Abstract
In 1521, the Italian philosopher Agostino Nifo (1473–1538) published his Libellus de his quae ab optimis principibus agenda sunt. In this traditional “mirror for princes” text, Nifo examines the qualities he believes a good ruler should possess, and devotes a chapter each to prudence, justice, modesty, gentleness (mansuetudo), innocence, clemency, piety, religion, humanity, accessibility, honesty Thus far, Nifo’s text is typical of the genre, inherited from classical times, and contains few surprises. However, in Chapter 29, the text takes a somewhat more original turn as the author turns his attention to examining what qualities are desirable in high-ranking women, a question he says has not received systematic treatment from the philosophers. Examining ancient testimonies, he sketches the canvas of virtues for which women have been praised in the past, a wide-ranging panoply that highlights the absence of a single or definitive answer to the question. His overview points to the fact that women in roles of leadership have been repeatedly praised both for their constancy, liberality, patriotism, courage, and fidelity—virtues manifestly associated with good government—and on the other hand, for the qualities frequently perceived as feminine (moderation, modesty, chastity, temperance, gentleness, clemency, humanity), which correlate with the ones he has just outlined as important for the ruler. Although Nifo draws no conclusions from the lack of consensus of the Ancients, the text suggests that women have frequently demonstrated their capacity for princely virtue, as he defines it.1
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Notes
The Libellus figures in Part II of the political works of Gabriel Naudé’s edition of Nifo’s Opuscula moralia et politica (Paris: R. le Duc, 1645), pp. 89–148 (Chapter 29 spans pp. 139–143) and so was in circulation at the period with which we are concerned.
Ian Maclean Woman Triumphant. Feminism in French Literature, 1610–1652 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1977), p. 53.
As Marc Angenot indicates, to demand equality in education is to open the doors of public life to women (Marc Angenot, Les Champions des femmes. Examen du discours sur la supériorité des femmes, 1400–1800 (Montréal: Presses de l’Université de Québec, 1977), p. 147), a consideration that renders these demands uncomfortable for some. In fact, some of the limitations and contradictions in the discourse concerning female education are undoubtedly due to an awareness of this logical conclusion, and a desire to avoid it.
Éliane Viennot, La France, les femmes et le pouvoir, II: Les Résistances de la société (XVIIe–XVIIIe siècle) (Paris: Perrin, 2008), p. 149.
The term is Sharon L. Jansen’s in Debating Women, Politics, and Power in Early Modern Europe (New York and Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2008), p. 9.
The phrase is Karen Green’s in “Phronesis Feminised: Prudence from Christine de Pizan to Elizabeth I,” in Jacqueline Broad and Karen Green, eds., Virtue, Liberty, and Toleration: Political Ideas of European Women, 1400–1800 (Dordrecht: Springer, 2007), pp. 23–38 (p. 23).
One of the most explicit elaborations of this code can be found in Torquato Tasso’s Discorso della virtù feminile e donnesca (1582) which was in circulation in French in the 1630s, under the rather misleading title “De la vertu des dames illustres,” in Les Morales de Torquato Tasso, traduittes par Jean Baudoin (Paris: chez A. Courbé , 1632), pp. 113–164.
For an analysis of its importance in the sixteenth century, see the chapters in Constance Jordan, Renaissance Feminism: Literary Texts and Political Models (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1990) on “Sex and Gender” and “Equality,” pp. 134–307.
Concerning gynæcocracy, of particular interest is the analysis of the valorization of the feminine aspects of androgyny in Philip Sidney’s The Countess of Pembroke’s Arcadia (1593), pp. 220–240.
Louise Olga Fradenburg, “Introduction: Rethinking Queenship” in Louise Olga Fradenburg, ed., Women and Sovereignty (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1992), pp. 1–13 (pp. 1–2).
See, for example, Volker Kapp, “Georges de Scudéry: ‘Salomon instruisant le Roi’ (1651), édition critique,” Francia, 9 (1981), 236–256 (pp. 236–237).
Jacqueline Broad and Karen Green, “Introduction,” in Jacqueline Broad and Karen Green, A History of Women’s Political Thought in Europe, 1400–1700 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009), pp. 1–9 (pp. 4–5).
On the significance of a tradition of virtue ethics for women in political thought, see Karen Green and Constant Mews, eds., Virtue Ethics for Women, 1250–1500 (New York: Springer, 2011).
