Sibling Relations and Gender in the Early Modern World: Sisters, Brothers and Others 9781351900164, 1351900161

Table of contents :
Cover
Half Title
Title Page
Copyright Page
Table of Contents
Acknowledgments
List of figures
Contributors
1 Introduction: Thicker than Water: Evaluating Sibling Relations in the Early Modern Period
Divine devotion
2 Making a Saint out of a Sibling
3 Recusant Sisters: English Catholic Women and the Bonds of Learning
4 Families, Convents, Music: The Power of Sisterhood
5 ‘Liebe Schwester …’: Siblings, Convents, and the Reformation
Ties that bind
6 Resisting Henri IV: Catherine de Bourbon and her Brother
7 Sister-Subject/Sister-Queen: Elizabeth I among her Siblings
8 Mary Sidney’s Other Brothers
Drawing the line
9 The Politics of Private Discourse: Familial Relations in Lady May Wroth’s Urania
10 When the Mirror Lies: Sisterhood Reconsidered in Moderata Fonte’s Thirteen Cantos of Floridoro
11 Andrea and Giovanni Gabrieli: Musicians and Sororal Relations in Later Sixteenth-Century Venice
12 The Shame of Siblings in David and Bethsabe
13 Sibling Bonds and Bondage in (and beyond) Shakespeare’s The Tempest
Hand in hand
14 Playing the Game: Sisterly Relations in Sofonisba Anguissola’s The Chess Game
15 ‘My Deare Sister’: Sainted Sisterhood in Early Modern England
16 Sisterly Feelings in Cavendish and Brackley’s Drama
17 ‘Thy Passionately Loving Sister and Faithfull Friend’: Anne Dormer’s Letters to her Sister Lady Trumbull
18 Siblings, Publications, and the Transmission of Memory: Johann Albert Hinrich and Elise Reimarus
19 Thicker than Blood: l’oltr’altra
Index

Citation preview

Sibling Relations and Gender in the Early Modern World

Women and Gender in the Early Modern World Series Editors: Allyson Poska and Abby Zanger In the past decade, the study of women and gender has offered some of the most vital and innovative challenges to scholarship on the early modern period. Ashgate’s new series of interdisciplinary and comparative studies, ‘Women and Gender in the Early Modern World’, takes up this challenge, reaching beyond geographical limitations to explore the experiences of early modern women and the nature of gender in Europe, the Americas, Asia, and Africa. Submissions of single-author studies and edited collections will be considered. Titles in the series include: Maternal Measures Figuring Caregiving in the Early Modern Period Edited by Naomi J. Miller and Naomi Yavneh Women’s Letters Across Europe, 1400–1700 Edited by Jane Couchman and Ann Crabb Boccaccio’s Heroines Power and Virtue in Renaissance Society Margaret Franklin Envisioning Gender in Burgundian Devotional Art, 1350–1530 Experiences, Authority, Resistance Andrea Pearson Widowhood and Visual Culture in Early Modern Europe Edited by Allison Levy Architecture and the Politics of Gender in Early Modern Europe Edited by Helen Hills

Sibling Relations and Gender in the Early Modern World Sisters, Brothers and Others

Edited by

NAOMI J. MILLER AND NAOMI YAVNEH

First published 2006 by Ashgate Publishing Published 2016 by Routledge 2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN 711 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10017, USA Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business Copyright © 2006 Naomi J. Miller and Naomi Yavneh Naomi J. Miller and Naomi Yavneh have asserted their moral right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988, to be identified as the authors of their chapters. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. Notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe. British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data Sibling relations and gender in the early modern world: sisters, brothers and others. – (Women and gender in the early modern world) 1. Brothers and sisters – History – 16th century 2. Brothers and sisters – History – 17th century 3. Brothers and sisters – History – 18th century 4. Brothers and sisters in literature I. Miller, Naomi J., 1960– II. Yavneh, Naomi 306.8'75'0903 Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Sibling relations and gender in the early modern world: sisters, brothers and others / edited by Naomi J. Miller and Naomi Yavneh. p. cm. – (Women and gender in the early modern world) ISBN 0-7546-4010-8 (alk. paper) 1. Brothers and sisters – Europe – History. 2. Brothers and sisters in literature. I. Miller, Naomi J., 1960– II. Yavneh, Naomi. III. Series. HQ759.96.S53 2006 306.875'094'0903–dc22 2005014399 ISBN 9780754640103 (hbk) ISBN 9781138258914 (pbk)

Typeset in Times New Roman by Bournemouth Colour Press, Parkstone, Poole.

Contents Acknowledgments List of figures Contributors 1

Introduction: Thicker than Water: Evaluating Sibling Relations in the Early Modern Period Naomi J. Miller and Naomi Yavneh

vii ix xi

1

Divine devotion 2

Making a Saint out of a Sibling Susan D. Laningham

3

Recusant Sisters: English Catholic Women and the Bonds of Learning Kari Boyd McBride

15

28

4

Families, Convents, Music: The Power of Sisterhood Craig A. Monson

40

5

‘Liebe Schwester …’: Siblings, Convents, and the Reformation Merry Wiesner-Hanks

53

Ties that bind 6

Resisting Henri IV: Catherine de Bourbon and her Brother Jane Couchman

64

7

Sister-Subject/Sister-Queen: Elizabeth I among her Siblings Carole Levin

77

8

Mary Sidney’s Other Brothers Margaret P. Hannay

89

vi

CONTENTS

Drawing the line 9

The Politics of Private Discourse: Familial Relations in Lady May Wroth’s Urania Sheila T. Cavanagh

104

10 When the Mirror Lies: Sisterhood Reconsidered in Moderata Fonte’s Thirteen Cantos of Floridoro Valeria Finucci

116

11 Andrea and Giovanni Gabrieli: Musicians and Sororal Relations in Later Sixteenth-Century Venice Rebecca Edwards

129

12 The Shame of Siblings in David and Bethsabe Stephen Guy-Bray 13 Sibling Bonds and Bondage in (and beyond) Shakespeare’s The Tempest Naomi J. Miller

140

150

Hand in hand 14 Playing the Game: Sisterly Relations in Sofonisba Anguissola’s The Chess Game Naomi Yavneh

166

15 ‘My Deare Sister’: Sainted Sisterhood in Early Modern England Kathryn R. McPherson

182

16 Sisterly Feelings in Cavendish and Brackley’s Drama Alison Findlay

195

17 ‘Thy Passionately Loving Sister and Faithfull Friend’: Anne Dormer’s Letters to her Sister Lady Trumbull Sara Mendelson and Mary O’Connor

206

18 Siblings, Publications, and the Transmission of Memory: Johann Albert Hinrich and Elise Reimarus Almut Spalding

216

19 Thicker than Blood: l’oltr’altra Naomi J. Miller and Naomi Yavneh

228

Index

231

Acknowledgments Our truest acknowledgments of our debts of heart and spirit to our respective and collective sisters can be found in our epilogue for this volume, Sibling Relations and Gender in the Early Modern World, but formal thanks must be offered as well. Our deepest gratitude goes to our beloved editor and friend, Erika Gaffney, for her encouragement, guidance, and abundant patience. Thanks, too, to Ellen Keeling and the others at Ashgate who shepherded this collection to press. The sponsorship of the Society for the Study of Early Modern Women enabled us to organize sessions on sibling relations at the annual conventions of several organizations, including the Renaissance Society of America, the Sixteenth Century Studies Conference and the Modern Language Association. Linda Austern joined us in presenting a workshop on sibling relations at the University of Maryland’s 2003 ‘Attending to Women’ conference; we thank her and the many vocal participants. Mary Garrard was extremely helpful in providing advice regarding permissions. And we deeply appreciate Courtney Canter’s outstanding efforts in creating a comprehensive and useful index. In addition, Naomi Miller would like to thank her co-author, Bruce Coville, for the many ways in which their collaboration on a novel adapting Shakespeare’s The Tempest for young adults has helped her to develop her understanding of ‘sibling bonds and bondage’ in that play, at once contributing to her essay for this volume, and enabling her to engage with The Tempest in ways heretofore undreamed of. She also thanks Susan Aiken, Mary Crane, Myra Dinnerstein, and Maureen Kelly, without whom she could not have made it through, as well as Marilyn Schuster and Susan Van Dyne, whose support has helped her to keep moving forward. And most immediately as well as long-lastingly, Naomi Miller thanks Naomi Yavneh, the ‘other Naomi’ and sister of her heart, for collaborating on the seedling idea for this volume and nourishing it through, literally, to full fruition when Naomi (M.) could not even see the next step on her own path. A Creative Scholarship Grant from the Office of Sponsored Research at the University of South Florida facilitated Naomi Yavneh’s research for the introduction to this volume, as well as her own essay; she also received support from USF’s Department of Humanities and its Office of Undergraduate Research. In particular, she would like to thank Stuart Silverman, Dean of the Honors College, Daniel Belgrad, Adriana Novoa,

viii

SIBLING RELATIONS AND GENDER IN THE EARLY MODERN WORLD

Penny Carlton, Beverly Cartee and Jana Futch Martin. Her husband, Ray Shattenkirk, and children, Shoshana, Raphael, Isabella and Lily, provided love, support and infinite resources regarding sibling relations and rivalry. And, as always, it has been a pleasure and a privilege to collaborate with Naomi Miller. This is a book that gives pride of place to siblings. For both of us, studying sisters began at home (indeed, at birth), where ‘sibling relations’ were the subject of both our childhood play and reading. This collection bears the indelible traces of countless re-readings (and re-enactments) of the novels of Louisa May Alcott, Laura Ingalls Wilder and Sidney Taylor, and of our intimate bonds to our sisters, Marcia Ishii-Eiteman and Tenli Yavneh, to whom this volume is lovingly dedicated.

List of Figures 7.1

8.1

8.2

Elizabeth, Edward VI, and Mary, stipple engraving by R. Page after Robert Smirke, 1824, private collection Paul van Somer, Robert Sidney, 1st Earl of Leicester, oil on canvas, c. 1616–18, by kind permission of Viscount De L’Isle from his private collection Nicholas Hilliard, Mary Sidney Herbert, Countess of Pembroke, watercolour on vellum, diameter 5.4 cm, c. 1590, London, National Portrait Gallery

14.1 Sofonisba Anguissola, The Chess Game, oil on canvas, 72 x 97 cm, Pozna´n, Muzeum Narodowe 14.2 Sofonisba Anguissola, Self-portrait Playing the Virginals, oil on canvas, 81.2 x 63.5 cm, by permission of the Collection at Althorp Park (Photograph: Photographic Survey, Courtauld Institute of Art, London) 14.3 Titian, Venus and Cupid with an Organist, oil on canvas, 148 x 217 cm, 1548, Madrid, Museo Nacional del Prado 14.4 Titian, Danaë, oil on canvas, 129 x 180 cm, 1553–4, Madrid, Museo Nacional del Prado 14.5 Paris Bordone, Two Chess Players, oil on canvas, 1550–55, Berlin, Gemäldegalerie (Berlin, Staatliche Museen Preussischer Kulturbesitz) 14.6 Giulio Campi, The Game of Chess, oil on canvas, 1540s, Turin, Museo civico d’Arte Antica e Palazzo Madama 14.7 Sofonisba Anguissola, Boy Bitten by a Crab, black chalk and charcoal on brown paper, 33.3 x 38.5 cm, c. 1554, Naples, Museo di Capodimonte, Gabinetto Disegni e Stampe, by kind permission of the Fototeca–Soprintendenza Speciale per il Polo Museale napoletano 16.1 A Pastorall, filmed at Hoghton Tower, Lancashire, by Lancaster University Television, 2000. Masque Prologue with (from left to right) Innocence (Lucy Guttridge), Ver (Estelle Buckridge), and Chastity (Erika Sanderson)

78

95

96

168

170 171 174

176 177

179

199

x

LIST OF FIGURES

16.2 A Pastorall, filmed at Hoghton Tower, Lancashire, by Lancaster University Television, 2000. Song-over with Innocence (Lucy Guttridge) and Persuasion (Mark Warne) 16.3 A Pastorall, filmed at Hoghton Tower, Lancashire, by Lancaster University Television, 2000. Temple Scene with Innocence (Lucy Guttridge), Chastity (Erika Sanderson), and Ver (Estelle Buckridge)

201

203

Contributors Sheila T. Cavanagh is Masse-Martin/NEH Distinguished Teaching Professor at Emory University. She is the author of Cherished Torment: The Emotional Geography of Lady Mary Wroth’s Urania (Duquesne, 2001) and Wanton Eyes and Chaste Desires: Female Sexuality in The Faerie Queene (Indiana, 1994) and numerous articles on Renaissance literature and pedagogy. She is also the Director of the Emory Women Writers Resource Project, a website devoted to women’s writing from the sixteenth to twentieth centuries, which has received a major grant from the NEH. Jane Couchman is Associate Professor of French, Humanities and Women’s Studies at Glendon College, York University (Toronto). Her current research deals with informal political influence and French/Dutch/English relations in the letters of late sixteenth- and early seventeenth-century Huguenot women. She has published articles and book chapters on Louise de Coligny, Catherine de Bourbon, Charlotte de Bourbon-Montpensier and Eléonore de Roye, and is co-editor with Ann Crabb of Women’s Letters across Europe 1400–1700: Form and Persuasion (Ashgate, 2005). Rebecca Edwards received her Ph.D. in historical musicology from Princeton University. She specializes in keyboard music and patronal issues in sixteenthcentury Italy, with publications on such leading figures as Andrea Gabrieli, Gioseffo Zarlino, Claudio Merulo and Giovanni Gabrieli. She is currently vice director and associate dean for academic affairs at Loyola University Chicago’s John Felice Rome Center in Italy. Alison Findlay is Professor of Renaissance Drama at Lancaster University, where she teaches courses on Shakespeare, Renaissance drama and women’s writing. Her publications include Illegitimate Power: Bastards in Renaissance Drama (1994), A Feminist Perspective on Renaissance Drama (1998) and Women and Dramatic Production 1550–1700 (Longman, 2000). She has published essays on Shakespeare and his contemporaries, and is co-editor of the two-volume Lancastrian Shakespeare (2003). She has just completed a book Playing Spaces in Early Women’s Drama for Cambridge University Press, and is currently working on Women in Shakespeare.

xii

CONTRIBUTORS

Valeria Finucci is Professor of Italian at Duke University and co-editor of the Journal of Medieval and Early Modern Studies. She has published on early modern literature, cultural and science history, gender studies, and psychoanalysis. Her most recent publications are The Manly Masquerade: Masculinity, Paternity, and Castration in the Italian Renaissance (Duke University Press, 2003) and a critical edition of Giulia Bigolina’s manuscript Renaissance prose romance, Urania, which she published in Italian (Bulzoni, 2002) as well as in English (Chicago University Press, 2005). Stephen Guy-Bray is Associate Professor of English at the University of British Columbia. He is the author of Homoerotic Space: The Poetics of Loss in Renaissance Literature (University of Toronto Press, 2002) and of numerous articles, chiefly on Renaissance poetry. He has just completed a book-length study of the erotics of poetic influence. Margaret P. Hannay, Professor of English at Siena College, is the author of Philip’s Phoenix: Mary Sidney, Countess of Pembroke (Oxford University Press, 1990). She has edited, with Noel J. Kinnamon and Michael G. Brennan, The Collected Works of Mary Sidney Herbert, Countess of Pembroke (Oxford University Press, 1998); a modern spelling edition for students, Selected Works of Mary Sidney Herbert, Countess of Pembroke (MRTS, 2005); and Domestic Politics and Family Absence: The Correspondence (1588–1621) of Robert Sidney, first Earl of Leicester, and Barbara Gamage Sidney, Countess of Leicester (Ashgate, 2005). She has also edited, with Susanne Woods, Teaching Tudor and Stuart Women Writers (MLA, 2000). She is currently writing a biography of Lady Mary Wroth. Susan D. Laningham is Assistant Professor of History at Tennessee Technological University. Her current research focuses on gender, the body and religion in early modern Spain. Currently, she is editing a new translation of María Vela’s autobiography for the University of Chicago Press. Carole Levin is Willa Cather Professor of History at the University of Nebraska where she specializes in early modern English women’s and cultural history. Her books include The Heart and Stomach of a King: Elizabeth I and the Politics of Sex and Power (University of Pennslyvania Press, 1994) and The Reign of Elizabeth I (Palgrave, 2002). She recently coedited Elizabeth I: Always Her Own Free Woman (Ashgate, 2003). She is a past president of the Society for the Study of Early Modern Women. Kari Boyd McBride is Associate Professor of Women’s Studies at the University of Arizona and Director of the Group for Early Modern Studies

CONTRIBUTORS

xiii

(GEMS). Her books include Country House Discourse in Early Modern England: A Cultural Study of Landscape and Legitimacy (Ashgate, 2001) and Women’s Roles in the Renaissance, co-authored with Meg Lota Brown (Greenwood, 2005). She is currently completing an edition of Womans Worth (a previously unpublished seventeenth-century contribution to the Woman Controversy) for the Medieval and Renaissance Text Society and is launching a study of Women and Education in Early Modern England, 1500–1700. Kathryn R. McPherson is Associate Professor of English at Utah Valley State College, where she is also completing a term as Assistant Vice-President for Academic Affairs. Her interests in early modern maternity have generated a nearly complete book-length study, Refiguring Maternity in Early Modern England, and a collection of essays, Conceiving Maternity in Shakespeare’s England (co-edited with Kathryn M. Moncrief), which is currently under editorial review. Once these volumes go to press, she anticipates undertaking a video project for classroom use on major early modern English women writers. Sara Mendelson (D. Phil, Oxon) is an Associate Professor in the Arts and Science Programme at McMaster University in Hamilton, Ontario, a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society, and past President of the Society for the Study of Early Modern Women. Her books include The Mental World of Stuart Women: Three Studies (1987), Women in Early Modern England 1550–1720 (1998) (co-author Patricia Crawford), and Paper Bodies: A Margaret Cavendish Reader (2000) (co-author Sylvia Bowerbank). She has published articles on Stuart women’s diaries, disorderly women, early modern sexual identities (with Patricia Crawford), women’s working lives, the civility of women in seventeenth-century England, Margaret Cavendish, and Queen Elizabeth I. Current work in progress includes an edition of the letters of Anne Dormer (co-edited by Mary O’Connor) and the gendering of popular culture in early modern England. Naomi J. Miller is Professor of English and Women’s Studies at Smith College. The author and editor of two books on Mary Wroth, she is co-editor, with Naomi Yavneh, of Maternal Measures: Figuring Caregiving in the Early Modern World (Ashgate, 2000), and editor of Reimagining Shakespeare for Children and Young Adults (Routledge, 2003). Craig A. Monson is Professor and former Chair of the Department of Music at Washington University in St Louis. His wide-ranging musical interests include Elizabethan and Jacobean music, Baroque keyboard music and opera, and Native American music. He has published widely on music in Italian nunneries, including two books: Disembodied Voices: Music and Culture in

xiv

CONTRIBUTORS

an Early Modern Italian Convent and The Crannied Wall: Women, Religion, and the Arts in Early Modern Europe. Mary O’Connor is Professor and Chair of English and Cultural Studies at McMaster University, Hamilton, Ontario. Her research is in the field of gender and the everyday. In Early Modern studies, she has published on representations of intimacy in the life-writing of Anne Clifford and Anne Dormer (in Representations of the Self from the Renaissance to Romanticism (Cambridge University Press, 2000)) and on Early Modern woman abuse (Quidditas, 2002). She is preparing an edition of the letters of Anne Dormer (co-edited with Sara Mendelson). Almut Spalding is Assistant Professor of Modern Languages (German, French) and Coordinator of the Gender and Women’s Studies program at Illinois College. She has published articles on sociability and women’s writing in Early Modern Germany and is the author of Elise Reimarus (1735–1805), the Muse of Hamburg: A Woman of the German Enlightenment (Würzburg, Germany: Königshausen & Neumann, 2005). Merry Wiesner-Hanks is Professor of History and Director of the Center for Women’s Studies at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee. She is the author or editor of a number of books, including Gender in History (2001), (with Teresa Meade) the Blackwells Companion to Gender History (2004), and (with Susan Karant-Nunn), Luther’s Writings on Women: A Sourcebook (2003). She is the co-editor of the Sixteenth Century Journal. Naomi Yavneh is Associate Professor of Humanities and Director of Undergraduate Research at the University of South Florida. The author of numerous articles on issues of gender, spirituality and sensuality in Renaissance Italy, she is co-editor, with Naomi Miller, of Maternal Measures: Figuring Caregiving in the Early Modern World (Ashgate, 2000) and editor of Options for Teaching Women Writers of the Italian Renaissance (MLA, forthcoming).

We dedicate this volume to our very own sisters of the heart as well as blood: Marcia Ishii-Eiteman and Tenli Yavneh. And with loving care for the sibling bonds shared by our own children: Fiona, Isaiah, Damaris and Elias Miller; and Shoshi, Raphael, Isabella and Lily Shattenkirk.

CHAPTER ONE

Introduction: Thicker than Water: Evaluating Sibling Relations in the Early Modern Period Naomi J. Miller and Naomi Yavneh While the relationship between parent and child has been a staple of critical inquiry since antiquity, the bonds between siblings have received far less attention. Despite early feminist acclamations of sisterhood, as well as the explosion of scholarly interest in reconsidering both the complexity of gender roles and the significance of domesticity in the early modern period, actual sisters and brothers have been rather neglected. A survey of recent studies of domesticity, the family and gender in the early modern period – including our own previous collection, Maternal Measures1 – reveals multiple entries for mothers, fathers, nurses, sons and daughters, but virtually no mention of siblings. Rephrasing Mary Beth Rose’s famous question, ‘where are the mothers in Shakespeare?’ we might ask, ‘where are the brothers – and sisters, too?’ Yet in contradistinction to the issues explored by Rose, who ponders why the significance of mothers in Shakespeare’s time should be marked by their conspicuous absence within his texts,2 and although siblings may largely be absent from late twentieth and early twenty-first-century accounts of the period, they are consistently present in early modern texts – and families. Brothers and sisters, especially twins, play an important role in Renaissance narratives, particularly romance and theater, allowing for creative, moving and often hilarious explorations of gender roles, familial relations and such important themes as the relationship between appearance and reality.3 This literary presence reflects, at least to some degree, the ubiquity of sibling interactions in contemporary lived experience: if the average mother bore a child every 24 to 30 months (more frequently in upper-class families where wet-nursing was the norm),4 those children were siblings, presumably affected by a range of factors including: their presence in a common household; the choices made for them on the family’s behalf (choices often determined by a child’s gender, birth order or even appearance); and high mortality rates (only 20–50 per cent of newborns might be expected to live to adulthood). Beyond

2

SIBLING RELATIONS AND GENDER IN THE EARLY MODERN WORLD

questions of inheritance, marriage, dowries, and education, there were also issues of an emotional nature: rivalry and affection. Inheritance, marriage, dowries, education. Here are topics easily located not only in indices, but in chapter headings and even titles of comprehensive studies of the early modern world. Yet the effect thereon, as, indeed, the significance thereto, of sibling relations is largely unaddressed. Like the Renaissance women in generations of scholarship before our own, siblings are, to paraphrase Sara Mendelson and Patricia Crawford in their superlative Women in Early Modern England, ‘everywhere and nowhere.’5 How are we to explain this absence? Perhaps it is that the emphasis on patriarchal and intergenerational structures has occluded the intragenerational. In a world in which women were constrained principally by the triple virtues of chastity, silence and obedience, and in which women were constructed as daughters and wives (property passed from father to husband), it is perhaps not surprising that feminist scholars seeking to explore the complexity of gender relationships in the early modern world would focus on the family ties most obviously associated with issues of power and authority – parenthood and marriage – while neglecting the significant fact that sons and daughters are often brothers and sisters. For example, Mendelson and Crawford remark that ‘sons were educated separately, leaving the daughters with female companions.’ What even such astute historians omit from their discussion, however, is the relationship between those separately educated sons and daughters. A brother might, for example, whether inadvertently or conscientiously, afford his sister – at least vicariously – the education or experience denied her by her sex. After completing her own convent schooling at age nine, the sixteenth-century Venetian feminist Moderata Fonte demanded that her elder brother teach her what he had learned in school each day, thus providing her with the ability to both read and write Latin.6 Elise Reimarus not only experienced her own vicarious ‘Grand Tour’ through her correspondence with her brother, but also reinforced her brother’s intellectual pursuits, even as he fortified hers.7 This reciprocity is a central feature of the sibling relationship, extending beyond heterosexual sibling pairs. Sofonisba Anguissola’s paintings of her family members affirm her sisters’ intellectual powers, virtue and economic status, even as they assert the painter’s own artistic virtuosity.8 Same-sex sibling relations offer another opportunity to evaluate all the primary paradigms of sibling bonds – reciprocity, affection, competition, and alliancebuilding – even as we interrogate the significance of the gendering of those bonds. Whatever might be gained by such reciprocity, it also attests to the affectionate bonds between siblings that underscore the common desire to memorialize deceased siblings. Mary Sidney, for example, commemorates

INTRODUCTION: THICKER THAN WATER

3

and grieves for her brother Philip in a pastoral world of her own creation, while Lady Jane Cavendish Cheyne’s poetry mourns the death of her sister, Elizabeth Egerton, Countess of Bridgewater.9 Although only three of the Venetian virtuosa Gaspara Stampa’s poems had been published during her lifetime, her sister Cassandra arranged for the publication of the complete Rime after Gaspara’s death, affirming in a dedicatory letter that, although Cassandra would have chosen not to ‘refresh the wounds of so many sorrows, having lost such a valiant sister,’ she ‘must not, could not … disturb the glory of [her] sister by hiding her honored labors.’10 While Cassandra’s selfproclaimed reticence may have stemmed from her desire to present herself within the modest mores expected of the Venetian woman, we owe most of our knowledge of Stampa’s poetry to this unique contemporary edition (the second edition did not appear until the mid-eighteenth century) – the only one that does not present the poems as a pseudo-autobiographical Petrarchan narrative of love, loss and penitence.11 While each of these four examples (Anguissola, Sidney, Cheyne and Stampa) is illustrative of the nature of sisterly ties, their significance extends beyond evidencing familial affection. Each story tells us something as well about how an early modern woman might situate herself as a writer or artist, negotiating a position between public and private. Other aspects of family life, such as dowries, demonstrate some of the more concrete effects of sibling relations, presenting another area in which attention to such ties may provide insight into a complicated social process. In sixteenth- and seventeenth-century Venice, for example, the number of women in convents, by some estimates, exceeded those uncloistered, resulting largely from a system designed to restrict patrician status to a small percentage of the republic’s population and to consolidate the wealth of individual patrician families.12 Due to skyrocketing dowry rates and the desire not to divide family property, only one brother might marry (generally in his late twenties or early thirties), leaving the others to live with his family in fraterna. Similarly, only one or two sisters (generally the youngest, so as to maintain familial control of dowry funds for as long as possible) would be betrothed at 13 or 14, while the others would be consigned for life to the convents, whose ‘spiritual dowry’ rates were kept artificially low by Senate proclamation. While these coerced monachizations were of sufficient concern to draw the attention of the Patriarch Giovanni Tiepolo, who declared in a 1619 letter to the Senate that ‘More than two thousand patrician women … live in this city locked up in convents as if in a public tomb,’13 the practice continued throughout most of the century, suggesting its social and economic significance to the Republic – a fact not lost on the institution’s most vociferous critic, the cloistered nun Arcangela Tarabotti. L’inferno monacale

4

SIBLING RELATIONS AND GENDER IN THE EARLY MODERN WORLD

(‘The Hell of the Convent’) presents a scathing indictment of the hypocritical social structures by which fathers incarcerate their daughters with the active support of both Church and state. In contrasting the experiences as nun and bride of two otherwise interchangeable sisters, receiving vastly different treatment for no reason other than the greed of others, Tarabotti not only underscores the injustice of a system in which women are valued merely as objects of display, but argues that such coerced monachizations constitute a crime perpetrated by the Church, the Republic and the fathers of Venice against not only individual women, but sisterly relations in general.14 Permanent cloistration of unwilling virgins was perhaps the most obviously oppressive version of the dynastic marriage arrangements Ariosto plays with in his romance epic, and which were a common aspect of upperclass and noble family life in the early modern world. What can the sibling relationship tell us about such alliances? And how does the political, social and religious rhetoric thereof reveal the significance of the sisterly or brotherly tie? In an important article on ‘The Erotics of Absolutism,’ Margaret D. Carroll contrasts the visual and political rhetoric surrounding the 1615 dual marriage of the future King Philip IV of Spain to Elisabeth, sister of France’s Louis XIII, and of Louis to Philip’s sister, Anne (commemorated, she argues, in Rubens’s Rape of the Daughters of Leucippus [1615–18]), to the actual experience of the brides and grooms, as described by contemporary witnesses. Both the program for the festivities surrounding the signing of the treaty by which the marriages were arranged and Rubens’s painting of another two sets of siblings draw the analogy between Louis and Philip on the one hand, and Castor and Pollux on the other, underscoring that the important bond created by these betrothals is not that between husband and wife, but rather between the new ‘brothers,’ who, in Carroll’s terms, ‘Like the twins Castor and Pollux … once united by familial bonds, would banish the tempests of war from Europe.’15 In Carroll’s reading, Rubens’s presentation of the brides as ‘sacrificial victims … intimate[s] the sacred importance of these nuptials and the sovereign powers of the brides’ quasi-divine spouses.’16 But the rhetoric of sexual power and public fraternal bonding is belied by the experience of the real-life siblings, or at least the French ones. According to the diary of Louis XIII’s physician, Jean Heroard, 15-year-old Louis and 13-year-old Elisabeth spent the day of her departure sobbing and clinging to each other, until forcibly separated by the Spanish Ambassador.17 The sibling bonds of diplomacy might be more powerful politically, but the bonds of blood on which they were modeled were possibly more affecting. Whether moved by reciprocity, competition, or affection, early modern sibling relations not only coexist with other familial bonds, but often precede, underlie and sometimes

INTRODUCTION: THICKER THAN WATER

5

even outlast those alternative familial constructs, as attested to by a staggering range of representations from the early modern world.

Drawing on art history, musicology, literary studies and social history, the interdisciplinary essays in this volume explore a broad spectrum of sibling bonds in the fifteenth, sixteenth and seventeenth centuries in Italy, England, France, Spain, and Germany. Rather than dividing the contributions by country, language, genre, field, discipline, or chronology, we have chosen to organize the collection into four topical sections that correspond to some of the primary paradigms of sibling relations in the early modern world, considering issues of confinement and celebration, authority and empowerment, reciprocity and constraint, and affection and competition. The discussions of these paradigms are framed, in turn, by an array of feminist and cultural studies perspectives, enabling the volume to offer a spectrum of critical approaches to these shared groupings of topics.

Divine devotion While the title of our introduction, ‘Thicker than Water,’ alludes to the obligatory bond among those conjoined by blood, sibling ties might also be created or augmented by the complexity of relations in religious communities. Accordingly, the volume’s first section, ‘Divine devotion,’ examines sibling devotion and competition in the context of a variety of religious practices, particularly those associated with convents in Spain, England, Italy, and Germany, both before and after the Reformation. In ‘Making a Saint out of a Sibling,’ Susan B. Laningham considers the relation between the sixteenthcentury Spanish nun María Vela y Cueto and her brothers, who would tolerate no disparaging remarks about her, insisting that their sister was ‘a saint’ even when her fellow nuns in the convent challenged the sanctity that Maria’s brothers associated with her extreme ascetism and visions. Maria’s letters to her brothers, as well as her autobiography and the biography of a confessor, provide a composite glimpse into the relation between siblings launching a process of beatification, and suggest the conflicts that might arise between sibling ties of blood and those of the religious community. The educational and spiritual value of religious sisterhood is underscored by the response to the anti-conventual strictures of Protestantism. Kari Boyd McBride’s ‘Recusant Sisters: Refusing Protestant Womanhood’ examines the extent to which the dissolution of the English convents in the sixteenth century closed off one avenue for women’s learning and the kind of sisterhood of religious and educational practice that had characterized the medieval

6

SIBLING RELATIONS AND GENDER IN THE EARLY MODERN WORLD

religious. In response, a number of recusant women left England for the Continent, where they founded women’s houses in France and Flanders. At the same time, notable devotion to learning can be found among the followers of Catholic visionary leader Mary Ward, who not only espoused women’s education but called for women religious to be uncloistered like their Franciscan and Dominican confreres. Although in Italy the significance of conventual life remained largely uncontested by the Reformation, the interplay of familial and religious sisterhood posed challenges to the institution both before and after the Council of Trent. In ‘Families, Convents, Music: The Power of Sisterhood,’ Craig Monson explores monastic and sibling ties in early modern Italy, focusing specifically on musical facets of convent life, as reflected in monastic documents. Because the Church hierarchy perceived strong family ties as a potential threat to the monastic ideal of common life, as well as to monastic government, official policy generally required that no more than two sisters be permitted in a single monastic institution, to avoid the creation of family power blocks. A study of the frequent challenges to this established quota, particularly in the instance of musical families, suggests that sibling relations offered alternative venues for the exercise of influence and agency, both within and outside cloister walls. The Reformation is again the context for a consideration of relations between nuns in the final essay in this section, Merry Wiesner-Hanks’s ‘“Liebe Schwester …”: Siblings, Convents, and the Reformation.’ WiesnerHanks analyzes the depiction of personal relations, including blood relations, within convents in several works by German nuns written before and after the Reformation, including the ‘Denkwürdigkeiten’ of Charitas Pirckheimer and the letters of the Rem sisters in Augsburg. The essay also considers ways in which these writings were used in later arguments about convents, sometimes in accordance with the views of their authors and sometimes in opposition to them.

Ties that bind Private family ties often had important political and economic ramifications, especially among noble or upper-class families; the volume’s second section views such public/private interactions through the lenses of history, art history, and literature. Certainly the history of early modern Europe is larded with regencies, stepparents and matchmaking powerplays; Jane Couchman calls attention to Catherine de Bourbon, the rarely mentioned sister of Henri IV of France (1553–1610), who played a significant public role as his regent in Navarre and Bearn. Equally significant was her later resistance, both public

INTRODUCTION: THICKER THAN WATER

7

and private, to her brother’s conversion to Catholicism and to his attempts to bring about her own conversion as well. ‘Resisting Henri IV: Catherine de Bourbon and her Brother’ explores the gendered imbalance of power between the siblings as revealed in their correspondence, and reviews the history of this period by listening not only to the charismatic male figure, who then, as now, holds center stage, but also to the voice of his sister, an influential political and religious figure in her own right. Moving to England, in ‘Sister-Subject/Sister-Queen: Elizabeth I among her Siblings,’ Carole Levin examines the sibling relationships of Queen Elizabeth I with her sister Mary and her brother Edward, as well as with the other children of Henry VIII, of whose illegitimacy there was no question. Although Elizabeth often used the rhetoric of family in her role as queen, she found her relationships with her siblings to be problematic and dangerous. At the same time, many royal sibling relationships were predetermined by the political and religious constraints of the time, which limited the expression of familial affection. Elizabeth’s relation to her fellow sovereigns, whom she referred to as her sisters and brothers, offers another perspective on the significance of the sibling relation in the royal court. As Jane Couchman’s essay demonstrates, the interactions between famous figures and their less celebrated relations may be at least as telling and compelling as between those of equal renown. In ‘Mary Sidney’s Other Brothers,’ Margaret Hannay casts light on the relatively undiscussed relation between Mary Sidney Herbert, Countess of Pembroke, and her two younger brothers, Robert and Thomas, in the context of her bond with her famous brother, Sir Philip Sidney. Both Robert and Thomas served with Philip in the Netherlands, and were apparently present when he died there, serving also as principal mourners at the funeral in which, as a woman, Mary Sidney was unable to participate. In her own writings, however, Mary Sidney recasts herself as senior representative of her family, assuming the role of chief mourner in a pastoral literary world of her own construction, insisting, moreover, that she mourns alone. The essay evaluates Mary Sidney’s choice of literary speaking position even as it explores the familial implications of her complex connections with her surviving brothers. Exploring another angle to the Sidney family dynamic, Sheila Cavanagh’s ‘The Politics of Private Discourse: Familial Relations in Lady Mary Wroth’s Urania’ discusses the significant role played by familial communication in the 1621 prose romance authored by Lady Mary Wroth, who was Sir Philip Sidney’s niece. The complicated navigation of public and private life in the political realm of the Urania involves a blurring of positions between siblings and cousins, who perform congruent discursive functions in the romance. At the same time, the varying models of discourse between siblings and cousins prove particularly interesting because they are set within an international

8

SIBLING RELATIONS AND GENDER IN THE EARLY MODERN WORLD

structure inhabited largely by monarchs, and serve to construct a private domain that operates simultaneously but often at odds with the countries that depend upon these figures for leadership and guidance. In such cases, the familial becomes the political, with intriguing implications for effective communication.

Drawing the line The volume’s third section attends to the sometimes supportive, sometimes abusive, and frequently troubling lines of sibling authority in sixteenth- and seventeenth-century Italy and England. As both historical and fictional documents, especially drama, underscore, the relationships between brothers and sisters might be particularly vexed. Evident in the early modern example of Bradamante and Ricciardetto from Ariosto’s Orlando furioso, the relationship between twins is not only a frequent means for exploring a broad variety of themes in Renaissance literature, but it is also one of the clearest and most common expressions of the complex world of sibling ties in early modern culture. The story of the donna guerriera and her male twin is a seeming digression: Ricciardetto is to be killed because he has disguised himself as his sister in order to win the love of a princess who had believed Bradamante to be male; he is then rescued by Bradamante’s beloved, Ruggiero, who mistakes the brother for the sister. Yet the episode demonstrates that marriage is dependent not only on avoiding the traditional obstacles of romance and assuring parental consent, but upon an interplay of relationships involving the entire family, especially siblings. In a poem so concerned with (among other threads) dynastic and familial relations, Orlando furioso rehearses the main paradigms of sibling relations – reciprocity, affection, competition and alliancebuilding – reminding us, moreover, that sibling relationships are gendered. Such expression, however, may be determined not only by the gender of the characters depicted, but also by the author who creates them. In ‘When the Mirror Lies: Sisterhood Reconsidered in Moderata Fonte’s Thirteen Cantos of Floridoro,’ Valeria Finucci interrogates some of the stock features of Renaissance romance and comedy, including opposite-sex twins, examining the implications of gendered authorship in the example of Moderata Fonte’s Tredici canti del Floridoro (1581), which ostensibly casts two female twins as emblematic figures of law and order. The two sisters serve as the two faces of womanhood described in the poetry and culture of all times: one is the castrating female and the other is the pliant, although often unavailable, object of male desire. The essay asks what aspects of sisterhood a female author summons in her writing, and under what representational conditions crossdressing enables a transformation of topos.

INTRODUCTION: THICKER THAN WATER

9

Patriarchal structures often gave male members of the family power over the female, but they could also afford a measure of protection. Such was the case with Angelica, daughter of Piero the weaver, whose history is considered in Rebecca Edwards’s ‘Andrea and Giovanni Gabrieli: Musicians and Sororal Advocates in Sixteenth-Century Venice.’ Angelica fled her husband’s home in 1584, taking disputed possessions with her and seeking shelter with her uncle, Andrea Gabrieli, organist and composer at the Basilica of San Marco in Venice. The bitter ecclesiastical and civil court cases that followed, uninterrupted by Andrea’s death in July, drew members of her family to her aid, most especially her brother, Giovanni. A comparison of Giovanni’s activities with those of his uncle, Andrea, reveals that both generations of brothers called upon their social and financial connections to serve the families of their sisters, fostering conditions of familial harmony that supported the production of a brilliant musical repertory. While the case of Gabrieli demonstrates how private, familial alliances might contribute to success in the professional realm, Stephen Guy-Bray’s ‘The Shame of Siblings in David and Bethsabe’ reveals the obverse: how the stories of David’s seduction of Bathsheba and of Absalon’s rebellion become, in playwright Peele’s hands, largely an account of the extension of disorder within the royal family to the realm as a whole. In a play that begins with David’s glimpse of Bethsaba as she bathes and ends with the death of Absolon, the rape of David’s daughter Thamar by his son Ammon precipitates Absolon’s rebellion against his father, stemming from Absolon’s keen sense of his sister’s shame. The essay analyzes the extent to which the sibling relations in a family are at the heart of the entire power system, underscoring the instability of the distinction between public and private. While the previous essays in this section are concerned with sibling interactions that result from one person’s authority over another, Naomi Miller’s contribution explores the problem of sibling rivalry: the interplay of ties between siblings themselves as well as between individual siblings and parental figures. ‘Sibling Bonds and Bondage in (and beyond) The Tempest’ considers the vexed surrogate sibling bonds between Miranda and Caliban in Shakespeare’s romance, where both characters find themselves competing for the attention of the father-figure Prospero. Moreover, Ferdinand can emerge, at least initially, as a surrogate brother figure to Miranda as well, who has never before met a male in a nonfamilial relation to her. At the same time, Ferdinand is not only situated as a suitor to Miranda, but also placed in pseudo-fraternal competition throughout the play with Caliban, the laboring brother (bearing logs) to the unexpectedly prodigal son (‘this thing of darkness I acknowledge mine’). Miller explores how subsequent adaptations of The Tempest, from the seventeenth century to the present, complicate or even multiply the sibling bonds from Shakespeare’s play. The essay considers

10

SIBLING RELATIONS AND GENDER IN THE EARLY MODERN WORLD

how the staged imbalance of power and communication works repeatedly to transform familial bonds into bondage, while the array of actual and potential sibling relations in the play serve as portals into constructions of domination and desire, longing and loss, across a range of social and familial relations.

Hand in hand The previous section considers some of the negative or challenging consequences of sibling competition, authority and hierarchies. But, as we have seen, sibling bonds, especially sisterly ties, might prove both enabling and empowering. The volume concludes with a group of essays focusing primarily upon supportive sibling bonds in Italy, England, and Germany, drawing attention to the powerful role of sibling ties in enabling early modern women to overcome challenging social constraints. In ‘Playing the Game: Sisterly Relations in Sofonisba Anguissola’s Chess Game,’ Naomi Yavneh examines Sofonisba Anguissola’s 1555 portrait of three of her sisters and their maidservant playing chess not only as a remarkable instance of clearly delineated individual portraits that attest to the artist’s intimate familiarity with the subjects, her sisters, but also as a carefully constructed statement on the role of the woman artist, on female creativity and intellect, and on the reciprocity of sisterhood. Situating her analysis in relation to the social circumstances of women artists in sixteenth-century Italy, Yavneh argues that by juxtaposing chess, painting, embroidery, and caregiving in The Chess Game, Sofonisba celebrates a broad spectrum of ‘women’s work’ and breaks down barriers dividing disciplines, gender, and even class. Turning to England and from painting to biography, ‘Sainted Sisterhood in Seventeenth-Century England’ considers women’s authorship not in describing fictional siblings, but rather in depicting the writers’ own deceased sisters. Kathryn McPherson analyzes how the autobiographical writings of Alice Thornton (1625–1706) describing her sister Lady Catherine Danby’s death, and Lady Jane Cavendish Cheyne’s (1623–69) poem about the death of her sister, Elizabeth Egerton, Countess of Bridgewater, utilize motifs of female sainthood to enact both the bonds between sisters and a subtle veneration of women who died in childbirth. The essay argues that while women’s writing participates in an established rhetorical tradition of maternal memorialization by men, female-authored texts often reinscribe the ideology by posthumously representing women’s virtues in a manner that establishes them as substitute saints. Such a strategy of establishing their sisters as localized, household saints was particularly valuable for Protestant women writers faced with an allmale Trinity and clergy, without the intervening presence of the Virgin Mary or the female saints so prevalent in the Catholic Church.

INTRODUCTION: THICKER THAN WATER

11

While the writings of Alice Thornton and Lady Jane demonstrate the sustaining power of sisterly bonds beyond the grave, the subjects of the next two essays – also English women – display how writing, whether collaboratively or dialogically, might serve not only to assert such ties between living sisters, but to strengthen them in adversity. In ‘Sisterly Feelings in Cavendish and Brackley’s Drama’ Alison Findlay analyzes the powerful sororal bond between the daughters of William Cavendish, Lady Jane Cavendish (1621–79) and Lady Elizabeth Brackley (1616–63), particularly as manifest in their collaborative authorship of two dramatic texts, The Concealed Fancies and A Pastorall. When considering the complications posed to sibling relations by marriage, the Cavendish sisters’ dramatic texts can be read as collaborations written to reaffirm sororal bonds at the critical moment when the sisters are challenged by physical separation and new emotional alliances in marriage. By contrast to marriage, the bonds of sisterhood in this instance encourage self-possession in a mutually supportive holding environment. Sara Mendelson and Mary O’Connor, themselves writing collaboratively, draw attention to the enabling force of sororal bonds in the face of the even more challenging constraints posed by an explicitly abusive marriage. ‘“Thy Passionately Loving Sister and Faithfull Friend”: Anne Dormer’s Letters to her Sister Lady Trumbull,’ considers the letters of Anne Dormer to her sister Lady Elizabeth Cottrell Trumbull, written from 1685 to 1691, while the latter was married to the envoy to France and ambassador to Constantinople. This sibling relationship offers a particularly significant example of sororal support across geographical distance in the face of Anne Dormer’s increasingly difficult relationship. While sister-sister relationships might seem to afford the most obvious means of support in a culture clearly divided along gender lines, brother-sister relations might be distinguished not only by competition or authority but by genuine mutual empowerment as well. Exploring siblings who lived into the early nineteenth century, Almut Spalding’s ‘Siblings, Publications, and the Transmission of Memory: Johann Albert Hinrich and Elise Reimarus’ attends to the relationship between Elise Reimarus (1735–1805) and her brother, Johann Albert Hinrich Reimarus (1729–1814), without whom she could not have become the most important female representative of the German Enlightenment. A physician by training, Johann Albert Hinrich became known for introducing smallpox vaccinations and lightning rods to Germany and was also one of the first proponents of free trade, while Elise was well known to her contemporaries as a writer, educator, dramatist, and leader of an early literary salon. The essay examines a trove of surviving documents that shed light on the close and reciprocal bond between the siblings from their earliest youth through their adulthood, providing a rare glimpse of how a girl

12

SIBLING RELATIONS AND GENDER IN THE EARLY MODERN WORLD

back home could vicariously broaden her education through her brother’s study abroad, and how siblings could buttress one another’s intellectual interests throughout their lives, reinforcing an enabling bond of emotional, intellectual, and social support. Finally, closing the volume with a personal reflection upon the dynamics of sororal collaboration in a professional context, the volume editors, Naomi Miller and Naomi Yavneh, offer a narrative of their collaboration with each other as ‘l’oltr’altra,’ or ‘the other other,’ sharing both the same name and closely intertwined professional and personal profiles. Their reflection suggests ways in which, when two people share the extraordinary experience of being ‘the other other,’ they can find themselves at once singular and united. This volume starts from the premise that sibling relations in the early modern period were at least as complex and compelling as the filial or maternal ones that have of late been the focus of such suggestive and productive work. Sisters, for example, were often constructed as their brothers’ ‘treasures,’ both because they could be married off and because they looked out for their brothers’ interests, monetarily, socially or even emotionally. At the same time, sororal bonds were very important in enabling women to survive the social strictures that contained them. Brothers, in turn, often assumed authority over their sisters, whether to protect them or to control any threats to the family honor; as we have seen, brothers might also afford their sisters education or opportunities usually deemed beyond their sex. Moreover, sibling relations were not created exclusively by blood; they might be further complicated by the interplay of personal, spiritual and political relationships in early modern convents (both before and after the Reformation) as well as in the political arena of marriage alliances and diplomacy. As the essays contained herein demonstrate, to consider brothers and sisters – in literature, art, music or politics – enriches our understanding not only of familial relations but of gender dynamics and social (and professional) constructions in general.

Notes 1.

Naomi J. Miller and Naomi Yavneh, ed., Maternal Measures: Figuring Caregiving in the Early Modern Period (Aldershot and Burlington: Ashgate, 2000). The literature on gender and familial roles in the early modern period is rapidly growing; although the bibliography here is not intended to duplicate the references found in the notes to the various essays in this collection, helpful works on women and gender include: Merry Wiesner-Hanks, Women and Gender in Early Modern Europe, 2nd edition (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000) and Sara Mendelson and Patricia Crawford, Women in Early Modern

INTRODUCTION: THICKER THAN WATER

13

England 1550–1720 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1998). On family life in Italy, see, for example, Louis Haas, The Renaissance Man and his Children (New York: St. Martin’s, 1998), Christiane Klapisch-Zuber, Women, Family and Ritual in Renaissance Italy (Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 1985), David Herlihy and Christiane Klapisch-Zuber, Tuscans and their Families: A Study of the Florentine Catasto of 1427 (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1978). Useful essay collections include Trevor Dean and K. J. P. Lowe, Marriage in Italy 1300–1650 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998) and Kari Boyd McBride, ed., Domestic Arrangements in Early Modern England (Pittsburgh: Duquesne University Press, 2002). Laurie Shannon’s Sovereign Amity (Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 2001) explores friendship in great detail, but addresses the sibling relationship only minimally. 2. Mary Beth Rose, ‘Where are the Mothers in Shakespeare? Options for Gender Representation in the English Renaissance,’ Shakespeare Quarterly 42:3 (Fall 1991), 291–314. 3. Examples from the Italian epic tradition include Lodovico Ariosto, Orlando furioso (1532), Moderata Fonte, I tredici canti di Floridoro (1581). Siblings in Shakespeare’s comedies, from The Comedy of Errors to Twelfth Night, have played notable roles that intersect with and expand upon the sibling relations in Shakespeare’s prose romance sources and antecedents, such as Sir Philip Sidney’s Arcadia. Siblings play an important role in Italian and Spanish theater, as well. 4. See discussion in Margaret King, Women of the Renaissance (Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 1991), 2ff. 5. Mendelson and Crawford, Women in Early Modern England 1550–1720, 9. 6. ‘Anzi (cosa mirabile a dire) che il fratello, che si andava alla scuola di gramatica, non si tosto era a casa tornato, che gli era lei d’intorno e facendosi mostrar e dire quanto gli era stato insegnato ed aveva egli imparato, in maniera se lo scolpiva nella mente, che maggior profitto fece ella assai di lui … in breve tempo venne a tale, che intendeva benissima ogni libro latino e mediocremente scriveva in quella lingua ogni cosa.’ Moderata Fonte, Il merito delle donne, ed. Adriana Chemello (Mirano and Venice: Editrice Eidos, 1988), 5–6. [‘At the same time (amazing to account), when her brother came home from school …, little Modesta would come up and pester him to show her and explain to her what he had been taught that day; and she would so fervently impress what he said on her memory that she retained a great deal more of what he had learned than he himself did. And she so threw herself into the study of letters that … she could soon read any Latin book very fluently and could even write fairly well in Latin.’ The Worth of Women, ed. and trans. Virginia Cox (Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 1997), 34–5.] 7. See Almut Spalding’s essay on the relationship between Elise Reimarus and her brother, Johann Albert Hinrich Reimarus, in this volume. 8. For a discussion of Sofonisba Anguissola, see the essay by Naomi Yavneh in this volume. 9. For discussions of Mary Sidney and Lady Jane, respectively, see the essays by Margaret Hannay and Kathryn McPherson in this volume. 10. The letter, dated 13 October 1554, is cited in translation in Fiora A. Bassanese, Gaspara Stampa (Boston: Twayne, 1982). 11. For a discussion of the corrective reordering of the editions, see Ann Rosalind Jones, ‘Bad Press: Modern Editors versus Tullia d’Aragona, Gaspara Stampa and

14

12.

13.

14.

15. 16. 17.

SIBLING RELATIONS AND GENDER IN THE EARLY MODERN WORLD

Veronica Franco,’ in Strong Voices, Weak History?: Renaissance Women Writers and the Canon, ed. Pamela Benson and Victoria Kirkham (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2004). For a thorough discussion of nuns, dowries, and coerced monachizations, see Jutta Gisela Sperling, Convents and the Body Politic in Late Renaissance Venice (Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 1999), chap. 1, passim. On dowries and marriage regulation in Venice, see Stanley Chojnacki, Women and Men in Renaissance Venice: Twelve Essays on Patrician Society (Baltimore and London: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2000). ‘Duemille e più Nobili … in questa Città vivono rinserite nei monasterij come quasi in publico deposito.’ Cited in Sperling, Convents and the Body Politic, 3 and 26 (Italian given in n. 273); ‘Scriptura R.mi D.i. Patriarchae,’ Museo Civico Correr (MCC), Codex Cicogna (CC) 2570, fols 299–304. Also cited in Emilio Zanette, Suor Arcangela monaca del Seicento veneziano (Venice, 1960), 36. Arcangela Tarabotti, L’inferno monacale, ed. Francesca Medioli (Torino: Rosenberg and Sellier, 1989). The University of Chicago Press has plans to publish a translation as part of its OVIEME series; currently available in English is Tarabotti’s similarly-themed Semplicità ingannata, translated as Paternal Tyranny (Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 2004). Margaret D. Carroll, ‘The Erotics of Absolutism,’ in Norma Broude and Mary D. Garrard, ed., The Expanding Discourse: Feminism and Art History (New York: Harper Collins, 1992), 147. Ibid., 151. Ibid., 151.

CHAPTER TWO

Making a Saint out of a Sibling Susan D. Laningham In 1603, a 42-year-old aristocratic nun named María Vela y Cueto submitted for nine months to a series of exorcisms in the Cistercian convent of Santa Ana in Ávila, Spain. The rituals were intended to relieve María of the visions, voices and mysterious ailments she claimed came from God, but during the last exorcism María reached such a level of spiritual rapture that her body arched and grew rigid, and her head became stuck in the little window through which communion was passed. Only when her ecstasy ended did María’s body relax enough that the shocked nuns could free her head.1 Lorenzo Cueto, María’s older brother and a priest, soon arrived in Ávila. María informed him of recent events and showed him a scathing critique written about her by a certain religioso. Lorenzo promptly penned a public rebuttal, castigating the author for his inaccurate portrayal of María. Lorenzo then began coming to Santa Ana to serve as María’s confessor, to ensure that no more unsympathetic persons complicated María’s life. When unable to visit, Lorenzo wrote letters. Like all written correspondence of the early modern period, the letters were haphazardly delivered by anyone going in the general direction of the recipient. An unnamed townswoman once brought a letter of Lorenzo’s that she found trampled underfoot in the open market in Ávila, whereupon María immediately wrote to Lorenzo: ‘How terrible it would have been to lose it, since it consoled me so much,’ adding, ‘ask the Lord, brother, to arrange things, so I have some relief,’ since, as she reminded him, ‘the whole of hell is gathered together after me.’2 Indeed, María was in great need of consolation from her older sibling, since little sympathy could be found for her inside the convent. Over the last several years she had been insisting that God was personally directing her through celestial voices and mystical visions. He had taken her, she claimed, away from ‘common rules,’ and she was therefore not obliged to follow the same exercises as the other nuns.3 The defining moment came when the voices insisted she take only the Holy Eucharist as food, nothing else. She began missing meals in the refectory. As María admitted in her autobiography, this was regarded as singular behavior ‘and not as evidence of good spirit, that I should miss going to the refectory; it would be better for me to act like the

16

SIBLING RELATIONS AND GENDER IN THE EARLY MODERN WORLD

rest.’4 Her confessor and abbess ordered her to eat without fail for the sake of her health, but on the second Sunday of Lent in 1598, just as she was about to go to Communion, her jaws inexplicably locked. Not even a doctor could pry them apart. The nuns of Santa Ana were outraged, and María’s confessor was in a state of panic, afraid she would starve to death under his care. From 1598 to 1603, her jaws clamped intermittently, causing great turmoil in the convent and prompting confessor after confessor to excuse himself from María’s service. To many nuns in Santa Ana, María’s clenched jaws were hardly a medical mystery or evidence of demonic possession. They saw her condition as nothing more than an attempt to manipulate her environment, to refashion Santa Ana into a convent that catered to her own whims. Santa Ana was a bastion of propriety and tradition, inhabited by women born into privileged families who lived under a relaxed Cistercian rule and who called each other by the formal title of ‘Doña,’ rather than ‘Sister.’5 María’s last confessor and biographer admitted that some parents, apparently less affluent ones, refused to send their daughters there because of accusations of unequal treatment based on social status.6 The aristocratic nuns were unwilling to forego their accustomed creature comforts. They ate meat regularly and dressed warmly. Mild forms of ascetic practice were considered sufficient to meet the requirements of ritual self-abasement practiced by the Santa Ana community. María advocated a form of asceticism that went beyond the norm: she took a wire given to her for making paper flowers and fashioned a sharp, pointed crucifix to wear next to her bare skin; she tied a cord of raw wool around her knee so that it cut off circulation and caused agonizing pain with every step; she used the same cord to bind her hands, which then, according to her confessor, ‘took on the color of the grave.’ Such extreme asceticism had already ‘gone out of style’ in Ávila.7 So, when María claimed that God preferred she live a life of self-denial and abrogation in the center of their plush convent, her fellow nuns believed she was implicitly criticizing them, which she was. Hence, as a contemporary recalled, the nuns ‘bellowed.’ Through the controversy, María’s two older brothers, Diego and Lorenzo Cueto, stood by her. Their relationship, though existing within a rather unusual set of circumstances, was actually quite typical of the extent to which family involvement and support influenced the course of events in the early modern world. One’s own parents were not necessarily one’s primary advocates, since the chances of natural parents living to see their children through adulthood were slim. Thus, siblings, aunts, uncles, and cousins were called on for support. While some modern scholarship has been done on the early modern family in Europe and much more on early modern women’s relations with their paramours or spiritual advisors, only passing mention has been made of

MAKING A SAINT OUT OF A SIBLING

17

women and their brothers. Examining the relationship between a woman and her brother, particularly if they were close in age, may tell more about a woman’s personality than any other source, for siblings often turned into lifelong friends and confidants. Diego and Lorenzo were privy to María’s uncensored thoughts and ambitions, and always rushed to her defense, if not for her sake alone, at least for the honor of the family. This essay will focus on the efforts of María Vela and her two brothers to acquire for María that which she desired above all else and would by proximity elevate the status of the entire family: that is, María’s sainthood. This they hoped to achieve through María’s perfect imitatio Christi, and through her pointed resemblance to past worthies such as the fourteenthcentury ascetic, St Catherine of Siena, and the soon-to-be canonized reformer, Teresa of Jesus, herself a native of Ávila. Through extraordinary selfmortification and concentrated efforts to purify her surroundings María expected, with the help of her brothers, to reach that level in the Christian hierarchy so rarely obtained. For María, sainthood was not to be tentatively pursued. She once declared during prayer, ‘Lord, I would like to be a saint!’ and promptly understood ‘that this desire would be granted.’8

The path to sainthood From the time she entered Santa Ana in 1576, María had been different. She was 15 when she arrived at the convent, so frail and ill that she had to be carried in a chair through the gates. The general consensus among the nuns watching her that day was that María had arrived only in time to die. Her mother, a notably pious widow, would actually facilitate the entry of not one, but ultimately three feeble daughters into the convent, but the youngest sister died within months of entering Santa Ana, never able to take her vows, while the other lived only two years after professing along with María in 1582.9 In the space of three years, María lost her two sisters and her mother. All that remained to her of immediate family were older brothers Lorenzo and Diego, though the brothers were not always close at hand, for Lorenzo was sent after his mother’s death to live with an uncle, the bishop of Burgos, and Diego, as eldest sibling and heir, resided of necessity at the family home in Cardeñosa, some nine miles from Ávila. For twenty years María practiced as rigorous an ascetic regime as her superiors would allow, until 1598, when her path to spiritual perfection took a unique turn. It was then, in the tradition of medieval saints, she declared that God, speaking to her personally, had ordered her to take communion every day, for a week, and not eat any other food during those seven days. Her confessor and abbess, looking at her sickly frame and unconvinced that any

18

SIBLING RELATIONS AND GENDER IN THE EARLY MODERN WORLD

heavenly directives had been given, would not let her fast. So María’s jaws, in the presence of all, simply locked. According to her last confessor, her jaws were so rigidly set that it seemed, ‘as if on each side they were nailed.’10 A doctor was called to pry the jaws apart. He tried repeatedly with his instruments, ‘and exerted so much strength,’ María recalled, ‘that it made my teeth grate.’11 Experts in theology were summoned from as far away as Madrid and the University of Salamanca. Hurrying through the doors of Santa Ana were exorcists, priests, abbots, wandering holy men, all anxious to give their opinions about this strange predicament. Whenever the abbess obliged María’s ‘voices’ by allowing her to go without food on Communion days, the jaws unlocked. When permission was denied, again her jaws clenched, once so tightly that the jawbone was thrown out of joint. María swore she was trying to do as abbess, confessor and other spiritual authorities ordered, but whenever she ate, she was ‘spiritually reprimanded’ by the celestial voices. So began María’s path to sainthood, a process she shared intimately with her brothers. The ‘impediment of the jaws,’ she wrote to Lorenzo, was not punishment from God, as everyone suspected. On the contrary, it worked to her advantage. The locked jaws, ‘so senseless to everyone else,’ resulted in her eventually receiving daily Communion.12 To her brothers, María was forthright about the maneuvering required to attain and prove the extraordinary holiness she claimed for herself in the religiously conservative environment of Santa Ana. She was certain of her brothers’ devotion and aid, reminding Lorenzo on one occasion to ‘ask that God help me to carry out my trials so that you and I don’t fail.’ Her quest for spiritual perfection was their quest, as well. As revealed in the 86 surviving letters that María wrote to her brothers, the relationship between the siblings consisted of much more than perfunctory visits and dutiful inquiries concerning one another’s health. Diego and Lorenzo were not only advising María, as might be expected from older brothers, but also taking directives from her. ‘Send me the little book of songs I need, and some pens,’ María once demanded in a letter to Lorenzo, ‘and don’t forget. I have written about it before. And remind my [other] brother, who has as little memory as you.’13 They were running errands for her, copying manuscripts, sending money and, perhaps most importantly, soliciting outside support. María’s letters to her brothers have lain virtually undisturbed in Santa Ana for nearly four hundred years. Neither dated nor edited, the letters contain a wealth of information about Spanish spirituality, the exploitation of one’s own body and the manipulation of authority during Spain’s Golden Age. The letters are also invaluable for what they reveal about family relations, particularly among the upper classes. Though typically the correspondence of nuns was scrutinized and censored by the abbess or another appointed to the

MAKING A SAINT OUT OF A SIBLING

19

task, the contents of María’s letters indicate an assumption on her part that no one but her trusted brothers would read her words. This guarantee of privacy may have been general policy in a convent where a great number of the nuns could boast of exceptional lineage, or it may have been that María’s own particularly elevated social status prevented the perusal of her personal letters. The Vela were, after all, among Ávila’s elite.14 Whatever the reason for the lack of censorship of María’s letters, she was certainly free to pour out a litany of complaints, condemnations of others, and plans for bypassing the hierarchy in her letters to Lorenzo and Diego. Her candid epistolary discourse is particularly revealing when read in conjunction with other available primary sources. These include María’s two autobiographies written at the request of her confessors: the Mercies (Mercedes), which she penned around 1598, and the Life (Vida), finished about 1610. There is also a four hundred-page biography of María composed by her last and favorite confessor, Dr Miguel González Vaquero, entitled The Strong Woman (La muger fuerte) and published just months after her death in 1617. The three compositions – María’s Mercies and Life, and Dr Vaquero’s Strong Woman – are quite unlike María’s letters to Diego and Lorenzo in that they are formal compilations, heavily edited, and follow the medieval hagiographical model. The authorial intention is to establish María’s claim to sanctity. Nevertheless, the three works provide a day-by-day retelling of María’s controversial years. In 1598, when her jaws first locked, María was under obedience to Father Salcedo, a Jesuit. María was impatient with Salcedo’s vacillation concerning the authenticity of her voices and visions, and she wrote to Lorenzo that Salcedo was ‘shrunken and timid,’ something she could never say in her Mercies, since it was Salcedo who ordered her to write the autobiography and undoubtedly read every word of it. Eventually, the scandal that ensued over her rigid jaws and the criticisms and accusations of incompetence leveled against Salcedo caused the beleaguered confessor to resign. For a while, María confessed to the convent chaplain, but within a short time she complained to Lorenzo that the chaplain had actually accused her of having physical maladies, such as the petrified jaws, ‘up her sleeve,’ to use as needed.15 María considered doing without a confessor, and said so to Diego. He responded in the only surviving letter written by one of the Vela y Cueto brothers. Diego tells María that Lorenzo, studying to be a priest, is more qualified than he to voice an opinion, but if she really wants to know what he thinks, it is this: that ‘governing one’s self is a principle that destroys a thousand goods and gives little satisfaction.’16 He advised that she submit to the chaplain-confessor, at least for the time being, until feelings settled down in the convent. But emotions did not subside. The abbess appointed the

20

SIBLING RELATIONS AND GENDER IN THE EARLY MODERN WORLD

elderly Father Julián de Ávila to be María’s confessor. Julián had previously served for 22 years as frequent confessor and traveling companion to the renowned Teresa of Jesus, but by the time he came to confess María, Julián had developed a notable aversion to extraordinary modes of pious expression.17 Julián told María that considering all the things she had imagined or were put into her head by incompetent confessors, it was a wonder she had not become a Lucifer!18 María immediately wrote Lorenzo, telling him that, ‘Julián of Ávila has been the greatest opposition I have had,’ and that he and Diego should ‘give another prod’ to the bishop and ask that a new confessor be found. She concedes that, ‘you would have to leave your studies, but since I’m in need, it’s only natural that my brothers would help me.’19 The implication is clear. Lorenzo may be busy studying for the priesthood, but his sister’s needs should come first. She later admitted to Lorenzo that it worried her greatly, disturbing him at such a time. She suggests that he ask God for the opportunity to continue his studies, but not before he does her another favor, this time a letter on her behalf to the Jesuit Provincial. Due to continued intervention on the part of her brothers, María received a new confessor. Diego sent a friend of his, a priest named Ledesma, to be her spiritual guide. Father Ledesma arrived at the convent of Santa Ana, spent a few hours with María, and then publicly declared that she was crazy. Diego was furious, and retorted that his sister had been a saint ‘since the day she was born.’20 Perhaps Diego said more to Ledesma, for María was soon able to write to Lorenzo that, ‘Ledesma came and begged forgiveness for the past.’21 Shortly afterwards, Lorenzo wrote the refutation to the certain religioso already mentioned and began to serve as María’s confessor. The Vela brothers’ support of their sister was quite public. Each also brought to María’s defense the special abilities inherent to his position in Spanish society. Diego, as head of the family, was well situated to act on her behalf in the secular realm, while Lorenzo, a priest and Cistercian monk, could operate with an equal amount of finesse in the politically and emotionally sensitive atmosphere of the Church.22

Reform and resistance In 1600, María began the more visibly active phase of her path to sainthood: the reform of the convent. In this, Lorenzo figured more prominently than Diego, undoubtedly due to his greater familiarity with monastic practice.23 María was appointed Mistress of Novices, an honor indicating at least some approval of her style of piety in Santa Ana, since the Novice Mistress was in a position greatly to influence the younger nuns. She began her tenure by

MAKING A SAINT OUT OF A SIBLING

21

taking down all the mirrors in the convent, an act sufficient in itself to provoke a number of the women.24 In an even bolder step, and with Lorenzo’s full support, she appeared in the refectory wearing hemp sandals and dressed in the primitive costume prescribed in the original rule of the Cistercians, called the aljuba.25 As María remembered, ‘it was as if I had clothed myself like a scarecrow, disfiguring the habit of St Bernard.’26 She recalls in her Life how ‘disapproval of my appearance was manifest on every face’ because she had abandoned the contemporary nun’s habit. One sister even put on an unbecoming cowl as a joke and ‘went to converse with the sick nuns in mockery of me.’ Not one to be dissuaded by critics or clowns, María then made aljubas for several of the other nuns, who wore them boldly. This time, ‘the entire convent rose up in wrath.’27 The ensuing uproar was such that the prior of the neighboring monastery of Dominicans appeared at the grille in Santa Ana to inform the abbess that she would be in a state of mortal sin if she continued to allow María and the handful of other nuns to wear the vexatious garb.28 As María reported to Lorenzo, ‘the dress has suffered greatly.’29 Meanwhile, María’s jaws continued to lock and unlock, and as Dr Vaquero reports in Strong Woman, ‘In all of Ávila, they talked of nothing but María.’ Though María received some support both within and without the convent, one preacher railed at her in his weekly sermon, calling her childish, foolish, and offensive to God. About the preacher’s attack, María wrote Lorenzo: ‘Penitence, silence and prayer are so defamed because I did them that no one can practice them without fear, and I can see why. It’s because they hear it condemned from the pulpit, as if there is no other thing in need of reform.’30 In those words to Lorenzo, she reveals a motive far more disquieting to the other nuns than her quest for sainthood: she wanted to reform all of them.31 Though reluctant to declare outright in her ‘official’ writings that Santa Ana should return to the primitive rule of Cistercian observance, María spoke freely of her plans to her brothers. ‘This house,’ she told Lorenzo, ‘has great need of someone to take up the return to virtue and obedience.’32 The ‘someone’ was surely María. Since there were ‘some things about the Rule that are badly understood here,’ María relied on Lorenzo to peruse documents and query scholars to provide her with the information needed before she launched a full-scale reform of Santa Ana. She wanted to know if the Church authorities could force her or anyone else to forgo the original Rule in the interest of communal solidarity. She entreats Lorenzo to ‘send me your thoughts on this case and consult with some of the most serious and learned and spiritual fathers.’ It was, as she reminded him, ‘serious business.’33 ‘You know,’ she confided in another letter, ‘that we are talking about a monastery of recoletas.’ Recoletas, or recollects, were those who separated themselves from an existing religious order for the purpose of returning to a

22

SIBLING RELATIONS AND GENDER IN THE EARLY MODERN WORLD

pure, unmitigated, and strict observance of the original and primitive Rule. The Franciscans and Augustinians had already seen groups of recoletas leave their motherhouses. Teresa of Jesus was even then being venerated for her success in founding the reformed Discalced Carmelites right there in Ávila.34 Such a break, while lauded by many and possibly a guarantee of sanctity for the founder, was a slap in the face to the original house, as it implied inadequate pious observance in a convent. María was speaking to Lorenzo of leaving Santa Ana and founding one of these new, reformed convents. ‘And if that should come to pass,’ she tells him, ‘let your beard grow and get your traveling bag and come be my chaplain.’35 Letting his beard grow would entail Lorenzo actually abandoning his monastery for her sake. María was confident that her brothers would do anything to assist her in establishing what would be, essentially, a rival house to Santa Ana. Only one letter from the brothers is extant, but it is clear from María’s written responses to them that no resistance was coming from either brother.36 On the contrary, Lorenzo once chided her for worrying that all her efforts would come to naught. ‘You are so right to call me a child,’ she plaintively replied.37 She constantly lamented the difficulty in effecting any change in the convent, especially since, ‘there is a great outcry, here and outside, from those who have always made war against me.’38 She wryly concurs that, ‘as you said in your letter, there is no need to go to the land of infidels to satisfy the desire to suffer.’39 She was suffering right there in Santa Ana: reviled, rebuked, thwarted, and frustrated. In Strong Woman, Dr Vaquero castigates the ‘overly zealous’ nuns for wanting to ‘reduce [María] to the level of all.’ Vaquero was quite right; the nuns of Santa Ana did want to bring María to their level, but it was no reduction in their eyes. It can be argued that it was a matter of survival. Female solidarity was critical to the daily functioning, maintenance, and existence of the convent. Together, the nuns were required to perform the daily choir services and prayers for the souls of the dead and living. Such services were the purpose of female monastic houses. Because of her physical maladies, María was missing communal prayers and choir. Because she was Santa Ana’s organist, her absence adversely affected the quality of the choral performance.40 María would not be ‘part of the community.’ The nuns’ indignation was aroused not so much because María would not eat, but because she would not eat with them. As long as she joined the other sisters, the nuns remained quiet.41 María never understood why the nuns of Santa Ana so adamantly rejected her claims of divine intercession and her efforts to reform them. She repeatedly interpreted their opposition as stubborn resistance to a purer form of monastic observance. What she failed to concede was that, for most convents, staying out of the limelight was crucial to the self-governance they

MAKING A SAINT OUT OF A SIBLING

23

valued. Scandals meant that a steady stream of theological experts, all male, were entering Santa Ana, shaking their heads, making their analyses, and telling the nuns what to do. The pattern was clear. Over and over, María pointed out through her lofty example the shortcomings of Santa Ana. The nuns would react violently to the criticism and men would come running to straighten out the women’s problems. María may have intended her unyielding jaws to symbolize and be an inspiration for the strictly cloistered convent prescribed in the original Cistercian Rule, but instead of prompting the nuns to restore a convent no longer desecrated by men and worldly concerns, the clenched jaws brought even more intrusions. Relying on her brothers to fulfill her every desire further reinforced opinion that María was willing to compromise Santa Ana’s female sovereignty by any available means, as long as her spiritual ambitions were realized. She had no qualms about including the men of her own family among the men interfering in the nuns’ daily lives. Diego and Lorenzo could engineer a change of confessors, publicly denounce her critics, and furnish a significant amount of financial backing. Diego was clearly sending money; María speaks of awaiting the money from the barley harvest, and judging by María’s letters, the Vela y Cueto men were a regular presence in the convent. ‘The abbess,’ María once wrote to Lorenzo, ‘wants that lamp that you still have of hers.’ Lorenzo had borrowed a little lamp from the abbess, with the understanding that he would return it within 15 days. ‘I run away whenever she starts to ask about it,’ María complained irritably, ‘What a bother, that you aren’t more diligent.’42 Lorenzo may, indeed, have been careless about a lamp, but he was never lax about promoting his sister as a saint. Supportive siblings were not enough to secure María’s canonization, though the brothers’ efforts were not entirely in vain. After her death in 1617, beatification proceedings began in Ávila. Lorenzo, by then, was the only sibling alive. He testified at the hearing, still insisting on the remarkable holiness of his sister. A few nuns from Santa Ana also bore witness to miracles associated with María’s body, but in the end the reforming nun from the staunchly unreformed convent achieved no higher title than ‘Venerable.’43 Aristocratic Santa Ana would produce no saint dedicated to leveling the social hierarchy. María Vela employed her socially privileged family in her efforts to obliterate the same such privileges in Santa Ana. Realizing the contradiction, she downplayed, at least in her autobiographies, her aristocratic lineage and the advantages gained by the support of such a family. She mentions her brothers only three times in her official writings, referring twice to Lorenzo as a temporary confessor and to Diego as the procurer of an unsuitable confessor. Her brothers, she would have us believe in her autobiographies, were not

24

SIBLING RELATIONS AND GENDER IN THE EARLY MODERN WORLD

instrumental in smoothing her path, when in fact they were considerable assets in her quest for spiritual perfection and fame.44 The cooperation between María and her brothers was neither unusual nor considered ill advised by the majority of Spaniards. Regardless of the monastic ideal, family connections and concerns did not stop when vows were taken. In fact, family interference was fundamental to the continuing operation of convents, cathedrals, canons, and choirs. The Church prospered or not according to the degree to which it served the interests of the family, particularly the aristocratic family. The energy, time and money spent by the Vela family in their efforts to acquire sainthood for María helped to reinforce a number of ecclesiastical institutions: the cult of sainthood, monastic observance, even the clerical hierarchy. In Santa Ana, family ambitions and religious goals intersected. María’s pious ambitions were based upon a family culture in which achievement was expected. She once mentioned how two nuns came to her after dinner one evening, ‘saying I held such lofty ideas that nothing less than sainthood would content me. I replied that this was true.’ True, indeed, for María’s brothers, as well. Diego and Lorenzo were duty-bound to turn possibility into reality, inasmuch as the entire family would benefit from María’s ‘lofty ideas.’ Hence, an aristocratic nun’s desire to be as virtuous as possible became a concentrated family effort to make not just a saint for the Church, but to have the Vela name invoked by Christians for centuries to come.

