Historiographigal reviews wives, widows, and brides of christ: Marriage and the convent in the historiography of early modern Italy

Historical Journal

Volumn 43, Issue 1, 2000, Pages 233-247

  Evangelisti, Silvia ^a  

^a UNIVERSITY OF BIRMINGHAM   (United Kingdom)

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[No Author keywords available]

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EID: 60950086275     PISSN: 0018246X     EISSN: 14695103     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1017/S0018246X99008973     Document Type: Article

References (137)

1. Fernanda Sorbelli Bonla, Camilla Gonzaga-Faà: storia documentata (Bologna, 1918).
2. See also F. Satta, 'Faà, Camilla', in Dizionario biografico degli italiani (Rome, 1993), xliii, pp. 591-3. Faa's memoir was published for the first time in 1895. For its English translation see Valeria Finucci, 'Camilla Faà Gonzaga: the Italian memorialist', in
3. Katharina M. Wilson and Frank J. Wamke, eds., Women writers of the seventeenth century (Athens, GA, and London, 1989) pp. 121-37.
4. Antonius Possevinus, Belli Monferratensis historia ab anno salutis M. DC. XII usque ad annum MDC. XVIII (n. p., 1637), p. 389 and passim.
5. Lodovico Antonio Muratori, Annali d'ltalia dal principio dellera volgare sino alPAnno 1749 (Milan, 1749), xi, p. 64;
6. Leonardo Mazzoldi, 'Da Guglielmo III duca alia fine della prima dominanza austriaca', in Mantova: la storia (Mantua, 1963), III, p. 88. It is interesting to note that until the end of the nineteenth century this event was more of a literary subject than a historical one. Between 1844 and 1882, two short stories, a historical drama, a novel, and a poem were published:
7. see Sorbelli Bonfa, Camilla Gonzaga-Faà, pp. III-17.
8. See for instance Gabriella Zarri, 'Gender, religious institutions and social discipline: the reform of the Regulars', in Judith C. Brown and Robert C. Davis, eds., Gender and society in Renaissance Italy (London and New York, 1998), pp. 193-212.
9. Michela De Giorgio and Christiane Klapisch-Zuber, eds., Storia del matrimonio (Rome and Bari, 1996);
10. Trevor Dean and Kate J. P. Lowe, eds., Marriage in Italy, 1300-1650 (Cambridge, 1997). On these two volumes
11. see Renata Ago, Giulia Calvi, and Silvia Salvatici, 'Discussioni', Ricerche storiche, 2 (1997), pp. 351-67.
12. Quoted in Diane Owen Hughes, 'Il matrimonio nell'Italia medievale', in De Giorgio and Klapisch-Zuber, eds., Storia del matrimonio, pp. 5-61.
13. Jacqueline Musacchio, 'The rape of the Sabine women on Quattrocento marriage-panels', in Dean and Lowe, eds., Marriage in Italy, pp. 66-82.
14. See also Brucia Witthoft, 'Riti nuziali e loro iconografia', in De Giorgio and Klapisch-Zuber, eds., Storia del matrimonio), pp. 119-48.
15. See the comments by Ago, 'Discussioni', pp. 351-5.
16. Maria Teresa Guerra Medici, I diritti delle donne nella società altomedievale (Rome, 1986), pp. 166-74.
17. David d'Avray, 'Marriage ceremonies and the church in Italy after 1215', in Dean and Lowe, eds., Marriage in Italy, pp. 107-15.
18. Daniela Lombardi, 'Fidanzamenti e matrimoni dal concilio di Trento alle riforme settecentesche', in De Giorgio and Klapisch-Zuber, eds., Storia del matrimonii), pp. 215-50;
19. idem, 'Intervention by the church and state in marriage disputes in sixteenth-and seventeenth-century Florence', in Trevor Dean and Kate Lowe, eds., Crime, society and the law in Renaissance Italy (Cambridge, 1994), pp. 142-56.
