Practices of Gender in Late Medieval and Early Modern Europe PDF
Preview Practices of Gender in Late Medieval and Early Modern Europe
PRACTICES OF GENDER IN LATE MEDIEVAL AND EARLY MODERN EUROPE LATE MEDIEVAL AND EARLY MODERN STUDIES PRACTICES OF GENDER IN LATE MEDIEVAL AND Editorial Board under the auspices of The Faculty of Arts, University of Melbourne, EARLY MODERN EUROPE and the Arizona Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies Ian Moulton, Chair Arizona State University Frederick Kiefer University of Arizona Stephanie Trigg University of Melbourne Charles Zika University of Melbourne Edited by Megan Cassidy-Welch and Peter Sherlock Advisory Board Jaynie Anderson University of Melbourne John Cashmere La Trobe University Megan Cassidy-Welch University of Melbourne Albrecht Classen University of Arizona Robert W. Gaston La Trobe University John Griffiths University of Melbourne Anthony Gully Arizona State University Bill Kent Monash University Anne Scott Northern Arizona University Juliann Vitullo Arizona State University Emil Volek Arizona State University Retha Warnicke Arizona State University Previously published volumes in this series are listed at the back of the book. H F VOLUME 11 LATE MEDIEVAL AND EARLY MODERN STUDIES PRACTICES OF GENDER IN LATE MEDIEVAL AND Editorial Board under the auspices of The Faculty of Arts, University of Melbourne, EARLY MODERN EUROPE and the Arizona Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies Ian Moulton, Chair Arizona State University Frederick Kiefer University of Arizona Stephanie Trigg University of Melbourne Charles Zika University of Melbourne Edited by Megan Cassidy-Welch and Peter Sherlock Advisory Board Jaynie Anderson University of Melbourne John Cashmere La Trobe University Megan Cassidy-Welch University of Melbourne Albrecht Classen University of Arizona Robert W. Gaston La Trobe University John Griffiths University of Melbourne Anthony Gully Arizona State University Bill Kent Monash University Anne Scott Northern Arizona University Juliann Vitullo Arizona State University Emil Volek Arizona State University Retha Warnicke Arizona State University Previously published volumes in this series are listed at the back of the book. H F VOLUME 11 British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data Practices of gender in late medieval and early modern Europe. - (Late medieval and early modern studies ; v. 11) 1. Women - History - Middle Ages, 500-1500 2. Women - History - Renaissance, 1450-1600 3. Feminist theory I. Cassidy-Welch, Megan II. Sherlock, Peter 305.4'0902 CONTENTS ISBN-13: 9782503523361 List of Illustrations vii Introduction 1 MEGAN CASSIDY-WELCH AND PETER SHERLOCK Gender Theory and the Study of Early-Modern Europe 7 MERRY WIESNER-HANKS Pushing the Boundaries: Argula von Grumbach as a 25 Lutheran Laywoman, 1492–1556/7 PETER MATHESON A Woman’s Path to Literacy: The Letters of 43 Margherita Datini, 1384–1410 CAROLYN JAMES Convent Culture in Early-Modern Italy: Laywomen 57 and Religious Subversiveness in a Neapolitan Convent © 2008, Brepols Publishers n.v., Turnhout, Belgium CAMILLA RUSSELL Gender, Hybridity, and Violence on the Frontiers 77 All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, of Late-Medieval and Early-Modern Ireland stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, DIANNE HALL AND ELIZABETH MALCOLM electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, The Queen’s Three Bodies: Gender, Criminality, and 99 without the prior permission of the publisher. Sovereignty in the Execution of Mary, Queen of Scots RAYNE ALLINSON D/2008/0095/126 ISBN: 978-2-503-52336-1 The Royal Art of Conjugal Discord: A Satirical 117 Double Portrait of Francis I and Eleanor of Austria LISA MANSFIELD Printed in the E.U. on acid-free paper British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data Practices of gender in late medieval and early modern Europe. - (Late medieval and early modern studies ; v. 11) 1. Women - History - Middle Ages, 500-1500 2. Women - History - Renaissance, 1450-1600 3. Feminist theory I. Cassidy-Welch, Megan II. Sherlock, Peter 305.4'0902 CONTENTS ISBN-13: 9782503523361 List of Illustrations vii Introduction 1 MEGAN CASSIDY-WELCH AND PETER SHERLOCK Gender Theory and the Study