Notes 1.

2. 3.

Miguel González Vaquero, La muger fuerte: Por otro titulo, la vida de Doña María Vela … (Barcelona: Geronymo Margarit, 1627), 108v. This biography of María written by her last confessor was published in Spain in 1618, just a few months after María’s death. Subsequent new Spanish editions followed in 1627, 1640 and 1674, along with two Italian editions. See Isabel Poutrin, Le voile et la plume: autobiographie et sainteté feminine dans l’Espagne moderne (Madrid: Casa de Velázquez, 1995), 442–3. María Vela y Cueto, Letters (Archivo del Monasterio de Santa Ana, Ávila, Spain), #22. See María Vela y Cueto, Life, in The Third Mystic of Ávila: The Self-Revelation of María Vela, a Sixteenth-Century Spanish Nun, trans. Frances Parkinson Keyes (New York: Farrar, Straus and Cudahy, 1960), 58. The Third Mystic is currently the only English translation of María’s autobiographies. Plans are underway for a new translation to be published by the University of Chicago Press, translated by Jane Tar and edited with an introduction by the author of this essay. See also María Vela y Cueto, Autobiografía y Libro de las Mercedes, ed. Olegario González Hernández (Barcelona: Juan Flors, 1961). For the sake of non-Spanish readers, I will use Keyes’s translation, designating María’s autobiographies as either Life or Mercies.

MAKING A SAINT OUT OF A SIBLING

4. 5.

6. 7.

8. 9.

10. 11. 12. 13. 14.

15. 16. 17.

18. 19. 20. 21.

25

Life, 58. The Rules of monastic orders were revised and mitigated, or relaxed, by Pope Benedict XII in the early fourteenth century. Most monastics lived under a mitigated Rule, but Protestant criticism and the reforms of the Council of Trent prompted some monastic houses to return to their primitive Rules in the sixteenth century. The most famous reform of a Spanish order was that accomplished by Teresa of Jesus for her Discalced (‘shoeless’) Carmelites. For the mitigated Cistercian Rule given to the nuns of Santa Ana in the late fifteenth century by the bishop of Ávila, see Olegario González Hernández, ‘Fray Hernando de Talavera: Un aspecto nuevo de su personalidad,’ Hispania Sacra 13 (1960), 149–74. For information on Santa Ana and its foundation, see Francisco Esteban Martin, Venerable María Vela (Religiosa Cisterciense): 1561–1617 (Ávila, 1986), 34–5; Bartolomé Fernández Valencia, Historia y Grandezas del Insigne Templo … de los Santos Mártires (Ávila, 1676; repr. Ávila: Ediciones de la Institución ‘Gran Duque de Alba’ de la Excma, 1992)’, 73–5. For the architecture of Santa Ana, see Maruqui Ruiz-Ayucar, ‘El Claustro del Convento de Santa Ana,’ Cuadernos Abulenses 1 (1984), 143–5. Vaquero, La muger fuerte, 5v. See Jodi Bilinkoff’s The Ávila of Saint Teresa: Religious Reform in a Sixteenth Century City (Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press, 1989). Bilinkoff does a superb study of pious trends and ‘fashionable’ spiritual expression, linking them to economic and social change in Ávila. Mercies, 205. Vaquero, 4v. Vaquero reports that María’s mother was ‘so determined’ that María enter the convent she commandeered the chair used to carry her daughter inside Santa Ana. In so saying, Vaquero leaves room for speculation about María’s own preference, admitting that at age 14, María had been ‘tempted by the devil to stay in the world, like her mother.’ Vaquero, 75v. Life, 64. Letters, 17. Letters, 45. The Vela family was not titled nobility, but of sufficient stock to ensure a prominent place in the affairs of Spain. María’s great uncle, Blasco Nuñez Vela, was Peru’s first viceroy; her grandfather served as admiral of the armada that sailed from Spain to Peru; her cousin was a member of Philip II’s Council of War, while an uncle, Cristóbal Vela, was bishop of Burgos. The Cueto family belonged to the local elite. Letters, 17, and Life, 72. Letters, 9. It is possible that Julián did not want to encourage any competition to ‘his’ holy protégé, Teresa. He wrote a biography of Teresa after her death, but never had it published. He left the originals of Teresa’s biography to Dr Vaquero, whom he also confessed and mentored (Vaquero, 102v). Vaquero was simply following Julián’s example, and that of a good number of other confessors, by writing the life of a female penitent considered particularly holy. Life, 67. Letters, 16. Vaquero, 104v. Letters, 17.

26

SIBLING RELATIONS AND GENDER IN THE EARLY MODERN WORLD

22. The diverse ‘occupation’ of each brother was typical. After a family produced a son and heir, at least one son born afterwards became a man of the Church. It was, perhaps, insurance for both worlds, satisfying all the requirements of a Godfearing Spanish family of high social status. 23. María’s ambition to reform her convent was also supported by her current confessor, a Discalced Carmelite named Jerónimo de San Eliseo. His tenure as María’s confessor was short, however, because a new Constitution ended the Discalced Carmelite friars going to convents. María once again called on Lorenzo for assistance, entreating him to ‘perhaps through some friend, get me permission from the General of the Discalced Carmelites to let Padre Jerónimo de San Eliseo, or any other of those religious who live in the Carmelite house in Ávila, to come to this house of Santa Ana whenever we call them … Try, brother, for this is important for my advancement and consolation.’ Letters, 22. 24. Letters, 21. 25. Aljuba, a Moorish word, was a style of clothing adopted from the Muslims who inhabited Spain for seven centuries. It was worn by some Christian monastics. Variations of the aljuba include bell-shaped sleeves, a flaring skirt and a tightfitting waist, quite uncomfortable if the cloth was rough. 26. Life, 80. 27. Life, 79. 28. Life, 80. 29. Letters, 23. 30. Letters, 14. 31. María alludes to such intention, saying the nuns were ‘under obligations to friends and relatives or to their own creature comforts’ and therefore God wanted her to ‘mingle more freely with the Community’ so she could be an example to them. Mercies, 178. 32. Letters, 21. 33. Letters, 55. 34. Teresa of Jesus (1515–82) enjoyed a close relationship with her brothers, receiving from them encouragement as well as crucial financial support while establishing her Discalced convents. 35. Letters, 53. 36. That María’s brothers kept her letters may indicate their confidence in her eventual sainthood, whereupon the letters would become valuable relics. 37. Letters, 25. 38. Letters, 55. 39. Letters, 61. 40. See Colleen Baade, ‘Nuns’ Music-Making in Early Modern Castile,’ PhD diss. (Duke University, 2002). Baade explains that nuns’ musical skills (she mentions María Vela) made them particularly valuable to a convent. The acclamation received by a convent based on its musical performance often determined the amount of donations received. Also, P. Renée Baernstein, A Convent Tale: A Century of Sisterhood in Spanish Milan (New York: Routledge, 2002), 134–6. Baernstein describes how the aristocratic nuns of San Paolo in Milan employed polyphonic music, introduced in 1570, to attract public attention and improve attendance at all their divine services. Polyphonic singing had its detractors, however, as it veered from the established custom of plainchant. María’s insistence on primitive observance may have carried with it a censure of these new multiple harmonies.

MAKING A SAINT OUT OF A SIBLING

27

41. Vaquero, 66v. 42. Letters, 59. 43. Handwritten reports of the beatification proceedings remain in Santa Ana, yet to be transcribed and translated. Permission to transcribe will provide further opportunity to examine Lorenzo Cueto’s efforts to present his sister as a qualified candidate for canonization. 44. It is also possible that María was disassociating herself from her brothers in order to protect their reputations, should the Church censure her. Some nuns did complain about her to a visiting inquisitor in 1603, but she was only required to explain herself to a local priest and was fully exonerated. She barely mentioned it to Lorenzo, and then only in passing, telling him she spoke about the inquisitor with another priest, ‘about how [the inquisitor] had nothing to say, and so I am very happy to have finished with this.’ Letters, 44.

CHAPTER THREE

Recusant Sisters: English Catholic Women and the Bonds of Learning Kari Boyd McBride The education of English women in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, as well as the scholarship on that topic, has a complex history. The Dissolution of the monasteries in the sixteenth century closed off one avenue for English women’s learning and the kind of sisterhood of religious and educational practice that had gone hand in hand for some medieval nuns. This decline came at the very moment that humanists like Roger Ascham, Desiderius Erasmus, Thomas More, and Juan Vives, as well as Catherine of Aragon, Vives’s patron, were advancing the expanded education of elite women and, in the case of More and Catherine, putting such pedagogy into practice within their households. But it has been argued that the early sixteenth-century florescence in women’s learning was followed by a reimposition of conservatoire gender norms, that the promise represented by learned women like Margaret More Roper or Elizabeth I was not realized in the generations that followed: few women ‘had a Renaissance,’ in the now famous words of Joan Kelly Gadol.1 At the same time, the received wisdom holds that the Protestant Reformation, which had provided the theological justification for the Dissolution, expanded educational opportunities for women, particularly those of the newly literate middle class. Indeed, most feminist scholarship has focused on the lives and works of Protestant women and on the limits imposed on women’s education by conservative Protestant moralists and educators. This focus, and the concomitant failure to attend to Catholic women’s experience, leave our histories of women’s education in England distorted and incomplete. For a variety of confessional and historical reasons, Catholic families tended to espouse humanist education for girls, particularly the learning of Latin, long beyond the period when it was the norm among Protestant families. And Catholic girls were more likely than their Protestant sisters to be educated outside the household (often outside the country) in boarding schools. Furthermore, learned Catholic women were often impelled to display their learning in genres and in venues that transgressed gender norms. I wish to

ENGLISH CATHOLIC WOMEN AND EDUCATION

29

explore here some possible reasons for the different trajectory of Catholic women’s lives and to begin the process of restoring them to the history of early modern English education. Probably most important to the continuing tradition for learnedness among Catholic women was the salience of Latin to Catholicism. Protestants associated Latin with Catholicism to the point of eschewing its study. Jane Stevenson notes that ‘to Quakers, Latin was “the language of the Beast”,’ (of Catholicism), though many Protestant women continued to value Latin nonetheless.2 But Catholics tended to see learning Latin as an act of confessional devotion. The very demands of Tridentine Catholicism, with its reaffirmation of the priority of the Vulgate and the primacy of the Latin Mass, meant that Catholic girls who were educated at all were likely to be educated in Latin, though the extent of their learning varied widely, from rote recitation of prayers and creed to the most extensive facility in translation and versification. James Walsh notes that the Vulgate ‘remained the only text of the Bible in Catholic hands well into the seventeenth century. The children of the gentry were brought up on it. Any serious and formal education depended on it as its first textbook.’3 In this sense, girls’ education for Catholicism might be seen as merely accidentally giving them access to the Latin corpus of works that defined the renaissance of learning in this period. But Catholic girls’ wider education in Latin was more than serendipitous. English Catholic women, from the elite, extremely well-educated Mary Ward (founder of the Institute of the Blessed Virgin Mary [IBVM], an order dedicated to women’s education) to the middle-class Margaret Clitherow, held knowledge of Latin to be central to a woman’s education, and perhaps even salvation, rather than a superfluous ornament. Clitherow had received little formal education as a girl, but learned Our Lady’s Matins (in Latin) so as to be ready to become a nun should the opportunity present itself later in her life. Ward saw Latin as the door to women’s preparation for the spiritual life, second only to prayer in their formation. She wrote in 1627 to Winifred Bedingfeld, founding member of the Mary Ward house in Munich, Pax Christi! These [greetings] are indeed chiefly to congratulate the unexpected progress of your Latin schools. You cannot easily believe the content I took in the themes of those two towardly girls [whose writing Bedingfield had sent to Ward] … All such as are capable invite them to it, and for such as desire to be one of us, no talent is so much to be regarded in them as the Latin tongue.

Ward reiterated these sentiments in a letter to her Companion, Winifred Wigmore, then the novice mistress at the house in Naples, regarding the education of girls in her care,

30

SIBLING RELATIONS AND GENDER IN THE EARLY MODERN WORLD

I would have Cecilia and Catherina begin out of hand to learn the rudiments of Latin; fear not their loss of virtue by that means, for this must and will be so common to all as there will be no cause for complacency. I would not have their other work be hindered, but what time can otherwise be found besides their prayer, let it be bestowed upon their Latin.4

One of Mary Ward’s followers, Sister Dorothea, who had herself benefitted from a superb education, saw a rudimentary knowledge of Latin as essential even to her work with poor girls. She lived and worked in Suffolk, where she schooled elite girls in the full range of subjects and even saw that ‘the simple and vulgar sort’ learned Latin by rote, teaching them ‘their Pater, Ave, Creed, Commandments etc.’5 And English Catholic girls sent to expatriate convents on the Continent would have been thoroughly familiar with a wide range of Latin liturgical texts. Stevenson notes that ‘[t]he Constitutions of the English Benedictine convents at Cambrai and Paris specifically state that the divine office and profession ceremonies were sung in Latin by the quire nuns.’ Latin was, she suggests, ‘part of everyday life for them.’6 In addition to Latin, Catholic girls were more likely than their Protestant sisters to learn two or more modern languages, French in particular (as so many Catholic girls were sent to convent schools there), but Italian, Spanish, and German, as well.7

Learning and the family Catholic girls, like their Protestant sisters, also benefitted from the tendency of learnedness to run in families, what Jane Stevenson calls the ‘family paradigm’ of women’s learning.8 Even though attitudes towards women’s learning fluctuated from decade to decade, girls’ learning within families tended to be quite stable. Once a woman had gained an education, her daughters and their daughters were nearly guaranteed an education at the same level or higher. Though this paradigm was not peculiar to Catholic familes, the legal and cultural constraints imposed on Catholics in postReformation England meant that they were inclined to be more intentional about their children’s education than Protestant families, whose needs were served to a greater or lesser extent by the existing institutions, educational and religious. This phenomenon can be demonstrated by the educational histories of the women of the More family, including More’s daughters as well as other girls ‘adopted’ into the More household like Margaret Giggs (Clement). Margaret More (Roper)’s facility in Latin and Greek surpassed those of most male contemporaries, and she was often extolled by contemporaries as the exemplar of women’s learning in the early sixteenth century. In fact,

ENGLISH CATHOLIC WOMEN AND EDUCATION

31

Clement’s facility in Latin and Greek matched Roper’s, and Clement went on to study medicine through the texts of Galen and other ancient authors.9 Both women educated their own daughters in Latin. Indeed, after her marriage, Clement took into her household Elizabeth Woodford, who had been educated at the convent of Burnham Abbey and professed a nun in 1519 but turned out in the Dissolution. After joining the Clement family, Woodford was put in charge of educating the Clement children. When later the Clement family went into religious exile in Flanders, Woodford joined the monastery of St Ursula’s in Louvain, an Augustinian house. All the Clement sisters were schooled at St Ursula’s, where Woodford continued to oversee their education. One of those sisters, Margaret Clement, remained at St Ursula’s after her profession as a nun and was elected Prioress at the unusually young age of 30.10 This passion for educating sisters as well as brothers was not limited to the daughters of the More household but can be traced through a number of Catholic families and well into the next century. The eight Vaux siblings were educated by the renowned scholar and Catholic martyr Edmund Campion, who lived in their household as a tutor to conceal his clerical status (a common strategy under Elizabeth’s reign). Through Campion, all the children, both brothers and sisters, had the best and most extensive education available. All of them were known for their educational attainments, particularly Anne, who was noted for her rhetoric and argumentation against the pursuivants (those charged with discovering and detaining Catholics). The eldest sister, Eleanor Vaux Brookesby, educated her own two children and her adopted daughter, Frances Burroughs, as well as her grandson, Edward Thimelby, later a priest.11 Burroughs was later smuggled out of England to join the nuns at St Ursula’s at Louvain, where Margaret Clement was then prioress. So the tradition of educating sisters begun by Thomas More had an effect far beyond his generation and his own family. The convent in Louvain was one of dozens of religious houses – Ursuline, Augustinian, Benedictine, and Poor Clares – where English Catholic children were educated, beginning in the late sixteenth century. Catholic families who could afford to do so, the middling classes as well as the elite, sent both their daughters and their sons to the Continent for education, despite the fact that it was illegal to do so. But Catholic families risked prosecution in order to ensure that their children would not be exposed to Protestantism but would instead be educated in Catholic doctrine and tradition. As a result, the convents of northern France and Flanders became centers for English education in the seventeenth century and long afterwards. Dame Gertrude (Helen) More, a great-great-granddaughter of Thomas More, was among the first sisters professed at the Benedictine house in Cambrai where, throughout the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, the nuns

32

SIBLING RELATIONS AND GENDER IN THE EARLY MODERN WORLD

there ‘operated a rather select school for English Catholic young ladies.’12 No details of More’s early education are extant, but she wrote two treatises on devotional practice and left one of the finest lyrics in English from this period, ‘Magnes Amoris Amor.’13 Cicely Joseph (?Elizabeth) Cornwallis, from a Norfolk family, was educated at the IBVM convent in Paris and later joined the English Poor Clares at Rouen. She was the ‘Writer’ or chronicler of the house for 50 years, collecting and arrranging all their records and leaving an incomparable documentary history of the order; she also translated ‘books of devotion.’14 Convent-schooled girls were also known for their skills in dancing, music and, of course, the ever-present needlework. In addition, girls were schooled in geography, sacred and secular history (one girl is noted as translating Roman histories to perfect her skills), and arithmetic.15 English Catholic girls’ enhanced educational opportunities were due in particular to the work and vision of Mary Ward. Ward founded an order of uncloistered women with a special calling to the education of ‘maidens and girls of tender years in piety, in the Christian virtues and liberal arts so that they may be able thereafter to undertake fruitfully the secular and monastic life, according to the vocation of each.’16 As a young girl during the last decades of the sixteenth century, Ward herself was educated in English and Latin by her grandmother, who had spent 14 years in prison for her faith. After some unsatisfying months at a Poor Clare convent on the Continent, Ward ‘heard an interior voice’ calling her to ‘some other thing.’17 Though she wanted to model her order on the Society of Jesus (Jesuits), they scorned her design. Those clergy who were opposed to the Jesuits were also critical of such an order for women, calling Ward and her Companions ‘Galopping Gurles,’ ‘Wandering Gossips,’ and ‘Gad-Abouts.’ Nonetheless, though hindered by both the Protestant and Catholic authorities, Ward gathered her ‘Companions’ about her and began the work of educating girls. Ward’s pedagogical vision called for teaching a sense of duty, Christian doctrine, good morals, how to serve God, reading the common [English, Spanish, and French] and Latin languages, writing, household management, liberal arts [that is, the trivium (grammar, rhetoric, and logic), and the quadrivium (music, arithmetic, geometry, and astronomy)], singing, painting, sewing, spinning, curtainmaking, in a word, all those liberal exercises which are more suitable for every state of life.18

Because life for Catholics in England was particularly dangerous in the early seventeenth century, Ward first acquired a house in Saint-Omer in 1610 for the education of English girls. Within a few years, Ward had founded three more houses, at Liège, Cologne, and Trier. She returned to England in 1639, where, under the Catholic queen Henrietta Maria, Ward hoped to be able to found schools in London as well as in her native Yorkshire, but England

ENGLISH CATHOLIC WOMEN AND EDUCATION

33

remained too dangerous. After her death in 1645, her companions Winifred Wigmore and Mary Pointz took a ‘small group of English children’ to Paris and founded the school there. Finally, in 1669, a Ward community and school was instituted in Hammersmith, just outside London, and in 1686 the Bar Convent in York was established. For Catholic girls, the tradition of education under the tutelage of Mary Ward sisters or in traditional convents, combined with the tradition of matrilineal learning, meant that humanist educational ideals persisted for Catholic girls long after the mid-sixteenth century. Furthermore, the Catholic tradition in which recusant women understood their gendered nature was one that exalted a veritable academy of learned and outspoken women, not only the biblical figures that were part of the heritage shared with Protestants of all varieties but also the lineage of sainted nuns, the holy sisters whose public works and words survived in the very act of their remembrance and that the Protestant churches had overtly repudiated. And though these women were typically praised for their obedience and chastity, there was also a subterranean tradition that praised women for their wisdom, their learning, and even their defiance of parental and patriarchal authority. Even the most hackneyed version of a female saint’s life included the woman’s refusal of one or more suitors proposed by her father in favor of chastity and spiritual marriage to Christ. Implied in that narrative is the renunciation of parental and domestic authority on the grounds of a very individual sense of divine calling, often a calling to education, and one that counseled defection from societal and even religious norms. This paradox surely had its effect on every generation of Catholic women, who did not need the theology of an ‘inner light’ to shore up their disobedient and willful resolve. Indeed, Mary Ward allowed as much when she responded to criticism of her educational program for women with the contention that ‘There is no such difference between men and women that women may not do great things, as we have seen by the example of many saints who have done great thngs.’19 In contrast, while moderate Protestantism offered women roles of some authority and dignity, those roles were almost entirely maternal and wifely, and education – too much education, at any rate – was more likely to be seen as a barrier to a woman’s fulfillment of these roles than as a necessary support. While I would not want to underestimate the significance of what the role of the Protestant housewife made available to women in terms of gendered discourse as a counterweight to, for instance, the priapic obsession of the Petrarchan lyric, the result in terms of women’s literary output might be best represented by the diary of Elizabeth Cooke, Lady Hoby, the record of a faithful goodwife fulfilling her religious duties to God and family.20 Indeed, a ‘diary of conscience’ such as Hoby’s, wherein the diarist records the daily temptations and triumphs of her soul, the graces and reproofs of God, is a

34

SIBLING RELATIONS AND GENDER IN THE EARLY MODERN WORLD

particularly Protestant and private genre, one that appealed especially to conforming Anglicans like Hoby whose days were punctuated by attendance at public service, household prayers, and private study and meditation.

Learning made public But despite the fact that attitudes towards women among Catholics were not markedly different from those expressed by Protestants, and Catholic doctrine certainly counseled women’s confinement to the domestic sphere (whether through matrimony or religious vocation), English Catholic women were sometimes moved to defy patriarchal authority, as did Mary Ward, and to make that defiance public, sometimes through choosing to write in more public, ‘masculine’ genres. Partly because their own religious life was not reflected in the dominant liturgical, theological, and ecclesiastic forms of the day, it demanded to be made public as a challenge to those hegemonic forms and as a witness to personal or familial faithfulness to the old faith. Furthermore, Catholic women often saw to it that their works were published, whether in print or through manuscript circulation, making public the ‘spectacle’ of a learned and outspoken woman, who might then serve as a model to Catholic girls. I don’t want to overstate the general applicability of this hypothesis, which will inevitably be shown to be inadequate to address all women’s situations. Aemilia Lanyer comes to mind immediately as a conforming Anglican who chose a ‘public’ genre, though her theology can hardly be seen as orthodox. Nevertheless, pace Lanyer and, no doubt, many other exceptions to this model I propose, it seems plausible that, because the very difference that marked Catholic women as marginalized was a difference defined by politics, theology, creeds, and public discourse, such women were more likely than their conforming sisters to be driven beyond the domesticity that all religious forms saw as women’s particular destiny and into public debates. A preface written by the Catholic convert Elizabeth Cary suggests this very process of self- ‘publication’: ‘To looke for glorie from Translation is beneath my Intention … I desire to have noe more guest at of me, but that I am a Catholique, and a Woman.’21 Indeed, Cary’s Tragedie of Mariam, Faire Queene of Jewry, illustrates the process that drove some Catholic women onto the public stage. The play seems disablingly conflicted about the question of women’s speech, women’s will, women’s relationship to men, and women’s authority within both private and public spheres. Though Mariam condemns herself for her inability to keep silence and refrain from disputing with her husband, she is ultimately justified, even by the very husband who had silenced her most emphatically

ENGLISH CATHOLIC WOMEN AND EDUCATION

35

by beheading her. The play’s internal conflicts express the kind of dilemma that Cary herself faced: the very arena that compelled her disobedient speech was the domestic sphere, the site that most thoroughly represented the coverture of a woman’s independent thought and voice, particularly in relationship to her parents and her husband, all of whom were vehemently Protestant. The contradictions of The Tragedie of Mariam seem a perfect expression of the conundrum of Cary’s life, where competing imperatives made impossible the expression of a coherent self – either by Cary or by those contemporaries who wrote about her. Cary’s children said of their parents in The Lady Falkland: Her Life, written in the late 1640s, ‘He was very absolute, and though she had a strong will, she had learned to make it obey his.’ She is reported to have advised her daughter to ‘prefer the will of another before her own’ whenever possible, and presumably she herself attempted to follow this precept.22 But Cary’s writings and her refusal to foreswear Catholicism show her, ultimately, to have failed in her womanly obedience to ‘prefer’ her husband’s – or her monarch’s – will to her own. And Mariam did not constitute the whole of Cary’s output: in addition to that closet drama, Cary wrote religious verse and saints’ lives, translated contemporary Catholic polemicists as well as classical authors, and authored the first political history to be written by a woman, The History of the Life, Reign, and Death of Edward II. She was able to produce these varied works because she had taught herself seven languages as a young girl (including not only Latin, but Hebrew)23 and, in the process, had read widely in the classics. Cary’s own children were much influenced by their mother’s espousal of Catholicism and by her education. Though she was for years denied contact with them in her husband’s attempt to sway her from her chosen religion, nonetheless, six of her eight children who survived to adulthood also confessed Catholicism, and all four sisters became nuns. Rather than being chaste, silent, and obedient to her husband, Cary was infamously willful, vocal, and, insofar as speech was always a marker for chastity, she was, in the parlance of the day, ‘a whore of the mouth’ – a connection that was not lost on Cary herself. As Herod, Mariam’s husband in The Tragedie, says in condemning her, ‘shee’s unchaste, / Her mouth will ope to ev’ry strangers eare.’ Like Cary, many English Catholic women were driven to transgress gender norms in their rejection of the English religious status quo. It was often, for a number of reasons, Catholic women who sheltered within their homes fugitive priests and the paraphernalia of the Mass, making those homes in a sense spaces of public worship and public political protest. And recent studies have documented that women outnumbered men among recusants, a statistic that undoubtedly reflects not only the tendency to shelter Catholic property through the husband’s outward conformity but also contemporary tendencies

36

SIBLING RELATIONS AND GENDER IN THE EARLY MODERN WORLD

to see women as most liable to being misled and seduced to apostasy.24 When it happened that Catholic women held religious views different from their husbands’, then their obedience to God, to their monarch, and to their husbands became distinct and competing imperatives rather than one and the same thing. Such conflicting loyalties almost inevitably led women outside the bounds of domesticity where both their selves and their words were made public.25 The life of Margaret Clitherow illustrates the way in which Catholic women’s competing loyalties could beget words and actions that violated gender norms, including those regarding women’s education. Clitherow’s parents and stepparents were among the elite of York, but she married a butcher and lived and worked in the Shambles of York, that bustling and prosperous area of the city.26 She converted to Catholicism, and, though her husband remained a conforming Protestant, he is reported to have been agreeable to her religious practice. Her Catholic activism attracted the attention of the York Ecclesial Commission, and she was ultimately convicted and executed by peine forte et dure (pressed to death) for harboring Catholic priests, for hearing the Mass, and for refusing to acknowledge the sovereignty of the English Church and State. She left no words but what were recorded by her confessor and biographer, John Mush, in The Life and Death of Mistress Margaret Clitherow, but she left a testament to her faith in the lives of her own children, whose education she oversaw, along with that of other local children, in a secret school she set up in rented rooms. Her daughter Anne Clitherow was educated alongside her brothers; she is the daughter to whom Margaret famously willed her stockings and shoes as a sign that the daughter should follow in her mother’s footsteps. Anne later became a nun at St Ursula’s convent in Louvain, noted for its learning (and Clitherow’s two sons both became Catholic priests). These brief biographies of Catholic women do not, of course, provide statistical evidence of Catholic women’s greater scholarly accomplishments when compared to Protestant women. At present, the data are insufficient to attempt such a study, though the work of reckoning has begun.27 But the very existence of the many Continental IBVM establishments and religious houses where English girls were educated during this period argues that hundreds of early modern Catholic girls received a solid education whose scope went far beyond that available to most Protestant girls. Did English Catholic women ‘have a Renaissance’? Though even they were not educated in the same curriculum as their brothers, and they were certainly subject to the same kinds of gender proscriptions as Protestant girls, English Catholic girls’ education in many languages, especially Latin (whether rudimentary or extensive), meant that they, more than any other group of women, continued to benefit from the radical tenets of humanism espoused by early sixteenth-century scholars long

ENGLISH CATHOLIC WOMEN AND EDUCATION

37

after those ideals ceased to obtain for most Protestants. Rather than being an entirely conservative and androcentric backwater, Post-Reformation English Catholicism offered recusant sisters educational opportunities nearly unknown outside that community.

Notes The research for this article was made possible by a summer research grant from the Women’s Studies Advisory Council (WOSAC) at the University of Arizona and by the generosity of St Catharine’s College, Cambridge, where I was a visiting scholar in autumn 2003 and where I had access to the resources on recusancy of the Cambridge University Library. 1.

2. 3.

4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10. 11. 12.

13.

Joan Kelly Gadol’s ‘Did Women Have a Renaissance?’ is available in Feminism and Renaissance Studies, ed. Lorna Hutson (New York: Oxford University Press, 1999). Gadol’s verdict needs to be reassessed, in part because of the many ‘exceptions’ to the rule of women’s enforced ignorance that keep turning up in our scholarship. In this context, Jane Stevenson has suggested that ‘[i]t is modern scholarship, rather than early modern, which has caused the woman scholars of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries to vanish.’ ‘Women and Classical Education in the Early Modern Period,’ in Pedagogy and Power: Rhetorics of Classical Learning, ed. Yun Lee Too and Niall Livingstone (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998), 94. Jane Stevenson, Women Latin Poets (New York: Oxford University Press, 2005), 635. The Council of Trent required the use of the Vulgate ‘in all public lectures, instructions and disputations.’ James Walsh, SJ, ‘Introduction,’ Till God Will: Mary Ward Through her Writings, ed. M. Emmanuel Orchard, IBVM (London: Darton, Longman and Todd, 1985), xvii. Letter to Winifred Bedingfeld, 16 July 1627, in Walsh, Till God Will, 96; letter to Winifred Wigmore, 10 October 1667, in Walsh, Till God Will, 97. Quoted in Roland Connelly, Women of the Catholic Resistance: in England 1540–1680 (Edinburgh: Pentland Press, 1997), 157. Stevenson, Women Latin Poets, 643–4. Walsh, Till God Will, 97. Stevenson, Women Latin Poets, 635. Connelly, Women of the Catholic Resistance, 32. Ibid., 35–7, 144–7. Ibid., 161–2, 165–7. Janet E. Hollinghead, ‘From Cambrai to Woolton: Lancashire’s First Female Religious House,’ Recusant History 25 (2001), 461. The house in Cambrai had over a thousand volumes when it was dissolved at the French Revolution, ibid., 462. More’s treatises were published as ‘The Holy Practices of a Devine Lover: or, The Sainctly Ideot’s Devotions’ (Paris, 1657) and ‘Confessiones Amantis, or Spirtual Exercises, or Ideot’s Devotions’ (Paris, 1658). Dorothy L. Latz reprints More’s poem in Neglected English Literature: Recusant Writings of the 16th–17th

38

14. 15.

16. 17.

18. 19. 20.

21. 22. 23. 24.

25.

26. 27.

SIBLING RELATIONS AND GENDER IN THE EARLY MODERN WORLD

Centuries (Salzburg: Institut für Anglistik und Amerikanistik Universität Salzburg, 1997). Ann M. C. Forster, ‘The Chronicles of the English Poor Clares of Rouen – II,’ Recusant History 18 (1986), 170. Margaret J. Mason, ‘Nuns and Vocations of the Unpublished Jerningham Letters: Charlotte Bedingfield, Augustinian Canoness (1802–76), Louisa Jerningham, Franciscan Abbess (1808–93), and Clementina Jerningham, Marquise de RipertMonclar (1810–1864),’ Recusant History 21 (1993), 503–55. Mary Ward, First Plan of the School of the Blessed Mary (Schola Beatae Mariae), quoted in Orchard, Till God Will, 35. M. Immolata Wetter, IBVM, Mary Ward: Foundress of the Institutum Beatae Mariae Virginis (English Ladies), 2nd English edn, trans. M. Bernadette Ganne, IBVM (Regensburg: Verlag Schnell & Steiner, 1996), 6. See Wetter for data on Ward’s life as well as Till God Will, ed. Orchard, a ‘biography’ created through a patchwork of Ward’s own writings and letters. Quoted in Orchard, ed., Till God Will, 37. Connelly, Women of the Catholic Resistance, 210. Though Mary Ellen Lamb has shown the ways in which public political and religious debates of the day made themselves into Hoby’s private meditations, her connection to those debates did not lead Hoby to write in a genre explicitly designed for public consumption. ‘The Sociality of Margaret Hoby’s Reading Practices and the Representation of Renaissance Interiority,’ Critical Survey 12 (2000), 17–32. Elizabeth Cary, The reply of the most illustrious Cardinall of Perron, to the answeare of the most excellent King of Great Britaine … (Douai, 1630), A2v. Elizabeth Cary, Lady Falkland: Life and Letters, ed. Heather Wolfe (Tempe, AZ: Medieval and Renaissance Text Studies, 2001), 115. Flora Fraser, The English Gentlewoman (London: Barrie & Jenkins, 1987). In some Catholic households, the men were church papists, outwardly conforming to Anglicanism though secretly loyal to Catholicism, while their wives more or less openly practiced the old faith, because men were more liable to punishment than women and because such a fiction sometimes protected the family property, as it belonged to the man and not the woman. On women’s roles in Post-Reformation English Catholicism, see Sarah L. Bastow, ‘“Worth Nothing, But Very Wilful”: Catholic Recusant Women of Yorkshire, 1536–1642,’ Recusant History 25 (2001), 591–603, and Patrick McGrath and Joy Rowe, ‘The Elizabethan Priests: Their Harbourers and Helpers,’ Recusant History 19 (1989), 209–33. For an instructive discussion of this conundrum, see Megan Matchinske’s chapter on ‘Framing Recusant Identity in Counter-Reformation England,’ in her Writing Gender and State in Early Modern England (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998), esp. 64–8, 74–83. Protestant women in Catholic households also faced this dilemma, as well, though the phenomenon was rare after the early sixteenth cnetury. Katharine M. Longley, ‘Saint Margaret Clitherow and Alexander Pope: An Unexpected Link,’ Recusant History 18 (1986), 143–8. See Caroline Bowden, ‘“For the Glory of God”: A Study of the Education of Catholic Women in Convents in Flanders and France in the First Half of the Seventeenth Century,’ Paedagogica Historica, Supplementary Series 5 (1999), 77–95, and Claire Walker, Gender and Politics in Early Modern Europe: English

ENGLISH CATHOLIC WOMEN AND EDUCATION

39

Convents in France and the Low Countries (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2003).

CHAPTER FOUR

Families, Convents, Music: The Power of Sisterhood Craig A. Monson In the world of the convent – the ‘real world’ for an overwhelming number of early modern Italian women (in some cities, for the great majority)1 – sibling relationships remained powerful forces. Sibling ties fostered cloistered replications of worldly families, consisting of sisters, their sister-aunts, and even sister-great-aunts. Sibling ties also spanned convent walls to include brothers, whose daughters were accepted into convent families of women, often in times of crisis, while brothers served as nuns’ advocates in the world. Music played a surprising, little-known role in strengthening such ties of sisterhood. Shared musical talents among sisters and brothers from generation to generation encouraged convent ‘musical dynasties,’ scarcely recognized because they have remained hidden, and helped make convents important early modern centers of musical activity. The Church hierarchy perceived family ties as a threat to the monastic ideal of the common life. Cardinals in Rome and bishops in local dioceses therefore tried to weaken nuns’ links to the families they had left behind on taking their vows. In Bologna, for example, Archbishop Alfonso Paleotti sought to diminish nuns’ sense of family and dynastic pride by decreeing in 1601 that ‘no nun may have door hangings with [family] coats-of-arms and embroidery on the doorways of her cells and on other convent doorways,’ a restriction that reappears at other times and places.2 Prelates also perceived family ties within and across convent walls as a threat to good government, and required that only two sisters be admitted to a single monastic institution, to avoid the creation of family ‘power blocks.’ As Bolognese reformers put it shortly after the Council of Trent, Because there are three or four sisters in some convents, therefore when there is disagreement, these control the office of prioress and other offices as they wish. And experience has demonstrated that when the government of the convent has fallen into the hands of two sisters simultaneously, it has caused notable damage.3

‘Abuses’ resulting from potential alliances of sisters served to justify

FAMILIES, CONVENTS, MUSIC

41

convent quotas on siblings. In the following instance, the abbess and her fellow nuns seem to have recognized in advance that even two sisters from one difficult family could have posed a threat to good order. The response to their actions proved how right they were: The Mother Abbess and the other nuns from the Convent of San Giovanni in San Genesi again have recourse to Your Most Eminent Lordships, requesting that it might please you to deign to order the Lord Vicar of Camerino to mete out just punishment [both] to Don Fulvio Pacetti for the insolence and defiance shown to the petitioners, and [also] to Sister Maria Angelica, for having turned the Mother Abbess’s face into a handkerchief by spitting in her face, because she, together with the other nuns in chapter, did not wish to accept a sister of theirs into the convent.4

Given the usual two-sister limit, families often had to parcel their daughters out amongst several convents. In the mid-seventeenth century, for example, Ginevra Barnieri Malvezzi of Bologna, observing the letter of the law, sent her five daughters off to three different monasteries: two to Santi Vitale et Agricola, two to Santa Margherita, and the last one to Santa Cristina.5 Exceptions to the two-sister rule remained extremely common, however, but required the special permission of the Church hierarchy, which generally stipulated payment of a larger dowry and/or the relinquishment of active and passive voice in the deliberations and elections of the religious community. An attempt by the reformed Bolognese nuns of Giesù e Maria to justify their acceptance of a third daughter from a single family in 1647 reveals just how widespread exceptions to the rule were, in fact. It also drives home the reality of warehousing female offspring in early modern monastic institutions. The nuns of Giesù e Maria catalogued the following Bolognese exceptions to the established quota: three Pepoli sisters at Sant’Agnese; four Rinaldi, three Machiavelli, and three Montalbani sisters at Santa Maria Nuova; also three Lambertini, Savignani, Campanuzzi, and Ghezzi sisters at Santa Maria Nuova, but some recently deceased; three Lega and three Castellani sisters at San Giovanni Battista; three Albergati sisters at Santa Maria degli Angeli; four Giovagnoni sisters at Corpus Domini; three Fabri at Santa Margherita. The nuns further claimed these represented only the exceptions known to them personally.6 Elsewhere, in 1646 the convent of Santi Giacomo e Filippo in Genoa justified the admission of no fewer than five Doria sisters with the remark, ‘the Sacred Congregation replied … that granting such permission could cause inconvenience and trouble to the convent, [but] … it would not cause any trouble, especially because there are more than 70 voting nuns and because there are two [similar] examples there – of the five Serra sisters and the four Pallavicino sisters.’7 Even this remarkable example can be topped by

42

SIBLING RELATIONS AND GENDER IN THE EARLY MODERN WORLD

no fewer than seven sisters from the powerful Chigi family (plus the inevitable aunt), who all entered the Sienese convent of San Girolamo in Campansi in the late seventeenth century.8 Clearly, nuns and their families perceived such ties of sisterhood as a very positive feature of convent life, despite male clerics’ suspicions to the contrary. Siblings’ presence made young girls’ transition from the world to the cloister easier to bear, and sometimes quite attractive. Sibling alliances also permitted the recreation of an alternative semblance of family – but a family that was entirely female. Monastic records therefore overflow with examples of sisters entering convents in pairs. Another, comparably important sibling relationship strengthened these monastic families of women: the bonds of young girls and their aunts, for girls very often entered the convent under the care of their mother’s or father’s sisters, who had already professed at the institution. The practice of aunt/niece bonding remained so common it might be characterized as almost universal. When the future composer Lucrezia Orsina Vizzana and her older sister Verginia entered the convent of Santa Cristina della Fondazza in Bologna in 1598, for example, no fewer than three of their mother’s sisters, Flaminia, Ortensia, and Camilla Bombacci, were there to greet them. At least two of these Bombacci sisters very probably had also entered Santa Cristina under the care of their maternal aunt, Ortensia Luchini (d. 1576). Similarly, in the 1630s the Vizzani sisters would be joined by their natural half-brother’s sister, Valeria, thus extending family ties of sisterhood over more than half a century.9 Nuns’ extended families in the world also placed great store upon these intertwining links of siblings over generations, especially in times of family crisis, as numerous petitions to the Sacred Congregation of Bishops and Regulars vividly illustrate. In 1637, for example, Francesco Righetti of Cento requested permission to place his only daughter Laura Catherina in the convent of Santa Catherina, where her two aunts could care for her, despite the fact that she was only four years old, because his wife was mortally ill. Aunts taking in their nieces at such tender ages is doubly confirmed by the example of Suora Leona Lodovica Selvi, from the Bolognese convent of the Convertite, or reformed prostitutes, who described herself as ‘a professed nun, a virgin, and the organist in the said monastery,’ when in 1662 she requested permission to raise her four-year-old niece, Sarah Nannini, whose parents were both mortally ill, just as she herself had been taken into the convent at age four. In some cases cloistered aunts sought to prevent the exploition of their helpless young nieces: Maria Vittoria, daughter of the late Manfredo Passani of Genoa, who was murdered last year by a gunshot, [is] only four years old and with an advantageous inheritance. Her mother, who promptly remarried a

FAMILIES, CONVENTS, MUSIC

43

Spaniard, intended to take her along to Spain at the instigation of her [new] husband, in order to enjoy her goods and to marry her off at their pleasure … Your Eminences are now requested to grant permission to place her in the monastery of San Bartolomeo dell’Olivella in Genoa, even though she is not yet of the appropriate age, since there are two wise and mature nuns there, the sisters of the father of the petitioner [i.e., Maria Vittoria’s aunts]. (Genoa, 1632)

Other examples illustrate convent protection of adult sisters from abusive husbands: Margarita d’Oddi, gentlewoman of Perugia and wife of Baldassar Vuetta, … is forced to separate from the said husband and enter the convent della Beata Colomba, where she has two sisters who are nuns, because of many beatings received from her husband, who has frequently threatened to murder her, without her having given the slightest provocation for such beatings, as is well known to Monsignor, the Bishop of this city. This is necessary to escape the said beatings and to save her life. She cannot retire alternatively to her relatives’ houses, lest hostilities and homicides involving them and her husband result. (Perugia, 1698)

The local bishop of Perugia responded rather dispassionately and equivocally to the Sacred Congregation, I cooperated extensively in order to reunite her with her husband, as finally happened. I now hear that the same beatings continue despite serious admonitions to the husband, which I will also continue. I myself would certainly not know how to discern if it would be good to separate them. Nevertheless, I would tend to think that it would not be a bad idea to send me the license for her entrance into the convent della Beata Colomba, which I would make use of solely in case of real necessity.10

Such examples strikingly illustrate why convent sibling relationships, involving women who would never bear offspring of their own, remained important means of nurturing and sustaining ties of blood from generation to generation, when support systems in the world might otherwise fail.

Musical ‘gifts’ Interestingly enough, music quite frequently seems to have strengthened monastic ties of sisterhood, offering a variety of advantages to all concerned. Musical talent facilitated multiple siblings’ acceptance at the convent of their choice and encouraged parents to develop daughters’ musical abilities with an eye toward the cloister. This was obviously the case with Vittoria Aleotti, only the third woman, and apparently the very first nun, to have her music published. Her father’s dedication of her Ghirlanda de madrigali à quatro voci (Venice, 1593) reveals his recognition of music’s utility for potential

44

SIBLING RELATIONS AND GENDER IN THE EARLY MODERN WORLD

nuns and offers a charming illustration of how multiple sisters might come to study music almost by accident: The first of the five daughters … that it has pleased the goodness of God to give me brought with her from the maternal womb a natural inclination to serve His Divine Majesty. Hence, … I had her taught a bit of music … It happened that while she was learning, my second daughter (her sister), called Vittoria (a girl of four going on five), was always present. She, fixing her innocent mind on the lessons of the Maestro, who was teaching the other girl, learned so much (without anyone’s realizing it), that within the space of a year nature so loosened her tiny hands that she began to play on the harpsichord in a way that astonished not only her mother and me, but also the teacher himself. This good old man … begged me … to have her brought up (as I did) in the Monastery of the never sufficiently praised Reverend Mothers of San Vito here in Ferrara. Their perfection and excellence in music surpasses … all the most famous Concerti by members of the feminine sex … Whence it happened that this daughter also, reaching the age of fourteen years, prudently chose to dedicate herself here to the service of God.11

Aleotti’s father does not mention it, but quite commonly musical ‘gifts’ (of various sorts) proved advantageous in facilitating the admission of multiple daughters on terms favorable to their families, as the records of the Sacred Congregation repeatedly demonstrate. In 1647, for example, Paolo Canozzio requested special permission to place a third daughter in the convent of Santo Resto delle Trè Fontane, where her two sisters were already nuns, because he had built the convent a new organ, in addition to performing other charitable acts. In 1653 the Sacred Congregation granted the nuns of Santa Chiara in Cento permission to accept Anna Guidiccini, despite the fact that her two sisters were already nuns there, ‘because she is expert in plainchant,’ though she was to ‘remain deprived of active and passive voice throughout her lifetime.’12 It is especially interesting that shared musical talent made the admission of multiple daughters as attractive to convents as to the girls themselves. Sisters not only thereby stayed together and had the opportunity to practice their art, but their admission might at once doubly strengthen flagging convent musical traditions. As a result, they were more likely to be courted on financially advantageous terms, as a few of the numerous similar petitions to the Sacred Congregation reveal. In 1637, for example, the nuns of Santa Chiara in Ferentino requested permission to admit Antonia and Angela Pagella ‘because the girls are of good families from that city, virtuose, both for performing the divine office and also for playing and singing [improvisations] upon the melody.’ In 1646 the Abbess of the Monastery of Santa Maria del Soccorso in Trapani (Sicily) requested to admit Dorothea and Oliva Daidone without dowries, because they were ‘very well trained in the talents of singing, and

FAMILIES, CONVENTS, MUSIC

45

playing, and every kind of musical practice, sufficient, not only to adorn the said monastery, but also to instruct the nuns in future … So that never again will it be necessary … to spend more than 60 scudi a year for an organist’s salary and for singing and instruments at six solemn festivals a year.’ In 1660 the nuns of Santa Chiara in Jesi sought to admit two musical sisters, Cecilia and Maria Madalena Gamberini, for half price, in order to restore their choir, so sorely depleted by the recent deaths of several musical nuns that ‘the service, … especially in sung masses and vespers and in organ playing, remains more than a little deficient and with the certainty that with every passing day it will decline due to the frailty of some singers among the few who remain.’ If admitted, Cecilia and Maria Madalena ‘could provide significant relief to the said services, get them back on their feet and maintain them.’ In 1699 four Roman musicians, including two sisters, Margherita and Antonia Aureli, having been imported to the convent of Santa Chiara in Spello to bolster a flagging choir, had been granted the rather unusual permission to study with an outside teacher. They subsequently requested permission to continue such studies with a teacher of impugnable reputation, ‘Don Angelo Maccarelli, a 70-year-old priest and music master in Spello, in order to perfect their talents so that they can subsequently teach the other girls … And in case Don Maccarelli (who suffers from gout) is indisposed, [they request] that Canon Giovanni Maria Rondinelli, a 60-year-old priest and eunuch, might replace him.’13 Convents in such smaller towns as Jessi or Spello regularly had to turn to larger cities such as Bologna or Rome for musicians, who, because of high demand and limited convent space in their own cities, might thus find themselves far from their blood relations. In such cases, musical sisters’ companionship must have seemed even more important. It was under such circumstances that two sibling musicians, Elena and Angelina Raghetti of Bologna, ‘singers and virtuose at instrumental performance,’ were to enter the convent of Santa Chiara in Jesi in 1730, without having to pay their own living expenses, because of their talents. By a sad coincidence, on the very same day a Maria Felicità ‘Ronchetti’ of Bologna appeared in an identical request, framed in virtually identical language, from the convent of the Most Holy Annunciation in Jesi. This looks very much like a third musical sister from the same family. Whether because of the two-sister quota or perhaps because of Holy Annunciation’s especially attractive offer of admission gratis, Maria Felicità lived out her life, not only far from her home town, but also isolated from Elena and Angelina, with whom she had grown up and whose blood and musical enthusiasms she shared. This sad situation was not unique. In 1592, for example, the musically talented Elena, daughter of Amfione Ferrabosco of the prominent Bolognese

46

SIBLING RELATIONS AND GENDER IN THE EARLY MODERN WORLD

musical dynasty, had entered the convent of San Leonardo in the distant city of Genoa, a year before her sister Laura was accepted at a different convent, San Bartolomeo, in that same city, far from home. And on 2 August 1697 the Sacred Congregation considered a petition from the nuns of Santa Rosa in Viterbo to admit ‘Santa Teresa Zagretti, born in Rome to a father and mother from Viterbo’ as their future music teacher, the very same day on which the Congregation also ruled on a request from the nuns of Santa Anna in Jesi to accept ‘Apollonia Agata Zagretti from Rome … expert not only in playing the organ and violin, but also in singing’ – very likely another pair of musical sisters forced to live apart, in different cities.14 Intergenerational ties of sisterhood also figured in nurturing musical talent within the cloister. Lucrezia Vizzana, for example, probably received her formative musical training from her mother’s sister, Camilla Bombacci, described in the Santa Cristina necrology as ‘first organist, and three times mistress of the novices, and subsequently abbess.’ When Lucrezia Vizzana later served as novice mistress, she may likewise have provided musical instruction to her illustrious relative Teresa Pompea Vizzana, who joined Santa Cristina in the 1630s and was remembered for outstanding musical ability and artistic patronage. Such modest convent musical dynasties of aunts and nieces regularly reappear in monastic records, both in Bologna and elsewhere. Anna Maria Cavalazzi, for example, was granted permission to enter Santi Bernardo ed Orsola in Bologna in 1644 as organist, having been trained by her aunt, the incumbent organist, whom she eventually succeeded. Marsibiglia Maria Vittoria Bolognini, who professed at Santa Cristina in Bologna in 1683, with responsibilities as singer and organist, likewise presumably trained the musical Maria Giuditta Ginevra Bolognini, who professed there in 1699.15

The family outside The alternative sibling relationship of brother and sister also proved very important in convent society, since sibling relationships outlasted parental ones, often by decades. Brothers in the world, with easier access to political connections and to money, could act on their sisters’ behalf beyond the cloister wall, where nuns’ power was severely limited. Once again, the Church hierarchy seems to have tried to discourage siblings’ ties. In 1609, for example, the Congregation of Bishops and Regulars informed the nuns of Monopoli that ‘It is forbidden to hang other portraits except those of saints in chapel, even though they might be of some nun’s cardinal brother.’ The much despised, long-time nuns’ vicar of Bologna, Giovanni Bondini, once declined to countersign the pope’s indult, allowing a long absent brother to visit his

FAMILIES, CONVENTS, MUSIC

47

sister at Santa Cristina, with the comment that they could see each other in paradise.16 Similar actions by the Church hierarchy at other times suggest that Bondini’s notorious meanness was not unique. In 1620, for example, a Bolognese friar sent the following petition to the Sacred Congregation: Friar Tomaso Nobili of Bologna, a religious in the convent of the Fathers of San Giacomo, of the Augustinian Order, in that city, … relates that there is a nun, his sister, in the convent of Sant’Agostino in Bologna. Because he has not seen her in many years, and for other reasons, he would like to visit her. Since he cannot do so without the approval of Your Holiness, he humbly requests that you deign to grant license or to order that this be granted him, so that he may meet with his abovementioned sister one single time.

But the Sacred Congregation responded ‘Nihil.’17 Just as cloistered sisters could be counted upon to take in and raise their brothers’ daughters in times of crisis, male siblings often worked to improve the lot of their sisters in the convent, even when it came to music. Petitions to the Sacred Congregation reveal, for example, that in musical families musical brothers sometimes assisted or replaced musical fathers in nurturing their sisters’ musical talents. In 1650, for example, Giovanni Battista ‘Pecinino’ requested permission from the Sacred Congregation to teach his two musical sisters, Beatrice and Ginevra Piccinini, nuns in the convent of San Vito in Ferrara. The petition reveals that the Piccinini musical family, active in sixteenth- and seventeenth-century Mantua, Ferrara, and Bologna, had a female branch, which the convent wall has kept hidden from later music historians – a situation that is hardly unique, as ongoing convent research continues to reveal additional female branches in musical family trees. In this case the Sacred Congregation responded bluntly (and almost inevitably), ‘Nihil.’ Their knee-jerk reaction may well have been prompted by such situations involving music as the following, from Macerata in 1663: Eurando Aurispa from Macerata … humbly relates how he has three sisters, professed nuns at the convent of Santa Caterina in the same city. Against one of these named Maria Lucrezia Monsignor the Bishop, in order to seek revenge and to please another nun inimical to her, forbade singing during the next Holy Week, on the assumption that, against his prohibition, this nun [Maria Lucrezia] had rehearsed certain verses of the Benedictus and Miserere, taught to her by another of her brothers, in the parlatorio—but without any imaginary scandal to anybody. And because that same inimical nun boasts about having brought this mortification upon the aforenamed [sister], although innocent, he [Eurando Aurispa] humbly requests Your Eminences to deign to order Monsignor the Bishop to testify in this Sacred Congregation about this opposition to his sister, by universally prohibiting singing, or else [to specify] that it not apply only to her, based on a supposition, far from the truth, and only to please the others.18

48

SIBLING RELATIONS AND GENDER IN THE EARLY MODERN WORLD

This example brings together the common themes of scandal and invidious rivalries that convent music was perceived to provoke, but also illustrates the role of brothers, both as potential teachers and as mediators on their sisters’ behalf in the world.19 In the absence of disposable income of their own, nuns also relied upon their brothers as patrons of convent music. Of course, families were customarily required to pay for the induction ceremonies of their female relatives, in which music figured prominently. But direct artistic collaboration between sisters in the convent and their brothers in the world sometimes continued long afterward: Donna Margarita Acquaviva and Donna Lella Castromediano Acquaviva, professed nuns in the convent of Santi Marcellino e Tesco in the city of Naples, humbly relate to Your Eminences that, by order of the Most Eminent Lord Cardinal Filamarini, Archbishop of that city, all female monasteries have been forbidden to celebrate the feasts of their churches solemnly with music, in order not to involve the said convents in excessive expenses. And because the said petitioners have been elected as sacristans for the coming year, and because their brothers, according to their piety, wish to celebrate the said accustomed feasts in that convent at their own expense, without the financial involvement of the convent, they therefore request that Your Eminences grant permission to celebrate the said feasts. (Congregation’s response: ‘At the Archbishop’s discretion.’)20

Interestingly enough, such sibling collaboration occasionally enabled cloistered sisters to escape from their musical responsibilities. The necrology of the convent of Santa Maria Maddalena in Bologna relates, for example, that ‘on 21 January 1733 Signora Maria Dorotea Nobili donned the religious habit as organist and took the name Suor Maria Geltrude, and professed the following year. And on 15 September 1745, after the death of her father, her brothers paid off the remaining portion of her dowry, so that she would no longer be organist.’ Maria Angela Soavi, who originally professed at the Bolognese convent of Santi Naborre e Felice as organist in 1760, apparently also perceived music as an onerous responsibility, for she subsequently used an inheritance from her late brother to buy her way out of the organist’s position.21 One wonders how often a girl’s acceptance of the convent organist’s post had little to do with musical talent or interest, and everything to do with money. All these documents offer only tantalizing vignettes of the links between convents, siblings, and music, leaving us in the dark about many details. But three letters from the convent of Santa Chiara della Pieve di Cento22 allow us to eavesdrop in greater detail on the negotiations involving a musical sister, her brother, and her possible future convent home. Although they date from as late as the mid-eighteenth century, the letters probably still reflect the

FAMILIES, CONVENTS, MUSIC

49

careful maneuvering for advantage that characterized the interactions between families and convents for generations. Typically, the young woman remains an elusive, passive figure, more like a commodity, overshadowed by her brother, who actively negotiates on her behalf. In 1754 Abbé Paolo Guastarobba of Finale (near Modena) and his sister Maria were searching for a convent. Maria had recently revealed some talent for music, which her brother determined to use to her (or his?) advantage. On 7 February he approached the abbess of the convent of Santa Chiara della Pieve di Cento: My sister pursues with her accustomed ardor the study of music, through which I hope within the year she will be able to take on the obligation to serve as organist in any monastery. Therefore, next September I shall bring her there [to Cento] so that she may be heard. If she meets with approval, if the monastery is to her liking, and if there should be the advantageous arrangements I desire, she can enter shortly thereafter on probation. On the supposition that she ought to be qualified in every way, I shall not find it inconvenient to keep her with me a while longer, in order to free her of all impediments to her desired employment, since she perseveres in her highest vocation to become a nun, and probably in your venerable nunnery.

On 17 October, after his sister’s audition, Abbé Guastarobba acknowledged the convent’s offer of admission, with the suggestion, however, that it was not entirely satisfactory: To speak the truth, this is a good deal, but it is not everything I’d hoped to hear, … which is to know precisely, exactly, and clearly what would be the outlay in cash, free and clear of any other expense, whether related to the months of probation, or the taking of the veil, her profession, furnishings, and whatever else might occur. Informed of these matters, then I can still offer a definitive response. And once we agree a contract can be drawn up, and in this way provide you with assurances and free me of the many obligations and impediments that I continually must endure for my sister, who nevertheless is entirely inclined toward your venerable convent, and who does not fail in her total devotion to her study, in which I hope she meets with some success.

Four days later, the girl’s confessor, Agostino Giorgi, further intensified the negotiations. Giorgi, claiming (quite implausibly) to write without the knowledge of his friend the abbé, insisted that the nuns’ suggested £1,500 dowry was well beyond Guastarobba’s means. One nun at Santa Chiara had led the abbé to believe that they might agree on less than £1,000, which the abbé could afford, but was embarrassed to propose. Giorgi’s primary point, however, was to play a new card in the game – Santa Chiara faced competition for the budding organist. Giorgi had promised to find the rival convent of Santa Maria Maddalena in Cento a girl prepared to profess there if someone else provided her with the requisite dowry. Guastarobba had

50

SIBLING RELATIONS AND GENDER IN THE EARLY MODERN WORLD

enlisted the help of Catterina Monti, sister of the abbess at Santa Maria Maddalena and cousin of the mother vicar there, who was prepared to contribute to such a dowry – an interesting example of how female as well as male networking could come into play in convent negotiations. The abbé had then begun to dangle his sister before the nuns of Santa Maria Maddalena. Once they had met Maria Guastarobba face to face, these nuns’ initial 50 per cent dowry discount had been increased still further. Although nothing had been finalized, the abbé claimed that his sister would have been quite content to join Santa Maria Maddalena on such favorable terms. Only later, after Maria had begun her musical studies, did the attractive possibility of becoming organist at the rival convent of Santa Chiara arise, with its own subsequent negotiations. The go-between, Agostino Giorgi, concludes, ‘You cannot imagine the pleasure I would feel if I could say to the aforesaid abbé Paolo, “Friend, everything is arranged!”’ – having just hinted to the nuns, ‘otherwise another convent will be found, where the same advantage may be enjoyed.’ So where did Maria Guastarobba end up? Unfortunately, but not atypically, the final outcome of these careful negotiations remains unclear. No record of Maria Guastarobba’s profession has come to light at either the convent of Santa Chiara or Santa Maria Maddalena. Ties of blood thus were intricately woven into the fabric of convent sisterhood. Judith Brown suggests that nuns’ frequent longevity resulted, not only from their protection from the perils of childbirth and contagion, but also from the supportive environment the cloister could provide.23 The complex, intertwining ties of sisterhood – and brotherhood – briefly examined here must also have played salutary roles in the creation of what was for many women a positive place to live out their lives.

Notes 1.

2. 3. 4.

Robert Kendrick points out that close to 75 per cent of Milanese patrician daughters between 1600 and 1650 became nuns. See ‘The Traditions of Milanese Convent Music and the Sacred Dialogues of Chiara Margarita Cozzolani,’ in The Crannied Wall: Women, Religion, and the Arts in Early Modern Europe, ed. Craig A. Monson (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1992), 211–12. Ordini alle Monache Sopra i libri prohibiti, e profani, Portiere, & altri mobili souerchi, & disdiceuoli (Bologna: Vittorio Benacci, 1601), in Archivio IsolaniLupari, Fondo Paleotti, Cartone 33, ‘frammenti sparsi sulla riforma.’ Quoted in ‘Information[i] sopra Mon[aste]ri alla cura ep[iscop]ale sottoposti,’ in Archivio Arcivescovile di Bologna (AAB hereafter), Miscellanee Vecchie 808, fascicolo 13, ‘Diverse informationi et provisioni delle Monache.’ Rome, Archivio Segreto Vaticano, Sacra Congregazione dei Vescovi e Regolari (ASV, VR hereafter), sezione monache, l’anno 1628 (feb.–maggio).

FAMILIES, CONVENTS, MUSIC

5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10. 11.

12. 13. 14.

15.

16. 17. 18. 19.

20. 21.

51

Bologna, Archivio di Stato (ASB hereafter), Demaniale 14/2874 (S Cristina). Document with illegible date: 1630 or 1650. ASV, VR, sezione monache, l’anno 1647 (aprile–maggio). Ibid., l’anno 1646 (gennaio–marzo). On this unusual convent family and its relationship to music, see Colleen Reardon, Holy Concord within Sacred Walls: Nuns and Music in Siena, 1575–1700 (New York: Oxford University Press, 2002). On these relationships of aunts and nieces, see Craig A. Monson, Disembodied Voices: Music and Culture in an Early Modern Italian Convent (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1995), 20–22. ASV, VR, sezione monache, l’anno 1637 (gennaio–maggio). Ibid., l’anno 1662 (novembre–dicembre). Ibid., l’anno 1632 (gennaio–luglio). Ibid., l’anno 1698 (ottobre). The full dedication is translated in Vittoria Aleotti, Ghirlanda de Madrigali a Quatro Voci, ed. C. Ann Carruthers, revised and expanded by Thomas W. Bridges and Massimo Ossi (New York and Williamston: Broude Trust, 1994), xiii–xv. The introduction discusses the ambiguities that surround Vittoria and Rafaella Aleotti, whose names appear on madrigal and motet publications, respectively, and concludes that ‘Rafaella’ was probably the name Vittoria assumed upon her profession. ASV, VR, sezione monache, l’anno 1647 (aprile–magio). Ibid., registri monialium 6 (1653) fols 548–9. Ibid., l’anno 1637 (luglio–dicembre). Ibid., l’anno 1646 (aprile–maggio). Ibid., l’anno 1660 (aprile–luglio). Ibid., l’anno 1699 (maggio–giugno). On the Ferrabosco nun musicians in Genoa, see Maria Rosa Moretti, Musica e costume a Genova tra Cinquecento e Seicento (Genoa: Francesco Pirella editore, 1992), 131–3. For the Zagrettis, see ASV, VR, sezione monache, l’anno 1697 (lugio–agosto). All these examples appear in Craig A. Monson, Disembodied Voices, 49–50 and 264–5. For examples of such musical dynasties in Milanese convents, most notably that of Chiara Margarita Cozzolani, see Robert Kendrick, Celestial Sirens: Nuns and their Music in Early Modern Milan (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1996). For the Monopoli ruling, see Rome, Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana, MS Borg. Lat. 71, fol. 32v. On Giovanni Bondini, see Craig A. Monson, Disembodied Voices, 149–50. ASV, VR, posizione 1620, lettere A–C, undated petition. For the Piccinini sisters, see ibid., sezione monache, l’anno 1650 (marzo–luglio). The petition from Macerata appears in ibid., l’anno 1663 (gennaro–aprile). For an extended discussion of the collaboration of the bursar at Santa Cristina, Madre Donna Luigia Orsina Orsi, and her brother, Don Ludovico Maria Orsi, prior of the Camaldolese hermitage of San Benedetto di Ceretola, in the convent’s multi-year conflict with Bolognese Archbishop Giacomo Boncompagni, waged both in Bologna and Rome over the imminent Consecration of Virgins at Santa Cristina in 1699, see Craig A. Monson, Disembodied Voices, 199–224. The Acquaviva sisters’ request appears in ASV, VR, sezione monache, l’anno 1660 (agosto–settembre). The S Maria Maddalena reference appears in Bologna, Biblioteca Comunale, MS B3283, Raccolta di notizie del Monastero e Monache di S M[ari]a Maddalena. For Maria Angela Soavi at the convent of Santi Naborre e Felice, see ibid., MS B919, 164.

52

SIBLING RELATIONS AND GENDER IN THE EARLY MODERN WORLD

22. ASB, Demaniale 3/7900 (S Chiara di Cento), ‘lettere diverse,’ fols 305, 306, 308. 23. Judith Brown, ‘Monache a Firenze all’inizio dell’età moderna: Un’analisi demografica,’ Quaderni storici 85 (1994), 117–52.

