Worlds of the Renaissance 2000 - Rachel Casteel's Project

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The Worlds of the Renaissance Projects, 2000

Women in the Renaissance Lab

(6) Document 4 Leon Battista Alberti, The Family in Renaissance Florence, The Civilization of the Italian Renaissance, ed. Kenneth Bartlett, (Lexington, Massachusetts: D.C Heath and Company, 1992)

Alberti was a papal secretary as well as an accomplished painter, architect, athlete, musician, orator, mathematician and author. He is often cited as an ideal Renaissance man. He wrote The Family in Renaissance Florence in the 1430's.

I, my dear wife, shall seek with all my powers to gain what we have asked of God. You, too, must set your whole will, all your mind, and all your modesty to work to make yourself a person whom God has heard and to whom he has granted what you prayed for. You should realize that in this regard nothing is so important for yourself, so acceptable to God, so pleasing to me, and precious in the sight of your children as your chastity The woman's character is the jewel of her family; the mother's purity has always been a part of the dowry she passes on to her daughters, her purity has always far outweighed her beauty. A beautiful face is praised, but unchaste eyes make it ugly through men's scom, and too often flushed with shame or pale with sorrow and melancholy A handsome person is pleasing to see, but a shameless gesture or an act of incontinence in an instant renders her appearance vile. Unchastity angers God, and you know that God punishes nothing so severely in women as he does this lack. All their lives he makes them notorious and miserable. The shameless woman is hated by her whose love is true and good She soon discovers that, in fact, her dishonored condition pleases only her enemies. Only one who wishes us to suffer and be troubled can rejoice when he sees you fall from honor.

"A great part of modesty, remember, consists in tempering all one's gestures with gravity and a mature manner. One must temper one's mind and every word of one's speech, even within the household and among one's own family, all the more outside among strangers. I shall be truly glad if I see that you disdain the frivolous mannerisms, the habit of tossing the hands about, the chattering that some little girls do all day, in the house, at the door, and wherever they go. They talk now with this friend, now with that one, they ask a lot of questions and say a lot of things that they don't know as well as a lot that they do. All that is the way to get yourself the reputation of an irresponsible featherbrain. Silence is as it always has been, the peak of dignity and the source of respect for a woman.

(6) Document 4	Leon Battista Alberti, The Family in Renaissance Florence, The Civilization of the Italian Renaissance, ed. Kenneth Bartlett, (Lexington, Massachusetts: D.C Heath and Company, 1992)
	Alberti was a papal secretary as well as an accomplished painter, architect, athlete, musician, orator, mathematician and author. He is often cited as an ideal Renaissance man. He wrote The Family in Renaissance Florence in the 1430's.
	I, my dear wife, shall seek with all my powers to gain what we have asked of God. You, too, must set your whole will, all your mind, and all your modesty to work to make yourself a person whom God has heard and to whom he has granted what you prayed for. You should realize that in this regard nothing is so important for yourself, so acceptable to God, so pleasing to me, and precious in the sight of your children as your chastity The woman's character is the jewel of her family; the mother's purity has always been a part of the dowry she passes on to her daughters, her purity has always far outweighed her beauty. A beautiful face is praised, but unchaste eyes make it ugly through men's scom, and too often flushed with shame or pale with sorrow and melancholy A handsome person is pleasing to see, but a shameless gesture or an act of incontinence in an instant renders her appearance vile. Unchastity angers God, and you know that God punishes nothing so severely in women as he does this lack. All their lives he makes them notorious and miserable. The shameless woman is hated by her whose love is true and good She soon discovers that, in fact, her dishonored condition pleases only her enemies. Only one who wishes us to suffer and be troubled can rejoice when he sees you fall from honor.
	"A great part of modesty, remember, consists in tempering all one's gestures with gravity and a mature manner. One must temper one's mind and every word of one's speech, even within the household and among one's own family, all the more outside among strangers. I shall be truly glad if I see that you disdain the frivolous mannerisms, the habit of tossing the hands about, the chattering that some little girls do all day, in the house, at the door, and wherever they go. They talk now with this friend, now with that one, they ask a lot of questions and say a lot of things that they don't know as well as a lot that they do. All that is the way to get yourself the reputation of an irresponsible featherbrain. Silence is as it always has been, the peak of dignity and the source of respect for a woman.