer Elizabeth Gaskell reported that “Miss Brontë more than once said to me, that…there was not a word in her account of the institution but what was true at the time when she knew it.”4 When, thirty years later, Gaskell herself looked into the situation at Cowan Bridge, she found it rather puzzling: “I can hardly understand how the school there came to be so unhealthy, the air all around about was so sweet and thyme-scented, when I visited it last summer.”5 In the end Gaskell tempered the novelist’s harsh judgment, sympathetically exonerating the founder and blaming the cook. But Brontë’s own presentation left no doubt that in her mind the problem lay at the founder’s door: the sadistic Mr. Brockelhurst subjects the girls to a regimen of deprivation out of masculinist and elitist prejudices masquerading as religious faith and social propriety. For the novelist, the survivor, the “unconsciously avenging sister,”6 it is because Lowood is an instrument of his self-defined “mission” to “mortify” the girls that it becomes a venue of death. Once Mr. Brockelhurst is repudiated by an indignant public and relieved of his authority, the health of the pupils ceases to be an issue and the school becomes “a truly useful and noble institution.”7 The grim boarding-school episode in Charlotte Brontë’s life and fiction brings to mind a set of questions that, curiously, have been overlooked in all the recent attention to the history of education.8 Was the death of pupils a significant problem at early modern schools for girls? Was it significant at boarding schools generally or merely at poorly run schools such as Lowood/Cowan Bridge? Did any

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contemporaries observe that girls were dying at boarding school and call attention to deaths at school as a cause for concern? How might the answer to these questions change our understanding of what it meant—not merely in intellectual and social terms, which have preoccupied historians, but also in terms of physical well-being—for girls to go away to school? Full answers to these questions are not at hand: the questions themselves are only now being posed, and the hunt for sources of the requisite data has scarcely begun. There is enough evidence, however, to establish that death at school was a phenomenon of some significance and to suggest that it involved more than the cruelty of school heads or the idiosyncratic practices of particular schools. This essay sets the beginning point for further investigation by bringing together fragments of perception and experience that have come to light from various locations in eighteenth-century Europe. It first samples eighteenth-century perceptions of health and death at the boarding school, in order to gauge the extent to which contemporaries were cognizant of schoolgirl mortality. It then examines some actual occurrences at school of death, “its frequent visitor,” in order to identify (insofar as the data permit) some patterns of school mortality. It concludes by speculating on the implications of uncovering this phenomenon for a fuller understanding of early modern education. CONTEMPORARIES’ PERCEPTIONS One distinctive feature of the early modern educational revolution in Europe was the prominence of boarding schools. In contrast with America, where until the late nineteenth century most instruction took place in a home (either the teacher’s or the pupil’s), Europeans— the upper classes first and then progressively deeper strata of the population—sent their children away for schooling rather than educating them at home. So numerous did boarding schools become that a Londoner alleged in 1759: “two or three houses might be seen in almost every village with the inscription ‘Young Ladies Boarded and Educated.’”9 And in France, where some five hundred Catholic pensionnats for girls were established by teaching nuns in the course of the seventeenth century, a contemporary wrote: “Their convents are everywhere, and there is no town so small that it does not have one or two.”10 As a consequence, the school—that modern invention that came for the first time in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries

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to be the typical environment for European children—was often not simply a daytime activity but a total experience. Pupils were distanced from their families and more or less isolated from the outside world in institutions that took possession of them physically and purveyed not only book learning but also discipline, surveillance, and socialization. Through co-residence, these institutions structured not only pupils’ cognition but also their emotional life and such material experience as nutrition and health. As schools proliferated in the eighteenth century, some of the commentaries debating the relative advantages of education at home or in school included reflections on students’ health.11 D’Alembert’s reasons for preferring private tutoring at home included his observation that young men often leave collèges “with impaired health, among other and greater effects of the corruption of morals.”12 And at least one abbé-précepteur at Louis-Le-Grand worried that the regime of exercise at colleges cost pupils their lives: “They are allowed to play and get so overheated that they catch often-mortal pleurisies.”13 On the other hand, the abbé de Saint-Pierre, in 1729, wrote of the superior salubrity of schools: “By playing ball games and shuttlecock, and other exercises, the children in colleges are better able to preserve their health than are those educated at home.”14 And Rousseau, speaking specifically of girls’ education, granted, somewhat grudgingly, a health advantage to schools. As a moralist, he dismissed boarding schools as “regular schools of coquetry.” Girls should be educated at home so that they would learn to love domestic life: “a woman whose mother did not educate her herself will not be willing to educate her own children.”15 But boarding schools had more healthful regimes. Girls kept at home were likely to be fed on delicacies and kept sitting in a stuffy room under their mother’s eye without a moment’s freedom to play or jump or run. “Women should not be strong like men but for them, so that their sons may be strong. Convents and boarding schools, with their plain food and ample opportunities for amusements, races, and games in the open air and in the garden, are better in this respect than the home.”16 Such sporadic and incidental philosophical allusions to physical impacts of educational practice were superseded in the closing years of the century by a trio of English writings17 that evolved into a systematic, feminist, and medically informed treatment of schoolgirl health: Mary Wollstonecraft’s Thoughts on the Education of

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Daughters, 1787, Erasmus Darwin’s Plan for the Conduct of Female Education, in Boarding Schools, 1797, and Thomas Beddoes’s Hygëia, 1802.18 Wollstonecraft’s Thoughts was the first publication for the twenty-eight-year-old who, but four years later, would pen the founding statement of modern feminism, The Vindication of the Rights of Woman. Into Thoughts, Wollstonecraft poured both her personal experience as an educator of girls—she ran a school at Islington and then at Newington Green, north of London—and the reformist spirit she was developing in her associations at Newington Green with such radical liberals as Richard Price.19 Darwin’s and Beddoes’s writings were among the very earliest instances of doctors bringing medical expertise to bear directly on the question of boarding schools; both were practicing physicians—“the most challenging and original medical [men] active in England in the era of the French Revolution.”20 Darwin and Beddoes were close friends, Wollstonecraft their associate in radical causes. Darwin and Beddoes were broadly learned, Wollstonecraft brilliant and intense. All three believed that new knowledge and the adoption of rational, healthful practices could transform human life, and that education was the major instrument of such transformation. Darwin and Beddoes, in particular, acted on their faith that science had put victory over disease within reach. All three had a special commitment to improving the well-being of women. All three—the most capable and critical among late eighteenth-century observers— were mute on the issue of death at school. The contribution of Wollstonecraft’s brief Thoughts to the evolving prescriptive literature on educating girls is the fierce moral critique on the basis of which she both denounces typical curricula and prefers home education over boarding school. Schools, whether boarding or day, are primarily preoccupied with the ornamental, the “follies”— beauty in appearance, manners, showy accomplishments—because they sell: they are the visible product by which potential customers judge the school. Catering to the misguided priorities of socially ambitious parents betrays the true aim of education, however; “to prepare a woman to fulfil the important duties of a wife and mother” presupposes cultivation of inner virtue that is less amenable to display. Here, Wollstonecraft begins to sketch an opposition between genteel graces and moral virtue that will mature into the armature on which the radical social and political vision of her Vindication would later hang.21

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In terms of what girls are taught, there is, implicitly, nothing to choose between day and boarding school. As Wollstonecraft presents the decision on educational venue, it turns exclusively on the capacity of the mother to undertake the task herself. If and only if the mother cannot do so for one or another reason and the daughter would by default be left to the servants should she be sent away to school. In an impersonal school situation the virtues and sentiments cannot be “called forth in the way they might be by maternal affection….The virtues are best learnt at home, if a mother will give up her time and thoughts to the task…. If a mother has leisure and good sense, and more than one daughter, I think she could best educate them herself.” So Wollstonecraft’s thinking on the relative desirability of education at boarding school or at home is considerably narrower than, for example, Rousseau’s. Although early in Thoughts she asserts the importance, in child rearing, of physical care—“The first thing to be attended to, is laying the foundation of a good constitution”—she makes no mention of health in relation to boarding schools and so omits any such consideration from parental decision making.22 Erasmus Darwin’s Plan for the Conduct of Female Education rests on the same moral critique Wollstonecraft sketches but tries, by paying close attention to physical conditions and practices (which Wollstonecraft almost entirely ignores), to make boarding schools safe for girls. His objective, stated at the outset, is improvement of an institution whose value he believes in and whose existence he takes for granted. Whereas Wollstonecraft considers education in groups a second best to home education, Darwin sees substantial advantages in school education. Collective experience, for example, is in his view a key to motivating children to learn. In groups, through their natural inclination to imitate others—“an emulation, which naturally exists, where many pursue the same studies”—children will become “more active in the pursuit of their studies, and in the acquirement of their accomplishments”; “children often take pleasure in teaching each other” and hence learn more than they would from a tutor or parent alone. From each other, too, children learn “practical physiognomy,” by which Darwin means an ability to read motives on others’ faces, which facilitates the learning of languages and conversation. Children learn this more readily from each other

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than from adults because children’s faces naively express thoughts and feelings that adults have learned to dissemble.23 Physical well-being was, for Darwin, as important as mental acquirements: “The advantages of a good education consist in uniting health and agility of body with cheerfulness and activity of mind; in superadding graceful movements to the former, and agreeable tastes to the latter.” And so he devotes several sections of his work to comments on the importance of daily exercise so as not to make “their countenances pale and bloated” and of fresh air for “bracing the system,” the danger of corset stays and of excessive sedentariness that compromises a straight spine, plus a miscellany of considerations on dress, makeup, and hairdos.24 Most of this, though, is just good advice for the treatment of girls, not particularly aimed at boarding school conditions. Darwin specifies a few physical arrangements in schools that can exacerbate these general problems. “Delicate young ladies are very liable to become awry at many boarding schools, this is occasion’d principally by their being obliged too long to preserve an erect attitude, by sitting on forms [benches] for many hours together.” So seats should either have backs on them or be at desks on which the girls can lean from time to time. Or again, the practice of sleeping two to a bed can increase the danger to young girls’ frames: pupils need regularly to rotate their side of the bed—and hence the side of their body on which they sleep—so as not to promote crookedness. And fresh air is more difficult to obtain at boarding schools. “Schoolroom, dining-room, bed-rooms, and their other apartments” need ventilation from the outside so that “the vital air, which constitutes about one-fourth part of it, may not be too much diminished by frequent respiration.” Parents ought to pay particular attention to inspecting provisions for pure air at the boarding school to which they would consign their children.25 Darwin, in bringing considerations of health to the fore, does not characterize boarding schools as fundamentally unhealthful places for girls, nor does he recognize them as posing dangers to the very lives of those sent there. He touches only indirectly on the specter of fatality when framing a polarity between middle-class and workingclass standards of living. By likening the bad conditions into which boarding schools might fall to the living conditions of the poor, he implies that if poorly managed, elite boarding schools will cancel out the advantages of superior class and wealth. Boarding schools

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must be, in physical terms as well as in cultural terms, the antithesis of popular life. What elite families want to avoid is the “pale bloated complexion, which is seen in children of crowded manufactories.” Impure air is a menace because it can cause such diseases as “indigestion, difficulty of breathing, and sometimes convulsive fits…and lastly putrid fevers; of which fatal instances frequently occur in the crowded habitations of the poor.” A diet of gruel, “so frequently had recourse to in some boarding schools, I believe to have laid the foundation of incurable debility. The diseases of debility, as scrophula, bronchocele, softness of bones, and the consequent distortion of them, are very common among the children of the poor in Derby, which on examination, I believe to be owing to their food consisting chiefly of gruel.”26 If Wollstonecraft frames a moral critique of girls’ education without addressing the issue of health at school and Darwin embeds within a moral critique an agenda for physical reforms, Beddoes serves up a scathing indictment that boarding schools rob students of their health by the very efforts at social distinction that, as both Wollstonecraft and Darwin recognized, are the schools’ current raison d’être. Boarding schools make invalids: “Medical men have few better patrons [than] the keepers of boarding-schools.” Parents ought to shun them for health reasons, no matter what other benefits they might offer: “all acquirements are vain, if health be not secured….If boarding schools incontrovertibly possessed the alleged advantages, and others still superior, will any one who knows the difference between good and bad health, say that the destruction of the constitution ought to be risqued for their sake?”27 In Beddoes’s analysis, the problem might lie to some extent in physical provisions. School food ought to be better prepared and more abundant. Schools are generally too large to ensure adequate personal attention: not more than a dozen pupils should coreside in a school because even the most generous and loving teacher cannot feel as tender toward or as solicitous of many students as she can of a few. But for Beddoes the source of the problem runs far deeper: the illness bred in boarding schools is self-inflicted, in the sense that it is caused by the pathological lifestyles that the upper classes adopt in pursuit of fashion. “Our chronic maladies are of our own creating.” Society wants young ladies to be delicate, fragile, weak. And Beddoes recognizes that, in the words of Roy Porter, “the torture chamber de rigueur to render the daughters of the nouveaux riches Twiggy-like votaries of the Graces was the boarding school.”28 To this end it teaches them to drink tea, inducing thereby “a

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sense of intoxication, with enfeebled faculties, uncomfortableness and languour”; it teaches them to shun exercise and fresh air, and imprisons them in overly tight clothing. The result is “habitual sickliness…debility and sickliness in riper years.”29 Indeed, both Beddoes’s concern and his conclusions originated with women’s “riper years” rather than with girls’ health during the school time itself. Baconian though he might be, Beddoes based his medical conclusions and prescriptions not on first-hand inspections of boarding schools but on the words of adult women who had been educated at boarding schools, on the stories of schooling told him later in their lives by female patients. Because their testimonies corroborated one another on essential points, he posited substantial uniformity of practice among schools in general. The onset of the health problems he observed in adult women could be dated precisely from the women patients’ recollections: “The period at which [women invalids’] health has begun to decline, has been frequently well marked. It has been often within a year, or a year and half, after their removal to school.”30 Beddoes’s was a remarkable insight: that individuals’ early standard of living lays the foundation of subsequent mortality and morbidity experience. Physicians today know that health assets acquired during childhood constitute a kind of capital endowment that gets spent out in adulthood, so that deprivation or abuse in childhood can lower health chances in the long run. Moreover, according to demographic historians, it was the change in those assets that produced the modern mortality revolution: secular improvement in childhood health was the engine driving improvements in longevity that produced the general mortality decline between 1700 and 1914.31 What Beddoes noted and urged on his readers—the damage inflicted on pupils whose full consequences might show up only when they were no longer students— was a dimension of boarding school experience with far-reaching significance. Still, Beddoes’s insight was limited in two respects. First, by starting with cases of adult invalidism or weakness or ill health, he necessarily missed the phenomenon of death at school: those who died as pupils could not be found among the adult women he queried. He may have identified the health effect that boarding school had on Charlotte Brontë, but he missed what happened to her two sisters. Second, Beddoes, though a research chemist and a clinical physician, does not discuss the boarding school as a disease environment, as a site that generates pathogens that it spreads by contagion. Elsewhere in the

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eleven essays composing Hygëia he speaks of infections and fevers, but in his essay on boarding schools he makes no mention of physical conditions at residential schools that make them worse. The problem is the curriculum—moral rather than environmental. Beddoes the crusader, in Hygëia, beseeches the “heads of families” among the wealthier classes to change the treatment of their young daughters, to abandon cultural practices by which “natural good is converted into artificial evil.” Echoing and extending Darwin, he identifies the contradiction in the cultural system as the fact that precisely the “hurtful customs” parents impose on their daughters in order to distinguish them socially create a commonality of enfeebled condition between the inhabitants of mansions and the working classes above which they seek to rise. “One part of the public cannot procure enough [food and clothing]. The other injure themselves by its abuse.” The soft life of luxuries celebrated by Mandevillean economists as the source of prosperity in a commercial society brings moral and physical decay to all alike. “The encouragement of manufactures, that is, the creation of a miserable and sickly population is a paltry excuse for lying to macerate in the stew pan of luxury, till we become miserable and sickly ourselves.”32 As the treatises by Wollstonecraft, Darwin, and Beddoes—all radical reformers, all three keenly interested in the well-being of women, two of them by profession physicians—illustrate, eighteenth-century discussions of the healthfulness of boarding schools for girls focused on the moral consequences of the way life at school was organized. They were part, then, of the general critique of social arrangements that lay at the heart of the Enlightenment. They saw illness being bred by the way school society was arranged in much the same way that nonphysician philosophes saw personal vice being incubated in society at large. Even the two physicians framed their discussion in moral terms, urging an end to practices that robbed human beings of their potential and substituting those that could make them robust. They wrote as cultural critics rather than as investigative physical scientists. Readers of their tracts would not learn from them that death was a menace at boarding schools, that something even worse was at stake in parents’ choice of educational venue than crooked spine or lingering fragility.