CHAPTER FIVE

‘Liebe Schwester …’ Siblings, Convents, and the Reformation Merry Wiesner-Hanks Female monasteries throughout Europe were often homes to family groups of sisters, cousins, aunts, and nieces. Such women were generally members of local families, with those who were professed nuns often coming from wealthy and prominent noble, gentry, or patrician families from the city where the convent was located or the surrounding countryside. This was a very different pattern than male monasteries, whose residents generally came from a much broader geographic area, with fewer ties to locally prominent families. Women thus maintained family ties within convent walls, and were often quite able to maintain ties with family members outside of the convent, including those with brothers or with sisters who were not in the convent. Nuns often depended on their family members outside of the convent for financial and political support; brothers represented their sisters in court battles involving convent property, or provided extra donations from the family inheritance if convent incomes declined. Some nuns also had close intellectual friendships with siblings outside, exchanging letters, books, and ideas. The Protestant Reformation both strengthened and strained connections among siblings. Ties between sisters and other family members within a convent could reinforce nuns’ resolve to oppose Protestant teachings, with some of the most famous cases of resistance to Protestantism emerging in convents housing groups of sisters. On the other hand, Protestant brothers and sisters used family connections along with theological arguments to encourage their sisters to leave the convent. They visited their sisters personally, and wrote letters attempting to convince them of the uselessness of the monastic life. These letters were occasionally published as pamphlets, particularly during the 1520s when the religious situation in Germany was very fluid and many pamphlets by lay authors were produced and sold.1 Such open letters to convent residents became common enough that authors who were not really siblings chose to couch their arguments in this form. Because these pamphlets were often published anonymously, it is difficult to tell if they emerged from

54

SIBLING RELATIONS AND GENDER IN THE EARLY MODERN WORLD

real sibling relationships or simply adopted these conventions. Ultimately this distinction may not matter much, because all of these pamphlets draw on cultural understandings of the ways in which sibling relationships could be expressed in public, and so provide information about notions of the proper role of siblings. Many German convents were founded by members of noble families. In the early and high Middle Ages, the abbesses of these convents controlled large amounts of property and often had jurisdiction over many subjects.2 By the fifteenth century, it appeared to some Church officials and the more rigorous nuns as if many religious houses had forgotten their spiritual focus. In many ways this is not surprising, as some convent residents had been placed there unwillingly by their parents, and continued to live as they would outside, wearing secular clothing and jewelry, entertaining visitors, and frequently leaving the convent to visit family or friends.3 Leaders of religious orders or reform-minded abbesses attempted to halt such behavior and enforce strict rules of conduct and higher standards of spirituality. These fifteenth-century reforms had both positive and negative results for women religious. On the negative side, they often put religious houses more closely under the control of a local male bishop, taking away some of the abbess’s independent power, and decreased the contact that the women had with the outside world, which also decreased their opportunities to get donations. On the positive side, they often built up a strong sense of group cohesion among the residents and gave them a greater sense of the spiritual worth of their lives, particularly if an abbess herself led the reform. This sense of group cohesion could be enhanced by family relationships among the women living in the convent. Monastic rules in many orders exhorted nuns – and monks – to avoid ‘particular friendships,’ because such relationships meant one was putting devotion to one person above devotion to the group and could lead to sexual intimacy. Despite these prohibitions, there is evidence that sisters and other blood relatives could be very close. Sisters sometimes chose to have themselves buried together and memorialized on the same gravestone. In the Katharina convent in Augsburg, for example, Anna Walter, the prioress, and her sister paid the Augsburg artist Hans Holbein the Elder (c. 1460–1534, the father of the famous Hans Holbein) for a gravestone for the cloister, depicting themselves and other family members. The three Vetter sisters, all convent residents, also chose to be buried together under an elaborate grave marker painted by Holbein: Veronica, Walpurgis, and Christina Vetter ordered a painting on wood depicting the passion of Christ to be made in the cloister for 26 florins. All three of them are nuns. All three of them are buried under this, and the grave-stone was laid over them: Veronica Vetter died in 1490, Christina Vetter in 1499, and Walpurgis Vetter in 1500; all three of them

SIBLINGS, CONVENTS, AND THE REFORMATION

55

were carnal sisters (leibliche schwestern). One of them was the prioress of this convent, this was Christina, who was the youngest.4

Necrologies, or death notices that describe the way a nun met her hour of death, designed for the edification of other convent residents, also provide evidence of close family relationships. Mourning and bereavement were supposed to be measured, even that for close family members. The 1410 death notice for Sister Lucia Canal, a nun in the convent of Corpus Domini in Venice, describes the ideal: ‘When her relatives visited her, she sent them away as soon as she could. Her father, mother, brothers, and sisters died, and she was never seen to weep. Her mother and sisters were buried in here with us; she did not stir to touch them but sang with the rest just as if they had no connection with her.’5 This desired detachment was not always possible, especially for women who were in convents with their sisters. ‘She leaves behind her a dear sister who is deeply afflicted by the loss she has just experienced,’ writes one death notice, while another describes a nun who died of a stroke just a day after her sister’s death.6 Such intense emotion sometimes extended to other family members; death notices comment: ‘Her three nieces are in pain for the loss they have suffered’ … ‘Her dear niece whom we have as a religious is inconsolable.’7 Jean Maillefer, a citizen of Reims, noted that on the death of her aunt in the monastery, ‘My daughter the nun is inconsolable; she loved her; she was holding her hand when she died.’8 Physical closeness did not stop at hand-holding. The death notice of Sister Margarita Piacentini notes that she entered the convent with her younger sister, and ‘the day before she passed away, when she was sleeping with her sister by her, the sister saw a round object more radiant than the sun at the feet of the sick woman and called out to the sick woman in fear: it seemed as if all at once she woke up and opened her mouth and that light immediately entered the sick woman’s mouth. From this one can see how acceptable that blessed soul was to her spouse, the Lord Jesus Christ.’9

Protestant attack and Catholic defense Such intimate family relations could be upset by the Protestant attack on celibacy and questioning of the value of convent life. Martin Luther’s first major treatise against monastic vows, De votis monastici, was published in Latin and German in 1521, amidst a debate about the efficacy of monasticism that had been going on already for several years. The remaining years of the 1520s saw still more pamphlets for and against monastic life, some of them written (or purported to be written) by current or former monks, and a very few by former nuns. The most famous of the latter was a letter by the German

56

SIBLING RELATIONS AND GENDER IN THE EARLY MODERN WORLD

noblewoman Ursula of Münsterberg explaining her reasons for leaving the convent of Mary Magdalene the Penitent in Freiberg, first printed in 1528 and later reprinted with an afterword by Luther.10 This was written as a letter addressed to two male cousins, Dukes Georg and Heinrich of Saxony, but her personal relationship with them or other family members does not enter into her discussion. Much more revealing of the strain that disagreements about the value of convent life could put on family relationships is a letter from Katherine Rem of the Katharina convent in Augsburg to her brother Bernhart, the organist for the Fuggers, written in her own name and that of Bernhart’s daughter Veronica, who was a nun in the same convent. This letter and his answer were printed as part of the same pamphlet in Augsburg in 1523.11 She begins the letter with a reference to Job 8:13, ‘The hope of a hypocrite melts away,’ and then continues: You have wished us the correct understanding of Jesus Christ. We thank you for that. We hope we have the correct understanding of God. God will fortify us because we praise and favor him. You have sent us two letters, which I am returning to you. We regard you as one of the false prophets that Jesus warned us against in the Holy Gospels when he said ‘Guard yourselves against prophets who come in the form of a sheep and are ravening wolves.’ Therefore you have also come with many good words and wanted to lead us astray and make us despondent. You should not think that we are so foolish that we place our hope in the convent and in our own works. Rather we place our hope in God … You will pull a splinter out of our eye, while you yourself have a large log in yours. I certainly know that you have said that your daughter and I are to you more as if we were in a brothel12 than in a convent. You should shame yourself in your heart to think [such a thing] to say nothing of saying this. Whoever hears this from you cannot think very well of you. There we certainly see the brotherly love that you have for us … If you don’t come in kinship, stay out.13

Bernhart Rem’s much lengthier answer reads in part: Dear sister … I have received your answer but have viewed with little pleasure [the fact] that you have scorned my letter, written in all Christian faith, and that you have sent my admonition back to my house, and this in anger, that I certainly did not anticipate. [You] insulted me and called me a false prophet. To these words I will say nothing harder than that you do not yet know or do not want to know, what a false prophet is. For a false prophet uses fine words to deceive simple hearts, which he cunningly separates from the healing words of Jesus Christ with his own illusions and human teaching. This I have – God is my witness – never done, but simply out of Christian faith, held before you not human teaching which confuses, but God’s teaching, for your spiritual peace and the pleasure of your conscience. Human teaching destroys and confuses the heart, and pulls one away from the true and simple teachings of Christ

SIBLINGS, CONVENTS, AND THE REFORMATION

57

our Savior (2 Cor. 11), just like the snake deceived Eve through its cunning … I will say nothing about the convents, where many different types of work – all of it self-chosen – are practiced with the fine glitter of holiness. And it is worthless straw, whatever one makes of it.14

Both Katherine and Bernhart use strong language to describe the actions of the other – she calls him a false prophet and ravening wolf, he argues that she is deceived like Eve and that life in a convent is worthless straw, no better than a brothel. In the same year that the Rem pamphlet appeared, Matthias Wurm von Geduertheym, a member of the minor Alsatian nobility living in Strasbourg, wrote to his sister Anna in the convent of St Nicolas in Undis. She had apparently written to him, objecting to some Lutheran books he had sent; he wrote in response and published the letter, though he did not include her original letter.15 Wurm does not express the same level of annoyance at his sister that Rem does, and his theological arguments follow those of Luther: faith, not works are what matters; vows of chastity are nearly impossible to maintain, ‘for nature does not let itself be locked up’; Christ’s rules, not those of any order, are to be followed. According to Wurm, her letter had asked whether he wanted her to lose her honor by breaking her vows and marrying, and whether he was now going to pressure their other sister – who was also in a convent – in the same way. He answered that he did not want to force her into anything, but that breaking vows that had been made in error in the first place brought no dishonor, particularly as it was God’s commandment to ‘be fruitful and multiply.’ Later that year Wurm wrote a much longer work, Trost Clostergefangene (‘Consolation for those Imprisoned in Convents’), in which he provided extensive biblical justification for arguments that monasticism was idolatrous and good works were of no use. In this he comments, ‘I have decided to take my sister out of the cloistered life, if she truly consents after suitable examination.’16 He apparently became unwilling to wait for Anna to change her mind, and went to her convent with a large group of men to force her to leave; she refused and later wrote to him asking that he leave her alone.17 Wurm’s pamphlet was followed by several others that are also written as answers by lay brothers and sisters to letters sent to them by sisters in the convent. (Unfortunately, none of these includes the original letter of the nun; the Rem pamphlet is the only one that includes an actual dialogue.) One of these was published with the male author’s name attached, and three more appeared anonymously.18 Of the anonymous pamphlets, two present themselves as written by married women to their sisters, one of whom describes herself in the title as ‘an honorable woman in the married estate.’ It is, of course, impossible to tell if the anonymous pamphlets were actually written by family members, but they contain small details about specific

58

SIBLING RELATIONS AND GENDER IN THE EARLY MODERN WORLD

events – the birth of a child, the burning of a sermon that the lay sister had sent the nun – that suggest they were what they purported to be. The ‘honorable woman’ notes that she is the younger sister, so should not normally be telling her elder sister what to do, but Scripture had commented that any son or daughter could prophesy. The other woman is sharper. Though she comments she is writing ‘out of sisterly love and devotion’ and sprinkles her letter liberally with ‘dear sister,’ she also compares her sister to Balaam’s ass (for reciting Latin without understanding it), the wives of Herod and Caiaphas (for not visiting the infant Jesus), and the Pharisees (for praying loudly and demanding payments so that ‘widows’ houses are devoured … because of your harshness toward the poor.’) Both pamphlets by women use language about their sister’s decision to enter the convent that reflect a female perspective more than do Reformation pamphlets known to be by male authors; the ‘honorable woman’ praises the ‘dear, beautiful children’ of married people, while the other female author notes that the Ten Commandments make no mention about whether someone should live ‘with a husband or without a husband.’ (In their criticism of clerical celibacy, Luther and other Protestant reformers always couch the desired alternative in masculine terms – ‘Take a wife.’) As I have argued elsewhere, religion and the family provided the most powerful authorizations for women’s writing (and publishing) in the early modern period.19 The female authors of these two pamphlets were in a situation in which they could use both; writing to one’s sister was not a threatening act, and the gravity of their sisters’ misguided spiritual life provided justification for the letters to be made public. These pamphlets by brothers and (perhaps) by sisters to their nun-sisters were joined by a lone eight-page pamphlet from a woman describing herself as a former nun, addressed to her ‘natural brother in the Carthusian order,’ which contains standard Lutheran theology against works-righteousness and almost no personal details.20 Writing to one’s brother was a bit more presumptuous than writing to one’s sister, but it is impossible to identify the author, particularly as there are no other published letters by brothers to their monk-brothers encouraging them to leave the monastery with which this could be compared. On the Catholic side, along with the letter of the Rem sisters there is one anonymous pamphlet written in the form of a letter by a ‘devout and pious nun from Marienstein’ to her lay brother Endris, published in 1524.21 It was written as an answer to his earlier letter, and exhorts him not to claim that all nuns and monks were impious and bad; some were, but so were some Lutherans. He was not to judge her, for ‘you have not heard that me and my fellow-nuns have judged or damned you, your pious wife, and my very dear relatives.’ Charity and mercy were the qualities of Christ and true Christians,

SIBLINGS, CONVENTS, AND THE REFORMATION

59

and if Christ was truly charitable, why would he have led their parents and grandparents astray all those years with the Catholic teachings he was now criticizing? This pamphlet has fewer personal details than the two anonymous ones by Protestant women, and does not use female-related images the way they do, so I am less willing to assume it was actually written by a woman. The copy in the Herzog August Bibliothek in Wolfenbüttel attributes it, in fact, to Kilian Leib, who was the prior at Rebdorf near the bishopric of Eichstätt. I could find no evidence about where this attribution came from, however, and it may have simply stemmed from the opinion of an earlier scholar that women rarely had and never publicly expressed theological ideas. Scholarship on women and the Reformation over the last thirty years has clearly demonstrated that women – including Catholic women – did express their religious opinions publicly, however, so that this pamphlet is better simply left as ‘anonymous.’ Whether or not he is the real author of the nun’s letter in support of convents, Kilian Leib was in contact with the most famous defender of convent life, Charitas Pirckheimer, the abbess of the St Clara convent in Nuremberg, who was also famous as the learned sister of the humanist scholar Willibald Pirckheimer. (She also had two sisters in the convent with her.) Charitas’s defense, given the title ‘Denkwürdigkeiten’ by its editor when first published in 1852, combined chronicle, reports, and letters.22 Over a period of several years, Charitas fought with the city council and religious leaders to keep the St Clara convent open after Nuremberg accepted Protestant teachings. The ‘Denkwürdigkeiten’ includes discussion of many incidents in this battle, the best known of which was the violent forcible removal of three young nuns by their mothers.23 A lesser-known incident followed shortly after this, in which ‘the young Miss Tetzel’ (Pirckheimer does not give her first name) came to the convent to take away her step-sisters Ursula and Justina Trolinger ‘with force,’ but the two girls told her ‘that they were not obligated to obey her, because she was no closer relative than their stepsister.’ Tetzel claimed that the convent overseer had authorized her to do this, and Pirckheimer’s subsequent letter to the overseer on behalf of the Trolinger sisters is included in the ‘Denkwürdigkeiten.’ It reads in part: They asked me to ask you that their stepsister not be allowed to do this again; if there are doubts about whether they want to be in the convent, people can certainly come and listen to them, but do this with modesty and not with such vehemence and violence. They hope that (because they no longer have a father or mother) their stepsister does not have the power to make them listen to her, or to take them out of the convent, which would be painful to God. We cannot believe that the city council would give this power to siblings or any other relatives except father and mother; the girls also recognize that the real reason for this is the property they brought into the convent with them [which would revert to the family if they left the convent].”24

60

SIBLING RELATIONS AND GENDER IN THE EARLY MODERN WORLD

Pamphlets by siblings, real or purported, are only a small share of the many pamphlets debating convent life that were published during the early years of the Reformation. Ultimately the fate of convents was decided by the political authorities under whose jurisdiction they fell, who may or may not have read any of these works. In areas that became Protestant, monasteries and convents were generally closed. Either the buildings and land were immediately confiscated and the residents ordered to move to Catholic areas, or (as was the case in Nuremberg), new novices were forbidden and the current residents lived out their lives on a portion of the convent’s old income. Monks could (and many did) become pastors in the new Protestant churches, or they could move to another monastery in their order if they did not accept Protestant teachings. Women, of course, could not become members of the Protestant clergy, and moving would take them out of a house that they had often entered as young girls; moving might also take them away from their sisters or other family members. The religious houses in Germany that fought the Reformation most vigorously were generally convents whose leading residents were sisters and cousins from prominent local families.25 In some cases, their families backed them in this, even if they had themselves become Protestant. In contrast to the scene in the St Clara convent in Nuremberg, for example, six Lutheran noblemen pleaded with one of the Dukes of Brunswick not to close the convents in his territory, ‘What would happen to our sisters’ and relatives’ honor and our reputation if they are forced to marry renegade monks, cobblers, and tailors?’26 Women religious often made up as much as five to ten per cent of the population in many German cities, and their opportunities outside the convent were extremely limited. Thus these men were surely not alone in their pragmatic approach to the issue, but it is difficult to say whether this position or that of Bernhart Rem and Matthias Wurm was more common, for the fate of most women who left or were forced to leave convents was never recorded.27 The closing of convents in most Protestant territories certainly altered family dynamics in terms of marital politics, as dowries would now have to be provided for almost all daughters, but what this meant in terms of sibling relations is unclear. It is dangerous on the basis of just a few documents to make too many conclusions about sibling relationships; some of the printed letters may not have been by actual siblings at all, and, more importantly, as Miriam Chrisman has noted, ‘the emphasis for all these writers … was not familial love or affection but the salvation of their sister’s soul.’28 What we can safely say is that sixteenth-century German people recognized that sibling bonds could be extremely close both within and over convent walls, making religious divisions within a family especially poignant. Luther and other reformers emphasized the respect and obedience due to

SIBLINGS, CONVENTS, AND THE REFORMATION

61

parents by their children, an idea that received legal sanction in both Protestant and Catholic areas through laws requiring parental consent to marriage or allowing parents to imprison disobedient children. With the development of family history over the last several decades, historians have studied the actual workings of these laws, as well as many other aspects of early modern parent-child relations.29 Sibling relations were more ambiguous, a matter of personal attachment or disaffection rather than law. They have thus left far fewer traces in the sources, but following what traces we can find will deepen our understanding of early modern family relationships and emotional ties.

Notes 1.

2.

3.

4.

5. 6.

7. 8.

Miriam Usher Chrisman, Conflicting Visions of Reform: German Lay Propaganda Pamphlets, 1519–1530 (Atlantic Highlands, NJ: Humanities Press, 1996); Paul A. Russell, Lay Theology in the Reformation: Popular Pamphleteers in Southwest Germany, 1521–1525 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986). Some of the institutions often referred to as convents were actually canoness houses (Kanonissenstifte), in which women took no solemn vows and could leave the house if they chose. These women were thus technically not ‘nuns,’ but the distinction was often blurred. Women in both types of religious houses were most commonly called sisters (Schwestern) in sixteenth-century documents, though I have used the word ‘nun’ more often in this chapter to avoid always having to say ‘carnal sisters’ when referring to blood relatives. The role of convents in the marital politics of elite families has been best studied in Italian cities. See Jutta Gisela Sperling, Convents and the Body Politic in Late Renaissance Venice (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1999) and P. Renée Baernstein, A Convent Tale: A Century of Sisterhood in Spanish Milan (New York: Routledge, 2002). Diocesan Archives, Augsburg, HS 95, 27v–28r, quoted in Magdalene Gärtner, Römische Basiliken in Augsburg: Nonnenfrömmigkeit und Malerei um 1500. Schwäbische Geschichtsquellen und Forschungen, vol. 23 (Augsburg: Wiener, 2002), 31. Sister Bartolomea Riccoboni, Life and Death in a Venetian Convent: The Chronicle and Necrology of Corpus Domini, 1395–1436, ed. and trans. Daniel Bornstein (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2000), 74. Elizabeth Rapley, A Social History of the Cloister: Daily Life in the Teaching Monasteries of the Old Regime (Montreal and Kingston: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2001), 201. Quotation from Archives de Saint-Sulpice, Paris S 197 (Bordeaux 15/4/1733); trans. Rapley. Ibid. Quotations from Archives de Saint-Sulpice, Paris S 197 (Toulouse, 8/6/1738); Bibliothèque de l’Arsenal 49992-54 (Montdidier, 22/9/1691); trans. Rapley. Henri Jadart, Mémoires de Jean Maillefer continués par son fils jusqu’en 1716 (Paris, 1891), trans. and quoted in Rapley, Social History of the Cloister, 201.

62

SIBLING RELATIONS AND GENDER IN THE EARLY MODERN WORLD

9. Riccoboni, Life and Death, 66. 10. Ursula of Münsterberg, ‘Christliche Ursachen des verlassenen Klosters zu Freiberg,’ in Dr. Martin Luthers Sämmtliche Werke, 2nd edn, vol. 19, ed. Johann Georg Walch (St Louis: Concordia Publishing House, 1907), pp. 1694–1723. Excerpts from this have been published in translation in Merry Wiesner-Hanks and Joan Skocir, eds and trans., Convents Confront the Reformation: Catholic and Protestant Nuns in Germany (Milwaukee: Marquette University Press, 1998), 39–63. 11. [Katherine Rem], Antwurt Zwayer Closter frauwen in Katheriner Closter zu Augspurg/an Bernhart Remen. (Augsburg: P. Ulhart, 1523). 12. The words used here are ‘Tempel haus,’ a reference to what is often called ‘temple prostitution’ in the ancient Near East. In some religious traditions that were contemporaneous with the ancient Hebrews, the sexual services of temple personnel – priests and priestesses – were considered part of their priestly functions for specific festivals and holidays. 13. Translated in Wiesner and Skocir, Convents, 28–31. 14. Ibid., 31–7. 15. Matthias Wurm von Geudertheim, Christlich Schreiben so ain Evangelischer bruder seiner schwester … zugeschicht (Strassburg: n.p., 1523) This pamphlet, and others involved in the controversy over convents, has been analyzed most fully by Amy Leonard in Nails in the Wall: Catholic Nuns in Reformation Germany (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2005). My thanks to Amy for sharing her work and her ideas about these issues with me. These pamphlets have been more briefly examined in Antje Rüttgardt, ‘Die Diskussion um das Klosterleben von Frauen in Flugschriften der frühen Reformationszeit (1523–28),’ in Anne Conrad, ed., ‘In Christo ist weder man noch weyb’: Frauen in der Zeit der Reformation und der katholischen Reform (Münster: Aschendorff, 1999), 69–94. 16. Matthias Wurm von Geudertheim, Trost Clostergefangner (Strassburg: n.p., 1523), fol. Aii, trans. and quoted in Chrisman, Conflicting Visions, 141. 17. This controversy was not simply about differing religious beliefs, but also involved complex financial relationships between the Wurm family and the convent (Chrisman, Conflicting Visions, 142, 152). 18. Nicolas Cattelspurger, Ain Missiv. darinn. durch hailig geschrift angezaygt wirt von den falschen leeren byssher gehalten. einer schwester. umb rechtes glaubens verstand geschriben (n.p.: 1524); Antwort auf den Sendbrief einer vermeinten geistlichen Klosterfrauen, der von Mariestein ausgangen, Klosterleben und Gelübde betreffende ([Augsburg:] 1524); Ein Bezwungene Antwort über einen Sendbrief einer Kloster-Nonne ([Nuremberg:] 1524); Ein Sendbrief von einer ehrbaren Frau im ehelichen Stand an ain Klosterfrauen ([Augsburg: 1524]). 19. ‘Kinder, Kirche, Landeskinder: Women Defend their Publishing in Early Modern Germany,’ in Robin B. Barnes, Robert A. Kolb, and Paula L. Presley, eds, Books Have their Own Destiny (Kirksville, MO: Sixteenth Century Journal Publishers, 1998), 143–52; ‘The Early Modern Period: Religion, the Family, and Women’s Public Roles,’ in Anne Carr and Mary Stewart Van Leeuwen, eds, Religion, Feminism and the Family (Louisville: Westminster/John Knox, 1996), 149–65. 20. Ayn kurtzlich antwort ainer Ordens schwester irem natürlichen brüder Cartheüser ordens zugeschickt/ über seine Christiche und Evangelische lere und ermanung ([Nuremberg:] 1523). 21. Ayn Sendbrieff vonn ainer Andächtigen frumen klosterfrawen von Marienstayn/

SIBLINGS, CONVENTS, AND THE REFORMATION

22. 23.

24. 25.

26. 27. 28. 29.

63

an yren brüder Endris vonn wegen der Lutherische ler ([Augsburg:] 1524). This was answered by the much longer anonymous pamphlet Antwort auf den Sendbrief (see n. 18 above). Josef Pfanner has edited a modern edition of Charitas’s writings, including her ‘Denkwürdigkeiten’: Die ‘Denckwürdigkeiten’ der Charitas Pirckheimer (Landshut: Solanus, 1962). This incident and other selections from the ‘Denkwürdigkeiten’ have been translated in Gwendolyn Bryant, ‘The Nuremberg Abbess: Charitas Pirckheimer,’ in Katharina M. Wilson, ed., Women Writers of the Renaissance and Reformation (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1987), 287–303. For a discussion of Charitas’s relations with her brother, see Paula S. Datsko Barker, ‘Charitas Pirckheimer: A Female Humanist Confronts the Reformation,’ Sixteenth Century Journal 26 (1995), 259–72. Pfanner, ‘Denckwürdigkeiten’, 96–7. For more on this, see Leonard, Nails, and my ‘Ideology Meets the Empire: Reformed Convents and the Reformation,’ in Germania Illustrata: Essays Presented to Gerald Strauss, ed. Andrew Fix and Susan C. Karant-Nunn (Kirksville, MO: Sixteenth Century Essays and Studies, 1992), 181–96. Quoted in Johann Karl Seidemann, Dr Jacob Schenk, der vermeintlicher Antinomer, Freibergs Reformator (Leipzig: C. Hinrichs’sche, 1875), Appendix 7, 193. Amy Leonard’s forthcoming book will trace this in Strasbourg, where there are good records about several convents whose fate during the Reformation was especially interesting. Chrisman, Conflicting Visions, 151. This has been explored most fully by Sarah Hanley for France. See ‘Social Sites of Political Practice in France: Lawsuits, Civil Rights, and the Separation of Powers in Domestic and State Government, 1500–1800,’ American Historical Review 102 (1997), 27–52, and a number of earlier articles.

CHAPTER SIX

Resisting Henri IV: Catherine de Bourbon and her Brother Jane Couchman Henri of Navarre, later Henri IV (1553–1610), is one of France’s most admired and most studied monarchs. He is credited with bringing peace to his country after nearly forty years of bloody religious and dynastic wars, and with making France the first state to institutionalize religious tolerance though the Edict of Nantes (1598).1 Henri’s sister, Catherine de Bourbon (1559–1604), is only rarely mentioned in studies of the period, though she does have her own biographers.2 She deserves further attention, in her own right, for her political support for her brother during his rise to power, and for her role in working out a solution to the religious strife in their country. Of necessity, the relationship between these royal siblings was simultaneously public and private.3 Henri and Catherine were the two surviving children of Jeanne d’Albret, Queen of Navarre and Antoine de Bourbon, a ‘Prince of the Blood.’4 Jeanne d’Albret, a fervent Protestant, was the acknowledged leader of the Huguenot cause during the early years of the French religious wars. Antoine de Bourbon’s political loyalties and religious convictions were less firm; he vacillated on both counts between the Huguenot and the royalist causes. In a sense, Catherine carried on their mother’s role, echoing Jeanne’s fierce Protestant beliefs as well as her rhetorical ability, while Henri, like his father, understood religion and politics in a much more flexible, not to say opportunistic, way. At the same time, Henri deeply admired his mother and her legacy.5 He found his sister’s intransigence in matters of religion frustrating but also sometimes useful and even admirable. Catherine remained devoted to her brother even after he converted to Catholicism. Her public reputation as a staunch Protestant enhanced Henri’s position in Navarre and Béarn, and was later useful during the negotiations around the Edict of Nantes. Until Henri’s second marriage, with Marie de Medicis in October 1600, Catherine was the highest-ranking woman at the French court.6 Even what we might think of as their private disagreements (about a marriage partner for Catherine and about Catherine’s right to continue to practice the Reformed faith) had crucial public implications.

CATHERINE DE BOURBON AND HENRI IV

65

Henri and Catherine were educated separately, unlike their grandmother Marguerite de Navarre and their great-uncle François I. In his early youth, Henri spent more time at the chateau of his governess and with his father at the Valois court than he did with his mother and sister. It was only after Antoine’s death in 1562 that Henri rejoined the women, and then only for brief periods, for he was serving with the Huguenot forces. Catherine spent her entire childhood with her mother, until Jeanne’s death in June 1572, while she was in Paris to negotiate Henri’s marriage with Marguerite de Valois, sister of the King of France, Charles IX. The first extant letter from Catherine to her brother, written when she was 13 years old, is a postscript to a letter from their mother during these negotiations: Monsieur, I’ve seen Madame [Marguerite de Valois] and I found her very beautiful and I really wish you could have seen her. I spoke very well to her for you, asking her to keep you in her good graces, which she promised to do, and she was very friendly to me and gave me a beautiful little dog which I like very much. (21 February 1572, 1).7

A few months later, Jeanne was dead. Her deathbed request to her son was that he take his sister back to Béarn to complete her education with her Protestant tutors, and that he arrange a marriage for her with a Protestant prince.8 It was not in Henri’s power to fulfill his mother’s first wish. Henri and Catherine survived the Saint Bartholomew’s Day massacre that followed Henri’s wedding to Marguerite de Valois in August 1572. However, Henri was forced to abjure the Protestant faith on behalf of both of them, and both remained virtual prisoners in the Louvre palace until Henri escaped and Catherine was permitted to join him in 1576. As for their mother’s second request, Henri entirely ignored it, promising his sister at one time or another to a dozen or more suitors whose alliance he was seeking, and eventually marrying her to the Duke de Bar, a member of the ultra-Catholic Lorraine family. For their adult years, we can learn about Henri and Catherine’s intense and often stormy relationship from the letters they exchanged and from letters they wrote to others about each other and about the issues that concerned them. When we use letters as sources of information about personal relationships, we must of course keep in mind the conventions of the epistolary genre and especially the way these conventions formalized relationships between nobles in sixteenth-century France.9 Expressions of devotion which may seem ‘sincere’ from our point of view may owe as much to form and to persuasive strategy as they do to personal emotion, and, indeed, self-fashioning is central to these letters. Still, we can observe that Henri and Catherine address each other differently than other correspondents. And even within sixteenth-century conventions, many of the letters examined here are

66

SIBLING RELATIONS AND GENDER IN THE EARLY MODERN WORLD

remarkable for their forthrightness. Some of Henri’s letters were dictated to a secretary and carry the flavor of his oral expression; others are in his own hand. Catherine’s letters to Henri are in her own hand, but they too bear strong marks of orality, for she often quotes from earlier conversations between herself and her brother.

‘In perfect friendship’ Henri’s and Catherine’s letters include many expressions of their devotion to each other, which go beyond the conventional forms of the salutatio and the conclusio. Each ends most letters to the other with a variant of: ‘I kiss you a thousand times, my dear and brave King whom I love more than myself’ (Catherine to Henri, 11 February 1599, 147) or ‘I kiss little sister’s hands’ (Henri to his mistress Diane d’Andoins, referring to Catherine, August 1586, II, 238). Responding to Catherine’s letter of condolences on the death of another of his mistresses, Gabrielle d’Estrée, Henri writes: ‘The root of my love is dead, it will not grow again: but the root of my affection will always be green for you, my dear Sister, whom I kiss a million times’ (April 1599, V, 111). Catherine did not use these expressions in her letters to any other correspondents; Henri used similar ones only when writing to his current mistress. As befit her rank and her gender, Catherine expressed obedience as well as affection: My dear king, whatever my condition, wherever I may go, you will always have the same power over me as you have always had; I conclude with that truth, kissing you a thousand times, my dear and brave King (April 1599, 154–5).

Catherine’s expressions of obedience and dependence could be a strategic choice (especially when there was tension between them): ‘Since I want to depend only on you, let me find in you the support which [I have] earned by the obedience, the affection and the faithfulness that I have given to you’ (March 1599, 149). Henri sometimes expressed frustration with Catherine for her resistance in the matters of her marriage and her faith, writing to an advisor in June 1598, for example: My sister is in the same bad mood as she was in at Compiegne, which is an unbearable affliction to me. That is why I am hurrying as much as I can to get her married (Henri to Caumont, 18 June 1598, IV, 1010–11).

But Henri earlier acknowledged the similarity between them, writing to another advisor: ‘You know her as well as I do; we are both quick to react and stubborn, but we calm down right away’ (Henri to Rosny [later Sully], 17 May

CATHERINE DE BOURBON AND HENRI IV

67

1596, IV, 582). Henri too could adopt a more conciliatory tone. Attempting to convince Catherine to accept a marriage he proposed, he wrote, with studied patience but also affection: As for me, I am proposing what I think is the gentlest and the easiest way. If you know of a better one, I am ready to receive it … I will always act in conformity with your wishes, since my [wish] is principally to see you happy and content, and for us to live together in perfect friendship (June [1596], IV, 606).

Political allies Catherine’s role as Henri’s political ally was most important when, between 1576 and 1592, he named her his regent in Béarn and Navarre, so that he could pursue his political and military goals elsewhere in France. They were closely united, sharing the same religious beliefs and the same goal, that Henri should defend the Protestant faith and become King of France. Catherine was well suited for her role. In 1576, when Henri and Catherine returned to the Kingdom of Navarre from the Valois court, it was Catherine whom the people welcomed back. They remembered her as her mother’s daughter, while they were somewhat suspicious of her less steadfast brother. Catherine’s letters at this time show her confidence in taking command, arranging for troops and funds for her brother, maintaining his alliances. He in turn supported her fully; for example, he wrote to a dissatisfied nobleman: Monseigneur d’Acqs, I received the letter which you wrote to me in which I could see that you were not at all pleased about what my sister did recently in connection with the property at Ayen. I will only say this, that ... I have left these matters to Madame my sister and her council (18 April 1584, VIII, 264).

Catherine was able to be an effective regent because she was wise, skillful, and well counselled, but also because the people were used to rule by a woman. The Salic Law that prevented a woman from becoming monarch of France did not apply in Navarre. Jeanne d’Albret had been Queen of Navarre in her own right, and if Henri had died without heirs, Catherine would have inherited their mother’s title and lands.11 This period of concord and mutual support between Henri and Catherine came to an abrupt end in the spring of 1592, as a result of Catherine’s resistance to Henri’s marriage politics for her. Catherine was recalled to her brother’s court, no longer his regent in the southwest with an independent court of her own. She still exerted influence, though less directly. As the highest-ranking lady in France, she was seated beside her brother on ceremonial occasions such as his coronation celebrations in February 1594

68

SIBLING RELATIONS AND GENDER IN THE EARLY MODERN WORLD

and his triumphant entry into Paris the following month. Henri often visited Catherine at her Paris residence, using it as a convenient place to meet privately with his Huguenot allies, and she organized elaborate entertainments and ballets there as she had earlier in Pau and Nérac. Henri wrote proudly to her of his military successes: ‘My dear sister, you will have the first news of the happy success that God has given me today [at Amiens, a decisive victory against the Spanish] … Tell this good news to my good servants’ (30 August 1597, IV, 838). Catherine accompanied Henri to Nantes for the negotiations leading up to the Edict of Nantes. Even after she finally married and accompanied her husband to Lorraine, Catherine retained her status at Henri’s court. For example, as the King’s sister, she was recalled to the court to assist Marie de Medicis and to witness formally the birth of the Dauphin, the future Louis XIII, in September 1601.

Marriage politics It was in the arena of marriage politics that the gendered nature of Henri’s power over his sister was most obvious. Catherine never questioned Henri’s right to choose a husband for her. Instead, she brought to bear the considerable force of her eloquence to persuade him either to give her the husband of her choice or not to force her to make an unacceptable match. In her letters, she constantly reminded her brother of earlier promises he had made to her, a strategy which might not have been well-chosen for a king whose principal policy after the religious wars was oubliance, that is, forgetting past differences, and sometimes also past services.12 For many years, Henri had been suggesting marriages for Catherine that would further his national and international political goals, but never with serious consequences. In November 1587, Henri brought home yet another suitor, Charles de Bourbon, Duke de Soissons, who had fought gallantly with him at the decisive battle of Coutras. Catherine’s interest in this particular suitor outlasted her brother’s.13 Matters came to a head in March 1592. Henri sent for his sister so that she could marry his current choice for her, the Duke de Montpensier. Instead, Catherine and Soissons met at Pau and made a secret agreement to marry. This was a rash move, since neither Catherine nor Soissons could legally make such a promise without the king’s permission.14 When Henri learned that Soissons had visited his sister, he had Soissons arrested and his sister put under house arrest. Catherine’s letter to her brother on this occasion is a masterpiece of diplomacy and understated anger. She creates an image of Soissons as her brother’s faithful servant, which, she writes, ‘is the principal reason why I wish him well, after the commandment that you gave me from your own mouth to do so.’ She describes Soissons’

CATHERINE DE BOURBON AND HENRI IV

69

affection ‘for his master [Henri] and for me, whom, with your permission, he calls his mistress.’ She then reminds Henri that he had earlier offered her a choice ‘either of him [Soissons] or of Monsieur the Prince de Dombes’ to be her husband, and asks her brother to ‘find it good that I choose him [Soissons].’ As for those who had imprisoned her, she writes as if they had done so without Henri’s knowledge, calling their action ‘insolent.’ ‘It seems to me, Monsieur, … that such people should not be allowed to darken the reputation of one who has guarded it [her reputation] at all costs.’ Finally, she throws herself on Henri’s mercy: You have always loved me. I have no certainty nor support except from you. For God’s sake, my King, let it be seen that you are a good king and a good brother … If, by the accident of this outrage, I see myself abandoned by you, I do not want to live any longer (May 1592, 96).

Henri was still furious when they finally met several months later. Catherine did not marry Soissons, but she refused to repudiate her promise to him until several years later. Henri did not, however, abandon his plans to make a marriage for his sister that would be politically advantageous to him. He now offered her a choice between the Duke de Montpensier and Henri de Lorraine, Marquis du Pont-àMousson and later Duke de Bar, for he needed the support of the ultraCatholic Lorraine family for the Edict of Nantes. Catherine again resisted, citing as before earlier commitments her brother had made to her: … may it please you to remember, Monsieur, that, when he [Montpensier] was my suitor, you often said to me that he was like his father, who was not a good husband, and, laughing, you said a thousand other things that could only make me dislike him … I know, Monsieur, that you have such a good memory that you won’t forget what happened last year at Saint-Germain. One evening you did me the honor of coming to visit me, and, … when I complained that you didn’t want to find a husband for me, … you swore before God that you would give me whomever I chose, whether from inside or outside your kingdom, except for Monseigneur the Count de Soissons and Monseigneur de Montpensier. … I will return to Monseigneur du Pont. May it please you to remember that when you were at Pau, no one could paint anything … more hideous than the form in which you represented him to me (about 22 September 1595, 121).

Catherine finally yielded to her brother and married Henri de Lorraine, Marquis du Pont-à-Mousson and Duke de Bar on 31 January 1599. She was 40 years old. A month later, she left for Lorraine. A witness describes the ‘final adieux’ of Henri and Catherine as ‘pitiful’: ‘Madame fainted when she said farewell to the King, who was crying bitterly himself.’15 A flood of letters followed Catherine’s departure, each one expressing her desire to see her brother: ‘My dear brother, I am still so astonished at having left you that I

70

SIBLING RELATIONS AND GENDER IN THE EARLY MODERN WORLD

don’t know where I am’ (about 1 March 1599, 147). In her letters Catherine now fashioned herself as the happiest of wives, writing to her brother: ‘You have given me such a good husband … whom I love passionately, for he gives me irresistible reasons to do so … May God make you as happy when you are in that holy place as we are’ (June 1599, 159). She wrote frequently of her desire to bear a child, as in this letter to the new Queen, Marie de Medicis: My dear Queen, … we put as much effort as we can into making a little page or a little lady-in-waiting for you … I don’t dare write to you what I would say if I had the honor to be with you. I will simply say that it is much better to sleep with company than alone (early October 1601, 183–4).

We may wonder whether her happiness was sincere, or wishful thinking. Perhaps Catherine calculated that such statements would please her brother, maintain her credit with him, and thus enhance her value to her new family because of the alliance she represented. Tragically, she died convinced by her doctors that she was pregnant; either they were unaware or they hid from her the truth of her final illness.

In matters of faith, her mother’s daughter For her marriage, Catherine ultimately bowed to Henri’s will, acknowledging his right to make that decision for her. In matters of religion, she acknowledged no such right, and there was no limit to her resistance to her brother’s wishes. Even as Catherine was writing to her brother about her marriage, she was also writing one letter after another to Protestant leaders and theologians, reaffirming with confidence her adherence to the Reformed faith. Catherine’s beliefs had always been acknowledged as steadier than her brother’s. When Henri escaped from the Valois court in early 1576, he did not immediately renounce the Catholicism he had been forced to accept. His Huguenot allies knew that the only person who could convince him to renew his commitment to Calvinism was his sister, ‘who was the incarnation of the rigor and the conviction of their mother.’16 The two returned to the Protestant faith together at Niort on 13 June 1576. During the period of her regency in Béarn and Navarre, Catherine equated Henri’s struggle to gain the throne with the advancement of the Protestant faith and of their fellow believers. Catherine wrote to the ministers at Pau in June 1589: Dearly beloved, the news that we receive every day about the undertakings of those of the [Catholic] League, who have sworn to destroy all people of good will who seek public peace, and the dangers … to which the King my brother is exposed, with all those who seek with zeal the glory of God and the conservation of this State, makes us think

CATHERINE DE BOURBON AND HENRI IV

71

that we can do no less than to assist them with our prayers and unite with God and with them to persevere in such a just struggle, … imploring together God’s help … and the success of those who maintain his glory, public good and tranquility, and the conservation of the whole State (2 June 1589, 46–7).

When, in 1593, Henri abjured his Protestant faith and converted to Catholicism in order to complete his conquest of his kingdom and to enter the city of Paris, Catherine, along with most of Henri’s Huguenot allies, was shocked. How could he abandon precisely what they had all been fighting for? Catherine first attributed her brother’s conversion to expediency and assured the Huguenot intellectual and spiritual leader Philippe Du Plessis-Mornay that it was only a temporary measure. Monsieur Du Plessis, … I have no doubt that the change [Henri’s conversion and abjuration] about which you have heard, saddens you. As for me, I am so distressed by it that I cannot express it adequately to you. But I hope that God, who has until now given us such strong evidence of his goodness, will not abandon us, and particularly him [Henri] who, for the good of his people, is not afraid to give up something of his conscience, which I am sure God will restore to him as safe and sound as it ever was, once these confusions have died down (July 1593, 111–12).

For her part, Catherine never wavered in her faith and in her support for other Huguenots who, like her, had refused to follow their King’s example. It is clear that she saw her constancy as important not only to herself but to the Huguenot community as a whole.17 She repeatedly addressed the community of believers, asking Du Plessis-Mornay to ‘assure all people of good will that I remain resolute in my religion’ ([1594], 114), and writing to the Huguenot Duke de Bouillon, ‘I’ve been told that there is a rumor in Guyenne that I have been to mass. Please respond for me that I am resolved to live and die in the only religion in which I believe’ (June 1597, 138–9). Jeanne d’Albret’s example was obvious when Catherine wrote to the Huguenot theologian Théodore de Bèze, ‘I continue to profess the same religion in which I have been nourished since my cradle’ (23 July 1599, 163). Religion was not a matter of expediency for Jeanne, nor was it for Catherine. During the negotiations leading to the promulgation of the Edict of Nantes, Henri does not appear to have put pressure on Catherine to convert with him, nor did he prevent her from holding Protestant services in her household. No doubt the presence of his Calvinist sister helped convince some recalcitrant Huguenot leaders to support the Edict. Catherine was at Nantes when the Edict was negotiated and is generally acknowledged to have played a role in putting it in place.18 When she did marry into the Catholic Lorraine family, it was with Henri’s promise that she would not be pressured to convert, that she could take her Protestant courtiers and chaplains with her to her husband’s

72

SIBLING RELATIONS AND GENDER IN THE EARLY MODERN WORLD

court. She wrote confidently to the Ministers of the Gospel in the Reformed Church of Nérac: ‘I am by no means disposed to cease professing the [Protestant] religion … I hope to make it known, and even in Lorraine’ (21 September 1598, 143). But a prediction she had made much earlier was confirmed soon after her marriage: I described to you the difficulties that could befall me if I fell into the hands of a sovereign prince who could constrain me in my conscience, and the limited support that I could hope for from you, who, so as not to be accused by the Pope of still being a Huguenot, would not dare to help me in my distress (about 22 September 1595, 121).

By 1598, Henri was seeking the support of the Pope, Clement VII. His failure to make Catherine convert was indeed interpreted as a sign of the insincerity of his own conversion. Henri had insisted that Catherine’s marriage to the Duke de Bar take place without the dispensation that was required because of the couple’s consanguinuity. He convinced the Lorraine family that the papal dispensation would be easier to obtain once the marriage had taken place, but the Pope refused to grant it unless Catherine converted. Immediately after her marriage, Henri began a concerted campaign to bring about Catherine’s conversion. He ordered that her Huguenot ladies-inwaiting be sent away, and her Huguenot ministers replaced by priests, an order which Catherine succeeded in having only partially rescinded. In her anger, she made a veiled threat to seek the support of her Huguenot allies against Henri: I can’t believe that after I have offered you all sorts of obedience, and taken the husband whom you gave me whose religion is different from mine, that you would want to treat me with such cruelty, and I prefer to believe that this [order] has come from someone who is using your name, perhaps in the hopes of making it necessary for me to ask the princes of the [Protestant] religion to offer me the help which I hope to receive only from you. (March 1599, 148–9).

She quickly withdrew the threat, and wrote: My dear King, I am very upset that you have misunderstood what I wrote to you, for my intention was simply to beseech you very humbly, as I do again, not to allow me to be constrained in my religion as I am pressured every day and at all hours. It is to you only that I have and wish to have recourse (March 1599, 150).

Still, her threat suggests that both she and Henri understood her power base and knew that she could count on the Huguenot leaders for support against him. Under continuing pressure to convert, from her husband and his family as well as from Henri, Catherine agreed to ‘receive instruction’ in the Catholic

CATHERINE DE BOURBON AND HENRI IV

73

faith. Henri set up a debate for her between prominent Catholic and Huguenot theologians, including, on the Catholic side, Cardinal du Perron, a former Huguenot who had brought about Henri’s own conversion.19 This too failed, as Catherine wrote to Théodore de Bèze: The artifices of our enemies have not succeeded in shaking a single point of my beliefs, whatever was expected from this debate … I feel that I am accompanied by special grace from God which helps me to be resolved to bear all sorts of afflictions rather than to change my profession [of faith] (2 December 1599, 174).

While theological arguments did not shake her faith, she was moved by her husband’s emotional state. Because they had married without the papal dispensation, he was refused the sacraments. Catherine wrote to Du PlessisMornay: I will tell you that I am undergoing difficult struggles, not about being forced in my religion, but about the distress that is being caused to my husband because he has not received forgiveness from the pope for having married me, since I am a relative. This grieves him so much that I feel his pain … The gentleness with which he treats me makes me wish that I could offer my life if it would relieve him of the belief they have given him that he is damned (November 1599, 173).

Catherine was willing to offer her life, but not her soul, to help her husband. What she hoped for was that he would no longer let himself be convinced that he was damned for marrying her; this would mean, in effect, that he no longer accepted the authority of the Pope. In the end, Catherine prevailed, but it was a bitter victory. Henri wrote to his ambassador at the papal court that all means possible had been tried to effect Catherine’s conversion, but to no avail. Monsr. de Bethune, … we have not been able to defeat my sister the Duchess de Bar, with all our efforts and means … You know what has happened up to now, having been amply informed of the means that have been taken to convert the spirit of my sister, for which I have spared neither advice nor persuasion, nor the authority I have over her; and still I have not altogether lost hope that, with time, this may succeed, but it is nonetheless not reasonable to leave my brother-in-law in this turmoil nor in fear of the continuation of His Holiness’ rigor (21 March 1602, V, 558–8).

Can we read between the lines, along with frustration, a certain admiration for the strength of his sister’s convictions, for her successful resistance to all his attempts to bring about her conversion? At the same time, Catherine wrote a very carefully worded letter to the Pope, which some have interpreted as a near-capitulation, but which in fact left everything to divine ‘inspiration,’ that is, to God’s grace, her central belief as a Huguenot.

74

SIBLING RELATIONS AND GENDER IN THE EARLY MODERN WORLD

I am resolved to follow the inspiration which God will be pleased to give me, promising Your Holiness that I will for my part not harbor any passion, resistance nor stubbornness, but rather will be very pleased to find the truth in a cause to which the exhortations of Your Holiness, the prayers of the King my brother, and the contentment of my lord the Duke de Bar invite me (end of March 1602, 186).

The Pope relented and sent the dispensation, which arrived only a few months before Catherine died. Catherine’s faith remained solid until the end. While awaiting the papal dispensation, she wrote the last of her extant letters, to Théodore de Bèze and the Huguenot ministers with whom he was associated: ‘I pray you to give my best wishes to your colleagues and to assure them of my affection towards them and my resolve to continue to profess the truth’ (6 December 1603, 196–7).

In this sibling relationship between two intelligent and strong-minded people, Henri held much of the power because of his gender: military power, the right to become King of France, the legal right to choose a husband for his sister. Catherine also exerted political power, based on her noble birth, her mother’s example, the respect she gained as regent in Navarre and her unshakeable Calvinist faith. This was the power she contributed to her brother’s cause. It was this power as well that enabled Catherine to resist Henri’s marriage plans for many years, though she did finally accept his choice for her. Her resistance in the area of religion was more effective. Catherine offered a powerful example to her fellow Huguenots, encouraging them in their faith and showing genuine leadership as they struggled with Henri’s conversion. The strength of her convictions was such that eventually both the King of France and the Pope had to admit that they could not change her mind.

Notes 1.

2.

See, among others, Yves Casaux, Henri IV ou la grande victoire (Paris: Albin Michel, 1977); Jean-Pierre Babylon, Henri IV (Paris: Fayard, 1982); David Buisserat, Henri IV (London: Allen and Unwin, 1984); Mark Greengrass, France in the Age of Henri IV, 2nd edn (London and New York: Longman, 1995); Mack P. Holt, The French Wars of Religion (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1995). Roland H. Bainton, ‘Catherine de Bourbon,’ in Women of the Reformation in France and England (Boston: Beacon Press, 1975), 75–81; Raymond Ritter, La soeur d’Henri IV, Catherine de Bourbon, 1559–1604 (Paris: Jean Touzot, 1985); Pierre Tucoo-Chala, Catherine de Bourbon: une calviniste exemplaire (Biarritz: Atlantica, 1997); Sabine Melchior-Bonnet, Catherine de Bourbon, l’insoumise, éd. Dominique Missika (Paris: Nil Éditions, 1999).

CATHERINE DE BOURBON AND HENRI IV

3. 4. 5.

6. 7. 8. 9.

10. 11. 12.

13. 14.

15. 16. 17.

75

See my article: Jane Couchman, ‘What is “personal” about sixteenth-century French women’s “personal” writings?’ in Atlantis 19, no. 1 (Fall–Winter 1993), 16–22. In the absence of heirs to the sons of Henri II and Catherine de Médicis, Antoine de Bourbon was next in line for the French throne. Jeanne’s banner was carried beside Henri’s during Henri’s entry into Paris, which is surprising given the intense Catholicism of the capital. The anonymous song ‘Mon Dieu la belle Entrée’ describes the procession in detail. See The King’s Noyse, Le Jardin de Mélodies, CD recording Harmonia mundi 907194, 1997, track 1 and p. 37. Marguerite de Valois was exiled from the court, hence Catherine was Henri’s ‘first lady.’ She was referred to as ‘Madame, soeur unique du roi.’ Catherine’s letters are cited from: ‘Catherine de Bourbon, Princesse de France, Infante de Navarre, Duchesse de Bar,’ Lettres et poésies, ed. Raymond Ritter (Paris: Edouard Champion, 1927). All translations are mine. Jean-Pierre Babylon, Henri IV, 172; Nancy L. Roelker, Jeanne d’Albret (Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1968), 385. See Kristen B. Neuschel, Word of Honor:Interpreting Noble Culture in SixteenthCentury France (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1989) and, among others, Elizabeth Goldsmith, ‘Authority, Authenticity and the Publication of Letters by Women,’ in her Writing the Female Voice: Essays on Epistolarity (Boston: Northeastern, 1989); Janet Altman, Epistolarity: Approaches to a Form (Columbus: Ohio State, 1982); Sara Jayne Steen, ‘Behind the Arras: Reading Renaissance Women’s Letters,’ in New Ways of Looking at Old Texts, ed. W. Speed Hill (Binghamton, NY: Medieval & Renaissance Texts and Studies, 1993), 229–38. Henri’s letters are quoted from Henri IV, Recueil des lettres missives, ed. Berger de Xivrey, Collection des documents inédits sur l’histoire de France, 1er série, 7+2 vols (Paris: Imprimerie royale, 1843–76). All translations are mine. The division of the property they inherited from their mother also complicated Henri and Catherine’s relationship and is the subject of several of Henri’s letters. See for example Michel De Waele, Michel, ‘Image de force, perception de faiblesse: la clémence d’Henri IV,’ in Renaissance and Reformation: Renaissance et Réforme 17 (autumn 1993): 51–60, and Barbara Diefendorf, ‘Waging Peace: Memory, Amnesia and the Edict of Nantes,’ unpublished plenary lecture, Sixteenth Century Studies Conference, Toronto, 23 October 1998. Probably because Henri had discovered that Soissons was attempting to hold both Henri of Navarre’s favour and that of his enemy Henri III, or because he thought Soissons was attempting to further his own ambitions to be king. As nobles, both required the king’s permission to marry. As well, clandestine marriage was frowned upon by both Catholic and Protestant authorities and had been outlawed in France. See Marian Rothstein, ‘Clandestine Marriage and Amadis de Gaule: the Text, the World, and the Reader,’ Sixteenth Century Journal 25 (1994), 873–86. Louise de Coligny, princesse d’Orange, Correspondance, ed. Paul Marchegay and Léon Marlet (Paris: O. Doin, 1887; repr. Genève: Slatkine, 1970), late March 1599, 148–9. My translation. Jean-Pierre Babylon, Henri IV, 219. See Mack P. Holt, The French Wars of Religion, for an account of the Huguenot emphasis on the community of believers.

76

SIBLING RELATIONS AND GENDER IN THE EARLY MODERN WORLD

18. See Roelker, Queen of Navarre, 386 and n. 32 for contemporary references. 19. Catherine’s letters to Philippe Du Plessis-Mornay and others at this time make it clear that she was aware that the King’s attempts to secure her conversion to Catholicism were part of a broader policy, and also that she understood clearly the theological points that were under debate.

CHAPTER SEVEN

Sister-Subject/Sister-Queen: Elizabeth I among her Siblings Carole Levin Elizabeth Tudor had one older half-sister and one younger half-brother by the first and third of her father Henry VIII’s wives. During her father’s reign the young Elizabeth spent a fair amount of time with one or the other of her siblings, either at court or one of the other residences where she lived. Though her relationship with her brother Edward was easier, Mary, 17 years older than her younger sister, could be kind to the child who had lost her mother in such a horrific manner – even though she loathed Elizabeth’s mother Anne Boleyn. This essay interrogates the relationships Elizabeth had with both Mary and Edward (Figure 7.1). But these were not the only siblings Elizabeth had. She not only referred to fellow sovereigns as her sisters and brothers, but Henry VIII fathered other children of whose illegitimacy there was no question. This essay also considers Elizabeth’s sibling relationships in these other contexts. Though as queen Elizabeth often used the rhetoric of family, she found her relationships with her siblings to be problematic and dangerous. Given the competing claims for power, it was often difficult for royal children to have close bonds. Henry had each of his daughters declared illegitimate when he ended the marriages with their mothers, but in his will of 1543, ratified by Parliament, he placed them back in the succession after his son Edward if he died without children of his own. Mary, as the elder, was of course the more immediate heir. Elizabeth’s life in her father’s reign was difficult, but improved considerably with the coming of her final stepmother, Katherine Parr, who was kind to all three of the children. In the final year of his reign, 1546, no doubt at Katherine’s instigation, Henry invited Elizabeth to court. Mary and Elizabeth were listed as the queen’s ladies-in-waiting.1 Edward and Elizabeth were brought together in January 1547 to be told the news of their father’s death; Edward’s advisors thought the boy would deal with the news better if he were with his sister. This seems to be the case; Elizabeth met the news with fortitude and Edward congratulated her on her stalwartness: ‘There is very little need of my consoling you, most dear sister,

78

SIBLING RELATIONS AND GENDER IN THE EARLY MODERN WORLD

7.1

Elizabeth, Edward VI, and Mary, stipple engraving by R. Page after Robert Smirke, 1824, private collection

ELIZABETH I AMONG HER SIBLINGS

79

because from your learning you know what you ought to do, and from your prudence and piety you perform what your learning causes you to know … I perceive you think of our father’s death with a calm mind.’2 Yet once Edward was boy-king at the age of nine, he spent little time in the company of his sister Elizabeth, and she in turn lived in different households from her older sister Mary. Elizabeth did attempt to stay in touch with Edward through letters, and several times she visited him at court. Though Elizabeth was writing to a younger brother, she was also well aware that she was addressing her sovereign. In a letter written to Edward only a month into his reign, she told him that her ‘feelings, indeed, proceeding not so much from the mouth as from the heart, will declare a certain due respect and faith towards your majesty.’ A year later, after a visit with Edward she wrote ‘Of your love towards me no more numerous or illustrious proofs can be given, king most serene and illustrious, than when I recently enjoyed to the full the fruit of a most delightful familiarity with you … I perceive your brotherly love most greatly inclined towards me, by which I conceive no small joy and gladness’ (Elizabeth I 13, 15–16). Though she may well have felt fondness for her brother, and possibly her sister for that matter, at this point in her life, from her early teens, Elizabeth must have been all too well aware that for her ever to ascend the throne, her siblings had to die. And those around Edward and later Mary were equally aware of what a threat to these reigns the young Princess was. In early 1549, at only 15, Elizabeth was at great risk because Thomas Seymour, among other plots to gain power as Edward’s younger maternal uncle, attempted to marry her. Though she had no one to advise her, Elizabeth learned very early to keep her own counsel and to hold back her trust. She also used her position as the king’s sister to advantage early on. After Seymour and both Elizabeth’s principal gentlewoman, Kate Ashley, and her cofferer, Thomas Parry, were lodged in the Tower, the Council sent Sir Robert Tyrwhitt to examine Elizabeth. Perhaps as a way to humiliate Elizabeth and to force a confession, Tyrwhitt told Elizabeth that there were rumors circulating that she was with child. But this did not break Elizabeth’s will. She responded with a forceful letter to the Lord Protector, asking to come to the court so that she could demonstrate that she was not pregnant. Furthermore, aware of the importance of being well thought of by the English people, Elizabeth requested that Somerset publicly deny this slander, and do so since she was the king’s sister: ‘But if it might so seem good unto our lordship and the rest of the Council to send forth a proclamation into the countries [counties] that they refrain their tongues, declaring how the tales be but lies, it should make/both the people think that you and the Council have great regard that no such rumors should be spread of any of the king’s majesty’s sisters (as I am, though unworthy)’ (Elizabeth I 32–33). Elizabeth

80

SIBLING RELATIONS AND GENDER IN THE EARLY MODERN WORLD

managed to survive this crisis and protect both Ashley and Parry. As for Seymour, she certainly did not publicly mourn his death, but she carefully remembered his fate, that he had been executed at the command of his own elder brother. In May 1549, a few months after the crisis was over and life was more tranquil for Elizabeth, she sent her brother the present of her portrait that he had requested. She also hinted in the accompanying letter that she wished she could come to court and see him more often. ‘I shall most humbly beseech your majesty that when you shall look on my picture you will witsafe to think that as you have but the outward shadow of the body afore you, so my inward mind wisheth that the body itself were oftener in your presence’ (Elizabeth I 35). For the rest of Edward’s reign Elizabeth presented herself as a demure young Protestant woman who kept the Council and her brother fully abreast of her doings. This self-presentation was successful. At the end of that year of crisis Elizabeth was invited to spend Christmas at court with her brother. The Spanish ambassador noted that Elizabeth ‘was received with great pomp and triumph, and is continually with the King.’3 Elizabeth visited court a second time in early 1551. As Edward’s health became more fragile, Elizabeth sent her brother concerned letters. In October 1552 she wrote: ‘What cause I had of sorrow when I heard first of your majesty’s sickness all men might guess but none but myself could feel.’ In the spring of 1553 she wrote to Edward that the news of his ill-health ‘grieved me greatly … I shall pray God forever to preserve you’ (Elizabeth I 37, 38, 39).

Succession and survival But Edward’s health only worsened in the spring and summer of 1553. Edward, at the behest of the Duke of Northumberland, or at least with his assistance, made a new will that excluded his sisters in favor of his cousin Lady Jane Grey, fortuitously married to the duke’s youngest son Guildford. Edward was deeply concerned about the continuation of Protestantism, Northumberland about the continuation of his power. Edward’s ‘Devise for the Succession’ was illegal. Edward was not of age, and while his father’s will had been ratified by Parliament during Henry’s lifetime, Edward’s was not. Despite his supposed closeness to Elizabeth, the argument that she, like Mary, might wed a foreigner, seemed to be a justification for Edward to exclude her in favor of the safely married Jane. Even at this time, Elizabeth was not one who could easily be persuaded to marry. Originally his devise called for the heir to be the son of Jane Grey, but given Edward’s health this was changed to Jane herself; even if all had gone smoothly, who knew when Jane and

ELIZABETH I AMONG HER SIBLINGS

81

Guildford would actually produce a boy. In the devise both Mary and Elizabeth are declared ‘illegitimate and not lawfully begotten.’ Edward added the hope that after his death his sisters would ‘live in quiet order, according to our appointment,’ a vain hope indeed.4 Edward failed rapidly. For this plan to work, Northumberland knew that he had to have both princesses under his control before he announced Edward’s death and Jane’s accession. Events were moving too fast for the duke, and with the king’s death kept secret, Northumberland sent both Edward’s sisters the message that his last wish was to die in his sister’s arms. Whatever the news that Edward was dying might have meant personally to either sister, it also meant that according to the succession as dictated by Henry VIII, Mary was the next queen. She immediately took to the road for London with a small entourage but was stopped on the way with the message that she was riding into a trap – some members of the King’s Council, while they might publicly support Northumberland thinking they had little choice, in fact did not want to upset the succession or see him continue in power in this way. While Mary had immediately flown to action, Elizabeth, concerned with what might be going on and sensing a trap, sent word that she herself was too ill to travel – a ploy she would use again in her dealings with a sibling.5 Mary became queen without a battle; on 19 July the Duke of Northumberland was arrested, and Mary proclaimed ruler of the realm. Ten days later Elizabeth came to London to await Mary’s triumphant entry, and on 31 July rode out of London to meet Mary and escort her into the city. Elizabeth may well have been concerned over how her sister would respond to her – their sisterhood depended on their father and their mothers had been bitter rivals. In the first euphoria of becoming queen, Mary greeted her younger sister with great affection and on 3 August, when Mary rode in state, Elizabeth was immediately behind her sister, the queen. But this warm state of affairs cooled rapidly and Mary went so far as to deny her relationship to Elizabeth altogether, claiming to those close to her that Elizabeth instead resembled the musician Mark Smeaton, ‘a very handsome man,’ but also the one of lowest status of the five executed as Anne Boleyn’s lovers.6 Few people accepted Mary’s claim. Though Elizabeth had the dark eyes of her mother, her red hair came from Henry VIII, and Elizabeth was proud that people saw her very much as a Tudor. But the Catholics were also putting forth propaganda that Anne Boleyn was a witch, and Simon Renard, Mary’s Spanish ambassador and close confidant, considered Elizabeth ‘a spirit full of enchantment.’7 Though Edward VI and Elizabeth had shared similar religious beliefs, which one would have thought would make her an acceptable heir, at the end of his reign the dying Edward had apparently acquiesced or even initiated a change in the succession that would have denied Elizabeth her rights and

82

SIBLING RELATIONS AND GENDER IN THE EARLY MODERN WORLD

placed her in extreme danger. She and Mary not only had personal bitterness with which to contend, but a very different religious outlook, and one that, for Mary, was the guiding force of her life. As Mary returned England to obedience to Rome, she must have been all too aware of how her younger sister was the Protestant alternative. At first Elizabeth boycotted the Catholic services at court, but by September of 1553 it was clear her position was too dangerous to continue that. Elizabeth begged Mary for instruction in the ‘true faith,’ but though Elizabeth claimed conversion, Mary must have been suspicious, since on 8 September, the first day Elizabeth was to attend mass, the Princess asked to be excused because of a stomach ache. When the queen insisted on her presence, Elizabeth ‘complained loudly on the way, keeping up a pretence of illness.’8 Elizabeth must have become even more concerned the following month when Parliament passed an act that upheld the legality of Henry’s marriage to Catherine of Aragon. Many might well argue that since Elizabeth was legally a bastard, she had no right to succeed the throne. Elizabeth, upset with the political and religious mood at court, became even more sporadic in her attendance at mass. Though at the beginning of the reign Elizabeth had had precedence over all ladies at court save the queen, by November the French ambassador Antoine de Noailles was noting that Mary was ceding that position to their cousin Margaret, Countess of Lennox, and sometimes even to ‘Madame Frances, who is the Duchess of Suffolk,’ and also mother of the condemned Lady Jane Grey.9 This clearly put even more strain on the sisters’ relationship. Mary was furious when she heard that Elizabeth was meeting secretly with the French ambassador; Elizabeth managed to convince Mary’s representatives this had not happened, but it was becoming more and more evident that Mary was eager to believe the worst of her younger sister. The Venetian ambassador wrote home of Mary’s ‘scorn and ill will’ toward Elizabeth.10 Elizabeth decided to leave court and go to her residence at Ashridge, but begged to see Mary before she left. Elizabeth assured her sister of her devotion to the Catholic doctrine, but Mary was not convinced. Though Mary gave Elizabeth a gift of a coif of rich sables, it was not out of sisterly affection; Renard had suggested it would be unwise for Elizabeth to leave court feeling disaffected. What Elizabeth wanted much more from her sister was the promise that she would allow Elizabeth to defend herself in person if Mary heard anything to her discredit, begging Mary, de Noailles heard, ‘not to put faith in stories to the disadvantage of the Princess without giving her a hearing.’11 Mary, however, by this time felt great hostility to her sister, convinced Elizabeth would ‘bring about some great evil unless she is dealt with.’12 The evil Mary feared turned out to be the rebellion led by Thomas Wyatt

ELIZABETH I AMONG HER SIBLINGS

83

against her marriage to Philip of Spain in early 1554. Though the rebellion was defeated on 29 January Mary demanded that Elizabeth return to court and respond to charges that she had known and approved of the plot. Elizabeth responded that she was too ill to travel. Mary did not believe her sister; she sent three members of her Council – Lord William Howard, Sir Edward Hastings, and Sir Thomas Cornwallis – accompanied by two doctors, Thomas Wendy and George Owen. The doctors were ordered to examine Elizabeth and determine just how ill she really was. Mary informed the doctors that unless travel would actually endanger Elizabeth’s life, then she must answer the queen’s summons. The doctors admitted that, though Elizabeth was unwell, travel would not be life-threatening. Elizabeth was not so sure. This decision was made on 12 February, the same day her cousin Jane Grey was executed. Elizabeth may well have believed that traveling to the capital could be fatal. While Elizabeth did seem truly to be in ill-health, she also appears to have exploited her physical condition so that she could prolong the travel time. The entourage moved slowly, taking five days to travel the 33 miles to London. Mary’s confidant, Simon Renard, wanted Elizabeth sent directly to the Tower, as did Mary’s chancellor, Stephen Gardiner, Bishop of Winchester. But several members of Mary’s Council were uncomfortable with the idea of imprisoning the sister of the Queen. Though Renard saw Elizabeth as an enormous danger to Mary, he was also impressed by her self-control and intuitive sense of self-presentation: The Lady Elizabeth arrived yesterday, dressed all in white and followed by a great company of the Queen’s people and her own. She had her litter open to show herself to the people, and her pale face kept a proud, haughty expression in order to mask her vexation.13

Elizabeth was sensitive to the symbolic import of colors throughout her life. When she met with Mary at the very beginning of her sister’s reign Elizabeth had all her ladies dressed in the Tudor colors of green and white. Dressing all in white as she was carried through the street was a visual statement of her innocence and virtue; by drawing back the curtains of her litter, she was demonstrating her desire for the people to see her and to know that she had nothing to conceal from them. Elizabeth was held for nearly a month in her rooms in Whitehall while Mary and her Council argued about her fate. Since no one was willing to guard Elizabeth under house arrest, Mary decided she would indeed send her to the Tower. The Earl of Sussex and another member of the council were sent to take Elizabeth to the Tower by barge, as Mary and her Council feared there might be attempts to rescue her if she were taken through the streets of London. When Elizabeth was told she was being sent to the Tower she begged

84

SIBLING RELATIONS AND GENDER IN THE EARLY MODERN WORLD

for an audience with Mary before the order was carried out. The order to the Tower without a chance to see Mary was what Elizabeth had most feared, and was exactly what she had begged from her sister at their last meeting. Sussex knew the queen would not see Elizabeth, but when this request was denied Elizabeth pleaded that she might at least write to Mary before she was moved. Sussex yielded; Elizabeth was, after all, like Mary, the daughter of Henry VIII. In her letter Elizabeth beseeched Mary to see her before imprisoning her in the Tower. At this moment of crisis, Elizabeth not only recognized the need to be able to see and talk with her sister, she understood the importance of carefully crafting her request. Elizabeth urged Mary to grant her an interview so that she could respond to the charges against her: And to this present hour I protest afore God … that I never practiced, counseled, nor consented to anything that might be prejudicial to your person any way or dangerous to the state by any mean. And therefore I humbly beseech your majesty to let me answer afore yourself and not suffer me to trust your councillors—yea, and that afore I go to the Tower (if it be possible); if not, afore I be further condemned (Elizabeth I 41).

