Philosophy-RAG-demo/transcriptions/HoP 429 - She Uttereth Piercing Eloquence - Women’s Spiritual Literature.txt

 Hi, I'm Peter Adamson, and you're listening to the History of Philosophy podcast, brought to you with the support of the philosophy department at King's College London and the LMU Inman Act, online at historyoffilosophy.net. Today's episode, She Uttereth Piercing Eloquence, Women's Spiritual Literature. Virginia Woolf's famous essay, A Room of One's Own, imagines what would have happened if Shakespeare had had a sister with gifts similar to his own. Her literary curiosity would have been gently but firmly blocked by her parents. As Woolf imagines, she picked up a book now and then, one of her brothers perhaps, and read a few pages, but then her parents came in and told her to mend the stockings, or mind the stew, and not moon about with books and papers. The demands of married life would further have stymied her development in adulthood. As for getting involved in the London theatre scene, like her brother did, that would have been unthinkable. Shakespeare's non-existent sister would ultimately, like Woolf herself, have committed suicide for "...who shall measure the heat and violence of the poet's heart when caught and tangled in a woman's body." Woolf's disturbing conclusion is that, in general, any woman born with a great gift in the 16th century would certainly have gone crazed, shot herself, or ended her days in some lonely cottage outside the village, half-witch, half-wizard, feared and mocked at. This fictional narrative is intended to explain what Woolf assumed as an obvious fact. Certainly no woman wrote a word of that extraordinary Elizabethan literature when every other man, it seemed, was capable of song, or sonnet. It's a tremendously powerful piece of writing, even though this starting assumption is at most only half right. Surely it's true that, in Elizabethan society, the plays of Shakespeare could not have been written by a woman. Woolf was interested above all in the expression of literary genius, and there's no doubting the obstacles that have stood in the way of such expression long before and long after the 16th century. In this period, women were quite literally told to keep their mouths shut. Shakespeare himself alluded to this in a line from Two Gentlemen of Verona, To be slow in words is a woman's only virtue. This looks like satire, but the same point was sometimes made with strident seriousness, as in a work on rhetoric by Thomas Wilson. What becometh a woman best, and first of all, Silence. What second? Silence. What third? Silence. What fourth? Silence. Yay, if a man should ask me till doomsday, I would still cry, Silence, Silence. Yet Woolf was wrong to think that women made no contribution to Elizabethan literature. Perhaps they produced no works of genius, but they did publish poems, including sonnets, as well as translations and religious writings. In fact, one could argue that the 16th century was a turning point in the history of women's writing in England. It was a time when new opportunities opened up for such writing, thanks to the emergence of humanism and the Reformation. That will be clearer to us if we start by discussing a figure who was active somewhat earlier, in the first half of the 15th century, Marjorie Camp, who was born in about 1373 and died in 1449. If we compare her to other women we've covered here on the podcast, we have to say that Camp shares very little with her near contemporary, Christine de Pizan, and is far more reminiscent of medieval mystics like Julian of Norwich. In fact, Camp got to meet Julian when this famous anchorite was an old woman. Like Julian, her thought was premised upon, and licensed by, experiences of a personal encounter with God. So if we are going to be in the difficult business of drawing a line between late medieval and Renaissance writing by women, we would probably want to put Camp on the medieval side of that line. But if we want to speak of her as having produced writing at all, then this should come with some caveats. The work, known simply as the Book of Marjorie Camp, was dictated by her to a male companion, and then copied out with extensive improvements to the language by a friendly priest. The involvement of the priest helps to legitimize the text, firstly because he's a member of the religious establishment, and secondly because, as the book tells us, he was initially dubious about her spiritual gifts, but was won over in the end. This is a common pattern in the book. Camp is constantly met by opposition and skepticism, especially from men, but perseveres, thanks to the unflagging support she receives directly from God, who is often on hand to offer her an encouraging pep talk, or condemn those who refuse to take her seriously. The book also makes it abundantly clear why she would have faced so much hostility. In a society where women were supposed to be silent, she was anything but, and flouted any number of conventions. Though married, she took a vow of chastity. The book details at length her campaign to get her husband to accept this. She