Anna Maria Van Schurman, 'The Star of Utrecht': The Educational Vision and Reception of a Savante 9781472463340, 9781317180692, 9781472463357, 9781472463364, 9781315567211

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ANNA MARIA VAN SCHURMAN, ‘THE STAR OF UTRECHT’

Dutch Golden Age scholar Anna Maria van Schurman was widely regarded throughout the seventeenth century as the most learned woman of her age. She was ‘The Star of Utrecht,’ ‘The Dutch Minerva,’ ‘The Tenth Muse,’ ‘a miracle of her sex,’ ‘the incomparable Virgin,’ and ‘the oracle of Utrecht.’ As the first woman ever to attend a university, she was also the first to advocate, boldly, that women should be admitted into universities. A brilliant linguist, she mastered some fifteen languages. She was the first Dutch woman to seek publication of her correspondence. Her letters in several languages – Hebrew, Greek, Latin, and French – to the intellectual men and women of her time reveal the breadth of her interests in theology, philosophy, medicine, literature, numismatics, painting, sculpture, embroidery, and instrumental music. This study addresses Van Schurman’s transformative contribution to the seventeenth-century debate on women’s education. It analyses, first, her educational philosophy; and, second, the transnational reception of her writings on women’s education, particularly in France. Anne Larsen explores how, in advocating advanced learning for women, Van Schurman challenged the educational establishment of her day to allow women to study all the arts and the sciences. Her letters offer fascinating insights into the challenges that scholarly women faced in the early modern period when they sought to define themselves as intellectuals, writers, and thoughtful contributors to the social good. Anne R. Larsen is the Lavern ‘39 and Betty DePree ‘41 Van Kley Professor of French at Hope College, USA. She has edited (and co-edited) books on Renaissance and seventeenth-century women writers, including Early Modern Women and Transnational Communities of Letters (2009).

Women and Gender in the Early Modern World Series Editors: Allyson Poska, The University of Mary Washington, USA and Abby Zanger

The study of women and gender offers some of the most vital and innovative challenges to current scholarship on the early modern period. For more than a decade now, Women and Gender in the Early Modern World has served as a forum for presenting fresh ideas and original approaches to the field. Interdisciplinary and multidisciplinary in scope, this Ashgate series strives to reach beyond geographical limitations to explore the experiences of early modern women and the nature of gender in Europe, the Americas, Asia, and Africa. We welcome proposals for both single-author volumes and edited collections which expand and develop this continually evolving field of study. Titles in the series include: Maternity and Romance Narratives in Early Modern England Edited by Karen Bamford and Naomi J. Miller Education and Women in the Early Modern Hispanic World Elizabeth Teresa Howe Women’s Literacy in Early Modern Spain and the New World Edited by Anne J. Cruz and Rosilie Hernández Early Modern Women in the Low Countries Feminizing Sources and Interpretations of the Past Susan Broomhall and Jennifer Spinks A Ruler’s Consort in EM Germany Aemilia Juliana of Schwarzburg-Rudolstadt Judith P. Aikin Early Modern Habsburg Women Transnational Contexts, Cultural Conflicts, Dynastic Continuities Edited by Anne J. Cruz and Maria Galli Stampino

Anna Maria van Schurman, ‘The Star of Utrecht’

The Educational Vision and Reception of a Savante

ANNE R. LARSEN

First published 2016 by Routledge 2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN and by Routledge 711 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10017 Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business © 2016 Anne R. Larsen The right of Anne R. Larsen to be identified as author of this work has been asserted by her in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe. British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Names: Larsen, Anne R., author. Title: Anna Maria van Schurman, ‘the star of Utrecht’ : the educational vision and reception of a savante / by Anne R. Larsen. Description: Farnham, Surrey, UK ; Burlington, VT : Ashgate, 2016. | Series: Women and gender in the early modern world | Includes bibliographical references and index. Identifiers: LCCN 2015026616 | ISBN 9781472463340 (hardcover) | ISBN 9781472463357 (ebook) | ISBN 9781472463364 (epub) Subjects: LCSH: Women—Education—Philosophy. | Schurman, Anna Maria van, 1607–1678. | Women scholars—Netherlands—Biography. Classification: LCC LC1701 .L37 2016 | DDC 371.822—dc23 LC record available at http://lccn.loc.gov/2015026616 ISBN: 9781472463340 (hbk) ISBN: 9781315567211 (ebk) Typeset in Times New Roman by Apex CoVantage, LLC

For my mother, Wiepske Rozelaar Larsen For my daughter, Stephanie For my sisters, Natalie and Barbara Psalm 23:1

If Tycho Brahe, the famous astronomer and Danish baron, had lived in our day, would he not have celebrated that new star recently discovered in his region – let us call her thus – Mademoiselle van Schurman, the rival of those illustrious Ladies in eloquence, and of their lyric poets too, even in their own Latin language, and who, besides that language, possesses all the others, ancient and modern, and all the liberal and noble arts? Marie de Gournay (1641)

Contents List of Figures Acknowledgements

ix xi

Introduction: The Savante in Historical Context

1

1

A Star is Born: The Education and Fame of a Savante

33

2

The Savante, the Theologian, and the Philosopher

69

3

Defending the Savante

101

4

Translating the Savante

119

5

Publishing the Savante

153

6

Reception in France

189

7

Reception in England

225

Epilogue

263

Appendix 1: Translated Latin Documents Appendix 2: Eulogy of Anna Maria van Schurman by Isaac Bullart, 1682 Bibliography Index

277 287 291 335

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List of Figures I.1 I.2 2.1 2.2

Anna Maria van Schurman, Self-Portrait (1640). Engraving. Frontispiece to Van Schurman, Opuscula (1648, 1650). Bibliothèque nationale de France, Paris Crispijn van de Passe, Sr, Anna Maria van Schurman (163?). Pencil sketch. Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam Calligraphic page by Anna Maria van Schurman, from Van Schurman, Opuscula (1650). Bibliothèque nationale de France, Paris Crispyn van den Queborne, Princess Elisabeth of Bohemia. Frontispiece to Caspar Barlaeus, Faces augustæ (Dordrecht, 1643). This portrait replaces Van Schurman’s self-portrait in Opuscula (1648) at the Newberry Library, Chicago.

2 3

80

93

3.1

André Rivet, from Johannes Meursius, Athenæ Batavæ (1625). Bibliothèque Mazarine, Paris

102

4.1

Van Schurman, Question celebre (1646). Bibliothèque nationale de France, Paris

136

5.1

Van Schurman, Amica Dissertatio (1638). Bibliothèque Sainte-Geneviève, Paris. Photo: A. Larsen Van Schurman, Dissertatio (1641). Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Yale University Van Schurman, Opuscula (1652). Bibliothèque nationale de France, Paris Edme de Boulonois, Anna Maria van Schurman. Engraving from Isaac Bullart, Academie des Sciences et des Arts (1682). Bibliothèque nationale de France, Paris

5.2 5.3 5.4

6.1

7.1

159 169 177 182

Jean Matheus, Marie de Gournay. Frontispiece to Les Advis, ou, Les Presens de la Demoiselle de Gournay (1641). Bibliothèque nationale de France, Paris

194

William Marshall, Bathsua Makin, ca. 1649. Engraving. National Portrait Gallery, London

251

x

E.1 E.2 E.3

Anna Maria van Schurman, ‘The Star of Utrecht’

Anne Marie de Scurman [sic] (ca. 1726–54). Engraving, from Etienne Jahandier Desrochers, Oeuvres. Bibliothèque nationale de France, Paris Cornelis van Dalen the Younger, Anna Maria van Schurman (ca. 1661). Print engraving after a painting by Cornelis Jonson (or Janssens) van Ceulen (1657). Collection Martena Museum, Franeker Jan Lievens, Anna Maria van Schurman (1649). Oil on canvas. National Gallery, London

264 266 267

Acknowledgements Many have helped with their generous expertise and encouragement to bring this project to completion. My thanks go first to former Provost Jacob E. Nyenhuis and current Provost Richard Ray at Hope College, my home institution, for their supportive interest. Colleagues in the field of Early Modern French Studies – Susan Broomhall, Leah Chang, Jane Couchman, Brenda Hosington, Marie-Thérèse Noiset, Catharine Randall, and Colette Winn – all gave perceptive comments on individual chapters. Their own work has been a constant source of inspiration to me. I am deeply grateful to my colleague in English, Charles Huttar, and to my daughter, Stephanie Wykstra, for their editorial corrections and suggestions and always wonderful encouragement. I am also very thankful to my colleagues in Classics, the late John Quinn and especially Steve Maiullo, for invaluable help with the Latin and Greek translations. I thank Julie Campbell and Diana Robin for their collegial friendship during many inspiring book club gatherings in Chicago on early modern women, and for their insights and advice on an early manuscript draft. I thank as well Phil van Eyl and Alice Ward for delightful, ongoing sessions on Dutch secondary criticism of Anna Maria van Schurman. I am also very grateful to Al Rabil for stimulating my interest in cross-national women’s writings in his outstanding National Endowment for the Humanities Summer Institute ‘A Literature of Their Own? Women Writing: Venice, London, Paris, 1550–1700’. Moreover, my particular thanks go to Ashgate Publishing; to Erika Gaffney for her unfailing support and advice; to Ashgate’s anonymous reader who provided ways to improve the book; to Allyson Poska and Abby Zanger, editors of the series ‘Women and Gender in the Early Modern World’; and to Maria Anson and Tricia Craggs who shepherded the manuscript through the editorial process with care. Finally, I am most grateful to Michelle Kelley at Hope College’s Interlibrary Loan Office; Caitlin Johnson and Leigh Wynveen for help on the index; as well as Gina Veltman and Lauren Wade for help on the bibliography. My deepest appreciation goes to my spouse for being such a supportive ‘PA’ throughout the preparation of this book. Much of this volume was written during two year-long sabbatical leaves generously funded by Hope College, and a National Endowment for the Humanities Fellowship for College Teachers. Part of the time was spent as a visiting scholar at the Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies at UCLA. I thank Brian P. Copenhaver, then Director of the Center, and Karen E. Burgess, its programme coordinator, for their welcome. A summer travel grant to archival collections from the American Philosophical Society allowed me to pursue

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research in France. I thank Hope College for awarding me the Endowed Lavern ’39 and Betty DePree ’41 Van Kley Chair, which has funded my trips to Paris and the Netherlands. My thanks go to the staff of the following libraries for their professional courtesy and help: Koninklijke Bibliotheek Special Collections at The Hague, Utrecht University Library Special Collections, Leiden University Library Special Collections, Rijksarchief Special Collections at Leeuwarden, Bibliothèque Nationale de France, Bibliothèque Mazarine, Bibliothèque de l’Arsenal, Bibliothèque Sainte-Geneviève, the Houghton Library at Harvard University, the UCLA Clark Memorial Library, the Newberry Library, and the Beinecke Library at Yale University. Marion Bost and Marjan Brouwer at the Martena Museum in Franeker generously spent time guiding me through the Anna Maria van Schurmann special collection. I am pleased that the editors of the following volumes allowed me to publish an expanded version of a portion of Chapter 4, which in its earliest form appeared under the title ‘The French Reception of Anna Maria van Schurman’s Letters on Women’s Education (1646)’, in Women’s Letters across Europe, 1400–1700: Form and Persuasion (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2005), 297–314, edited by Jane Couchman and Ann Crabb; and a portion of Chapter 6, which appeared under the title ‘A Women’s Republic of Letters: Anna Maria van Schurman, Marie de Gournay, and Female Self-Representation in Relation to the Public Sphere’, in Early Modern Women: An Interdisciplinary Journal 3 (2008): 105–26, edited by Jane Donawerth, Adele Seeff, and Diane Wolfthal.

Introduction: The Savante in Historical Context In the summer of 1648, Anna Maria van Schurman (1607–78) commented to her editor Frederik Spanheim (1600–49) on her self-portrait, which graced her newly published collection of letters. Her delight, even if understated, is palpable: Regarding the portrait which the printer has placed there with verses borrowed from mine, I never saw anything which comes so close to its original, and which has less of an air and a posture: but one must pardon the licence of painters.1

Her self-depiction became the most famous and most frequently copied of all her portraits (Figure I.1). Completed in 1640, it circulated widely. It firmed up her status as an internationally recognized learned woman, and played an important role in her patronage and friendship networks. She unapologetically projected herself as a scholar, in fact, a savante [female erudite]. She crafted this image over and against those who would depict her merely as a cultivated woman. A comparison of her portrait with the pencilled one at about the same time by the famous Utrecht engraver Crispijn van de Passe, Sr (1564–1637) reveals this striking representational difference (Figure I.2). Van de Passe presents her as a dilettante. She wears an elaborately bejewelled and embroidered dress, with exquisite lace and a recherché hairstyle, and holds an elegant fan in one hand while resting the other on a closed book. Seated comfortably behind a table adorned with an oriental carpet, against a swathe of velvet drapery with a hanging tassel, she directs her alert gaze and half smile at the viewer. Van Schurman, on the other hand, depicts herself against a plain background, in a simpler lacedup dress, with a white collar covering amply her shoulders; her hair, knotted in short pigtails, is held up at the back in a bun with a simple row of pearls. No smile crosses her face; her gaze is serious, intently focused, and directed away from the viewer. The two poses could not be more different. In the Van de Passe portrait, she appears as a mondaine [worldly] elite woman, perfectly conforming to the bienséances [decorum] of her rank. The closed small octavo book which she touches lightly suggests that reading for her is a leisure activity, not a dedicated pursuit of knowledge. Whereas Van de Passe casts her as a cultivated woman, she 1  Van Schurman to Spanheim, French letter dated 15 August 1648, in Schurman, Opuscula (1652), 292. On Van Schurman’s self-portraiture, see Chapter 5. Translations of French citations throughout this book are mine, unless otherwise stated.

2

Figure I.1

Anna Maria van Schurman, ‘The Star of Utrecht’

Anna Maria van Schurman, Self-Portrait (1640). Engraving. Frontispiece to Van Schurman, Opuscula (1648, 1650). Bibliothèque nationale de France, Paris

Introduction: The Savante in Historical Context

Figure I. 2

Crispijn van de Passe, Sr, Anna Maria van Schurman (163?). Pencil sketch. Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam

3

4

Anna Maria van Schurman, ‘The Star of Utrecht’

wants viewers to see her as an intellectual deserving a place in the scholarly ranks of the Republic of Letters.2 This book onAnna Maria van Schurman as a savante addresses her transformative contribution to the seventeenth-century debate on women’s education. I analyse, first, her educational philosophy; and, second, the transnational reception of her letters on women’s education, particularly in France and also in England. Helpful to my endeavour is the work of intellectual historians Hilda Smith and Carol Pal; French philosophers Michèle Le Doeuff, Elsa Dorlin, and Marie-Frédérique Pellegrin; and art historian Elise Goodman, among others. These critics have all examined the intellectual history, philosophical writings, and pictorial casting of early modern women thinkers.3 Van Schurman urged women to define themselves as rational beings. In advocating serious learning for them, she challenged the educational establishment of her day to allow them to study all the arts and the sciences. Her letters therefore offer fascinating insights into the challenges that scholarly women faced in the early modern period when they sought to define themselves as intellectuals, writers, and thoughtful contributors to the social good. Anna Maria van Schurman could not have been more famous. She was regarded throughout the seventeenth century as the most learned woman not only of the Netherlands but of Europe. She was ‘the Star of Utrecht’, ‘the Dutch Minerva’, ‘the Tenth Muse’, ‘the Muse of Utrecht’, ‘a miracle of her sex’, ‘the incomparable Virgin’, and ‘the oracle of Utrecht’. As the first woman ever to attend a university, she was also the first to advocate, boldly, that women should be admitted into universities.4 A brilliant linguist, she mastered some 15 languages.5 She was the first Dutch woman to seek publication of her correspondence.6 Her letters in several languages – Hebrew, Greek, Latin, and French – to the intellectual men and women of her time reveal the breadth of her interests in theology, philosophy, medicine, education, literature, numismatics, painting, sculpture, embroidery, and instrumental music. A collection of her letters – entitled Minor Works in Hebrew, Greek, Latin, and French, In Prose and Verse by the Most Noble Maiden 2  Other contemporary portraits of learned women such as those of Marie de Gournay and Bathsua Makin, also dating from the 1640s, similarly present them as serious scholars. Gournay [see Figure 6.1] is shown as a writer laureate with a laurel branch (or pen) in hand. Makin [see Figure 7.1] is cast as the preceptor of Princess Elizabeth Stuart, youngest daughter of King Charles I; inscribed in the oval medallion are the three learned languages, Greek, Latin, and Hebrew, which she taught the princess. 3  See Smith 2007; Pal 2012; Le Dœuff; Dorlin; Pellegrin; and Goodman. 4  Beek 2010. 5  Van Schurman knew both ancient and oriental languages (Latin, Greek, Biblical and Rabbinic Hebrew, Arabic, Chaldeic [or Aramaic], Syriac, Persian, Samaritan, and Ethiopian), as well as six modern languages (French, Spanish, German, Italian, Flemish or Dutch, and English). She may have known a total of 18 languages if we include the writings in Japanese, Chinese, and Siamese which Andreas Colvius sent her to decipher on 3 November 1637. See Chapter 2 in this volume. 6  See Chapter 5.

Introduction: The Savante in Historical Context

5

Anna Maria van Schurman – appeared in 1648 at the height of her fame.7 Her correspondents include Daniel Heinsius, Constantijn Huygens, Jacob Cats, André Rivet, Claudius Salmasius (Claude Saumaise), and Princess Elisabeth of Bohemia in the Netherlands; Sir Simonds D’Ewes, Lady Dorothy Moore, and Bathsua Makin in England; and Pierre Gassendi, Valentin Conrart, Marie de Gournay, and Princess Anne de Rohan in France, to name but a few of the vast number who wrote to her. Van Schurman advocated higher studies for women in an academic treatise or disputation and in two letters in Latin to the French Calvinist theologian André Rivet (1572–1651). Rivet was professor of theology at the University of Leiden, and later governor of Prince William-Henry of Orange-Nassau (the Future William II) at the court of The Hague. Her letters, along with Rivet’s response, were published in Paris in 1638,8 and again, with her treatise and exchanges with other noted scholars, in Leiden in 1641.9 The French literary historian and poet Guillaume Colletet (1598–1659) translated her and Rivet’s letters into French, publishing them in Paris in 1646 under the title A Famous Question: Whether it is necessary or not that Girls be learned [ … ].10 Dedicated to Anne-Marie-Louise d’Orléans (1627–93), Duchesse de Montpensier, the Question celebre attracted some attention. Van Schurman was known for her prodigious erudition, while the Duchess was the wealthiest heiress in France, if not Europe.11 Using the gallant terminology of the day, Colletet presented the exchange between Rivet and Van Schurman as ‘one of the most beautiful and most temperate duels of the pen that one has seen in a long time in the history of belles lettres’.12 A decade later, in 1659, Van Schurman’s treatise on women’s learning was translated into English by the educator Clement Barksdale (1609–87). Although Van Schurman was never entirely forgotten in the centuries following her death, studies on her are scarce in the Netherlands until the 1980s and in  Schurman 1648, hereafter cited as Opuscula. All citations from Opuscula, unless otherwise stated, come from this edition. For the three other editions in 1650, 1652, and 1749, and the circumstances of their publication, see Chapter 5. 8  Schurman 1638, Amica Dissertatio [ … ] [A Friendly Argument between the Most Noble Maiden Anna Maria van Schurman and Andreas Rivetus, on the Aptitude of the Female Mind for Knowledge and Better Letters], hereafter cited as Amica Dissertatio. On this edition, see Chapter 5. 9  Schurman 1641, Dissertatio [ … ] [Dissertation on the aptitude of the Female Mind for Knowledge and Humane Letters. To which are added certain letters on the same argument], hereafter cited as Dissertatio. Van Schurman’s treatise on women’s advanced education, included in this work, is hereafter cited as Dissertatio logica. 10  Schurman 1646, hereafter cited as Question celebre. 11  Montpensier was the daughter of King Louis XIII’s brother Gaston d’Orléans, who was known as ‘Monsieur’. She was called ‘Mademoiselle’ as long as her father did not have other daughters. When he remarried and had a daughter in 1645 by his second wife, she became La Grande Mademoiselle. 12  Colletet, Advis au Lecteur, in Question celebre, n.p. 7

6

Anna Maria van Schurman, ‘The Star of Utrecht’

America until the 1990s. The earliest Dutch biography and historical analysis, by G. Schotel in 1853, remains an important archival source. Anna Douma’s Dutch dissertation, published in 1924, focuses on Van Schurman as scholar, while Una Birch’s English biography in 1909 examines Van Schurman as artist, scholar, and mystic. J. Voisine’s informative article in 1972 summarizes the state of Van Schurman studies in its period of greatest limbo, between the 1930s and the 1980s, with its apt title ‘An Eclipsed Star: Anna Maria van Schurman’. Scholars are currently focusing on four principal areas: her religious views, educational philosophy, artistry, and epistolary networks.13 Her religious views, particularly her adherence in the last two decades of her life to the mystical sectarian Jean de Labadie (1610–74) – a defrocked, charismatic Jesuit priest converted to Calvinism – have garnered the greatest attention with pathbreaking scholarship by Joyce Irwin, who argued for a fundamental continuity between Van Schurman’s early scholarly works and later theological Labadist treatises.14 Scholars today agree that Van Schurman’s stated rejection of her learning in her autobiographical work Eukleria (1673) should not be taken at face value.15 She became the theologian and intellectual guide for the Labadist community, whose moral and spiritual leadership she assumed alongside Labadie. She continued to write in Latin even though many of the religious separatists of the period, as the Quakers, for instance, advocated the abandonment of Latin and book-learning in general to seek instead the leading of the ‘Inner Light’ of their consciences. She maintained, furthermore, the importance of church doctrines to individual salvation. Joyce Irwin comments that Van Schurman upheld ‘a fundamental core of indispensable knowledge’ in theology and belief,16 and Bo Karen Lee notes that Van Schurman underwent a ‘dramatic shift within her theological worldview’ as she redirected her learning toward properly achieving through experience her stated ‘goal of pure theology’.17 Van Schurman’s life journey led her gradually to understand that a personal engagement in a separatist household, outside the social institutions with which she was most familiar – the Dutch Reformed Church, the humanist Republic of Letters – was the best way for her to integrate ‘the one thing necessary’ with her learning.18 Articles on Van Schurman’s educational writings examine her defence of a woman’s right to higher studies.19 Her radical advocacy posed somewhat of a 13  Van Schurman continues to attract biographers. The most recent are by Brouwer; and Spang. 14  Irwin 1977, and 1980. On Jean de Labadie and the Labadists, see Chapter 1 in this volume. 15  Schurman 1673. 16  Irwin 1991, 310. 17  Lee 2007, 198. 18  Studies on Van Schurman’s theology include those by Roothaan and Van Eck 1990; Baar, 1994 and 1996c; Roothaan, 1996; Scheenstra; and Lee 2014. 19  Irwin 1989; Moore 1994; Rang 1996; Eck 1996; Deyon 1999; Bulckaert 1997, and 2010; Sneller; and Clarke 2013.

Introduction: The Savante in Historical Context

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quandary to her Dutch male contemporaries, who generally thought that proper roles for women were limited to those of wife and mother and, for the upper classes, cultivated woman. Her artistic talents are examined in studies mostly by Dutch scholars,20 while her networking and connections to the international Republic of Letters have drawn strong critical interest,21 and been recently featured in Carol Pal’s Republic of Women: Rethinking the Republic of Letters in the Seventeenth Century (2012). David Norbrook’s important articles highlight as well the place which Van Schurman’s educational philosophy proposed for women in the Republic of Letters, and the possibilities her views offered for significant roles for them in politics.22 Remarkably, the rediscovery in the last three decades of Van Schurman’s accomplishments in Dutch, Latin, and French letters began initially in the absence of a modern translation of her correspondence. Her treatise and letters in Latin on the education of women have since been translated by Irwin in the series ‘The Other Voice in Early Modern Europe’ (1998), and both treatise and excerpts of the letters by Desmond Clarke (2013). An edition containing Guillaume Colletet’s French translation of Van Schurman’s letters to Rivet, as well as some of her French letters to other addressees, was published by Champion (2004).23 Yet, apart from Pieta van Beek’s highly informative The First Female University Student: Anna Maria van Schurman (1636) (originally published in Dutch in 2004), which thoroughly examines Van Schurman’s works and educational career especially in connection with her Dutch milieu, no monograph to date concentrates on Van Schurman’s educational writings in the context of the seventeenth-century European-wide debate on female education, particularly in France. Her writings gained currency among French salonnières, bio-bibliographers, and members of the Republic of Letters. In this study I shall emphasize Van Schurman’s French connections, her coming to fame as a savante in Parisian academic and salon circles; her educational writings in light of Cartesian thought and the Querelle des femmes,24 the publication in Paris of her Amica Dissertatio (1638); Guillaume Colletet’s translation of her letters on serious education for women and its influence on her reception in seventeenth- and eighteenth-century France; and her contacts with three famous Parisian writers, Marie de Gournay, Anne de Rohan, and Madeleine de Scudéry. Extending the examination of her cross-cultural influence, 20

 See, for instance, Stighelen 1987b, and 1996.  Beek (1996a) opened the way for further studies by Smet 1997 and Baar 2004. 22  Norbrook 2004; Norbrook’s 2003 article examines how Van Schurman was read in the 1640s by English Parliamentarians sympathetic to women’s education. 23  Schurman 1998, 2004, and 2013. 24  Pellegrin, 2013d, reminds us that the Querelle des femmes, an anachronistic nineteenth-century historiographical notion, must be reexamined. All early modern debates engaged the ‘question’ or place of women; one cannot speak of a monolithic literary querelle in the singular but of multiple querelles that were philosophical, theological, social, and political in nature. 21

Anna Maria van Schurman, ‘The Star of Utrecht’

8

my last chapter analyses her reception in England among intellectuals such as Dorothy Moore and Bathsua Makin, with whom she corresponded. *** Anna Maria van Schurman’s scholarly context and the country in which she spent the better part of her life were essential to her identity. First and foremost, she flourished during the early Golden Age (1588–1647) of the prosperous United Provinces of the Netherlands, known also as the Dutch Republic. This period emerged through a confluence of sociopolitical and economic factors that included a market system with a global reach;25 new universities and civic colleges; a book trade on a European scale; and a relative religious tolerance. The Dutch Republic’s economic, technological, and cultural achievements enabled it to become a world economic power. The new merchant elite, in part made up of wealthy immigrants from Antwerp and the South Netherlands, restructured the economy with the rise of the ‘rich trades’. Together with the regents (magistrates and public administrators), they invested in new commercial ventures in the Caribbean, the East Indies, West Africa, Brazil, and northern Russia.26 The new universities of Leiden (1575), Franeker (1585), Groningen (1614), Utrecht (1636), and Harderwijk (1648) became the centres for classical studies and late humanism in Europe, attracting thousands of students and renowned scholars. During the quarter-century 1625–50, Leiden, the most prestigious of these universities, enrolled 11,000 students, around 40 per cent foreign-born.27 About half of the students were German Protestants; the rest came from France, England, Scotland, and Scandinavia. All told, some 20 countries sent students to Leiden, including countries in North Africa, the Turkish Empire, and Persia.28 Leiden University paid well for the services of late humanist scholars Justus Lipsius, Claudius Salmasius, and especially Joseph Justus Scaliger, whose students included among others the statesman jurist Hugo Grotius, the NeoLatin poet Daniel Heinsius, the antiquarian Petrus Scriverius, the mathematician Willebrord Snellius, the polymath and wise merchant (Mercator sapiens) Johannes de Laet, and the Arabic scholar Thomas Erpenius. Dutch universities were highly respected for their core disciplines of theology, law, and medicine. The majority of scholars corresponded with their peers in Paris: Marin Mersenne, Claude Sarrau, and the Dupuy brothers, Jacques and Pierre. Further institutions (the Illustrious Schools, or Athenaea, civic colleges for boys) founded at Deventer (1630), Amsterdam (1632), Dordrecht (1635), ’s-Hertogenbosch (1636), Breda (1646), and Middelburg (1650) attracted equally renowned teachers and rectors who at some point in their career also taught at the university.29 25

 Vries and Woude.  Israel 1995, 344–45. 27  Israel 1995, 572. 28  Cruz 2009, 218. 29  Prögler, 86. 26

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Part of the appeal of Leiden was its thriving printing industry that could disseminate internationally the books of its faculty. Van Schurman’s two major works, her Dissertatio and Opuscula, were published by the Leiden dynastic Elzevier firm. The Elzeviers and other Dutch presses dominated the book trade in the whole of Europe, specializing in the small octavo book format.30 Lenient censorship accounts for the dominance of the Dutch book trade. Books banned elsewhere, such as separatist and Puritan publications in England from about 1600 to the 1640s, were printed in the United Provinces. Dutch presses produced the bulk of Puritan books of piety, Bibles, theological tracts, and worship aids.31 Of the roughly 2,000 Dutch-language Puritan or pietist reformed titles, about one-third were translations from English Puritan works.32 As for the Dutch Republic’s religious tolerance, Netherlanders enjoyed freedom to an extent unheard of in other countries. Since religious allegiance was a personal and familial choice not imposed by the authorities, they could choose whether or not to affiliate with one of many different confessions and could even maintain a critical distance from the teachings of their religious leaders.33 Although the Reformed Church became a public church and its ministers officiated at baptisms and marriages for the general population, it had at first a modest following because the sacrament of the Lord’s Supper was limited only to confessing members of good doctrine and conduct. Around 1590, only about 10 per cent of Hollanders were confessing members of the Reformed Church; this number increased to 25 per cent in around 1620, and by the 1650s a little under half the population were members, most of them second- and third-generation people who automatically joined more out of habit than conviction.34 As Fred van Lieburg indicates, Calvinist ministers had to abandon their initial idea of a church with a ‘pure communion table’: ‘the church had, as it were, given in to the public’ (412). In addition to Calvinists, Roman Catholics, and Jews, there were many dissenting Protestant sects, making the country one of the most religiously diverse and tolerant in all of Europe.35 Added to these factors was a distinctive Dutch cultural and literary identity shaped during the first half of the seventeenth century through the cultivation of intellectual disciplines originating in Renaissance humanism36 and by the pervasive 30

 Gibbs.  Prögler, 67. 32  Lieburg, 17. 33  Kaplan 1997, 68. 34  Lieburg, 410. 35  This tolerance was the work primarily of civil authorities who rigorously maintained social peace. Dutch religious toleration, however, had its limits. Deists, Socinians, Spinozists, and Labadists were suppressed. On the ‘rejection of toleration’, see Israel, 372–77; and essays in Po-Chia Hsia and Nierop. 36  For the impact of Renaissance humanism on Dutch literature and thought, see Price 1974, chapter 5; and Schenkeveld, chapter 7. 31

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influence of France and England.37 Dutch writers drew on Italian Petrarchist and especially French Pléiade poets, as well as classical and Renaissance learning. Daniel Heinsius (1580–1655), for instance, appointed in 1602 as lecturer at the University of Leiden, became the leading poet of his time by enriching Dutch vernacular poetry with Neo-Latin and French influences.38 The court of the Princes of Orange-Nassau at The Hague became a haven for French influence on architecture, art, language, manners, and literature and was one of the chief transmitters of French culture to the Dutch.39 The political alliance with France40 and the influx of Walloons (French Huguenot émigrés) contributed to the gallicization of the upper classes. The ties between French Huguenots, or Protestants, and the Dutch Reformed Church were very close since the latter’s organization, conforming to the Genevan presbyterial model, patterned itself on the French Reformed Church. French émigrés settled in Amsterdam, Leiden, The Hague, and smaller towns where they were active in the luxury trades, the printing industry, the army, and the court.41 French was the international diplomatic language at the Orange court and among the Dutch elite, and the only foreign modern language taught at the schools. French authors from the sixteenth and the seventeenth century – such as the Huguenot poet Guillaume Salluste du Bartas, playwright Pierre Corneille, epistolary writer Guez de Balzac, and novelist Madeleine de Scudéry – were printed, reprinted, and translated into Dutch.42 Like her male scholarly peers, Anna Maria van Schurman was invested not only in humanist encyclopedic learning but also in several modern languages, French especially, which she used in her verse and letters. Although it is not known whether she was fluent in English – few Netherlanders at the time has an active knowledge of English43 – she corresponded frequently in Latin, Greek, and Hebrew with English scholars. Given the close family ties between the Orange and Stuart courts and the frequent contacts between Dutch and English intellectuals, Van Schurman remained firmly apprised of the political and religious situation in England during the Civil Wars of the tumultuous decade of the 1640s. England and the United Provinces were closely linked from 1585 on when Elizabeth I supported the Dutch Revolt to impede Spanish domination over Western Europe. Tens of thousands 37

 For the French influence on Dutch culture, see Dijkshoorn; Geys 1964; Schenkeveld, 143. For the English influence, see, for instance, Jardine; and Prögler. 38  Becker-Contarino 1978, 23–63; Spies 2001, 35–56. As will be seen, Heinsius’s patronage of Dutch women writers such as Anna Roemers Visscher and Anna Maria van Schurman was critical to their early careers. 39  For the French influence on the Dutch court, see Keblusek and Zijlmans. 40  The Dutch-French alliance was reinforced in 1635 when King Louis XIII and Cardinal Richelieu pursued a controversial pro-Protestant, anti-Hapsburg policy of support for the Protestants of the Palatinate, which led to severe criticism in France and to royal repression of all opposition. 41  Bots 2001. 42  Bots 1996; and Gallas. 43  Joby, 39.

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of Englishmen, among them separatists, Puritans, and merchants, moved to the Netherlands, more than to any other country. Large English communities resided at Rotterdam, Amsterdam, Leiden, and The Hague while Utrecht, Middelburg, and Flushing held mid-sized English communities.44 Reinforcing these connections, William II (1626–50), son of Frederik Hendrik (1584–1647), the Stadholder of the United Provinces during Van Schurman’s early years, was wedded on 2 May 1641 to Mary Stuart (1631–60), daughter of Charles I of England and Queen Henrietta Maria. Going further back, from 1621 on, Elizabeth Stuart (1596–1662), daughter of James I and sister of Charles I, resided for many years at The Hague with her husband Frederick V of the Palatinate and their large family. Frederick’s mother, Electress Dowager Louise Juliana, was the daughter of William of Orange, the founder of the Nassau dynasty which provided leaders to the Dutch Republic and commanders for the Palatinate. Elizabeth’s court at The Hague greatly influenced Anglo-Dutch relations as she became a figurehead in the cause of Protestantism. The goal to reunify the Protestant churches on the Continent with the Church of England, leading to a vast Protestant Commonwealth, dated back to 1608, when the Protestant Union of German princes was founded with the help of activists at the Palatine court. The Anglo-German alliance was sealed by the marriage in 1613 of Elizabeth and Frederick, who was the leader of the Protestant Union. Frederick’s reign as King of Bavaria was abruptly curtailed by his defeat at the battle of the White Mountain in November 1620 which frustrated, but did not end, plans for a strong international Protestant alliance in Europe. While in exile at the court of The Hague, Frederick tried to reclaim his hereditary lands. Efforts toward the reunification of the churches continued throughout the 1630s and 1640s.45 Meanwhile, in contrast to the Netherlands, important historical developments in France included the increasing political peril to the French Huguenots, the cultural decline of the universities, and the concomitant rise of the court and urban salons. After the assassination of King Henry IV in 1610 and the resignation from the royal council of his chief minister the Duc de Sully in 1611, the Huguenots’ corporate existence underwent a steady decline and a virtual extinction through a war of attrition. Over the two decades leading up to the siege of La Rochelle (1627–28), the last of the Protestant fortified towns, five major events undermined their militant wing. First, King Louis XIII’s Edict of Restitution in June 1617 required that church property taken from the Catholics since 1569 be returned to the Catholic Church; when the Béarnese Protestant capital of Pau resisted, the king’s army entered the city ‘without a shot being fired’.46 The Huguenot militants in La Rochelle thereupon called an assembly in November 1620 which commanded their leading men of war – Henri, Duc de Rohan; his brother the Duc de Soubise; the Maréchal de Châtillon, grandson of Admiral Coligny; the Duc 44

 Prögler, 63.  See Pursell. 46  Holt, 182. This sketch on the French Protestants is indebted to Holt. 45

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de La Force, governor of Pau; the Duc de Lesguidières; and Henri de La Tour d’Auvergne, Duc de Bouillon – not to make peace or sign a truce with the king without their authorization. Louis XIII then declared that the La Rochelle militants had committed high treason for levying their own troops, administering their own justice, raising taxes, and running their own government. Second, the king’s army besieged and took in 1621 the Huguenot stronghold of St-Jean d’Angély, near La Rochelle, where Rohan was governor, and in 1622 Montpellier, where Rohan made a final stand; the peace edict that followed was ‘a total defeat for the Protestants’ (187). They lost half their fortified towns and their military and political organization. Third, Protestant noble warriors such as the Prince de Condé, Châtillon, and Lesguidières increasingly abjured their faith to join the king’s service, receiving ample reward, while the Duc de Bouillon and the Duc de La Force remained neutral and on the sidelines; only Rohan and his brother Soubise remained loyal to Protestant militancy. Fourth, Soubise was routed in April 1622 in a campaign against the royal army at the Ile de Ré on the Atlantic coast and 2–3,000 of his men were killed, while another 1,000 drowned. Finally, with the appointment to the royal council in 1624 of Cardinal Richelieu, the final phase of the war of attrition against the Huguenots took place. The English fleet sent by Charles I under the Duke of Buckingham to aid the besieged town of La Rochelle was driven away and the 14-month siege of the town ended in late October 1628. The corporate existence of the Huguenots was destroyed, leaving firmly in place the Edict of Nantes’s Gallican goal of ‘one faith, one king, one law’. The peace edict of Alais on 16 June 1629 was the last in a long series of edicts with the French Protestants, beginning with the first one in 1562. From then on they lived as ‘a heretical minority in a Catholic world’, remaining, however, a stable community until the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes in 1685. While late humanism and new emerging philosophical and technological trends defined the culture of the universities in the Dutch Republic during the first half of the century, French universities settled into stagnation: they did not keep up with the new ideas that spread across other parts of Europe.47 Instead, the court, the salons, and the academies drew the majority of intellectuals and trendsetters, who, unlike their counterparts in Dutch universities and the pastorate, were largely secretaries of noblemen. These men of letters took their cues from the mondain side of intellectual life, from coteries of noble amateurs and amatrices of belles lettres. After ending the religious civil wars (the last one leading to the siege of La Rochelle in 1629) and rebellions such as the Fronde (1648–53) – which pitted the crown against a loose coalition of the Parlement, the nobles, and the Paris mob – the triumphant French state, headed by a youthful King Louis XIV, awarded those who remained loyal or had rallied to him, among them intellectuals from the gentry and minor nobility. These men and women – among them, for instance, the famous salonnière Madeleine de Scudéry – turned their energies to creating a belle société 47

 Ridder-Symoens, 433.

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privileging the noble life of leisure founded on pleasing the monarch.48 A new social model, the gallant man and the gallante woman, emerged; its antecedent in the courtly salons of the sixteenth-century Valois kings was theorized in the early seventeenth century as the honnête homme and the honnête femme (more on this later). This exemplary type flourished in mixed-sex social spaces headed by women, spaces more pro-feminine than feminist, that favoured women’s cultivated participation rather than equal education and access to public employment. Debating the Education of Women Van Schurman’s engagement in the cause of advanced learning or the ‘serious education’ of women came at a fraught moment marked by contesting discourses for and against.49 A (brief) overview of the education afforded to girls at the time is important to understand her educational vision. I discuss her own education and her educational ideals for women in Chapters 1–4. While variations existed between individual European countries and different regions within a country, a common denominator in a majority of educational institutions emerged across national lines: as Martine Sonnet aptly notes, ‘no matter what school a girl went to, there was little danger that she would emerge a scholar’.50 In France, in the wake of the Protestant Reformation, the Catholic Counter-Reformation founded elementary petites écoles, convent boarding schools, and charitable day schools for country and urban girls; but the content of the training they offered (with the exception of the Ursuline and Visitandine convent schools, which taught reading by means of Latin religious texts) was limited to manual work and religious education. Little time was given to academic subjects.51 Even Protestant daughters of well-known clergymen were not allowed the learning afforded to their brothers. Marie du Moulin (ca. 1613–99), for instance – the daughter of the Calvinist theologian Pierre du Moulin (1568–1658) and Van Schurman’s soeur d’alliance [covenant or intellectual sister] – lamented in a letter to Valentin Conrart (1603–75), the secrétaire perpétuel of the Académie Française, that she had ‘reproached herself a thousand times for having spent her youth pricking her fingers with a needle, or standing like a crane at court,

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 Viala 2008, chapter 6.  Margaret King 1991, 165, defines ‘serious education’ as the humanist Latin-based learning accessible to male students. 50  Sonnet, 122. 51  Berriot-Salvadore, 91; Timmermans, 55–9. On the education offered by the Visitandines and Ursulines, see Rapley; and Annaert. Subjects in Ursuline schools included the skills of reading in Latin and French, literary composition, orthography, history, arithmetic, and handwork (Rapley, chapter 7). See Conley 2002 on catechetical instruction and moral philosophy at these convent schools. 49

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or sometimes cooking a stew’.52 Encouraged by Van Schurman, she acquired considerable learning only later in life. The only institutional school in France that came close to offering for a short period a challenging education was Madame de Maintenon’s school for young noble girls at Saint-Cyr. From its founding in 1686 until 1689, Maintenon (1635–1719) hired laywomen of the Dames de SaintLouis to teach a curriculum that included French literature, history, arithmetic, the natural sciences, the fine arts, and the proper use of spoken and written French. However, after 1689, Maintenon changed the mission of the school to training her young wards for housewifery; the ideology of maternalism and domesticity replaced mondain activities such as the art of conversation, proper letter-writing, poetry, and theatre.53 In Spain, a backlash arose against Erasmian and Reformation ideologies pertaining to women’s advanced learning. Although a number of girls’ colegios were founded in the sixteenth century through the foresight of Cardinal Jimenez de Cisneros, the curriculum emphasized domestic skills, religious instruction, and some literacy, showing ‘a very limited scope … and the tenuous nature of the institutions providing it’.54 The confessional politics of the Spanish monarchy channelled women writers into religious activity reflecting the status of Spain as a bulwark of Catholic orthodoxy. Nuns such as St Teresa of Avila (1515–82) and visionaries such as Sor María de Ágreda (1602–65), nonetheless, managed to exercise real political and social influence.55 In Ibero-America seventeenth-century nuns alone among women had occasion to devote themselves to higher learning, and several wrote literature in the vernacular in different genres.56 Recent studies show that some elite women in Spain and the Hispanic diaspora continued their early education through broader and informal modes of learning, which included reading books dedicated to them and books in the libraries of male relatives, letterwriting between mothers and daughters, participation in literary academies, and publishing their own books.57 In Protestant Holland and the German states, boarding schools for girls from the gentry offered a reduced curriculum in practical skills. While literacy rates among middle-class women were higher in the urbanized Netherlands than elsewhere, the goals of female education emphasized skills relating above all to household management in keeping with the Reformation’s emphasis on women’s place in the home. The mission of English and Irish boarding schools to transform a girl into a marriage prospect meant that, there too, little was offered beyond  Marie du Moulin to Valentin Conrart, French letter dated ca. January 1647, in Un Tournoi, 48. Marie came to live at The Hague in 1634 with the family of her uncle André Rivet. On her life, see Labrousse 1993; Beek 2002b: 111–19; Pal 2012, chapter 2. 53  On Saint-Cyr’s educational program, see Birberick, 180–81; Lougee, 190–95. 54  Howe, 107, 126. 55  Stevenson 2005a, 202. 56  Stevenson 2005a, 399. 57  See Cruz and Hernández. 52

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social accomplishments such as singing, dancing, needlework, and French.58 The Reformed Irish noblewoman Dorothy Moore (ca. 1613–64) observed that her education consisted of: dauncing and curious works; both which serve onely to fill the fancy with unnecessary, unprofitable and proud imaginations … for my owne education was to learne both, and all I got by them was a great trouble to forget both.59

Later, in the seventeenth century, the educator Bathsua Makin (1600–ca. 1681) and Mary Astell (1666–1731) attempted to implement a demanding academic and intellectual education for girls. They connected serious learning with the humanist ideology of domesticity, which advanced the notion of the wife’s reforming and educational influence over her husband and children. At Tottenham High Cross, Makin advertised in 1673 a school for gentlewomen that offered not only music, song, and dance but also ancient and modern languages, natural science, astronomy, arithmetic, history, and geography. She circulated her pamphlet An Essay to Revive the Ancient Education of Gentlewomen (1673) to defend her school’s advanced programme in the service of both the household and the nation. Mary Astell, in A Serious Proposal to the Ladies (1694), made plans for a college for women, reminding her readers of the positive influence of women over their children, husbands, and society should they be well educated.60 Margaret Ezell indicates that as a rule many young, urban Englishwomen found a way to continue their early rudimentary education by reading guidebooks, called ‘Academies’; during the 1650s, under the Interregnum, these ‘how-to’ books taught them ‘the art of self-fashioning and self-presentation in English’.61 As for seventeenth-century elite women, their educational situation was modified from its Renaissance inception.62 The Renaissance érudite from the nobility and, at times, the upper gentry could, and was even expected to, display publicly her Latin-based education. The seventeenth-century learned woman, on the other hand, came under increasing pressure to match her public persona to that of a cultivated woman. The latter’s more suitably feminine accomplishments, connected with the rise of salon sociability, focused on domestic skills, dancing, drawing, and music, with the fashionable vernaculars French, Italian, and Spanish. The privileging of the cultivated woman, at the expense of the savante, resulted from differing attitudes toward male and female education: middle- and upper-class men continued to receive a Latinate and classical rhetorical education befitting their public roles, while upper-middle and upper-class women were taught forms 58

 On educational prospects for English girls, see Chapter 7 in this volume.  Moore 2004, 120. 60  Astell 1986, 167–8. 61  Ezell 2008, 160. Bowden points out that possibly most of girls’ education in England occurred not in schools but in informal educational spaces in the home. 62  Stock, 81; Merrim, 198–9; Timmermans, 58–9. 59

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of knowledge specific to their roles in the home and society. They continued to be denied entrance to the three key institutions in which knowledge and power were connected: the universities, the seminaries, and the scientific academies.63 The savante Marie de Gournay (1565–1645) confronted directly in her Ladies’ Complaint (1626) the dual masculine monopolization of savoir [specialized knowledge] and pouvoir [power]. Her indictment, laced with sarcasm, concerns the situation of women denied a classical education and, therefore, access to ‘public duties’, ‘liberty’, and ‘power’: Blessed art thou, Reader, if you are not of that sex to which one forbids everything of value, thereby depriving it of liberty; indeed, to which one also forbids almost all the virtues, removing from it public duties, responsibilities, and functions – in a word, cutting if off from power, by the moderate exercise of which most of the virtues are formed – with the object of setting up as its only happiness, its crowning and exclusive virtues, ignorance, servitude, and a capacity to play the fool if a woman likes that game.64

Gournay’s counter-discourse summarizes the predicament of women to whom the knowledge and power connected with a classical education were refused.65 Cultivated women such as Madeleine de Scudéry (1607–1701) condemned as well the conditions of ignorance imposed on the majority of women: Those who own slaves instruct them for their [own] convenience; and yet they whom Nature or custom has given us as masters would have us extinguish in our minds all the brilliance that Heaven has put there and would have us live in our heaviest shadows of ignorance.66

But, unlike Gournay, she wants women to acquire a vernacular rhetorical culture through the reading of handbooks on rhetorical and stylistic codes appropriate to court and salon speech and writing. Although elite women’s participation in a Latin-based rhetorical culture did not altogether disappear in the seventeenth century – a few studied Latin and other classical languages – women’s learning was increasingly positioned (and limited) to their roles in polite society.67 63  Smith 1996, chapter 1; Clarke 2007. Men from the very highest ranks did not attend universities or seminaries; they, and their sisters, were tutored at home where they learned the values and practices associated with their rank. On the education of high-born girls in the seventeenth century, see Morali. 64  Gournay 2002a, 10; also Gournay 2002b, 1: 1074. 65  On counter-discourse—a notion from Michel Foucault—as a rhetorical strategy to resist gendered norms, see Stanton 2014, 2–3. 66  Scudéry 2004, 91; also Scudéry 1642, 433. 67  Stevenson 2005a, 284n30, points out that the rising number of complaints by seventeenth-century women over their limited educational opportunities was due not so

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This bifurcation between two types of elite women – a majority of cultivated women and a minority of truly erudite women – was completed in the eighteenth century. The novelist Louise d’Epinay (1726–83) echoed Marie de Gournay in a letter to the Abbé Galiani: ‘I am very ignorant; that is the fact of the matter. My entire education was concerned with developing talents to make me agreeable.’ The most learned woman, she continues, is so in name only and ‘earns ridicule when she claims to be learned or to have a fine mind and believes that she can keep up that reputation’.68 D’Epinay voices the general discredit befalling women who dared to engage in scholarly learning judged unsuitable to their sex. This discredit, however, did not stop many from engaging in the world of ideas of their time. Gournay, Scudéry, and D’Epinay are not alone in questioning the aims and methods of learning and education for women. Current scholars of early modern women’s education are exploring the flurry of debates at that time regarding goals and methodologies, curricula and teachers. At the 2009 conference at the University of Maryland, ‘Conflict, Concord: Attending to Early Modern Women’, a workshop entitled ‘Changing the Curriculum: Negotiating the Education of Daughters and Wives, Midwives, Humanists, and Indians’ offered striking examples of these debates. The workshop organizers examined both the ‘gendering of knowledge’ into separate male and female spheres and women’s own involvement in their learning to overcome such strictures.69 They stressed the constant questioning and negotiating over pedagogy – whether girls could share their brothers’ textbooks and teachers, and which reading lists and techniques for handwriting were permissible for girls – and over pedagogical sites for learning: ‘at home or in church, in the sewing room or nursery’. The organizers drew attention to the insistent petitioning by early modern women ‘anxious to negotiate the demands of motherhood and wifehood with the requirements of learning and literacy’.70 Van Schurman was as concerned as Gournay over elite women’s access to full literacy, and especially a classically based formal education. However, unlike her radically revisionary peer, who not only rejected the narrowing scope of female learning but also questioned the very definition of a woman’s proper sphere of action, contending that women should take on the same public functions as men, Van Schurman seemed to speak from a more accommodationist social much to the closing of doors that had previously been open to women humanists but ‘from the fact that there was an increasing number of women who expected and demanded more from their lives’. Hence cultivated women such as Scudéry saw the need for a sophisticated vernacular rhetorical culture to fill in the gap. 68  Mme d’Epinay to the Abbé Galiani, French letter dated 4 May 1771. Cited in Craveri, 17, 18. On female education in the eighteenth century, see Brouard-Arends and Plagnol-Diéval 2007; Goodman 2009; Bérenguier; and Gargam 2013. 69  The workshop’s organizers were Adrianna Bakos, Theresa Kemp, Elizabeth Mazzola, and Victoria Mondelli. The workshop abstract is posted at http://sites.google. com/site/conflictconcord/home/plenary-4-pedagogies/28 (accessed in June 2012). For the workshop summary, see Nelson, 219–21. 70  Workshop abstract.

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and religious perspective. In keeping with the United Province’s emphasis on devotio domestica, she contended that women should use a broadly based humanist education for private uses and to strengthen their religious faith. Yet, by advocating equal access to a classical education, Van Schurman, I shall argue, was as radical as Gournay in the sphere of female educational advocacy.71 Her profeminist stance of equality was ahead of her time.72 Before François Poullain de la Barre’s (1647–1725) famous De l’égalité des deux sexes [On the Equality of the Two Sexes, 1673] and De l’éducation des dames [On the Education of Women, 1674], she endorsed publicly in her writings one of two of Poullain’s dominant themes: that the inequality of the sexes is due to the inequality of their education, on account of the limited (and the type of) curriculum offered young women that discouraged them from developing their reasoning capability.73 Poullain’s second theme, that the inequality of the sexes is founded on the unquestioned acceptance of unjust sociopolitical structures, is implicitly, rather than explicitly, addressed by Van Schurman.74 Like Poullain, she defends women’s capacity to become productively educated and active citizens in society. The Savante in Historical Context Anna Maria van Schurman became during her lifetime the epitome of a savante. What did the term savante mean in her time period? How was her prodigious learning perceived? Why did Crispijn van de Passe portray her as a cultivated woman rather than a savante? These and other questions are best accessed in 71

 Irwin, in Schurman 1998, 10, comments on Van Schurman’s conservative bent: ‘Nowhere does Schurman suggest changes in the power structure of political or religious institutions’. Merrim, 200–1, views Van Schurman, Bathsua Makin, and Mary Astell as part of the transitional and transformative dynamic of the early modern period; she categorizes Marie de Gournay, Maria de Zayas, and Poullain de la Barre (also spelled Poulain), on the other hand, as forming a radical group, more properly ‘modern’. In critiquing unequal education, however, Van Schurman implicitly critiques unjust sociopolitical structures (see Chapter 3). On devotio domestica, see Frijhoff, 39. 72  As Cox 2008, xxvii, notes, the terms ‘profeminist’ and ‘protofeminist’ indicate a more politicized slant to the defence of women than ‘pro-woman.’ But even this distinction, she reminds us, ‘differs from modern feminism in its lack of a concrete agenda for social reform.’ 73  For Van Schurman as for Poullain, a proper application of encyclopedic learning leads also to more accurate self-knowledge and greater civility. In Dissertatio logica (Schurman 1998, 33), she states that ignorance breeds contempt: ‘to the extent that each knows himself less, he will … scorn others … when one has faithfully learned the liberal arts, one’s character is refined and one cannot remain uncivilized’. 74  Welch, in Poullain de la Barre 2002, 13, notes that Poullain links the notion of ‘personal freedom’ to ‘issues of female promotion’ as a way to protest against contemporary social structures.

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historical context. I discuss Van Schurman’s reception as a savante in Chapters 1, 6, and 7, and the Epilogue. The female erudite emerged during the Italian Renaissance as a cultural type linked to a broad-based humanist Latin education. Eulogies of this secular figure found their way into the epistolary genre, and especially the catalogues of illustrious women. Angelo Poliziano’s famous encomium of Cassandra Fedele (1465–1558) epitomizes the epistle in praise of the learned ‘virgo’ and ‘virago’. As a subgenre, its origins lay in Petrarch’s De viris illustribus [On Famous Men, 1338], which initiated the catalogue tradition, and in Boccaccio’s De claris mulieribus [On Famous Women, 1374], which established rhetorical norms for the praise of women who won fame through activities considered masculine. Boccaccio’s defence of classical exemplars was illustrative of women’s capacity for virtue. In the late fifteenth century, these catalogues, which progressively played into women’s emergence as writers and savantes, began to include contemporary women intellectuals.75 In sixteenth-century France, lists of classical and biblical mulieres doctae [learned women] were popular in elite circles. In the majority, illustrative women are praised for how well they embody social and moral expectations. They appear as well in pro-women and epideictic Querelle des femmes lists as proof of their superiority over men or as a way to flatter a female patron.76 Some sixteenthcentury catalogues, however, evidence the new phenomenon of the learned female writer, particularly in the second half of the century. These catalogues set in motion two trends. First, they reflect a nationalistic trend of glorifying the French state and its culture, and especially the superiority of its intellectuals, women included, over those of other nations. François de Billon (1522–66), in The Impregnable Bastion of the Honour of the Female Sex (1555), was among the first bio-bibliographers to praise the writings of French ‘sçavantes’ as proof of the ‘Triumph of the Gallic Kingdom’. If individual women could attain such heights of learning, then the country itself was clearly superior for producing this brilliance. He includes the aristocratic luminaries of his time – such as Marguerite de Navarre and Marguerite, Duchesse de Berry – and mentions even women of lesser rank who pursued learning ‘in secret and in spite of the thorns of paternal prohibition’. He hails Latinate women writers of major regions and cities, giving each pride of place. They merit praise for increasing the reputation of the ‘Republique françoise’.77 Similarly, the bio-bibliographer François Grudé de La Croix du Maine (1552–92), in his Bibliothèque Françoise (1584), catalogues some 46 savantes from the nobility and the gentry, half of whom were still living when the book was printed. Of these, 15 had published books, another four had their writings included in miscellanies, and the rest circulated their manuscript works. Among them, he 75

 Recent studies on erudite women in Italy include Cox; Robin 2007a; and Ross 2009a. For Poliziano’s letter, see Fedele, 90–93. 76  Berriot-Salvadore, 356. 77  Billon, 35.

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praises especially Madeleine and Catherine des Roches, ‘toutes deux si doctes et si sçavantes’ [‘both so erudite and so learned’] that France could rightly pride itself on having engendered them. He appreciates above all their published writings, which constituted for him so many public proofs of their learning.78 He argues that women should get their works printed rather than settle for manuscript circulation so that, if not at present, then at least some day a more enlightened reader can judge without prejudice the excellence of their ‘inventions’. Among the érudites he praises are those of high rank who participated in early academies by virtue of their serious learning and social status. So, for example, Henri III’s Palace Academy, established in the 1570s, admitted as académiciennes Marguerite de Valois, the Duchesses de Nevers and de Retz, and Mme de Lignerolles (Anne Cavriana). The ‘sçavantes femmes’ of the sixteenth century distinguished themselves through the public display of their learning and writings. They brought fame to themselves, their city, the court, and the nation. The second trend evidenced in sixteenth-century French catalogues of illustrious women is that they valorize learning as a virtue. This trend, notes Renée-Claude Breitenstein, began with Boccaccio’s De claris mulieribus which ‘reunites, for the first time, a great variety of female figures known for their learning in all its forms’. But how precisely these women acquired their learning goes unmentioned as references to their youthful education are scarce. Only during the seventeenth century do the lives of the savantes and how they acquired their education get discussed in collections of illustres savantes which progressively replaced the earlier catalogues of femmes illustres.79 Then, during the seventeenth century, an important shift occurred. The designation sçavante as an umbrella term described a number of different groups, from cultivated salonnières and female writers to érudites distinguished for philosophical and scientific learning. But negative connotations also began to surface with some frequency. In Furetière’s Dictionnaire universel (first published in 1690), under ‘sçavant, -ante’ as an adjective and a noun, we find: ‘Women who fancy the title of sçavantes are not in good standing in the world’, and ‘this newly-married man found a wife more sçavante than he would have wished’.80 In the Dictionnaire de l’Académie françoise (1694), the savante is referenced as well in negative terms. Under ‘Sçavant, ante’, we are told: ‘this girl is too savante … She passes off as a savante.’ The savante also appears under ‘pedant, pedante’: ‘A woman who passes off as a savante or as capable, or is grave and serious, is out of character even in the least little things.’81 The ‘pedant’ designated the university instructor who, according to Furetière, is ‘impolite, grimy, muddy [crotté], an obstinate critic, and a disputer of nonsense’. The pedant is the antithesis of the honnête man in dress and comportment because he walks the muddy streets of 78

 La Croix du Maine, 41.  Breitenstein, 160. 80  Furetière 1701–2, 2: 812. Cited in Goodman 2000, 3. 81  Dictionnaire, 2: 447, 227. 79

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cities rather than travelling in coaches, and he does not speak elegantly.82 And, like her male derivatives, writes Furetière, ‘there are female pedants, who act as savantes in the way of the Colleges’.83 Furetière’s blatant correlation of pedants to educational institutions derived from the fact that French universities throughout the seventeenth century were thought of as antiquated and anti-intellectual; the salons and the academies, on the other hand, were considered key sites for progressive ideas.84 The notion of the savante as a threat to her husband and as arrogant and unduly confident had already surfaced in the late sixteenth century, usually in connection with learned women from the lesser nobility and the upper gentry. The Calvinist warrior poet Agrippa d’Aubigné (1552–1630), for instance, told his daughters to avoid erudition, which would lead to marital discord.85 And Catherine des Roches has her flighty character Iris, in her pro-feminist pedagogical ‘Dialogue between Iris and Pasithée’ (1583), state to her learned neighbour Pasithée that her paramour ‘does not want to talk to you because you are a savante’.86 Marie de Gournay, for her part, lashed out in her Apology for the Woman Writing (1641) at the contempt shown her for being an independent woman of intellectual ambitions: ‘Among our vulgar class, they fantastically prank up the image of an educated woman – that is, they make of her a stew of extravagancies and chimeras.’87 Starting in about the 1630s, French critics attacked the public show of erudite professionalism.88 Women intellectuals whose coteries imitated or were confused with academies were harshly criticized, since no woman was allowed into the all-male academies. Influential arbiters of taste expressed their distaste for femmes autrices [women authors] who publicized their learning. Jean Chapelain (1595–1674) – an early habitué of the salon of Catherine de Vivonne, Marquise de Rambouillet (1588–1665), and a close friend of Madeleine de Souvré, Marquise de Sablé (1599–1678) – criticized women who published. To the popular letter writer Guez de Balzac (1597–1654), he sharply critiqued Charlotte des Ursins, Vicomtesse d’Auchy (ca. 1570–1646), for writing and publishing a book that displayed her erudition, and for using her salon audience as a type of academy to focus attention on her éclat.89 Balzac responded that he, too, found her ‘pedantry’ offensive and that:  On propreté [cleanliness] as essential to reputation, see Viala 2008, 116–20. The pédant, in Miller 2000, 73, ‘stood for those unable to make the kind of conversation that could hold the attention of the worldly’. 83  Cited in Mesnard 1992, 107. 84  Mesnard 1992, 106, states that in France, ‘the intellectual world in the seventeenth century was animated by an anti-university spirit’. 85  Aubigné 1969, 851–4. 86  Des Roches 1998, 260. 87  Gournay 2002a, 124; also, Gournay 2002b, 2: 1392. 88  Timmermans, 71–94; 177–8; and Maître 1999, 241–53. 89  Chapelain to Balzac, French letter, 22 March 1638, in Chapelain 1880, 1: 215. D’Auchy opened her salon in about 1605 when the poet Malherbe became a court favourite 82

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Anna Maria van Schurman, ‘The Star of Utrecht’ I’d suffer more willingly a woman with a beard than one who poses as a savante. … Really, if I were heading the police, I would send all those women packing who want to make books, who cross dress their mind, and have betrayed their rank in the World. There are some who judge as brazenly our verse and our prose as they do their embroidery and their lace.90

Chapelain was equally critical of Marie Bruneau, Mme des Loges (ca. 1584–1641), whom Balzac favoured: [S]he writes so ambitiously and so pretentiously turns out quantities of polite letters that I can hardly tolerate her, for all affectation is unbearable to me, and it seems to me that in a woman there is nothing more disgusting than to set herself up as a writer and for this alone to entertain commerce with witty minds.

Contrasted with Mme des Loges, the Marquise de Sablé, according to Chapelain, ‘never writes without a topic and never writes anything other than about her topic with a beautiful negligence, which reveals all the more the beauty of her intention the better she tries to hide it’.91 Although Sablé was just as learned as Mme des Loges and the Vicomtesse d’Auchy, Chapelain valorized the former’s aristocratic ethos and court connections, as he would also Rambouillet’s. In his view Sablé’s ethos was founded on the negligence or nonchalance which Baldassare Castiglione in The Book of the Courtier defined as the art of concealment and of making ‘whatever is done or said appear to be without effort and almost without any thought about it … wherefore facility in such things causes the greatest wonder’.92 Sablé and Rambouillet caused this ‘greatest wonder’. Their courtly behaviour displayed modesty, artful self-effacement, and discretion; their ‘topic’ emerged directly from group conversation. The Vicomtesse d’Auchy, on the other hand, was condemned for self-sufficiency in drawing attention to herself as an erudite author.

and her lover. In 1609 her husband exiled her to Brittany where he was governor; she reopened her salon in Paris upon his death in 1627/28. Timmermans, 76, conjectures that D’Auchy may have wished to imitate the salon of Marguerite de Valois who treated ‘savants as savants’, whereas at the Hôtel de Rambouillet the savants were cast primarily as ‘galants’. 90  Balzac to Chapelain, French letter, 30 September 1638, in Balzac 1656, 285. D’Auchy’s literary critical practices, imitated by later salonnières, became a key feature of the querelle des savantes in Paris in the 1670s. 91  Chapelain to Balzac, French letter, 9 October 1639, in Chapelain 1880, 1: 504. 92  Castiglione, 43. Chapelain, a devotee of Mme de Rambouillet, criticized any woman who he thought was competing with her. Pekacz, 148n478, indicates that the notion advanced in the nineteenth century of an enmity between Rambouillet and D’Auchy is unfounded. D’Auchy visited the Hôtel de Rambouillet, and several members of Rambouillet’s salon, such as Vincent Voiture, Valentin Conrart, and the Marquise de Sablé, attended D’Auchy’s gatherings.

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She was culpable of vainglory.93 The cultivated woman, epitomized by a Sablé and a Rambouillet, became in short order preferable to the supposedly immodest femme savante. As Chantal Morlet-Chantalat aptly notes, ‘what separates the good from the bad savante, is not the nature of her learning, but the bienséance of her speech about learning’.94 To what historically can we attribute this shift in perception over the savante, who, during the Renaissance, was an admired icon? First, the aristocratic salons of a Rambouillet and a Sablé afforded social promotion and distinction to professional literary trendsetters such as Chapelain and Balzac. Schapira reminds us that these men of letters from la roture [commoners] cultivated their social identity in relation to royal favour and courtly values and, therefore, in opposition to the ‘érudit entrenched in his learning’.95 Second, Chapelain’s declared contempt for women writing professionally like the érudit surfaced in the same time period as the founding of the Académie Française (1635), a ‘corporation’ benefiting directly from state sponsorship.96 As an academician, Chapelain wanted to firm up a clear divide between the state-sponsored all-male French Academy and the independent female-directed academies. He stigmatized Mme d’Auchy both for her ‘professionalized’ learning and for gatherings at her academy which served as a backdrop for discussion of her published writings – she wrote especially on theological topics reserved for men of the cloth, and she published under her own name her Homélies on Saint Paul’s Epistle to the Hebrews (1634).97 Thus as allmale academies – the Académie Française being the most prestigious – grew in number and influence, women’s participation declined, and although three women later in the century were proposed for membership at the French Academy, they were ultimately denied entrance.98 Furthermore, whereas manuscript circulation of 93  The distinction between Rambouillet’s gatherings and those of other femaleled academies is highlighted in 1724 by Henri Sauval, 2: 495, who includes the Hôtel de Rambouillet in a section on aristocratic palaces, while he places the ‘Academies des Dames savantes’, Marie de Gournay, Mme des Loges, and Mme d’Auchy, in a section on governmental ‘corps’ or associations denoting their professionalism. Cited in Maître 2003, 51. The ‘rivalry’ between the salons and the women-led academies was dramatized in Samuel Chappuzeau’s L’Académie des femmes (1661). 94  Morlet-Chantalat, 180. 95  Schapira 2003, 239. 96  Maître 2006b, 271–92. 97  In a French letter to Balzac, on 7 April 1638 (Chapelain 1880, 1: 222), Chapelain slyly reports a rumour that a theologian by the name of Maucors had sold his paraphrase of the homilies to D’Auchy, thereby implying that Maucors wrote the meditations for her. D’Auchy also incurred suspicion because some of the discussions she directed were considered politically sensitive for including detractors of Richelieu’s policies toward Rome. Academicians such as Chapelain were clients of Richelieu. 98  Schiebinger, 22. The three women were Scudéry, the poet Antoinette Deshoulières (1638–94), and the classicist Anne Dacier (1645–1720). The same process of exclusion occurred in the sciences. Although women were present in scientific salons and at debating

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a woman’s writings for personal and salon use was acceptable, print publication crossed the line of the permissible. However, during the 1630s and 1640s (the period when Van Schurman was publishing her works), the lines of permissibility were still relatively open and fluid. The regency of Anne of Austria, beginning in 1643, galvanized ‘champions of women’ into consolidating her power through works arguing the intellectual superiority of women. François du Soucy, Monsieur de Gerzan, for example, in his Triomphe des Dames (1646), praises Mme d’Auchy for her academy and her homilies which lent prestige to the France of Anne of Austria: ‘It is she who wrote that beautiful Paraphrase of St Paul, which everyone admires and which serves as an immortal and incontestable proof of her great mind and profound doctrine.’99 After the Fronde in the mid-1650s, the savante assumed two increasingly divergent meanings connected with the exponential growth of salon sociability and the rise to power of an absolutist king, who designed royal patronage as the source for the majority of cultural productions:100 the first referred to the cultivated woman, usually the salonnière whose learning and wit were considered positive attributes, while the second, especially in satiric works of fiction such as Molière’s comedies, attributed to the savante and her double, the précieuse, a negative connotation.101 Among the earliest to distinguish clearly the cultivated woman from the femme savante was Madeleine de Scudéry, the dame régnante of salon circles, who sought to legitimize women’s speech in the semipublic forum of the salon, the cabinet, and the promenade. Scudéry’s heroine Sappho, in her Femmes illustres ou les Harangues heroïques (1642, 1644), discourages her friend Erinna from the sorts of studies undertaken by professionals: societies in the 1660s, women were left out of the membership of the newly founded Académie des Sciences (1666). 99  Du Soucy, 132. The following year Pierre le Moyne in his Gallerie des Femmes fortes (1647) and Hilarion de Coste’s augmented edition of his Eloges et vies des reynes (1647) endorsed the same agenda, and both praise Mme d’Auchy for her published writings. Jacques du Bosc, in his chapter on learned women in L’Honneste femme (1632), also praises her Homilies. However, in his Nouveau recueil de lettres des dames de ce temps [New Collection of Letters and Responses by Contemporary Women], published in 1635, the same year as the founding of the Académie Française, Du Bosc’s letter writer condemns publishing women: ‘I can tolerate the idea of a woman being learned as long as she does not write or produce books’ (Du Bosc 2014, 232). 100  Wellman, 372, indicates that the conferences (1630s and 1640s) of Theophraste Renaudot’s debating society avoided being ‘stiffled by a monarch like Louis XIV’. The Fronde, she notes, had a ‘chilling effect’ on cultural expression since it led to monarchical control of all cultural and scientific manifestations. 101  Maître (1999) examines the difficulty of defining the précieuses. The majority of contemporary writings on them are polemical and conjectural, and no elite woman of the period adopted the term. Critics today alternate between affirming their historical existence and calling them a fiction. See Viala 2008, 166–70; Stanton 2014, 7–8; and Maître 2015.

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I do not at all desire for you the kind of studies that make your complexion yellow, your eyes sunken, your visage pale, that puts wrinkles on your forehead and make your mood somber and anxious … but rather, I only wish you to follow me to the borders of Parnassus.102

Scudéry judged scholarly study both too focused on scientific and philosophical problems that by definition excluded a non-Latinizing salon audience and too professional for salon conversation. This view was shared with theorists of honnêteté (see below), grammarians such as Claude Irson, and critics such as Michel de Pure. For Irson, a conversation was either ‘serieuse’ [serious] or ‘enjouée’ [entertaining, lively]: ‘the serious and erudite conversation is a Conference where one treats all sorts of Sciences, like Theology, Philosophy, Jurisprudence, and Medicine’, and its main setting is the academy.103 For Pure, too, salon conversation is fundamentally different from la conversation savante: ‘if one requires that questions of learning & doctrine be discussed … one loses freedom and pleasure. It is no longer a diversion, it is an occupation, it is less a conversation than a conference.’104 Such lexical distinctions reference the honnête ideals of salon sociability, imported from Italy, which included a non-specialized learning general enough for group interaction. Honnêteté was first defined by Nicolas Faret (1596–1646) in L’honnête homme, ou l’Art de plaire à la cour [The honnête man, or the Art of pleasing at court, 1630] as a social code of conduct linked to the art of pleasing.105 Women, Faret thought, were essential to the civilizing process, and a man should profit from them for his own social advantage. Soon thereafter, a number of clerical authors, associated with the moral turn of the Counter-Reformation, defended the elite woman’s mondain engagement in social life through poor relief, teaching, and nursing.106 For this she needed good judgement coming from an adequate education. The base principle of the Franciscan friar Jacques du Bosc’s (1600–69) bestseller L’Honneste femme (1632–36), the first major theoretical work on honnêteté for women, is the equality of women and men founded on their ‘shared 102

 Scudéry 2004, 92; also Scudéry 1642, 435. See Goodman 2008, introduction, on Scudéry and the cultivated woman. Parnassus, the ancient site of the Muses and Apollo, god of poetry, stands here for salon sociability, and is opposed to the professional Republic of Letters. Scudéry was the first to gallicize Sappho to Sapho. 103  Irson, 250. Irson describes the different academic circles in Paris in the 1650s, the Académie Française and the weekly conferences of Jean de Soudier de Richesource, Louis de Lesclache, and Jacques Rohault. 104  Pure, 1: 212. On Scudéry and conversation, see Denis 1994, 113; and Pekacz, 139. 105  The noun honnêteté and the adjective honnête have a wide range of meanings from virtuous and sincere to cultured, civil, civilized, courteous, and noble. See Mesnard’s classic study (1987). 106  French Counter-Reformation clerics’ counterparts in Italy also defended female learning adapted to her engagement in the world. See Cox 2011, introduction.