It is perhaps not surprising that at this time of crisis, Elizabeth would recall a previous threat to her personal and political safety, the Seymour incident. Begging Mary to see her, Elizabeth refers to Seymour’s death at the order of his brother, Somerset: I have heard in my time of many cast away for want of coming to the presence of their prince, and in late days I heard my lord of Somerset say that if his brother had been suffered to speak with him, he had never suffered … Therefore once again, with humbleness of my heart because I am not suffered to bow the knees of my body, I humbly crave to speak with your Highness (Elizabeth I 41–2).

Elizabeth hoped that if she could actually see and talk with her sister, she could convince Mary of her innocence, despite their differences. Elizabeth steadfastly denied any association with Wyatt and insisted on her loyalty to Mary. But Mary was furious that Sussex allowed Elizabeth to write to her and she refused her fervent plea for a meeting; perhaps Mary did not trust herself to remain firm if she and Elizabeth actually talked. Simon Renard was convinced that Elizabeth wrote the letter for the express purpose of delaying her imprisonment, but it seems likely that Elizabeth truly believed that were she able to see and speak with Mary, she might avert this catastrophe. The letter only gained Elizabeth a one-day reprieve; the next day she was taken to the Tower. In the next months Elizabeth became so convinced that her sister would have her executed she considered begging Mary for a French swordsman, so she could be executed in the same manner as her mother. While Elizabeth feared Mary greatly, the Queen in the end did not have her

ELIZABETH I AMONG HER SIBLINGS

85

younger half sister killed. When Mary was dying in November 1558, she sent word to Elizabeth begging her sister to continue the Roman Catholic faith. But Elizabeth’s father had broken with the Pope to marry her mother, and when Elizabeth became queen she re-established the Church of England.

Queen and sister The new Protestant queen had lost both her brother and sister. But while she was queen she used the rhetoric of family often in her letters to other monarchs, on occasion calling herself sister to both her cousin Mary Stuart and Mary’s son James. As Lena Orlin points out, Elizabeth ‘turned to political purpose her membership in the figurative family of European sovereigns.’14 Indeed, the special relationship of monarchs was such she even called herself ‘sister’ when she signed a letter to the King of Morocco.15 The official siblings of Elizabeth I were her two predecessors, Edward and Mary, who had both ruled before her, but Henry VIII had other children about whose illegitimacy there was no question and who had no claim to the throne. Elizabeth’s relations with these siblings was much less clear but they also played some role in her development as queen as well as sister. Henry Fitzroy, Duke of Richmond, died in his teens soon after witnessing the execution of Elizabeth’s mother Anne Boleyn. There seems no connection between Elizabeth and Fitzroy. Henry, however, may have had other sons. Some people have argued that Mary Boleyn, briefly Henry’s mistress before he fell in love with her sister Anne, had a son by the king, but William Carey acknowledged the boy as his and the king never suggested otherwise, nor did Henry Carey. There was a rumor about Henry Carey as the son of Henry VIII floating around in the 1530s, and Anthony Hoskins has recently argued that not only Henry but his sister Catherine Carey were the children of Mary Boleyn Carey by Henry VIII.16 But Elizabeth never recognized either of the Careys as her half-siblings, though she was very close to them, especially Catherine. Retha Warnicke insists that ‘Until her death in early 1569, Catherine was one of her cousin Elizabeth’s closest friends’ (emphasis mine).17 Elizabeth enobled Henry Carey as Lord Husdon and he served her in a number of positions. Elizabeth was certainly fond of her Carey relatives, but probably because of the connection with Anne Boleyn. On the other hand, Sir John Perrot did claim to be the son of Henry VIII, though Henry never formally acknowledged him so. Perrot, born sometime between 1527 and 1530, was the son of Mary Berkely, whose husband Sir Thomas Perrot was a courtier and wealthy landowner. John’s physical resemblance to Henry VIII fueled rumors that he was the king’s son, a belief that Sir John strongly encouraged. Perrot was knighted as part of Edward VI’s

86

SIBLING RELATIONS AND GENDER IN THE EARLY MODERN WORLD

coronation but his Protestantism did not endear him to Mary and he was briefly imprisoned during her reign for sheltering heretics; after his release he fled abroad. Perrot returned upon Elizabeth’s accession and in fact was one of the four bearers who carried the canopy of state during her coronation. In Elizabeth’s reign Perrot was sent to Ireland, a place that destroyed a number of her courtiers. Perrot’s talent for making enemies at court, especially Sir Christopher Hatton, also did not help him. Evidence of a treasonable correspondence between Perrot and Philip II was shown to be a forgery, but in 1592 Perrot was still found guilty of treason, possibly because of his contemptuous comments about Elizabeth. He had stated publicly that Elizabeth was ‘ready to piss herself for fear’ of Philip of Spain. Perrot was lodged in the Tower but Elizabeth was reluctant to have him executed. ‘God’s death! Will the Queen suffer her brother to be offered up a sacrifice to the envy of his frisking adversaries?’ Perrot exclaimed. Whether she believed he was her brother or not, Elizabeth may well have remembered decades earlier how she felt in the Tower waiting for word whether or not Mary would order her death. While rumors were circulating that Elizabeth intended to pardon him, Sir John died of natural causes. Elizabeth restored the estates to his son Thomas.18 While Henry VIII never admitted to the paternity of Sir John Perrot, he did acknowledge that he was father of Ethelreda Malte, though he had her raised as if she were the natural child of his tailor, John Malte, who was paid well for the privilege. Ethelreda’s mother was Joanna Dyngley, but she had no hand in her upbringing. Ironically and indirectly, Ethelreda may have done more than any other sibling to establish a sense of family for Elizabeth. John Harington of Stepney was treasurer of the King’s camps and buildings at Stepney and intensely loyal to Henry. In payment for Harington’s fidelity, the king arranged a marriage for him in 1546 with his illegitimate daughter and at the time of the marriage granted Ethelreda a large grant of forfeited monastic land, which Harington inherited on Ethelreda’s death, which apparently occurred sometime between 1555 and 1559.19 The lands Harington inherited on her death made his fortune and he showed his gratitude to the king by the steadfast devotion to his younger daughter Elizabeth. Harington, as a servant to Thomas Seymour, had been in Elizabeth’s household when she lived with Katherine Parr early in Edward’s reign. Though still married to Ethelreda, by early in Mary’s reign Harington was very much in love with Isabella Markham, one of the six gentlewomen of Elizabeth’s household. In 1554 John and his wife Ethelreda accompanied Elizabeth to wait upon her when she was imprisoned in the Tower. While there Harington wrote to Mary’s Chancellor Stephen Gardiner. After describing his own duty to Elizabeth he added, ‘My wife is her servant, and does but rejoice in this our misery, when we look with whom we are held in bondage. Our gracious King

ELIZABETH I AMONG HER SIBLINGS

87

Henry did ever advance our families’ good estate … wherefore our service is in remembrance of such good kindness.’ Suggesting a close relationship with Elizabeth, Harington described how she ‘does honor us in tender sort, and scorns not to shed her tears with ours.’20 Harington’s marriage to Ethelreda may have had its difficulties, especially given his love for Isabella, whom he married early in Elizabeth’s reign. When John and Isabella’s son John was born in 1561 Elizabeth agreed to be his godmother.

Elizabeth’s relationships with her siblings caused her danger and anxiety. In many ways Elizabeth had little freedom over how she would relate to her siblings; these relationships were predetermined by the political and religious constraints of the time, which made uncomplicated familial affection impossible. But Elizabeth was able to structure some positive family feelings. Being a godmother apparently gave the queen some joy. As her godson Sir John Harington said of her, ‘We did all love her, for she said she loved us … When she smiled it was pure sunshine.’21

Notes I would like to thank Sara Mendelson and Jo Carney for their help with this work and so much else. Elizabeth Darocha, Lisa Schuelke, and Natasha Luepke all helped with the research when I needed it. I am very grateful. Quotations from Elizabeth’s writings are taken from Leah S. Marcus, Janel Mueller, and Mary Beth Rose, ed., Elizabeth I: Collected Works (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2000). 1. 2.

Anne Somerset, Elizabeth I (New York, St Martin’s Press, 1992), 14. Frank A. Mumby, The Girlhood of Queen Elizabeth: A Narrative in Contemporary Letters (London: Constable and Co., 1909), 81. 3. Somerset, Elizabeth I, 28. 4. Ibid., 30. 5. ‘Elizabeth, according to most accounts, had one of her real or feigned attacks of illness at the hour of Northumberland’s temporary success’; Mumby, Girlhood of Queen Elizabeth, 81. 6. Henry Clifford, The Life of Jane Dormer, Duchess of Feria, ed. Joseph Stevenson (London: Burnes and Oates, 1887), 80. 7. Royall Tyler, ed., Calendar of Letters, Despatches, and State Papers, Relating to the Negotiations between England and Spain, Preserved in the Archive at Simancas and Elsewhere (London: Longman, Green, Longman & Roberts, 1862–1954), vol. XI, 169, 393. 8. Mumby, Girlhood of Queen Elizabeth, 80. 9. Ibid., 92. 10. Rawdon Brown, ed., Calendar of State Papers and Manuscripts, Relating to English Affairs, Existing in the Archives and Collections of Venice (London: Her

88

11. 12. 13. 14. 15. 16.

17. 18.

19.

20. 21.

SIBLING RELATIONS AND GENDER IN THE EARLY MODERN WORLD

Majesty’s Stationery Office, 1881; repr. Nedeln/Liechtenstein: Kraus, 1970), vol. VI:2, 1058). Mumby, Girlhood of Queen Elizabeth, 97. Tyler, ed., Calendar of Letters, vol. XI, 418. Ibid., vol. XII, 125. Lena Orlin, ‘The Fictional Families of Elizabeth I,’ Political Rhetoric, Power, and Renaissance Women, ed. Carole Levin and Patricia A. Sullivan (Albany: SUNY Press, 1995), 94. The point about the king of Morocco was made by Professor Nabil Matar in his talk ‘Queen Elizabeth and Mulay Ahmad al-Mansur’ at the symposium, The English and the Others, Newberry Library, Chicago, 5 December 2003. For Hoskins’s argument see his article ‘Mary Boleyn Carey’s Children: Offspring of King Henry VIII?’ Genealogists’ Magazine 25:9 (March 1977), 345–52. A monk of Syon in his confession claimed that Mr Skydmore [Sir John Scudamore] had introduced him to ‘young master Care, saying that he was our sovereign lord the king’s son, by our sovereign lady the queen’s sister, whom the queen’s grace might not suffer to be in the court’; Paul Friedmann, Anne Boleyn (London: Macmillan and Co., 1884), vol. II, 324. But Catholics would certainly have encouraged any negative comments about Henry and the Boleyns and this statement, while interesting, does not prove that Henry Carey was Henry’s son. The monk was also incorrect that Anne did not want young Henry Carey at court. He was Anne’s ward, and she made sure that he received a fine education; see Retha M. Warnicke, The Rise and Fall of Anne Boleyn (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989), 148. Ibid., 238. For more on Perrot, consult H. C. G. Matthews and Brian Harrison, ed., Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004), vol. 43, 810–15, and see Hiram Morgan, ‘The Fall of Sir John Perrot,’ in The Reign of Queen Elizabeth: Court and Culture in the Last Decade, ed. John Guy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995), 109–25. Ruth Hughey has found evidence that Ethelreda was still alive in 1555 and died before 1559. Hughey claims that there was a daughter, Hester, ‘who was living in 1568 but nothing else is known about her’; Ruth Hughey, John Harington of Stepney: Tudor Gentleman (Columbus: Ohio State University Press, 1971), 18, 36. See also Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, vol. 25, ‘Harington, John,’ 283–4, ‘Harington, Sir John,’ 285–8. Hughey, John Harington of Stepney, 45. Sir John Harington, Nugae antiquae, ed. Henry Harington (London: J. Dodsley, 1779), vol. I, 140–41.

CHAPTER EIGHT

Mary Sidney’s Other Brothers Margaret P. Hannay Mary Sidney Herbert, Countess of Pembroke, is closely associated with her famous brother, Sir Philip Sidney.1 Indeed, some of his posthumous fame comes from her efforts to commemorate him by patronizing writers who praised him, by supervising the publication of his work, by writing poems to commemorate him, and by completing the metrical Psalms that he had begun. In these ways she was celebrated by her contemporaries as Philip Sidney’s Phoenix. They became so closely associated in the public mind that most poems praising her mention Philip and an eighteenth-century manuscript of Philip Sidney’s epitaph identifies him simply as ‘brother to the Countesse of Pembroke.’2 But Mary Sidney had two younger brothers, Robert and Thomas, both of whom had served with Philip in the Netherlands and were present when he died there. Robert was the chief mourner who walked immediately behind ‘The Corpes’ at Philip Sidney’s splendid funeral; young Thomas was one of the other principal mourners who followed Robert. As a woman, Mary Sidney could not participate in the funeral, but she was represented by her husband, who rode with the ‘Earles and Barons of his kindred and frendes,’ including the Sidneys’ uncles, the earls of Leicester, Huntingdon, and Warwick.3 In her writings, however, Mary Sidney recasts herself as the chief mourner. In ‘The Doleful Lay of Clorinda,’ probably first composed shortly after Philip’s death in 1586 and revised with Edmund Spenser for its first publication in 1595, she complains that she has no one left to mourn with her, for ‘none alive like sorrowful remains.’4 She is probably referring to her mother and father, who had both died in the same year as Philip, and perhaps also to her youngest brother, Thomas, who had died on 26 July 1595. None of them remains to mourn with her, but by honoring Philip, she honors them all. Remarkably, she assumes the role of senior representative of her family, and she seems to discount her brother Robert entirely. (Note that this argument does not rest on my belief that she is the author of the ‘Lay.’5 If Spenser wrote it, then he intends to please her by portraying her as mourning alone.) In this pastoral world she becomes the chief mourner, as she does in her later poem, ‘To the Angel Spirit of the Most Excellent Sir Philip Sidney.’ In this chapter I

90

SIBLING RELATIONS AND GENDER IN THE EARLY MODERN WORLD

will consider Mary Sidney’s complex connections with her brothers Thomas and, especially, Robert, as those relationships can be reconstructed from family correspondence, accounts, and literary works, and I will attempt to answer the question, Why does she mourn alone? If we attempt to reconstruct the family dynamics among the siblings, we see that Mary Sidney’s closest relationships throughout her childhood and youth were not with her brothers, but with her sisters. (For the various Sidney siblings I will use first name only, rather than constantly repeating ‘Sidney.’) Mary was evidently named for her dead sister, Mary Margaret, as was customary. Her sister Elizabeth was one year old when Mary was born, and the two girls were raised together until Elizabeth’s death in Dublin when Mary was six. By then she had a younger sister, Ambrosia. Mary and Ambrosia studied and played together, and even dressed alike, as in their winter gowns of purple mockado (imitation velvet) with warm woolen petticoats, or their more formal dresses of crimson satin, with Ambrosia’s dresses made ‘in all points’ like Mary’s, as the account books record.6 They learned French together, probably with Jean Tassel, and Italian with ‘Mistress Maria the Italian.’7 The family no doubt spoke French and Italian at home on occasion, for their mother, Mary Dudley Sidney, wrote French verse in her books and was fluent enough in Italian to converse with the Spanish ambassador in that language. Their father was commended for his knowledge of modern languages, including French and Italian, and Philip and Robert made good use of both languages on their Continental travels and embassies, as Mary later did in her translations and eventually in her own Continental sojourn. Philip and Robert, at least, also knew some German and Spanish, and Robert studied Dutch, although it is unclear whether their sisters also studied these languages so important for political embassies.8 Philip left for Shrewsbury School when Mary was three, so she would have seen him only occasionally in her childhood. He boarded at the home of George Leigh and during the school term normally remained in Shrewsbury even when the rest of the family was at the family estate, Penshurst Place, or traveled to Henry Sidney’s official lodgings in Wales and Ireland.9 When Philip left for Oxford in the winter of 1567/68, the children at home were Mary, Robert, Ambrosia, and Thomas; Elizabeth had died that November. The account books give a charming glimpse of the four younger children, dressed alike by their proud parents. In 1571, when Mary was nine, Robert seven, Ambrosia probably six, and Thomas just two, the girls had matching dresses of purple and orange changeable taffeta, and the two boys had cloaks in matching fabric.10 Philip, seven years older than Mary and nearly fifteen years older than Thomas, was held up as a model for the younger children. Sir Henry later instructed Robert, ‘Imitate [Philip’s] vertues, exercises, studyes, and acyons;

MARY SIDNEY’S OTHER BROTHERS

91

he ys a rare ornament of thys age, the very formular that all well dysposed young gentlemen of ouer court do form allsoe thear manners and lyfe by. In troth I speak yt wythout flatery of hym, or of my self, he hathe the most rare vertues, that ever I found in any man … Once agayn I say imytate him.’11 One can only imagine what such advice did for the relationship between the brothers, but it was mitigated by the assurance that Philip, ‘in loving you, is comparable with me, or exceedeth me.’ When Philip was with the younger children, they did not stand on equal footing. Their father’s evaluation of his sons is reflected in his description of them as ‘one [Philip] of excellent good proof, the second [Robert] of great good hope, and the third [Thomas] not to be despayred of, but very well to be liked.’12 His comments make it difficult to tell if he was just differentiating by age and therefore by what his sons had accomplished, or whether young Thomas, who was not to be despaired of, had been spoiled like so many youngest children. Part of the expected aristocratic male education was a sojourn abroad, and all three Sidney sons did have a period of Continental travel, beginning with Philip’s nearly five years traveling through France, the Low Countries, Italy, and as far as Hungary and Poland. Because Philip was perceived on the Continent as the son of the vice-regent of Ireland (Proregis Hibernici filius) and as the heir of the powerful earls of Warwick and Leicester, and because he had been made ‘Baron de Sidenay’ by Charles IX of France, he was treated almost as a prince.13 Hubert Languet and other Huguenot leaders saw him as their best hope in forming a Protestant League to counter the power of Catholic Spain, and he was considered worthy to marry the daughter of William of Orange. (Elizabeth made certain his position in England was considerably less, giving him the ‘double life’ that Alan Stewart describes in his recent biography.) Robert followed in Philip’s footsteps on a somewhat scaled-down tour of Europe, with many of the same tutors and contacts.

The court and a good marriage The girls were under less pressure from comparison with Philip. They do not seem to have been less valued by the family, but their opportunities and responsibilities were not the same as their brothers’. They never studied at Shrewsbury School or Oxford, of course. Although they were given the rigorous humanist education evident in Mary Sidney’s later works, they were primarily trained to make a good marriage and become respected aristocratic women – who could intercede for friends and relatives, encourage the spiritual instruction of the household, command the respect of servants, and enrich family life with music and needlework. In the Sidney family there was also the expectation that the girls would serve at court, keeping the queen

92

SIBLING RELATIONS AND GENDER IN THE EARLY MODERN WORLD

company at chapel, in various ceremonies, and in her leisure hours, conversing with courtiers and with foreign ambassadors, and participating in a sophisticated literary and musical culture. There is no reason to suppose that Ambrosia would have become less distinguished than her sister Mary. Her sudden death at Ludlow Castle in February 1575 was devastating for the family. Her godfather, Ambrose Dudley, Earl of Warwick, built a magnificent tomb for her in the parish church at Ludlow, and her father’s heart was eventually buried near her. Her death must have been an even greater loss for the other children, particularly for Mary, who was then the last surviving girl of four sisters. (Imagine what they might have written had they lived. Mary Margaret, Elizabeth, Mary, and Ambrosia might have inspired and encouraged each other, like the learned Cooke sisters of the previous generation, and their combined voices could have altered English literary history.) Ambrosia’s death paradoxically was the beginning of Mary’s life at court, even as Philip’s death was later to prompt her literary role as writer and patron. Queen Elizabeth, attempting to console the Sidneys on Ambrosia’s death, noted that they still had one daughter ‘of very good hope’ and invited her to court, promising to ‘have a speciall care of her.’14 Mary Sidney later describes her service at court in a letter to Elizabeth thanking her for accepting her son William at court, ‘remembring (what is of deerest memory) how in my youngest times my self was grased by the same heavenly grace, the same sunn which evermore hath powre to perfit the greatest imperfection by the rarest example of all perfection.’ She astutely attributes her own education, worth, and purpose all to Elizabeth: ‘I, who, by a more particular bond, was borne, and bred, more, yowr Majesty then any other Creature and do, I protest, desire to live but to serve and observe yow.’15 At court her powerful uncle Robert Dudley, Earl of Leicester, who termed her his ‘daughter’, was her sponsor, so she held a place of honor at the Kenilworth festivities, which she attended with her family. Her beauty, intelligence, and evident charm added to her status to make her one of the most eligible young women at court. Her father was delighted when Leicester made a match with Henry Herbert, second Earl of Pembroke, his friend and contemporary.16 Gender distinctions can cut both ways. While Philip was being insulted by the Earl of Oxford in the famous tennis court quarrel, while Queen Elizabeth was reminding him that he was merely a gentleman and owed duties to the great lords, Mary became Oxford’s social equal. At age 15 she achieved, through marriage, the rank and fortune that eluded her brother Philip. True, it was her husband’s wealth, not hers, but she still was mistress of Wilton, Ramsbury, Ivychurch, and the enormous London house, Baynards Castle. An early letter shows how difficult it was to adjust to her new rank and

MARY SIDNEY’S OTHER BROTHERS

93

responsibilities, but she quickly grew into the role.17 Her stepmother-in-law and her sister-in-law, both of whom lived with the Pembrokes for the first decade of her marriage, would have given her a valuable apprenticeship in the duties of a wealthy countess. No doubt there was considerable tension among the women. It cannot have been easy for Lady Anne Herbert Talbot, whose husband had been heir to the Shrewsbury title and fortune, to return to her brother’s house, nor can it have been easy for Anne Talbot Herbert, the Dowager Countess of Pembroke, to see her former position assumed by a teenager. Nor can it have been easy for the young countess to be under the direction of the two widows; nevertheless, they would have mentored young Mary in her duties. In her late teens and early twenties Mary was thus occupied with learning to supervise servants, welcome dignitaries, and handle the myriad administrative tasks that were the province of an aristocratic lady with some two hundred servants. In these years she also bore four children, with at least one miscarriage or still birth thereafter, and even with a full complement of nurses, the children were her primary concern. Tragically, little Katherine died at ‘three yeare old and one daie,’ just hours before her son Philip Herbert was born.18 During this time her brother Philip made frequent visits to Wilton. For Philip, who had traveled through Europe and had been expected to take a prominent role on the world stage, his pastoral retreat at Wilton was bittersweet, the result of Queen Elizabeth’s reluctance to allow him a public role. His time there was seen as neglecting his duties in the increasingly reproachful letters he received from his mentor Languet. For Mary, of course, Wilton was her duty. The difference in their responsibilities can be seen in Philip’s casual comment in the Defence of Poetry that ‘Truly a needle cannot do much hurt, and as truly (with leave of ladies be it spoken) it cannot do much good.’19 That comment may have stung, for Mary was renowned for her needlework, an accomplishment mocked as trivial, but it may also reflect Philip’s own discomfort with his literary activities with his sister when he ought to have been active in public service.

The family alliance There were two areas where Mary could stand on common ground with her brothers – political and literary. She could not serve as an ambassador or fight in the wars like her brothers, but she had connections at court, and she could offer her home as a meeting place. When Philip was delegated to write a letter for the Dudley/Sidney alliance opposing Elizabeth’s proposed marriage to Alençon, they met at Baynards Castle. No doubt she also offered hospitality to her brother’s friend and ally Philippe de Mornay, whose work she later

94

SIBLING RELATIONS AND GENDER IN THE EARLY MODERN WORLD

translated. Philip’s friends Daniel Rogers and Hubert Languet referred to her as a valued member of the Sidney family and, as I have argued elsewhere, she supported the family alliance through patronage, intercession at court, and admonitory flattery of the queen.20 But her real strength was in the literary world. During the early years of her marriage, when Philip spent considerable time with her at Wilton or in London, the siblings seem to have delighted in this opportunity to become reacquainted as adults and to share their literary interests. Philip says that she inspired him to write the Arcadia, that he wrote much of it in her presence, and that he sent her bits on loose sheets of paper as they were done. No doubt they discussed the plot as the work progressed, and Philip took delight in inserting asides to the ‘fair ladies,’ Mary and the women around her.21 Robert does not seem to have been included in much of this literary activity, although when he was traveling on the Continent Philip did promise to send him his ‘toyfull books.’22 Philip’s closest family alliances were, however, with his brothers. As we have seen, Robert shared Philip’s education and military training, they traveled to many of the same places in Europe, and they both sought a military career as a means of advancement at court (Figure 8.1). Robert had all the disadvantages of a younger brother who was not the heir, but he did become Philip’s colleague. Even young Thomas followed in his brothers’ footsteps; both Robert and Thomas traveled with Leicester to serve in the Low Countries when Philip went as Leicester’s second in command of the English forces attempting to free the Dutch from the occupying Spanish army. Robert fought in the skirmish outside of Zutphen in which Philip was wounded, and was later knighted by Leicester for his valor in that engagement. Robert and Thomas shared the general optimism that Philip would soon recover, but watched helplessly as gangrene set in. And, as George Gifford, a minister present at the deathbed, records, Sir Philip in his last words did ‘exhort his two brothers in an affectionated manner.’23 Robert, Fulke Greville says, showed ‘infinite weakness’ in the expression of his grief, but Philip remained steadfast in the face of death.24 All of the siblings were devastated by Philip’s death. The depth of Robert’s anguish is depicted in a painting owned by Leicester showing young Robert dressed in black and leaning heavily on a halberd, with helmet and gauntlets on the ground. Behind him is portrayed a battle in front of a fortified city, probably intended to represent Zutphen.25 Robert never wrote directly about his brother’s death, but the searing experience of watching him die is reflected in the imagery of pain, gangrene, and amputation in his Sonnet 26. Mary’s grief is depicted in the elegies that she wrote for Philip. Earlier that year she had been the only child present in England for the deaths of her father and her mother; she was reportedly ill, perhaps with the same disease that killed her

MARY SIDNEY’S OTHER BROTHERS

95

8.1 Paul van Somer, Robert Sidney, 1st Earl of Leicester, oil on canvas, c. 1616–18, by kind of permission of Viscount De L’Isle from his private collection

96

SIBLING RELATIONS AND GENDER IN THE EARLY MODERN WORLD

mother, and near death herself. Even after she recovered physically she remained in Wiltshire to mourn the deaths, in such rapid succession, of her daughter Katherine, both parents, and brother. Thus, by the end of 1586, out of the Sidneys’ nuclear family of parents, four daughters and three sons, only Mary, Robert, and Thomas survived. Mary was 25 (Figure 8.2), Robert 23, and Thomas just 17. They still had, for a couple of years, the sponsorship of Leicester, but he was in those years frequently in disgrace with the queen – particularly for his secret marriage to Lettice Knollys Deveureux, and for his assumption of the title of Governor General of the United Provinces and Cities of the Low Countries, against Elizabeth’s explicit instructions.

8.2 Nicholas Hilliard, Mary Sidney Herbert, Countess of Pembroke, watercolour on vellum, diameter 5.4 cm, c. 1590, London, National Portrait Gallery

MARY SIDNEY’S OTHER BROTHERS

97

During this time of personal tragedy and national emergency, as the Spanish Armada approached, Robert was called to serve with Leicester at Tilbury, and probably heard Elizabeth give her famous speech there. Mary provided a haven in Wiltshire for Thomas and for Robert’s wife and baby, her goddaughter Mary Sidney, later Lady Wroth. Robert continued national service when he was sent on embassy to King James of Scotland, and when he was appointed to Philip’s position of Governor of Flushing (July 1588). While Robert assumed Philip’s official duties, Mary took it upon herself to continue his literary work and patronage. From Leicester’s death in 1588, Robert’s primary alliance was with his sister and her husband, and later with her sons, who eventually became the earls of Pembroke and Montgomery. The subsequent relationship of Mary and Robert with their youngest brother Thomas is more difficult to trace. Since Thomas was not of age when his parents died, his father’s will left him to the care of his aunt and uncle, the Earl and Countess of Huntingdon; nevertheless, he was with his sister in Wiltshire for an extended period during the attack of the Armada, as we have seen, and presumably on many other occasions. The childless Katherine Dudley Hastings was so close to all the Sidney children that Daniel Rogers termed her their ‘second mother,’ which is clearly how she saw herself, since she had taken the children with her to court, particularly young Thomas, and she looked to Robert for comfort when her husband died.26 The Huntingdons later arranged Thomas’s marriage to another of their charges, Margaret Dakins Devereux, in what may well have been a love match. Thomas died in his twenties, evidently of smallpox, in 1595. No letters to or from him are known to have survived, and Robert’s agent Rowland Whyte reports to him the intense grief of his guardian the Countess of Huntingdon, not that of his sister.27 We cannot read too much into those remarks, however, since a sister’s grief would be assumed, the Countess of Huntingdon was dramatic in her mourning, and Whyte tends to report various family deaths in the context of what Robert might gain from them. Robert continued to rely on his sister’s knowledge of the court and on his alliance with her husband. In one of his earliest letters to his wife Barbara Gamage Sidney, written from the camp at Tilbury, he says that he has sent all the ‘news’ in his letter to his sister.28 This becomes a pattern with references to letters to and from his sister frequently appearing in his correspondence with his wife and with his agent Rowland Whyte. If these letters had not been lost we would have a much fuller understanding of their relationship. Mary’s one extant family letter is addressed to Barbara, sending her own baby nurse in September 1590 when Barbara had gone with her little daughter ‘Malkin’ (later Mary Wroth) to join her husband in Flushing; William Sidney was born under the care of this nurse at Flushing on 10 November.29 The closeness of the relationship between Mary and Robert is also

98

SIBLING RELATIONS AND GENDER IN THE EARLY MODERN WORLD

indicated by their efforts to help each other. When she used her formidable writing skills to seek leave for her brother Robert to return from Flushing, Whyte reported, ‘I never read anything that could express an ernest desire like unto this.’30 During her husband’s serious illness in 1599, Mary turned to Robert. ‘My sister … hath no friend left to rely upon, her son being under years, but myself,’ he told Cecil.31 He pleaded with Cecil not to ‘dislike the stay’ he had made at Wilton, for his sister told him ‘certain causes of hers [probably her concern that her 15-year-old son William would come under the jurisdiction of the Court of Wards] which, if any accident should fall out, she must commit to me, the only near friend now left unto her.’32 Robert’s attempt to have the Earl of Pembroke resign to him his office in Wales caused some tension between the families, but they were soon reconciled. When his brother-in-law lay near death in 1601, Robert wrote to Cecil that ‘when he is gone I shall lose him to whom of all men, my father and mine elder brother alone excepted, I have been most bound.’33 Robert continued to make Baynards Castle his London home throughout his life, even after young William had inherited the title. Once William grew out of his youthful indiscretions, he too became a valuable ally at court. In 1611 Robert wrote to his wife that ‘My Lord of Pembroke was this afternoon sworne of the Privy Council, so as now I have one friend more among them, who will be both willing and able to do me good.’34 This close alliance between the two families is transfigured by Wroth into the royal families of Morea (the Sidneys) and Naples (the Pembrokes) who are the focus of her Urania (see chapter 9). The continuing friendship between Robert and Mary is also demonstrated when she decided, in her early fifties, to visit the Continent, about which she had heard so much from her brothers. Robert arranged ships for her and sent his lieutenants to bring her safely ashore.35 There is no record that she went to Flushing, but it would be surprising had the siblings not gotten together, perhaps at Spa, which Robert had visited the year before her arrival and had no doubt recommended to her for its healing waters. As they had shared their youth, so they shared their declining years. After they were both home in England, their continued relationship can be inferred from a 1620 letter from London that says ‘My sister is prettily[sic] well but comes not up this winter,’ as she usually did.36

The chief mourner Mary and Robert Sidney were obviously close friends and allies throughout their lives. So, to return to our opening question, why is she portrayed as mourning alone in ‘The Doleful Lay’ and ‘Angel Spirit’? In the real world, Robert was not only the chief mourner, but also assumed Philip’s position,

MARY SIDNEY’S OTHER BROTHERS

99

and replaced him as the heir of the Earl of Leicester. As Millicent Hay says, ‘Philip’s career became Robert’s.’37 (His anticipated title finally became Robert’s as well. After long years of legal battles with Leicester’s ‘base son’ Sir Robert Dudley, Robert finally received in his fifties the Earl of Leicester’s title, but not his wealth.) In the literary world, however, Mary was the chief mourner and, I would argue, Philip’s literary career, in a sense, became hers. Poets who praise Philip Sidney in order to please his sister typically mention only her likeness to Philip, not that of Robert or Thomas. For example, when Spenser addresses to her The Ruines of Time, he mentions almost the entire Dudley/Sidney alliance, but not Philip’s living brothers. Thomas Moffet is one of the few who mentions the poems of Robert, though he tactfully gives the highest praise to his own patron, who is ‘Arcadias heire most fitte’ and also the ‘fittest’ home for the muses.38 I certainly am not suggesting that poets usually ignore Robert in order to please his sister. Rather, he was away in Flushing, deeply in debt, and therefore not perceived as someone who had much to give to poets, whereas Mary could influence her powerful and wealthy husband to supply patronage. Nevertheless, the effect is to make Mary the chief mourner in the literary world. And, significantly, works such as Spenser’s The Ruines of Time, Abraham Fraunce’s series of Ivychurch poems, and Michael Drayton’s Idea: The Shepheards Garland, place Philip with her in that pastoral, literary world of the Arcadia rather than on the battlefield. She was, Drayton says, left ‘the Lawrell crowne, / The ancient glory of her noble Peers’ as a family legacy, particularly from her brother Philip.39 Mary, rather than Robert, was celebrated as Philip’s literary successor. While both Robert and Mary wrote poetry in the pastoral mode, and both were known for their love of music, their public roles were quite distinct. Robert’s writings were private and served as a diversion from his administrative position; if they were the ‘youthful toyes’ spoken of by the Countess of Warwick, they may have been held against him at court.40 He did share his poems with his sister, as Philip had done, addressing his working copy, ‘For the Countess of Pembroke.’41 But this holograph rough copy is the only extant manuscript; his work was not given the wide circulation in manuscript and print of his brother and sister. Mary’s writings seem to have been, at least throughout the 1590s, her real work and constituted her reputation. The siblings’ very different public roles are emphasized in their portraits. Robert was painted in his regalia as Governor of Flushing and later as Earl of Leicester; Mary was portrayed holding the Sidney Psalmes. Both surviving siblings thus carried on the work of their famous brother, but they worked in different venues. While Robert was continuing the military campaign in the Netherlands, keeping up friendships with Continental leaders, and dealing with the financial catastrophes caused by the dishonest

100

SIBLING RELATIONS AND GENDER IN THE EARLY MODERN WORLD

treasurer Thomas Shirley, duties that would have been Philip’s had he lived, Mary worked equally diligently to carry on his literary work – by encouraging works that praised him, by overseeing the publication of his works, by writing poems in his honor, by translating a companion work to Philip’s Mornay translation, and by completing the Psalmes that he had begun. So in ‘The Doleful Lay’ the speaker ‘Clorinda’ looks around the pastoral world to those who might mourn with her – she first looks toward the heavens, but rejects them since they caused, or at least foresaw, her brother’s death; she then looks to men, but rejects them since ‘they alas like wretched be,’ and have too many problems of their own to be able to comfort her. She then says that she will mourn alone ‘Sith none alive like sorrowfull remains,’ and her ‘plaints’ will echo back from woods, hills, and rivers (lines 20–24). Three stanzas later she is calling on ‘shepheards lasses’ to ‘break’ their ‘garlands’ and wear ‘sad cypress’ instead (37–42). That is, she has found fellow mourners, even if fictional. Those ‘shepherds lasses’ then seem to become the women in her household who heard Sidney’s verse, who heard him sing his ‘love-layes’ and ‘the riddles which he sayd / Unto your selves, to make you merry glee’ (44–46). He is termed the ‘shepherds pride,’ with the implication that male shepherds (that is, poets) will mourn him as well. By the end of the poem Clorinda speaks within a community of ‘we … wretches’ that ‘mourn his private lack,’ asking Sidney to ‘give us leave thee here thus to lament’ (89, 92). This community, which seems to be primarily the original audience for Sidney’s works at Wilton, is expanded to all those who appreciate his works, but it does not take any particular note of his brothers. ‘To the Angel Spirit of the Most Excellent Sir Philip Sidney’ is even more personal in its focus, disingenuously claiming that her metrical Psalms were written only for him. (The accompanying dedication to Queen Elizabeth undercuts the opening statement that ‘to thee alone’s addres’t / this coupled worke,’ perhaps echoing Philip’s dedicatory statement that the Arcadia is addressed ‘only for you, only to you.’)42 In the early draft found among the papers of Samuel Daniel her grief is the primary focus; in the revision included in the Psalmes manuscript (MS J, owned by Dr Bent Juel-Jensen), her heart’s blood is transmuted into ink, as she becomes a writer. In the revision she deletes two stanzas on her grief (Variant ‘Angel Spirit,’ lines 22–35) and adds four stanzas, three on Philip Sidney and his works (‘Angel Spirit,’ 50–70) and one on her own role as writer (78–84). These revisions trace the process of grieving, as she shifts the presentation of her own words from merely spontaneous mourning to the work of a writer who memorializes her brother and carries on his work. Both versions call upon both those in the family circle (‘Who knew thee best’) and the wider community that values him (all that are not ‘blinde’), but otherwise there is no explicit gesture to her younger brothers as fellow mourners (Variant, 62–63; ‘Angel Spirit,’ 48–9).

MARY SIDNEY’S OTHER BROTHERS

101

She seeks a larger audience of other poets and discerning readers, not just family, in her efforts to praise Philip as he deserves. Her relationship with Philip was undoubtedly less conflicted than Robert’s, largely because of gender. Robert was always in the shadow of his famous elder brother: his deep love for Philip must have been complicated first by his father’s admonition to strive to emulate Philip (with the implication that he would never quite succeed), and then, after both his father and brother died in 1586, by long years of lawsuits over the estate caused by problems in Philip’s will. Furthermore, when poets like John Davies did address Robert, they increased the pressure by asking him to live as Philip’s ‘Monument.’43 Mary’s life was expected to be both quite different and quite separate from Philip’s, so she was never under the same pressure as Robert. Furthermore, the Pembrokes’ wealth was untouched by the increasingly severe financial problems Robert faced, and they were not involved with Robert’s various family lawsuits, particularly with Philip’s widow and Leicester’s illegitimate son. To put it bluntly, Philip may have bequeathed to Mary his muse, as the poets claimed, but he bequeathed to Robert his debts at home, his problems with Elizabeth, and his intractable administrative problems at Flushing. Once again gender roles privileged Mary rather than Robert: Mary might choose to struggle to write something worthy of his praise, but Robert was forced to struggle to preserve the family honor and estate.44 So why is Mary Sidney mourning without her brother Robert in ‘A Doleful Lay’ and in ‘Angel Spirit’? She mourns alone because those pastoral poems provide an alternate world like an idealized Wilton, where Philip is a writer and she is his primary audience in the early ‘Lay,’ and where they are both writers in ‘Angel Spirit.’ In the real world, both siblings grieved and both endeavored to carry on Philip Sidney’s legacy, one assuming his former position as a military commander, and one assuming his role as literary patron and poet. The address of Robert’s poems to Mary and Mary’s efforts to help Robert at court seem to imply that they made a conscious effort to collaborate, honoring their elder brother by continuing his work. It was a team effort with Robert becoming Governor of Flushing and eventually Earl of Leicester in his brother’s place, and Mary undertaking Philip’s role as poet and as patron in an international community that honored his poetry – and hers.

Notes 1. 2. 3.

I am indebted to Noel Kinnamon and Michael Brennan for their helpful comments on this chapter. Thomas Archer, 1760, British Library Additional MS 5830, fol. 179v. Thomas Lant, Sequiter et pompa funebris (London, 1587), plates 17–18.

102 4.

5. 6. 7. 8.

9. 10. 11. 12. 13. 14. 15. 16. 17. 18. 19. 20. 21. 22. 23. 24. 25.

26.

SIBLING RELATIONS AND GENDER IN THE EARLY MODERN WORLD

The Collected Works of Mary Sidney Herbert, Countess of Pembroke, ed. Margaret P. Hannay, Noel J. Kinnamon, and Michael G. Brennan (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1998), vol. I, 133. Cf. Danielle Clarke’s argument that, whether or not Pembroke wrote the ‘Lay,’ the Colin Clout volume in which the ‘Lay’ appears reveals ‘an insistent preoccupation … with the Countess of Pembroke’s position as chief mourner to Sidney,’ ‘“In Sort as She It Sung”: Spenser’s “Doleful Lay” and the Construction of Female Authorship,’ Criticism 42 (2000), 451–68. Collected Works, vol. I, 119–32. De L’Isle and Dudley MS U1475 A56 (2). The De L’Isle and Dudley Papers are quoted with the kind permission of the Viscount De L’Isle, MBE DL. De L’Isle and Dudley MS U1475 A4/4. Henry Sidney later recommended Tassel to tutor Anne Cecil in French; Katherine Duncan-Jones, Sir Philip Sidney: Courtier Poet (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1991), 25. Millicent V. Hay, The Life of Robert Sidney, Earl of Leicester (1563–1626) (Washington DC: Folger Books, 1984), 40; P. J. Croft, The Poems of Robert Sidney Edited from the Poet’s Autograph Notebook (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1984), 326. Alan Stewart, Philip Sidney: A Double Life (London: Random House, 2001), 44. De L’Isle MS U1475 A36 Clothing [drapery] accounts for Henry and Mary Sidney 1571. Henry Sidney to ‘Robin’ Sidney, 25 March 1578, De L’Isle MS U1475 Z53/22. Henry Sidney to Francis Walsingham, 1 March 1583, PRO SP12/159, fol. 41. James M. Osborn, Young Philip Sidney (1572–1577) (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1972), 54, 454. Queen Elizabeth to Henry Sidney, PRO SP40/1, fol. 83. Mary Sidney Herbert, Countess of Pembroke, to Queen Elizabeth, Cecil Papers 90/147, Collected Works, vol. I, 291. Henry Sidney to Robert Dudley, Earl of Leicester, 4 February 1577, De L’Isle MS U1475 C7/3. Mary Sidney, Countess of Pembroke, to Robert Dudley, Earl of Leicester, undated [probably 15 August 1578], Dudley Papers II/187, Collected Works, vol. I, 285. Sidney Family Psalter, Trinity College Library, Cambridge, R.17.2, fol. 5v. Philip Sidney, A Defence of Poetry, in Miscellaneous Prose of Sir Philip Sidney, ed. Katherine Duncan-Jones and Jan van Dorsten (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1973), 105. Margaret Hannay, Philip’s Phoenix: Mary Sidney, Countess of Pembroke (New York: Oxford University Press, 1990), 84–105. Mary Ellen Lamb, Gender and Authorship in the Sidney Circle (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1990), 72–114. Philip Sidney to Robert Sidney, 18 October 1580 (?), De L’Isle MS U1475 C7/8. George Gifford, ‘The Manner of Sir Philip Sidney’s Death,’ in Miscellaneous Prose of Sir Philip Sidney, 171. Fulke Greville, ‘Dedication to Sir Philip Sidney,’ The Prose Works of Fulke Greville, Lord Brooke, ed. John Gouws (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1986), 82–3. Elizabeth Goldring has made the probable identification of this portrait, sometimes called Sir Thomas Knollys, as Robert Sidney. ‘“So lively a portraiture of his miseries”: Melancholy, Mourning and the Elizabethan Malady,’ The British Art Journal,’ (forthcoming). Jan A. van Dorsten, Poets, Patrons, and Professors: Sir Philip Sidney, Daniel

MARY SIDNEY’S OTHER BROTHERS

103

Rogers, and the Leiden Humanists (Leiden: Leiden University Press, 1962), 62. 27. Rowland Whyte to Robert Sidney, 19 September 1599, De L’Isle MS U1475 C12/161. 28. Robert Sidney to Barbara Gamage Sidney, 5 August 1588, De L’Isle MS U1475 C81/7, Letter 6; Domestic Politics and Family Absence: The Correspondence (1588–1621) of Robert Sidney, first Earl of Leicester, and Barbara Gamage Sidney, ed. Margaret P. Hannay, Noel J. Kinnamon, and Michael G. Brennan (Aldershot, Hants and Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2005), 26. 29. Mary Sidney Herbert, Countess of Pembroke, to Barbara Gamage Sidney, 9 September 1590, bound in British Library Additional MS 15232; Collected Works, vol. I, 286. 30. Rowland Whyte to Robert Sidney, 14 January 1598, De L’Isle MS U1475 C12/121. 31. Robert Sidney to Robert Cecil, 26 April 1599, Cecil Papers 69/81, Historical Manuscripts Commission, Calendar of the Manuscripts of the Most Honourable The Marquis of Salisbury, Preserved at Hatfield House (London: HMSO, 1906), vol. IX, 142. 32. Robert Sidney to Robert Cecil, 31 May 1599, Cecil Papers 179/20, HMC Salisbury, vol. IX, 188. 33. Robert Sidney to Robert Cecil, 12 January 1601, Cecil Papers 180/2, HMC Salisbury, vol. XI, 9. 34. Robert Sidney to Barbara Gamage Sidney, 29 September 1611, De L’Isle MS U1475 C81/229, Letter 221. 35. John Throckmorton to Robert Sidney, Viscount L’Isle, 7 August–4 October 1614, De L’Isle MS U1475 C9/349-50, 357, 361, 366. 36. Robert Sidney, Earl of Leicester, to Countess of Leicester, 26 November 1620, De L’Isle MS U1475 C81/310. 37. Hay, 26. 38. Thomas Moffet, The Silkewormes and Their Flies: A Facsimile (1599), ed. Victor Houliston (Tempe, AZ: MRTS, 1989), A1, B1. 39. Michael Drayton, Idea: The Shepheards Garland (1593), in The Works of Michael Drayton, ed. J. William Hebel (Oxford: Blackwell, 1931), vol. I, 76. 40. Rowland Whyte to Robert Sidney, 21 February 1599/1600, De L’Isle MS U1475, C12/214. 41. Robert Sidney’s notebook, British Library Additional MS 58435. 42. Mary Sidney Herbert, ‘To the Angell Spirit of the Most Excellent Sir Philip Sidney,’ Collected Works, vol. I, 110; Philip Sidney, ‘To My Dear Lady and Sister the Countess of Pembroke,’ The Countess of Pembrokes Arcadia [The Old Arcadia], ed. Jean Robertson (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1973), 3. 43. John Davies of Hereford, ‘To the Right Noble, Robert Lord Sidney, Baron of Penshurst,’ Microcosmos (1603), The Complete Works of John Davies of Hereford, ed. Alexander B. Grosart (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1878), 98. 44. Michael G. Brennan, Noel J. Kinnamon, and Margaret P. Hannay, ‘Robert Sidney, the Dudleys, and Queen Elizabeth,’ in Elizabeth I: Always Her Own Free Woman, ed. Carole Levin, Jo Eldridge Carney, and Debra Barrett-Graves (Aldershot, Hants and Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2003), 20–42.

CHAPTER NINE

The Politics of Private Discourse: Familial Relations in Lady Mary Wroth’s Urania Sheila T. Cavanagh Lady Mary Wroth (1587–1653) continued the literary tradition of the Sidney family, initiated by her uncle Sir Philip Sidney and fostered by her aunt Mary Sidney Herbert, Countess of Pembroke (see chapter 8). For many years her father, Sir Robert Sidney, served as Governor of Flushing and struggled to clear the debts incurred by his elder brother Philip, but his fortunes improved after the accession of James I in 1603. Mary’s marriage the following year to Sir Robert Wroth, a wealthy landowner, brought her to court. There she became a favorite of Queen Anne and performed in the elaborate masques written by, among others, Ben Jonson, who dedicated The Alchemist to Mary in 1612. It was an unhappy marriage: two of Mary’s three children resulted from a long liaison with her cousin William Herbert, Earl of Pembroke. Wroth died in 1614, leaving substantial debts that obliged Mary to withdraw from court. Despite her father’s continued favor with the king – he was created Earl of Leicester in 1618 – Mary was unable to defend herself against rumors concerning her private life. Turning to writing, she drew upon this background of the most spectacular aspects of court life and intense, thinly disguised, family relationships to create The Countesse of Montgomery’s Urania. The first part of this prose romance was published in 1621,1 amid accusations of slander concerning characters and events represented; the second part of Urania remained unpublished.2 The Countesse of Montgomery’s Urania incorporates such a vast array of characters, locations, and topics that it remains nearly impossible to summarize the text. Like many other early modern romances, its innumerable characters engage in countless adventures as the Urania’s narrative follows a host of interconnected tales involving love, chivalry, politics, and heartbreak. Often hard for the novice Wroth reader to keep straight, these stories cover several decades, countless miles, and a number of marriages, births, coronations, deaths, and wars. One consistent feature throughout the narrative, however, provides considerable structure to this web of disparate stories: the strong relationship linking the set of royal

FAMILIAL RELATIONS IN LADY MARY WROTH’S URANIA

105

siblings and cousins who provide most of the central figures in the romance. The families at the heart of the text rule many European and Asian countries. Its members also regularly provide each other with social and romantic partners, making both personal and political ties extremely complex. The main female character, Pamphilia, for example, is Queen of the country of Pamphilia; she is also close friends with her cousin Urania, Queen of Albania. At the same time, she is in love with Urania’s brother, the Emperor Amphilanthus, even after they each marry others, namely the King of Tartaria and the Princess of Slavonia. This dizzying interconnection between siblings, cousins, monarchs, and lovers is replicated repeatedly in the Urania. The bonds between these characters transcend the constraints of time and geography that they would face in a more realistic environment. In the fictive realms of the Urania, they are able to stay in close contact and advise each other on both public and private affairs, at the same time that they travel widely and endure lengthy, immobilizing enchantments. These familial ties serve key functions in the narrative, such as Wroth’s exploration of peer relationships between relatives of the same and opposite sexes and her complex consideration of both the distinctive and the interrelated challenges facing public figures in their official and domestic capacities. The Urania’s central cohort relies upon siblings and cousins for physical, emotional, and practical support. Throughout the romance, these relationships sustain the characters as they provide the reader with insight into one early modern conceptualization of the importance of sibling bonds and other close familial ties in the lives of the nobility. Members of the royal families of Morea, Naples, and Romania, along with their spouses, constitute Urania’s inner core. Within the narrative, the children of the kings reigning at the beginning of the tale receive the most attention, as most of them mature into rulers and parents themselves. Although there are others who enter the story with regularity, the predominant focus upon a single generation is noteworthy. With the exception of a few older figures, such as the Queen of Naples and the King of Morea, who intermittently loom large in the narrative, and a handful of younger knights, who play an active role in part two, the most significant characters are roughly the same age and progress through the narrative at parallel stages in life. Even when they become parents – a life event that could change their situations considerably – they continue to interact mainly with each other, since most of their children are either enchanted in an unknown place or they are traveling in search of those who are missing. In fact, the tendency for cousins and siblings to rely upon each other may result in part from the romance convention that often keeps children separated and unknown by their parents. Urania, for example, learns of her heritage only after reaching adulthood (1:23) and many of her companions share similar histories of parental

106

SIBLING RELATIONS AND GENDER IN THE EARLY MODERN WORLD

ignorance. In addition, numerous characters remain uncertain about other aspects of their backgrounds and the birthmarks that are supposed to provide evidence of identity are not recognized easily and cannot always be trusted (2:494, note 97.9). In this environment, parents do not necessarily know their offspring and children do not know their own names and stations with certainty.3 Siblings and cousins tend to recognize each other most readily, however, and their close bonding may result, at least partially, from the unusual stability that appears to encompass these relationships. This concentration of similarly aged relatives, who simultaneously rule a host of countries across Europe and into Asia, enables Wroth to place significant weight upon the value of siblings and cousins within her characters’ personal and professional lives. Although these figures invariably treat their elders with respect, they turn most commonly to those relatives nearest in age and station for advice, discussion, and companionship. The close bond between Ollorandus, King of Bohemia, and Amphilanthus, who are not related, offers a significant exception to this pattern; nonetheless, the tendency for these characters to remain most intimately linked to their relatives suggests that it may be difficult for rulers and others of this stature to find appropriate peer relationships outside their families. Alternately, this structure may indicate that other ties are largely unnecessary within such family systems. In any event, this propensity among the narrative’s main characters provides the Urania’s readers with a prolonged representation of discursive practices among this population. Often appearing remarkably realistic in tone and content, the multiple conversations reported in the text reveal Wroth’s comfort and apparent familiarity with these kinds of exchanges and offer an intriguing portrayal of the lives of elite families in early modern England. Although cousins may initially appear to fall outside the realm of siblings delineated in this volume, the two groups fulfill both similar and complementary functions within the Urania. In many respects, they appear to be interchangeable, possibly due to the congruity between so many of their personal and professional characteristics. Given the elasticity of the term ‘cousin’ during this period, it seems reasonable to expand both categories in this instance, since they operate so indistinguishably in this romance. Differences in gender, in fact, seem more significant than the exact degree of relationship being depicted. Both cousins and siblings claim the right to direct and intimate discourse, but those talking to cousins of the opposite gender tend to venture into realms that differ from those they enter during discussions with relatives of the same sex. Such distinctions probably result from a significant difference between the potential course of such relationships: whereas cousins could marry, siblings cannot. Accordingly, Urania speaks both to her cousin Pamphilia and to her brother Amphilanthus

FAMILIAL RELATIONS IN LADY MARY WROTH’S URANIA

107

in a forthright manner that these vexed lovers/cousins commonly avoid with each other. While members of this coterie often marry outside it, the potential for marriage within this family structure still shapes conversations and other interactions. Apart from the complications sometimes introduced through marital prospects, however, cousins and siblings in the narrative generally interact almost identically. Thus, it seems appropriate, at least within this romance, to view the two roles as largely synonymous, since they employ a flexibility similar to that evinced by the term ‘cousin’ in many early modern contexts. Although members of the group are all young adults at the beginning of the narrative, the relationships portrayed suggest that many of them were children together; moreover, most of them will remain in close contact until their deaths, some of which occur during the course of the romance. In the Urania, therefore, both cousins and siblings maintain bonds that last throughout their lifetimes. This continuity ensures that personal and political affairs will always be influenced by the advice and behavior of this tightly knit group. The narrative’s focus upon these relationships is particularly interesting because of the characters’ complex personal and political lives. Neither love, parenthood, nor monarchy tends to run smoothly in this environment. Among the group, there are individuals and couples involved in the governments of numerous European and Asian countries. Since many of these regions remain entangled in significant political and religious conflicts during the romance, the substance and tenor of communication between the countries’ interrelated rulers can have widespread repercussions. Many of these conversations contain advice that addresses both private and public affairs and they are often delivered at times when one ruler’s emotional state threatens the stability of his or her country. Careful intervention by cousins or siblings, therefore, often reminds a distracted leader that official duties cannot always accommodate the drama that tends to accompany the private lives of these characters. In some cases, these discussions prevent catastrophic consequences, such as Amphilanthus’s contemplated suicide. At other times, even when the stakes are not quite so high, frank conversations between siblings or cousins help figures in the narrative find their way through perplexing or emotionally challenging dilemmas. Although Pamphilia, among others, sometimes turns to official advisors for assistance with the various crises facing her country, most typically, these characters rely upon the other rulers in their cohort for solace and counsel.4

Urania and the voice of reason Pamphilia and Amphilanthus often play more central parts in the romance

108

SIBLING RELATIONS AND GENDER IN THE EARLY MODERN WORLD

than its eponymous figure. Nevertheless, Urania, daughter to the King of Naples, wife to the King of Albania, and sister to Emperor Amphilanthus, fulfills critical functions across this fictive realm through her blunt and insightful conversations with the rest of the company. Apart from her early, thwarted passion for Pamphilia’s brother Parselius, which had to be expunged by a perilous, but cleansing leap off a cliff (1:230–31), Urania’s romantic life lacks the dramatic contortions that characterize the liaisons of many of her cousins and siblings. She appears to be happily married to Steriamus, with whom she has several children. Despite the enchantment of her offspring, a fate she shares with many others, her adult life lacks serious difficulties and she generally responds with equanimity to the challenges she faces. Even during the first part of the romance, when her own life remains relatively chaotic, Urania can usually summon sufficient presence of mind to guide her impetuous cousins and brothers wisely. Thus, although Urania is closely involved with many of the turbulent adventures concerning her cousins and siblings, she frequently provides the reasonable voice that might come from a parent or other elder in a different family dynamic. Typically calm and reassuring, Urania does not hesitate from communicating firmly and directly when necessary. Despite her position as the youngest child of the King of Naples, Urania speaks authoritatively and invariably commands respect. Her extended absence and her comparative youth are never issues for her older brothers and cousins, and everyone in this tightly knit family tends to modify their behavior at her behest. While the Queen of Naples appears to serve as family ‘matriarch,’ Urania often fulfills a similar function for her cousins and brothers, by reminding them of their duties and by offering solace or chastisement when their personal lives descend into disarray. Urania shows her talent in this regard even before she is reunited with the family she lost upon being kidnapped as a small child. When introduced during the opening episodes of the first part of the Urania, Urania urges the despairing Perissus not to lose his faith, using a combination of compassion and common sense that soon becomes her trademark. Here, when Perissus fears that his beloved is dead, Urania calms him: “My Lord Perissus,” said Urania, “how idle, and unprofitable indeed are these courses, since if shee be dead, what good can they bring to her? and not being certaine of her death, how unfit are they for so brave a Prince, who will as it were, by will without reason wilfully lose himselfe … No my Lord, I cannot beleeve but she is living, and that you shal find it so, if unreasonable stubborne resolution bar you not, and so hinder you from the eternall happinesse you might enjoy” (1:14).

Perissus initially attempts to dismiss Urania’s admonitions, but eventually he acknowledges the power of her words and demeanor:

FAMILIAL RELATIONS IN LADY MARY WROTH’S URANIA

109

These wordes wrought so farre in the noble heart of Perissus, as rising from his leavie Cabine, then thus said hee, “Is Perissus the second time conquer’d? I must obey that reason which abounds in you; and to you, shall the glory of this attempt belong: now will I againe put on those habites which of late I abandoned, you having gaind the victorie over my vowe” (1:15–16).

Thus, Perissus becomes the first of many figures in the romance who benefits from Urania’s wisdom. At the conclusion of this encounter, Urania is reunited with her brother Amphilanthus and her cousin Parselius and becomes swept into the close-knit group that will envelop her for the rest of the romance. This opening scene, however, showcases personal qualities that will prove invaluable to her rediscovered family. As the strengthened resolve evinced by Perissus demonstrates, Urania’s combination of logic, concern, and frankness make her a particularly valuable advisor for troubled souls. These characteristics serve her well in this company, since she is surrounded by powerful figures whose positions could easily isolate them from such bold feedback. Her brother Amphilanthus, for example, consistently attains ever more exalted posts during the Urania, eventually becoming the fictive equivalent of Holy Roman Emperor. As Emperor, he can readily protect himself from most unwanted advice. Avoiding the cautionary words of his sister proves difficult, however, and Amphilanthus regularly receives both Urania’s support and her censure. With the exception of the seer Melissea, many of the other characters can only wonder and worry about some of Amphilanthus’s decisions and precipitous actions, but Urania retains the capacity to confront her brother honestly, with concern or chastisement, as needed. This access proves fortuitous on numerous occasions. In the manuscript Urania, for example, Urania approaches her distraught brother when those around him despair over their inability to dissuade him from the belief that he is ‘the wrechedest of man kinde and the unworthiest … And non durst adventure to contradict him in any thought, though aparant that if one might argue with him, in few words they might gaine the better, and say hee eclipst him self; for tow sunns can nott shine with true light att one time’ (2:136). Amphilanthus’s stature and the depth of his agony, however, make it impossible for anyone to reach him. Only Urania has the courage to try, and even she is initially rebuffed when she intervenes in Amphilanthus’s suicidal reverie. Shocked that a ‘lady soe bold’ (2:139) would approach him, the emperor assumes that she represents evil and threatens to add her death to his: ‘What devill in woema[n]s habitt comes thus to torture and hinder my ende? Bee gon or bee assured thou shallt bee the beeginning, and I seale up all my sacrifice with mine and thine blood’ (2:139). Upon recognizing his mistake and embracing his ‘deere sister’ (2:136), Amphilanthus apologizes to Urania,

110

SIBLING RELATIONS AND GENDER IN THE EARLY MODERN WORLD

but announces that he will not be thwarted from suicide since he has ‘wronged deerest, sweetest, faithfullest Pamphilia’ (2:139) by marrying the Princess of Slavonia upon believing false rumors that Pamphilia was bethrothed or married to the King of Tartaria. Urania skillfully convinces him to trust himself to her care in order to ‘lett mee truly understand all your sorrow and the true cause of itt’ (2:139). As she successfully guides him away from thoughts of killing himself, she reminds him of her prowess in the art of calming tortured souls: ‘you shall see, my fortune wilbee to serve you to all blessednes againe. Did nott I say thus much to Perissus, and did itt not fall out soe? Did I nott for my everlasting blis redeeme and save my deerest Lord Steriamus, and his brave brother, and worthy sister Selarina?’ (2:139). Although Amphilanthus eventually agrees to accompany his sister, so long as she keeps his presence secret, Urania needs to work extremely hard to convince the emperor to remain alive. Even as he concedes to her wishes, he does so with reluctance and continued woe: ‘“Your speaches are, deerest sister,” sigh[d] hee, “so broken, soe mixt, and unjointedly joined as dispaire hath still as great ore a greater part to the patient then comfort. Butt what need miserie dispute, butt leave all to itt self, and to mee the woefullest spectacle of the hidiousest misery. I will obey you in going with you”’ (2:141). With that acquiescence, Amphilanthus allows himself to be carried into Urania’s carriage in search of solace elsewhere. Urania’s persistence with her renowned brother clearly has important ramifications for their family as well as for his empire with its allied countries. Since his political stature makes it easy for him to avoid counselors and wellwishers from outside his domestic sphere, Urania’s intervention is particularly important. If she were unwilling or unable to calm her tormented siblings and cousins effectively, many of the central figures and their countries would face uncertain fates. In this complicated world, where traumatic romantic adventures and political crises are common, Urania’s talent for perceptive and soothing rhetoric provides a kind of glue to keep these fragile family systems and governments intact. Although Amphilanthus, for instance, is consistently called a great leader,5 he regularly displays a level of emotional unpredictability that undermines his ability to rule. In the middle of the Urania, part two, for instance, he abandons his colleagues for a six-month sojourn alone, leaving everyone ‘sadly complaining of the Emperours strange leaving them’ (2:190). Without Urania’s ability to restore her brother’s equilibrium, chaos could easily reign. In fact, the need for Urania’s continued presence and comfort appears not long after the suicidal incident just described, when a ship carrying many of the company encounters dangerously rough conditions. ‘Attributing this to the continuance of his miseries’ (2:171), Amphilanthus determines to throw himself overboard in order to save those traveling with him. When his vault

FAMILIAL RELATIONS IN LADY MARY WROTH’S URANIA

111

off the ship is stopped by a group of watchful knights, he responds with rage: And with that, was casting him self over-board, which they (as most respecting him and hoping in him, had ever ther eyes fix’d on him), parceaving, ran hastely to him, and with force, and fortune, hinderd his unlucky atempt on the bravest man, him self, living. Hee, beeing forced though to save him self, looked on the too knights and the rest with that infinite fury and anger as (allthough they weare brave, younge spiritts as most were att that time), might have binn daunted with such lookes, and from Amphilanthus (2:172).

As this passage indicates, Amphilanthus often intimidates his followers. Although they do what they can to keep him alive, they shrink at the wrath that greets their rescue efforts. It appears, therefore, that physical strength would be unlikely to prove sufficient as a long-term solution for Amphilanthus’s tendency towards suicide. Once again, however, Urania is bold where knights fear to tread. Castigating her brother for his desperate act, she reminds him of his weighty responsibilities as emperor, which preclude this level of emotional selfindulgence: Butt [Urania] took him in hand, extreamly blaming his rashnes, that hee (who governed the world, ore the best part of itt) was soe weake in him self, att least in shew, that hee could nott overmaster his passions: noe way beefitting his greatnes and goodnes (which had binn admired in him) thus to fall into soe poore a busines as to make men think hee had noe sence (nott soe much as of Religion, doing contrary to the poorest Christians), and runn into the censure of all men, who how ill soever, ore bace, ore mischivous, yett as ill people might lay a staine on that his glory, till then bright shining; nay, lay want of grace to him, wher yett never waunt was found (2:172).

Upon receiving this ‘true, milde, and Vertuous reproufe’ (2:172), Amphilanthus immediately shows remorse for his behavior. Although he still desires death, he backs away from active attempts to hasten his demise, as he and his companions find themselves at the enclave of the wise and soothing Melissea. Urania’s privileged status as the emperor’s sister, combined with her qualities of kindness and reason has again enabled her to prevent tragedy for her family and the emperor’s domain. With the possible exception of the mystical Melissea, none of the other characters shows a similar ability to combine the necessary access and insight to protect Amphilanthus and other major leaders from the consequences of their emotional excesses. As a beloved sibling, however, Urania is able to function as savior upon numerous occasions.

112

SIBLING RELATIONS AND GENDER IN THE EARLY MODERN WORLD

Romance, melancholy, and enchantment The Queen of Albania displays a similar talent for talking sense into her equally emotionally volatile cousin Pamphilia. Like the emperor in many ways, Pamphilia is often ruled by her passions, particularly at those frequent times when Amphilanthus is either unfaithful or absent. Although she generally takes her role as Queen of Pamphilia quite seriously, her romantic disappointments regularly distract her from her official duties.6 At these junctures, she also turns to Urania for comfort and clear thinking. There are relatively few women related by birth among the sets of cousins at the center of the Urania. Not surprisingly, therefore, Urania and Pamphilia often interact in ways that are indistinguishable from relations between siblings. Urania’s ability to dispense advice from the perspective of a happily married woman, moreover, provides a stable foundation to counter Pamphilia’s regular emotional upheavals. Urania’s personal example, therefore, further facilitates her continuing efforts to promote concord among her emotionally changeable relatives. Her comparative contentment, however, does not prevent those she is trying to help from mentioning her own lovelorn past. Pamphilia, for instance, reminds her cousin of earlier thwarted romantic aspirations when Urania attempts to offer words of consolation: ‘“Were you so discreet?” said Pamphilia. “When time was, as I remember, you were forced to bee wash’d before you could manifest your judgement in leaving”’ (1:459). The lovesick woman immediately follows this unsympathetic allusion with a plea that Urania remain her ally: ‘but (sweet Urania) doe not you prove an enemy to mee, though my owne eyes and heart have turn’d to my destruction’ (1:459). Despite Pamphilia’s initial resistance to Urania’s assistance, she soon welcomes her cousin’s aid, however limited its success may be. Pamphilia’s melancholy survives valiant efforts to dissipate it, however: ‘Urania was glad, because shee hoped company would assist her desire in her Counsens good; but shee was deceiv’d, for Pamphilia was in company, and alone much one, shee could bee in greatest assemblies as private with her owne thoughts, as if in her Cabinet, and there have as much discourse with her imagination and cruell memory, as if in the presence’ (1:459). Like Amphilanthus, therefore, Pamphilia experiences heightened emotionality that requires regular intervention from her siblings and cousins, particularly since her despair often threatens to interfere with her ability to rule effectively. Ironically, the efforts of her relatives to ease her pain occasionally distance her further from her subjects. Such unintended separations between country and monarch remind readers that family desires and political needs do not always coincide. Pamphilia becomes caught in the enchantment at the theatre

FAMILIAL RELATIONS IN LADY MARY WROTH’S URANIA

113

in part one, for instance, because she succumbs to her companions’ pleas to join them on an adventure, against her better judgment: Being arrived at that beautyfull place, the young loving Princesses must needs see the Sea, and not only that, but goe upon it; Pamphilia went to the shoare with them, but then considered her gravity was too much in the opinion of the world to enter into so slight an action, wherefore desired pardon. They would not allow it her, but with sweete perswasions, and inticements got her a bord with them; they sayled some leagues from the shoare with much pleasure, (and as they cald it) content, Pamphilia and Urania discoursing, Philistella, and Selarina … thus they plotted to deceive themselves, and rann from safety to apparent danger, for what is the Sea but uncertaintie (1:371).

The group is soon caught in one of the Urania’s central enchantments, which keeps all of these monarchs away from their official duties for a considerable period. Nonetheless, Pamphilia is able to turn this event to her personal emotional advantage, by adopting an unaccustomed role for her: she comforts Urania and the others. Apparently, she is better equipped for the stress of an enchantment than she is prepared for romantic emotional turmoil: Pamphilia most patiently tooke it, at least most silently: She climbing the Rocke till at the top she discover’d a fine Country, and discerned before her a delicate plaine … ‘I feare this storme, and adventure,’ said Urania, ‘ever since I was carried to Ciprus; if it be an inchantment, woe be to us, who may be bewitched to the misery of never seeing our desires fulfil’d, once was I made wretched by such a mischiefe.’ ‘Let it be what it will,’ said Pamphilia, ‘I will see the end of it, led a in a dreame by the leader, not with bewitching dull spirit but craft’ (1:372).