of Early-Modern Europe 7 MERRY WIESNER-HANKS Pushing the Boundaries: Argula von Grumbach as a 25 Lutheran Laywoman, 1492–1556/7 PETER MATHESON A Woman’s Path to Literacy: The Letters of 43 Margherita Datini, 1384–1410 CAROLYN JAMES Convent Culture in Early-Modern Italy: Laywomen 57 and Religious Subversiveness in a Neapolitan Convent © 2008, Brepols Publishers n.v., Turnhout, Belgium CAMILLA RUSSELL Gender, Hybridity, and Violence on the Frontiers 77 All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, of Late-Medieval and Early-Modern Ireland stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, DIANNE HALL AND ELIZABETH MALCOLM electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, The Queen’s Three Bodies: Gender, Criminality, and 99 without the prior permission of the publisher. Sovereignty in the Execution of Mary, Queen of Scots RAYNE ALLINSON D/2008/0095/126 ISBN: 978-2-503-52336-1 The Royal Art of Conjugal Discord: A Satirical 117 Double Portrait of Francis I and Eleanor of Austria LISA MANSFIELD Printed in the E.U. on acid-free paper Engendering Lust in Early-Modern Italy: 137 Pisanello’s Luxuria CATHERINE KOVESI Cornelius Agrippa’s School of Love: Teaching Plato’s 151 Symposium at the Renaissance University GRANTLEY MCDONALD ‘The richest man in Italy’: Aldo Manuzio 177 ILLUSTRATIONS and the Value of Male Friendships ROSA SALZBERG Women, Work, and Power in the Female Guilds of Rouen 199 SUSAN BROOMHALL Textile Workers, Gender, and the Organization 215 of Production in the Pre-Industrial Dutch Republic Mansfield ELISE VAN NEDERVEEN MEERKERK Figure 1, p. 118. Anonymous (English or French?), Francis I and Eleanor, Queen Charitable Bodies: Clothing as Charity 235 of France, panel, 81 × 56cm, sixteenth century. The Royal Collection of Her in Early-Modern Rural England Majesty Queen Elizabeth II, RCIN 403371. Reproduced with permission. DOLLY MACKINNON Commemorating a Mortal Goddess: Maria Salviati 261 Kovesi de’ Medici and the Cultural Politics of Duke Cosimo I Figure 2, p. 138. Antonio Pisanello, Luxuria, pen and brown ink, 129 × 152mm, NATALIE TOMAS c. 1425–39. Vienna, Graphische Sammlung Albertina, inv. 24018r. Repro- Patriarchal Memory: Monuments in Early-Modern England 279 duced with permission. PETER SHERLOCK Figure 3, p. 142. Francesco del Cossa, Triumph of Venus, detail from Month of Agency, Women, and Witchcraft in Early-Modern England: 301 April, fresco, c. 1469–70. Palazzo Schifanoia, Ferrara. Photograph by Scala, Rye, 1607–11 Florence. Reproduced with permission. ELIZABETH KENT Figure 4, p. 148. Aphrodite Pandemos, agate and onyx cameo, Roman, late Augus- Reflecting and Creating Gender in Late-Medieval 317 tan period. Museo Nazionale, Naples. Reproduced with permission. and Early-Modern Europe MEGAN CASSIDY-WELCH AND PETER SHERLOCK Sherlock List of Contributors 327 Figure 5, p. 280. Monument of Thomas and Elizabeth Eyre and monument of Christopher Eyre, c. 1625. St Thomas’s, Salisbury. Photograph. Reproduced with permission of the National Monuments Record, English Heritage. Engendering Lust in Early-Modern Italy: 137 Pisanello’s Luxuria CATHERINE KOVESI Cornelius Agrippa’s School of Love: Teaching Plato’s 151 Symposium at the Renaissance University GRANTLEY MCDONALD ‘The richest man in Italy’: Aldo Manuzio 177 ILLUSTRATIONS and the Value of Male Friendships ROSA SALZBERG Women, Work, and Power in the Female Guilds of Rouen 199 SUSAN BROOMHALL Textile Workers, Gender, and the Organization 215 of Production in the Pre-Industrial Dutch Republic Mansfield ELISE VAN NEDERVEEN MEERKERK Figure 1, p. 118. Anonymous (English or French?), Francis I and Eleanor, Queen Charitable Bodies: Clothing as Charity 235 of France, panel, 81 × 56cm, sixteenth century. The Royal Collection of Her in Early-Modern Rural England Majesty Queen Elizabeth II, RCIN 403371. Reproduced with permission. DOLLY MACKINNON Commemorating a Mortal Goddess: Maria Salviati 261 Kovesi de’ Medici and the Cultural Politics of Duke Cosimo I Figure 2, p. 138. Antonio Pisanello, Luxuria, pen and brown ink, 129 × 152mm, NATALIE TOMAS c. 1425–39. Vienna, Graphische Sammlung Albertina, inv. 24018r. Repro- Patriarchal Memory: Monuments in Early-Modern England 279 duced with permission. PETER SHERLOCK Figure 3, p. 142. Francesco