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DEATHS AT SCHOOLS Yet death, we know, was a fact of life in early modern boarding schools. Alexandrine d’Etioles, the daughter whom Madame de Pompadour sent away to school when she separated from her husband and became mistress of Louis XV, died suddenly in 1754 at the age of ten in the Convent of the Assumption.33 At the Convent of Notre-Dame in Etampes the nuns buried the twelve-year-old daughter of a Paris bourgeois family in 1743, two more Parisian demoiselles (aged four and eleven) in 1756, a six-year-old in 1761, and in 1776 a thirteen-yearold from Saint-Domingue.34 The Nouvelles Catholiques in Paris lost six adolescent girls between 1704 and 1792. Indeed, the majority of internats for girls in Paris had at least one pupil perish at school.35 In London in March 1795, Elisabeth Ferray, a Huguenot refugee, died at the Westminster Charity School, where she had been living for nearly three years.36 Bobbin Young, beloved fourteen-year-old daughter of the famed English agronomist Arthur Young, died at school of consumption in 1797.37 In Portarlington, a small Irish town whose major industry was private boarding academies that drew pupils from across the island, registers of the French Church identified ten children as dying in the town’s schools between 1791 and 1807: four of these ten were girl boarders, aged eight to twelve.38 This list could easily, albeit sadly, be lengthened. And this would not surprise us, for early modernity was an age of high childhood mortality: as a rule of thumb, one-quarter of children born would die in their first year and another quarter before reaching adulthood. But how did rates of death at school compare with these life chances in society at large? Were boarding schools more favorable or less to youngsters’ health than day-school attendance or tutoring in the home? How great a factor in children’s life chances was their parents’ choice of educational venue? What were the patterns of death at school? Random cases such as those cited here tell us almost nothing about pupil mortality. How frequent was Brontë’s “frequent visitor”? What proportion of pupils did it claim? Did schoolgirl victims such as Alexandrine d’Etioles and Elizabeth Ferray die alone or among a group of casualties? Did they die soon after arrival at school or after a longer residence there? Were some schools more successful than others in preserving the lives of their students? In order to understand the phenomenon of pupil mortality, we would need not only to identify the cases of death but also to know the entire population involved (such

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data as the number of students and their age profile), the patterns of death (such indicators as the ages of victims, length of residence, symptoms, seasonally of occurrences), and living conditions in the school. All these we rarely possess for the early modern period. However, records of two schools for girls—Smol’nyi Institute in St. Petersburg and the Maison royale de Saint-Cyr near Versailles—offer at least some of this requisite information and so give some insight into the phenomenon of death at school, pointing the way to further study. Smol’nyi Institute, founded in 1764 by Catherine the Great, was one of the largest and most important girls’ schools in all of Europe.39 Originally designed to educate two hundred daughters of the Russian nobility at a time, it added a second section in 1765 for two hundred forty bourgeois girls (after 1770, two hundred eighty). “Smolniards” in both sections of the institute entered at age five or six, their parents having agreed to leave them in residence for a full twelve years, uninterrupted by vacations away from school and disrupted only on a very limited basis by visitors from the outside. Students were thus isolated from their families, deliberately quarantined in a controlledaccess enclave. By 1794, when Catherine the Great died, 1,316 girls had attended the school, of whom some eight hundred fifty had graduated. Smol’nyi continued to educate girls until October 1917, when its buildings were taken over as Lenin’s headquarters; they served as the local Communist party headquarters until August 1991. The Empress Catherine’s patronage of Smol’nyi was part of her larger initiative to continue the process of westernization and modernization begun early in the century by Peter the Great. Successive Russian rulers looked to the West for models of girls’ education. On June 11, 1717 Peter himself had paid a visit to the most renowned girls’ school in France, the Maison royale de SaintCyr, and to its founder the morganatic second wife of Louis XIV, the marquise de Maintenon : ‘The Czar went to Saint-Cyr. He saw the house; he entered into the room of madame de Maintenon, who was in bed, and he pulled back the curtains to see her.”40 Later, the man who would become Catherine’s chief cultural advisor, Ivan Ivanovich Betskoi, was sent by the Empress Elizabeth to France to study and report on the same exemplary school. In 1764, the founding documents and regulations of Saint-Cyr as well as its architectural plans were sent to Catherine, on Louis XV s orders.41

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Catherine’s aim was to produce women who would provide a new and reformed moral base for Russian society: “pleasant and capable [women] able to raise their own children and to manage a household …wives suitable for our lords.” A preamble to efforts at a public school system for the entire empire, Smol’nyi was part of a broad effort at top-down social reform and is considered by many an important catalyst for change in Russia: “It helped carry the message that women should be educated, and it was an impetus for the spread of girls’ schools.” It was “a serious institution which made a lasting impression upon Russian society.”42 An unusual source gives us insight into the health situation at Smol’nyi. The English prison reformer John Howard traveled to Russia in 1781, and Smol’nyi was one of the institutions he visited personally. Howard had from time to time, in his on-site investigations in the British Isles, inspected the premises of schools. For example, he had examined charity schools on several trips to Ireland in the 1770s and 1780s.43 Here and there he found a conscientious schoolmaster and well-tended premises. But overall, he reported finding abuses that merited Parliamentary inquiry. The schools were underfunded, staffed with difficulty, and overcrowded. The children were “many in rags,” their clothes “infamously tacked together.” The houses were “dirty,” “full of fleas,” the “bed clothes ruinous…sheets, as at most of the schools, brown linen, which hides dirt and never seems clean.” He found the “pantry empty,” the pupils “scantily fed.” Worst of all were the infirmaries: one he saw was “used for a pig sty,” another “as a stable.” Elsewhere, “boys lay in the room called the infirmary, in which were turkeys and fowls.” The children were “puny, sickly objects,” their “countenances shew their sickly state.” In one establishment, “four or five [of the forty-three pupils] lay sick on the floor in the schoolroom.” No wonder, then, that, as he would observe, “the children in general did not appear cheerful.”44 And little wonder that Howard reacted with ecstasy to Smol’nyi. In “a stately pile of buildings” composed of “lofty and airy” rooms, he found the girls enjoyed a diet carefully controlled to combat sickness and periods of active recreation interspersed among their hours of studies. “In consequence of this management, and of living so much in the air, and being used to exercise, and cleanliness and a simple diet, they are seldom known to take cold; and become capable of bearing the severest weather of the climate without receiving any harm, their clothing being only a short wadded cloak, whilst others are loaded

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with furs.” Given the kinds of institutions he had inspected up to this date, it is not surprising that Smol’nyi seemed a prodigy to him. And it is by bearing in mind how sharp the contrast was between most schools and the showplace of Smol’nyi that we can best appreciate the mortality that, in spite of all measures taken to prevent it, yet occurred there. As Howard reported, Smol’nyi, too, found death “its frequent visitor.” The mortality rate at the school was 5.6 percent; 22 among the first 393 to enter died at Smol’nyi. And among the victims Howard reported a striking social differential: 1 percent of noble pupils died, 10.5 percent of commoners.45 Was this a favorable or unfavorable record? Howard, who had, as we have seen, extensive experience of far worse institutional living conditions, considered it favorable—“The children on this foundation enjoy, as might be expected, an uncommon degree of health”—and implicitly attributed the good health to the premises and activities he described.46 The philosophe Denis Diderot, visiting in 1773, had written Catherine to the same effect: “One has taken in your convent the surest precautions to strengthen health, conserve their [the girls’] natural character, their innocence and gaiety, and to give them talents without constraint, to form domestic economy without debasement, in a word, to prepare instructed, honest, and useful mothers, wives, and citizens.”47 Smol’nyi, it seems, was as well run and as solicitous of its charges as a boarding school could hope to be. The regulations enjoined teachers not to be severe, to make learning pleasant and the atmosphere friendly. Diet was simple, exercise and fresh air abundant, medical care (including an infirmary) available on site, and hygiene a formal part of the curriculum. Catherine made Smol’nyi a favored personal project—Diderot noted on his visit that the pupils greeted Catherine more like a beloved mother than like an empress—and kept it very much in the public eye as a showpiece of the monarchy. She orchestrated public celebrations at Smol’nyi, saw to it that the activities and accomplishments of the girls were covered in the officially sponsored St. Petersburg Gazette, and took selected graduates into highly visible positions at court. State bureaucrats, commissions, and a four-man supervisory board of important state officials, all chosen personally by the Empress, monitored operations at the school.48 So why did deaths occur at this antithesis of Lowood/Cowan Bridge? Were other forces at work even in the best of boarding schools, irrespective of whether the school regimen was repressive or indulgent?

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Were such forces different from or identical to, greater or lesser than, those that took the lives of young girls not residing at school? What is known to date about Smol’nyi cannot take us far toward answering these questions because though Howard gave a mortality rate, he conveyed (and almost certainly knew) nothing about the patterns of death (who died, at what date and what age) or the pattern of continuing residence. Were some Smol’nyi pupils, for example, as Jane Eyre said, “fortunate enough to have friends and relations able and willing to remove them” when contagion struck the school? Were noble pupils, perhaps, more likely to benefit from this good fortune than bourgeois girls, thus creating artificially the class differential in the deaths recorded at school? Did other pupils, “already smitten, [go] home only to die,” in that way not getting recorded as casualties at the school?49 More about the experience of girl pupils at boarding school can be teased from the records of the school after which Smol’nyi was modeled: the Maison royale de Saint-Cyr, which was run by the French monarchy for the daughters of noble army officers from 1686 to 1793. Saint-Cyr was established by Madame de Maintenon two years after she had secretly become the second wife of Louis XIV, the Sun King. Handsomely financed by the monarch himself, Saint-Cyr was widely praised and widely imitated. Today its name is well known because after the French Revolution of 1789 shut the school down, Napoleon converted its vacant buildings into the premier military academy of France. But in the eighteenth century it was a school for girls. There the daughters of many prominent French families received their educations, including the grandmother of the writer George Sand, the grandmother of the poet Alfred de Musset, the wife of the English prime minister Bolingbroke, and ancestors of the artist ToulouseLautrec, of the writer Saint-Exupéry, and of Madame Giscard d’Estaing, wife of the president of France in the 1970s.50 The school was in operation for 107 years—from 1686 to 1793. In that time, 3,063 girls attended Saint-Cyr, entering between seven and twelve years of age and staying until age twenty. A handful left for misconduct or other forms of “unsuitability”—including three students who conspired to kill one of their teachers by twice putting hemlock in her soup and in her salad. Of those who stayed, nearly one out of every six (15.3 percent) died at the school.51 Is this worthy of note? Did youngsters simply die at this rate in preindustrial France or is this mortality experience higher than usual? The evidence argues that this rate of death at school was not

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characteristic of this age group in the French population as a whole. Table 8–1 of survival rates, showing mortality in various French regions, permits comparisons for ages ten to fourteen, and none of the French localities had survival rates in this age group as low as Saint-Cyr’s. Even Sotteville, a notoriously unhealthy working-class suburb of Rouen where nearly half of children born died before their tenth birthday, surpassed the elite school in preserving its early adolescents’ lives. The table of survival rates also shows that for the more extended age group of ten to twenty, Saint-Cyr’s losses by death were greater than the French comparison cases. At Challain in Anjou, conditions were so unfavorable that over half of children born died before their tenth Table 8–1: Survival Rates Ages 10–15 and 10–2052

birthday, but mortality from age ten to twenty was a mere 4 percent. So to summarize these data, out of one thousand children at the age of ten, at Challain 961 would survive to the age of twenty, at Rouen 905, at Lyon 872, and so on; at Saint-Cyr the survivors would number but 856. OnlyWorthy Park, a slave plantation in eighteenth-century Jamaica, had survival rates as low as Saint-Cyr’s. So mortality experience at the boarding school was worse than in the same age group among the French population as a whole: the pupils at Saint-Cyr did not just die in the same numbers as their

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friends outside the boarding school. Beyond even this are four reasons that we might reasonably expect the pupils at the boarding school to have died in smaller numbers than their cohort outside. First, because their health was screened by a physician on the very day of their entry to the school, and girls with any recognizable health problem were not permitted to enter. Disqualifications named in the institution’s descriptive brochure included paralysis, scrofula, scurvy, cancer, epilepsy, continual vapors, and “those who are crooked, deformed, lame, rickety, one-armed, bad-odored, cold humored, or with any weakness or trouble of the night.”53 Thus, a wide range of health problems present in the general population was absent from Saint-Cyr, a circumstance that might reasonably have been expected to result in a more favorable mortality profile for the school than for the general population of adolescents. A second difference between Saint-Cyr girls and the general population that could reasonably be expected to have increased the pupils’ life chances was the exceptional medical care at Saint-Cyr. Among the general population in Northern France there was one medical practitioner (doctor, surgeon, or healer) for each 2,200 people;54 but the two hundred fifty pupils who were at Saint-Cyr at any given time had at their disposal a full-time doctor, a resident surgeon, at least two highly trained pharmacists, a corps of nursing nuns, specialists when needed, and a dentist. The school also had a pharmacy and infirmary that were models of current medical science. The third reason why we might have expected these pupils to have even a better chance of survival than their cohort outside the school is that they were all of a privileged socioeconomic group. Life chances varied clearly with social class in early modern Europe. Families of the elite regularly had higher life expectancies than their less fortunate neighbors, probably because of superior nutrition, hygiene, and medical care. The fourth reason we might expect the pupils to have had a more favorable mortality profile than the village children is that all the pupils were girls, whereas all the village statistics used for comparison purposes combine male and female children’s deaths. Females usually enjoyed better life chances than males in Old Regime France (as they do today), especially in childhood. In sum, then, the table of survival rates already demonstrates a certain contrast between Saint-Cyr mortality and mortality in the general adolescent population. But if we could find a similar outside population—if we could find an outside population of the same sex

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(all girls) with equal physical preselection, equal access to medical treatment, and equally favorable socioeconomic status—then the contrast between mortality profiles would be even greater than what we see in the table. We would see an even greater extent to which the pupils at Saint-Cyr had lowered their chances of living to adulthood by entering the school. What was it about being at school that killed these girls? Jane Eyre brings to mind the possibility that the girls died from the harshness of life in this convent school. Another novel, Diderot’s The Nun, raises the suspicion that the deaths could be attributed to overwork and excessively rigorous devotions, to which Diderot believed his own sister had succumbed in an Ursuline convent.55 Neither suspicion is borne out in Saint-Cyr’s case. The nuns were quite kindly and indulgent toward the girls. Great care was taken not to subject the girls to overwork or to too-severe religiosity, indeed, even to prevent them from imposing those on themselves. Diet figures make it extremely doubtful that Saint-Cyriennes were left hungry like Jane Eyre. Per capita daily portions at the pupils’ tables averaged more than 4,000 calories per day: 2,663 calories of bread, 330 of meat, 416 of wine, 165 of fish, 131 of milk, 112 of butter, 81 of oil, 76 of sugar, 41 of eggs.56 So why did Saint-Cyr girls die in numbers unusual for their age and sex amid an environment of physical abundance that few of their peers on the outside enjoyed? The answer has three parts: contagion, internally generated infection, and progressive debilitation. First, with respect to contagion, as the excerpt from the calendar of Table 8–2: Calendar of Pupil Deaths, 1740s