The group remains enchanted for some time, but they are freed before Urania’s dire fears of eternal imprisonment are fulfilled. Although Pamphilia and her sister monarchs cannot serve their people during this period, the frequently forlorn queen appears to find this space fascinating, prompting her to shed her emotionally dependent role in favor of taking the lead before her more tentative companions: ‘Pamphilia (more desirous of knowledge than the rest) went as far behind that pillar as she could’ (1:373). Confined with most of the same coterie whose company she enjoys during times of freedom, Pamphilia enters into enchantment more calmly than she approaches much of her daily life. While Pamphilia’s equanimity under these circumstances is somewhat surprising, it reveals the emotional reciprocity between cousins and siblings that helps keep these characters’ private lives and public responsibilities from careening out of control. At various times, different figures possess the emotional skills necessary to assist their companions. Although Pamphilia does not often fulfill this function, her ability to do so in this instance is indicative of the collective strength enjoyed by these characters when they

114

SIBLING RELATIONS AND GENDER IN THE EARLY MODERN WORLD

ally with each other. Not bound by the unspoken rules that often appear to discourage the monarchs’ subjects and other advisors from involvement in both personal and political crises, these close relatives remain ready to guide each other through the countless domestic and political upheavals that could otherwise undermine the leaders’ ability to oversee their countries and private lives appropriately. The calm that overtakes Pamphilia during the enchantment, moreover, suggests that she is most at peace when surrounded by her cousins and without access to the outside pressures that continually complicate her personal and political lives. In the world of the Urania, monarchs and countries often appear to have a metonymic relationship, not solely in cases where they share the same name, such as Pamphilia. The romantic escapades and other adventures of these rulers, therefore, tend to have a significant impact upon the lives of their countrymen. Thus, many people are invested in the stability of these leaders’ emotional lives, although few have any way to influence these figures directly. The continued involvement of the group of cousins and siblings, therefore, helps ensure that the ongoing efforts of these monarchs to spread Christianity and thwart the potential expansion of their heathen enemies’ dominions are not unduly hindered by private turmoil.7 Without these familial structures firmly in place, there would be substantially more room available for international crises as well as domestic upheaval. In the world of the Urania, cousins and siblings soothe the emotional beasts that could otherwise overwhelm these countries and their rulers. In this environment, where siblings, cousins, lovers, and rulers are all part of the same close constellation of characters, countries become dependent upon families to ensure that personal turmoil does not impede political judgments. At the same time, these siblings and cousins ensure that the obligations of monarchy leave room for matters of the heart.

Notes 1.

2.

3.

Mary Wroth, The First Part of The Countess of Montgomery’s Urania, ed. Josephine A. Roberts, Medieval and Renaissance Texts and Studies, vol. 140 (Binghamton, NY: Center for Medieval and Early Renaissance Studies, 1995). The title comes from the dedication to Pembroke’s sister-in-law, Susan Herbert, Countess of Montgomery. Mary Wroth, The Second Part of The Countess of Montgomery’s Urania, ed. Josephine A. Roberts, completed by Suzanne Gossett and Janel Mueller, Medieval and Renaissance Texts and Studies, vol. 211 (Tempe, AZ: Arizona Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies, 1999). Even when the children are not stolen, there are many impediments to identification and communication between parents and children. For example, it remains unclear whether or not the Knight of the Faire Design is Amphilanthus’s

FAMILIAL RELATIONS IN LADY MARY WROTH’S URANIA

4. 5.

6.

7.

115

son. Moreover, this kind of uncertainty can last through adulthood. The King of Morea, for instance, is startled by Parselius’s changed appearance when he returns home as a pilgrim (2:396). The most significant exception to this pattern is the seer Melissea, who often provides shelter and advice to these monarchs, their siblings, and their children. When he is crowned emperor, for example, he is met with profuse praise: ‘At Franckford he was crown’d with the greatest applause and content that ever Emperor was, and with the best reason, for he was the most worthy, and famous that ever reign’d over them’ (1:463). Ironically, her biggest romantic drama – Amphilanthus’s marriage to the Princess of Slavonia – occurs because she is meeting with her official advisors about wars in Pamphilia and is not available to show Amphilanthus the error of his perceptions about her (2:133). I discuss these political crises at length in Sheila T. Cavanagh, Cherished Torment: The Emotional Geography of Lady Mary Wroth’s ‘Urania’ (Pittsburgh: Duquesne University Press, 2001).

CHAPTER TEN

When the Mirror Lies: Sisterhood Reconsidered in Moderata Fonte’s Thirteen Cantos of Floridoro Valeria Finucci Siblings, especially twin boys or fraternal twins of opposite sex, are a stock feature of Renaissance romance and comedy. Thus, when Italian women writers started to write romances of chivalry in the sixteenth century, they had a ready-made topos to explore. Given their particular interests, they soon started to examine the dynamics that the relationship between female twins could produce in a woman-friendly fictional world. Moderata Fonte (1552–92), for example, although apparently concerned with the adventures of the knight Floridoro in her Thirteen Cantos of Floridoro (Tredici canti del Floridoro, 1581), gives more space and depth of characterization to the woman warrior Risamante, whose quest to recover the inheritance she is due as the daughter of the king of Armenia leads her to fight her identical twin, Biondaura, the ruler’s sole heir. Although described as opposite in their personalities – Risamante is a woman warrior with strength and determination while Biondaura epitomizes the damsel-in-distress type for whom every knight will prove his mettle – the two sisters are so indistinguishable in beauty as to be consistently mistaken for the other. In short, they are the two faces of womanhood identifiable in the poetry and culture of all times: one is the masculine, aggressive, overpresent subject and the other is the pliant, though often unavailable, object of male desire. One is feared and the other is loved, and yet both look so much alike that even their closest allies cannot detect a difference. In the most successful chivalric romances that constitute the tradition, such as Ludovico Ariosto’s Orlando furioso (1532) and Torquato Tasso’s Gerusalemme liberata (1581), the trajectories these women are made to pursue can be easily detailed. The strong woman is given a dynastic marriage if she has conducted herself properly, as in the case of Ariosto’s Bradamante, or a career as an unmarried sister if she has been chaste but too strong willed, as in the case of Marfisa. When too different or too castrating, she is killed off, as with Tasso’s Clorinda. The feminine woman, on the other hand, gets the

SISTERHOOD IN MODERATA FONTE’S FLORIDORO

117

husband she wants after a few seemingly salacious encounters (the case of Angelica in the Furioso and most probably of Armida in the Liberata). But does a woman writer follow this ad hoc construction?1 And what is at stake in using female twins to examine issues of lineage, bloodlines, and inheritance at a time when no woman had an unquestionable legal right to her father’s property? These are the issues I will examine in this essay. Women writers of chivalric romances and epics have used narratives of aggression, fraternal strife, and paternal backstabbing – just like their male counterparts – to make their heroes central to the ideologies of state formations, patriliny, and birthright of their times. Ariosto, for one, had celebrated the lineage of the Este, the ruling family of Ferrara, through the heroics of their ancestors, Bradamante and Ruggiero. Moderata Fonte will use Floridoro to concentrate not on one but on two mythic dynastic trends: one agnatic, beginning with the knight Floridoro’s marriage to the Greek princess Celsidea, a union leading to the creation of the city state of Venice, and the other, surprisingly for the times, cognatic, originating with the woman warrior Risamante’s marriage to an unnamed Christian knight, a tie pointing to the Medici family grandukedom in Tuscany, by way not of a son – let us remember that this is the work of a woman writer – but of a daughter called Salarisa. Women warriors were popular in sixteenth-century literature and culture and parents often named their daughters after them. But can women make war? Fonte is of the opinion that women can do all the things men do when the circumstances of their upbringing are equal, whether on the battlefield or on the writing table. She significantly puts the two activities together in the same octave: Le donne in ogni età fur da natura Di gran giudizio e d’animo dotate, Né men atte a mostrar con studio e cura Senno e valor degli uomini son nate; E perché se commune è la figura, Se non son le sostanze variate, S’hanno simile un cibo e un parlar, denno Differente aver poi l’ardire e ’l senno? Sempre s’è visto e vede (pur ch’alcuna Donna v’abbia voluto il pensier porre) Nella milizia riuscir più d’una, E ’l pregio e ’l grido a molti uomini torre; E così nelle lettere e in ciascuna Impresa che l’uom pratica e discorre Le donne sì buon frutto han fatto e fanno, Che gli uomini a invidiar punto non hanno. (4.1–2) Women in every age were by nature endowed with great judgment and spirit, nor are they born less apt than men to demonstrate (with study and

118

SIBLING RELATIONS AND GENDER IN THE EARLY MODERN WORLD

care) their wisdom and valor. And why, if their bodily form is the same, if their substances are not varied, if they have the same food and speech, must they have then different courage and wisdom? // Always one has seen and sees (provided that a woman wanted to put thought into it) more than one woman succeed in the military, and take away the esteem and acclaim from many men. Just so in letters and in every endeavor that men undertake and pursue, women have achieved and achieve such good results that they have no cause at all to envy men.

Limitations for Fonte, in short, do not come from women’s nature but from a patriarchal culture in which fathers have simply not cared to educate their daughters or to teach them how to fight, as they have their sons, on the assumption that it was not worth their effort (4.4). In early modern Italian society daughters remained tied to the father’s line even after marriage, the most significant ‘pursuit’ (‘affar,’ as Fonte would say) for which they were raised. The recovery of a patrilineally oriented kinship and patrimony on the part of Risamante, rather than marriage, constitutes in many ways the backbone of Floridoro. Fonte follows closely her female knight’s efforts to get a kingdom, the way men in chivalric romances do, and this is indeed the only issue that she resolved before, surprisingly, sending Floridoro to press, incomplete.2 What the author left to the readers to figure out is whether Risamante will share the territory she has just gained with her twin or whether she breaks all sisterly ties and punishes her. In a previous study I suggested that Fonte’s inability, or unwillingness, to unravel this episode fully with perhaps a few more octaves had a twofold origin. One was biographical, in that she married the very year in which Floridoro suddenly came out, and we know that she wrote no more for a decade. The other was authorial, in that she felt perhaps unable to negotiate the formulaic closure – with the ‘good’ hero killing the ‘bad’ hero (in our case, Risamante killing king Cloridabello, the defender of her sister) and becoming the ruler of the state – that had made the genre so successful.3 Such was, for example, the ending of Virgil’s Aeneid, the text against which all Italian writers of epics were to measure themselves, including the author whom Fonte so ostensibly imitates, Ariosto. In this chapter I would like to return to the issue of authorial lack of closure – a subject capital to any narrative, but particularly, I feel, to women’s narrative – from another angle, and suggest that Fonte’s impasse came from the fact that it was psychologically impossible for her to choose a twin over her identical other or, in patriarchal terms, to pick an offspring over another. When all differences between the two sisters were dismantled and the time came to present Biondaura to the readers (she was the subject of conversation or the object of voyeuristic onlooking through a portrait, but had always been physically absent), the narrative line seems suddenly to lose momentum and

SISTERHOOD IN MODERATA FONTE’S FLORIDORO

119

Fonte opts out, as if the enemy twins had become one and the mirror had ceased to function as a go between.

Identity and inheritance Fonte begins the chronicle of her twins early in Floridoro by differentiating them by their names as soon as they are born: Biondaura echoes the evasive, ethereal, and light-diffusing Petrarchan type; and Risamante gets a name that de-dramatizes the implications of her narrative cross-dressing by hinting at a sunny, playful disposition. They are identical in everything, Fonte adds, apart from their outward gendered characteristics: one is soft and delicate like a woman and the other goes around the world armed like a warrior. Sometime after their birth the twins are separated by a benevolent father figure, a wizard named Celidante, who kidnaps Risamante, knowing that she is predestined to leave her mark on the world and wants to educate her for the task. We are not told her age at the moment of separation (the word used, ‘fanciulla,’ covers a wide range of years), but we can surmise that Risamante was old enough to talk. Entry into language is entry into the symbolic and for the young girl this entry is marked by the loss of both parents. It is also marked, significantly, by the loss of her gender, since from that moment she is raised as what she is not: a warrior rather than a little girl. Throughout Floridoro, Fonte carefully phallicizes Risamante’s body by presenting it mostly as masculine, fully armored and with a helmet, so as to negate her heroine any proper, or perhaps just any appropriate, identity. At the same time, Fonte, unlike male writers such as Bibbiena and Ariosto, never plays up the potential for homoerotic associations that the cross-gendered description of her character suggests. Even though she was lost to her family following her kidnapping, we are made to understand that Risamante’s mother – her uterine tie to the daughter always strong – thought that the child could be found alive. The mother’s love and bereavement, that is, preserved the daughter’s identity in the father’s kingdom at a time when no news whatsoever was available. But, after the mother passed away, the father chose to believe that Risamante was lost for good. Refusing even to name her, as if to avoid stirring up a ghost, at his death he left the kingdom to his only remaining daughter, Biondaura (2.35). Risamante is apprised of her noble origins only 17 years later. Newly conscious of her rights, she reads paternal negligence, rather than paternal might, in the king’s decision. Thus, in phallic disrespect for his Law, she asks her sister for half of her inheritance. They are born of the same father, she argues, and therefore have equal rights, let alone equal features. Biondaura rejects the symbiotic link that this request from a sister she must have presumed (or wanted) dead suggests, and responds that her land is hers by

120

SIBLING RELATIONS AND GENDER IN THE EARLY MODERN WORLD

right. By upholding the father’s decision, once again Biondaura makes Risamante invisible and leaves fully in motion the trauma of a daughter yearning for paternal recognition. Thus, in ‘just rage,’ Risamante wages a war against her. As the plot of separation, repression and yearning for reconciliation delineated above makes clear, the creation of the double allows Fonte to analyze the splitting of the subject and the alienation that subsequently creates an identity. Central throughout to Fonte’s preoccupation is the staging of Oedipal rivalries and the violence that the lack of an original mark of difference engenders. To be sure, the issue of which twin should have the right to paternal property is a complex one. Who is born first when both are born almost at once? Is the one born first generated first as well? More generally, how do women inherit? At the time of Fonte’s writing the legal system in place throughout Italy with municipal variations (ius proprium) was slowly moving from a method called in fraterna, in which all brothers shared equally in the father’s patrimony, to one based on primogeniture, which meant that younger sons could not inherit from intestate fathers as wealth started to concentrate on the first-born male of the casato. Women had access to the father’s estate only through dowries, which they could not claim legally, however, although it was often understood that dowries were indispensable to the honor of the family, and thus provided if at all possible and even if debts had to be incurred. When there was no son to inherit the father’s property, daughters would come in, at least in Venice, in equal parts, while in Florence an indirect, even collateral, male line had the precedence over daughters for property devolution in order to keep the family name alive.4 Maternal inheritance, if there was any, was divided equally among males and females when there was no will. All in all daughters were not treated equally among themselves and by the end of the sixteenth century, just as cadet brothers were given a living allowance (‘vitalizio’) and sent to the military or the Church, so one or two daughters only were allowed to marry. The others were allocated, unwillingly if not coercively, to the convent. Of those who married, the first, the last, or the most physically attractive, was customarily given the highest dowry in order to attract a promising husband. In her treatise, The Worth of Women (1600), Fonte is quite vocal in denouncing fathers who do not provide in time for their daughters. She also censures brothers who postpone (or avoid altogether) giving a sister a dowry in order to use dotal assets for business transactions. Since even convents required money to take in unmarried and unmarriageable daughters, women of all classes considered a dowry indispensable to their survival. They also saw the dowry as a precise indicator of their place in society. A daughter with no property, Fonte vehemently asserts in The Worth, has almost no choice than to become a prostitute.5 It pays to notice that Fonte was writing just three

SISTERHOOD IN MODERATA FONTE’S FLORIDORO

121

years before a royal edict of 1595 fixed in place in many parts of Italy the vertical, patrilineal vision of the noble family household that I delineated above, in which inheritance applied exclusively to the first son and in his absence, to another male member on the father’s side. Women now had to sign off any property claim to their agnatic family with an official renunciation once they were granted a dowry.6 In reading through Floridoro one senses that there is something personal in Fonte’s emphasis that fathers ought to guarantee the sustenance of their nubile family dependents and that provisions should be made for them in due time. If we are to believe her biographer and uncle, Niccolò Doglioni, Fonte herself seems to have gone through a long legal battle to win her right to a congruent amount of her father’s assets destined, we surmise, following favor agnationis, to her slightly older brother, Leonardo, after they were orphaned of both parents in quick succession in early childhood.7 She remembers the heartache directly in Floridoro: Quanti orfani oggi son cui sono oppresse Le facultà che de lor padri foro Per non aver (non chi al morir s’appresse) Ma chi opri pur la lingua in favor loro. (3.3) How many orphans today have no access to the possessions that were their fathers’ for lacking, not someone who would court death, but someone who would employ even his tongue in their favor?

Recognition and unveiling The story of the original separation and of the father’s differentiation between his offspring is told in almost exact terms twice in Floridoro, as if repetitions were necessary both to narrative development and to cure some deeply felt anxiety on the part of the author. The chain of events that led one sister to pursue another in the name of equality is given center stage once at the start of the romance (2.30–37) and then again, almost verbatim, in the last canto (13.51–9). Both times this tale is accompanied by a combat in which Risamante fights (and defeats) a knight championing her sister. Both times Risamante takes off her helmet at the end of the joust and reveals her sex under the cover of armor, an event that thoroughly confounds the onlookers because, at the same time that she is recognized as a woman, she is also mistaken as being the one whom she definitely is not: Biondaura. The first misrecognition takes place as the public present at the duel between Risamante and Macandro, king of the Parthii, realizes, in utmost surprise, that in taking off her helmet Risamante looks exactly like the woman in the painting that her adversary, whom she has just killed, left hanging on a

122

SIBLING RELATIONS AND GENDER IN THE EARLY MODERN WORLD

tree. Macandro had come to the tournament to assert his belief, through a duel, that his idol, Biondaura, was the most beautiful woman in the world, as her portrait clearly showed. Now that he is dead the onlookers are puzzled: why would you fight the woman you adore? Fonte uses here the image of the mirror to highlight the extreme resemblance between the sisters, one that in fact does not fade even when the real woman and the one painted are placed next to each other for comparison (2.29).8 In this scene Risamante is indistinguishable from Biondaura. Her sight, in fact, engenders an uncanny reaction in the public at large. To mark her difference, therefore, she reveals how things are: her sister has a kingdom and she does not and all came about because her father – unlike any of the onlookers – saw a difference between them. The scene concludes with Risamante shedding the only sign of dissimilarity between her and her sister that Fonte had mentioned when first describing them: clothes. At the insistence of the Queen of Greece and of her daughter, Celsidea, Risamante takes off her breeches and dresses up in feminine attire for the official dinner. This entry into femininity does not last long, however, because the next morning she hurriedly puts back on the accoutrements of the other gender, as if wearing a dress felt like a masquerade. It is not yet time for Risamante to embrace femininity. Momentous or not, this is after all only Canto 2. Risamante’s literal uncovering of her identity is repeated in the last octaves of Floridoro, after she defeats the second champion of her sister, king Cloridabello, who is now engaged in fighting not for Biondaura’s beauty, as Macandro did earlier, but for Biondaura’s kingdom. Were he to lose, Biondaura is bound to let her sister have her entire land, including the capital city of Artemita. In seeing Risamante’s face, a prostrate Cloridabello mistakes her for Biondaura and cannot understand why the very woman whose cause he is championing has chosen to fight him: Non è questo (dicea) l’amato volto Che mi stampò nel cor la man d’Amore? Non son questi i begli occhi, che m’han colto Al dolce laccio e posto in dolce errore? Io non son già sì cieco né sì stolto Che non conosca chi m’ha tolto il core. (13.66) ‘Is this not,’ he said, ‘the beloved face that Love’s hand stamped in my heart? Are these not the beautiful eyes that caught me with a sweet snare and placed me in sweet error? Indeed I am not so blind nor so foolish as not to recognize the one who has taken my heart.’

In ‘Beyond the Pleasure Principle’ (1920) Freud linked the compulsion to repeat with the death instinct.9 More recently, Lacan has stretched Freud’s statement further to suggest that repetition leads the individual to find unconscious truths. That is, the repetition of repressed material is not the

SISTERHOOD IN MODERATA FONTE’S FLORIDORO

123

action by which the neurotic masters the past or recreates pleasure but the action that is meant ‘to place something unified and familiar – an ego – between the real of traumata and the exigencies of the symbolic and imaginary.’10 As the story of Risamante develops, what is at stake, I argue, is not so much the recognition of who is right, but who is who. Throughout the narrative, what Risamante wants is not to be her sister but to have what her sister has – the kingdom of Armenia – because that will make her, just like Biondaura, her father’s daughter. But she wants also to be recognized as a sister, in the sense that she wants to reconstruct the bond of diffuse unity that was broken so early in her childhood when she was taken away, even though she yearns to grow out of it. This rivalry, which is internal to the subject but also necessary to the ideology of state formation at the core of epic romances, harks back to Ariosto’s Furioso. In Canto 6.43, Ariosto described a similar instance of a father who, by dividing his inheritance unjustly, provoked discord among his three daughters: the chaste Logistilla, to whom he left everything, and the more promiscuous and cunning Alcina and Morgana, born of another union, to whom he left nothing. As a result, Alcina appropriated for herself most of Logistilla’s land. Ariosto’s argument was somewhat deterministic: since the two disinherited sisters were born of incest, they were wicked; the father’s castrating behavior could thus be justified. Nothing of the sort happens in Fonte, not only because the twins of her story are legitimate, but also, more tellingly, because Fonte is unwilling to create a wicked female character, even when we would expect one.11 Like Alcina, Biondaura exerts her power through manipulation, but she does not use her body to reach that purpose. In fact, she restrains herself even from loving any of the men willing to fight for her. At the most, she donates a likeness of herself, a painting with which they can idolatrously fall in love. Biondaura is indeed the woman-as-other, personally unavailable but ready for consumption as a fetish, a Galathea for any aspiring Pygmalion, and yet she keeps her agency without appearing castrating. She does not function as an exchangeable commodity – a woman for a kingdom – since she promises little to whoever fights for her. Thus, while the overtly sexual woman is routinely chastised in most chivalric romances when the hero she has seduced departs for better shores – in due time, for example, Ariosto unveils the seductive Alcina as a witch with no teeth and sparse hair – Biondaura is bound to escape this destiny because she has never been possessed as an object, although she has been given out as a projection of men’s desire. As for Risamante, she does not reflect Logistilla’s exacting rational personality; rather, like Bradamante, whose name she echoes, she moves from infantile illusions of omnipotence to an acceptance of her separate identity as a result of working through a set of disillusionments.12 At first, as I mentioned, Risamante tries to reestablish the imaginary wholeness that she imagined she

124

SIBLING RELATIONS AND GENDER IN THE EARLY MODERN WORLD

enjoyed with her sister before her abduction from their father’s home. Hence, her narcissistic desire to find herself in the other. Biondaura rightfully refuses to be part of it, aware that overidentification spells the subject’s death. Since the desire of the other produces anxiety, Biondaura now forestalls the moment of acceptance of the similar other by cultivating another form of primary narcissism, the sense that she alone merited the father’s care and love and she alone could substitute for him in affairs of state. To Risamante’s desire to be ‘loved’ by her sister so that she can be cured of the sense that she has been Oedipally displaced, Biondaura can only respond by insisting that her alterity is irreducible and the past is irretrievable because her father willed it so. Luckily for Risamante, through her youth she was able to split the paternal image into two: the real father, who in her mind did not love her but was still her first object of heterosexual desire, and the ideal father, Celidante, who raised her and supported her right to a reign to the extent of assembling an entire army at the frontiers of Armenia in one night.13 Celidante functions as the Ur-father of Freud’s ‘Totem and Taboo,’ the omnipotent, all-moral father who knows what is right and what is needed and allows for the constitution of the ego-ideal and for the identifications that structure the superego.14 To be loved at least by this benign father, Risamante let herself be masculinized; willingly, we are told, she became a phallic, fully armored daughter for an ever-vigilant pater. The only way Risamante can cure herself of the fear of being so unworthy of her real father’s love as to have been literally forgotten, even on his deathbed, is to make the paternal decision to disinherit her fulfill a fantasy that she too, indeed, deserves to be loved because she is strong and successful, as everybody can see – the fulfillment of any father’s desire.15 True, unable to go through mourning until a significant climaxing event takes place, she remains stuck for a while in melancholia and repetition.16 But when, upon defeating Cloridabello, Risamante has the chance to show that her cause is just and moral, the fury against the sister that guided her melts away. Seeing the king lying half dead on the bloodied battlefield, she breaks an all-encompassing epic rule – kill your adversary – and with a compassionate hand (‘con pietosa mano’) takes off his bloodied helmet and has him brought inside a tent to be cured (13.63). Having risked death in order to be ‘recognized,’ Risamante now nullifies her father’s ‘No’ by entering into an equal relationship with her sister based on blood ties. The king’s ‘unveiling’ – that is, Risamante’s dismantling of her father’s ‘mistake’ by subduing a father figure standing for the law – finally begins the process of mourning that allows the daughter to forgive her ruler-father, put her past in context, and become her own self, no longer engulfed in the desire for a doting nuclear family. For once, although still fully armed, Risamante is given an adjective that had so far marked only her sister, ‘molle.’ Fonte used

SISTERHOOD IN MODERATA FONTE’S FLORIDORO

125

softness to describe Biondaura’s femaleness, but now she employs it to refer to Risamante’s heart. Women warriors, she seems to suggest, have different issues at stake when they engage in combat: respect for what they stand for is of primary importance, she argues, while useless violence is better left to men. Rivalry stops when truth is revealed because women’s hearts are soft. In short, women can choose to be generous when they have made their point.17 The story of Risamante can end without the proper clear-cut closure that we are accustomed to expect in epic romances, but with a hint that perhaps our woman warrior can now embrace a newly discovered feminine ‘softness’ and stop cross-dressing. Let me recall that Fonte had explicitly made clothes the only distinguishing sign of difference between the sisters. This leads me back to Moderata Fonte, the author. Like her character Risamante, she too had an extended period of mourning following her father’s untimely death and the destitution that accompanied her orphaned state vis-àvis a brother so close to her in age that he could be seen almost as her twin. She too would eventually surmount this phase by revisiting it in a phallic way, not with a sword in her hand, like Risamante, but with a pen in her hand, like any of the recognized authors of books of dynastic myth-making parsing narratives of legitimacy and genealogical purity. As Risamante enters into adulthood by establishing her true bloodline and by taking possession of her filial assets after a protracted battle of wills with her estranged ‘other,’ so Fonte eventually marries with a proper dowry, quite late but still blissfully within her class, and enters an adult life as mater familiae – the only form of coming of age that women of her time could experience. We will never know whether the kingdom of Armenia was to prove a sufficient asset for an ambitious Risamante, but we know that domestic life might have had its pitfalls if Moderata Fonte ferociously, as well as methodically, set out to assault it in the book that she was writing the day she died, The Worth of Women. But this is another story.

Notes 1.

The genre of chivalric romances penned by early modern women writers, although known at the time, was literally forgotten for centuries and its very existence had to be recovered and brought to the attention of contemporary audiences. This was done in 1995 with the publication in a modern edition of Fonte’s Floridoro, which opened the field to new studies. Now female-authored romances of chivalry, such as Tullia d’Aragona’s Meschino (1560, on whose authorship there are still doubts), Margherita Sarocchi’s La scarderbeide (1606), Lucrezia Marinella’s Enrico (1635) and Barbara Albizzi Tagliamochi’s Ascanio errante (1640), are finally having their day. The case of Laura Terracina’s Discorso (1560), which expands on Ariosto’s first lines of each canto, also should

126

2. 3.

4.

5.

6.

7.

8.

SIBLING RELATIONS AND GENDER IN THE EARLY MODERN WORLD

be included. Most of these texts are being translated for the ‘Other Voice’ series of the University of Chicago Press. The translation of Floridoro by Julia Kisacky, from which I will be quoting, is for a forthcoming volume that I am editing for that series. According to her uncle, Doglioni, Fonte had written many more pages, now lost, than those eventually printed. See Valeria Finucci, ‘Moderata Fonte e il romanzo cavalleresco al femminile,’ in Moderata Fonte, Tredici canti del Floridoro, ed. Valeria Finucci (Modena, Mucchi, 1995), XXXII, XXXVIII. Likewise, although Marinella has two women warriors fighting each other in her epic, the Byzantine Meandra and the Venetian Claudia, both eventually succumb in the match and have the ‘honor of the victory’ (24.48). See also Virginia Cox, ‘Women as Readers and Writers of Chivalric Poetry in Early Modern Italy,’ in Gino Bedani et al., Sguardi sull’Italia: Miscellanea dedicata a Francesco Villani (Leeds: The Society for Italian Studies, 1997), 134–45. For the need to give a dowry to guarantee the honor of the family, see Donald Queller and Thomas Madden, ‘Father of the Bride: Fathers, Daughters, and Dowries in Late Medieval and Early Renaissance Venice,’ Renaissance Quarterly 46 (1993), 704. Roman law (ius commune), which was the law of the country, allowed inheritance rights for women, even when they had a dowry, but municipalities could – and did – enact their own restrictions. For the juridical place of women in early modern society, the dowry system, and the dotal size in Venice and the Veneto region at the time, see Bellavitis, Chojnacki, Queller and Madden, Grubb, and Ferraro. For the Tuscan case, see Kuehn, Molho, and Klapisch-Zuber. For Naples and the south, see Visceglia. More generally, see Pomata, Bellomo, Barbagli, and Trevor and Lowe. Lucrezia, one of the interlocutors, was disinherited by her father, so she knows the problem first hand. See also Virginia Cox, ‘The Single Self: Feminist Thought and the Marriage Market in Early Modern Venice,’ Renaissance Quarterly 47 (1995), 513–81. According to Gianna Pomata, ‘Family and Gender,’ in John Marino, ed., Early Modern Italy: 1550–1796 (New York: Oxford University Press, 2002), 78–80, after 1560 70 per cent of Venetian patrician women were sent to monastic orders; in Milan 75 per cent of patrician women were celibate in the first half of the seventeenth century. The information is in ‘Life of Moderata Fonte,’ written the year after Fonte died and published in the preface of The Worth of Woman (Il merito delle donne), trans. Virginia Cox (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1997), 31–40. See also Virginia Cox, ‘Moderata Fonte and the “Worth of Women”,’ in ibid., 31–40. Lack of a dotal asset may also have been a motivating factor in Fonte marrying only at 26. In Venice, the average age of marriage was 16 in the second half of the sixteenth century. See Stanley Chojnacki, Women and Men in Renaissance Venice: Twelve Essays on Patrician Society (Baltimore and London: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2000), 175 and 313. Fathers were known to fake downward the age of their daughters to increase their chance of marriage after 25. See Anthony Molho, ‘Deception and Marriage Strategy in Renaissance Florence: The Case of Women’s Age,’ Renaissance Quarterly 41 (1988), 204. In women’s writing, unlike men’s, portraits of beautiful women, authorized by women, do women no good. A striking example is that of the unnamed duchess

SISTERHOOD IN MODERATA FONTE’S FLORIDORO

9. 10. 11.

12. 13. 14. 15.

16.

17.

127

in Bigolina’s Urania, whose portrait, featuring parts described along Petrarchan codes, causes her eventual undoing. See Sigmund Freud, ‘Beyond the Pleasure Principle,’ The Standard Edition of the Complete Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud, ed. and trans. James Strachey (London: Hogarth Press, 1953–74), vol. 18, 7–64. See Ellie Ragland, Essays on the Pleasure of Death: From Freud to Lacan (New York: Routledge, 1995), 69. For example Circetta, the daughter of Circe and Ulysses, who, like Alcina, could turn men into trees, is unable to behave wickedly and falls in love; likewise, the witch kidnapping Nicobaldo and his wife ends up trying to help him and asks for his forgiveness (6.73). On Bradamante’s career, see Valeria Finucci, The Lady Vanishes: Subjectivity and Representation in Castiglione and Ariosto (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1992), chap. 8. The figure of Celidante is modelled upon that of the wizard Atlante in the Furioso. See Sigmund Freud, ‘Totem and Taboo,’ The Standard Edition of the Complete Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud, ed. and trans James Strachey (London: Hogarth Press, 1953–74), vol. 13, 1–161. As Melanie Klein writes, ‘A time will come, the child phantasizes, when he will be strong, tall and grown up, powerful, rich and potent, and father and mother will have changed into helpless children, or again, will be very old, weak, poor and rejected.’ ‘Mourning and Manic Depressive States,’ in Selected Melanie Klein, ed. Juliet Mitchell (New York: Penguin Books, 1986), 154. ‘Melancholia,’ Judith Butler asserts, ‘is precisely the effect of unavowable loss. A loss prior to speech and declaration, it is the limiting condition of its possibility: a withdrawal or retraction from speech that makes speech possible. In this sense, melancholia makes mourning possible, a view that Freud came to accept in The Ego and the Id.’ ‘Psychic Inceptions: Melancholy, Ambivalence, Rage,’ The Psychic Life of Power (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1997), 169. According to Low, women fight to get respect. They are also not overly vindictive, do not engage in braggadocio, and are not bloodthirsty. Jennifer Low, Manhood and the Duel: Masculinity in Early Modern Drama and Culture (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2003), 140–41.

Texts and further reading Albizzi Tagliamochi, Barbara, Ascanio errante. Florence: Landini, 1640. Ariosto, Lodovico. Orlando furioso. Milan: Garzanti, 1974. ________ . Orlando furioso. Trans. Guido Waldman. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1983. Barbagli, Marzio. Sotto lo stesso tetto: Mutamenti della famiglia in Italia dal XV al XX secolo. Bologna: Il Mulino, 1984. Bellavitis, Anna. ‘Patrimoni e matrimoni a Venezia nel Cinquecento.’ In Le ricchezze delle donne: Diritti patrimoniali e poteri familiari in Italia (XIII–XIX secc.), ed. Giulia Calvi and Isabelle Chabot. Turin: Rosenberg and Sellier, 1998. 149–60. Bellomo, Mario. La condizione giuridica della donna in Italia. Turin: Einaudi, 1970. Bigolina, Giulia, Urania, a Romance. Ed. and trans. Valeria Finucci. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2004.

128

SIBLING RELATIONS AND GENDER IN THE EARLY MODERN WORLD

Chojnacki, Stanley. Women and Men in Renaissance Venice: Twelve Essays on Patrician Society. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2000. Cox, Virginia. ‘Moderata Fonte and the “Worth of Women”,’ in Moderata Fonte, The Worth. 1–23. D’Aragona, Tullia. Il Meschino, altramente detto il Guerrino Venice: Sessa, 1560. Doglioni, Giovanni Nicolò. ‘La Vita della Signora Modesta Pozzo dei Zorzi, nominata Moderata Fonte.’ In Fonte, Merito. Ferraro, Joanne. Marriage Wars in Late Renaissance Venice. New York: Oxford University Press, 2001. Fonte, Moderata. The Worth of Women (Il merito delle donne). Trans. Virginia Cox. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1997. Floridio. Tredici canti del Floridoro. Ed. Valeria Finucci. Modena: Mucchi, 1995. ________ . Floridio. Ed. Valeria Finucci, trans. Julia Kisacky. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, forthcoming. Grubb, James. Provincial Families of the Renaissance: Private and Public Life in the Veneto. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1996. Klapisch-Zuber, Christiane. Women, Family, and Ritual in Renaissance Italy. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1985. Kuehn, Thomas. Law, Family, and Women: Toward a Legal Anthropology of Renaissance Italy. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1991. Marinella, Lucrezia, L’Enrico ovvero Bisanzio Acquistato. Venice: Imberti, 1635. ________ . The Nobility and Excellence of Women and the Defects and Vices of Men (La nobiltà et l’eccellenza delle donne. Ed. and trans. Ann Dunhill. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1999. Pomata, Gianna. ‘Family and Gender.’ In Early Modern Italy: 1550–1796 ed. John Marino. New York: Oxford University Press, 2002, 69–86. Sarocchi, Margherita, La scarderbeide. Rome: Facis, 1606. Terracina, Laura. Discorso sopra il principio di tutti i canti dell’Orlando Furioso. Venice: Giolito, 1550. Trevor, Dean, and K. J. P. Lowe, eds, Marriage in Italy: 1300–1650. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998. Visceglia, Maria Antonietta. Il bisogno d’eternità: I comportamenti aristocratici a Napoli in età moderna. Naples: Guida, 1988.

CHAPTER ELEVEN

Andrea and Giovanni Gabrieli: Musicians and Sororal Relations in Later Sixteenth-Century Venice Rebecca Edwards Sometime in the late 1570s, Angela di Fais, daughter of Piero the master linenweaver, gathered up her few possessions in an act of desperation and fled the home of her husband, Bartolomeo de Albertis, a wine porter in the city of Venice, to return to her natal family. Taking lodging with Andrea Gabrieli, organist at the Basilica of San Marco in Venice, she may have helped to support herself by practicing the craft of weaving for the next few years, until her family retained counsel to plead her case to Church authorities. In the protracted ecclesiastical and communal proceedings which followed, Angela’s objective was to obtain permission to leave her marriage without obligation to return; her husband’s, to oppose her at every turn.1 Fragments of Angela’s story were first published some twenty years ago in the context of the biographies of the renowned organists-composers Andrea and Giovanni Gabrieli, her uncle and brother, respectively.2 Newly studied documents from the Archivio Storico Patriarchale in Venice now provide insight into the situation affecting two generations of brothers and sisters in the di Fais-Gabrieli family. Angela’s court proceedings reveal that, upon the deaths of Andrea Gabrieli and Piero di Fais, Giovanni Gabrieli assumed the combined roles of the deceased – financial support and pater familias of a large clan – with far greater pressures to succeed musically and financially than have been assumed. He also became a mediator between his many siblings, whose differing stances towards Angela’s marriage had torn the family into factions, and his prominent use of testimony in the ensuing trial may have compromised the family’s standing in the community. His decision to publish many of Andrea’s musical works posthumously may have been driven as much by his need to increase income and restore reputations, as by simple loyalty to his uncle’s memory. Trial records from early 1584 to autumn 1585 reveal that matters went poorly for Angela. Her counsel, Consalvo Chrispoldo, worked only halfheartedly on her case, frequently attending hearings late or missing them

130

SIBLING RELATIONS AND GENDER IN THE EARLY MODERN WORLD

altogether, and he often lacked the necessary paperwork and failed to prepare convincing evidence to support his client’s position. The repeated postponements and reschedulings engendered exasperated accusations by the opposition that Chrispoldo was deliberately stalling for time, while judgments continued to accumulate against her.3 When Chrispoldo himself was thrown into prison over an apparently unrelated matter, Giovanni Gabrieli, newly appointed organist at San Marco, decided to take up the case on his sister’s behalf, requesting ten days to consult with Chrispoldo, whose release was imminently expected. Frustrated by yet another postponement, Angela’s husband reacted with a barrage of angry words, declaring that neither his wife nor her brother would be able to produce valid arguments against him, no matter how much time they were allowed. His protest was to no avail, for the judge granted Giovanni Gabrieli eight days to prepare for a new hearing. Within a short while Giovanni Gabrieli’s astonishing efficacy as Angela’s procurator melted away many of the opposition’s earlier advantages. The young musician probably was an inexperienced advocate, yet he deftly made moves in a cunning chess game that placed Bartolomeo de Albertis on defensive alert. While the documents are vague, they suggest that Giovanni’s strategies were novel and unanticipated. For example, after receiving only eight of the ten days he had requested to prepare his arguments, Giovanni neglected to appear for the scheduled hearing, giving the impression that Angela’s case would continue to suffer from ineffectual representation. Three days later, however, he was in court, boldly proposing that Bartolomeo pay all costs, to which his opponent countered with ‘memories’ that he offered irrefutable rebuttals to Giovanni’s argument. Undaunted, Giovanni pressed forward with another proposal, which caused Bartolomeo to declare that he needed more time to study the initiatives of his opponent.4 Bartolomeo took a new tack in the next phase of the proceedings, producing an allegation from the Avogaria di Commun that Angela had taken certain items when she ran away from their home. Giovanni rejected the civil accusation as frivolous and impertinent to the decision by the vicar, but Angela’s husband persisted, citing the necessity of taking the stolen items into account in the event of her possible monachation. Throwing light on the nature of Giovanni’s new strategy, Bartolomeo protested that it was not appropriate to propose that a woman who had abandoned her spouse be allowed to take up a religious vocation, but that he at least should be permitted to remarry if Angela were allowed to take holy orders rather than being condemned.5 It bears notice at this juncture that Angela di Fais’s case came soon after the Tridentine reforms, which provided new hope to married women who were trapped in conjugal unhappiness yet deeply fearful of living without support in a society whose prescribed female roles were profoundly limited.6

ANDREA AND GIOVANNI GABRIELI AS UNCLE AND BROTHER

131

Even if a young woman such as Angela did possess skills valuable in the cloth industry, and even if the di Fais, as popolani, were freer to provide more creatively for their loved ones than their more status-driven patrician counterparts, strict sixteenth-century Venetian social codes would have discouraged her from living indefinitely with her natal family. A traditional dowry would have been provided by her father or male kinsmen to ensure lifelong support by either a husband or a convent.7 In the tightly bound social and moral system of Renaissance Italy, which made few allowances for marital failure, the Tridentine reforms brought hope that a successful petition for annulment might undo misery and provide a fresh start for women’s lives.8 Generally, legal counsel helped to shape cases to be argued on the basis of canon law, yet each instance rested upon the credibility of the supplicants, the status and number of the witnesses, and the nuanced stories they told.9

The case for the defense Procedures followed a prescribed order. First, procurators conducted extensive research, established the facts and referred them to an attorney, who would construct a plausible scenario. After the presentation of initial arguments, the opposing party was allowed to respond. In Angela’s case, after the imprisonment of her counsel, Giovanni Gabrieli served as her sole representative, invested with the power to appear before ecclesiastical judges, provide a list of witnesses, cite salient points of law, and articulate arguments. His strategies were entirely different from those previously employed by Chrispoldo, who had sought almost exclusively to discredit the court rather than to argue in favor of an annulment. In contrast, Giovanni’s accusations were adroitly crafted to convey the ring of legitimate grievance to an ecclesiastical judge: his sister had not married of her free consent; she had been coerced and lied to by her father and uncle, of whom she had been terrified; the marriage had never been consummated because her husband was impotent. In the witness phase of the trial, Giovanni carefully selected persons to confirm Angela’s allegations. Among them was Dona Marietta, wife of Thesei de Bellis, who lived in the parish of Santa Maria Zubenigo, near the casetta of Andrea Gabrieli.10 This elderly neighbor claimed that, at the time of her marriage, Angela had been very young, scarcely more than 18 or 20 years old, whereas ‘Ser Bortolomeo’ was already an old man. Moreover, as soon as Angela had learned of her father’s and uncle’s plan, she had spoken openly of her utter dislike of Bartolomeo and of the fact that she would never accept him as her husband.11 Dona Marietta told how Angela’s older sister, Marina, had begged her to exhort Angela to acquiesce to her fate, and that Dona Marietta

132

SIBLING RELATIONS AND GENDER IN THE EARLY MODERN WORLD

had indeed said, ‘Dearest madonna Angela, you must content yourself with the plans made for you by your father and your uncle,’ but that Angela had implacably refused her advice. Continuing her testimony, Dona Marietta confirmed that, at home, Angela was taunted by her father, who verbally abused her, jeering and saying ‘Who do you want [expect] for a husband, the doge of Venice?’ Since Angela would not accept his choice for her marriage, Piero threatened to leave her without [any dowry or means of support]. Dona Marietta had not witnessed this firsthand, but she was convinced it was true, having been told of it by Marina, who continually begged her to persuade Angela to marry Bartolomeo. Spurning her sister, Angela cried and lamented constantly, yet the rigid insistence of her family prevailed and, in the end, she obeyed and wed a man whom, from the very first, she had bitterly denounced.12 Dona Marietta said that, on her wedding day, Angela had been so deeply unhappy that, when they had passed on the street, she had seemed nearly dead. After three months with her husband, Angela fled. Another witness, Dona Angela, the widow of Gasparis de Scuttari, from the di Fais family contrada of San Geremia, confirmed that Angela had been only about twenty when she was forced to marry a man who was probably forty or fifty, and that her uncle and father had pressured her continually with taunts and injurious words and were feared by everyone in their home. Moreover, as a woman ignorant of the law and sacred canons, Angela had been deceived, since she did not know that such pressure was enough to nullify a marriage. The elderly neighbor claimed that, since Bartolomeo was impotent, the marriage could not be consummated, a fact supported by Angela’s virginity, which had been confirmed by the women who had been called upon by the court to examine her.13 On 7 November 1585, scarcely a month into the new phase of the trial, the vicar, judge and apostolic subdelegate ruled that Angela would be allowed to enter a monastery as she had promised to do, indicating a precise two-month interval for her to prepare for a ‘tacit commitment,’ with the option of a more binding profession at a later time if she so chose. Otherwise, she would be obligated to return to her husband. Failure to follow these explicit directives would mean that she must pay the litigation costs of the spouse she had betrayed. In any case, her actions would not interfere whatsoever with Bartolomeo’s rights to recover items that she had taken from their home.14 Two months later, on 9 January 1586 Angela entered the convent of San Giovanni Laterano in Venice, ceding to her brother Giovanni all of her worldly goods in exchange for his promise to provide a suitable dowry for her monachation.15 Angela’s distrust of her father and uncle is contrasted by her singular faith in her brother, who so effectively had argued her case, either to recover her dowry or to raise sufficient capital for her entrance into the convent. In the end, it was the latter course of action that proved necessary.16

ANDREA AND GIOVANNI GABRIELI AS UNCLE AND BROTHER

133

It is ironic that Angela’s misery can be traced to the interventions of her uncle Andrea, beloved mentor and father figure to her brother Giovanni. Andrea’s role in the family was central. The brother of the children’s mother Paola, Andrea Gabrieli seems to have remained unmarried, spending most of his working life and earnings to provide for the care of his sister’s large family (a fact corroborated by his wage statements and requests for salary enhancements at the Basilica of San Marco in Venice).17 Already in March 1567 Andrea was allocating 25 ducats per year to enable one of Paola’s older children, Giacomo, to enter the Congregation of Santa Maria dall’Orto,18 and he may have single-handedly reared and trained Giovanni, who took his uncle’s surname, calling himself ‘Giovanni di Andrea Gabrieli’ in his earliest madrigal publications.19 Moreover, in his role as family elder, Andrea clearly was influential in Angela’s marriage arrangements, although, when the union proved disastrous, he allowed Angela back into his house at San Vidal, eventually leaving money for her in the form of a pious bequest before his death of fever and catarrh in the long summer of 1585, during which Angela’s case had languished.20 The final resolution of Angela’s case proved as equivocal as the daily vagaries of its progress through the Patriarchal court. After heated argumentation, the judge decreed that Giovanni Gabrieli must pay the costs of Bartolomeo di Albertis to the sum of 163 lire, 6 soldi piccoli. True to his wishes to stay married, Bartolomeo pursued Angela almost to the convent doors, berating the family when, two months past the appointed deadline, he believed that she still had not submitted to the veil. He also insisted on a complete inventory of the items missing from his home.21 Giovanni Gabrieli produced testimony on 14 January 1586 that the Patriarch’s chaplain had personally assisted Angela’s entrance into the convent, but Bartolomeo insisted that she be captured and coerced. Giovanni responded that his sister had obeyed the vicar, but he also stood on the regulations of the Council of Trent, asserting that Angela could not be coerced, since the rules allowed for a one-year trial period before permanently adopting the habit. The outraged Bartolomeo claimed that such a ruling did not apply to married persons, but Giovanni remained firm and asked that both he and his sister be liberated from Bartolomeo’s pretences and molestations. The judge’s response that Angela must strictly obey the sentence appears to have ended further protestations by both parties. Finally, with regard to Bartolomeo’s missing property, the records of the Avogaria di Comun show the following entry on 15 March 1586: I, Bortolo di Alberti, have received the items mentioned in the decree and [declare myself] to be fully satisfied as is stated in the inventory. I, Giovanni Girolamo Stella, have written this on behalf of the said Bortolo because he does not know how to write.22

134

SIBLING RELATIONS AND GENDER IN THE EARLY MODERN WORLD

Fear, fraud, and failure The case of Angela di Fais vs Bartolomeo de Albertis is interesting for the light it sheds on marital relationships in Renaissance Venice in general and on the lives of the Gabrieli family in particular. As the daughter of a linen-weaver from the popolano class, Angela benefitted from the close-knit communities in the contrade where her family maintained residences, establishing networks that proved especially important when the family’s hierarchical structure failed her. As Ferraro suggests, Angela probably made the best of Venice’s cramped domestic spaces, wedged into narrow streets and alleyways in arrangements which practically ensured that familial and marital relationships were visible and audible to a wide audience of co-inhabitants. Conveniently, neighbors provided alternative support in her time of need. Her exchange of gossip with women such as Dona Marietta and Dona Angela eventually furnished Angela with reliable witnesses from different parts of the city, who offered uniform recollections of her plight.23 This was particularly important in Angela’s case. Her brother’s toughest challenge in a court already predisposed toward his opponent was to free his sister from the grasp of a husband who claimed to want nothing more than to have his wife reunited with him. The too common claims of an unfaithful husband, one who had failed to provide adequately for his wife’s support, or one that he did not love her, might have been excluded out of hand. But the testimony of witnesses enabled Giovanni Gabrieli to construct annulment arguments based on very particular charges that would conform to post-Tridentine practice. Whether or how he was coached to argue the three counts of fear, fraud, and failure is unknown, but it is apparent that Giovanni raised each issue within the course of the difficult proceedings. Reliable witnesses helped first to demonstrate that Angela’s marriage was not based on the prerequisite of mutual agreement which the Church required. Their testimony showed that Angela had been implacably opposed to the marriage from the very beginning, that she had never agreed to take Bartolomeo as her husband, that she never buckled under pressure from her older sister, Marina, nor from the painful ridicule of her uncle and father. She had been married off, despite all protests, while being threatened to be left without a dowry and abandoned with no means of support. Indeed, the Patriarchal court could only conclude that Angela was forced into marriage by meanness and by fear.24 Inseparably connected with the issue of fear was the issue of fraud, for Angela had been deceived by her family into believing that she was obligated to marry Bartolomeo de Albertis. As Dona Angela testified, Angela was an innocent young woman, who had been deliberately kept ignorant of the sacred canons that asserted that marriage must be consensual.25 Finally, there was the issue of failure, because Angela’s husband was said to be impotent, causing the

ANDREA AND GIOVANNI GABRIELI AS UNCLE AND BROTHER

135

union never to have been consummated. Taken separately, each issue – grave fear, fraud or failure – might have provided sufficient reason for annulment. Taken together they provided a case that prevailed before Church authorities who strongly upheld the sacrament against all but the most convincing arguments. By defending Angela’s right to a ‘tacit commitment’ before taking lifetime vows in the convent, Giovanni Gabrieli cleverly provided for his sister’s exit from a wholly unsatisfactory life, while leaving open the door to her resumption of a more pleasing one within a year if she so chose.26 Together they may have dared dream of a far more desirable partner for her than an impotent, illiterate, old wine deliverer, and the scheme to exchange her forced marriage for the severe black robes of the nunnery may have been the result of subtle but significant shifts in the social order of later Renaissance Venice evident in their generation. Giovanni, at least, would have been acquainted with the phenomenon which saw wealthy, marriageable young male patricians or cittadini begin taking brides or common-law wives from the lower classes rather than participate in the much-discussed phenomenon of dowry inflation in the mid- to late 1500s. The behaviors of these young men created a new elasticity in the social fabric but did not improve the plight of their female counterparts who were placed in convents in unprecedented numbers. Giovanni’s own ambitions for social advancement well beyond his simple origins enabled him to establish close personal relationships with prominent patrons ranging from influential German counts to fabulously wealthy Netherlandish merchants.27

Paying the price Still, all parties to this dispute lost in some way or other. Bartolomeo de Albertis had the most to lose, not least his personal property, manly reputation, and hopes for a conjugal relationship. Angela escaped her marriage to Bartolomeo, but was forced to enter a convent with no assurance that she would be able to leave it again; moreover, she was held liable for stealing her husband’s property. Piero’s and Andrea’s abuse was bitterly recounted, becoming a matter of public record.28 As members of an older generation in an era of significant change, they seem not to have taken proper measure of Angela’s views, nor to have believed that they mattered. It is perhaps more understandable that the weaver Piero was committed to exerting tyrannical control over his daughter than that the musician Andrea Gabrieli remained apparently oblivious to the social ferment that provided contemporary writers and fellow composers with so many comic scenarios used in the commedia dell’arte. The subject matter of unwilling brides, pitiful

136

SIBLING RELATIONS AND GENDER IN THE EARLY MODERN WORLD

nuns, tyrannical families, approved marriages, and secret liaisons appeared in many popular writings, especially those of his composer colleagues.29 Most of Andrea’s secular compositions follow the serious Petrarchan model of earlier generations of madrigal writers, who idolized female beauty and lamented male lack of access to its perfections. Even his greghesche and giustiniane songs, in which he collaborated with poets who made reference to the comic, even ribald, aspects of old age, address more formulaic pastimes of commedia characters: a healthy meal, drinking to excess, dreaming about sexual adventure, singing and dancing. They do not explore the breaking of class boundaries or the thorny problems of moral conduct, cruelty or abuse of power. Notably, Andrea did not contribute to the genre of monacella songs. As seen above, Giovanni Gabrieli had to pay his adversary’s considerable court costs. He also had to muster a new dowry for his sister’s entry into the convent, reunite his divided family, and restore his uncle’s reputation. These setbacks and challenges may have prompted him to assiduously expand his musical employments during the period immediately following Angela’s trial, which saw him raise significant sums of money while pursuing an international reputation and solvent lifestyle.30 His acceptance of a permanent position at the Scuola di San Rocco, extra duties at the Basilica of San Marco during Ascension and Christmas, and German boarding students were probably undertaken because of his pressing need for funds. It also may be that his decision to begin publishing large portions of Andrea’s manuscript oeuvre, the most popular being the Concerti di Andrea e di Giovanni Gabrieli (1587) and the Terzo libro de madrigali a cinque voci (1589), to which Giovanni added his own compositions, represented an attempt not only to make money but to build public admiration of his deceased uncle. Giovanni later expanded his printing campaign, adding Andrea’s sacred and secular, vocal and instrumental works, including the intonazioni d’organo (1593) and the ricercari (1595). His important collection Sacre symphoniae (1597) quickly won fame and was reprinted and diffused throughout Germanspeaking lands north of the Alps, where Andrea had enjoyed success early in his career. Fittingly, Giovanni’s own style and fame were kept alive in the next generation by his most famous German pupil in Venice, Heinrich Schütz. It is perhaps a final justice that, following Andrea Gabrieli’s lifelong devotion to the well-being of his sister Paola, the next generation of brother helping sister – Giovanni helping Angela in the 1580s – provided the vehicle for a sister to help her brother four centuries later. In the 1980s the troubled disputes of Angela di Fais were first discovered by music historians, furnishing them with valuable tools with which to reassess and better understand the life and extraordinary career of her brother, Giovanni Gabrieli.

ANDREA AND GIOVANNI GABRIELI AS UNCLE AND BROTHER

137

Notes 1.

The case is preserved in the Archivio Storico del Patriarcato di Venezia (hereinafter ASPV), Epioscopato di Torcello, Libro Actorum (hereinafter ET, LA) 4 (1584–86). 2. See Martin Morell, ‘New Evidence for the Biographies of Andrea and Giovanni Gabrieli,’ Early Music History 3 (1983), 101–22, which argues that Andrea was born a generation later and had a much briefer career than music historians had originally believed. 3. ASPV, ET, LA 4 II, cc. 10v, 47r, 67r. 4. ASPV, ET LA 4 II, cc. 73v–74v. The surprise nature of these new initiatives becomes clear in the subsequent deliberations. 5. ASPV, ET, LA 4 II, cc. 74v–75r. 6. As Joanne Ferraro has noted in her book Marriage Wars in Renaissance Venice (Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 2001), 8, records of the Patriarchal court demonstrate how few options were open to women who did not enter marriage or a convent – a life of servitude in good cases, illness, shame, destitution, and prostitution in less fortunate ones. 7. Ibid. 8. The Tametsi decree, a product of Tridentine meetings, asserted that the consent of both members of a couple was required in order that a union be valid, and that the ceremony take place before a parish priest and legitimate witnesses. Canon law rendered invalid any contracts entered into under the pressure of fear or fraud; ibid., 38ff. 9. The means by which cases came to trial are note din ibid., chapter 2. See also the role of lawyers in Daniele Hacke, ‘“Non lo volevo per marito in modo alcuno.” Forced Marriages, Generational Conflicts, and the Limits of Patriarchal Power in Early Modern Venice, c. 1580–1680,’ Time, Space and Women’s Lives in Early Modern Europe, ed. Anne Jacobson Schutte, Thomas Kuehn, and Silvana Seidel Menchi (Kirksville: Truman State University Press, 2001), 211–12. 10. ASPV, Curia II, Serie Causarum Matrimoniorum (hereinafter SCM), Busta 80 (1585–86), #3-Angelae Q. Petri Tessari, Bartholomeo de Albertis. According to Joanne Ferraro, who has extensively studied this series, Angela described Andrea Gabrieli and Piero di Fais as ‘selfish, frightful people’ and called ‘a host of women to defame the men’s characters in court.’ See Ferraro, Marriage Wars, 62. 11. For information on the marriageable ages of young girls, see Brian Pullan, Rich and Poor in Renaissance Venice (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1971), 353, and 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 Migiel and Juliana Schiesari (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1991). 12. ASPV, Curia II, SCM, B. 80, #3. Chojnacki’s research into fourteenth- and fifteenth-century patricians indicates that most testating fathers who left instructions for their daughters’ futures showed no concern for the girls’ preferences about their marriage. See ‘The Power of Love: Wives and Husbands in Late Medieval Venice,’ in Women and Power in the Middle Ages, ed. Mary Erler and Maryanne Kowaleski (Athens and London: University of Georgia Press, 1998), 133. Hacke provides an expanded bibliography on the notion of cold, distant parent-daughter relationships showing that it has been argued from a number of perspectives; ‘Non lo volevo,’ 204, n. 3.

138

SIBLING RELATIONS AND GENDER IN THE EARLY MODERN WORLD

13. ASPV, Curia II, SCM, B. 80, #3. 14. ASPV, ET, LA 4 II, cc. 74v–75r. 15. Morell, ‘New Evidence,’ 106–7. According to Nino Tamassia, an Italian father held the position of patria potestas with the legal control over all of his children and their worldly goods. If daughters married they were under the joint command of their father, who had the power to disinherit them, and their husband. When the father was deceased, unmarried daughters passed to the authority of his closest male relatives; La famiglia italiana nei secoli decimoquinto e decimosesto (Milan: 1910; reprint Rome: Multigrafica Editrice, 1971), 248. 16. See the first document cited by Morell, ‘New Evidence,’ 104. 17. See my Ph.D. dissertation, ‘Claudio Merulo: Servant of the State and Musical Entrepreneur in Later Sixteenth-Century Venice’ (Princeton, 1990), Introduction and chapter 2, and my article ‘An Expanded Musical and Social Context for Andrea Gabrieli: New Documents, New Perspectives,’ in Andrea Gabrieli e il suo tempo: Atti del convegno internazionale, ed. Francesco Degrado (Florence: Leo Olschki, 1987), 43–57. 18. Martin Morell, ‘La biografia di Andrea Gabrieli: nuove acquisizioni e problemi aperti,’ Andrea Gabrieli e il suo tempo, 23–5. 19. See also Giovanni’s encomium in his Concerti di Andrea et di Gio. Gabrieli (Venice, 1587), in which Giovanni says he is hardly less than Andrea’s son. 20. Morell, ‘New Evidence,’ 107. 21. ASPV, ET, LA 4 (1584–86) II, cc. 101v–104r. 22. Morell, ‘New Evidence,’ 119. 23. On the public nature of Venetian daily life and the involvement of neighbors in family disputes, see Hacle, ‘Non lo volevo,’ which also cites Thomas Kuehn’s Law, Family and Women: Toward a Legal Anthropology of Renaissance Italy (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1991), 219–21: ‘planned marriages involving a large age gap between the prospective husband and wife, a different social station, or a future groom reputed to be a womanizer and/or a drunkard, called parental decisions into question and elicited a lack of understanding and amazement on the part of the neighbors.’ See also Joanne Ferraro, ‘The Power to Decide: Battered Wives in Early Modern Venice,’ Renaissance Quarterly 48 (1995), 492–512, and Marriage Wars, Introduction and chapter 1. 24. Daniela Hacke offers other instances from the Causarum Matrimoniorum in which a daughter’s complete rejection of a prospective partner was forcefully overruled by her family. In such cases it was crucial for the defense to show that the daughter had never given her consent, and thus an abuse of parental power, often involving grave fear, had occurred. As might be expected, many such marriages were never consummated; ‘Non lo volevo,’ 212. 25. As a ruling which placed the desires of offspring against the marital and financial designs of the parents, the Tametsi decree held great potential for conflict; see Patricia Seed, To Love, Honor, and Obey in Colonial Mexico: Conflicts over Marriage Choice, 1574–1821 (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1988), 32–6, which looks at the work of Hubert Jedin, Geschichte des Konzils von Trient, 4 vols (Freiburg: Herder, 1975–82). 26. Based upon present evidence, it seems unlikely that Angela remained for long within the convent for she appears as an ordinary citizen, along with her sisters, in a notarial document following Giovanni’s death; Archivio di Stato, Venezia (ASV), Notarile Atti, Zuanne e Ferigo Figolin, B. 5683 (1612), cc. 478r–479r. It is almost certain, moreover, that she was never reconciled to Bartholomeo de

ANDREA AND GIOVANNI GABRIELI AS UNCLE AND BROTHER

27.

28. 29.

30.

139

Albertis, whose last will and testament showed that he worked as a wine porter into advanced age, leaving all worldly goods to Santin and Bartholo, sons of his sister Domenega; ASV, Notarile Testamenti, B. 47, nos 82 and 96, 20 August 1613. Wilfrid Brulez, Marchands flamands à Venise I & II (1568–1605) (Rome and Brussels: L’Institut Historique Belge de Rome, 1965). Giovanni was particularly close to the Hellmans’ circle, some of whom took common-law wives from among Venetian neighbors and seem to have had close relations with servant girls. Ferraro, Marriage Wars, 62. Ferraro mentions the works of Girolamo Parabosco, Andrea’s older organist colleague at the Basilica of San Marco, himself no stranger to marital troubles, and the compositions of the 1590s by Adriano Banchieri and Orazio Vecchi, pieces which generally found their way into print a decade after Andrea’s death; Marriage Wars, 60–61. In Convents and the Body Politic in Late Renaissance Venice (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1999), especially n. 74, Jutta Sperling describes a contemporary song ‘Barzeletta dele Monacelle,’ a popular comic piece that laments young girls who were tricked into convent life by unscrupulous family members. Many similar poems, often set to music, mocked situations in which one sister was admired for her beauty, jewels and fine attire while the other was stripped of her hair, all adornments and forced to dress in black; Benedetto Cingulano, ‘Barzeletta delle Monacelle,’ BNM, Class It. IX 369 (7203) poesie varie, sec. XVI, c. 48v. Morell presents circumstantial data for Giovanni’s financial difficulties and his efforts to alleviate them in ‘New Evidence,’ 117–20. As a point of generational comparison, Andrea’s humble housing arrangements appear briefly in my article ‘An Expanded Musical and Social Context,’ 56–7.

CHAPTER TWELVE

The Shame of Siblings in David and Bethsabe Stephen Guy-Bray George Peele was only about forty when he died in 1596, leaving behind some very fine poems and a number of plays, for which he is best known. Peele is notable for having written in several genres: the pageant, the history play, and, in the case of David and Bethsabe, one of only a very few plays from late sixteenth-century England based on a biblical story.1 The love story indicated by the Bible is only the first part of the play’s narrative, and Peele’s focus quickly shifts to Ammon’s rape of his sister Thamar and then to Absolon’s killing of Ammon and his rebellion against his father. The play has often been condemned as episodic and incoherent, but some critics have argued that the play does possess thematic consistency. As far as I know, the first critic to make this point was Inga-Stina Ewbank, who argued that the ‘connection between David’s sins and the sexual disorders within his House, as well as civil strife within his realm, was [Peele’s] organizing principle.’2 Ewbank’s contention has been influential; for instance, in his book on incest in Renaissance literature, Bruce Thomas Boehrer argues that David’s adultery initiates a process in which his ‘sons acquire their father’s depravity almost by moral osmosis; thus they finally expiate the father’s crime by proxy.’3 Boehrer’s sense that the play is about expiation is important to my own argument, but I see incest as the play’s most important crime. Although Ammon’s rape of his sister follows David’s seduction of Bethsabe, the incest should nevertheless be seen as something that gives us a way to understand the text as a whole. David and Bethsabe is a play that uses incest to talk about family relationships in general and especially about the importance these relationships have when the family in question is a royal family, whose actions inescapably affect the country as a whole. By beginning the play with David’s adultery with the wife of one of his soldiers and following with a scene in which the enemies of Israel mock David’s humble origins, Peele reminds us that there were many possible sources of contention in David’s kingdom, but the play as a whole demonstrates that these things – the king’s adultery, the succession to the throne of a shepherd’s son – can ultimately be

SIBLING SHAME IN DAVID AND BETHSABE

141

accommodated. In Peele’s version of the story, it is only incest that is capable of tearing the country apart. This may be due to the fact that incest can represent both a dangerous rupture, insofar as desire is deflected from its proper aims, and a dangerous continuity, insofar as the individual is unable to move beyond the family circle. David and Bethsabe can be classified with the history plays that were so popular in Peele’s day: they too are often characterized by a simultaneous distrust of change and a fear of a tyrannical and ultimately tragic continuity.4 In the context of the history play, then, just as the incest in David and Bethsabe is at once change and continuity so it is also at once a marginal sexuality and a figure for the central issues of one of the Renaissance theater’s most popular genres. The scene of incest occurs early in the play, directly following the siege of Rabath, and certainly the experience of reading the play is that the scene is in some sense a repetition of David’s seduction of Bethsabe. As Roger Stilling points out, ‘[t]he ordering of these early scenes makes it clear that the audience was meant to find them mutually enlightening.’5 The key word here is ‘mutually:’ the scene with Ammon and Thamar signals that we are to understand the scene of incest as a repetition (with a change) of the initial adultery. The ways in which David and Bethsabe’s first scene illuminates its third are perhaps obvious; what is less obvious is how the third scene illuminates the first, but David’s desire for Bethsabe can be considered as incestuous in Peele’s presentation of it, although not in the Bible. Peele was writing at a time in which the metaphor of the king as father of his people was frequently used – in fact, by the end of the sixteenth century it had almost become a dead metaphor. His recension of the biblical story gives the metaphor new life, and it could be argued that the story of David, a king who is famous for his desire for his subjects, is particularly suited to this purpose. If David can be seen as the father of his subjects, then sexual relations with them are ipso facto incestuous. Peele gestures toward this possibility when David describes Bethsabe as ‘the flower of Israel, / The fairest daughter that obeies the King.’6 Connecting the idea of Bethsabe as a daughter with the idea of obedience – due equally from a child to a father and from a subject to a king – brings the tenor and the vehicle of the metaphor together; linking male desire and female obedience sets up a connection we recall when Ammon rapes his sister. In the Bible, when David attempts to find out the name of the beautiful woman he has seen, someone asks ‘Is not this Bethsheba, [th]e daughter of Eliam, wife to Vriah the Hittite’ (II Samuel 11:3);7 in David and Bethsabe, Cusay answers by asking ‘Is it not Bethsabe, the Hethites wife, / Urias’ (ll. 82–3). Peele retains the part of the question that establishes David’s desire as adulterous and that names the obstacle to his desire, but he does not altogether omit the mention of Bethsabe’s father in the original; instead, in the lines I

142

SIBLING RELATIONS AND GENDER IN THE EARLY MODERN WORLD

quoted in the previous passage he translates the reference to her literal father into a reference to a metaphorical one according to which she is the daughter of Israel. As kings were often referred to in early modern English by the names of the countries they ruled, we can take this as a reference to David himself. In this scene, then, Peele changes the Bible in order to present David as at once Bethsabe’s origin and her destination and he thus establishes at the very beginning of his play precisely the kind of circular relationship that is typical of incest. Although David’s desire for Bethsabe will provide the son who becomes the next king of Israel, something that is the subject of much of the last section of the play, he introduces this desire as, once again, an example of continuity rather than of change. What is metaphorical in this scene will become literal in the third scene when a brother rapes his sister, but the metaphorical incest in this scene should strike us as a version not only of that scene but also of the relationship of David and Absolon, in which, once again, a familial bond becomes unmanageably intense. In these opening scenes, Peele uses both classical mythology and other biblical stories to situate incest in the context of stories about deeply troubled families. For instance, in her first speech, Bethsabe calls upon ‘gentle Zephire trickt with those perfumes / That erst in Eden sweetned Adams love’ (ll. 34–5); in his first speech, David says Bethsabe gives him more pleasure than ‘Faire Eva plac’d in perfect happinesse’ (l. 53) gave to Adam. The foreshadowing is unmistakable here – the sin of Adam and Eve is clearly cited as a precedent for the sin of David and Bethsabe – but the violence between Adam and Eve’s children is also foreshadowed. This is a double foreshadowing: as a man who kills his brother, Cain was to Abel as Absolon will be to Ammon, but as a man who uses violence against a sibling, Cain was to Abel as Ammon will be to Thamar. Yet another connection is suggested by Thamar herself. After Ammon has raped her and forced her out of his house, she says that she is ‘Cast as was Eva’ (l. 322) because, like Eve, she will be forced to wander through the wilderness. Thamar’s reference to the expulsion from the Garden of Eden can be seen as a sign that the original sin of David and Bethsabe is the incestuous rape rather than David’s abuse of his kingly power to fulfil his adulterous desire. The use of classical mythology comes after the rape of Thamar. When Thamar tells Absolon that Ammon has raped her, Absolon vows revenge in a remarkably elaborate speech. After beginning with references to ‘the covenant God hath made with [David]’ (l. 347) and to ‘Jacobs ruler’ (l. 351) and with a characterization of Ammon as ‘Traitor to Heaven, traitor to Davids throne, / Traitor to Absolon and Israel’ (ll. 349–50), Absolon invokes the classical gods:

SIBLING SHAME IN DAVID AND BETHSABE

143

At him the thunder shall discharge his bolt, And his faire spouse, with bright and fierie wings, Sit ever burning on his hatefull bones (ll. 356–8).

Both the reference to Jupiter the Thunderer and the reference to Juno in her role as the goddess of vengeance are conventional, but in the specific context of David and Bethsabe we should keep in mind that Jupiter and Juno were brother and sister (and the children of a brother and sister) as well as husband and wife. The allusions to Adam and Eve present familial strife as existing since the very beginning of the family (and, indeed, of human history); the allusion to Jupiter and Juno presents incest as equally primordial. Peele’s allusions here are typical of his use of the Bible throughout David and Bethsabe. He makes fairly minor changes to the Bible, generally with the aim of drawing attention to family relationships and to the idea of the family more generally. In the scene of incest, for example, when Jonadab asks Ammon why he looks so ill, Ammon says ‘Ah Jonadab it is my sisters lookes, / On whose sweet beutie I bestow my bloud’ (ll. 253–4). When Jonadab tells him that this desire can be fulfilled, Ammon asks ‘How can it be my sweet friend Jonadab, / Since Thamar is a virgine and my sister’ (ll. 263–5). The differences from the Bible are instructive. There, we are told that ‘Absalom the sonne of Dauid hauing a faire sister, whose name was Tamar; Amnon the sonne of Dauid loued her’ (II Samuel 13:1) and Amnon confesses his secret to Jonadab with the simple statement that ‘I loue Tamar, my brother Absalons sister’ (II Samuel 13:4). As the heading at the top of this page in the Geneva Bible reads ‘Ammons incest,’ the action itself is not different, but Peele gives it a crucially different context. A logical inference that could be drawn from the biblical presentation of the scene is that Amnon’s crime is most importantly a crime against his brother; in David and Bethsabe, the crime itself appears primarily as a crime against his sister. For Peele as well, of course, the important consequence of the rape will be the enmity of the brothers, but by emphasizing the incest he presents that as the primal crime in the world of the play and thus gives incest the same sort of originary status that it has in the legend of Jupiter and Juno.