20. On pre-Tridentine secular courts and regulations regarding marriage see Trevor Dean, 'Fathers and daughters: marriage laws and marriage disputes in Bologna and Italy, 1200-1500', in
21. Dean and Lowe, eds., Marriage in Italy, pp. 85-106.
22. Lombardi, 'Fidanzamenti e matrimoni', p. 216 and passim; Lucia Ferrante, 'Il matrimonio disciplinato: processi matrimoniali a Bologna nel Cinquecento', in Paolo Prodi, ed., Disciplina dell'anima, disciplina del corpo e disciplina della società tra medioeco ed età moderna (Bologna, 1994), pp. 901-27.
23. Lombardi, 'Fidanzamenti e matrimoni', p. 232;
24. Ferrante, 'Il matrimonio disciplinato', pp. 905-10.
25. On the local implementation of Tridentine laws see Angelo Turchini, 'Dalla disciplina alia "creanza" del matrimonio all'indomani del concilio di Trento', in
26. Gabriella Zarri, ed., Donna, disciplina, creanza cristiana dal XV al XVII secolo: studi e testi a stampa (Rome, 1996), pp. 205-14.
27. Maria Fubini Leuzzi, 'Appunti per lo studio delle doti granducali in Toscana', Ricercht storiche, 20 (1990), pp. 339-66, and idem, "'Dell' allogare le fanciulle degli Innocenti": un problema culturale ed economico', in Prodi, ed., Disciplina delVanima, pp. 863-99.
28. Piet Van Boxel, 'Dowry and the conversion of the Jews in sixteenth-century Rome: competition between the church and the Jewish community', in Dean and Lowe, eds., Marriage in Italy, pp. 116-27.
29. Christiane Klapich-Zuber, Women, family and ritual in Renaissance Italy (Chicago, 1985);
30. Anthony Molho, Marriage alliances in late medieval Florence (Cambridge, MA, and London, 1994);
31. Julius Kirshner, 'Wives' claims against insolvent husbands in late medieval I taly', in J. Kirshner and
32. S. F. Wemple, eds., Women of the medieval world (Oxford, 1985);
33. Isabelle Chabot, 'Risorse e diritti patrimoniali', in Angela Groppi, ed., Il lavoro delle dome (Rome and Bari, 1996);
34. idem, 'La dette des families: femmes, lignages et patrimonines a Florence aux XIVe et XVe siècles' (Ph. D. dissertation, European University Institute, Florence, 1995);
35. idem, and Massimo Fornasari, L'economia della carità: le doli del Monte di Pietà di Bologna (secoli XVI-XX) (Bologna, 1997);
36. Stanley Chojnacki, 'Dowries and kinsmen in early Renaissance Venice', Journal of Interdisciplinary History, 5 (1975), pp. 575-80;
37. idem, 'Nobility, women and the state: marriage regulation in Venice, 1420-1535', in
38. Dean and Lowe, eds., Marriage in Italy, pp. 128-51;
39. Gérard Delille, Famille et propriété dans le Royaume de Naples (Paris and Rome, 1985).
40. Thomas Kuehn, 'Some ambiguities of the female inheritance ideology', in Law, family, and women: toward a legal anthropology of Renaissance Italy (Chigago, 1991), pp. 238-66;
41. e-XVNe siècles), Clio. Histoire, femmes et sociétés, 7 (1997), pp. 51-72.
42. Sara F. Matthews Grieco, 'Matrimonio e vita coniugale nell'arte dell'Italia moderna', in De Giorgio and Klapisch-Zuber, eds., Storia del matrimonio, pp. 251-82;
43. Musacchio, 'The rape of the Sabines', pp. 66-82;
44. e XVII secolo', in Zarri, ed., Donna, disciplina, pp. 253-67.
45. Patricia Allerston, 'Wedding finery in sixteenth-century Venice', in Dean and Lowe, eds., Marriage in Italy, pp. 25-40.
46. Dean and Lowe, eds., 'Introduction', in Marriage in Italy, pp. 7-17.
47. Renata Ago, Carriere e clientele nella Roma barocca (Rome and Bari, 1990), pp. 45-71;
48. idem, 'Giochi di squadra: uomini e donne nelle famiglie nobili del XVII secolo', in Maria Antonietta Visceglia, ed., Signori, patrizi, cavalieri nell'età modemà (Rome and Bari, 1994), pp. 256-64. idem, 'Giovani nobili nell'età dell'assolutismo: autoritarismo paterno e libertà', in Giovanni Levi and Jean-Claude Schmitt, eds., Storia dei giovani (Rome and Bari, 1994), 1, pp. 375-426.