On the history of the querelle, its historiography, and some of the methodological issues involved in its research, see Eliane Viennot, “‘Revisiter la querelle des femmes.’ Mais de quoi parle-t-on?” in Éliane Viennot with Nicole Pellegrin, eds., Revisiter la “Querelle des femmes.” Discours sur l’égalité/inégalité des sexes, de 170 aux lendemains de la Révolution française (Saint-Étienne: Publications de l’Université de Saint-Etienne, 2012), pp. 7–30.
A shorter useful list of works pertaining to both sides of the “woman question” can be found in Jeanette Geffriaud Rosso, Etudes sur la féminité aux XVIIe et XVIIIe siècles (Pise: Editrice Libreria Goliardica, 1984), pp. 189–211, which lists 142 texts for the seventeenth century alone.
Titles of eighty-three of the better-known ones can be found in Maïté Albistur and Daniel Armogathe, Histoire du féminisme français du moyen âge à nos jours, 2 vols (Paris: des femmes, 1978), pp. 174–176, 192–194.
For a useful overview of the key issues raised in this material, see Gisela Bock, “Querelle des femmes: A European Gender Dispute,” in her Women in European History (Oxford: Blackwell, 2002), pp. 1–31.
For a brief outline of the history of the term querelle des femmes, see Margarete Zimmermann, “The Querelle des Femmes as a Cultural Studies Paradigm,” in A. Jacobson Schutte, T Kuehn, and S. Seidel Menchi, eds., Time, Space, and Women’s Lives in Early Modern Europe (Kirksville, MO: Truman State University Press), 2001, pp. 17–28 (pp. 19–24).
For a critique of the term and its use, with which I concur, see Marie-Frédérique Pellegrin, “La ‘Querelle des femmes’ estelle une querelle? Philosophie et pseudo-linéarité dans l’histoire du féminisme,” Seventeenth-Century French Studies, 35.1 (2013), 69–79, who argues that the debate about women is not one single querelle but that it enters into every intellectual debate of the period.
See, for example, Siep Stuurman, “The Deconstruetion of Gender: Seventeenth-Century Feminism and Modern Equality,” in Sarah Knott and Barbara Taylor, eds., Women, Gender and Enlightenment (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2007), pp. 371–388 (p. 371).
Tjitske Akkerman and Siep Stuurman, “Introduction: Feminism in European History,” in Tjitske Akkerman and Siep Stuurman, eds., Perspectives on Feminist Political Thought in European History: From the Middle Ages to the Present (London and New York: Routledge, 1998), pp. 1–32 (p. 6).
See also Karen Offen’s prologue “History, Memory and Empowerment,” and introduction “Thinking about Feminisms in European History,” in European Feminisms, 1700–1950: A Political History (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1999), pp. 1–26.
See Step Stuurman, “The Canon of the Historyof PoliticalThought: Its Critique and a Proposed Alternative,” History and Theory, 39.2 (2000), 147–166 (pp. 147, 161).
Stuurman points out (pp. 149–150) how the textbook-taught history of political thought has remained largely unchanged since Robert Blakey’s The History of Political Literature from the Earliest Times (1855).
Elena Woodacre, ed., Queenship in the Mediterranean: Negotiating the Role of the Queen in the Medieval and Early Modern Eras (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2013);
Elena Woodacre, The Queens Regnant of Navarre: Succession, Politics, and Partnership, 1274–1512 (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2013).
Bartolomé Bennassar, Le Lit, le pouvoir et la mort: reines et princesses d’Europe de la Renaissance aux Lumières (Paris: Fallois, 2006)
Isabelle Poutrin and Marie-Karine Schaub, eds., Femmes et pouvoirs politiques. Les princesses dEurope, XVe–XVIIL siècle (Paris: Bréal, 2007)
Armel Dubois-Nayt and Emmanuelle Santinelli-Folz, eds., Femmes de pouvoir et pouvoir de femmes dans l’occident médiéval et moderne (Valenciennes: Presses Universitaires de Valenciennes, 2009).
Other collective volumes and journal issues relevant to earlymodern Franceinclude Giovanna Motta, ed., Regine e sovrane. Ilpotere, lapolitica, lavitaprivata (Milan: Franco Angeli, 2002)
Melinda Gough and Malcolm Smuts, eds., “Queens and the Transmission of Political Culture: The Case of Early Modern France,” special issue of The Court Historian, 10.1 (2005)
Philippe Meunier, ed., Reines, princesses, favorites: quelle autorité déclinée au féminin? Cahiers du CELEC, 3 (2012), http://cahiers-ducelec.univ-st-etienne.fr/ (accessed February 10, 2015).