Family ties and the force of desire Throughout David and Bethsabe, Peele makes numerous changes to the Bible, most of them quite small, in order to draw his audience’s attention to familial relations: his strategy is to emphasize whenever possible both the power of family ties and their propensity to lead to violence.8 Peele’s emphasis on the family is another reason to see the incestuous rape, rather

144

SIBLING RELATIONS AND GENDER IN THE EARLY MODERN WORLD

than the adultery, as the original sin of the world of the play. From this point of view David’s love for Bethsabe is not the precedent for Ammon’s rape of Thamar but rather a proleptic version of it. What is more, as the play progresses, the scene of incest can be seen to function as a precedent for the relations between David and Absolon. Of course, David’s love for Absolon is already strongly stressed in the biblical account – David’s lament for his son has long been famous as one of the most moving passages in the Bible – but as is the case with his treatment of the Bible as a whole, Peele exaggerates what is already there for his own purposes. Over the course of David and Bethsabe, David’s love for Absolon is not only increasingly frequently expressed but also increasingly important to the narrative even after Absolon’s death. This importance is also structural: as Carolyn WhitneyBrown has suggested, the play becomes ‘a circuit whereby father and son each reproduce one another as rebel at the expense of other identities.’9 In the second half of the play, David seems increasingly likely to abandon ruling because of his grief for his son. On the narrative level, then, David’s love for his son is not the thing that will make a peaceful succession possible and thus produce a dynastic movement that is both change and continuity (and this, after all, is the ideal condition to which Elizabethan history plays aspire) but rather a force that prevents any forward movement at all – just like incest. This more metaphoric incest is a sign of the fact that Peele presents David’s love for Absolon as excessive, as something required by the nature of the family but which becomes unmanageable and introduces violent conflict into the family circle; thus, it resembles Ammon’s lust but with the difference that David’s love threatens to destroy not only the family but also the kingdom. Absolon’s beauty may seem less important than his desire to avenge his sister or his desire to rule, but Peele emphasizes the beauty to a startling degree. For example, Ammon greets Absolon at Hazor by saying ‘Thou faire young man, whose haires shine in mine eye / Like golden wyrers of Davids yvorie Lute’ (ll. 747–8). Later, Joab describes Absolon by saying, A beautifull and faire young man is he, In all his bodie is no blemish seene, His haire is like the wyer of Davids Harpe, That twines about his bright and yvorie necke: In Israel is not such a goodly man (ll. 935–40).

In the rebellion, David instructs his generals not to hurt Absolon in similarly extravagant terms: touch no haire of him, Not that faire haire with which the wanton winds Delight to play, and love to make it curle, Wherein the Nightingales would build their nests, And make sweet bowers in every golden tresse,

SIBLING SHAME IN DAVID AND BETHSABE

145

To sing their lover every night asleepe. O spoile not Joab, Joves faire ornaments, Which he hath sent to solace Davids soule (ll. 1401–8).

I have quoted these lines at length in order to give some sense of Peele’s tone. What may seem particularly noteworthy is the emphasis on Absolon’s hair, which is part of a complex of imagery going throughout the play that Murray Roston has aptly called ‘hair-symbolism.’10 In this passage in particular, the reference to Absolon’s hair serves three purposes: it foreshadows the nature of his death; it gives these descriptions an erotic tone, since the reference to curling golden hair is standard in Renaissance love poetry; it recalls both David’s lines about Bethsabe near the beginning of the play and Absolon’s earlier description of himself as favoured by God: ‘His thunder is intangled in my haire’ (l. 1169). In the speech I quoted above, David follows his description of Absolon’s hair by saying ‘The best ye see (my lords) are swift to sinne, / To sinne our feet are washt with milke of Roes’ (ll. 1409–10). At the beginning of the play when David waits for Bethsabe to appear he says ‘Now comes my lover tripping like the Roe, / And brings my longings tangled in her hair’ (ll. 115–16). When used by a man of a woman he desires this sort of language is unremarkable in Renaissance literature, but when used by a man of his son the situation is obviously very different. The association of Absolon with Bethsabe as objects of David’s desire is surely intended to be unsettling, to say the least. The association is strengthened by the language of the passage, which represents a return to the beautiful lyricism of the play’s first scene – something that has been noticeably absent since that scene. Like Ammon’s desire for Thamar and David’s desire for Bethsabe, what Peele presents as David’s desire for Absolon can be characterized in Renaissance terms as disorderly love. In practice, the distinction between sinful and virtuous love is less important in the play than the distinction between orderly and disorderly love. In all three cases, desire troubles the orderly functioning of family life at the highest (dynastic) level; the third is the most disorderly, however, as David’s adultery and the death of Urias that is one of its consequences are expiated by the death of David and Bethsabe’s first son, Ammon’s rape is expiated by his own death, and after Thamar tells her story to Absolon we hear no more of her. Furthermore, the scene in which David and Bethsabe’s second son Salomon is identified as heir apparent (ll. 1641–1780) would seem to conclude the story of adultery altogether. Although the somewhat mangled condition of the text of David and Bethsabe means that the possibility that this scene is simply out of place cannot be ruled out, I think it is more likely that Peele intended to place the scene precisely where the only source for the play has it.11 If we see the scene as placed

146

SIBLING RELATIONS AND GENDER IN THE EARLY MODERN WORLD

intentionally immediately following Joab’s speech to his soldiers after the death of Absolon, a speech that signals the end of the rebellion, then Salomon’s thorough demonstration of his precocious brilliance would simultaneously conclude the story of his parents and point the way toward a happier future. Seen from this angle, David and Bethsabe would seem to end in a way that recalls Elizabethan history plays, a view promoted most notably by David Bevington, who says that ‘Absolon’s rebellion cannot succeed, yet David is unfit to govern. His wisest act is to step down and invest royal power in Solomon, who like Marlowe’s Edward III can begin anew without the contamination of his predecessor’s reign.’12 Bevington’s insight is useful to me in that it connects David and Bethsabe with Edward II; in the final scene, we can also see a parallel between David and Edward II as well as between Salomon and Edward III. In this scene, Peele demonstrates that although Absolon is dead David’s love for him is not; this love will continue to disturb the world of the play both at the personal level and at the political level until the last possible moment. This disturbance appears in the play’s last scene as David’s mourning for Absolon, a mourning that is clearly excessive insofar as it disrupts David’s declaration that Salomon will be his heir and threatens to return the country to the state of civil war from which it has just been delivered. When Cusay tells David that Absolon has ‘(by Joab and his men) / Sustaind the stroke of well deserved death’ (ll. 1803–4), David bursts into a speech in which he not only expresses his grief in a way that employs the rhetoric of romantic love but also signals his desire to withdraw from the kingship for which his armies have been fighting: Hence David, walke the solitarie woods, And in some Caedars shade (the thunder slew, And fire from heaven hath made his branches blacke) Sit mourning the decease of Absolon (ll. 1809–12).

David’s rhetoric is echoed by Bethsabe, who offers herself as a sacrifice to David’s well-being. The excessive nature of this rhetoric is pointed out first by Nathan the prophet, These violent passions come not from above, David and Bethsabe offend the highest, To mourne in this immeasurable sort (ll. 1836–8)

and then by Joab, who now enters the scene and who points out that David’s grief has led to a neglect of his duty: ‘Why is the King now absent from his men? / And marcheth not in triumph through the gates?’ (ll. 1845–6). David’s love for Absolon, which Nathan has just characterized as violent and passionate, is now shown to lead to public disorder. When David accuses Joab of murdering Absolon, his response is to accuse David of ingratitude and of unkingly behavior and to threaten rebellion:

SIBLING SHAME IN DAVID AND BETHSABE

147

Advance thee from thy melancholy denne, And decke thy bodie with thy blisful robes, Or by the Lord that swaies the heaven, I sweare, Ile lead thine armies to another King (ll. 1878–81).

Peele’s presentation of David’s love for Absolon resembles Alan Bray’s influential definition of what ‘sodomy and buggery represented’ in Renaissance England: ‘the disorder in sexual relations that, in principle at least, could break out anywhere.’13 Incest and sodomy are two forms of sexual disorder with which the Renaissance was particularly concerned, and the connection between them is underlined by David and Bethsabe’s structure: in the play’s first half, a man’s passion for his sister threatens to destroy a kingdom; in its second half, a man’s passion for his son threatens to destroy a kingdom. In his handling of this passage, Peele exaggerates the biblical account. There, Joab speaks sharply to David – ‘Thou hast shamed this day the faces of all thy serua[n]ts’ (II Samuel 19:5) – and threatens to leave – ‘except thou come out, there wil not tary one man with thee this night: and that wil be worse vnto thee, then all [th]e euil that fel on thee from thy youthe hetherto’ (II Samuel 19:7) – but there is, crucially, no indication that David is angry with Joab, no mention of ‘another King’ and no equivalent for the warning with which Peele ends Joab’s speech: ‘Take thou this course and live, refuse, and die’ (l. 1892). The biblical Joab appears to predict that David’s refusal to stop mourning will lead to anarchy while Peele’s Joab threatens to lead his soldiers to another king; the biblical Joab does not appear to be able to separate himself from Israel while Peele’s Joab sees himself as a free agent. His independence and the extent to which he emerges as a threat to David are emphasized by Abisay’s speech: ‘Come brother, let him sit there till he sincke, / Some other shall advance the name of Joab’ (ll. 1893–4). It is significant that Abisay reminds us at this point that he is Joab’s brother. In contrast to the conflict and excessive emotions that characterize David’s relations to his children and their relations to each other, Peele gives us a pair of brothers who cooperate, although this cooperation is not an example to be followed, as the brothers seek to overthrow the king. In the context of the play, even what seems to be an entirely proper sibling relation threatens political order. Joab’s threats work and David arises. He does deliver one more speech about his love for Absolon, but this speech is valedictory as he imagines his son in heaven: Thy soule there plac’d in honour of the Saints Or angels clad with immortalitie, Shall reape a sevenfold grace, for all thy greefes. Thy eyes now no more eyes but shining stars, Shall decke the flaming heavens with novell lampes (ll. 1905–9).

148

SIBLING RELATIONS AND GENDER IN THE EARLY MODERN WORLD

David’s tone is still noticeably elevated but he ends this last speech in a suitably royal manner: ‘Courage brave captaines, Joabs tale hath stird, / And made the suit of Israel preferd’ (ll. 1917–18). His return to kingship, expressed in a rhyming couplet, would seem to provide a fitting ending to the play, but this is not the case. Joab has the last word, taking up David’s use of ‘brave’ as well as his use of a rhyming couplet: ‘Bravely resolvd and spoken like a King, / Now may old Israel, and his daughters sing’ (ll. 1919–20). The patronizing praise is striking: in the fact that David is now under the necessity of receiving approval from Joab we can see the transformation from an absolute monarchy in which the king is chosen by God to rule (something which is theoretically true of monarchs according to the idea of the divine right of kings and literally true of David in the Bible) to a monarchy obliged to consult with powerful noblemen and always under the threat of armed rebellion, which is to say the sort of monarchy familiar to us from the history plays of Peele’s time. Even more important, however, is the fact that Joab’s speech returns us to the beginning of the play. Although David’s apotheosis of Absolon signals an end to the incestuous dangers of that attachment, the reference to the daughters of Israel recalls David’s early reference to Bethsabe as the daughter of Israel (ll. 74–5). Furthermore, the reference to singing recalls the very beginning of the prologue: ‘Of Israels sweetest singer now I sing’ (l. 1). While it might be tempting to see the ending of David and Bethsabe as providing a forward narrative motion signalled by the passage of power from a king to his son – the sort of motion we expect from history plays – what Peele really provides is a circular narrative motion. Ammon’s desire for his sister Thamar is paradigmatic and affords us a way to understand not only David’s desire for Bethsabe or for Absolon but also the very narrative that contains these stories. Just as the forms of desire in the play repeat each other and just as incest is a repetition in that it retains desire within the family unit rather than using it to extend the family outward and onward, so Peele’s version of the biblical narrative is itself repetitive: it ends as it began. Incest is a metaphor for the processes of narrative and of history rather than an allegory. Allegory gives us (temporarily, at least) another way of speaking, but incest here is a synecdoche, one part of the whole mechanism of repetition that, in David and Bethsabe at least, turns out to be the way the world works.

Notes 1. 2.

For the sake of consistency, I shall use Peele’s versions of biblical names rather than the more familiar versions (e.g., Bethsabe rather than Bathsheba). Inga-Stina Ewbank, ‘The House of David in Renaissance Drama: A Comparative Study,’ Renaissance Drama 8 (1965), 20.

SIBLING SHAME IN DAVID AND BETHSABE

3. 4.

5. 6. 7.

8.

9.

10. 11. 12. 13.

149

Bruce Thomas Boehrer, Monarchy and Incest in Renaissance England: Literature, Culture, Kinship, and Kingship (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1992), 61. For a good discussion of the play from this point of view see Judith Weil, ‘George Peele’s Singing School: David and Bethsabe and the Elizabethan History Play,’ Themes in Drama 8, ed. James Raymond (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986), 51–66; and Monarchy and Incest in Renaissance England, 57–62. Roger Stilling, Love and Death in Renaissance Tragedy (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1976), 57. David and Bethsabe, ed. Elmer Blistein, The Dramatic Works of George Peele, vol. 3, general editor Charles Tyler Prouty (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1970), ll. 74–5. All references are to this edition. In the introduction to his edition of the play, Blistein despairingly remarks that ‘[i]t seems impossible to ascertain which version of the Bible Peele used as his source’ (147), although he demonstrates that the most likely candidates among the various versions available to Peele are probably the Geneva Bible and the Bishops’ Bible. For Blistein’s discussion of this question see the introduction, 143–8. For quotations, I have used the Geneva Bible, in the facsimile of the 1560 edition published in 1969 by the University of Wisconsin Press. The differences in wording among the versions do not affect my reading of David and Bethsabe. See, for instance, his decision to make David’s soldier Ithay the son of King Achis of Gath (l. 1042) as opposed to merely one of the leaders of the Gittites, as he is in the Bible. This change sets up a tension between two kings of Gath: Machaas, whom we saw taunting the Israelite army in the second scene, and Achis, to whom David twice fled for protection from Saul (for Ithay, see II Samuel 15; for Achis, see I Samuel 21 and 27). Thus what appears in the Bible to be a change in Gittite foreign policy becomes in Peele’s version at least potentially a conflict within the Gittite royal family, which is to say that it becomes precisely the sort of conflict that is typical of David and Bethsabe as a whole. Carolyn Whitney-Brown, ‘“A Farre More Worthy Wombe:” Reproductive Anxiety in Peele’s David and Bethsabe,’ in In Another Country: Feminist Perspectives on Renaissance Drama, ed. Dorothea Kehler and Susan Baker (Metuchen, NJ: Scarecrow Press, 1991), 184. Murray Roston, Biblical Drama in England: From the Middle Ages to the Present Day (London: Faber and Faber, 1968), 104. Roston is the only critic I have found who connects Peele’s presentation of Bethsabe and Absolon in this way. For a discussion of the textual problems, see Blistein’s introduction, 177–81. He points out that the text is ‘far less corrupt than some editors would have us believe’ (181). David Bevington, Tudor Drama and Politics: A Critical Approach to Topical Meaning (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1968), 220. Allan Bray, Homosexuality in Renaissance England (London: Gay Men’s Press, 1982), 25. The first two chapters of Bray’s book contain a detailed description of the association of homosexual acts with social disorder.

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

Sibling Bonds and Bondage in (and beyond) Shakespeare’s The Tempest Naomi J. Miller Sibling relations in Shakespeare’s plays tend to receive less attention than parent-child relations, particularly father-child relations, given the influential presence of fathers and the absence of mothers in so many of the major plays. Certainly The Tempest has offered no obvious exception for such critical emphasis, given that Prospero serves in effect as a domineering father figure for every other character on the island at the start of the play, from his biological daughter Miranda to the spirit Ariel and the monster Caliban, in the striking absence of all the mothers.1 Even (and in some sense even more so) Ferdinand, the son of Prospero’s rival, finds himself subject to the mage’s paternal authority. And yet the ‘sibling relations’ among ‘Prospero’s children’ have not received much critical attention, for all that.2 Moreover the sibling dynamics among ‘Prospero’s children’ can prove all the more illuminating when examined in the context of the most crucial sibling relation of all for Prospero himself: his failed competition with his own brother, Antonio. The present chapter engages the topic of sibling relations in The Tempest, not in order to presume to offer a definitive analysis of the subject so much as to take the opportunity to consider some of the ways in which sibling bonds and bondage refract and/or contain wider social and familial conflicts. As Kate Chedgzoy so lucidly articulates in her introduction to Shakespeare’s Queer Children, it may be more productive in certain instances to allow the diversity and multiplicity of one’s topic to achieve its own polyphony than to try to impose a single fixed reading that appropriates Shakespeare to a particular ideological end.3 Having no fixed end for this topic, I offer instead a series of reflections regarding sibling bonds and bondage in The Tempest, drawing on my own creative as well as critical, and pedagogical as well as scholarly, engagement with the text in recent years. I find that many of the most conflicted as well as mutually instructive relations among the characters in (and beyond) the play can be understood, figuratively if not literally, in terms of sibling relations. Moreover, in most of these sibling pairs, the staged imbalance of power and communication in the play works

SIBLING BONDS IN THE TEMPEST

151

repeatedly to transform familial bonds into bondage. Repeatedly, The Tempest explores instances in which the staging of performances implicate audience members in a shared experience of revelation with the potential to release the players (and/or family members) from their bonds. When considering biological bonds, the most visible sibling relations in The Tempest can be identified between men: Prospero and his usurping brother Antonio, and Alonso and his would-be-usurping brother Sebastian. Sibling bonds in The Tempest, then, would appear to be manifest primarily in fraternal conflict and competition, much as in other Shakespeare comedies, from Much Ado About Nothing to As You Like It.4 Yet once the alternative and apparently non-competitive sibling bond between Ferdinand and his sister Claribel is recalled, even if invisible on stage, then the sibling dynamic expands to include not only competition but also loss, in this case the loss of a sister to a foreign king and ‘other,’5 recalling as well the apparent loss of another sister in Twelfth Night. Moreover, the potential for coterminous competition and loss can be identified in the fraught ‘sibling’ relation between Caliban and Miranda, who were apparently raised together on separate and unequal terms by the same paternal authority in Shakespeare’s play, so that the favored biological offspring, Miranda, receives all the instruction from the father, only to pass some of that instruction on, in turn, to her literally dispossessed foster-brother, who has lost not only a mother, but his maternal inheritance, the island itself, under this patriarch’s rule. And finally, a pseudosibling competition emerges in the further displacement of the log-bearing Caliban by the log-bearing Ferdinand. Arguably, it is Ferdinand who achieves a ‘favored son’ status (evident even in the differential disciplinary warnings he receives from Prospero) that Caliban, ‘thing of darkness,’ can never attain. Interestingly, the opening scene of The Tempest conveys the final experience of dissolution as a loss of family, and even more specifically as a division of siblings: ‘Farewell my wife and children! – Farewell brother! – We split, we split, we split!’ (I, i, 52).6 Even as the destruction of familial bonds is signified by the splitting of the vessel, the ultimate restoration of the vessel and every soul aboard might be expected to find its parallel in a complete restoration of family bonds. However, in many ways this drama turns out to be about the potential for family, including sibling relations, to ‘suffer a seachange, into something rich and strange’ (I, ii, 401–2). Suffering a sea-change, sibling rivalry, for instance, may be forgiven, but never forgotten. From his opening narrative of his past loss of power, Prospero takes every opportunity to frame his brother’s actions as arising from an ‘evil nature’ (I, ii, 93), manifest in his ambitious strategy to gain the upper hand. Also from the beginning, Prospero frames his own love for his brother in comparative terms, telling Miranda: ‘I pray thee mark me, that a brother should / Be so perfidious – he whom next thyself / Of all the world I loved’ (I, ii, 67–9).

152

SIBLING RELATIONS AND GENDER IN THE EARLY MODERN WORLD

Prospero identifies his brother as ‘the ivy which had hid my princely trunk / And sucked my verdure out on’t’ (I, ii, 86–7), choosing a metaphor of organic interdependence that proves to result in parasitic destruction. When he rages: ‘tell me / If this might be a brother,’ Miranda replies succinctly: ‘Good wombs have borne bad son,’ (I, ii, 121), at once allowing for the possibility that evil might have origins in good, and implicitly affirming the validity of recognizing origins as distinct from results. And yet Prospero himself cannot offer an originary forgiveness to his brother without becoming mired in the results of Antonio’s evil actions, so that sibling rivalry proves a disease that infects them both: For you, most wicked sir, whom to call brother Would even infect my mouth, I do forgive Thy rankest fault – all of them; and require My dukedom of thee, which perforce I know Thou must restore. (V, i, 130–34)

Indeed, even in referring to his act of forgiveness in the epilogue, Prospero calls Antonio not by the name of ‘brother,’ but rather by the title of ‘the deceiver’ (Epilogue, 7), signaling that the ultimate insult, almost greater than his capacity to forgive, is not so much the loss of power, which after all can be restored, as the deception (and concomitant loss of authority) perpetrated upon him, which can never be forgotten.7 In the next generation, the sibling relation expands to include Ferdinand’s sister, Claribel. Although the play never offers an opportunity to hear Ferdinand and Claribel speak to or about each other, their connection is remarked upon constantly by the other characters, from Alonso’s opening lament: ‘Would I had never / Married my daughter there, for coming thence / My son is lost and (in my rate) she too’ (II, i, 108–10), to Gonzalo’s closing observation that: ‘in one voyage / Did Claribel her husband find at Tunis; / And Ferdinand, her brother, found a wife / Where he himself was lost’ (V, i, 208–11). Brother-sister sibling relations in this instance seem to be a case of lost and found, with loss and recovery occurring in tandem rather than in competition. Claribel’s name, oddly enough, proves to be a sort of aural inversion of Miranda’s foster brother, Caliban, sharing five of the same letters, just as the names of Ferdinand and Miranda share five of the same letters, offering a pair of aural connections between the future lovers and between the lost or estranged siblings themselves.8 On the other hand, the effectual sibling relation between Miranda and Caliban is defined implicitly by competition rather than collaboration, at least on the part of the dispossessed monster, from the moment that Prospero’s commitment to serving as Miranda’s ‘schoolmaster’ (I, ii, 172) is contrasted with his dismissive treatment of Caliban, who laments:

SIBLING BONDS IN THE TEMPEST

153

This island’s mine by Sycorax, my mother, Which thou tak’st from me. When thou cam’st first Thou strok’st me and made much of me; wouldst give me Water with berries in’t, and teach me how To name the bigger light and how the less That burn by day and night. And then I loved thee … For I am all the subjects that you have, Which first was mine own king. (I, ii, 332–6, 342–3)

Rather than rehearsing the extensive critical discussion of the colonialist implications of Caliban’s dispossession here,9 I would like to point out, in the context of the familial dynamic that defines the sibling relations in the play, that Caliban loses not only his mother (arguably an originary loss parallel to that suffered by Miranda), but also his father, who used to ‘make much’ of him and now has cut him off with no opportunity to defend or explain his assumed violation of Miranda’s honor (I, ii, 346–9). Small wonder, perhaps, that instead of attempting any explanation after the fact, Caliban embraces the hypothesis – ‘Would’t had been done’ (I, ii, 350) – and claims ownership of the hypothetical result – ‘I had peopled else / This isle with Calibans’ (I, ii, 351–2) – without once admitting to the actual attempted rape. What other available way for the dispossessed to subvert his tormentor’s authority than to claim a position of autonomy through a perceived attempt to possess the creature who was once, in childhood, his familial peer. The pseudo-sibling competition between Caliban and Ferdinand becomes visible in the literal parallel between their log-bearing responsibilities at Prospero’s command, ironically in both cases serving as a form of punishment for their imagined, alleged, or anticipated desire for Miranda.10 The inverted twinship of their relation is made visible as well through such contrasts as their opposed linguistic relation to Miranda, who ‘took pains’ to teach a language to Caliban that is already the first basis for Ferdinand’s connection to her: ‘My language? Heavens!’ (I, ii, 429).11 Another inversion of their pseudo-sibling relation to Miranda can be located in the fact that Caliban’s alleged desire for Miranda loses him a father, while Ferdinand’s apparent desire for the same woman gains him a father: ‘second father / This lady makes him to me’ (V, i, 195). When Prospero announces, at the ending of the play: ‘this thing of darkness I / Acknowledge mine’ (V, i, 275–6), his ownership can be applied, as other critics have observed,12 as much to his own dark imagination in envisioning the act of violation as to Caliban himself, finally accepted by a father who has nothing more to offer him, at the moment when he loses his almost-sister Miranda forever to marriage (a loss which can in some sense be seen to echo Ferdinand’s loss of Claribel at the opening of the play). On the other hand, Prospero’s successful staging for Alonso – ‘a wonder to

154

SIBLING RELATIONS AND GENDER IN THE EARLY MODERN WORLD

content ye’ (V, i, 170) – of the ‘return from the dead’ of both Ferdinand and Miranda, ‘discovered’ playing at chess, indicates other levels of transformative bonding entirely. Alonso is reborn to his role as King of Naples with the discovery of his son and heir upon the occasion of this performance, releasing Prospero to return to his lawful position as Duke of Milan, even as Prospero releases his daughter into marriage and gains a new son in the process. Moreoever the lovers themselves are performing the game of chess not to win or lose, but to consolidate their romance as autonomous individuals equally capable of gamesmanship. Miranda even outlines the script, telling Ferdinand: ‘Yes, for a score of kingdoms you should wrangle, / And I would call it fair play’ (V, i, 164). ‘Fair play’ here signifies the realization of a mutual desire that has less to do with chess than with the successful transformation of two individuals into a unified pair.

‘Prospero’s children’ Oddly enough, it must be noted that the scope of (potential) sibling relations in The Tempest has received almost as much creative as dearth of critical attention. Many subsequent plays, poems, stories, and novels have taken the opportunity to explore the sibling dynamics among ‘Prospero’s children,’ even to the extent of multiplying the presence of siblings in certain creative adaptations of Shakespeare’s play in order to investigate the possibilities associated with sibling bonds and bondage. Lacking the space in this chapter to explore the stunning array of creative adaptations of The Tempest in depth, I will simply indicate relevant points of intersection with my own reflections on sibling relations in the play. To commence with the earliest creative adaptations of sibling relations in The Tempest, it is particularly instructive to consider the example of John Dryden and William Davenant’s radically revisionary adaptation of the play in 1667, first published in 1670 under the title The Tempest, or The Enchanted Island, and further adapted seven years later into an operatic version by Thomas Shadwell under the same title. For the next 150 years, English audiences came to Shakespeare’s The Tempest primarily by way of the Dryden-Davenant-Shadwell versions, which provided Miranda with a sister, Dorinda, Caliban with a twin sister, Sycorax, and Prospero with a foster son, Hippolito, whom he tries to keep from Dorinda.13 According to Dryden in the preface to the first printed edition, Davenant ‘found that somewhat might be added to the Design of Shakespear,’ and so he ‘design’d the Counterpart to Shakespear’s Plot, namely that of a Man who had never seen a Woman; that by this means those two Characters of Innocence and Love might the more illustrate and commend each other.’14 Dryden’s and Davenant’s play may be

SIBLING BONDS IN THE TEMPEST

155

regarded as interesting not only for its foregrounding, in the Vaughans’ words, of ‘the royalist political and social ideals underlying Shakespeare’s original … for upper-class Restoration audiences,’15 which I will not discuss here, but also for the perhaps unintended consequences of such a plethora of sibling relations. Introducing their play after Davenant’s death, Dryden observes that in this collaboration, as in others, Davenant ‘sometimes added whole Scenes together, which may as easily be distinguish’d from the rest, as true Gold from counterfeit by the weight.’16 Given the multiplicity of sibling relations in this adaptation, Dryden’s words, intended to contrast his own lesser contributions with those of Davenant, provide an unintentionally interesting gloss on the value of sorting ‘true Gold from counterfeit by the weight.’ Indeed, there are many instances in which Dryden’s and Davenant’s omissions as much as their additions highlight the relevance of irreplaceable constructs in Shakespeare’s play.17 In The Enchanted Island, Prospero’s first speech is not his assurance to his only daughter that ‘there’s no harm done,’ as in Shakespeare’s play (I, ii, 15), but rather the interrogative: ‘Miranda! where’s your Sister?’ (5). Immediately, then, the significance of sibling relations takes center stage.18 The rest of Prospero’s narrative incorporates the presence of Miranda’s ‘young sister’ (6) into the tale of their departure from Milan and their arrival upon the island. Consequently, Prospero’s accusation that Caliban ‘didst seek to violate the honour of my Children’ makes more inevitable the plural in Caliban’s answering wish to have ‘peopl’d else this Isle with Calibans’ (11–12), at which point Dryden and Davenant give the ‘Abhorred slave’ speech to Prospero, initiating an editorial tradition of attribution that persisted into the mid-twentieth century.19 The next ‘sibling deviation’ from Shakespeare’s play occurs in Prospero’s speech to Ariel, with a reference to Sycorax’s plural offspring: ‘two Brats, which she did / litter here, the brutish Caliban, and his twin Sister, / Two Freckel’d-hag-born whelps,’ to which Ariel immediately responds: ‘Yes! Caliban her Son, and Sycorax his Sister’ (10). The doubling of the mother in the name of the twin sister, Sycorax, functions in the Dryen-Davenant play to divide and contain the absent and yet all-encompassing power of the Sycorax of Shakespeare’s play into a present and subordinate female under the authority of Prospero. Caliban and his sister Sycorax are termed ‘two Monsters of the Isle,’ figuring forth a monstrous parallel to the two sisters as the other pair of siblings who spend their childhood on the island. Whereas in Shakespeare’s play Caliban offers Miranda to Trinculo, casting a further shadow upon his relation to her, in the Dryden-Davenant play, Caliban feels free instead to offer ‘My lovely Sister, beautiful and bright as the full Moon’ (24), a gift with the value added that Trinculo perceives that his marriage to this sister will enable him to ‘lay claim to this Island by Alliance’ (24). Given

156

SIBLING RELATIONS AND GENDER IN THE EARLY MODERN WORLD

that Prospero has apparently ignored the legitimate claim of Caliban upon the island through the maternal inheritance of Sycorax, it seems unlikely that a marriage claim through this second Sycorax will prove any more effective. The operative message, however, might be that a Sycorax-figure controls legitimate access to the island in either case. Meanwhile, the attribution of the ‘Abhorred slave’ speech to Prospero results in an excision of Miranda’s role as an educator of Caliban, which enables Dryden and Davenant to represent her instruction of her supremely innocent younger sister, Dorinda, instead. Miranda’s role as educator emerges in such scenes as the sisters’ early discussion of the possibility that the shipwrecked vessel might contain creatures heretofore unfamiliar to them: Mir. But, Sister, I have stranger news to tell you; In this great Creature there were other Creatures, And shortly we may chance to see that thing, Which you have heard my Father call, a Man. Dor. But what is that? For yet he never told me. Mir. I know no more than you: but I have heard My Father say we Women were made for him. Dor. What, that he should eat us Sister? Mir. No, sure, you see my Father is a man, and yet He does us good. I would he were not old. Dor. Methinks indeed it would be finer, if we two Had two young Fathers. Mir. No Sister, no, if they were young, my Father Said that we must call them Brothers. Dor. But pray how does it come that we two are not Brothers then, and have not Beards like him? Mir. Now I confess you pose me. Dor. How did he come to be our Father too? Mir. I think he found us when we both were little, and grew Within the ground. (13)

The idea that the two sisters were found by Prospero, growing ‘within the ground,’ is interesting not only for the obvious intention of exposing their arrant sexual naiveté, but also for the revelation of their self-concept that they are a natural part of their island environment. And the fact that they regard the male visitors to the island as potential ‘Brothers’ suggests that these creatures so unknown to them can initially be understood only in the familial terms that they already know: either as fathers or as siblings, which are the two human relations in their lives. Meanwhile, two of the other original sibling relations in the play are erased by Dryden and Davenant, so that Ferdinand has no sister (being effectively paired with Hippolito instead) and Alonzo has no brother. Instead, Alonzo becomes additionally doubled with Antonio, emerging from the start of the play as a usurper in his own right, having stolen the throne of ‘Mantua’s Infant

SIBLING BONDS IN THE TEMPEST

157

Sovereign’ (14), Hippolito. In one of the scenes ‘added to the Design of Shakespear,’ Alonzo and Antonio are themselves located in a fraternal relation when they encounter a vision of two ‘brother devils,’ whose ominous appearance initiates the process of guilt and repentance for both usurpers (16–17). It turns out that Hippolito’s dying father ‘bequeathed him to [Prospero’s] care’ (24), so that he is consigned by Antonio to the same fate as Prospero and ends up on the island with the family of outcasts. Near the opening of the play, Prospero reveals in soliloquy that he has kept Hippolito hidden away from his daughters all these years, not out of concern for their safety so much as because ‘by calculation of his birth’ he ‘saw death threat’ning [Hippolito] if, till some time were / Past, he should behold the face of any Woman’ (24). Consequently, in the first half of The Enchanted Island, Prospero instructs Hippolito about women in a solemn speech that establishes for the audience the relevant correspondences between the innocent Dorinda and the uninitiated Hippolito: Prosp. Here are creatures which I nam’d not to thee, Who share man’s sovereignty by Nature’s Laws, And oft depose him from it. Hip. What are those Creatures, Sir? Prosp. Those dangerous enemies of men call’d women. Hip. Women! I never heard of them before. But have I Enemies within this Isle, and do you Keep me from them? Do you think that I want Courage to encounter em? Prosp. No courage can resist ’em. Hip. How then have you, Sir, Liv’d so long unharm’d among them? Prosp. O they despise old age, and spare it for that reason: It is below their conquest, their fury falls Alone upon the young. Hip. Why then the fury of the young should fall upon them again. Pray turn me loose upon ’em: but, good Sir, What are women like? Prosp. Imagine something between young men and Angels: Fatally beauteous, and have killing Eyes, Their voices charm beyond the Nightingales, They are all enchantment, those who once behold ’em, Are made their slaves for ever. (25–6)

As these lines make abundantly clear for the first time, this ‘enchanted island’ is an island filled with the enchantment of women, from the spells of the ‘witch’ Sycorax to the charms of Prospero’s own daughters, none subject to his authority. Prospero’s bitter imbrications against Sycorax acquire a new resonance when considered in relation to his assertions that ‘Nature made / Nothing but Woman dangerous and fair’ (26).

158

SIBLING RELATIONS AND GENDER IN THE EARLY MODERN WORLD

Meanwhile, he instructs his daughters to keep away from the man whom he has in his care, warning them that ‘all the danger lies in a wild / Young man:’ Dor. Do they run wild about the Woods? Prosp. No, they are wild within Doors, in Chambers, And in Closets. Dor. But Father, I would stroak ’em and make ’em gentle, Then sure they would not hurt me. Prosp. You must not trust them, Child: no woman can come Neer ’em but she feels a pain full nine Months. (27)

Apparently Prospero’s view of the relation between the sexes is based on the potential for sexual frustration and violation on both sides, another interesting ‘equalizing’ effect of the Dryden-Davenant revisions. Not surprisingly, after a brief sororal confabulation, Miranda and Dorinda decide to seek out this man, Dorinda observing: ‘I find it in my Nature, because my Father has forbidden me’ (28). Forbidden fruit … And indeed, Dorinda and Hippolito are smitten with each other on first sight, despite (because of?) the warnings each has received about the danger of the other sex. Their first encounter borrows resonances from the first encounter of Romeo and Juliet, even to the sensual touch of palms: Dor. Ay me! Heav’n grant we be not poison to each other! Alas, can we not meet but we must die? Hip. I hope not so! For when two poisonous Creatures, Both of the same kind, meet, yet neither dies. I’ve seen two Serpents harmless to each other, Though they have twin’d into a mutual Knot: … You have a hand like mine, may I not gently touch it? [takes her hand] Dor. I’ve touch’d my Father’s and my Sister’s hands And felt no pain; but now, alas! There’s something, When I touch yours, which makes me sigh: just so I’ve seen two Turtles mourning when they met; Yet mine’s a pleasing grief; and so methought was theirs. (30)

Meanwhile, Miranda’s first encounter with Hippolito leads her to tell her father that she found him ‘so near my kind, that I did think I might have call’d it Sister’ (31). Prospero’s reply, prepping her for her first encounter with Ferdinand, is to advise her that ‘you shall see another of his kind, / The full blown-flower, of which this youth was but the / Op’ning-bud’ (32). In the transmutations of The Enchanted Island, instead of praising Ferdinand by inverted comparison to the monstrous Caliban, Prospero can introduce him as an improved version of Miranda’s sister’s beloved, a man whom Miranda herself regards as alike as a ‘Sister.’ Where are all these sibling doublings headed? The answer, initially, is: toward a doubling of competition between the lovers that makes

SIBLING BONDS IN THE TEMPEST

159

Shakespeare’s play appear greatly restrained by contrast. Even as Hippolito offers enthusiastically to love Miranda as greatly as her sister and cannot understand Dorinda’s appalled chagrin, so Ferdinand interprets Miranda’s sisterly affection for Hippolito as evidence of her quintessentially female falsehood: It is too plain: like most of her frail Sex, she’s false, But has not learnt the art to hide it; Nature has done her part, she loves variety: Why did I think that any Woman could be innocent, Because she’s young? No, no, their Nurses teach them Change, when with two Nipples they divide their Liking. (54)

On this enchanted island, neither sex can be trusted. The confusion achieves a climax when Sycorax attacks her brother Caliban for connecting her with a husband who only wanted her for the island, ‘beating him off the stage’ (64), and Ferdinand engages in a staged duel with Hippolito for honor’s sake, accidentally giving him a fatal wound (65). Yet just as The Enchanted Island is poised to end in tragedy, with the splitting of all bonds between the siblings, Ariel redeems the day. Behaving astonishingly like Puck, Ariel rounds the earth to locate ‘the purple Panacea’ (74) and revives Hippolito from apparent death. After another potential outbreak of competitive jealousy between the sisters is averted, the couples pair up in an As You Like It type of final celebration that concludes with the appearance of a partner for no less than Ariel: the ‘gentle Spirit Milcha’ (82). Prospero’s final words offer an invocation of all’s well that ends well: ‘On my retreat let Heaven and Nature smile, / And ever flourish the Enchanted Isle’ (82). What’s missing from the ending of The Enchanted Island is any assertion on Prospero’s part that ‘our revels now are ended,’ or ‘this rough magic I abjure,’ or even, perhaps most tellingly, any reference to ‘this thing of darkness I acknowledge mine.’ Missing also is Caliban’s lyrical eulogy to the natural enchantment of the island, threaded with loss: ‘when I waked / I cried to dream again’ (III, ii, 142–3). Dryden’s and Davenant’s Enchanted Island is overenchanted by women and overrun with siblings, but remarkably untouched by any persistent darkness or loss. By comparison, the loss that marks each of the sibling bonds in Shakespeare’s Tempest can be seen to embody an unrealized potential for reconciliation that renders visible the yearning for an enduring connection that defines so many of the familial bonds in Shakespeare’s late plays, from King Lear to The Winter’s Tale.

160

SIBLING RELATIONS AND GENDER IN THE EARLY MODERN WORLD

The relevance of sibling bonds in The Tempest Twentieth-century creative adaptations of The Tempest have persisted in exploring the relevance of sibling relations in the play, apparently responding to the implicit sibling tensions between Shakespeare’s characters as well as to the fruitful potential for using sibling bonds as a screen on which to project sometimes much larger examinations of society and social constraints. In her thoughtful analysis of iconoclastic adaptations of The Tempest, Chedgzoy calls attention to Philip Osment’s play, This Island’s Mine, whose central achievement, in Osment’s words, is its exploration of ‘the idea of families and how we create alternative families for ourselves based not on blood ties but on a community of interest and ideas – pretended families if you like.’20 Although Chedgzoy’s analysis focuses more directly upon parent-child relations in Shakespeare’s plays than on siblings, she provides a very illuminating consideration of the significance of ‘Shakespeare’s sister’ (as constructed by Virginia Woolf in A Room of One’s Own) upon considerations of the tradition of early modern women writers.21 Apparently, even ‘pretended families’ can illuminate conceptual constraints. Interestingly, given Dryden’s and Davenant’s identification of the twin siblings, Caliban and Sycorax, as ‘two Monsters of the Isle,’ Suniti Namjoshi’s 1984 Snapshots of Caliban features a central poem, ‘Prospero’s Meditations,’ that also identifies two monsters: Two monsters are crawling out of my eyes And onto the sand, scrabbling and scuttling, Climbing and sliding on top of one another, Tipping over stones, doing themselves, And one another too, some damage perhaps. Of the two crabs, which is more dainty? Which one of the two least crab-like? Most graceful? Is there a lovelier sheen On one curved carapace, a subtler shine? Their function escapes me. They have broken their claws. Oh my pretty playthings, my shining instruments!22

Kate Chedgzoy suggests that the two crabs in this passage ‘represent Caliban and Miranda, in the form of monstrous projections of aspects of the self which are unacceptable to Prospero and which have eluded his control and understanding.’23 Namjoshi herself, cited in Chedgzoy’s analysis of this passage, observes that ‘in Snapshots of Caliban I tried to create a female Caliban, with a strong ego and a healthy appetite, who just wanted what she wanted … [but] I found that although its manifestation differed, egoism itself was as central to the voices of Miranda and Prospero as it was to Caliban’s.’24

SIBLING BONDS IN THE TEMPEST

161

In a revisionary transformation that attains an end undreamed of in the seventeenth-century Dryden-Davenant play, Namjoshi’s late twentiethcentury Miranda and Caliban achieve a sisterly reconciliation grounded not in the ‘dream’ of Miranda constructed by her father, but rather in the mutual recognition afforded Miranda by a female Caliban, who returns her anger of dispossession and, in returning it, enables the two women to achieve mutual forgiveness.25 In the interests of grounding my own perspective on this issue, I would like to conclude this discussion by sharing the fact that I am currently in the process of writing a fictional adaptation of The Tempest in the form of a young adult novel, co-authored with Bruce Coville. Provisionally entitled Sea Changes, this novel focuses the narrative upon the perspectives of the adolescents, offering alternating chapters in the voices of Miranda, Caliban, and Ferdinand. Each adolescent is working out an individual as well as collective relation to a range of parental figures, including Prospero, Miranda’s dead mother, Ferdinand’s missing-and-presumed-dead father, Alonso, and the witch-mother Sycorax who has been in contact with all three of them.26 At the same time, the three young adult protagonists are also exploring their bonds with their ‘siblings,’ ranging from Ferdinand’s relation to his now-married sister Claribel to the long-standing sibling relation between Miranda and Caliban, as well as the competitive relation between Caliban and Ferdinand. In Sea Changes, Sycorax is present on the island when Prospero and Miranda first wash ashore and ends up nursing the young Miranda and raising her until she turns five years old. Sycorax departs on Miranda’s fifth birthday as the result of an agreement made between herself and Prospero, in recognition of the fact that one island cannot sustain the competing presence of two spell-spinners, whether witch or mage. Caliban and Miranda are left to share the bereavement occasioned by this loss of ‘their’ mother. Feigning antagonism toward each other in order to protect their bond from the hostile attention of Prospero (who has punished Caliban ever since he misinterpreted an embrace between them), Miranda and Caliban forge a sibling bond in the absence of the mother that is shadowed, at the time of Ferdinand’s appearance, at once by subliminal longing and estrangement. What I find most interesting about the array of actual and potential sibling relations in The Tempest and some of its adaptations, as reviewed here, is not so much the mere fact of their existence as their capacity to serve as portals into constructions of domination and desire, longing and loss, across a range of social and familial relations. When viewed in relation to each other, sibling bonds in The Tempest turn out in some sense to be more about coexistence than competition after all. Thus Prospero’s unwilling forgiveness of his brother foreshadows his reluctant acknowledgement of ‘this thing of

162

SIBLING RELATIONS AND GENDER IN THE EARLY MODERN WORLD

darkness,’ Caliban, who has survived failures and dispossessions even greater than Prospero’s own. At the same time, it is Prospero who must seek to be ‘set free’ (Epilogue, 20) by placing the affirmation of his successful performance in the hands of the audience, whose willingness to applaud might signal in some sense our recognition of our own passage through those portals.

Notes 1.

2.

3. 4.

5.

It is interesting that, for all the much-discussed absence of female figures in The Tempest, the figure of Sycorax seems to dominate Prospero’s consciousness as much as her influential absence informs the other characters’ understanding of their island world. For more discussion of this conundrum, see Kate Chedgzoy’s discussion of feminist revisions of The Tempest in ‘Rewriting the Narratives of Shame: Women’s Transformations of The Tempest,’ chapter 3 in Shakespeare’s Queer Children; Sexual Politics and Contemporary Culture (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1995), esp. 100–106, as well as Jonathan Goldberg’s analysis of iterations of Sycorax in ‘Caliban’s “Woman”,’ the second essay in Tempest in the Caribbean (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2004), esp. 41–101. See also my essay, ‘A Womb of One’s Own: Constructing Maternal Space in Early Modern England and Beyond,’ in Attending to Early Modern Women: Structures and Subjectivities, ed. Joan Hartmann and Adele Seeff (University of Delaware Press, forthcoming 2006). Paul Brown points out that ‘two children, Miranda and Caliban, have been nurtured’ upon the island, while ‘Prospero’s narrative operates to produce in them the binary division of the other, into the malleable and the irreformable, … [that is] a major strategy of colonialist discourse’ [‘“This Thing of Darkness I Acknowledge Mine”’. The Tempest and the Discourse of Colonialism,’ in Political Shakespeare: New Essays in Cultural Materialism, ed. Jonathan Dollimore and Alan Sinfield (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 48–71; reprinted in Gerald Graff and James Phelan, eds, The Tempest: Case Studies in Critical Controversy (Boston: Bedford/St Martin’s, 2000), reprint cited here, 221]. In Shakespeare’s Queer Children, Kate Chedgzoy focuses more closely upon parent-child than sibling relations. Jan Siegel’s recent fantasy novel, Prospero’s Children (New York: Ballantine Publishing, 1999), does not engage with Shakespeare’s The Tempest in any direct sense. Chedgzoy, Shakespeare’s Queer Children, 5–6. Stephen Orgel, ‘Prospero’s Wife,’ Representations 8 (Fall 1984), 1–13, reprinted in Rewriting the Renaissance, ed. Margaret Ferguson, Maureen Quilligan, and Nancy Vickers (Chicago: Chicago University Press, 1985), 50–64, observes that Shakespeare ‘seems to have expressed his strongest familial feelings not toward children or wives but toward parents and siblings,’ and ‘when there are two children, they tend to be presented as alternatives or rivals’ (1985 reprint, 57, 56). A slightly revised version of the same essay, with an expanded conclusion, appears in Stephen Orgel, The Authentic Shakespeare and Other Problems of the Early Modern Stage (New York: Routledge, 2002), 173–86. Goldberg, The Tempest in the Caribbean (155, n. 47), identifies the simultaneous parallels between Claribel’s North African marriage and Miranda’s alliance with

SIBLING BONDS IN THE TEMPEST

6. 7.

8.

9.

163

Ferdinand, as well as the North African link between the King of Tunis and Caliban. All citations from The Tempest will be drawn from The New Arden Shakespeare, ed. Virginia Mason Vaughan and Alden T. Vaughan (London: Thomas Nelson & Sons, 1999). Stephen Orgel points out that the intended consequence of Prospero’s marriage of Miranda to Ferdinand is his successful usurpation of his brother’s dukedom in perpetuity (‘Prospero’s Wife,’ 63); see also Deborah Willis’s analysis of ‘Antonio as Other,’ in ‘Shakespeare’s Tempest and the Discourse of Colonialism,’ Studies in English Literature 1500–1900 29:2 (1989), reprinted in The Tempest: Case Studies in Critical Controversy, ed. Gerald Graff and James Phelan (Boston: Bedford/St Martin’s, 2000), esp. 161–4. See Russ McDonald’s analysis of the ‘musical repetition of vowels and consonants … and incantatory effect of this musical design,’ which are ‘congruent with and supported by larger networks of reiteration, most of them narrative and structural’; ‘Reading The Tempest,’ in Critical Essays on Shakespeare’s The Tempest, ed. Virginia Mason Vaughan and Alden T. Vaughan (London: Hall, 1998), 218, 222. Mary Thomas Crane extends the implications of McDonald’s essay to suggest that ‘from the perspective of the complex, intermeshed and largely unconscious structures of sound and meaning in the mental lexicon, the reliance of The Tempest on subterranean connections among words reveals, not a conscious attempt to give the audience a workout, but rather a bringing to the surface of the buried and often alogical ways in which we think and give meaning to things around us’; ‘Sound and Space in The Tempest,’ in Shakespeare’s Brain: Reading with Cognitive Theory (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2001), 181. In Shakespeare’s Caliban: A Cultural History (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991), Alden T. Vaughan and Virginia Mason Vaughan gather together a range of historical and literary contexts as well as subsequent adaptations of the text that provide an interesting lens on some of the potentially colonialist implications in the play. For a particularly rich collection of essays on the play’s engagement with ‘the world in its time,’ as well as ‘across time and space,’ see ‘The Tempest’ and its Travels, ed. Peter Hulme and William H. Sherman (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2000). Critical engagement with the ongoing tradition of ‘colonialist critiques’ of The Tempest includes: Paul Brown, ‘“This Thing of Darkness I Acknowledge Mine”: The Tempest and the Discourse of Colonialism,’ in Political Shakespeare, 48–71; and Deborah Willis’s response to Brown’s essay, ‘Shakespeare’s The Tempest and the Discourse of Colonialism,’ [essays by Brown and Willis reprinted in The Tempest: Case Studies in Critical Controversy, 203–39 and 256–68]; also Meredith Anne Skura, ‘Discourse and the Individual: The Case of Colonialism in The Tempest,’ Shakespeare Quarterly 40 (Spring 1989), 42–69; Frances E. Dolan, ‘The Subordinate(’s) Plot: Petty Treason and the Forms of Domestic Rebellion,’ Shakespeare Quarterly 43 (Fall 1992), 317–40; and Barbara Fuchs, ‘Conquering Islands: Contextualizing The Tempest,’ Shakespeare Quarterly 48 (Spring 1997), 44–62. In ‘Playing with Shakespeare,’ the conclusion to Shakespeare, Race, and Colonialism (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002), 161–8, Ania Loomba surveys the controversial links between colonialism and race in The Tempest, particularly in the articulation of notions of sameness and difference, while Jonathan Goldberg explores ‘post- and anticolonial possibilities and positions that

164

10.

11.

12. 13.

14.

15. 16. 17.

18.

19. 20.

21.

SIBLING RELATIONS AND GENDER IN THE EARLY MODERN WORLD

exceed [the] norm’ of ‘heteronormative assumptions’ about the colonial relations in the play; Tempest in the Caribbean (2004). Certainly the sexual nature of Prospero’s suspicions when confronted by a male who is the object of his daughter’s attention can be glimpsed in the innuendo underlying his threat to Ferdinand to ‘make thy weapon drop’ (I, ii, 474), long before his dark warnings about the consequences should Ferdinand ‘break her virgin-knot’ (IV, i, 15). See Mary Thomas Crane’s discussion of ‘Prospero’s Anxieties about the Sexuality of Ferdinand and Miranda,’ in Shakespeare’s Brain, 194. Kim Hall, Things of Darkness: Economies of Race and Gender in Early Modern England (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1995), analyzes the ‘epistemic connection’ between Ferdinand and Miranda as evidence that ‘the “real” difference between Caliban and Ferdinand is racial, not moral or sexual’ (148). See, for example, Octave Mannoni, Prospero and Caliban: The Psychology of Colonization (1956), excerpted in Appendix 2 in The New Arden Shakespeare: The Tempest, ed. Vaughan & Vaughan, esp. 339). For more discussion of the reception history of the Dryden-Davenant Tempest, see Vaughan and Vaughan, Introduction to The New Arden Shakespeare: The Tempest, 76–9. See also Joseph Roach, ‘The Enchanted Island: Vicarious Tourism in Restoration Adaptations of The Tempest,’ in ‘The Tempest’ and its Travels, ed. Hulme and Sherman, 60–70. John Dryden and William Davenant, The Tempest, or The Enchanted Island (1670; facsimile published London: Cornmarket Press, 1969); Dryden’s preface, A2v. All subsequent citations from the body of the play will refer to this edition, by page number, given that there are no scene or line numbers in the text. Vaughan and Vaughan, Introduction to The New Arden Shakespeare: The Tempest, 76. Dryden, preface to The Enchanted Island, A3v. Because the readers of this essay are likely to be less familiar with the DrydenDavenant adaptation than with Shakespeare’s The Tempest, I will review some of the plot and character details from The Enchanted Island at more length than my preceding consideration of parallel details from The Tempest itself, with the aim of exploring the effects of an adaptation in bondage to sibling bonds. Ann Thompson, ‘“Miranda, Where’s Your Sister?”: Reading Shakespeare’s The Tempest,’ uses Prospero’s opening exclamation in the Dryden-Davenant version of The Tempest as an occasion for interrogating the notable absence of women from Shakespeare’s play; first published in Feminist Criticism: Theory and Practice, ed. Susan Sellers (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1991), reprinted in The Tempest: Case Studies in Critical Controversy, ed. Graff and Phelan, 337–47. See the Vaughans’ introduction to The New Arden Shakespeare: The Tempest, 135–6. Philip Osment, ‘Finding Room on the Agenda for Love: A History of Gay Sweatshop,’ in Gay Sweatshop: Four Plays and a Company, ed. P. Osment (London: Methuen, 1989), p. lxi; cited in Kate Chedgzoy’s introduction to Shakespeare’s Queer Children, 6, n. 1. The text of This Island’s Mine can be found as well in Adaptations of Shakespeare: A Critical Anthology of Plays from the Seventeenth Century to the Present, ed. Daniel Fischlin and Mark Fortier (London: Routledge, 2000), 255–84. As Chedgzoy points out, the tradition of Shakespeare’s sister has continued to be

SIBLING BONDS IN THE TEMPEST

22. 23.

24. 25.

26.

165

appropriated for feminist purposes in examples that include Olive Schreiner’s From Man to Man (London: Unwin, 1926; repr. London: Virago, 1982) and Ellen Galford’s Moll Cutpurse (Edinburgh: Stramullion, 1984), which ‘follows Schreiner in using the figure of a thwarted female to expose the construction of women’s domestic and sexual duties in opposition to their literary desires, emphasized here by the sardonic use of zeugma’ (18–19). Suniti Namjoshi, Snapshots of Caliban, in Because of India: Selected Poems and Fables (London: Onlywomen, 1989), 94. I am indebted to Kate Chedgzoy’s chapter for calling my attention to this passage, as indicated in Note 23. Chedgzoy, ‘Rewriting the Narratives of Shame,’ Shakespeare’s Queer Children, 118. It was Chedgzoy’s analysis that recently introduced me to Namjoshi’s work, while affirming my own already articulated creative understanding of the connection between Caliban and Miranda as embodying a sibling relation ‘from which Prospero, uncomprehending, is excluded’ (120). Namjoshi, introduction to Snapshots of Caliban, 83–4. See Namjoshi, Snapshots of Caliban, encompassing both Miranda’s articulation of her father’s construction of her (‘From his superior knowledge / he made me a dream. / I listened / and understood clearly / in myself I was nothing,’ 96), and Miranda’s reconciliation with Caliban, 101. Bruce Coville and Naomi Miller, manuscript-in-progress, provisionally titled Sea Changes, with one alternative title being The Witch’s Gifts.

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

Playing the Game: Sisterly Relations in Sofonisba Anguissola’s The Chess Game Naomi Yavneh SEPHONISBA ANGUISSOLA. VIRGO. AMILCARIS FILIA. EX VERA EFIGIE TRES SUAS SORORES. ET ANCILLAM PINXIT. MDLV.

Sofonisba Anguissola, virgin daughter of Amilcare, painted from life three of her sisters and their maid-servant in 1555.1

In the midst of reviewing ‘tutti i migliori e più eccellenti pittori, scultori, ed architetti che sono stati a’ tempi nostri in Lombardia’ (all the best and most excellent Lombard painters, sculptors and architects of our time), the artist and biographer Giorgio Vasari pauses to discuss the excellence of Sofonisba Anguissola and three of her sisters. Although, as he acknowledges, Vasari had mentioned Sofonisba earlier (in his discussion of the Bolognese sculptress, Properzia de’ Rossi), at that time he had known only her reputation and one of her drawings. Now, however, having visited her home, he presents her, as it were, in famiglia, ‘con tre sue sorelle’ (with three of her sisters), domesticating her talent to show her not as a freak of nature, but rather as the most excellent (eccellentissima) of four distinguished and talented sisters, ‘all virtuosissime – most virtuous and virtuosic – young women, the offspring of Amilcare Angusciola and Bianca Punzona, each from the most noble families of Cremona.’2 Only after carefully providing the artist’s pedigree and lineage does Vasari move on to a discussion of her painting. And lest we have any lingering doubts regarding Sofonisba’s chaste reputation, Vasari quotes at length a letter from the artist to the Pope regarding a painting of the Virgin that she has created for him, along with Pius IV’s equally laudatory thanks (‘lo terremo fra le nostre cose più care’)3 and blessing. This careful construction of Sofonisba as virtuosa – artistic virtuoso and virtuous woman – is accentuated by the painting he describes as hanging in the family home: [D]ico aver veduto quest’anno in Cremona, di mano di lei, in casa di suo padre e in un quadro fatto con molta diligenza, ritratte tre sue sorelle in

SOFONISBA ANGUISSOLA’S CHESS GAME

167

atto di giocare a scacchi, e con esso loro una vecchia donna di casa, con tanta diligenza e prontezza, che paiono veramente vive, e che non manchi loro altro che la parola (498). I say that I have seen this year in Cremona, by her hand, in the house of her father, and in a painting done with great care and accuracy [diligenza], portraits of three of her sisters in the midst of playing chess, and with them, an old woman-servant of the house [painted] with such accuracy [diligenza] and such readiness [prontezza] that they seem truly alive, and that they lack nothing other than speech.

Vasari’s emphasis on the lifelike qualities of the portraits is not hyperbole; the originality of organization and individuation of each figure is a distinctive feature of the painting often noted by critics and responsible, in part, for the work’s frequent anthologizing. The painting is remarkable for the clearly delineated individuality of each figure, which captures the artist’s intimate familiarity with the subjects, her sisters (Figure 14.1). But, as I will argue, Sofonisba’s presentation of her sisters is a carefully constructed statement on the role of the woman artist, on women and creativity, on female creativity and intellect, and on the reciprocity of sisterhood.

Filia Amilcare Before examining the painting itself, we might consider Sofonisba’s delicate position as both artist and lady. In sixteenth-century Italy, for a woman to become a professional artist was extremely rare; for a noblewoman to become a court painter was unheard of. Women’s sphere was largely limited either to early marriage or the convent (with prostitution as a third option), and, in general, a young girl’s education was confined to the skills deemed appropriate to her future: a working knowledge of the vernacular, arithmetic and needlework. Moreover, given the supremacy granted to female chastity, an artistic education was considered not only unnecessary but dangerous. The apprenticeship process as it normally transpired would require intimate contact with the master artist and the members of his shop (all male), who generally lived together, while the subjects treated – powerful histories, nudes, or even portraits of men – were unseemly objects of consideration for a virgin. The very suggestion of impropriety was to be avoided at all costs, for the woman who was free with her tongue (or her paintbrush) was presumed to be free with other body parts as well. While most early modern women artists – the aforementioned Properzia, Lavinia Fontana, and Artemisia Gentileschi, for example – were the daughters of artists, trained in their fathers’ workshops, Sofonisba Anguissola was unique. The oldest of six daughters of a Cremonese nobleman, Amilcare

168

14.1 Sofonisba Anguissola, The Chess Game, oil on canvas, 72 x 97 cm, Pozna´n, Muzeum Narodowe

SOFONISBA ANGUISSOLA’S CHESS GAME

169

Anguissola, and his wife Bianca Punzona (the seventh child was the longedfor son), she and her sisters were given the humanist education normally reserved for boys. Sofonisba and the next daughter, Elena, who later became a nun, were sent to study with the celebrated artist, Bernardo Campi, in whose home they were properly chaperoned by his wife. Having acquired the skills appropriate to an apprenticeship, while leaving out any potentially corrupting influences, the sisters returned home, where Sofonisba then instructed her youngest sisters, who, as we have seen, were subsequently noted by Vasari as accomplished artists as well.4 Sofonisba’s education, however, was not complete. Conscious of his daughter’s prodigious talent, and of the potential for financial gain therefrom, Amilcare sent examples of her drawings to Michelangelo, who encouraged the father to send Sofonisba to Rome, where she remained for two years, properly supervised, and gained a considerable artistic reputation. Although women were limited in the range of subjects they might respectably depict, received opinion is that Sofonisba made a virtue of necessity, specializing in unusually animated and detailed portraits which ultimately led to her appointment as Court Painter and Lady-in-Waiting to Queen Isabella (Elizabeth of Valois) at the court of Philip II.5 Indeed, as Vasari remarks, Sofonisba was already in Spain when the biographer visited her home. If, in his Vite, Vasari is careful to present a chaste portrait of the artist within appropriate domestic confines, he is following the artist’s lead, for, as Mary Garrard has argued, in her self-portraits Sofonisba cultivates a chaste and almost austere reputation by dressing in black or other dark colors, styling her hair demurely and severely limiting her use of jewelry and other ornaments (Figure 14.2). Suggestively, before her marriage at the almost unheard of age of forty, she signed at least eight of her paintings – including The Chess Game – with the descriptor virgo, a term that underscores her virginal status and moral purity, while further implying the independence and self-possession of the classical figures so designated.6 Such self-fashioning, like Vasari’s narrative, seems constructed to negotiate the precarious position of a female artist. In contrast to (and yet not unlike) the later Artemisia Gentileschi, who used her unfortunate notoriety at the hands of her father’s student to enhance her reputation as a painter of femmes fortes,7 Sofonisba presents herself as virgo, often playing consciously on the expectations of the represented woman in art. For example, her SelfPortrait Playing the Virginals (1561; Althorp Collection, Earl Spencer; Figure 14.2) seems a self-conscious adaptation of contemporary images of Venus with an organist or lutenist (Figure 14.3), which draw upon the metaphor of a woman’s body as an instrument to be played upon.8 Not only is the modestly clad and physically (and thus morally) upright virgo controlling her own instrument, she is accompanied by her equally reserved maid, whose eagle-

170

SIBLING RELATIONS AND GENDER IN THE EARLY MODERN WORLD

14.2 Sofonisba Anguissola, Self-portrait Playing the Virginals, oil on canvas, 81.2 x 63.5 cm, by permission of the Collection at Althorpe Park (Photograph: Photographic Survey, Courtauld Institute of Art, London)

171

14.3

Titian, Venus and Cupid with an Organist, oil on canvas, 148 x 217 cm, 1548, Madrid, Museo Nacional del Prado

172

SIBLING RELATIONS AND GENDER IN THE EARLY MODERN WORLD

eyed gaze at the viewer seems designed to curb any untoward thoughts with respect to her charge, rather than to incite lasciviousness through contrast and lechery.9 In keeping with the demure comportment befitting the lady of the Renaissance, Sofonisba achieves these effects, these negotiations, with such subtlety that at times they are missed by critics. The animation of The Chess Game, for example, is often admired with unintentionally backhanded compliments: Sofonisba, forced by her position to paint members of her family, is able to present them in such a lively manner because she knows them intimately. Such remarks, while reflecting a truth about the painting, minimize Sofonisba’s conscious presentation of her subjects; although the woman artist may lack the authority to paint history, this artist – oldest of six artistic sisters – is an authority on sororal bonds. As I will demonstrate, her vivid representation of her sisters is both an artistic display of the communality of sisterhood and a feminist corrective of the traditional relationship between active (male) painter and (passive) female object of display, for while the image of the sisters helps to define their oldest sister’s virtuosity, Sofonisba reciprocates both by demonstrating their respective powers and documenting their sisterly affection.

Tres suas sorores The Chess Game presents the middle three of the artist’s five sisters10 grouped intimately about a table, covered in an expensive oriental rug with an abstract pattern. To the left and right of the table, shown in half-length and largely in profile, are two of the sisters, usually identified as Lucia (born between 1536 and 1538) and Minerva (born 1539–41), engaged in a game of chess. A third, younger sister, Europa (born 1542–44), is standing on the third side of the table, while just behind Minerva an older female servant peaks her head in to observe the game. The four figures are located in an enclosed garden, with a hilly landscape in the background. As Vasari notes, these girls are ‘in atto di giocare a scacchi’ – in the act of playing chess – and the complex interplay of the sisters’ glances underscores the strikingly active engagement of all the members of the family. While Europa stands closer to the eldest sister, who has apparently just captured the black queen, she gazes with an amused smile at the solemn Minerva. Minerva stares intently at Lucia with a raised right hand, as Lucia prepares to move or seize another piece, gazing not at Minerva but at the viewer – or at the painter, her oldest sister, Sofonisba, whose position appears to be directly across from Europa. Instead of the stiff and formal portraiture typical of the mid-sixteenth century, Anguissola has created a genre scene of a family’s intellectual

SOFONISBA ANGUISSOLA’S CHESS GAME

173

pastime, in which she herself is an unseen participant, as both her physical resemblance to her sisters and the inscription on the side of the chessboard affirm.11 Anguissola’s new portraiture even adds a character normally excluded from such representations, for, in a highly unusual gesture that contributes to the work’s homey and lifelike quality, she has included the maid, who peers over Minerva’s shoulder on the far right. Yet the maid has an important function beyond her contribution to the genre quality of the scene. As noted above, in sixteenth-century Italian art, the presence of an older, uglier female is often used to contrast with and thereby highlight the youthful, usually nude, beauty of the heroine who is the work’s main subject. For example, in the Prado version of Titian’s Danaë (1554), the dark skin and wrinkled face of the avaricious and misguided servant, holding out her apron for the coins, serve to throw into relief Danaë’s ideal Petrarchan features and soft, reclining body (Figure 14.4). The servant of The Chess Game, in contrast, serves a similar role to her counterpart in Self-Portrait Playing the Virginals; indeed, they are likely the same woman. In The Chess Game, the maid’s simple clothes and lined, if sympathetically portrayed, face (as well as her position on the outskirts of the group) distinguish her from the elaborate and elegantly detailed costumes and smooth faces of the sisters, but to different effect. First, while the presence of a maid accentuates the social status of the girls indicated by their wardrobe, that emphasis draws attention to the garments themselves. As Ilya Peringieri has discussed, Amilcare’s daughters were educated in the ladylike pursuits appropriate to their class as well as liberal arts, and Sofonisba’s skill at and eye for needlework are amply evidenced in her portraiture.12 The detailed attention to fabric may not be disingenuous, however, but rather a conscious effort to display the femininity of both artists and sisters, as well as to draw attention precisely to the socalled ‘womanly arts’ traditionally held in lower esteem than their ‘manly’ counterparts, which all four sisters have mastered as well. Moreover, by using the servant to call attention to the needle arts, Sofonisba highlights another aspect of ‘woman’s work’ as well: juxtaposing chess, painting, embroidery, and caregiving, The Chess Game celebrates a broad spectrum of ‘women’s work’ and breaks down barriers dividing disciplines, gender and even, to a lesser extent, class. While class distinctions are by no means erased here, certainly the painting affords a different perspective on the work of the servant. Danaë’s attendant seems a greedy bawd, ignorantly seeking to catch in her skirts the shower of gold that is the god come to rape the exquisite virgin. In contrast, the sisters’ aptly labeled ‘ancilla’ is there to protect her charges’ chastity, her Latin title recalling the words of that virtue’s supreme exemplar. The presence of the ancilla may also help to explain The Chess Game’s

174

14.4

Titian, Danaë, oil on canvas, 129 x 180 cm, 1553–4, Madrid, Museo Nacional del Prado

SOFONISBA ANGUISSOLA’S CHESS GAME

175

garden location. The sfumato mountains of the background city may be, as Perlingieri has suggested, an idealized view of Cremona, which is in fact flat.13 But a walled garden also evokes the iconography of the Song of Songs, traditionally adapted in depictions of the Annunciation to signify Mary’s virginity. In The Chess Game’s sheltered locus amoenus, the sisters may freely enjoy their intellectual and creative pursuits.