traveled across Europe, and as far as Jerusalem, without her husband, but with a message of intense religiosity, in apparent defiance of St. Paul's ban on women preaching. She also refused to eat meat, and wore white, which would normally be reserved for virgins. Hardest to ignore were Camp's regular bouts of loud, boisterous weeping and wailing, brought on by thoughts of human sin and the sufferings of Christ. She found herself unable to prevent these outbursts, even if, as sometimes happened, they came while a priest was trying to give a sermon in church. Camp saw these intense emotional experiences as a gift from God, not least because he came in person to assure her that this was so. The book says that the cryings began in Jerusalem and became increasingly frequent, sometimes several times a day. They came whenever God wished to send them, for she never knew either the time or hour when they should come, and they never came without unsurpassed sweetness of devotion and high contemplation. For other people, Camp's histrionics were not so much exalted as exaggerated and exasperating. At one point, a group of people went to a priest to demand that he order her to eat meat like they did, put aside her weeping, and not talk of holiness so much. But Camp was not so easy to tame. She treated even an archbishop with fairly astonishing irreverence. When he said that he had heard she is utterly wicked, she replied in effect, oh, that's funny, I've heard the same about you. She then refused to abide by his command not to teach. In Leicester, she was confronted by an official who, after interviewing her, concluded, either you're a really good woman or else you're a really wicked woman. Through all this, Camp revels in her Christ-like role as a figure who has been sent to save her fellow humans, but remains unappreciated and even persecuted. She thought it was a joyful thing to be rebuked for God's love, and it was a great solace and comfort to her when she was chided and taunted for the love of Jesus, for rebuking sin, for speaking of virtue, for talking about scripture, which she had learned through sermons and by talking with clerics. The book is careful to avoid presenting Camp as if she were holy outside the structure of the church. Remember, an admiring priest is the one writing all this down, and the text is at pains to mention and rebut the accusations of heresy that were thrown at her. Often, these connected her to lawlardy. As you'll remember, the Lawlards were a religious group in England who have often been seen as forerunners of the Reformation because they did things like reading the Bible in English and letting women be religious teachers. One female Lawlard named Hawissia Moon said, every man and every woman being in good life out of sin is as good priest and hath as much power of God in all things as any priest ordered, be he pope or bishop. Camp was not a card-carrying member of the group for sure, but one modern scholar of her thought says that she at least hovered around the gray areas on its margins and that, if lawlardy was characterized as a reading community based on a firm commitment to the private reading of the scriptures in the vernacular, then she was certainly part of such a community. In some ways, though, Kemp was very Catholic. She went on pilgrimages and collected souvenirs and relics, was greatly moved by the miracle of the Eucharist, enthusiastically took part in church processions and services, even if she made it impossible to hear the priest over her loud wailing, and encountered God as a visible presence, as when Christ appeared to her as a beautiful man dressed in purple. As far as I can tell, then, Kemp was rebelling not so much against the church as against what would be expected of her as a married woman. It was one thing to take vows and become a nun or anchorite like Hildegard or Julian, and quite another to be a married woman who acts like an itinerant preacher and mouths off to archbishops. It's been said of the book that there is no pro-feminist element to the text, only pro-marjorie, which seems right, but the book justifies her idiosyncratic and provocative behavior in highly gendered terms. Like earlier medieval mystics, Kemp claimed to be in direct contact with God. In the book, she has numerous lengthy conversations with him. But, whereas some medieval women mystics seem almost to have transcended gender, Kemp's womanhood is constantly being brought to the attention of the reader. Sexuality is a main theme of the book. The constant threat of rape hangs over her during her travels. She takes the vow of chastity and wears virginal white, having wedded herself to God, even though she still has a human husband. Some passages indulge in lightly erotic descriptions of this relationship. In a more complicated version of her relationship to God, Christ appears to Kemp and addresses her as daughter, but then asks her to take on the role of the Virgin Mary so that she can nurse him. Isabel Davis, whom I interviewed a long way back about Chaucer, observes that here Kemp is simultaneously mother, daughter, and wife of