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Female Strategies for Success in a Male-ordered World: the Benedictine Convent of Le Murate in Florence in the Fifteenth and Early Sixteenth Centuries

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  21 March 2016

K. J. P Lowe
K. J. P Lowe*
Affiliation:
Christ’s College, Cambridge
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Extract

This paper will centre on the relationships of women to men and women to women which form the backbone of the history of the Benedictine convent of Le Murate in Florence in the fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries. Le Murate started in a quiet way with one pious woman deciding to live virtuously by herself, but under no rule, in a house on the Ponte Rubaconte in 1390, and expanded to become perhaps the largest female convent in Florence in 1515, situated on Via Ghibellina, with 200 enclosed women and their servants living under the Rule of St Benedict. I want to examine the relations between these nuns and the outside world and look at how the male government of the outside world, secular and ecclesiastical, both at an individual level and in a more collective, formal way, tried to restrain and weaken this group of females, even to the point of forbidding them to earn their own livelihood. I would like to posit that religious life on a large scale and in a large city offered opportunities for the exercise of power by women not available to those of the female sex who stayed within the structure of the family and who were, therefore, in direct competition with men at every stage. Daughters, sisters, wives, and widows were legally and socially subject to their male relatives, in varying degrees. Nuns were not, and were permitted a measure of self-government. Just how irksome, worrying, and unacceptable to men it was for women to take their own decisions will become clear later. Barred by their sex from an active life in the hierarchy of the Church, and barred by their Order from an active life in the community, nevertheless in the Renaissance these enclosed Benedictine nuns devised strategies for obtaining access to power and money unparalleled by their secular counterparts. Le Murate exerted a strong attraction on women, both the powerful and famous and the more ordinary. Due to the increasing politicization of Florentine society, it secured, in addition, the patronage of the two most important Florentine political families during the period, the Medici and the Soderini. It was this seeming capacity to mobilize support from every sector of the population, regardless of sex, social group, income, political hue, or place of origin, which enabled the convent to prosper.

Type
Research Article
Information
Studies in Church History , Volume 27: Women in the Church , 1990 , pp. 209 - 221
Copyright
Copyright © Ecclesiastical History Society 1990

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References

1 The best overall history of Le Murate is in Richa, G., Notizie istoriche delle chiese fiorentine, 2 (Florence, 1755), pp. 79—112 Google Scholar. See also W. and Paatz, E., Die Kirchen von Florenz, 4 (Frankfurtam-Main, 1952), pp. 344’56 Google Scholar.

2 See Kuehn, T., ‘Women, Marriage and “Patria Potestas” in Late Medieval Florence’, The Legal History Review, 59 (1981), pp. 127’47 Google Scholar, esp. p. 136, and ‘Cum “Consensu Mundualdi”: Legal Guardianship of Women in Quattrocento Florence’, Viator, 13 (1982), pp. 309-33; Klapisch-Zuber, C., ‘The “Cruel Mother”: Maternity, widowhood and dowry in Florence in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries’, in Kuehn, , Women, Family and Ritual in Renaissance Italy (Chicago, 1985), p. 119 Google Scholar has interesting comments on women trying to live alone.

3 The manuscript is in Florence, Biblioteca Nazionale (hereafter BNF), 11 II 509.

4 Weaver, E., ‘Spiritual fun: a study of sixteenth-century Tuscan convent theater’, in Rose, M. B., ed., Women in the Middle Ages and the Renaissance (Syracuse, 1986), pp. 173 and 175 Google Scholar.

5 Davis, N., ‘Gender and genre: women as historical writers, 1400-1820’, in Labalme, P., ed., Beyond their Sex (New York, 1980), pp. 160’1 Google ScholarPubMed.

6 BNF, II II 509, fols pre-11 and pre-Iv.

7 Ibid., fols 27v-81, 40V, 51V, and 92V.

8 ibid., fol. 2v.

9 Material relating to Le Murate is contained in Florence, Archivio di stato (hereafter ASF), Conventi Soppressi (hereafter Con. Sop.) 81.

10 These are contained in ASF, MAP (indexed under Madonna delle Murate).

11 BNF, 11 II 509, fol. 15r.

12 Ibid., fol. 26v.

13 ASV, Reg. Vat. 493, fol. 13OV.

14 BNF, 11 II 509, fol. 46r.

15 Ibid., fol. 60r.

16 ASF, Notarile Antecosimiano G9649 (Ser Giovanni di Marco da Romena), fols 319r-v.

17 ASF, Archivi della Repubblica, Balie 40, fol. 76V. This document was brought to my attention in a short note by C. Carnesecchi, ‘Monache in Firenze nel 1515’, in I. Del Badia, ed., Miscellanea fiorentina di erudizione e storia, 1 (Florence, 1902), p. 29.