49. Ago, 'Giovani nobili', p. 411.
50. See also Lombardi, 'Fidanzamenti e matrimoni', pp. 218-22.
51. Christiane Klapich-Zuber, 'The cruel mother: maternity, widowhood, and dowry in Florence in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries', in idem, Women, family, and ritual, pp. 117-31. Isabelle Chabot, '"La sposa in nero": la ritualizzazione del lutto delle vedove fiorentine', Quaderni storici, 86 (1994), pp. 421-62;
52. Giulia Calvi, 'Reconstructing the family: widowhood and remarriage in Tuscany in the early modern period', in Dean and Lowe, eds., Marriage in Italy, pp. 275-96.
53. See also Sandra Cavallo and Lyndan Warner, eds., Widowhood in medieval and early modern Europe (London, 1999).
54. Giulia Calvi, Il contralto morale: madri e figli nella Toscana modema (Rome and Bari, 1994);
55. idem, 'Maddalena Nerli and Cosimo Tornabuoni: a couple's narrative of family history in early modern Florence', Renaissance Quarterly, 45 (1992).
56. Renata Ago, 'Ruoli Tamilian e statuto giuridico', Quaderni Storici, 88 (1995), pp. m-33;
57. Giulia Calvi and Isabelle Chabot, eds., Le richezze delle donne: diritti patrimoniali epoterifamiliari in Italia (XII-XIX secc.) (Turin, 1998).
58. See also Gestione deipatrimoni e diritti delle donne, issue of Quaderni Storici, 98 (1998).
59. Ida Fazio, 'Percorsi coniugali nell' Italia moderna', in De Giorgio and Klapisch-Zuber, eds., Storia del matrimonio, pp. 151-214;
60. idem, 'Complicità coniugali: proprietà e identità della Torino napoleonica', Quaderni Storici, 98 (1998), pp. 333-360.
61. Gabriella Zarri, 'Monasteri femminili e città (secoli XV-XVIII) ', in Storia d'ltalia: annali (Turin, 1980), IX, pp. 357-429;
62. idem, Lesante vivie: profezie di corte e devozionefemminile tra '400 e '500 (Turin, 1990);
63. idem, 'Recinti sacri: sito e forma dei monasteri femminili a Bologna tra '500 e '600', in Sofia Boesch Gajano and Lucetta Scaraffia, eds., Luoghi sacri e spazi della santita (Turin, 1990), pp. 381-90;
64. idem and Lucetta Scaraffia, eds., Donne efede: santità e vita religiosa in Italia (Rome and Bari, 1994).
65. Gabriella Zarri, 'Le istituzioni dell'educazione femminile', in Le sedi della cultura nell' Emilia Romagna. I secoli moderni. Le istituzioni e il pensiero (Cinisiello Balsamo, 1987), pp. 84-109;
66. idem, 'La vita religiosa femminile tra devozione e chiostro', in Le sante live, pp. 21-50;
67. Danilo Zardin, Donna e religiosa di rara eccellenza-' Prospera Colonna Bascapé, i libri e la cultura nei monasteri milanesi del Cinque e Seicento (Florence, 1992)
68. and idem, 'Mercato librario e letture devote nellasvolta del Cinquecento tridentino: note in margine ad un inventario milanese di libri di monache', in N. Raponi and A. Turchini, eds., Slampa, libri e letture a Milano neWetà di Carlo Borromeo (Milan, 1992), pp. 135-246;
69. Serena Spanò Martinelli, 'La biblioteca del "Corpus Domini" bolognese: l'inconsueto spaccato di una cultura monastica femminile', La bibliofilia, 88 (1986), pp. 1-23.
70. Craig Monson, ed., The crannied wall: women, religion, and the arts in early modem Europe (Ann Arbor, 1992);
71. E. Ann Matter and John Coakley, eds., Creative women in medieval and early modern Italy: a religious and artistic Renaissance (Philadelphia, 1994).