del Cossa, Triumph of Venus, detail from Month of Agency, Women, and Witchcraft in Early-Modern England: 301 April, fresco, c. 1469–70. Palazzo Schifanoia, Ferrara. Photograph by Scala, Rye, 1607–11 Florence. Reproduced with permission. ELIZABETH KENT Figure 4, p. 148. Aphrodite Pandemos, agate and onyx cameo, Roman, late Augus- Reflecting and Creating Gender in Late-Medieval 317 tan period. Museo Nazionale, Naples. Reproduced with permission. and Early-Modern Europe MEGAN CASSIDY-WELCH AND PETER SHERLOCK Sherlock List of Contributors 327 Figure 5, p. 280. Monument of Thomas and Elizabeth Eyre and monument of Christopher Eyre, c. 1625. St Thomas’s, Salisbury. Photograph. Reproduced with permission of the National Monuments Record, English Heritage. INTRODUCTION Megan Cassidy-Welch and Peter Sherlock his collection of essays originated in a symposium held at Ormond T College, University of Melbourne in 2004. The participants in that symposium presented a vibrant and provocative set of papers around the theme of gender in early-modern Europe. It is the intellectual synergy between those papers that we hope to convey in the publication of this volume. We have included most of the papers presented at that symposium, in revised and expanded form, together with a number of additional, commissioned essays. We expanded the chronological parameters to include ‘late-medieval’ in the title of this book: we understand the time sweep thus named to represent the period from roughly the fourteenth century through to the early eighteenth century. There is some regional breadth to the essays here, which range across western Europe to include Ireland, England, France, the Low Countries, Italy, and Germany. Italy and England are particularly well-represented. Although we were keen to promote some regional diversity in this collection, we are also very aware that ‘Europe’ is a rather nebulous category when applied to early modernity, and that there are many other areas and regions which are deserving of study in another volume. We believe, however, that the range of approaches and subjects contained within these pages well demonstrates the myriad nature of gender practices in late-medieval and early-modern contexts. Broadly, there are two purposes to this volume. The first is to explore the practice of gender in a number of specific historical contexts in order to add to our understanding of gender construction, representation, and experience. The second purpose is to explore the idea of gender as an historical practice. How do we, twenty years after Joan Scott’s invention of gender as a ‘category of historical analysis’, deploy and imagine that category in our historical writing? To address these two issues, we have included essays on the basis that they are founded on 2 Megan Cassidy-Welch and Peter Sherlock INTRODUCTION 3 detailed empirical scholarship and that they respond to the idea of gender as a the figure of Giulia Gonzaga just how autonomous, malleable, and complex these methodological tool. The essays individually add to our specific knowledge of institutions could be. Women could exercise very unexpected and sometimes people, practice, and place, whilst simultaneously deploying and/or critiquing radical degrees of control in these convents, existing, as they could, in female- gender as a way of writing the past. defined ‘third spaces’ within. We begin this collection with an historiographical overview by Merry The fluidity of space might be teased out in quite different contexts, as we see Wiesner-Hanks who, in erudite and lively fashion, tracks the theoretical and in the essay by Dianne Hall and Elizabeth Malcolm on gender, hybridity, and methodological shifts in writing gender history over recent decades. Wiesner- violence on the Irish frontiers. Hall and Malcolm show us that women and men Hanks flags the main preoccupations of gender historians to show just how were responsible for the creation of a ‘middle nation’ in late-medieval Ireland, intellectually receptive gender history is and can be. Gender history is not only where English and Irish cultures could exist in the same space simultaneously. It about women, or even men, but is a way of engaging with all social, political, and is through unpacking