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pupil deaths shows (Table 8–2), pupils rarely died alone: one sees a clear pattern of successive months with no deaths at all, broken by a month of multiple deaths or successive months of at least one death. This confirms the health problem as one of contagion and infection— transmission of mortal illness from one student to another. Second, with respect to internal generation of illnesses, the great epidemics—smallpox and measles—appeared at the school from time to time. But by far the greater part of deaths seem not to have been from illnesses imported into the school from outside, but rather to have been infections bred in the interior of the school and transmitted uncontrollably therein. The main evidence for this, shown in Figure 8–1, is the seasonal distribution of pupil deaths. Two times of year were big killers: late spring (May-June) and early fall (SeptemberOctober). This implies two principal sets of contagions and infections: grippes and broncho-pulmonary problems developing to fatal proportions at the end of the cold season and, in the fall, dysenteries and fevers. These are the kinds of health difficulties caused by the inadequacies of the school’s water supply, drainage, refuse disposal, ventilation, and heating for its densely coresident crowd. Figure 8–1:

Third, with respect to progressive debilitation, some deaths occurred surprisingly quickly: five pupils died within three months of arrival at the school, one of them within ten days and another after only four days. Quick deaths might well be attributable to the

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youngsters’ entering a new germ pool, or separation trauma or homesickness might have predisposed these girls to illness that ended by being fatal soon after their arrival at school. But as Figure 8–2 of deaths by year at school shows, the highest risk time for girls at Saint-Cyr was not at the point of entry or during the likely period of homesickness following it. It was, rather, in the second and fourth years after entry. A problem additional to initial homesickness or unaccustomed germs seems to have been operating, and it may have been the languor that George Sand in her autobiography talks about observing later in her own boarding school. Sand speaks of the state of listlessness and anomie into which she and her fellow students gradually fell at boarding school: “The confinement, the absolute continuity of the same regimen, which I regard as fatal to the Figure 8–2:

successive developments or continual modifications of the human organism, eventually rendered me sick and languishing….Confinement and regulation are apparently most antipathetic to adolescence.”57

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This evidence for contagion, internally generated illness, and progressive debilitation strongly suggests that it was unsafe to send girls to boarding schools in the eighteenth century—not only because the curriculum and culture, as in Beddoes’s moral critique, might render them delicate but because the physical habitat generated an intractable disease environment that even Beddoes’ medical eye missed. Students entering Saint-Cyr were swept up in a collective catastrophe: these girls of rural origins were subjected at Saint-Cyr to many of the demographic disadvantages of the preindustrial city—a loss of privilege somewhat akin to the class leveling Erasmus Darwin feared. The catastrophe was not that Saint-Cyr’s regimen was particularly harsh. Rather, the engineering problems involved in supporting healthfully a large, enclosed residential community before the public health and medical revolutions of the nineteenth century—the difficulty of providing a healthful water supply, drainage, refuse disposal, ventilation, provisioning, exercise, heat for a densely coresident crowd—were overwhelming. Despite constant attention at Saint-Cyr, despite the fact that the king had army troops almost constantly working on Saint-Cyr’s physical plant, these engineering problems could not be solved. The extent to which the mortality experience at Saint-Cyr was typical of early modern boarding schools simply cannot be known at this time because Saint-Cyr is the only school whose population—dying and surviving—has been reconstituted in the systematic way that demographic historians reconstitute early modern village populations. 58 Even so, it seems likely that the problem from which Saint-Cyr suffered so acutely was one common to all large institutions in early modern Europe— whether run as well as Smol’nyi or as poorly as Cowan Bridge. Under conditions of technology and disease then prevailing, large communities could not be made safe, for young people at least. At a time when the main causes of death were contagious and infectious rather than degenerative as they are today, the close regular contact of collective life multiplied the dangers. The practice of educating girls in boarding school in seventeenth- and eighteenth-century Europe meant increasing their sickness and lowering their life chances because two aspects of modernization—the educational revolution and the health revolution—were timed differently: because the educational

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revolution proliferated residential schools before gains in hygiene and medicine made high-density coresidence safe for groups of girls. 59 Later, after the public health revolution, even though boarding schools would enroll millions of young persons in Europe, often in very large establishments, school mortality would fall to an insignificant level.60 In well-managed schools with good health care, the health of pupils would begin to be better than that of children on the outside. By the time the private boarding school movement took off in the United States in the 1880s, health problems had largely been brought under control.61 By the early twentieth century in England, the physical wellbeing of pupils stood at the center of educational bureaucrats’ concerns, and medical professionals had revolutionized the design of school facilities precisely to promote students’ health. 62 Today at school, as outside it, the main health consideration in the care of children is accidents rather than disease.63 IMPLICATIONS: GOING HOME AGAIN But while it lasted, the unhealthfulness of boarding schools must have had an impact—which historians have not begun to take account of—on the experiences of pupils, parents, and family life. With respect to pupils, if death was a part of school life in early modern Europe, then understanding children’s experience of schooling entails knowing the ways in which groups of children and adolescents “faced, suffered, and gave expression to their own death or the death of others.”64 What physical and emotional imprint did the specter of death at school cast on pupils’ educational experience?65 With respect to parents, recognition of the phenomenon of death at school complicates the already vexed issue of parents’ attitudes toward their children in early modern Europe.66 How might those attitudes be revealed by the decisions parents made on where to educate their children? If parents had known the increased incidence of death at boarding schools, they could have made that a factor in their choices between educating their children at home or sending them away to school. Could they have known? Not—to judge from the writings of Wollstonecraft, Darwin, and Beddoes—from reading the publications designed to advise parents

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on that very decision. Would they have been swayed by that knowledge if they had had it, given the competing advantages of acculturation and social promotion that the schools offered? Arthur Young, for one, would have been swayed, judging by his anguished regret, after his daughter Bobbin’s death, at having sent her to Camden House “or to any other [boarding school], for they are all theatres of knavery, illiberality, and infamy…. Oh! what infatuation ever to send her to one. In the country she had health, spirits, and strength, as if these were not enough with what she might have learned at home.”67 On the other hand, more than a dozen Saint-Cyr parents sent a second daughter to Saint-Cyr to replace the first who had died, and ten even entrusted a third daughter to the school after the loss of two. It may be instructive to think of the cultural usage of sending children away to boarding school as more akin than has been thought to the practice of sending infants out to wetnurse, a practice that as much as doubled infants’ mortality.68 The two practices raise similar questions about parental knowledge and about the relative priorities of parents’ material gain versus children’s well-being. Were both of these forms of distancing children from parents means of limiting family size (as has been said of wetnursing) or ways “to keep them from troubling the house at home”69 (as has been said of sending children to boarding school) or means of preserving the family in the traditional sense as a property unit and parrying its becoming an emotional unit? Such speculations, though they be no more than speculations, suggest the need to reconsider an assumption underlying recent writing in both the history of education and the history of the family about the relationship between schooling and family life. This assumption—that family and school have been compatible and mutually reinforcing in modern history—was given forceful expression in the classic that nearly single-handedly created the field of family history: Philippe Ariès’s Centuries of Childhood.70 Ariès’s book was a milestone when it was published more than thirty years ago because it showed convincingly that the family is historical: that far from being a timeless, biologically based component of human society, the family changes over time in fundamental ways and that the family we know and take for granted is a modern invention, only perhaps three hundred years old. Centuries of Childhood argued that prior to the eighteenth

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century Europeans understood the family as lineage, as the family line stretching from generation to generation; it performed certain social functions, such as conferring status and providing for the passing down of property. But it was not thought of or experienced as a unit of mutual emotional attachments and deeply intertwining lives, as it is in modern Western societies: this sentimental family is a modern construction that only came to be part of Europeans’ experience in the late seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. What is more, Ariès pointed out that the school, too, is a modern invention that came to be part of European experience only in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. So the rise of the family and rise of the school were contemporaneous, and the two institutions, in his view, were complementary. Both family and school centered on, and served, an innocent, vulnerable child who needed intense attention, supervision, discipline, isolation, and protection from the cruel world. School and family alike developed to create an artificial and protected universe in which the child could grow up. And both served to prolong childhood, to prolong the dependence of children beyond what biology mandates. But how could the school—at least the boarding school, which was the modal form for the elite families Ariès had in mind—and the family have been compatible and mutually reinforcing when the child could only be in one or the other? How could development of closer emotional bonding between parents and children be compatible with greater physical distance and with schools assuming functions in the place of parents who were no longer with the child? Ariès resolved the contradiction by suggesting that what schooling replaced was an earlier pattern of apprenticeship in which the child left the family at an early age, trained in some other household—whether for a trade or as protégé in an aristocratic household—and then went directly from that household to independent adulthood, not returning ever again to the family home. Schooling, he argued, was more compatible with family than apprenticeship had been because the family was the child’s destination after school. Because the pupil went home again when school was finished, “the ties between the schoolboy [sic] and his family had tightened.”71 But if the compatibility of family and school turned on the child’s going home again, then the incidence of death at school must have made for more tension and contradiction between the

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two institutions than Ariès acknowledged. Replacing apprenticeship with schooling moved children from one-on-one situations into large cohabiting groups, at a time when these could not be made safe for a family’s children. In this way, the educational revolution increased the chances that children sent away, of either sex, would not live to experience family life again. For some substantial period of time— until the very end of the nineteenth century, when gains in hygiene and medicine would make it safe for large groups to live together— the emotional life of families was inescapably at risk from the boarding school, inescapably prey as it was, in turn, to “its frequent visitor.” NOTES 1. Charlotte Brontë [Currer Bell, pseud.], Jane Eyre : An Autobiography (London: Smith, Elder, 1847), 1:155, 111, 138–39. 2. Quoted in Helene Moglen, Charlotte Brontë: The Self Conceived (New York: Norton, 1976), p. 114. 3. A retrospective diagnosis of all the Brontës’ illnesses and causes of death has been offered by Philip Rhodes, a physician, in “A Medical Appraisal of the Brontës,” Brontë Society Transactions 16 (1972): 101– 09. Rhodes suspects that the two sisters died from tuberculosis rather than from typhus, as is usually said, possibly because the dietary privations at school increased the girls’ susceptibility to tuberculosis bacilli. The Brontë family’s health history suggests that extreme isolation at Haworth Parsonage, occasioned by their neurotic avoidance of outsiders, made them vulnerable to infections whenever any of them ventured away from home. A useful social history of the family is Rebecca Fraser, The Brontës: Charlotte Brontë and Her Family (New York: Crown, 1988). 4. Elizabeth C.Gaskell, Life of Charlotte Brontë (New York: E.P.Dutton, 1933 [1857]), p. 39. 5. Gaskell, p. 41. Gaskell discusses Cowan Bridge School on pp. 39– 49, 252–53. 6. Gaskell, p. 44. 7. Brontë, 1:114,152. 8. The practices of educational institutions and pupils’ experience of schooling have loomed much smaller in educational histories than have the intentions of founders and teachers, the formal curriculum, and the social composition of student bodies. Among reviews of recent work in European educational history are Konrad H.Jarausch, ‘The Old ‘New History of Education’: A German Reconsideration,” History of Education Quarterly 26 (Summer 1986): 225–41; Peter Cunningham, “Educational

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History and Educational Change: The Past Decade of English Historiography,” History of Education Quarterly 29 (Spring 1989): 77– 94; Pénélope 2 (1980) special issue on “Education des filles: Enseignement des femmes.” 9. Quoted in Lawrence Stone, The Family, Sex and Marriage in England 1500–1800 (New York: Harper & Row, 1979), p. 230. Nearly identical words appear in Clara Reeve, Plans of Education: With Remarks on the Systems of Other Writers (London, 1792), p. 111 and in John Burgoyne’s The Heiress: A Comedy (London, 1786). 10. Quoted in Elizabeth Rapley, “Fénelon Revisited: A Review of Girls’ Education in Seventeenth-Century France,” Histoire sociale: Social History, 20 (1987): 301. 11. In America, in contrast, “little was heard of school health” before the nineteenth century because of the predominance of instruction “in the home of the teacher where the physical environment was reasonably good.” See John Duffy, “School Buildings and the Health of American School Children in the Nineteenth Century,” in Charles E.Rosenberg, ed., Healing and History: Essays for George Rosen (New York: Science History Publications, 1979), pp. 161–78. 12. Jean Le Rond d’Alembert, “Collège” Encyclopédie, ou Dictionnaire raisonné des sciences, des arts et des métiers, ed. Denis Diderot et al. (Paris and Neufchastel, 1751–1780), 3:635. 13. Quoted in Françis de Dainville, L’Education des Jésuites (xviiexviiie siècles) (Paris: Editions de Minuit, 1978), p. 524. 14. Charles-Irénée Castel, abbé de Saint-Pierre, Projet pour perfectionner l’éducation, avec un discours sur la grandeur et la sainteté des hommes (Paris, 1728), p. 72. 15. Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Emile, trans. Barbara Foxley (New York: Dutton, 1974 [1762]), p. 351. 16. Rousseau, p. 329. 17. The French medical literature on health at boarding schools did not begin to appear until the 1820s, and then it concerned boys. Charles Pavet de Courteille laid out standards and offered advice on curriculum, physical plant, and the medical personnel needed for healthy students in Hygiène des colleges et des maisons d’éducation (Paris: Gabon et cie., 1827). Pavet was the physician at the College royal de Saint-Louis (formerly Harcourt). 18. Mary Wollstonecraft, Thoughts on the Education of Daughters, with Reflections on Female Conduct in The more important Duties of Life (London, 1787); Erasmus Darwin, A Plan for the Conduct of Female Education, in Boarding Schools (Derby, 1797); Thomas Beddoes, Hygëia: or Essays Moral and Medical on the Causes Affecting the Personal State of our Middling and Affluent Classes (Bristol, 1802). Essay 3, “On the

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Individuals, Composing our Affluent and Easy Classes,” is dedicated to girls’ boarding schools. Because Beddoes’s eleven essays originally appeared in monthly installments, each has its own pagination. Roman numerals in the following citations refer to the essays/installments. I am indebted to Sheila Ryan Johansson for drawing my attention to Beddoes’s work. 19. A most insightful recent examination of Mary Wollstonecraft’s life and work in historical context is G.J.Barker-Benfield, The Culture of Sensibility: Sex and Society in Eighteenth-Century Britain (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1992). 20. Roy Porter, Doctor of Society: Thomas Beddoes and the Sick Trade in Late-Enlightenment England (New York: Routledge, 1992), p. 1. 21. Wollstonecraft, p. 58. 22. Wollstonecraft, pp. 57–60, 3. 23. Darwin, pp. 115, 116, 17–19. 24. Darwin, pp. 10,68,71. 25. Darwin, pp. 75, 72, 71. 26. Darwin, pp. 73, 88. 27. Beddoes, III: 12,27,61. 28. Porter, p. 66. 29. Beddoes, VII: 98; III: 33, 39, 84. 30. Beddoes, III: 25. 31. Roderick Floud, “Medicine and the Decline of Mortality: Indicators of Nutritional Status,” in The Decline of Mortality in Europe, eds. Roger Schofield, David Reher, and Alain Bideau (New York: Oxford University Press, 1991), pp. 146–57. 32. Beddoes, I: 13; III: 7, 50, 84. 33. Jacques Levron, Secrète madame de Pompadour (Paris: Arthaud, 1961), p. 90. 34. M.Ch.Forteau, “Notes sur la Congrégation de Notre-Dame à Etampes,” Mémoires et documents de la Société historique et archéologique de Corbeil, d’Etampes et du Hurepoix 7 (1901): 4–23. 35. Martine Sonnet, L’Education des filles au temps des lumieres (Paris: Editions du Cerf, 1987), p. 181. 36. Westminster School Manuscripts C 1/1: Registrations and Admissions, 1786–1889, Huguenot Library (London). 37. M.Betham-Edwards, ed., The Autobiography of Arthur Young (London: Smith, Elder & Co., 1898), pp. 263–64. 38. Thomas Philip Le Fanu, ed., Registers of the French Church of Portarlington, Ireland (London: Spottiswoode & Co., 1908). 39. On Smol’nyi, see J.L.Black, “Educating Women in EighteenthCentury Russia: Myths and Realities,” Canadian Slavonic Papers 20 (1978): 23–43; Carol S.Nash, “Students and Rubles: The Society for the Education of Noble Girls as a Charitable Institution,” in Russia and the World of the