72. Only recently historians have begun to address their interest on nuns and figurative arts:
73. see Geraldine A. Johnson and Sara F. Matthews Grieco, eds., Picturing women in Renaissance and Baroque Italy (Cambridge, 1997);
74. Silvia Urbini, 'Sul ruolo della donna "incisore" nella storia del libro illustrato', in Zarri, ed., Donna, disciplina, pp. 367-91.
75. See also Suor Plautilla Kelli (1523-1588) : the first woman painter in Florence, special issue of Studies in Italian history and culture (forthcoming).
76. Craig Monson, Disembodied voices: music and culture in an early modern Italian concent (Berkeley, Los Angeles and London, 1995), pp. 7-12.
77. On nuns and music see also Robert Kendric, Celestial syrens: nuns and their music in early modern Milan (Oxford, 1996).
78. Zarri, 'Monasteri femminili', pp. 361-78;
79. Pio Paschini, 'I monasteri femminili in Italia nel '500', in Problemi di vita religiosa in Italia nel Cinquecento (Padua, 1960), pp. 31-60;
80. Pietro Stella, 'Strategic familiari e celibato sacro in Italia tra '600 e '700', Salesianum, 41 (1979), pp. 73-109;
81. Elisa Novi Chavarria, 'Monachesimo femminile nel Mezzogiorno nei secoli XVI-XVII', in Gabriella Zarri, ed., Il monachesimo femminile in Italia dall'alto medioevo al secolo XVII a confronto con Voggi (Verona, 1997), pp. 339-67;
82. Antony Molho, '"Tamquam vere mortua": le professioni religiose femminili nella Firenze del tardo medioevo', Societa e storia, 43 (1989), pp. 1-44;
83. Gaetano Greco, 'Monasteri femminili e patriziato a Pisa (1530-1630) ', in Città italianc del '500 Ira riforma e controriforma (Lucca, 1988), pp. 313-39;
84. Carla Russo, I monasteri femminili di clausura a Napoli nel secolo XVII (Naples, 1970).
85. See for example Sara Cabibbo e Marilena Modica, La santa dei Tomasi: storia di sum Maria Crocifissa (1645-1699) (Turin, 1989) : in 1659 the three daughters of the prince of Palma di Montechiaro, Sicily, entered the convent of SS. Rosario founded by their family.
86. Judith C. Brown, 'Monache a Firenze all'inizio dell'età moderna: un'analisi demografica', Quaderni Storici, 85 (1994), pp. 117-52.
87. Given the constraints of space it is not my intention to address the many implications of the positive and negative images of the convent (i.e. spiritual and intellectual achievement as opposed to female reclusion, even forced reclusion) which have been discussed by scholars. This bipolar interpretation raises a series of very interesting questions which should not be neglected by those working on female monastic communities. However, these two opposed ideas of the convent did not always exclude each other.
88. See the example of the seventeenth-century Venetian nun and writer Arcangela Tarabotti who made her unhappy reclusion the starting-point for her heavy criticism offorced monachization.
89. See Francesca Medioli, L" Inferno monacale' di Arcangela Tarabotti (Turin, 1991).
90. Francesca Medioli, 'Monache e monacazioni nel Seicento', Rivista di storia e letteratura religiosa, 34/2 (1998), pp. 676-8.
91. Brown, 'Monache a Firenze', pp. 120-2;
92. Richard C. Trexler, 'Le célibat à la fin du Moyen Age: les religieuses de Florence', Annates ESC (Nov.-Dec. 1972), pp. 1329-50 (trans.: 'Celibacy in the Renaissance: the nuns of Florence', in Power and dependence in Renaissance Florence (Bingham ton NY, 1993, II, pp. 6-30). On the Florentine female monastic population see also Julius Kirshner and Antony Molho, 'Il Monte delle Doti a Firenze dalla sua fondazione nel 1425 alia metà del Sedicesimo secolo. Abbozzo di una ricerca', Ricerche storiche, 1 (1980), pp. 21-47;
93. Gene A. Brucker, 'Monasteries, friaries, and nunneries in Quattrocento Florence', in T. Verdon and J. Henderson, eds., Christianity and the Renaissance: image and religious imagination in the Quattrocento Florence (Syracuse, NY, 1990), pp. 41-62.
