The Enclosed Renaissance: Intellectual and Spiritual Learning in Early Modern Venetian Convents

206 Pages·2018·0.733 MB·English

by  Charlotte Cover Moy

NORTHWESTERN UNIVERSITY

The Enclosed Renaissance:
Intellectual and Spiritual Learning in Early Modern Venetian Convents

A DISSERTATION

SUBMITTED TO THE GRADUATE SCHOOL
IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OF THE REQUIRMENTS

for the degree

DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY

Field of History

By

Charlotte Cover Moy

EVANSTON, ILLINOIS

June 2018
(cid:3)
(cid:3)
(cid:3)
(cid:3)
ProQuest Number:10792618
(cid:3)
(cid:3)
(cid:3)
(cid:3)
All rights reserved
(cid:3)
INFORMATION TO ALL USERS
Thequality of this reproduction is dependent upon the qualityof the copy submitted.
(cid:3)
In the unlikely event that the authordid not send a complete manuscript
and there are missing pages,these will be noted. Also, if material had to be removed,
a notewill indicate the deletion.
(cid:3)
(cid:3)
(cid:3)
(cid:3)
(cid:3)
ProQuest 10792618
(cid:3)
Published by ProQuest LLC ( 2018). Copyrightof the Dissertation is held by the Author.
(cid:3)
(cid:3)
All rights reserved.
This work is protected against unauthorized copying under Title 17, United States Code
Microform Edition © ProQuest LLC.
(cid:3)
(cid:3)
ProQuest LLC.
789 East Eisenhower Parkway
P.O. Box 1346
Ann Arbor, MI 48106 - 1346
2
ABSTRACT
The Enclosed Renaissance:
Intellectual and Spiritual Learning in Early Modern Venetian Convents

Charlotte Cover Moy

Convent education was financially accessible to many girls whose families could not
afford a private tutor and nuns were the largest group of educated, culturally-active women in
pre-modern Europe. Convent education mirrored the general contours of humanist education by
associating learning with morality, serving the purposes of the Venetian republic, and providing
an education relevant to the class and social positions of the students. But convent education also
differed in fundamental ways from other sources of education because it allowed lifelong
intellectual exploration within a community of women. Convents valued reading and writing as
ways to develop the intellect and the spirit simultaneously, while also sometimes allowing
creative expression through theater. As a result, women could pursue intellectual enrichment
throughout their lives and some used the opportunity to advance feminist arguments. Former
convent students, both nuns and married women, used their knowledge to educate other women,
argue for the spiritual and intellectual equality of women, and correspond with prominent
thinkers of the time.
3
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

I have been privileged to work with many professors at Northwestern and they all shaped
my work in some way. I owe a special debt of gratitude to Ed Muir, an excellent advisor who
offered both constructive criticism and unwavering encouragement at every stage in this project.
I also thank my committee members, Scott Sowerby and Dyan Elliott, for reading and improving
each chapter. Classes by Ken Alder were crucial for my development as a scholar and Alex
Owen’s course on women’s history was fundamental in the initial formulation of my dissertation
topic.
My archival research in Venice would not have been possible without preliminary
research funding from the Northwestern University Graduate School and funding for nine
months of work in the Venetian archives from the Gladys Krieble Delmas Foundation. I received
advice about sources early on from Sarah Ross and Christopher Carlsmith, while Monique
O’Connell was infinitely helpful when she found me wandering confused on my first day at the
Archivio di Stato. Dan Riches, my undergraduate advisor, continued to provide academic advice
and friendship throughout my graduate career. Everyone in my virtual writing groups, especially
Jessica Pouchet and Morganna Lambeth, provided encouragement and writing feedback during a
critical stage of the writing process.
It seems impossible to sufficiently thank the family and friends who have supported me
before and during graduate school. I would not have reached this stage in my life and education
without my loving parents, James and Christine Cover. I owe a great deal to my sisters: Mary-
Caroline Benson, whose detailed proofreading of my first graduate school papers taught me more
about writing than any class and Sarah Cover, whose willingness to discuss Church history and
the history of science often kept me motivated. I am grateful to have formed friendships with my
4
“academic twin,” Joel Penning and my favorite art historian, Catherine Olien, who each offered
the ideal combination of loyal friendship and academic conversation over the past seven years. I
must also thank many other friends who listened to far more talk about Venetian nuns and
writing woes than they ever expected: Liz Lane Bryan, Johnna Dominguez, Linn Groft, Christi
Positan, Jennifer Morrison, and Madeliene Weaver. Finally, my deepest gratitude belongs to
Richard Moy and Genevieve Moy for joining me on this journey and many more.
5
ABBREVIATIONS

ACPV Archivio della Curia Patriarcale di Venezia
ASV Archivio di Stato di Venezia
BMC Biblioteca Museo Correr, Venezia
BNM Biblioteca Nazionale Marciana, Venezia
6

CONTENTS

I. Introduction 7

II. The World as Her Province or the Cell as Her World?: Early Modern Pedagogy 24
and the Convents
1. Introduction
2. Humanism and Venetian Priorities
3. Venetian Schools
4. Social and Vocational Training
5. Virtue, Rhetoric, and Creativity
6. Conclusion

III. Arcangela Tarabotti, The Convent Feminist 88
1. Introduction
2. Tarabotti’s Knowledge and Education
3. Tarabotti’s Feminist Arguments
4. Conclusion

IV. Maria Alberghetti and La Compagnia delle Dimesse 122
1. Introduction
2. Third Order Nuns and the Venetian Republic
3. The Schools of Christian Doctrine
4. Conclusion