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Eighteenth Century, ed. R.P.Bartlett, A.G.Cross, and Karen Rasmussen (Columbus, Ohio: Slavica Publishers, 1988), pp. 258–72; Carol S.Nash, “Educating New Mothers: Women and the Enlightenment in Russia,” History of Education Quarterly 21 (1981): 301–16; Carol S.Nash, “The Smol’nyi Institute in the Eighteenth Century: Studies and Extracurricular Activities,” unpublished paper; Isabel de Madariaga, Russia in the Age of Catherine the Great (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1981), pp. 309, 493, 571, 643. For several of these sources I am indebted to Nancy Shields Kollmann. 40. Philippe Courcillon, marquis de Dangeau, Abrégé des mémoires ou Journal 4 vols. (Paris: Treuttel et Würtz, 1817), 4:32. 41 Letter dated October 7, 1667, D’Ormesson papers, 144 AP 145, dossier 2, section 1, #14, Archives nationales (Paris). 42. Quoted in Black, pp. 30–31; Nash, “Smol’nyi,” 1; Black, p. 42. 43. Technically, “boarding schools” were paying institutions for children of the upper middle class and gentry. Residential schools for the lower classes and poor were “shelter institutions.” The two types of institution proliferated in parallel during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, but they were clearly distinct from each other in purpose, design, and activity, sharing only the residential dimension. 44. John Howard, The State of the Prisons in England and Wales, With Preliminary Observations on Some Foreign Prisons (London, 1791), 2:101–24. 45. Howard, 1:86–90. 46 Howard, 1:90. 47. Quoted in Nash, “Mothers,” p. 311. 48. Nash, “Smol’nyi,” p. 19. 49. None of these questions can be answered unless Smol’nyi kept death and enrollment records like those kept at Saint-Cyr (see note 51, below) and some historian finds them as well as detailed information on the school habitat and analyzes them all, as the following section of this paper does for Saint-Cyr. Nor can any light be shed, on the basis of the figures Howard gives, on the acute differential in life chances between the noble and bourgeois pupils at Smol’nyi or on the reasons for the different mortality experience at Smol’nyi and Saint-Cyr. 50. On the school, see Carolyn C.Lougee, “Noblesse, Domesticity, and Social Reform: the Education of Girls by Fénelon and Saint-Cyr,” History of Education Quarterly 14 (1974): 87–113; Daniel Roche, “Education et société dans la France du xviiieme siècle: l’exemple de la maison royale de Saint-Cyr,” Cahiers d’histoire 23 (1978): 3–24; W.H.Lewis, The Splendid Century (New York: W.Morrow, 1954), chapter 12. The classic history is Théophile Lavallée, Histoire de la Maison royale de Saint-Cyr (Paris: Furne, 1856).

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51. These figures, and those that follow, are based on my reconstitution of the Saint-Cyr student body. As in other convents, the nuns at Saint-Cyr kept mortuary registers recording the names, parentage, and ages of pupils who died as well as their dates of death. At the same time, as a royal institution, Saint-Cyr kept vital information on all its pupils: names, genealogy, home address, birthdate, date of entry, date of exit. The combination of these religious and secular documents makes it possible to reconstruct the entire student body, as others have reconstituted villages, and to place the deaths at school in the context of the entire population at risk. These documents are in series D and in the ancien état civil at the Archives départementales des Yvelines in Versailles. In addition to the four hundred seventeen girls who died at Saint-Cyr, there were seventy-four girls whose ruined health required that they be sent home, some of whom died shortly thereafter in their families, as well as at least nineteen who did graduate but died in the first months after graduation. Another thirteen were withdrawn by their families, perhaps because their parents worried about their children’s poor health. 52. These are the best comparison data available. More comparisons and elaborated discussion are in the extended analysis of the mortality experience at Saint-Cyr that will appear as Death at School: Saint-Cyr in the Eighteenth Century (forthcoming). Sources for these figures are: Alfred Perrenoud, “La Mortalité à Genève de 1625 à 1825,” Annales de demographic historique (1978): 219; Gérard Bouchard, Le Village immobile: Sennely-en-Sologne au xviiie siècle (Paris: Plon, 1972), pp. 74– 76; Marcel Lachiver, La Population de Meulan du xvie au xixe siècle: Etude de démographie historique (Paris: S.E.V.P.E.N., 1969), pp. 201, 206; François Lebrun, Les Hommes et la mort en Anjou aux lie et 18e siècles: Essai de demographic et de psychologie historiques (Paris: Mouton, 1971), p. 180; Pierre Valmary, Families paysannes au xviiie siècle en Bas-Quercy: Etude démographique (Paris: Presses universitaires de France, 1965), p. 144; Michael W.Flinn, The European Demographic System (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1981), pp. 130–31; M.Messance, Recherches sur la population des généralités d’Auvergnc, de Lyon, de Rouen, et de quelques provinces et villes du royaume, avec des réflexions sur la valeur du bled tant en France qu’en Angleterre, depuis 1674jusqu’en 1764 (Paris, 1766), p. 170; Pierre Goubert, Beauvais et le Beauvaisis de 1600 à 1730 (Paris: S.E.V.P.E.N., 1960), pp. 39–40; Michael Craton, “Death, Disease and Medicine on Jamaican Slave Plantations: the Example of Worthy Park, 1767–1838,” Histoire sociale: Social History 9 (1976): 242. By way of comparison, it is interesting to note current mortality figures in these age groups. From 1960 to 1980 in the countries of the European Union, the survival rates at age twenty for one thousand persons at age ten were 994 for females and 987 for males. See Marie-Hélène Bouvier-

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Colle, Monique Kaminski, and Béatrice Blondel, “Causes de mortalité parmi les adolescents et jeunes adultes dans les pays de la communauté européenne et évolution de 1960 à 1980,” European Journal of Population 2 (1986): 189. 53. Mémoire pour servir d’instruction aux Personnes qui désireront obtenir des Places pour des demoiselles, dans la Royale Maison de SaintLouis, à S. Cyr-les-Versailles (n.d., but between 1763 and 1776), AD VIII 4B, Archives nationales (Paris). 54. Jean-Pierre Goubert, “The Extent of Medical Practice in France around 1780,” Journal of Social History 10 (1977): 410–27. 55. Arthur M.Wilson, Diderot (New York: Oxford University Press, 1972), pp. 14,382–91. 56. L.Bensaïd, La Maison royale de Saint-Louis à Saint-Cyr, 1686– 1973, Mémoire de maîtrise (Université de Paris VII, 1974), pp. 63–73. 57. George Sand, Histoire de ma vie, in Georges Lubin, ed., Oeuvres autobiographiques, (Paris: Gallimard, 1970), 1:867, 936. 58. It is to be hoped that future studies will make it possible to compare the vital experiences of many schools. One recent attempt to compare Parisian school mortalities was based on incorrect calculations, having neglected to adjust for varying lengths of pupil residence at the schools being compared. See Sonnet, pp. 181–82. 59. On the dimensions, timing, and causes of the mortality revolution, see Roger Schofield and David Reher, ‘The Decline of Mortality in Europe,” in Schofield, ed., Decline of Mortality, pp. 1–17. 60. In the U.S.S.R. in 1980, about 1.5 million pupils were living in boarding schools, half of them at primary-school age: V.G.Tsypurskii, “Educational and Upbringing Work at School Boarding Hostels,” Soviet Education 24 (1980): 93–107. In contemporary France the average-size boarding school has four hundred boarders: see “Les Conditions de vie et de travail de l’écolier,” Enfance (1965). In England in 1942, the Fleming Committee Report on “The Public Schools and the General Educational System” found among the advantages of boarding school “healthy surroundings and constant supervision from the matron and the school medical officer”: quoted in W.R.Fraser, Residential Education (Oxford: Pergamon Press, 1968), p. 145. 61. Edward N.Saveth, “Education of an Elite,” History of Education Quarterly 28 (1988): 367–86. An exception to this generalization—and seemingly a most promising area for study of school health and mortality— may be the residential schools for Indians established in the U.S. and Canada in the nineteenth century. Devon Irene Abbott, “Medicine for the Rosebuds: Health Care at the Cherokee Female Seminary, 1876–1909,” American Indian Culture and Research Journal 12 (1988): 39–71, for example, claims that at the Cherokee Female Seminary in the Cherokee

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Nation (later Oklahoma) the students were healthier than children outside the school. The common childhood diseases continued to be present and to require medical care, but there were only a dozen deaths in thirty-three years (1876–1909) at a school that boarded one hundred fifty pupils at a time. This article offers a descriptive survey of health-care experience at this girls’ school but does not analyze either patterns of disease or their demographic impact. A considerably gloomier picture is presented by David Wallace Adams, Education for Extinction: American Indians and the Boarding School Experience, 1875–1928 (Lawrence, KS: University Press of Kansas, 1995), pp. 124–35. The author of this excellent study believes that the off-reservation boarding schools were “a fundamentally unhealthy environment” and that the situation of disease and death was more frequent among their pupils than in the Indian population at large. However, he was unable to get accurate statistics on either population, and though he was able to identify severe health problems at school, he was unable to say whether they reflected or contrasted with the incidence of these same problems among Indian children outside the schools. Health problems were among the biggest factors in turning parents against these schools despite their recognition of the importance of the instruction (vocational and literacy) that their daughters and sons could receive there: see J.R.Miller, “The Irony of Residential Schooling,” Canadian Journal of Native Education 14 (1987): 3–14. Instances of pupil death were also instrumental in exposing the psychological and physical effects of intensive reculturation in these schools: see Elizabeth Furniss, Victims of Benevolence: Discipline and Death at the Williams Lake Indian Residential School, 1891–1920 (Williams Lake, B.C.: Cariboo Tribal Council, 1992). 62. Roy A.Lowe, “The Medical Profession and School Design in England, 1902–14,” Paedagogica Historica 13 (1973): 425–44. 63. See, for example, Basil Castaldi, Educational Facilities: Planning, Modernization, and Management (New York: Allyn and Bacon, 1987). 64. Thus does Roger Chattier define the quarry of cultural histories of death in “Histoire de la mort et histoire culturelle,” in La Mort aujourd’hui (Marseille: Éditions Rivages, 1982), pp. 111–24. The French classics in this genre include Philippe Ariès, The Hour of Our Death (New York: Vintage Books, 1982) and Philippe Ariès, Western Attitudes toward Death from the Middle Ages (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1974). 65. Besides school records, personal memoirs could be a rich source of such information. Numerous women’s recollections of their school experience are, for example, discussed in Barbara Brandon Schnorrenberg, “Thoughts on the Education of Daughters: The Education of British Girls c. 1750–1850,” Consortium (1982): 269–89.

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66. The quality of emotional bonds between parents and children in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries has been the subject of considerable debate in the past two decades. An excellent review of this controversy as well as a substantial contribution of new evidence to it is Linda Pollock, A Lasting Relationship: Parents and Children over Three Centuries (London: Fourth Estate, 1987). 67. Autobiography of Arthur Young, pp. 263–64. 68. Stone, p. 65. 69. John Brinsley, Ludus literarius; or, The Grammar Schoole (London, 1627). 70. Philippe Ariès, Centuries of Childhood: A Social History of Family Life, trans. Robert Baldick (New York: Vintage, 1962 [1960]). 71. Ariès, Centuries of Childhood, p. 369.

CHAPTER 8

‘A Knowledge Speculative and Practical’ The Dilemma of Midwives’ Education in Early Modern Europe Adrianna E.Bakos

I consider it a fact that a woman-Voltaire would only produce deformed children; I consider it a fact that a woman-Rousseau will never be able to breast-feed. —Restif de la Bretonne, La femme infidelle

By the time Restif de la Bretonne’s novel La femme infidelle appeared in 1786,1 the view that the uterus and the brain were at war within a woman’s body was a long-held commonplace. According to this view, a woman given to abstract thought was clearly incapable of performing her reproductive role efficiently. Despite the pivotal role played by the salonnières in the cultivation of intellectual life in eighteenth-century France, or rather because of such involvement, the woman-philosopher was ridiculed, in part, to undermine the perceived threat such a figure posed to herself, to her potential offspring and, perhaps most importantly, to society at large.2 The view that a woman’s intellectual accomplishments were inversely correlated with her ability to produce healthy offspring was paralleled in the eighteenth century with a growing conviction that female midwives were not competent to manage even normal childbirth. This connection between fears of the corruptive female intellect and the declining status of midwives has not, however, figured 225

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greatly in the discussion of the gradual displacement of traditional midwives by (male) obstetricians. Yet it seems to me that eighteenthcentury attacks on the “feminization” of intellectual life, on the one hand, and the degradation of the traditional midwives’ status (especially among social elites), on the other, must be viewed as linked consequences of a seismic cultural shift that shook the cultural landscape of Europe during the second half of the seventeenth century, the powerful aftershocks of which continued through the Enlightenment to the French Revolution and beyond. I am referring, of course, to the epistemological changes collectively known as the scientific revolution. In recent years, the historiography of the scientific revolution has undergone its own transformation. Earlier histories of science tended to focus on the advancements in mathematics, physics, medicine, and other related fields, stringing them together like so many pearls of progress, without reference to the multi-layered context in which these advancements occurred. The implicit teleology of such a history of science rendered context unnecessary; scientific truth was, after all, transcendent and awaiting discovery. In stark contrast to this older view, recent works have placed much more emphasis on context, reexamining the scientific revolution from a number of perspectives. Some works focus on the defining frameworks within which philosopher-scientists were compelled to operate by virtue of their relationships to socio-political institutions such as courts.3 Others have stressed the manner in which patriarchal power structures to a great extent determined the course of scientific progress.4 Despite their differences, all of these newer histories share a deep skepticism about the inevitability of scientific advance. In essence, historians such as Mario Biagioli and Londa Schiebinger have, to a greater or lesser degree, rejected the idea of scientific truth as “discovered” in favor of the view that it is “constructed.” Looking specifically at how the scientific revolution affected women, we can see that several integral elements of this large-scale intellectual transformation contributed to changes in perceptions about women with concomitant alterations in their social status and condition. First, the discovery of the ovum and spermatozoa led to the definitive rejection of the Aristotelian idea that men and women were the same sex, differentiated only by their levels of perfection. This one-sex model gave way to the Galenic two-sex model, for which the discovery of these sex-specific cells provided bracing evidence.