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morality and reason.’107 He thus proposed an ambitious programme of moral and philosophical education to deepen a woman’s interior life; reading the ancients (Seneca and Plutarch especially) and church fathers (Saint Jerome) was the best path to virtuous conduct. However, he also thought it unseemly for an honnête femme to display in public her learning. His colleague, the Jesuit Father Pierre Le Moyne (1602–72), in La Gallerie des Femmes fortes [The Gallery of Strong Women, 1647], dedicated to Anne of Austria, endorsed the Cartesian principle that ‘la Philosophie n’a point de sexe’ [‘Philosophy has no gender’],108 and that women could study speculative and moral philosophy: In all things Women are equal with Men in terms of the Soul, which is the intelligent part, and which creates Savants and Philosophers; and if there is inequality as concerns the Body, as one cannot deny, it is advantageous to Women and perfects in them the capacity of which I speak.109

Le Moyne, though, like Du Bosc, is quick to remind readers that learning philosophy does not mean women should go to universities or even study the same disciplines: In all that I have said, however, my intention is not to summon Women to College. I don’t want to turn them into women with diplomas, or change into Astrolabes and Spheres their needles and their wool bobbins. I respect too much the boundaries that separate us, and my question concerns only what they are able to do, and not what they must do, in the present state of affairs established either by a law of Nature, or by an immemorial custom as old as Nature itself.110

Women are theoretically equal in intellect to men, but in practice they must observe the social order. Maintaining the status quo was throughout the period the principal line of argument against gender inclusiveness in higher learning. Rivet, as will be seen, relied heavily on this argument in his discussion with Van Schurman. Honnêteté avoided, then, specialized learning for the sake of polite conversation. Similarly, honnête writing emerged from the salon collective, drawing its topics and genres from within the group’s dynamic. Geoffrey Turnovsky notes that a ‘new vision’ for writers took shape in the salons in ‘the convergence of letters – 107

 Wolfgang and Nell, 65; Du Bosc 2014, 2. Du Bosc’s conduct manual was edited some 50 times between 1632 and the early eighteenth century; it was translated into Dutch soon after its publication. Cited in Du Bosc 2014, 34. 108  Le Moyne, 249. Le Moyne’s bestselling Gallerie appealed to Dutch readers as well: it was reedited another four times in France (1660, 1663, 1665, and 1667) and twice by Elzevier, once in Leiden and the second time in a joint reprint in Leiden and Paris (1660). On its success, see DeJean 2003. 109  Le Moyne, 251. 110  Le Moyne, 253.

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identified retrospectively as literature – with the activities and values of a selfconsciously new social elite, which appropriated literary writing forms – along with their writers – in assertions of its cohesiveness, brilliance, and, indeed, its modernity’. The culture of honnêteté required that writers, male and female, adhere to ‘legitimate motives and behaviors, such as aristocratic disinterest, leisure, and a commitment to upholding the elegant dynamic of the group over one’s own individual brilliance’.111 In her Histoire de Sapho (1653), in the tenth volume of Artamène, ou, Le grand Cyrus, Scudéry emphasizes the difference between the femme savante drawing attention to herself and the cultivated salon woman in terms of the alienation of the former and the adherence of the latter to the honnête sociability and literary modernity described by Turnovsky: I want it said of a Person of my Sex that she knows a hundred things of which she boasts of none; that she has an enlightened mind; that she reads fine works with sensitivity; that she speaks well; that she writes correctly; that she knows the world; but I don’t want it said, This is a femme savante, because these two women are so completely different that they don’t resemble one another in the least.112

Consequentially, aristocratic negligence and the increasing professionalization and state-control of knowledge and the sciences under Louis XIV led some women writers to decline to be publicly identified as authors and to prefer mondain success to literary glory, a trajectory which was both a subterfuge and a ‘strategy of insertion’ into the literary and philosophical field.113 The fundamental difference for Scudéry between the femme savante and the cultivated woman is perceptible, as we shall see, in Guillaume Colletet’s translation of Van Schurman’s letters on women’s education and in the history of her reception in France. A savante par excellence, how would she be welcomed by Paris salonnières? Colletet’s Question celebre addresses directly the issue of the appropriateness of her erudition for these women. Indeed, he queries ‘Whether it is necessary or not that Girls be learned?’ Is it socially appropriate for them to be erudite? Or should they avoid learning specific to men? ***

111

 Turnovsky, 21–2.  Scudéry 1650–53, 10: 401. 113  Maître 1999, 245; Timmermans, 204. Scudéry in later years published several volumes of Conversations – philosophical discussions on a variety of topics. By the third quarter of the century, Cartesian mechanism had made significant inroads, allowing elite women freedom to philosophize and speculate about the sciences in the salon context. See Conley 2002. 112

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With seven chapters and two appendices of first translations of documents, this book explores Anna Maria van Schurman’s advocacy of women’s higher learning and her reception in the transnational communities of letters of her time. Chapter 1, ‘A Star is Born: The Education and Fame of a Savante’, is biographical. In it I chart the educational and religious influences on Van Schurman’s early life and upbringing until her mid-teens when she began to draw the attention of Dutch savants. I then examine the nature of her international fame in the 1630s and 1640s, particularly in Paris, with a view to appreciating both the reasons for her extraordinary public appeal and the enormous strain that the weight of such fame caused her. She struggled with the effects of her celebrity and the endless correspondence and visits to her home in Utrecht. She gradually came to understand that such fame was detrimental to the cause of women’s higher education, as well as to her own intellectual, moral, and spiritual health. Chapter 1 ends with her eventual adherence in 1669 to the separatist community of Jean de Labadie. In Chapter 2, ‘The Savante, the Theologian, and the Philosopher’, I document the early theological and philosophical influences that shaped Van Schurman’s views on educating women. The theologian Gisbertus Voetius (Gijsbert Voet, 1589–1676), the rector of the newly formed University of Utrecht, first brought Van Schurman officially into the limelight. He invited her in 1636 to deliver before a large audience the traditional Latin ode on the inauguration of the university. In this and a second poem in Dutch, Van Schurman eloquently and dramatically advocated the admission of female students to the university so that they too could learn on a par with men. In the ensuing exchange of letters with her mentor Rivet, she argued that women could and should study everything taught at universities at that time to complement their faith and serve the common good. The Cartesian, or pre-Cartesian, influence on Van Schurman is also important in understanding her perspective on women’s learning. René Descartes (1596–1650) spent some 20 years living in the Dutch Republic, where he met Van Schurman at least twice: once when she went to visit him in Utrecht in 1634, and the second time when he stopped off in Utrecht in 1649 on his way to the Swedish court. She did not summarily dismiss his thought, as has been contended. It is crucial to examine the precise points at which her thinking intersects with his. Her esteem for the French atomist philosopher and scientist Pierre Gassendi (1592–1655), with whom she corresponded, is also illuminating. Her high regard comes as somewhat of a surprise since Gassendi had long established himself as a sceptical and Epicurean philosopher. Mutual respect is nonetheless strongly evident in their correspondence. Chapter 2 thus offers an analysis of the influence of major philosophical and theological thinkers on Van Schurman’s views on women’s education. The story of how Van Schurman and André Rivet, her père d’alliance [covenant father], first began their correspondence is narrated in ‘Defending the Savante’ (Chapter 3). Here I analyse her Dissertatio logica – the scholastic treatise she composed for Rivet on women’s higher learning – and the arguments in the letters they exchanged. Rivet argued that it was not advisable to educate women beyond what they were called to accomplish in their daily lives. Van Schurman, on the

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other hand, advanced the relatively novel concept of disengaging higher education from merely professional ends in order to reinvest it in the private sphere, thereby allowing women to become scholars. She argued that ‘the more private goal’ of studies was realistically doable for women, and that having the same educational opportunities as men did not necessarily entail their becoming professionals in the marketplace. Her adept use of the dialectical rhetoric of contentio [argument], when analysed against Rivet’s equally combative rhetoric, makes these letters profoundly revealing of the intensity of the debate over women’s learning. Chapter 4, ‘Translating the Savante’, describes how Guillaume Colletet translated the Van Schurman-Rivet letters most likely for the salon of the Marquise de Rambouillet. An examination of who influenced him and his reasons for doing so offers a fascinating insight into the social ethos of salon society in Paris in the 1640s. The new readers and new horizon of expectation of Colletet’s free translation are crucial to understanding its reception. The significant conceptual changes and difference in tone that he brought to his source text were largely motivated by the code of honnêteté connected to the recasting of the savante into the cultivated woman, and a popular mode of translation dubbed Les Belles infidèles [The Beautiful unfaithful]. Colletet’s version in large measure shaped the French reception of Anna Maria van Schurman. Seventeenth- and eighteenthcentury bio-bibliographers – Louis Jacob, Jean de La Forge, Jacquette Guillaume, Marguerite Buffet, Antoine Baudeau de Somaize, Charles Sorel, Isaac Bullart, Mme de Château-Thierry Galien, Jean Nicéron, and Philibert Riballier – referred in their entries on Van Schurman not to the original Latin letters, but to Colletet’s Question celebre. In ‘Publishing the Savante’ (Chapter 5), I craft a narrative in which Van Schurman progressively assumes control over publication of her writings. It was because of her letters (on the education of women especially) between the late 1630s and the early 1650s that she became famous. Her book collections include the Amica Dissertatio (1638), the Dissertatio (1641), and the Opuscula (1648). From her published epistolary statements and from what her closest associates – mentors, sponsors, and editors – said of her, her journey from scribal to print publication appears to have been fraught with ambiguity. However, it is clear from her unpublished letters to Rivet that she actively sought publication.114 Her negotiative strategies, increasing control, and skilful use of the modesty trope lie at the heart of this chapter. My final two chapters focus on Van Schurman’s transborder reception. Chapter 6, ‘Reception in France’, describes how she was read by the noted Parisian writers Marie de Gournay, Princess Anne de Rohan (1584–1646), and Madeleine de  Van Schurman’s manuscript letters to Rivet are in A Collection of Seventy-four letters & four Latin Poems [ … ] owned by the Koninklijke Bibliotheek at The Hague, hereafter cited as KB, ms. 133 B 8. Steve Maiullo and I are preparing a critical edition and translation of these letters to be published by the Toronto Centre for Renaissance and Reformation Studies, in the series ‘The Other Voice in Early Modern Europe’. 114

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Scudéry, who formed part of her communication and patronage networks. Attention is given to how a poetics of exemplarity functioned in their attempts to create a workable model of the savante. Van Schurman’s letters to Rohan and Gournay reveal views of them that are entirely positive for the former, and positive as well as critical for the latter. Scudéry, who did not, as far as we know, correspond directly with Van Schurman, expressed great admiration for her Dutch counterpart. But her ‘feminism of difference’115 would have led her to question the practical feasibility of Van Schurman’s scholarly way of life and its applicability to women in the Parisian world of salon sociability. Chapter 7, ‘Reception in England’, explores Van Schurman’s influence on religious engagement and educational advancement for women in writings by two of her English correspondents, Lady Dorothy Moore and Bathsua Makin. Their reception of her educational vision is contrasted to her reception in Paris. Whereas Van Schurman’s Parisian readers focused primarily on her exemplarity as a savante, her English counterparts saw her as well as a guide for leadership and teaching roles for women. Moore was a religious reformer interested in expanding women’s roles in the church; Makin was a life-long professional tutor and teacher who, like Van Schurman, advocated an encyclopedic learning for girls. Both exercised political agency in exploring institutional change for the betterment of women’s lives. Van Schurman played a major part in their evolving sense of vocation. The appendices consist of several first-time translations of documents analysed in the book. Appendix I features translated Latin documents penned by, to, and about Van Schurman; and Appendix II, a little-known eulogy of Van Schurman by the contemporary French literary biographer Isaac Bullart (1599–?). This book explores the important role Anna Maria van Schurman played in the European debate over women’s education, and her rich epistolary connections with leading male scholars and savantes of her period. Her educational writings are frequently mentioned today in studies on early modern women intellectuals, but usually in passing and without a full understanding of the precise nature and expansive influence of her educational vision. I aim here to present a more complete historical and literary framework. It is hoped that it will contribute to further studies on the life and work of a remarkable early modern woman intellectual. Final remarks are in order concerning the dates of letters and the names of scholars.116 Two calendars were in use in the Dutch Republic throughout the period of this book: whereas the provinces of Holland and Zeeland adopted on 1 January 1583 the Gregorian calendar (also called the western calendar), the provinces of Utrecht, Gelderland, Overijssel, Friesland, and Groningen continued to use the ‘Old Style’ or Julian calendar until 1700–01. Thus dates in Holland, Zeeland, and England differ from the rest of Europe by 10 days, so that 1 January in the Julian calendar would be 11 January in the Gregorian calendar used in the rest of Europe. 115  The terms ‘feminism of difference’ and ‘feminism of equality’ come from Broad and Green, 190. 116  Adapted from Vermij, introduction.

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Also the ‘new year’ in the Julian calendar was not recognized until 21 March, the date of the spring equinox. In general I give the dates pertinent to the location. Scholars usually Latinized their names. When introducing them I state both their actual name and the Latinized version. In Dutch names, the prefixes van, van der, and de are not capitalized. However, when citing the last name only, the prefix is capitalized. In the index, the prefix does not count in the alphabetical order (e.g., Van Schurman is listed under Schurman).

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Chapter 1

A Star is Born: The Education and Fame of a Savante I think that all honourable disciplines, or the whole encyclopedia, as they are called, are entirely fitting for a Christian woman (just as they are a proper and universal good or adornment of humanity). Van Schurman, Dissertatio logica (1641)1

She has qualities which give passion to virtue itself, and which force the most beautiful minds to travel across lands and seas to hear and see her. As for me, I will never be satisfied until I have seen the city which Anne has turned not only into the temple of honour, but also of virtue. Paul Jacob, ‘Eloge de Mademoiselle Anne Marie de Schurman’ (1646)2

In the autumn of 1623, then 15-year-old Anna Maria van Schurman penned a Latin letter to the great Daniel Heinsius: ‘I do not think that this letter will be any less pleasing to you because it is from a maiden who has just recently left behind childhood and approaches true learning.’ She dares to write because a ‘reverence for God alone’ and admiration for him ‘impel’ her, ‘not a desire to put myself on display; philosophy keeps me from doing that, in whose name I put behind all ostentation, with the sole intention of venerating Religion and you’. Even modesty does not deter her from signing off with a bold request: ‘Farewell, Sun and Salt of our age, and take care that you illuminate this little star, a sixth of a magnitude of the sun, that it shine light in darkness with your brilliance.’3 Daniel Heinsius (Heyns, 1580–1655) was one of the most renowned scholars in the Dutch Republic. He was appointed professor of poetics in 1603 at Leiden, professor of Greek in 1605, and professor of political science in 1612. As classical philologist, orientalist, and poet, he published numerous critical editions of Greek and Latin classical and patristic works. Over the years he exchanged letters with Van Schurman, sending her copies of his books. A reply of Van Schurman in 1640, published in Opuscula, thanks him for just such a gift.4 In appreciation for her 1

 Schurman 1641, 12.  Schurman 1646, 114. 3  Van Schurman to Daniel Heinsius, 18 September 1623, Utrecht University Library Ms. hs 7 E 7. I thank Jaime Goodrich for transcribing the letter, written in a hand other than Van Schurman’s. 4  Van Schurman to Daniel Heinsius, 8 January 1640, Opuscula, 183–4. 2

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talent, he composed a quatrain on Jan Lievens’s oil portrait of her (see Cover and Figure E.3), in which he praises her for being Utrecht’s living Minerva, more influential even than Leiden’s civic titular Pallas: Pallas, drawn by hand, is the glory of our Leiden, And, as Goddess, she thinks she is safe because she is painted. A contrast she is to the living Utrecht Minerva; The will of the painted Pallas is that she [the Utrecht Minerva] holds the greater power.5

Anna Maria van Schurman’s biography and literary context are foundational to her educational vision and reception. Her family, upbringing, and choices of life style, her networking with tutors, mentors, scholars, and sponsors, all made possible her advanced training in the sciences and the arts. I shall chart the familial and educational opportunities which influenced her from a young age; the reasons for her strategic choice of the single life; her networking practices her ensuing national and European-wide fame, and her detachment in later life from that fame. Early Life Born on 5 November 1607 in Cologne, Anna Maria van Schurman was the third child of Frederik van Schurman and Eva von Harff, who married in Antwerp in 1602.6 She had two older brothers, Hendrik Frederik (ca. 1603–ca. 1632) and Johan Godschalk (ca. 1605–64), and a younger brother, Willem (ca. 1610–15). Both sets of grandparents had fled persecution on account of their Calvinist beliefs. As her contemporary biographer and close Labadist colleague Pierre Yvon (1646–1707) relates, her paternal grandfather Frederik van Schurman and his wife Clara van Lemens – Clara belonged to the House of Lumey from the Brabant nobility – fled Antwerp in 1568 on the night that the Protestant martyr Christoffel Fabricius was burned at the stake by the army of the Duke of Alva.7 On losing their possessions – they belonged to the magistracy of the city8 – they moved to Frankfurt, then Hamburg, finally settling in Cologne in 1593, where Frederik senior died. Her mother’s parents, from the minor German nobility, fled persecution as well when they narrowly escaped from the city of Neuss pillaged by the Duke of Parma’s troops, thereafter settling in Cologne. 5

 Latin inscription in Schotel, 2: 72.  This historical sketch of Van Schurman’s life is indebted to Schotel; Hansen; Beek 1992 and 2010; Pal 2012, chapter 1; Irwin 1989; Moore 1990 and 1994a; and to her contemporary biographers Pierre Yvon and Isaac Bullart. 7  Yvon, 1264, column 2. On Van Schurman’s grandparents and parents, see Beek 2004a, 255; Baar and Rang 1996, 1–2; Schotel, 1: 2; Hansen, 251. 8  Bullart, 229. See Appendix 2. 6

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Van Schurman was baptized in a clandestine Calvinist church in Cologne.9 Cologne was the seat of a bishopric that kept a close watch over the Protestant minority. When Reformed Church services were banned in 1610, the Van Schurman family fled to Schleiden, southwest of Cologne, to the small family castle of Dreiborn (or Drimborn), home of her mother’s ancestors. From there they moved to The Hague, where Frederik van Schurman had business to attend to, before finally settling in 1615 in Utrecht; Anna Maria van Schurman was then seven or eight years old.10 Before leaving Cologne for the Netherlands, and to ensure the nobility of his children, her father and his two brothers, Johan and Samuel, obtained letters of nobility for themselves from the Holy Roman Emperor Matthias.11 Van Schurman’s maternal aunts, Sibella and Agnes von Harff, also escaped from Cologne to settle in Utrecht. The obstacles which Anna Maria’s immediate family had to overcome in order to pursue freely their religious beliefs would greatly influence her educational and religious views. Her education began early. In Eukleria we find out that at age three she could ‘read German accurately and recite part of the [Heidelberg] catechism from memory’, thanks to ‘an excellent domestic tutor’.12 Average children, on the other hand, learned to read at age seven.13 Her memorization of the catechism 9  Unlike many Protestant exiles in the German Rhineland, the Van Schurmans did not join churches that mixed confessional services together; they remained in churches exclusively for Reformed worship, even when these, note Veen and Spohnholz, 84, ‘were banned according to imperial and territorial laws … Through much of the Rhineland, there was good reason for refugees to reduce, not increase, commitment to Calvinism.’ The Van Schurmans went thus against the grain. 10  Beek 2010, 22, speaks of a ‘court case of great importance’ at The Hague in which Frederik van Schurman needed to take part. Isaac Bullart, 229, reports that Frederik van Schurman, a man of ‘estude’ [‘study’] and ‘esprit’ [‘intellect’], prepared ‘some Memoirs which he presented in the year 1618 to the States [General] of the United Provinces, containing very important advice which he gave them for the security and glory of the Republic; and even as a mark of his zeal, he served for some time in their troops as a Volunteer’. The most important event in 1618 was the Synod of Dordrecht (Dordt), opposing the Remonstrants and Counter-Remonstrants and ending in 1619 with the Stadholder Prince Maurits’s coup d’état when he ousted the Grand Pensionary Oldenbarnevelt. After the latter’s fall and the purging of the Remonstrants, the United Provinces were presided over by the prince and the Counter-Remonstrants, who upheld strict Calvinist orthodoxy and were hostile to Catholicism. As Bullart suggests, Frederik van Schurman may have played a (minor) role in the events unfolding at the States General, following the Synod of Dort. See Appendix 2. 11  Beek 1992, 11. 12  Schurman, Eukleria, in Schurman 1998, 81. All English citations from Eukleria come from this translation. In Eukleria (1673), a narrative of her life, Van Schurman defends her religious choice to join in 1669 the Labadist community. 13  Most boys and girls in seventeenth-century England learned to read the alphabet, the Lord’s Prayer, and the Bible at age seven; if allowed to continue, they learned to write at age eight. Teaching was based on rote learning. Cited in Donawerth 2006, 987n10.

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was no rote exercise: at age four, she was asked by a maid, while out collecting herbs and flowers, to recite the first question of the Heidelberg catechism, a critical document, along with the Belgic Confession, for Calvinist orthodoxy. She describes what happened: [A]t the words that I am not my own but belong to my most faithful Saviour Jesus Christ, my heart was filled with such a great and sweet joy and an intimate feeling of the love of Christ that all the subsequent years have not been able to remove the living memory of that moment. (80)

Her connection of the love of Christ with the heart, seat of intuitive knowledge and inner experience, was foundational to her later Christian philosophy based upon achieving union with Christ through self-denial and a sincere conscience. When she turned seven she was sent to a French school, as was customary among elite families, but after only two months she resumed her studies at home with a private tutor in writing, arithmetic, and instrumental and vocal music. By leaving the school, she was spared, she writes, from ‘involvement in the amusements and adornments of worldly girls’ (82). Bullart indicates that at that time ‘she began to speak Latin, taught by a Preceptor, who taught this language to her older brothers’, so much so that by the age of 10 or 11 she became adept at correcting her brothers.14 Discovering her at this one day, her father, who until then had allowed her to study only French, permitted her to take part fully in their lessons.15 He gave her Seneca’s sayings, and to show her how much he appreciated her talent, he quoted her an adage from Erasmus: ‘Aquila non capit muscas’ [‘The eagle does not catch flies’], thereby comparing her to the majestic bird of prey that cannot be bothered with trivia (81). Bullart, in his account, adds that she wrote summaries in Dutch and French of what she found most interesting in Seneca. She then went on to learn Greek ‘with a success which increased even more the astonishment and joy of her Father’.16 In the process of learning Latin and Greek, Van Schurman committed herself to a life-long avoidance of ancient poets who might ‘divert the mind from chastity and virginal purity’ (81). She applied this principle as well to entertaining literature in other languages. When, in later life, it was rumoured that she had translated Honoré d’Urfé’s popular pastoral romance, L’Astrée (1607–27), she wrote a vigorous Latin poem in which she declared that she consorted not with Venus, the goddess of love, but with Astræa, the virginal goddess of justice, who

14

 Bullart, 229.  Van Schurman’s father followed at first the custom of disallowing Latin to girls. Latin was considered a danger to female morality because of its potential to expose girls to titillating erotic literature: ‘a woman who speaks Latin never comes to a good end’ went the saying. See Waquet 2001, 223. 16  Bullart, 229. 15

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had abandoned the corrupt world for the heavens.17 The only poet she admitted to reading was Guillaume du Bartas (1544–90), the French Huguenot encyclopedic and cosmological writer whose Sepmaine ou creation du monde [The Week, or Creation of the World, 1578] and Seconde Sepmaine [Second Week, 1584] recount the first seven days of creation and its sequel in Genesis.18 Du Bartas was enormously popular in England, as well as the Netherlands, where he was frequently translated into Dutch. Dutch Golden Age poets Joost van den Vondel, Pieter C. Hooft, Jacob Cats, and Constantijn Huygens imitated him in their verse, leading to a renewal of Christian poetry in the Dutch Republic.19 At age 11 Van Schurman read the lives of the martyrs, including in all likelihood John Foxe’s Commentarii Rerum in Ecclesia Gestarum [Strasbourg, 1554; later translated into English in 1563 as History of the Martyrs or Actes and Monuments]. Portions of Foxe’s work, a popular history of early Christian and Protestant martyrs, were first translated into Dutch in 1612.20 There she would have read the narrative of the heroic death of Lady Jane Grey (1536/37–54), in whom she developed a deep interest, and whom she mentions several times in her letters. Jane Grey, Queen of England for only nine days, was beheaded at age 16 or 17 and immediately became ‘a symbol of Protestant heroism and martyrdom’.21 Foxe’s work, hugely important to Dutch Calvinists, especially to those families who like the Van Schurmans emigrated to escape persecution, evoked in the young Anna Maria a burning desire to die for her faith. She states in her autobiography that: At the contemplation of the example of so many faithful servants of Christ and witnesses to his truth, such an ardent desire for martyrdom seized my mind that I fervently longed to exchange even the sweetest life for such a glorious death.22

The significance of these martyrs in her early life was not lost on Pierre Yvon, who connected it with her later decision to join the separatist Labadist community: what she experienced at age 11, she experienced anew, he writes, ‘and felt in her heart the renewal of that joy that she had then when she believed that she would be infinitely happy if one day she could suffer something for his [Jesus’] Name’s 17

 On this poem, see Beek 2002a, 288; and 2010, 130. Van Schurman wrote a second poem in self-defence, now lost. Her first poem, published as a liminary piece in her Amica Dissertatio (1638), was subsequently included in her Opuscula, 265–6. 18  Eukleria, 82: ‘The French poet Du Bartas did not befoul his laurel crown with, as it were the rotten leaf of a single licentious verse.’ 19  On the Dutch Du Bartas, see Beekman. 20  On Foxe in the Low Countries, see Arblaster. 21  Levin, 97. On Lady Jane Grey in Van Schurman’s letters on the education of women, see Chapter 6 in this volume. 22  Eukleria, 80. On lives of martyrs that Van Schurman may have read, see Beek 2004a. She may also have known D’Aubigné’s Les Tragiques (1616), Book 4: lines 147–50, where she would have encountered Lady Jane Grey and other English female martyrs.

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sake’.23 His reasoning was that the persecution that the Labadist community suffered for their faith was akin in many ways to the suffering endured by the early Christian and Reformation martyrs. An overview of Van Schurman’s first decade of life indicates that she grew up in a household academy not unlike those found in Italy, France, and England which provided a haven for learned study. This domestic paradigm was supportive of studious daughters; and, notes Sarah Ross, throughout the early modern period it provided a powerful means for women intellectuals and their male sponsors ‘to build a foundation of authorial credibility for a new figure in the western social paradigm: the culturally normal learned woman who was not a queen, not a nun, and most certainly not a courtesan’.24 For Van Schurman’s father, as for other fathers of talented daughters, the notion of ‘learned virtue’, whereby Christian faith and morality were wedded to classical education on fortitude and accomplishment, was central. But, as Ross argues, faith, morality, and the fame that inevitably accompanied the female intellectual left a ‘fruitful ambiguity’ at the heart of these fathers’ educational enterprise (4). Van Schurman herself would have a difficult time balancing these in her life as a spectacularly learned woman. On the other hand, the rhetorical model she inherited proved immensely profitable. Like humanist women before her – Isotta Nogarola, Cassandra Fedele, Laura Cereta, and Margaret More are some striking examples – she framed her literary exchanges with learned men in terms of kinship relations, using the language of filial deference and accentuating the context of the famille d’alliance.25 Like her female predecessors, she made the best use of her family network, beginning with her father and mother, her brother Johan Godschalk, household tutors, and extended family members, and, in her teens, with eminent patrons, mentors, sponsors, editors, publishers, and scholars of the Republic of Letters. In the remainder of the chapter I focus on her networking practices and on how she managed her extraordinary fame. Local Recognition Van Schurman’s teen years were marked by her formal entrance into the networks of the Republic of Letters. That she managed this as a woman, and at so young an age, suggests an overarching strategy. Her engagement in these networks closely resembles what Carol Pal calls a ‘three-stage development’ which usually, for a male scholar, included, first, being noted locally for his accomplishments; second, getting the attention of national and international savants; and last, creating his own network(s) of exchange within the larger community of letters.26 23

 Yvon, 1212, column 2.  Ross 2009a, 2–3. 25  Pal 2012, 20. 26  Pal 2012, 43–4. 24

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Van Schurman gained attention locally for her artistic work and her learning.27 The first recorded recognition of her talents occurred in around 1620, when she was 12 or 13 years old. She was eulogized in a poem by a woman emblem writer from Amsterdam, Anna Roemers Visscher (1584–1651), who praised her for being not merely a cultivated woman with skills in art and music, as was common among Dutch elite women, but an érudite for her Latin and Greek. Prophetically, Anna Roemers Visscher thought that Van Schurman would one day ‘banish male pride / With reason and with argument’. Roemers ends her poem with special praise for her exceptional father: ‘Let honor to your Father come, / Who educated you so well’.28 She prized a father attuned to educating his daughter because she herself benefited from a similar upbringing. Roemers Visscher became for Van Schurman a model on how to introduce oneself to scholars. Roemers had secured local recognition by replying to a praise poem from Daniel Heinsius, which he included in his collection Nederduytsche Poemata [Dutch Poems, 1616]. Roemers went on to compose a poem honouring Jacob Cats (1577–1660), the Grand Pensionary of Holland and a poet of national stature. Her poem was included in a poetic anthology from Zeeland entitled Zeeusche nachtegael [Zeeland Nightingale, 1623].29 With Roemers as a model, Van Schurman addressed in 1623, as noted earlier, a letter to Heinsius; she had also a year earlier, in 1622, sent a missive to Cats, thanking him for his recent visit and for inquiring ‘zealously after my studies (or rather, my trifles)’.30 But, unlike Roemers, she wrote in Latin, the international language of the Republic of Letters. Moreover, she alluded to the fame he had promised to give her and her studies. She also sent Cats a Latin poem in elegiac couplets in which she drew a complimentary parallel between him and Cicero.31 Both her letter and poem were included in her collected works Opuscula.32 Cats responded by praising her in his 27  Van Schurman’s artistic education included embroidery, calligraphy, intricate paper cutting, pastel painting – she was the first Hollander to paint a pastel portrait – glass engraving, wax modelling, and miniature carvings intended as gifts. See Eukleria, 82–5; Beek 2010, 20; Stighelen 1996 and 1987b. 28  Visscher 1998, 51–3. See also Visscher 1999, 96. Van Schurman senior was indeed unusual. As a comparison, Stighelen and Landtsheer 2010, 177, note that the poet-diplomat Constantijn Huygens believed his only daughter, Susanna, could have been a savante like Anna Maria, but he preferred for her a more conventional ‘womanly’ lifestyle. Indeed, he wrote that ‘I was never inclined to do anything other than bring her up as a decent girl who was not ignorant’ (cited in Joby, 279). Susanna, the youngest of five children (she had four brothers, all highly educated, among them the celebrated scientist Christiaan), was the first to marry. 29  Visscher, in Gemert et al. 2010, 237, 239. 30  Van Schurman to Jacob Cats, 1622, in Opuscula, 168. See Appendix 1.1. 31  Beek 2010, 28, underscores Van Schurman’s precocious talent, noting that composing Latin poetry was considered so exacting that it was generally postponed to the end of a (male) student’s career. 32  Opuscula, 168–89, 256–7.

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bestseller, Houwelijck [Marriage, 1625]; he singles her out, along with Roemers Visscher, as an exception to her sex.33 Even though Van Schurman never married and Roemers Visscher was unmarried at the time, Cats could ignore that fact since he considered both of them exceptional. In his major work Proefsteen van de Trou-ringh [Touchstone of the Wedding Ring, 1637], which he dedicated to Van Schurman, Cats included an engraved portrait of her with a description of her qualities, languages, and learning, stating that she and he resembled each other in that both bore ‘paper children’.34 During her teens Anna Maria’s devoted brother and life-long supporter, Johan Godschalk, connected her with his professors. When he enrolled in 1623 at the University of Leiden to study applied mathematics with Willebrord Snel van Royen (Snellius, 1580–1626) – a prodigy at applied mathematics in the areas of astronomy, navigation, and optics – Johan Godschalk introduced her to Daniel Heinsius, and most likely to André Rivet, and Adolphus Vorstius (1597–1663), a professor of medicine and botany at Leiden.35 It was then, in September 1623, as stated earlier in the chapter, that she penned her letter to Heinsius. Now fully embarked on drawing attention locally, she continued to do so in the next phase of her life in Franeker, the capital of Friesland, to which her family moved sometime in 1623 so that Johan Godschalk could study medicine and geometry at the university. Her father also wanted to study, along with his sons, under the English Puritan William Ames (Amesius, 1576–1633), professor of practical theology at Franeker from 1622 to 1633. Amesius and the English Puritans emphasized personal conversion, piety, and strict morality, and they influenced Dutch Pietism; Ames was also a key figure in the printing of Puritan literature for the English market. The Van Schurman family may have rented the large Martenahuis in Franeker, at present the Museum Martena which owns a substantial collection of Anna Maria’s books and artwork.36

33

 Cats was prolific on the roles of women in marriage. While studying law in Orléans, he wrote the first of many works on the subject, Monita Amoris virginei, sive officium puellarum, in castis amoribus, emblemate expressum [Admonitions on the Love of maidens, or the office of young girls, on chaste love, rendered emblematically, Paris, 1610], to which he appended a French translation, Le devoir des filles ès chastes amours, exprimé par emblèmes. See Cats. On his esteem for Van Schurman, see Sneller 1996; and Beek 1992, 12, 49–53. 34  Cats’s description is included in Van Schurman’s Opuscula, 335. 35  Beek 2010, 22. 36  Beek 2010, 22; Brouwer, 11. According to Brouwer, 5, Van Schurman’s eighteenthcentury great-nephew, Abraham Frederik van Schurman, donated the collection to the city of Franeker. On view at the museum is his 1772 portrait with the family coat of arms, his mother Jacoba Gercama’s (1690–1762) portrait, and a Latin family Bible from 1545, containing on the first pages the Van Schurman family tree. Abraham Frederik was the last of the Van Schurman line. His father, Abraham van Schurman, held a high position as representative of Friesland at the Raad van State [Council of State].

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Frederik van Schurman died suddenly on 15 November 1623, soon after the move. The family stayed on until about 1625/26 so that Johan Godschalk could complete his studies. Anna Maria profited from her proximity to the University of Franeker by becoming acquainted, through her brother again, with several professors, two of whom she met again at the University of Utrecht: Meinardus Schotanus, her ‘regular discussion partner’,37 a professor of Old Testament; and his brother Bernardus, professor of law and mathematics, who became Utrecht’s first rector magnificus. Later she included in the Opuscula an obituary poem to Schotanus, whose portrait she etched.38 She also met the mayor of Franeker, Willem Staackman, a patron of poets, who praised her as a beacon of light setting ‘the universe afire’.39 The family returned to Utrecht, where Eva von Harff bought in November 1629 a house called De Lootse, situated at Achter de Dom [behind the cathedral]. The location of the house, which, today, has a large plaque over the front door indicating that Van Schurman had lived there, could not have been more fortunate for her budding career. It stood just a few hundred metres on the same street from the soon-to-be founded university. The heart of the university, the Academiegebouw [University Hall], is on the same street. On its ground floor, one can visit the Anna Maria van Schurmankamer [Anna Maria van Schurman Room] with both her and Gisbertus Voetius’s portraits side by side. Voetius lived with his family just around the corner from the Van Schurman house on what is now Voetiusstraat. One of her paternal uncles, along with his wife, moved into her house to serve as head of the household.40 Other members of Van Schurman’s extended family moved from Germany to Utrecht over the course of the Thirty Years’ War (1618–48), including her father’s brothers, Johan and Samuel, and her mother’s brother and five sisters.41 One of her aunts married Dirck Alewijn (1574–1637), a wealthy landowner and cloth merchant in Amsterdam, whose children found spouses among powerful Amsterdam families; and another aunt married Dirck Jacobsz van Halewijn (1580–1638), burgomaster of Harderwijk.42 Reflecting many years later on the education she had received, Van Schurman noted in Eukleria that she was different from other children: unlike them, she was allowed to ‘delight in studies and arts’.43 Although her early education was not vastly different from theirs – young boys and girls of the upper classes in the Netherlands were similarly taught in the arts and letters at home by private tutors – the intensity with which she gave herself to her studies and their wide range were out of the ordinary. 37

 Stated on the caption to an oil portrait of Schotanus at the Museum Martena.  ‘In Obitum Meinardi Schotani’, Opuscula, 275–6. 39  Beek 2010, 27. Van Schurman included a letter to Staackman in Opuscula, 193. 40  Yvon, 1263, column 1. 41  Beek 1992, 13n21. 42  Schotel, 2: 47–9. 43  Eukleria, 87. 38

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So were the urgent admonitions of her father, who, ‘with great ardour even up to his death’, counselled her and her brothers against ‘the inextricable, highly depraved bond of worldly marriage’. She obeyed his fatherly advice ‘when thereafter’, she writes, ‘the world attempted in various ways to bind me to it by this method [marriage]’.44 She had just turned 16 years old when her father died. What led her to obey her father’s wishes not to marry? Her decision to remain single dovetailed with her growing sense of a scholarly vocation. Bullart expresses this view when he states that her father on his deathbed wanted her to continue her studies, ‘assuring her that she would acquire fame incomparably more precious than anything he could leave her in his dying’.45 In choosing a scholarly vocation, Van Schurman resembled a number of secular male intellectuals of her century – Galileo, Descartes, Peiresc, Hobbes, Boyle, Locke, and Newton – for whom bachelorhood was linked to their life’s work.46 The French polymath Pierre Gassendi, for instance, who was unmarried since he was attached to the Catholic Church, endorsed this current thinking on the incompatibility of marriage and scholarship. He warned against marriage Hendrik Reneri ( Renerius, 1593–1639), a professor of philosophy at Utrecht and an early admirer of Descartes, on grounds that it forced a scholar to have to pay attention to the upkeep of his wife and family, turning him away from his studies to lucrative gain; true wealth and freedom were found in remaining a life-long bachelor, for marriage is ‘in my opinion an immense bother for a heart that is truly free and born for philosophy, as yours is for sure’.47 The French antiquary NicolasClaude Fabri de Peiresc (1580–1637) sums up the resistance among lettered men to marriage; he himself refused to marry, alleging that he ‘could not care for a wife and children, and be free to follow his studies and patronize learned men’.48 Peiresc’s statement seems borne out in the marital woes of Salmasius, the French philologist at Leiden, whose wife, Anne Mercier, had, we are told, a difficult character, and whose many children made his life of study a challenge.49 A number of well-known women intellectuals of the period were also unmarried, all for differing reasons; they include Marie de Gournay, the Protestant princesses Elisabeth of Bohemia and Anne de Rohan, Madeleine de Scudéry, the educator Mary Astell, Marie du Moulin, and Queen Christina of Sweden among others.  Eukleria, 87. In the second part of Eukleria (1685), cited in Beek 1997, 311, Van Schurman states that her father urged his sons as well not to marry so as to remain free from what he considered worldly contamination. Neither of the surviving sons married. 45  Bullart, 229. 46  Zack, chapter 4. 47  Gassendi to Hendrik Reneri, 8 February 1630, in Gassendi, 1:52. On this letter, see Taussig, 78. 48  Miller 2000, 44. 49  Bots and Waquet, 103. On the other hand, happy marriages among savants existed, as with André Rivet and his second wife Marie du Moulin, the French classical scholars André and Anne Dacier, as well as with philologists Gerardus Johannes Vossius and Johannes Fredericus Gronovius (104). 44

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Several Dutch women writers such as Margaretha van Godewijck, Katharina Lescailje, and Cornelia van der Veer, all contemporaries of Van Schurman with long careers, remained unmarried.50 Van Schurman, on the other hand, unlike these male and female intellectuals, considered her choice of the single life as justified primarily by the love of Christ. Her difference lies in that religion was usually not a determining factor among the learned in choosing the single life – exceptions are those connected to the Roman Catholic Church such as the philosophers Gassendi and Marin Mersenne, learned nuns Sor Juana Inés de La Cruz and Gabrielle Suchon, and the Benedictine oblate Elena Cornaro Piscopia.51 Van Schurman prized her celibacy because it provided a single-minded devotion to Christ. Her life’s motto, Amor Meus Crucifixus Est [My Love is the Crucified], borrowed from the letters of St Ignatius of Antioch (ca. 35–ca. 107), appeared, for instance, on the title page of Clement Barksdale’s The Learned Maid (1659), and in her many contributions to the alba amicorum [friendship albums] of acquaintances.52 For example, in the friendship album of Jacob Heyblocq, a principal of the Amsterdam Latin school, she inscribed in September 1645 in Arabic, ‘A single day for a scholar is better than a lifetime for an ignoramus’, followed by her motto: ‘My longing has been crucified [is the crucified]’.53 She often appeared side by side with famous people, as in Johannes Koerbagh’s album amicorum where she is placed, again with her motto, alongside the educationalist Jan Amos Comenius.54 In opting for a life of secular celibacy, she had the approval of St. Paul’s letter to the Corinthians where the apostle warns against marriage,55 and of the church 50

 On Lescailje and Van der Veer, see Elk.  Suchon (1631–1703) is an interesting case of a French nun who fled the convent for an independent studious life. In Du Célibat volontaire, ou la vie sans engagement [On the Celibate Life Freely Chosen, or Life without Commitment, 1700], she argues that intellectual women who wished to avoid the convent or marriage should be allowed a ‘third way’ enabling them to live an active life of autonomous freedom. See Suchon. Cornaro Piscopia (1646–84), for her part, was the first woman to earn an advanced degree, a doctorate at Padua, in 1678. Although she studied theology, her degree was in philosophy, since Cardinal Barbarigo refused to allow a woman a degree in theology. She turned down a marriage offer to ‘consecrate herself totally to the love of God’ and to her studies, living the rest of her life at home in Venice as an oblate. See Maschietto, 105. 52  Van Schurman’s life motto comes from Ignatius, Epistolae 4. 7, in Migne, 5: 693b. See the eighteenth-century bio-bibliographer Chauffepié, 211; and Beek 2004a, 259. 53  Thomassen and Gruys, 167. Van Schurman’s 13 extant entries in friendship albums contain an aphorism, her life’s motto, and her signature. See ‘Anna Maria van Schurman Scripsit’. 54  See Mertens; and Oosterhuis. 55  In I Cor. 7:26, in the NIV Study Bible, St. Paul warns ‘virgins’ that ‘because of the present crisis, I think it is good for you to remain as you are’; in I Cor. 7:28, he further states: ‘if a virgin marries, she has not sinned. But those who marry will face many troubles in this life and I want to spare you this.’ 51

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fathers, who wrote extensively on female virginity, chastity, and consecration to Christ.56 She was enthusiastically commended for her virginal life by Meletios Pantogalus, bishop of the Greek Orthodox church at Ephesus.57 Her dedication to the single life became well known: Thomas des Hayons, a French Hellenist writer from the Huguenot French city of Sedan, published in Utrecht in 1649 a collection of 13 epigrams and one anagram, entitled Epigrams Consecrated to the Virtue of Mademoiselle Anne de Schurman, in which he described her devotion to Christ as akin to a holy marriage.58 Her desire to consecrate her life to her faith, and her father’s deathbed warnings, reflected her spiritual yearnings. But her father may also have wished to protect her from a confessionally mixed union. Utrecht remained in the first half of the seventeenth century a centre of Catholicism in the Netherlands; about one-third of its population was Catholic and about one-quarter of the Republic’s priests lived in the city. It had a high incidence of confessionally mixed marriages among the Dutch nobility until the 1640s. Calvinist authorities opposed such unions, warning of the dangers of possible conversion to Catholicism.59 National Fame By the late 1620s, Anna Maria van Schurman had become nationally famous. Her brother, who had stepped in to replace her deceased father, acted as her publicity agent. On 5 December 1629 he introduced himself and her to Caspar van Baerle (Barlaeus, 1584–1648), the regent of the Amsterdam Athenaeum Illustre [Latin School] and a major Neo-Latin poet; he hoped to draw Barlaeus’s attention by sending him a poem he had written, and he briefly mentions his sister, then 22 years of age: ‘I have but one unsurpassed sister, who does not shrink from such studies, and who is quite well known; I don’t know if you have heard of her. Your writings have won her full attention.’ Her brother then adds that he will write on some other occasion to describe how she spends her time and the nature of her studies.60 A month later Barlaeus excitedly announced her existence to the 56

 See, for instance, St. Cyprian, ‘On the Discipline and Advantage of Chastity’, in St. Cyprian, 2: 253–63. 57  Beek 2010, 123–5. 58  See Des Hayons’s poems in Schotel, 2: 84–91. Des Hayons published in 1627 an ode to Frederik Maurice de La Tour d’Auvergne (1605–52), the last Prince of Sedan, and a number of books on the lives of female saints. 59  There is a growing body of work on mixed marriages in the Dutch Republic. See Forclaz. Pal 2012, 55–6, surmises that Van Schurman’s decision to avoid marriage may have originated from her rather than her father. However, it is not inconceivable that her father, knowing of her ardent devotion to her studies and faith, wished to spare her a union which would have jeopardized in his view both her studies and her faith. 60  Johan Godschalk van Schurman to Barlaeus, Latin letter dated 5 December 1629, University of Leiden, Ms. PAP 2, and Schotel, 2: 112. On this letter, see Beek 2010, 30–31;

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poet diplomat Constantijn Huygens (1596–1687), who was private secretary to the Stadholder, Frederik Hendrik (1625–47), at the court of The Hague: There is in Utrecht a rare exemplary young girl, Anna Maria van Schurman, who is Roman not only because she possesses a first name, name, and surname, but because she speaks Latin. She paints, writes, versifies, reads Greek, and understands it. … She … is truly a learned woman for the Batavians.61

Van Schurman sent Huygens three years later, in 1633, her first engraved selfportrait with a Latin quatrain: ‘Neither the pride of my mind, nor the grace of my beauty / Have compelled me to sculpt my face in eternal bronze: / But if by chance my uninformed stylus were rejecting better things, / Then I would now for the first time be attempting more impossible things.’62 Although etched with the modesty trope, her quatrain shows she was clearly relishing getting to be known by important members of the Republic of Letters. Jakob Reefsen (Jacobus Revius, 1586–1658), a lyric poet and pastor in his native city of Deventer, on hearing about her, sent her in 1630 a collection of his Dutch poetry – Over-ysselsche sangen en dichten [Songs and Poems from Overijssel], which included a sonnet praising her.63 Van Schurman developed a close friendship with Revius. Inspired by the French Calvinist poetic tradition, he warned, for instance, in ‘Heydens houwelijck’ [On marrying a pagan], against the dangers of drawing on literature from Antiquity, particularly the ‘Greek and Roman charms’ of the ‘Pieran muse’: ‘Pare off all that she has of sumptuous wantonness, / Of dull idolatry and subtle scornfulness.’64 Van Schurman responded approvingly with a Latin poem, ‘On the Muses of Jacobus Revius’, which Revius sent on to Heinsius.65 Van Schurman’s networks extended not only to individual Dutch scholars but also to the court circle at The Hague, and coteries in Utrecht and Dordrecht. The exile court of Elizabeth Stuart, Queen of Bohemia, provided a locus for meetings among scholars, theologians, and scientists. Rivet, court chaplain and tutor to Prince William of Orange-Nassau, presented to Princess Elisabeth, the queen’s eldest daughter, some French verses of Van Schurman, and he introduced his niece, Marie du Moulin, Van Schurman’s soeur d’alliance, to court members; later John

Pal 2012, 63. See Appendix 1.2. 61  Barlaeus to Constantijn Huygens, 7 January 1630, Latin letter, in Huygens, 1: 273, no. 484. 62  Stighelen 1987a, 138. 63  Jacobus Revius, ‘Voor … Maria Schuyrmans’, in Revius 1968, 151. 64  Schenkeveld, 48. 65  Beek 2010, 30.

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Dury and Dorothy Moore took part in the early 1640s in court activities during their two-year stay in The Hague, where Dury was chaplain to the Princess Mary.66 Utrecht and Dordrecht held their own loosely formed literary circles. Sir John Ogle (1569–1640), the English governor of Utrecht, and his Dutch wife, Elisabeth de Vries, invited guests regularly to their home. Their daughter, Utricia Ogle (1611–74), a celebrated singer and musician and a close friend of Van Schurman, was married in 1645 to the English colonel Sir William Swann; she regularly performed at the Utrecht gatherings and at Constantijn Huygens’s magnificent country estate, ‘Hofwijck’, on the outskirts of The Hague. In his Dutch country house poem (2,824 lines) by the same name (1651) celebrating his country retreat, Huygens compares Ogle to a nightingale: ‘I heard her singing here, I think I hear her still / Out-sing the nightingale, eclipse the nightingale.’67 Dordrecht’s coterie, consisting of savants primarily, met at Castle Develstein and became known as the ‘Develsteinse Kring’ or the ‘Dordtse School’. It drew the city pensionary Jacob Cats, the Latin School rector Gerardus Johannes Vossius, pastors Jacobus Lydius and Andreas Colvius, and physician Johan van Beverwijck, all correspondents of Van Schurman. The Dordrecht circle prized its learned women, Maria Margareta van Akerlaacken (1605-ca. 1670), Maria de Witt (1622–44), and the poets Anna van Blocklandt, Elisabeth Vervoorn (1617–57), and especially Margaretha van Godewijck (1627–77), whose father co-directed the Latin School. Van Godewijck wrote Neo-Latin and Dutch poetry, including emblems, and knew Greek, some Hebrew, and several modern languages.68 Van Schurman met her in Dordrecht and drew a portrait of her.69 Several members of this coterie advocated the scholarly education of women. Vossius, rector of the Latin School from 1600 to 1615 and later a professor of theology at Leiden and history at the Amsterdam Athenaeum Illustre, endorsed such learning in his De quatuor artibus popularibus [On the Four Popular Arts, 1650] – a three-volume compendium on the teaching of writing, gymnastics, music, and painting, to which he added philology and mathematics. He introduces in book two a catalogue of learned women, which includes Van Schurman.70 Vossius believed it was unjust to deny women the higher disciplines, and that the risk of libertinism, often levelled against higher 66

 On the exile court, see Keblusek and Zijlmans, 47–57; Jardine; and Pal 2012, 33–6. On Dury and Moore at The Hague, see Chapter 7 in this volume. 67  Davidson and Weel, 137, lines 409–10. Cited in Adelheid Rech, ‘Constantijn Huygens, Lord of Zuilichem (1596–1687)’, http://www.essentialvermeer.com/history/ huygens-b.html (accessed February 2012); Jardine, 164. On Utricia Ogle, see Vinde, 62–5. Huygens’s country retreat, located in Voorburg and restored to its former glory, can be visited today. 68  Dijkshoorn, 191–2. On the learned women of the Dordrecht network, see Jeu, chapter 2, and Stevenson 2005b. On Vervoorn and Van Godewijck, see the On-Line Dictionary of Dutch Women (Digitaal vrouwenlexicon van Nederland), http://resources. huygens.knaw.nl/vrouwenlexicon/ (accessed August 2015). 69  Beek 2010, 149. 70  Rademaker, 322–5.

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learning for women, was minimal if modesty and a disciplined curiosity were in evidence. He had his own daughter, Cornelia, educated alongside his sons until her untimely death in 1638.71 Johan van Beverwijck also advocated the education of women, citing a high number of Dutch learned women in his Van de wtnementheyt des vrouwelicken Geslachts [Of the Excellence of the Female Sex, 1639, 1643], a 670-page panegyric on the ‘superiority’ of women that reflects, according to Cornelia Moore, the ‘self-assuredness of the Dutch burgher class’, proud of the accomplishments of its educated women.72 Van Schurman complimented him on training his daughters Anna and Maria in ‘wisdom and languages’: Let us pray Almighty God that he be willing to give his blessing to such a worthwhile enterprise, and incite others to imitate you, so that many may learn to think with knowledge and virtue about the brevity of this illusory life.73

Cornelis Boy, a lawyer at The Hague, praised Van Beverwijck’s daughters for speaking five languages from a young age.74 Van Beverwijck wanted to educate them to the same level as Van Schurman, but he made sure as well that they were trained in the domestic arts to meet the needs of their future husbands. Did Van Schurman attend the gatherings of the so-called Muiderkring, or ‘Muiden Circle’, a loosely knit literary coterie which met at Pieter C. Hooft’s (1581–1647) manor house of Muiden, a few miles north of Utrecht? This circle offered, it was said, from 1620 until Hooft’s death a space for invited artists and writers: Huygens, Barlaeus, Anna and Maria Tesselschade Roemers Visscher, the singer Francisca Duarte, the poet dramatist Joost van den Vondel, the Amsterdam organist and composer Jan Pieterszoon Sweelinck, the physician Nicolas Tulp, and the French priest and composer Jon Albert Ban (Bannius) among others.75 Nineteenth-century bio-bibliographers created the fiction of a Dutch Hôtel de Rambouillet by drawing parallels between the Muiden Circle and Rambouillet’s Chambre bleue.76 Both circles offered poetry contests, musical soirées, and literary debates, and both privileged the vernacular; Hooft and Huygens hoped to turn Dutch into a tongue as expressive as French, while members of the Chambre bleue 71

 Bots and Waquet, 98.  Cornelia Moore 1994b, 645; see also Cornelia Moore 1990, on the education of women in the Dutch Republic. Van Beverwijck includes some 700 European women in his work. 73  Van Schurman to Van Beverwijck, Latin letter, in Schurman 1639; also 8 February 1639, in Opuscula, 27. 74  Cornelis Boy (1611–65) became fiscal attorney and procurer general of the provinces of Holland, Zeeland, and Friesland. He provided the poems for Van Beverwijck’s panegyric on women. The first book is dedicated to Boy’s wife, the learned Anna van Blocklandt. On Boy, see Moore 1994b, 645n30. 75  On the ‘Muiden Circle’, see Parente; Brachin 1955 and 1957. On the Duartes, see Jardine, chapter 7. 76  See Leuker. 72

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wrote exclusively in French. The French singer Mlle Paulet had her counterpart in Francisca Duarte, the ‘nightingale of Muiden’ and daughter of Sephardic Jews of Antwerp, who was invited to entertain the company with her striking musical abilities. The French circle, however, was an aristocratic salon headed by a woman, while the Muiden Circle was predominantly middle and upper gentry headed by a male poet. Given Van Schurman’s preferences for more elevated and scholarly discourse, it is unlikely that she would have frequented the witty soirées of the Muiden members.77 Transnational Fame Van Schurman’s fame crossed geographical borders, attracting early interest from French savants. A primary reason for her emergence in French intellectual networks is that correspondence was at the core of their enterprise, just as it was for the Dutch. Van Schurman belonged to a prominent centre of scholarly letter writing, which flourished in the Dutch Republic from the middle of the sixteenth to the seventeenth century. This Dutch centre paralleled a second centre of letter production in France with the Parisian academies of Marin Mersenne (1588–1648) and the brothers Pierre (1582–1651) and Jacques (1591–1656) Dupuy. Not surprisingly, the majority of the thousands of letters which circulated in Europe during this period were with readers from only five cities, two of them in the Netherlands: Paris, London, Rome, The Hague, and Amsterdam.78 One of the very first French scholars to notice Van Schurman was Claude Saumaise (Claudius Salmasius, 1588–1653), who had begun teaching at Leiden University in 1632 as the successor to Joseph Scaliger. In 1634, when Van Schurman was 26 years old, Salmasius sent to the Dupuy brothers her first engraved self-portrait (1633). He mentions the portrait to Rivet: I have sent Mademoiselle de Schurman to Paris by the last messenger. As soon as I have a reply, I will let both you and she know. It is a cabinet collection piece and of the rarest, as much for she who created it as for the person it represents, who are the same.79

Some five years later, Salmasius was still answering questions from Paris about Van Schurman. Asked about ‘her beauty’, he replied to Jacques Dupuy:

77

 Hooft criticized Van Schurman in a letter in 1639 to Maria Tesselschade as one whose ‘work reeks [of] the schoolmistress’. See Tesselschade, 183. 78  See Berkvens-Stevelinck et al. 79  Saumaise to Rivet, French letter dated 7 January 1634, in Saumaise and Rivet, Correspondance échangée, 56.

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There are more beautiful ones, but more ugly ones also; she is a brunette with a face that is a little melancholic, her eyes are black and secretive, agreeable enough, and very chaste and modest and with such a deep and lowly humility that she cannot bear to be praised.80

Van Schurman’s fame reached new heights in France after Rivet began circulating her Dissertatio logica – her scholarly treatise on women’s aptitude for higher learning – and the letters on women’s education, leading up to the publication of the Amica Dissertatio in 1638 in Paris. Van Schurman’s treatise attracted some attention. It was the earliest work in the Netherlands penned by a woman on the topic of the suitability of scholarly work for women. The letters between the young Van Schurman and the older Rivet, then in his mid-sixties, attracted even more attention. In a letter to Rivet in 1638, Father Marin Mersenne81 wrote that Rivet’s youngest son, Frédéric Rivet, had spoken to him with great enthusiasm of: a damoiselle from Utrecht, who often writes to you and who has so many talents that after what he [Frédéric Rivet] has said to me, I don’t know what one can add, and that she has even written to you in Hebrew, and of letters where she proves that girls are capable of the arts and the sciences. When you send a letter to your son, please have a copy done for me of the one where she demonstrates this, for such a prodigious mind is quite rare, and I’d be very pleased to know her name, her age and where she’s from, for she deserves to be among the illustrious women. One must admit that the centuries produce some quite extraordinary things, as we have seen in Pico della Mirandola and that Italian girl who knew all the sciences;82 and we also have here, since a year ago, a young lady from Venice, who does marvellous work in miniature painting in which, your son tells me, your girl from Utrecht is also excellent. Please, let me know the day, the year, and the hour of her birth, if you can, by letter.83

80  Saumaise to Jacques Dupuy, Leiden, French letter dated 10 April 1639, in Ms. Dupuy 898, f. 36v (BnF). Cited in Saumaise and Rivet, 117n2. 81  Adrien Baillet called Mersenne ‘the great trafficker of letters’. Cited in Waquet 1989, 492. Mersenne, who carried out his vast correspondence network from the convent of the Minimes at the Place Royale in Paris, directed from his cell an informal academy. Yates, 284–5, notes that ‘every savant who came to Paris visited Mersenne as a matter of course, and in addition to his very large circle of personal relationships – his most intimate friend, René Descartes, is also the most famous – he conducted an enormous correspondence with people whom he never met’. Some 77 letters to Rivet, and six of Rivet’s letters to Mersenne, are extant. See Bots 2005. 82  A probable allusion to the Italian Protestant scholar Olympia Morata (1526–55). 83  Mersenne to Rivet, French letter dated 23 May 1638, in Mersenne, 7: 213–14. Frédéric Rivet was then finishing his studies at the Protestant Academy at Sedan. He later became the private secretary of the Dowager Princess Amelia van Solms. See Tulot 2005: 73.

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In seeking precise information on the ‘damoiselle from Utrecht’, Mersenne asked Rivet for a commendatitia, a letter of recommendation attesting to the erudition necessary for inclusion as citizen in the Republic of Letters. Such a letter generally informed on the name, birth, and geographical, social, and professional origins of the person commended, as well as the works undertaken or published, the intellectual and moral qualities, and the profit that the addressee could expect from corresponding with or meeting such a person.84 The praise letters on Van Schurman, which flooded the networks of the Republic of Letters, highlighted over and over again the rarity of her mind. For instance, the English poet James Martin (Jacobus Aretius, fl. 1612–13) wrote to Mersenne from London: As for what you write about that distinguished maiden of Utrecht, she is truly a portent of Nature (or rather, of God powerfully working a miracle in that gentler sex). If even the wages of keener judgement are added to those estimable gifts of talent and memory, she is obviously worthy of being reckoned in the choir of the virgin goddesses and it must be hoped for that some example of her amazing learning be brought into the light of day. Far be it that that Attic talent, a gift of a grace certainly divine, be buried beneath the earth.85

In June 1639 Johan van Beverwijck sent Mersenne a copy of the third part of his collection De Vitæ Termino [On the End of Life] to which Van Schurman contributed an epistolary essay. In his covering letter, he singles out from among the 24 essayists: that [one] nearest to a miracle, the most illustrious maiden Anna Maria van Schurman, knowledgeable not only in Latin, Greek, and the Oriental languages, but also in Theology and Philosophy, even in Scholastic philosophy, to the amazement [of all]. You can get to know her especially in this one epistle, as a lion by its claw.86

Mersenne immediately penned a letter to Van Schurman, which he asked Huygens to send her.87 84

 Bots and Waquet, 96. On admitting a scholar into the Republic of Letters, see Bots 1994, 111–12. 85  Aretius to Mersenne, Latin letter dated 25 April 1639, in Mersenne, 8: 402. One of Oxford’s most active Neo-Latin poets, Aretius dedicated in 1613 Primula veris, seu panegyrica to Frederick V, the husband of Elizabeth Stuart, James I’s daughter. His collection of verse was written in a dozen languages. See Binns, 47, 58–9, 63. 86  Van Beverwijck to Mersenne, Latin letter, 27 June 1639, in Mersenne, 8: 459. 87  See Huygens’s accompanying Latin letter to Van Schurman, dated 26 August 1639, in Mersenne, 8: 484, and Huygens, 2: 489, no. 2218. In his letter, Huygens warns Van Schurman that should she begin to correspond with Mersenne, she would become ‘fatigued’ and daily besieged with ‘letters, questions, and problems’ as he had been. Both Mersenne’s letter and Van Schurman’s reply are no longer extant.

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Mersenne was not alone among French érudits wanting to know more about Van Schurman. Members of the Cabinet Dupuy and the aristocratic Hôtel de Rambouillet actively inquired about her. Jean Chapelain (1595–1674) comments in a missive in 1640 to Jean-Louis Guez de Balzac (1597–1654): The verses that you saw from the Dutch Sulpicia are not the best that she has composed. She writes in a prose that is quite elegant and I’ve seen some of her French letters, which would put to shame those of many of our ladies.88

Balzac and Chapelain were apparently shown samples of Van Schurman’s verses and French letters which were circulating in Paris at the time. Cardinal Richelieu and Queen Anne of Austria wrote to her, and she responded in letters that have since been lost.89 By the mid-1640s Van Schurman acquired an even greater curiosity value among members of Mme de Rambouillet’s salon. Balzac, the most influential epistolary writer at the time and, according to Pierre Bayle, ‘la plus belle plume de France’ [‘the most beautiful pen in France’],90 states on three separate occasions to Giles Ménage and Chapelain his desire to read her verses and letters: ‘Send me all you can find, be it prose or verse, by Mademoiselle Schurman’ (6 November 1645); ‘I would very much like [to receive], with the verses of Father Théron, those of Mademoiselle de Schurman and some of her letters, remind our dear friend’ (17 December 1645); ‘Our dear Ménage does not remember Mademoiselle de Schurman’ (29 January 1646).91 Balzac’s wish was finally fulfilled; in May 1646 he wrote to Guillaume Girard (d. 1663), secretary to the Duc d’Epernon: One must admit that Mademoiselle de Schurman is a marvellous Girl, and that her Verses are not the least of her wonders. I don’t think that this Sulpicia, so highly praised by Martial,92 has composed anything more beautiful, nor more 88

715.

 Chapelain to Balzac, French letter dated 4 November 1640, in Chapelain 1880, 1:

89  Douma, 20. According to Paquot, 3: 663, the academician François de La Mothele-Vayer (1588–1672) owned manuscript copies of Van Schurman’s letters to Anne of Austria, Richelieu, and Charles du Chesne, Louis XIII’s personal physician and editor of the Amica Dissertatio. 90  Guillaume, 14. Guillaume states: ‘no name shines forth with more éclat than Balzac’s, from 1625 to 1655, and one could make, in the fashion of the day, a famous garland of all the extraordinary eulogies whose object he became’ (2). Balzac’s fame dates to his Lettres (1627) which set off a dispute as to whether he had surpassed the Ancients in the epistolary art. 91  Balzac 1873, 1: 712, 724–5, 741. 92  Martial memorialized Sulpicia, a Latin writer of the late first century ad, as a poet of married love: ‘Let all maidens who want to please only her husband, read Sulpicia. … He who shall properly estimate her poems, will say that no one is more modest, no one more loving.’ Cited in Stevenson 2005a, 45.

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Anna Maria van Schurman, ‘The Star of Utrecht’ Latin. But what modesty and honnêteté there are among the graces and beauties of her Verses! How agreeably the virtue of her soul blends with the products of her mind! I am most grateful to you for introducing me to this marvellous Girl.93

In his letter, Balzac alludes to receiving a book by Salmasius whose prefatory epistle praises Van Schurman: ‘A new Book was [just] brought to me, whose Preface I wanted to read, and this is what I found in it, Habemus in urbe unius diei itinere hinc dissita, etc. [We have in a city that is distant only one day from ours, etc.].’ This portion of Salmasius’s preface is included in the Opuscula.94 Clearly, Van Schurman was well received in Paris; salon habitués and trendsetters such as Chapelain and Balzac found her letters and the ‘pudeur’ [modesty] and honnesteté of her verse in line with their concept of the cultivated woman who does not parade her learning. Balzac especially appreciated Van Schurman’s elegant French letters. During the 1620s he was a fierce critic of ‘pedantic’ French. He distinguished between two types of eloquence, that of ‘l’Eschole’ [the schools], the pulpit, and the law court, which ‘bear the odour and tincture of books and sciences’, and the ‘pure, free, and natural’ eloquence in ‘the conversations of gentlemen and ladies’.95 Van Schurman’s elegant French letters conformed in his view to conversational eloquence. Creating a Female Network Sometime in 1641 Lady Dorothy Moore contacted Van Schurman. Newly widowed, she had turned to her Dutch peer for direction, calling her, as Van Schurman reports in her reply, an ‘example not unworthy of imitation’.96 Moore saw in her a model to imitate. Van Schurman proffered her advice, and then expressed a startling thought. She imagined, she said, the possibility of some day living with Moore: ‘I doubt not if, by God’s Grace, we might sometime enjoy the happiness of living together in the same house, we may be able in so great a Conspiracy of studies and affections, to excite each other unto Virtue.’97 In brief,

93  Balzac to Girard, French letter dated 15 May 1646, in Balzac 1647, 635–40; also Opuscula, 345–6. 94  Opuscula, 325–6.Salmasius’s preface is addressed to the Dupuy brothers in February 1645. The work is Salmasius’s Miscellæ defensionis de variis observationibus et emendationibus ad jus atticum et romanum pertinentibus (Leiden, 1645), a work on Roman and Greek law. 95  Guillaume, 99. 96  Van Schurman to Dorothy Moore, Latin letter, 1 April 1641, Opuscula, 196; translation by Cornelia Moore 1994a, 217. On Van Schurman and Dorothy Moore, see Chapter 7 in this volume. 97  Opuscula, 196; translation Moore 1994a, 217.

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she hoped very much that they could set up a type of household academy wherein to share each other’s lives and studies. This striking example illustrates beautifully Van Schurman’s networking ability with contemporary learned women, not only in the Netherlands but abroad as well. Carol Pal argues compellingly that the female scholars in Van Schurman’s network were not marginalized or in any way isolated or segregated from the larger Republic of Letters; they were integral to the intellectual revolution of the seventeenth century, constituting ‘well-known and highly respected actors within it’.98 Van Schurman’s letters to so many of these women from different faiths and socio-economic status on the Continent and in England indicate her desire to create and sustain over the longue durée a broad-based circle of women communicating with her and, in the case of several, with one another. Such extensive networking began in her own country where she became an exemplar, paradigmatically embodying two practices: first, her glowing reputation spilled over on to other learned women, elevating their reputation; and, second, her eagerness to connect with them, and they with her, spoke to their eagerness for recognition and mutual support. Johanna Hoobius’s (ca. 1614–ca. 1642) poetic collection, Het Lof der Vrouwen [In Praise of Women, 1643], celebrates the ‘Utrecht Minerva’ as an exempla for women of the Dutch Republic. Hoobius expresses the amazement of her countrywomen at the praise bestowed on them, thanks to Van Schurman: Who can believe her ears? Who will not stand amazed, As Utrecht offers women thunderous rounds of praise? There and throughout the land, borne on wings of Fame, The name of Schurman is reaping loftiest acclaim. O jewel of all women, flower of this land, Your splendour falls on us, in your bright rays we stand. The name we have in you will live on without end. Yes, we feel honoured, too, when you stand tall with men. 99

Hoobius incorporates into her lexicon the spill-over effect of the Utrecht scholar’s exemplarity. Van Schurman’s public profile emblematizes the virtues of the university town of Utrecht; and her stardom’s ‘bright rays’ fall on her and all women, raising their status in the eyes of contemporaries. Charlotte de Huybert (ca. 1622–ca. 1646), daughter of the Zeeland lawyer Anthonie de Huybert, seconds Hoobius in eulogizing Van Schurman for raising the level of respect for women universally. In a prefatory poem in honour of Van Schurman, included in Van Beverwijck’s On the Excellence of Women (1643), Huybert declares: ‘Your praise is our praise’ and ‘through your name all women are praised’.100 Van Schurman networked with many of her Dutch peers, Elizabeth Heinsius, Sibylle 98

 Pal 2012, 1.  Gemert et al. 2010, 44; Spies 1986, 345; Beek 2010, 153. 100  Van Beverwijck, 3. Cited in Spies 1986, 345. 99

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van Griethuysen, Maria Margareta van Akerlaecken, and the paper-cutting artist Joanna Koerten-Blok.101 Van Schurman was particularly sensitive to the academic and artistic pursuits of her female contemporaries, making sure to connect with the female members of the families of her epistolary male acquaintances. They were as important to her networks as their male kin. Time and again she added at the end of her letters reminders to send her greetings to their daughters, granddaughters, and nieces – as in the case of Daniel Heinsius’s daughter, André Rivet’s wife and niece, Gerardus Vossius’s daughter Cornelia, Van Beverwijck’s two daughters, Anna and Maria, and Salmasius’s wife, Anne Mercier, with whom she corresponded and exchanged art work.102 She sent samples of her art to the young daughters of her correspondents: for instance, five copies of her 1640 engraved self-portrait went to the family of Sir Simonds D’Ewes (1602–50), an English antiquary and Member of Parliament;103 and John Morris, an English Anglo-Saxon scholar, had a sample of his daughter’s art work sent to her, to which she reciprocated with a sample of her art work.104 Thanks to her linguistic brilliance, Van Schurman corresponded in French with the Catholic Marie de Gournay, the Huguenot Princess Anne de Rohan, her

101

 Beek 2010, 150–56; Dussen et al., 201, 226, 252.  Anne Mercier (1602–?), although maligned for her supposedly difficult character, was highly respected by Van Schurman, perhaps because she came from an illustrious scholarly family. She was the daughter of the French Huguenot philologist Josias Mercier, Seigneur des Bordes, and the granddaughter of the Christian Hebraist Jean Mercier, who taught at the Collège de France. The Mercier family was closely related to the humanist educator Jean de Morel, whose three daughters – Camille, Diane, and Lucrèce – were famous savantes. Her grandmother was none other than Marie Dallier, daughter of Antoinette de Loynes, Jean de Morel’s erudite wife. Anne Mercier grew up in a household academy and was likely learned. She married Claude Saumaise [Salmasius] in 1623. See Zuber 2006. In a Greek letter, dated November/December 1647, in Opuscula, 166–7, Van Schurman thanks both Salmasius and his wife Anne Mercier for the excellent, spicy meal prepared for her and her brother on a visit. 103  Simonds D’Ewes requested the portraits from Van Schurman in a Latin letter on 17 January 1645, BL Harleian Ms. 378, fol. 78: ‘From these [self-portraits], I gave three into the hands of my wife and two daughters, the fourth I have kept for myself and placed between portraits of others of excellent fame; the fifth I am saving for a son, who maybe will still be born (if I read the signs correctly).’ 104  In a Latin letter on 13 August 1639 to the Leiden philologist Johannes de Laet (1581–1649), in Correspondence of John Morris […], 21, Morris asks that he send ‘a small sample of my youngest daughter’s trifles … to the Lady Schurman so that you can entice some from her in return’. Van Schurman reciprocated by sending a drawing which, according to Morris in a letter dated 16 November 1640, 22, inspired his daughter: ‘It was a great pleasure to see how closely my youngest daughter imitated her [the Lady Schurman] in copying and portraying small animals and shrubbery, although in an art form different from the one to which she is accustomed.’ 102

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Reformed soeur d’alliance Marie du Moulin, Madame Coutel,105 Anne de Merveil,106 Mme Saumaise, and Queen Anne of Austria; in Greek, with Bathsua Makin; in Hebrew and Latin, with Lady Dorothy Moore; in Latin and French, with Elisabeth of Bohemia; and in Latin, with Birgitte Thott of Denmark and the German Pietist Johanna Eleonora von Merlau. Her inspirational writings were known to LouiseMarie de Gonzague-Nevers, Queen of Poland; Anne-Geneviève de BourbonCondé, the Duchesse de Longueville; Madeleine de Scudéry; Christina of Sweden; and, in the 1650s and beyond, to Antoinette Bourignon, Hannah Wooley, Elizabeth Elstob, Johanna Eleonora von Merlau, Benigna von Solms-Laubach, Henrietta von Gersdorff, Dorothea Loeberia, and Sophia Brenner, to name a few. Emboldened by their allegiance to female networks – be they at court, in salons, mondain academies, or in correspondence networks – several of these women, who had either influenced her, as Marie de Gournay, or been inspired by her example, wrote in support of women’s education. Notable examples include Bathsua Makin, Dorothy Moore, Marie du Moulin, Marie de Gonzague-Nevers, and Hannah Wooley.107 The Weight of Fame As mentioned earlier in the chapter, Van Schurman began corresponding with scholars at a young age. As her fame kept growing in the 1640s and 1650s, she became very ambivalent about it. She concluded that such personal glory did more harm than good both to her deeply held piety and to the cause of educating women. Finally, in Eukleria, published five years before her death, she formally rejected her eulogists, whom she now called ‘trumpeters of overblown eulogy’ and ‘fallacious fawners who, magicked by the potion of self-manufactured encomium,

105

 Madame Coutel was a friend of Salmasius and an artist. Salmasius was once called upon to adjudicate between her and Van Schurman. 106  Anne de Merveil, dowager Lady Prosting, had a busy court life and suffered from poor health. Van Schurman befriended her daughter. In a French letter to Anne de Merveil, dated 16 August 1642, in Opuscula, 291–3, Van Schurman invites her to move to Utrecht so that they could live closer to each other. 107  Makin published An Essay to Revive the Ancient Education of Gentlewomen […] (1673); Moore wrote a tract, ‘Of the Education of Girls’ (ca. 1650), no longer extant; and Du Moulin, De l’éducation des enfants (Amsterdam, 1654, 1679), originally published in 1654 with the title De la premiere education d’un prince depuis sa naissance jusqu’à l’age de sept ans). According to Francesco Clodoveo Maria Pentolini in Le donne illustre (Livorno, 1776) (cited in Stevenson 2005a, 365), Gonzague is credited with a Latin dissertation on whether women should be learned. Wooley, a household servant and school teacher, is the supposed author of The Gentlewomans Companion; or, a Guide to the Female Sex (1673). Wooley, 29–30, accords the greatest praise to Van Schurman in her catalogue of savantes. On the disputed authorship of The Gentlewomans Companion, a book promoting women’s equal access to a Latinist education, see Hobby 1988, chapter 7.