Chess The painting of chess, like the game itself, has a long history in Renaissance art. Arriving in Europe from Arabia in the late Middle Ages, chess became popular among the upper classes as an intellectual yet leisurely pursuit, generally considered more sophisticated than and therefore superior to games of chance. Two strains inform the game’s representation in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. In the first, chess is presented, in Patricia Simons’s words, as ‘a disciplined exercise for aristocratic men who both entertained themselves and sharpened their combative wits at the chessboard.’14 In an article on the gendered politics of chess in Renaissance Italy, Simons cites Christine de’ Pizan’s assertion that Ulysses invented chess as one of the ‘subtle and very beautiful games to so entertain the knights when they were at rest’ during the siege of Troy, as well as a fifteenth-century commentary’s opinion that chess ‘was discovered, created and organized primarily in the similitude of a linear battle, with its lines well-ranged and ordered.’15 In Renaissance art, the masculine rationality of the game is sometimes contrasted with the intellectual inferiority and frivolity both of other games and of women, as in Paris Bordone’s Two Chess Players (1550–55; Figure 14.5), where two noble figures play chess in the foreground, before the columns of a classical portico, while on the far right, lesser men gamble in the background, and women lounge leisurely in the landscape beyond the walls.16 Chess, however, was frequently played by a heterosexual pair; accordingly, the second tradition presents the game as a sexual metaphor. In vernacular romances as well as images, a woman playing chess may be battling for or risking her virginity, seeking to protect her chastity or demonstrating her lust, as we see, for example, in Giulio Campi’s Game of Chess (1540s; Figure 14.6), formerly attributed (interestingly enough) to Anguissola,17 where an elaborately coiffed and alluringly and extravagantly attired beauty plays chess with an armed and helmeted knight. Sofonisba’s Chess Game seeks both to distance itself from the second tradition and regender the first by showing a game of chess between two actively engaged and virtuously represented girls, played out in the absence of males. Their elegant, ornate yet modest dress – high necklines, long sleeves,

176

14.5 Paris Bordone, Two Chess Players, ol on canvas, 1550–55, Berlin, Gemäldegalerie (Berlin, Staatliche Museen Preussischer Kulturbesitz)

177

14.6

Giulio Campi, The Game of Chess, oil on canvas, 1540s, Turin, Museo civico d’Arte Antica e Palazzo Madama

178

SIBLING RELATIONS AND GENDER IN THE EARLY MODERN WORLD

hair braided around the head and restrained by beautiful but not ostentatious hairbands of gold and pearls – suggests both their social standing and chastity. These are the blood as well as spiritual sisters of the artist, the virgo (and virtuosa) Sofonisba Anguissola, as the inscription on the chessboard reminds us. Chess, then, has been transformed into a chaste and intellectual pursuit, but the specifics of this match are worthy of attention. Although some critics have suggested that Minerva is conceding, in a decorous and unemotional manner, or that Lucia is in the process of check-mating her sister, in fact, the exact situation is unclear. If Lucia has just seized Minerva’s queen, which she holds in her left hand, why is her right hand poised over the board as if she is about to make a move? Certainly the suspense may contribute to that heightened sense of action and verisimilitude noted from Vasari onward. But the ambiguity of Lucia’s right hand draws our attention back to her left. Originally, the queen had a somewhat limited role in chess. At the end of the fifteenth century, however, the rules changed, and the queen was granted the power of unlimited moves in all directions that had previously belonged to the bishop. (The king retained only his power to move one square at a time.) In an influential and wildly popular Virgilian-style epic, the Scacchia ludus (‘Chess Game’) or Scacchiad, the poet Marcantonio (or Marco) Girolamo Vida, a fellow Cremonese and friend of Amilcare Anguissola, celebrates the transformation of the game and the power of the queen:18 At regina furens animis pars optima belli, In frontem, in terga, ac dextram, laevamque movetur, Itque iter obliquum, sed semper tramite recto Procedit (ll. 139–142) But the fierce Queen, whom dangers ne’er dismay, The strength and terror of the bloody day, In a straight line spreads her destruction wide, To left or right, before, behind, aside. (132–5)19

Vida refers to his martial queens both as ‘virgo’ and ‘Amazon,’ invoking a tradition that views chess as a battle of the Amazons.20 The language of this influential poem is thus suggestive not just in comprehending the significance of the sisters playing chess, but in understanding the symbolism of the pieces themselves; viewed from this perspective, the queen-amazon-virgin in Lucia’s hand becomes a synecdoche for the beautifully dressed, virtuous sisters. What, then, of the pawn in Europa’s hand? For next to Lucia, her little sister holds a pawn in the same squared C with which the elder holds the queen and which is a signature of the eldest sister – Sofonisba’s – style. Again, the symbolism derives from the specific rules of chess: as any reader of Through the Looking-Glass knows, when a pawn successfully traverses all eight squares to cross the board, she becomes a queen as well.

SOFONISBA ANGUISSOLA’S CHESS GAME

179

In a letter to Cosimo I de’ Medici dated 20 January 1562, accompanying the gift of this drawing and one by Michelangelo, Tomaso Cavalieri describes the drawing of her little brother that Sofonisba had sent to Michelangelo. Michelangelo, writes Cavalieri, ‘having seen a drawing done by her hand of a smiling girl, … said that he would have liked to see a weeping boy, as a subject more difficult to draw. After he wrote to her about it, she sent to him this drawing which was a portrait of her brother, whom she has intentionally shown weeping.’21 Presumably eager to please il Divino, Sofonisba had responded with a drawing of Asdrubale in tears, his fingers pinched by a crab, and one of her little sisters (probably Europa), who affectionately comforts him (Figure 14.7). While the little girl is erased from Cavalieri’s description, feminist critics have noted the subtly subversive quality of Anguissola’s

14.7 Sofonisba Anguissola, Boy Bitten by a Crab, black chalk and charcoal on brown paper, 33.3 x 38.5 cm, c. 1554, Naples, Museo di Capodimonte, Gabinetto Disegni e Stampe, by kind permission of the Fototeca–Soprintendenza Speciale per il Polo Museale napoletano

180

SIBLING RELATIONS AND GENDER IN THE EARLY MODERN WORLD

choice of subject: responding to Michelangelo’s implicit assertion that boys are better than girls and tragedy superior to comedy, Sofonisba sends, in Mary Garrard’s terms, ‘a child who needs a band-aid.’22 Moreover, the smiling girl remains, setting the tone of the drawing. And in The Chess Game’s celebration of sisterhood, Sofonisba again returns to the ‘less difficult’ feminine subject. The smiling-faced little girl, clutching the amazonetta – little Amazon, as it is suggestively termed in a sixteenth-century treatise on chess – is another, subtle response to and correction of Michelangelo and his world.

Notes 1.

Inscription on The Chess Game (my translation). Currently in the Muzeum Narodowe in Pozna´n, the work was originally located in the Anguissola home in Cremona. On the work’s provenance, see Sofonisba Anguissola e le sue sorelle, exh. cat. (no city: Leonardo Arte, 1994), 190. 2. ‘Ma sopra tutti gli ha fatto onore ed è stata eccellentissima nella pittura Sofonisba Angusciola Cremonese con tre sue sorelle; le quali virtuosissime giovani sono nate del signor Amilcare Angusciola e della signora Bianca Punzona, ambe nobilissime famiglie in Cremona.’ Giorgio Vasari, Le vite de’ più eccellenti pittori, scultori ed architettori, ed. Gaetano Milanesi (Florence: Sansoni, 1906), vol. 6, 498. All translations mine. 3. ‘We will consider it among our most dear possessions’ (499–500). 4. For Sofonisba’s biography, see Sofonisba Anguissola e le sue sorelle; Ilya Sandra Perlingieri, Sofonisba Anguissola: The First Great Woman Artist of the Renaissance (New York: Rizzoli, 1992); Sylvia Ferino-Pagden and Maria Kusche, Sofonisba Anguissola: A Renaissance Woman (Washington, DC: The National Museum of Women in the Arts, 1995). 5. After Isabella’s death, Philip presented a dowry to Anguissola, who left Spain in 1569 to marry a Sicilian. Widowed after only five years of marriage, Sofonisba subsequently married a Genoese sailor, and returned to northern Italy, where she remained until her death in 1625. 6. Mary Garrard, ‘Here’s Looking at Me: Sofonisba Anguissola and the Problem of the Woman Artist,’ Renaissance Quarterly 47:3 (Autumn, 1994), 580ff. 7. On Artemisia Gentileschi, see Mary Garrard, Artemisia Gentileschi (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1989) and Artemisia Gentileschi around 1622: The Shaping and Reshaping of an Artistic Identity (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2001); Keith Christiansen and Judith W. Mann, ed., Orazio Gentileschi and Artemisia Gentileschi, exh. cat. (New York: Metropolitan Museum of Art, New Haven: Yale University Press, 2001). 8. See discussion in Garrard, ‘Here’s Looking,’ 589. Another self-portrait playing the virginals, from c. 1551, minus the chaperone and possibly of her sister, Lucia, rather than of the artist herself, is in the Capodimonte Museum in Naples. 9. See, for example, the maid in Titian’s Danaë (Figure 14.4), discussed above. 10. In 1555, Elena, born c. 1535, would already have entered the convent, while Anna Maria, born about 1546, would have been younger than the youngest girl shown here. See the discussion in Perlingieri. 11. If the artist herself is not visually represented, she is nevertheless present, as the

SOFONISBA ANGUISSOLA’S CHESS GAME

12. 13. 14.

15. 16. 17. 18.

19. 20. 21. 22.

181

inscription on the side of the chessboard clarifies. Just as Vasari will do, the artist identifies herself by name, as the daughter of Amilcare. Visually, her presence is recalled by the three other daughters of Amilcare represented, many of whose features she shares. Perlingieri, 86. As Perlingieri notes, needlework was ‘a highly accomplished endeavor, requiring creativity, impeccable manual dexterity, and a sense of composition and color.’ Perlingieri, 91. Patricia Simons, ‘(Check)Mating the Grand Masters: The Gendered, Sexualized Politics of Chess in Renaissance Italy.’ Oxford Art Journal 16:1 (1993), 59. On the history of chess, see Harry Golombek, Chess: A History (New York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1976) and H. J. R. Murray’s classic A History of Chess (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1913). Simons, ‘(Check)Mating the Grand Masters,’ 59. Ibid., 60. As the editors of Sofonisba e le sue sorelle remark, the theme of chess was popular in Cremona in this period, as evidenced by the poem as well (314). Although written before 1513, the Latin poem was first published in a pirated edition in 1525 and then in an authorized version in 1527 in Rome, just prior to the Sack; about 150 editions have been published since, including an eighteenthcentury English translation by Oliver Goldsmith. For a modern edition of the Latin text, Goldsmith’s translation and the texts of three earlier versions, as well as a helpful introduction, see The Game of Chess: Marco Girolamo Vida’s ‘Scacchia Ludus,’ ed. Mario A. di Cesare (Nieuwkoop: B. de Graaf, 1975). Vida himself was familiar with Anguissola: by this point a bishop, he referred to her in 1550 as ‘inter egregious pictures nostri temporis,’ Poemata omnia (Cremona, 1550), c. 64v. Cited in Sofonisba e le sue sorelle, 11. All citations from the di Cesare edition. V. l.353: ‘At medias acies inter crudescit Amazon/Candida,’ which Goldsmith translates, ‘But in the midst of all the battle raged/The snowy Queen’ – expunging, here as throughout, any references to Amazons. Cited in Charles de Tolnay, ‘Sofonisba Anguissola and her Relations with Michelangelo,’ The Journal of the Walters Art Gallery 4 (1941), 117. ‘Here’s Looking,’ 613.

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

‘My Deare Sister’: Sainted Sisterhood in Early Modern England Kathryn R. McPherson Visual, narrative, and poetic representations of grief explore and attempt to assuage it, often investigating God’s Providence, the bereaved’s religious convictions, or the ways of holy dying so privileged in Protestant England. A memorial tradition also appears in Protestant rhetoric remembering the dead as ‘saints.’ This codification implied sainthood not in the official sense of a canonized martyr, but more generally as ‘one of the blessed dead in Heaven,’ or simply as, ‘a Christian.’1 Women writers whose sisters died in childbirth referenced this trope, but also connected their sisters’ deaths to feminine righteousness and maternal martyrdom. Given the complex communal aspects of childbirth in the period, sisters attended each other’s lyings-in with some frequency; among the literate classes, a sister’s presence at the birth may also have been augmented by correspondence before and after the labor. Sisterly intimacy deepened by assisting or discussing childbirth becomes particularly compelling when memorials for lost sisters enact a sororal discourse of sainthood. The autobiographical writings of Alice Thornton (1625–1706) describing her sister Lady Catherine Danby’s death, and the poem of Lady Jane Cavendish Cheyne (1623–69) about the death of her sister, Elizabeth Egerton, Countess of Bridgewater, both utilize motifs of female sainthood to dramatize the bonds between sisters and suggest a compelling veneration of women who died in childbirth.

Maternity and femininity in early modern England Certainly, women’s death in childbed held a special significance: in the early modern period such women became intimately connected to a set of interrelated ideas about Eve’s sin and all women’s punishment for that transgression, Mary’s giving birth to Christ, and a Protestant mother’s spiritual instruction to her children.2 In the period’s querelles de femme, Elaine Beilin observes that connections to Eve’s transgression ‘nevertheless propose that the

SAINTED SISTERHOOD

183

second Eve, the Virgin Mary, is the source of all redemption. Their image of the virtuous woman is a domesticated version of the Virgin: remaining at home to keep the household goods, a good woman was pious, humble, constant, and patient, as well as obedient, chaste, and silent.’3 I would extend this list to include ‘maternal,’ and will demonstrate how texts posthumously representing maternal virtues establish a type of substitute saint. Thus, women who died during or just after enduring such suffering became peculiarly revered.4 Acting as more than exempla, particularly within their own families, such ‘sainted sisters’ showed their sisters how they should live and how they should die. This tradition of sainted maternity intersects with the restrictive, maleauthored sermons, conduct books, epitaphs, and lyric poems addressing maternity; these texts expound upon idealized feminine attributes, particularly women’s pious acceptance of suffering.5 Certainly, women’s writing sometimes participates in this ideology, but often reinscribes it by posthumously establishing sisters as substitute saints whose suffering becomes inspirational. Thornton’s and Cheyne’s memorials reveal how close sororal bonds led to this dramatic variety of hagiographic memorializing of women who, in John Donne’s words, ‘paid their last debt’ by dying as, or soon after, they gave life. The most famous piece in the ‘sainted maternity’ genre (though it does not involve sisterhood) is John Milton’s poem, ‘Methought I Saw My Late Espoused Saint.’6 In a dream vision, Milton consecrates his ‘espoused saint,’ who returns to him ‘as pure as her mind.’ The poem’s allusions to the ‘spot of childbed taint’ and the white veil refer to churching ceremony, an Anglican remnant of the ancient Jewish ceremony of post-partum purification. Milton’s late wife, purified after the birth that caused her death, radiates ‘love, sweetness, [and] goodness.’ He remembers her as an icon of purity and grace, ‘vested all in white,’ who seems to minister to his grief and blindness.7 Milton’s poem hints at aspects of a rhetorical tradition that represented a deceased woman’s virtuous behavior by praising her piety, modesty, and chastity.8 Now enthroned in Heaven as one of God’s saints, she becomes a radiant vision, a saint worthy of veneration whose intercession is cruelly prevented by the speaker’s waking. Milton may have had a particular meaning of the term ‘saint’ in mind. Certainly, tradition allowed for generalized use of ‘saint,’ referring to any good Christian believed to be in Heaven. Yet the surging nonconformist movements of the late sixteenth century and the seventeenth brought a particular resonance to the term.9 Various Puritan theologians used ‘saint’ as a synonym for God’s chosen, ‘the elect.’10 In this tradition, a person’s goodness was directly tied to their chance of being loved by God – thus saintliness became a close proximity to God, as well as a condition which was outwardly

184

SIBLING RELATIONS AND GENDER IN THE EARLY MODERN WORLD

visible, since a pure heart shone in the face of the elect.11 Within English Puritanism, the language of which increasingly infused Protestant rhetoric in general, the term began to imply both a wide-ranging sense of a person’s holiness or piety, as well as particular proximity to God within the reformed tradition. Thornton and Cheyne draw on, and expand, this tradition as they mourn their sisters. Equally important, and existing in opposition to the discourse of saintliness, is the cultural discourse connecting femininity, sin, and corruption. Although in mid-seventeenth-century England, women’s bodies were subject to less disgust for their sinful nature (compared to women in early antiquity or the Middle Ages), Gail Kern Paster has amply demonstrated that the female body was still seen as dangerous and unclean.12 The taint of sin and its origins in femininity was, as Elaine Beilin has argued, prevalent in texts written by, for, and about women.13 Consider, too, John Oliver’s morbid advice of 1663 for women with child: ‘Sin makes travel [travail, labor] painful, death dreadful, and hell intolerable … May it not trouble you to consider with yourself thus, if I die with this load of sin upon me, it will surely sink me deep enough into the burning lake.’14 Oliver uses his polemical text to encourage a rigidly puritanical standard of maternal behavior, recommending constant prayer and enthusiastic repentance prior to giving birth. He adheres to the Scriptural dictate that women ought to, as did Eve, continue to redeem their sin, and all humanity’s sins, by bringing forth children ‘in sorrow’ as commanded in Genesis 3:15. Oliver’s text fuses consideration of women’s inherent sinfulness with possibility of their death in childbirth. He promotes Christian redemption, and virtuous femininity, by invoking maternal suffering and death. But women’s suffering in childbirth also had a redemptive power that became magnified in the early modern period, according to Patricia Crawford, by the view that such suffering increased female subordination to, as well as intimacy with, God. Crawford notes, ‘As the preacher Richard Sibbes explained, because women were in frequent danger of death in childbirth, they were “forced to nearer communion with God”.’15 Women’s writing confirms the ‘communion’ to which Sibbes refers. Observe, for example, Alice Thornton’s graphic representation of her body as a site of torture during the birth of her fifth child in 1657: Upon Wednesday the ninth of December, I fell into exceeding sharp travail in great extremity … in this condition continued until Thursday morning between two and three o’clock, at which time I was upon the rack in bearing my child with such exquisite torment, as if each limb were divided from the other, for the space of two hours; when at length, being speechless and breathless, I was by the infinite providence of God in great mercy delivered.

SAINTED SISTERHOOD

185

But alas! All these miseries was nothing to what I have deserved from the just hand of God, considering the great failings of my duties as required both as to God and man. And though I am not given over to any sinful enormous crimes which thousands are subject to, yet I am not pure in the sight of God.16

Thornton, a staunchly pious Anglican gentlewoman, crafts a narrative of her own suffering and sinfulness. Much of the memoir catalogues her difficult life, especially the privations of childbearing and its attendant illnesses.17 Though Thornton survived the wracking pains of this breech birth, she clearly felt near death. Her insistence that she is ‘not pure in the sight of God’ underscores her persistent sense of unworthiness and tellingly contrasts with her depiction of her sister’s death in childbirth analyzed in detail below. Although Thornton hints at her own martyrdom during similar passages throughout her memoir, she fails to see her suffering as fully redemptive, whereas she looks to her sister’s for redemption. The fact that women literally and metaphorically shared childbed suffering with their sisters (biological, familial, or in the larger sense, all women) perhaps leads to the fascinating deployment of the motifs of female sainthood in the works I am about to discuss. Linda Pollock, however, has recently questioned the mystique of ‘sisterhood’ surrounding childbearing in early modern England. Citing documentary evidence from many of Jane Cheyne’s and Alice Thornton’s contemporaries, Pollock asserts that although many women united in a common cause during childbirth, that unity did not extend much beyond the birth. Pollock concedes that women, especially female relations, often provided physical and material support (linens, birthing stools, or medications) in the birthing chamber during a sister’s or neighbor’s confinement; she suggests, however, that this may have been a way to assert social control about appropriate behavior. When women complained about a friend or relative’s decision to arise from bed too soon, Pollock observes, ‘These frequent chidings, gentle or otherwise … were part of the regulatory nature of female culture. The bonds of womanhood were not all-embracing; rather, they operated as evaluators of another’s behavior and were acute sensors of departures from the norm.’18 Despite Pollock’s cogent problematization, documentary evidence indicates many biological sisters supported one another emotionally during pregnancy and childbirth, as well as at other times.19 In the cases of Thornton and Cheyne, furthermore, behavioral evaluation becomes not censorious, but hagiographic. By sanctifying their deceased sisters, both women may be reaching towards a substitute for the pantheon of female saints denied them by the Anglican Church. These sisters, who tracked each other’s due dates and helped gather each other’s childbed linens, grieved the loss of their sibling who died giving birth, and voiced a sisterly devotion that verges on veneration.

186

SIBLING RELATIONS AND GENDER IN THE EARLY MODERN WORLD

Sainted sisters Thornton’s autobiography features a complex (and arguably conflicted) rhetorical approach to pregnancy, birth, and motherhood. In analyzing Thornton’s motivations, Mary Beth Rose asserts Thornton’s insistence on her own suffering allows her to ‘position herself as one of God’s chosen … As a result, her Autobiography very clearly dramatizes the morality of female selfsacrifice by revealing its spiritual and psychological dynamics at work in secular life.’20 In Rose’s analysis, as one of the ‘chosen,’ Thornton appears as a kind of martyr, one suffering in the cause of motherhood. Her representation of her sister Lady Catherine Danby’s post-partum death in 1645, however, extends this figuration of suffering, and, more dramatically, establishes her suffering sibling as a worthy saint. Near the beginning of her memoir, Thornton narrates ‘her deare and only sister’ Catherine Danby’s death resulting from the premature delivery of her sixteenth child. Sir Thomas Danby’s absence and what Thornton labels ‘the horrid rudeness of the Scots and soldiers quartered among them’ caused Lady Danby to fall into labor early. Thornton notes that ‘after exceeding sore travail she was delivered of a goodly son’ but that he ‘came double into the world, with such extremity that she was exceedingly tormented with pains.’21 The difficult breech delivery (and resulting injury or infection) kept Catherine Danby from sleeping, ‘except a few frightful slumbers,’ for a period of two weeks. Despite this torment, ‘yet still she did spend her time in discourse of goodness excellently pious, godly, and religious, instructing her children and servants, and preparing her soul for her dear Redeemer.’ While her sister Alice was her sole attendant (other women in the family having returned to their homes), Lady Danby engaged in discourse ‘very good and profitable to the hearers, [teaching?] patience, humility, and all how to entertain the pleasure of God with contentedness,’ even to the extent of not being ‘concerned to part with her husband or children, nor anything in this world.’ Thornton reports that local ministers praise her sister’s piety, ‘giving her as high a character as could be.’22 Certainly, the dying woman’s reported behavior is consistent with the early modern focus on the ars moriendi, which, according to David Cressy, experienced a resurgence during this period and reached its peak with the publication of Jeremy Taylor’s Rule and Exercises of Holy Dying in 1651; Cressy also notes that ‘[e]xemplary Christian biography featuring the “holy life and happy death” of one or another worthy contributed to a popular genre of seventeenth-century writing.’23 Thornton seems well aware of the genre, and composes the narrative of her sister’s death to meet generic requirements regarding the dying person’s piety, prayerfulness, easy acceptance of her fate, and blessings bestowed on the living.

SAINTED SISTERHOOD

187

In addition, the tradition of the ‘happy death’ has provocative ties to the rhetoric of sainthood. Lucinda McCray Beier observes, ‘Reports of good deaths, whether children or adults, gave the departed the status of household saints in the memories of those who survived them.’24 Beier’s notion of a deceased family member as a sort of localized, household saint provides suggestive connections between the ancient practices of Christianity (descended from the Roman reverence for the household gods, the lares and penates), and early modern deployments of faith within an increasingly fragmented religious environment. Cressy observes that ‘Reforming churchmen sought to suppress traditional practices they deemed superstitious, including women’s semi-secret rituals surrounding childbirth … it was offensive to advanced protestant sensibilities if those props were tinged with Catholicism and superstition.’25 What I am arguing here is that women, unsettled by the relatively sudden and recent loss of saints as intercessors, not only sought aid from a variety of folk sources, but also created their own sources by sanctifying their sisters. And, also that, as a means to evade the restrictions of the ‘reforming churchmen,’ elevating a sister who died in childbirth into a saintly position may have brought some comfort to women who grieved for her, and feared their own inevitable suffering in childbed as well. Bereft of both official saints and beloved sisters, women like Thornton (who witnessed her sister’s death some years before her own pregnancies and birth) may have seized on this trauma as a means of contextualizing suffering, loss, and redemption. Thornton’s narrative of Lady Danby’s protracted suffering also illustrates the bond between the two sisters. Thornton describes how Lady Danby thanks her for ‘all the care and pains I took with her, and watching a whole week altogether; if she lived, she would requite my love, with an abundance of affections to this purpose.’26 Lacking any of Catherine’s autobiographical writing, modern readers cannot know for certain what Catherine might have done to requite Alice’s love, but she might have similarly attended her sister during a future lying-in, acted as a gossip, and attended Thornton’s upsitting and churching. Sadly, Thornton soon becomes exhausted with nursing her sister and returns home, leaving the dying sister in the care of their mother and a trusted servant. Thornton frets over her own departure, and regrets that she hears her sister’s pious final words, ‘I have made my peace with God. Lord Jesus, receive my spirit,’ secondhand. At this point, Thornton states, ‘And thus ended that sweet saint her weary pilgrimage, having her life interwoven with many cares and afflictions.’27 Catherine Danby’s protracted demise, along with her calm and confident approach to both death and redemption, in addition to allowing her sister ample opportunity for farewell, also gives Thornton the chance narratively to explore her sister as an exemplum, one who has ‘made [her] peace with God.’ At peace with the Creator who

188

SIBLING RELATIONS AND GENDER IN THE EARLY MODERN WORLD

punished her with suffering in childbirth, Catherine Danby’s Christian devotion teaches her sister anew about the redemptive possibility of motherhood. Once she completes the narrative of her sister’s exemplary and pious death, Thornton then records an extraordinary catalogue of her sister’s virtues: Thus departed that good soul, having been called young to walk in the ways of God … The Lord sanctify this sad loss of this virtuous sister of ours to the whole family, and that, as she lived the ways of godliness from her youth, so may she be a godly example to all her children. She was a most obedient child to her parents, loving, loyal, affectionate and observant to her husband, a tender and prudent mother to her children, bringing them up in the severities of Christian duties, yet enough indulgent over them with a Christian moderation; a wise and discreet mistress towards her servants, who loved and honored her in their obedience; truly affectionate to all her relations in general, and courteously affable friends and neighbors.28

This exhaustive list is a nearly complete description of ideal early modern English feminine behavior, which we should also note was a set of behaviors deeply enmeshed in Christianity. Suzanne Trill reminds us how many texts in the period sought to define the perfect Christian woman: ‘The key aspects of her life and character are her wisdom, piety, humility, meekness, love, constancy, charity, good household government, and godly devotion.’29 Lady Danby’s death, in addition, to instructing her sister in Christianity, also includes lessons about perfected femininity. Likewise, in her sister’s representation, Lady Danby reaches a level of perfection virtually unattainable by other women, except Thornton’s own mother, similarly idolized in other sections of Thornton’s Autobiography.30 Notice, for example, that in addition to Lady Danby’s piety and a series of tender goodbyes with her children during the month-long course of her demise, she is obedient, loving, and prudent. Perhaps the only missing adjective about Lady Danby we might expect is ‘chaste’, but that is clearly to be inferred from the loyalty to her husband. With the list of characteristics in this eulogistic passage, Thornton demonstrates her intense and abiding love for her sister, and the suffering they endured together as sisters and mothers, although Thornton herself was not yet a mother at the time of her sister’s demise. Her sister’s virtuous example, and her sainted memory, in part act to redeem (or at least teach) women – perhaps Thornton’s own daughters – the presumed audience for the Autobiography. Domesticity, piety, and submission to male authority are all characteristics of female saints’ lives,31 and her sister’s narrative of Catherine Danby’s intense suffering in the cause of motherhood thus conveys an aspect of maternal martyrdom onto her untimely death.

SAINTED SISTERHOOD

189

Lady Jane Cavendish Cheyne similarly establishes her sister, Lady Elizabeth Cavendish Egerton, the Countess of Bridgewater, as a model Christian who perishes in service of a woman’s highest calling: motherhood. Certainly, as a member of the aristocracy, Egerton’s role as a child-bearer would have been paramount. Children were extraordinarily valuable in the seventeenth century: to wealthy families, they perpetuated a lineage and its prestige; to the religious, they signified God’s grace. To women of all social levels, a living child demonstrated the completeness of their femininity – a proof of their ability to perform what God had ordained and a chance for them to make amends for Eve’s transgression. Elizabeth Egerton’s own focus on her role as a mother is evident in her writings, a group of which were collected posthumously and exist in several manuscript versions titled ‘True Coppies of Certain Loose Papers left by ye Right Honorable Elizabeth, Countess of Bridgewater, Collected and Transcribed Together here since her Death, Anno Domimi 1663.’ These papers, as well as another manuscript, demonstrate that, as part of the aristocracy, Egerton and her sister had the leisure to compose literature. She and her sister’s relationship with each other, with their literary father, William Cavendish, Duke of Newcastle, with their families (including their stepmother, Margaret Cavendish), and particularly Elizabeth Egerton’s writing has recently been studied at length in Betty Travitsky’s Subordination and Authorship. As Travitsky reports, Cheyne, who lived from about 1623 to 1669, was the elder of the two sisters and co-authored with her sister a 162page folio titled ‘Poems, Songs, a Pastorall, and a Play.’32 Both sisters were apparently writers, though little of their work was designed for public consumption. Travitsky’s analysis also demonstrates that all the Cavendish children remained close after their father’s remarriage in late 1645 and their own subsequent marriages; she notes the extant letters ‘demonstrate deep affection and strong family feeling … Elaborately courteous, although they deal with homely family matters, these missives are informed with gentleness and redolent of kindly feelings.’33 Among the many textual proofs of intimacy within the family is a poem, likely written by Cheyne, memorializing their mother, Elizabeth Bassett Howard Cavendish (1593–1643): I had a mother which to speake was such That would you prayse, you could not prayse too much For what of woman could bee perfect Lov’d But shee was that, & the true side of good Then in a word shee was the quinticence of best And now sweete Saint, thy happy soule’s at rest34

Lady Cavendish’s praises, sung by her daughter, establish her, however briefly, as a kind of saint; she is ‘the quinticence of best,’ as well as a ‘Saint.’

190

SIBLING RELATIONS AND GENDER IN THE EARLY MODERN WORLD

The daughter idolizes and sanctifies the mother, as does Alice Thornton, in language that resurfaces in Cheyne’s memorial to her sister Elizabeth. Elizabeth Egerton’s privileged, conventional life was deeply enmeshed within the expectations of piety and childbearing common to her rank. She married Lord John Egerton, Viscount Brackley at age 15, but she and her husband, who was 19, seem not to have immediately consummated their marriage. Elizabeth Egerton continued living with her sister Jane and the rest of the family, thereby allowing the sisters to continue their close relationship and also to become co-authors of the literary texts mentioned above.35 In 1645, she began cohabiting with her husband and in 1646 gave birth to the first of nine children, six of whom survived her. In 1663, at the age of 37, Elizabeth died in childbed, after having fallen into premature labor.36 As a memorial tribute, her sister Jane Cheyne recorded a poem, titled ‘On the Death of my Deare Sister the Countesse of Bridgewater dying in Childbed, Delivered of a dead Infant a son, the 14th day of June, 1663’: O God thy Judgements unto sinfull eye Were great when I did see my Sister dye, Her last look was to heaven, from whence she came, And thither going, she was still the same, No discomposure in her life or Death, She lived to Pray, prayer was her last Breath: And when Deaths heavy hand had closed her eyes Me thought the World gave up it’s [sic] Ghost in Cryes: What ere relations choice or nature made Lost their best light, and being in that Shade For none can give example like her life To Friendship, Kindred, family or wife. A greater Saint the Earth did never beare, She lived to love, and her last thought was care; Her new borne Child she asked for, which ne’re cryed Fearing to know its end she Bowed and Dyed: And her last Vale to Heaven appeared to all How much she knew her Glory in the call.37

The poem enacts a wrenching goodbye to a beloved sister at the same time it supports an exploration of sororal bonds and the codification of maternal selfsacrifice. First, regarding the sister’s bonds, Cheyne was present at her sister’s confinement and death. Like Alice Thornton, she is able to report specific details of the deathbed scene. She saw ‘her Sister dye,’ saw her ‘last look to Heaven,’ and heard the questions and prayers of her sister’s ‘last Breath.’ This level of intimacy is not surprising when we consider earlier epistolary evidence. One extant 1656 letter from Elizabeth Egerton to her brother Charles Cavendish reports on Jane’s pregnancy. By this time, Elizabeth was preparing to deliver her fifth child, a son named Henry about whose death she

SAINTED SISTERHOOD

191

composed a touching poem.38 While both women are pregnant, Elizabeth predicts that ‘there will be but a weeke difference between my sister Cheyne and I,’ and in another letter mentions that Jane is ‘not neere so bige as I am: She Breeds the best that I Ever knewe: for she makes noething of a great Belly.’39 Having given birth four times at this point, Egerton admires her sister’s healthy pregnancy and positive attitude towards the discomforts of having a ‘great Belly.’ Given this previous evidence of how the two sisters closely followed each other’s childbearing, it is not surprising that Jane Cheyne was present at her younger sister’s delivery and subsequent death. More powerfully, Cheyne’s poem sanctifies a beloved sibling who has died in childbirth. The poem delineates Egerton’s piety as the defining characteristic of her life, and how she accepts God’s judgments smilingly. Cheyne’s memorial poem reports her sister never gives in to ‘discomposure,’ perhaps not even at the earlier deaths of her children Catherine and Henry.40 She depicts her sister as an idealized example of femininity and piety, stating that ‘none can give Example like her life.’ At this point, Egerton becomes explicitly sanctified, as Cheyne asserts that ‘a greater Saint the Earth did never beare.’ Deepening the sanctification of maternal self-sacrifice, Egerton is described as a perfect Christian woman who ‘lived to love.’ In the ultimate act of maternal self-sacrifice, Egerton asks for the stillborn infant, but before she can hear the tragic answer that he ‘ne’re cryed,’ she dies. Perhaps Cheyne’s most compelling articulation of the impulse to sanctify her sister comes in the poem’s final line, which describes ‘How much she knew her Glory in the call.’ The poem’s language leaves us unsure if the glory and the call involve Egerton’s call to heaven, ‘From whence she came,’ or if her calling culminates in an idealized femininity dramatically expressed in her maternal self-sacrifice. Jane Cheyne’s hagiographic memorial to her sister Elizabeth compares instructively with John Egerton’s expressions of grief and admiration for his wife. Indeed, until feminist scholars examined Egerton’s ‘Loose Papers,’ Egerton was best known through the extravagant epitaph composed by her husband John. Part of the lengthy epitaph, which he had engraved at great expense on her elaborate tomb, eulogizes her as: a Lady in whom all the accomplishments both in Body and in Mind did concur to make her the Glory of the present, and Example of Future ages … She was a most affectionate and observing Wife to her Husband, a most tender and indulgent Mother to the Children, a most kind and bountiful Mistress to her family; in a word, she was so Superlatively good, that Language is too narrow to express her deserved Character.41

John Egerton heaps praise upon his dead wife’s memory, but other than observing that she has ‘exchanged her earthly Coronet for an heavenly Crown,’ he fails to sanctify her as her sister does. He hints at hagiography by

192

SIBLING RELATIONS AND GENDER IN THE EARLY MODERN WORLD

focusing on the wide range of her goodness as mother, wife, mistress, and writer of religious meditations, as well as emphasizing her traditionally feminine virtues of piety, modesty, obedience, beauty, meekness, and humility. Yet his language, which does describe Elizabeth as ‘an Example of Future ages,’ falls short of Jane Cheyne’s assertion that her sister is humanity’s ‘best light,’ as well as her hyperbolic statement that ‘a greater Saint the earth did never beare.’ He lets his grief overwhelm his efforts to describe his late wife’s goodness, and retreats into a conventional assertion of the futility of language. Perhaps not needing to remember her in the same way as her surviving sister – a woman who doubtless hoped to bear more children – John Egerton’s eulogy avoids the veneration of the childbed martyr in which Jane Cheyne’s poem participates.

What then do Thornton’s and Cheyne’s short memorial pieces, both composed by Anglican women of the upper echelons of early modern English society in the mid-seventeenth century, tell us about sisterhood and motherhood? Primarily, these texts share two main features. First, these two sets of sisters, and doubtless many other women, provided important emotional support to one another during childbirth. Given the general conclusions by historians that women in early modern England gave birth an average of eight to ten times each (and the averages may indeed be higher for noblewomen who tended not to nurse their own children),42 the consistent and repeated support of one’s sister was a welcome part of the childbearing process. Second, these brief examples indicate that for sisters who assisted one another with childbearing, the death of one in childbirth produced an impulse to sanctify the dead sibling. This impulse is not devoid of ambivalence, however. Although both Thornton and Cheyne establish their sisters as exempla, as women who died in the highest calling a woman at that time could have – redeeming Eve by bringing forth children in sorrow – their extended and poignant memorials also could be construed as muted complaints about women’s duty to bear the burden of Eve’s judgment. But more apparent is the way Thornton and Cheyne repeatedly emphasize their sister’s domesticity, maternal feelings, and piety, sanctifying their suffering during a fatal childbirth. These Protestant women, faced with what Patricia Crawford notes was an all-male Trinity and all-male clergy, without the intervening presence of the Virgin Mary or the female saints so prevalent in the Catholic Church, canonize their sisters as localized, household saints who represent what all women should aspire to become, both in their lives and their deaths.

SAINTED SISTERHOOD

193

Notes 1. 2. 3. 4.

5. 6. 7.

8.

9. 10. 11. 12. 13. 14. 15. 16.

17.

See The Oxford English Dictionary for deployments of the term ‘saint.’ Valerie Wayne, ‘Advice for Women by Mothers and Patriarchs,’ in Women and Literature in Britain, 1500–1700, ed. Helen Wilcox (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996), 59. Elaine V. Beilin, Redeeming Eve: Women Writers of the English Renaissance (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1987), xix. Elizabeth Joceline’s The Mothers Legacie to her Unborn Child (1624) is the clearest example of this impulse. See Teresa Feroli, ‘“Infelix Simulacrum”: The Rewriting of Loss in Elizabeth Joceline’s The Mothers Legacie,’ ELH 61.1 (1994): 89–102. My analysis of this tradition, Refiguring Maternity in Early Modern England, is a work in progress. ‘Methought I Saw’ has occasioned significant debate. Merritt Hughes reviews this controversy in John Milton: Complete Poems and Major Prose (New York: Macmillan, 1957), 70–71. See David Cressy, Birth, Marriage, and Death: Ritual, Religion, and the Life Cycle in Tudor and Stuart England (Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 1997), 197–229, for the historical and cultural context of the churching ceremony. See Milton’s ‘An Epitaph on the Marchioness of Winchester.’ See also Louis Schwartz, ‘Scarce well-lighted flame: Milton’s Epitaph on the Marchioness of Winchester and the Representations of Maternal Mortality in the 17th Century Epitaph,’ in All in All: Unity, Diversity, and the Miltonic Perspective, ed. Charles Durham and Kristin Pruit (Selinsgrove: Susquehanna University Press, 1992), 200–23. See, for instance, Henry Ainsworth, A Communion of Saints (Amsterdam, 1607) or Thomas Shepard, The Saints Jewel (London, 1642). Ellwood Johnson, The Pursuit of Power: Studies in the Vocabulary of Puritanism (New York: Peter Lang, 1995): 35–6. Ibid., 52 and 147. Milton’s sonnet, ‘Methought I Saw’ clearly uses this tradition in lines 10–13. Gail Kern Paster, The Body Embarrassed: Drama and the Disciplines of Shame in Early Modern England (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1993), 165. Beilin, Redeeming Eve. John Oliver, A Present for Teeming Women (London, 1663), fol. 5v. Patricia Crawford, Women and Religion in England 1500–1720 (London: Routledge, 1993), 73 ff. Sibbes’s sermon, ‘The Hidden Life,’ was published in 1639. Sir Charles Jackson, ed., The Autobiography of Mrs Alice Thornton, Surtees Society, 62 (London, 1875); reprinted in Charlotte Otten, English Women’s Voices, 1540–1700 (Miami: Florida International University Press, 1992), 242–3. Apart from anthologies, Thornton’s text exists only in Jackson’s heavily edited version. He omits many of Thornton’s meditations and prayers about maternity. Compiled from three octavo volumes (last known extant in 1935) that represent ‘amplifications of a more tiny book’ (xv), Jackson’s edition may be compared with a much shorter and earlier, version A Booke of Remembrances (Yale University Microform 327). See Raymond Anselment’s ‘The Deliverances of Alice Thornton,’ Prose Studies 19:1 (1996), 19–36.

194

SIBLING RELATIONS AND GENDER IN THE EARLY MODERN WORLD

18. Linda Pollock, ‘Childbearing and Female Bonding in Early Modern England,’ Social History 22:3 (1997), 292. 19. Patricia Crawford and Laura Gowing detail sisters’ relationships in Women’s Worlds in Seventeenth-Century England: A Sourcebook (London: Routledge, 2000), 189, 229. 20. Mary Beth Rose, ed., Women in the Middle Ages and the Renaissance: Literary and Historical Perspectives (Syracuse: Syracuse University Press, 1986), 261. 21. The Autobiography of Alice Thornton, repr. in Otten, 232. 22. Ibid., 233. 23. Cressy, Birth, Marriage, and Death, 390. 24. Lucinda McCray Beier, “‘The Good Death in Seventeenth Century England’ in Death, Ritual, and Bereavement, ed. Ralph Houlbrooke (London: Routledge, 1989), 55. 25. Cressy, Birth, Marriage, and Death, 24. 26. The Autobiography of Alice Thornton, repr. in Otten, 234. 27. Ibid., 235 [emphasis mine]. 28. Ibid. 29. Suzanne Trill, ‘Religion and the Construction of Femininity,’ in Helen Wilcox, ed., Women and Literature in Britain, 1500–1700, 33. 30. See Otten, English Women’s Voices, 244–54. Note that Lady Wandesford is at one point called ‘this holy saint and patron of true piety,’ ibid., 253. 31. Linda Coon, Sacred Fictions: Holy Women and Hagiography in Late Antiquity (University Park: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1997), xiv. 32. Betty Travitsky, Subordination and Authorship in Early Modern England: The Case of Elizabeth Cavendish Egerton and her ‘Loose Papers’ (Tempe, AZ: Medieval and Renaissance Text Society, 1999), 67. 33. Ibid., 46. 34. Ibid., 77. 35. See Helen Wilcox, ‘Private Writing and Public Function: Autobiographical Texts by Englishwomen,’ 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, 1994), 47–62. 36. Travitsky, Subordination and Authorship, 150. 37. Germaine Greer et al., eds, Kissing the Rod: An Anthology of SeventeenthCentury Women’s Verse, (London: Farrar, Strauss, Giroux, 1988), 77. 38. Ibid., 117. 39. Ibid., 117. 40. I have argued (The Ben Jonson Journal 7 (Winter 2000), 421–43) that Egerton’s ‘discomposure’ becomes evident in discussions of her children’s deaths. 41. Travitsky, Subordination and Authorship, 84. 42. See E. A. Wrigley and Roger Schofield, The Population History of England (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1981), 255. Lawrence Stone also discusses fertility patterns in The Family, Sex, and Marriage in England, 1500–1800 (New York: Harper Torchbooks, 1979), 52–4, but contends that most women in the nobility bore only four children on average.

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

Sisterly Feelings in Cavendish and Brackley’s Drama Alison Findlay In her poem ‘The Angry Curs,’ Lady Jane Cavendish (1621–79) launches 18 lines of curses at those who are plotting to take away Lady Elizabeth Brackley (1626–63) from her company. The remarkable passion fuelling her lines is not that of an incensed lover, but a sister: Who is’t that dare tell mee they’l have away My Sister Brackley, who’s my true lifes day For if hir absence I will bee a Nunn And speak then nothinge, but when will shee come.1

The lines alert us to a powerful bond between the two women, who were the daughters of William Cavendish (Earl and later Duke of Newcastle, and husband of Margaret Cavendish). Their drama was written during the English Civil War and preserved, along with a selection of poems, in a handsome folio volume. Jane’s poems construct an aristocratic family woven tightly together through ties of love, respect, and loyalty, even across great geographical distances.2 Many of the poems are addressed to William, who fled into exile after the defeat of his northern royalist troops at the Battle of Marston Moor in 1644, leaving his daughters to manage his two estates at Welbeck Abbey and Bolsover Castle. Jane and Elizabeth’s mother, Elizabeth Bassett, had died the year before, in 1643. Jane praises her as ‘the quintessence of best’ and a ‘sweete Saint’ (p. 31). Their brothers Charles and Henry, also addressed in poems, had gone with their father to the Continent. The family homes were besieged and captured by the Parliamentary forces in 1644, though the sisters were given protection to remain at Welbeck by Lord Fairfax.3 The circumstances of the English Civil War, the death of a mother, and the absence of father and brothers must, in themselves, have forged an especially intense bond between Jane, Elizabeth and their younger sibling, Frances. A tripartite sororal relationship features strongly in the work of the Cavendish sisters. However, it is the relationship between the two elder sisters that stands out as exceptional within that already extraordinary context. Why should Jane feel that Elizabeth is ‘her life’s day’ and that, if she is removed, Jane will be forced into nun-like silence until Elizabeth comes back?

196

SIBLING RELATIONS AND GENDER IN THE EARLY MODERN WORLD

I think the answer lies in the fact that Jane Cavendish and Elizabeth Brackley wrote collaboratively. Their play The Concealed Fancies advertises itself in a prologue as the wit of ‘eighteen or twenty-two youth’, the ages of Elizabeth and Jane in 1644–45.4 In an epilogue addressed specifically to ‘your Lordship’, the elder sister Luceny seeks William Cavendish’s approval for ‘our scenes,’ while the younger sister, Tattiney, tells William Cavendish that if he dislikes them ‘then pen and ink shall have a fatal blow’ (Epilogues, 124).5 The nature of Jane and Elizabeth’s collaboration is even clearer in their Pastorall entertainment (c. 1645), where the manuscript gives the initials ‘JC’ or ‘EB’ in the margins of the text for each scene. It is possible that the marking of this script indicates a different pattern of collaboration, such as writing from two separate places, as opposed to the seamless interweaving of authorship in The Concealed Fancies, where no initials appear. Such suggestions can only be speculative, but we do know that a separation between the sisters did occur sometime after Elizabeth’s marriage, in 1642, to John Egerton, Viscount Brackley. The biography of William Cavendish by his second wife, Margaret, implies that Elizabeth did not leave her family home immediately after her marriage since she was ‘too young to be bedded.’6 Once the wedding ceremony had taken place, however, the threat of losing Elizabeth was ever present, as Jane’s poem poignantly notes. ‘Who is’t that dare tell mee they’l have away / My Sister Brackley,’ she asks, with a mixture of defiance and anxiety. I want to propose that The Concealed Fancies and A Pastorall can usefully be read in the light of that imminent separation; that the Cavendish sisters’ dramatic texts are collaborations written to reaffirm sororal bonds at the critical moment when they are challenged by physical separation and new emotional alliances in marriage. Both dramas also feature roles for a third sister, whose presence reaffirms sisterly solidarity. Presumably these were written for the younger Frances Cavendish.

Love and competition Sisterly feelings, as represented in Cavendish and Brackley’s drama, include competition as well as love. The Concealed Fancies stages a friendly rivalry between the heroines Luceny and Tattiney, in the training of suitors to be acceptable husbands rather than dominant tyrants. Their first exchange runs like this: Luceny. Sister, pray tell me, in what humour thou wert with thy servant yesterday? Prithee, tell me how you acted your scene? Tattiney. I beg your excuse, a younger sister cannot have the confidence to teach an elder. (Act I, scene 4, 1–5)

SISTERLY FEELINGS IN CAVENDISH AND BRACKLEY’S DRAMA

197

Spoken by Jane and Elizabeth, as was surely intended, these lines have an additional level of humour. Elizabeth, playing Tattiney, was already married, and therefore well entitled to the confidence of presuming to teach her elder sibling about courtship. Why Jane, the elder daughter, did not get married until 1654 is not clear, although William Cavendish’s financial circumstances and her own role in maintaining the family estates must have been important factors. There is no evidence that Jane shared Katherina’s jealousy: ‘she is your treasure, she must have a husband / I must dance barefoot on her wedding day’ (The Taming of the Shrew, II, i, 32–3), or envisaged sitting in a corner to cry ‘Heigh-ho for a husband,’ as Beatrice jokes (Much Ado About Nothing, II, i, 278–80).7 Nevertheless, the very existence of the jokes suggests that precedence in age and marriage was an obvious area of tension between older and younger siblings. Jane and Elizabeth seem to avoid this by devising a common project in the play world. Their heroines plot to reject or reform suitors whom they deem unsuitable for their version of matrimony: ‘an equal marriage’ intended to ‘join lovers’ rather than subjugate wives to husbands as ‘the rod of authority’ (Epilogues, 85–7).8 Competition between the sisters is a source of fun, rather than anxiety, involving jokes over knowledge of the Bible, and a bet over how to deal with an obnoxious suitor (Act II, scene 3). In the subplot, three cousins dare each other to steal fruits and sweetmeats from their father’s cabinet, to which they have gained the keys in his absence (Act II, scene 4). Like the main plot, this one sparkles with an adolescent pleasure in transgression, and the scene would have appealed particularly to the younger Cavendish sister, Frances, for whom the third cousin’s role was probably designed. The three cousins of the subplot support each other during the pressures of living under siege by theatricalizing their imprisonment and praising each other’s performances. Sh. (whose name is not given in fuller form in the text) tells Cicelly she looked ‘great, though in misfortune’ and proudly notes the model for her own behaviour: ‘I practised Cleopatra when she was in her captivity’ (Act III, scene 2, 11–14). Although, in moments like this, sibling bonds help to make light of suffering, Cavendish and Brackley do not shy away from showing how anger between sisters can erupt in moments of wider family tension caused by the Civil War. For Luceny and Tattiney the inescapable dysfunctional context is the absence of their exiled family. Having rejected their suitors and retired to a nunnery, they vie over what is the most powerful way to mourn their friends’ absence. Luceny, personifying ‘Grief,’ criticizes her sister’s quieter ‘Sadness,’ and threatens to commit suicide. Tattiney confidently assures her that stoic endurance is a higher form of suffering than such ‘madness,’ since she will ‘grieve to the bone’ (Act III, scene 2, 13–14). Passions become so heated that an angel has to intervene to calm their anger, and promise hope for the future if they ‘suffer with their friends’ in sisterly solidarity (Act III, scene 2, 15).

198

SIBLING RELATIONS AND GENDER IN THE EARLY MODERN WORLD

Sisterhood in the Pastorall Cavendish and Brackley’s Pastorall, probably written in the spring of 1645, develops the picture of sisterly solidarity as a form of stoic aristocratic endurance and female empowerment. The divisive effects of the English Civil War on families is clearly outlined in the first antimasque, where five witches point out the miseries of war Bell. … make Brother hate brother Hagg. Sister hate sister Bell. Wife hate Husband, and all other kindred, hath their devisions of hatred.9

Jane Cavendish, who wrote this scene, was sharply aware that the tensions splitting the country also set siblings against each other. While Lady Brilliana Harley took a very active role in defending her home for the parliamentarians, for example, her eldest brother, Viscount Conway, and her favourite sister, Frances Pelham, were both royalist supporters.10 In the Pastorall, Jane Cavendish prioritizes sisters and brothers to emphasize the war’s power to pervert even primary blood relations that should stand thicker than water. The masque acts as a foil to such unhappy divisions by offering an example of close sisterly collaboration in the pastoral fiction, and writing practice. The main masque opens with a united sisterhood of shepherdesses, undoubtedly written for the three Cavendish sisters: Innocence (Jane), Chastity (Elizabeth), and Ver or Spring (Frances). A Prologue by Chastity (Figure 16.1) announces that they have dedicated themselves to seclusion, merging with the landscape in their melancholy to ‘become a fine coule [cool] shady walke’ or ‘a fine thick Grove of thought’ (p. 65). Their determination to remain ‘sad Shee Hermetts’ (p. 65) until their father and brothers return, leads each sister to reject her shepherd suitor. They reorient themselves as pastoral nuns rather than lovers, and a powerful celebration of primary sororal bonds can be felt through the scenes. The first exchange, between Innocence and the shepherd Persuasion, features an outstanding example. Innocence presents herself to the audience, symbolically clad in white and devoted to the care of her flock and her absent friends. When Persuasion mentions her father’s name, her further ruminations are expressed in the form of a song: His absence makes me think I am One that should prepare a Lambe To sacrifice, that is my selfe to bee A willing Marter for each one to see The reason why his absence makes me sad. (p. 67)

What is so remarkable about the song is that the singer is not Innocence but

199

16.1

A Pastorall, filmed at Hoghton Tower, Lancashire, by Lancaster University Television, 2000. Masque Prologue with (from left to right) Innocence (Lucy Guttridge), Ver (Estelle Buckridge), and Chastity (Erika Sanderson)

200

SIBLING RELATIONS AND GENDER IN THE EARLY MODERN WORLD

her sister-shepherdess, Chastity. It is the early modern equivalent of a voiceover, a ‘song-over,’ in which the sisters are so close that one can sing the feelings of the other. In production, Innocence muses silently, her thoughts impenetrable to Persuasion, while Chastity’s singing allows the audience privileged access to Innocence’s feelings (Figure 16.2). Such a deep sharing of emotions was, I suggest, of a piece with the sisters’ collaboration in writing. Jane wrote this scene; trusting Elizabeth to articulate her deepest feelings for her father in song was, perhaps, a natural extension of the trust that collaborative authorship depends on. Innocence sings later in the scene, so we can be certain that Chastity was not chosen for the former number merely because Elizabeth was the only singer of the family. Jane Cavendish uses song-over for deliberate dramatic effect, to draw the sisters together in twinlike empathy. An additional emotional dimension emerges in the exchanges between Chastity and Careless, written by Elizabeth Brackley. Here Elizabeth dramatizes the palpable tensions for a bride who is also a sister. Chastity, the ‘shee Priest’ of the shepherdess sisterhood, is accosted by the shepherd Careless, who reminds her she is married to him: ‘Now know you are a shee and sure a wife’ (p. 73). We do not know whether Elizabeth shared Jane’s passionate fears about losing a sister through marriage, as expressed in the poem, but Chastity’s behavior here does play out a positive version of Jane’s vision of retreat to a nunnery. Chastity postpones married life, committing herself instead to a ‘Country life’ of sad contemplation with her sisters until the good news of her friends’ return allows her to turn her thoughts to love (p. 73). Careless complains that Chastity may ‘owne your selfe to bee a wife / And yet you practice not that life’ (p. 73). This is a witty dramatization of Elizabeth’s own seclusion at Welbeck Abbey immediately after her marriage.11 Its humor is more pointed when we consider that her husband Brackley, figured as Persuasion, had earlier played the role of the Elder Brother in Comus and confidently proclaimed that chastity was a strong armor which would protect his sister in the forest.12 Now his words are turned back on him, as Chastity resolves to ‘keep pretty sheepe’ in the country instead of going home with him (p. 73). In fact, Cavendish and Brackley’s Pastorall postpones the dissolution of the shepherdess-sisterhood indefinitely. The shepherdesses retire to ‘a little Table’ in a temple to worship ‘our God,’ a paternal deity whose identity blends with that of William Cavendish (p. 76). Although their solemn ritual is mocked by a fourth shepherdess, Jearer, the suitors Careless and Persuasion are obliged to respect the sisterhood. Chastity speaks for Innocence, telling Persuasion that she can offer no sweet words of love since ‘I am hir Sister in griefes pay’ (p. 76). Their sororal devotion is neatly dramatized in an anthem, with verses composed by Jane and Elizabeth to be sung by Chastity,

201

16.2

A Pastorall, filmed at Hoghton Tower, Lancashire, by Lancaster University Television, 2000. Song-over with Innocence (Lucy Guttridge) and Persuasion (Mark Warne)

202

SIBLING RELATIONS AND GENDER IN THE EARLY MODERN WORLD

Innocence and Ver in turn, and with the final line in chorus ‘To see our lov’d friends, doth make our day’ (p. 77). Immediately following this, the ‘Shepardesses Sisters’ speak an exchange of ten rhyming couplets ‘in answer to one another’ to dramatize their mutual longing for their father and brothers (Figure 16.3). A fourth shepherd, Freedom, tries to tempt the sisters to join in a country dance, but the customary terpsichorean conclusion to the masque is unfulfilled. They refuse to participate until their father’s return, maintaining their icy iconic position as ‘three Devinities of sad[ness]’ (p. 80), their affections frozen. Even though the masque’s overall tone is melancholy, the absence of the father figure allows glimpses of a more positive dimension to the sisterhood. The shepherdesses offer a highly spectacular lament for their father in the rituals, but they simultaneously appropriate the space created by his absence for their own purposes.13 The grotto allows them to prolong, indefinitely, the conventionally independent role of the mistress in courtship. Persuasion ruefully notes ‘Your father’s absence makes you always owne / Your selfe’ (p. 66). The bonds of sisterhood, as opposed to marriage, encourage selfpossession in a mutually supportive holding environment. Innocence tells him ‘I dedicate my selfe to each sweete field / For to your Sex I’m very loath to yeild’ (p. 68). Since the sisters have identified themselves with the natural landscape, Innocence’s dedication to each sweet field is also to her roots, to the sororal relationships through which she has grown as a subject. Chastity too claims possession of herself, telling her husband ‘I’m myne’ (p. 73). Cavendish and Brackley’s drama is supremely conscious of the fragility of sisterhood. It is always shadowed by the presence of fathers, brothers, and husbands who claim attention. Nevertheless, it is also empowering, comforting, and nurturing, and therefore to be enjoyed and treasured. Cavendish and Brackley do not follow the pattern of Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream, where bonds between Hermia and Helena, Titania and her votaress are dissolved to promote the happy ending of marriage. Instead, their plays preserve primary sororal relationships. A Pastorall suspends marriage in a fantasy of eternal sisterhood, while The Concealed Fancies shows the endurance of powerful sisterly feelings beyond the marital threshold. Instead of the traditional wedding, this comedy ends with the shared confidences of two sisters, beginning with the words ‘As you love me, sister, now you are married, tell me how you agree’ (Epilogue, 1). By writing drama together, Jane Cavendish and Elizabeth Brackley find a means to overcome fears that ‘they’l have away / My Sister,’ and the silence that could follow such separation. Death rather than marriage took Elizabeth away in 1663, although, significantly, she died fulfilling the wife’s duty to bear her husband’s children. In a fitting poetic tribute to her ‘Dear Sister’ and co-authoress, Jane wrote, ‘Me thought the world gave up its ghost in cries.’14 The loss of a sister is also the loss of voices.

203

16.3

A Pastorall, filmed at Hoghton Tower, Lancashire, by Lancaster University Television, 2000. Temple Scene with Innocence (Lucy Guttridge), Chastity (Erika Sanderson), and Ver (Estelle Buckridge)

204

SIBLING RELATIONS AND GENDER IN THE EARLY MODERN WORLD

Notes 1. 2.

3. 4.

5.

6. 7. 8.

9. 10. 11.

12. 13. 14.

The poem appears in the sisters’ manuscript folio volume ‘Poems, Songs a Pastorall and a Play by the Rt. Honourable the Lady Jane Cavendish and Lady Elizabeth Brackley,’ Bodleian Rawlinson Poet, 16, p. 25. See, for example, poems addressed to Jane’s uncle, Charles Cavendish, to her grandmothers, Lady Ogle and Elizabeth, Countess of Shrewsbury, and her aunts Mary and Jane, also Countesses of Shrewsbury. There are also poems to her dead mother and siblings who were taken by God because ‘they were most his, soe sav’d amongst the few’ (p. 31). See Nathan Comfort Starr, ‘The Concealed Fansyes’: A Play by Lady Jane Cavendish and Lady Elizabeth Brackley,’ PMLA 45: 3 (1931), 802–4. The Concealed Fancies appears on pp. 87–157. It is reprinted in Starr, pp. 804–38, and in Renaissance Drama by Women: Texts and Documents, ed. S. P. Cerasano and Marion Wynne-Davies (London: Routledge, 1996), 131–54. All quotations are taken from the latter edition. On the importance of William Cavendish as a patron for the Cavendish sisters’ writing see Margaret J. M. Ezell, ‘ “To be Your Daughter in Your Pen”: The Social Functions of Literature in the Writings of Lady Elizabeth Brackley and Lady Jane Cavendish,’ in Readings in Renaissance Women’s Drama: Criticism, History and Performance 1594–1998, ed. S. P. Cerasano and Marion Wynne-Davies (London: Routledge, 1998), pp. 246–58. Margaret Cavendish, The Life of William Cavendish, Duke of Newcastle, to which is added The True Relation of my Birth, Breeding and Life, ed. C. H. Firth (London: John C. Nimmo, 1886), p. 141. William Shakespeare, The Norton Shakespeare, ed. Stephen Greenblatt, Walter Cohen, Jean E. Howard, and Katherine Eisaman Maus (New York and London: W. W. Norton, 1997). For more detailed discussion of the play’s gender politics see my ‘Playing the “Scene Self”: Jane Cavendish and Elizabeth Brackley’s The Concealed Fancies,’ in Enacting Gender on the English Renaissance Stage, ed. Viviana Comensoli and Anne Russell (Urbana and Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 1999), 154–76. The Pastorall masque runs from pages 49 to 84 in MS Rawl Poet 16. Five witches meet in the opening scene but the speaking parts are limited to Hagg, Bell (probably short for Belladonna) and a younger ‘Prentice’ witch. See Jacqueline Eales, Puritans and Roundheads: The Harleys of Brampton Bryan and the Outbreak of the English Civil War (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990), 140, 173, 189. On the significance of the Abbey as a setting for nunnery scenes see ‘ “She gave you the civility of the house”: Household Performance in The Concealed Fancies,’ in Readings in Renaissance Women’s Drama, ed. Cerasano and WynneDavies, 259–71. John Milton, ‘A Masque Presented at Ludlow Castle, 1634,’ in John Milton, ed. Stephen Orgel and Jonathan Goldberg (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1990), 44–71, ll. 420–31. On the appropriation of garden space and its significance in the Pastorall, see Alison Findlay, Playing Spaces in Early Women’s Drama (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, forthcoming), chapter 2. ‘On the Death of My Dear Sister,’ Huntington Library MS Ellesmere 8353, in

SISTERLY FEELINGS IN CAVENDISH AND BRACKLEY’S DRAMA

205

Women Poets of the Reniassance, ed. Marion Wynne-Davies (London: J. M. Dent, 1998), 257–8.

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

‘Thy Passionately Loving Sister and Faithfull Friend:’ Anne Dormer’s Letters to her Sister Lady Trumbull Sara Mendelson and Mary O’Connor Looking at family correspondence of the early modern period, we can find examples of the full range of sibling relations, from deep love and affection to violent hatred and antagonism. The surviving letters of Anne Cottrell Dormer (1648–95) to her sister Elizabeth Cottrell Trumbull (1653?–1704),1 written from 1685 to 1691 while the latter was married to the envoy to France and ambassador to Constantinople, offer a striking illustration of the positive end of the spectrum. Every letter Anne wrote to her sister provides evidence of the two siblings’ fervent love for each other. The language of the letters is that of passionate mutual affection, the verbal outpourings of a staunch lifelong friendship. What might be dismissed as formulaic epistolary expressions of devotion turn out to be, in this case, indicative of an active and empathetic love. Moreover, this close sibling relationship was in fact highly functional for both sisters, especially for Anne Dormer. As Anne repeatedly affirmed in her letters, her sister’s loving care and concern literally saved her life while she suffered the torments of an abusive marriage.2 Anne and Elizabeth (also called Katherine) were the second and fourth children born to Sir Charles Cottrell (1615–1701), Master of Ceremonies under Charles I and II and James II, and his wife Frances West (1620–c.1656), of Marsworth, Buckinghamshire. (Sir Charles was also ‘Poliarchus’ to Katherine Philips’s ‘Orinda.’ ) The sisters’ childhood was marked by the strife of the English Civil War and by deaths in their family. As prominent royalists, Sir Charles and his wife fled England to the Netherlands shortly after Anne’s birth in 1648. She was left at nurse in England3 and it is unclear whether she joined the family later or lived with relatives until her mother returned in 1655. Elizabeth was born in the Netherlands and her eldest sister died while the Cottrells were there. By the time Sir Charles returned to England in 1660, his wife had died and

ANNE DORMER’S LETTERS TO LADY TRUMBULL

207

the children were again with relatives. Robert Dormer, whom Anne married in 1668, deplored the fact that Anne had had no mother to watch over her while she was growing up. As he complained to her, ‘it was greate pitty I had lost my Mother, for had I had a mother shee would never have lett a crew of such young fellows as Mr Colt have come to the house …’4 As an adolescent Anne spent some time in Clerkenwell School, a London girls’ school; but once Sir Charles set up house in Spring Gardens, St James’s Park, the girls lived with him and their two brothers. Sir Charles’s mistress, Lady Salkeld, was a strong and divisive influence in the household, as Anne recalled later in life. The sisters’ tumultuous childhood and their alliance against Lady Salkeld, whom they referred to in biblical symbolism as ‘the serpent’,5 helped strengthen kinship and sibling bonds in a way that was to last for a lifetime. The intimacy between the sisters is evident in the variety of topics covered in their correspondence. On the one hand, Anne offers domestic details such as those of child-rearing, or sends requests to her sister in Paris for French writing paper and fabrics.6 On the other hand, she voices her fears about the personal ramifications of the political upheavals in England in the 1680s.7 Yet all these topics are as asides to the main narrative of her troubled marriage and its effects on her health and well-being. At the same time, the letters convey a complex series of overlapping allegiances, not only of siblings but of other familial relationships: husband and wife; sons- and father-in-law; sisters- and brothers-in-law; daughters and father.8

‘My dearest life …’ In adulthood the sisters’ paths diverged because of their disparate experiences of matrimony. Anne and Elizabeth were married within two years of each other, Anne in 1668 at age 20, Elizabeth in 1670 at 17. Anne married Robert Dormer (1628?–1689), of Dorton, Buckinghamshire, and Rousham, Oxfordshire. In addition to a stepson Robert, who was ten when Anne married his father, Anne bore him eleven children, eight of whom lived to adulthood. Elizabeth married William Trumbull, called by a contemporary ‘the eminentest of all our Civilians, and … by much the best pleader in those Courts, and … a learned, a diligent, and a vertuous man.’9 Trumbull entered public life in 1683, was commissioner to Tangiers in that year and knighted in 1684. After his diplomatic missions to Paris and Constantinople, he became lord of the Treasury, member of the Privy Council and finally Secretary of State in 1695. Elizabeth Cottrell’s marriage to Trumbull was the romantic love match of a beautiful and charming young woman to an ambitious hard-working barrister at the start of his career. Cut in the same mold as his father-in-law Sir

208

SIBLING RELATIONS AND GENDER IN THE EARLY MODERN WORLD

Charles Cottrell, Trumbull became a successful politician who earned the respect and admiration of the entire extended Cottrell family. Obliging and generous to both friends and relations, Sir William epitomized the model of civility, the consummate gentleman. Trumbull cherished his wife, who willingly accompanied her husband on his travels as England’s representative, first to the French court at Paris at the time of the 1685 massacre, and then to an equally turbulent stay at the Ottoman court at Constantinople. The couple were still deeply in love after a quarter century of marriage, as Elizabeth’s letters to her ‘dear Willy’ during the 1690s reveal: ‘My dearest life … Mr Hedges came hither … and brings this letter to thanke you for more love than I can ever deserve, while I live, for never wife had such a husband as my selfe …’10 In another letter from the same time period, Elizabeth wrote to her husband, ‘I could not but be dull to have thee from me soe long, but thy most tender deare letter cheeres me up till you come to her that Loves you better than life & hopes ever to be your owne Bettie.’11 The union would have been judged a perfect marriage were it not for the fact that Elizabeth and William failed to produce any offspring. Yet perhaps partly because she never suffered the ill-effects of childbirth, Elizabeth retained her resilient health despite the hazards of international travel and residence in foreign lands.