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The substitution of two-sex “incommensurability” for one-sex similitude had a profound impact on views regarding female sexuality and reproduction.5 Second, as the example of the ovum and sperm makes clear, the creation of new instruments such as the microscope was both a result of new scientific knowledge and the means by which further investigation could be undertaken.6 The impact of new instruments and devices was felt unequally by men and women. While men (with sufficient financial means) could acquire and employ instruments to further their scientific and/or professional pursuits, by contrast, women’s access to instruments was often frustrated. One of the most famous examples of this instrumental inaccessibility was the forceps, the use of which was expressly forbidden to female midwives. As science penetrated further into microcosmic minutiae and macrocosmic expanse, advance was ever more predicated upon the use of instruments whose availability to women was strictly curtailed. Third, the invention of, and brisk commerce in, instruments provides tangible evidence of the new mechanistic view of universal order. In place of the traditional conception of the cosmos as an organic entity animated by the breath of God, philosopher-scientists proposed a rationally ordered machine, the workings of which could be perceived, understood, and, most important, controlled. And whereas prior to the scientific revolution, beliefs about women were complicated by a positive association with female Nature, the dethroning of that quasi deity led to a more unambiguously negative view of women, whose disordered natures were henceforth contrasted unfavorably with a perfectly regular universe. Finally, the scientific revolution must be seen as a cluster of cultural changes rather than merely the aggregate collection of scientific “discoveries” made during a given period, important as those advances may have been. One of the most important of the associated cultural changes was the creation of a “language” of science. If the cosmos were a rationally ordered system whose laws were comprehensible and gave consistently reproducible results for those with the requisite knowledge and training, then the language used to describe that system should be similarly ordered and rational. Moreover, since scientific truth was “objective” and existed separately from both its primum mobile (God) and its human interpreter, the language used to express that truth must be similarly objective and detached. To use a particularly heimlich metaphor: rationality,

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objectivity, and detachment now provided the discursive warp into which the woof of particular scientific exchanges was woven. This language was exclusively the preserve of male scientists; female attempts either to converse in, or circumvent, this new language were ridiculed. Not only were women excluded from the emerging professional societies that were becoming so important to the conduct of science, but they were also effectively barred from even participating in scientific discourse as knowledgeable amateurs.7 All of these large-scale changes: the new adherence to the two-sex model of sexual differentiation, the invention of and growing reliance upon scientific instruments, an increasingly mechanistic world view, and the creation of a scientific language were to have a profound impact on the professional status of women within the scientific community. Perhaps nowhere is this degradation in status more graphically manifested than in the case of female midwives. Throughout the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries, midwives found themselves on the horns of a dilemma: how best could they educate themselves in order to be able to continue to compete within the shifting professional landscape of early modern health care? By focusing on the education of midwives and placing it in sharp relief against the larger backdrop of the scientific revolution, this paper seeks to reexamine how and why female midwives were systematically supplanted by obstetricians as the primary caregivers overseeing the process of childbirth among urban social elites. The remainder of the paper is divided into two sections. The first section provides a synthetic overview of the types of educative enterprises in which midwives were engaged, ranging from the creation of specialized institutions for instruction to much less formal apprenticeship programs. Much of this overview is drawn from the wealth of recent scholarship on early modern midwifery. Within the last ten years, early modern midwifery has received sustained and sophisticated attention from historians interested in both the lives of women and in social and cultural developments in the history of medicine.8 Collectively, this body of scholarship provides a reasonably complete picture of (especially urban) midwives in the early modern period, and it seems useful and appropriate at this juncture to synthesize this information. Moving beyond this background material, the paper then proceeds to an analysis of selected tracts written by midwives in an effort to determine the extent to which these women were themselves conscious

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of, and responsive to, perceived social and cultural shifts that threatened their role within the birthing process. I have chosen to focus on works written primarily by female practitioners both because the opinions of male midwives and the emerging professional obstetricians have been analyzed elsewhere, and because it seems to me that an examination of how these women themselves thought and behaved in the face of changing circumstances may offer some new insights into the ongoing scholarly discussion of exactly why female midwives were ultimately displaced from the birthing chamber. THE EDUCATION OF A MIDWIFE Although the range of pedagogical activities in which early modern midwives were engaged varied considerably across Europe between the years 1550 and 1800, some practices were common among midwives everywhere in western Europe.9 To varying degrees, midwives received their training through the following means: apprenticeship; formalized instruction at a hospital, faculty of medicine, or through the college of surgeons; and autodidactically, by reading some of the increasing number of midwifery manuals available in many vernacular languages. In addition, midwives were simultaneously educated and regulated through examinations they were increasingly required to take in order to be certified either by ecclesiastical or municipal authorities. None of these avenues of education existed in isolation. Indeed, often one mode of training was predicated on another as, for example, when admission to a formalized program of training required evidence of a previously completed apprenticeship. Of all these modes of education, by far the most common was apprenticeship, and it was quite probably the one way of acquiring training that urban midwives and their rural sisters had in common.10 From the point of view of professional autonomy, apprenticeship had the distinct advantage of providing the means by which midwives themselves controlled the acquisition and transmission of knowledge. Not surprisingly, however, it was precisely on this basis that apprenticeship as a stand-alone form of training was criticized: ignorance and superstition were as likely to be passed on to the next generation of midwives as would any useful information, indeed perhaps more so. And as we shall see, the emphasis on practical apprenticeship was one of the major ideological pillars employed by

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midwives whose manuals were as much rhetorical strategies of selfjustification as they were actual handbooks for accoucheuses (as female midwives were called) and childbearing women. Although the length of time ranged from one to as many as seven years, apprenticeship formed the core of midwives’ education across western Europe and remained so even when more formalized training became available, even mandatory, throughout the eighteenth century. In London around the middle of the seventeenth century, the most common way to become a midwife was to become an apprentice for an extended period of time, sometimes as long as seven years.11 Elsewhere in Europe, the apprenticeship relationship was much briefer. In southern Germany, for example, apprenticeship lasted on average only a year, with trainees themselves deciding when they had attained sufficient knowledge to practice on their own.12 In contrast with Germany, however, in Spain apprenticeship averaged much longer; in seventeenth-century Zaragoza, for example, midwives could train with physicians only after having already apprenticed with an established midwife for four years.13 These relationships of apprenticeship could vary considerably. In some cases, established midwives took on students for a fee. In others, midwives would train younger female relatives such as nieces or daughters.14 The famous royal midwife Louise Bourgeois, for example, initially apprenticed in Paris with the midwife who had previously delivered Bourgeois’s own children.15 After she herself was established as a midwife, Bourgeois noted in her Observations diverses (1652) that once she recognized her daughter’s interest in midwifery, she strongly encouraged the girl’s attendance at a great number of births, “in order for [the girl] to be sure of her vocation and not to be shocked by diverse types of deliveries.” Consequently, Bourgeois’s daughter had already witnessed fifty births before she was fifteen years old.16 Although apprenticeship, “learning by doing,” was the primary means by which midwives were trained, during the course of the seventeenth century a new educational avenue was opening up to women: learning by reading. Beginning in the early sixteenth century with the publication of Der Swangern Frauwen und Hebammen Roszgarten (1513), which was subsequently translated into Latin and from thence into English as The Birth of Mankind (1540), an ever-increasing number of obstetrical manuals were published in all the major vernacular languages of Europe. While some handbooks

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had circulated in manuscript prior to the appearance of printed manuals, such as the English translation of Libri Trotuli, the writings of Trotula, a female physician living in Salerno in the eleventh century,17 as for so many other literary genres, the advent of print had a profound effect on the production of medical literature. By the end of the seventeenth century the trickle of obstetrical manuals had swelled to a flood. Moreover, most of these manuals were highly successful commercially, going into multiple editions. If we take what was happening in England as an example, The Birth of Mankind, first published in 1540, went into thirteen editions, the last of which appeared in 1654. More popular still was the rather less theoretical Aristotle’s complete masterpiece, twenty-six editions of which appeared by the middle of the eighteenth century.18 Although a number of these manuals and textbooks were written by prominent English surgeons and physicians, many such works were translations of works produced on the Continent, including the writings of the most famous French physicians: Ambrose Paré, and Guillemeau and François Mauriceau. Significantly, as the seventeenth century waned, a number of women began to publish midwifery manuals and more general health guidebooks for women, among them Hannah Woolley, Jane Sharp, and later Sarah Stone.19 Others such as Elizabeth Cellier, who did not write manuals, nevertheless were brave (or perhaps brazen?) enough to publish impassioned defenses of female midwifery.20 Preceding all of these English midwives was Louise Bourgeois, arguably the most famous midwife of the seventeenth century, who as royal midwife to Marie de Médicis delivered Louis XIII and all of his siblings. Bourgeois was the first woman to publish a manual for midwives; her Observations diverses sur la sterilité, perte de fruits, fécondité, accouchements et maladies des femmes et enfants nouveaunés originally appeared in 1609, with subsequent French editions in 1642 and 1652. It was translated into German in 1644, into Dutch in 1658, and much of it was plagiarized and incorporated into The Compleat Midwife’s Practice Enlarged, appearing in 1656.21 Other Frenchwomen followed suit, among them Marguerite du Tertre de La Marche and in the later eighteenth century Angelique Marguerite Le Boursier du Coudray. Unlike apprenticeship, however, the production of printed material on obstetrics, and consequently the extent to which midwives could be truly autodidactic, varied greatly across Europe. In Spain, for

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example, only three obstetrical works written in Castilian appeared in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries (1541, 1580, and 1606). Although these appear to have been directed at midwives, the fact that they contained Latin passages meant that the potential readership was quite small.22 This brings us to the other important limiting factor on book learning as a means by which midwives could acquire the requisite obstetrical knowledge: literacy rates. Literacy rates, especially for women, are notoriously difficult to calculate. Nevertheless, we can make some generalizations that will shed light on the role played by book learning in midwives’ education. Clearly, urban midwives were much more likely to be literate than their rural counterparts. Adrian Wilson calculates that at the turn of the eighteenth century as many as 80 percent of London midwives could sign their own names; he speculates that the number of midwives who could read but not write was probably even higher. In Paris, the rates were somewhat lower but still significant. By contrast, literacy rates were considerably lower in Spain and Italy.23 Female illiteracy posed one obstacle to the dissemination of obstetrical knowledge in written form, but there was possibly an even more potent barrier to expanded reliance on written work by midwives. Both male and female medical personnel viewed book learning for midwives with deep ambivalence. Physicians believed that providing some rudimentary theoretical knowledge about the process of reproduction and potential problems that might emerge in the course of pregnancy would help alleviate the woeful ignorance they attributed to female midwives. However, they also feared that providing them with such information might serve only to give midwives a falsely elevated sense of their own skill, thereby discouraging them from calling for assistance when emergencies arose. For their part, some midwives felt that relying on book learning might undermine their status as preferred practitioners within the birthing chamber. If, after all, everything that one had to learn about childbirth could be gleaned from a book, then men, as the more literate segment of the population, possessed a distinct educational edge over women which they could translate into professional advantage. Despite these misgivings, however, both physicians and midwives continued to produce obstetrical manuals throughout the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, complete with case histories and illustrations,

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that undoubtedly contributed at least in part to the education of literate women studying to become midwives. Both book learning and apprenticeship were part of the training process for midwives that often culminated in taking a certifying or licensing examination. In many European urban centers, midwives were required to appear before a board to answer a variety of questions put to them by examiners who might include civic officials, physicians, experienced midwives, honorable women, and ecclesiastics. The diverse composition of these examination boards testifies to the multifaceted role the midwife was expected to fulfil within society. The participation of physicians and midwives indicates that technical competence was one issue in the granting of licenses, but the inclusion of ecclesiastics and honorable women demonstrates that the questions of moral probity and religious conformity were deemed equally pertinent. In fact, in many places the licensing of midwives was originally solely the church’s concern and only in later years was a test of skill added to an investigation into religious orthodoxy. In England, for example, despite repeated attempts to create a separate board, the licensing of midwives continued to come under the jurisdiction of the Church of England until well into the seventeenth century.24 In Italy, in the post-Tridentine push for conformity, midwives formed the first line of defense. In 1614, the pope decreed the episcopal supervision of midwives and specified that midwives were to be instructed in proper baptismal ritual by parish priests.25 The concern over a prospective midwife’s conformity is to be expected, of course, since she was often responsible for emergency baptisms of dying or deceased newborns. Consequently, many midwifery manuals included not only a discussion of childbirth and delivery techniques, but also instructions about how and when to administer baptism. In the anonymous French pamphlet Le Chemin Frayé et infaillible aux accouchements qui servira de flambeau aux sages-femmes (1689), the author discusses some interesting scenarios that might confront a midwife. If the child was duocephalic, for example, the midwife must be sure to baptize both heads, being careful the second time to include the words: “If you have not been baptized already, I baptize you…,” thereby avoiding the specter of Anabaptism.26

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Beyond demonstrating their ability to perform a proper baptism, midwives were examined to determine their moral probity. Again, such concerns on the part of the examining board reflect the fact that midwives not only supervised childbirth but were also called on in other events related to human sexuality and procreation, including cases of rape, suspected infanticide, and abortion. In cases of rape, for example, the midwife was asked to examine the victim: an investigation into suspected infanticide might require that the midwife participate in the interrogation of the accused woman, including attempting to express breast milk to determine whether the suspect had indeed delivered recently.27 In southern Germany, municipal boards included “respectable” women whose control over the midwives was quite extensive: not only did they conduct exams of those wishing to become midwives, they also assigned midwives to poor women and were even empowered to discipline midwives and revoke their licenses.28 The problems with such certification procedures are manifest. Besides the very obvious fact that competence was given short shrift alongside other concerns, there was tremendous potential for professional and personal rivalries to influence the process. As Louise Bourgeois recounts, the personal antagonism of one of the examining midwives, Madame Dupuis, almost derailed her bid to become a “matron jurée” in the city of Paris. According to Bourgeois, Dupuis felt threatened by the fact that Bourgeois would have an advantage over other Parisian midwives because her husband was the wellknown surgeon Martin Boursier.29 Beyond such petty squabbles was the much more significant drawback that such certification and licensing procedures did little to ensure the quality of obstetrical care midwives could offer their clients. Ironically, the emphasis of these boards on moral probity and religious conformity rather than technical competence meant that the licensing process institutionalized the view of midwives as unskilled. Nevertheless, as the composition of such examination boards began to include physicians and midwives alongside civic and ecclesiastical officials, demonstrated obstetrical knowledge began to assume greater importance among the varied criteria for midwives’ certification. When skill became as important as character in determining whether a midwife ought to be licensed, new attention began to be paid to the manner in which midwives were trained and it was not at all clear that either apprenticeship or autodidactic

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methods were, by themselves, sufficient means of acquiring the requisite technical skill. Consequently, throughout the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, both midwives and physicians made repeated attempts to create opportunities for more formalized obstetrical education. That these efforts were in many cases stillborn and in others only moderately successful highlights the ambivalence both midwives and doctors felt about women pursuing institutional avenues of education. Although some sporadic efforts were made in the 1600s to reform the education of midwives, most of the formalized training programs were instituted in the eighteenth century. In Spain, for example, classes were to be given by a professor of anatomy to qualified women (those who were thirty years of age and Aragonese, and who had apprenticed for a minimum of four years). The College of Physicians at Zaragoza also apparently produced a manual to accompany the classes. Such programs increased in number and rigor during the Enlightenment. Although several attempts to create schools under the auspices of scientific societies came to naught, by the last decades of the eighteenth century colleges of surgeons began to offer programs. In Madrid, a “chair of childbirth” was established in 1787, the occupant of which was required to teach not only aspiring male surgeons but midwives as well, provided that “in the time and hours he can, without detriment to the teaching of the [male] students of the College,…instruct in one of the rooms of the building, and behind closed doors, the women who wish to learn and have classes.”30 In 1795 the College of Surgeons at Barcelona instituted a program for midwives, requiring attendance at ninety-minute classes taking place every day for two months. Despite the apparent seriousness of these efforts, however, the effect of the new emphasis on institutional learning on the levels of obstetrical knowledge among midwives remains unclear.31 As in Spain, in certain cities of northern Italy, anatomy classes began to be offered to midwives by the end of the seventeenth century. Indeed, by 1719, such classes were made obligatory for midwives in Venice. Between 1757 and 1779, thirteen midwifery schools were established in northern Italy, mostly under the auspices of the surgeons.32 Also around mid-century a municipal ordinance in Braunschweig, Germany, made compulsory midwives’ attendance at a formal course combining theoretical and practical information offered by the professor of obstetrics and gynecology at the