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transform themselves into Beasts of Flattery’.108 She also criticized them for misconstruing learned women as rarities, whereas their refusal to accept advanced learning for women was the true cause for wonder: ‘perhaps they judged nothing worthy of observing and celebrating except what was rare in our sex and valued for that reason’.109 Van Schurman became so famous that she spent a great deal of her time answering letters and receiving visitors at her home in Utrecht. Many a literary person said with the French lawyer Paul Jacob that: [S]he has qualities that give passion to virtue itself, and force the most beautiful minds to cross lands and seas to hear and see her. As for me, I’ll never be satisfied until I’ve seen the city that Anne turned not only into a temple of honour, but also of virtue.110

Pierre Yvon went so far as to state that: [T]here was not a man of quality or of estate who, in passing through Holland, did not look for the privilege of conversing with her even for a mere quarter of an hour. To have been in Utrecht without seeing Mlle de Schurman was like having been to Paris without seeing the King.111

Yvon commented on the strain that fame brought. At first, she responded liberally to all who wrote, knowing that membership in the respublica litteraria entailed the obligation, as Paul Dibon puts it, ‘to establish, maintain, and encourage communication, primarily by personal correspondence or contact’.112 Rendering service to others and exchanging information through letters lay at the heart of the scholarly enterprise. But, gradually realizing that she had neither the time nor the inclination to continue in this vein and that, in Yvon’s words, ‘she would put herself in danger, especially regarding the correspondences, of honouring those who had no honour, and who would even misuse her name, or show off her 108  Cited in Baar 1994, 149. Baar’s translation is based on the Dutch Eukleria. The Latin version, in Schurman, Eukleria, 78, is as direct but less overblown: ‘Lying eulogists, as someone has not unfairly called them, as they sing each other’s praises, transform themselves into mere animals, living for glory.’ 109  Eukleria, 80. Van Schurman critiqued her eulogists’ conflation of learned women with the gendered stereotype of the woman beyond her sex, who acquired celebrity due to her difference from other women. She had lost none of her critical acumen over the treatment of women. Baar 1994, 150, notes that Eukleria ‘can be read as an attempt to dismantle this type of gender-specifying stereotyping, in the sense that the book poses in more than one way a subtle challenge to contemporary sex roles’. 110  Jacob, ‘Eloge de Mademoiselle Anne Marie de Schurman’, in Question celebre, 114–15. Paul Jacob was a lawyer in the Paris Parlement. 111  Yvon, 1264, column 2. 112  Dibon 1978, 46.

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letters’, she became more discriminate.113 She grew increasingly critical of the eulogies addressed to her because she thought them harmful not just to herself but to the cause of women’s education. Van Beverwijck, for instance, who was about to dedicate to her Book 2 of his Of the Excellence of the Female Sex where he included a 13-page eulogy of her talents,114 received her urgent entreaty that he spare her from further public exposure: I vehemently entreat you, yea by our inviolable friendship I beseech you, that you not (as according to your accustomed favour toward me, you seem to intend) dedicate this book to me. For you are not ignorant with what evil eyes the majority of men (I mean not so much men of the meanest rank, whom it is easy to condemn, as men who are highly esteemed) look at what tends to our praise.

She refused the dedication for fear of those same critics who thought that women are ‘well dealt with if we merely obtain their pardon for aspiring to these higher studies; they would be very displeased if they suspected me of having given the least occasion of sounding forth our praises in this way’.115 Van Schurman had warned the Dordrecht physician once before that his praise of her was doing the cause of women’s education more harm than good: there are many, she notes apprehensively, who bar women from higher learning and think that ‘this more refined adornment does not suit our sex and that access to this sanctum of Minerva is not open to us’.116 She was moreover deeply distrustful of his aim to prove the superiority of women. Few, indeed, would have agreed with this thesis; Daniel Jonctys, for instance, a physician colleague of Van Beverwijck, objected strenuously to the notion in his treatise Der Manne Oppe-Waerdigheid [On Man’s Superiority, Rotterdam, n.d.].117 Van Schurman herself had taken issue with the

113

 Yvon, 1264, column 2. Van Schurman’s name was indeed misused as she explained to her editor Frederik Spanheim in a letter dated 29 June 1644: ‘my situation does not allow me to extend too much the boundaries of my acquaintantship through the commerce of letters, especially after the abuse I suffered through the person of ******; Monsieur Rivet, I think, will have told you the story’. See Opuscula, 308; the letter is dated 29 June 1645 in Opuscula (1652), 273. The person who misused Van Schurman’s name was not Descartes, as Venesoen surmises in Schurman 2004, 177. Descartes’s negative estimation of Van Schurman was expressed four years earlier in a letter to Mersenne (see Chapter 2 in this volume). 114  Beverwijck 1643, fols. 169–81. 115  Van Schurman to Van Beverwijck, Latin letter dated 1639, in Opuscula, 188–9. See Appendix 1.5. 116  Van Schurman to Van Beverwijck, Latin letter dated 21 January 1638, in Opuscula, 185. 117  Cited in Moore 1994b, 646. Stighelen and Landtsheer 2010, 177, comment on how Huygens mocked Van Beverwijck’s book in a humorous poem on the (male) ‘tbroeckeloos geslacht’ (‘trouserless sex’).

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Italian polemicist Lucrezia Marinella’s The Nobility and Excellence of Women (1600, 1601), which argues the superiority of women.118 Van Schurman’s discomfort with fame related to her stoical view on life. She admired the Neo-Stoic Justus Lipsius (1547–1606), who argued that true scholarship led to detachment from the public concerns of everyday living. He spoke of a ‘safe tranquillity’, even refusing to pronounce himself on the political and religious issues of his time.119 In the same vein, Van Schurman valued education for women as a retreat from the troubled world and a haven for scholarly pursuit. Her ‘quietistic approach’, in Joyce Irwin’s words, led her to emphasize the enrichment value of education rather than the activist teleology that characterized a humanist education for men.120 This enrichment value, however, did not preempt in Van Schurman’s mind the usefulness of serious education for women. Finally, Van Schurman was critical of the excessive praise given her because she thought it contrary to truth. Her concern surfaced early in her career. To the Protestant theologian Pierre du Moulin she stated a preference for the rewards of faith in God rather than of fame ‘for fear that truth itself might shake this foundation, and interrupt for me your good graces’.121 A decade later, in 1644, she explained to Gassendi, who had expressed enthusiasm for her Dissertatio logica, that: as I understand it, you, otherwise a most vigorous defender of truth, have been led astray … not lightly would I sin against your genius and truthfulness unless I released you as soon as possible from this error, whatever sort it is.122

A year later she asserted to D’Ewes: ‘you attribute to me such glory of learning that, if I should admit it willingly, I would greatly offend the laws of truth and modesty’.123 The conflict, on the one hand, between pride of place as a distinguished citizen in the networks of the Republic of Letters and, on the other hand, her deeply held Christian faith surfaced again and again in her correspondence with leading male savants. From her first contact with Daniel Heinsius in 1623 at age 15 to her autobiography published in 1673 when she was 65 years old, she touched repeatedly on the weight of her fame. In the introduction to Eukleria she opposed falsehood – the fame heaped on her – to the ‘genuine image of truth’ that she 118

 On Van Schurman and Marinella, see Chapter 6.  Israel 1995, 566. 120  Irwin 1989, 167. 121  Van Schurman to Pierre du Moulin, French letter, 20 March 1635, in Opuscula, 278. 122  Van Schurman to Gassendi, Latin letter, 12 January 1644, Opuscula, 212–13. See Appendix 1.8. 123  Van Schurman to D’Ewes, Latin letter, 31 October 1645, Opuscula, 218. See Appendix 1.9. 119

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wanted to present. She confessed that although very often her conscience was troubled, she was led by ‘the appearance of some virtue of duty and the supposed common good of learning’ to acquiesce and so allowed herself ‘to be led step by step into that theatre of a more conspicuous fame, from which the departure has been difficult’.124 The weight of fame led her progressively toward detachment from the public life of a scholar to the relative hiddenness of a separatist community. A Dramatic Change of Course Growing intolerance of fame and praise led her in the mid-1640s to refuse to reply to correspondents whom she did not personally know. Yvon transcribes in his biographical sketch two poems written by anonymous French gentlemen who were unable to see her during their visit to Utrecht. The first is entitled ‘To the very wise and very virtuous Mademoiselle de Schurman on the impossibility of obtaining the happiness of seeing her’, while the second, containing only the first two of 20 stanzas, begins ‘Your great humility, incomparable Schurman, / Prevents me from seeing you.’125 Even members of André Rivet’s own family had a hard time. A certain Du Plessis Gourest, a cousin of Rivet, begged Rivet for a letter of recommendation with which to visit Voetius, and especially Van Schurman.126 She made exceptions though for defenders of the cause of women’s higher education. She exempted Gassendi: [T]he proof of your love for genuine wisdom is clear, since you do not even scorn the least spark of it in our sex; and you do not hesitate to cherish or to raise it up with your extraordinary favour.127

She frequently asked Rivet whether it was necessary for her to reply to people she did not know. On the day she received D’Ewes’s self-introductory letter, enclosed with a letter from Rivet, she expressed her hesitation, even displeasure, in a postscript to Rivet: Before I could sign this letter, yours and a letter from that English Baronet arrived; I cannot see how to respond appropriately to him, since it seems neither advisable nor safe to have communication with those I don’t know.128

124

 Eukleria, 78.  Yvon, 1265, column 1. 126  Du Plessis Gourest to Rivet, ms. letter, Leiden, 12 July 1650, Leiden University Library. 127  Van Schurman to Gassendi, 12 January 1644, Opuscula, 213. See Appendix 1.8. 128  Van Schurman to Rivet, 7 March 1645, KB, ms. 133 B 8, no. 45. 125

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She finally agreed to reply to D’Ewes only because, she tells him, ‘your most favourable opinion concerning my sex has encouraged me to do so’, and because he thought so highly of Bathsua Makin, one of the members of her network.129 Yet even though she felt free to shut her door to unwanted admirers, she could not stop important royal visitors from coming. She played host to the ageing Marie de Medici (1575–1642), the queen mother of Louis XIII, who, after years of exile in the Spanish Netherlands (present-day Belgium), toured the United Provinces in 1638 before sailing for England. On 26 December 1645 she welcomed the new French Queen of Poland, Louise-Marie de Gonzague-Nevers (1611–67), a habitué of the Hôtel de Rambouillet, who was travelling through the Low Countries to Poland to wed King Władysław IV, and whose portrait she drew.130 In September 1646, Anne-Geneviève de Bourbon-Condé, the Duchesse de Longueville (1619–79), arrived with her retinue. Van Schurman also saw in 1654 Queen Christina of Sweden (1626–89) and executed her portrait.131 Van Schurman’s ambivalent relations with Christina of Sweden epitomize the quandary in which she sometimes found herself. The queen probably corresponded with her because they had similar interests. A polyglot, she had established a court academy where numerous invited scholars – among them Christian Hebraists known to Van Schurman, such as Nicolas Heinsius and Isaac Vossius – debated the Babylonian, Egyptian, and Hebraic background of the Scriptures and the NeoPlatonism of Iamblichus and Proclus, among other topics.132 Even Salmasius spent a year at her court in 1650–51. In a short period, some 40–50 French scholars and artists were invited to Sweden. According to Yvon, several of Van Schurman’s close acquaintances spoke eloquently to her about the queen’s scholarship and character, urging her, ‘although somewhat against her will, to compose a eulogy in Latin verse and allow a small present of her own crafting, which was very rare, to be presented to the queen’.133 Van Schurman complied, and soon her good friend Samuel Bochart (1599–1667), a minister and nephew of Rivet’s wife Marie du Moulin, who had been invited to Stockholm where he resided from 1651 to 1653, took the eulogy and gift along with him, stating to the queen that ‘it [the gift] had been taken as if by force from Mlle de Schurman’s hands for the latter’s  Van Schurman to D’Ewes, 31 October 1645, Opuscula, 218. See Appendix 1.9.  On Marie de Gonzague’s visit to Van Schurman, see Le Laboureur 1648, 64–7. Le Laboureur describes the city of Utrecht, its elegant houses, and friendly people; he thought Utrecht more distinguished than other Dutch cities: ‘The country is very good, as it is on a higher plane than the rest of Holland; and the citizens are also more civil’ (76). On Van Schurman’s portrait of Gonzague, see Joly 1672, 152. 131  On Marie de Medici’s travels through Holland, see Carmona 539–41; on Longueville, see Craveri, chapter 6; on Longueville’s visit to Van Schurman, see Joly 1672, 150–55, and Lebigre, 100–101; on Queen Christina’s visit to Van Schurman, see Masson, 221, and Beek 2010, 157–9. 132  Åkerman 1991a, 105. 133  Yvon, 1264, column 1. 129 130

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modesty did not permit her to appear at the Courts of Princes and Kings’.134 But when Van Schurman learned sometime in 1652 that the queen’s personal French physician, Pierre Michon de Bourdelot (1610–84), had made impious jokes and comments before the queen in the presence of Bochart, ‘she not only felt horror for this impious man, but she refrained from taking any further step toward Queen Christina’. Bourdelot had asked Bochart about ‘a certain book called the Bible’; when the latter responded, he was interrupted with loud laughter.135 Other scholars at the court of Stockholm were subjected to his derision. Gabriel Naudé, Cardinal Mazarin’s chief librarian, who came to the Swedish court in 1651 during the Paris Fronde, was forced to execute ancient Greek and Roman dances, while the court’s German assistant librarian, Marcus Meibohm, had to sing the music.136 Nicolaas Heinsius, also at the court, accused Bourdelot of holding that ‘the gods are nothing, the heavens empty; and words of virtue are for putting out the light’. Bochart called him ‘le peché originel’.137 After the queen’s abdication in 1651 and before her departure for Rome in 1654, she stopped off incognito in Holland where the only two people she cared to see were the polyglot grammarian Johannes Fredericus Gronovius (1611–71) and Van Schurman. She visited the latter after her trip to Hamburg at the end of July 1654 and before going on to Antwerp on 12 August 1654.138 Despite her reservations, Van Schurman received the queen, displayed her cabinet of curiosities, debated with her on theological matters, and drew her portrait.139 Van Schurman’s fame spread far and wide, reaching even the shores of the American colonies. Cotton Mather included her in Ornaments for the Daughters of Zion (1692) in a section on American ‘authoresses’, among them the poet Anne Bradstreet.140

134  Yvon, 1264, column 1. Bochart, a renowned biblical scholar who knew 18 languages, pastored the Protestant church in Caen until his departure for Sweden. He left Queen Christina’s court, accompanied by Gabriel Naudé, on 1 June 1653. Cited in Correspondance de Jacques Dupuis […], 128n11. A manuscript letter dated 1632 from Bochart to his aunt, Marie du Moulin, is included in Rivetiana, BPL 282, fol. 250, Leiden University Library. 135  Yvon, 1264, column 1. Bourdelot, an abbot, then physician at the Paris Faculté in 1642, served the Prince de Condé before leaving for the Swedish court in February 1652. He returned to Paris in June 1653. 136  This anecdote is cited in Rice, 42; and Pintard, 393. 137  Cited in Åkerman 1991a, 41. On Cristina and Bourdelot, see Åkerman 1991b. Chapelain sent the queen some verses and the first book of his epic poem, La Pucelle. But when rumours circulated on the ridiculing of French savants at her court, he turned against her, stating to Nicolaas Heinsius, on 25 September 1654 (in Chapelain 1966, 260), that ‘my resentment has turned to indignation with even disgust at myself for having showered praises on so vain an Idol and so unworthy an object of our adoration’. 138  Lanoye, 36; Beek 1992, 16n49. 139  Beek 2010, 158–9. 140  Mather 1978, 4. See Chapter 7 in this volume.

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The Last Decades The last quarter-century of Anna Maria van Schurman’s biography took her away from her beloved Utrecht both physically and intellectually.141 Her growing disenchantment with the direction of the Reformed Church and her life, joined with new responsibilities at home, led her to rethink her goals. During the 1650s she took increasing care of two elderly aunts, Sibella and Agnes von Harff. From late summer 1653 to July 1654, she returned with them and her brother to Cologne to reclaim land confiscated during the Thirty Years War. She let few people know about her trip. Constantijn Huygens had to write to Utricia Ogle to find out her whereabouts, stating ruefully, ‘the towne of Utrecht is a mightie looser by it, and should have hindred it by all possible violent civilities’.142 Since Reformed services in Cologne were unavailable, she and her close kin had to cross the Rhine by boat to attend Protestant services in Mülheim. She came to value the tightly knit bonds of her minority community as well as her anonymity. Ill-willed ministers in Utrecht, meanwhile, circulated the rumour that she had converted to Roman Catholicism, following the example of Anna and of Tesselschade Roemers Visscher who had both converted. She returned to Utrecht in 1654–55 where she resided for several more years. In 1660, to escape from a quarrel over ecclesiastical goods and Sabbath observance – two ministers whom she supported, Abraham van de Velde and Johannes Teellinck, were banished from the city on orders of the regents143 – she left Utrecht for Lexmond, a municipality in the Dutch countryside. There she spent two years with her brother, aunts, and servants, living once again in a close-knit community she compared to an independent ‘Christian church’.144 Almost entirely blind, her aunts now required her constant presence and help until they died, aged 89 and 91 respectively, in 1661.145 These years away from Utrecht brought her a reprieve, according to Yvon, from the continual visits, letters, and conversations which her fame had caused and of which she had grown so ‘tired. … She enjoyed there a great calm, distanced from the crowd and the troubles of the world.’146 Throughout the 1660s Van Schurman warned friends of her growing disillusionment with the lack of spiritual devotion within the Reformed Church. Her disquiet is reflected in a letter to Constantijn Huygens, dated 13 September 1669. Huygens had requested her comments on his poem ‘Aen sommighe predikers’ 141

 Sources for this biographical sketch include Beek 2010, part III; Saxby; Stighelen and Landtsheer 2010; Kolakowsky; and Lieburg. 142  Huygens to Utricia Ogle, 5 September 1653, in Huygens 5: 187, no. 5310. 143  An upsurge in members in Utrecht increasingly denounced the disciplinarian measures of the consistory of the Reformed Church as a ‘yoke and a tyranny’ and Voetius and his colleagues as ‘devilish Puritans’. Cited in Lieburg, 420. 144  Beek 2010, 206. 145  Chauffepié, 4: 211; Beek 1992, 16. 146  Yvon, 1267, column 2.

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[‘On some preachers’], penned on 27 and 28 October 1666, which mocked the posturing of church ministers; he also wanted her opinion on several portraits by family members and others. But she responded with Hippocrates’ aphorism ‘ars longa, vita brevis’ [‘art is long, life short’], and that her goal was now to live for Christ and the reformation of the Church. Although she kept his poem because, she notes, it ‘exhibits to the ecclesiastics, as a mirror, an unfortunate vice that occupies the pulpit’, she returned the rest to him, stating that she cared only for the ‘heavenly image’ of Jesus who was now her teacher: I, in my wish to end my life in such a pursuit, end it with this prayer: May the Almighty and most High God above, the only Teacher of this art, teach this practice to you, me, and all others who love Him for his glory, and for the reformation of the true Church.147

To other acquaintances such as Johannes Schweling, she quoted in his liber amicorum a saying from Pico Della Mirandola’s Oration on the Dignity of Man: ‘Philosophy seeks, theology finds, and religion possesses the truth.’148 Not content with sitting on the sidelines, she actively tried to reform the church from within by organizing meetings with ministers and writing letters to them. She even travelled throughout the country, going as far north as Leeuwarden to organize meetings with Frisian pastors. In Eukleria, she describes Voetius’s opposition, on grounds of feminine impropriety, to her admiration for Paula (347–404), a disciple of St Jerome, who, with her daughter, followed him to Bethlehem to help translate the Bible into Latin.149 During that same period her brother, Johan Godschalk, began telling her about a charismatic spiritual leader he had met. In late 1661 Johan had travelled to Basel to study theology with the Hebrew scholar Johannes Buxtorf. Buxtorf and his colleague Lukas Gernler spoke at length with him on matters of moral reformation and told him about Jean de Labadie, a French defrocked Jesuit priest converted to Calvinism and residing in Geneva where he preached the reformation of the church.150 Remaining in Geneva for two months, Johan wrote enthusiastically to 147

 KB, ms. 133 B 8, no. 72; Huygens, 6: 253–4, no. 6723. Van Schurman quotes the aphorism from Seneca’s On the Shortness of Life, Book 10. 1. See Seneca, 2: 287. See Huygens, 6: 253, no. 6722, for Huygens’s letter to Van Schurman, dated 8 September 1669. In a final attempt to dissuade her, Huygens sent her a 124-line Dutch poem on 11 June 1670 attacking Labadie and accusing her of betraying herself, her former professors, and the city of Utrecht. 148  Opuscula, 197. 149  Beek 2010, 220. 150  The charismatic Jean de Labadie (1610–74) sensed early in his life a vocation for the renewal of the church. Like Van Schurman, who, at age four, underwent a mystical experience upon hearing the name of Jesus when reciting the Heidelberg Catechism, Labadie’s devotions focused on Jesus, whom he especially revered. In the late 1640s he began having visions that led him to develop his chiliastic, or millenarian, notions of the

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his sister during Lent 1662 about the lengthy sermons Labadie preached before a packed audience, some lasting up to four hours. He made his way back to the Netherlands by way of Germany, taking two years, but on account of ill health, had to make haste to Utrecht where he died in September 1664.151 His impressions of Labadie left a profound impression on his sister. Meanwhile, Labadie grew increasingly discontented with Calvinist Geneva’s nominal Christians and convinced his small band of followers that the elect had to separate from nominal and non-believers to comprise a church solely of the regenerate.152 When in 1665 he was invited to the pastorate in Middelburg, Zeeland, home to the oldest Walloon congregation in the Netherlands, he took his leave from Geneva. He arrived a year later, stopping first at Utrecht where he and his co-workers Pierre Yvon, Pierre Dulignon (or Du Lignon), and Jean Menuret lodged at Van Schurman’s house. As pastor at Middelburg, his fiery sermons on the need for moral regeneration and for believers to live apart from unbelievers, and his chiliasm, or millenarianism,153 drew the ire of other ministers, including Voetius. Van Schurman travelled frequently to Middelburg to hear his sermons and became a strong advocate in spite of the opposition of friends such as Jacobus Koelman, pastor at Sluis in Zeeland, who could not dissuade her.154 Huygens became so concerned that he wrote to Marie du Moulin about Labadie’s propensity for violent acts; he hoped, perhaps, that she could influence her soeur d’alliance.155 Labadie was removed, due in large part to severe conflict with Henri du Moulin, Marie’s brother, with whom he shared the pastorate at Middelburg. He settled in Amsterdam in August 1669 to establish a separatist church household. Soon after, Van Schurman sold her home in Utrecht with the furniture and a portion of her library to join Labadie’s sectarian community. The sale of her property amounted

Kingdom of God. After various wanderings, he settled in Geneva for seven years (1659–66), playing host to Johan Godschalk during Lent 1662. On Labadie, see Saxby; Sambuc; and Vidal. 151  Van Schurman wrote a deathbed memoir of her brother’s final days, included in Yvon, 1268–9. 152  Kolakowski, 720. 153  Saxby, 149: ‘Millenarianism consists in a belief in the second advent of Christ to establish a kingdom of righteousness on earth with the resurrection of the saints who will dwell in him.’ Historically, millenarianism was popular during periods of social crisis and unrest. 154  Saxby, 166. Jacobus Koelman (1632–95), a Reformed minister to the Dutch ambassadors in Copenhagen and Brussels, adhered to the Nadere Reformatie (Further Reformation), and was influenced by his Utrecht professors Voetius and E. Hoornbeeck. See Bunge 2003, 2: 567–8. 155  Huygens to Marie du Moulin, Dutch and French letter, 14 April 1667, in Huygens 6: 209, no. 6604. Huygens recounts how Labadie ripped off a table carpet on which there lay a card game his friends were playing one day in Geneva; he adds, ‘I don’t know whether our illustrious friend [Van Schurman], who adores him, would approve this procedure.’

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to 9,000–10,000 guilders intended for her maintenance and charitable work.156 Just a few months before, she had published in Amsterdam a 10-page pamphlet – Pensées d’A.M. de Schurman Sur la Reformation necessaire à present à l’Eglise de Christ [Thoughts … On the Reformation necessary at present in the Church of Christ, 12 March 1669] – in which she forcefully denounced the ‘Doctors of the Church’ for trampling on ‘celestial Wisdom’, using mainly reason as their guide. She, for her part, preferred the people of God ‘separated from the mondains, in a happy sojourn, / Through hatred of the World, and through Divine love’.157 When Van Schurman broke off relations with the Reformed Church, she came under severe attack, but remained immovable in the face of immense opposition and a smear campaign from friends and supporters, including Huygens, Voetius, and her own family. She asserted that she preferred the spiritual edification found in the Labadist community, of which she now became one of the principal leaders. Bo Karen Lee remarks that, ironically, Van Schurman became more truly ‘voiced within her new community’ even though she advocated radical self-denial in her quest for union with Christ. Abandoning the humility trope so endemic to her early writing, she became ‘open and forthright; the style, tone, and content of her writings reveal a new authority and confidence’.158 Due to their unorthodoxy, the Labadists were forced to leave Amsterdam and seek a new refuge. Van Schurman turned to her old friend, Princess Elisabeth of Bohemia – now abbess since 1667 at the Lutheran Damenstift abbey at Herford, Germany – who issued her an invitation. The Labadist community, numbering about 50, lived in the grounds of the convent for two years, from 1670 to 1672. To enlist further support and patronage, Van Schurman sought to persuade Princess Elisabeth’s sister, Sophia von der Pfalz, future Electress of Hanover, of the merits of Labadism.159 Sophia had written to Van Schurman, in the early part of the latter’s stay with her sister, to inquire about her health. Van Schurman replied that she was doing fine thanks to Elisabeth’s support and, she hoped, to Sophia’s future help in the furtherance of the Labadist agenda. Indeed, her help, she writes, mirrors God’s leading: to bring us back an idea, and a start of an Evangelical life, according to the example of early Christianity, such as it is described for us in the [book of] Acts 156

 Saxby, 258–9.  Schurman 1669, lines 70–71; 130–31. 158  Lee 2007, 213. 159  Sophia von der Pfalz Hanover (1630–1714) – the twelfth and last child of Frederick V, Elector of Palatine, and his wife Elizabeth Stuart – was married to Ernest-Augustus of Brunswick-Lüneburg (ruled 1679–98), elevated in 1692 to Elector of Hanover. Though raised a Calvinist, she was undogmatic in her beliefs and enjoyed discussions with thinkers of different viewpoints. A Cartesian, she agreed with Leibniz that reason should be central to religious belief. See Israel 2001, 84; and Leibniz and the Two Sophies […], as well as her Memoirs. 157

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and the Apostolic letters, when the multitude of believers were of one heart and one soul.160

She enclosed with her letter two of Labadie’s works recently published by the community’s printing press. In her reply, Sophia thanked Van Schurman for the ‘very beautiful books’, but claimed that only in heaven would she be able to attain the ‘beatitude’ promised therein, so defective is human nature, hers in particular. Unlike her sister Elisabeth, Sophia was deeply sceptical of Labadie, writing to their brother Karl Ludwig, Count Palatine: ‘You have never seen anything more pleasant than that kinglet among all those saints.’ However, she could be fair-minded, calling the Labadists ‘good people, who damn us all’, and stating that Labadie distilled from Calvinism ‘so pure an essence that I believe it will evaporate as soon as one thinks to hold it’.161 Sophia nonetheless entertained good relations with Van Schurman, who would show her, as well as Elisabeth and other members of their retinue, her collection of portraits and carvings in wood and wax at which she continued to work during her stay at Herford, where a small room was reserved especially for her art work.162 Life within the community was organized according to family parental relations. Antoine Lamarque, a renegade Labadist, wrote in 1670 that Labadie was referred to as ‘Papa’ and Van Schurman as ‘Mama’. She sat at his right hand and was as important as he was. Adults in the community were called ‘Uncle’ and ‘Aunt’ by the children.163 Labadie and Van Schurman did not marry, as rumours at the time would have it. Labadie married Lucia van Sommelsdyck, who had come from Amsterdam to join the community.164 Growing opposition from the surrounding inhabitants, and the threat of Louis XIV’s troops closing in, led the Labadists to move yet again. On 23 June 1772, they headed to Altona, in Denmark, not far from Hamburg. Elisabeth remained steadfast in her support, even writing letters in their favour to the King of Denmark.165 In Altona, Van Schurman published Eukleria, or Choosing the Better Part toward the end of 1673, taking its title from Luke 10:42 where Mary ‘chooses the better part’ by sitting at the feet of Christ. Eukleria was well received by Leibniz and his circle and by leading Pietists such as Johann Jakob Schütz, Philipp Jakob Spener, 160

 Van Schurman to Sophia von der Pfalz, autograph French letter dated 16 November 1670, British Library, Kings Mss. 140, fol. 24v. 161  Sophia to Karl Ludwig, 19 March 1671, British Museum Library, Kings Mss. 140, fols. 219–20. Cited in Saxby, 203. 162  Saxby, 203; Beek 1992, 32n137. 163  On life among the Labadists, see Kolakowsky, 768–73. 164  The churchman Pierre Daniel Huet (1630–1721) wrote that Van Schurman had married Labadie and was living with him in Friesland. See Huet, 51. Huet owned a copy of Van Schurman’s 1650 edition of the Opuscula (BnF, Z. 19198). 165  Saxby, 218–19. Elisabeth also supported the Quakers; she hosted in 1676 the Scottish theologian Robert Barclay (1648–90), and William Penn (1644–1718) in September 1671 and again in 1677.

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and Eleonore van Merlau with whom Van Schurman corresponded. Eukleria was translated into Dutch and followed by a second part in Latin published posthumously in Amsterdam in 1685. Labadie’s death in February 1674 and the war threatening Altona led Pierre Yvon, the new leader of the community, to find another home. Van Schurman sought a more hospitable environment in England, and came into contact with the English biographer and Latinist translator Lucy Hutchinson (1620–81), an ally of the Congregationalist divine John Owen with whom Van Schurman corresponded.166 The community eventually found a new site in 1675 in the Frisian village of Wieuwerd where it flourished for about a decade, attracting many new members. Some of these new converts included people of renown such as the artist-naturalist Maria Sibylla Merian (1647–1717), who joined the community with her mother and two daughters for a 10-year sojourn.167 At its optimum period it numbered some 400 men, women, and children of all backgrounds, professions, and languages, practising absolute detachment from worldly values. The community shared all in common as in the early church, and strove for regeneration ‘by penitence, discipline, community prayer, and prophetic exercise’.168 On 12 July 1677, William Penn met with Van Schurman. In his journal, he summarized her words on the ‘little family’ to which she had devoted her remaining years: She saw her learning to be vanity, and her religion like a body of death; she resolved to despise the shame, desert her former way of living and acquaintance, and to join herself with this little family, that was retired out of the world; among whom she desired to be found a living sacrifice, offered up entirely to the Lord.169

In the last year of her life, Van Schurman was housebound with gout and severe rheumatism. She continued to correspond, and completed the second part of Eukleria. Fearing adulation after her death, she had burned most of her remaining unpublished correspondence a few years before.170 She died on 4 May 1678 at the age of 70. In the remaining chapters and epilogue of this study, I shall address the theological and philosophical underpinnings of her educational vision; her reasoned defence of female higher studies; the publication of her writings on women; and the reception of these writings in France and England.

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 Norbrook 2003, 286; Saxby, 231, 375.  On Merian, see Schiebinger, 68–79; and Davis. 168  Davis, 161. In 1683 a number of Labadists settled in Cecil County, Maryland, on what became known as the ‘Labadie Tract’. By 1730 the community had dissolved. 169  Penn, 99. 170  Yvon, 1265, column 1. 167

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Chapter 2

The Savante, the Theologian, and the Philosopher It is certain that, as soon as knowledge of true Philosophy has occupied all the venues of our mind and has conquered that sensible throne, there is no entrance in it for vain passions. Van Schurman to Rivet (1638)1

Anna Maria van Schurman lived in an age of conflict. For nearly a century, from the onset of the French Wars of Religion (1562–98) and Thirty Years’ Wars (1618–48) to the English Civil Wars (1642–51), Europe was engulfed in interconfessional quarrels. Theological and philosophical disputes and rivalries filled political, cultural, and religious discourses. As Jonathan Israel states, ‘confessional theology long remained the principal and overriding criterion in assessing all intellectual debate and innovation’.2 But from the 1640s onward, beginning in the United Provinces with the onset of the Cartesian controversies, the prevailing pattern of confessionally regulated cultural cohesion began to break down. The main pressure came from the so-called New Philosophers, who progressively introduced explanations of God, human beings, and the universe that collided with the accounts of the scholastic Neo-Aristotelians who dominated the pastorate and the universities. The clash of ideas between the old scholastic and new thinkers was epitomized in the open, and at times bitter, conflict between the Utrecht theologian Gijsbert Voet (Gisbertus Voetius, 1589–1676) and the philosopher René Descartes (1596–1650). This chapter traces the influence of these two important players in Anna Maria van Schurman’s advocacy of higher education for women. It examines the nature of their interactions with her and their respective contributions to her intellectual trajectory. Voetius first brought Van Schurman officially into the limelight on 16 March 1636 when he invited her to read before a large audience her Latin ode celebrating the inauguration of the University of Utrecht. In this and a second poem in Dutch Van Schurman eloquently asserted that female students should be admitted to the university. Would this have been a surprise to Voetius, who had become her professor? What views did she hold in common with him over the education of women and on what did they disagree? Descartes’ influence helps us gauge as well Van Schurman’s perspective on women’s higher learning. For more than two decades, from 1628 to 1649, Descartes lived in the Dutch Republic where 1

 Opuscula, 70.  Israel 2001, 24.

2

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he wrote his major works. He met Van Schurman at least twice. Did she summarily dismiss his thought, as has been contended? It is crucial to sort out the points at which her thinking intersects with Cartesian or pre-Cartesian views. She had a long-term esteem for Descartes’ colleague, Pierre Gassendi (1592–1655), who provides an interesting comparison. The chapter ends on an evaluation of Voetius’s and Descartes’ formative influence on Van Schurman’s intellectual development and views on women’s education. Van Schurman and Voetius Gisbertus Voetius, the chief spokesman for the conservative Neo-Aristotelian camp, was a Reformed minister before becoming in 1634 professor of theology, Hebrew, and ancient oriental languages at the Illustre Latin School of Utrecht. The high school became a fully fledged university two years later. The University of Utrecht was the fourth Dutch university to be founded, preceded by Leiden, Franeker, and Groningen, but became from the start the second in status for the prestige of its humanist studies – classical philology, biblical studies, and philosophy.3 On the occasion of its founding, Voetius invited Van Schurman to write the customary Latin ode, to which she added poems in Dutch and French.4 It comes perhaps as a surprise that Voetius initiated such a public invitation at a time when women were barred from university study. However, Van Schurman was an exceptional Latinist, not merely verbally fluent but with a rare command of classical (Ciceronian) Latin which very few women could display.5 She rivalled other humanist prodigies, those notably of sixteenth-century Italy and France, who delivered Latin orations on important civic occasions. Cassandra Fedele (1465–1558), for instance, gave a Latin oration at the age of 22 at a baccalaureate ceremony at the University of Padua in 1487; she later delivered an oration on literary studies for men and women to the doge and Venetian senate.6 ClaudeCatherine de Clermont (1543–1603), Duchesse de Retz, gave a Latin oration in 1573 on behalf of Catherine de Medici to the Polish ambassadors during their court visit. Voetius, who had started mentoring Van Schurman in 1634, wanted to display the talents of his precocious protégée by featuring her as a type of civic titular Minerva, thus adding to the prestige of the city. But while he envisioned her as functioning merely in a ceremonial and ornamental role, she seized the occasion to challenge received ideas and issue an activist call for gender integration. In her 30-line Latin ode, Van Schurman boldly petitions officials of the new university for a space for women, and lays forth her views on the goals of education. 3

 Israel 1995, 573, 575.  The Latin ode was included in Opuscula, 262–3, while the French poem was added to the 1652 edition of Opuscula, 302. 5  Stevenson 2014, 94. 6  On Fedele’s Latin orations, see Fedele, 154–64, and Robin 2002. 4

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She underscores Utrecht’s newly established mission ‘to enlighten the intellect and with the weapons / Of Pallas Athena to banish the ignorant barbarians’.7 Within the city now gush forth new springs of learning not only for the city’s citizens but for the whole world: Indeed, with ease Pegasus opens up new wells for you and The lovely muse takes care of the Castalian waters. From here the thirsty Dutch inhabitants will drink their own nectar. From here all those who live between the two Poles will drink. You, too, Utrecht will draw forth peaceful riches, the gifts of the intellect, Through the eloquent speech of Minerva’s initiates. (lines 13–18)

The tone soon changes. The speaker notes that this city of intellect remains flawed at its very ‘heart’: ‘But what cares disturb your heart (perhaps you ask)?’ (line19) Van Schurman interrupts the general euphoria with this daring question that the learned city fathers, professors, and ministers will likely not have considered. Then, with equal force and clarity, she provides them with the unexpected answer: Well, these holy precincts are inaccessible to Minerva’s virgin chorus! For everyone this sacred spot is sown and measured, so that friendly And nurturing Themis can shut out discordant Chaos from this peaceful World, So that divine Science can shine forth through proper practice And an altar can burn to God on high. (lines 20–24)

Three times in the space of this poem Van Schurman invokes Pallas Minerva, virgin goddess of the intellect and wisdom, a figure at once pagan (Pallas Minerva) and Christian (Wisdom). Minerva held a special meaning for Van Schurman. She was often referred to as the Dutch ‘Minerva of her century’.8 She once engraved a Römers [wine glass] with the Latin sententium ‘Non ego Bacche tua sed Palladis arte placebo’ [‘Bacchus, I will be pleased not by your arts, but by Pallas’s’].9 Minerva was frequently invoked in relation to academies and universities.10 For instance, in his address on the inauguration of the Amsterdam Latin School in 1632, Caspar Barlaeus, the new professor of philosophy, challenged his audience of merchants and regents to ‘welcome now between these walls and doors, Minerva, goddess of knowledge, humanity, and wisdom’.11 But for these Amsterdam merchants the school was exclusively open to their sons. In her Latin ode, on the other hand, Van Schurman draws attention to ‘Minerva’s virgin chorus’, female students who also 7  ‘Anna Maria van Schurman congratulates the famous and ancient city of Utrecht’, in Beek 2002a, 286, lines 3–4. 8  Opuscula, 328. 9  Cited in Stighelen 1996, 66. 10  Yates, 179; Stevenson 2000a, 24. 11  Baerle, 169.

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belonged to the goddess of learning but had not been invited. She envisions the new university welcoming these female students within its ‘holy precincts’, so that it can carry out its educational mission ‘for everyone’ (line 21). Pieta van Beek has rightly drawn attention to the emphatic positioning of the words ‘For everyone’ at the start of the line, and she comments that this makes ‘the unreasonable exclusion of women all the more poignant’.12 Van Schurman ends her poem with a reference to the motto or device of the University of Utrecht, which is ‘Sun of Justice’ (line 28). She reminds her audience that this ‘Sun’ must shine its beams on students of both sexes. She concludes with a heightened expectation that the new university will prove itself as the ‘hope of the people’ and the ‘beginning of a better generation’ (line 27). Likewise, in her Dutch ode on the inauguration, she is as emphatic about admitting women into Pallas Minerva’s inner sanctum: The doors here stand open to PALLAS’s innermost chamber. Her treasures are common property, the veil has disappeared, And that which was hidden is revealed to one and all.13

Van Schurman refers here not only to a metaphorical veil that hides the treasures of academic learning from women, but also to the required veiling that blocked her own face and body while she attended lectures at the University of Utrecht from 1636 onwards – we shall learn more on this later. In demanding that the university open its doors to women, she seeks to remove the veil that separates her and other women from integration into academic life. She takes her critique one step further: this veil is not only imposed upon women through social prohibition; women themselves adopt it only too willingly through their love of ornamental finery. In her Dutch poem she rebukes her female contemporaries for their shortsighted vision: You, who yet have a spark of a higher bent, I speak here of our sex; as does a slave Do not be so occupied in adornment and finery, Or with your flowing hair, and beautiful clothes.14

Van Schurman’s ode draws on a discourse of rational and Christian perfectibility. She argues that the goal of higher learning is intellectual and spiritual maturity, ‘so that divine Science can shine forth through proper practice / And an altar can burn to God on high’ (lines 23–4). In her view it is essential that everyone, including women, participate in this goal. Only then can justice flourish in civil society and the university live up to its device ‘Sun of Justice’. Her published Latin and Dutch 12

 Beek 2002a, 287n8.  Eck, 44. 14  Translation in Eck, 44. 13

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poems on the inauguration of the new university thus contain a utopian vision of a society in which the pursuit of ‘divine Science’, in accord with worship of ‘God on high’, is available to all regardless of gender.15 Educating Women: Voetius’s Influence Van Schurman’s ode distils views on university schooling that mirror closely those of her professor, Voetius. To understand her views, we should know his perspective on the role of theology and natural philosophy in higher learning.16 Voetius had been formed by the militant wing of the Reformation. His grandfather died a martyr and his father died while serving William the Silent (1533–84) during the Dutch Revolt against the Spanish occupiers. He took part in the Arminian controversy at the Synod of Dordrecht (1618–19); sided with the Counter-Remonstrants or orthodox Calvinists; and, once rector of the newly founded university, he dominated ecclesiastical life in Utrecht for over half a century. Inspired by Puritan models of piety that he had encountered during his trip to England in 1636, he became the leading figure of the Nadere Reformatie [Further Reformation], a Pietist movement within the Dutch Reformed Church that sought to fulfil the goals of the first Reformation of Calvin and Luther. Since the Dutch Reformed Church held the status of a public rather than an official church, religious allegiance to it was a personal choice not imposed by the authorities. Given the context of the war of independence against Spain (1568–1648), the Dutch regents, who governed the country for much of the century, were confessionally neutral, and the principle of freedom of conscience was a key value upheld from the outset of the republic. The civil authorities adopted the rituals of the Reformed Church for the religious design of civic life, such as baptisms and weddings, but none of these rituals necessarily had a ‘Reformed’ meaning pertaining to the Reformed creed.17 Thus members of the Nadere Reformatie sought above all a purification of society through a close conformity between personal and corporate practices. They attempted to combine pietas [piety] of the heart with præcisitas [preciseness] of life style in conformity with the biblical commandments. Through petitions to town councils, they proposed edicts to reform manners and morals and bring about a more genuine, godly society, one in which membership was not merely a habit but the expression of genuine piety and faith reflected in living according to God’s commandments. Voetius took the lead in allying practical theology with a dogmatic fundamentalism. He trained generations of ministerial students for over 40 years. 15  Other seventeenth-century female educational reformers who drew on a similar discourse of perfectibility include the educators Bathsua Makin and Mary Astell. On seventeenth-century learned women and the discourse of perfectibility, see D’Monté and Pohl, introduction. 16  Sources for this overview of the life and theology of Voetius include Ruler 2003; Goudriaan; Forclaz; Lieburg; and Vermij, chapter 9. 17  Forclaz, 251.

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Voetius upheld two principles which, he surmised, were threatened by the rise of the New Philosophy: the primacy of theology over all other disciplines, and the propaedeutic function of philosophy – broadly conceived as logic, natural philosophy, and metaphysics – needed for preparation for learning and study. In his inaugural address on 21 August 1634 at Utrecht’s Illustre School, he spoke at length of the necessity of uniting knowledge to personal piety and submitting fully to the will of God as revealed in the Decalogue and the Bible.18 He sought to sanctify all aspects of the lives of students, not just their classroom learning. Unlike Barlaeus, who had reminded his Amsterdam audience at the opening of their school that knowledge should be linked to social and economic practices, Voetius connected learning with piety.19 Then, in his disputation De Ratione Humana in Rebus Fidei [Of Human Reason in Matters of Faith, 1636], held in the first few days after the opening of the University of Utrecht, he argued that all truths are dependent on the ‘external principle of faith’ as revealed in Scripture.20 Reason holds an ‘instrumental’ rather than a ‘normative’ role with respect to faith because reason, affected by sin, is subordinate to faith which illumines it.21 Scripture, the divine source of all knowledge – whether natural, ethical, or religious – has to be understood literally as it did not contain falsehoods of any kind. All disciplines, including natural philosophy, physics, mathematics, and astronomy, were subordinate to a system – largely Thomistic – in which ‘theology, as a higher discipline, holds an unquestioned right to supervise philosophical theory’, and all subjects therefore vindicate Scripture.22 Finally, in his Sermon on the Usefulness of Academies and Schools, delivered at the inauguration of the University of Utrecht, Voetius further underscored his belief that: If these things [the secrets of Nature] are taught in the academies and schools, what else does one do but explain Scripture and take from it the doctrines of things natural? Moreover, if a student of physics examines many things in such a science and aims to become experienced in it, what else is he doing but admiring and considering the works of almighty God, and at the same time lending a helping hand to the theologian and indeed to all readers and lovers of Holy Writ (who, night and day, find their meditation and joy therein) in order to understand even better so many of its chapters and proverbs.23

Hence Voetius thought that the aim of higher education was to deepen a student’s knowledge of Scripture and to view all subjects, even those outside the disciplinary 18  Voetius, De Pietate cum Scientia conjungenda (Utrecht, 1634). Cited in Descartes and Schoock, 29. 19   On the striking differences between the two inaugural addresses, see Baerle, 46–8. 20  Voetius, De Ratione Humana in Rebus Fidei, in Selectarum Disputationum Pars Prima (Utrecht, 1648), 1:1. Cited in Ruler 1995, 23. 21  Goudriaan, 37–8. 22  Ruler 1995, 16, 20. 23  Voetius, Sermoen, 28; translation Ruler 1995, 26–7.

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boundaries of theology, as ancillary to Scripture. He became thus understandably resistant to ideas coming from the New Philosophy, such as the Copernican notion of an annual and diurnal rotation of the earth, which he critiqued earlier as being in conflict with Scripture.24 He tried as well to maintain the propaedeutic function of philosophy, which consisted in the conceptual and analytic tools needed for studying the higher disciplines of theology, law, and medicine. He thought that introducing alternative philosophical and physical theories was disruptive and impracticable because learning traditional Aristotelian terms was foundational to doing science.25 It should be noted at this point that his views on the moral value of philosophy were no different from those of other university pedagogues of his time and that he was not in any way anomalous. François Parent, for instance, a professor at the Collège de France in Paris, argued similarly that the benefits of philosophy include a preparation for ‘worshipping God’, instruction in ‘the laws of man’, and training in ‘modesty, greatness of mind and other virtues’.26 Van Schurman’s views on the purposes of higher learning mirror Voetius’s perspective on education. Her advocacy of including women in academic higher learning, on the other hand, does not align with her mentor’s perspective. In a treatise on women, included in his Politica Ecclesiastica (1663–76), Voetius approves ‘the studies of wisdom and letters’ for women of leisure and of intellect; these women can study at home.27 Can they also study at a university? His view on women fighting in wars provides an answer: he thinks that ‘for preserving chastity and modesty’, women should not ‘pass their time within the eyesight of men’, and he disagrees with Plato that ‘women should have their studies in common with men, especially military studies’.28 So his declaration that women not study alongside men pre-empts any inclusion of women as students at institutions of higher learning. Van Schurman’s Attendance at Disputations, and her Study of Languages Voetius, however, made a stunning exception for Van Schurman. He invited her to study languages and attend his lectures on theology. Her mentor, André Rivet, encouraged her to accept the invitation. In a letter to Rivet, she describes her hesitation in taking such a step: ‘I fear, however, that there is a need not so much for a net as for a goad on that very threshold to which I am clinging.’29 She accepted,  Voetius, Thersites Heautoutimorumenos [Thersites or the ‘Audacious SelfTormentor’, Utrecht, 1635]. Cited in Ruler 1995, 14. 25  Ruler 1995, 28–31; Goudriaan, 32. 26  Brockliss, 185. 27  Voetius, Politica Ecclesiatica (Amsterdam: Waesberge, 1663–76), Book 1, treatise 4, in Schurman 1998, 126. 28  Schurman 1998, 125. 29  Van Schurman to André Rivet, Latin letter dated 2 October 1634, KB, ms. 133 B 8, no. 8. She informs Rivet of her acceptance in her next letter, dated 21 November 1634, 24

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since in October 1634 Voetius began tutoring her in Greek as well as biblical and rabbinic Hebrew. She also took up Arabic. The following year, in May 1635, her good friend Aernout van Buchell (Arnoldus Buchelius, 1565–1641), a Utrecht antiquarian, expressed some anxiety over her surcharge of studies: ‘Anna Maria van Schurman is pursuing Arabic and I fear that it may in some way overwhelm her too much.’30 Then, in 1636, Voetius expanded his lessons to include theology and oriental languages (Syriac, Chaldean, or Aramaic). He invited her to come to these lectures, making her the first woman ever to attend unofficially a university. She did so, hidden in a small closet-like space or cubicle with a lattice grid.31 She also attended his private lectures (the so-called privatissima for privileged students) at his home.32 Van Schurman’s attendance at Voetius’s lectures and disputations was typical of all university students at the time. The lectio, or praelectio [lecture], came first; it consisted in a professor’s reading and commenting on select authoritative texts. The lectio was then followed by the disputatio, that is the development of a select topic by a professor or a student before an audience of other students and professors. The disputation came in three distinct forms: the public disputation for the granting of a degree; the public practice disputation open to anyone who wished to attend; and the private disputation written by a professor in preparation for his lectures and usually conducted in his home. The disputation’s main purpose was to resolve a disputed quæstio [question]; in the faculty of theology, it was handled as part of a series in the collegium covering a course on theological topics, the shortest of which usually took 15 months to complete and consisted of some 40–50 disputations.33 Thus Van Schurman would have been involved for long periods of time in attending these courses, much to the dismay of Voetius’s critics who blamed him for keeping her so occupied. Her attendance at these disputations became so widely known that Descartes wrote in jest to his disciple Henry Duroy (Henricus Regius, 1598–1679), professor of theoretical medicine and botany at Utrecht, that he would not hesitate to come to the latter’s rescue should he need moral support in his defence of Cartesian theories, ‘provided that no one knows anything about this and that I be able to remain hidden in the Listening area or the Tribune where Mlle de Schurman is accustomed to following the classes’.34 Van Schurman’s study of languages, on the other hand, was not so unusual for girls from the Dutch elite. French was taught in the schools, and Italian was considered a desirable female accomplishment. Instruction in Latin and Greek KB, ms. 133 B 8, no. 9. 30  Buchell, 40. On Buchelius, see Pollmann. 31  Baar 1994, 145; Cohen, 536. 32  On these private lectures, see Bots 1994, 105; Beek 2010, 60. 33  On university lectures and disputations, see Stranglin. I thank Donald Sinnema and Richard Muller for this reference. See also Dibon 1954, 33–51. 34  Descartes to Henricus Regius, 24 May 1640, in Descartes 1964–71, 3: 70; Baillet, 2: 60.

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depended on paternal encouragement. Hebrew was valued as the original language of the Scriptures, offering, as the linguarum mater [mother of languages], a direct access to biblicalknowledge and wisdom. Its teaching was promoted by the Dutch Hebraist Sixtinus Amama as the best way to stave off moral decline. Amama, who taught Hebrew at the University of Franeker from 1616 until 1629, even tried to introduce it in the provincial grammar schools.35 Although unsuccessful, his attempt encouraged some ambitious parents to have their sons and daughters tutored in Hebrew. A Reformed minister in the town of Nieuwendam taught Hebrew to girls and women who wished to improve their understanding of the Hebrew Old Testament.36 Marie du Moulin read the Bible in Hebrew, having learned it at Van Schurman’s suggestion.37 By mid-century, Hebrew classes had become so popular that some were open to upper- and middle-class amateurs, among them women. Johannes Leusden (1624–99), professor of oriental languages at Utrecht, published in 1668 a Hebrew manual in Dutch, which Van Schurman had asked him to write for non-Latinist women students.38 Van Schurman’s extensive knowledge of Semitic or ancient oriental languages, however, was very unusual for a woman.39 As a university student, she learned these languages because philology and oriental studies had become pre-eminent at Utrecht, and also especially at Leiden. Leading orientalists at Leiden included Thomas Erpenius, who introduced Arabic studies in the Dutch Republic and wrote in 1613 the first major Arabic grammar; his star student Jacobus Golius, who travelled to the Orient to buy Arabic, Persian, and Turkish manuscripts and published a much-used Arabic lexicon in 1653; Hiob Ludolf, who, in 1645, studied Ethiopian in the manuscript collection of Scaliger; and the polyglot German theologian Johannes Cocceius, famous for his Latin translations of the Talmud and his commentary on the Koran.40 Leiden was called the ‘Mecca of Orientalism’ at a time when the Dutch mercantile industry was increasing its commercial 35

 Zwiep, 35.  Douma, 28; Spies 1986: 342. 37  Beek 2002a, 278. 38  Zwiep, 48. On Van Schurman’s study of Hebrew and the Jewish Kabbalah, see Goldman. 39  Only two other women were thought of equal linguistic genius in Europe at the time: the Danish noblewoman Birgitte Thott, who was proficient in 10 languages (Latin, Greek, Hebrew, Danish, German, French, Dutch, English, Italian, and Spanish) (cited in Beek 2010, 190); and Sitti Maani Gioerida, the Persian wife of the traveller Piero della Valla, who was honoured upon her death with a catafalque inscribed with epitaphs in the 12 languages she was thought to have learned (Italian, French, Spanish, Portuguese, Persian, Turkish, Armenian, Latin, ancient and modern Greek, Syriac, and Arabic) (cited in Stevenson 2005a, 280). On Sitti Maani Gioerida, see Baskins. Christina of Sweden was reputed to know six languages (Swedish, German, French, Latin, Dutch, and Italian); some of her admirers claimed that she knew up to 11 languages, including rudiments of Hebrew, Chaldean, and Arabic. Cited in Åkerman 1991a, 104. 40  On Dutch orientalists, see Hamilton et al., 27–51. 36

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transactions with North Africa and the Middle East.41 J. Brugman notes that ‘Leiden Arabicists supplied the main Arabic textbooks, Erpenius’s grammar, and Golius’s dictionary, that were to be used all over Europe well into the nineteenth century’.42 The study of Arabic in particular was justified on grounds that it was important to the study of science, medicine, mathematics, and the Bible. The Hebrew Bible, it was claimed, contained expressions whose meaning could only be obtained through Arabic.43 Van Schurman took her Arabic studies so seriously that she copied by hand the entire Koran and had it bound. Her copy was edited in 1694 by the Hamburg pastor Abraham Hinckelmann.44 Her rapid mastery of Syriac and Arabic surprised even Buchelius, who noted in his journal Voetius’s report that ‘she has imbibed the basics of Syriac with great ease and is beginning to read Arabic with great dexterity; she is practising also philosophy, especially logic’.45 To Arabic, Chaldeic (or Aramaic), and Syriac, Van Schurman added Persian, Samaritan, and Ethiopian, which she studied on her own. She wrote an Ethiopian Latin grammar that was never published and has since been lost. She was adept at French, German, Italian, and Flemish or Dutch. According to Jean Le Laboureur, she also knew Spanish. The latter kept a travel journal in 1645 while accompanying the new Queen of Poland, Louise-Marie de Gonzague-Nevers, who was travelling from Paris through the Low Countries to rejoin her husband, Wladyslaw IV. Le Laboureur recounts how the entire royal entourage was astounded by Van Schurman’s linguistic brilliance as she conversed effortlessly in Italian and Latin with the Bishop of Orange, and in Greek with the queen’s physician. With a touch of humour he adds: ‘She has a great deal of knowledge of Hebrew, Syriac, and Chaldeic; all that she lacks is an occasion now and then to speak these languages.’46 Jacob Cats reported that Van Schurman was ‘so well-versed in Italian and English, that she could read and use books on politics or similar works written by Italians, and also the excellent theological books published by the English’.47 None of her writing in English survives, except for one line on the portrait of her deceased father.48 She may have tried to decipher Japanese, Siamese, and Chinese. The Walloon pastor Andreas Colvius (1594–1671) sent her samples of these languages, as well as of Persian, urging her to ‘keep them all’, noting that ‘there is a Chinese

41

 See Bulut.  Brugman; Dibon 1990b, 20. 43  The tradition of mastering Arabic and other oriental, ancient, and modern languages predates the early modern period. The thirteenth-century philosopher Roger Bacon believed that one could not understand Aristotle or even the Bible unless one knew Greek, Arabic, Hebrew, Aramaic, Spanish, and several other languages. See Rubenstein, 188. 44  Beek 2010, 79. 45  Buchell, April 1636, 65. 46  Le Laboureur, 66, excerpt in Opuscula, 340. 47  Beek 2010, 42. 48  Beek 2010, 42. 42

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man in Amsterdam who knows their characters’.49 If she had an active knowledge of these three, she would have known a total of 18 languages. Van Schurman’s Calligraphy in Multiple Languages Van Schurman not only read all these languages, she could also write them. Rivet often mentioned to his correspondents her exquisite multi-language calligraphy. Everyone had cause to marvel. In the seventeenth century few men and even fewer women had the training to compose a formal letter crafted in a fine hand. Most formal letters were dictated to a notary or a scribe.50 Van Schurman learned schoonschrift [beautiful writing] at a very young age, reaching such a level of perfection that she was frequently invited to provide a specimen in alba amicorum [friendship albums]. The earliest sample of her calligraphy dates from 23 August 1623, when she was 15 years old; it is a congratulatory note in Latin added to the friendship album of Gérard Thibault, a fencing master from Antwerp, who from 1622 on taught fencing in Leiden and authored the rapier manual Academie de l’Espée [Academy of the Sword, 1628]. Thibault was a close friend of Crispijn van de Passe, Sr.51 Van Schurman’s individual sheets of calligraphy in different scripts were framed and displayed (Figure 2.1), as is evident from Canon Claude Joly’s description of his visit to her in September 1646 while accompanying the Duchesse de Longueville. Joly noticed on the wall a framed sample of her calligraphy and remarked: ‘I have never seen anything which came close to the beauty of her writing in Rabbinic, Syriac, and Arabic.’52 Cats praised her for surpassing even the best calligraphers of her day,53 and Buchelius states in his journal in September 1635 that he had seen at her house one of her Hebrew letters to Voetius, compiled from verses of the Hebrew Scriptures: ‘The writing was extremely elegant, which no typesetter can equal.’54 Huygens asked her to create special pages of polyglossia for him: If ever you wish to spend some of your leisure time in favour of an old friend, I ask that you create as many specimens of your fine hand as you can so that I can preserve the pages in my collection of curiosities.55 49

 Colvius to Van Schurman, French letter dated 3 November 1637, in Schotel, 2: 115. Colvius’s letter and a sample of Chinese characters are on display at the Museum Martena, Franeker. 50  Adams, 63–76. 51  Verwey, 300. See Stighelen 1987b, 212–30, and Beek 2010, 75–81, for examples of Van Schurman’s entries in alba amicorum. Anna Roemers Visscher also contributed an undated poem in Dutch to Thibault’s album in the calligraphic script for which she became famous. 52  Joly, 151. 53  Stighelen 1986, 63. 54  Buchell, 48. It took Van Schurman less than a year to master the Hebrew script. 55  Huygens to Van Schurman, 5 December 1660, in Huygens, 5: 344, no. 5667. She finally complied on 1 November 1666, in Huygens 6: 200, no. 6587, after having been asked

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Figure 2.1

Anna Maria van Schurman, ‘The Star of Utrecht’

Calligraphic page by Anna Maria van Schurman, from Van Schurman, Opuscula (1650). Bibliothèque nationale de France, Paris

Van Schurman was among a minority of Dutch female calligraphists, who included the sisters Anna and Maria Tesselschade Visscher, Cornelia Kalff, Jacquemyne Hondius (the sister of the cartographer Jodocus Hondius, who added two pages of her calligraphy to his Theatrum artis scribendi of 1594), and especially Maria Strick (1577–after 1631), a teacher at the French school in Rotterdam who multiple times.

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published several writing books.56 Van Schurman used a model-book published by Maria Strick to teach herself calligraphy.57 Her ability in this domain can be compared to that of Esther Inglis (1571–1624), a miniaturist and calligrapher born in Dieppe to French Huguenot parents, who found refuge in Scotland in around 1570. Inglis taught at the French school of Edinburgh founded by her parents and produced some 50 manuscript copybooks containing self-portraits, miniature paintings, and diverse calligraphic hands.58 Van Schurman’s formative years under the tutelage of her neighbour and professor Gisbertus Voetius were fruitful in her study of oriental and classical languages. Her mastery of the rhetoric of the disputatio influenced the writing of her Dissertatio logica. Given his importance in her theological and linguistic development, would she have expressed interest in Cartesian, or preCartesian, thought? Van Schurman and Descartes Descartes’s influence on seventeenth-century women intellectuals was substantive. Their emergence coincided with his emphasis on the universality of reason in his Discourse on the Method of rightly conducting one’s reason and seeking the truth in the sciences (1637). In underscoring the notion in ancient Stoic epistemology that reason has no sex because bon sens belongs to everyone, Cartesianism relegated Aristotelian theory on women’s natural incapacity for rational deliberation to the category of error. Descartes’s thought appealed to thinkers with no formal university training, making possible a new egalitarianism in knowledge.59 As Erica Harth puts it, ‘for educated, upper-class women, his [Descartes’s] philosophy was like a university without walls’, making philosophical discussion in the vernacular accessible.60 Descartes made clear that ‘even women’ could read his Discourse on Method since: if I am writing in French, my native language, rather than Latin, the language of my teachers, it is because I expect that those who use only their natural reason in

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 Stighelen 1987b, 215 Adams, 69–70.  Honig, 33. 58  Ross 2009b. 59  On the legacy of Aristotelianism as a marker of sexual difference, see Maclean 1980. Descartes participated in a trend popularizing philosophical and scientific thought that included Théophraste Renaudot’s conferences at his Parisian ‘Bureau d’Adresse’, Pierre Bayle’s dictionary, and, eventually, the eighteenth-century Encyclopédie. See Bury 2003. 60  Harth 1992, 3. 57

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all its purity will be better judges of my opinions than those who give credence only to the writings of the ancients.61

Such discussion, reflecting the honnête ideals of the salons, did not require access to formal education, only a modern culture founded on modern writers. It became easier to claim that erudition in and of itself was unnecessary. Rather, what was needed was a method for introspection – that is, breaking down the more complex operations of the intellect to their simplest form and recombining them into an orderly chain of deduction – which, as Descartes’s Discourse on Method states, even women could do. The step of declaring that erudition is unnecessary was taken, for instance, by Elisabeth of Bohemia, who wrote to Descartes that his way of reasoning was ‘the most natural that I have encountered and seems to teach me nothing new, but instead allows me to draw from my mind pieces of knowledge I have not yet apprehended’.62 Margaret Cavendish likewise thought her natural reasoning allowed her to propose theories ‘from the Fountain of my own Brain, without any help of assistance’.63 Mary Astell, a Cartesian, claimed in A Serious Proposal to the Ladies (1694) that ‘all have not leisure to Learn Languages, and pore on Books, nor opportunity to converse with the Learned; but all may Think, may use their own Faculties rightly, and consult the Master who is within them’.64 Some feminist critics have countered that Descartes’s neutrality over women’s potential for reasoning equal to that of men left unchallenged the male bias of savant learning as a masculine enterprise.65 One must remember, however, that early modern women such as Elisabeth of Bohemia, the English philosopher Anne Conway, Mary Astell, and the French salonnières embraced Descartes’s method of reasoning.66 Marie-Frédérique Pellegrin notes that while Cartesian thought was excluded from the universities, it was eagerly welcomed in Paris  Descartes 1984–85, 1: 78, 151. Descartes, in Correspondence of Descartes, 37–8, insisted that Susanna van Baerle, Huygens’s wife, annotate the Discourse, for ‘I would value her judgement, which is naturally excellent, far higher than that of many of the Philosophers’. Cited in Jardine, 154. 62  Elisabeth to Descartes, 16 August 1645, in Princess Elisabeth of Bohemia and Descartes, 100. 63  Margaret Cavendish, Philosophical Letters (London, 1664), 3. Cited in Broad 2002, 40. 64  Astell 1997, 119. 65  Lloyd, 38–50; Bordo, 62–8. Schiebinger, 172, on the other hand, reminds us that Descartes swept the decks clean: ‘Without comment, Descartes simply dropped all talk of sexual temperament … Descartes (unlike Aristotle) did not conceive of women as having lesser reason; nor did he (unlike Rousseau) claim for women distinctive mental or moral faculties.’ 66  Broad 2002, 5, notes that only certain aspects of Cartesianism, such as reason and rationalism, were influential with seventeenth-century women who were critical, on the other hand, of soul–body dualism and the mechanistic theory of matter. On popular 61

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salons and debating societies attended by women.67 Rebecca Wilkin argues persuasively that Descartes’s inclusion of women in the philosophical enterprise, ‘albeit conventional and ambivalent … broke new ground’.68 In advocating a more nuanced understanding of the Scientific Revolution, a period of methodological and technological invention coterminous with the beginnings of modern science, Wilkin joins historians of science Steven Shapin and Daniel Garber who challenge the argument proposed by Carolyn Merchant of ‘a feminized object of knowledge, nature’ subjugated by ‘a masculine, knowing subject’.69 Wilkin contends that learned women, rather than being simply viewed as ‘objects of science’, were seen instead as ‘potential rivals or partners in the search for truth’ (4). Cartesianism played no small part in supporting seventeenth-century women’s assertion that the products of their minds be recognized and respected.70 What, then, was Van Schurman’s view of Descartes? Several scholars state that she never met him;71 or that she rejected his thought at the earliest stage of her acquaintance with him;72 or that, according to Sarah Hutton, since she was ‘taught by Descartes’s detractor, Gisbertus Voetius’, she had no interest in Descartes and was thus an exception when ‘almost all the women who became interested in philosophy in the seventeenth century were interested in the new philosophies of the period’.73 Similarly, some who cite Van Schurman in passing summarily state that Cartesianism was simply irrelevant to her.74 While Van Schurman never wrote a published response to Descartes, it is erroneous to conclude that she paid him no attention. Van Schurman did meet the French philosopher and was initially interested in his thought, if only because members of her entourage – such as Cartesianism’s emphasis on the universality of reason and opposition to ancient authority, see Nicolson. 67  Pellegrin 2013a, 372. 68  Wilkin, 2–3. 69  Wilkin, 3. 70  Recent literary and intellectual historians on early modern women argue this view. See Gargam 2013, 311, who states that Descartes, followed by Poullain de la Barre, ‘profoundly modified views on femininity’; Hutton 2004; Åkerman 1991a; Battigelli; Atherton; Smith 2007; Rodis-Lewis 1999; Pellegrin 2013a. 71  Venesoen, in his edition of Schurman 2004, 9n9, states erroneously that ‘the notion of a meeting is excluded’ on the basis that Van Schurman’s family had left the city of Franeker where they were residing in 1623 long before Descartes came to live there in 1629. 72  For Voisine, 506: ‘if a meeting has been attested, it does not seem that the relations between the valiant antagonist of the giants of scholasticism and the protégée of Rector Voet were cordial’. 73  Hutton 2004, 241, and 241n49; Hutton 2005, 5n11. 74  O’Neill 1999, for instance, 236, states that she will not consider Van Schurman in her overview of women’s published responses to Cartesianism because when Van Schurman met Descartes for the first time ‘in 1649’, she dismissed him, and his thought was therefore of no consequence.

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Van Beverwijck, Colvius, Salmasius, and Huygens especially – were interested in early Cartesianism. Some Dutch female contemporaries, members of literary circles, such as Margaretha van Godewijck, whom she met in Dordrecht, may have also joined in the general interest.75 What Van Schurman saw in Descartes and how it connected with her philosophy of women’s education are the questions at hand. Descartes left Paris in late 1628 for Holland where he remained until a year before his death in 1650. There he worked out his new scientific system, publishing in 1637 The Discourse on Method. This treatise introduced three works on optics, geometry, and meteorology to exemplify the new system. Declaring his independence from the Neo-Aristotelian science of the universities, Descartes condemned their speculations which, he thought, had not yielded a single, indisputable truth.76 He dismissed the humanist curriculum based on the ancients, challenging its claim to be useful knowledge. The first thing to establish is that Van Schurman personally took the initiative to visit Descartes when he arrived in Utrecht in March 1635. He came to see his friend and disciple, the Walloon Hendrik Reneri (Henri Régnier or Henricus Renerius, 1593–1639), who had been appointed in 1634 professor of philosophy at the Illustrious School. Van Schurman describes her meeting to Rivet on 19 March 1635, and shares as well some initial reservations: Moreover, I do not want to keep from you the news that I have recently visited Monsieur Descartes, a man of great, or rather (as they say) unheard-of knowledge, who seems not to hold a high opinion of the common or received progress of humane letters, saying that none of these add anything to true Knowledge, and that he has found another way to reach the truth much more quickly and certainly.77

Rivet, who had welcomed Descartes in Holland in 1629,78 may have alerted her to his presence in Utrecht; or she could have heard about him from Huygens, who had met Descartes in April 1632 at the house of Jacobus Golius in Leiden and again in Amsterdam in 1635. Huygens became a supportive facilitator of The Discourse on Method.79 He expressed enthusiasm for Cartesian ideas, while challenging Descartes and Golius to channel them to more practical ends.80 Rivet, for his part, maintained diplomatic and cordial relations with Descartes, refraining from any 75

 Dijkshoorn, 191; Thijssen-Schoute 1954, 365.  Descartes 1984–85, 1: 115, 131, 142. 77  Van Schurman to Rivet, 18 March 1635, in Horst, 282–3. See Appendix 1.3. 78  Dibon 1990c, 466–7. 79  Dibon, 1990c, 468; Cohen, 492–3. 80  Baillet, in his life of Descartes, 1: 267, numbers Huygens among Descartes’s most ardent supporters. On Huygens’s friendship with Descartes, see Cook, 233; Rodis-Lewis 1998, 94–6; Verbeek 2013. 76

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criticism of his work on grounds that he was insufficiently versed in mathematics to understand it.81 He refused to take sides later, in 1641, in the quarrel between Descartes and Voetius, maintaining a prudent distance. In Paul Dibon’s words, Rivet was ‘a peaceable man, who sought to reconcile’.82 More interested in moral issues than in controversy, Rivet mirrored the Walloon culture of moderation that informed his way of thinking. Upon her first meeting with Descartes, Van Schurman was initially taken aback by his low estimate of scholastic learning and his declaration that he had found another or new path to true knowledge.83 But at the time that she was composing her treatise and letters on the education of women, she was receptive to certain Cartesian ideas that replicated her beliefs. Her letter to Rivet in November 1637, which outlines her inclusive vision of female education, was written a few months after the publication of Descartes’s Discourse on Method in June of the same year. Voetius, moreover, was not adverse to Descartes at the time. To state that Voetius ‘had already rejected Descartes’ ideas in the early sixteen-thirties’ is misleading.84 His distrust began in March 1639 when, upon the death of Reneri, a funeral oration by Antonius Aemilius, professor of eloquence and history, which praised Reneri’s defence of Cartesian ideas, was published at Utrecht, thus making it seem that the university officially sanctioned them. Even then, Voetius did not openly protest.85 Only in autumn 1640, when Henricus Regius, the new chair of medicine at Utrecht, continued Reneri’s advocacy, did a suspicious Voetius ask Marin Mersenne to take sides against Descartes.86 Yet even when the Utrecht crisis had begun in December 1641, after Regius’s defence of the Cartesian theory on the circulation of blood, Voetius’s published response, On the Natures and Substantial Forms of Things, was moderate, containing a general critique of the New Philosophy.87 Cartesian thought, according to him, was hypothetical and unproven; it tried to 81

 Dibon 1990d, 348.  Dibon 1990d, 349. 83  Van Schurman’s reservations parallel to some extent those of Jacobus Revius, who met Descartes in Deventer sometime between May 1632 and February 1634, and of John Dury, who met him in Utrecht in August 1635. Both men were suspicious of the theological aspect of Cartesian thought. Dury tried to convince Descartes that the Bible rather than the sciences led to truth more certainly. On Revius and Descartes, see Revius 2002; Verbeek 1992, 40, 114–17; Gaukroger, 225. On Dury and Descartes, see Léchot, 95–6. 84  Rang, 32. However, without elaborating further, Rang states that Van Schurman was ‘not unreceptive to aspects of Cartesianism’ (31). 85  Rodis-Lewis 1998, 93. 86  Voetius to Mersenne, October 1640, in Mersenne, 10: 164. On Voetius, Reneri, and Regius, see Gaukroger, chapter 9. 87  Regius’s defence began in June 1640 when he had his student Johannes Hayman defend the circulation of the blood in a medical thesis that presented a materialist view of the body. Several other disputations on the same topic were then published in 1641. A second series of disputations in November 1641 asserted even more aggressively the materialist view, suggesting that ‘the body could exist separately from the soul, which was 82

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replace a good position with a new one disregarding ‘universal experiences’ and emphasizing ‘one particular experiment’.88 As Theo Verbeek indicates, ‘Voetius objects to the rashness of the would-be Cartesians rather than the precise content of their philosophy’.89 It was in February 1642, when Regius responded with an ad hominem attack against his Utrecht Aristotelian colleagues, that Voetius and likeminded peers openly turned against Descartes, and a battle of pamphlets ensued.90 Intersections between Van Schurman and Descartes Basic commonalities between Van Schurman and Descartes include, first, their Neo-Stoical view of the relations between mind and body; second, their rejection of customs preventing humans from using their reason; and, third, their common interest in the link between cosmology and natural theology. First, we can detect Van Schurman’s awareness of Cartesian ideas in a reply in 1637 to Colvius, who had inquired about the ill effects of her studies on her health. Van Schurman had met Colvius in Dordrecht and may have known of his correspondence with Descartes in the years 1637 to 1644.91 Colvius, after quoting Pliny, ‘There is something morbid in dying for learning’, remarks further that ‘One can be excessive in one’s desire to pursue the sciences and great knowledge is a heavy burden.’92 He urges her to turn to recreation now and then: ‘your body is getting weak because it is overburdened with serious matters. Pleasant ones have to divert you a little.’93 Van Schurman replies that reason dictates it is better to discourage the desires of the body than discourage the mind from learning. She concedes that the issue of excess arises if a person wants to know ‘vain and superfluous curiosities’; but someone in search of salutary truths is protected from vice and ‘unregulated passion’.94 She makes only one concession, that she may be accused of being even more stoical than the Stoics: I know well that someone will say to me that I am more than Stoical on this point, and that I fancy greater austerity than the Philosophers themselves, who tell us along with the Poet, ‘We should pray that a healthy mind be found in a not, therefore, necessary for human life’. Cited in Cook, 245. This assertion gave rise to theological problems, especially that of bodily resurrection. 88  Goudriaan, 222. 89  Verbeek 1992, 18. 90  On the querelle between Voetius and Descartes, see Ruler; Verbeek 1992; Descartes and Schoock; Cohen, 535–78 and 595–601; Vermij, chapter 9; Clarke 2006, chapter 8. 91  On the epistolary exchange between Colvius and Descartes, see Thijssen-Schoute 1952, 236–8. 92  Colvius to Van Schurman, French letter, 7 April 1637, in Schurman, Dissertatio, 81. 93  Dissertatio, 82. 94  Van Schurman to Colvius, French letter, 9 September 1637, Dissertatio, 84.