‘somtimes a frump, and somtimes a kiss’ It would be difficult to find two seventeenth-century husbands of a more contrasting character than Sir William Trumbull and Robert Dormer. Commenting on the vast difference between his two sons-in-law, Sir Charles Cottrell wrote to Trumbull in Constantinople, ‘Since I must want your company and my daughter’s [i.e. Elizabeth], your happinesse in each other is my greatest comfort, & I could be glad her sister [i.e. Anne] were as far off another way, with her husband, if hee could be made thereby as kind a one as you are.’12 An undistinguished widower twenty years Anne’s senior, Robert Dormer had nothing to recommend him when the couple were married but a large estate and an irresistible infatuation for Anne.13 Dormer saw himself as the archetypal patriarch, an image which he embodied by fathering eleven children on Anne in addition to his son from his first marriage. Yet in contrast to his successful hardworking brother-in-law, Dormer by the 1680s was perceived by his wife as an indolent self-centered dilettante: ‘he spends his time as he used to do, loiters aboute, somtimes stues [stews] prunes, somtimes makes chocalate, and this somer he is much taken with preserving, but betweene whiles he has somtimes a frump [insult], and somtimes a kiss, in readyness for me …’14 After twenty years of wedlock, Dormer’s infatuation with Anne had been

ANNE DORMER’S LETTERS TO LADY TRUMBULL

209

transformed into extremes of jealousy and possessiveness to a degree his contemporaries judged insane. With no career to occupy him, Dormer devoted much of his abundant spare time to tormenting his wife. ‘My closett is a safe shelter,’ Anne wrote, ‘but out of it is little quiett because he whose life is idleness is seldom from home and all his discourse is cavelling and opposition.’15 The letters only hint at possible physical abuse: in 1688 Anne reported that she had lectured Dormer, ‘I tell him he can but hurt my body but he ruines his owne soul …’16 But Anne’s epistolary narratives document in painful detail the psychological persecution to which she was continually subjected. By the 1680s she was virtually a prisoner in the manor house at Rousham in Oxfordshire, not even permitted to visit her aging father and the rest of the Cottrell family in London. ‘I have quite layed aside ever going out farther then my garden,’ she wrote in 1688.17 Because of her upper-class status, Anne did not have the same opportunities for ‘gadding’ to nearby friends and neighbors as her plebeian counterparts. Although she could count many friends and relations among the Oxfordshire gentry, she lived too far away for casual everyday visiting. A coach was required, and this Dormer would not allow her. As she complained to her sister, ‘a poore woman that lives in a thatched house when shee is ill or weary of her work can step into her Neigh[bour] and have some refreshment but I have none but what I find by thinking writing and reading …’18 Writing to Elizabeth in Constantinople, Anne summed up her condition with the apt comparison that there was ‘not a greater slave in Turky then I am here.’19 By the mid-1680s, as she wrote to her sister, she had abandoned hope that Dormer would ever become a satisfactory husband or even a normal, rational human being: ‘I now have given him quite over, and tho nothing shall take away the care I will still take to do my duty yett I will concern my self no farther and whether he frowns or smiles it shall be no more to me then the changes of the weather.’20 In effect, her sister Elizabeth had come to fill the role that Dormer had vacated, serving as both donor and recipient of all the warm-hearted generous affection that Anne was denied in her relationship with her husband. At this time Anne’s most urgent personal concern was her health, undermined by twenty years of ‘illness and childing’21 in an abusive marriage. Not only happiness but sheer physical and psychological survival appeared to be at stake. How could her beloved sister help, caught in the midst of religious wars in Paris, and afterwards several thousand miles away in Constantinople, where letters might take six months to arrive, or never reach their intended recipient at all? Even before the Trumbulls left England, Lady Trumbull had come up with a magic formula that transformed her absence into a spur to Anne’s survival. Like a mantra, Anne incessantly repeated the vow the two sisters had made to each other when they said goodbye: ‘I often remember thy parting request to take care of my self that if you do see England againe you

210

SIBLING RELATIONS AND GENDER IN THE EARLY MODERN WORLD

may finde me alive.’22 ‘When I remember how you begg’d of me to do what I could to live that you might find me if you did come home againe, I apply my self to tend my crasy health, and keep up my weak shattred carcase broken with restless nights and unquiett days.’23

Sisterly support The long-distance support the two sisters provided for each other took both psychological and material form. Perhaps the greatest substantive aid the Trumbulls rendered Anne was to bring her eldest son Jack (John Dormer) along with them to Paris and then to Constantinople. In doing so, they took on the heavy responsibility of educating the adolescent heir to the Dormer fortune in the virtues of social responsibility and hard work. Apparently this was a lengthy uphill battle, as we can infer from frequent laments by Anne and the rest of the Cottrells about Jack’s resemblance to Robert Dormer in all his worst qualities. Both Anne and her father acknowledged in their letters to the Trumbulls that they had given up trying to cure Jack of his faults, which Sir Charles had concluded were ‘bred in the bone.’ In this as in other roles Elizabeth and William stood in as deputies for Jack’s real father and as counterweights to what all the Cottrells regarded as Dormer’s pernicious influence. As Sir Charles wrote to his daughter Elizabeth in Constantinople, ‘I hope [Jack] is more carefull to please thee & his unckle, then his father to please his wife & me … I cannot but love Jack for his Mothers sake but the more unlike you can make him to his father, the more he will be esteemd & the more thankfull to you & his unckle.’24 Anne echoed her father’s opinion of Jack in a letter to her sister: ‘it would be a joy to me to heare Jack is what he ought to be and that he is not too like my L[or]d, but I fear he gives you too much trouble because if he deserved a commendation I am sure you would be forward to give it him and I do not find you have any thing to bragg of.’25 At the same time, Elizabeth and William tendered both material and psychological aid to Anne herself. Along with expensive presents, such as a case of Smyrna wine sent from Constantinople, Elizabeth deployed her frequent letters to England to convey practical advice. Anne was urged to tend her bodily health with a therapeutic regime that included doses of chocolate (then used medicinally as a stimulant), the ‘King’s drops,’ and small quantities of wine. Anne periodically reported to her sister that this regimen was doing her good: ‘my ill nights are too frequent but the Kings Dropps alwayes releive me when I take them. I have gott more and as often as I take them wish you may finde as much good by every thing as I have done by them.’26 Yet the real foundation of this curative physical regime was the Trumbulls’ unflagging emotional support:

ANNE DORMER’S LETTERS TO LADY TRUMBULL

211

after I have prayed and almost read my eyes out, the thoughts of my friends [Anne’s sister and brother-in-law] and the concern they take in my life and health makes me ashamed to suffer all their [care] and paines to be lost, and therefore I strive to cheer up my self but it is so unnaturall to me to be guttling [gourmandizing] and tending my self, that I have somtimes much adoe to do it, and then comes a new supply of some good thing as the other day a vessell of rare wine from thee, the kindness of which gave me a greater joy then if I had had it full of pearle some other way ...27

The two siblings’ frequent pledges of care and concern for each other’s well-being form the predominant motif of the letters. They pray for each other, exchange religious and practical counsel, and use their shared Christian faith to cement their intimacy despite their physical separation. Anne cites St Paul while reminding her sister that the two are always ‘present in mind’ even while absent in body: ‘since as I am sure we do meete in our most faithfull affections and prayers for each others happyness lett us make that our contentment and strive to promote each others good as much as we can at this distance.’28 Equally important to Anne was the constant reassurance that she was worth the struggle for survival. Over the years, her self-esteem had been so undermined by her husband that, as she wrote to her sister, ‘truely did not that kindness you all shew me, make me take some encouragement, the sense I have of my own infirmities would make me apt to take my Husband to be in the right when he describes me as the most abject pittyfull creature in the world.’ Dormer often told his wife ‘as one values themselves they shall be valued,’ although Anne perceived that this did not always hold true, ‘for I know none values him as he values himself …’ Nevertheless, she affirmed the basic truth of this dictum in her need for a counterweight to her husband’s contempt for her: neither can I ever … want humility so much as to think of my self so well as the love and pitty of my deare friends inclines them to think of me, but when I remember they have taken so much paines to keepe this poor carcase above ground I rouse up and resolve it shall encour[a]ge me to pull up a spiritt if not to tugg with an obstinate hard hearted Man, yett to keepe my self from being trodd on …29

In this self-imposed struggle to ‘pull up a spiritt’ the letters themselves play a major role as physical and intellectual proof that Anne’s survival and wellbeing are of vital concern to Elizabeth and William. Reading and writing letters is itself a form of therapy for Anne, who assures Elizabeth she would be writing to her sister all day long if permitted by the ‘insupportable Tyranny I live under’: ‘… to my worthy Brother I would say a greate deale to express my gratitude and affection but you must speake for me because I must leave for I am so watched that ’tis with difficulty I can gett a minute to write.’30

212

SIBLING RELATIONS AND GENDER IN THE EARLY MODERN WORLD

The vital importance of the letters between the two siblings as Anne’s psychological lifeline can be gauged by her husband’s efforts to read and censor the correspondence which his wife wrote and received, and conversely by the variety of ploys she utilized to evade his watchful censorship. She could not prevent him from inspecting letters coming into the house, but she made use of friendly neighbors to convey missives she wrote privately. Alternatively, she waited until Dormer was away on one of his London jaunts to compose long detailed narratives of his behavior and conversation and send them secretly to her sister: ‘I contrive to write when he is from home, that I may spare my self and my friends the trouble of hatching a formall letter, he watches to read those I receive but now he is almost continually abroad I write when I can have most liberty to speak my thoughts.’31 Yet the danger and difficulty of revealing her true thoughts to Elizabeth underline Anne’s vital need to articulate her misery to a loving sympathetic audience. There are many immaterial dimensions to the love Anne has for her sister. The letters document familial negotiations of power and influence. Anne needs to win her sister’s support against Robert. We can also argue that there is a visceral dimension to the sisters’ love. In physical terms, Anne was repelled by her husband’s kisses at the same time she voiced her longing to hold her sister in her arms again. In her letters she delineated the dystopic physical and psychological reunions with her husband, notably the sexualized fawning over her that would suddenly transform into anger and degradation; or his knocking down doors in a rage to find her.32 The scene of meeting her husband after parting is offered to us as one of dangerous negotiations over power. Dormer demands his wife meet him at the door and kiss him after his jaunts to London. When she does, he ignores her. When she does not, he complains she no longer loves him.33 With her sister’s encouragement, Anne finally took a stand against this humiliating ritual. She reports to Elizabeth a speech she made to Dormer: ‘20 year is long enough in conscience to have beene a toole and now I am resolved if you will have my kindness you shall deserve it, I am weary now of playing the munkey any longer, and if I canot deserve your friendship I do not desire your fondness.’ Anne then explains her strategy to her sister, to do him good I have more hopes by making my self less cheap then by suffring my self to be scorned and vilified … I have cast up the account and see what I gott by his fondness and what shall loose by trying another way … I shall be less sensible of his anger when he leaves pretending to be kind then when one half [h]our hel vow I am an Angell and then the next halfe houre I shall be blacker then a fiend and in both humores is constant to his resolution never to do anything I desire.34

Yet Anne’s matrimonial struggles were never resolved, and her husband’s abusive treatment continued to haunt her even after his death in 1689.35

ANNE DORMER’S LETTERS TO LADY TRUMBULL

213

Sir William Trumbull and his wife Elizabeth returned from Constantinople at the end of 1691, two years after Robert Dormer’s death. The letter that concludes the narrative constructed by this remarkable archive finds Anne eagerly awaiting her sister’s return: ‘My dearest soul … tho I have been ill since I came from Tunbridge I trust in God it is now over, and that I shall … have the joy of hugging thee in my armes againe (which I so pass[i]onately long for) … since thine from Lazareto I have written three [letters] to thee … for now it is pleasure to write when thou art drawing nearer and nearer.’ Anne warns Elizabeth that illness and stress have taken their toll on her physical appearance, but assures her that nothing else has changed between the two siblings: you will scarcely know me, my poor Carcase is made a sadd example but my heart is still the same that tenders thee above my life & bears a gratefull sence of thine & my excellent Brothers unexpressible kindness to me and mine … how much I long to see thee, and my dear Broth[er] no words can express, but sleep to my waking Eyes, & health to the sick was never more wellcom then you will be both to thy tenderly affectionate sister & faithfull friend.36

The letter conveys the intensity of the longing for physical and emotional contact, this time with immediacy and urgency, since the sisters are so close: ‘drawing nearer and nearer.’ Anne imagines the scene of the return as one of physical embrace, but she also imagines the gaze of her sister on her body after all these years. The poignancy of the intertwining of illness and love, here coming at the end, is a reminder of the pained life Anne has been living and the solace that her sister’s love has offered her. She has kept her body alive for this physical reunion, but she also presents herself as already dead: this ‘Carcase.’ This imagined return of the ideal sister has stood as a solution and antidote to her ills, yet the love and the illness are inextricably entwined. Since the letters end here, we do not have the details of the sisters’ further life together. (Anne died four years later; Elizabeth stayed in England while her husband’s public career advanced.) While Robert Dormer was alive, the sibling bond had provided a complete contrast to (and much preferred substitute for) Anne’s embattled relations with her husband. After his death, a series of bitter conflicts with her aging father about her preference for a frugal life of piety at Rousham ironically replicated the same pattern of patriarchal struggles that Anne had suffered in her marriage.37 In Anne’s experience, sisterhood was an egalitarian relationship, but in her role as wife or daughter she could never be an equal partner. Of all those with whom Anne had formed intimate bonds, only her sister continued to voice her unconditional love, her unqualified acceptance of Anne’s autonomy. We can conjecture that Elizabeth Trumbull on her return to England continued to play the same role which she had for so many years, as the only stable focal point, the one perfect relationship in Anne Dormer’s life.

214

SIBLING RELATIONS AND GENDER IN THE EARLY MODERN WORLD

Notes 1.

2.

3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8.

9. 10. 11. 12. 13.

14. 15. 16. 17. 18. 19. 20. 21. 22. 23. 24. 25. 26. 27.

Anne Dormer, Letters to her sister, Lady Elizabeth Trumbull, and two letters to her son, John Dormer, 1685–91, British Library, Additional MS 72516, fols 156–241 (hereafter cited as Dormer, Letters). We are very grateful to Mr and Mrs Charles Cottrell-Dormer for allowing us to consult the archive at Rousham. For detailed analyses of Anne Dormer’s relationship with her husband Robert Dormer, see M. O’Connor, ‘Interpreting Early Modern Woman Abuse: The Case of Anne Dormer,’ in Quidditas 23 (2002), 51–67, and ‘Representations of Intimacy in the Life-Writing of Anne Clifford and Anne Dormer,’ in Representations of the Self From the Renaissance to Romanticism, ed. P. Coleman, J. Lewis, and J. Kowalik (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000), 79–96. P. Thomas, ‘Sir Charles Cotterell and Katherine Philips,’ Appendix 4 of The Collected Works of Katherine Philips The Matchless Orinda, vol. II: The Letters, ed. P. Thomas (Stump Cross: Stump Cross Books, 1992), 174. Dormer, Letters, fol. 196. For example, see ibid., fol. 210. Ibid., fol. 159v. Ibid., fols 171–173. Further evidence for this web of family relationships and its importance to both sisters is found in the letters of Sir Charles Cottrell to his daughter Elizabeth Trumbull and his son-in-law Sir William Trumbull, British Library, Additional MS 72516, fols 1–155v (hereafter cited as Charles Cottrell, Letters). Gilbert Burnet, Bishop Burnet’s History of His Own Time, 2 vols (London: Thomas Ward, 1724) i, 769. Sir William Trumbull and Lady Elizabeth Trumbull, Letters, British Library, Additional MS 72510, fols 18–37v, Lady Elizabeth Trumbull to Sir William Trumbull, 8 August 1697, fol. 30v (hereafter cited as Trumbull, Letters). Ibid., fols 32v–33. Charles Cottrell, Letters, fol. 50. Of Dormer’s abhorrence for her father’s mistress, Lady Salkeld, Anne wrote, ‘when I was married Mr D had such an aversion for my La[dy] [Salkeld] that … he vowed to me often that if he had not had such a passion for me that he could not rest till he had gott me he should have fled the sight of me as soone as he saw my L[ady] was of my acquaintance …’ See Dormer, Letters, fol. 210v. Ibid., fol. 166. Ibid., fol. 159v. Ibid. fol. 169v. Ibid. fol. 168. Ibid., fols 176v–177. Ibid., fol. 176v. Ibid., fols 159–159v. Ibid., fol. 157v. Ibid., fol. 167. Ibid., fol. 163. Charles Cottrell, Letters, fol. 53v. Dormer, Letters, fol. 173. Ibid., fol. 162. Ibid., fol. 163.

ANNE DORMER’S LETTERS TO LADY TRUMBULL

28. 29. 30. 31. 32. 33. 34. 35. 36. 37.

215

Ibid., fols 161–161v. Ibid., fols 169–169v. Ibid., fol 173. Ibid., fol. 186v. See, for example, ibid., fol. 193; see also O’Connor, ‘Woman Abuse.’ See, for example, Dormer, Letters, fols 202–203. Ibid., fols 170–170v. See, for example, ibid., fols. 202–203. Ibid., fol. 241. See, for example, ibid., fols 217–219. For Anne’s father’s view of the conflict, see, for example, ibid., fols 108, 113, 121–123.

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

Siblings, Publications, and the Transmission of Memory: Johann Albert Hinrich and Elise Reimarus Almut Spalding In the fall of 1805, a rather unusual announcement of the death of a woman appeared in a widely circulated Hamburg newspaper: On 2 September, my beloved sister, Margaretha Elisabeth Reimarus, died in her 71st year. This I announce to our relatives and friends. Hamburg, 4 September 1805.

J. A. H. Reimarus, M.D.1

Besides hinting at the personal grief that a brother felt at the loss of his sister, the words acknowledge also the public role that his sister had played in Germany and beyond. Both Johann Albert Hinrich (1729–1814) and ‘Elise’ Reimarus (1735–1805), as she was commonly known, were well known to their contemporaries, he as a physician, scientist, and philosopher, and she as an educator, writer, and leader of an early literary salon. Johann Albert Hinrich is still recognized for introducing smallpox vaccinations and lightning rods to Germany2 and as one of the first proponents of free trade. Elise has long been treated in German intellectual history as a friend of such giants as Gotthold Ephraim Lessing (1729–81), Moses Mendelssohn (1729–86), Friedrich Heinrich Jacobi (1743–1819), and Joachim Heinrich Campe (1746–1818). That Elise also held a central role in the German Enlightenment movement in her own right is re-emerging.3 In his autobiography, however, Johann Albert Hinrich mentions his sister only as the person who raised his young children after he was widowed. Bowing to nineteenth-century tastes for male and female respectability, this portrayal intended for publication omits important dimensions of the siblings’ lifelong close relationship. Not surprisingly, Johann Albert Hinrich’s autobiography significantly influenced how subsequent generations would remember the two siblings. The purpose of this chapter is to explore the impact of a brother-sister relationship on some of their respective writings, arguing that siblings could offer to one another mutual inspiration and support – emotionally, intellectually, and in social matters – to a far greater degree than is often credited.

JOHANN ALBERT HINRICH AND ELISE REIMARUS

217

Scholars have begun to appreciate the often crucial role of a brother in the education and intellectual development of a sister. The reverse – the role of a sister in her brother’s life and accomplishments – is still underexplored.4 To be sure, tracing the education of early modern siblings is rarely possible in detail, and in most cases, sibling relationships over a lifetime must be inferred from scant documentation. Johann Albert Hinrich and Elise Reimarus present a fortuitous exception, thanks to a trove of written material surviving from their youth. Johann Albert Hinrich and Elise Reimarus grew up with ties to both the educated elite and the well-to-do merchant world of the port city of Hamburg, in a home that functioned as a center of one of Germany’s Enlightenment circles. Generations of their family held prominent positions in the city’s educational institutions, produced distinguished civic leaders, and through their scholarship and writing had an impact well beyond Hamburg and even Germany. Best known today is their father, Hermann Samuel Reimarus (1694–1768), as the author of controversial writings that sparked one of the most famous theological disputes of early modern Germany.5 Clearly the Reimaruses were no ordinary family, yet they do represent the urban educated elite of their time. That both a brother and sister of the family were able to leave a mark on their era through writings is partly owing to the relative openness earlier in the century for a girl to receive an excellent education, and partly to Johann Albert Hinrich’s lifelong, unconditional support for Elise. In the Reimarus family, a combination of public or private schools and tutors at home provided all children – boys and girls – essentially the same education, varying only slightly according to personal interests. Thanks to their relatively close age, Johann Albert Hinrich and Elise even had joint lessons with the same tutors at home.6 Of course, Elise could not attend a college preparatory school or a university like her brother. Nevertheless, she emulated her brother’s education and clearly had her parents’ approval, even learning Latin and perhaps also Greek with her father.7 Johann Albert Hinrich nurtured Elise’s hunger for knowledge and intellectual engagement, including when he was a university student in Göttingen, Leiden, Edinburgh, and London between 1752 and 1757. Largely through correspondence with her brother, Elise vicariously experienced international travel and acquired an outstanding education short only of a formal university degree. She, in turn, became Johann Albert Hinrich’s confidante, particularly when the duration of his studies became a point of contention with his parents. Later, the siblings continued to support each other in all areas of life, including in their writing. They always lived physically close, under the same roof or in the immediate neighborhood. Johann Albert Hinrich had his own family, with children from two marriages. Elise remained single and during

218

SIBLING RELATIONS AND GENDER IN THE EARLY MODERN WORLD

her twenties and thirties functioned as a mother and educator for her brother’s eldest children. Out of this experience emerged her pedagogical writings, her most widely circulated works. Elise was in her fifties when she set up her own small household (with a foster child), but toward the end of her life made the very conscious decision again to move directly across the street from her brother. As in social matters, the siblings also encouraged each other, relied on each other, and collaborated on publication projects. The following discusses their publications in three areas: applied science, education, and politics.

The unnamed collaborator Based on the most thorough reference work of Hamburg authors, at least fifteen or sixteen separate publications on lightning and lightning rods over the course of a generation stemmed from Johann Albert Hinrich’s quill.8 Characteristically, his first publication following his medical dissertation, in 1768, concerned the scientific study of lightning strikes.9 It preceded by a decade his landmark study on lightning, Vom Blitze (‘On Lightning’), which centuries later would still be hailed as ‘the great work’ on the subject.10 Already when he was a student, however, Johann Albert Hinrich’s particular interest in electricity was evident, and already then the person with whom he discussed it was his sister Elise. From England, where he learned about Benjamin Franklin’s recent invention of the lightning rod (1752), Johann Albert Hinrich wrote to Elise a lengthy letter that deals almost exclusively with electricity. Recognizing that electricity would become important, he charged his sister: ‘I wish that you should in the future teach it.’11 Over the course of several pages, he explained characteristics of electricity and – a matter he had probably learned through the Royal Society – why the death of a physicist in St Petersburg in 1753 was the result of his failing to ground his laboratory’s lightning rod.12 Johann Albert Hinrich also spelled out ideas for a lightning rod on the Reimarus family home, in the form of an Apollo statue with a spiky crown on its head and in one hand a lyre, of which one string would become the grounding wire. No brother would have filled a letter to his sister with these details unless he expected her to share his enthusiasm for science. Elise lived up to this expectation. While it is unknown how she responded to her brother’s early missives specifically on electricity, Elise provided her brother with detailed observations of unusual water turbulences in Hamburg’s Alster and Elbe rivers. As Johann Albert Hinrich announced to her, ‘I communicated your description of the live waters to the Royal Society of Sciences. Truly, I’m serious.’13 While he expected Elise’s observations to hold

JOHANN ALBERT HINRICH AND ELISE REIMARUS

219

up to the scrutiny of ranking scientists, he did not disclose his sister as the author to this august body, perhaps lest the account be dismissed as the product of a woman. This pattern of Johann Albert Hinrich taking his sister’s writings very seriously but refraining from naming her publicly remains evident throughout their collaborative publication projects. As one might expect, this significantly contributed to the uneven transmission of their memories. Decades after the siblings’ first documented exchange about scientific matters, Elise unquestionably contributed to her brother’s publications on electricity, as is evident in her correspondence from the summer of 1776 when she was visiting her sister’s family in Bremen. She actively collected data on lightning activity for her brother and repeatedly commented that despite palpable lightning strikes into the recently installed lightning rod of St Ansgar’s Church, residents in the immediate neighborhood remained safe. One letter apparently contained an especially vivid description of dramatic lightning activity.14 Tellingly, that portion of the letter is now missing, almost surely because those pages became part of Johann Albert Hinrich’s growing collection of lightning data, some of which survived in the descendent family for over 200 years. In his publications, Johann Albert Hinrich often acknowledged his sources of information, particularly when they involved men of some public standing. Other informers, however, are not disclosed by name. For instance, one can only assume that an especially detailed account of a 1770 lightning strike at Bremen’s St Ansgar’s Church stems from Johann Albert Hinrich’s brother-inlaw, Hermann Thorbecke (1732–1802). So it is with Elise. Her specific written contributions to her brother’s publications on lightning are now impossible to identify. Johann Albert Hinrich never named Elise as a collaborator in his projects, nor did Elise ever claim credit. However, her comments indicate that she was intimately involved and invested in her brother’s publications. In May 1778, she reported to her brother-in-law, August Hennings (1746–1823), about several current literary projects in the family: By the way, I do have to tell you that a special printing star appears to shine on our entire family. You, with your “Reason” etc., my brother with his lightning rod which, thank heavens, is finally being published, and I – […] I had to turn over to Campe all of my meager educational experiences that I wrote down 12 and 14 years ago, in order for him to print them now and then in his educational writings.15

The comments reflect gendered implications. On the one hand, Elise counted herself among three authors in the family whose works would soon appear in print. On the other hand, her words deflect from her contributions to her brother’s publication on scientific matters and instead emphasize the context

220

SIBLING RELATIONS AND GENDER IN THE EARLY MODERN WORLD

of education, where the writings of a woman would be much less objectionable or dismissable. Elise also underscored that not she, but the renowned educator Campe, comparable to a German Rousseau, initiated the publication of her writings. One senses a hint of pride, but also the concern not to lose her female respectability by appearing in print. In any case, the year 1778 would mark a publishing milestone for both Reimarus siblings. Johann Albert Hinrich saw Vom Blitze and also his first how-to manual on installing lightning rods in print.16 Both titles proved so popular that surviving copies of the first edition are now very difficult to locate. For Elise, too, that year stands as the beginning of a remarkable publishing success as a best-selling author.

‘E. R.’ and the Kleine Kinderbibliothek Elise’s writings appeared in a series that became known as a multi-volume reader called Kleine Kinderbibliothek (‘Small Library for Children’), published by the renowned pedagogue Joachim Heinrich Campe, a close friend of the Reimaruses. Campe would become the most widely published German author of his time, not least thanks to the Kleine Kinderbibliothek, which marks the beginning of Campe’s international success on the children’s book market, comparable to the current Harry Potter phenomenon. Originally conceived as an almanac that was both entertaining and instructive for children, the series contained readings of poetry, prose, and short dramatizations geared to three different age and reading levels, by both male and female authors. All texts had been field-tested for holding children’s attention. Beginning in 1778, the series appeared in at least fourteen ‘rightful’ editions in German until 1881, not to speak of pirated publications. It was equally successful in translation. Over more than half a century, at least six different editions appeared in French, at least two editions in Polish, and some ten reprints in Russian. Elise Reimarus probably made her greatest mark in the Kleine Kinderbibliothek with her characteristic short dramatizations, some thirty in number, always with child protagonists and consistently lifelike in content and style. Their didactic purpose was to teach qualities like altruism, thoughtfulness, politeness, patience, thankfulness, and resourcefulness, ultimately to raise useful citizens. Elise was particularly skillful – compared to Campe himself, for instance – in applying the Socratic method, that is, in conveying a teaching goal through an engaging conversation that lets the protagonist learn on his or her own. In any era, this approach is more palatable to children than finger pointing and guilt trips, and undoubtedly this is one reason for the popularity of Elise’s dialogues.

JOHANN ALBERT HINRICH AND ELISE REIMARUS

221

Every edition of the Kleine Kinderbibliothek, regardless of language, contains a significant portion of contributions by Elise. In fact, she may be the single most important secret behind Campe’s own success as a writer, since it was the Kleine Kinderbibliothek that really launched Campe’s own phenomenal publishing career. Despite the accomplishment of having had her writings in print throughout Europe for over a century, however, Elise’s name as contributing author has become very obscured, if not erased from the Kleine Kinderbibliothek. This is very much in contrast to the reputation of her brother to whom, ironically, more writings are now attributed than he himself ever claimed to have authored. In part, the disappearance of Elise Reimarus’s name from one of the most successful publishing ventures in eighteenth- and nineteenth-century Europe was due to her own choice. Much to Campe’s regret, during her lifetime she consistently refused to be identified and at most allowed her initials ‘E. R.’ to appear in print.17 Ironically, she was too well known as a writer for her own comfort. Having seen firsthand two literary disputes that involved family and friends, Elise became extremely reluctant to be identified in print even as an author of writings for children.18 In 1807, Campe prepared the ‘authoritative last edition’ of his oeuvre – the first of several such editions yet to come – and removed all identifying names and initials of contributing authors. Hence, that edition creates the definite impression that the entire series originated with Campe himself. Though Campe in 1815 for the first time fully named the authors of the Kleine Kinderbibliothek in the last reprint that he himself edited, it was too late to balance the effect of the many German editions and translations circulating and reprinted without attribution of authors. As a result, Elise’s writings have largely become lost in Campe’s publications. If Olms proceeds as planned to republish the 1807 edition of Campe’s works, this will perpetuate the transmission or omission of memory according to nineteenth-century standards. None of this could be known to Elise or Johann Albert Hinrich Reimarus themselves, of course. She did not live to see even her initials removed from Campe’s 1807 edition of the Kleine Kinderbibliothek, and Johann Albert Hinrich did not live to see his sister’s name spelled out in full for the first time in the 1815 edition. But during their lifetime, both siblings clearly knew the popularity especially of Elise’s children’s dialogues, for which she was best known. It is worth noting that she also wrote dialogues for adults. One appeared in 1780 in a journal, purporting to be the translation of a Classical Greek text. It presents two of Socrates’ friends discussing civic responsibilities.19 In private Elise claimed authorship and also confirmed that she had not only her brother’s approval, but his praise.20 That year, Johann Albert Hinrich’s encouragement of his sister’s various literary activities is also evident from

222

SIBLING RELATIONS AND GENDER IN THE EARLY MODERN WORLD

the siblings’ collaboration with some friends to keep the Hamburg theater functioning after the departure of its director. Though unknown to the public, Elise provided translations of three French plays that were produced that season.21 As a result, despite her ambivalent feeling about being recognized, Elise ventured beyond the safer topic of the education of children and became a published and played author in areas that were ordinarily off-limits to a woman.

The authorship of Freiheit This would become even more obvious – only to those who knew her, of course – in connection with political discussions following the French Revolution. Surviving among Elise Reimarus’s papers is an explicitly political treatise, a distillation of the political philosophy of Thomas Hobbes (1588–1679) and John Locke (1632–1704).22 Written between 1789 and 1792, a century and a half before Hobbes’s and Locke’s relevant works appeared in German in print, the treatise exposed at least some German readers to the theory of social contract. The manuscript has the dubious distinction of being the only preserved text in Elise’s hand to which disclaimers regarding its authenticity were later added. Even though the handwriting is indisputable, scholars examining the papers between 1930 and 1940 questioned the document as Elise’s work.23 This reveals common assumptions about female participation in political discourse. A woman’s interest in such matters appeared unlikely and even improper to both contemporaries and a later generation. It has become clear, however, that the women in the Reimarus family very actively participated in the political discussions of their day, enthusiastically backing the French Revolution until it turned bloody. The political outspokenness of the female members of the Reimarus family was well enough known in public that the women became the object of jokes.24 Elise in particular was known for being politically astute, and her friends even occasionally found her outspokenness excessive.25 The surviving political treatise in Elise’s own hand and her known political engagement suggest that it is both too simple to dismiss Elise as the author of political writings, and also to take at face value the long tradition that Johann Albert Hinrich was the author of an anonymously printed booklet entitled Freiheit (‘Freedom’).26 At the very least, the siblings likely collaborated. The booklet Freiheit appeared in connection with a journeymen’s bloody revolt in Hamburg in the summer of 1791. It presents the same political concepts contained in Elise’s manuscript treatise and clearly intends to teach politically untrained individuals about citizenship. In an immediately engaging and entertaining dialogue style – far more fun to read than the

JOHANN ALBERT HINRICH AND ELISE REIMARUS

223

treatise and strikingly reminiscent of Elise’s dialogues for children – the plot presents two cousins discussing the meaning of freedom. One of the cousins has just returned from America. His insights contrast with what the other cousin imagines as freedom. Their discussion ends with a fully developed definition of freedom and demonstrates the need of human beings to live in community and to regulate society through civil law – the perfect ending for a 20-page civics lesson. This was not Johann Albert Hinrich’s style of writing. While he recognized that dialogues could be effective teaching tools, especially for women,27 throughout his life he overwhelmingly preferred the essay form for his writing. More tellingly, his own references to this work both remain cryptically ambiguous about his authorship, even hinting that the author might be someone else. He clearly brought the work to publication and therefore could claim it as ‘my little occasional work’28 or, as he described it almost as an afterthought in his autobiography, that he had ‘edited’ this work that ‘had been composed previously.’29 Nowhere in his references to Freiheit does he use the first person singular and verbs that clearly identify him as the author, such as ‘I wrote,’ ‘I presented my thoughts,’ ‘I put down on paper,’ as he did in other writings. Above all the writing style suggests that Elise was the main, if not the sole author of Freiheit, a note that Johann Albert Hinrich was consciously obscuring in his autobiography. Since many readers would have recognized the booklet’s style, Johann Albert Hinrich might even have directed immediate speculations about the anonymous author toward himself in order to preserve his sister’s respectability. Given the family’s widely known public status, keeping her reputation untarnished was also in his own interest. Twelve years later, in 1803, Johann Albert Hinrich published a work on the education of citizens that is directly based on the earlier pamphlet Freiheit.30 While this treatise is written in essay form, its content and overall argument follow the pattern of Freiheit, the choice of words is similar if not identical, and major sections are lifted from Freiheit entirely.31 Notably absent are all the elements that made Freiheit a dialogue, namely the characters of the two cousins and the quick succession of their give and take – the very qualities that make Freiheit entertaining to read. Also missing is the original reference to a government of elected representatives, which indicates how much the Reimaruses had lost confidence between 1791 and 1803 that a popular democracy in continental Europe was really possible. Significantly enough, Johann Albert Hinrich’s autobiography contains no hint that he had used Freiheit for this work, much in contrast to his careful explanations of differences between various editions of his own works or those by his father that he republished. This further underscores Johann Albert Hinrich’s strategy to obscure the relationship between these two publications and their authors.

224

SIBLING RELATIONS AND GENDER IN THE EARLY MODERN WORLD

Elise was still alive, actively engaged in writing, and explicitly considering publishing projects when her brother’s educational treatise appeared. She must have agreed that he use the booklet Freiheit as the core of this new work. In some ways, the situation is comparable to Johann Albert Hinrich’s earlier publications on lightning, to which his sister had also contributed. It is perhaps worth noting that the single publication listed in Johann Albert Hinrich’s autobiography with a title immediately revealing its dialogue style appeared in 1803, the same year as his treatise on citizens’ education.32 This short conversation between a teacher and a pupil shows remarkable similarities with Elise’s earlier purported translation of a Classical Greek dialogue, both in its length, the use of conversational filler words, and the hint that ambiguities and contradictions enhance an interesting conversation. It is as if in the course of preparing his educational treatise, Johann Albert Hinrich had discovered for himself the effectiveness of a style which his sister long championed and which he finally appropriated for himself. Johann Albert Hinrich and Elise Reimarus received uneven public credit for their collaboration on publication projects in various disciplines, both during their own lifetimes and later. The ever more restrictive standards of proper female behavior over the course of the eighteenth century found reflection in Elise’s increasing reluctance to be identified as a published author. However, a number of widely disseminated printed works by the Reimarus siblings attest to the mutual influence that brother and sister exercised on both the content and style of each other’s writings as they continued to publish. The Reimarus case demonstrates that when a brother and sister actively participated in the Enlightenment movement, despite the increasingly narrow standards of propriety for women, both siblings benefitted from it.

Notes 1. 2.

3. 4.

Kaiserlich Privilegierte Hamburgische Neue Zeitung, 142. Stück, Mittwoch, 4 September 1805, 3. Blatt. All translations of quotes into English are mine. The first lightning rod in Germany was installed on Hamburg’s St Jacob’s Church. See Nicolaus Peters, ‘Reimarus als Naturforscher,’ Johann Albert Hinrich Reimarus: Vorträge gehalten anlässlich … seines 200. Geburtstages, Vorträge und Aufsätze herausgegeben vom Verein für Hamburgische Geschichte, vol. 5 (Hamburg: Mauke Söhne, 1930), 29. Almut Spalding, Elise Reimarus (1735–1805): The Muse of Hamburg. A Woman of the German Enlightenment (Würzburg, Germany: Königshausen & Neumann, 2005). Though not addressing sister-brother dynamics, the following English-language publications include a discussion of the role of eighteenth-century German women who significantly contributed to their husbands’ publications: Susanne

JOHANN ALBERT HINRICH AND ELISE REIMARUS

5.

6.

7.

8. 9.

10.

11. 12.

13. 14.

15. 16.

225

Kord, Little Detours: The Letters and Plays of Luise Gottsched (1713–1762) (Rochester, NY, and Woodbridge: Camden House, 2000); Ruth Dawson, The Contested Quill: Literature by Women in Germany 1770–1800 (Newark: University of Delaware Press, 2002). Carried out in print between Lessing and the Hamburg pastor Johann Melchior Goeze (1717–86), this debate became known as the ‘Fragment Dispute,’ following Lessing’s publication of supposed manuscript fragments that he claimed to have found in the Wolfenbüttel ducal library. This is evident from the Reimarus family’s financial records: Cassa-Buch 1728–49 and 1750–58, ms., Staatsarchiv Hamburg (in the following abbreviated StA HH), 622-1 Reimarus, A 18, vols 1 and 2. A critical edition of these financial records is in preparation by Paul S. and Almut Spalding. Johann Albert Hinrich Reimarus, letter to Elise Reimarus, 27 May 1755, Edinburgh VIII, 4, ms., StA HH. Part of a collection of Reimarus-Sieveking family papers that were until recently in private hands, the letter is now deposited in the Staatsarchiv Hamburg, but remains uncataloged. Subsequent references to this collection will be abbreviated as ‘StA HH, uncataloged.’ Hans Schröder, Lexikon der hamburgischen Schrifsteller, vol. 6, 1873; reprinted in Deutsches Biographisches Archiv, ed. Bernhard Fabian et al. (München: Saur, 1986) fiche 1013, panels 259–264. Johann Albert Hinrich Reimarus, Die Ursache des Einschlagens vom Blitze, nebst dessen natürlicher Abwendung von unseren Gebäuden (Hamburg, 1768). Subsequent editions of this work appeared in Langensalza (1770) and Leipzig (1774). Peters, ‘Reimarus als Naturforscher,’ 28 (n.2). The beginning of Johann Albert Hinrich Reimarus’s lengthy book title is: Vom Blitze: Dessen Bahn und Würkung auf verschidene Körper, nach zuverlässigen Wahrnehmungen von Wetterschlägen gezeiget (Hamburg: Bohn, 1778). The expanded, revised edition appeared in 1794. Johann Albert Hinrich Reimarus, letter to Elise Reimarus, 13 March 1756, London IX, ms., StA HH, uncataloged. The lightning rod installed on the house of Georg Wilhelm Richmann (1711–53) ended in an electric meter inside his laboratory. Since the device was not grounded, a bolt of lightning discharged to Richmann’s head as he tried to read the gauge on 26 July 1753. Detailed manuscript accounts of this incident circulated at the Royal Society of London in German and English almost immediately (British Library, Add. 4439, fols 229–239), decades before readers in Germany found a similar account in print. Johann Albert Hinrich Reimarus, letter to Elise Reimarus, 23 March 1756, London VIII, ms., StA HH, uncataloged. This particular letter by Elise Reimarus to her sister-in-law, Sophie Reimarus (and by extension also to her brother), dates from early July 1776, two others from 15 and 29 July 1776, all ms., StA HH, 6221-Reimarus, F 9, Unterakte ‘Briefe an Familienangehörige.’ Elise Reimarus, letter to August Hennings, 1 May 1778, ms., Staats- und Universitätsbibliothek Hamburg (in the following abbreviated SUB HH), NL Hennings 79, 54A. The instruction manual is Vorschriften zur Anlegung einer Blitz-Ableitung an allerley Gebäuden: nach zuverlässigen Erfahrungen entworfen (Hamburg: Bohn, 1778). The second, revised edition appeared in 1794.

226

SIBLING RELATIONS AND GENDER IN THE EARLY MODERN WORLD

17. Sophie Becker, diary entry, 2 November 1785, Vor hundert Jahren: Elise von der Reckes Reisen durch Deutschland 1784–86 nach dem Tagebuche ihrer Begleiterin Sophie Becker, ed. and intro. G. Karo and M. Geyer (Stuttgart: Spemann, [c. 1884]), 210. 18. After the ‘Fragment Dispute’ of the 1770s that involved her late father and her friend Lessing, in the 1780s, Elise became entangled in the public debate between Mendelssohn and Jacobi whether Lessing had been an adherent of Spinoza, which became known as the ‘Pantheism Dispute.’ 19. ‘Philolaus und Kriton: Ein Gespräch aus dem Griechischen,’ Deutsches Museum 6 (June 1780), 547–51. 20. Elise Reimarus, letter to August Hennings, 16 June 1780, ms., SUB HH, NL Hennings 79, 244B. 21. Elise Reimarus, letter to August Hennings, 18 August 1780, ms., SUB HH, NL Hennings 80, 11A-B. 22. ‘Versuch einer Erläuterung und Vereinfachung der Begriffe vom natürlichen Staatsrecht,’ ms., StA HH, 622-1 Reimarus, F 5. 23. The pencil notation on the manuscript (‘by Elise Reimarus?’) from around 1930 is by Bertha Badt-Strauss (1885–1970). The notations in the archival catalog and manuscript folder (‘not clearly attributable to Elise Reimarus’) are probably based on notes by Heinrich Sieveking (1871–1945), in whose hands the papers were at the time. 24. Sophie Reimarus, letter to August Hennings, 29 July 1790, ms., copy by unknown hand in ‘Briefe … der edlen und geistreichen Sophie Reimarus[,] aufbewahrt von ihrem Bruder[,] an den sie gerichtet sind […],’ fols 65A–66, StA HH, uncataloged. 25. Elise von der Recke (1754–1833), diary entries for 7 May and 27 October 1794, Tagebücher und Selbstzeugnisse, ed. Christine Träger (München: Beck, 1984), 245 and 286, respectively. 26. Freiheit (Hamburg: Meyn, 1791). The most recent scholar to attribute this booklet to Johann Albert Hinrich was Gerhard Alexander, ‘Johann Albert Hinrich Reimarus und Elise Reimarus in ihren Beziehungen zu Lessing,’ Lessing und der Kreis seiner Freunde, ed. Günter Schulz, Wolfenbütteler Studien zur Aufklärung 8 (Heidelberg: Schneider, 1985), 135. An eminent scholar on the father, Hermann Samuel Reimarus, Alexander nevertheless does not demonstrate convincingly that he was familiar with the content or style of Freiheit. 27. Johann Albert Hinrich Reimarus, letter to Elise Reimarus, 6 October 1753, Leyden IIIA, ms., StA HH, uncataloged. 28. Johann Albert Hinrich Reimarus, letter to Adolf Freiherr von Knigge, 11 January 1792, letter no. 22, Aus einer alten Kiste: Originalbriefe, Handschriften und Dokumente aus dem Nachlasse eines bekannten Mannes (Leipzig: Kollmann, 1835; reprinted in Aufklärung und Revolution: Deutsche Texte 1790–1810, ed. Jörn Garber (n.p.: Scriptor, 1979). 29. J. A. H. Reimarus, Lebensbeschreibung von ihm selbst aufgesetzt, ed. Karl Sieveking (Hamburg: Campe, 1814), 47. 30. Entwurf eines allgemeinen Staats-Unterrichts für künftige Bürger (Hamburg: Campe, 1803). Johann Albert Hinrich’s name appears not on the title page, but at the end of the foreword, p. vi. Among those who cite this work as an exemplary expression of Hamburg citizens’ political self-understanding around 1800 are Katherine B. Aaslestad-Lambertson, The Transformation of Civic Identity and Local Patriotism in Hamburg, 1790 to 1815, diss., University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, 1997 (Ann Arbor, MI: UMI Diss. Services, 1997), 138.

JOHANN ALBERT HINRICH AND ELISE REIMARUS

227

31. The foreword is new, as are the main text’s introductory paragraph and additional sections pertaining primarily to economics. 32. [J.A.H.R.] ‘Quo ruimus? oder: Gespräch zwischen einem Lehrer und einem Zuhörer,’ Neue Berlinische Monatsschrift 9 (January–June 1803), 315–18.

CHAPTER NINETEEN

Thicker than Blood: l’oltr’altra Naomi J. Miller and Naomi Yavneh It all started at the 1990 MLA Convention in Chicago, when we found ourselves looking at the same text in the book exhibit, and each responded when someone called, ‘Naomi.’ It was only a matter of moments before we discovered that we shared not only the same name and the same feminist interests in the Renaissance, but also the same undergraduate alma mater (Princeton) and the same passion for maternity (and breastfeeding). In fact, our first official act of collaboration, as academic mothers of young children, was to organize a session for the following MLA, in December 1991, called ‘This Self Which Is Not One: Childbearing, Childrearing, and the Profession.’ As we have already noted in the acknowledgments section of our first shared volume of essays, further collaborations followed that first MLA – from subsequent MLA sessions to shared panels at the Renaissance Society of America conferences and the Attending to Early Modern Women symposiums in College Park, Maryland, leading finally to our full-blown scholarly collaboration in Maternal Measures: Figuring Caregiving in the Early Modern Period (Ashgate, 2000). During the period in which we gathered that first collection of essays together, we came to be known to our volume contributors as ‘the Naomis’ and acquired the habit of signing off email messages to each other as ‘the other Naomi,’ ‘the other other,’ and finally ‘l’altra’ and ‘l’oltr’altra,’ interchangeably, borrowing from Naomi Yavneh’s language of academic study. Moreover, what we discovered is that being ‘the other other’ is entirely different from being simply ‘the other,’ since a doubling of alterity can result in a recognition of singularity, a unity of identity emerging from difference itself. Whether coincidentally or not (given that our name of ‘Naomi’ represents a compelling force of maternity in the Bible), both of us gave birth to four children before earning tenure (for which our code has become 4B4T), and supported each other through the very real challenges of raising young children while meeting the requirements for promotion on the tenure track and beyond. It is perhaps not surprising, then, that some of what we value the most from our many collaborative ventures is not simply the scholarly products

THICKER THAN BLOOD

229

themselves. We treasure our liberating exchange of thoughts and ideas and feelings with no concern for proprietary boundaries and academic territories. In short, we have discovered that we are sisters in spirit even if not blood and, moving beyond the title of our introductory essay (‘Thicker than Water’), we can recognize that we are bound together more intimately in some ways than if we had been biological siblings. From that recognition, it was an inevitable step to conceive this present volume on early modern siblings as a companion volume to Maternal Measures. We offer this narrative of our collaborative background not because we think that readers of this book must understand our sororal bond before they can appreciate the volume of essays that resulted from it, but rather because we believe that collaboration itself is a subject worthy of more attention in the scholarly world. Even as we celebrate the fruits not only of our own sisterly partnership, but also of other collaborations among our scholarly peers, including the collaborative essay in this volume by Sara Mendelson and Mary O’Connor, we recognize that the academic workplace favors competition over collaboration. In the humanities, dual-authored essays are still far from the norm, and often looked at, if not askance, at least with a bit of skepticism. In promotion reviews we are encouraged to dissect any collaboration into absurdly artificial allocations of ‘responsibility.’ And yet, in many ways, true collaboration requires far more concentrated and sustained effort than independent work, and produces a whole much greater than the sum of its parts.1 In fact, excessive attention to divisions of labor may cause us to lose sight of the whole. As one of us observed in an article on this topic, ‘Which half is yours?’ is finally no more useful a question when designating credit for academic promotion than when evaluating the success of a duet performed by one’s children. Indeed, as with a couple’s biological offspring, with the best collaboration no partition exists. Those may be my eyes, but the child is both ours and uniquely herself. Without ‘the other’ there would be nothing. With ‘l’oltr’altra’, we can recognize that collaboration brings unique perspectives, seeming detours that turn out to offer the most direct path after all to an unexpected end that we recognize as our destination only after we’ve arrived.2 And so we offer our shared vision in this volume now to the collaborative engagement of our readers and sibling scholars.

Notes 1.

While John and Paul labeled any song by one of them the product of ‘Lennon and McCartney,’ we don’t (unless we’re academics or fanatic Beatlemaniacs) sit around obsessing about who wrote what part of their songs.

230 2.

SIBLING RELATIONS AND GENDER IN THE EARLY MODERN WORLD

For more discussion of this topic, see Naomi J. Miller, ‘Which Half is Yours? The Art of Collaboration,’ The Chronicle of Higher Education, Career Network website, Balancing Act column, 20 January 2003, http://chronicle.com/jobs/ 2003/01/2003012001c.htm.

Index A Pastorall (film), fig. 199, fig. 201, fig. 203 A Room of One’s Own, 160 Absolon, 140, 142, 144–48 abjuration, 71 adultery, 140–41, 144–5 Aeneid, 118 Albret, Jeanne d’, Queen of Navarre, 64, 71 Aleotti, Vittoria, 43, n. 51 Amphilanthus, 105–7, 109–12, n.114–15 Angel Spirit, 89, 98, 100–101 Anguissola, Sofonisba, 2, 10, n. 13, 166–7, fig. 168, fig. 170, 172–3, 175, 178, fig. 179 Arcadia, 94 Ariosto, Ludovico, 4, 8, n.13, 116 As You Like It, 151, 159 asceticism, 16 Ascham, Roger, 28 Ashley, Kate, 79 Autobiography, 186, 188, n. 193 Bedingfeld, Winifred, 29, n. 37 Beier, Lucinda McCray, 187 Beilin, Elaine, 182, 184 Bevington, David, 146 Beze, Theodore de, 71, 73 Biondaura, 116, 118–25 Boehrer, Bruce Thomas, 140 Boleyn, Anne, 77, 81, 85, n. 88 Bordone, Paris, 175, fig. 176 Bourbon, Charles de, Duke of Soissons, 68 Bourbon, Catherine de, Duchess of Bar, 6–7, 64, n. 74–5 Bourbon, Antoine de, 64 Boy Bitten by a Crab (sketch), 179 Brackley, Elizabeth Lady, 11, 195–8, 200, 202, n. 204 Bradamante, 8 Bray, Alan, 147 Brown, Judith, 50, n. 52

Campi, Giulio, 175, fig. 177 Campion, Edmund, 31 Canal, Sister Lucia, 55 canonization, 23, n. 27 Carey, Mary Boleyn, 85, n. 88 Carey, William, 85 Carey, Catherine, 85 Carey, Henry, 85, n. 88 Carroll, Margaret D., 4, n.14 Cary, Elizabeth, 34, n. 38 Catherine of Aragon, 28, 82 Catholicism, 7, 29, 35–7, n. 38, 64, 70–71, n. 75–6, 81, n. 88, 91, 187 Cavanagh, Sheila, 7, 104 Cavendish, William, 11 Celidante, 119, 124 Charles IX, King of France, 65, 68–9 chastity, 33, 35, 57, 167, 173, 175, 178, 183 Chedgzoy, Kate, 150, 160, n. 162 chess, 166–7, 172–3, 175, 178, 180 as a sexual metaphor, 175 Cheyne, Lady Jane Cavendish, 3, 10, 182, 185, 189–92, 195–8, 200, 202. n. 204 childbed, 182–3, 185, 187, 190, 192 death in childbed, 182, 191 childbirth, 182, 184–5, 187–8, 191–2, 208 suffering in, 184 Chrisman, Miriam, 60 Christ, 54–9, 182 Christianity, 114, 187–8 Church of England, 85 classical mythology, 142 Clément VII, pope, 72 Clitherow, Margaret, 29, 36, n. 38 Concerti di Andrea e di Giovanni Gabrieli, 136 confessor, 15–20, 23, n. 24, n. 25, n. 26 Constantinople, 11 convents during Middle Ages, 54

232

INDEX

convents contd. early modern convents, 12, 40 fate of, 60 in England, 5, 30 in France, 31 German, 5–6, 54, 56, 60 in Italy, 5–6, 167, n. 180 in Milan, n. 51 Protestant, 53, 60 Santa Ana, 15–18, 20–23, n.24, n. 25, n. 26, n. 27 Seventeenth-century, 41 siblings in, 40–44, 48–9, 53–7, 59 Sixteenth-century, 135 in Venice, 3, 55, 120, 135 with musical activity, 40, 48 conversion, religious, 72–4, n. 76 Cooke, Elizabeth, 33 Cornwallis, Cicely Joseph (? Elizabeth), 32 Couchman, Jane, 6-7, 64, n. 75 Crawford, Patricia, 2, n.13, 184, 192 Cressy, David, 186 Cueto, Lorenzo, 15–16, 19, 23–4, n. 25 Cueto, Maria Vela y, 5, 15–16, 19, 23–4, n. 25 Cueto, Diego, 16, 19, 23–4, n. 25 Danae (painting), 173, fig.174, n. 180 Danby, Catherine Lady, 10, 182, 186–8 Daniel, Samuel, 100 Davenant, William, 154 David and Bethsabe,140–48, n. 149 De votis monastici, 55 Defence of Poetry, 93 Denkwurdigkeiten, 59 Devereux, Margaret Dakins, 96 Dormer, Anne, Cottrell, 11, 206–13, n. 214 dowries, convent, 14, 44, 60, 120 marriage, 2–3, n.14, 120 Drayton, Michael, 98 Dryden, John, 154 Duke Heinrich of Saxony, 56 Duke of Northumberland, 80–81 Duke Georg of Saxony, 56 Duke de Bar, 65, 69, 72, 74 Du Perron, Cardinal Jacques Davy, 73 Du Plessis-Mornay, Philippe, 71, n. 76 Early Modern period, 1, 12, 15, 29, 36, n. 37, 58, 106, n. 125, 160, 167, 182, 184, 206, 217

Edict of Nantes, 64, 68–9, 71 education of women, artistic, 167, 169 elite, 28, 92,167, 217 Catholic, 29–33, 36, 37, n. 38 Early Modern, 29 English, 28–9, 31–2, 36–7, 91–2, 142 family correspondence, 206 German, 217 humanist, 28, 91, 169 limits on, 28 middle-class, 29, 31 opportunities, 28 Protestant, 28, 30, 33 religious, 5, 31 romances, 104, 107 secular, 2, 6, 12, 167 sibling bonds, 105 Edward II, 146 Edward III, 146 Edward VI, 77, fig. 78, 79–81, 83, 85–6 Edward II, 146 Edwards, Rebecca, 9, 129 Egerton, Elizabeth, 3, 10, 182, 189–92 Elizabeth I, 7, 28, 79–81, 84–6, 91–93, 96, 100–101 Elizabeth, Edward VI, and Mary, fig. 78 Elizabethan, history, 144, 146 England, 2, 5–8, 10, n.13, 28, 30–32, 82, 85, 91, 94, 97, 106, 140, 147, 182, 184–5, 192, 206–10, 213, 218 English Civil War, 195, 198, 206 Erasmus, Desiderius, 28 Eve, 57, 182–92 Ewbank, Inga-Stina, 140 Fais, Angela di, 129–30, 134, 136 familial, affection, 87 alliance, 70, 94 aristocratic, 195 bonds, 142, 151 brothers, 5, 7, 9, 12, 53, 89, 91, 108, 120, 129, 143, 147, 195 circle, 144 connections, 24, 53, 90 culture, 24 deceased member, 187 dependents, 121 divided, 136 dynamics, 108 exiled, 197

INDEX faithfulness, 34 financial support, 53 honor, 17, 101, 120 intellectual, 172 interference, 24 involvement, 16 legacy, 98 life, 145 matriarch, 108 natal, 129, 131 nature of, 144 negotiations, 212 noble, 121 nuclear, 124 outcasts, 157 political support, 53 pressure, 71–2 prominent, 217 relationships, 104, 134, 140, 143, 207 royal, 140 sisters, 90 standing in society, 129 status, 17 n. 25 strife, 143 strong, 189 structures, 107, 110, 114, 134 ties, 105 torn, 129 unit, 148 family ties, 40, 42, 53, 143 across or within convent walls, 40, 42, 53, 54, 60 biblical, 143 destruction of, 152 loss of, 151 love, 195 loyalty, 195 musical, 47 respect, 195 Father Salcedo, 19 Father Julian de Avila, 20 Father Ledesma, 20 fifteenth century, 15 Findlay, Alison, 11, 195, n. 204 Finucci, Valeria, 8, 116, n. 126–8 Flanders, 6 Floridoro, 116–19, 121–2, n. 125–6 Fontana, Lavinia, 167 Fonte, Moderata, 2, 8, n. 13, 116–17, 125, n. 126

233

France, 4–6, 11, n. 14, 31, 64–5, 67, 74, 91, 206 François I, 65 Fraunce Abraham, 98 Freiheit (Freedom), 222–4 French Revolution, 222 Freud, Sigmond, 122 Gabrieli, Giovanni, 12–31, 133–6 Gabrieli, Andrea, 9 Gadol, Joan Kelly, 28, n. 37 Game of Chess (painting), 175, fig. 177, n. 181 Garrard, Mary, 169, 180 Gentileschi, Artemisia, 167, 169 German Enlightenment, 11, 216 Germany, 5, 10–11, 53, 60, 216–17 Gerusalemme liberata, 116 Giggs, Margaret (Clement), 30 Giorgi, Agostino, 49–50 God, 56–7, 59 Grey, Lady Jane, 80, 82 Guastarobba, Maria, 49, 50 Guastarobba, Paolo, 49 Guy-Bray, Stephen, 9, 140 Hanks, Merry Wiesner, 53, n. 62 Hannay, Margaret, 7, n. 13, 89, n. 102–3 Harington, John, 86–7 Hay, Millicent, 98 Henri IV, King of Navarre, King of France, 6–7, 64 Henry VIII, 7, 77, 81, 84–6, n. 88 Henri de Lorraine, Marquis of Pont-àMousson, Duke of Bar, 69 Herbert, Mary Sidney, Countess of Pembroke, 2, 7, n. 13, 89–92, fig. 96, 101, 104 Herbert, Anne Talbot, 93 Herbert, Henry, 92 Heroard, Jean, 4 Hilliard, Nicholas, 96 Hinrich, Johann Albert, 11, n. 13, 216–24 Hoby, Lady, 33 Hoskins, Anthony, 85 huguenot, 64–5, 68, 70–74 humanists, 28, 33, 91 Idea: The Shepheards Garland, 98 incest, 140–44, 147–8 intonazioni d’ organo, 136 Italy, 91,120, 131, 167, 175 Ivychurch Poems, 98

234

INDEX

Jonson, Ben, 104 King David, 140–48 Kleine Kinderbibliothek (Small Library for Children), 220–21 l’ oltr’ altra (the other other), 228 Languet, Hubert, 91, 94 Laningham, Susan B., 5, 15 Lanyer, Aemilia, 34 Levin, Carole, 7, 77, n. 88 Louis XIII, 68 Luther, Martin, 55 Macandro, King, 121–2 Maillefer, Jean, 55, n. 61 Malte, John, 86 Malte, Ethelreda, 86 Markham, Isabella, 86 marriage, 2, 4, 8, 11, 12, 61, 64–72, 74, 91, n. 75, 77, 82, 86, 87, 94, 96, 104, n. 115, 117–18, 129, 167, 169, n. 180, 189, 196–7, 200, 202, 208 abuse in, 11, 206, 209 arranged, 4, 64–70, 86, 96 consanguinuity, 72 dynastic, 116 equal, 197 in Venice, n. 126 non-mutual, 134 not consummated, 131 opposed to, 202 politics of, 68–9, 72, 83, 104 re-marriage, 189 resistance to, 66–7, 74, 93, 132, 134 romantic, 207 royal, 77, 82 status from, 92–3 suffered in, 213 troubled, 207 unhappy, 104 unmarriageable daughters, 120 Mary Sidney Herbert, Countess of Pembroke, watercolour on vellum, 96 Mary, Queen of England, 77, fig. 78, 79–86 Maternal Measures, 228–9 maternity, 182–3 Mc Bride, Kari Boyd, 28 McPherson, Kathryn, 10, n. 13, 182 Medicis, Marie de, 64, 68, 70

Melissea, 109, 111, n. 115 Mendelson, Sara, 2, 11, n. 12, 206, 229 Methought I Saw My Late Espoused Saint, 183 Middle Ages, 54, 175 Miller, Naomi, 9, n. 12, 150, n. 165, 228, n. 230 Milton, John, 183 Miranda, 150–56, 158–61, n. 162–3 Moffet, Thomas, 98 monachizations, coerced, 3-4, n. 14, 131 monarchy, biblical, 148 monasteries, 53, 60 female, 53 male, 53 Protestant, 60 Monson, Craig A., 40, n. 50–51 Monti, Catterina, 50 More, Margaret (Roper), 28, 30 More, Thomas, 28, 31 More, Gertrude (Helen) Dame, 31 Mornay, Philip, 100 mothers, 1, n. 13, 150, 218 music, 40, 43–50, n. 50, n. 51 Namjoshi, Suniti, 160 Navarre, Kingdom of, 67 Navarre, Marguerite, de, 65 necrologies, 55 Netherlands, 7 Nineteenth century, 216, 221 nuns, 40–50 advocates for, 40, 46, 48 Bolognese, 41, 46 from convent of San Giovanni, 41 musical, 45–8 siblings as, 43–5, 47, 50 O’Connor, Mary, 11, 206, 229 Oliver, John, 184 On the Death of my Deare Sister the Countesse of Bridgewater dying in Childbed, Delivered of a dead Infant a son, the 14th day of June, 1663, 190 Orlando furioso, 116 Orlin, Lena, 85 Osment, Philip, 160 Page, R., fig. 78 Paleotti, Archbishop Alfonso, 40

INDEX Pamphilia, 105–8, 110, 112–14, n. 115 pamphlets, 53–5, 57–8, 60 Paris, 30, 32–3, 65, 68, 71, 207–8 French court at, 208 religious wars in, 209 Parr, Katherine, 77, 86 Parry, Thomas, 79 Parselius, 108–9, n. 115 Paster, Gail Kern, 184 Pastorall, 196, 198, fig. 199, 200, fig. 201, 202, fig. 203, n. 204 patriarchy, 2, 9, 213 struggles within, 213 Peele, George, 140–48 Peringieri, Ilya, 173 Perissus, 108–10 Perrot, Sir Thomas, 85 Perrot, Sir John, 85–6 Phillip II, 86 Piacentini, Margarita, 55 Pirckheimer, Charitas, 6 Pizan, Christine de’, 175 Plessis-Mornay, Philippe Du, 71, 73, n. 76 Poems, Songs, a Pastorall, and a Play, 189 Pollock, Linda, 185 Post-Reformation, 37 Prospero, 150–62 prostitute (prostitution), 120, 167 reformed, 42 Protestantism, 5, 53, 64–5, 67, 70–72, n. 75, 80, 86, 91, 182, 184, 187, 192 Psalmes, 100 Puritan, 183–4 Queen Anne, 104 Queen of Albania, 105, 112 rape, 140–45, 153 Reformation, 28, 30, 53, 58–60 Reimarus, Elise, 2, 11, n. 13, 216–24 Renaissance, 28, 36, 116, 147, 172, 175 art, 175 chess, 175 comedies, 116 England, 147, 195 feminist interest in, 228 history plays, 141, 144, 146, 148 lady of, 172 literature, 140, 145 love poetry, 145

235

marital relationships, 134 moral system of, 131 romance, 116–18, 121, 123, 125, n. 125 social order of, 135 symbolism in art of, 175 theatre, 141 Renard, Simon, 81, 83–4 Ricciardetto, 8 ricercari, 136 Risamante, 116–25 Robert Sidney, 1st Earl of Leicester, oil on canvas, 95 Rogers, Daniel, 94, 96 Rose, Mary Beth, 1, n. 13, 186 Roston, Murray, 145, n. 149 Rubens, Peter Paul, 4 Rule and Exercises of Holy Dying, rules, Monastic, 54 Sacre symphoniae, 136 Saint Catherine of Siena, 17 Saint Bartholomew’s Day massacre, 65 sainthood, 10, 17–18, 20, 21, 24, n. 26 Salic Law, 67 Self–Portrait Playing the Virginals (painting), 169, fig. 170, 173, n. 180 Seventeenth-century, 28–9, 31–2, n. 37, 41–2, 47, 161, 184, 192, 208, 216 Seymour, Thomas, 79, 86 Shakespeare, 1, 9, n. 13, 150–51, 154, 156, 159–60 siblings, advice from, 112 affectionate bonds between, 2, 66, 79, 91, 105, 107, 151, 172, 190, 195, 200, 202, 207, 213 alliances, 42, 67, 93 as friends, 17 brother–brother, 58, 91, 94, 151 collaboration, 48 competition between, 151, 153 conversations between, 107 dangerous, 77, 87 deceased, 2, 10, 81, 90, 94, 96 division of, 151 emotional support of, 105, 113, 210, 216 English, 7, 77–87, 89–101, 206–13 estranged, 152 financial support, n. 26, 53, n. 62, 210

236

INDEX

siblings, advice from, contd. forgiveness, 161 fraternal of opposite sex, 116 fraternal conflict, 151 French, 4, 64 German, 60, 216–24 imbalance of power between, 7, 68, 150 in convents, 41–3, 46–8, 53 in Shakespeare’s comedies, n. 13 in Shakespeare’s dramas, 150–51, 154 in Spanish and Italian theater, n. 13 intervention between, 107, 112 learning from, 12 legal support of, 131 male, 47 manipulation of, 79 mourning a, 100, 184 musicians, 43–5, 47, 50 nineteenth century, 11 political support, 53 problematic, 77 psychological support of, 210 public support of, 20, 218 Reformation, 6 relationships, 40, 42, 46, 106–114, 151–2, 206, 216 rivalry, 9, 84 royal, 64, 105 shame of, 9, 81 sister–brother, 5, 18, 40, 53, 56–8, 64, 70, 77, 91, 94, 97, 108–114, 125, 151–2, 179, 195, 216–17 sister–sister, 40–48, 54-5, 53, 57, 77, 84–5, 116, 118, 122–3, 125, 155–6, 160, 166–7, 172, 178, 182, 196, 198, 200, 202, 206–13 sixteenth century, 129–36 supportive, 18, 23, 109, 185, 192, 221, 224 tension between, 197–8 ties, 40, 46 twins, female, 116–17 violence against, 142 Sidney, Elizabeth, 90, 92 Sidney, Ambrosia, 90 Sidney, Barbara Gamage, 97 Sidney, Mary Dudley, 90 Sidney, Philip Sir, 7, n. 13 Sidney, Robert, 7, fig. 95, 98–9, 101

Sidney, Thomas, 7, 89–91, 94, 96, 98, 100 Sidney, William, 97 Simons, Patricia, 175 sister (hood), 40, 202, 213 affection, 159 as a confidant, 218 celebration of, 180 communality, 172 during childbearing, 185 educational, 28 encouragement of a, 221 familial, 10–11, 81, 167, 180, 182, 206–13 feminist, 1 jealously, 159 mourning, 216 reciprocity, 167 reconciliation, 161 religious, 5–6, 28 responsibilities, 91 ties, 118 within convents, 40–48, n. 51 within poetry, 183 sixteenth century, 28, 30–33, 36, 60, 65, 116–17, 120, 131, 140–41, 167, 180, 183 culture, 117 England, 140 Italian art of, 173 Italy, 167 literature, 117 movement within, 183 portraiture of, 172 social codes, 131 treatise on chess, 180 Snapshots of Caliban, 160 sodomy, 147 sororal bonds, 172, 183, 190, 195, 198, 200 Spain, 15 Spalding, Almut, 11, n. 13, 216, n. 225 Spenser, Edmund, 89, 98 Stampa, Gaspara, 3, n. 13 Steriamus, 108, 110 Stevenson, Jane, 29, 30, n. 37 Stilling, Roger, 141 Stuart, Mary, 85 Subordination and Authorship, 189 Talbot, Anne Herbert, 93 Tarabotti, Arcangela, 3, n.14 Tasso, Torquato, 116

INDEX Taylor, Jeremy, 186 Teresa of Jesus, 17, 20, 22, n. 25, n. 26 Terzo libro de madrigali a cinque voci, 136 Thamar, 140–45, 148 The Alchemist, 104 The Chess Game (painting), 168 The Concealed Fancies, 196, 200 The Countesse of Montgomery’s Urania, 104 The Doleful Lay of Clorinda, 89 The Lady Falkland: Her Life, 35 The Life and Death of Mistress Margaret Clitherow, 36 The History of the Life, Reign, and Death of Edward II, 35 The Ruines of Time, 98 The Tempest, 150–51, 154, 159, 160–61, n. 162 The Tempest, or The Enchanted Island, 154–5 The Worth of Women, 120, 125 Thirteen Cantos of Floridoro (Tredici canti del Floridoro), 116 This Island’s Mine, 160 Thornton, Alice, 10–11, 182, 184–5, 190 Tiepolo, Patriarch Giovanni, 3 Titian, fig. 170, 173, fig. 174, n. 180 To the Angel Spirit of the Most Excellent Sir Philip Sidney, 89, 100 Tragedie of Mariam, Faire Queene of Jewry, 34–5 Travitsky, Betty, 189 Tridentine, 130–31, 134, n. 137 Trill, Suzanne, 188 Trost Clostergefangene, 57 True Coppies of Certain Loose Papers left by ye Right Honorable Elizabeth, Countess of Bridgewater, Collected and Transcribed Together here since her Death, Anno Domimi 1663, 189 Trumbull, Elizabeth Cottrell, Lady, 11, 206–13, n. 214 Trumbull, William, 207–8, 213 Tudor, Elizabeth, 77 twins, fraternal of opposite sex, 116 opposite sex, 8 same-sex male,1, 4, 8 same-sex female, 8, 116–18, 123 Two Chess Players (painting), fig.176 Tyrwhitt, Robert Sir, 79 Urania, 104–14

237

Ursula of Munsterberg, 56 Valois, Marguerite de, 65, n. 75 Van Somer, Paul, fig. 95 Vaquero, Miguel Gonzalez Dr., 19, 21, 22, n. 25 Vasari, Giorgio, 166–7, 169, 172, 178, n. 181 Venice, convents in, 3, 60 domestic spaces, 134 familial inheritance in, 120 marital relationships, 134 social codes, n. 126, 131, 135 state, 4, 117, 129 Venus and Cupid with an Organist (painting), fig. 171 Vetter, Veronica, 54 Vetter, Walpurgis, 54 Vetter, Christina, 54 Virgil, 118 Virgin Mary, 10, 166, 175, 182–3, 186, 192 virtues, 2, 10, 32 Christian, 32 feminine, 192 maternal, 183 sister’s, 188 women’s, 10 Vives, Juan, 28 Von Blitze (On Lightning), 218 Von Geduertheym, Matthias Wurm, 57 Von Geduertheym, Anna, 57 Vulgate, 29, 37 Walsh, James, 29, 37 Ward, Mary, 29–30, 32–4, 37, n. 38 Warnicke, Retha, 85 Whitney-Brown, Carolyn, 144 Wiesner-Hanks, Merry, 6, n. 12 Wigmore, Winifred, 29, 33, 37 womanhood, 8 bonds of, 185 cultural, 116 expectations, 91, 183 religious, 5 responsibilities, 91 women abused, 132, 209, 212 ambitious, 207 Anglican, 185 artists, 10, 167, 172

238

INDEX

women contd. authors, 10, 160, 167, 182–4, 189–90, 195, 216, 220 body as an instrument, 169 beautiful, 122 Catholic, 28–9, 33–6, 59 Christian, 188, 191 commodity, 123 constrained, 2 degradation, 212 desired, 141, 145 determination of, 116 died in childbirth, 10 dying, 186, 216 education, 30, 36 educators, 31, 216–17 egoism, 160 elite, 28 English, 28 feminine, 116 free with their tongues, 167 icons, 183 idolized, 188 in convents, 3, 40, 42–3, 53–5 in coerced monachizations, 4, 132 in misery, 133 Italian, 40 of the Early Modern period, 10, 160, 217 of the Renaissance, 2, 167 learning, 5, 91 literary career of, 93 married, 130 narcissistic, 124 noblewoman, 167 option for, n. 137 patrician, 316, 53, 91 persistence of, 109 playing chess, 175 political career of, 93 political interests, 222 praised, 33 Protestant, 28–9, 33–4, 59–60, 80 religious, 54, 60

represented in art, 169 self-sacrifice, 186 servant, 167 sexual, 123 siblings, 43 spiritual life of, 29 stereotypes of, 116, 173 strength, in, 116 suffering, 184 viewed as saints, 183 virginal, 166–7, 169, 173, 175, 177 virtuous, 166, 175, 178, 183 wisdom of, 109 writings, 33, 58–9, 99, 116–17, 207, 219–20 work of, 10, 173 Woodford, Elizabeth, 31 Woolf, Virginia, 160 writings, autobiographical, 23, 89, 98, 182, 189 backstabbing used in, 117 children’s dialogues, 220–21 chivalric romances, 116–18, 123, n. 125 educational, 219 history plays, 141, 144, 146, 148 how-to manuals, 220 letter between siblings, 18–19, 22, 56–7, 60, 94, 207 narratives, aggression used in, 117 fraternal strife used in, 117 pedagogical, 218 Petrarchan style, 119, 136 poetry, 98–9 political treatise, 222 religious, 35, 58 Renaissance love poetry, 145 Socratic method, 220 unwilling brides in, 135 Wroth, Sir Robert, 104 Wroth, Mary Lady, 7, 104 Wyatt, Thomas, 82 Yavneh, Naomi, 10, 12, n. 13, 166, 228