Primary Document: Gender and Society
Women in Renaissance Society
On the Study of Literature
To Lady Battista Malatesta of Montefeltro
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I feel myself constrained, dear lady, by many successive reports of your wonderful virtues to write to you in commendation of the perfect development of those innate powers of which I have heard so much that is excellent, or, if that is too much, at least to urge you, through these literary efforts of mine, to bring them to such a perfection.
By learning, however, I do not mean that confused and vulgar sort such as is possessed by those who nowadays profess theology, but legitimate and liberal kind which joins literary skill with factual knowledge, learning Lactantius possessed, and Augustine, and Jerome, all of whom were finished men of letters as well as great theologians. It is shameful by contrast, how very little modern theologians know of letters. This then will be our first study: to read only the best and most approved authors. Our second will be to bring to this reading a keen critical sense. The reader must study the reasons why the words are placed as they are, and the meaning and force or each segment of the sentence, the smaller as well as the larger; he must thoroughly understand the force of the several particles whose idiom and usage he will copy and the author he reads. Hence a woman who enjoys sacred literature and who wished to observe stylistic propriety will take up Augustine and Jerome and any other authors she finds similar to them, such as Ambrose and Cyprian. But the greatest of all those who have ever written of the Christian religion, the one who excels them all with his brilliance and richness of expression, is Lactantius Firmaianus, without doubt the most eloquent of all Christian authors, and the one whose eloquence and technique are best able to nourish and educate the type of ability I am considering. It will moreover be profitable for her from time to time to make an effort to read well aloud. For in prose, as well as in verse, there are certain rhythms, inflexions, and pacing, an orchestration, as it were , recognized and measured by the sense of hearing, which causes the voice at one moment to drop and at another to rise, and to create beautifully ordered connections between the cola, commata, and periods. This will be readily apparent in every good writer. Having said that genuine learning was a combination of literary skill and factual knowledge, we have set forth our view of what literary skill is. Let us now, therefore, say something about knowledge. Here again I have in mind someone whose intellect shows their greatest promise, who despises no branch of learning, who holds all the world as her province, who, in a word, burns marvelously with a desire for knowledge and understanding, An ardent and well-motivated person like this needs, I think, to be applauded and spurred on in some directions, while in others she must be discouraged and held back. Disciplines there are , of whose rudiments some knowledge is fitting, yet whereof to obtain the mastery is a thing by no means glorious. In geometry and arithmetic, for example, if she waste a great deal of time worrying about their subtle obscurities, I should seize her and tear her away from them. I should do the same in astrology, and even, perhaps, in the art of rhetoric. I say this with some hesitation, since if any living men have labored in this art, I would profess myself to be of their number. But there are many things here to be taken into account, the first of which is the person whom I am addressing. For why should the subtleties of the status, the epicheiremata, the krinomena, and a thousand other rhetorical conundrums consume the powers of a woman, who never sees the forum? That art of delivery, which the Greeks has hypocrisis and we pronunciatio, and which Demosthenes said was the first, the second, and the third most important acquirement of the orator, so far is that from being the concern of a woman that if she should gesture energetically with her arms as she spoke and shout with violent emphasis, she would probably be thought mad and put under restraint. The contests of the forum, like those of warfare and battle, are the sphere of men. Hers is not the task of learning to speak for and against witnesses, for and against torture, for and against reputation; she will not practice the commonplaces, the syllogisms, the sly anticipation of an opponent's arguments. She will, in a word, leave the rough-and-tumble of the forum entirely to men. When, then, do I encourage her, when do I spur her on? Just when she devotes herself to divinity and moral philosophy. It is there I would beg her to spread her wings, there apply her mind, there spend her vigils. It will be worth our while to dwell on this in some detail. First, let the Christian woman desire for herself a knowledge of sacred letters. What better advice could I give. Let her search much, weigh much, acquire much in this branch of study. But let her fondness be for the older authors. The moderns, if they are good men, she will honor and revere, but she should pay scant attention to their writings. A woman of literature will find no instruction in them that is not in St. Augustine, and St. Augustine, moreover, unlike them, has the diction of an educated person , and one well worth attending to. Nor would I have her rest content with a knowledge of sacred literature; let her broaden her interests into the secular studies as well. Let her know what the most excellent minds among he philosophers have taught about moral philosophy, what their doctrines are concerning continence, temperance, modesty, justice, courage, liberality. She should understand their beliefs about happiness: whether virtue is in itself sufficient for happiness, or whether torture, poverty, exile, or prison can affect it. Whether, when such misfortunes befall the blessed, they are made miserable thereby, or whether. they simply take away happiness without inducing actual misery. . . They are valuable not only for the guidance they give in life, but they also supply us with a marvelous stock of knowledge which can be used in every variety or oral and written expression. Other subjects will be related to them in proportion as they contribute to them or to their embellishment. It is true that the marvel of human excellence, that excellence which raises a name to genuine celebrity, is a direct result of a wide and various knowledge; and it is true, too, that we should read much and learn much, selecting, acquiring, weighing, and examining all things from all points of view, from which process we derive great benefit for our studies. To the aforesaid subjects there should first be joined, in my view, a knowledge of history, which is a subject no scholar should neglect. It is a fit and seemly thing to be familiar with the origins and progress of one's own nation, and with the deeds in peace and in war of great kings and free peoples. Knowledge of the past gives guidance to our counsels and our practical judgement, and the consequences or similar undertakings [in the past] will encourage or deter us according to our circumstances in the present. I would further urge her not to neglect the orators. Where else is virtue praised with such passion, and vice condemned with such ferocity? It is the orators who teach us to praise the good deed and to hate the bad; it is they who teach us how to soothe, encourage, stimulate, or deter. The poets, too, I would have her read and understand. This is a knowledge which all great men have possessed. Aristotle, at least, frequently cites passages of Homer, Hesiod, Pindar, Euripides, and the other poets, showing by his familiar knowledge and ready quotation of them that he was no less a student of the poets than of the philosophers. In sum, then, the excellence I speak of comes only from a wide and various knowledge. It is needful to read and comprehend a great deal, and to bestow great pains on the philosophers, the poets, the orators and historians and all the other writers, For thus comes that full and sufficient knowledge we need to appear eloquent, well-rounded, refined, and widely cultivated. Needed too is a well-developed and respectable literary skill of our own, For the two together reinforce each other and are mutually beneficial. Literary skill without knowledge is useless and sterile; and knowledge, however extensive, fades into the shadows without the glorious lamp of literature. |
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