94. On Milanese and Perusian nuns see Dante E. Zanetti, 'La demografia del patriziato milanese nei secoli XVII, XVIII, XIX', Annales Cisalpines d'histoire sociale, 2nd ser., 2 (1972)
95. and Luigi Tittarelli, 'Monacazioni, matrimoni e fecondita a Perugia nel Seicento', in Bollettino di Demografia Storica SIDES, 20 (1994), pp. 157-71.
96. R. Burr Litchfield, 'Demographic characteristic of Florentine patrician families, sixteenth to nineteenth centuries', The Journal of Economic History, 29 (1969), p. 197, table 2.
97. Marriage dowries went from 10, 000 scudi to 25, 000 scudi, remaining stable until the mideighteenth century. In order to have an idea of the value of such capitals, 10, 000 corresponded to roughly five years of incomes for an elite family;
98. see Burr Litchfield, 'Demographic characteristics', p. 203;
99. Brown, 'Monache a Firenze', pp. 128-9;
100. Trexler, 'Le célibat', p. 1340.
101. Francesco Scaduto, Stato e chiesa sotto Pietro Leopoldo Igranduca di Toscana (1765-90) (Florence, 1885), p. 301;
102. Lorenzo Cantini, Legislazione toscana raccolta e illustrata (Florence, 1804), xv, pp. 155-63-
103. Chabot, 'La loi du lignage', pp. 51-72.
104. Francesca Medioli, 'Monacazioni forzate: donne ribelli al proprio destino', Clio, 3 (1994)) pp. 431-54.
105. See also Romano Canosa, Il velo e il cappuccio: monacazioni forzate e sessualità nei conventi femminili in Italia tra Quattrocento e Settecenio (Rome, 1991);
106. Paola Vismara Chiappa, 'Per vim et metum': il caso di Paola Teresa Pietra (Como, 1991);
107. Giovanna Paolin, Lo spazio del silenzio: monacazioniforzate, clausura e proposte di vita religiosa femminile nell'età moderna (Pordenone, 1996).
108. Guido dall'Olio, 'La disciplina dei religiosi all'epoca del concilio di Trento: sondaggi bolognesi', Annali dell'Istituto Storico Italo-germanico in Trento, 21 (1995), pp. 93-140.
109. Francesca Medioli, 'La clausura delle monache nell'amministrazione della congregazione romana sopra i regolari', in Zarri, ed., Il monachesimo femminile, pp. 249-82;
110. Gabriella Zarri, 'Gender, religious institutions and social discipline: the reform of the Regulars', in Judith C. Brown and Robert C. Davis, eds., Gender and society in Renaissance Italy (London and New York, 1998), pp. 193-212
111. Sherrill Cohen, The evolution of women's asylums since 1500.-from refuges for ex-prostitutes to shelters for battered women (New York and Oxford, 1992).
112. On nuns, property, and religious poverty see my '" Fame quello che pare e piace...": l'uso e la trasmissione delle celle nel monastero di Santa Giulia di Brescia (1597-1688) ', Quaderni storici, 30 (1995), pp. 85-110.
113. See also idem, 'La povertà impossibile: monache, famiglie e proprietà in Italia (secc. XVI-XVIII) '(Ph. D. dissertation, European University Institute, Florence, 1998).
114. Zarri, 'Monasteri femminili', p. 412. Francesca Medioli, 'La clausura delle monache', pp. 249-61;
115. Monson, Disembodied voices; idem, 'Disembodied voices: music in the nunneries of Bologna in the midst of the counter-reformation', in Monson, ed., The crannied wall, pp. 191-209. On claustration also see the classic studies by Raymondo Creytens, 'La giurisprudenza della Sacra Congregazione del Concilio nella questione della clausura delle monache (1564-1576) ', Apollinaris, 37 (1964), pp. 251-85;
116. idem, 'La riforma dei monasteri femminili dopo i decreti tridentini', in Il Concilio di Trenlo e la riforma tridentina: atti del convegno storico internazionale (Rome, 1965), 1, pp. 45-84.