V. Drawing Gold from the Mines: Moderata Fonte, Former Educanda 163
1. Introduction
2. Support for the Education of Women
3. The Argument for Convent Education
3. Conclusion

Conclusion 195

Bibliography 198
7
I. Introduction
In The Worth of Women, Moderata Fonte (1555-1592) presents a striking picture of
liberty as one of six figures in a fountain. Liberty holds a sun, which, as the widowed character
Leonora explains, “stands free and alone, giving light to itself and sharing its light with the
whole universe.”1 The fountain was designed by Leonora’s aunt, who never married. Thus
Leonora explains that the figure of liberty symbolizes that “my aunt, living free and alone as she
did… shared the treasures of her mind with every person of refinement with whom she came into
contact – something she might not have been able to do under the rule and command of a
husband.”2 This is an interesting perspective in a society where marriage or life as a nun were
typically the only options for a woman. But Venice often proved to be an exceptional place in
terms of women’s educational accomplishments: far more than in other Italian cities, examples
abound of women who gave inaugural speeches, lived independently from their husbands, or
wrote in defense of their sex.
Convent education was financially accessible to many girls whose families could not
afford a private tutor, and nuns were the largest group of educated women in pre-modern Europe.
Convent education mirrored the general contours of humanist education by associating learning

1 “La terza è la Libertà e l’impresa è il Sole, il quale libero e solo illustrando se stesso comparte
la sua luce a tutto l’universo…”Moderata Fonte, Il Merito Delle Donne: Ove Chiaramante Si
Scuopre Quanto Siano Elle Degne e Più Perfette De Lil Uomini, ed. Adriana Chemello
(Venezia: Editrice Eidos, 1988), 22; The English translation is from Moderata Fonte, The
Worth of Women: Wherin Is Clearly Revealed Their Nobility and Their Superiority to Men, ed.
and trans. Virginia Cox, The Other Voice in Early Modern Europe (Chicago: The University
of Chicago Press, 1997), 55.
2 “…dinotando che ella libera e sola divenne Chiara per molte degne ed onorate qualità e ha
compartito anco i tesori della sua virtú ad ogni gentile spirito, che ne ha avuto conoscenza; il
che sotto la signoria ed imperio del marito, forse non averiapotuto fare.” Fonte, Il Merito
Delle Donne, 22; The English translation is from Fonte, The Worth of Women, 55.
8
with morality, serving the purposes of the Venetian republic, and providing an education relevant
to the class and social positions of the students. But convent education also differed in
fundamental ways from other sources of education because it allowed lifelong intellectual
exploration within a community of women. Convents valued reading and writing as ways to
develop the intellect and the spirit simultaneously, while also sometimes allowing creative
expression through theater. As a result, women could pursue intellectual enrichment throughout
their lives, and some used the opportunity to advance feminist arguments. Former convent
students, both nuns and married women, used their knowledge to educate other women, argue for
the spiritual and intellectual equality of women, and correspond with prominent thinkers of the
time.
Studies of women’s education in Venice have been hampered by several factors. Early
forays into women’s history ignored the importance of women’s education entirely, rarely
studying educated women and then only to recognize the unusual nature of their
accomplishments. Recent studies have assigned more importance to educated women but have
still disparaged the education received both at home and in convents by dividing men’s and
women’s education into the categories of “public” and “private.” These divisions ignore the fact
that all education aimed to increase virtue and prepare young people for their future careers,
whether in government, business, or as homemakers. While interest in convents has increased
over the past twenty years and scholars have recognized that they offered creative opportunities
to young women, many scholars see convent education as irrelevant to large cultural
developments because nuns were under strict enclosure. I demonstrate that convents offered
young women an education comparable to that received by many young men and that convent-
educated women used their knowledge to advance themselves and the status of all women.
9
By investigating the education of women in Venetian convents, I provide a new
perspective on the long-debated question of whether women were true participants in the
Renaissance. Closely related to this question are similarly long-running historiographical debates
over whether divisions between “public” and “private” are useful in pedagogical history and
whether educated women were able to challenge gender norms. I argue that dividing education
into the realms of public and private is unhelpful and serves to reproduce the mindset of
contemporaries who devalued the activities of women. I also support the contentions of recent
scholars who argue that early modern women did change society and extend this argument about
lay women to women who resided in convents.
Joan Kelly-Gadol famously asserted that the economic, political, and cultural advances of
Renaissance Italy had actually undermined the power of women by creating a new division
between public and private life that removed women from public concerns and created the
modern relation of the sexes.3 Discussions of this argument, which have continued over the past
forty years, have often centered on the availability of education to early modern women. Kelly-
Gadol’s argument was generally supported in subsequent works by Christine Klapisch-Zuber and
Margaret King.4 J.R. Brink and Patricia Labalme, although they focused on the accomplishments
of select women who received a full, formal education, assigned those same women little

3 Joan Kelly-Gadol, “Did Women Have a Renaissance?,” in Becoming Visible: Women in
European History, ed. Renate Bridenthal and Claudia Koonz (Boston: Houghton Mifflin
Company, 1977), 161.
4 Christine Klapisch-Zuber, Women, Family, and Ritual in Renaissance Italy, n.d. implicitly
backed the article’s assessment through an astute application of statistical information that
drew heavily on the 1427 catasto and descriptions from ricordanze. Later works, such as
Margaret L. King, Women of the Renaissance (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1991)
are more nuanced in some respects but nevertheless present the life of a woman in the
Renaissance as having severely limited opportunities for personal or intellectual fulfillment.