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healthy body’. My reply is that it is a greater stupidity to be insensitive to reason, which makes us resolve (especially since these two goods fit together so rarely, that the one can hardly increase without the decrease of the other) to suffer the loss of the part that has to be less important to us. (Dissertatio, 84–5)

The mind must conquer the body, she continues, making it ‘more spiritual and more obedient to the exercises of the mind, as the examples of Mr. J. Calvin, Jos. Scaliger, and J. Lipsius, and of so many others testify’ (85–6). She may have heard of Descartes’s third maxim in Discourse on Method on the need to ‘conquer oneself’.95 Members of her entourage would have been familiar with notions of what is within human power to control and what is not, as well as the mind–body distinction. She was of course au courant of classical Stoical and Neo-Stoical thought on reason, virtue, and the body. In classical Stoicism – to which she closely adhered – virtue equals perfection of mind; it is, according to Lisa Schapiro, the ‘perfected capacity of reason’ leading to ‘complete knowledge’.96 Van Schurman aimed for complete knowledge in everything she undertook. Like the classical Stoic, she was after ‘perfected reason’, not ‘perfecting [one’s] reason’, which implies a gradual acquisition of learning within the limits set by the divine will. For Neo-Stoics like Colvius and Descartes the principal task is to determine what is within human power to achieve and what is not, and how to exercise human faculties to the best of one’s ability. The body is not to be rejected or disciplined to such an extent that one lives only for one’s mind. Eileen O’Neill notes that for Descartes ‘the goods pursued by the body are good in themselves and bad only insofar as they wreck havoc with the soul’.97 A second commonality between Descartes and Van Schurman lies in their rejection of customs that imprison the mind and prevent the proper use of reason. In her letter of 6 November 1637 to Rivet on women’s higher learning, Van Schurman pits the enlightened against the traditionalists: I, indeed, confess that not a few have been persuaded of this point, and many illdisposed people of our age are inclined to agree. But we do not accept this Rule of Lesbos since we seek the voice of reason, not of received custom.98 According 95  Descartes 1984–85, Discourse on Method, 1: 123, ‘My third maxim was to try always to master myself rather than fortune, and change my desires rather than the order of the world. In general I would become accustomed to believing that nothing lies entirely within our power except our thoughts.’ 96  Princess Elisabeth of Bohemia and René Descartes, volume editor’s Introduction, 47. 97  O’Neill 1999, 241. In corresponding with Elisabeth, Descartes came to understand that the passions, far from being harmful to the soul, need to be regulated, not tamed or suppressed. See Wilkin, 205. 98  Bulckaert 2001, 177n35, notes that Van Schurman’s statement ‘we do not accept this Rule of Lesbos’ (Opuscula, 68) refers to girls learning household management on the island of Lesbos, the largest of the Greek islands, and home to the Greek poet Sappho.

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to what law, I ask, have these things become our lot? Is it by divine or human law? Never will they demonstrate that these limits, by which they force us into line, have been prescribed by fate or by heaven.99

It might be objected that Van Schurman derives her critique of custom tyrannizing reason not so much from Cartesian universal reason as from controversies over the place of women. She identifies with the third voice in Querelle des femmes literature: women differ from men not because they are by nature inferior or superior, but because of cultural prejudices. This view was defended in the sixteenth century in a wide variety of genres. In the first half of the seventeenth century, proponents of a liberalization of education for women found further ammunition in two main venues: the honnête ideals of salon discourse and the Cartesian notion that reason and bon sens belong to everyone. Descartes’s dualist separation of body and mind, congruent with Augustine’s concept of the soul as a place where there is no sex, attracted a number of women intellectuals known as Cartésiennes.100 It could also be argued that Seneca, rather than Descartes, influenced Van Schurman in her condemning custom stifling women’s minds. At the most, one can ascertain a certain commonality with Descartes’s morale par provision [provisional morality], which, in the third part of The Discourse on Method, asserts that in seeking advice as to how to live one should follow ‘the opinions commonly accepted in practice by the most sensible’.101 The ‘most sensible’ adopt ‘the most moderate and least extreme opinions’ by following reason rather than blindly adhering to custom (122). Later, Descartes explains more fully to Princess Elisabeth his practical, temporary moral code when he says that Seneca ‘takes to task those who follow custom and example more than reason. … In this I am strongly of his opinion.’102 A final point of contact with Cartesian ideas in Van Schurman’s letters on women’s education can be discerned in her discussion with Rivet on cosmology and natural theology. She states that theology, the ‘Queen’ of the sciences, should not ‘walk alone and unescorted’, but be accompanied by all the sciences.103 Theology becomes more meaningful in her view if its study is not isolated from the other disciplines. It is important for everyone, she writes, women also, to 99

 Dissertatio, 48.  Harth 1992, 3. 101  Descartes 1984–85, 1:122. 102  Descartes to Elisabeth, 18 August 1645, in Princess Elisabeth of Bohemia and René Descartes, 102. Cited in Wilkin, 216. 103  Van Schurman to Rivet, 6 November 1637, in Dissertatio, 51. Van Schurman was keenly interested in cosmology. Her epistolary treatise to Smetius (Johannes Smith, 1590–1651), entitled De motibus primo primis, on the Primum Mobile [Prime Mover] in Aristotelian cosmology, or who had set the universe in motion, is no longer extant. Her brother, Johan Godschalk, in a letter to Smetius, called it the ‘most important’ of all the essays intended for the Opuscula. Cited in Beek 2010, 66,121. 100

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access scientific debates and questions since the ‘Book of Nature’ is open to all. She asks whether, for instance, the ‘machine of this world has come together from atoms, or whether it emerged from unformed chaos; or whether certain bodies take on a celestial form by lot, and other bodies a terrestrial form’ (51). Her references to ‘atoms’, ‘unformed chaos’, and the world’s terrestrial or celestial nature reflect in part her awareness of the Cartesian and Gassendian critiques of Aristotelian cosmology which were discussed in her entourage. Briefly put, Aristotle divided the universe into two spheres: the celestial or supralunar region that admits no change in its unvarying circular motion; and the terrestrial or sublunar region marked by transiency of all kinds. The substances that make up the universe are not aggregates of tiny particles or atoms but continuous wholes.104 Descartes, in De mundo [The World] – nearly completed in 1633 but suppressed when he heard of Galileo’s condemnation for publishing his views on the motion of the earth – critiques the distinction between terrestrial and celestial origins, claiming instead that the heavens and the earth are made of the same matter.105 Even if God set atoms into a chaotic motion, the atoms in conjunction with the laws of nature created by God form into a structured universe on their own, for ‘the laws of nature are sufficient to cause the parts of his chaos to disentangle themselves and arrange themselves in such a good order that they will have the form of a quite perfect world’ (1: 91). Although Van Schurman’s knowledge of Descartes’s suppressed cosmological work cannot be established, discussion of its content and the writings of Galileo would have occurred in the learned circles she frequented. Van Schurman’s and Descartes’s Parting of Ways By the 1640s, Descartes and Van Schurman expressed strong reservations about each other. Descartes wrote to Mersenne in late 1640 that Voetius was a ‘pedant’ whose sway over Van Schurman was entirely negative: This Voetius has spoiled the Demoiselle de Schurman; for whereas she had an excellent mind for Poetry, Painting, and other such niceties, it has already been five or six years that he possesses her so completely, that she occupies herself solely with controversies in Theology, which has caused her to be excluded from the conversation of all honnestes gens.106

The context for this remark is crucial to Descartes’s evident displeasure. Mersenne has just alerted Descartes of the request by Voetius to join him in gathering evidence 104

 Lindberg, 54–6.  Descartes 1984–85, The World, 1: 91. 106  Descartes to Mersenne, 11 November 1640, in Descartes 1964–71, 3: 231. See also Mersenne, 10: 223–4; and Baillet, Book 5, chapter 8, in 2: 62. 105

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against him.107 Also, Descartes was apprized of another controversy unfolding at the time. Earlier in 1640, Mersenne had informed Rivet that he was preparing for Van Schurman a new musical score and method on how to ‘sing well’, which had apparently been requested from him by her brother, Johan Godschalk.108 It was well known that Van Schurman’s artistic talents included a fine voice and the ability to play the lute, spinet, and viola da gamba. She attended musical soirees in Utrecht along with her brother, Utricia Ogle Swann and her husband, Huygens at times, and even Voetius. Given Van Schurman’s musical abilities, it is no surprise that in August 1640 Bannius (Jon Albert Ban, 1597–1641) – the French priest and musicologist from Haarlem – contacted her for her opinion in a musical querelle initiated by Mersenne and mediated by Huygens. Mersenne had invited both Bannius and Antoine Boësset (or Boisset, ca. 1585–1643), the intendant de musique of Louis XIII and Anne of Austria, to provide a musical score on the selected love verses, ‘Me veux-tu voir mourir, insensible Climaine?’ [‘Do you want me to die [of love], indifferent Climaine?’]. Mersenne, rather chauvinistically, found Boësset’s lyric superior to Bannius’s score. Deeply disappointed, Bannius turned for support to Descartes and Huygens; but they, too, found it inferior. On Huygens’s urging, Bannius then approached Van Schurman with a lengthy explanation of his views on the theoretical appropriateness of the musical score he had written for the selected love verses.109 But she did not answer him – Bannius learned two years later that she had in fact received his letter. Although Descartes does not refer to her refusal to get involved, he may have thought of it when he criticized her in his missive to Mersenne, blaming Voetius for cutting her off from ‘conversation’ with ‘les honnestes gens’. Along with other conservative Calvinist ministers at the time, Voetius critiqued certain musical practices, and even condemned the use of organ music in church services;110 and so he may have seemed to Descartes an enemy of musical entertainment tout court. Van Schurman’s refusal to enter into a musical querelle evidenced her neglecting her role in the correspondence networks of the Republic of Letters, which demanded conceding personal convictions for the sake of communication, generous exchange, and ‘humanitas’.111 Further reasons for Descartes’s disapproval included Van Schurman’s involvement in disputatious university culture and, according to Adrien Baillet, Descartes’s contemporary biographer, her meddling in theology. Descartes considered useless the speculations of scholars such as Voetius, declaring their litigiousness harmful to civil society. He compared scholastic philosophers and 107

 Voetius to Mersenne, October 1640, in Mersenne, 10: 164.  Mersenne to Rivet, 28 February 1640, in Mersenne, 9: 144. 109  On the controversy, see Rodis-Lewis 1971; Gordon-Seifert, 54–5; and Rasch. On Bannius’s letter to Van Schurman, 20 August 1640, see Mersenne, 10: 18–46. 110  Michel, 599–600. 111  On communication in the Republic of Letters, see Bots and Waquet 1994, viii; Goldgar, chapter 3. 108

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theologians to ‘ivy, which never seeks to climb higher than the trees which support it, and often even grows downward after reaching the tree-tops’. Their book knowledge backfires, since they ‘become somehow less knowledgeable than if they refrained from study’.112 He would have agreed with an English commentator of the period who described academic disputations as ‘an Epidemick evill of that time’ and scholastic culture as ‘a civil war of words, a verbal contest, a combat of cunning craftiness’.113 As for Van Schurman’s theological studies, Baillet contends that Descartes foresaw her adherence to Labadism because of her misplaced theological pursuits under Voetius: M. Descartes, without being a prophet, had had some foreboding of what would happen to this poor girl. He thought that the disproportionate curiosity in wanting to know too much and to penetrate the most inaccessible mysteries of Theology for persons of her sex could well take her too far and degenerate into a presumption that would bring her the fate of the foolish and imprudent virgins of the Gospel. One could already see such a disposition in her since the time that M. Voetius … started to give her lessons in Theology and to train her in the controversies of Religion.114

Should one consider this statement at face value – Descartes, according to Baillet, condemned Van Schurman’s and all women’s involvement with theological speculations – or as a personal attack? Since Descartes never stated in his writings that studying theology was gender-specific, his criticism of Van Schurman was personal, although mostly directed at Voetius, who he believed had too great an influence on her.115 Descartes was joined by other savants concerned over Van Schurman’s perceived withdrawal from polite society into Voetius’s orbit. Rivet wrote to Huygens in September 1639 that he had sent her art samples from a Parisian lady along with letters from Salmasius to which he received no reply (her brother answered in her stead, stating that she would reply soon): Monsieur Voetius so overburdens her mind, and gives her so much to do that she is entirely his, and to tell you frankly, I fear that he is crushing this spirit who wants to know everything, and to know it exactly.116 112

 Descartes 1985, 147.  Cited in Shapin 1996, 121. 114  Baillet, book 5, chapter 8, 2: 61. 115  Wilkin, 215–16n118. 116  Rivet to Huygens, 26 September 1639, in Huygens, 2: 503, no. 2247. The Parisian lady was Marie Forget, locally famous for her artwork and embroidery. She had read a letter by Salmasius on Van Schurman and, according to Salmasius in a French letter to Rivet, ‘fell in love with her and wants to become acquainted with her’. She sent Salmasius art samples (intricate paper cutting and a miniature painting) for Van Schurman. Salmasius adds in his 113

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Rivet was piqued by Voetius’s taking possession of his fille d’alliance and he felt his own virtual ownership of her threatened. Gassendi once called her, in a letter to Rivet, ‘the young woman who you say is yours’.117 Buchelius, also, was concerned enough to state in his diary in February 1640 that Johannes de Laet (1581–1649), the Leiden polymath, had told him that ‘the Lady Schurman is so involved in scholarly disputations that her studies are disturbing her, making her miserable … she is labouring in vain and torturing her mind’.118 Even Huygens began to complain in the late 1630s that he was not getting any replies from Van Schurman,119 and he wrote to Utricia Ogle-Swann that Van Schurman had not acknowledged a book he had sent her: I do not know how you govern your Sibyl. It has been more than eight months that I sent her a Latin book that I wrote, and that all the learned men and others from outside have judged worthy of a response of [at least] three lines, and this good lady keeps quiet. Is this among the rules of the philosophy of Utrecht?120

Huygens’s exasperation and wounded pride is evident in his calling her a ‘Sibyl’, a term applied derisively at times to learned women – Marie de Gournay, for instance, was called a ‘vieille Sybille ridicule’ in Saint-Evremond’s La Comédie des Académistes (written in 1643).121 Because Van Schurman did not respond to him sooner, Huygens accused her of breaking an engagement, normally accepted by members of the Republic of Letters, to respond within a reasonable amount of time. Membership in the Republic of Letters required cooperation with other scholars and ‘the importance of the heart over the mind, of politeness over intellect’.122

letter to Rivet on10 April 1639, in Saumaise, 117, ‘This lady does not busy herself with the sciences and meddles only with housekeeping and her needlework.’ 117  Gassendi to Rivet, 28 January 1645, in Gassendi, 1: 403, ‘la jeune fille que tu dis tienne’. Mersenne also described Van Schurman to Rivet in a letter on 20 December 1646 as ‘votre pucelle’ (‘your virginal maiden’). Cited in Gassendi, 1: 419n5122. 118  Buchell, February 1640, 102–3. 119  To Rivet, in September 1639, in Huygens 2: 499, no. 2239, Huygens stated: ‘I find this Minerva as if fearful to write to me. Could it well be my widowerhood that frightens her?’ For other complaints from Huygens about Van Schurman, see Hermann, 177–8. Stighelen 1987a, 138, shows the imbalance in the epistolary rapport between Huygens and Van Schurman: from his first poem to her in October 1634 and first letter in June 1636, to her last letter in September 1669 and his last poem in June 1670 when she had joined the Labadists, he wrote 30 poems and 18 letters and, she, five poems and eight letters. Stighelen and Landtsheer (2010) provide translations in Dutch. 120  Huygens to Utricia Ogle, 1 January 1645, Huygens, 4: 111, no. 3862. 121  Saint-Evremond, 2: 3. 122  Goldgar, 156.

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Crispyn van den Queborne, Princess Elisabeth of Bohemia. Frontispiece to Caspar Barlaeus, Faces augustæ (Dordrecht, 1643). This portrait replaces Van Schurman’s self-portrait in Opuscula (1648) at the Newberry Library, Chicago.

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Van Schurman, for her part, voiced doubts about the Cartesian approach to learning in two letters to Elisabeth of Bohemia.123 How Van Schurman met Elisabeth and the context in which her doubts surfaced are important. Elisabeth (Figure 2.2) appears to have heard of Van Schurman in 1632 by way of Rivet, who met her when he moved to The Hague to commence his duties as tutor to her brother, Prince William. He handed her a French poem penned by Van Schurman, possibly on the death of Van Schurman’s father.124 In these verses Van Schurman relates that following the death of her father she became disconsolate and directionless; then, in a dream vision, she saw Lady Philosophy, who advised her: ‘May reason be your guide, and in the future change / Your bitter delights into a sweet memory’.125 Two years later Rivet appears to have spoken once again to Elisabeth about Van Schurman. On 4 March 1634 Van Schurman thanks him for mentioning her name to the princess: ‘Concerning the Princess’s kindness toward me, it was gratifying to learn from you that Her Highness does not disdain to recall the name of even her most lowly subject.’126 Elisabeth did not forget Van Schurman. In 1639, then 21 years old, she inquired about what she should read. Van Schurman’s reply contains, in addition to a formidable reading list, an implicit critique of Descartes’s approach to reading. She writes that studying history is very important to women because ‘they will achieve that perfection of admiring nothing on the earth as new, and we will say with the wisest of Kings: What has been, will be … and there is nothing new under the sun’.127 Her words evoke her initial discomfort with Descartes’s mention to her that he had found another new way to knowledge. For Descartes, prior knowledge gained from extensive study is not necessary to the mind’s ability to attain truth through reason. It is this aspect of his thought that was influential with women intellectuals, who were forbidden access to universities and scientific academies. Van Schurman, on the other hand, was an exception. She had invested years of her life in mastering the scholastic disciplines, believing that these would facilitate a deeper understanding of biblical and theological truths. The study of history as a living drama of revelation was central to her worldview. It is no wonder that she found troubling Descartes’s dismissal of scholastic learning.

123

 Opuscula, 281–7, 300–303.  Rivet wrote to Van Schurman on 1 March 1632 (in Schurman 1998, 41) that he had handed over ‘[her] French verses to Princess Elisabeth, and she read and praised them in my presence and promised that she would render thanks in her own hand’. Venesoen, in Schurman 2004, 63, surmises that these ‘French verses’ are those that Van Schurman wrote soon after the death of her father. These verses are transcribed in Douma, 80–81. Beek 2010, 26, suggests Van Schurman’s poem was intended for Jacob Cats. 125  Van Schurman, in Douma, 80, lines 31–2. 126  Van Schurman to Rivet, Latin letter, 4 March 1634, KB, ms. 133 B 8, no. 12. 127  Van Schurman to Elisabeth, French letter, 7 September 1639, Opuscula, 283–4. Emphasis added. 124

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Four and a half years later, in early 1644, Van Schurman addressed a second letter to Elisabeth in which she again implicitly critiqued the Cartesian approach. Why at this particular moment? In the preceding year Elisabeth had started corresponding with Descartes, whom she had met at her mother’s court at The Hague in the spring of 1643. When Descartes called on her again, she was absent; but she sent him her first letter, dated 6 May 1643, where she questioned him on how the soul, an immaterial entity, could move the body, a material thing.128 Descartes had argued in Meditations on First Philosophy (1641) that mind and body are distinct entities, each with its own modus operandi. This led to a number of problems about which Elisabeth pressed him. In her second letter on 10 June 1643 she states that, given the constraints of her court and family life, she is unable to attain the philosophical state of mind achieved through detachment from the senses that Descartes urged. Then, in two further letters in 1643, written before his departure for Paris to arrange for the publication of his Principles of Philosophy, Elisabeth continued to question him on the relations of mind and body, asking for strategies on how to gain mastery over the passions and for moral direction. She resumed a correspondence with him nine months later, in August 1644, when she received a copy of the Principles of Philosophy that he had dedicated to her. In these intervening nine months she fell ill, and contacted Van Schurman anew, inquiring about her health and occupations and questioning her on her esteem for ‘les Docteurs Scholastiques’ [‘the Scholastic Doctors’].129 Van Schurman replies that she admires the Aristotelian professors and theologians at Utrecht because of two key features of their work: their emphasis on theology and their respect for the past. They are admirable for ‘supporting the highest points of the Christian Religion against the Sceptics, the Profane, and the Atheists’; furthermore, they have reached ‘such a high degree of perfection, inasmuch as they have not scorned the legacy of their predecessors or the heritage of all the past centuries’ and have been led by ‘those two great stars of the divine and human sciences, St. Augustine and Aristotle’.130 Van Schurman’s defence of the Aristotelian Christian philosophical and scientific legacy is again the subject of a letter, this time to Pierre Gassendi. She states her admiration for his encyclopedic approach to knowledge and especially his endorsement of women’s learning. She is delighted with his affirmation of her ‘little dissertation about the more polished studies of maidens’ where ‘indeed, what I argue is greatly to be praised, quite apart from the fact that I have tried in earnest to defend a liberal cause, indeed a most just cause in my opinion, as 128  Elizabeth to Descartes, French letter, 6 May 1643, in Princess Elisabeth of Bohemia and Descartes, 61–2. 129  While Elisabeth’s letter is no longer extant, we can guess at its content since Van Schurman answers point for point Elisabeth’s queries in her response, dated 26 January 1644, in Opuscula, 301. 130  Van Schurman to Elisabeth, 16 January 1644, in Opuscula, 301–2; Schurman 1998, 67.

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far as modesty permits me to say so’.131 His support is proof of his genuine love for wisdom; she is also most encouraged by the fact that he does not ‘hesitate to cherish or to raise it [women’s learning] up with [his] extraordinary favour’ (213). Gassendi had indeed championed women’s study of philosophy, declaring in On the Life and Ethics of Epicurus (1633–45) that women are equal in nature to men, hold the same gifts, and surpass in intelligence many of the best philosophers. He praises Van Schurman, ‘a person with the greatest number of all sorts of virtues and erudition’, and concludes that ‘there is no reason to deprive women of the contemplation of [philosophical] things’.132 Van Schurman’s appreciation for Gassendi led her to exempt him from her rule of no longer writing to strangers; she made an exception, because: you especially whom I see equipped with such arms and resources that you have recently vindicated the honour of ancient philosophy itself in such a way that, if it is necessary, you would easily be able to protect the common cause of the good arts and letters against their professed enemies or certainly those contemptuous of feminine glory.133

Brita Rang surmises that Van Schurman had read a manuscript copy of Gassendi’s anti-Cartesian Disquisitio metaphysica (finished in 1642 and first published in 1644).134 In 1641, at the request of Mersenne, Gassendi wrote his objections to Descartes’s Meditations, which he later expanded into the Disquisitio metaphysica. This latter work came to the attention of Van Schurman’s circle, including Voetius, Rivet, Barlaeus, and Heinsius among others.135 Voetius’s response was positive in that he thought that Gassendi, by critiquing Descartes, was making common cause with the Aristotelians.136 Ironically, however, Gassendi had long established himself as a sceptical and Epicurean philosopher whose critique of Aristotelianism had formed the basis of his first published work, Exercitationes Paradoxicæ Adversus Aristoteleos [Exercises in the Form of Paradoxes against the Aristotelians, 1624]. He critiqued scholastic syllogistic reasoning (of the sort that Van Schurman used in her Dissertatio logica) and argued that knowledge of the world comes only from sensory experience, since all we can know is ‘how things appear, not how they really are in themselves’.137 131  Van Schurman to Gassendi, Latin letter, 21 December 1644, Opuscula, 213. See Appendix 1.8. 132  Cited in Taussig, 77n177. 133  Opuscula, 214. 134  Rang, 32. 135  Verbeek 1997, 270. 136  Verbeek 1997, 271. Verbeek thinks that Voetius likely gave only a cursory reading to Gassendi’s work. In addition, little attention was paid to Gassendi in Holland because of the greater presence of Cartesianism in the universities. 137  Popkin, 270.

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What, then, attracted Van Schurman to Gassendi? While the French philosopher had abandoned Aristotle, his method of analysis was founded on a humanistic historiographical style very different from Descartes’s sweeping disregard for the philosophical traditions of previous ages. Lisa Sarasohn explains that: Gassendi believed that philosophically correct understanding had to be based on an evaluation of all preceding and contrasting philosophic schools, even if he personally favored Epicureanism. As a result, all of his works include complex and verbose explorations of philosophy from antiquity until the seventeenth century.138

Gassendi’s rehabilitation of Epicurus may not have seemed so extreme to Van Schurman given his constant attention to close readings of and citations from authoritative texts of antiquity and the Christian past. Gassendi was also a fervent student of oriental languages, Arabic especially. His philological and encyclopedic approach to learning was Van Schurman’s approach as well. Finally, an added reason for Van Schurman’s respect for Gassendi was that Rivet was particularly devoted to him. He had welcomed Gassendi on the latter’s visit to Holland in 1629 and continued to correspond with him.139 Van Schurman found a kindred spirit in him as a lover of the Ancients. Conclusion Among the influential figures in Anna Maria van Schurman’s intellectual life, Voetius exercised the most profound influence. His invitation to speak at the inauguration of the University of Utrecht opened the way to fame. When she used the occasion to plead for women’s entrance into academe, he made an exception for her and created a special cubicle in which she could attend, unseen, university lectures. He hosted her as one of his privileged students at private lectures at his home. In the late 1630s he became even more visible in her life than Rivet by including her in university disputations. Not everyone was happy with this development, least of all her friends and sponsors. However, from the 1650s on, Voetius seems to have faded in importance for her, especially when she undertook a journey to Cologne and began experiencing different forms of familial and personal worship. Additionally, in Eukleria, she recounts how she became increasingly disillusioned, even angry, with Reformed ‘worldly theologians’ whose sermons she fled, since they ‘contained not a whit of solid learning or genuine eloquence’. She judged that their ‘polemical theology’ especially led them to ‘sin, since with  Sarasohn, 14. According to Taussig, 85, ‘rejecting all manner of tabula rasa, his [Gassendi’s] sense of transmission [from the past] invited him to adopt all that is good in writers’. 139  See Dibon 1990d, 347. 138

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regard to Scripture and didactic theology, they seize not the Spirit of the letter, but, legalistically and perversely, they seize the letter of the Word of God, which kills’.140 She attacks Scholastic disputations, equating them with a form of ‘theatre pleasing to the devil’, who: provides them [the theologians] material to nourish ambition, envy, anger, and other such monsters of the human heart or else to establish the reign of and love for reason and human argumentation, by which he may then triumph, if not in full, certainly in part, over the actors in this kind of pretence. (Eukleria, 94)

Such language harks back to her 16 January 1644 letter to Princess Elisabeth on the rancorous theological disputes in which some ‘Scholastic Doctors’ pitted themselves against their opponents.141 As early as 1644, then, Van Schurman began to question the usefulness of theological disputes, associated inevitably with Voetius, for the advancement of the moral life and adherence to Christian principles.142 As for Descartes’s influence on Van Schurman, it is safe to say that she likely knew little about the technicalities of Cartesian thought other than the general notions of universal reason, mind–body dualism, and the method of admitting only what can be proven by reason. She was not alone. In the late 1630s and early 1640s, the detailed inner workings of Cartesian philosophy were not widely known in the Dutch Republic.143 In Utrecht, the little that was known was communicated essentially through the philosopher Reneri and the physician Regius, who had attacked the Aristotelian doctrines on forms and qualities. Even then, Cartesianism was considered by Reformed theologians less a serious philosophy than a sect. For Voetius and Maarten Schoock (1614–69), a philosopher at Groningen, Descartes’s proof for the existence of God from the idea of God rather than the order of nature made him an ally of sectarian believers for whom access to God was direct and unmediated by the church and theological doctrine.144 Like Voetius, Van Schurman was on the defensive concerning Descartes’s perceived scepticism. Her initial reservations on meeting him for the first time in 1635 turned, it seems, to rejection during her last encounter with him in the 140

 Eukleria, 90, 93.  Opuscula, 301. 142  Smith (2007) reminds us that early modern women’s critique of the irrelevance of and posturing in scholarly disputes reflects not just their own intellectual values but the fact that they were excluded from such debates. Van Schurman was the exception; she was constantly solicited for her opinions. But in the long run she severed herself from such quarrels to follow her spiritual aspirations. 143  Verbeek 1993, 168, explains that during the late 1630s and early 1640s, the only available publication by Descartes was his incomplete Discourse on Method, while the distribution of the Parisian edition of the Meditations (1641) was confined to France. Moreover, the Dutch publisher Johannes Le Maire in Leiden sold few copies of the Discourse in the Dutch Republic, much to Descartes’s chagrin. See also Dibon 1990e, 2: 649. 144  Descartes and Schoock, 32–3. 141

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summer of 1649, when he was travelling to the Swedish court of Queen Christina. Yvon relates Descartes’s visit thanks to an account he found in the posthumous papers of one of the female members of the Labadist community.145 Noticing a Hebrew Bible on Van Schurman’s desk, Descartes expressed astonishment that she, a person of ‘esprit’ [wit], was wasting her precious time on studying Hebrew, ‘a thing of such little importance’. When she explained that reading the Sacred Scriptures in their original tongues was important, he replied that he had once been of the same opinion and had studied Hebrew, but when he came to the Genesis account of creation, he found that ‘however hard he thought about it, he could conceive nothing clear and distinct’ and had thus abandoned the pursuit. Deeply offended, Van Schurman felt ‘a repulsion for this Philosopher, and took care for ever after never to have anything to do with him’.146 How might we understand this episode? Van Schurman’s keen interest in the Hebrew Scriptures mirrors the interest of other scholars at the time. Since the Reformation it was thought that the Latin Vulgate version of the Bible was inaccurate. Polyglot Bibles were produced due to the common belief that because of the confusion of languages at Babel the church’s mission was to reproduce as exactly as possible the Scriptures in all languages. Translators first based themselves on Jewish Kabbalists and Hebraizing Neo-Platonists who argued that the Old Testament Scriptures were written in Hebrew and that the original language of Adam in Genesis was Hebrew.147 The systematic comparison of oriental languages, however, soon led to the conclusion that Hebrew was just one language among a number of Semitic languages. As Susanna Åkerman points out in her study of Queen Christina’s court circle, between 1630 and 1650 the intensive study of Ethiopian, Coptic, and Egyptian languages indicated that they were older than Hebrew. Samuel Bochart then argued that even though there was evidence in the Genesis account that the Old Testament was originally written in Hebrew, it was more likely that Phoenician, more ancient than Hebrew, was the Bible’s original language.148 Van Schurman’s study of ancient and oriental languages was thus not merely a result of her piety; she was attuned to the debates of the period over Adam’s original tongue, comparativist linguistics, the genesis of languages, philology, and biblical hermeneutics. Descartes’s rationalist programme ran 145  Kolakowski, 310. Yvon, 1264, column 1, adds that Van Schurman described her meeting with Descartes in ‘a memoir’ and that ‘she wrote these words under the title Blessings of the Lord: God has turned my heart away from profane men, and he has used it as a goad to excite me to piety and to make me more fully devoted’. Kolakowski observes that this anecdote, although ‘difficult to believe’, fits well with Descartes’s reported contempt for the study of ancient languages and antiquitates in general. 146  Yvon, 1263, column 2; 1264, column 1. Mehl, 76, argues that Descartes held Scripture in high esteem, and so was probably critiquing commentaries on Genesis from the Kabbalah. 147  Slaughter; and Knowlson. 148  Åkerman 1991a, 111.

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counter to the aim of orientalist linguists of conveying transparently the original message of Scripture. Åkerman states Cartesian linguistics culminated ‘in a rationalist project for a universal character and grammar’ (108). In the second half of the seventeenth century, theological linguistics fell out of favour, leading the way to a universal linguistics founded on attempts by philosophers like Leibniz to search for the deep structure of an original, universal language. Even though Descartes’s overall influence on Van Schurman was slight, it was not inconsequential. His defence of universal reason and her profeminism of equality in advocating serious learning for women are conceptually aligned. As Wilkin aptly notes, Descartes’s philosophy was directly relevant to ‘the alteration of institutions and customs that were out of line with truths rationally discovered’.149 Thus Van Schurman’s radical call to reform higher education by admitting women students constitutes a prescient response to the social implications of Descartes’s universal reason. Yet her role in the later development of serious schools for girls, particularly in seventeenth-century England, has been underestimated, even neglected. Feminist historians of seventeenth-century female educational reformers focus largely on Margaret Cavendish, Hannah Woolley, and Mary Astell, who promoted the education of girls through reliance on the Cartesian principle of the intellectual equality between men and women.150 They also discuss how Astell and Elizabeth Elstob (1683–1756), a pioneer in Anglo-Saxon studies, thought that women’s inequality was due to the latter’s subordination in marriage and that marriage should be more egalitarian. Like Van Schurman, however, Astell used reason as a God-given tool to argue that women should gain the same education as men in colleges founded specifically for that purpose. And Elstob adduced, like Van Schurman, that scholarly work was useful to women. As will be seen in a later chapter on Van Schurman’s influence on Bathsua Makin, the Dutch scholar’s role in initiating the turn towards institutional academic reform and serious education for women is vitally important to the history of women’s education. Ironically, in her later years, Van Schurman may have come closer to the spirit of Descartes’s independent thought than she realized. In late 1670 to 1672, Van Schurman and the Labadist community left Amsterdam to settle at the Lutheran abbey of Herford in Westphalia where Elisabeth of Bohemia was abbess. Descartes would not have disapproved of the independence of mind of the two reunited friends.

149

 Wilkin, 224.  Smith 1982, 3–18; Broad 2002; Zack, 163–5.

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Chapter 3

Defending the Savante The principal question is this: Whether at this time the study of letters and the fine arts is especially fitting for a maiden? As for me, an affirmative answer is most pleasing because I have become convinced by arguments that are by no means weak. Van Schurman to Rivet (6 November 1637)1

If conduct and studies follow the makeup of the body, it is certain that the Author of nature so formed the sexes differently in order to signify that He had destined men to one set of things and women to another. Rivet to Van Schurman (18 March 1638)2

Anna Maria van Schurman’s successful career as a savante was due in large measure to supportive networks whose ‘gatekeepers’3 were family members such as her brother, mentors, tutors, and sponsors. These gatekeepers introduced her to their learned friends, thus opening up a world of contacts. The reach of her connections gave her an entrée into epistolary relationships with male and female scholars. One of these was André Rivet (Figure 3.1), who held a privileged position in her life as her père d’alliance and mentor. The story of Rivet’s mentorship reveals the ways in which early modern women advanced their careers. Mentors were crucial, then as they are now, to men’s and women’s success. Rivet was an encourager and a gate opener, but he was also a cautioner; to her credit, she did not always agree with him, especially over the contested issue of educating women. This chapter sheds light on the debate between them over allowing a woman to become a savante. Van Schurman’s treatise, the Dissertatio logica, and her letters to Rivet show her adept use of the adversarial contentio [argument], a staple of judicial rhetoric. She used this polemical discourse not in a court or public setting, as contentio requires, but in an epistolary exchange founded on sermo [conversation]; sermo, unlike contentio, is related to a semi-public, non-official form of discourse, such as one finds in letter-writing.4 In her Opuscula, Van Schurman’s treatise is 1

 Opuscula, 66.  Opuscula, 82. 3  Shelford, 33. 4  Cicero, in De Officiis, 1.132, defines contentio as ‘the kind of discourse to be employed in pleadings in court and speeches in popular assemblies’; sermo, on the other hand, ‘finds its natural place in social gatherings, in informal discussions, and in intercourse with friends’. 2

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Figure 3.1

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André Rivet, from Johannes Meursius, Athenæ Batavæ (1625). Bibliothèque Mazarine, Paris

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framed as a letter; there it is entitled ‘Anna Maria van Schurman, A Practical Problem. For the Reverend and Most Illustrious Theologian, Mr. André Rivet’.5 At issue in this chapter is the rhetorical efficacy of her epistolary treatise and letters at conveying publicly her ideas,6 namely how she established her ethos [credibility or character] in her aim to persuade her correspondent and the public at large of the justice of her cause. André Rivet, ‘père d’alliance’ Rivet was born in 1572 in Saint-Maixent, southwest of Poitiers.7 His first pastoral duties took him to the Château de Thouars in the Poitou region in 1595 where he served for 25 years as chaplain to the Calvinist Duc Claude de la Tremoille and his wife Charlotte-Brabantine de Nassau, daughter of William the Silent and his third wife Charlotte de Bourbon. Charlotte-Brabantine was the sister of Mauritz of Nassau, who became Stadtholder of the Netherlands from 1585 to his death in 1625. At Thouars Rivet cultivated close relations with other noble Huguenots such as the powerful family clan of the Rohan-Soubise. In 1620, after lengthy negotiations between the curators at the University of Leiden, the French Huguenot National Synod of Alais, and Rivet himself, he was hired as professor of theology at Leiden University.8 Rivet had become so famous for his preaching that students of theology left France to follow him to Leiden. When his wife died in 1620 – she refused to follow him to the Netherlands and died soon after his departure – he married the following year Marie du Moulin, a widow and the sister of the theologian Pierre du Moulin. After 12 years at Leiden, his next assignment took him in 1632 to the court of The Hague where he became governor of the young prince of Orange, William-Henry, the future William II. There he met Princess Elisabeth of Bohemia, to whom he introduced his niece Marie du Moulin, who had moved into the Rivet household. His final move was to Breda where he was appointed in 1646 as rector of the Illustrious School. He died in 1651 at the age of 78, a few months after the death of his royal pupil.

 Opuscula, 28. In Dissertatio, 9, the address to Rivet is not included.  Writing a letter constituted a venue for going public. See Couchman and Crabb 2005, 3–18. 7  This sketch of Rivet’s biography is indebted to Cohen, 293–310; Haag 1846–59, 8: 444–49; Bots 1971; Tulot 2005; Patry; and the introductions to edited collections of Rivet’s letters. For an inventory of Rivet’s vast correspondence, see Dibon 1971. For Rivet’s correspondence with Valentin Conrart, see Kerviler and Barthelemy 1971, 261–560; with Claude Sarrau, see Correspondance intégrale [ … ] 1978–82; and with Salmasius, see Saumaise and Rivet 1987. 8  For the manuscript letters negotiating Rivet’s position at Leiden, see Rivetiana, Leiden University Library, BPL 282, fols. 99–150. 5

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Rivet was influential in the Leiden Circle of the Walloon expatriates, who included the renowned scholars Claudius Salmasius, Hendrik Reneri, Samuel Desmarets, Polyander à Kerkhoven, Andreas Colvius, and Frederik Spanheim. Diplomat, courtier, and member par excellence of the international Republic of Letters, Rivet corresponded assiduously with leading scholars in the Low Countries and France, setting aside an entire day of each week to reply to his correspondents.9 His diplomacy and ‘faculté de dialogue’ led Mersenne to choose him, along with Descartes, as his principal correspondent in Holland.10 Conrart also corresponded with him, sometimes several times a week, and made him his intermediary with the Elzevier publishers in Leiden; Conrart would charge Rivet to inform them on the best French authors to publish.11 Rivet, finally, was a prolific published author of sermons, commentaries on the Scriptures, and church history.12 For all his open-minded qualities, however, he was a man of his times, rigidly conservative when he defended a strict form of Calvinism against the French Protestant theologian Moïse Amyraut and Hugo Grotius, among others.13 Van Schurman’s correspondence with Rivet began in her early 20s. As noted below, she had not yet met him, but she knew about him. She first heard him preach in 1621 when she was almost 14, and she was so moved by his sermons that she started henceforth, according to Yvon, ‘to feel for him the respectful love that she held for him her whole life’.14 She may have heard Rivet preach again in 1623 when her brother enrolled at Leiden. In keeping with her method of seeking out eminent citizens of the Republic of Letters, ministers and theologians especially, she wrote to him. In a letter dated 20 July 1631 – she was then 24 years old – she expresses her ‘rejoicing that a man such as you would firmly place me on that peak of fame and glory, were I not trying in vain to hide under the protection of obscurity even after my intellectual pursuits have been exposed’, and she describes her admiration for his preaching: For so many years now, holy Theology has stirred up my love and reverence for you, for your rare virtues have achieved worthy distinction and shone more brightly and clearly than the stars in the sky when the Sun shed its light upon them.

She concludes that since theology binds them together in a close friendship, she will dedicate her life to what is ‘worthy of faith’.15 Rivet, in turn, corresponded with her. In a letter dated 1 March 1632, he takes pride in that even though they 9

 On the Walloon milieu in Leiden, see Dibon 1990a, 315–41.  Zuber 1980, 472. 11  Kerviler and Barthélemy, 269, 300, 323. Cited in Zuber 1980, 473n39. 12  On Rivet as church historian, see Dompnier. 13  Zuber 1980, 476–7. 14  Yvon, 1263, column 1. 15  Van Schurman to Rivet, Latin letter, 20 July 1631, KB, ms. 133 B 8, no. 1. 10

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have not yet met, she, ‘a girl of such inborn talent and such piety, has solicited my friendship and called me so kindly to this communication’ (41).16 Later, in his dedication to her of his L’Instruction préparatoire à la saincte Cène [Preparatory Instruction to Holy Communion, 1634], he reminds her of ‘the honour you did me of informing me and then offering me your saintly friendship, and desiring mine, which is all yours’.17 By January 1632 she felt confident enough to inform him of her current project. She thanks him for his ‘unique support of friendship’, which allows her to entrust him with a secret. She will no longer ‘hide’ her studies from him. She is working on a book, written in French, on how women should enjoy their free time: It has been a year now, or thereabout, since a certain attempt [of mine] was made to compose a little book in French (given the fact that the charm and elegance of that language is naturally very much esteemed by young women), and in that attempt I would try to persuade them of the best reasons for enjoying our leisure (albeit more on the basis of emotion than the strength [of my intellect]).18

She hopes that Rivet becomes its ‘guide and protector’ and that, when completed, it will ‘overcome all obstacles’. She explains that writing the work in French (and not Latin) would be more effective because it is addressed primarily to women, who prefer French for its ‘charm and elegance’. The ideas in this work – which is no longer extant – were likely developed in her Latin treatise and letters to Rivet on women’s learning. Composing in Latin may have been caused by two factors, her attending at the time Voetius’s lectures and her editorial decision to address the same audience of theologians, scholars, and Latinate readers to whom she addressed her ode on the inauguration of the University of Utrecht. In replying, Rivet remarks that in praising her publicly he wished others to give glory to God because ‘he adorned your sex with such splendour of letters and fine arts’.19 But she is clearly an extraordinary exception, for even though women are capable of higher studies they either refuse to apply themselves or are too busy with their daily duties. In any case, it is not ‘expedient’ for women generally to choose this type of life and ‘it would suffice if some, called to it by a special 16  All citations in this chapter from the Dissertatio logica and the Van SchurmanRivet letters are from Van Schurman’s Dissertatio (1641). Page numbers are included in parentheses in the text, unless otherwise noted. 17  Rivet 1634, 5. Rivet’s dedicatory letter is included in Schurman 1638. In framing her friendship as a ‘saincte amitié’, he models it on that of early church fathers for their female protégées, as, for instance, Saint Jerome for his associate Paola. 18  Van Schurman to Rivet, Latin letter, 12 January 1632, KB, ms.133 B 8, no. 3. This letter, which can also be found at Utrecht University Library, Hs. 7 E7, fols. 79–80v, is included in Dissertatio, 37–9, where it is the first in the sequence of letters between Rivet and Van Schurman on women’s advanced education. 19  Rivet to Van Schurman, Latin letter, 1 March 1632, in Dissertatio, 40.

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inspiration, sometimes stand out’, in order especially to remind the young men to take their own studies more seriously: ‘certainly, it is good for them to stand corrected and to be filled with shame by someone such as you’.20 His admiration for her is such that he is overjoyed that she sought him out: ‘I have been so moved by this kindness that I am pursuing with my paternal affection a girl whose face I do not yet know’ (41).21 Her modesty is also exceptional; she is so modest in fact that ‘she has sinned more by lack [of self-estimation] than by excess, except that I think that even that lack leads to perfection’ (41). Van Schurman’s Room of Her Own Five years after her exchange with Rivet on women’s best use of leisure, Van Schurman sent him her scholarly defence. Her Dissertatio logica’s subtitle, Problema practicum, underscores its connection to the active life. As an academic quæstio or disputation, it examines, in utramque partem, both sides of an argument. The premises of the quæstio are first defined and the arguments, for and against, developed with proofs and refutations. A syllogistic and deductive work, it matches the format of a university-sponsored disputation. To her opening question, ‘Whether the study of Letters is fitting for a Christian Woman?’ she replies with a resounding, italicized yes in a sentence standing on its own: ‘We will attempt to defend the affirmative’ (9). She uses the inclusive Latinized ‘we’ which can also allude to the presence of a wider audience listening in on her defence. Van Schurman’s thesis is that ‘all honourable disciplines … are entirely fitting for a Christian woman’ (12). But several material conditions must be met. A woman’s life circumstances must match certain requirements: first, she must have a ‘moderate intellect … not wholly incapable of learning’; second, ‘she must be equipped with what she needs, and the limited wealth of the household should not stand completely in the way’; finally, if she is young, she should ‘from time to time’ be free from household duties, ‘from anxieties and preoccupations’, and, if she is older, she should be single or have servants to help her with domestic duties (11–12). These limitations are strikingly modest. Van Schurman does not state that only the most brilliant can aspire to study. Rather, even a woman with a ‘moderate intellect’ can apply. Nor does she need to be wealthy to become a savante; in fact, all she really requires is that ‘limited wealth’ not ‘stand completely in the way’ and that her parents are willing and able to teach her at home or with a tutor. And she should 20  Dissertatio, 40, 41. Rivet draws on the Erasmian trope of the learned woman shaming men for not devoting themselves seriously enough to the studia humanitatis. On this trope, see Ross 2009a, 56, 217. 21  Rivet was eventually to meet Van Schurman, for she came to The Hague for a visit. In a Latin letter dated 6 August 1634, KB, ms. 133 B 8, no. 7, she describes her excitement at conferring with him in his home about her ‘higher studies.’

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in her youth ‘from time to time’ be freed from the demands of a ‘special vocation’, and domestic duties; if she is elderly, she should have servants helping her. Such conditions, economic and common sensical for the most part, rather than limiting higher education to only a very few, as has been supposed, suggest that for Van Schurman a far greater number of women are potentially free to devote themselves to serious study. By the 1630s, when she wrote her treatise, the United Provinces had established the richest economy in Europe. The enormous wealth of the Dutch merchant elite or regent class was firmly based on high-value trade, manufacturing, and overseas investments. These riches were reflected in a vast underclass of servants giving women of the upper gentry some respite from domestic obligations.22 Also, along with increased wealth came the fairly new notion among upper middle-class Dutch society of giving women leave to devote themselves to their households and cultural activities. Throughout the previous centuries, Dutch women of the lower, middle, and even upper-middle classes participated vigorously in the economy of their country to such an extent that foreign visitors would comment on their engagement in activities largely reserved to men in other countries.23 At the beginning of the seventeenth century, on the other hand, the matrimonial ideology of the Dutch Republic began to designate the home – for the middle and upper gentry – as a married woman’s primary sphere of vocation, while lower-class women continued their active engagement as traders and entrepreneurs throughout the early modern period.24 Daniel Heinsius summarized the new cult of domesticity in his Spiegel vande doorluchtige vrouwen [Mirror of illustrious women, 1606] when he declared that while men ‘conquered cities and countries … the virtues and talents / Of women are hidden and buried, / And her faithful nature, her chaste behavior / Have the threshold of the house as their boundary’.25 Jacob Cats in Houwelick [Marriage, 1625] stated that married women should stay at home to take care of the household, and Johan van Beverwijck in Schat der gesontheydt [Treasure of Health, 1636] argued that women should stay at home because they were not physically equipped to engage in trade and travel.26 Given the extraordinary economic benefits accruing from Dutch maritime expertise and business acumen – the United Provinces’ ‘economic miracle’27 – which brought new prosperity to the middle and upper classes, Dutch women now had more leisure time than before. Their confinement to the household did not imply that they should not be educated. In fact they enjoyed the highest rate of literacy in Europe, reflected in the privileging of women’s letter-writing as a popular theme in Dutch genre painting over the course of the seventeenth century.28 22

 On the ‘rich trades’, see Israel 1995, 310–21; Price 2011, chapter 2.  Spies 1995, 10, and 2001, 36–8. 24  Spies 1995, 10. 25  Spies 1995, 10. 26  Heuvel, 43. 27  Price 1998, chapter 2. 28  See Sutton 2003. 23

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Van Schurman’s fourth and last requirement is that women should study not for fame but to serve God, guide their households, and be useful to other women. She explains: ‘Fourth, and finally, for her there should not be vainglory and an ostentatious or a certain useless curiosity but rather the general goal of the glory of God and naturally the salvation of her soul’ (30). Thoroughly educated, she would benefit her family and ‘she should profit her whole sex as much as possible’ (30). Interestingly, in a long marginal notation, Van Schurman references several authorities from antiquity on the education of girls from wealthy families (11).29 Oddly, she does not include here Plato’s Republic, one of the foremost references from antiquity to women’s education. Plato reserved higher studies for the women of the Guardian class. These women were selected for their exceptional mind and gifts, which allowed them to direct their fellow citizens to serve the state. As Julia Annas puts it: ‘Plato’s interest is neither in women’s rights nor in their preferences as they see them, but rather with production of the common good and a state where all contribute the best they can according to their aptitude.’30 In her letters to Rivet, as we will learn, Van Schurman’s justification of female higher studies does take on a platonic cast, when she argues that women must be educated for the common good. The Dissertatio logica reflects in many ways the Christian humanist ideology of domesticity of Juan Luis Vives, Desiderius Erasmus, and Thomas More, which was summed up anew in Van Beverwijck’s Of the Excellence of the Female Sex. All promoted the ideal of educating women of the middling classes to acquire the virtues necessary toward becoming better Christian wives and mothers.31 Confronting Objections After stating conventional pedagogic humanist wisdom, Van Schurman unexpectedly takes a new direction. She extends the range of women’s academic study, the better to confront the common objection that they did not need a humanist education at all in ordinary life. When she discusses the subjects that women can and should study, she boldly asserts: ‘I think all honourable disciplines, or the whole encyclopedia, as they are called, are entirely fitting to a Christian woman (just as they are a proper and universal good or adornment of humanity)’ (12, emphasis added). Joyce Irwin notes that Van Schurman uses the Greek term ‘encyclopaedeia … found in classical writers Quintilian, Pliny, and Galen to 29  Van Schurman references, for instance, Pliny’s Letters and Plutarch’s Education of Children. For a translation of the notation, see Schurman 2013, 80a. 30  Annas, 181. 31  See Vives; Erasmus on Women, 15–22; More, letter 35, ‘To Margaret Roper’, 155. In a second marginal note in Dissertatio, 17, Van Schurman writes that she draws on ‘the letter to Guillaume Budé where he talks about the education of the daughters of Thomas More’. On this letter, see Erasmus, 8: 297.

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refer to the circle of arts and sciences considered by the Greeks as essential to a liberal education’.32 These studies included the speculative or theoretical sciences of the trivium (grammar, logic, and rhetoric) and the quadrivium (mathematics, geometry, music, and astronomy), to which Van Schurman adds physics, metaphysics, history, and languages, especially Hebrew and Greek. While she does not insist on the practical sciences pertaining to law and the military – or to ‘the arts of speaking in Church, Court, and School’, which she found ‘less fitting or necessary’ (13) – nonetheless she contends that women must not be excluded from knowledge of these, ‘least of all from knowledge of the most noble discipline of politics’ (14).33 She therefore recommends women’s induction into the four categories of literacy open to men: ‘Sacred literacy’ (the Bible, books of prayers, and theology); ‘Learned literacy’ (the humanist Latin curriculum); ‘Bureaucratic literacy’ (the law); and ‘Vernacular literacy’ (vernacular languages and literatures).34 In contrast, the majority of women at the time were limited to just two literacies, ‘Sacred’ and ‘Vernacular’. Van Schurman’s extending the speculative and practical sciences to women constitutes a radical proposition that is fully articulated later in the century in the writings of Poullain de La Barre and Gabrielle Suchon. Anticipating Enlightenment thought, Poullain argues in The Equality of the Sexes (1673) that because ‘the mind works the same in men as in women’, they are ‘as capable as men of all manner of studies’, including the ‘social sciences like ethics, jurisprudence and politics’; Suchon advocates in her Treatise in Ethics and Politics (1693) the full range of the sciences to engage women’s minds.35 Van Schurman confronts the common objection that, given their vocation to live a private life, women ‘need to know little’ by arguing that this would logically entail that men in private life would have to be denied ‘the encyclopedia’ since their studies would be irrelevant to any public career. Rather, one must affirm that ‘the universal knowledge that especially pertains to all people, by which we are either Christians or at the very least human beings … should by no means thereby be excluded’ (35).36 Women’s direct access to higher knowledge is legitimate on grounds of the universality of knowledge, which, she implies, is gender-neutral. She references here Aristotelian universality.37

32

 Schurman 1998, 26n2.  Van Schurman follows closely the description of the speculative and practical sciences in Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics, Book 5. 34  Donawerth 2006, 988n11. 35  Poulain de La Barre, 82; Suchon, Part 2: On Knowledge. 36  Emphasis added. Poullain de La Barre, 94, similarly addressed the popular misconception that it was pointless for women to study because ‘they have no access to the positions which are the reason for taking up study’. 37  Aristotle, Metaphysics (1.980a22), ‘All men by nature desire to know’. Descartes laid the theoretical ground for the gender neutrality of knowledge. 33

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By the end of the Dissertatio logica, Van Schurman has proposed three radical changes in the way women’s education was envisioned at the time. First, women should learn the totality of the sciences, which are no respecter of gender. This means that in addition to a rhetorical Latin education, logic, physics, metaphysics, even law and political theory should be integral to their learning. Second, she recommends that women from other social elites, not just the nobility and the very wealthy, have access to a humanist curriculum. In stating that universal knowledge pertains to all, she extends in principle the reach of a Latin-based curriculum to all women: ‘This is especially true, however, for those who are better provided than others with leisure and other means and support for the study of Letters’ (36, emphasis added). She hedges her words, leaving open the possibility that even women without much wealth or ample time can study. Third, Van Schurman pleads for the direct involvement of both father and mother in their daughter’s early education: ‘we think parents themselves should be the first to be urged and seriously admonished concerning their duty’ (36). The Van Schurman–Rivet letters In November 1637 Van Schurman broached once again the topic of female learning. Her circumstances had changed since 1632 when she had first written on women’s higher studies. The year before, in March 1636, her Latin and Dutch poems on the inauguration of the University of Utrecht were published. She was now in the extraordinary position of being the first woman admitted to a university, and her situation at home had been altered since her mother’s death sometime before or soon after September 1636. She had household responsibilities to take care of, but still somehow found time for her studies.38 The occasion for the new exchange of letters was Rivet’s gift of several volumes for her library. After thanking him, she asks advice on ‘Whether at this time the study of letters and the fine arts is especially fitting for a maiden’ (44).39 She is willing to hear an opinion that differs from hers, but is fairly optimistic that Rivet’s judgement will confirm her view as in a ‘rescript’ (44).40 She then evokes 38

 Van Schurman announced her mother’s actual or impending death to Rivet in a letter dated 26 September 1636 (KB, ms. 133 B 8, no. 13). Yvon, 1266, column 1, states that ‘the care of the household, which had rested entirely upon her mother during her life, began to pull her away from her cabinet only after her [mother’s] death. Even then, the care was minimal for several years; it was enough for her to generally keep an eye on things without applying herself too much’. She had less leisure after 1642 when she cared for her two incapacitated aunts. 39  Van Schurman to Rivet, 6 November 1637. 40  ‘Quasi rescripto’, an imperial response to a personal request or petition to civil authorities in the days of the Roman Empire. Van Schurman is confident that, once heard, Rivet will agree with her. If he disagrees, she will ‘sound the signal for retreat’. As we shall see, when he objected, she did not retract.

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the lives of young women like her – their ‘large amount of time and quietness that are friendly to the Muses’ (46) – and she questions the appropriateness of leaving them to their own devices. Surely idleness, feeding on ‘luxury and negligence’, can lead them astray (47). Seneca, she comments, in contrasting negotium and otium, thought that only leisured men had time for wisdom, and that ‘they are the only ones who live’. But the same applies to women, many of whom experience leisure and solitude; far from bringing weariness, such moments ‘sharpen instead the wise’ (48). Van Schurman’s reasoning, although paralleling to some extent that of progressive humanist theorists, differs from theirs. Like them, she argues that women have more leisure time than men, and that idleness breeds vice whereas learning leads to virtuous activity, female morality is strengthened by learning wisdom, and education offers women satisfaction in solitude. But her ambitious curriculum opens a path to scholarship normally reserved for the savants. Such scholarship, she states, would give a fuller appreciation of creation and the great scientific debates of the time in cosmology and natural philosophy, be they the Copernican revolution or the Cartesian critique of Aristotelian cosmology. She applies to women the image of man’s erect posture in the creation story, as recounted by Guillaume du Bartas, one of her favourite religious poets:41 To what purpose would he have given to us an erect posture unless he was directing our eyes and mind toward contemplating him? Certainly we would be tree trunks and not human beings; we would be guests and not inhabitants of this world, if we did not bring our mind, excited and kindled, as it were, by divine love to such beautiful and such difficult questions in which the Majesty of his eternal divinity shines forth. (52)

She references the early modern debate on the dignity and misery of human beings that posits that each person can ascend to God through the contemplative pursuit of wisdom, or come down to the level of the earth through idleness.42 Rivet’s Rebuttal Rivet responded with a rebuttal faulting Van Schurman on three counts. She was wrong to claim that women were equal, even superior, to men; she showed an overweening confidence in the power of reason and learning; and most women did not deserve the same educational chances as she because she was a prodigy whom no woman could or would ever imitate.  Du Bartas, VIe journée, lines 493–508. Van Schurman draws on dignity-of-man texts on the Genesis account of humans in God’s image, particularly man’s upright posture to gaze into the heavens. 42  Warner, chapter 1. 41

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She was defending women’s equality, and even their superiority (60).43 For Rivet, such reasoning belonged to Querelle des femmes polemics. He shifts the rhetorical grounds from her deliberative mode of inquiry – the pros and cons of a position – to the epideictic praise and censure connected with querelle rhetoric. The querelle, an agonistic verbal tradition, was fuelled in part by praise and blame stereotypes. As it spilled over into salons, mondain academies, and mixed-gender epistolary exchanges such as the one between Rivet and Van Schurman, women’s polemical voices were often neutralized; the rhetoric of salon and heterosocial correspondence disallowed engaging in debate with women as intellectual adversaries or equals.44 So Rivet tried to neutralize Van Schurman’s attempt at situating the debate in an objective and philosophical line of thought. Opponents of female intellectual equality, observes Elsa Dorlin, commonly used this strategy of shifting from the deliberative to the epideictic. Under attack, defenders then had to move away from the deliberative to convincing their opponents, who were also their judges, as if they were in a law court.45 Rivet thus resorts to epideictic argumentation to elude Van Schurman’s polemical and philosophical intent. His obfuscation of her arguments allows him not to take her at face value. Second, Rivet faults Van Schurman for overconfidence in learning. It does not take, he asserts, a great deal of scientific knowledge of the inner workings of creation to worship God (68). Those who put stock in ‘their expert knowledge of the rotation of the heavens, the appearance of the planets, and the influence of the stars or similar things’ end up turning away from God ‘with the result that they attribute all things to nature’. The simple-minded and the ignorant, on the other hand, are best at true worship of God, whereas the learned, ‘after long disquisitions feast upon the wind’. He quotes in Hebrew a verse from Ecclesiastes (1:18): ‘For with much wisdom comes much sorrow; the more knowledge, the more grief’ (69). A strict Calvinist, he thought deep learning irrelevant to Christian devotion. Only a few (male) authorities were needed to interpret the Bible, and women were naturally excluded on the basis of custom and the Scriptures.46 Finally, Rivet accuses Van Schurman of generalizing her case to all women. The bulk of his letter is devoted to this criticism. He pointedly reminds her that a liberal education’s civic and political ends equip only men for public office. It follows that ‘practical civic knowledge ought to be as different as possible from that of women’ (62). To Van Schurman’s statement, ‘An enormous admiration for the sciences, or the equity of common law, moves me not to consider as rare in 43

 Rivet to Van Schurman, 18 March 1638.  On women as undesirable polemical opponents, see Maître 2006a, 253. 45  Dorlin, 88–91. Maître (2006a) indicates that a discourse on equality is possible only when it presupposes the equality of the opponents in an exchange. Marie de Gournay, who argued for equality, was not taken seriously because ‘a woman could never be considered purely as an intellectual adversary’ (255). The only possible form of equality for women at the time was the one linked to the noble habitus of aristocratic distinction (258). 46  Clarke 2013, 354. 44

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our sex that which is most worthy of the desires of all people’ (44), he opposes a biological essentialism, divinely ordained, that bars the vast majority of women from participating in intellectual discourse: ‘it is certain that the Author of nature so formed the sexes differently in order to signify that He had destined men to one set of things and women to another’ (61). Men influence learning, politics, and the church whereas women limit their activities to their own separate sphere. He rejects her argument for equality in education in favour of gender complementarity. In sum, Rivet eludes the philosophically innovative and logical dimension of Van Schurman’s reasoning. By going from the particulars of her own experience – she is capable of studying all the arts and the sciences, therefore women in general are capable of doing the same if given the opportunity – she adopts in her defence an empirically grounded mode of reasoning. But Rivet deliberately misconstrues her reasoning as simply an attempt to evade her superiority over other women: ‘You wanted this education to be for all women so that you might be able to hide in the crowd and have nothing singular attributed to you’ (61). He labels her intellectual individualism as appropriate only to her, an exception with no followers (61). Van Schurman’s Reply Some scholars think Van Schurman capitulated to Rivet. Solange Deyon, for instance, qualifies her reply as a ‘strange letter’ in which she pretends that Rivet misunderstood her as a way of retreating from a discussion that made her ill at ease. Nicolas Schapira remarks that she simply gave in by telling Rivet to tell her how to think about the topic.47 But Van Schurman neither made believe that there was a misunderstanding – she clears up in fact what may have been one – nor did she admit to being in the wrong. She states that after feeling possibly ‘troubled’ by what at first glance could be construed as a misunderstanding, she now thinks that in ‘its overall sentiment’ Rivet’s opinion agrees with her ‘wishes’ (70). To what misunderstanding is she referring and where does she find agreement? She begins by refuting Rivet’s accusation that she advanced the superiority of women. She indicates that on account of such a claim of female superiority, she disagrees with Lucrezia Marinella’s The Nobility and Excellence of Women and the Defects and Vices of Men; nor does she fully agree with Marie de Gournay’s The Equality of Men and Women.48 As for her argument that a ‘Christian woman’ can rightfully dedicate herself to serious learning, she endorses the two chapters in Vives’s On the Instruction of a Christian Woman (Book 1: 3 and 4) that Rivet had urged her to reread. These chapters in effect contain little, if anything, that would be found objectionable to her thesis. Vives encourages young women to read in order to live a godly and chaste life and, as part of his dialectical proofs, after 47

 Deyon 1999, 354; Schapira 2003, 354.  On Marinella, Gournay, and Van Schurman, see Chapter 6.

48

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stating ‘if we wished to review past ages, we would not find any learned woman who was unchaste’, he offers a catalogue of exemplary women whose eloquence illustrates their morals.49 Ironically, Vives appears more enlightened than Rivet: he does not state, as does Rivet, that such famous women are ‘rare birds on the earth’ (66) having ‘the effect of a prodigy’ (67). Neither does Van Schurman capitulate to Rivet’s way of thinking. To the contrary, she continues to exercise her critical judgement. She questions the arguments he had ‘proposed problematically’ (72) on the little usefulness of higher education for women. Her goal, she explains, was to discuss what he thought of the ‘tyrannical laws of custom’ (73) and to offer her ‘opinion’, which she believed to be in agreement with his (72). She ends her letter affirming her continued respect and love for him. Of paramount importance in her reply is her skill at ending the debate on an amicable note without in any way abdicating. She keeps her ground because she shifts from the rhetorical mode of contentio to sermo, allowing her to focus on what unites her to Rivet in the interest of their ongoing relationship. She applies skilfully the rhetoric of sermo to her letter-writing. In De Officiis, Cicero establishes that in sermo, ‘there should be a point at which to close it tactfully’. Sermo should be free of excessive emotion ‘uncontrolled by reason’ and ‘we should also take the greatest care to show courtesy and consideration toward those with whom we converse’.50 Sermo allows Van Schurman to maintain her independent position, while at the same time appealing to fair play and mutual affection to maintain cordial relations. These relations lasted until the end of Rivet’s life in 1651, even though she continued to disagree with him. In a letter to Princess Elisabeth in 1639, she implicitly critiqued his view that the study of politics and history is reserved solely for heads of state and ruling female monarchs, a common view at the time among moralists and educators. To Elisabeth, Van Schurman denies that women in general should be exempt from the study of history, for it is useful both to ‘public personalities and private individuals’.51 Van Schurman’s Political Efficacy Rivet’s utilitarianism, social conservatism, and strict Calvinism influenced his belief that women cannot become savantes since they are not called to hold professional public positions, and deep learning is unnecessary to faith. For Van Schurman, on the other hand, it is logical that women’s leisure time gives them opportunity to cultivate their mind, and that they should do so even if such ‘study rarely or never advances toward public duties (34)’. In stating this, she tries to dislodge the idea that advanced education must necessarily open the door 49

 Vives, 65–71.  Cicero, De Officiis, I: 135–6. 51  Van Schurman to Elisabeth, 7 September 1639, Opuscula, 284. 50

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to participation in public affairs. She chooses her words very carefully: highly educated women ‘rarely’, if ever, undertake public duties; but the presumption that advanced education for women can lead to public roles is implied. A similar rhetorical imprecision, which in principle leaves the door open to a future state where women can take up public duties, is present when she says to Rivet: For, indeed, so that I might begin to weave my web with civil law, I remember reading at some point in a law of Ulpian that women are excluded from all civil and public charges or offices. But with what sense of equity this has been decreed, I will not now spend any time inquiring; but, at the very least, I think that it is clearly proven that the leisure in which we spend our time has been praised and legitimated. (46, emphasis added)

She mutes her judgement of Ulpian’s law which, codified under the Justinian Digesta, forbade women from holding civil or public office. The very fact that she questions ‘with what sense of equity this has been decreed’ indicates that she has thought about the injustice of a law that legalizes male dominance in public affairs; for the time being, though, she cannot, or will not undertake a rational inquiry into its claim. Rivet would never realistically entertain the idea of women in public sphere activities. So she develops an argument which, she thinks, may not encounter a swift refusal, that women’s very exclusion from public duties fully justifies their access to the ‘speculative’ and ‘practical sciences’. Here, too, she advances a radical claim, as I noted earlier: she does not distinguish these two groups of sciences as appropriate to one sex and not to another, making clear that both the theoretical or speculative, and the practical or empirical sciences, concern men and women alike. She comes very close to stating here Poullain de La Barre’s general maxim, that ‘the mind is equal in men and women’, and therefore women should study all the disciplines.52 Even more striking, Van Schurman posits a novel concept: she disengages higher learning from its functional and pragmatic ends – engagement in civic and public office – to invest it in the gender-neutral and non-political private sphere. She uses the term ‘privatus’, a private person male or female, to argue that this person has leisure for serious learning (56). The terms ‘public’ and ‘private’ in the seventeenth century referred to the state (the public) and to the domestic (the oikos and its derivatives). Civic humanism emphasized the public dimension of human existence, reserving the notion of the private for individuals not politically active. Thus ‘public’ and ‘private’ refer to functions and spatial entities governed by ‘the logic of distinction and not of strong opposition’.53 Van Schurman’s leisured private person represents a woman, or a man, who, in living a life free from the demands of political duties, can turn to the private pursuit of knowledge.

52

 Poullain de La Barre 2002, 82.  Taranto, 46.

53

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Van Schurman’s thinking on serious learning for women moves away from her earlier utopian appeal in 1636 to include women in the ranks of university graduates. Coeducational higher learning was not realistically negotiable; nor could she offer Rivet examples of colleges of higher learning for women, since none existed at the time. He had countered that her reasoning was inapplicable until appropriate colleges solved the problem of mixed-sex education: Before you can persuade me, I would like you to set up colleges of learned women so that in these academies, those maidens whom you dedicate to such studies may be thoroughly refined. You yourself will not easily grant that they all become self-taught, or even that they would have parents at home to take upon themselves this task, which happily befell you. (67)54

Since no colleges of higher learning for women existed, she insists that a woman may devote herself to advanced learning within the domestic sphere. Her advocacy of an education modelled on a classical understanding of male leisure is an astute political move. Some scholars, however, think her advocacy is politically ineffectual because it does not directly question the social power structures and leaves intact women’s segregated roles. French philosopher Michèle Le Dœuff states: Without a murmur Anna Maria van Schurman accepts women’s containment within a private and entirely domestic sphere. Even though … she successfully illustrates the significance of an intellectual life for a woman, she seems to remain content with a niche in a systematic sexual division of roles, which she neither examines nor criticizes.55

Elise Goodman remarks that: Despite Schurman’s formidable learning, her treatise is timid and conservative. … Her moralistic defense of a woman’s right and duty to study is an exercise in rhetoric and logic rather than an assertion of real convictions. … Nowhere does Schurman advocate changes in the status quo of the mortal Muses she addresses.56

In reply, it is inaccurate to state that Van Schurman’s defence is merely an ‘exercise in rhetoric’ springing from no ‘real convictions’. Her courageous, publicly delivered challenge to the University of Utrecht to include women students implicitly carries with it the need for fundamental social change in the make-up of academic institutions. In the same manner, her extending the theoretical and the empirical sciences to women implies that a person who masters the empirical is 54

 Rivet to Van Schurman, 18 March 1638.  Le Dœuff, 22–3. 56  Elise Goodman 2008, 44–5. 55

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also capable of mastering the theoretical and vice versa, which, in principle, fits her for public sphere duties. It may be asked at this point why Van Schurman did not explicitly question ‘the sexual division of roles’, as some think she should have done. One reason is that premodern elite women like her generally adhered to the conservative noble ideology of gender complementarity that did not violate the social expectations governing their roles. Another reason is that, with the possible exceptions of Marie de Gournay, Margaret Cavendish, and the artist Mary More, seventeenth-century female theorists of women’s advanced education did not discuss human rights and the unjust constitution of society.57 Neither, for that matter, did progressive thinkers who, even when they asserted women’s capacity to enter professions and offices reserved for men, did not require that society actually change to allow women to do so.58 The exception is Poullain de La Barre, for whom women’s equality was concomitant with the need for sociopolitical reforms and individual rights; but he was ahead of his time, prefiguring the Enlightenment.59 A fully articulated liberal feminist rights discourse appeared only in the late eighteenth century, and programmes of social change not until the nineteenth century.60 However, Van Schurman, who stood in the late humanist tradition of innovative women polemicists such as Moderata Fonte, Lucrezia Marinella, and Marie de Gournay, paved the way for the later seventeenth-century savantes Bathsua Makin, Mary More, Gabrielle Suchon, and Mary Astell by injecting into the debate the notion of equality of access to education with its implicit radical potential for women. Van Schurman’s advocacy is therefore an effective form of political and social critique. She argues that just as the private man has leisure time for learning, so does the private woman. Both are freed – some more and some less – from the duties of public and private cares, to cultivate learning. Because learning, as classically defined, is linked with leisure, she thinks its pursuit is best reserved for those with some income and time. She further politicizes her critique by including the study of public affairs, history, and law, usually reserved for female rulers. These disciplines are important for the preservation of public morality because ‘the whole economy of moral virtue’ depends on educating the ‘masses’ (55). She thus highlights the utility of private subjects learning these disciplines; their study 57

 Gournay 2002a, 86, stated ‘the Human animal, taken rightly, is neither man nor woman’; Cavendish touched on full participation in intellectual and public life in Philosophical and Physical Opinions (1656) (see Ferguson, 85); More was influenced by Van Schurman in her unpublished The Woman’s Right (1680s), where she cites her (BL, MS Harley 3918, fol. 50r-v) (on More, see Ross 2009a, 304–47). 58  Gibson, 19. 59  Pellegrin, in Poullain de La Barre 2011, 21, 25, notes that his feminism is the source of his radical stance: ‘All other inequalities derive from this fundamental and first inequality between the sexes’. He proposed a ‘vast social reform’ founded on the hypothetical notion of the end of male domination. Stuurman 2004, viii, credits Poullain for putting forth ‘the first recognizably Enlightenment social philosophy’. 60  Ross 2009a, chapter 7.