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Anatomical-Surgical Institute.33 In Holland, already by 1679 all midwives were required to attend classes taught by surgeons.34 The situations in France and England were somewhat singular, for different reasons. During the seventeenth century, France was considered to be at the forefront of midwifery. As Jacques Gélis recounts, for a long period of time the maternity ward at the HôtelDieu in Paris was the only real school for obstetrics in Europe. As early as the fourteenth century, there was a designated post at the Hôtel-Dieu for the “mistress of parturient women” although she did not as yet have responsibility for training midwives. By the sixteenth century, however, a resident midwife was established at the Hôtel-Dieu to oversee the training of midwives in Paris. By the first decades of the seventeenth century, regulations were in place regarding the functioning of the midwifery school. In the three months that midwives studied at the Hôtel-Dieu, they would be exposed to births ranging from the most uneventful to the most difficult. As a result of the wealth of experience they gained at the Hôtel-Dieu, midwives trained at the hospital were held in very high esteem.35 In England, in contrast, midwives’ being trained at hospitals did not become common until well into the eighteenth century. In fact, securing any type of formal training for midwives was a struggle. The debate over how and where midwives ought to be educated has often been cited as evidence for the paradigm of professional rivalry that has characterized histories of English midwifery for so long. As early as 1616, there was support for the formation of a College of Midwives, spearheaded by the famous family of barbersurgeons, the Chamberlens. This proposal was blocked by the College of Physicians which recommended instead that midwives be examined by two or three physicians before they went before the bishop.36 In 1634, Peter Chamberlen the Younger revived the idea of a corporation, suggesting that he himself function as governor of the body, charged with providing monthly meetings at his home for the purposes of instruction. Generally speaking, the midwives were opposed to such an organization, rightly perceiving the self-interest motivating Chamberlen. 37 Yet the midwives themselves were not necessarily opposed to establishing some formal mechanism for educating themselves. Somewhat later in the century, the notorious Elizabeth Cellier proposed the formation of a college for midwives under royal auspices. She asked James II for an

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endowment of between five and six thousand pounds to support a combination college/foundling hospital. Cellier envisioned a system of public lectures given by the principal male midwife. Attendance would be compulsory, and all the lectures would be written down and bound together in a book. Although supported by James II, the proposal suffered from bad timing; upon the king’s exile, the foundation collapsed.38 Finally, in the eighteenth century, sustained efforts to educate midwives were undertaken in conjunction with the foundation of lying-in hospitals. In 1739 Sir Richard Manningham opened up the first such institution in London where he taught both men and women. By the mid-1750s, there were three new lying-in hospitals in London and although there was some debate about whether or not midwives ought to be taught, eventually all of these hospitals admitted women to be trained as midwives who could deliver “natural and easy labors.”39 Therein lies the crux of the problem with midwives’ education at such formal institutions. In most instances across Europe, formal training of midwives was limited to equipping them with the skills to deal with normal deliveries. There was no attempt to teach midwives how to use the forceps or vectis, and midwives were familiarized only with the more unusual or complicated fetal presentations in order to recognize when they ought to call on an obstetrical surgeon or physician. The debate over the education of midwives hinged on the fear that educated midwives would have a false sense of their own skill, resulting in higher rates of maternal and infant mortality because the prideful midwives would not call for an obstetrician until it was too late. In all of the pedagogical techniques employed by midwives and sanctioned by civic, ecclesiastical, and medical authorities— apprenticeship, examination, book learning and institutional instruction—a clear distinction was made between natural and unnatural childbirth. The fact that midwives were to be responsible only for normal childbirth, whereas obstetricians were to oversee complicated deliveries, reflects contemporary perceptions about the relative merits of different types of knowledge. Uncomplicated birth required only patience and matronly sympathy on the part of the attendant. Consequently, what qualified female midwives to oversee normal childbirth was really only their gender; indeed, in principle, all women who had borne children were capable of functioning as birth attendants. In contrast, difficult cases required considerable

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anatomical and physiological knowledge as well as technical skill and refined judgment—acquired attributes predicated upon the possession of rational intelligence. As a new epistemological hierarchy evolved in the course of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, the types of knowledge that midwives could claim to possess were devalued. Midwives themselves were not unaware of this process, and their responses to the shifting epistemological landscape bear closer examination. The analysis of a few selected manuals and pamphlets written by midwives provides a new vantage point from which to reexamine the paradigm of professional conflict between midwives and obstetricians by placing that struggle in the context of the new models of knowledge acquisition that characterized the scientific revolution. THE ENTHRONING OF RATIONALITY Like traditional histories of science that chronicle the seemingly inevitable displacement of a predominantly spiritual, one might even say superstitious, world view by an ever more sophisticated understanding of an essentially mechanical cosmos, obstetrical histories praise the supplantation of female midwives by obstetricians as evidence of progress. According to this view, midwives slowly disappeared from the childbirth scene largely because of their own ignorance and the public’s growing dissatisfaction with the low level of care they could provide.40 A somewhat more sympathetic view of midwives is presented by those who argue that the idea of midwives’ ignorance was deliberately fostered by the new professional obstetricians intent on creating client demand for their services.41 This paradigm of professional rivalry has remained remarkably resilient, although it has been challenged very recently by Adrian Wilson, who maintains that even by the mid-eighteenth century new obstetrical practices were “contained within the old forms: man-midwifery had not begun to displace the female midwife.”42 The modern midwifery movement has also resulted in the production of new histories that prefer to focus on the accomplishments of women as midwives through the ages rather than lament their loss of status.43 Despite their contributions to the history of midwifery, all of these histories fail to take into account one of the most important cultural changes affecting midwives: the displacement of what I

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will call the intuitive model of knowledge acquisition by the scientific or rational model of knowledge acquisition. That is to say, the most profound consequence of the scientific revolution was the enthroning of rationality as the means by which “truth” could be known and the accompanying degradation of other previously accepted means of comprehending truth.44 Many midwives saw the potential problems such an epistemological shift would cause them but were hampered in their response by the social and gender realities governing the pedagogical opportunities open to them. Midwives’ participation in formal institutions where the new epistemology was increasingly holding sway such as hospitals, universities, and academies was either prohibited or severely circumscribed. Consequently, midwives felt compelled to justify their status as preeminent birth attendants based on more traditional means of knowledge acquisition. These included (but were not necessarily limited to) spiritual, intuitive, and practical routes to knowledge. Of these three, midwives rested their claims primarily upon intuition and practical experience, perhaps because spiritual justifications were particularly fraught with difficulties. Spirituality possessed a dark side, after all, and midwives had to be constantly on guard against accusations of witchcraft. If she were unfortunate enough to lose a mother or child during labor or delivery, even a respected midwife might be accused by the grieving family of having received her knowledge from Satan rather than from God. It is not coincidental that witchcraft trials reached a crescendo on the very eve of the scientific revolution and that midwives were disproportionately represented among those accused and tried.45 It is ironic that the decline of witchcraft trials, which one might see as beneficial for midwives, was in fact an indication of a decline in a belief system that had hitherto privileged women as primary birth attendants. Although often tarred with the brush of witchcraft, midwives also benefitted from their place at the nexus of life and death. Empowered to perform baptisms in a variety of emergencies, midwives were part of the ecclesiastical establishment that had a vested interest in protecting them. Although in theory male midwives could be accorded the same spiritual powers, having men baptize endangered infants would blur the lines between clergy and laity in a much more threatening way than would allowing women to do so.

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Despite such problematic associations, midwives did make use of arguments derived from their spiritual status. Elizabeth Cellier cited the story of the Hebrew midwives Shiprah and Puah who, because they feared God, defied the king of Egypt’s command to kill all the Hebrew boy-children born. She includes a direct quotation of Exodus, chapter 1, verse 20: “Wherefore God dealt well with the midwives; and the people multiplied and waxed very mighty.”46 Arguments based on spiritual privilege were, however, a losing proposition for midwives. Such protection as they did derive from their association with the ecclesiastical hierarchy dissolved alongside the diminution of respect accorded religious authority throughout the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Midwives also claimed a preeminent role in childbirth by virtue of their gender. Female midwives, so they argued, possessed both a natural affinity for the laboring woman and an intuitive knowledge of the process of childbirth itself. If we turn once again to Elizabeth Cellier, we find her recounting the story of Agnodike, an Athenian woman who dressed as a man in order to circumvent the law prohibiting women from practicing “physick.” Hearing of a woman who suffered lamentably with “private diseases” Agnodike “made proffer of her Service to cure her, which the sick Person refused, thinking her to be a Man; but when Agnodicea [Agnodike] had discovered that she was a Maid, the Woman committed herself into her Hands, who cured her perfectly: and after her many others with the like Skill and Industry.”47 The physicians were so envious of Agnodike’s success that they accused “him” of adultery, thereby forcing Agnodike to reveal her true gender. Cellier makes it clear that Agnodike decides to study medicine in order that she be able to help other women; her gender makes her more sympathetic to the plight of her sisters and consequently better able to treat womanly conditions (including childbirth) than her male colleagues. A full century after Cellier, midwives were still claiming that they were better able to care for laboring women simply because, as women, they possessed both natural sympathy and an intuitive knowledge of childbirth. Teresa Ployant, a Spanish midwife, advocated midwives’ participation in a formal program of study while nevertheless maintaining that a midwife’s knowledge sprang from her gender. “Let us then be quick to stem this fatal turn of events,” she wrote, “and through untiring study make the

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public realize that we are the ones that can bring births to a happy outcome and at the same time save women’s modesty.”48 As the quotations from both Cellier and Ployant make clear, a second reason was often offered in conjunction with arguments based on intuitive abilities of female midwives: the issue of feminine modesty. The emphasis on modesty received support from an unexpected quarter: male physicians. Early in the eighteenth century, for example, Philippe Hecquet endorsed female midwifery and condemned the innovation of the male accoucheur. He begins by stating that women have asked him to write on their behalf and to indicate their repugnance at the idea of being delivered by a man. Male midwifery was an affront to feminine modesty and because of this, it was never endorsed by any civilization, even the pagans, “as vicious as they were.”49 Although Hecquet’s stance would seem to lend support to the midwives’ cause, in fact he was motivated by a not-so-secret agenda of his own. Hecquet was determined to discredit the new profession of accoucheurs and forge a working relationship between midwives and physicians because he believed that women would be more pliable and willing to accede to a physician’s authority.50 In a society that revered Nature and respected natural ability, midwives could argue persuasively that their intuitive gifts gave them special status within the birthing chamber. Unfortunately, the long held association between Woman and Nature that had hitherto benefitted midwives took on a much more negative connotation during the scientific revolution. Nature, now, was not a beautiful goddess bestowing her bounty on humanity. Rather, nature was made up of inanimate matter, the motion and action of which could be regularly predicted and controlled. Such control could only be exercised through knowledge taken from, not granted by, nature. The new paradigm of using knowledge to gain authority over nature definitively undermined the midwives’ claims to be intuitive recipients of knowledge from nature. Perhaps the strongest argument women could make on their own behalf was based on their practical experience as midwives. They were the ones, after all, who actually delivered children day after day, year after year. How could anatomy lectures and physiological theories ever compete with the sorts of hands-on experience that midwives possessed and that physicians and surgeons decidedly did not? Very early in the seventeenth century, Louise Bourgeois made

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a point in her Observations diverses of demonstrating the relative merits of experience versus university training. She recounts the story of a man who suffered from bloody flux for over seven years. He consulted with numerous surgeons and physicians, but no one could cure him. Finally a Flemish painter named Rabel cured the man within seven days. Bourgeois editorializes: “It is a remarkable thing that this painter knew the remedy when no physician knew it. The Sovereign Doctor wanted to show that not all the sciences are found in one head and that God uses lowly persons to abase the pride of those who think they know everything.”51 Bourgeois goes on to say that medicine consists only of experiences, whether witnessed personally, at second-hand, or culled from a written source.52 Elizabeth Cellier is even more vehement about the superiority of experience over university training. She characterizes the idea of physicians teaching midwives as wholly ludicrous: I hope, Doctor, these Considerations will deter any of you from pretending to teach us Midwifery, especially such as confess they never delivered Women in their Lives, and being asked What they would do in such a Case? reply they have not yet studied it, but will when occasion serves; This is something to the purpose I must confess, Doctor: But I doubt it will not satisfy the Women of this Age, who are so sensible and impatient of their Pain, that few of them will be prevailed with to bear it, in Complement to the Doctor, while he fetches his Book, studies the Case, and teaches the Midwife to perform her work, which she hopes may be done before he comes.53

Even the physician Philippe Hecquet praises the practical experience of midwives, comparing it favorably with the lack of concrete information possessed by the usurping male accoucheurs. In his desire to forge a working relationship between physicians and female midwives, Hecquet refers to the midwife as the “eye of the doctor,” whose hands-on experience complements the theoretical knowledge of the university-trained physician.54 Most women who wrote midwifery manuals relied on the spiritual, intuitive, and practical justifications for their role, but a few midwives recognized and attempted to respond to changing circumstances. Although experience continued to be the cornerstone

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of the midwives’ claim to special status, some midwives began to argue that such practical knowledge must be wedded to theoretical or “speculative” knowledge. Although they were unwilling to abandon traditional modes of knowledge acquisition, midwives such as Jane Sharp attempted to balance these with a new attention to knowledge acquired through the application of rational thought. In the introduction to The Midwives Book, Sharp clearly outlines the intellectual attributes of the ideal midwife: As for their knowledge it must be twofold, Speculative; and Practical. She that wants the knowledge of Speculation, is like to one that is blind or wants her sight: She that wants the Practice, is like one that is lame and wants her legs, the lame may see but they cannot walk, the blind may walk but they cannot see. Such is the condition of those Midwives that are well versed in both these.55

The same balancing act was performed in France by Marguerite du Tertre de La Marche, who justified her own literary effort by arguing that the best midwives must have both book learning and practical experience.56 It is significant, however, that despite the importance she attaches to theoretical knowledge, La Marche still feels that such knowledge is useless without accompanying experience, writing that “[t]he oldest and most skilled midwives recognize that practical experience is absolutely necessary, thus we send our daughters to be instructed by them, because [the daughters] cannot see what they must in the city and are able to see such things only at the Hôtel-Dieu.”57 The works of Sharp, La Marche, and others (such as Sarah Stone in the early eighteenth century) highlight both the sensitivity of the midwives to the shifting epistemological landscape and the dilemma they faced in attempting to negotiate the unfamiliar terrain. They might argue that the ideal midwife possessed both practical and speculative knowledge, but in reality this balance was almost impossible to achieve. Even in those regions where some type of formalized training for midwives had been introduced, it was limited in scope and, as often as not, designed to inculcate dependence on physicians rather than educate midwives for independent action. Consequently, arguments that midwives could attain the requisite theoretical knowledge to accompany their obvious practical experience sounded hollow and unconvincing. Finding only a very

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precarious footing on the other side of the chasm, the midwives retreated to safer ground, relying heavily on the sorts of justifications that had always worked well in the past. Recognizing that they could never compete with obstetricians on the basis of a formal education that women had great difficulty obtaining, the advocates of female midwifery continued to argue for experience and intuitive abilities. Sharp and other midwives, such as Elizabeth Cellier in England and Louise Bourgeois in France, attempted to counter the professional encroachment of male obstetricians by claiming a special role for experience and thus advocating apprenticeship as the best means for acquiring obstetrical skills. Significantly, these midwives claimed that women were “naturally” better suited to assisting at childbirth, drawing on wellknown examples from antiquity, especially the famous episode recorded in Exodus regarding the midwives Puah and Shiprah. CONCLUSION This emphasis on natural abilities, coupled with experience, was increasingly at odds with an emerging scientific culture that downplayed intuitive methods of knowledge acquisition in favor of university learning and ever more rigorously delineated experimental methods. As I hope my essay has suggested, in a sense, the female midwives contributed to their own obsolescence by “backing the wrong horse” in the race to determine the most appropriate means for obtaining knowledge in the “modern” world. Of course, it was reasonable for midwives to promote the types of training to which they had relatively easy access. Nor was it necessarily obvious that intuition and apprenticeship would irrevocably give way to formalized learning and experimentation. In the course of the scientific revolution, however, the pursuit of “objective” truth through experimentation did become paramount, and the older, alternative modes of knowledge acquisition were rejected as dangerously irrelevant. Consequently, midwives, who relied on “natural” abilities and practical experience, had a diminishing role to play in an increasingly scientific culture. As the case of early modern midwives makes clear, the outcome of ideological contests is never a given, and certainly never known to the combatants in the midst of the fray. Nevertheless, knowledge