18 ASV, Arm. 29, tom. 75, fol. 8r.

19 According to the figures quoted in ASF, Archivi della Repubblica, Balie 40, fols 76r and 77V, although these are by no means complete, the Convertite had 162 inmates (the numbers were rising every day) and Santa Lucia 130.

20 See Trexler, R., ‘Le célibat à la fin du Moyen Age: Les religieuses de Florence’, Annales, 27 (1972), pp. 1333 and 1337 CrossRefGoogle Scholar, and Bizzocchi, R., Chiesa e potere nella Toscana del Quattrocento (Bologna, 1987), p. 31 Google Scholar.

21 Brucker, G., Renaissance Florence (New York, 1969), pp. 192’3 Google Scholar, and Hay, D., The Church in Italy in the Fifteenth Century (Cambridge, 1977), p. 63 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

22 Klapisch-Zuber, The “Cruel Mother”’, p. 119.

23 BNF, 11 II 509, fols 3r-5v.

24 Ibid., fols 5v-6r.

25 Ibid., fol.6r.

26 See D. Herlihy, The Tuscan town in the quattrocento: a demographic profile’, Medievalia et Humanistica, 1 (1970), p. 94, and J. Kirshner and A. Molho, The dowry fund and the marriage market in early quattrocento Florence’, JMH, 50 (1978), pp: 423 and 427.

27 See Harris, A. Sutherland and Nochlin, L., Women Artists: 1550-1950 (New York, 1976), p. 20 Google Scholar, and Creytens, R., Cultural and Intellectual Heritage of the Italian Dominican Nuns (Summit, N.J., 1977). PP. 18’24 Google Scholar.

28 Trexler, ‘Le célibat’, p. 1332.

29 BNF, 11 II 509, fols 8r-v.

30 Micali, O. Fantozzi and Roselli, P., Le soppressioni dei conventi a Firenze (Florence, 1980), p.79 Google Scholar

31 On Gomez, see Puccinelli, P., Historia dell’eroiche anioni de’BB. Gometio Portoghese abbate di Badia e di Teuzzone romito (Milan, 1645)Google Scholar. This book contains a list on pp. 69-70 of all die abbesses of Le Murate.

32 See Trexler, R., Synodal Law in Florence and Fiesole, 1306-1518 (Vatican City, 1971), pp. 120’2 Google Scholar for some discussion of encroachment on parochial authority.

33 This story unfolds in BNF, 11 II 509, fols 1or and 13r-14r.

34 A list of all the confessors at Le Murate during this period can be reconstructed from the Chronicle (see esp. fols 63V and 74V). Brenda Bolton suggested that they may have been Medicean supporters.

35 In general see J. Anson, The female transvestite in early monasticism: the origin and development of a motif, Viator, 5 (1974), pp. 1-32.

36 There are many letters in ASF, Con. Sop. 81, 100, between the King and/or Queen and Eugenia. See esp. fols 223r-57r and 461r-71r.

37 Eugenia’s story is told in BNF, 11 II 509, fols 53r-6v.

38 Ibid., fol. 54V.

39 Ridolfi, R., Vita di Girolamo Savonarola, 1 (Rome, 1952), pp. 24’5 Google Scholar, and Weinstein, D.. Savonarola and Florence (Princeton, 1970), p. 84 Google Scholar.

40 Savonarola, G., Prediche sopra i salmi, 1 (Rome, 1969)Google Scholar, ed. V. Romano, pp. 181-2.

41 BNF, 11 II 509, fol. 25r

42 Ibid., fol. 75V.

43 See, for example, ASF, Con. Sop. 81,100, fol. 192r, where the Duchess of Ferrara thanks the Abbess for a present in a letter of 28 July 1490. Mention is made of money earned from sewing with gold and silver thread in BNF, 11 II 509, fols 25r and 45r.

44 BNF, 11 II 509, fol. 6or tells of a book of prayers written and illuminated by the nuns sent to the Queen of Portugal, and ibid., fol. 76r mentions a missal penned by Suora Battista Carducci, also illuminated, given to Leo X in 1515. Alexander, J. and Mare, A. C. de la, The Italian Manuscripts in the Library of Major J. R. Abbey (London, 1969), pp. 159’60 Google Scholar publish details of a manuscript written in Le Murate in 1510, which has the arms of Julius 11 on fol. 1.

