Stony Brook University

SSStttooonnnyyy BBBrrrooooookkk UUUnnniiivvveeerrrsssiiitttyyy The official electronic file of this thesis or dissertation is maintained by the University Libraries on behalf of The Graduate School at Stony Brook University. ©©© AAAllllll RRRiiiggghhhtttsss RRReeessseeerrrvvveeeddd bbbyyy AAAuuuttthhhooorrr... The Civic Virtue of Women in Quattrocento Florence A Dissertation Presented by Christine Contrada to The Graduate School in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy in History Stony Brook University May 2010 Copyright by Christine Contrada 2010 Stony Brook University The Graduate School Christine Contrada We, the dissertation committee for the above candidate for the Doctor of Philosophy degree, hereby recommend acceptance of this dissertation. Dr. Alix Cooper – Dissertation Advisor Associate Professor, History Dr. Joel Rosenthal – Chairperson of Defense Distinguished Professor Emeritus, History Dr. Gary Marker Professor, History Dr. James Blakeley Assistant Professor, History St. Joseph’s College, New York This dissertation is accepted by the Graduate School. Lawrence Martin Dean of the Graduate School ii Abstract of the Dissertation The Civic Virtue of Women in Quattrocento Florence by Christine Contrada Doctor of Philosophy in History Stony Brook University 2010 Fifteenth century Florence has long been viewed as the epicenter of Renaissance civilization and a cradle of civic humanism. This dissertation seeks to challenge the argument that the cardinal virtues, as described by humanists like Leonardo Bruni and Matteo Palmieri, were models of behavior that only men adhered to. Elite men and women alike embraced the same civic ideals of prudence, justice, fortitude, and temperance. Although they were not feminists advocating for social changes, women like Alessandra Strozzi, Margherita Datini, and Lucrezia Tornabuoni had a great deal of opportunity to actively support their own interests and the interests of their kin within popular cultural models of civic virtue. This, in turn, earned these women much praise at the time. By exploring interpretations of each virtue and illustrating case studies of merchant and aristocratic women’s activities, this dissertation points to a larger Florentine culture that set forth the path to a virtuous life for both men and women. This path challenges the historiographical cliché that Florence, because of its patriarchal culture, was a particularly difficult place to be a woman. While highlighting the uniqueness of women’s experiences, this dissertation argues that oppression was more reflective of a woman’s economic position than of her sex. New interpretations of letters, prescriptive literature, and wills reveal the ways in which the humanist cultural climate affected both men and women. Seen in this light, the active engagement of both sexes in Renaissance humanist culture emerges on a larger historical canvas. iii Dedication Page I am forever indebted to my teachers. Thank you Dr. Brucia for the inspiration and for being my first guide in the Eternal City. Thank you to my professors at James Madison University and Stony Brook University. I would especially like to acknowledge Alix Cooper and Joel Rosenthal. They taught me both the art and the beauty of history. I am also indebted to the archivists and librarians in Florence who patiently helped me to explore their treasures. I cannot thank my parents enough for the endless support that they gave to their eternal student. You, along with Andrea and Suzanne, have always helped me keep the project in perspective. Cara, my roommate in Florence, is the person who best understands how one can be enamored by all things Italian. I also appreciate my supportive students and colleagues at Germanna Community College Michael, your loving curiosity about this project helped me to cross the finish line Table of Contents Chapter I. Introductions . 1 Chapter II. Prudence . .37 Chapter III. Temperance . .92 Chapter IV. Justice. 148 Chapter V. Fortitude. 189 Conclusions. 218 List of Works Consulted. 223 iv I. Introduction Inspiration The position of women as the agents of powerful husbands, even in circumstances when women are constricted by patriarchy, has a long history stretching from the earliest civilizations to contemporary contexts. It was just such a contemporary context that further inspired me to assess the place of women as individuals in civic culture, and not to view those women who lived in patriarchal societies as the agents of men. In 2007 Jehan Al Sadat, the wife of assassinated Egyptian leader Anwar Sadat, spoke to 2,000 members of the Phi Theta Kappa Honor Society in Nashville, Tennessee.1 I was enthralled to hear, first hand, how this Egyptian woman has managed to bring property and divorce rights to women in that modern nation for the first time. Sadat may be seen as a feminist because she brought a sense of political identity into the lives of women in a pervasively patriarchal culture. Granted, the elite women discussed