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acquisition was transformed from an intuitive to a primarily experimental endeavor; the never-ending search for “truth” assumed a decidedly scientific cast; and nature surrendered ever more to a “man-made” world. Because they were viewed by contemporary men as having intuitive but largely untrained and untrainable minds, and because of their millennia-old association with nature, women in general and midwives in particular were deemed incapable of participating in the construction of modernity. NOTES 1. Restif de la Bretonne, La Femme infidelle (Geneva: Slatkine Reprints, 1988 [1786]). The quotation is from pp. 8–9. 2. See the discussion of the socio-sexual threat posed by salonnières in Joan Landes, Women and the Public Sphere in the Age of the French Revolution (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1988). 3. See Mario Biagioli, Galileo, Courtier: The Practice of Science in the Culture of Absolutism (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1993) and Geoffrey V.Sutton, Science for a Polite Society (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1995). 4. I am especially indebted to Londa Schiebinger, The Mind has no Sex? Women in the Origins of Modern Science (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1989) and Carolyn Merchant, The Death of Nature: Women, Ecology and the Scientific Revolution (San Francisco: Harper and Row, 1980). 5. See Thomas Laqueur, Making Sex: Body and Gender from the Greeks to Freud (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1990) and Maryanne Cline Horowitz, “The ‘Science’ of Embryology Before the Discovery of the Ovum,” in Connecting Spheres: Women in the Western World, 1500 to the Present, ed. Marilyn J.Boxer and Jean H.Quataert (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1987), pp. 86–94. 6. Thomas L.Hankins and Robert J.Silverman, Instruments and the Imagination (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1995). 7. Londa Schiebinger has eloquently argued that science remains an overwhelmingly male pursuit even within contemporary society, due in large part to the thoroughly gendered nature of scientific language created during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. See The Mind has No Sex, passim. A wonderfully illustrative example of the attempt to circumvent scientific language in favor of older rhetorical modes is recounted by Jonathan Sawday in his discussion of Margaret Cavendish, in chapter 8 of The Body Emblazoned: Dissection and the Human Body in Renaissance Culture (London: Routledge, 1995).

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8. This renewed attention to midwifery is due, in large measure, to contemporary debates about the reintroduction of midwives as birth attendants for laboring women. Interventionist modes of overseeing birth have been increasingly challenged by women interested in emphasizing the natural aspects of childbirth. Ironically, what helped defeat female midwives in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries—the fact that they did not employ instruments—is now considered a crucial element in their participation in the natural birth movement. 9. Information about midwives in central and eastern Europe is considerably sketchier than that available about their counterparts in western Europe. This brief survey of midwives’ education thus focuses on midwives in England, Spain, the Netherlands, Italy, and France, drawing primarily though by no means exclusively on the highly useful collection of essays on early modern midwifery The Art of Midwifery, ed. Hilary Marland (London: Routledge, 1993). 10. As Hilary Marland points out in her introduction to The Art of Midwifery, midwives in rural areas probably did not undergo formal apprenticeship akin to that experienced by urban midwives. David Harley notes, regarding the training of provincial midwives: “Midwifery was a skill, like farming or child-rearing, that was passed on to succeeding generations without formal instruction.” “Provincial midwives in England: Lancashire and Cheshire, 1660–1760,” in The Art of Midwifery, p. 28. 11. Adrian Wilson, The Making of Man-midwifery: Childbirth in England, 1660–1770 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1995), p. 31. 12. Merry E.Wiesner, “The midwives of south Germany and the public/ private dichotomy.” in Marland, p. 82. 13. Teresa Ortiz, “From Hegemony to Subordination: Midwives in Early Modern Spain,” in Marland, p. 99. 14. Wilson maintains, however, that in London at least, probably only a minority of midwives were apprenticed to their mothers or other older female relatives. The Making of Man-midwifery: Childbirth in England, 1660–1770, p. 32. 15. See Martine Mirau, Louise Bourgeois et les six couches de Marie de Médicis, These medicale (Université de Paris VII, 1981); and Françoise Olive’s preface to Louise Bourgeois, Observations diverses sur la sterilité, perte de fruits, fécondité, accouchements et maladies des femmes et enfants nouveau-nés (Paris: Côté-femmes editions, 1992 [1652]). 16. Bourgeois, p. 159. 17. It is debatable whether or not Trotula really existed. The manual attributed to her is based on the work of the second-century b.c. physician Soranus. See Jean Towler and Joan Bramall, Midwives in History and Society (London: Croom Helm, 1986). Manuscript translations of Libri

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Trotuli began to appear in English in the late fourteenth and early fifteenth centuries. A modern edition of Trotula’s writings, based on Sloan M. 2463 appeared in 1981: Medieval Woman’s Guide to Health, ed. B.Rowland (London: Croom Hellm, 1981). 18. See Audrey Eccles, Obstetrics and Gynaecology in Tudor and Stuart England (London: Croom Helm, 1982), chapter 1 for a fuller account of the publication history of midwifery manuals in England. 19. Jane Sharp, The Midwives Book (London, 1671); Sarah Stone, A Complete Practice of Midwifery (London, 1737). 20. Collier’s case is unique and indeed somewhat problematic. Although it is clear that she was a committed advocate and eloquent spokeswoman for female midwifery, Cellier’s pamphlets are primarily selfjustifying diatribes against those who accused her of treasonous activities through her alleged involvement in the Meal-Tub Plot of 1677–1678. 21. See Bourgeois, Preface. 22. Ortiz, p. 97. 23. Wilson, p. 31; Ortiz, p. 97. In her article “City Women and Religious Change,” Natalie Davis asserts that an examination of contracts in Lyons indicates female literacy stood somewhere around 28 percent. Parisian literacy rates for women might be somewhat higher, and urban midwives were probably more literate than other female town dwellers. Nevertheless, the number for France is still probably far lower than the high literacy rates indicated for England. Natalie Davis, Society and Culture in Early Modern France (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1965), pp. 72–73. 24. Wilson, p. 32. 25. Nadia Maria Filippini, “The Church, the State and Childbirth: the Midwife in Italy During the Eighteenth Century,” in Marland, p. 159. 26. Other instances when the midwife’s understanding of the baptismal sacrament might be put to the test include the possibility of the child’s dying during labor. In this case, the midwife is advised to baptize any body part which has emerged with the words, “If you live, I baptize you….” If the child born is monstrous, the midwife is enjoined to baptize the most human-looking part in the following manner: “If you are animated with a reasoning soul, I baptize you….” See Book Three of Le Chemin Frayé et infaillible aux accouchements qui servira de flambeau aux sages-femmes (Lille, 1689). 27. Harlay, p. 38. 28. Wiesner, p. 80. 29. Dupuis reportedly said to the other midwife on Bourgeois’ board, “By God, my friend, my heart says nothing good can come to us from this, because she is the wife of a surgeon; she gets on with these doctors like cutpurses at a fair. We should only receive the wives of artisans who

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understand nothing of our business.” Louise Bourgeois, Les Six couches de Marie de Médicis, cited in G.J.Witkowski, Les Accouchements à la cour (Paris: G.Steinheil, 1890), p. 134. Dupuis was overruled by her colleague and the two physicians seated on the board. 30. Real Cédula de S.M.y., Señores del Consejo, en que se aprueban y mandan observar las ordenanzas formadas…para el Colegio de Cirugía establecido en Madrid…(Madrid, 1787) cited by Ortiz, p. 101. 31. Ortiz, p. 102. 32. Filippini, p. 163. 33. Mary Lindemann, “Professionals? Sisters? Rivals? Midwives in Braunschweig, 1750–1800,”in Marland, p. 179. 34. Hilary Marland, “The ‘burgerlijke’ midwife: the stadsvroedvrouw of eighteenth-century Holland,” in The Art of Midwifery, p. 196. 35. Jacques Gélis, La sage-femme ou le médecin (Paris: Fayard, 1988), pp. 56–61. 36. Hilda Smith, “Gynecology and Ideology in Seventeenth-Century England,” in Liberating Women’s History, ed. Berenice A.Carroll (Urbana, IL: University of Illinois Press, 1976), p. 110. 37. Antonia Fraser, The Weaker Vessel (New York: Vintage Books, 1984), pp. 449–50. 38. Fraser, pp. 460–61. See also Elizabeth Cellier, “A Scheme for the Foundation of a Royal Hospital, and Raising a Revenue of Five or Six Thousand Pounds a year, by and for the Maintenance of a Corporation of Skilful midwives, etc.,” Harleian Miscellany, vol. IV, 1745 and Cellier, To Dr.—An Answer to his Queries, Concerning the College of Midwives (London, 1688). 39. Wilson, pp. 115, 145–58. 40. See among others Irving S.Cutter and Henry R.Viets, A Short History of Midwifery (Philadelphia: W.B.Saunders, Co., 1964) and Harvey Graham, Eternal Eve: The History of Gynaecology and Obstetrics (Garden City, NJ: Doubleday, 1951). As recently as 1982, in her book Obstetrics and Gynaecology in Tudor and Stuart England, Audrey Eccles presented a warmed-over version of this scientific progress view when she summed up the move from female to male midwives: “Opponents of men-midwives in the eighteenth century often presented them as exploiters of female ignorance and folly, but it seems more likely their success was due to a quite rational evaluation by women themselves of the respective merits of male and female midwives, and a conscious decision to employ men in defiance of sexual prejudice in the interests of the women’s own safety and comfort” (p. 124). 41. Jean Donnison, Midwives and Medical Men: A History of InterProfessional Rivalries and Women’s Rights (London: Heinmann, 1977). The American context is examined by J.B.Donegan, Women and Men

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Midwives: Medicine, Morality and Misogyny in Early America (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1978). 42. Wilson, p. 161. Wilson’s book is in many ways a fine addition to the scholarship and he is surely right to challenge what has become an alltoo-pat interpretation of what happened to female midwives. Nevertheless, his belief that midwives continued to oversee natural childbirth while obstetricians took over difficult deliveries is problematized by the fact that the definitions of “normality” were in the process of constricting. Wilson writes: “Even though male practitioners were now called much more quickly, their province was still the delivery of difficult births. And although the threshold of difficulty had fallen considerably, the threshold itself remained firmly in place” (p. 163). I would suggest, however, that this “falling” threshold is a significant process because it is part of the substitution of a medical (or scientific) for a natural vision of childbirth. 43. See Jean Towler and Joan Bramall, Midwives in History and Society (London: Croom Helm, 1986). 44. I am deeply indebted to the work of Londa Schiebinger and Carolyn Merchant for this interpretation of the scientific revolution as something other than the inevitable accumulation of “better” types of knowledge. 45. The connections between midwifery and witchcraft were made explicit in the infamous fifteenth-century witch-hunter’s manual, Malleus Maleficarum. The links forged between midwives and witches in the popular imagination are explored by Thomas Forbes, The Midwife and the Witch (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1966). In his book The Witch-hunt in Early Modern Europe (London: Longman, 1987), Brian Levack agrees that midwives were a prime target of witch-hunters, although he believes the case might have been overstated in previous scholarship. 46. Cellier, p. 1. Cellier further elaborates that Shiprah and Puah could not possibly have “acted as midwives to all the Women of that mighty People, who about 100 Years after went up out of Egypt 600,000 Fighting Men, besides Women and Children, and a great mixt Multitude, but rather that they were the Governesses and Teachers of other Midwives, which could not be a few; and as I am informed by a Learned Rabbi, now in Town, their names signify the same.” 47. Cellier, pp. 3–4. 48. Teresa Ployant, Breve Compendia dell’Arte Ostetricia (n. p., 1787), p. 6, cited by Ortiz, p. 167. 49. Philippe Hecquet, De l’indecence aux hommes d’accoucher les femmes et nourrir leurs enfans (Paris, 1708), Preface, n.p. 50. Hecquet, pp. 6–7. 51. Bourgeois, p. 208. 52. Bourgeois, pp. 208–209. 53. Cellier, pp. 6–7.

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54. “S’ils avoient besoin de quelque instruction sur l’état des femmes malades qu’ils traitoient c’étoient des Sages-femmes, non des hommes qu’ils chargoient de ce soin. Aussi une Sage-femme passoit-elle pour l’oeil du Medecin; parce que c’étoit par son ministere, qu’il s’assuroit de ce qu’il ne luy seyoit, ni à un autre homme d’examiner par lui même.” Hecquet, pp. 6–7. 55. Sharp, p. 2. 56. Marguerite du Tertre de La Marche, Instruction familiere et très facile faite par questions et résponses touchant toutes les choses principales qu ’une sage-femme doit sçavoir pour I’exercice de son art (Paris, 1677), n.p. 57. La Marche, n.p.

About the Editor and Contributors

Howard Adelman served for many years as the director of the Program in Jewish Studies at Smith College and now teaches in Israel. He has written on the life and thought of Leon Modena and is currently writing a book on women in early modern Italian Jewish history and literature. Adrianna E.Bakos is an assistant professor of history at the University of Rochester. She has published articles in the Sixteenth Century Journal and the Journal of the History of Ideas. She is editor of Politics, Ideology and the Law in Early Modern Europe (Rochester: University of Rochester Press, 1994) and author of Images of Kingship in Early Modern France (New York: Routledge, 1997). Catherine R.Eskin has taught at the University of Texas at Austin, the University of Trondheim (NTNU) in Norway, and currently teaches at Drexel University in Philadelphia. In addition to her publication in the history of Rhetoric and kairos, she is currently working on a book about the popular prose romance and women’s voices in renaissance England. Colleen Fitzgerald received her Ph.D. from the University of Saskatchewan in 1996. Her dissertation is entitled, “Authority in Ancien Régime France: The Understanding of Jacques Du Bosc.” Carolyn Chappell Lougee is professor of history at Stanford University. Her influential book on women and salons, Le Paradis des femmes, was published in 1976. Her recent research focuses on 251

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girls’ education in the Old Regime and on Huguenot refugee women in the era of the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes. Sharon D.Michalove is an adjunct assistant professor in the history of education at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. She is the author of several articles on education and coeditor with A.Compton Reeves of Estrangement, Enterprise and Education: Chapters in Fifteenth-Century English History (Stroud: Sutton, 1998). Stacey Shimizu is currently a Visiting Instructor at Illinois Wesleyan University. A Doctoral candidate in Comparative Literature at the University of Southern California, she is working on Renaissance images of domesticity and the fictional construction of feminine virtue. Sharon T.Strocchia is Associate Professor of History at Emory University. She is the author of Death and Ritual in Renaissance Florence (Johns Hopkins University Press, 1992) and of numerous articles on women, family, and ritual in Renaissance Italy. Strocchia is currently working on a book-length study of female religious communities in fifteenth-century Florence. Barbara J.Whitehead is Associate Professor of History at DePauw University. In addition to publishing essays on French historiography, she is currently working on a book about women writers of the French Enlightenment.