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is for the good of the state. The state has no need to fear its learned citizens since all agree that ‘a state would flourish the most which is going to have citizens who obey not the laws so much as wisdom’ (45–6). Van Schurman defends in such a way a woman’s access to advanced education as the most effective means to serve family, God, church, and country.

Chapter 4

Translating the Savante Although I celebrate our illustrious Authors1 With fine sentiments and enchanting words, And, by praising, thus make myself praiseworthy; I confess that when reading your Immortal Writings, Since your Intellect has found no equal, I have never had enough Incense for your Altar. Guillaume Colletet, ‘A Mademoiselle de Schurman. Sonnet’ 2

For Anna Maria van Schurman, educating women meant offering them all of the liberal arts taught at universities. Elite circles in Paris, however, would have thought this unwarranted, even strange. Enter Guillaume Colletet, Van Schurman’s French translator. Here I shall first inquire into his reasons for translating her educational writings; next, look at the nature of his audience; and, finally, examine the end product, the Question celebre (1646). A comparative analysis of the source text and Colletet’s version shows both subtle and major changes to meet the expectations of the Parisian elite. His translation served as the main conduit for the dissemination of Van Schurman’s writings in France. It also sheds light on the debate over the savante in Paris from the late 1630s on. Trained as a lawyer, Guillaume Colletet (1598–1659) served in the Paris Parlement, and later became a member of the Académie Française, a literary historian, a prolific poet, and a polygraph, who supported himself professionally.3 He was well placed as Van Schurman’s translator. From the early 1620s to the mid-1640s, he frequented the salons of Marguerite de Valois, Marie de Gournay, and Catherine de Vivonne, Marquise de Rambouillet, as well as those of the Vicomtesse d’Auchy and Mme des Loges. These circles held sway until the midcentury Fronde wars. He participated in the drafting of the Guirlande de Julie, the famous literary album offered in 1641 by the Duc de Montausier to his beloved Julie d’Angennes, Mme de Rambouillet’s daughter. A socialite and a savant, he crossed easily from the world of the salons over to that of the all-male academies. From 1620 to 1644, he attended the academy of Nicolas Bourbon, whose primary interest was in contemporary Neo-Latin literature. He also met with the habitués of François de Malherbe’s literary circle from 1610 to 1628, and of the Académie des Puristes from 1619 to 1624, which functioned as clearing houses on questions  Colletet published in 1644 a translation of Scévole de Sainte-Marthe’s Latin Praises of Illustrious Men. 2  Question celebre, 117. 3  On Colletet, see Boer 1925; Natoli; Jannini; and Mortgat-Longuet, chapter 4. 1

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of language, poetic genres, and literary style. Then, from 1632 to 1652, he hosted one of the best-known literary circles in Paris. It met at his country house, formerly owned by the poet Ronsard, on the outskirts of Paris, near the Porte Saint Marcel. In summer the meetings took place in his garden, and in winter in his well-stocked library assembled with the help of his colleague Gabriel Naudé. Translation was a favourite subject for discussion; his library contained a notable collection of the works of the Pléiade poets, and of Latin works which he lent to anyone interested in translating them.4 Four of Colletet’s colleagues influenced him in his decision to introduce Van Schurman to French readers. The first, the Carmelite Father Louis Jacob de SaintCharles (1608–70), had become by 1645 a compiler of annual lists of Parisian and national newly printed books, which he published under the titles Bibliographia Parisina (1643–50) and Bibliographia Gallica universalis (1643–54).5 In 1646 he wrote, but never published, an extensive Latin compendium on the writings of learned women from antiquity to contemporary times, entitled Bibliotheca illustrium mulierum, or Bibliothèque des femmes illustres par leurs écrits [Library of women illustrious through their writings]. His extended eulogy of Van Schurman was translated by the Lyonnais lawyer Paul Jacob, and included in Colletet’s Question celebre.6 A second colleague who influenced Colletet was Gabriel Naudé (1600–53), the librarian of state and the founder of the discipline of library science. Naudé lived in Italy for a decade from 1631 to 1641 where he worked as secretary to the bibliophile papal nuncio Gian Francesco de’ Conti Guidi di Bagno. When his patron died in 1641, he became librarian to Cardinal Richelieu. Upon the latter’s death in 1642, he was selected as chief librarian of Cardinal Mazarin, travelling to the Low Countries, Italy, England, and Germany to collect books for Mazarin’s library.7 Naudé was interested in the publishing efforts of learned women. While residing in Venice in December 1645, he met with the erudite nun Arcangela Tarabotti, asking her to donate several of her works to the new Mazarine Library. Tarabotti corresponded with Naudé, asking for his help in having her manuscript Paternal Tyranny published in France.8 Later, he listed in his dialogue Mascurat 4

 Boer 1938. On academic and scientific circles in Paris, see Brown 1934; Yates, chapter 12; and Pintard. 5  On Jacob, see Maclean 2009, chapter 14. 6  ‘Père Jacob’ and the date ‘1646’ appear at the end of the manuscript (fol. 198v), a copy of the original at the BnF. Maclean 2009, 416, surmises that the manuscript remained unpublished because Colletet had by then begun work on his famous Vies des poètes français of both sexes. 7  On Naudé’s travels throughout Italy, see Naudé 1982; on his biography, see Rice; Pintard, 156–73; and Clarke 1970. 8  On Tarabotti and Naudé, see Tarabotti 2004, 14; Tarabotti 2005, 194–5; and Ray, 189, 200–201. Paternal Tyranny was published posthumously in 1654 by Elzevier. On how the French scientist Ismaël Boulliau assisted in its publication, see Westwater. Boulliau visited Van Schurman in Utrecht in 1651 while delivering Tarabotti’s manuscript to Elzevier. In a

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(1650) close to 1,000 women writers, many from Italy.9 He describes Van Schurman as ‘one of those miracles of our time … [who] excelled no less over all the savantes, as the two Scaligers did over all the savants’.10 His letter extolling Cassandra Fedele was included with her collected letters published in 1636 in Padua under the title Clarissimæ Feminæ Cassandræ Fidelis Venetæ: Epistolæ et orationes [Letters and orations of the Illustrious Venetian woman, Cassandra Fedele] and edited by Jacopo Filippo Tomasini, a client of Queen Anne of Austria and Mazarin, and a friend of Naudé.11 Naudé was acquainted with Van Schurman’s On the End of Life (1639), since he too contributed an essay to the same volume, edited by Johan van Beverwijck, which had her essay. He also wrote about her to Van Beverwijck. In a letter in 1642, published by the Italian poet Domenico Gilberto da Cesena, Naudé reports on a conversation he held with Colletet about her: I remember that when I had bumped into him recently in his charming country house, he [Colletet] had been engaged in a conversation over nature’s remarkable providence. The nearly retired Marie de Gournay, advancing into old age, a woman of such great eloquence, talent, and reputation for learning, so gifted that she could stop in their tracks even the most educated men, wanted to groom, as it were, Anna Maria as she was growing up, her equal in mental acumen, and not beneath her glory and reputation, and who could hold her own among her male rivals.12

Naudé reports through Colletet that the ageing Marie de Gournay wished to ‘groom’ Van Schurman as her replacement.13 Gournay had, indeed, invited Van Schurman to form a mother–daughter covenant.14 Naudé states, furthermore, that ‘Gournay was saying that it is consistent with reason that an emendation be done to a will in which Lipsius, a keen judge of talent, began to fortify a path toward immortal glory for our Maria’.15 Colletet was now the one to take up Lipsius’s praise of Gournay and apply it to Van Schurman. So he was given additional information letter to Jacques Dupuy on 19 September 1651 (BnF, f.fr. 13043, fols. 29r–30r), Boulliau calls Van Schurman ‘a demoiselle as wise and modest as she is learned’. Cited in Nellen 1994, 199; and Westwater, 97n125. Boulliau could well have spoken of Tarabotti to Van Schurman. 9  See Naudé 1650. On Naudé and learned women, see Haase-Dubosc, 54. 10  Naudé 1650, 72. Julius Caesar Scaliger and his son Joseph Justus Scaliger were renowned for their learning. 11  On Fedele’s letters, see Robin 1995. 12  Naudé to Van Beverwijck, Latin letter, 21 June 1642, in Gilberto. See Schotel, 2: 104, for Gilberto’s panegyric and Naudé’s letter. 13  Colletet knew Gournay well, since he had met her at Marguerite de Valois’s court gatherings in the 1610s, and later attended her literary circle. See Ilsley, 143. 14  On Gournay’s offer of a mother-daughter alliance or covenant, see Chapter 6. 15  Gilberto, in Schotel 2: 104.

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on Van Schurman in his conversations with the knowledgeable Naudé, and he may in fact have thought of writing a eulogy of the ‘Dutch Minerva’ as early as 1642, when he spoke with Naudé. Two other colleagues interested in Anna Maria were Conrart and Chapelain. Conrart’s influence was diverse and far-reaching. He corrected the works of his friends; entertained daily an epistolary network of correspondents both in France and abroad; read and recommended new works for publication; and, as royal secretary at the Chancery, accorded to them the royal privilège for their books.16 An amateur, he opted for manuscript circulation of other people’s works over publication of his own. His cabinet was a centre for the transcription of hand-copied documents, which he would send to correspondents along with his marginal notations. The receuils Conrart at the Bibliothèque de l’Arsenal in Paris, consisting of 50 volumes containing each between 800 and 1,500 pages, resemble in many ways the Samuel Hartlib papers in England.17 In the early 1630s Conrart gathered a circle of literary experts who, at the instigation of Richelieu, were instrumental in the formation of the Académie Française (1635). One of the aims of the new institution was to encourage the translation of a literature of ideas, making Greek and Latin works accessible to a wider public. Conrart commissioned many translators into the service of the Academy. Since he knew neither Latin nor Greek (his father destined him for a position in finance and so he did not get to learn these languages),18 he would often complain that he could not understand the works of other savants. About one of Salmasius’s books, he admitted to Rivet: ‘Every time that I hear about the publication of an excellent Latin work, I am strangely mortified by my ignorance.’19 He began corresponding with Rivet in November 1644, thanks to Marie du Moulin (Marie’s father, Pierre du Moulin, was a close colleague of Rivet). Hearing about Van Schurman, he asked Rivet for an introduction so that the latter might ‘bring it about that this illustrious girl, who reveres you as much as she is revered by other men, counts me among her admirers’.20 At Rivet’s insistent request, in January 1645, she replied to his first letter. Conrart immediately wrote back. Twice that spring, he reminded Rivet that he was waiting for a return letter from her.21 He finally decided to write to her directly on the advice of Marie du Moulin; Marie had come up with the clever idea of sending him a letter she addressed to Van 16

 On Conrart, see Bourgoin; Kerviler and Barthélemy; and Schapira 2003.  Schapira 2003, chapter 7. 18  Bourgoin, 14. Tallemant des Réaux, a well-informed gossip, states that Conrart’s library did not contain ‘a single Greek, or even Latin book’ (1:578). 19  Conrart to Rivet, 7 October 1645, in Bourgoin, 129. 20  Conrart to Rivet, 26 November 1644, in Bourgoin, 262. 21  Conrart to Rivet, 18 March 1645, and 1 April 1645, in Kerviler and Barthélemy, 272, ‘it is important that I receive it [her letter] when she is free to write’; and, again, ‘I will not bother Mlle de Schurman with my letters for fear that she thinks that I am pressing her to honour me with hers’ (272). 17

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Schurman, asking him to forward it enclosed in his cover letter.22 The stratagem worked. Van Schurman sent him not only a letter but also her self-portrait, ‘which I will place’, he wrote back triumphantly to Rivet, ‘among those of honourable men whose letters have rendered them illustrious, and which I have in abundance in my cabinet’.23 Rivet could have sent Conrart his and Van Schurman’s letters on women’s learning. And Conrart may have then asked Colletet to translate them. Father Louis Jacob mentions he had seen the Rivet–Van Schurman manuscript letters among Colletet’s papers: ‘by a singular favour of the friendship he [Colletet] bears me, I saw these [letters] in manuscript form in his beautiful and curious Library of Saint Marcel Faubourg in Paris’.24 We do not know precisely how Colletet got a copy but can surmise that given his friendship with Conrart, the latter may have had the letters recopied and sent to him. Lastly, Chapelain could well have influenced Colletet’s translation. Chapelain’s successful career as homme de lettres led him from legal studies in his youth and a preceptorship until 1632 with the Marquis de La Trousse, to membership in the salon of Mme de Rambouillet and Conrart’s circle. He was one of the founding members of the Académie Française, a prolific critic and promoter, and he later worked for Colbert, Louis XIV’s finance minister.25 In the mid-1640s Chapelain was hard at work on La Pucelle, ou la France délivrée [Joan of Arc, or France delivered], an epic that glorified the Maid of Orleans as a warrior-saint and a martyr. His chief patron, the Duc de Longueville – a descendant of Joan of Arc’s companion Dunois, Louis d’Orléans’s illegitimate son – had commissioned Chapelain to compose an epic in Joan’s honour. Chapelain took his task very seriously, reading excerpts of his long poem, begun in 1634 and published two decades later in 1656, at the Rambouillet salon. However, Rivet, in his reply to Van Schurman on women’s education, had cast aspersions on Joan of Arc’s military exploits, suggesting that she was unchaste. Rivet’s critique of Joan of Arc would have caused some degree of consternation among Mme de Rambouillet’s aristocratic guests because, first, it was an affront most notably to Chapelain, her literary defender. Second, to imply that Joan was unchaste was an affront to the French state since she was venerated as one of the pillars of the monarchy. In his Portraits des hommes illustres françois qui sont 22

 Conrart to Rivet, 1 April 1645, in Kerviler and Barthélemy, 272.  Conrart to Rivet, 23 September 1645, in Kerviler and Barthélemy, 287. Conrart continued to complain to Rivet that Van Schurman was not answering him; see letters dated 2 July 1646, 19 April 1649, and 3 February 1650, in Kerviler and Barthélemy, 442, 516, and 533. On the role of Van Schurman’s self-portraits in her patronage and friendship networks, see Chapter 5 in this volume. 24  Question celebre, 109, ‘Par une singuliere faveur de l’amitié qu’il [Colletet] me porte je les ay veües manuscrites dans sa belle et curieuse Bibliotheque du fauxbourg sainct Marcel à Paris’. 25  Viala 1985, 187–8. On Chapelain, see Jouhaud, 97–150; and Miller 2000. 23

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peints dans la gallerie du palais Cardinal de Richelieu [Portraits of illustrious men, who are painted in the gallery of the palace of Cardinal Richelieu, 1650], Vulson de la Colombière includes the life stories of 26 heroes and heroines, all defenders of the crown, whose portraits graced the gallery of Richelieu’s palace – among them figures Joan of Arc placed prominently alongside members of the royal family, Marie de Medici, Henri IV, Anne of Austria, and Gaston d’Orléans.26 Hence Rivet’s aspersion had all the makings of a querelle. Colletet wrote a poem in her defence, ‘Pour la Pucelle représentée à genoux sur le Pont d’Orléans’ [For the Pucelle represented with bended knees on the Bridge of Orleans, 1646].27 Soon after the publication of the Question celebre, Madeleine de Scudéry, a habitué of the Rambouillet salon, began a querelle of her own in which she undertook, with Chapelain’s encouragement, a spirited defence of Joan in a three-way manuscript correspondence with Conrart and Marie du Moulin.28 The Question celebre and La Grande Mademoiselle Colletet’s dedication of the Question celebre to Anne-Marie-Louise d’Orléans, Duchesse de Montpensier (1627–93), known then as La Grande Mademoiselle, provides as well a key motive for the translation. Van Schurman’s combative defence could appeal to Montpensier, particularly its querelle and femme forte overtones, and its sharpened focus on the usefulness of education for women as players on the world political stage.29 Colletet’s dedication was prescient. Montpensier and her friend Anne-Geneviève de Bourbon-Condé, Duchesse de Longueville (who had paid Van Schurman a special visit in Utrecht in January 1646), would soon become femmes cavaliers performing acts of heroism during the Fronde des nobles (1650–53). Montpensier played the role of Joan of Arc when she secured on horseback the city of Orleans for her father, and during the siege of Paris directed the cannons of the Bastille against her cousin, King Louis XIV. Her agency underscores the major political role that aristocratic women played in France and the active debate concerning challenges to monarchical power both in France and in England throughout the 1640s into the 1650s. Montpensier had also been drawing for some time the attention of pro-women defenders with dedications similar to Colletet’s. François de Grenaille (1616–80) 26

 Harth 1983, 94.  For Colletet’s poem on Joan of Arc, which was included in a four-page plaquette, see Bray, 26. 28  See Un Tournoi. On Rivet’s critique, see further in this chapter. 29  On Montpensier’s heroism during the Fronde, see DeJean 2003; and Vergnes, 443–50. During her first exile at Saint-Fargeau (1652–57), Montpensier became a dedicated reader, writer, and architect; she imitated her ancestor Queen Marguerite de Valois, who did the same during her exile at her Château of Usson (1586–1605). Montpensier supervised on her lands the building of schools and hospitals for orphan girls. 27

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dedicated to her the first part of L’Honneste fille (1639) when she was just 13 years old. When she turned 19, François du Soucy (Monsieur de Gerzan, 1627–53) wrote the Triomphe des Dames, dediée à son Altesse Royale Mademoiselle (1646), published the same year as the Question celebre.30 Triomphe des Dames exalts the superiority of heroic women born to lead men with poems of praise by poet Pierre du Pelletier and Parlement lawyer Paul Jacob, the same two writers who composed elogia of Van Schurman for the Question celebre. Du Soucy, in a chapter entitled ‘On the excellence of women’s minds’, includes Van Schurman among exemplary contemporaries for her ‘twelve or fifteen different languages’, and ‘with a knowledge so profound and an eloquence so marvellous that she causes astonishment and admiration among the érudits, who find the excellent products of her mind admirable’.31 In dedicating the Question celebre to Montpensier, Colletet was seeking to impress her father, Gaston d’Orléans (1608–60), King Louis XIII’s brother. He praises Gaston’s military victories, following up on a sonnet he wrote to commemorate the victorious siege of Courtrai in June 1646.32 A protector of artists and writers, Gaston was renowned for his generosity; and Colletet, whose patron Cardinal Richelieu had died in 1642 and whose current patron Cardinal Mazarin was less than generous, hoped to interest the king’s brother.33 Gaston owned a copy of Van Schurman’s Opuscula.34 Contextualizing the Question celebre: Educating Women in Paris The Question celebre drew attention to a topic of great currency. Women’s nature, social roles, and Latinate and vernacular learning were frequently addressed in the salons and the deliberations of state-sponsored societies such as Théophraste Renaudot’s weekly public conferences for a motley audience, possibly including

30

 On Du Soucy, see Hepp.  Du Soucy, 117–18. Other dedications to Montpensier in close succession include Hilarion de Coste’s Les Éloges et vies [ … ] (1647); Gilbert (1650); the anonymous Le Triomphe des merites de Mademoiselle (Paris: Jacob Chevalier, 1652); and Poullain de la Barre, De l’Education des femmes (1674). 32  On Colletet’s sonnet ‘Sur la prise de Courtray par Monseigneur le Duc d’Orléans’, which he sent to Nicolaas Heinsius (Leiden University Library, BPL 1923), see Bray. 33  Louis XIII cut poetic pensions dramatically after Richelieu’s death, leaving others to fill in the void. Gaston d’Orléans was one of the period’s most important literary patrons. See Dethan, 119–35, 227–39. Chancellor Pierre Séguier, prominent in the privilège of the Question celebre, became the French Academy’s principal protector after Richelieu’s death in 1642 and a sought-out patron. See Shoemaker, 30. 34  The BnF owns a copy of Van Schurman’s Opuscula (1648) with the coat of arms of Gaston d’Orléans on its red Moroccan cover (Rés. Z. 2741). 31

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women, which met officially from 1633 until 1642.35 The enterprising Renaudot (1586–1653), a protégé of Richelieu and a Protestant physician and philanthropist who converted to Catholicism, founded a Bureau d’Adresse in Paris to publicize services rendered. These included free medical consultations, a chemical laboratory, a centre for referrals, and the first French periodical, the Gazette de France, whose agenda was to quell criticism of Richelieu’s policies and gain support for the monarchy.36 In the preface to Renaudot’s Premiere Centurie des questions [First One Hundred questions, 1633], Renaudot explains his objectives: ‘the young are fashioned, the elderly refresh their memory, the erudite are admired, others learn, and all find honnête entertainment’.37 His weekly conferences, attended by up to 100 people, took place in the grande salle of his Paris home on the Ile de la Cité. They popularized knowledge assumed to be the domain of the selective male academies and universities. He overlooked the supposed confidentiality of intellectual exchange by publishing and disseminating the proceedings throughout the country. Thanks to these reports, published from 1634 until 1655, he participated in the beginnings of the creation of a public literary sphere. His reports of the debates, written in French and published in five volumes consisting each of about 460 presentations, were adapted to civil conversation. About onethird dealt with natural history, astronomy, medicine, and natural philosophy. Even auditors unschooled in the sciences could learn a good amount of the most recent scientific findings and issues propounded by the New Philosophers.38 Some 45 of the 460 topics at these public debates focus on the contested nature, roles, and learning of women. In 1636, at about the time that Van Schurman was writing her Dissertatio logica, the topic for discussion was ‘S’il est expédient aux femmes d’estre sçavantes’ [Whether it is expedient for women to be learned]. Three gentlemen each articulate their position: the first blames the tyrannical governance of men for depriving women of higher studies on grounds that understanding is common to all humans and that women’s ‘vie sédentaire et solitaire sont encore favorables à l’estude’ [‘sedentary and solitary lives are favourable as well to study’]. The second conferee argues that because women already have far too much influence over men, allowing them to study would simply make them ‘insupportables’ [unbearable]. Besides, their physiology, the humidity of their brains, and their capricious nature make them unfit to learn. The third strikes a middle ground in stating that women need learning, for ‘comment est-ce qu’elles 35

 Sources for this sketch include Mazauric 1994, 1997, 1999, 2003; Solomon; and Wellman. On women at Renaudot’s lectures, see Jellinek. For Wellman, 13, no conclusive evidence points to women in attendance. 36  See Wellman. Renaudot’s interest in poor relief drew the attention of other reformers of the period, particularly in England. Samuel Hartlib and Jan Comenius expressed keen interest in the Bureau d’Adresse. 37  Cited in Mazauric 2003, 66. 38  Sutton 1995, 24, 30; Mazauric 1999, 113.

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seront vertueuses si elle ne sçavent ce que c’est de la vertu?’ [‘How shall they become virtuous if they do not know what virtue is?’].39 None of the debaters advocates that a woman become a savante. They emphasize gender differences grounded in Aristotelian biology and Galenic medicine to keep women anchored in their prescribed social roles. The propriety of women’s higher studies continued to be actively debated throughout the 1660s. Jean de Soudier de Richesource, a participant in Renaudot’s weekly conferences, founded the Académie des Orateurs [Academy of Rhetoric] for a mixed-sex audience. Women’s education was discussed in 1661 in a session entitled ‘Si l’estude des Sçiences et des belles lettres sied bien aux Dames et si elle leur est utile?’ [‘Whether the study of the sciences and belles lettres is fitting for women and whether it is useful for them’], but the session ends very differently from the one on the same topic at Renaudot’s conference.40 One of the pro-women orators, called the Prieur, cites directly from Scudéry’s Femmes illustres. For instance, he states that women and men differ only in ‘matters of war’.41 Also, women’s leisure and ‘retraite’ [retreat] from public charges give them ample time to study since ‘they steal nothing from the public nor from themselves; to the contrary they do honour to their country by making themselves illustrious and without harming anyone they acquire great glory’.42 A second orator, a lawyer by the name of Philippe Cattier, agrees with the Prieur that the study of medicine, mathematics, music, even eloquence and theology are useful. He references Van Schurman as an exemplar: This famous girl, the Dutch Mademoiselle Marie Anne de Schurman, is a great example in our day of women’s capacity to learn the sciences, and she has defended this cause so well that I need only use her advocacy to triumph over the barbarity of those who prevent them from studying.43

The third orator, on the other hand, a Monsieur de Godonville, contradicts the first two by insisting that women’s learning threatens a husband’s authority, men’s power, and women themselves given their analytic shortcomings. ‘It suffices’, he concludes, ‘that a woman knows how to skilfully manage the mind of her husband, it suffices for a young girl to know how to defend herself from assaults to her

 Renaudot, Conférence dated Monday 17 March 1636, 53–6.  Richesource, 25–56. 41  The Prieur, in Richesource, 30, cites from Scudéry’s Femmes illustres (424): ‘We see every day that cupidity is found in our sex as ugliness is found in the other’, and ‘beauty does not necessarily belong to women as knowledge to men’. Van Schurman, also, in Dissertatio, 50, prefers women aided by ‘Athena wearing the toga’. 42  Richesource, 31, quotes from Scudéry’s Femmes illustres, 431–2. 43  Richesource, 34. The second orator mentions approvingly Marie de Gournay and Mme d’Auchy (29). 39 40

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honour, after which each should spin the distaff’.44 To allow women the study of theology leads to heresies and new religious sects.45 In the end, the moderator, Richesource himself, concludes the debate in favour of women’s pursuit of advanced learning; the only prerequisite is that they leave to men ‘the cares of the active life, and the troubles of household, civil government, and politics’ to enjoy the benefits of ‘the contemplative life which they will find in erudite conversations they will hold one with one another, if they were allowed to study and become savantes’.46 But although the Academy of Rhetoric ends its deliberation with the victory of the profeminists, its endorsement maintains the status quo, revealing the fault line in even the most enlightened discussions of the period: women are capable of and even ought to acquire serious learning provided that the social structures remain untouched and that they not become too learned. A striking dialogue by Elisabeth-Marie Clément – Dialogue de la princesse sçavante et de la dame de famille [Dialogue of the learned princess and the lady of the house, 1664] – features a learned princess, named Pauline, debating the merits of advanced education for women with a housewife, named Penelope, before a judge who turns out to be Valentin Conrart. Pauline lists the savantes of her time: Mme de Montausier, the Comtesse de La Suze, Mme de la Calprenède, Scudéry, Marie-Catherine de Villedieu, and finally ‘Mademoiselle de Scurman la Hollandoise’, and Elisabeth of Bohemia.47 In the end, Conrart happily endorses Pauline’s defence of the femme savante, stating: ‘it is my intention to persuade the whole world of the merits of the fair sex, but especially of the savantes who are above them all, and who are worthy of adoration’.48 Richesource’s academy deliberations were not the only fruitful venues for women’s pursuit of the sciences. Other public sessions between 1635 and 1669 included lectures by the Aristotelian mondain philosopher Louis de Lesclache, and by Jacques Rohault, Claude Clerselier, and Pierre-Sylvain Régis, who disseminated Cartesian thought through their teaching, pamphlets, and brochures, thus providing an alternative philosophical education. The predigested forms of their dialogues and entretiens [conversations], mixed in with experimental demonstrations, summarized debated ideas and offered definitions of abstract terms.49 44

 Richesource, 27.  Richesource, 27. 46  Richesource, 35–6. The same arguments pro and con are featured in the anonymous Apologie de la science des dames par Cléante (1662), where the enlightened Cléante, who echoes Scudéry in Sapho to Erinna, is pitted against Aristide; the latter, according to Stuurman 2004, 63, may be a stand in for André Rivet. On Richesource, see also Stuurman 1998, 74. 47  The savantes listed are Julie de Rambouillet, Duchesse de Montausier, Mme de Rambouillet’s daughter; the poet Henriette de Coligny, Comtesse de La Suze; Madeleine de Lyée, Comtesse de La Calprenède, a member of Montpensier’s circle; Madeleine de Scudéry; and the prolific writer Marie-Catherine Desjardins de Villedieu. 48  Clément, 258, 262. 49  Wilkin, 189–98; Conley 2002, 8–9; Sutton, 106–109; and Gibson, 31. 45

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The Question celebre therefore came at an opportune time in the discussion on educating women, which concerned first and foremost its social purposes. While most theorists of female education agreed that some form of study was acceptable given the exponential growth of leisure, few were of the same mind on the range and types of subjects to be studied. Conservative Protestant and CounterReformation clerics like Rivet and the Jesuit polemicist Father François Garasse (1585–1631) emphasized Vives’s prescriptions for the ‘good woman’ – the chaste, obedient, and proverbial wife – and thought that subjects that taught the domestic arts and the moral life were sufficient. Garasse critiqued in 1624 the savante who interpreted Scripture and meddled in theology: It is silly to give arms to a woman other than her distaff and her needle … Books are not true household implements for women, and among books, the book of books, that is holy Scripture, is no proper spool for their distaff.50

For these conservatives, the place of a woman was the home, her leisure employed for the betterment of family life, and her education aimed at moral improvement, not personal intellectual enlightenment. Jeanne de Schomberg’s Règlement donné par une Dame de haute qualité à M*** sa petite-fille, pour sa Conduite, & pour celle de sa Maison [Rule given by a high-born Lady to M*** her grand-daughter, for her Conduct and that of her Household], published posthumously in 1698, embodies this conservative ideal of the femme modèle [the exemplary woman] in the tradition of Erasmus’s and Vives’s matrimonial ideology.51 A number of less conservative clerical apologists, on the other hand, made concessions to modernity in allowing for a more intellectual education, but always within the limits of the social roles and proprieties imposed on women. They, too, distinguished between the cultivated, or accomplished woman, and the savante; only the former, they thought, was a legitimate model. Du Bosc thus stipulates that reading widely is not the same as reading like professional men. Women who become overtly learned he warned are in danger of misappropriation and inappropriate speech in that when ‘they address a topic they know, they report everything, including the marginalia, pages, dates, and other superfluous matter’.52 The Question celebre and the Hôtel de Rambouillet We now come to the question of audience. For whom did Colletet intend his translation? He might have thought of the educated urban readership at Renaudot’s Bureau d’Adresse interested in current scientific and philosophical topics. A second, more likely, forum would have consisted of aristocratic members of Mme 50

 Garasse, 499.  See Schomberg. 52  Du Bosc 2014, 71. 51

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de Rambouillet’s salon, which Colletet frequented along with Conrart, Chapelain, Montpensier, Scudéry, the scholar Gilles Ménage, the grammarian Claude Favre de Vaugelas, and members of the intellectual and political urban gentry. The Hôtel de Rambouillet’s period of greatest influence extended from 1624 to 1648.53 Its creator had fashioned a retraite or haven in which she could live on her own terms. The Hôtel de Rambouillet’s famous Chambre bleue [Blue Room] – termed for its blue panelled velvet walls and matching furniture – was not just a site for mondanités, salon entertainments, balls, fêtes, and diversions of all kinds. It hosted serious literary and philosophical discussion. Each Thursday Mme de Rambouillet opened her apartments to guests whom she received from her day bed. Her gatherings constituted the mondain version of the Académie Française on account of their ongoing discussion of correct French usage (referred to as ‘le bel usage’), just as later in the century Mme de La Sablière’s salon constituted the mondain side of the Académie des Sciences (founded in 1666) for its focus on scientific topics.54 The Hôtel de Rambouillet was praised as a site for rational discourse expressed in elegant French. There were two aspects to this cultivation of salon reasoning. First, like Renaudot’s conferences, discussions led one to acquire a general knowledge of the sciences. This could be done in French and not just in the learned languages of Latin and Greek. Du Bosc, in pressing for the education of elite women, contended that to exempt women from the sciences because these were too challenging or obscure was ‘a strange misconception. It is an extravagant idea to think that Reason does not speak all the languages, and that knowledge cannot be as readily expressed in French as in Greek or Latin.’55 Rambouillet hosted intellectuals who talked about their latest books. Gassendi presented in 1634 portions of his manuscript De vita et moribus Epicuri [On the Life and Customs of Epicurus]. Descartes’s Geometry, Optics, and Meteorology were discussed in the salon in 1637. Current foreign affairs and reports from the front in Renaudot’s weekly Gazette de France were also regularly analysed.56 Second, salon reasoning, prefiguring Descartes, mobilized bon sens [common sense]. The Hôtel de Rambouillet became the place where bon sens reigned. Chapelain remarked that Mme de Rambouillet’s salon differed in this area from the academy of Mme d’Auchy, where ‘ladies have set themselves up as savantes and have turned this quality into coquetry’; at the Hôtel de Rambouillet, on the other hand, ‘one’s conversation is not learned, but it is reasonable, and nowhere in the world is there more common sense and less pedantry’.57 As early as 1615 its 53

 Beasly, 257n107. Krajewska 1990, 202, states that Mme de Rambouillet’s salon opened as early as 1608, and Fumaroli, 136, as early as 1615. 54  Bury 1995, 35. 55  Du Bosc 2014, 98. 56  Krajewska 1990, 90, 171. 57  Chapelain to Balzac, French letter, 22 March 1638, in Chapelain 1880, 1: 215. Krajewska 1990, 186, notes that at the Chambre bleue sound reasoning was artfully blended with esprit [wit].

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weekly meetings were known to introduce practices that the Académie Française would later formalize. In adapting reason to salon usage, it found ‘a new way to reason and to construct value and knowledge’.58 Although highly intellectual, members of the Hôtel de Rambouillet differed in their reading tastes from those of the Rivet–Van Schurman exchange: the latter, belonging to the international Republic of Letters, privileged a late humanist encyclopedic learning based on philology, the study of antiquity, and ancient and oriental languages. As academicians and Latinists, their goals differed from those of mondain salon culture. Certainly some of the salon members belonged to the all-male academies. But the circulation was one-way, as salon members did not cross over into the academy. Colletet’s readers were for the most part interested in literary criticism, discussion of new ideas, and improvisation – in short belles lettres rather than lettres savantes.59 The ambient ideal of honnêteté promoted courtliness, witty conversation, and a modern, accessible culture.60 Salon members were discouraged from the use and in some cases even the knowledge of Latin since by 1600 French was used in most fields, with the exception of academic theology and professional diplomacy; the Académie Française had also by 1635 signalled the prestige of French and the corollary concept of French nationhood.61 To adapt his source text to these new readers, Colletet naturalized it to minimize as much as possible deviations from cultural and linguistic norms. The receptor text had to give the impression it was written by a contemporary French writer supremely familiar with the cultural habits of thought and speech patterns of his readers. It also had to be perceived as an act of creative composition in its own right to accord with the view, which Colletet inherited from his sixteenthcentury predecessors, that the translator fashioned the source text into a receptor text marked by enargeia, or vivid representational power. The Question celebre as a Mondain Translation Translation is always a shift, not between two languages, but between two cultures – or two encyclopedias. Umberto Eco62 58

 Beasly, 39.  Viala 1985, 150. 60  On the differences between learned academies, epitomized by the Parisian Cabinet Du Puy, and salon social practices and culture, see Miller 2000, chapter 2; Harth 1992, chapter 1; Viala 1985; Maître 1999, 327; Pekacz; Shelford, chapter 3; Conley 2002, introduction; Jouhaud, chapter 2. 61  In the seventeenth century, less than 25 per cent of all books printed in France were in Latin. See Waquet 2001, 81. 62  Eco, 22. 59

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A translation generally positions itself closer to one of two poles: either it leans towards a semantically oriented, almost word-for-word replication of a source text, or it aims at being a communicative piece with the reader’s and the translator’s interests at the forefront. Stated another way, the question that guides a translator, according to Umberto Eco, is whether a translation should allow the reader to better understand the source text’s ‘linguistic and cultural universe’, or whether it should ‘transform the original by adapting it to the reader’s cultural and linguistic universe’. For Eco, a translation that does not take into account the reader’s idiolect cannot be taken seriously. Some modernizing or domesticating of the source text is usually present.63 Thus the translator aiming for reading fluency strives for what Lawrence Venuti calls ‘invisibility’.64 ‘Under the regime of fluent translating’, Venuti writes, ‘the translator works to make his or her work invisible, producing the illusory effect of transparency that simultaneously masks its status as an illusion: the translated text seems natural, i.e. not translated’ (5). This ‘domesticating’ practice of translation, that renders it invisible, ‘brings the author back home’, whereas a ‘foreignizing’ practice of translation, which keeps the linguistic and cultural differences of the foreign text, ‘sends the reader abroad’ (15). Since French was developing into a hegemonic language during the seventeenth century, transparency in translation promoted those linguistic and cultural values which were favoured by the Parisian elites. But Venuti also speaks of the ‘violence of translation’, and the necessary ‘abuse’ and even ‘damage’ done to the source text; a domesticating translation is ‘the forcible replacement of the linguistic and cultural differences of the foreign text with a text that is intelligible to the translating-language reader’ (14). For Colletet, then, a translation must interpret the original text by transposing the cultural realities of one language and society into another. To do so means to write in a vernacular pleasing to readers. In the preface to his translation of Scévole de Sainte-Marthe’s Eloges des hommes illustres [Praises of Illustrious Men, 1644], Colletet states that to translate is to turn the source text into a ‘François à la mode’ [fashionable French].65 He subscribed to a mode of translation dubbed Les Belles infidèles [The Beautiful unfaithful] which gained accreditation in the first half of the seventeenth century. Michel Ballard notes that this type of translation, inherited from the translator Jacques Amyot, ‘aims to be a form of re-creation, an exercise in style destined to give French its letters of nobility’.66 To achieve this end, Nicolas Perrot d’Ablancourt, the leading translation theorist of the period, stated in 1640 that the translator: at every turn must adopt a different air and visage, unless he wishes to create a monstrous body, as those of ordinary translations, which are … without any 63

 Eco, 22.  Venuti, 1. 65  Sainte-Marthe, preface, n.p. 66  Ballard, 170. I thank Brenda Hosington for drawing my attention to Ballard. 64

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order or charm … This means, however, that the best translations seem to be the least faithful.67

D’Ablancourt, in his preface to Lucian (1654), addressed to Conrart, expounds his theory, stating that since a translation’s sole raison d’être is pleasure, a translator must alter the source text: ‘for here it is a question of Gallantry, not erudition … Hence I do not always cleave to the words or thoughts of this Author; whilst keeping in sight his purpose, I fit things to our air and manner.’68 Colletet’s philosophy of translation mirrors D’Ablancourt’s views. However, liberties taken with the content of a piece tend to produce a different text. As Emmanuel Bury succinctly states: ‘Let us especially remember that the art of Les Belles infidèles aims at a complete re-creation of the translated author: as such, the translator can claim for himself the full-fledged title of author.’69 While not going to this extreme, Colletet, nonetheless, introduced two types of major changes: those of a conceptual order, and those of tone. In the remainder of the chapter I analyse these changes and, furthermore, how he modulates his translation to the listening tastes of his readers. He wants his reader to ‘hear’ the text by means of the phrasing and oral distinctiveness of the French language. The concise and at times hard-hitting Latin phrase of the source text becomes French in its rhythm, tone, expression, musicality, and prolixity. As will become evident, in creating a mondain version of Van Schurman’s text, I shall argue that Colletet not only refashioned its authorial intent, but also toned down its pro-woman content. Adapting the Content In all, there are three significant conceptual changes in Colletet’s translation. These relate to the type of young woman Van Schurman had in mind; her study of the disciplines of history and public affairs; and her knowledge of classical languages. Colletet’s changes adapted the text to the gendered expectations of a salon public. Immediately noticeable on reading the Question celebre is that whereas Van Schurman focuses on the education of a ‘virgo’ [maiden, young girl, or virgin], Colletet favours instead the education of a ‘fille bien née’ [well-born or noble girl].70 The expression ‘bien née’ refers to the honnête femme who had acquired refined manners and habits of mind. As stated earlier (see the Introduction), honnêteté 67

 Perrot d’Ablancourt, ‘Preface to Tacitus’, 32.  Perrot d’Ablancourt, ‘Preface to Lucian’, 35–6. In the second half of the century, Les Belles infidèles as a translation mode was severely criticized. The grammarian and critic Gilles Ménage created the metaphor Les Belles infidèles in reference to D’Ablancourt’s free translations, which he compared to the antics of an unfaithful mistress (cited in Ballard, 147). On this mode of translation, see Mounin; Zuber 1963, 1968. 69  Bury 1990, 253. 70  Citations come from Van Schurman’s Dissertatio (1641), 46, passim, and from the Question celebre, 4, passim. 68

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was a code of behaviour reserved for elite individuals primarily associated with the court. Nicolas Faret, the premiere theorist of honnêteté during the first half of the century, asserted that such people are noble because ‘those who come from a good place ordinarily have good inclinations that others rarely have’.71 They are privileged by birth and upbringing. Whereas Van Schurman’s intent is to challenge young girls of the Dutch gentry and minor nobility such as herself, Colletet’s concern is with a minority of French noblewomen like his dedicatee Mlle de Montpensier. This difference in audience is attributable to the cultural distinctiveness of the Dutch and French elites. The huge growth in urban wealth gave the Dutch merchant elite and town regents the power to rule over civic life, thereby diminishing the influence of the nobility.72 Dutch city merchants not only addressed their sons’ formal training but also saw to it that their daughters benefited from an education destined primarily to increase their competency as wives, mothers, and companions to their husbands. In France, on the other hand, the court played a preponderant role in the creation of high culture. Salon members had close ties to the court, and while admitting untitled members from the noblesse de robe and the enriched commercial classes, the salons ensured that aristocratic culture was perpetuated and strengthened through polite conversation, refined manners, and selective readings and writings.73 Van Schurman’s and Colletet’s conceptions of the educated woman also differ in their view of the principal goal of education. Whereas Van Schurman’s ‘virgo’ is understood principally as a ‘Christian’ young woman for whom higher learning means strengthening her religious faith, Colletet’s elite woman, by virtue of being ‘bien née’, is educated to conform to the social demands of her rank. Although Van Schurman does not specifically identify her ‘maiden’ as a ‘Christian woman’ in her letters to Rivet, this is implied since she had already qualified her subject as a ‘Christian woman’ in the opening question of her Dissertatio logica, ‘Whether the Study of Letters is Fitting for a Christian Woman?’ Colletet does not translate the Dissertatio logica and so Van Schurman’s emphasis on educating a ‘Christian woman’, while present by implication in her correspondence, is lost in translation. He no doubt had read the Dissertatio logica and knew of Van Schurman’s emphasis. But his substitution of ‘fille bien née’ for ‘maiden’ gives an entirely different slant: it does not convey the defining theological underpinnings of Van Schurman’s philosophy of education. Van Schurman emphasizes the spiritual benefits of learning for leisured women, who needed, in her view, to be challenged to deepen their personal, individual relation to the divine. Such a relation would have positive ramifications for their lives as individuals and in society. Colletet, on 71

 Faret, 37. Cited in Couprie, 179.  Prögler, 78, observes that the fewer noble families in the United Provinces tended to conform to a decidedly ‘non-noble lifestyle’ which frequently astonished foreign visitors. 73  On seventeenth-century salons and aristocratic culture, see, for instance, Lougee; Goldsmith; and Pekacz. 72

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the other hand, wants to convey the claims of honnêteté, a social ideal of conduct that ‘referred to relations among people rather than to an individual’.74 For Van Schurman, personal religious zeal and devotion, accompanied by great learning, are superior to honnêteté, whereas for Colletet zeal of any kind in learning and piety should be sacrificed to achieve the golden mean. Moderation lay at the heart of the honnête code which governed all aspects of polite sociability, including religious sentiment. Jolanta Pekacz notes perceptively that ‘moderation in practicing virtue, advocated by numerous writers, can be interpreted as … the essential factor that made honnêteté and religiosity compatible’. Religion and honnêteté were judged compatible only through adapting the former to the latter, ‘through ‘“mondainizing” religion … or moralizing le monde’ (47). The subtitle of the Question celebre provides revealing clues of the deliberate honnête orientation of Colletet’s adaptation (Figure 4.1). Rivet’s profession as a famous theologian and his role as tutor to Prince William of Nassau are entirely left out; specialized knowledge was considered incompatible with honnête behaviour, and an honnête homme did not display the attributes of his profession. Rivet is simply referred to as ‘le Sr André Rivet Poitevin’, indicating his region of origin in southwestern France. Moreover, in the order of names, Van Schurman’s is the most important: she comes first; her full name is inscribed in large, bold, capital letters taking up a whole line, with the ‘Mademoiselle’ and the ‘Holandoise’ taking up another half a line. Rivet’s name, inscribed in small letters, takes up just over half a line. Even Colletet’s name, in bold capital letters in the subtitle, conveys greater importance than Rivet’s. Below the subtitle, the imprint of the libraire éditeur Rolet le Duc shows an illustration of Themis, goddess of justice, carrying in one hand a balance signifying judgement, and in the other a drawn sword representing the law’s executive power. The streamer around the sword carries the inscription: ‘Per me, reges regnant’ [Through me, kings rule]. Rolet le Duc was well known to Colletet’s milieu, since he had published Gabriel Naudé’s Advis pour dresser une bibliothèque [Advice on Building a Library, 1644] and Louis Jacob’s Traicté des plus belles bibliothèques publiques et particulières [Treatise on the Most Beautiful Public and Private Libraries, 1644]. This title page is thus designed to attract an elite, mixed audience of professionals, salonnières, and literary amateurs. The very title, Question celebre, highlights this appeal. The term celebre identifies the debate as one bringing celebrité or fame to its contestants (and noble dedicatee); according to Randle Cotgrave, celebre means ‘celebritie, glorie, honour, renowne, a great report in the world’.75 In Latin, celeber means ‘renowned’, as well as ‘often repeated’ in the sense that a celeber topic is a current one, frequently debated. The choice of the term Question holds a variety of semantic meanings pertinent to the debates practised by professionals, Querelle des femmes writers, and members of the Rambouillet circle. It touches on lawyers’ pleadings and judicial decisions, which were often published, as in Jean Chenu’s 74

 Pekacz, 20.  Cotgrave, under ‘celebrité’.

75

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Figure 4.1

Anna Maria van Schurman, ‘The Star of Utrecht’

Van Schurman, Question celebre (1646). Bibliothèque nationale de France, Paris

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collection of Singulières questions de droict, decidés par arrests memorables [Unusual Legal Controversies Adjudicated by Memorable Decrees].76 Lawyers debated both sides of an argument and drew on exemplars in much the same way as Querelle des femmes writers. The latter, in exploring vices and virtues, man’s dignity and misery, and the superiority or inferiority of women relative to men, used examples of virtuous or vice-ridden women and men. The question format of a spirited dialogue of opposing viewpoints corresponded to one of the main literary activities at the Hôtel de Rambouillet, which consisted in debating both sides of an argument on any given topic.77 A second substantive change introduced by Colletet concerns the perceived gendered inappropriateness of some of Van Schurman’s educational claims. Van Schurman, on the study of history and ‘whether knowledge of public affairs is fitting for any private person’,78 declares: Although I easily concede that it [the study of history] is directly relevant to the practical needs of a Republic, still, on account of the theoretical and particular benefits from history that come to every single person, we think that no one should neglect this knowledge. (54)

Her alleged reason for allowing ‘any private person’, male or female, knowledge of history and public affairs is that these disciplines increase one’s understanding of the reigns of monarchs, the rise and fall of nations, and the Sacred Scriptures that reveal God’s judgements upon nations and individuals. ‘If God wants this study to be in the heart of everyone’, she asserts, ‘is it not the case that the contemplation of God’s admirable governance will stir our lyres?’ and thereby increase the ability to praise the Creator (54). Knowing history and political affairs is necessary preparation for ‘civil conversation or the bonds of the higher Republic of Christians’; and it prepares one to ‘undertake more remarkable deeds’ for the common good (55). Van Schurman defends women’s education in political virtue because it allows them to do virtuous deeds for the larger extrafamilial community, even when they are not directly involved in political governance. Finally, knowing classical and biblical history lets a young woman acquire prudence, which cannot be learned simply from experience alone: Moreover, nothing is more useful for a young woman, and nothing more necessary than to distinguish the contemptible from the honourable, the harmful from the harmless, the appropriate from the inappropriate; but how much experience with the world, how much nimbleness in judgement does this require from us? But since it is neither useful nor safe for us to learn prudence of this

76

 Warner, 199. Chenu’s work went through four editions from 1603 to 1611.  Hamel, 34. 78  Dissertatio, 54. All emphases added. 77

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Anna Maria van Schurman, ‘The Star of Utrecht’ kind from experience alone, we ought to flee headlong to history, ‘just as in a mirror, to beautify our life or assimilate the virtues of others’. (56)79

Van Schurman wants young women to learn the ancient virtue of prudentia because, as a cardinal and intellectual virtue linking all the other virtues, prudence guides ethical decisions. Aristotle (and the Stoics, Seneca, and Cicero) likened prudence to practical wisdom in decision-making and good management of the state, the household, and the self, and stated that even women should exercise it.80 The study of history, part of moral philosophy in the standard university curricula of the time, was thought essential to acquiring the prudence to live well, make good decisions, and exercise self-control. Guidance by historical exempla, a staple of Justus Lipsius’s Politica and Political Admonitions and Examples, texts which Van Schurman admired, gave rulers the prudence to serve the public good. Colletet, however, balks at Van Schurman’s extending the study of history and public affairs to women. He mistranslates her ‘private person’ as a private male citizen for whom it is not necessary to know public affairs: One can ask here if it is useful and necessary for all men to become savants in public affairs; to this I’ll respond first that it is not absolutely necessary, if one considers that all private individuals cannot put into practice for the good of the public all such beautiful knowledge.81

He operates here according to the rules of honnêteté: knowledge of a discipline must be determined by its usefulness to everyday social practice. But then realizing that he is contradicting his source text, he adds a qualifying statement that a private man can certainly reap personal benefit from such knowledge ‘so as not to leave politics only to sovereign Princes and their principal Ministers’ (28). The upshot of this conceptual change is that in the end studying history and political theory applies strictly to men, whether private or public individuals. It is only when Van Schurman insists that a young woman know history so as not to fall into error through direct experience that Colletet switches back to women. But here again he mistranslates his source. Van Schurman states simply: But since it is neither useful nor safe for us to learn prudence of this kind from experience alone, we ought to flee headlong to history, ‘just as in a mirror, to beautify our life or assimilate the virtues of others’.82

79  Van Schurman quotes in Greek from Plutarch’s Parallel Lives, vol. 6: ‘Life of Aemilius Paulus’, 1. 1, ‘I use history as if it were a mirror and try, in a certain manner, to fashion my life in accordance with the virtues of those men depicted in it (i.e., history)’. 80  Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics (19. 1141b8). On prudence, see Martin 1997, 1323. 81  Question celebre, 27. 82  Dissertatio, 56.

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Colletet translates this passage as follows: Surely, since it is true that our age, long though it may be, could not offer us [women] all the experiences necessary for the conduct of one’s life, and that it is difficult for us to establish a solid foundation upon the inconstancy of our lives, it is quite reasonable that to compensate for these lacks we turn to the reading of ancient tales, so that they can become true mirrors where, by contemplating the vices and the virtues of others, we may observe at the same time what we must flee, or embrace in their example, in a word, how we may regulate upon them the entire course of our lives. (32–3)

Colletet interprets the prudentia that the young girl must learn to live the moral life as the experience or know-how needed to regulate her conduct in the world. This experience is culled not by fleeing to history, as in Van Schurman’s text, but by turning to ‘anciennes histoires’ [ancient tales]. The discipline of ancient and modern history that Van Schurman advocates is transmuted into the reading of ‘histoires’ [tales/stories] selected for their appropriateness to a well-born girl. There is a subtle shift away from virtues to social conduct. These cumulative changes reflect Colletet’s adherence to sociopolitical custom: it was inappropriate for girls to study history, reserved for male learners; and it was inappropriate for women to meddle in the knowledge of public affairs, since the aristocratic order rested on political rights and properties passed down primarily from father to son, and only exceptional women such as queens and regents – which were considered gendered masculine roles, could be knowledgeable about politics. A third and final major conceptual change is evident in Colletet’s notion that the study of classical languages is an inappropriate goal. Van Schurman, on the other hand, extols a command for women of Latin, Greek, and Hebrew. Several times in her writings, and here in her letter to Rivet, she mentions Lady Jane Grey (1537–54), the Protestant queen and martyr to her faith who, during the last six months of her imprisonment in the Tower of London, composed prayers, letters, and a dying speech, all carefully preserved in John Foxe’s account of her life in his Actes and Monuments, or Book of Martyrs.83 A few days before she was executed, Jane Grey publicly debated John Feckenham, Queen Mary I’s confessor, about Christian doctrine. She added, writes Van Schurman, that she considered ‘the nobility of her blood, the beauty of her form, and the youthfulness of her flowering age’ as secondary; instead, ‘she declared with great courage that nothing in her whole life had been more pleasing than that she knew the three languages called the languages of the learned’ (58). Colletet subtly modifies the way in which Lady Jane Grey pronounces her words:

83

 On Lady Jane Grey, see Levin; Pollnitz, 219–28.

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Anna Maria van Schurman, ‘The Star of Utrecht’ she confessed and pronounced with great courage, and a male, and eloquent voice, that among all these graces, not one had been as dear nor as agreeable as the knowledge of these three beautiful languages which are the domain of the savants, Latin, Greek, and Hebrew. (37)

Qualifying the queen’s eloquence as ‘male’, and emphasizing the languages she prizes as belonging to the ‘domain of the savants’ highlight her academic savoir. But seventeenth-century salon culture disavowed the public expression of academic knowledge, since the learning appropriate for cultivated women was removed from the scholarly orientation of the universities and scientific academies. Changing the Tone Colletet’s adaptation of the receptor text is again notable in its change of tone, especially when he subverts the confrontational honesty of Van Schurman’s Latin letter. For instance, Van Schurman expresses frank doubt over Rivet’s proposition that only a few exceptional women have the right to pursue scholarly interests: [Van Schurman:] But I am compelled to doubt what you have decided as a general principle on this matter. (Dissertatio, 44) [Colletet:] After all, I must tell you that it’s you yourself who inspired this doubt, or rather this new curiosity, in me. (Question celebre, 5)

Whereas Van Schurman tells Rivet that she feels ‘compelled to doubt’ him, in Colletet’s version Rivet authorizes her doubt, ‘or rather new curiosity’, as if she could not bring herself to doubt and question him in the first place. The blunt directness of Van Schurman’s Latin is undercut by the more polite, agreeable, even inaccurate indirectness of Colletet’s formulaic French phrase. When Van Schurman goes on to explain the terms of her disagreement, she begins by stating that married women involved in household duties must of necessity bow to the obvious: they cannot spend much time on their studies. But what about all the other women who have time to study, what are they to do? [Van Schurman:] But, however, if we mean girls endowed with mental ability, who ought to be educated in the liberal arts, the sort that our age produces in great abundance, I have a difficult time agreeing. (Dissertatio, 45) [Colletet:] But if you mean to speak generally, and include in this number those to whom God has given an excellent mind, who have been nobly brought up and instructed with great care – such as one finds many in our day and age – pardon me for saying that in spite of all the deference I owe you and of my protestations to follow you, it is a huge effort for me to agree with you concerning the point you make. (Question celebre, 6–7)

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Van Schurman’s concise, deliberative reasoning and use of the polemical contentio are persuasive rhetorical tools. But coming from a young girl who flatly contradicts a famous theologian, they are inappropriate. Colletet thus rewrites her script, changing statements such as ‘I feel compelled to doubt’ to ‘you yourself inspired … this curiosity in me’ and ‘I will accede less easily’. Her queries become more palatable when embedded in slanted, polite protestations of fidelity. Colletet steers Van Schurman’s combative voice away from the contentio to the more genderfriendly sermo. Likewise the young women endowed with a powerful intellect, who should acquire an encyclopedic liberal arts education, are transmuted, in his version, into ‘filles bien nées’ [nobly brought-up young girls] groomed for highsociety living. The intellectually-inclined women from a broadly based social mix are reduced to a minority of noblewomen. A second significant instance of a change in tone concerns Colletet’s accentuation of Van Schurman’s affective lexicon to correspond to salon galanterie. After she thanks Rivet – with great flourish in the French version – for the books that he has sent her, she draws attention to a deeper source of contentment: [Van Schurman:] Moreover, I think it no less a kindness that you do not refuse to promise your help, both by aiding me with all my studies and even by solving more serious doubts. I value your judgement very much, as it is fitting, because where I lack sufficient perspective, I cling to my own uncertainty and am forced to press on with my foot suspended, as it were. (Dissertatio, 44) [Colletet:] But if the gift to which you have obliged me flatters me infinitely, the offer that you make of helping me in the course of my studies and in clearing up my doubts transports me beyond myself. I esteem the solidity of your judgement as much as I ought to esteem it; I take pleasure in following you; and when I lose sight of your radiant path, I soon find myself plunged into a deep abyss of darkness and confusion. In such a state I cannot decide on anything, and instead of advancing on the pathway of good letters, I see myself regressing, and my steps faltering at all hours. (Question celebre, 4)

Colletet’s version gives the impression that Van Schurman dissolves into a state of extreme disorientation and indecision when she cannot follow the trail of her mentor. But nowhere in the source text does she evoke any sense of complete dependency on Rivet’s point of view. She has her own ideas and simply needs to consult with him when she lacks ‘sufficient perspective’. She is certainly not plunged into ‘an abyss of darkness’ from which he needs to rescue her. Colletet makes her dependent on Rivet for the very use of her reason. He also shifts away from her studies, making her seem a dilettante. Here, again, Colletet adapts the source text to make its expression more conforming to gendered bienséances.

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The Question celebre and the Woman Question To heighten audience interest, Colletet presents the correspondence as a ‘delicate’ and ‘moderate’ verbal duel between two opponents of equal strength: If you take the trouble to consider it closely, you will find in it a pleasant topic treated with as much learning as delicacy, an old quarrel sustained by both sides with new arguments; in short one of the most beautiful and most moderate duels of the pen that one has seen in a long time in the history of belles lettres. Give the prize to the one who merits it; or, if you think that the strength and skill of the combatants make the award doubtful, suspend your judgement as I do; and in praising both of them equally, content yourselves with saying that this Amazon is worthy of this Alexander.84

Colletet declares that the matter at hand is ‘an old quarrel sustained by both sides with new arguments’. By calling it a ‘contestation’ [quarrel], he situates the debate in the Querelle des femmes controversy, which argued for and against the superiority of women. Even though Van Schurman does not argue for the superiority or even the equality of women, but rather for equality of educational opportunity, a gender-neutral philosophical and epistemic category, Colletet maintains that Rivet’s and her arguments issue from the querelle, and that they are in effect writing in the querelle genre of the paradoxical encomium. Indeed, in a biographical sketch of the sixteenth-century poet Marie de Romieu (ca. 1545–90), included in his unpublished Vies des poètes français [Lives of the French poets], Colletet states in an aside that he has just translated Van Schurman’s letters in which there are some ‘new and solid demonstrations that women are more capable of the sciences than men’.85 But Colletet then adds: If this is a paradox, it is neither the time nor the place to decide such a question, for it is apparent that the reading [of this work] will not displease especially our illustrious Ladies, who justly pride themselves on knowing something other than the tip of a needle and the movement of the spindle.86

Because Colletet thinks in terms of male and female complementarity, he rejects the idea of equality. Arguing for equality of opportunity in education, as does Van Schurman, was judged too radical, and labelled as paradoxical.87  Question celebre, ‘Advis au Lecteur’, n.p.  Colletet, Vies [ … ], BnF ms., fol. 431v. Colletet credits Van Schurman here with solid reasoning because he writes about her in the bio-bibliographical genre, more suited to academic writing. 86  Colletet, Vies, fol. 431v. 87  Similarly, Poullain de La Barre’s Equality of the Sexes, 11, was greeted as a ‘paradox that had more gallantry than truth’. 84 85

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By situating the exchange in an agonistic Woman Question frame, Colletet utilizes the language of combat, victory, and glory to engage his aristocratic audience. He calls Van Schurman an ‘Amazon’ facing off in battle an ‘Alexander the Great’, who, according to legend, fought Penthesilea, queen of the Amazons, in the border regions of India.88 Cast as a living Amazon, Van Schurman readily calls to mind the heroines of Du Bosc’s La Femme heroïque (1646) and Le Moyne’s La Gallerie des femmes fortes (1647). Between the 1620s and 1640s in France, paintings, as well as fictive and historical tales of female warriors proliferated. These women engaged in single combat with men, led armies, and lay siege to cities. They reflected in part a contemporary reality: noblewomen such as the memoirist Catherine Meurdrac (1613–76) de La Guette and Barbe d’Ernecourt (1607–60), Comtesse de Saint-Baslemont, fought alongside men in military activities, displaying an extraordinary capacity for battle.89 Portrait galleries and printed collections of engraved portraits of warrior women, frequently depicted as Amazons and as Minerva, became popular among the nobility. Marie de Cossé Brissac, Maréchale de La Meilleraye, for instance, hung in her study between 1637 and 1642 portraits of female warriors from antiquity (Penthesilea, most prominently) and modern times (Joan of Arc); and Anne of Austria had a similar gallery constructed for her bedroom. Anne of Austria was the first seventeenthcentury female sovereign to adopt the iconic identity of Minerva, goddess of war and of the arts and sciences.90 Colletet also uses Querelle des femmes and Femmes fortes rhetoric when he comes across a passage likely to arouse the indignation of his readers. When Rivet calls into question Joan of Arc’s ‘pudicitia’ [modesty, chastity, or virtue], Colletet seizes the occasion to dramatically expand on the theologian’s criticism. Rivet asserted that Joan of Arc’s meddling in affairs of state and bearing arms like men made her chastity doubtful. Among the few women from the past who ventured on to the battlefield alongside men, he states: [Rivet:] Deborah and Jael were rare; this palestra,91 which the English designated for burning people alive, did not turn out well for Joan of Lorraine, and although she is being honoured as a second Pallas, as it were, by our friends  Question celebre, ‘Advis au lecteur’, n.p. Given that the terms Querelle des femmes originated as a nineteenth-century euphemism for what early modern polemicists called ‘la guerre des sexes’, Colletet’s use of the word ‘combat ’is closer to the querelle’s original meaning. See La Charité 2008, 309n1; Pellegrin 2013d. 89  DeJean 2003, 122–4. On La Guette, see Stanton 2014. La Guette’s oldest sister, Marie Meurdrac, published under her own name La Chimie charitable et facile en faveur des dames [Chemistry charitable and easy in favour of the ladies, 1666]. 90  DeJean 2003, 126. On the visual rhetoric of Anne of Austria’s portraits, see Goodman 2008, chapter 4. 91  The palestra, an Ancient Greek term, refers to a school for rhetoric and the place where Socrates held his dialogues with the youth of Athens. Rivet is perhaps thinking of the passage in Plato’s Republic, 452a, where Socrates mentions the ridicule attached to female 88

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in England, nevertheless her chastity remains in doubt even among her admirers. (Dissertatio, 67) [Colletet:] One has only to come across Jael and Deborah. And if that famous Joan of Vaucouleur, carried by an invincible courage, wished to follow them on to this warring terrain, one can say that this extraordinary valour had a rather miserable success, since it served as a shameful spectacle to the English, and as lamentable fodder for their flames. I know well that our city of Orleans respects her still as its liberator, and that all its people esteem her as a second Pallas. But I also know well that the greatest worshippers of her valour and those who are the most jealous of her glory speak of her honour and chastity with much uncertainty only. (Question celebre, 60–61)

Rivet expresses a brief, but powerful indictment of women in public sphere activities through his allegation of Joan of Arc’s loss of ‘pudicitia’, the foremost female virtue. Colletet expands on Rivet’s charge, even switching to the firstperson pronoun to express his own opinion on the matter. He knew full well that in Catholic France such language would incite controversy. And, indeed, Madeleine de Scudéry seized the occasion to commence a querelle of her own in defence of Joan of Arc in which she tried to engage Van Schurman.92 Colletet also knew of course that Montpensier, his noble dedicatee, revered Joan of Arc as the saviour of the city that belonged to her family – five years later, at the start of the Fronde war, she became an Amazon warrior à la Jeanne d’Arc in her successful attempt to save Orleans.93 A Salon Reading These artists of orality did not speak as in books, but they had read a lot, with their ear, and it is with this social and musical resonance that they judged books. Marc Fumaroli94

Colletet created a competing text with appeal to readers. He draws on querelle language to heighten their interest. He is concerned as well with making these athletes ‘exercising stripped in the palestras alongside the men’. Rivet conflates the palestra with the stake. Colletet bypasses the word palestra altogether. 92  On the querelle over Joan of Arc, see Larsen 2003; and Schapira 2003, 355–65. Although Scudéry defended Joan’s chastity, she argued that her military engagement could in no way serve as model of virtuous female sociability. 93  Voisine, 511, states that Rivet’s insinuation, spelled out in full, ‘contributed not a little, through its scandalous success in Catholic France, to make known indirectly the writings of Anna Maria in women’s favour’. 94  Fumaroli, 131–2.

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letters audible. As Fumaroli notes, salon members were particularly attuned to the oral qualities of written language, its musicality, and adaptability to conversation: ‘The pleasure of hearing, in a society of gourmets of the word, is more important to them than the pleasure of the text’(132). Conversational exchange was central to rhetorical salon culture. Salon writings – letters, maxims, portraits, plays, dialogues, romances, and poems – emerged from salon discourse. Conversational performances were marked by a culture of the voice.95 In the Question celebre Colletet multiplies instances of an oral give and take, with one significant difference: whereas Van Schurman’s speaker is conscious of the necessity of expressing herself quickly and briefly, her male interlocutor allows himself ample occasion to discourse while putting her on the defensive; he uses the rhetorical device of paralipsis, a trope of persuasion to prevent the opponent from disagreeing. Paralipsis elides the source of contention by saying little or nothing about it to better put one’s opponent on one’s side. This pre-emptive strategy, common in polemical debate,96 consists in stating ‘You know as well as I do’, which gives the contender leave to expand his statements all the more while his opponent struggles to get in her words. Thus to stress the modesty required of her, Colletet has Van Schurman announce time and again, through added interjections not found in the source text, that she will not tax Rivet’s patience: ‘but so as not to depart from what I proposed to ask’ (4); ‘but so as not to stall at the entrance of this discourse’ (9); ‘but so that I don’t lose my way in generalities that would bring me little glory and you little pleasure, I will content myself, Monsieur, with just a word’ (27); ‘with the permission of all the illustrious Ladies’ (36), and so on. Rivet, on the other hand, constantly adds formulas such as ‘I know you will tell me’ (45); ‘you’ll permit me to say to you’ (47); ‘you must admit’; ‘tell me I pray’ (53); ‘when you’ll agree with me on this point, I know that you will have little difficulty in consenting also to’ (59) – terms that allow him to cajole Van Schurman by establishing with her a complicity that makes it all the harder for her to fight back. Other formulas, again not found in the source text, such as ‘you know just as well as I do’ (46) and ‘if you would take the trouble to think’ (55), give him licence to critique her for lack of proper reasoning so as to appear the winner in the argument. These formulas underscore the solidity of his judgement at her expense. To facilitate comprehension, Colletet adds material corresponding to the reader’s and hearer’s idiolect; he thus explains certain learned allusions, and eliminates others altogether. Moreover, he amplifies the Latin formulaic phrases, which tend to brevity and directness. For instance, Van Schurman states that she has just received a gift of books from Rivet ‘hilari fronte’ [‘with a happy face’] (Dissertatio, 43), to which Colletet adds: ‘c’est à dire avec une grande satisfaction d’esprit’ [‘that is with a great satisfaction of mind’] (43). Van Schurman writes: ‘hoc est triomphi tui materiem’ [‘this [gift] is to the subject matter of your triumph’] (Dissertatio, 43), 95

 On salon conversation, see Bung.  Maclean 1977, 258n94.

96

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which becomes ‘qui sert de matiere à vostre Triomphe, et d’instrument à vostre gloire’ [‘which serves as a subject matter of your Triumph and as instrument of your glory’] (2–3). Throughout, Colletet explains and sometimes replaces Van Schurman’s learned allusions with references that do not require book learning. Her allusion to Ulpian becomes ‘Ulpian the Jurisconsult’ (10), and Thomas More is identified as ‘the famous Chancellor of England’ (19). Mythological allusions are approximated: ‘Charybdis’ becomes ‘ce dangereux escuëil’ [‘this dangerous reef’] (12); paradoxical turns of phrase are suppressed, such as Van Schurman’s warning that the intellect of the uneducated woman will become ‘effoeminatur’ [‘effeminized’]. Colletet uses concepts from early plays by Corneille, who read them in Mme de Rambouillet’s salon before publication. Cornelian terms abound, such as ‘repos’, ‘âmes généreuses’, ‘vaines passions’, ‘honnestes gens’, ‘honneste pudeur’, ‘honneste loisir’, ‘honneste honte’, ‘gloire’, and ‘maximes’ [‘rest’, ‘peace’, ‘generous souls’, ‘vain passions’, ‘honnête people’, ‘honnête modesty’, ‘honnête leisure’, ‘honnête shame’, ‘glory/reputation’, ‘maxims’].97 The following illustrates Colletet’s technique of supplying pleasing formulas. Van Schurman critiques the draconian laws that prohibit women from cultivating their intellect: [Van Schurman:] To this must be added that no honour, no dignity, and finally no reward for virtue, by which illustrious souls are usually impelled toward praiseworthy pursuits in particular, leave us here any hope. We boast in vain about the nobility which we have received from our ancestors, especially since a dastardly obscurity envelops it too soon. (Dissertatio, 49) [Colletet:] It is entirely reasonable, since they form the most beautiful half of the world that they participate also in the solid honours that the world bestows. It is again entirely reasonable that they strive for the sweetest reward of virtue, and the sharpest spur of generous souls, I mean glory, and that they gain not only the right to hope for it, but the happiness to attain it. Vainly would we boast of this beautiful title of nobility that we have received from our ancestors, if we buried it in the shadows and let it languish in an indolent idleness. (Question celebre, 17)

The above demonstrates Colletet’s success at adapting the source text to the interests, language, and cultural idiosyncrasies of his elite readers. His use of fashionable terms such as ‘aiguillon des ames genereuses’ [‘spur of generous souls’] and ‘beau tiltre de noblesse’ [‘beautiful title of nobility’] seems particularly aimed at his dedicatee, La Grande Mademoiselle, who strove her entire life to live up to her exalted ancestry.

 Question celebre, passim.