in this dissertation about Renaissance Florence were separated from modern women’s rights by half a millennium. Fifteenth-century women were not, of course, modern feminists; they did not advocate social changes for other women or clamor for equality. However, they did share much in common with a woman like Sadat. She is, like they were, most immediately recognized as her husband’s wife. As such, her accomplishments have not received the same level of recognition as those of her late husband. Her name gives her, as did theirs, a ready stage, but she is much more than a mere continuer of her husband’s legacy. She does indeed continue to espouse his vision, but she is more than a sounding board for his past pursuits. With her mission rooted in her husband’s legacy, Sadat’s soft- spoken approach has allowed her to keep her husband’s ideology in the limelight while she “quietly,” but quite boldly, uses her name to advance the cause of equality for women in Egypt. She has made her husband’s legacy her own by using her atypical and powerful status to advocate for her own program. As radical as her aims are, she uses her 1 Jehan Al Sadat, “Keynote Address”, Phi Theta Kappa International Convention, held at the Gaylord Opryland Resort, Nashville, Tennessee, 7 April 2007. 1 husband’s legacy as a shield to deflect criticism while she proposes ideas threatening to patriarchal hegemony in Egypt. As I considered her success, I found myself reflecting on the privileged women of Renaissance Florence I had been studying. Did they also utilize such a shield? Did they use this shield to better advocate for themselves and their families while achieving civic virtue and the praise of their community? I have found time and time again that they did. The “program” of fifteenth- century elite Florentine women was obviously influenced by a civic brand of Renaissance humanism that permeated Florentine society, well beyond a select group of male elites. These women were first and foremost “Florentine” in their pursuits, as they were part of this larger civic culture. What that entailed, in the context of their pursuit of the civic virtues, will be discussed in some detail in this work. Like Sadat, the women in my study also utilized the strength of their positions as mothers, daughters, and wives within a patriarchal society. In the case of these fifteenth- century women, they displayed an active interest in the four civic virtues that permeated Renaissance culture and society well beyond their most obvious influence in the male- orchestrated political sphere. As I found myself gripped by Sadat’s carefully planned and humble speech, the overlap between her ideals and her husband’s legacy were impossible to separate. She is the first to acknowledge that his legacy gave her a stage on which to promote her own initiatives to a receptive audience. I could not help but find my Florentine subjects on a stage partially constructed by men, although their stage was unmistakably decorated with the humanist culture of their own age. The Virtuous City The Italian Renaissance was a time when the building of a virtuous, ideal city was the goal of urbane and political men. This epoch was marked by rapid political change. By the end of the fifteenth century, the ideal of constructing the medieval walled city of Christine de Pizan was outmoded, especially in Italy.2 Cities began to expand out of their 2 Christine de Pizan, The Treasure of The City of Ladies, trans. Sarah Lawson (New York: Penguin, 1985). In this work, Christine de Pizan discusses the virtues that would prosper in a city of educated women. 2 walls and away from fortified castles and towers. Unlike Northern Europe, Italy had developed away from the feudal medieval political topos of a king who first and foremost acted like a “good Christian”.3 A “vacuum” of central leadership was abandoned in favor of leadership that espoused civic virtues consistent with a more cosmopolitan outlook geared toward achieving, expanding, and retaining power.4 Renaissance Italy saw a number of republican experiments reminiscent of those which thrived in antiquity.5 Five cities on the Italian peninsula stood out as powerhouses in the fifteenth-century: Florence, Venice, Milan, Rome, and Naples. Of the five, only two, Florence and Venice, were independent republics. Florence, our focus, was a city of 40,000 permanent residents that was not crafted on models of medieval lordship, but instead was more heavily influenced by humanism’s renewed interest in the political writings of the classical world. The Florentines lived in a world more closely aligned with the cosmopolitan Roman republic than with the city-states of the Hellenic world.6 Far from the idealism of the classical republicanism espoused in Plato’s work, Florence was a republic much influenced by one family that came to dominate the politics of the 3 The jurist Bartolus of Sassoferrato (1313-1357) is a good example of this anti-imperial sentiment.

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