Index

Abbaco schools, 5, 9 Abitacolo dealt Oranti (Ascarelli), 146 Aboab, Samuel, 143 “Against Women Who Pursue Religious Studies” (Francese), 139 Alberti, Leon Battista, 26 Andrini, Isabella, 149 Antoninus, 22 Archivolti, Samuel, 135 Aretino, Pietro, 149 Ariés, Philippe, 215–217 Aristocratic women (1450– 1540), education and life of hospitality, role of, 52–53, 57–58 household management, power and influence of, 49–53 household management, teaching of, 53– 59, 68–70 hunting and hawking, 58–59 as justices of the peace, 50 Lisle family, 59–68 placement of children into other households, 55–57 researchers’ views on the education of, 47–49 Aristotle, 105, 231

Art (Aristotle), 105 Arte of English Poesie (Puttenham), 88 Arte of Rhetorique (Wilson), 103 Ascarelli, Debora, 146 Avis à un Dame de Qualité sur l’education de Mademoiselle sa fille (Fénelon), 163 Barbaro, Francesco, 4, 20, 21, 22–23, 101 Bayeux Tapestry Beaufort, Margaret, 50, 57 Beddoes, Thomas, 197, 200–202 Berardelli, Alessandro, 146, 148 Bergren, Ann, 75 Bernardino, San, 22 Berners, Juliana, 59 Beruriah, 134, 140 Better Than Rubies:A History of Women’s Education (Stock), viii, ix Beyond Their Sex:Learned Women of the European Past (Labalme), viii, ix Biagioli, Mario, 226 Birth of Mankind, The, 230, 231 Black, Robert, 26

253

254 Boarding schools contemporaries’ perceptions, 195–202 deaths at, 202–214 implications, 214–216 Jane Eyre (Brontë), 193–194 Maison royale de Saint-Cyr (Versailles), 204, 207–213 Smol’nyi Institute (St. Petersburg), 203–207 Boccaccio, Giovanni, 81, 112 Bonifaccio, Baldassare, 146, 147 Book collecting, impact of, 25 Booke of curious and strange inventions, A (Ciotti), 79–80 Book Named the Governor (Elyot), 109 Bourgeois, Louise, 230, 231, 234, 241–242 Bretonne, Restif de la, 225 Brink, J.R., viii, ix Broke of St. Albans, The, 59 Brontë, Charlotte, 193–194 Bruni, Leonardo, 20, 112 Bruto, Giovanni Michele, 77, 87–88, 114, 116–117 Bryene, Alice de, 52, 56 Byrne, Muriel St. Clare, 59, 62 Camden, Carroll, 83 Carew, Richard, 60–61 Castiglione, Baldassare, 123, 149 Catherine the Great, 204, 206 Catholic Reformation, impact of, 6 Ceba, Ansaldo, 146, 147 Cellier, Elizabeth, 231, 236–237, 239, 240, 242 Centuries of Childhood (Ariès), 215– 217 Certaldo, Paola da, 24 Chamberlen family, 236 Chapelain, Jean, 161

Index Chastity associated with sewing/ weaving, 78–80 males’ views of sewing and the seductiveness of, 85–88 Chojnacki, Stanley, 4 Cicero, 104–106 Ciotti, Giovanni, 79, 89 Civile Conversations (Guazzo), 108–109 Clementia, Monna, 5 Cockeram, Henry, 89 Colonna, Aegidius, 138 Colonna, Vittoria, 148–149 Compleat Midwife’s Practice Enlarged, The, 231 Compleat Woman, The (Du Bosc), 160, 161–162, 163– 173 Conat, Estellina, 145 Convent education at Lapo (Santa Maria del Fiore) age of students, 16–18 background of students, 11–13 boarding at, 10–11, 12 financial sources for, 7–9 interruptions in, 29 learning the virtues, 19–26 life at, 9–10 marriage prospects affected by, 30–32 nature and purposes of education for girls, 18–32 origins of, 6–7 physical deportment, 20–21 pupils as revenue, 9 quattrocento, 20, 22 reading, teaching methods, 26–27, 29–30 reading, views toward, 19, 24–26 scriptorium at, 8 sewing instruction, 30 turnover rates at, 27–28 writing, 32–36 Convent education at San Niccolò dei Frieri, 9, 13–16, 28, 30 Corinna, 149

Index Coudray, Angelique Marguerite le Boursier du, 231 d’Alembert, Jean Le Rond, 196 Dame/petty schools, 68–69 Darwin, Erasmus, 197, 198–200 de’ Bardi, Alessandra, 21 De garrulitate (Plutarch), 107 De Guevara, Antonio, 109, 111 De inventione (Cicero), 105 del Bene, Judah Asael, 134–135 De mulieribus claris (Boccaccio), 81, 112 De oratore (Cicero), 104, 105 De regimine principum (Colonna), 138 Der Swangern Frauwen und Hebammen Roszgarten, 230 de Sales, François, 164, 165, 166 d’Etioles, Alexandrine, 202–203 Diall of Princes (de Guevara), 109 Dialogue between Pole and Lupset (Starkey), 58–59 Diderot, Denis, 206, 210 Dominici, Giovanni, 21 Doria, Marcantonio, 147–148 Dress class distinctions and style of, 78 seduction and, 85–88 Du Bosc, Jacques, 159 background of, 160–163 Le Philosophe indifferent, 161 L’Honneste femme (The Compleat Woman), 160, 161–162, 163–173 Education defined, x–xi, 48 problem with narrow definitions of, ix–x Education in Fifteenth-Century England (McMahon), 47

255 Education of a Yong Gentlewoman, The (Bruto), 114 Elizabeth I, 120 Elyot, Thomas, 109, 110 English Dictionarie (Cockeram), 89 Erasmus, 107, 108, 109, 120 Eshet hayyil (Yagel), 135 Euphues Shadow (Lodge), 101 Exempla books, 81–85, 110–111 Eyn hakoreh (Leon), 137 Female literacy, motivations for, 25 Female Scholars:A Tradition of Learned Women Before 1800 (Brink), viii, ix Fénelon, François de Salignac de la Mothe, 159–160 Avis à un Dame de Qualité sur l’education de Mademoiselle sa fille, 163 background of, 162–163 Lettre à Louis XIV, 163 Télémaque, 163, 183 Traité de l’éducation des filles, 160, 162, 173–181 Ferguson, Margaret W., 101 Ferray, Elisabeth, 203 Fior di virtu, 33–34 Fioretta (Bat Sheva), 141–142 Foundation of Rhetorike, The (Rainolde), 106 Four Ages of Man (Novare), 69 Francese, Immanuel, 139–140 Gambara, Veronica, 149 Garden of Eloquence (Peacham), 103 Gaskell, Elizabeth, 194 Gehl, Paul, 5, 9 Gelis, Jacques, 235–236

256 Gender connotations, sewing/ weaving and, 76, 88–91 Gender differences in Renaissance Florence females, as teachers, 5–6 Latin, instruction in, 5 nature and purposes of education for girls, 18–32 reading, teaching methods, 26–27, 29–30 reading, views toward, 19, 24–26 subjects taught boys, 5 writing, 32–36 Giggs, Margaret, 120 Greene, Robert, 76, 81–85, 88, 90–91 Grendler, Paul, 3, 5 Grey, Lady Jane, 120 Guazzo, Steffano, 108–109 Guide for the Perplexed (Maimonides), 137 Gunaikeion (Heywood), 81 Harleston, William, 51 Harris, Barbara, 50 Heal, Felicity, 57–58 Hecquet, Philippe, 240–241, 242 Hermant, Godefroi, 160, 161 Heroinate (River), 81 Hey wood, Thomas, 81 History of Lace (Palliser), 78–79 Holm, Janis Butler, 123, 124 Hore, Bartholomew, 88–89 Hospitality in medieval England, role of, 52–53, 57–58 Household management, in medieval England power and influence of, 49–53 royal, 58 teaching of, 53–59, 68–70 Howard, John, 205–206 Howard, Katherine, 57 “How the Goodwife Taught Her Daughter,” 53–54 Hull, Suzanne, 111, 124

Index Hunting and hawking, 58–59 Hurn, Christopher, 48 Husee, John, 60, 66–67 Hygëia (Beddoes), 197, 201–202 Hyrde, Richard, 120–121 Instruction of a Christen Woman, The (Vives), 101, 109, 111–112 Isaiah of Trani, 134 Itzhaki, Shlomo, 134 Jane Eyre (Brontë), 193–194 Jewish women, literacy of ambivalent attitudes toward, in Italy, 134–140 conflicting view in Talmud, 133–134 examples of, 140–145 published women writers, 146–149 revelation of husbands’ secrets, fear of, 138 sexual dangers in, 134–135 Joab, Moses ben, 138 Jones, Ann Rosalind, 78 Jordan, Constance, 112 Katzenellenbogen, Samuel Judah, 138–139 Keen, Maurice, 59 Kelly-Gadol, Joan, vii, 123 Kelso, Ruth, 78, 123 Kendrick, A.F., 89 Kisaot leveit david (del Bene), 134 Labalme, Patricia H., viii, ix La femme infidelle (Bretonne), 225 La Marche, Marguerite du Tertre de, 231, 243 L’Art du brodeur (Saint-Aubin), 78

Index Latin, taught only to males, 116–117 La vers perfettione (Ostans), 79, 86 Learning the virtues, 19–26 Le Chemin Frayé et infaillible aux accouchements qui servira de flambeau aux sagesfemmes, 233 Leon, David ben Judah Messer, 136–137 Le Philosophe indifferent (Du Bosc), 161 Lettre à Louis XIV (Fénelon), 163 Lettrure, 58 Levi-Perotti, Giustina, 146 L’Honneste femme (The Compleat Woman), (Du Bosc), 160, 161–162, 163–173 Libri Trotuli (Trotula), 231 Lisle, Honor and family, 59–68 Lodge, Thomas, 101 Maclean, Ian, 110–111 Magendie, Maurice, 166 Maimonides, Moses, 137 Maintenon, Madame de, 207 Maison royale de Saint-Cyr (Versailles), 204, 207–213 Manningham, Richard, 237 Manzuoli, Giovanni, 6 Margaret of York, 50 Markham, Gervase, 77 Marriage, arranged, 111–112 Marriage prospects, affected by female education, 30–32 Mary I, 120 Mauriceau, François, 231 Mauriceau, Guillemeau, 231 McMahon, Clara, 47

257 Midwives/midwifery apprenticeship for, 229–230 colleges/classes for, 235–236 correlation between fears of female intelligence and declining status of, 225–226 education of, 229–238 forceps forbidden to, 227 hospital training for, 236–237 language of science and the exclusion of, 227–228 licensing examinations and, 233–234 literacy rates and, 232 manuals and textbooks on, 230–232 scientific revolution, impact of, 226– 227, 238–239 views of, 238– 244 Midwives Book, The (Sharp), 242–243 Mirrhor of Modestie Meete for all Mothers and Auncient Matrones (Salter), 112, 114 Modena, Leon, 135, 147 More, Margaret, 120, 121 More, Thomas, 48, 58, 120 Moreri, Louis, 161 Mothers, as educators, 4–5 Mulcaster, Richard, 107, 121– 123 Necessarie, fit and conuenient education…, The (Bruto), 87–88, 114 Needles Excellency, The (Taylor), 77, 79, 81 Needlework. See Sewing/weaving Noriture, 58, 59 Nouvelles Catholiques, 162, 203 Novare, Philippe de, 69 Nun, The (Diderot), 210

258 Observations diverses (Bourgeois), 230, 231, 241 Ong, Walter, 10, 110 Opera a ben vivere (Antoninus), 22 Orme, Nicholad, 69 Ostans, Giovanni, 79, 86 Palliser, Fanny, 78–79 Paluzzi, Numidio, 146, 148 Paré, Ambrose, 231 Parker, Patricia, 107–108, 109, 112 Parker, Rozsika, 90 Pattern books dedications in, 80–81 feminine ideal and, 76–80 gender connotations, 76, 88–91 Peacham, Henry, 103, 104, 106–107 Penelopes Web (Greene), 76, 81–85, 88, 90–91 Petrarch, Francesco, 146 Petrucci, Armando, 33 Plan for the Conduct of Female Education, in Boarding Schools (Darwin), 197, 198– 200 Ployant, Teresa, 240 Plutarch, 107 Pole, Reginald, 58–59 Porter, Roy, 200 “Praise of the Needle, The” (Taylor, 79, 80 Precatio dominica in septem portiones distributa (Erasmus), 120 Provençal, Moses, 140 Puttenham, George, 88

Index Querelle des femmes, 110, 159 See also Du Bosc, Jacques; Fénelon, François de Salignac de la Mothe Quilligan, Maureen, 101 Rainolde, Richard, 106 Rape of Lucrece (Shakespeare), 86 Reading, taught by convents teaching methods, 26–27, 29–30 views toward, 19, 24–26 Rebhorn, Wayne, 103–104 Regola di governo di cura familiare (Dominici), 21 Rhetoric defined as an oral art, 103 effeminacy of, 107–108 eloquence of men equated with godlike and political power, 103–109 endorsement of education for women, 120– 123 as outlet/release, 106– 107, 108–109 Renaissance censuring of female speech, 101–102, 109–119 requirements and mystification of, 105–106 River, George, 81 Romano, Leone, 138 Roper, Margaret More, 120 Rousseau, Jean-Jacques, 196 Saint-Aubin, Charles Germaine de, 78 Saint-Cyr (Versailles), Maison royale de, 204, 207–213 Salter, Thomas, 112, 114–116 San Baldassare at Coverciano, 9 Sand, George, 212 San Niccolò dei Frieri, 9, 13–16, 28, 30

Index Santa Maria del Fiore (Lapo), 6–13, 16–18 Sappho, 149 Schiebinger, Londa, 226 Schools of Vertue (Seager), 54– 55 Scientific revolution, impact on midwifery, 226–227, 238–239 Seager, F., 54–55 Sewing/weaving chastity associated with, 78–80 exempla books, 81–85 gender connotations, 76, 88–91 instruction by convents, 30 pattern books and the feminine ideal, 76–80 Penelopes Web (Greene), 76, 81–85, 88, 90–91 reflections on husbands, 78 males’ views of, and the seductiveness of chastity, 85–88 Shahar, Shulamith, 49 Shakespeare, William, 86 Sharp, Jane, 231, 242–243 Shevah hanashim (Leon), 136– 137 Sidney, Philip, 89 Smol’nyi Institute (St. Petersburg), 203–207 Smythe, John, 69 Staniland, Kay, 91 Starkey, Thomas, 58 Stock, Phyllis, viii, ix Stone, Lawrence, 111 Stone, Sarah, 231 Strange, Edward, 89 Sullam, Sara Copia, 146–149 Survey of Cornwall (Carew), 60–61 Tagliente, Giovanni Antonio, 29–30

259 Taylor, John, 77, 79, 80, 81, 87 Teaching texts for women anti-rhetorical bias in, 113–116 endorsing education for women, 120–123 justifications for, 113–123 pattern books, 76–80 Renaissance censuring of female speech, 101–102, 109–119 vernacular anthologies based on psalters, 4 Télémaque (Fénelon), 163, 183 Thoughts on the Education of Daughters (Wollstonecraft), 196–198 Tongu, or On the Use and Abuse of the Tongue (Erasmus), 107 Traité de l’éducation des filles (Fénelon), 160, 162, 173–181 Treatise Upon the Pater Noster (Erasmus), 120 Trotula, 231 Tudor, Margaret, 59 Venice, female monasteries in, 6 Vespasiano da Bisticci, 4, 21, 22, 25–26, 30 Vickers, Nancy J., 101 Villani, Giovanni, 5 Vindication of the Rights of Woman, The (Wollstonecraft), 197 Vives, Juan Luis, 48, 101–102, 109, 111–112, 117–119 Ward, Jennifer, 51, 53 Warnicke, Retha, 47–48 Welles, Marcia, 79 Wilson, Adrian, 232, 238 Wilson, Thomas, 103, 105, 106 Witchcraft, 239 Witt, Ronald, 5

260 Wollstonecraft, Mary, 196–198 Woodville, Elizabeth, 50 Woolley, Hannah, 231 Writing instruction for females, fifteenth-century Florentine views of, 32–36

Index Yagel, Abraham, 135–136 Yahya, Gedaliah ibn, 140 Young, Arthur, 203, 214 Young, Bobbin, 203, 214 Ziegler, Georgianna, 85