God, proliferating the significant roles that she plays within the Trinity and the Holy Family and increasing her spiritual authority. All this gives us a context for understanding Kemp's cryings. Here, extravagant emotion is both effect and proof of her special relationship to God, a connection the book often labels as her feelings. At this time, women were thought to be more subject to strong emotions and feelings than men. So again, a phenomenon typically associated with the subordinate and inferior place of women is cleverly used to free Kemp from subordination and inferiority. There is even a suggestion that uncontrolled emotion is a more appropriate response to the Christian God, who, after all, is believed to have died in agony for us, than the cold, rational disquisitions of the churchmen and the schoolmen. This could explain why, as we are told in the preface to the book, Kemp was for a long time resistant to having her story written down. Her intense religiosity was best delivered through oral confrontation, or through apparently unhinged wailing that did not even take the form of language. So, it's appropriate that when her book was finally set down, and then revised, it was not her doing the writing. She needed men for that, but she did not need anyone else to develop a unique relationship to God or to tell her what this relationship meant. Many features of this remarkable text made for uncomfortable reading over the following generations, which is why versions of the book printed in the 16th century eliminate them. In these versions, Kemp, who was in modern times been called a noisy contemplative, was turned into a humble, quiet, listening woman. This might seem to cast some doubt on my claim that chances for writing as a woman actually opened up in the 16th century, but it depends on what kind of woman writer you want to be. By the time Shakespeare's sister would have been alive, such a writer would hardly be a crazed half-witch. To the contrary, she'd be well-schooled in Latin, and present herself as a refined and pious teacher of Protestant godliness. Whether Kemp was even literate is unclear, but if she was, then probably in the sense that she could read but not write, a not uncommon level of education in this era. Alternatively, she may have encountered the texts that were important to her by having them read out. That would above all have meant scripture, of course, but also works by other mystics like Saint Birgitta of Sweden and Richard Rolle. Very different would be the situation of elite Protestant women in the 16th century, who were more likely to read Erasmus and Calvin than medieval mystical texts. They benefited from humanist training, and were able to play a part in transmitting, interpreting, and composing texts. And I do want to stress that we're talking about elite women here. All of the figures I'm about to discuss came from the nobility, and the first of them was actually a leading member of the royal family. This was Catherine Parr, the last of Henry VIII's queens. In episode 419, I mentioned her briefly as a sponsor of humanist scholarship, including translations of Erasmus, and as the author of a treatise called Lamentation of the Sinner. She also wrote a set of prayers or meditations. Beyond her own writing, she had a powerful influence on the next generation of rulers, arranging for the young Prince Edward to study with Protestant tutors like William Grindel, a student of Roger Aschams. And remember how Elizabeth translated the Mirror of the Sinful Soul into English when she was only 11 years old? Well, that version was dedicated to Catherine Parr. So we're very far here from Marjorie Kempf, who was the daughter of a rich merchant, but whose world was socially and intellectually very distant from the sober and refined Reformed humanism of Catherine and her circle. John Fox, author of a famous history of Protestant martyrs, reports that Catherine retained diverse, well-learned, and godly persons to instruct her thoroughly in Scripture. And this shows in her writings. She may have written a lament about her own sinfulness, but her adherence to mainstream Protestantism is impeccable. That joke goes out to all the Latinists out there. A main focus in both her prayers and the Lamentation is the wish to be free of creaturely desires, to have no will but God's will. She prays to God, This being only one of numerous passages, deploring the love of worldly goods. Among those goods is high social standing, which Catherine is at pains to deplore, praying that she be as well pleased to be in the lowest place as in the highest. Which, you might argue, is easy for her to say, while quite literally sitting on a throne. But there's not much point in aiming accusations at Catherine, because she's already done it for us. She recognizes herself as always ready and prone to evil, and as barren and void of godly virtue, and powerless to resist sin without divine grace. She admits that she long followed the blind guide of ignorance before she finally found respite in faith, along with the realization of her own impotence in the phase of sin. It's