117. Mary Laven, 'Negotiating enclosure: the experience of nuns in Counter-Reformation Venice', in Steven Milner, ed., At the margins: minority groups inpre-modem Italy (forthcoming);
118. idem, 'Enclosure and the family: the experience of the Counter-Reformation in the convents of Venice', unpublished paper presented at the conference on Women in religious communities (Reading, 28 Nov. 1998). I would like to thank Mary Laven for kindly providing me with copies of these works.
119. Monson, Disembodied voices;
120. idem, 'Disembodied voices', in Monson, ed., The crannied wall. For a German case-study see Ulrike Strasser, 'Bones of Contention: Cloistered Nuns, Decorated Relics, and the Contest over Women's Place in the Public Sphere of Counter-reformation Munich' in Archivfor Reformation History, 90 (1999), pp. 254-88.
121. 47Franca Trinchieri Camiz, '"Virgo-non sterilis...": nuns as artists in seventeenth-century Rome', in Johnson and Matthews Grieco, eds., Picturing women, pp. 139-64.
122. An insightful discussion on such a topic in the medieval period is proposed by Jeffrey F. Hamburger, 'Art, enclosure, and the Cura Monialium: prolegomena in the guise of a postscript', Gesta, 31/2 (1992), pp. 108-34.
123. For a thought-provoking study concerning marriage and the cloister in Germany see Ulrike Strasser, '"Aut maritus aut murus"? Women's lives in Counter-reformation Munich' (Ph. D. dissertation, University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, 1996). I would like to thank Ulrike Strasser for sending me a copy of her dissertation.
124. Sandra Cavallo, Charity and power in early modern Italy: benefactors and their motives in Turin, 1541-1789, (Cambridge, 1995), pp. 153-67 (emphasis in the text). On women's commemorative bequests see Sharon Strocchia, 'Remembering the family: women, kin, and commemorative masses in Renaissance Florence', Renaissance Quarterly, 42 (1989), pp. 635-54.
125. On asylums for penitents see Cohen, The evolution;
126. idem, 'Asylums for women in Counter-Reformation Italy', in Sherrin Marshall, ed., Women in Reformation and Counter-Reformation Europe: private and public worlds (Bloomington and Indianapolis, 1989).
127. See also Lucia Ferrante, 'Honor regained: women in the Casa del Soccorso di San Paolo in sixteenth-century Bologna', in Edward Muir and Guido Ruggiero, eds., Sex and gender in historical perspective (Baltimore, 1990), pp. 46-72.
128. P. Renée Baernstein, 'In widow's habit: women between convent and family in sixteenthcentury Milan', Sixteenth Century Journal, 25 (1994), pp. 787-807;
129. idem, 'Family and faction in a Milanese convent, sixteenth and seventeenth centuries', Renaissance Papers (forthcoming). I am very grateful to the author for sending me a copy of her forthcoming article.
130. Zarri, 'Gender, religious institutions', pp. 198-208;
131. idem, 'Ursula and Catherine: the marriage of the virgins in the sixteenth century', in Matter and Coakley, eds., Creative women, pp. 237-78.
132. Kate Lowe, 'Secular brides and convent brides: wedding ceremonies in Italy during the Renaissance and Counter-Reformation', in Dean and Lowe, eds., Marriage in Italy, pp. 41-65.
133. One fascinating issue which historians have recently addressed is the possibility for women of a 'third way', or female celibacy without monastic vows;
134. see Zarri, 'The marriage of virgins', pp. 267-9;
135. Cecilia Nubola, 'Libertà, cultura, potere per le donne: il "Traité de la morale et de la politique" di Gabrielle Suchon', in Zarri, ed., Donna, disciplina, pp. 333-46.
136. See also Anne Conrad, 'Il concilio di Trento e la (mancata) modernizzazione dei ruoli femminili ecclesiastici', in Paolo Prodi and Wolfgang Reinhard, eds., Il concilio di Trento e il moderno (Bologna, 1996), pp. 415-36
137. and Ulrike Strasser, "'Aut maritus aut inurus'", pp. 197-246.