97

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The Reception of the Question celebre in France Queen of the beautiful Souls whom all admire, I so love your rare writings! The more I consider them, the more I find them pleasurable, And the more I read them, the more I want to reread them. François Colletet, ‘Sonnet à Mademoiselle de Schurman’98

For the moment, I shall identify two main consequences of Colletet’s adaptation for Van Schurman’s reception in seventeenth-century France, which include the side-stepping of her religious rationale and the differing view of her male and female eulogists, leaving for the epilogue her reception in the eighteenth century. Colletet’s version is largely the product of a feminine salon ethos constructed over the half-century during and following France’s Religious Wars.99 This ethos was founded on an alliance between three sociopolitical movements: the Catholic Counter-Reformation, the feminine mission to civilize, and the promotion of the French language. The Counter-Reformation theologian François de Sales (1567–1622) summoned his high-born female followers to align their religious values with their worldly engagement; the pacification efforts during and after the religious conflicts enlisted women’s mission to civilize; and, finally, the growth of salon sociability closely linked the myth of the French language’s ‘femininity’ to ‘feminine naturalness’.100 Over the course of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, Van Schurman’s French eulogists highlighted in her writings the civilizing and linguistic aspects of this feminine salon ethos. Colletet’s skirting the religious rationale of Van Schurman’s advocacy comes as a direct consequence of the ethos developed in the salons. Salon and court sociability minimized religious differences by encouraging the peaceful intermingling of Catholics and Protestants, a consequence of Richelieu’s policy of appeasement. The staunchly catholic Hôtel de Rambouillet hosted Conrart and the Duc de Montausier, both Huguenots; the protestant Mme des Loges welcomed in the 1620s Princess Anne de Rohan’s brother Henri, Duc de Rohan, a leader of the French Huguenots, as well as the Catholic Charles de Gonzague, Duc de Nevers; and the Catholic Mme d’Auchy brought into her gatherings the abbot François d’Aubignac, the scholar Gilles Ménage, and the Huguenots Conrart and Paul Pellisson. In the 1650s and 1660s, the Marquise de Sablé moderated in her salon religious and philosophical discussions between the Jansenist writers Blaise Pascal, Gilberte Pascal Périer, and Pierre Nicole and the Catholic critics Luis de Molina, Dominique Bouhours, and René Rapin.101

 Question celebre, 117.  This sketch on feminine salon ethos is indebted to Maître 2003. 100  Maître 2003, 42. 101  Conley 2014. 98 99

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French eulogists imitated Colletet. Father Louis Jacob says little about Van Schurman’s pious upbringing, focusing instead on her exceptionality as a ‘miraculum seu naturæ monstrum’ [‘a miracle or portent of nature’].102 His éloge, which Colletet included both in Latin and French, sets the pattern for subsequent French commentators. The opening paragraph begins with Van Schurman’s noble parentage, ‘but alas of a religion contrary to ours’: She was raised virtuously from her tender youth, and she devoted herself ardently to humane letters. And, since after that she embraced Philosophy, and even the mysteries of Theology, she acquired the reputation of being very erudite: so much so that due to her growing fame, her eminent doctrine and the fecundity of her mind, she passes off today in the world as a miracle and a marvel of her sex. She deserves a similar praise for the incredible knowledge she has of many languages. But what is considered prodigious is that she is not ignorant either of those from the East, nor of those from the West. She knows quite well Hebrew, Chaldean, Syriac, Arabic, Turkish, Greek, Latin, French, Italian, Spanish, English, German, Flemish, and Dutch. And, o amazing thing, she is even versed in all sorts of Arts and Sciences; it is on this account that she has contracted a very close friendship with the greatest and the most illustrious individuals in Europe, which is evident from the many testimonies of the most excellent Authors among whom I will cite four only. (99–100)103

After briefly touching on Van Schurman’s (unfortunate) Protestantism, Jacob focuses on her noble birth, virtuous upbringing, and extraordinary learning. She is a ‘miracle’ and a ‘prodigy’ who has mastered an ‘incredible’ number of languages. She is a ‘friend’ to all the prominent (male) intellectuals of Europe. Although Jacob later mentions in passing her study of the Scriptures and her letter to Lydius on the baptism for the dead, his references to her religious convictions are minimal, in keeping with the salon ethos. The main difference between Van Schurman’s subsequent male and female eulogists is that whereas her reputation as a brilliant linguist dominates her reception among men, her example as an intellectual gifted especially in the French language struck women the most. Female accomplishment in languages was highly valued. Greek and Hebrew were limited to exceptional nuns and Protestant women; Latin was studied by some members of erudite bourgeois and noble circles; Spanish and Italian were the clear favourites because of the dynastic alliances between the Bourbons, Hapsburgs, and Medicis. Baudeau de Somaize, for instance, includes Van Schurman as someone to be admired especially for her mastery of languages. She appears in his Grand Dictionnaire des Prétieuses (1660) under the salon pseudonym ‘Statira’, and Colletet under the name ‘Cleophus’: ‘STATIRA is a  Question celebre, 83.  The four authors are Naudé, Salmasius, Jacques de la Croix (Jacobus Crucius, 1579–1655), and the Parisian lawyer Jacques Martin. On Crucius, see Beek 2010, 132–34. 102 103

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précieuse from Iceland. Her writings are known all over the world, and no one is unaware that she is one of the most learned précieuses who has ever lived.’ He admires her books in several languages, one of which ‘Cleophus’ translated.104 Jean de La Forge and Isaac Bullart, bio-bibliographers who promoted a modern culture based on French works, praise Van Schurman’s command of ancient and modern languages. For La Forge, in Le Cercle des femmes sçavantes (1663), ‘what is hardly believable is that she left us works in four or five different languages’; and for Sorel, in La Bibliothèque françoise (1664), she is ‘a Mademoiselle who possesses so much beautiful knowledge and writes many books in different languages’.105 Bullart gives further information on her life and education, noting that in addition to Latin and Greek, she applied herself also to ‘Chaldean, Syriac, and Ethiopian; and accustomed herself to writing Letters, the major as well as ordinary ones, in all of these Idioms’.106 Finally, the French Calvinist physician Samuel Sorbière, who lived in the Netherlands from 1642 to 1650, recalls with admiration her 1633 self-portrait, and especially her command of languages, which made her ‘a citizen of these places.’107 Female writers, on the other hand, admired Van Schurman for inspiring women to overcome their limited education and for modelling correct French usage, again in keeping with the salon ethos of promoting French. In a letter in 1660 to La Grande Mademoiselle, Françoise Bertaut de Motteville (1621–89) judges men harshly for preventing women from studying the sciences, even though: we have seen that the sciences, practiced in every age by many women, in spite of the opposition of men, have, in our own day, enriched the minds of Elisabeth of Bohemia, Mademoiselle van Schurman of Holland, Madame de Brassac, and Mademoiselle de Scudéry in France.

These exemplars demonstrate that their ‘savoir did not take away their modesty and the douceur [sweetness] that befits our sex’.108 Motteville commends Van Schurman for being an agent of civilization and for conforming to the salon ethos of ‘naturalness, grace, douceur, delicacy, playfulness, [and] modesty’.109

104  Somaize, 1: 219. ‘Statyra’, or ‘Statira’, was the pseudonym of the famous Renaissance savante Hélène de Surgères, a lady-in-waiting to Catherine de Medici. Known as ‘la docte de la Cour’, she frequented the salon of Catherine de Clermont, Maréchale de Retz. See Clermont’s Album, 22n40, 94. 105  La Forge (cited in Voisine, 517); Sorel, 9: 186–7. 106  Bullart, 229–30. See Appendix 2. 107  Sorbière, 213. 108  Montpensier, 129, 53. Motteville and Catherine de Sainte-Maure, Comtesse de Brassac, were ladies-in-waiting to Anne of Austria. According to Tallemant des Réaux, 2:185, Brassac learned Latin with her brothers. 109  Maître 2003, 52.

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Two female bio-bibliographers in the 1660s, Jacquette Guillaume and Marguerite Buffet (died in 1680), included Van Schurman in their apologetic and epideictic accounts of ancient and contemporary savantes. In an extended eulogy of Van Schurman in Les Dames Illustres (1665), Guillaume thanks: Monsieur Colletet, [who] wished to gratify France, by publishing the knowledge of this amiable Demoiselle, who is born, he says, for the glory of her Sex, and the confusion of men; indeed, so many virtues, which are natural to her, are foreign to them [men].110

Guillaume repeats what Father Jacob wrote, adding a couple of concluding paragraphs of her own on the superiority of Van Schurman’s intellect and virtues to those of male eulogists. Three years later, Marguerite Buffet articulated in Nouvelles observations sur la langue françoise … avec les Eloges des Illustres Sçavantes [New Observations on the French Language … with Eulogies of the Illustrious Savantes, 1668) the same points found in Father Jacob and Jacquette Guillaume: Van Schurman is the queen of languages since she speaks ‘22 of them as correctly as the one that her nurse taught her’, and her ‘prodigious memory’ attracted the greatest savants of her own and of several other countries.111 A professional grammarian and pedagogue, Buffet describes herself in her opening epistle as ‘a young woman of quality who found herself obligated to support herself through the profession of Letters’. Her book, she explains, is a teaching manual for women of the gentry and for foreigners wishing to improve their pronunciation and writing of French.112 Inspired by Cartesian universalism, she argues that since ‘souls have no sex’, women and men are intellectually equal and ‘the beauty of the mind’ is ‘the inheritance of both sexes’ (200). To prove her point she catalogues past and especially contemporary savantes, many of whom she knew either by reputation or first-hand. She mentions Van Schurman as an exemplary foreigner who had mastered French especially: ‘her most beautiful works are in French, which she values more than the other languages’ (243). Van Schurman is praised at the very start of her catalogue because she demonstrated better than anyone else the alliance of linguistic brilliance and intellectual acumen, and showed that these are not reserved solely to reigning monarchs: ‘This erudite and incomparable girl acquired such a high reputation in the whole World for having so well benefited from the study of languages that she deserves to carry the Sceptre with even more glory and advantage than Mithridates.’ Moreover, notes Buffet, she knows all the sciences, including theology and philosophy. Finally, most importantly, ‘I learned that she is consulted when difficult points in Theology arise. Her reputation is very great in the whole of Europe’ (243–4). Buffet, while 110

 Guillaume, 286.  Buffet, 243. For Guillaume and Buffet, see Beaulieu 2008; Timmermans, 278–80, 277–8, 330–3, 377–8; and Ducharme. 112  Buffet, preface, n.p., 13, 155. On Buffet’s career, see Meli. 111

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admiring Van Schurman’s humanist learning, adapts her erudite image to the salon’s ethos through highlighting her bien dire [eloquence] in French. Buffet adds one last point that indicates that by the third quarter of the century, Van Schurman’s fame was beginning to rest more on hearsay and less on a direct reading of Colletet’s translation. Van Schurman’s ‘memory’, she writes, ‘will become eternal among these People [from Holland, Flanders, and Germany] who know her better than the French, who speak of her only through hearsay’.113 Even Jacquette Guillaume, who bases herself on the Question celebre, misstates the year of her birth and claims that she had died in 1660.114 Van Schurman had acquired in the 1660s a legendary cast in French literary circles. Conclusion Comparing the Van Schurman–Rivet Latin letters with Colletet’s mondain version leads one to conclude that the latter undercut Van Schurman’s rhetorical and dialectical achievement. Her dissenting letters to Rivet broke new ground. Rhetorically, she manoeuvred on two fronts: she applied to the familiar letter a forensic model of rhetoric (the contentio), while constructing with her opponent qua ‘père d’alliance’ a conversational model of exchange (the sermo). Rivet continued to operate in a hierarchical mode of communication as befitting his status and ideology. Jane Donawerth explains that the ‘hierarchical voice’ produces a mode of interaction that is ‘a highly structured form, where goals are specific and each person’s task explicitly limited, under the leadership of a senior group member’.115 Van Schurman, for her part, developed an anti-hierarchical voice, founded on a give and take that blended two distinct rhetorical forms, the contentio and the sermo, to question Rivet’s auctoritas in denying a classically based education to girls. Female predecessors who debated with male interlocutors the topic of women’s advanced learning – for instance, Helisenne de Crenne in her Invective Letters (1539), Charlotte de Brachart in her Harangue (1604), and Marie de Gournay in The Equality of Men and Women (1622) – employed genres different from the familiar letter. Crenne’s fictive letters, Brachart’s protestation, and Gournay’s essay all use a ‘rhetoric of combat’ founded largely on provocation, ad hominem attack, refutation, pathos, and even verbal violence.116 The familiar letter, on the other hand, with its link to conversation, enabled Van Schurman to defend publicly her educational ideals and secure at the same time the continuing trust of a well-known figure in the Republic of Letters. He protected her ethos by mediating her judgement to the wider public. She engaged in polemical discourse

113

 Buffet, 244.  Guillaume, 282. 115  Donawerth 2005, 119. 116  Winn 1999. 114

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using a deliberative rhetoric, but maintained the proprieties required by sermo for them to communicate amicably with each other. Therein lays the political efficacy of Van Schurman’s appeal and lasting legacy. She did not try to alter social structures, a transformative change that would come about historically much later. She participated instead in the early development of a rights discourse by creating a precedent for women, the right to attain serious knowledge and appropriate a rhetoric constituting a form of political influence. She operated in a late humanist world in regard to women’s education: she was among the first to recognize women as individuals, and to link individual women’s needs and experiences to those of women as a group. She spoke with authority of the equal rational abilities of women. Bio-bibliographers recognized the respect male scholars in the Republic of Letters accorded her. Louis Jacob spoke of her ‘estroite amitié’ [‘close friendship’] with the most influential scholars of her time. Marguerite Buffet noted that she was ‘consulted’ on difficult points of theology.117 She also achieved a special standing among select salonnières and educational reformers such as Mme de Motteville, Jacquette Guillaume, and Marguerite Buffet. A skilled dialectician, Van Schurman avoided Querelle des femmes polemical arguments for and against the superiority of women in her analysis of the false conclusions that her opponent and common opinion upheld. As a ‘logical feminist’,118 she did not argue for the superiority of women, or their equality, but more powerfully, for equality of access to knowledge.

 Jacob, ‘Eloge de Mademoiselle de Schurman’, in Question celebre, 100; Buffet,

117

244.

118

 Dorlin, 13.

Chapter 5

Publishing the Savante Reader, you must not believe that this most Noble Maiden voluntarily advances into the public eye; she does not advance herself willingly, but is being promoted by those who have decided that it is in the public’s best interest, lest such great virtue be completely hidden at home. And, indeed, the things that are on display for you here have been wrested away from her, rather than obtained from her by asking. Frederik Spanheim, ‘To the Reader’ (1648)1 Any day now, I will allow them [my letters] to be entrusted [to Elzevier]. I cannot refrain from asking you that you make them available. Van Schurman to Rivet (1640)2

Print publication made possible the rapid dissemination of Anna Maria van Schurman’s writings. A first glance, however, at the prefaces and dedications of her works depict her as a reluctant author. As the first epigraph indicates, her editor emphasized her resistance to having her letters printed. Pierre Yvon stated that: she was so far from wanting to show herself off or make known or valued what she knew, that the public would have known little of her had three persons whom she respected highly for their piety as well as their knowledge not drawn her with a certain force from her private life.3

These three persons were Voetius, Rivet, and her editor Frederik Spanheim. Marie du Moulin likewise explained to Conrart that Van Schurman ‘always hid her marvellous works in her cabinet and would have remained unknown had her most familiar friends not given birth to her fame’.4 But the story of her editorial journey is more complicated. We need to consider three key facets of early modern print publication: the passage from manuscript circulation, or ‘scribal publication’, to print; the rhetoric of modesty, integral to authorial presentation; and the constraints on women like Van Schurman who published their correspondence. The shift during the early modern period from manuscript circulation to print technology continued well into the seventeenth century. Manuscript circulation  Opuscula, 3. All citations from the Opuscula are in Latin, unless otherwise stated.  Van Schurman to Rivet, Latin letter dated 18 July 1640, in A Collection of Seventy four letters […], The Hague, KB, ms. 133 B 8. All citations from A Collection are in Latin, unless otherwise stated. 3  Yvon 1263, column 1. 4  Marie du Moulin to Conrart, [January] 1647, in Un tournoi, 51. 1 2

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remained a primary mode of communication, particularly among the networks of the Republic of Letters where correspondences flourished in manuscript rather than published form.5 Margaret Ezell argues three important points on this transition from manuscript to print for women writers. First, present-day definitions of private as personal and public as published do not concur with the nature of the readership of manuscript texts, which were widely circulated and copied: The text, although not universally available to any purchasing reader, nevertheless engages in a social function; as a medium of social exchange, neither public nor private in the conventional sense, it allowed women to express their views on a wider range of public and social matters.6

Thus women’s letters which were circulated and copied showed them actively engaged in the public discursive practices of their time. They did not need print publication to ensure that their ideas reached an audience. Second, the mode of dealing with a writer who preferred manuscript circulation to print publication has been to explain this preference negatively in one of two ways: either the writer was prevented from publishing for social, political, or domestic reasons; or was so ‘unskilled that no printer could be found to meet the author’s unfulfilled need’.7 But manuscript circulation was often the preferred mode of communication, especially for lettres missives by royal, noble, and upper-gentry women and men that have survived in countless family and national archives. Finally, the problem of the piracy of a text – that is, the print publication of a text in an area protected by a privilege and without its author’s knowledge, consent, or oversight – must be addressed in analysing the shift to print technology. Authors frequently resorted to printing an authorized text in order to nullify a previous, often mangled, and/or pirated, edition. Ezell’s three points can be fruitfully applied to Van Schurman’s relation to print publication. First, Van Schurman may not have needed print publication to communicate her ideas; yet, from the moment in March 1636 when she stood before a vast audience in Utrecht to read her Latin poem on the inauguration of the newly founded university, she was destined for a career in print publication; her poem was instantly published, making her famous throughout the Dutch Republic and beyond its borders.8 Second, her editors cast her in their prefaces as a reluctant author preferring manuscript circulation; but her unpublished Latin letters to Rivet indicate the opposite in that she wanted her ideas to reach a vast 5  The continuing importance of manuscript publication well up to 1700 is the subject of a host of studies, among them Love; Ezell 1999; Beal; and Hackel. 6  Ezell 1999, 38–9. 7  Ezell 1999, 43. 8  Schotel, 1: 92, describes the rush of praise poems heaped on Van Schurman over her Latin ode. Schotel, chapter 5, and Beek 2010, 54, date her European fame to this publishing event.

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audience through publication with Elzevier, the most sought-out publisher of the period.9 Finally, following the error-ridden first edition in 1638 in Paris of her Amica Dissertatio, she deliberately pursued the course of having a new authorized text printed because she wanted to nullify the unauthorized one and communicate her ideas to her audience in the best possible light. For Van Schurman, it could be argued, going public in print meant overcoming a certain ‘innato pudore’ [‘innate shyness’] and ‘virginali modestia’ [‘maidenly modesty’], as she once put it to Rivet.10 Yet such expressions frequently occur in women’s writings of the period; so much so that, as Patricia Pender aptly notes, ‘they constitute some of the most representative and anthologized moments of this literature’. Pender warns that to view these admissions as autobiographical instances imposes upon them an anachronistic reading. Women’s (and men’s) use of modesty tropes was grounded in the classical strategies of self-effacement propounded by Cicero (On Invention and On the Orator), Quintilian (The Orator’s Education), and the preface to the anonymous Rhetorica ad Herennium (ca. 90 bc), the most popular rhetorical treatise of the early modern period. Modesty rhetorical tropes functioned as ‘authorial alibis’, providing ‘an excuse, a pretext, a plea of innocence’ to early modern strictures against female authorship.11 Lastly, the material conditions of the passage of Van Schurman’s books into print, the reasons for her apparent resistance, and the rationale that her editors impressed upon her in their prefatory texts to ‘pressure’ her into consenting are all emblematic in this historical period of social attitudes toward publishing women. Women who corresponded with learned men exhibited modesty to the point of self-deprecation, even refusing acknowledgement of their correspondence. The philosopher Anne Finch Conway (1631–79), for example, wrote to the Cambridge Neo-Platonist Henry More (1614–87), who had just dedicated a book to her: ‘I could not read what you have published without blushing … being conscious to myself of not deserving that commendation you would seem to give me there’.12 Conway presents herself as ‘blushing’ to More’s published praise of her; she uses the trope of unworthiness to denigrate her status as an intellectual. Furthermore, one of the conditions she sets for engaging in an epistolary philosophical correspondence with More is that it be kept ‘secret’, meaning that she did not want it divulged to the larger public.13 Mary Astell, apparently distressed at the Oxford theologian-philosopher John Norris’s insistence on publishing her letters to him, protested that this would compromise her ‘beloved Obscurity, which I court, and doat on above all Earthly Blessings’.14 She claims here a preference for otium, the life of philosophical retirement, thereby using a standard modesty trope  Schurman, A Collection of Seventy four letters […], KB, ms. 133 B 8.  Van Schurman to Rivet, 24 March 1638, Opuscula, 93. 11  Pender, 1, 3. 12  Hutton 2004, 29. 13  Hutton 2004, 28. 14  Cited in Sutherland, 51. 9

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recommended in the preface to Rhetorica ad Herennium.15 She consented at last, provided that her name not appear anywhere in the book, even in initials. Easing a learned woman’s letters into the book market was of the utmost importance. The editor ‘negotiated’ a woman’s authorship to legitimize her literary standing and moral reputation which could be damaged if her writings were subjected to improper editing and if she were perceived as vainglorious. One of the most noted features in women’s writings of the period was the twin notion of the reluctant author and the forced publication. Editors frequently used the rhetorical figure of paralipsis, the pretended denial of what was actually affirmed. As a defensive device, it allowed not ‘to call specifically to the attention of others a matter best left unstated’.16 Editors, furthermore, permitted, perhaps even encouraged, women authors to embed in their texts their negotiative transactions with them. Van Schurman included in her major publication, the Opuscula, a letter to her editor wherein she defends her authorship. But she also withheld letters which indicate that she actively sought publication, a practice best hidden since it ran counter to the editorial trope of modesty. A comparison of her published and manuscript letters uncovers a fascinating dynamic exposing the type of resistance to publication expected from an early modern woman. In this chapter I shall examine the strategies she and her editors used to ease her letters into the book market, as well as her authorial fashioning, and the kind of textual control she exercised. In the process I aim to uncover her skilful use of modesty rhetoric, which belies as in a trompe l’oeil effect the attitude of reluctant author so evident in the prefatory texts to her writings. Early Published Writings The founding of the University of Utrecht in 1636 led to her first publications. Her Latin ode, Inclytæ et antiquæ urbi Trajectinæ Nova Academia nuperrimè donatæ gratulatur Anna Maria à Schurman [Anna Maria Van Schurman congratulates the famous and ancient city of Utrecht with its recently founded university], and her French composition, Remarque d’Anne Marie de Schurman, were published in a commemorative volume of the professors’ inaugural speeches.17 Her Dutch poem on the inauguration was appended to an impressive 90-page quarto volume containing four parts: a preface by Voetius, ‘Aen den Christelijchen Leser’ [‘To the Christian Reader’]; his 58-page sermon entitled Sermon on the Usefulness of Academies and Schools, and of the Sciences and the Arts that are taught therein; a catalogue of the universities and academies of various European countries with

 Rhetorica ad Herennium, I.i (3). On this trope, see Dunn, 5; Pender, 20.  Rhetorica ad Herennium, IV. 27 (321). 17  Academiae Ultrajectinae inauguratio unà cum orationibus inauguralibus (Utrecht: Aegidius and Petrus Roman, 1636). 15 16

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their inauguration dates; and a second catalogue listing the names of professors at the Illustrious Schools in those countries.18 Soon after the inauguration, she reminisced with the poet-theologian Jacobus Revius on her feelings about this publishing milestone. She states that her Latin verses, which she encloses with her letter, ‘have always pleased me as a poet’.19 But she then comments on the dangers of too great a fame, which she foresees will beset her on their account: ‘Let me tell thee, he who has hidden well his life, has lived well.’ But I am not unaware that the mores of this century are taking us by force somewhere else; and also the torrent of opinions, as it were.20

She quotes here a line from Ovid’s Tristia, a collection of elegies written by Ovid from exile to regain favour with Emperor Augustus, who had expelled him from Rome.21 In the same manner as Ovid with Augustus, she wants to regain Revius’s favour after her long silence. The defensive subtext to this line is that her poems in praise of the newly founded university have garnered so much publicity that she can no longer retreat to her former partial obscurity. (Her Latin poem was distributed to all attendees at the inauguration ceremonies, making her an overnight sensation.) The line cited from the Tristia comes from a chapter entitled ‘To a Friend – In Warning’, which continues with the admonition, ‘each man ought to remain within his proper position’. Ovid concludes: ‘Live unenvied, pass years of comfort apart from fame.’22 Van Schurman’s citation captures, it seems, her discomfort at her fame and her fear of envy. In citing Ovid, however, she also expertly uses one of the most famous tropes of modesty rhetoric: just as Ovid invokes his preference for otium over negotium in his desire for philosophical retirement, so she states her desire for the contemplative life and its accompanying denial of fame and glory. A second early work, her philosophical and theological letter treatise De Vitae Termino [On the End of Life], soon followed. Its publication presented again an occasion for her to mobilize modesty. She figures prominently in the title of Johan van Beverwijck’s collective volume Epistolary question on the end of Life, destined or changeable? With Scholarly Responses […] to which is added the same topic by the most Noble and Learned Maiden Anna Maria van Schurman

18  Utrecht: Aegidius and Petrus Roman, 1636. For the translation of the Latin ode, see Beek 2002a, 286–7. On the Dutch poem, see Beek 1992, 54–63. 19  Van Schurman to Jacobus Revius, Latin letter dated 31 March 1636, in Schotel, 2: 106–7. See Appendix 1.4. 20  Schotel, 2: 106–7. 21  Ovid, 3. 4. line 25 (117). 22  Ovid, 3. 4. line 26 (117); 3. 4. line 43 (119).

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(1639).23 Her ambitious letter treatise attracted attention. It answers two questions: how can one reconcile the ‘hour and type of death decreed from all eternity for all men’, when, as part of the changing nature of the universe, this ‘limit appears changeable, and can be prolonged’? And, of what use are physicians in the face of death? In other words, should human beings make use of science to prolong life, a question of great relevance even today? She replies that although the end of life is decreed by God, this end or limit is produced freely and contingently in the manner in which the death occurs. Physicians are essential in ‘moderating the virulence of illnesses, soothing pains, and reawakening natural strength’.24 She supports her arguments with ample references from Stoic, Sceptic, Ciceronian, Platonic, Judaic, Muslim, and early Christian works. Of the 24 invited contributors who participated in the three parts of Van Beverwijck’s published symposium, she was the only woman. Her reaction to Van Beverwijck’s publication possibly of her letter treatise, or perhaps another piece she wrote, illustrates again her deft handling of classical tropes of self-effacement: You extol my little letter with a praise that is far above what it deserves. And you write that you judge it to be among the great monuments of great men. I could not disagree more with you. It is so far from the little bit of honour that I attribute to my own little work that I can barely allow it to be granted the light of day, if it were not that I should yield to the frequent urgings of my friends rather than to my own judgement.25

Minimizing her work, she states twice how ‘little’ it is; she judges it unworthy of public exposure, and uses the rhetorical ploy of shifting responsibility for its publication onto her friends. Publishing in Paris: The Amica Dissertatio (1638) The next major publishing event in Van Schurman’s editorial journey occurred when an unauthorized edition of her letters to Rivet was published in Paris. Her experience on this occasion would give her invaluable insight into the recourse and necessary negotiative strategies an author had to undertake to obtain redress. The Amica Dissertatio is extremely rare. Pieta van Beek has identified a copy at the Kongelige Bibliotek in Copenhagen. She describes it as of poor quality and design, with incorrectly dated letters and printing errors. Even the content 23  Beverwijck 1639. Further editions followed in 1644 and 1665, with a Dutch translation in 1639 and 1647. 24  Van Schurman to Van Beverwijck, 8 February 1639, in De Vitae Termino, translated into French in Schurman 1730, 23. On the translator, see the Epilogue in this volume. For an overview of Van Schurman’s essay, see O’Neill 1998, 8: 558. 25  Van Schurman to Van Beverwijck, April 1643, in Opuscula, 209.

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Figure 5.1

Van Schurman, Amica Dissertatio (1638). Bibliothèque Sainte-Geneviève, Paris. Photo: A. Larsen

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of the letters was altered.26 There are three other copies which I have located at the Bibliothèque Sainte-Geneviève in Paris (Figure 5.1). The first, bound with 14 other texts, has 46 misplaced pages; the liminary texts – the preface to the reader, the extract of the royal privilège, and a letter by Rivet to Van Schurman – are all placed at the end. The second copy lacks a title page and liminary verses. The third, also 46 pages and in the correct order, is bound with five other texts.27 A description of this third copy will help us see what Van Schurman may have found so objectionable – aside from its being unauthorized – and how she then took deliberate steps to ensure that it be properly edited. This correctly ordered and complete copy of the Amica Dissertatio contains: (1) A one-page notice to the reader by Charles du Chesne, the editor of the Amica Dissertatio. Du Chesne, 28 a court physician of King Louis XIII, states that since the printing of the work, he has received letters from Rivet on his protégée’s progress in Hebrew, Syriac, and Arabic; on her calligraphy in several scripts; and on the fact ‘that she always comports herself with her usual modesty. And all this at the age of 27 or 28’. Did Rivet also send him his and her letters on women’s education, and did he give him the idea of publishing them? Or did the contents of the Amica Dissertatio find their way by another route to Du Chesne, who then decided to publish them? (2) Five brief liminary eulogies of Van Schurman, one in French and the other four in Latin. The Neo-Latin poet Jean de Peyrarède wrote three of these. These praise poems were later republished in the same order in Van Schurman’s Dissertatio (1641). (3) Van Schurman’s Latin ode on the founding of the University of Utrecht, followed by Caspar Barlaeus’s eulogy of her inauguration poem, entitled ‘From the Poems of Caspar Barlaeus, on the masculine verses of the astonishing maiden, with which the city of Utrecht is congratulated on the new Academy’. (4) Domenico Gilberto da Cesena’s panegyric on Van Schurman (1642).29 26

 Beek 2010, 111.  Amica Dissertatio, Bibliothèque Sainte-Geneviève. The call numbers of the first two copies are 8 D 11079 (P. 13) and 8 M SUP 20 RES. The third, in the correct paginated order, is 8OEE 342 INV 655 RES (P. 5). The Bibliothèque Mazarine also owns an incomplete and incorrectly ordered copy (8E 28375-5). 28  Charles du Chesne (or Duchesne), according to Pierre de L’Étoile, 4: 287–313, compiled A True story of what happened during the trip of King Henri IV from Dieppe to his return, since the death of King Henry III. By Charles Duchesne, Physician of the King, present then & serving his Majesty. Du Chesne was probably a Huguenot. See Kahn, 235n28. 29  See Gilberto. The copy of his Fama Trionfante at the Houghton Library, Harvard University, states Paris as the place of publication; the copy at the BnF states Rome. Du Chesne may have obtained a manuscript copy of the panegyric from Gabriel Naudé, who frequently travelled to Rome. 27

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(5) Van Schurman’s poem responding to rumours that she had translated Honoré d’Urfé’s pastoral romance L’Astrée, entitled A Defence of Anna Maria van Schurman against the erroneous rumours according to which, because of the homonymy of the name of Van Schurman, she is thought to have translated d’Urfé’s Astrée from French into Dutch. (6) A second preface by Du Chesne, dated 1 October 1638, who praises the virtues of Van Schurman, ‘le miracle de son sexe’, whom curious readers are eager to meet. Du Chesne emphasizes her rare knowledge of eloquence and oriental languages: ‘We have recognized in our time Stars that remained hidden until now; one can say that she has fortunately discovered the most hidden mysteries of eloquence, as well as imitated Oriental pearls.’30 He notes that one can easily gauge her command of these languages from her printed oeuvre in Greek, Latin, Hebrew, and French, and from her selfportrait, and that her calligraphic transcriptions of biblical quotations and aphorisms are avidly sought out. He concludes that he is not merely praising her as a way to thank her for agreeing to read his work Le Philosophe Chrestien [The Christian Philosopher]; rather, he invokes ‘the right of friendship and virtue’, which requires him to give glory to God whose brilliance ‘shines in this subject with a singular piety, modesty, wisdom, and proper adornment’. (7) The extract from the royal privilège, dated 12 November 1638, indicating that permission to print was given directly to Van Schurman, rather than her editor. As we will learn, she could not have been the one to ask for the royal privilège, and, moreover, she would have found such a printed admission problematic, even shocking. (8) Rivet’s letter, ‘A noble et vertueuse Damoiselle, Madamoiselle Anne Marie de Schurman’, where he chides her for remaining hidden in her cabinet when she should be allowing others to benefit from her knowledge: I know that your disposition is not to seek attention to yourself, and that in communicating with few people the knowledge of the graces that God has given you, which are exceedingly rare in your sex and in our century, you are content to remain hidden, and are drawn out of your cabinet only by force. Your modesty, which is praiseworthy, must not hold back those to whom you have done the favour of allowing you to be seen in your Works, to testify both their approval and their admiration, and to publish the fact that in this country lives a wise and modest maiden, who can converse in Latin and Greek with the learned, and communicates with them through well-apportioned letters, written with a skilful hand equalling those written by the best writers.

Du Chesne found this letter in Rivet’s collection of sermons, L’Instruction préparatoire à la Sainte Cène [The Preparatory Instruction to Holy  Du Chesne, ‘Au Lecteur’, in Amica Dissertatio, n.p.

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Communion, 1634], to which it served as dedicatory letter.31 Rivet’s request that Van Schurman come willingly out of ‘hiding’ was useful to Du Chesne, who, in his prefatory letter, likens her to a hidden ‘star’ whom he has newly discovered. (9) The three letters by Van Schurman and Rivet on the education of women dated the same as in the Dissertatio and the Opuscula. The third letter – Van Schurman’s reply – includes a postscript found in the manuscript collection of Van Schurman’s letters at The Hague, but left out of the Dissertatio and the Opuscula. Thus Du Chesne must have had in hand a copy of the original manuscript letters. Van Schurman had heard as early as March 1638 that an edition of her letters was being prepared – the Amica Dissertatio appeared in November of that year. In her postscript she warns Rivet that her letters, lacking his approval, cannot be useful to the public or bring her fame: From my friends I hear that certain bits of my little trifles were gathered into an Edition; regarding this I beg you earnestly not to pay any attention to them. For, indeed, you know that even if one were to eliminate the least important of these, none of what I have written to you so far has been commended by a distinguishing mark [of approval], so that of these [trifles] none can hope to accede to either public usefulness or fame and reputation for me. All of us here send from our heart the friendliest of greetings.32

Van Schurman is eager for more news about this edition of their joint letters. She deftly enfolds her request to know more about it in modesty rhetoric whereby she contrasts the unworthiness of her ‘little trifles’ with the ‘distinguishing mark’ of Rivet’s judgement, implicitly suggesting that her primary wish is to gratify him. The Anomalous Author’s Privilege A little more than a year following the publication of the Amica Dissertatio (1638), Van Schurman thanked Charles du Chesne for the edition, while also indicating that it should have remained ‘hidden beneath the cloak of friendship’. She adds: If My Lord the Cardinal thinks otherwise, that is a pure effect of his noble goodness in inciting my little Muse to higher conceptions, and not of his incomparable mind which cannot be susceptible to an opinion that is hardly tenable.33

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 Beek 2010, 110–11.  Postscript to Van Schurman’s final reply to Rivet on 14 [24] March 1638, KB, ms. 133 B 8, no. 16. 33  Van Schurman to Charles du Chesne, French letter dated 28 February 1640, KB, ms. 133 B 8 no. 77. 32

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Van Schurman had apparently received a letter from Du Chesne stating that Cardinal Richelieu had approved the publication. But she was likely profoundly dismayed when she finally received a copy of the work from France. It contains egregious typographical errors,34 and there is no publisher on the title page (publishers were obligated by law to include their name).35 She would have especially disapproved of the royal privilège given directly to her rather than the editor, thus showing the world that she had actively participated in the publication of her work. Not only had she not sought its publication, but from the manuscript postscript to her 14 March 1638 letter to Rivet, she knew little about it. The matter of the royal privilège accorded directly to her was a special source of concern and potential danger to her reputation. There are two reasons: first, as a noble woman, she would have been loath to be seen as requesting a privilège on grounds that she was not in the business of making and selling books; and, second, a privilège accorded to a woman author was an exceptional occurrence in France throughout the seventeenth century, and virtually non-existent in the first half of the century.36 The royal privilège was obligatory in France: it had an economic purpose, to protect the author and publisher from counterfeited copies; and, on account of royal censorship, it helped control the printing industry.37 To obtain a privilège, a requête [petition] was submitted to the royal chancery to get the manuscript evaluated by an official censor. After delivering his verdict, the censor either allowed or forbade lettres patentes [Letters Patent] conferring a book privilege. Letters Patent went out in the king’s name, authenticated by the royal seal and the signature of a royal secretary. Normally the authorized privilège was granted either to the author or to the publisher. The privilège à l’auteur, however, a frequent occurrence at the beginning of the sixteenth century, became progressively rarer during the course of the century and was finally replaced by the privilège to the publisher. It reappeared in the second quarter of the seventeenth century, and finally became the norm for authors only at the end of the century.38 When Van Schurman’s Amica Dissertatio appeared in 1638, the author’s privilège was still fairly underutilized. In 1636, only 20 per cent of the 122 privilèges granted that year were given directly to authors, and the rest to publishers; in 1645 the rate was 43 per cent to authors. 34  Errors include, for instance, the misspelling several times of her name as ‘Schurmen’. 35  Viala 1985, 95. 36  The privilège à l’auteur [author’s privilege] for a woman was just as exceptional in the sixteenth century. Louise Labé and the Dames du Verger are the only women known to date to have directly requested one. See Lazard, 122; Le Verger fertile des vertus […] (1595), 134. 37  The following sketch is indebted to Schapira 2002; and 2003, chapter 2. Other sources on book privileges include, for instance, Viala 1985, 94–103; Martin 1999, 1: 440–70; and Dock. 38  Schapira 2002, 124.

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Authors were reluctant to request directly the permission to publish. Guez de Balzac, for instance, insisted that his editor obtain it, until his colleagues Conrart and Chapelain advised him, in 1637, to request it for himself ‘parce qu’il vous est plus honorable’ [‘because it is more honourable for you’]; a privilège in the king’s name meant an enhanced social identity for the gens de lettres who frequented the salons.39 Descartes, also, to safeguard his anonymity, did not request a privilège à l’auteur for his Discourse on Method (1637). In a letter to Mersenne, whom he had charged with requesting a privilege, he distinguishes between the privilège proper, connected with the selling of books, and the permission to publish, connected with royal censorship: ‘It seems that you want to force me to become a maker and seller of books, which is neither my temperament nor my profession.’ He was interested only in the permission to print, since ‘ the privilège is for the editor, who fears that others may counterfeit his copies, which holds no interest for the author’.40 Van Schurman’s reservations concerning the privilège à l’auteur may have been informed by prejudices associated with rank. But even more significantly, a privilège accorded to a woman was exceptional. The act of publishing for a woman implied a ‘dévoilement’ [unveiling] and an exposure ‘absolutely contrary to the law of bienséance’.41 In her study of the privilège in the works of some 30 seventeenth-century French women writers, Edwige Keller-Rahbé describes four distinct practices that governed the publication of women’s works.42 Most commonly, the woman writer’s name appeared on the title page but not in the extract of the privilège, thereby enforcing the separation between the writer whose work was the product of leisure and the publisher seeking commercial profit. A second variation was the privilège granted to a male family member, friend, or sponsor. Madeleine de Scudéry’s brother, George de Scudéry, for instance, signed her works and took care of the privilège; even at the end of a long and successful writing career, she continued this practice, requesting a family member, the Sieur de Goutimesnil-Martel, to take care of the privilège for her Conversations morales (1686). A third practice involved the collaboration of author and publisher, with the author’s name on the title page and both names in the extract of the privilège. The author in this case did not fully assume responsibility for the publication. Mlle de Beaulieu, for example, shared the privilège for her novel L’Histoire de la Chiaramonte (1603) with her publisher, Jean Richier. Finally, the privilege à l’auteur was the rarest of the four practices. It was so rare in fact that when Gabrielle Suchon requested the permission to publish Le Celibat volontaire [On Voluntary Celibacy, 1698], the official registry of the chamber of syndicated 39  Schapira 2002, 125. This contested ‘honour’ suggests that print authorship among the elite was still in transition. 40  Descartes to Mersenne, 27 April 1637, in Descartes 1964–71, 1: 363. Cited in Schapira 2002, 126. See Clarke 2006, 139. 41  Keller-Rahbé, 70. According to Maître 2001, 1: 258–9, ‘a woman who deals openly and directly with the printers seems almost necessarily lost in reputation’. 42  Keller-Rahbé, 72–4.

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publishers miswrote the entry: ‘Damoiselle Gabrielle Suchon presented us Letters of Privilege granted to him by his Majesty for the edition of a book entitled Le Celibat volontaire for a period of ten years.’43 The masculine personal pronoun ‘him’ was later corrected and changed to the pronoun ‘her’, thereby indicating the inveterate masculine nature of the royal privileges. The very few literary women who requested an author’s privilege did so for the most part under a pseudonym – the writer of fairy tales, Mme d’Aulnoy, for instance, signed her works as Madame D** – and all of them, with the exception of one only, Marie de Gournay, were concentrated in the last three decades of the century.44 Marie de Gournay requested a privilege for five of her works between 1619 and 1634.45 It is important at this juncture to understand why she was the exception so that we can better access the anomaly of an author’s privilege supposedly granted to Van Schurman. What conditions enabled Gournay to solicit a privilège in her name, and how does her request inform her authorial trajectory as a woman of letters? Gournay’s publishing career included at its outset her editorial work for the well-known Parisian libraire Abel L’Angelier. L’Angelier published in 1595 a posthumous copy of Montaigne’s essays which Montaigne’s widow had entrusted to Gournay; in her role as Montaigne’s fille d’alliance, she edited it for L’Angelier. Gournay would continue to produce over her long life a stream of editions of the Essais published in France and abroad. Herein lies a major difference between Gournay and other literary women whose authorship is a product of an alliance of male editors, publishers, printers, and correctors: Gournay is herself the editor and corrector of her books. She apparently edited and corrected them in the typographical workshops where they were produced. Jean Balsamo indicates that after her mother’s death in 1591, Gournay was in such dire financial straits that she probably became a corrector for a printer hired by L’Angelier, making her ‘a unique case in the Parisian publishing industry of her time’, where women were known to occupy themselves with sales, but never as workers in the exclusively male typographical workshop.46 So Gournay corrected the errors in her works in the printing shop. The last edition of her collected works, Les Advis (1641), includes the extract of the royal privilege and her foreword to the reader in which 43

 Keller-Rahbé, 74, emphasis added.  In the last three decades of the seventeenth century, published women who requested an author’s privilege (Antoinette Deshoulières, Marie-Catherine de Villedieu, Catherine Bernard, Marie-Catherine d’Aulnoy, Marie-Jeanne L’Héritier, and Louise-Geneviève de Sainctonge) frequented the same salons and courted the same publisher, Claude Barbin (cited in Keller-Rahbé, 78). In the 1660s two women only requested a privilège d’auteur, Elisabeth-Marie Clément for her Dialogue de la princesse sçavante […] (1664); and Marie Meurdrac for La Chimie charitable […] (1666). 45  These works included Versions de quelques pieces … (1619), Traductions (1621), Alinda (1623), L’Ombre (1626 and 1627), and Les Advis, ou, Les Presens (1634). For Gournay’s privilèges, see Gournay 2002b, 2: Annexe VII. Cited in Keller-Rahbé, 77. 46  Balsamo, 132. 44

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her editorial agency is centre stage.47 Beneath the privilege a line was added indicating that Gournay herself delivered the book to her publisher. Then, in her preface, Gournay warns her readers that: it is not so much the nonchalance of the Printers, which gives you these errors, nor even that of a poor elderly woman who, in correcting her own Work on the press, always believes that she is reading what she wrote; for it is the destiny of Printing, that it can never be exempt [of errors].48

She entreats her readers to correct any further errors on their own copy. Thus Gournay’s professional years of work as reader, editor, and corrector shaped her professional writing career, a situation entirely unique to a seventeenth-century woman author. She sought as much control as possible over her texts to ensure that every aspect of their editorial creation was to her satisfaction. Soliciting a privilège à l’auteur fit into her editorial agenda. None of these conditions applied to Van Schurman, making the author’s privilege in her name a total anomaly. The Aftermath of the Amica Dissertatio Eighteen months after the publication of the defective work, Van Schurman wrote to Rivet that the collective reaction around her was that a new edition had to be arranged: Here, in this city, there are eminent men, who want very much a new edition of them, especially since the earlier version was so full of errors that they could barely stand being published again in such an ugly manner.

She suggests that Rivet request from Du Chesne a newly corrected version which would include a few more of her letters in French: If in this matter there is to be any gratification at all, perhaps we will add one or two letters written in plain French. You will send an example of these to the most eminent man Charles du Chesne if you have one to show.49

She was at this point thinking that the new edition would come from Du Chesne. That summer, however, she received from a friend the unexpected glad news that the famed Elzevier publishing firm in Leiden wished to bring out a new edition of her letters – the Dissertatio which Elzevier published in 1641. In joyous  See Extraict du Privilege du Roy, in Gournay 2002b, 1: 572.  Gournay 2002b, 1: 573. Emphasis added. 49  Van Schurman to Rivet, 15 April 1640, KB, ms. 133 B 8 no. 21. In describing Du Chesne’s edition of her letters, Van Schurman uses the term ‘vitiosa’ whose meanings include ‘ugly’, ‘corrupt’, ‘vicious’, ‘full of faults’, ‘defective’, and ‘morally depraved’. 47 48

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expectation, she encourages Rivet to release her letters, stating: ‘Any day now, I will allow them to be entrusted [to Elzevier]. I cannot refrain from asking you that you make them available.’ She herself added a couple of letters at the suggestion of friends ‘because of the similarity to our argument’. She concludes: ‘If further progress should be made, I give my permission now for the publication of all the rest of the letters.’50 To overcome any possible resistance on his part, she informs him that the ‘famous’ Johan van Beverwijck was releasing his copies of her letters so they could be added to the new volume. Van Schurman’s palpable thrill at being published by Elzevier was due to the very high regard in which this publishing family dynastic firm was held throughout Europe. Publication by Elzevier was a signal achievement. Its greatest fame was achieved between 1622 and 1652 under the partnership of Bonaventura and Abraham Elzevier, their successors never equalling their accomplishments.51 They were perfect publishers for Van Schurman’s writings in multiple languages. Soon after their appointment as Leiden University printers, they acquired, upon the death in 1624 of the orientalist professor Thomas van Erpe (Erpenius), an oriental press with Syriac, Chaldean, Ethiopic, Arabic, Hebrew, and Greek fonts. They were thus able to publish nearly half of all the scholarly books issued in Leiden during their tenure. In the last decade of their 30-year partnership, they also held a monopoly in the publication of French titles, reaching 50 per cent of their total output. They specialized in the small octavo book format, which proved immensely profitable, accounting for 42 per cent of their output. They marketed their books directly at sales counters all over Europe, especially Germany and France. They were revered in Paris; Johannes Elzevier, son of Abraham, when arriving in Paris in 1638 to complete his education, was welcomed with open arms by members of the Cabinet Dupuy, Chapelain, Conrart, and Chancellor Pierre Séguier among them. Conrart, as the king’s secrétaire charged with royal privilèges, would send Elzevier even manuscripts that had already been published in Paris, so appreciated was its type, paper, and output.52 Balzac and Ménage, both published by Elzevier, praised the firm to the skies for its typographical beauty. Balzac wrote in 1650 ‘I have been made a part of the immortal republic … I have been received in the society of halfgods’, while Ménage, in recognition of Elzevier’s signal favour, wrote effusively: ‘Oh elegant and exquisite types, Oh gracious and charming volume … because of you, poets will transmit the name of Elzevier from age to age.’53 Van Schurman could depend on Elzevier’s reputation for exactness and correct printings, which went a long way toward alleviating her dismay over the flawed Paris version of her letters. Professional writers were hired as correctors: the German poet, hymnist, and translator Philipp von Zesen (1619–89), for instance, 50

 Van Schurman to Rivet, 18 July 1640, KB, ms. 133 B 8 no. 22.  Davies, 75. On Elzevier, see Martin, 1: 306–16; Willems; Cruz 2009; Schapira 2003, 174. Elzevier is also spelled Elsevier and Elsevir. 52  Martin 1999, 1: 316n37. 53  Davies, 150. 51

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was a corrector in the 1650s, and possibly also during his stay in Holland from 1642 to 1648;54 Leiden professors were on the payroll – they alone could read ancient and oriental languages. Daniel Heinsius, for instance, corrected proofs for Elzevier. Several decades later, Elzevier’s policy remained unchanged; when Daniel Heinsius’s son Nicolaas complained of errors in his edition of Velleius Paterculus, Daniel Elzevier expressed utter disbelief: ‘the proofs have been read by three readers and then by yourself. If, after all that, one doesn’t succeed in printing correctly, the attempt had better be given up.’55 Publishing in Leiden: The Dissertatio (1641) Three years after the publication of Amica Dissertatio, Elzevier’s much anticipated edition of Van Schurman’s letters appeared in Leiden (Figure 5.2). It includes her treatise and letters to Rivet on female higher studies, several pages of elogia, and a two-way exchange with three noted scholars in the Dutch Republic: Adolphus Vorstius (1597–1663), a Leiden professor and a nephew of Buchelius; and Andreas Colvius (1594–1671) and Jacobus Lydius (1610–79), both ministers of the Reformed Church at Dordrecht. The Dordrecht physician Johan van Beverwijck edited the book. In both his prefatory letter to Van Schurman and his address to the reader, Van Beverwijck uses the modesty trope of the reluctant author, indicating that Van Schurman had apparently strongly ‘resisted’ publication. The arguments he marshals to legitimize the volume reveal his strategies in marketing her writings. First, in his letter to her, he draws attention to three often-cited ancient historians on a woman’s proper role – Thucydides, Tacitus, and Plutarch – for whom ‘like the body, so also the fame … of a good woman must be hidden at home; nor should it reach the public’.56 Van Schurman, however, is exceptional: she deserves fame for her extraordinary erudition. He scolds her for trying to hide and for rejecting ‘the glory that rightfully comes to such deeds [as yours]’ (4). She should not keep to herself the products of her nocturnal studies, gained at the expense of her health: That beautiful little body of yours is broken by so many sufferings, so many night vigils and insomnia. Is there so much pain that you keep hidden that you can be of benefit to no one? Do you know so many languages that you have become silent? Have you instructed that noble mind of yours with so many disciplines that you think that all those arts must remain without glory? (5)

54

 On Zesen, see Stighelen 1987b, 124.  Grafton, 103. 56  Dissertatio, 4. See Appendix 1.6. All original citations from Dissertatio are in Latin, unless otherwise stated. 55

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Figure 5.2

Van Schurman, Dissertatio (1641). Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Yale University

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His allusion to ‘nocturnal studies’, an associated modesty trope,57 makes it appear that her work was due more to extraordinary physical effort and diligence than to natural talent. Second, young women gifted with a mind above average need her as a role model to encourage them to ‘virtue and knowledge’. Just as medical knowledge should be readily available to all readers – Van Beverwijck published many how-to medical books in the vernacular58 – so higher studies should be accessible to all capable women and young girls. Finally, although her letters to Rivet had been ‘negligently’ published in Paris in an ‘unauthorized’ version, he, on the other hand, has prepared a ‘more correct’ version, and now they are coming to light ‘in a polished and elegant type’(6). He ends by informing her that Colvius and Lydius, ministers whom she trusts, have been commissioned to add elogia. In this letter, Van Beverwijck pretends to persuade Van Schurman to allow publication. His preface to the reader also reproduces the fiction of resistance by underscoring the ‘difficulties’ he encountered in obtaining her letters. He says he personally owned a copy of the Dissertatio logica that ‘someone’ had given him, but had to request the remaining letters from individuals who had themselves obtained copies from others. Furthermore, ‘these were published, not on account of her expectation of making them public or by the permission of those from whose hands they had received them; this is being done for the public good’ (7). The ‘public good’, or utility of the subject matter, a trope allied to modesty rhetoric, compelled him to work extremely hard at obtaining Van Schurman’s consent: ‘With great difficulty, at last we have obtained [permission] from her that they [the samples of her writing] will be published here in a cleaner fashion and that they will be added to her work which we are producing’ (8). Finally, his editorial mediation was crucial, he claims, in producing a print text that could nullify a previous, unacceptable version. His repeated references to the Amica Dissertatio whose text was so mangled as to be an embarrassment for Van Schurman provided in the end the determining reason for her consent. By promising a cleaner, more polished print text to nullify the counterfeit version, Van Beverwijck paved the way for her to accept publication without harming her reputation.59 Private Letters and Print Publication Van Beverwijck’s prefatory letter to Van Schurman and his preface to the reader exhibit cultural anxieties generated by the passage from manuscript to print. The prefaces of the period justified the printed text through an array of strategies found in classical modesty rhetoric, from withholding the author’s name and calling the work a youthful exercise to stating that the author was not complicitous in 57

 Pender, 23.  Gemert 1992, 100. 59  Turnovsky, 57, remarks that the editorial strategy of convincing an author to publish in order to avoid a counterfeit and / or poorly edited copy was a frequent occurrence throughout the seventeenth century. 58

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allowing the work into print.60 Authors frequently asserted the ‘private’ nature of their work, written for a coterie of friends and correspondents and not for commercial profit, public consumption, or political influence.61 Hence, even established members of the Republic of Letters in the early seventeenth century, who knew the publication potential of their work(s), either expressed reservations in print or refused publication. François de La Mothe Le Vayer (1588–1672), for instance, states in his preface to Dialogues faits à l’imitation des Anciens [Dialogues Written in Imitation of the Ancients, 1630] that his work was based on conversations held in the exclusive privacy of the gatherings at the elite Cabinet Dupuy: ‘These dialogues, which I fashioned on the Ancients, are better destined to remain in the shadows of a private cabinet than to suffer from the attention of public exposure in broad daylight.’62 The French antiquarian Nicolas-Claude Fabri de Peiresc (1580–1637) did not publish his letters, and, in fact, published very little; yet he was called ‘the General Attorney of the Republic of Letters in his own time’.63 Peiresc cultivated the image of a generous scholar solely interested in sharing information through wide manuscript circulation of his correspondence. The Dutch juror Hugo Grotius (1583–1645) refused to publish his letters or even allow others to do so for him. Salmasius and Gerardus Vossius, rector of the Athenaeum Illustre in Amsterdam, stated that their letters were confidential documents containing information pertinent to the addressee(s) alone.64 Elisabeth of Bohemia also refused the publication of her letters to Descartes, asserting their private nature and thereby ensuring her control over their circulation.65 The majority of edited correspondences of the period were posthumous, due to the publishing efforts of family members, friends, students, colleagues, and editors.66 Thus Van Beverwijck’s prefatory disclaimers function not merely as marketing tools but as legitimizing strategies to quell the anxieties associated with publishing private letters. To ease the passage of the Dissertatio into print, Van Beverwijck created a three-member editorial collective consisting of himself, Lydius, and Colvius. In 60

 On prefatory modesty rhetoric, see Dunn, chapter 1; Wall, chapter 3.  Wall, 173–5. 62  Cited in Bury 2003, 49. Bury, 1999c, states that publications on medicine, theology, and law were usually connected with the university to ensure orthodoxy in matters of doctrine; ideas discussed in academies and coteries, on the other hand, were founded on free speech and eclecticism that avoided academic specialization and orthodoxy. Given the selectivity of their audience, members of such circles favoured an exchange of ideas that remained within the parameters of ‘la pratique du secret’ [‘the practice of confidentiality’]. On this practice, especially among French Libertins érudits, see Mazauric 1999; and Charles-Daubert. 63  Bethencourt and Egmond, 1. 64  Nellen 1993, 95–6. 65  Princess Elisabeth and Descartes, 1. Elisabeth’s letters to Descartes appeared in 1879. 66  Bots and Waquet 1997, 151. 61

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such a way he made it appear that the publication was the product of a group dynamic, rather than a sole individual. The three, in consultation, selected epistolary exchanges with Van Schurman that informed the reader primarily about the arduousness of her studies. In one set of letters, Lydius and Van Schurman exegete the Scriptures on the topic of the baptism for the dead, found in I Corinthians 15:29.67 In a second and third set, Van Schurman argues with Colvius and Vorstius that they should not be so anxious about the state of her health due to what they thought were her overextended studies. Writing on Christmas Eve 1638, Vorstius warned her for her own well-being, in his quality as a ‘truthful and solicitous friend’, not to trespass the limits of what a woman could learn: Good God! You, an untouched Virgin, who does not leave untouched almost any of the disciplines? And even invades the whole world of the sciences? Leave behind, Lady, leave behind, I beg you, something for our sex, and don’t make too heavy a demand on your talent, even though it is very extensive. ‘A limit is allotted to everyone’ [in Greek] … You should put on the brakes and not break into flames.68

Vorstius includes a pointed reminder that she is always welcome to his house where she will be greeted by his ‘sweet wife Catharina’, ‘an example of chastity and modesty singular among matrons, who has borne me not ‘books’ [libros] but ‘children’ [liberos], five very sweet ones so far, may it not be a bother for you to meet her face to face’.69 Unfazed, Van Schurman replies that her studies ‘do not aspire to so sufficient a summit of erudition that they should merit a little envy from your sex’. Like a flowing river, they may ‘hold to a deeper course, nevertheless, from afar they push right below the landmark which they had set earlier for themselves’. Although everyone is allowed ‘to contend for the goal … it befalls to the very few to reach it’. She concludes: ‘If I may borrow the words of the poet, “Either just Jupiter loves them, or their own burning virtue carries them to the upper regions”.’70 Van Schurman’s reply to Vorstius’s gendered criticism is as 67  Lydius to Van Schurman, Dordrecht, April 1640, in Dissertatio, 91–4, followed by Van Schurman’s response, Utrecht, May 1640, in Dissertatio, 95–101. This letter exchange circulated widely. Buchelius included it in his Poemata Errantia, Utrecht University Library, HS 5. H. 40, 141–2v, 144–7r. 68  Vorstius to Van Schurman, Leiden, Christmas eve 1638, in Dissertatio, 76. The Greek saying, ‘A time is allotted to everyone’, or ‘For everyone there is a golden mean’, is from Pythagoras, Carmina aurea (The Golden Verses), line 38. 69  Dissertatio, 77. Vorstius references the imprint of the Dordrecht bookseller Hendrick van Esch which shows an illustration of the ‘Virgo Dordracena’ [Virgin of Dordrecht]: the streamer beneath the seated woman is inscribed with ‘Libros non Liberos Pariens’ [‘Bearing Books not Children’]. Van Esch published Van Beverwijck’s Van de wtnementheyt. 70  Van Schurman to Vorstius, Utrecht, 28 February 1639, Dissertatio, 79. The poet cited is Virgil, Aeneid, 6, lines 129–30.

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diplomatic as it is indirect: her studies lack the range needed to rival those of male scholars, since the goal she has set for herself always looms ahead, unreached. She should, therefore, not be for them an object of ‘envy’. And because her studies are all about gaining wisdom, ‘it is permitted for everyone’, including women, to study unhindered even though only a few will gain the prize. The publication of the Dissertatio was in the end a major achievement. It cancelled out the flawed 1638 edition of the Amica Dissertatio; it brought once again to the attention of the Republic of Letters Van Schurman’s theological expertise, a domain usually off-limits to women; at its core lay her treatise and letters on educating women which first heralded her fame; and its paratexts perfectly illustrated how to ease a woman’s publication into the book market. Yet the Dissertatio remains a problematic work: two of the three selected exchanges of letters focus on her health supposedly threatened by her treading on disciplines belonging to men, when in fact they expose her male correspondents’ anxieties about her; and the Dissertatio is produced by a three-member collective, giving her little control over its production. Van Schurman’s textual control over her own print texts would have to wait until the publication of her collected works, the Opuscula. Further Dealings with Du Chesne Van Schurman’s dealings with Charles du Chesne were far from over. In 1643, he requested that she translate some of her letters into French. She sent her reply with a covering letter to Rivet in which she expressed deep misgivings over Du Chesne’s request: Here is my letter which you should send to the royal Doctor, to which I have some objections, so that I can remove myself very far, and as much as possible, from the task of translating these small works into French. However, if the Queen persists in her opinion – you know how in a former letter I considered this task only in accordance with her desire71 – I do not see by what other colourful pretext I can manage her request: you will easily know this from conversing with Mr Du Chesne, who, for this reason, I thought, should be alerted.72

Van Schurman did not know for sure if the request originated with Queen Anne of Austria or with Du Chesne. Two weeks later, in a follow-up letter, her alarm is even more evident. Du Chesne, it seemed, wanted a translation of the Dissertatio, to which she is adamantly opposed. She does not see the reason for another version of the work recently published by Elzevier: ‘What I mean is that he seems to want 71

 In her previous letter to Rivet, dated 13 July 1643, KB, ms. 133 B 8, no. 31, Van Schurman assured Rivet that her first duty was to do the bidding of Queen Anne of Austria, ‘to whom I pledged my faith’. 72  Van Schurman to Rivet, 1 July 1643, KB, ms. 133 B 8, no. 32.

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to create a new version of what has already been done by someone else, and it seems to me that this is not only completely inauspicious but also superfluous.’ Finding herself in a bind – having vowed allegiance to the queen, she must be ‘careful that while I am attempting to avoid charges of arrogance, I be condemned, and rightly so, of inconstancy and frivolity’ – she proposes that Rivet find out through his friends in Paris whether it is the queen’s or Du Chesne’s wish that she translate the work. If it is Du Chesne who desires the translation, then ‘he could certainly take care of this task himself without much difficulty’.73 By August 1643, however, it seems that Van Schurman could rest easy. Rivet had asked the Protestant Princess Anne de Rohan to intervene with the queen so as to put a stop to Du Chesne’s request (Rivet knew the Rohan family from his days as chaplain in Thouars to Duc Claude de la Tremoille): ‘You brought to naught by your prudence’, she writes to Rivet on 5 August, ‘the imprudence, dare I say the vanity, that that man showered on me.’ If Rivet thought it appropriate, she would thank Anne de Rohan, ‘incomparabilis illius Heroinae’ [‘that incomparable Heroine’]. As for the queen, she would rather not write to her, ‘for you know how much I have abhorred too much fame throughout my whole life’.74 Van Schurman’s publishing experience with the Amica Dissertatio afforded her an invaluable lesson. She mustered public opinion in her home town to press for a new edition that would rectify the unacceptably flawed Paris version. The resulting book, the Dissertatio (1641), met her expectations. Two years later, in August 1643, she stood up to the pressure from Charles du Chesne to have her translate the Dissertatio, using Rivet to manoeuvre a more fitting outcome through the mediation of the Princess de Rohan with the French queen. This event had two crucial outcomes: it opened the way for Guillaume Colletet to translate into French her letters on the education of women, and it led to a brief correspondence with Anne de Rohan. Rohan sent Van Schurman a missive, no longer extant, in which she most likely referred to her mediation with the queen. Van Schurman responded on 19 August 1643, expressing her admiration for the princess and her desire to claim a spiritual covenant with her based on their shared Calvinist beliefs. This letter, the princess’s response, and another final reply by Van Schurman were included in the Opuscula.75 73

 Van Schurman to Rivet, 15 July 1643, KB, ms. 133 B 8, no. 31.  Van Schurman to Rivet, 5 August 1643, KB, ms. 133 B 8, no. 33. 75  Van Schurman’s final reply in French to the princess, on 13 November 1643, Opuscula, 297–300, was handed over to Rivet, so that he could send it to France. Van Schurman enclosed with her reply to Rohan an unpublished Latin letter to Rivet, dated 15 November 1643, KB, ms. 133 B 8, no. 35, where she states that Du Chesne had finally ‘acquiesced’ to Rivet’s advice, ‘although even now he remains steadfast in his view that he attempted nothing in this business apart from the will of the queen’. She mentions a rumour, which she disavows, that she had been invited to Paris: ‘As things stand now, I am enjoying this pleasant thought that the Seine will enrich me at some point; but if not, I will certainly satisfy my spirit, if not with this little joke, then with fame alone.’ On Van Schurman and Rohan, see Chapter 6. 74

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Publishing in Paris: The Question celebre (1646) As discussed earlier, factors that influenced Colletet’s free translation include the search for new patronage; the interest of close colleagues and members of the Rambouillet circle; the controversial nature of the letters; and the market appeal of the book. The Question celebre featured an epistolary debate opposing two famous interlocutors on a topic closely linked to controversies over women’s place which had evident economic advantages to the publisher. Colletet was well aware that the return for his translation was commercial, not merely aesthetic or intellectual.76 Rivet probably informed Van Schurman of the French publication when in August 1646 the Parisian parlementaire Claude Sarrau (d. 1651) wrote to him: ‘It was publicized here this week … on the topic of the femmes savantes, with several Eulogies of that miracle among the fair sex. I have not seen the book other than that.’77 A year later, Van Schurman also had not yet seen it.78 She finally did nearly two years after its publication. Rivet indicated to Conrart in March 1648 that ‘Monsieur Colletet’s translation … reached her [Van Schurman] from Portugal after having been sent to Boulogne-la-Grasse’.79 Van Schurman had no control over its production. But the Question celebre was nonetheless instrumental in conveying to a French and European non-scholarly readership her expansive vision of educating women in the higher studies reserved for men. Publishing in Leiden: The Opuscula (1648) A selection of Van Schurman’s vast correspondence during the 1630s and 1640s in Latin, Greek, Hebrew, and French, with references in Arabic and Syriac, was published in 1648 in Leiden. Once again, Elzevier published her work, but with a major difference: Van Schurman exercised some control over the print text. More than any of her previous publications, the Opuscula affirmed her authoritative standing in the Republic of Letters. For this reason, I shall inquire, first, how her editor, Frederik Spanheim, negotiated its passage into print, and how his prefatory strategies differ from those in the Dissertatio; next, how her self-portrait of 1640, which served as frontispiece, garnered support for her academic credentials, and how she and Spanheim resorted to a media campaign to ensure that the Opuscula reach the greatest number of influential readers. Finally, I shall conclude by showing how the Opuscula’s French letters, mostly addressed to erudite and/or 76

 On the economic dimension of women’s published writings, see Chang.  Sarrau to Rivet, 10 August 1646, in Correspondance 1978, 3: 470. 78  Van Schurman to Rivet, 13 September 1647, KB, ms. 133 B 8, no. 47, postscript, ‘I have not yet had the occasion to see a copy of my Dissertatio on the studies of women translated into French’. 79  Rivet to Conrart, French letter dated 23 March 1648, in Kerviler and Barthélemy, 442. 77

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highly cultivated women, further helped to define Van Schurman’s authorship and goals. The Opuscula, first published in 1648, is a beautifully printed octavo volume. A typical humanist letterbook in an elegant typographic print, it contains a striking frontispiece (Van Schurman’s engraved 1640 self-portrait in an oval frame) (see Figure I.1); two treatises (De Vitae Termino and Dissertatio logica); 59 Latin, Greek, and Hebrew letters; 22 Latin poems (Poemata); and 14 French letters. It closes with tributes by numerous colleagues in the Republic of Letters (Elogia) and three French letters written in 1647 and 1648 to Salmasius and his wife, Anne Mercier, hastily added at the last minute. An addendum in French to the 1648 edition, the ‘Avertissement au Lecteur’, states that ‘the printers were reaching the end of this volume when these letters [to Salmasius] fell into their hands, which is why one should not be surprised that they do not appear in their [correct] order’.80 Van Schurman’s letterbook is on a par with male humanist letterbooks which, notes Judith Henderson, ‘became the equivalent of our literary review or scholarly journal as a forum for professional discussion and career building’.81 It was so widely read that a second edition by Elzevier soon followed in 1650, and a third edition appeared in 1652 (Figure 5.3). Van Schurman personally took control of the last edition; she added new material,82 and reversed the order of the French letters and the Poemata, placing the former before the latter so that the French letters are in sequence with the Latin letters. She was concerned with reordering her volume correctly: the letters to Salmasius, his wife, and Spanheim were added at the end of the section of French letters, while the poem to Utricia Ogle was added to the section of Poemata. Following the deaths of Spanheim in 1649 and Bonaventura Elzevier in 1652, she selected Johann van Waesberge, a Utrecht publisher, for this third edition.83 Further impressions, no longer extant, followed in 1672 in Leiden

80

 Opuscula, 365. These three letters were also added to the 1650 edition, as well as her poem ‘On the welcome and residence of the Very Noble and Virtuous Lady, Madame Utricia Ogle, dite Swaen. Utrecht, in the month of November of the year 1647’, and Van Schurman’s French letter, dated 15 August 1648, thanking Frederik Spanheim for editing the Opuscula. 81  Henderson, 25. 82  Van Schurman added two new letters from Johannes Smith (Smetius), a minister and archaeologist at Nijmegen; a letter from Meletios Pantogatus, the Greek bishop of Ephesus; a letter dated 7 March 1644 to her editor Frederik Spanheim; her French poem on the inauguration of the University of Utrecht; and verse obituaries in 1651 on Rivet and the theologians Carolus de Maets (Dematius) and Menardus Schotanus. The breath of her interests in the Opuscula is immense. Her correspondence with Smetius even includes questions on his excavations of Roman antiquities and coins found around Nijmegen. He had published in 1644 On the City of the Batavians, or Nijmegen, which argued that the city that Tacitus described as belonging to the Batavians was Nijmegen. 83  Opuscula (1652).

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Figure 5.3

Van Schurman, Opuscula (1652). Bibliothèque nationale de France, Paris

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and Herford, 1700 in Wezel, 1723 in Dresden, and 1794 in Leipzig.84 A final fourth edition was published in 1749 in Leipzig, edited by the poet laureate Dorothea Loeberia, who included reference notes and reorganized the collection. Legitimizing the Opuscula: Spanheim’s Preface We need to ask now how Van Schurman and her book are presented, and what similarities and differences emerge between the Dissertatio and Opuscula in their defence of her authorship. Frederik Spanheim (1600–49), a well-established theologian and rector of the University of Leiden, supervised the printing of her epistolary collection and wrote its preface. Like Van Beverwijck, he is mindful of the standard ways in which women’s texts were mediated, circulated, and published. But Spanheim takes a different approach from his predecessor. He does not open the Opuscula with a dedicatory letter to Van Schurman exposing the reasons for which she has to give him permission to publish – the assumption is that he has already obtained her consent. Instead he chooses to market the work in broader terms by means of persuasive appeals. First, he addresses the reader’s curiosity – and nationalistic pride for the Dutch reader – in a work of a sort completely unknown to previous generations and benefiting especially the glory of the country: You have here, Reader, a Work such as previous generations have not seen, and which, as it relates to the honour and glory of our age, will thus someday continue to contribute to the admiration of posterity. At the same time, the Low Countries display a Maiden to you not only instructed in the erudite languages, which belong to the learned exclusively, but also in nearly every aspect of learning.85

Second, Spanheim underscores the fact that Van Schurman, even though she exhibits ‘the ultimate attempt of nature in this sex’, never transgresses the social prescriptions governing women. To elicit his audience’s good will, he draws attention to her modesty and chastity, the virtues par excellence of women, superior even to her scholarly and artistic talents: ‘[Her] gifts are by far inferior to those which she especially displays, piety without pretence, modesty beyond example, and a wondrous virtue of character and life that are exemplary.’ He, furthermore, insists that ‘even though she deserves to be greatly praised, she, nevertheless, does not desire any praise. And this in itself is beyond praise.’ Third, after establishing Van Schurman’s stellar moral credentials, he reveals that because she did not want to draw attention to herself by publishing her book, its contents had to be ‘wrested 84

 Beek 2010, 248, indicates that the poet Henriette, Baroness von Gersdorff (1648–1726), also edited the Opuscula in 1730 (now presumed lost), adding to it her own poems and letters. Von Gersdorff, a religious poet, was an early supporter of Pietism and the Moravian Church. 85  Spanheim to the Reader, Opuscula, n.p. See Appendix 1.11.

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away from her’ by those who felt that they had no other choice but to publish it for the sake of the ‘public’s best interest … lest such great virtue be completely hidden at home. And, indeed, the things that are on display to you here have been wrested away from her, rather than obtained from her by asking.’86 Spanheim’s use of classical modesty tropes, integral to the epistolary rhetoric of captatio benevolentiæ, is suitably tailored to a woman’s publication: he highlights her resistance to entering ‘in publicum prodire’ [into the ‘public’ sphere] and the fact that her virtue would have remained hidden ‘domi’ [at home] if influential patrons, friends, and he himself had not decided otherwise for the good of the (Re)public (of Letters). Indeed, in a postscript to an unpublished letter to Rivet a year before the publication, Van Schurman herself mentions Spanheim’s persistent calls for her to release her letters; she states that: [O]ur common friend Monsieur Spanheim urgently asked me to allow his editing some of our letters. Although I resisted him at first, I was not able to make him change his mind since he was so eager for my studies.87

Finally, Spanheim explains to his readers that his purpose in producing the Opuscula was not to satisfy his own curiosity or even fill his leisure. He was moved, he claims, by the entreaties and prayers of some of her ‘closest Friends’ whose sole motivation was ‘zeal for arousing everyone to the serious imitation of such an example’.88 He ends with a surprising twist: he casts Van Schurman’s persona as that of a stole-clad teacher, or academic professor, of ancient Latin wisdom: Reader, admire along with us the person who has provoked admiration from Royalty and what this stole-clad teacher of the Muses and the Graces teaches us by her example and equally by her pen; and what she values as her own distinguished honour, consider it also to be yours, as PIETY and, certainly, VIRTUE.

The words ‘stolatus … doctor’ [‘stole-clad teacher’] refer to the stola or long outer garment worn by Roman matrons, and, associated with the word ‘doctor’, to the doctoral gowns worn by university professors. He thus implicitly judges Van Schurman as a model, guide, and teacher worthy to be admitted to the ranks of the university professors of her time. She, therefore, is worthy of publication. Van Schurman’s Textual Control over the Opuscula Having allowed publication, two strategic courses of action followed. First, the names of addressees and the dates of the letters were retained. This procedure 86

 Spanheim to the Reader.  Van Schurman to Rivet, 24 February 1647, KB, ms. 133 B 8, no. 48. 88  Spanheim to the Reader, Opuscula, n.p. See Appendix 1.11. 87

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was unusual given that the majority of published letters in the first half of the seventeenth century are undated and the addressees unidentified. These were from the start public letters destined for letter manuals or composed as political tracts. The shift toward publishing dated private letters in France occurred during the 1650s.89 In the Opuscula, on the other hand, the dates and identities of addressees were retained to show that the letters were originally intended solely for the addressee and those to whom copies were sent. Allowing release of this information is linked to modesty rhetoric. A writer could intimate or posit that it was only the addressee’s desire that moved her to public discourse.90 Two striking examples of Van Schurman’s insistence on highlighting the private nature of her letters appear in requests to Salmasius and Spanheim. Salmasius intended to send Spanheim a copy of her letter on his De Transsubstantiatione liber [Book on Transubstantiation, 1646] for inclusion in the Opuscula. She then asked Salmasius to add a note indicating that the contentious arguments of her letter treatise were originally destined only for him: I desire only one thing, that the sharpness of its [her letter’s] style of controversy be attenuated somewhat by a warning to the Reader, that it had been intended only for a private reading. Forgive me for my frankness that I bother you for such a little thing.91

She was concerned that her vigorous use of the contentio, used in dialectical reasoning and debate, not be condemned, or prejudged as inappropriate. The second example, in a letter to Spanheim written a few months before the publication of the Opuscula, shows her emphasizing the ‘private’ nature of her letters and her hesitancy to publish them: If, of all the Orators, according to Plutarch, that most famous Tullius [Cicero] never stood up to speak without fear, then you will not be surprised, Reverend Sir, that I am reluctant and have doubts about publication of this type of letter. These letters were welcomed by friends on account of the intimacy of a private conversation and as a confirmation of my affection and love. But to those who look upon them as strangers, they will seem of little pleasure and usefulness.92

Counting on the ‘weight’ of Spanheim’s ‘approval and recommendation’, she trusts that he will not ‘run into any kind of criticism’ and will thereby assure safe

89  Montpensier, 20. Even then, some women’s letters were not dated, as, for instance, with Arcangela Tarabotti’s letters published in 1650. 90  Dunn, 5. 91  Van Schurman to Salmasius, French letter dated 6 November 1647, in Opuscula, 368. 92  Van Schurman to Spanheim, 3 May 1647, Opuscula, 243–4. See Appendix 1.10.