a nice illustration of something we may find difficult to understand, that many people in this era found a broadly Calvinist, determinist teaching of redemption to be comforting rather than terrifying. And, as so often in Protestant texts, this goes hand in hand with a rejection of worldly wisdom. Thus, Catherine writes, Now, none of this is particularly innovative in doctrinal terms. What's remarkable is that the person writing it is a woman. Humanism and Protestantism had quietly opened the door that Marjorie Kemp had fought loudly to force ajar. While Catherine engages in typical false modesty, referring to her simple and unlearned judgment, she doesn't seem to feel the need to justify or explain why the reader should be taking spiritual advice from a woman. Granted, this is literally a queen we're talking about here, so she might be operating by special rules. But in fact, it seems to be more generally true that those women of the 16th century who did receive a good education were able to apply that education in writing. One modern-day scholar says bluntly that, No evidence has yet come to light that men routinely, if ever, prevented tutor women from publishing anything they could persuade a printer to undertake. This may seem surprising, but some of the most influential humanists of the age, like Juan Luis Vives and Thomas Ailott, had argued for the education of women so as to encourage them in virtue and true religion. A fine example would be Margaret Moore Roper, the daughter of Thomas Moore. He saw to it that she was well-schooled and advised her in a letter to pursue medical science and sacred literature, in order to achieve the familiar aim of having a sound mind and a sound body. This bore significant fruit. She was able to produce a translation of a work by Erasmus, and she comes across impressively in her letters. These include a description of her unsuccessful attempt to persuade Moore to swear the oath of allegiance and avoid execution, as she had done. In a reminder that gender was not entirely forgotten, Moore wryly compared this to Eve telling Adam that she had already tasted of the forbidden fruit, so he might as well do the same. Less inclined to cooperate was a martyr on the other side of the religious divide, Anne Askew. She was the first gentlewoman to be tried for heresy and was burnt alive in 1546 when she was only 25 years old. We have a remarkable account of her interrogation from her own pen, which tells of how she was tortured but remains steadfast. At one point her questioners pushed her to answer the sort of ridiculous question that schoolmen like to discuss. In this case, if this transubstantiated host is dropped during mass and an animal eats it off the floor, does the animal receive the body of the Lord? She refused to respond, and when told that she had to because the practice of schoolmen was that questions must always be answered, she said that she was but a woman and knew not the course of schools. In a classic instance of the female religious visionary pulling rank on men of worldly power, she also told her inquisitors, God hath given me the gift of knowledge, but not of utterance. Once Protestantism became the law of the land instead of a heresy, it provided a context for other women to display their own knowledge in both utterance and writing. Often this came in the form of translations, something we've already seen with Elizabeth, which is not to be underestimated. It has been well remarked that in this period, translators of both sexes saw themselves as powerful cultural agents engaged in the difficult and invaluable task of importing foreign works or making domestic Latin works available to English readers. And it was an activity that attracted praise for contemporaries. A collection of writings from 1582 called The Monument of Matrons collects Elizabeth's translation of Marguerite with other texts, and the preface praises those women who, for the common benefit of their country, have not ceased to spend their time, their wits, and also their bodies in compiling and translating of sundry most Christian and godly books. I take this quotation from a study of one such translator and the last figure I want to look at in this episode, Anne von Locke, who lived in the second half of the 16th century. She was one member of a circle of female Protestant writers, which also included Anne Dourich, author of A History of the Religious Wars in France, and Locke's own daughter, also named Anne, who was described in a praise poem as learned, with a manly heart capable of grasping Greek wit and Latin song. Even among this group, Anne Locke stands out for her connections. She was a friend of John Knox, who encouraged her to spend time in Geneva and for her productivity. She translated The Marks of the Children of God, a text about the tribulations suffered by Calvinists of the Low Countries, evidently because she thought its consolations would be equally relevant for English Puritans. A further work of translation by Locke is an English version of a sermon by Calvin, on a chapter from the book of Isaiah from the Bible. She