the historical constructions of hybridization and violence, cultural contexts. Reading through discourses such as class, colonialism, sexuality, argue Hall and Malcolm, that we can see how masculinist their traditional nation, and religion with an eye to the embedded nature of gender is both definitions have been. In this instance, gender is not only a useful category of illuminating and encouraging, according to Wiesner-Hanks. Perhaps, she hopes, historical analysis, but is a crucial means of understanding the social and political such readings will soon be automatic. formulation of late-medieval Ireland. Peter Matheson’s essay explores the world inhabited by one Lutheran laywoman, Rayne Allinson also pursues issues surrounding violence, examining space, Argula von Grumbach. Matheson considers one woman’s extraordinary attempts movement, and imagery to provide a fresh interpretation of the execution of at protest to argue that — singular as Argula was — ‘the times were against Mary Queen of Scots. Mary’s body, gendered female and labelled criminal, was her’. Matheson’s conclusions remind us that the categories we often use to write subjected to a well-established ritual in the formal manner of her death at the gender history, categories such as ‘agency’ or even ‘autonomy’, need to be hands of the English government. Allinson’s detailed reading of the surviving carefully historicized. This is not to deny the vociferous and resolute nature of accounts of the execution leads her to argue that Mary was not a passive victim women like Argula; rather, Matheson makes the trenchant observation that our but used clothing, speech, and movement to ‘resist the criminal identity imposed expectations of female action might not always be reflected in the historical on her by the punishment ritual’. In so doing, she laid the foundations for a mirror. whole industry dedicated to retelling her story in the roles of female ruler and Carolyn James continues the theme of ‘agency’ in a careful and insightful martyr and pushed the execution ritual to breaking point. essay on Margherita Datini. Her analysis of Margherita’s late-medieval letters The gendered representation of power lies at the heart of Lisa Mansfield’s shows that epistolary writing was a practice to which women were attracted for reading of the double portrait of Francis I of France and his bride Eleanor of the possibilities it offered their self-expression. Margherita wrote openly and Austria. Probably commissioned by Henry VIII, the satirical image indicates emotionally to her sometimes bewildered husband, forging a space in which her how even Europe’s most powerful individuals, male rulers, engaged in political demands were heard and her frustration articulated. James’s essay shows the discourse based on particular notions of and anxieties about masculine sexual wonderful richness of women’s letter writing, arguing that through the act of behaviour. Marital discord was a chink in the armour of propaganda necessary correspondence ‘for which [they] were perceived to have a particularly affinity’, to the exercise of authority, and Henry VIII — even if only privately — took the women provided meaningful insights into the spheres of education, marriage, opportunity to lampoon his French rival. and emotion, whilst also creating expressive spaces for themselves. Images which drew attention to gendered bodies and behaviours could be The construction and use of space in an Italian context is also the focus of used to explore not only individual characters and attributes but also abstract Camilla Russell’s essay on convent culture in Naples during the early to mid- ideas. In Catherine Kovesi’s excellent and provocative analysis of Pisanello’s sixteenth century. Here, Russell considers the activities of Giulia Gonzaga, a Luxuria we see just how indefinite and unhelpful binary categories of male and laywoman in a convent, and her connections with religious unorthodoxy. Russell female could be for an artist attempting to depict lust. It is the hermaphroditic forces us to rethink the nature of female religious houses, demonstrating through and transformative quality of Pisanello’s figure which allowed the artist to denote
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