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passage of her book.93 In maintaining the fiction of privacy, her letter demonstrates her skill at negotiating advantageous terms of publication to ensure her reputation. The second form of textual control involves her declaring her right to choose which letters to include. After telling Spanheim that he had almost convinced her to go ahead with the publication, she insists that she be the one to select the letters, leaving aside those of compliment containing only ‘empty words’: As for the publication of my trifles, which even now you are urging me so strongly to publish, even if I have decided nothing certain thus far, nevertheless, because it seems good to you, I am no longer able to oppose your plans originating from such a sincere and friendly heart. Since, in fact, only a small portion of the letters contains anything other than empty words, I will take care to select, to the extent that it can be done, the stronger ones and I will send them to you.94

In using the trope of the writer’s friends urging publication, Van Schurman implies that she attributes her decision to publish entirely to Spanheim’s powers of persuasion. Then, assured that she will be the one to select the letters, she commissions him to ‘correct, form, and reform them just as it pleases you’.95 She plays perfectly her scripted role at allowing him to mediate her published letters. In yet another important negotiative letter to Spanheim on the publication of the Opuscula,96 she employs three further rhetorical strategies to win over her readers: she draws attention to her engraved self-portrait at the start of the volume to control her image and shape her authorial identity; she comments on the exemplarity of her letters, which she hopes will serve the common good; and she decides to add her negotiative letter to Spanheim to the 1650 and 1652 editions of the Opuscula to affirm her print authorship. Scholarly Self-Portraiture and Authorial Self-Fashioning Van Schurman expressed satisfaction to Spanheim over her engraved portrait which she told him coyly came close to the original.97 It became her most frequently copied self-portrait. Upon its completion, Voetius immediately sent a copy to Huygens: ‘I am displaying here a portrait of our Schurman, which she herself painted and engraved together with a short epigram, if by chance you have not seen it.’98 There are four slightly different versions. The oval frame in the 1648 and 1650 editions bears the words ‘Anna Maria van Schurman at the Age of 33, 1640’,

93

 Opuscula, 244.  Van Schurman to Spanheim, 9 January 1646, in Opuscula, 221. 95  Opuscula, 221. 96  Van Schurman to Spanheim, 15 August 1648, in Opuscula (1652), 292. 97  Opuscula, 292. 98  Huygens, 3: 157, no. 2670. 94

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Figure 5.4

Anna Maria van Schurman, ‘The Star of Utrecht’

Edme de Boulonois, Anna Maria van Schurman. Engraving from Isaac Bullart, Academie des Sciences et des Arts (1682). Bibliothèque nationale de France, Paris

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while in the 1652 and 1749 editions Van Schurman’s age is left out.99 A similar medallion portrait with Van Schurman’s name and age below the frame can be found in Isaac Bullart’s Academie des Sciences et des Arts (Figure 5.4).100 The reproduction in Bullart and in the 1648 and 1650 editions of the Opuscula comes with a distich by Van Schurman – ‘Cernitis hic picta nostros in imagine vultus: / Si negat ars formam, gratia vestra dabit’ [‘See my features portrayed in this image. / If art denies beauty, then your favour will grant it’] (see Figure 1.1)101 – while the reproduction in the 1652 and the 1749 editions of the Opuscula comes with a distich from Antonius Aemilius: ‘Non nisi dimidia spectatur imagine virgo, / Maxima quod totam nulla tabella capit. ANT. AEMIL’ [‘If the maiden is seen only in a half image, / It is because not even the biggest canvas can capture the whole’].102 In the 1652 edition, supervised by Van Schurman, who was then 45 years old, the reference to her age in the medallion frame was eliminated. Her distich, with its modesty trope and appeal to the reader’s good will, was replaced with Aemilius’s two-line reference. This was the portrait used in the Dutch postage stamp in 1978 commemorating the third centenary of her death. Van Schurman’s self-portrait features her as a savante and author. The majority of published operae at the time carried a portrait of the author, often in a medallion frame bearing the author’s name. Such pictorial self-fashioning references the tradition of portraiture dating back to Plutarch and Petrarch whose illustrious men and women were so highly valued by the Republic of Letters. Scholars adorned their studies, cabinets, and portrait galleries with images of the powerful and the famous, often making copies to send as gifts. These portraits functioned as a stimulant to imitation and as a mnemonic device. Gabriel Naudé explained that portraits of scholars and writers offered ‘a powerful stimulant to excite a generous and well-born soul to follow in their paths’.103 As ‘speaking images’, they facilitated the retention of the outlines of the scholar’s life and works, and allowed the viewer to apprehend the ‘genius’ of the writer.104 Van Schurman’s many self-portraits in several media – pastel, copper engraving, pencil, wax, ivory, boxwood, and gouache – were used to solidify her networks. The more famous she became, the more self-portraits she sent out to  The version in the 1648 and 1650 Opuscula has a distinctive mouche on Van Schurman’s right cheek; the version in the 1652 and 1749 Opuscula comes without the mouche and with fuller, rounder cheeks. On other visual differences between these versions, see Stighelen 1987b, 119–22. 100  Bullart, 231. The original is at Amsterdam’s Rijksprentenkabinet. 101  Bullart, 231, and Schurman, Opuscula (1648, 1650). Smetius in play rewrote the second line of the distich: ‘Contulit ars formam, gratia corda rapit’ [‘Art conveyed beauty, (your) favor will touch hearts’], cited in Beek 2009, 340; 2010, 136. 102  Opuscula (1652, 1749). Aemilius was professor of eloquence and history at the University of Utrecht. On Aemilius, see Cook, 232. 103  Naudé, Advis pour dresser une bibliothèque (1644). Cited in Le Thiec, 29. 104  Waquet 1991, 24. 99

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admirers. Portraits such as hers were especially favoured among the elite as a way to increase proximity.105 Finally, Van Schurman’s engraved and painted self-portraits were a highly effective way to publicize her self-fashioning as an artist. They were prized precisely because she did not have to rely on others; she owned an atelier at her house in Utrecht with the necessary materials to paint and engrave.106 She was taught by the renowned engraver Magdalena van de Passe, who in turn received her training from her father, Crispijn van de Passe, Sr. The Van de Passe family members were considered the most accomplished of all the engravers working for an international clientele.107 There were few women engravers in the Northern Netherlands at the time. Aside from Magdalena and Van Schurman, Geertruyt Rogman (1625–ca. 1647) and Catharina Questiers (1631–69) were the only other Dutch female engravers. Thus as a female artist, Van Schurman was a rarity with immense curiosity value. Collectors wanted to add her to their galleries, and scholars wrote effusively about her artistry. Colvius, for instance, wrote three short poems, each in a different language, in praise of her self-portraiture. His French quatrain reads: ‘A well-fashioned paint brush drew the face / Which delights all human hearts: / But these virtues, and her grace / Surpass a thousand times the hand.’108 Print Authorship, Epistolary Negotiation, and Publicity We come to two final aspects of Van Schurman’s collaboration with Spanheim to sell her book: she drew attention to its usefulness, and she created a list of readers to whom she had copies sent. Highlighting the book’s utility was a strategy common to all writers, women also. Mary Astell, for instance, agreed to allow the publication of her letters because it would ‘excite a generous emulation in my Sex, perswade them to leave their insignificant Pursuites for Employment worthy of them’.109 French seventeenth-century novelists justified the publication of their writings based on their public usefulness.110 Van Schurman’s comments on the 105

 Portraits were regularly exchanged among elite family members separated by great distances. The far-flung Dutch Orange-Nassau women, for example, avidly sought portraits from one another. Louise de Coligny often requested family portraits from her stepdaughter Charlotte-Brabantine de Nassau. See Coligny 1970, 292–93. 106  Stighelen 1987b, 122. On early modern women artists and their portraits, see Borzello. 107  On the Van de Passe, see Hind. On Van Schurman as engraver, see Stighelen 1987b, 122, 130. 108  Colvius, ‘In Effigiem D. Anna Mariae à Schurman’, in Schotel, 2: 78. Schotel, 2: 71–83, includes 36 poems by contemporaries on Van Schurman’s self-portraits. 109  Astell, Letters Concerning the Love of God (1695), preface, n.p. Cited in Sutherland, 51. 110  Grande 1999, 352.

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usefulness of her collected writings were a well-chosen means to ease her work into the limelight and affirm her authorship. Equally tactical was making visible her editorial negotiations. She added her French letter to Spanheim to the 1650 and the 1652 editions of the Opuscula; it ends the sequence of French letters, the majority to notable women (among the section’s 17 letters, only six are addressed to men; of these one is to Pierre du Moulin and five to Spanheim). She was not unique in adding such a letter to her collection. Catherine des Roches (1542–87) and Arcangela Tarabotti (1604–52), for instance, added negotiative letters to their printed epistolary volumes. Des Roches included in her Missives (1586) letters to her publisher commenting on the importance of her writings and proposing a marketing title for the volume.111 Tarabotti included letters throughout her collection Lettere familiari e di complimento [Familiar Letters and Letters of Compliment, 1650] that indicate the strategies she used to gain support for her publication. She even kept a letter from her sponsor, Giovanni Dandolo, to her publisher in Venice which praises her work as highly suitable for the press. Dandolo testifies vividly to her spiritual and feminine qualities.112 Van Schurman’s affirmation of her print authorship and her personal involvement in the production of the Opuscula are also evident in her publicity campaign. She and Spanheim saw to it that scholars with whom she corresponded, even those whose letters were not included in the Opuscula, received a gift copy directly from Elzevier. When her recipients did not receive their copy quickly enough, she complained. Writing to Rivet on 25 July 1649, she lamented that Conrart was still waiting for his copy: ‘I can’t understand why Elzeviers have not yet sent my letter with my little present to Monsieur Conrart, since our friend Monsieur Spanheim gave them charge to do so a long time ago.’113 Almost a year later, she was happy to announce to Rivet that ‘Elzeviers assured him [her brother] that they will still send again a copy of my letters to Monsieur Conrart, and that they will provide me a letter from him’.114 The Opuscula gave Van Schurman great satisfaction. Her collected oeuvre affirmed her contributions to the Republic of Letters. David Norbrook notes aptly that ‘such a book in itself constituted a public space, a claim to the right to be judged by one’s peers and to engage in judgment of them’.115 This was a no small achievement for an early modern woman, due in great part to her negotiative skills in controlling the production of her book and authorial persona. She worked in tandem with her editor to ensure that her standing in the Republic of Letters was couched in language and imagery palatable for public consumption.

111

 Des Roches 2006, 247.  Ray 2009, 199. My thanks to Meredith Ray for her email communication in November 2011 on Tarabotti’s negotiative letters. 113  Van Schurman to Rivet, French letter, 25 July 1649, KB, ms. 133 B 8 no. 51. 114  Van Schurman to Rivet, French letter, 12 June 1650, KB, ms. 133 B 8 no. 52. 115  Norbrook 2003, 279. 112

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Publishing in London: The Learned Maid (1659) Clement Barksdale’s English translation of Van Schurman’s Dissertatio logica and of a short excerpt from her letter of 6 November 1637 to Rivet appeared in London in 1659. A slim book of 55 pages, The Learned Maid includes a sampling of Van Schurman’s letters to select continental and English writers of interest to an English audience – such as Gassendi, Van Beverwijck, Dorothy Moore, Sir Simonds D’Ewes, and Frederik Spanheim – with a dedication to ‘A.H’ (Lady Anne Halkett, Lady Anne Huntington, or Lady Anne Hudson).116 Barksdale (1609–87), a vicar, teacher, and prolific translator from the Latin, was principal of a free school at Hereford and, later, master of a private school at Hawling in the Cotswolds. He was interested in the education of girls. He published a Letter touching a Colledge of Maids, or, a Virgin-Society (1675) in which he proposes a ‘House’ for ‘Ladies, rich, and virtuous … where they may have Lodging and Diet together, and be under Government, somewhat like the Halls of Commoners at Oxford’. He urges in particular the addition of a ‘Library, or closet of Books, in the Dining room’, containing books on history, poetry, and ‘practical Divinity and Devotion’ in English and the ‘Learned, as well as Modern Language[s]’. Natural and moral philosophy, supplemented with ‘Experiments in Natural things’, are especially useful for girls.117 Barksdale was linked in the 1650s to the Great Tew Circle, which organized an Erastian Anglicanism in support of the monarchy and the subordination of church to state. He supported the right of the state to intervene in theological disputes so as to secure the social peace.118 His translation of Van Schurman’s Dissertatio logica and of an excerpt of her letter to Rivet on female education may have been intended to supplement an English translation of the same excerpted letter in 1645 by Samuel Torshell, a chaplain of Princess Elizabeth (1635–50), Charles I’s second daughter. Bathsua Makin, Princess Elizabeth’s governess, probably asked Torshell to translate Van Schurman’s letter to Rivet.119 Barksdale’s translation likely brought Van Schurman’s fame to the American colonies. The Puritan minister Cotton Mather (1663–1728), in his Magnalia Christi Americana, Or, the Ecclesiastical History of New England (1702), refers 116  Scholars have variously attributed the dedication to these women. See Loftis, 10, and Teague 1998, 157n6. Van Schurman’s letter to Gassendi, dated 12 January 1645 (misdated 1644 in Barksdale’s translation), appears in Opuscula, 212–14; to Van Beverwijck, dated 1639, in Opuscula, 187–90; to Moore, dated 1 April 1641, in Opuscula, 196–9; to D’Ewes, dated 31 October 1645, in Opuscula, 217–19; to Spanheim, dated 24 December 1645, in Opuscula, 220–22; the excerpt of the letter to Rivet, dated 6 November 1637, in Opuscula, 78–9. 117  Barksdale, unpaginated. 118  Barksdale’s views derived from the Dutch lawyer Hugo Grotius whose works he translated. See Barducci. 119  Norbrook 2003, 284. On Torshell’s translation, see Chapter 7 in this volume.

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to her writings having reached America.120 He would have read her Dissertatio and Opuscula in their original Latin, while for non-Latinate readers Barksdale’s translation was at hand. In Ornaments for the Daughters of Zion, Or the Character and Happiness of a Virtuous Woman (1692), Mather defends women’s capacity for literary pursuits, citing Van Schurman as his most eminent example. He restates one of her leading arguments for allowing women the private pursuit of learning. She had proposed that ‘it is honourable for us [women] to become illustrious under the protection not so much of warrior Athena but of Athena in citizen garb’ through conducting their study in the home.121 Mather, likewise, writes: They to whom the common use of Swords is neither Decent nor lawful, have made a most Laudable use of Pens, and they that might not without Sin lead the Life which old Stories ascribe to Amazons, have with much Praise done the part of Scholars in the World.122

He also admiringly refers to women who wrote portions of the Scriptures ‘as we find mention’d in the Catalogues of Beverovicius [Van Beverwijck], Hottinger, and Voetius’.123 Conclusion Van Schurman’s career in print began on the day in 1636 when she stood before a mass audience to present her Latin poem on the inauguration of the University of Utrecht. Her poem was printed on leaflets that circulated widely. It was included in a magisterial volume containing Gisbertus Voetius’s inaugural sermon, while her Dutch poem, drafted for the same occasion, appeared alongside the inaugural speeches of the Utrecht professors. She knew, then, that that day had changed her life forever, and that, as she wrote to Revius, she would never return to her former partial obscurity. The publication two years later of the Amica Dissertatio (1638) filled her with such dismay that she shared her disappointment with family members and supporters. It is fortunate for us that this unacceptable and in her words ‘ugly’ edition provided her with the pretext to seek a new edition. Could her and her supporters’ complaints have led to the official suppression of the Amica Dissertatio? This volume, bearing no publisher’s name, was probably printed à compte d’auteur for a few readers. The extract of the royal privilège indicates that

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 Mather 1855, 135.  Dissertatio, 50. 122  Mather 1978, 4. 123  Mather 1978, 3. Mather refers to the catalogues of Van Beverwijck, Johann Heinrich Hottinger (1620–67), a professor of Oriental languages in Heidelberg, and Voetius. On Mather’s admiration for Van Schurman, see Brown 2001. 121

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two volumes were to be deposited in the king’s library. None to this day are extant at the Bibliothèque nationale de France. Van Schurman’s publishing trajectory after the mishap of the Amica Dissertatio reads as a two-pronged story illustrative of the modesty constraints on early modern women’s publications: the first narrative, meant for readers at large, is marked by the tropes of the reluctant author and the ‘forced’ publication; the second, reserved for her mentor André Rivet, evidences her proactive interest, even eagerness and collaboration in the publication of her letters. To protect her reputation she wished to be seen as reluctantly accepting print publication. Her editors played along. Johann Van Beverwijck’s preface to the Dissertatio underscores the effort that it took to persuade her to allow publication. His trump argument was his promise to produce a clean, elegant copy as a way of cancelling out the damaging Amica Dissertatio. Frederik Spanheim, in his preface to the Opuscula, drew ample attention to her exemplary character, talent, and writings, and her reluctance to reveal them. To achieve publication of her letters, she fully, even enthusiastically, gave printing privileges to Elzevier, the most influential publisher of her day; she urged Rivet to release copies of her letters to Elzevier, cleverly pointing out that the ‘famous’ Van Beverwijck was already doing so; she declared to Spanheim that she would be the one to select the letters; she included in the Opuscula’s editions of 1650 and 1652 a letter to him in which she commented on the usefulness of her work and the marketing advantages of her self-portrait; and, finally, she made sure that well-known savants with whom she corresponded received a personal gift copy. At the heart of each of her publications and their translations – the Latin and French poems on the inauguration of the University of Utrecht, the Amica Dissertatio, the Dissertatio and the three editions of the Opuscula, the Question celebre, and The Learned Maid – are her writings on educating women. With each new publication came widening connections with people – national and international scholars – who read of her educational vision for women. Van Schurman was the first individual Dutch woman to seek and personally oversee the publication of her works. The editors of a recent collection on Dutch women writers attribute this milestone in the history of Dutch women’s published writings to the poet Titia Brongersma (ca. 1650–87) from Groningen, whose anthology Bronswaan [Swan at the Well] was released in 1686.124 But it appears that Van Schurman was the first to do so. Because her collected oeuvre was so highly valued by the international Republic of Letters, she was widely read. Three editions appeared in the space of a mere four years. Her printed letters, fortunately for us, disseminated her fame across borders, preserving her writings and story for posterity.

124

 Gemert et al. 2010, 50.

Chapter 6

Reception in France Marie de Gournay, who is still alive, wrote in very friendly terms to Anna Maria van Schurman that she kept her and her writings in mind, and that, as long as life remained, she was preparing a new edition and would conserve in it the memory of the mutual affection and favour they had one for another. Arnoldus Buchelius, February 16401 In France there is a person of your gender, and your name, who honours you as she should, and who wishes you the happiness you merit. Anne de Rohan to Van Schurman, 20 September 16432 It suffices for me simply to tell you that I have for her virtue every possible veneration, and for her writings all the esteem that they merit, and that it is no small mortification for me to know that there is no way to alter the map so that the diverse provinces that separate us do not prevent me from the hope of seeing and hearing her. Madeleine de Scudéry to Valentin Conrart, 1 December 16463

Anna Maria van Schurman’s enlightened advocacy of women’s advanced education and her own remarkable example influenced contemporary and later learned women. She, in turn, established a commonality of purpose and a sense of community with them. Her influence on intellectual and artistic women began naturally in her own country.4 In England, her educational plea influenced two of her correspondents, Dorothy Moore and Bathsua Reginald Makin.5 In France, three notable women intellectuals – Marie le Jars de Gournay (1565–1645), Princess Anne de Rohan (1584–1646), and Madeleine de Scudéry (1607–1701) – formed part of her communication and patronage networks. Gournay and Rohan were correspondents, while Scudéry knew of and commented on her writings. These authors’ perceptions of her are the focus of this chapter. Van Schurman’s views of them and theirs of her are examined here against the backdrop of the concepts of imitation (‘the sacrosanct recourse to inherited 1

 Buchell, 101.  Opuscula, 297. 3  In Un tournoi, 16. 4  On Van Schurman’s female network, see the introduction to this volume. 5  See Chapter 7 on her reception in England. For her influence on women intellectuals in Germany, see Schotel, chapter 10; Brandes; Becker-Cantarino 1987; and the German Pietist writer Johanna Eleonora Petersen. 2

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cultural models’) and mimesis (‘the actual experience of the real world’) which are central to humanist exemplarity.6 Exemplarity assumed two narrative forms: the first based on the lives of illustrious figures in Roman moral philosophers and the biblical writers: and the second on conduct books with examples to follow or avoid in daily life. The first narrative, connected to the genre of the femmes illustres, appears in Boccaccio’s De claris mulieribus [On Famous Women, 1374]. Boccaccio’s use of exemplary biography facilitated revisionist arguments on women’s nature. In keeping with humanist historiography which privileged history as a reservoir of models for the active life, the exemplary biography held up virtuous and heroic models from antiquity. Boccaccio’s heroic women are characterized as exceptional, as models to follow or else avoid. The second narrative form of exemplarity – found in Juan-Luis Vives’s De institutione feminae Christianae [The Education of a Christian Woman, 1523] and Erasmus’s Sancti matrimonii institutio [The Institution of Marriage, 1526] – proposes models of good women applicable to everyday life. Both Vives and Erasmus upheld the conventional female virtues of silence, chastity, and obedience, viewed as complementary to male virtues. Ian Maclean notes that for moralists of the period, since ‘male and female capacity for virtue in genere is different’, men and women should practise ‘different virtues, which are complementary in character (silence, eloquence; obedience, command)’.7 These forms of exemplarity, however, are problematic for a woman writer. Illustrious female exemplars from antiquity are too remote, and the conventional virtues, silence especially, cannot inspire or adequately guide. In seeking encouragement for her life as a humanist scholar, Van Schurman turned not only, as we have seen, to her mentor André Rivet and her professors at the University of Utrecht; she also sought out many learned women. In this she followed the trend among early modern women of claiming one another as mentors and/or models in the fashioning of their lives as writers. Starting in the early Renaissance, these women read each other’s works and increasingly dedicated their writings to one another. This relatively new phenomenon originated in the fifteenth century with the growing number of women writing, circulating their manuscripts, and publishing.8 They appeared frequently in each other’s catalogues of illustrious women. Laura Cereta’s respublica mulierum [Republic of Women], for instance, includes a roster of women from antiquity and ends with three contemporaries

6  See Rigolot for these terms. I thank Jane Couchman (2007) for drawing my attention to this and other articles on Renaissance exemplarity. Sources for this brief sketch on exemplarity include Bromilow 2007, introduction; and Bromilow 2002. 7  Maclean 1980, 56. Cited in Bromilow 2007, 18. 8  The trend of women intellectuals reading and praising each other began as early as 1441 when then 16-year-old Costanza Varano wrote a letter to the humanist Isotta Nogarola comparing her to Aspasia and Cornelia. Cited in Cox 2008, 25.

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who she thinks should be better known.9 By extending her list to include peers, she indicates the enabling role of such catalogues in modern women writers’ search for models. Rather than limiting themselves to exemplars in conduct books, women referred increasingly to one another as would-be models, mentors, and inspirational guides. Van Schurman’s interest in contemporary savantes occurs against the backdrop of the growing humanist scepticism over the efficacy and relevance of ancient models. François Rigolot notes that the epistemological problems raised by the imitation of ancient exemplars divorced from the present historical moment signalled a probable ‘crisis of exemplarity’. Their applicability and universality was questioned: ‘In the face of the inexhaustible diversity and unpredictability of human actions, how can we choose a proper model after which to pattern our own behaviour? This is one of the many questions raised by the humanist’s disenchantment with imitative symbols of moral conduct.’ Rigolot indicates that the development of a ‘new historical consciousness’ marked the waning years of the Renaissance which ushered in another ‘method of epistemological inquiry … responsible for the emergence of modern subjectivity’.10 Pollie Bromilow argues insightfully that women writers generally played an important role in this decrease in authority of ancient exemplars. Marguerite de Navarre (1492–1549) was ‘cautious in embracing the ideology that came as part and parcel of the exemplary deed’.11 She did not think that the illustrious models of the past were pertinent to contemporary women writers’ experiences. Van Schurman’s admiration for and epistolary cultivation of contemporary learned women thus fits into the period’s general decline in looking to ancient cultural models. Not once does she refer to ancient female exemplars in her treatise and letters on women’s education. Much more relevant to her are her peers Marie de Gournay and Lucrezia Marinella – more on them later. However, it must be noted that Van Schurman’s view of self and others is still generated within a paradigm of exemplary imitation, and that, as I shall discuss further in the chapter, she does not adhere to the ‘new historical consciousness’ mentioned above which was occasioned by Cartesian rationalism and the emerging sceptical mentality of the new philosophers. Early modern writers identified with an author whom they could admire, even emulate, and with whom they had a sense of affinity and companionship. With these ‘living’ models, they hoped to enter into a form of civic friendship.12 Contemporary érudites offered Van Schurman influential role models. But this type of influence functions in two ways: it provides examples of agency useful in fashioning one’s authorial persona, as well as counter-examples on how not to

9

 Cereta, 78, ‘To Bibolo Semproni’, 13 January 1488.  Rigolot, 558. 11  Bromilow 2002, 165. 12  I address the model of female civic friendship in Chapter 7. 10

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proceed. Van Schurman, thus, viewed her female correspondents both positively and, in one instance, critically. This chapter examines Van Schurman’s views of her correspondents Marie de Gournay and Anne de Rohan in her quest for mentoring relationships and ways to depict female authorship in relation to the public sphere. Also addressed are Madeleine de Scudéry’s perceptions of her Dutch peer. Scudéry admired Van Schurman, but she was also concerned about the practical feasibility of her scholarly way of life and its applicability to women in the Parisian world of salon sociability. Van Schurman and Gournay: A Mutual but Critical Admiration Van Schurman’s writings about and correspondence with Marie de Gournay include a Latin poem in praise of Gournay, comments about Gournay in her two letters on women’s education addressed to Rivet, and a reply in French to Gournay.13 Gournay’s communications with Van Schurman include an unpublished letter to Van Schurman, dated 20 October 1639, and a letter no longer extant in which she invites her into a mother–daughter alliance or covenant.14 Although it appears that she communicated relatively little with Gournay, Van Schurman admired her French peer’s single-minded dedication to learning and her bold defence of woman’s intellect. Examining these writings is particularly interesting in that at first glance the two women are more different than alike. Gournay was 40 years older than Van Schurman, of a different nationality, and Catholic. Gournay was at the end of her career, while Van Schurman was mid-way in her ascendancy in the Republic of Letters. As we will see, they viewed each other in positive and negative, admiring and critical ways. What did they share in common? In what ways did they admire each other; how were they critical; and how were they models for one another as thinkers and writers? The focus here will be on the circumstances surrounding their epistolary relationship; the mother–daughter affiliation offered to Van Schurman; and the positive as well as problematic features of the ways each of them perceived one another. Marie de Gournay was known to scholars in the Low Countries. She was especially appreciated as the editor of Montaigne’s essays, which were eagerly  For Van Schurman’s poem on Gournay, see Opuscula, 164; for her two letters to Rivet, see Dissertatio, 43–59, 70–73, and Opuscula, 63–80, 91–95. Her reply to Gournay, misdated 26 January 1647 in the Opuscula, 318–20, is dated 28 February 1640 in the manuscript copy at The Hague, KB ms. 135 D 79. 14  Gournay’s unpublished French letter to Van Schurman, dated 20 October 1639, is included in KB, ms. 133 B 8, no. 76; Van Schurman’s comments on Gournay’s invitation to a mother–daughter covenant are found in a letter to Rivet, dated 4 October 1640, in KB, ms. 133 B 8, no. 23. 13

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read in Amsterdam’s literary circles.15 She travelled briefly to the Netherlands in May 1598, hoping perhaps to encourage the sales of her edition of the Essais; she also stopped off in Brussels where she was warmly welcomed.16 Justus Lipsius asked her to look upon him as her ‘brother’;17 Nicolaas Heinsius, son of Leiden historiographer Daniel Heinsius, declared that she had entered into a combat with men and had vanquished them;18 Hugo Grotius translated into Latin her verses addressed to the Maréchal de Thoiras, one of Richelieu’s lead generals in the fight against the Huguenots;19 and the Neo-Latin poet and historian Dominicus Baudius called her the ‘French siren’ and the ‘Tenth Muse’.20 Van Schurman admired Gournay’s life-long battle to legitimize the intellectual capacity of women. Gournay also represented an unusual example of a professional writer who had refused marriage to live an independent life of letters in Paris. She was an ‘extreme rarity in her time, a professional writer, not a princess, or a great lady dabbling in literature’.21 Van Schurman’s Writings about and Correspondence with Gournay Gournay appears in three different ways in Van Schurman’s printed oeuvre: in a brief Latin epideictic poem; in her two Latin letters on women’s education; and in her French correspondence with Gournay. In each case, Gournay is cast not as Montaigne’s editor, but as a defender of the cause of women’s learning. Van Schurman had read Gournay’s treatise L’Égalité des hommes et des femmes [The Equality of Men and Women, 1622] and the shorter Le Grief des dames [The Ladies’ Complaint, 1626]. These treatises appeared in Gournay’s collected works L’Ombre de la damoiselle de Gournay [The Shadow of Mademoiselle de Gournay, 1626] and were re-edited twice more in Les Advis, ou, Les Presens de la Demoiselle de Gournay [The Opinions, or the Gifts of Mademoiselle de Gournay, 1634, 1641] (Figure 6.1). Van Schurman could have well read Gournay’s treatises on 15

 The poet Pieter C. Hooft wrote a lengthy epideictic composition in honour of Montaigne, who was frequently discussed in his coterie at his country estate of Muiden. See Brachin 1957, 28–9. 16  Ilsley, 82; Gournay 2002a, 144. 17  In a Latin letter dated 24 May 1593 giving news of Montaigne’s death, Lipsius invited Gournay to view him as her ‘brother’. Lipsius failed to become her hoped-for mentor. See Landtsheer; Pal 2012, chapter 2. For six of her French letters to Lipsius, see Gournay 2002b, 2: 1932–44. 18  Nicolaas Heinsius, Liber Elegiarum (1646) (cited in Devincenzo, 136), ‘A virgin, having dared to battle against men, has trampled over men’. 19  Schiff, 118. The Maréchal de Thoiras (or Toiras) defeated Buckingham and the Duc de Soubise, Anne de Rohan’s brother, during the siege of La Rochelle. Gournay’s poem and Grotius’s translation are included in Gournay 2002b, 2: 1822–3. 20  Devincenzo, 135–6. On Gournay’s reception in the Low Countries, see Bonnefon 1969, 2: 365; Noiset. 21  Boase, 55.

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Figure 6.1

Anna Maria van Schurman, ‘The Star of Utrecht’

Jean Matheus, Marie de Gournay. Frontispiece to Les Advis, ou, Les Presens de la Demoiselle de Gournay (1641). Bibliothèque nationale de France, Paris

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women upon their publication in the 1620s, a period when as a rising star she was beginning to draw the attention of Dutch savants – she was 15 when The Equality of Men and Women appeared, and 19 when The Ladies’ Complaint was published. The second edition of Gournay’s collected works (1634) was printed in the precise time period that she was reflecting on female higher learning. Rivet, who by then was Van Schurman’s mentor, provided her with an introduction to Gournay. In a missive to Rivet, dated 12 December 1639, Van Schurman mentions that Gournay had written to her but that she had not yet responded for lack of time.22 In another letter on 4 October 1640, she refers to Gournay as Rivet’s ‘Nobilissima vestra Gornacensis’ [‘your most Noble Gournay’].23 The three ways in which Gournay is either mentioned or directly addressed reveal Van Schurman’s perceptions of her. First, in her Latin poem, she likens Gournay to an Amazon warrior fighting for the cause of women: Anna Maria Van Schurman congratulates The great and noble-minded heroine Gournay A strong defender of the cause of our sex. You bear the arms of Pallas, virago courageous in war, That you may wear the laurels, you bear the arms of Pallas. So, it is fitting that you should plead the cause of the harmless sex, And that men should, without doing harm, reverse their own weapons. Go ahead, glorious Gournay, we will follow your standards, Since a cause superior in strength to you is leading the way.24

Gournay is characterized as a ‘virago’ filled with the spirit of war, and as a great and ‘noble-minded heroine’. To illustrate Gournay’s fighting mind, Van Schurman declares twice in chiasmic form her heroine’s allegiance to Pallas Athena. She notes that Gournay has earned her place in history because she does battle with the written word and wears the ‘laurels’, a reference to both military victory and poetic immortality. An advocate for women, Gournay has turned rhetorical weapons against men. The poem ends on a resounding call to follow her beneath her banner, for in her the cause of women ‘is leading the way’. As Carol Pal notes, the poem’s ‘martial overtones’ depict Van Schurman as an ‘eager foot soldier’ following Gournay into war against men. The imagery of the woman warrior fighting for a woman’s cause depicts the dual self-positioning of erudite women standing in two worlds at once, the larger world of the Republic of Letters and the more circumscribed world of women scholars.25

22

 Van Schurman to Rivet, 12 December 1639, in KB, ms. 133 B 8, no. 19.  Van Schurman to Rivet, 4 October 1640, in KB, ms. 133 B 8, no. 23. 24  Opuscula, 164; translation Stevenson 2005a, 351. The poem circulated widely. Van Beverwijck included it in his Van de wtnementheyt (1639), 498. 25  Pal 2012, 90. 23

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The ‘superior’ cause to which Van Schurman refers is the advancement of women’s learning that she had advocated during the inauguration of the University of Utrecht, two years after the publication of the second edition of Gournay’s collected works. In these poems, Pallas Athena, titular goddess of higher learning, demands the admission of female students. Gournay influenced Van Schurman to voice such a radical call. She had upheld the ideal of an integrated community of letters transcending gender lines where women were accepted on the basis of intellectual merit. Second, Van Schurman discusses Gournay in two letters to Rivet. She wrote these at the same time as her laudatory verses to Gournay, between November 1637 and March 1638. She criticizes those who state that ‘pulling the needle and distaff is an ample enough lyceum for women’, thus echoing Gournay’s indictment in her Equality of Men and Women of those who limit women’s sphere to the ‘distaff, yea, to the distaff alone’.26 Like Gournay, she argues that this ‘received custom’ is an artificial and deleterious construct needlessly imposed on women. Countless ancient authorities, she insists, ‘will prove the opposite, just as the noblest glory of Gournay shows, with no less wit and learning, in the little book entitled The Equality of Men and Women’.27 Although Van Schurman does not explicitly state the equality of men and women, she refuses, like Gournay, a rigid rhetorical positioning of admitting only female superiority or inferiority. Gournay states: ‘For my part, I flee all extremes; I am content to make them [women] equal to men, given that nature, too, is as greatly opposed, in this respect, to superiority as to inferiority.’28 Equality allows for closing the gap between men and women in education: ‘why should not their [women’s] training in public matters and in letters, of a kind equal to men’s, fill up the gap that commonly appears between their heads and those of men?’29 Van Schurman, in replying to Rivet’s criticism of her arguments, reiterates her appreciation for Gournay even though, she states, she cannot approve of all its aspects: Just as, on the basis of its elegance and wit, I can by no means disapprove of the little dissertation of the most noble Gournay On the Equality of Men and Women, at the same time I would certainly not dare nor would I want to approve of it in all things.30

What, in particular, would she not have approved, and what would she have endorsed? Just prior to citing Gournay’s work, Van Schurman defends herself 26  Dissertatio, 48. Gournay, Egalité des hommes et des femmes, in Gournay 2002b, 1: 965, ‘la quenouille, ouy mesmes à la quenouille seule’. 27  Van Schurman to Rivet, 6 November 1637, Dissertatio, 48. 28  Gournay 2002a, 75; Gournay 2002b, 1: 965. 29  Gournay 2002a, 81; Gournay 2002b, 1: 971. 30  Van Schurman to Rivet, 24 March 1638, Dissertatio, 71.

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against Rivet’s accusation that she is asserting the superiority of women. He misunderstood her in thinking that she claimed that ‘women are more suited to study than men’.31 She rejects this criticism on grounds of her own ‘virginal modesty’ and ‘innate sense of propriety’, and notes that it ‘bothers’ her to read ‘that otherwise outstanding treatise by Lucrezia Marinella, to which she gave the title The Nobility and Excellence of Women, along with the Defects and Deficiencies of Men’.32 In juxtaposing Gournay with Marinella, Van Schurman indicates that she disagrees with the more radical aspects of their treatment of women. Clearly, she would have disapproved of Gournay’s critique of a husband’s headship and defence of women as priests and in public offices; these constitute the more subversive aspects of her Equality of Men and Women. She would have disagreed as well with Marinella’s radical and highly original denunciation of men’s vices, part and parcel of her polemical intent to undermine her opponent Giuseppe Passi’s misogynistic work I donneschi difetti [The Defects of Women, 1599].33 On the other hand, Van Schurman approved of Gournay’s citation of countless authorities.34 For her, Gournay’s defence of women’s learning is legitimate because it is based on classical and biblical sources. Moreover, Gournay thought that knowledge of the ancients was the best way for a woman to show her intellectual acumen, and that only through humanist erudition could she participate in a genderneutral aristocracy of the mind reserved for great women and great men.35 Only through learning foregrounded in the ancients could a woman join the universal Republic of Letters and its ‘grands esprits’ [great souls] without distinction of rank or gender. Indeed, for Gournay, ‘the Human animal, taken rightly, is neither man nor woman’.36 Her understanding, founded on the humanist ideal of the dignitas homini, inspired Van Schurman’s notion of the private woman and private man whose leisure time offered them both equal access to serious learning. As JeanClaude Arnould notes, Gournay endorsed a ‘single anthropological understanding’ of human beings leading the way to a feminism of equality whereby women writers are indistinguishable, because intellectually equal.37  Van Schurman to Rivet, Dissertatio, 71.  Dissertatio, 71. 33  See Marinella. Van Schurman, nonetheless, calls Marinella’s work an ‘otherwise outstanding treatise’. Her writings bear several distinctive similarities with Marinella’s, such as the academic disputational form of argumentation, her affirmation that she seeks the truth, her call to grant women equal access to education and that understanding the natural world brings one closer to God, and her criticism of male envy of learned women. Marinella’s examination of the noble names given to women in the first chapter of her Nobility and Excellence of Women recalls Van Schurman’s allusion, in her letter to Anne de Rohan, 13 November 1643, in Opuscula, 299–300, to the resemblance between words and things. On Marinella, see Ray 2015. 34  Van Schurman to Rivet, 6 November 1637, Dissertatio, 48. 35  Gournay 2002b, 1: 895. 36  Gournay 2002a, 86; Gournay 2002b, 1: 978. 37  Arnould, 28. 31 32

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Lastly, Gournay and Van Schurman corresponded with one another. Gournay, however, not only praised Van Schurman; she also took the liberty of critiquing her. In an unpublished letter in 1639, Gournay begins by thanking Van Schurman for her epideictic poem. She then comes to the main point of her missive: Dare I in passing say to you philosophically a word from my limited perspective: languages take an inordinate and too long a time for a mind as capable of matters, and of the best, as yours; nor is it useful for you to say, as you do, that you want to read the Originals in every case because their translated versions are not worthy of them.38

In this revealing exchange, Gournay presses her peer on two issues: the most beneficial way for her to spend her time, and whether a translation is in fact inferior to the source text, as Van Schurman supposes. Additionally, Gournay may be implying that the amount of time that Van Schurman spends on translation is detrimental to her own intellectual work. She advises her younger counterpart to focus only on Latin and Greek texts, to which she can add works in Italian, Spanish, and especially French, which Montaigne’s essays ‘have made necessary for the whole world’.39 She pointedly omits Hebrew, which she thought should be reserved to specialists whose profession required it. She draws attention here especially to the increasing popularity of French as the lingua franca of politics and sociability among the European elite. She even entertains the idea that true knowledge can be gained in just one language, French. In her Abregé d’institution, pour le Prince Souverain [Abridged institution, for the Sovereign Prince, 1634], she advised the young dauphin (the future Louis XIII) not to take an inordinate time to study Latin and Greek (unless he has an inclination to do so) on grounds that he can read ‘all good Latin books’ in French translation.40 Besides, learning many languages is a sign of pedantry. She writes: ‘to inquire about the knowledge and ability of a man, one ascertains how many Languages he knows, as if Languages were knowledge and ability, instead of simply one of the legs on which to carry oneself from one thing to the other’, concluding, ‘Languages in the Gymnasium of the Muses are simply the race, whose prize is Knowledge and ability’.41 The prince was not to think that learning many languages was a worthy goal, since ‘knowledge and ability’ are far more important. Gournay ends her letter to Van Schurman by promising that should she live longer, she would send her a new printing of her collected works, the Advis, ‘where 38

 KB, ms. 133 B 8, no. 76.  KB, ms. 133 B 8, no. 76. 40  Abregé d’institution, in Gournay 2002b, 1: 830. Gournay states that if the young prince had learned Latin in the same manner as Montaigne, from a very young age, she would have approved. Otherwise, learning Latin was not worth the effort. As for Hebrew and Greek, he need not waste his time. I thank Marie-Thérèse Noiset for bringing this text to my attention. 41  Gournay 2002b, 1: 830. 39

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your name will be included’.42 Her missive circulated among Van Schurman’s friends and supporters. Buchelius, in his diary in February 1640, remarks that her brother Johan Godschalk showed it to him: ‘Marie de Gournay, who is still alive, wrote in very friendly terms to Anna Maria van Schurman [saying] that she held her and her writings in her mind’; she had even announced, he writes, that ‘as long as life remained, she was preparing a new edition and would conserve in it the memory of the mutual affection and favour they had one for another’.43 In her reply, written three months later, in early 1640, Van Schurman praises Gournay for her epideictic poem in which the latter has ‘testified’ to ‘the advantages that your [Gournay’s] heroic virtues have procured to our sex’.44 She reveals how pleased she is at Gournay’s promise to mention her in the 1641 edition of the Advis, and adds that Gournay has given her ‘the hope that my name will one day be consecrated to immortality by the favour of your Muse’.45 Indeed, she continues, ‘in a sweet dream I imagine that the tokens of your affection, which will doubtless be manifested, will not be any less glorious for me than the honour of a praise which I hope to merit’.46 Gournay did as she promised: in the final edition of the Advis (1641), she added Van Schurman – the only contemporary – in her catalogue of illustrious women. Had the astronomer Tycho Brahe lived later, she states, he would surely have named the new star that he had discovered (in 1571) after ‘Mademoiselle van Schurman, the rival of those illustrious Ladies in eloquence, and of their lyric poets too, even in their own Latin language, and who, besides that language, possesses all the others, ancient and modern, and all the liberal and noble Arts’.47 Admittedly, Van Schurman’s allusion to Gournay’s bestowing literary glory on her is part of the rhetorical captatio benevolentiæ. But it seems to me from this letter that Van Schurman was pleased to have her name linked to Gournay’s, given their common defence of women’s serious learning. Finally, touching on Gournay’s criticism of her study of oriental and Semitic languages, she argues that she does so only in her leisure time, and, then, only rarely: With regard to your opinion that I amuse myself too much with the study of languages, I can assure you that I contribute only my leisure hours to them and sometimes after rather long intervals; if only you permit me to make an exception of the Sacred language. (Opuscula, 319)

She insists on keeping Hebrew, arguing that no translation is capable of expressing ‘so well the authenticity and force of these Holy Mysteries’ and that the use of

42

 Gournay to Van Schurman, 20 October 1639, KB, ms. 133 B 8, no. 76.  Buchell, 101. 44  Van Schurman to Gournay, 26 January 1640, Opuscula, 318–20. 45  Opuscula, 318. 46  Opuscula, 319. 47  Gournay 2002b, 1: 969. 43

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Hebrew ‘(according to the sentiment of the most learned) will last into the next life’ (319–20). A Mother–Daughter Covenant Gournay wrote at least one more known letter to Van Schurman, which has since been lost. We learn this from a passage in a manuscript Latin letter from Van Schurman to Rivet, written eight months after Van Schurman’s last reply to Gournay. Van Schurman had received an unusual request from Gournay that they form a mother–daughter alliance, and she eagerly asks Rivet what answer she should give: Your most Noble Gournay recently addressed me in writing. This offers me the opportunity to firm up a closer covenant between the two of us, that of a mother (of course) and a daughter. For this reason, I beg you urgently, in accordance with your prudence and your obligations as a father, that you advise me as rapidly as possible what follow-up I should give to this request.48

What is a mother–daughter covenant? An intellectual covenant was a wellestablished literary phenomenon in sixteenth-century France, and it was couched in terms of a familial partnership. Male writers often contracted such relations, either with another male author – as in the case of Montaigne and Etienne de La Boétie – or with a member of their own family and clan. The poet Clément Marot had a mère d’alliance,49 while Jacques de Romieu collaborated in a literary partnership with his sister, the poet Marie de Romieu. Male writers also chose literary sisters and daughters unrelated to them: Marot designated Anne d’Alençon, one of his dedicatees, as his soeur d’alliance,50 while Maurice Scève called the poet Pernette du Guillet his soeur par alliance, and Madeleine de l’Aubespine declared to Ronsard, ‘I call myself your daughter’.51 Probably the most famous alliance was the one between Gournay and Montaigne, which began when Gournay was young. From the much older Montaigne she was given literary advice and correction, and a means to launch her writing and publishing career. She was also ‘adopted’ into a famille d’alliance consisting of Montaigne as her ‘father’; Montaigne’s wife as her ‘mother’; Montaigne’s only surviving daughter Leonor as her ‘sister’; and Montaigne’s brothers who, she writes, ‘do me the honour of declaring themselves also members of my family’.52 48

 Van Schurman to Rivet, 4 October 1640, KB, ms. 133 B 8, no. 23. On this letter, see Douma, 45. 49  Ilsley, 31n19. 50  Saulnier, 179–80. 51  L’Aubespine, 17. 52  Gournay, The Promenade of Monsieur de Montaigne, in Gournay 2002a, 31, and Gournay 2002b, 2: 1287. On the famille d’alliance as a form of clientage, see Fogel, chapter 5; Pal 2009.

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Gournay’s desire to form a mother–daughter covenant or mentoring relationship with Van Schurman was, however, highly unusual between women of different lineages and countries. A few biological literary mothers in early modern France, Italy, and England mentored their daughters, nieces, and granddaughters.53 In France, Marguerite de Navarre found a role model in her mother, Louise de Savoie; Antoinette de Loynes, the wife of the courtier and humanist pedagogue Jean de Morel, mentored her three daughters, Camille, Lucrece, and Diane de Morel; Queen Jeanne d’Albret mentored her daughter, Catherine de Bourbon; Louise de Coligny educated and closely followed the lives of her six stepdaughters by means of a vast correspondence;54 and Madeleine des Roches’s collaboration with her daughter Catherine, which was integral to their self-representation, is a well-known case of mother–daughter mentorship. The Mesdames des Roches, mère et fille [mother and daughter], needed each other to legitimize their writing, publishing, and coterie, and Gournay would have known of them since they shared the same publisher, Abel L’Angelier. In Italy, the women in the Colonna-D’Avalos families taught one another, mother to daughters, aunt to nieces, and grandmother to granddaughters. Diana Robin notes that Costanza d’Avalos and Vittoria Colonna served as intellectual mentors and teachers to the younger members of their families, female and male. They hosted several influential literary salons on the island of Ischia off the coast of Naples for close to a decade until the mid-1530s. The readings in their circle influenced the emergence in Italy of ‘the woman-led intellectual salon and the poetry anthologies of the 1540s–50s’.55 In England Mary Sidney Herbert, Countess of Pembroke, became an inspirational model for the women of her family, particularly her niece Mary Sidney Wroth, who was named after her and whose godmother she was.56 The Countess of Pembroke also no doubt mentored her own daughter Anne, Wroth’s first cousin. It is clear that Gournay and Van Schurman did not need one another in the same way as did the Dames des Roches, the Colonna-D’Avalos women, or the Countess of Pembroke and Mary Wroth. Gournay was nearing the end of her career and Van Schurman in 1640 was well on her path to fame. But Van Schurman was interested in enlarging her circle of female correspondents and eager to show how much Gournay had inspired her during the critical phase of writing her defence of women’s education. Gournay’s emphasis on a woman’s capacity to reason and her use of evidence from ancient authorities and the Christian past appealed to Van Schurman’s sense of argumentation and encyclopedic mastery of ancient texts. Why did Gournay, on the other hand, offer an intellectual alliance to her Dutch counterpart? 53  Mothers mentoring their biological daughters, nieces, and granddaughters are found in other countries as well. For instance, the Danish scholar Birgitte Thott was mentored by her mother (Beek 2010, 198). 54  Broomhall; Berriot-Salvadore, 134–9. 55  Robin 2007a, 3. 56  See Hannay.

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Gournay’s chief desire in life to gain respect and recognition in Parisian literary circles and the Republic of Letters was reflected in her fight to engage literary men to take women like her seriously. She may have seen in Van Schurman an extraordinarily learned woman who, belonging to the category of the ‘grands esprits’,57 stood a better chance than she at drawing male respect and confounding the mockery directed at a learned woman.58 As a ‘mothering figure’, she may have hoped for a younger ‘literary daughter’ as an ally against the incomprehension of the age. As such, she may have cast Van Schurman as a nonconformist who dared, like her, to tread a path that few other women took but who, unlike her, was able to outmanoeuvre the obstacles. She describes such a woman in her Promenade of Monsieur de Montaigne: Everyone will say afterward that such a woman does ill, because she does not behave like others, neither in choosing her activities nor in regulating her actions. Let them talk; the worst I see in this is that we have to live in an age when a person, who wishes to follow the right road, must quit the well-worn one. Great intellects always stray from the beaten path; the more so because they have persuaded themselves that what is straying, according to custom, is submission to reason … Superiority itself exists only in difference.59

Gournay’s public recognition of Van Schurman led her to invite her into an intellectual covenant not unlike the one between the older Montaigne and her younger self. The main difference of course is that the covenant she proposes is one between women, whereas the ancients (and Montaigne) had stated that it could occur only between men. Montaigne declared that women’s souls were inadequately matched for a reciprocal intellectual and spiritual friendship: ‘the ordinary capacity of women is inadequate for that communion and fellowship which is the nurse of that sacred bond’. He made no effort to look further since, in his view, ‘this sex in no instance has yet succeeded in attaining it, and by the common agreement of the ancient schools is excluded from it’.60 Could Gournay have attempted to prove the contrary by showing that the ‘gender sameness’61 57

 In Gournay 2002b, 1: 895, Gournay writes on the attraction that great souls or minds exercise over one another: ‘And the one who could benefit from such a precious encounter, would desire with an ardent passion the attractiveness of such a great mind, engendered primarily from communication with another elevated mind, similar and friendly, and necessarily superior to all other human attractions.’ 58  In The Ladies Complaint, in Gournay 2002a, 101, Gournay writes: ‘there is no man, however mediocre, who does not put them [women] in their place with the approval of most of the company, when, with merely a smile or some slight shaking of his head, his mute eloquence pronounces, It’s a woman speaking’. Also, Grief des Dames, in Gournay 2002b, 1: 1075. 59  Gournay, 2002a, 55; Gournay 2002b, 2:1356. 60  Montaigne, ‘Of Friendship’, in Montaigne, 138. 61  I am indebted for this term to Chang, 184.

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essential to Montaigne’s friendship with La Boétie could be replicated in her relation with the exceptional Van Schurman? Could she have tried to prove that an intellectual, not biologically based, covenant between two learned women was possible? Gournay certainly saw in Van Schurman an ally in defending the ancients, classical learning, and humanistic literature against new poet grammarians such as François de Malherbe and epistolary writers such as Guez de Balzac, whom she accused of changing the definition of literature and language to suit fashionable taste. Gournay faulted certain court and salon women for the decline in classical education and the degeneration of the French language. In her essay Deffence de la Poësie & du Language des Poëtes [Defence of Poetry and the Language of Poets], dedicated to Mme des Loges whose salon she attended, she accuses the grammarians of ingratiating themselves for material benefits and for influence with high-placed women through limiting language usage: For they state in the first place, that it [language] should reflect the pure conversation of the Cabinets and Ruelles of the Court, that is of their Ladies so frequently and reverently referenced, as from a sovereign Tribunal: because they want to cajole them, if it must be said again, to bring them over to their side.62

In pleasing the ladies, the grammarians impoverished all. Gournay belonged to a trend of classical scholars who claimed the superiority of the ancients over the moderns in what would become the culture wars of the seventeenth century.63 Salon women in particular figured at the heart of the creation of a new reading public and a new, modern approach to literature.64 Gournay may also have wished to add Van Schurman to her réseaux de sociabilité [networks of sociability], which included distinguished women such as the Huguenot Marie de Bruneau, Mme des Loges – whose sociable gatherings Gournay had frequented in the 1620s along with Conrart, Malherbe, Balzac, Vaugelas, and Vincent Voiture; Catherine de Sainte-Maure, Comtesse de Brassac – an habitué of Rambouillet’s salon and reputed for her knowledge of Latin, theology, and mathematics; Madeleine de Senneterre, author of the novel 62

 Gournay, 2002b, 1:1090. Mme des Loges was the exception, winning Gournay’s respect. 63  The classical scholar Pierre-Daniel Huet attacked the forces against the Ancients linked to the Cartesian advance and the rise of mondain culture. His Against Cartesian Philosophy (1689) blames the defenders of a modern literary sensibility for their refusal to esteem ancient authorities, study oriental languages crucial to understanding the Bible, and respect history’s precepts to govern. See Shelford, 217. 64  DeJean 1997, 57: ‘Readers, not scholarly or specialist readers, but average readers – a true literary public – had begun to decide in important numbers that they had a stake in the production of literature – that they were competent to decide what types of works should be produced and how these works should be interpreted. This fundamental change in the operation of the French Republic of Letters had been instigated by literary Moderns.’

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Orasie (1646–48); Jeanne de Schomberg, Duchesse de Liancourt; and Antoinette de Pons, Marquise de Guercheville – a lady-in-waiting to Marie de Medici.65 All these women function as protective marraines [godmothers] of her works.66 She writes to Mme des Loges, for instance, in the dedication of her Defence of Poetry, that should ‘these people attack it [her Defence] in too rude a manner, as they have done to all my other paltry Works’, her work will: draw this particular and tender favour, Madame; that just as you would deign to give, when needed, a favourable place on your daybed to its Mother, so you will give it protection beneath your pillow, to hide it and save it from their hands.67

So, now in her declining years, Gournay herself wished to be a ‘Mère’ or marraine to Van Schurman, thereby being useful in the trajectory of a rising female star on the European stage. Her desire for Van Schurman to succeed her in the Republic of Letters was well known since Gabriel Naudé reports on it in a letter to Johan van Beverwijck; Gournay, writes Naudé, wished to ‘groom’ Van Schurman, ‘her equal in mental acumen, and not below her in glory and reputation, one who can hold her own among male rivals’.68 Marie de Gournay was clearly an important influence on Van Schurman’s writings on the education of women. Her emphasis on women’s capacity to reason, her critique of customs limiting women’s access to serious learning, her defence of her own literary voice, and her use of evidence from the ancients provided a model to admire and imitate. However, her letter to Van Schurman in October 1639 indicates not only praise but also criticism, and perhaps even a touchiness vis-à-vis the latter’s exceptional academic training. As mentioned earlier, Gournay thought that time spent on translating original sources was illfounded. Could she also have remained sensitive to her own lack of a formal education – she was after all an autodidact – in comparison to Van Schurman’s more accomplished formation? In her autobiographical self-justification Apologie pour celle qui ecrit [Apology for the Woman Writing], first published in 1626, she states that she struggled to learn on her own, ‘without formal schooling’, only one of the ancient languages, Latin. To ward off her critics, she calls herself in jest ‘a learned woman without Greek, without Hebrew, without aptitude for providing 65  On Gournay’s female networks, see Beaulieu and Fournier 2004. At the beginning of the century Gournay attended coteries led by intellectual court women, such as Catherine de Clermont, Maréchale de Retz, and Marguerite de Valois, for whom she worked as librarian. 66  Beaulieu and Fournier 2004, 55, argue that ‘marrainage’ was a crucial strategy for women writers who sought to protect and promote their works by means of textual and social networking. 67  Gournay 2002b, 1: 108. Cited in Beaulieu and Fournier 2004, 52. 68  Naudé to Van Beverwijck, 11 July 1642, in Gilberto 1642. See Schotel, 2: 104. On Naudé’s letter, see Chapter 3 in this volume.

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scholarly commentary on authors, without manuscripts, without Logic, without Physics or Metaphysics, Mathematics or the rest’.69 Although notable scholars and writers respected her, she was the target throughout her life of slanderous attacks and the butt of cruel jokes. Her defence of Ronsard and the Pléiade poets earned her ridicule. Her critique of the modernized French favoured by salon and court usage was derided. She was considered an embittered prude. Her learning, the difficulties she encountered as editor of Montaigne, and her unmarried state made her vulnerable to public condemnation. Above all, she promoted herself as an independent woman and professional writer, which was bound to create unbridgeable social – even financial – difficulties.70 Van Schurman, on the other hand, tried to avoid at all cost the kind of negative publicity that Gournay incurred and that was frequently associated with the status of the learned single woman. She was especially wary of her fame and entertained throughout her life a deeply held suspicion, fuelled by her Calvinist convictions and piety, of the praise heaped upon her. Time and again, she insisted in her letters to famous men that she sought not the praise of men but of God. The humility trope and her protectors’ use of it in their epistolary references to her played a central role, as we have seen, in making her more acceptable as a woman intellectual. One last point is important regarding Van Schurman’s nuanced perception of Gournay’s exemplarity. Van Schurman worried over the threatened existence of French Protestantism. Could she have known of Gournay’s published criticism of Lutherans and Huguenots? Gournay indicted them in her essay De la temerité [On Temerity] and in a sequence of poems on the siege of Protestant La Rochelle (August 1627–November 1628), included in her Advis. She blamed Luther for claiming a more authoritative understanding of the Scriptures than the Pope and doctors of the Catholic Church, and for spawning ‘a brood of Sects’.71 She applauded Cardinal Richelieu’s military campaign against the Huguenots, whom she considered rebels menacing the French crown and national unity. She praised his foresight and strong arm in her poem ‘Pour Monseigneur le Cardinal Duc de Richelieu. Sur la prise de La Rochelle’ [‘For Monseigneur Cardinal Duke of Richelieu. On the taking of La Rochelle’], likening him to the god Mars: ‘But to avenge the Church with greater glory / In this Triumphant Mars, God placed a Cardinal’.72 The problem was the political agenda of the French Huguenots; she 69

 Gournay 2002a, 126; also, Gournay 2002b, 2: 1394.  Hilarion de Coste 1646, 668–71, cites 18 well-known members of the Republic of Letters, Van Schurman among them, whose letters were found among Gournay’s papers after her death; he adds that letters from countless other scholars to her were in the possession of her estate executor La Mothe le Vayer, to whom she gave her library. On Gournay’s admirers and detractors, see Devincenzo, 124–40, 157–62. 71  Gournay 2002b, 2: 1236. 72  Gournay 2002b, 2: 1795. Gournay wrote six poems on the siege of La Rochelle; several were published in 1629 and all were included in her Advis of 1634 (Gournay 2002b, 2: 1795–98). 70

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could live at peace with them provided they were ‘obedient and good subjects of the Prince’.73 Like Lipsius in his influential Politicorum sive civilis doctrinae [Of Politics or Political Instruction, 1589], she believed that religious unity was essential to civil peace but that in private an individual’s freedom of conscience should be respected. Van Schurman could have had reservations in accepting a mother–daughter alliance with Gournay, knowing possibly of the latter’s published stance vis-à-vis the Huguenots. The urgency of her tone in asking her mentor André Rivet about accepting Gournay’s invitation may have been due in part to such knowledge. And, certainly, she would have been concerned that such an alliance might stand in the way of her mentoring relationship with Rivet. To sum up, Van Schurman could have found problematic the confrontational and public aspects of Gournay’s exemplarity. We do not know whether she accepted or declined Gournay’s invitation. But it would not be surprising if for the reasons cited she opted out of a mother–daughter covenant with her French peer. However, no letter or third-party report to this effect has been found so far. Van Schurman and Rohan: Faith and Heroism When some women successfully perform roles not formerly ascribed to their sex, the expectations of others are enlarged and a greater variety of options becomes accessible. Nancy L. Roelker74

A second contemporary French woman to inspire Van Schurman is the Huguenot Princess Anne de Rohan (1584–1646), some 20 years her senior. The published sources concerning their communication are limited to three French letters, two by Van Schurman and a reply by Rohan; additionally, several unpublished Latin letters from Van Schurman to Rivet contain references to the princess.75 As the epigraph indicates, women credited with positive actions ‘not formerly ascribed’ to them, perform an exemplary role for other women. Such was the case with Anne de Rohan, the daughter of Catherine de Parthenay-Soubise (1554–1631) and René II, Vicomte de Rohan and Prince de Léon (1550–86). She was the sister of Henri, Duc de Rohan (1579–1638), the last military chief of the Huguenot party during the reign of Louis XIII. Anne de Rohan is a striking example of both a Calvinist femme forte and a savante, who not only performed in the political arena but also developed a textual voice through her numerous published writings.

73

 Gournay 2002b, 2: 1235. Cited in Beaulieu and Fournier 1997.  Roelker 1972b, 405. 75  Van Schurman to Rohan, 19 August 1643, in Opuscula, 293–5; Rohan to Van Schurman, Paris, 20 September 1643, in Opuscula, 296–7; Van Schurman to Rohan, 13 November 1643, in Opuscula, 297–300; and KB, ms. 133 B 8, nos. 33, 35, 39. 74

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Catherine Randall theorizes that Calvinist women writers circumvented the intense resistance to female expression in Huguenot culture through two strategies of legitimation: they identified themselves with their household performative roles to the point of ‘hyper-domestication’; and they fashioned in their writings a female textual ‘community of discussants’ in which they modelled themselves as exemplars, drawing on the Protestant doctrine of the priesthood of believers.76 These strategies of household identification and textual exchange with other women, present as well in the writings of women of other religious traditions – Catholic, Anglican, Lutheran, and Puritan – are helpful when considering the epistolary exchange between Rohan and Van Schurman. Van Schurman first became acquainted with the existence of Anne de Rohan in 1633, when Buchelius sent her a sampling of Rohan’s poems.77 Then, 10 years later, in 1643, Van Schurman began a brief but earnest correspondence with her. Rohan, at the time, was 59 years old and Van Schurman, 35. Rivet introduced her to Rohan. The occasion was the intermediary role which Rohan played with Anne of Austria on behalf of Van Schurman; Rivet had asked Rohan to intervene with the queen to stop Charles du Chesne from pressing Van Schurman into translating the Dissertatio.78 He then passed on to Van Schurman a letter addressed to her by Rohan. Van Schurman’s reply dwells largely on Rohan’s exemplary status. Twice she refers to the princess’s exemplarity in virtue, nobility, and wisdom. The princess embodies ‘the most precious treasures of virtue itself’ and joins together ‘two things that are usually incompatible, that is, the grandeur of this world and Christian wisdom’.79 ‘Virtue’ here should be understood as valour, noble action, heroism, and moral fortitude – as it does for its parent word, the Latin virtus, and the Italian virtù. It has the added meaning, derived from philosophical scepticism, of self-mastery seen particularly in the ability to triumph over the adversities of fortune. As will be seen, Anne de Rohan’s embodiment of virtue was evidenced especially in her heroic life story. Van Schurman continues that if she cannot rightfully aspire to an ‘alliance d’amitié’ with the princess because of their unequal social status, she can at least claim something like a spiritual covenant with her, more firm than any found in political institutions:

76

 Randall, 439.  Beek 2010, 34, 182. Beek 2010, 34, indicates that Buchelius also mentioned to Van Schurman in a letter that same year the Latin poems of Anna van Pallandt (Pallantia). Pallantia was a learned niece of the humanist Karel Utenhove, about whom Guillaume Colletet wrote a brief biography. See Colletet, Vie de Charles Uytenhove, in Colletet, Vies des poetes françois, BN, Nouv. Acq. Fr. 3073, fol. 489. Utenhove came from an academic family that educated its daughters. 78  See Chapter 5. 79  Van Schurman to Rohan, French letter dated 19 August 1643, in Opuscula, 294. 77

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However, although the high rank of your very illustrious House does not permit me to join my soul with yours through a covenant of friendship, which requires equality of parties – yet they are bound together by a firmer knot than that of political societies.80

Both seek wisdom, she notes, which, ‘as the wisest of kings says, is better than jewels, and all that you may desire cannot compare with her’.81 Their common bond as Calvinist believers trumps social rank; even though a social chasm separates them, they can communicate through their shared faith. She ends her missive by invoking the princess as her very own model, stating that she will imitate ‘your example, as a brilliant Star amidst the darkness of this corrupt age’.82 Van Schurman may be implicitly proposing to Rohan a spiritual covenant between them when she compares Rohan to a ‘brilliant Star’ shedding its light in an age darkened by the forces of ignorance and war. Rohan replied immediately. She praises Van Schurman for her ‘piety, learning, and merit’, and states her great admiration: ‘But what troubles my satisfaction in this happiness [of receiving Van Schurman’s letter] is that I consider myself much more fit to admire you than to be of service to you.’ She reminds her that ‘in France there is a person of your sex, and your name [Anne], who honours you as she should’.83 In her reply, Van Schurman avows her long-time devotion to France, ‘mother and nurturer of wisdom and of virtue’, and asserts that she ‘loves and honours’ the country even more now that ‘it possesses the glory of our sex’.84 She establishes with the princess a rare sense of commonality between women of different social ranks. In societies as hierarchical as those of the early modern period, clans and families, rather than gender, played a primary role in defining identity.85 Although rank constitutes a formidable social barrier between the French princess and the Dutch scholar, the latter dares to claim that they share a substantive kinship on grounds that their spiritual and intellectual commonalities are more important than social rank. Whereas in her first missive to Rohan, Van Schurman aspired to spiritual equality and, barring an improbable alliance d’amitié, hoped for a spiritual covenant, in her second letter she invokes an allegiance based on their common first name and common interest in the cause of women’s advancement: And if there is conformity between things that have the same name (I interpret thus your sweet observation to my advantage) and if I am allowed to search for  Van Schurman to Rohan, French letter dated 19 August 1643, Opuscula, 295.  Schurman 1998, 64. Van Schurman quotes in Hebrew from Proverbs 8:11. 82  Opuscula, 295. French original. 83  Rohan to Van Schurman, Paris, French letter dated 20 September 1643, in Opuscula, 296, 297. 84  Van Schurman to Rohan, 13 November 1643, in Opuscula, 299. 85  Clarke 2001, 3. 80 81

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some secret in words and syllables, in imitation of the Kabbalists, how will I remember myself without reflecting back on my Original, that is to say, Your very illustrious person whose Name and image I bear.86

Van Schurman’s rhetoric of exemplarity in her letters to Rohan closely resembles the humanist conception of ancient historical exemplars as models for action. She interprets the princess’s life as embodying virtues, actions, and words similar to those of illustrious heroes and heroines, who were scrutinized as models of excellence and patterns for behaviour. The use of exemplary historical figures in the early modern period was neither for aesthetic, abstract, or speculative purposes but rather for ‘direct behavioral modification’.87 Put another way, humanist pedagogy ‘advocates the application of the narrative of someone else’s life [that of an ancient exemplar] to one’s present situation’.88 Van Schurman appropriates ancient humanist exemplarity by applying it to a contemporary woman whose narrative life story she views as nothing less than heroic, and, who, for that reason, should be imitated. Here she differs from the approach taken in French catalogues of famous women. In the decade of the 1640s, exemplary heroic women from the ancient and Christian past were celebrated. In Du Bosc’s La Femme heroïque (1645), a heroine from ancient times is set alongside a hero; likewise in Le Moyne’s Gallerie des femmes fortes (1647), an ancient heroine is placed in parallel with a more recent, but not contemporary, female exemplar, while in Madeleine de Scudéry’s two volumes of Les Femmes illustres (1642 and 1644, respectively), 40 ancient heroines are singled out for virtues such as conjugal fidelity, constancy, and generosity. Van Schurman, for her part, drew her primary inspiration on the value of contemporary female exemplars from Lipsius’s Monita et exempla politica [Political Admonitions and Examples, 1605], whose method she outlines in a letter to Elisabeth of Bohemia.89 Lipsius’s work is useful, she writes, because it shows ‘both public personalities and private individuals the uses they can make of ancient and modern examples’ (284). Lipsius’s Monita is a practical compendium on the utility of exemplars in the genre of the ‘mirror-for-princes’ which was popular throughout the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries; he wrote it to elucidate the political viewpoints expressed in his earlier major work, Sex libri politicorum [Six Books on Politics, 1589]. Each topic is illustrated with quotations from classical authors and supplemented with admonitions and historical examples of generals, kings, and queens from ancient, medieval, and contemporary history. Van Schurman emphasizes that contemporary exemplars lack nothing in comparison with ancient ones; and, in fact, she would go so far as to ‘dare to oppose a single Elizabeth in her life as Queen of England, and a Jane Grey over against all the illustrious women 86

 Opuscula, 299–300. French original.  Lyons 1989, 13. 88  Hampton, 23. Emphasis original. 89  Van Schurman to Elisabeth of Bohemia, 7 September 1639, Opuscula, 284. 87

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of ancient Greece and Rome’ (285). She prefers the modern exemplars because they lived their lives immediately before, during, and after ‘the inevitable change of the reformation of Christianity’ (285). She encourages the young Elisabeth of Bohemia to read books on the Reformation from historians such as Francesco Guicciardini, Johannes Sleidanus, and Jacques-Auguste de Thou.90 Rohan: A Protestant Heroine La Muse d’Utrecht faisait un très-grand cas du mérite d’Anne de Rohan. Fortunée Briquet, ‘Anne de Rohan’91

Van Schurman viewed the political agency and learning of Anne de Rohan as exemplary.92 Indeed, Rohan was born into an aristocratic family whose descendants included the ancient Dukes of Brittany, allied to the royal house of Scotland. The male members of the Rohan dynasty distinguished themselves on the battlefield and held influence at court. Won over to the Reform movement, they became staunch defenders of the French Huguenot cause. Likewise, the Rohan women were known for adroit political manoeuvring and valour in defending Protestantism. Anne de Rohan was the great-granddaughter of Michelle de Saubonne, Mme de Soubise (married to Jean IV de Parthenay-Soubise in 1507), who was the first French high noblewoman to convert to the Reform movement, and the gouvernante and principal influence on Renée de France (1510–74). She was the daughter of Catherine de Parthenay, Mme de Rohan-Soubise, who upon the death from battle wounds of her husband René de Rohan in 1586 became chef de famille, raised five children, assumed political and diplomatic leadership, and charted a new course through her example for women of her elite religious group. Along with her mother, at whose side she remained all her life, Anne de Rohan endured the disappointments and political vicissitudes of the Protestant cause in France. She and her mother were widely admired in French Huguenot circles as the indomitable heroines of the ruthless 16-month siege of La Rochelle from August 1627 to 1 November 1628 by the armies of Cardinal Richelieu. During the siege, which broke the remaining corporate existence and political power of the 90

 Francesco Guicciardini (1483–1540), an Italian statesman and historian, wrote his famous Storia d’Italia [History of Italy] on religious and political events in Italy between 1492 to 1532; Johannes Sleidanus (1506–56) was a German historian of the Reformation; Jacques-Auguste de Thou (1556–1617) – a French historian, book collector, and president of the Paris Parlement – was famous for his Histoire universelle covering the period between 1543 and 1607. 91  Briquet, 289. 92  Sources for this biographical sketch on Anne de Rohan and her extraordinary mother Catherine de Parthenay include: Haag, 6: 339–46; Bayle, 3: 24–63; Bonnet, 160–72; Vray 1998; Clarke 1966, 6, 154; and Deyon 2000. On Anne de Rohan and her mother at the siege of La Rochelle, see Haag, 6: 339–42. For an excellent essay on Parthenay’s life and works, see http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Catherine_de_Parthenay (accessed September 2014).