states that her aim is to render the French, so near as I possibly might to the very words of his text, and that in so plain English as I could express. That may just sound like good practice for any translator, but the reference to plainness has an additional resonance in this context, since it shows Locke aiming to make the work available to the widest possible audience, which is a paradigmatic feature of Protestant literature. And then there is the work which Locke appended to this translation of Calvin, a collection of 26 sonnets, under the Catherine Parr-like title, Meditation of a Penitent Sinner. A study of these poems summarizes them neatly as follows, The sonnets construct a poetic persona based upon an ardent desire for divine grace and a morbid fear of divine rejection, while simultaneously crafting an authorial persona who speaks publicly and displays a talent for biblical exegesis. The sonnets take their departure from another poem, namely Psalm 51 of the Bible. This text may have been chosen because the psalm includes the line, Lord, thou hast opened my mouth, therefore I will sing thy songs, which looks like a pretty good justification for a woman who wants to write about religious themes. But there's a problem. Locke says herself that the sonnets are not by her, but delivered to me by my friend, with whom I knew I might be so bold to use and publish it as pleased me. So, before interpreting them as another exception to Woolf's claim that women contributed nothing to 16th century literature, we need to decide whether Locke really wrote them. In favor of her authorship, we can observe that it was quite common in this period to present one's own writings with a weak pretense of not being the author. Saying, I got this from an unnamed friend would be an entirely typical way to do this, to the point that readers of the time might naturally have understood the meaning to be, I wrote this myself, but I'm too humble to say so. For the same reason, the translation of Calvin is not published under Locke's name either, she gives only her initials, AL. Furthermore, her version of Marks of the Children of God includes a poem of her own kind as a kind of appendix, so it makes sense that she might do the same here. But against this, a careful analysis of the meditation has found that it greatly differs stylistically from Locke's known poetry, and that it was more likely written by a man named Thomas Norton. He was a tutor for the royal family, a lawyer who worked at the inner temple, and the author of, of all things, a satirical poem against women. Furthermore, he really was someone Locke would have known, and whose poetry she might have selected for inclusion alongside the translation of Calvin's sermon. So when she says that she got this from a friend and is making so bold as to publish it, she might mean just that. I won't weigh in with a few of my own as to the authorship of the sonnets, but I would like to point out that if they are not by Locke, they were at least selected by her for the book, a departure from tradition, since usually it's the Locke that gets picked, not the Locke that does the picking. She might have done this for the very same reason just mentioned, that the meditation and its biblical source encourage everyone to speak out in God's praise. Women too should do this and not be silent. This is a sentiment we can confidently ascribe to Locke, given what she said when introducing her translation of the marks of the children of God. Everyone in his calling is bound to do somewhat to the furtherance of the holy building, but because great things by reason of my sex I may not do, and that which I may, I ought to do, I have, according to my duty, brought my poor basket of stones to the strengthening of the walls of that Jerusalem, whereof by grace we are all both citizens and members. So far in our coverage of philosophy and Renaissance and Reformation Britain, we've mostly been looking at the two phenomena that made it possible for women to join the world of letters, humanist literature and Protestantism. We've talked about literary texts from Moore's Utopia to the plays of Shakespeare, and about the wide-reaching effects of the Reformation, from radical political ideas of tyrannicide to spiritual meditations by figures like Catherine Parr and Anne Locke. By now, you may be wondering, weren't there also figures doing philosophy in the more traditional sense, like reading and commenting on Aristotle, that sort of thing? The answer is definitely yes, as we'll see next time, when we return to the rather cloistered and very male world of British scholasticism. But that's no reason to stop quoting Shakespeare, especially when there's this wonderful line from Romeo and Juliet, Love goes toward love as schoolboys from their books, but love from love towards school with heavy looks. Now that I say that out loud, I realize that this doesn't really work as an enticement to think about the ideas of the schoolmen. So how about, this above all, to thine own podcast be true, thy podcast of course being the history of philosophy, without any gaps.