45 BNF, 11 II 509, fols 63v-4r, 66v.

46 Ibid., fols 24V-jr.

47 I looked at the copy in BNF, Magliabechiana, Incunabula, G. Cust no. 1, entitled Operetta molto divota composta da Fra Girolamo da Ferrara dell’ordine de’frati predicatori sopra e’dieci comanda menti di Dio diritta alla Madonna O vero Badessa del munistero delle Murate di Firenze, nella quale si contiene la examina de’ peccati d’ogni et qualunche pecchatore, che è utile e perfecta confessione (Florence, 1495). See Schutte, A. Jacobson, Printed Italian Vernacular Religious Books, 1465-1550: A Finding List (Geneva, 1983), p. 349 Google Scholar, and on the woodcuts of Savonarola and the nuns at Le Murate, E. Turelli, ed.. Immagini e azione riformatrice: Le xilografie degli incunaboli savonaroliani nella biblioteca nazionale di Firenze (Florence, 1985), pp. 101-3 and 117-18.

48 Savonarola, Prediche sopra i salmi, 1, pp. 181-2.

49 BNF, 11 II 509, fol. 26r.

50 See, for example, ASF, MAP, filza 23, n. 24, a letter of 13 April 1465 from Scolastica Rondinelli to Lorenzo de’ Medici, discussing arrangements for recouping money so that a dowry may be paid for one of the nuns.

51 BNF, 11 II 509, fol. 66v.

52 ASF, Con. Sop. 81,90, filza 6, no 25, 29 March 1480.

53 Ibid., in an unnumbered filza, 14 November 1496.

54 Ibid., filza 6, no 40,10 August 1462.

55 ASF, Con. Sop. 81,91, 24v-5r.

56 For example, Argentina Malaspina installed water conduits throughout the convent, BNF, 11 II 509, fol. 72r.

57 BNF, 11 II 509, fols 173V-8V.

58 Ibid., fol. 16v.

59 Ibid., fol. 17V.

60 See her letters to members of the Medici family in ASF, MAP. This ruse was increasingly employed in the late fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries. See, for example, ASF, Con. Sop. 81,100, fol. 454r, a letter of 9 November 1510 from Cardinal Francesco Soderini.

61 An example is contained in a letter of 29 September 1505 from the Duchess of Ferrara to the Abbess of Le Murate, ASF, Con. Sop. 81,100, fol. 198r.

62 BNF, 11 II 509, fols 72r-V. The notarial document witnessing her entry as a corrodian and the financial arrangements is in ASF, Notarile Antecosimiano, G9649 (Ser Giovanni di Marco da Romena), fols 318r-v.

63 See ASF, Con. Sop. 81,100, e.g., fol. 226r (December 1510) and fol. 200r (24 February 1513). Giustina in BNF, 11 II 509, fols 59r and v, states that shipments of sugar arrived 14 times between 1497 and 1559.

64 BNF, 11 II 509, fol. 63r. For the wording on the deposito, see ASF, Con. Sop. 81,183, no 8. Two letters from Caterina to the Abbess are in ASF, Con. Sop. 81,100, fols 325r and 326r.

65 Ibid., fols 9or-2r; see also, J. Stephens, ‘L’infanzia fiorentina di Caterina de’ Medici, regina di Francia’, ASI, 142 (1984), pp. 428, 433-6; ASF, Con. Sop. 81, 91, fol. 26r and ibid., 100, fol.259r

66 Richa, Notizie istoriche, II, pp. 94-5.

67 ASF, MAP, filza XXII, n. 38,13 December 1465.

68 Ibid., filza XXV, nn. 75 and 116,6 July and 20 November 1471.

69 Ibid., filza XXV, n. 221,11 November 1472.

70 ASF, Con. Sop. 81,100, fol. 208r, 27 July 1520, and BNF, 11 II 509, fol. 6or.

71 Ibid., 100, fols 336r and 337r.

72 BNF, 11 II 476. See Mazzarino, D., Inventari dei manoscritti delle biblioteche d’Italia, 9 (Forli, 1899), p. 136 Google Scholar.

73 Robbia, E. Viviani Della, Nei monasteri Jiorentini (Florence, 1946), p. 62 Google Scholar.