Regina Schulte, ed., The Body of the Queen. Gender and Rule in the Courtly World, 1500–2000 (New York and Oxford: Berghahn, 2006);
Clarissa Campbell Orr, ed., Queenship in Europe, 16 60–1815: The Role of the Consort (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004)
Denis Crouzet, Le Haut Cœur de Catherine de Médicis: une raison politique au temps de la Saint-Barthélémy (Paris: Albin Michel, 2005)
Thierry Wanegfellen, Catherine de Médicis. Le Pouvoir au féminin (Paris: Payot, 2005)
Chantal Grell, ed., Anne d’Autriche: Infante d’Espagne et reine de France (Paris: Perrin, 2009)
Kathleen Wellman, Queens and Mistresses of Renaissance France (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2013).
Françoise Barry, La Reine de France (Paris: Éditions du Scorpion, 1964).
Fanny Cosandey, La Reine de France. Symbole et pouvoir: XVe–XVIIIe siècle (Paris: Gallimard, 2000)
Katherine Crawford, Perilous Performances: Gender and Regency in Early Modern France (Harvard: Harvard University Press, 2004).
Sharon L. Jansen, The Monstrous Regiment of Women: Female Rulers in Early Modern Europe (New York and Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2002)
E. William Monter, The Rise of Female Kings in Europe, 1300–1800 (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2012)
Anne J. Cruz and Mihoko Suzuki, eds., The Rule of Women in Early Modern Europe (Chicago, IL: Chicago University Press, 2009).
A number of general articles can also be found in Annette Dixon, ed., Women Who Ruled. Queens, Goddesses, Amazons in Renaissance and Baroque Art (London: Merrell, 2002), a volume that was produced to accompany an exhibition in the University of Michigan Museum of Art, and which includes four essays of wider range than the title implies, in addition to a magnificent body of iconographic work. I mention here only volumes that include essays relevant to Early Modern France, and not those that focus solely on other countries and time periods, for example, on England or Spain, or on medieval queenship.
Maria Teresa Guerra Medici, Donne di governo nell’Europa Moderna (Rome: Viella, 2005).
On this aspect of state formation, see also Sarah Hanley’s idea of the “Family-State Compact”in, for example, Sarah Hanley, “Engendering the State: Family Formation and State Building in Early Moder n France,” French Historical Studies, 16 (1989), 4–27
and Hanley “The Monarchic State in Early Modern France: Marital Regime Government and Male Right,” in Adrianna Bakos, ed., Politics, Ideology and the Law in Early Modern Europe (New York: University of Rochester Press, 1994), pp. 107–126.
Amanda Shephard, Gender and Authority in Sixteenth-Century England (Keele: Keele University Press, 1994)
Joan W. Scott, “Gender: A Useful Category of Historical Analysis,” American Historical Review, 91 (1986), 1053–1075 (pp. 10 67–1068).
Sharon L. Jansen, The Monstrous Regiment of Women: Female Rulers in Early Modern Europe (New York and Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2002)
E. William Monter, The Rise of Female Kings in Europe, 1300–1800 (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2012)
Anne J. Cruz and Mihoko Suzuki, eds., The Rule of Women in Early Modern Europe (Chicago, IL: Chicago University Press, 2009)
A number of general articles can also be found in Annette Dixon, ed., Women Who Ruled. Queens, Goddesses, Amazons in Renaissance and Baroque Art (London: Merrell, 2002)
Maria Teresa Guerra Medici, Donne di governo nell’Europa Moderna (Rome: Viella, 2005).
On this aspect of state formation, see also Sarah Hanley’s idea of the “Family-State Compact” in, for example, Sarah Hanley, “Engendering the State: Family Formation and State Building in Early Modern France,” French Historical Studies, 16 (1989), 4–27
and Hanley “The Monarchic State in Early Modern France: Marital Regime Government and Male Right,” in Adrianna Bakos, ed., Politics, Ideology and the Law in Early Modern Europe (New York: University of Rochester Press, 1994), pp. 107–126
Amanda Shephard, Gender and Authority in Sixteenth-Century England (Keele: Keele University Press, 1994)
Joan W. Scott, “Gender: A Useful Category of Historical Analysis,” American Historical Review, 91 (1986), 1053–1075 (pp. 1067–1068).
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© 2016 Derval Conroy
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Conroy, D. (2016). Introduction. In: Ruling Women. Queenship and Power. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137568496_1
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