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Protestants in France, some three-quarters of the population died of starvation and disease. During the last three months of the siege, mother and daughter survived on horse meat and four ounces of bread a day.93 Upon the capitulation of the city, both women were the only ones to suffer imprisonment at Niort on orders of Richelieu, who refused to pardon them, stating that the Duchesse de Rohan ‘had been the torch that consumed the people’.94 The Peace of Alais (16 June 1629) freed them the following year. Catherine de Parthenay, the last great heroine of the French Reform movement, died soon after in 1631, at the age of 77. One last fact about Anne de Rohan should be mentioned: she was never married. Louise de Coligny, William of Nassau’s last wife, tried in vain to arrange a marriage between her son Frederik-Hendrik, Prince of Orange and future Stadtholder, and Anne.95 Queen Marie de Medici opposed the marriage, fearing a political alliance between the houses of Rohan and Nassau.96 Anne de Rohan’s poetic writings, composed under the aegis of her famous mother, were known far and wide. She was introduced at a young age to the full range of a classical humanist education alongside her two brothers, Henri and Benjamin, and two sisters, Henriette and Catherine. She was inspired to write by her mother, whose own unpublished works gave her ‘a great name in the Republic of Letters’.97 She published verses on the murder of King Henri IV in 1610 that were so wrenching that Agrippa d’Aubigné included a portion of them in his account of the event, the better to capture its national trauma. Her poems on the misfortunes in the lives of her siblings include among others a tombeau [funeral poem] on the death in childbirth of her sister Catherine; a poem on the defeat in 93

 Bayle, 4: 888.  Vray, 173. 95  Louise de Coligny 1970, 249, 254–5, 266, frequently mentions in her letters to her stepdaughter Charlotte-Brabantine de Nassau her negotiations to marry her son to Anne de Rohan. See Couchman 2005b, 129–31. 96  François de Rignac (or Reignac), one of Louise de Coligny’s emissaries, was sent to the queen to negotiate the marriage. Parthenay reveals this in a letter to CharlotteBrabantine de Nassau, on 6 July 1611, in Parthenay, 60. Interestingly, a copy of the first edition of the Opuscula bearing on its red Moroccan cover the coat of arms of François de Rignac can be found at the Museum Martena in Franeker. Rignac appears to have been a member of the entourage of Henri de la Tour d’Auvergne (1555–1623), Duc de Bouillon, a Huguenot military leader who was first cousin of Claude de la Tremoille, Duc de Thouars. On Henri de La Tour d’Auvergne, see Tulot 2006. 97  Briquet, 289. Catherine de Parthenay was a close friend of Catherine de Bourbon (1559–1604), Henri IV’s sister, who patronized her militant theatre. Parthenay’s works include several comedies-ballets (1592–93), which depict a contemporary political controversy, performed by her children and herself at the court of Pau and at Tours; and the tragedy Judith et Holopherne, performed for the first time at the first siege of La Rochelle in 1574, and again either in 1626 or during the second siege in 1627–28. Her re-enactment of the story of the warrior Judith gives tribute to Catherine de Bourbon’s mother, Queen Jeanne d’Albret. On Parthenay’s comédies-ballets, see Couchman 2006; on her theatre, see Evain. 94

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battle of her rebellious brother Benjamin, Duc de Soubise, on the island of Riez, which cost the lives of thousands of his soldiers; a collection of poems mourning the death of her mother; an elegy on the demise of Louise de Coligny in 1620; and a sonnet in 1630 on that of her great admirer, D’Aubigné.98 In a letter of advice to his daughters, D’Aubigné had stated how highly he thought of Anne de Rohan and her mother: We have seen in France the radiant lustre of that excellent mirror the Duchesse de Rohan, of the house of Soubise, and, in its midst, Anne de Rohan, her daughter. The writings of both have led us to hide our pens many times; in them both, the intellectual and moral virtues are in delightful combat as to which ones are superior.99

Rohan’s verses were published not as portions of miscellanies or in male writers’ collections, as was frequently the case with women poets, but in plaquette form or independent books attributed solely to her. They appeared in Paris and Geneva from the presses of Protestant publishers. She was the only high-born Protestant among the Orange-Nassau–Du Plessis Mornay women to publish her literary works.100 Protestant women of her rank did not publish their writings, unless they were addressing contemporary political and religious issues linked directly to the defence of the faith and family honour. Rohan was versed in the genre of the catalogue of illustrious women. In an ode addressed to her brother Henri de Rohan commemorating the life of their deceased mother, she extols biblical heroines and especially contemporary Protestant women as models for her generation.101 She includes well-known biblical figures such as Abraham’s wife Sarah; Elizabeth, the mother of John the Baptist; the Virgin Mary; and the prophetess Anna, who was the associate of Simeon at the purification of the Virgin Mary. Others are less well known, such as the virginal daughter of Jephthah the Gileadite, who offered herself in sacrifice to satisfy her father’s rash vow; and the poor widow of Zarephath (or Sarepta), whose food the prophet Elijah multiplied.102 Her catalogue includes Éléonore de Roy, Princesse de Condé, whose death in 1564 was memorialized in an epistle translated two years later into English. Rohan praises the young French noblewoman for her public actions in saving her husband, Louis de Condé, on several momentous occasions, including his imprisonment in 1560 after the Amboise conspiracy and again in

98  For Rohan’s works, see the Bibliography to this volume. Rohan’s elegy on the death of Louise de Coligny is no longer extant; her sonnet on the death of Agrippa d’Aubigné is included in Bonnet 1876, 326. 99  Aubigné 1969, 852. 100  Pascal, 127. 101  Rohan 1636. 102  Judges 11: 30–40; I Kings 17: 8–24.

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1563 after the defeat of the Huguenot army at Dreux.103 She goes on to recall Jeanne d’Albret, whose coffin she and her mother accompanied in 1572, and who submitted ‘her sceptre to the Cross of the Lord’ by defending Protestantism in her realm.104 She singles out Elizabeth I of England and Scotland, an ardent defender of Protestantism, whom she calls ‘the Royal Virgin, / Who like a great Prince ruled’, but who preferred ‘to these two visible Crowns / The one she could not see’ – that is, the divine crown she anticipated wearing in heaven (26). Finally, her mother, Catherine de Parthenay, becomes in her poem a second Elizabeth I. Rohan depicts her extraordinary courage in key episodes of her life, such as the civil wars, the St Bartholomew Massacre, the siege of La Rochelle, and the imprisonment at Niort. Her mother’s motto, she writes, was also her own ‘Device, / As useful as it is exquisite: / Christ, to live and to die, to me is gain’.105 Van Schurman, given her interest in Protestant heroines, may have read Rohan’s poem. Like Rohan, she extols Elizabeth I, along with the Protestant martyr Lady Jane Grey, in letters to Elisabeth of Bohemia (7 September 1639) and Dorothy Moore (8 August 1640).106 She again refers to Elizabeth I as a model in a letter to Bathsua Makin (31 October 1645).107 All three of these correspondents had English connections or were of English descent, and were committed to the cause of Protestantism on the Continent. Queen Elizabeth and Jane Grey embodied for Van Schurman perfect examples of historical agency in their defence of Protestantism, even surpassing exemplary Greek and Roman women worthies, as she states to Elisabeth of Bohemia.108 Other seventeenth-century women writers who praised the English queen as a model include Anne Bradstreet, Margaret Cavendish, and Bathsua Makin.109 Rohan’s renown was such that Protestant writers, theologians, and even pastors of the time incorporated her poems into their collections and dedicated their works to her. One of her sonnets appears as an epigraph to Agrippa d’Aubigné’s epic poem Les Tragiques.110 Pierre du Moulin dedicated to her his treatise Heraclite ou la vanité et misère de la vie humaine [Heraclitus or the vanity and misery of 103

 On Roye, see Couchman 2004.  Rohan 1636, 27. 105  Rohan 1636, 29. Adapted from St. Paul, Philippians 1: 16. Catherine de Parthenay had corresponded with Elizabeth I. One of her letters to the English queen is included in Vray, 77. 106  Opuscula, 285, 160. 107  Opuscula, 164–5. 108  Van Schurman to Elisabeth of Bohemia, French letter, 7 September 1639, in Opuscula, 285. 109  See Gim. Interestingly, Magdalena and Willem van de Passe, in whose workshop Van Schurman learned engraving, did an engraved print of Elizabeth I which was included in Henry Holland’s Herωologia Anglica (1620), a collection of portraits of court figures and writers during the reign of James I, of which they were the lead engravers. Buchelius wrote the Latin verses signed ‘A.B.’ on the Herωologia plates. Cited in Gim, 15, and Hind, 5, 39. 110  Aubigné 1995, 1: 21–2. 104

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human life, 1st ed. 1609]; and Samuel Durant, her former tutor and pastor, included a dedicatory poem to her by Frederik Spanheim in L’histoire de la tentation de Nostre Seigneur Jesus Christ: exposée en XVIII sermons, en l’Eglise reformée de Paris [The story of the temptation of our Lord Jesus Christ: explained in 18 sermons at the Reformed Church in Paris, 1627]. Rohan frequently commented in her letters to Charlotte-Brabantine de Nassau on the sermons she heard at the Protestant Temple at Charenton, outside Paris, and at other Protestant churches and chapels.111 She was fluent in the eruditio trilinguis Latin, Greek, and Hebrew, which is why Van Schurman quotes in her missive to her a proverb from the Hebrew Scriptures. Bayle reports that instead of singing the Psalms in French at church with the others, Rohan would ‘in the meantime sing them over in Hebrew to herself’.112 Van Schurman’s two letters to the Princesse de Rohan are informed by great admiration for the heroic and learned persona the latter had fashioned. In an unpublished letter in 1643, she asks Rivet to forward her letter of thanks to Rohan, who had intervened with Anne of Austria to stop the projected French translation of her Dissertatio. The ‘incomparable Princesse de Rohan’, she writes, had shown great ‘kindnesses’ towards her. Her most fervent wish now is that ‘the greatest and most trustworthy God of all and the originator and the perfector of our faith see to it that through such an outstanding example of his steadfastness, her Royal House remains illustrious’.113 Van Schurman and Scudéry: Should the Salonnière be a Savante? At her exile home in Marseille, in December 1646, Madeleine de Scudéry, having read the newly published Question celebre, immediately penned a letter to Conrart in which she expresses her awe for Van Schurman: It has been a long time since the merit of this marvellous girl has touched my spirit in a very particular way; and although her excellent qualities surpass by far my extremely limited knowledge, I do not cease to gaze upon this northern star with even more admiration and pleasure than upon the sun of Provence.114

At first glance, the relation between Van Schurman and Scudéry – an exact contemporary who became after the civil war years of the Fronde a celebrated 111

 On Rohan’s love of sermons, see Parthenay 1874, 94, 104; Vray, 141; and Pascal, 121.  Bayle, 4: 888. 113  Van Schurman to Rivet, 15 November 1643, KB, ms. 133 B 8, no. 35. On Rohan’s mediation, see Chapter 5 in this volume. 114  Scudéry to Conrart, 1 December 1646, in Un tournoi, 15. Scudéry admired other contemporary érudites such as Elisabeth of Bohemia, Christina of Sweden, and Sibylla Ursula; she corresponded with Ursula. See Krajewska 1988. 112

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salonnière and novelist – appears all one-sided. It is not known whether the Utrecht scholar ever corresponded directly with her, while she, on the other hand, eagerly sought out a correspondence with Van Schurman. Scudéry received a copy of at least one letter in which Van Schurman reveals to Marie du Moulin her reluctance to get involved in the controversy over Joan of Arc which Scudéry had initiated soon after the publication of the Question celebre. Du Moulin forwarded the letter, composed between April and May 1647, to Conrart, along with Van Schurman’s engraved self-portrait which Scudéry had repeatedly requested; Conrart then delivered these to Scudéry.115 Scudéry had stated several times that she wanted the engraving for her Parisian portrait gallery. When she finally received it, she thanked Du Moulin for sending ‘the portrait of a person as illustrious as Mlle de Schurman, sent by a hand as dear as that of Mlle du Moulin, and received by a man as honnête as M. Conrart, a favour so notable that nothing can equal it’.116 We need to inquire what drew Scudéry to Van Schurman, and how the Dutch savante ultimately served as a foil regarding the contested issue of female learning. The sources discussed here include Van Schurman’s Latin letters to Rivet on women’s education and Scudéry’s ‘Sapho à Erinne’, in her Femmes illustres (1642), and ‘Histoire de Sapho’, in her Artamène, ou, Le grand Cyrus (1650–53). Van Schurman and Scudéry, it seems, did have much in common. Both were learned. Although Van Schurman was far more versed in a wide range of disciplines and academic modes of argumentation, both were thoroughly cognizant of classical humanist rhetoric. They also affirmed similar views on women’s leisure for study and ability for intellectual work. For Van Schurman, wisdom acquired from an education in all the arts and the sciences should be accessible ‘to every single person’: since wisdom, she writes, is ‘such an ornament of the human race that it ought rightly to be extended to every single person (in as much as it is allowed to each person’s lot)’, she does not see why it is not permitted to a young woman ‘in whom we allow diligence in cultivating and beautifying herself’. Scudéry also questioned why women – with their imagination, wit, memory, and judgement – employ ‘all these things only to curl our hair and search for ornaments that will add something to our Beauty!’117 Both maintained that since men are busy with public affairs with little leisure, women who do have time should be permitted to study. Scudéry explains:

115

 This letter from Van Schurman to Marie du Moulin is missing from the collection of manuscript letters on the controversy over Joan of Arc. Conrart comments on it to Rivet (17 May 1647, in Un tournoi, 75–6): calling it a ‘belle lettre’, he tells Du Moulin that Scudéry ‘will doubtless find it the most gallant and most delicate in the world, as well as I do’ (17 May 1647, in Un tournoi, 77, 78). 116  Scudéry to Du Moulin, Marseille, 21 August 1647, in Un tournoi, 90. 117  Van Schurman to Rivet, 6 November 1637, in Dissertatio, 45; Scudéry 1642, 430–31.

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But for us, our leisure and our retirement give us every facility that we could wish for. We steal nothing from the Public or from ourselves: on the contrary, we enrich ourselves without impoverishing others; we render our Country illustrious by making ourselves Illustrious; and without wronging anyone, we acquire great glory.118

For Scudéry men have to ‘steal’ time away from their public duties to find opportunities for study. As private citizens, women have no such professional obligations. They bring glory to their country through their learning, and their ‘desire for the good’, which she equates with the desire to learn, ‘should not be forbidden and consequently, it is no crime to practise it [learning]’.119 Scudéry shared as well with Van Schurman the goal of advancing women’s education through a return to classical learning. In this they were at odds with the epistemological shift in the decades of the 1630s and 1640s. As I stated earlier in the chapter, the New Philosophers and the scientific community ushered in a sceptical mentality, already at work during the French religious wars, which led to an erosion of the authority of exemplary figures from the past and a search for new ways to depict the self in the public sphere. As Timothy Hampton remarks, in this time period ‘scepticism toward humanism and, indeed, toward the authority of history itself begins to emerge’.120 And so Descartes, for instance, rejected imitation. John Lyons notes that: since the Cogito is an act of radical solitude, it can only occur authentically by refusal of all that comes from outside the subject including models … Imitation belongs, in the realm of knowledge, to an obsolete and negative moment.121

On the other hand, the rhetorical use of exemplars continued in the religious and political agenda of the Counter-Reformation and the emerging absolutist ideology. The moralistes, conduct book writers, and women such as Van Schurman and Scudéry still operated in a late humanist pedagogical framework and a Neo-Stoic sense of self-presentation that linked classical study and imitation of models to public action. Jane Donawerth observes aptly, in relation to Scudéry, that ‘by 1642, since men’s philosophy is being shaped by Cartesian rationalism and empiricism, this recovery of the classics for women appears safely nostalgic to the public, representing a past that men have moved beyond’.122 For Scudéry, as for Van Schurman, it was essential to link female education to the classics. Scudéry’s goal was to model for salon women elegant forms of speech

118

 Scudéry 1642, 431–2.  Scudéry 1642, 432. 120  Hampton, 7. 121  Lyons 1982, 521, 522. 122  Donawerth 1995, 258. 119

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anchored in rhetorical classical learning.123 The speeches of the heroines from antiquity in her Femmes illustres empower women with the historical legitimation to speak. The rhetoric they use, borrowed from Aristotle’s Rhetoric and Cicero’s Orator, is adapted to salon discourse. In her dedicatory letter ‘Aux Dames’ [‘To the Ladies’], female eloquence, she states, must be ‘sans art, sans travail, & sans peine’ [‘without artifice, without work, and without pain’]. Properly understood, it is not that women do not observe the rhetoric taught in schools of higher learning, but that they do so ‘more adroitly’, for: the most delicate artifice consists in leading one to believe that there isn’t any … I have tried to make my Heroines eloquent; but I did not think that the eloquence of a Lady should be that of a Master of Arts … and if anyone should introduce a Demoiselle from the country of Latinity to the young men at court, they would look upon her as a freak, and ridicule her.124

Sappho’s speech to Erinna in Les femmes illustres underscores avoiding the type of eloquence gained from professional studies, frequently associated with ‘tiresome researches into secrets that no one can solve’, and with ‘pedants’ who apply their intelligence to ‘philosophize indifferently about everything’.125 For the salonnière, Scudéry enlisted instead poetry, historical writing, and literary genres facilitating performative exchange.126 A decade later, in her Histoire de Sapho (1653), she asserted categorically that the ‘femme savante’ and the cultivated woman are entirely different creatures.127 The cultivated woman hides her learning, which the ‘femme savante’ displays: It isn’t that she, who is not called savante, may not know as many things, and more things than the other who is given that terrible name, but she knows how to use her mind, and she knows how to hide cleverly, what the other displays tastelessly.128

Scudéry contrasts her namesake Sappho with Damophile, who draws attention to her erudition by constantly talking about the books she has read in the company of the savants, ‘as if she were discoursing in public at some renowned university’; worst of all, Damophile avoids all household duties.129 Damophile’s speech, in the parlance of the time, was ‘pedantic’ because it bore the marks of a specialized 123

 The following is indebted to Jane Donawerth’s work on Scudéry’s rhetoric of conversation. See in particular Donawerth 1997; 1998; and 2012. See, also, Denis 1997. 124  Scudéry 1642, preface, n.p. 125  Scudéry 1642, 435. 126  On poetry as the preferred genre of sociability, see Génetiot. 127  Scudéry 1650–53, 10: 401. 128  Scudéry, 10: 401. 129  Scudéry 2003, 23; Scudéry 2005, 464.

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scholarly written discourse; Sappho’s honnête speech, on the other hand, privileged the spoken word which, in communicating thoughts more directly, was judged superior to the written word.130 In contrast to Damophile, Sappho hides her learning and avoids ostentatious praise; her verse contributes to the group dynamic of polite exchange. Although learned, she presents herself publicly as cultivated. Learning is essential for Scudéry since: it enables them [women] to understand what those more learned than they have to say and to speak to the point without talking like a book, but rather as if simple common sense made them understand the things talked about.131

Scudéry goes on to describe the kind of socially acceptable learning that a cultivated woman should display in conversation: She may well know several foreign languages, she may confess to having read Homer, Hesiod,132 and the excellent works of the illustrious Aristaeus without seeming too much a savante; she can even offer her views in such a modest and positive way that, without transgressing what is proper to her sex, she can let it be known that she is a woman of wit, knowledge, and judgement.133

Scudéry adapted classical education’s normative settings (the university, the allmale academy) and its content (a specialized academic curriculum and the rhetoric of the ancients) to the heterosocial settings of leisured conversation where men and women cultivated relations at once aesthetic and affective.134 Van Schurman also transposed classical rhetorical education to the setting (the private study or cabinet) most familiar to upper gentry and noblewomen. Moreover, as we have seen, she valued learning for personal ends. Classical Stoicism, Seneca, and Lipsius in particular influenced her thinking about self-improvement in a ‘safe tranquillity’ where the sage could devote herself to the cultivation of virtue and the liberal arts. So she, too, adapted humanist learning to sites frequented by leisured women. But, unlike Scudéry, she did not shape a new conversational rhetoric. She was very far from what Peter Miller describes as the drift in France in the late 1620s toward ‘conversation-as-courtesy’: ‘The appeal of conversation-as-courtesy overtook the ideal of learned sociability and the death knell had been sounded for

130

 Foucault, 92–5. Cited in Pekacz, 140.  Scudéry 2005, 503. 132  Scudéry wrote Le Songe d’Hésiode [The Dream of Hesiod], included in 1658 in Clélie, and, according to Denis 1998, 193, likely written in collaboration with Paul Pellisson, an influential member of her circle. 133  Scudéry 2005, 503–4. 134  On affective salon relationality in Scudéry, see Seifert. 131

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the scholar as an example of individual excellence.’135 Nor did she subscribe to Guez de Balzac’s famous quip in a letter to Conrart that ‘good sense is found in Paris, as well as in Athens and Rome, and one can fortunately think and express one’s thoughts without the help of Greek or Latin’.136 In other words, French alone was sufficient to make of Conrart a honnête homme. If Scudéry and Van Schurman shared the same incentive to promote women’s advancement, the type of learning each envisaged is quite different. Scudéry would have found Van Schurman’s encyclopedism and training in Aristotelian disputation antithetical to her goals. The learning she found useful lent itself rather to relational forms of interaction culled from the medieval courtly lyric, Italian and Spanish courtly dialogues and treatises, Neoplatonism, and the pastoral novel. Such learning could even promote philosophical reflection, as she explained in her later ‘De l’Incertitude’ in La Morale du monde, ou Conversations (1686). One of the discussants, Amerinte, asks whether she may study philosophical arguments allowing her to ‘dispute’ with a female friend who believes in Atomism. The sage Aristene answers that a ‘Lady who is too much a Philosopher’ is unacceptable, but that: [those] with an elevated mind can know everything without departing from the decorum of their sex, and with even more reason can listen to others speak, and we see that in Antiquity there have been many women famous for their learning.137

Learning is socially useful so long as it unites knowledge to the pleasure of conversing and asking questions. The point of philosophical conversation is not the resolution of difficult questions, but their aporia. As Laura Burch remarks, ‘Scudéry insists on a practice of learning that leaves open these questions. It is within this practice that a woman philosopher has her being.’138 Although Scudéry did not think Van Schurman’s exemplary erudition applied to the salonnière, she would have agreed with her embodiment of modesty, the hallmark of the honnête femme.139 As a rhetorical trope of deference and selfdeprecation, modesty was formulaic and conventional. Lynne Magnusson, basing herself on Pierre Bourdieu’s economic model for linguistic exchange, notes that the modesty trope in early modern women’s letters reflects a linguistic habitus which is ‘the set of dispositions acquired in learning to speak and write in particular contexts’.140 Modesty rhetoric was informed less by gender than by class, and was required not only of women but also of men to fit into the group dynamics of courtly conversation. In the early seventeenth century, following the chaos of the 135  Miller, 68. This drift actually began earlier, in the 1570s and 1580s, in the Parisian and provincial salons during the reign of the last Valois King Henri III. 136  Balzac to Conrart, 18 September 1637, in Balzac 1665, 1: 655. 137  Scudéry 1977, 95. 138  Burch, 373. 139  Furetière (1690) defines modesty as ‘pudeur’ [propriety] and ‘retenuë’ [restraint]. 140  Magnusson, 63.

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French civil wars, a renewed concerted civilizing effort emphasized, according to Roland Chartier, ‘the strict control of the instincts, firmer mastery of the emotions, and a heightened sense of modesty’.141 Modesty was even considered one of the essential Christian-Ciceronian private virtues of governing princes. Justus Lipsius, in his Monita et exempla politica, explains that in the face of fickle fortune a prince must guard himself against arrogance through modesty. He has to be ‘modest in sensu and in cultu’, in mind and in body, and not given over to ostentatious forms of personal display.142 Modesty for elite women was soon exemplified in Mme de Rambouillet’s aristocratic demeanour and gatherings. Pierre Le Moyne in fact praised the Hôtel de Rambouillet as an even more polite replica of the court, to which he added, ‘the Court of the Court … I mean of the ingenious and witty Court, the gallant and modest Court’.143 Modesty for a woman writer became an instrumental ‘strategy of inscription into the literary field’.144 Scudéry illustrates Sappho’s modesty by showing her reluctance to reveal her writings. It is only after Phaon, Sappho’s paramour, has courted her for a long time that she mentions her ‘secret’. The narrator and Phaon, alone with her one day, urge her to reveal her verses: ‘finally she agreed to show us some. But since her modesty would not suffer her to read her verse aloud to us, she offered it to us and went into her study to write two or three pressing letters.’145 Modesty, however, is a double-edged strategy: if it allows a woman writer a means of entrance into literature, it can also lead to the loss of her writings for posterity. Only those who promoted themselves as authors succeeded in preserving them.146 Van Schurman exhibited perfectly the honnête requirement of modesty; her admirers constantly alluded to it. Scudéry similarly mobilized modesty rhetoric to legitimize her own writing as well as female salon learning. This had not always been the case. During the early stages of her career in the late 1630s and early 1640s, she had aggressively pursued through correspondence and visits the pre-eminent Chapelain and Balzac. Chapelain, however, became critical of the constant stream of her missives during the first months of their acquaintanceship; their purpose, he said, was so she could parade his replies to others. He even accused her of holding him in a state of siege: ‘I wish sometimes I were ill or in prison in order to have a legitimate excuse not to write bad letters to her.’147 Two weeks later, he likened her to ‘bees, which bother you whether you chase them away or not’.148 She had to rethink how best to make her mark in the literary world. She took the path of combining learning to relational forms of modesty evidenced at Rambouillet’s 141

 Chartier, 16. Emphasis added.  Janssens, 153. 143  Le Moyne, 253. 144  Maître 1999, 395. 145  Scudéry 2003, 69. 146  Maître 1999, 396. 147  Chapelain to Balzac, 7 August 1639, in Chapelain 1880, 1: 474. 148  Chapelain to Balzac, 21 August 1639, in Chapelain 1880, 1: 483. 142

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and Des Loges’s circles.149 Pierre Le Moyne sums up perfectly the combination of learning and modesty he found in Rambouillet and her daughter Julie: [They] are savantes the one and the other with the learning of the Cornelias, Julias, and Paulines, their Ancestors … But one must not think that there is any puffiness and presumption in their learning, that it makes heads turn and causes fainting … It is modest and strongly civil; it is solid without pride or rudeness.150

Similarly, Balzac admired Mme des Loges for never showing off: ‘You know many rare things, but you do not show yourself off as a savante … One sees your tapestry, silk thread, and needles; but your books and your papers are invisible.’151 Scudéry codified the social practices she observed. These practices underscore male intellectuals’ projection of the savante as much as they reveal Scudéry’s absolute commitment to protecting her reputation as a learned sociable writer. When Colletet announced approvingly to Gabriel Naudé that Van Schurman was displacing Marie de Gournay as an ‘exemplary savante’, he could well have meant that, unlike the provocative Gournay, she was defending the right of women to an education without publicly insisting on a place for women in the scholarly world of men.152 Her more modest reach would appeal to Scudéry. The latter recast the savante as a cultivated woman, thereby absorbing the social implications of a Rambouillet,153 a Des Loges, and a Van Schurman. She would admire Van Schurman’s modesty and advocacy of a woman’s right to learn in a private realm or retraite inhabited by intelligent women who did not show off their learning. This retreat became the foundation for Scudéry’s creation of a realm of heterosocial and tender friendships, and the basis of an ideal of mixed-gender sociability that was learned without seeming so.154 Conclusion: Exemplarity and Counter-Exemplarity To sum up, of the three Parisian women writers Marie de Gournay, Anne de Rohan, and Madeleine de Scudéry, Van Schurman most admired Rohan. They shared the same zeal for the Protestant cause in France. Van Schurman followed with interest, even alarm, news of the French Reformed Church, inquiring on one 149

 Maître 1999, 397–405.  Le Moyne, 253. Cited in Timmermans, 325n43. 151  Balzac to Mme des Loges, 20 September 1628, in Balzac 1636, 2: 875. 152  See Chapter 4. 153  In De la politesse (1684), in Scudéry 1998, 122, Scudéry describes Rambouillet as a ‘model of perfect virtues’, and the embodiment of politesse joined to reason. 154  Broad and Green 2009, chapter 8, note insightfully that Scudéry’s (and Montpensier’s) notion of a retreat of tender friendships led to the emergence of a private sphere governed by sensibilité, which came to full prominence in the eighteenth century. 150

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occasion from Marie du Moulin, then at Sedan on a visit to her father, about ‘the state of our Religion, which is (as I have heard) troubled by new happenings that in their consequences can only be highly dangerous in a Kingdom where there are so many enemies’.155 Rohan’s legendary courage and tenacity during the terrible siege of La Rochelle epitomized the fortitude of the French Huguenot church hanging on by a thread for its existence. Van Schurman viewed Rohan as an exemplary woman on a par with ancient models of womanly heroism. Her view coincides with what Michel Jeanneret calls ‘an engaged, dialogic, and creative’ reading of history and a means of infusing the past, and near past, with relevance.156 She also found Rohan’s mastery of Latin, Greek, and especially Hebrew a source of support for her own investment in ancient languages. Rohan, of the great French Protestant nobility, offered her an unsurpassed model of erudition and historical agency. Van Schurman’s textual relations with Gournay are more complex. She admired her fighting spirit and bold advocacy of women’s higher learning, but her example was nonetheless problematic. As mentioned, Gournay thought that time devoted to translation was wasted. Van Schurman begged to differ. Gournay, furthermore, made known her aversion for the Huguenots whose rebellion, in her view, threatened the French nation. We do not know if Van Schurman was aware of Gournay’s writings against the French Protestants; if she were, she would have found them distressing. She may have thought Gournay’s reputation was a problem as well. Although Gournay was highly respected in some circles, she was the target of attacks. Her learning, her difficulties as editor of Montaigne, and her independent life style made her vulnerable to public opinion. Van Schurman knew the difficulty inherent in being a learned woman. Time and again she adds in her correspondence disclaimers as to her talents and erudition. These represent, to be sure, ritualized forms of epistolary expression. But they also denote her heightened awareness of the constraints on women’s self-representation. She refers repeatedly to her fear of envy. She warns Van Beverwijck, for instance, that his extravagant praise is harmful to her reputation: ‘you heap envy-provoking pronouncements upon my ignorance to such an extent that I think that I am unable either to safeguard my silence with modesty or my modesty with silence’.157 Concerned that learned women attract envy, she remarks that in his Of the Excellency of the Female Sex ‘you raised so many examples of illustrious women to such sublime celebrity that your discourse seems to give them more envy than admiration’.158  Van Schurman to Marie du Moulin, 8 December 1646, Opuscula, 311–12. After the Peace of Alais (or Alès) (1629), French Protestants strategized their survival on their collective loyalty to the crown and on hypergallicanism, more anti-Papist than anti-Catholic, in the hope that the Crown would continue to uphold the Edict of Nantes and break with Rome. See Labrousse 1996. 156  Jeanneret, 567. 157  Van Schurman to Van Beverwijck, 21 January 1638, in Opuscula, 184. 158  Van Schurman to Van Beverwijck, 1639, in Opuscula, 188. See Appendix 1.5. 155

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Van Schurman, therefore, would have found problematic the more confrontational aspects of Gournay’s exemplarity, her outspokenness, and lack of expressed modesty about women’s status and capacities. As for Scudéry, although she admired the talent and learning of her northern peer, she would also have been critical, given her differing emphasis on the status of the savante. To Van Schurman’s encyclopedic intellectualism, she adduced for the salonnière the cultivation of a rhetorical learning suitable to circle gatherings. Her feminism of difference ran counter to Van Schurman’s feminism of educational equality.159 Thus the cultivated woman that Scudéry represented so successfully in her long career as a writer with an immense public following, under the cover of her familial ‘pseudo pseudonym’,160 became in short order the norm. In French elite intellectual circles and in educational practices for girls well into the twentieth century, her Sappho became the new savante ‘never seen to read, study, or write’.161

 Scudéry, however, endorsed a form of social (aristocratic) parité or egalitarianism, rooted in what Viala 2008, 172, calls a salon ‘sociability founded on the sentiment of reciprocity’. 160  According to Grande, 2000, 191, Scudéry’s use of her brother’s name, George de Scudéry, also a writer, to promote her career, gave her a pseudonym that ‘designated as much as it veiled the author it pretended to hide’. On Scudéry’s ‘invisible signature’, see Harth 1992, 46. 161  Scudéry 2003, 7. 159

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Chapter 7

Reception in England I have heard about you, my beloved friend, honourable Lady.… Let us join together to trade and to acquire wisdom and understanding. Van Schurman to Dorothy Moore (1640)1 Logic is the key: those that have this in their heads may unlock other sciences … Those who read Schurman’s Dissertations will conclude she understood the principles and practice of logic very well. Bathsua Makin, An Essay to Revive the Ancient Education of Gentlewomen (1673)2

In the 1640s Van Schurman penned two letters in Hebrew and Latin to Dorothy Moore, and two letters in Greek to Bathsua Makin; they appear in her Opuscula. These letters help us understand her educational vision and reception among erudite women in England. They speak to the centrality of female scholarly friendship in the life of a savante; to female authorial self-presentation in shaping an intellectual, religious, and educational tradition for women; to the need for women to exercise leadership and teaching roles benefitting the church and the education of girls; and to the right of conscience in matters of religion. Dorothy Moore became a religious reformer, and Bathsua Makin a life-long professional tutor and teacher. Both lived through the tumultuous events of the 1640s and 1650s when England was wracked by intestine wars and London by demonstrations, often led by women; both exercised political agency in exploring institutional social change for the betterment of women’s lives. Their friendship with Van Schurman and protest against the limited roles of women in the church (Moore) and education (Makin) paved the way for later feminist movements that worked at changing women’s social conditions. Dorothy Moore: A Life in Context Dorothy Moore (née King, ca. 1613–64), one of nine children born into the AngloIrish aristocracy of Dublin, was educated by her father’s chaplains.3 Her close 1

 Schurman 1998, 60.  Teague 1998, 118, 119. 3  This sketch of the life of Dorothy Moore is indebted to Turnbull, 219–99; Hunter’s edition of Moore 2004; Hunter 1997; Cornelia Moore 1994a, 226–7; Greengrass 2004; and Pal 2012, chapter 4. 2

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friendship with her intellectually inclined neighbour Katherine Boyle (1614–91) – later Katherine Jones, Viscountess Ranelagh, and her niece by marriage – may have reinforced her early desire to learn.4 Members of Ranelagh’s immediate family, all known to Moore, were highly enterprising: her sister, Lettice Goring, wrote recipes in medicine and sugar-cookery; her other sister, Mary Rich, Countess of Warwick, became a physician and apothecary; her brother Edward was Milton’s contemporary as a student at Cambridge, and his death at the very start of his career was lamented in a memoir volume by Milton containing, among other poems ‘Lycidas’;5 her other brother, Robert Boyle, the famous scientist, became one of the founders of the Royal Society. Like Lady Ranelagh, Moore was reputed to have gained a high degree of learning and piety.6 Van Beverwijck describes Moore in 1639 as a 27-year-old recent widow who had mastered Latin, Hebrew, French, and Italian. ‘In addition’, he indicates, ‘she is so devout that, in between her studies, she sets aside a special time each day to spend piously, reading and meditating.’7 In the late 1620s, at the age of 17 or younger, Moore’s marriage to Arthur Moore, a landowner and politician, brought her to England and the Netherlands. During the 1630s she spent time at Utrecht with her husband, who may have been involved in the continuing ecumenical movement to reunify the Protestant churches on the Continent and ally them with the Church of England.8 We learn from Van Beverwijck that, in the late 1630s, Moore wrote to Van Schurman a letter, now lost: ‘A little while ago, she [Moore] wrote a letter in Hebrew to the most learned maid that ever lived, who needs no further introduction here.’9 Van Schurman replied in Hebrew on 8 August 1640.10 By then Arthur Moore had died and Dorothy went back to Dublin. Later she returned briefly to London, for when Van Schurman wrote her again in April 1641, she explained that she had 4  On Ranelagh, see Hunter 1997; Connolly 2007, 2008, 2011; Pal 2012, chapter 5. Shapin 1994, in a section entitled ‘Invisible Women’, comments on the little noted crucial role that Lady Ranelagh played in Robert Boyle’s intellectual life as theological interlocuter, financial supporter, nurse, and constant companion: ‘She was, in a loose but important sense, Boyle’s greatest technician’ (371). 5  I thank Charles Huttar for this reference. 6  Hunter 2005, 130, observes that unsurprisingly Moore and Ranelagh, in the 1640s and 1650s, became close collaborators of the future members of the Royal Society. Both came from Ireland where women benefited from the same educational opportunities as their mothers a generation earlier ‘even though the fashion may have died out in England’. Pal 2012, 146, notes that Ranelagh may have been educated by the family of her fiancé to whom she was betrothed at age six. 7  Translation in Cornelia Moore 1994a, 227n2. 8  See the Introduction in this volume for this movement. 9  Translation in Cornelia Moore 1994a, 227n2. 10  The superscription to Van Schurman’s Hebrew letter to Moore, 8 August 1640, in Schurman 1998, 60, states: ‘To the great city Dublin, to the honourable Lady Dorothy Moor, to the widow of the honourable nobleman Moor, from the city of Utrecht’.

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waited until her brother could deliver her letter personally to Moore on his trip to England. She adds, ‘He [her brother] will declare unto you the manner of my Life, and open to your view the closet of my heart (where you will find yourself to have a chief place).’11 Following, or perhaps preceding, her husband’s death in the late 1630s, Moore had become acquainted with the Puritan Scottish reformer John Dury (1596–1680), whom after a few years she would marry.12 Dury’s life calling was to unite the Protestant churches in England and on the Continent and reform the English schools along the principles of the Czech-speaking teacher, educator, and writer Jan Amos Comenius (1592–1670). Dury had studied at the French Reformed Seminary in Leiden and been pastor in Cologne and later Elbing, Poland, where he met Comenius and the polymath Samuel Hartlib (ca. 1600–62) and became active in Millenarian politics. He embarked between 1631 and 1641 on a series of continental missions to advance church unity in Europe, travelling to Germany and the Low Countries. In 1635 he was in Utrecht where he formed the first recorded English contact with Descartes, and likely met Van Schurman.13 Following his meeting with Dorothy Moore, he arranged for Voetius to educate her two sons in Utrecht. Letters to her from Dury, written in the summer of 1641, indicate that Voetius was about to release two of his 13 house boarders to make room for her sons. Dury also states that Van Schurman and her brother ‘salute yow kindly, [and] wish much your arrivall’.14 When Dury became chaplain and tutor to Mary Stuart, Princess Royal, at The Hague in early May 1642, Moore followed him with her sons.15 For the next two years, she was part of the entourage of the exiled Elizabeth, Queen of Bohemia. Moore and Dury championed with fervour the queen’s cause, the return of the Palatine monarchy. A decade earlier, in 1630, Dury had visited Charles I, Elizabeth’s brother, to seek support and funds for such a restoration.16 He was likely introduced 11

 Translation in Cornelia Moore 1994a, 217.  On Dury, see Batten; Turnbull; Webster 1975; Harrison, 131–140; Rae 1970; Léchot. 13  Dury wrote to Hartlib on 27 August 1635 of his Utrecht meeting with Descartes in which he attempted to convince him that the Bible contained a way to reach truth more certainly than through the sciences. See Léchot, 138; Gaukroger, 304; and Waard. 14  Dury to Moore, 29 July 1641 and 1 August 1641, in Moore 2004, 7–9. On these letters preserved in Hartlib’s papers, see Turnbull, 219–20. The letters provide an interesting account of the fees for Moore’s sons. Included are charges for private French lessons, Latin lessons at Utrecht’s Latin School, and music lessons with several teachers. 15  Mary Stuart (1631–60), eldest daughter of Queen Henrietta Maria and Charles I of England, was betrothed to Prince William of Orange on 2 May 1641, and moved to The Hague with her mother in the spring of 1642. See Geyl, 72–162. 16  King James I and his son Charles I financed the struggle for the Palatinate and Bohemia. Until 1624 England contributed some 500,000 pounds to Frederick of Bohemia, and half that sum after 1624. Charles I sent regular subsidies to support the Bohemian exiles’ finances at the court of The Hague until the outbreak in 1642 of the English Civil 12

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in 1634 to the queen by his patron Sir Thomas Roe. During his two years at The Hague, Dury hoped that Moore might assist him in tutoring Sophie and HenrietteMarie, the queen’s youngest daughters.17 However, Moore’s outspoken impatience with Charles I’s politics and the queen’s court chaplain, Dr. Samsson Johnson (d. 1661), as well as rumours of her impending marriage to Dury, aborted the plan.18 While at The Hague, Moore began thinking about the serious education of girls, which she mentions in a letter in 1643 to Ranelagh.19 But she drafted the tract on female education only towards the end of the decade, informing Ranelagh that she had completed ‘a Draught’ which she expected would be met ‘with disdain and contempt’. She had left out the usual curriculum for girls, ‘dauncing and curious works’, on grounds that ‘my owne breeding and practice hath been too dangerously ill for me, to return to those things either in my selfe, or to teach others’.20 To allow girls to ‘live reasonably and not fantastically’ she urged the teaching of scientific experimentation and technical skills.21 Moore’s tract is no longer extant. Dury’s long three-year courtship of Dorothy Moore, between May 1642 when he joined the court at The Hague as chaplain, and February 1645 when he eventually married Moore, paid off.22 Dury persuaded Moore, through the mediation of Lady Ranelagh, that in order to pursue their spiritual work together they had to marry. Moore’s frequent absences, he argued, and his own constant travels prevented them from achieving the fullness of communication promised by their spiritual friendship.23 Moore, for her part, told Ranelagh that notwithstanding her strong preference for the single life, she finally became convinced that marriage to Dury was the best way for her to fulfil her service to the common good of the church.24 Dury and Moore were married at The Hague in February 1645, at which point they War. After that date, the subsidies became irregular and Elizabeth’s financial situation suffered greatly. See Keblusek and Zijlmans, 48. 17  Henriette-Marie von der Pfalz (1626–51) and her sister Sophie von der Pfalz (1630–1714) were the youngest of 13 children born to the exiled Frederick V and Elizabeth Stuart. 18  In a letter on 24 August 1642 to Lady Ranelagh, in Moore 2004, 9, Moore describes Johnson as ‘a barking kurr whos breath is poisonous and companie contagious to those that heare him willingly’. 19  Moore to Ranelagh, 8 July 1643, in Moore 2004, 19. 20  Moore to Ranelagh, undated [c. 1650], in Moore 2004, 86. 21  Hunter 2005, 132. 22  In a letter on 17 June 1642 to Godemann, steward to the Earl of Pembroke, in Turnbull, 228, Dury states that he had not yet married Moore and that ‘he does not know whether he will ever attain to that happiness’. To Hartlib on 24 June 1642, in Turnbull, 229, he asks for assistance in getting Moore chosen to become governess to the Princess Mary; by helping him, Hartlib would enable him and Moore to marry. 23  Dury to Ranelagh, 14 December 1644, in Moore 2004, 114–17. 24  Moore to Ranelagh, 5 May 1645, in Moore 2004, 69–73. Moore defended herself in her letter against charges that she was marrying a man beneath her rank and without a suitable fortune.

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returned to England after a brief stint in Rotterdam where Dury worked as pastor of the English Church. In London, Dury became tutor from 1645/46 to 1649 to Charles I’s children, James and Henry; he would have also worked at St James’s Palace with Princess Elisabeth’s tutor, Bathsua Makin. Scholarly Friendship between Women Van Schurman’s Hebrew letter to Moore on 8 August 1640 and her Latin letter on 1 April 1641, along with her two Greek letters to Bathsua Makin, are the only missives in the Opuscula addressed to women in languages other than French.25 The two letters to Moore in particular touch on a matter of deep personal interest: forming close scholarly friendships with women of similar religious persuasion, and a disposition for wisdom and higher learning. ‘I have heard about you, my beloved friend, honourable Lady’ is the opening greeting to her Hebrew letter.26 She considers Moore divinely appointed as an exempla to her sex. Because of her knowledge and wisdom, Moore is the only one among English women to follow in the steps of Lady Jane Grey and Queen Elizabeth I, paragons of learning. For this reason, ‘God has chosen you to be a crown of glory for all women!’ (60) She then invites Moore into a friendship covenant: I long for your love, and I said to myself: I will come toward your excellent majesty with these ten statements, in all humility, to make a covenant of salt between myself and yourself. Let us join together to trade and acquire wisdom and understanding. (60)

A ‘covenant of salt’ alludes to the salt used in the Old Testament sacrificial meal that accompanied the making of a permanent alliance. This allusion to the books of Numbers (18:19) and Leviticus (2:13) references the offerings set aside for the Levite priests dedicated to the temple worship service. Her solemn invitation to a friendship covenant is thus cast in biblical imagery, as is her entire letter; she cites four other passages from the Hebrew Scriptures. Van Schurman offers Moore a friendship alliance steeped as well in Senecan overtones. In his Epistolae morales, Seneca explains that reason, as guide, creates ideal conditions for an egalitarian friendship in which friends learn from one another, turning amicitia into a means of teaching and acquiring wisdom.27 25  Opuscula, 160, 196–9. For translations of both letters, see Schurman 1998, 60–61; Moore 2004, 1–3. Clement Barksdale’s translation of the Latin letter to Moore, in Schurman 1659, is included in Cornelia Moore 1994a, 217. 26  Van Schurman to Moore, 8 August 1640, Opuscula, 160. I follow Joyce Irwin’s translation which references the letter’s many quotations from the Hebrew Scriptures (see Schurman 1998, 60). 27  Seneca 1970, I: XLVIII, 2–4 (315); I: LXXXI, 12–14 (227).

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The friendship Van Schurman offers is the very same kind found in scholarly exchanges of the Republic of Letters, with a long history extending back to Plato’s Symposium and Phaedrus, Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics (Chapter 8), Cicero’s De Amicitia and De Officiis, and Plutarch’s Moralia (‘How to tell a Flatterer from a Friend’ and ‘On Having Many Friendships’). Such friendship ties constituted an ‘emotional infrastructure’ for members of this international community; scholarly relationships were thought of as ‘a family of one’s own choice’ with a distinctive form of sociability.28 Key terms used to denote these friendships were humanitas and philanthrôpia [mutual understanding], concepts that appear frequently in Van Schurman’s letters.29 Van Schurman ends her letter with ‘Your beloved friend and your servant’ (60). Reprising the start of her missive where she declares Moore her ‘beloved friend’, she signals her desire for friendship with a peer she considers eminently suited to a relationship of equals in a respublica mulierum.30 Her second letter in Latin, on 1 April 1641, expands on this friendship offer. Moore, recently widowed, had turned to her for direction. Van Schurman rephrases Moore’s request: ‘You enquire how I order and dispose of my affairs so that with least offense I may, especially in these calamitous times, pass through the troubles of this life.’ She explains her educational philosophy, avowing, first, the primacy of divine providence on which she fully depends through lifting up all of her anxieties to God; and, second, that her chief remedy against the trials of life, which she attributes to the ‘tediousness and trouble’ of living ‘upon the public Stage of this world’, is the ‘retirement of Studies’. Studies, at once a haven of tranquillity and a refuge from the world, allow a just appraisal of what fills ‘profaner souls with admiration’. In this retreat, her mind, accompanied by the Muses, can rise to ‘higher matters’. She then imagines vividly the possibility of some day sharing that retreat with Moore.31 In brief, she hopes that they can set up a type of academic household wherein to study and live together. She ends by inviting Moore to read her ‘Printed Epistle’ – her recently published Dissertatio on women’s advanced learning – and sends along a copy of her 1640 engraved self-portrait, an ‘image depicted true to life with my own hand’, that will allow Moore to know her ‘in all ways, insofar as is possible’. She concludes by joining her request for a covenant friendship with the exemplarity of her

28

 Shelford, 39. See also Salazar.  Dibon 1972, 39; Bury 1999a. 30  Van Schurman reserves similar terms of endearment for Bathsua Makin. She signs off her Greek letter to Makin on [31] October 1645, Opuscula, 165, with ‘love me in return for my love to you’. Translation Beek 1995b, 32. 31  Translation Moore 1994a, 217. Van Schurman similarly invited (French letter on 13 August 1642, Opuscula, 292) Anne de Merveil, the newly widowed dowager of Prosting, to move to Utrecht where they could live closer to each other: ‘I cannot conceal from you … that the ardour and the strength of the desire to see you and some day offer you my very humble services make me hope that you will choose to establish your residence here in our city.’ 29

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correspondent: ‘Farewell, the immortal Honor of our Sex, and continue your love toward her who loves you most affectionately.’32 Van Schurman’s friendship facilitated an epistolary exchange (in French) three years later, in September and October 1643, between Moore and André Rivet. Moore inquired from Rivet whether women had a spiritual and moral duty to perform a public ecclesiastic role, if not as members of the clergy, then at least in some meaningful official capacity that would allow them to address parishioners publicly. Moore began developing her ideas on women’s roles in the church through letters, first with Lady Ranelagh and then with Rivet. Moore and Rivet ended up writing five letters exploring – in utramque partem – both sides of the issue.33 Their debate occurs rhetorically and hermeneutically against the backdrop of the earlier epistolary exchange on female education between Van Schurman and Rivet, from November 1637 to March 1638. The Moore–Rivet letters elicit several interrelated questions as to the precise circumstances that led Moore to engage in such a highly charged interchange, and the way in which Rivet responded to the problem she raised over women’s roles in the church. And, furthermore, we need to ask what arguments he reprised from his earlier communications with Van Schurman, and what role Van Schurman most assuredly played in Moore’s thinking. As we shall see, the debate between Moore and Rivet in fact demonstrates that the influence of these women on one another was mutual. Moore’s radical decision – decisively reached following her exchange with Rivet – to follow the right of conscience in religious life choices could have been one of the influences on Van Schurman, who, later in her life, opted to follow her spiritual calling beyond the walls of the established church through joining the Labadist house community. Moreover, Moore’s and Rivet’s epistolary interchange had some wellknown precedents. As a polemic between a female writer and her male opponent, it has a long tradition dating back to Christine de Pizan, ‘the forerunner of all subsequent movements in behalf of women’s rights’.34 Closer to Van Schurman’s and Moore’s own time, it figures among famous instances in Italy and England of polemical treatises directed by women at a notorious antagonist. The Venetian Jewish Sarra Copia Sulam’s Manifesto (1621), for instance, was written against the cleric Baldassare Bonifaccio’s accusation that she had questioned the immortality of the soul; Rachel Speght’s A Mouzell for Melastomus (1617) responds to Joseph Swetnam’s The Arraignment of Lewd, Idle, Froward, and Unconstant Women 32

 Translation Moore 1994a, 218. Van Beek 2002a, 291, translates the last line as: ‘Farewell, immortal glory of our sex and pursue me as your dearest friend.’ Moore’s replies to Van Schurman’s two letters are no longer extant. 33  Manuscript copies of Moore’s three French letters to Rivet, dated 23 September, 8 October, and 24 October 1643, together with Rivet’s two replies, dated 29 September and 28 October 1643, are included in Samuel Hartlib’s Papers at the University of Sheffield. I am grateful to Carol Pal who generously shared her copies and transcriptions of these letters. 34  Willard, 73.

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(1615).35 Although neither Van Schurman nor Moore were writing, like their counterparts, a rebuttal against a published treatise, they tried like them to overturn point by point Rivet’s contrary opinions and accusations. Although no other copies of letters between Van Schurman and Moore are extant, it is entirely possible that they continued to correspond with each other. Their friendship and Van Schurman’s published writings played an important role in Moore’s evolving views of women’s spiritual calling in the church. Debating on Women in the Church How did Moore become acquainted with Rivet and what led to the exchange between them? Dury likely introduced her to his former professor while residing at the court of The Hague where Rivet was tutor since 1632 to William-Henry, the future William II (1626–50).36 In 1642 Moore refers twice to Rivet: she informs Hartlib on 24 August that Rivet considered the queen’s chaplain, Dr Johnson, a dangerous Socinian, who had to be removed from court.37 A second letter, written sometime in 1642 and addressed to Albert Joachimi, the Dutch ambassador in London, indicates that Rivet, ‘having been misinformed, helped to spread the news of a marriage alliance between myself and Mr Dury’. She objects to these rumours which threatened Dury’s position as chaplain to Mary Stuart, Princess Royal, stating that Dury was a good friend and that if she had felt the need to marry him, she would have told him so, to which she adds: ‘I am fully determined to please myself in this matter and do not intend to pander to other people’s whims.’ She wanted Joachimi to inform Queen Henrietta Maria in London that these rumours were fabrications.38 Moore’s casual acquaintance with Rivet eventually solidified into a more friendly relation. Sometime in late 1642/early 1643 she may even have stayed momentarily at his house. This gave Van Schurman the occasion to entreat him to welcome Moore into a deeper friendship, perhaps even a mentoring relationship ‘because’, she writes: I know full well how much she would come to love and cherish you and your Virtues; and also on account of her rare piety, the gentleness of her disposition,

35

 Cox 2008, 211.  Léchot, 55. Dury, while a student at the French Reformed Seminary at Leiden in 1616, was taught by Rivet. 37  Moore to Hartlib, 24 August 1642, in Moore 2004, 10. As Jacqueline Broad notes in her edition of Mary Astell (2013, 14), ‘Socinian’ was ‘one of the most damaging and derogatory labels’ that could be applied. Socinians were dissenters who rejected religious beliefs inconsistent with reason. 38  Moore to Albert Joachimi, undated [1642], in Moore 2004, 12–14. 36

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and her other extraordinary gifts of intellect, my friendship with her is not at all an ordinary one. 39

Less than a year later, in September 1643, while living in Utrecht, Moore asked Rivet for advice about ecclesiastic roles suitable to her and other educated women. Her first letter begins with two bold and related questions in syllogism form: can ‘Christian women’ serve the universal church body; and – since the answer is clearly yes – by what means might they do so ‘without going against the modesty required of their sex, and without going outside the limits which prohibit women from the public administration of justice in a Republic, and the word of God in the church’.40 She had rehearsed these questions with Lady Ranelagh two months earlier, stating that all Christians should serve the church; but because women are excluded from public church roles, particularly from those of ‘administrators of his word and ordinances in the Church’, women are thought ‘alltogether incapable of such service as I now speake off’. Unmarried educated women like her are forced either into getting married to serve a husband and children or into finding some type of ‘Christian exercise’ proportionate to their talents, such as teaching. She continues: Now of these two I must choose the last, vntill the Lord present mee with such a Companion to whom being united my Conscience is convinced I may more then in an Ordinary way obtaine meanes and helpe of fulfilling this my Aime, and then I would strive to embrace it willingly although I could in my owne inclinations and desires begg and choose to doe my poore service in a single life, and soe through Gods Mercy I hope to doe until the Lord Manifest his will to the Contrary.

She would much rather stay single and serve as companion to a person of a higher social station or as a teacher to female students. At present, she concludes, she is ‘wholly unsattisfied with an Idle life, which neither proffitts others nor [her] selfe’.41 Moore, at this time, was in fact very far from idle. She, with Ranelagh, was an integral member of several intellectual and scientific networks which included most notably Samuel Hartlib’s circle, whose members corresponded between the early 1630s and 1660 on religion, education, language, and natural philosophy; Ranelagh’s own circle at her house in Pall Mall; and the Oxford circle of scientists such as Robert Boyle, Thomas Willis, and John Wilkins. The most important of these was Hartlib’s circle, whose proposed projects she and Ranelagh tried to steer toward greater inclusion of women in ways that ordinary political and 39

 Van Schurman to Rivet, 19 November 1642, in KB, ms. 133 B 8, no. 28.  French letter, Utrecht, 23 September 1643, in Hartlib Papers, 2nd edn, CD-ROM, 2 discs (Sheffield, University of Sheffield, 2002), 21/3/1A. All translations are mine unless otherwise stated. See also Moore 2004, 21–35, for a translation of the Rivet–Moore debate. 41  Moore to Ranelagh, 8 July 1643, in Moore 2004, 19, 20. 40

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ecclesiastical offices could not.42 Moore also frequently acted on behalf of men and women in politics. She wrote throughout the 1640s on behalf of Dury and even travelled to London twice to speak in his place.43 A confidante of Hartlib, she entreated him to negotiate with Members of Parliament for political and especially financial support for Elizabeth Stuart, the Queen of Bohemia. In a letter to Hartlib in 1643, she bemoaned the ‘present condition of the Queen of Bohemia, which is soe sad in all respects, that it cannot be related or heard’.44 Moore’s exploration in her letters to Rivet of fruitful church venues for educated women came at a time when she was residing at The Hague in Dury’s company. She was travelling extensively, working side by side with him in the Netherlands, Germany, and England. She was determined to engage in public service and freely exercise her political agency without being under a husband’s authority. But Dury was putting increasing pressure on her to marry him. Between 20 September 1643 and 2 May 1644 (Moore’s first letter to Rivet is dated 23 September 1643), Dury wrote to Hartlib that he was negotiating his resignation as chaplain to become minister of the English Church at Rotterdam; he hoped that Moore would follow him.45 She, on the other hand, hoped to avoid remarriage and, as a single woman, be able to justify her public activities as meriting the institutional church’s approval. It was for this reason that she wrote to Rivet, seeking his commendation. In the process, she also wanted to advance the discussion over women’s ecclesiastic roles. Moore’s search, however, conflicted with conservative Reformed Calvinist thought which constricted women’s service to private duties strictly in association with their status as maiden, wife, or widow. Women’s contributions were linked to their social connections to individual men and family members. But she wanted to extend the agency of the unmarried female erudite to give her the opportunity for a ‘Christian exercise’ unrelated to familial roles. The odds were not in her favour. Voetius’s treatise Concerning Women (1663), included in his Politica Ecclesiastica (1663–76), discusses the spiritual and ecclesiastical status of women that typifies conservative Calvinist views of the time. In answer to the question ‘Whether there is a distinction between men and women in respect to ecclesiastical status’ Voetius distinguishes between the ‘mystical church’ consisting of ‘an inward and invisible union, community, and relationship of the members to Christ’ and the ‘institutional church’ where ‘it is not permitted for a woman to speak or preside’.46 On the matter of ‘whether women should be admitted equally with men to religious exercises – public, private, and semiprivate’, he asserts that women can serve the mystical church in only two ways, either by serving their families through teaching their children, maid-servants, and other domestics, or through household devotional 42

 Connolly 2011, 158.  Hunter 1997, 188n36. 44  Moore to Samuel Hartlib, 17 March 1643, in Moore 2004, 14. 45  For Dury’s letters, see Turnbull, 235–42. 46  Voetius, Politica Ecclesiastica (Amsterdam, 1663–76), Book 1, treatise 4, in Schurman 1998, 130. 43

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exercises; and, if they wish to do so, they can even lead the ‘private discussions’ and ‘occasional religious or devotional exercises’ linked to ‘women’s meetings’ in conventicles where it is permissible for them to interpret scripture.47 Voetius, then, along with conservative Calvinists like Rivet, circumscribes women’s religious activities to their gender-appointed roles as wives and mothers: they can teach their households but not preach; they can lead discussions in small women’s conventicles but not take on leadership roles in church governance. Although he indicates that women to their credit are more religious than men, attend more sermons, and show a greater zeal for orthodoxy and devotion, the scope of influence that he offers them is limited to the domestic sphere and its derivatives.48 Moore’s thinking on female ecclesiastic roles evolved against the backdrop of an immensely important development which most certainly influenced her: in Holland and England, a segment of women asserted their spiritual equality before God and in the church. Since the Reformation, Holland’s pluralistic religious world allowed a wide variety of views on women’s roles in the church. A few women in Dutch Reformed congregations held informally the office of deaconess and voted on church matters, including the choice of ministers.49 Even though the National Synod at Middelburg in 1581 ruled that the formal office of deaconess was unadvisable, many congregations continued to appoint deaconesses to tend to the social welfare of their parishioners.50 English congregations in Holland also exhibited a wide diversity of opinion on women’s involvement in church governance: in some churches women could attend deliberations but could not vote, while in others women could vote in elections and certain church affairs; in yet other congregations women held minor offices and voted on important decisions such as the remodelling in 1633 of the English Church at Rotterdam. Female lay preachers were even permitted in Dutch congregations in Holland which needed them especially after the purge of Arminian preachers in 1618 at the Synod of Dort. This practice of lay preaching evolved in the 1630s in some English Baptist churches in Holland where women could take on the role of prophetess and publicly rebuke a congregation for unrighteous behaviour, if no man would do it.51 Meanwhile, in England, the first decades of the seventeenth century saw the rise of sects, including the Brownists or Independents, Baptists, Millenarians, Familists, Quakers, Seekers, and Ranters, to name a few in which women were in the majority.52 In their search for a pure and regenerated church, some sect 47

 Schurman 1998, 134.  Schurman 1998, 131. Voetius admitted reluctantly that in an exceptional situation such as in a heathen land a woman could preach if no man could be found. Cited in Thomas, 322. 49  Hufton, 1: 415. 50  Carlson, 120. 51  See Thomas, 323; and Crawford 1992b, 122. 52  The secondary literature on sectarian women in the English Civil Wars is vast. In addition to founding articles by Williams, and Thomas, more recent studies include those 48

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members chose exile in Holland. When they returned in the early 1640s, their women asserted their spiritual equality with men, even claiming the right to preach, as they had seen in some Dutch congregations. Several groups led by women became founding members of separatist churches: Dorothy Hazzard founded in 1640 Broadmead Baptist Church, the first dissenting church in Bristol, which first met in her home and grew until it comprised by June 1643 some 160 members; Katherine Chidley, the most radical of the ‘Brownist’ women (so called after Robert Browne, the Elizabethan founder of the earliest separatist congregations in England and Holland), founded a church in Suffolk and engaged in various forms of dissent, converting many to the separatist cause. Between 1641 and 1646, the very years when Dorothy Moore’s reflection over women’s ecclesiastic roles occurred, the Brownists were the earliest among the sects to allow women participation in church governance, including preaching. Déjà vu: Intertextual Echoing in Rivet’s Rebuttal Dorothy Moore was searching for an increased voice for women in the ‘church universal’ – what she calls their ‘service to the rest of the body in the communion of the saints’.53 Rivet’s reply, written less than a week after she sent him her letter, was swift and unyielding. He resorted to the same rhetorical strategy of deflection he had used in his exchange with Van Schurman six years earlier over women’s higher learning. He accused Moore of invalidating St Paul’s injunction that women remain silent and not teach in public: But it is on this that you base your principal difficulty, esteeming that this sex, being incorporated in Christ, must not be excluded from the public administration of justice in a Republic and the word of God in the Church, as if there were no other way to serve the entire body of the Church in the communion of the saints than in practicing the Magistracy or the Ministry of the Church. (underlined by Rivet; 29 September 1643, 21/3/3B)

He asserts categorically that ‘there are gifts and vocations which are not common to all; and these are the sorts that are in question’ (29 September 1643, 21/3/3B). He had written to Van Schurman about the exclusivity of male public roles in by Gillespie; Hobby 2000; Feroli; Brown 2001; Broad 2007; Crawford 1992a and 1992b; Ludlow. 53  Moore to Rivet, 23 September 1643, in Hartlib Papers, 21/3/1A (hereafter page numbers in parentheses). The ‘church universal’ or ‘invisible church’ was a concept fostered by the Spiritualist churches in the German Rhineland and the Northern Netherlands in the last quarter of the sixteenth century. Spiritualists emphasized the imitation of Christ over confessional statements, allowing them to tolerate believers of various confessions. See Veen and Spohnholz.

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almost identical terms: when she inquired whether a scholarly-oriented ‘Christian woman’ could propose as her life goal a commitment to higher studies, he told her that in the providential schema from nature men were destined for one thing (higher studies) and women for another (domestic duties).54 He insists again with Moore that women’s gifts and vocation are those ‘suitable to their sex and the order which God has established in his Church’ (29 September 1643, 21/3/4A). Women, he explains, perform acts of charity, pray, teach family members, and especially join piety to housework in the same manner as the Good Wife in Proverbs 31. He draws on Querelle des femmes argument by example, praising mothers from the ancient and Christian past who, like Cornelia, served the republic by educating her sons or, like the mother of St Gregory of Nazianzus, served the church as a ‘flag bearer’ in actions pertaining to the godly domestic woman (21/3/4B). He had similarly explained to Van Schurman that the proverbial good wife’s virtues have nothing to do with serious learning, and that therefore the feminine virtues are all ‘so greatly distant from the study of [the] liberal subjects’.55 In a final attempt to dissuade Moore, Rivet argues that only a few women in the past, like the prophetess Deborah and the daughters of Philip the Evangelist, possessed an extraordinary vocation that allowed them to perform extraordinary public deeds; to which he concludes: ‘I speak of the established order received in the communion of the saints which must not be transgressed’ (29 September 1643, 21/3/4A). This same affirmation of an immemorial, absolute cleavage between a few women worthies and the rest of womankind appears as well in his exchange with Van Schurman. Dorothy Moore refused to assent or be silenced. She corrects Rivet in three instances of what she calls his ‘grand abus’ [‘great injustice’] at misrepresenting her arguments (8 October 1643, 21/3/7B). She addresses, first, his erroneous belief that women should serve only other women rather than ‘the whole mystical body of Christ militant on earth, relatively distinguished from Christian women, or a Christian woman’ (21/3/7A). She reminds him that women should be stewards of the church universal and all of its members, female and male. Second, she counters his accusation that she wants women to serve in the same public roles as men, as ministers and church administrators, rebutting his assumption that these are the only possible roles leading to public service: I am therefore not saying that women must not be excluded from the administration of justice in a Republic or from the word of God in the Church, as you assumed I did; for even I presuppose that they are excluded from these privileges, which properly belong to you males: but I say that in keeping to the limits that exclude us from what belongs to you without going beyond the bounds of modesty, we should and can serve the public as members of the mystical body because we are incorporated in Christ in the same way that you are. (21/3/7B) 54

 Rivet to Van Schurman, 18 March 1638, in Schurman 1998, 49.  Rivet to Van Schurman, 18 March 1638, in Schurman 1998, 49.

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Moore argues that even though women are forbidden to legislate or preach, they can serve the church in some other public role because they are spiritually equal with men before Christ and their service is equally needed. Women can serve, for instance, as deaconesses to help with baptisms and in the semi-ecclesiastic role of instructing young women. Deaconesses were crucially important to the early church. Unfortunately, she observes, such roles: are no longer in usage and at present are no longer part of the intent we should be having today if only the church were willing to select a few women as Deaconesses in order to help the Ministers govern and instruct the female sex. (21/3/8B)

At the time that Moore was urging Rivet to allow such roles in the Calvinist church, Baptist and Independent churches had reinstituted the role of deaconess.56 Knowing this may have prompted her to urge Rivet to give thought to such roles for women. Finally, she asserts that Rivet misrepresented her citation of Matthew 25, where God rewards acts of Christian charity done to neighbours, whereas God says nothing about a reward for the private exercises of prayers and piety.57 Private exercises, she maintains, pertain only to personal profit and not to serving the church universal. She concludes that although women are denied the magistrate’s office and church, ‘nevertheless our sex must not be idle in the work of the Lord but employed for the public good of the mystical body which is now militant on the earth’ (21/3/8A, emphasis added). She probes the sorts of duties that would allow women to work for the common good of the church. She queries whether these duties might encompass according to I Corinthians 14 the highest gifts, including the gift of prophecy, and, if so, may women progress in the ‘study of the disciplines which serve in the exercise of the prophetic gift?’ (21/3/9A). In other words, can a learned woman like her, who wants to serve prophetically the larger church body, study theology and philosophy which support prophecy? Moore’s Civic Activism In her letters to Rivet, Moore addresses the issue of women’s prophetic voice in serving the common good. She returns repeatedly to this issue. She uses several expressions to refer to the ecclesiastic common good: the ‘good of the mystical body’, ‘the good of the public in the mystical body’, ‘the good of the whole body’, and finally the ‘common good’ (21/3/8A; 21/3/8B). Her insistence on women’s civic duty to the ‘common good’ is framed by two overlapping social trends of the 56

 Crawford 1992b, 144; Laurence, 351.  Matthew 25:31–46 refers to the parable of the sheep and the goats where God rewards doers of charitable deeds. 57

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time: the socio-scientific activism of noblewomen during the 1640s and 1650s, and the civic activism of Puritan members of the Hartlib circle. From about 1590 to the 1650s educated noblewomen turned civic science and medicine into a leisure activity, as well as a communally oriented service which they practised among friends, family, and male professionals.58 A number of their vernacular medicinal books and collections of recipes had titles and prefaces stating they were published for the ‘common good’. For instance, Alethea Talbot Howard’s Natura Exenterata [Nature Disembowelled, 1655], a collection of household recipes, explains that its publication was hastened for the ‘publick good’.59 Moore’s close acquaintance with Lady Ranelagh and her sisters, who were practitioners of science and medicine and had published health-related recipe books, would have sensitized her to the benefits of women’s service to the common good.60 As a member of the Hartlib circle, Moore would have also explored ideas about Baconian and Comenian universal knowledge, the development of trade and agriculture, and the reform of education, all of which were thought to contribute to the common good. Francis Bacon (1561–1626) recast knowledge and science as universal, resulting from God’s work in the universe. It was Bacon who managed, as Hunter puts it, to ‘hammer out an initial rhetorical structure’ within which to frame the sciences as linked to scientific procedure, empirical observation, and a ‘plain’ language in which the facts are open to all.61 Comenius, in various proposals, extended educational opportunity to all social classes, including girls. Schools for the young were to be built in every town and village and adapted to each social class. A humanist programme was reserved for noble students, while poorer students were to be given vocational training. Comenius was critical of the universities’ emphasis on scholastic studies and advocated instead the practical sciences, chemistry, botany, anatomy, and mathematics.62 All these reforms were founded on the concept of the public good, which remained the leading principle of Hartlib’s circle of Comenians committed to the millennial belief in the coming reign of Christ on earth. At the time that Moore was drafting her letters to Rivet – the early 1640s – there were also Members of Parliament sympathetic to women’s public

58  Hunter 2005, 129. Women who practised civic science and medicine included, for example, Ann Clifford; Margaret Hoby; Grace Mildmay; the Talbot sisters Alethea Howard, subsequent Countess of Arundel (d. 1654), and Elizabeth Grey, subsequent Countess of Kent; Margaret, Duchess of Cumberland; Joan Barrington; Brilliana Harle; and Queen Henrietta Maria, among others (cited in Hunter 2005, 128). On women’s investment in civic science in other countries such as Italy, see Ray 2015. 59  Hunter 2005, 134n60. 60  Pal 2012, 163–8. 61  Hunter 2005, 133. 62  Webster 1970, 52.

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civic engagement.63 Some entertained the legality of women’s roles in the public sphere and thought that women were barred from public roles because of custom rather than the law. In 1640, when widows tried to vote for Members of Parliament for Suffolk, they were stopped for impropriety rather than illegality. The Parliamentarian Sir Simonds D’Ewes, in his comments on the case, remarked that these women’s votes ‘might in law have been allowed’.64 During the Colchester popular riots in 1642 women demanded the right to vote, and in some places their votes were admitted.65 Nor were women preachers explicitly forbidden; it was not until 1646 that a vote was passed in Parliament disallowing anyone to preach who had not been ordained by the Reformed Church.66 The Right of Conscience Rivet’s final reply to Moore betrays impatience, if not complete incomprehension, that there might exist any way for women to serve the church in some public or even semi-public fashion alongside men. Insisting that all forms of public ministry are exclusive to men, he argues that women cannot pursue higher studies supporting ministries that lie outside their sphere of action; besides, those ministries that pertain to women limit ‘the means which would make you capable [of public ministries], and the studies to which you could apply yourselves to acquire these means’ (21/3/12B). Women cannot serve as deaconesses; nor can they publicly prophesy, roles Moore had proposed for women. He restricts female prophecy to private events in women’s family lives, given that future political events can be interpreted only by men. He comments on the modesty required of women, declaring that their sole purpose is to glorify God in their domestic lives. No verse in Scripture, he adds, warrants that they may ‘serve more distinctly and better than the men’ (underlined by Rivet; 21/3/12B), even though Moore had explicitly written that women can serve the common good, ‘not allowing us an ambitious curiosity to want to appear equal to the male sex in the learning of things which are not apportioned to our sex’ (21/3/9A). He reiterates that the only permissible forms of service open to women are caring for the poor and teaching their families (which he underlines). He criticizes another two times Moore’s search for ‘a truly public service’ in which women can ‘serve more distinctly and better than the men’ (again underlined; 21/3/13A), implicitly accusing her of trying to outdistance men in service to the church. His parting words are to assure her that he will pray that God bless her ‘saintly zeal’ and direct her search for duties to perform in his name.

63

 Norbrook 2004, 231.  Papers of Sir Simonds D’Ewes, BL, MS Harleian 165, fol. 8. Cited in Mendelson and Crawford, 397. 65  Capp, 118; Walter, chapter 8; Norbrook 2004, 231. 66  Williams, 564. 64

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Moore’s last reply, penned six days after receiving Rivet’s letter, returns to his accusation that she was thinking of public roles for women equal to those of men – Van Schurman, in her final reply to Rivet, refuted likewise his assumption that she favoured the superiority of women.67 Moore then states that she had simply questioned whether there existed a way for women to serve in an entirely spiritual service, all the more so because the spiritual is ‘universal’, and claims no distinction between men and women: ‘It is true that for the spiritual man of whom Christ is the head, there is no male nor female’ (24 October 1643, 21/3/10B). Public charges belong to men, yet since women are obliged to care for the good of the church body, there must be a charge and an office specific to women that are ‘apportioned distinctly to their gifts and qualifications and which cannot be as well [and as appropriately proposed] to men as to them’ (21/3/10B).68 But Moore is unclear about the nature of this spiritual charge and its application, which is why she wrote to Rivet in the first place, hoping for some helpful guidance. Although she had earlier argued for a return to the charge of deaconess, she now proposes that such a charge cannot lead women to serve the larger body because it focuses usually on only a portion of church members, and then only on their corporal needs. No extant reply by Rivet appears in the Hartlib Papers. Rivet may have broken off the correspondence because he could neither approve Moore’s argumentation for fear of lending it authoritative credibility, nor reject her claims for fear of denying her a genuinely inspired calling. By the end of 1644, however, Moore managed to work out, through correspondence with Lady Ranelagh, a way of discerning women’s – and specifically her own – spiritual charge to serve the universal church. This was the period when she realized that she could no longer remain single and work for the church. Only as a married woman could she hope to achieve her divinely appointed call to serve the larger ecclesiastic community. She moved away from arguing for women’s ecclesiastic roles – a dead end, as evidenced by Rivet – to discerning instead a woman’s spiritual vocation predicated directly on a call from God and affirmed by the right of her conscience. She wrote to Ranelagh that a woman, in seeking the direction of her life work, must be directly answerable to God and not to man in ascertaining the three aspects of a calling: the work to which she is called, the call, and herself. In regards to the work and the call, she explains: The worke unto which one is called must, to make it warantable fall under somme command of God … The second thing considerable is the Call (that is such meanes as are used by God to induce us to undertake some employment, which wee must examine and trye).69

67

 Van Schurman to Rivet, 24 March 1638, in Schurman 1998, 54.  The words in brackets are added in a different handwriting, perhaps Hartlib’s. 69  Moore to Ranelagh, 2 December 1644, in Moore 2004, 54–5. 68

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Likewise, in another letter to Ranelagh three months after her wedding to Dury, she mentions three reasons that led her to abandon the single state, all having to do with answering God’s direct call to her: that she would be better able to serve the ‘advance of Christs kingdome’ in a married state; that Dury indicated to her that marriage would give her many more opportunities to serve Christ; and that God himself had closed ‘all the other wayes that I proposed or sought out, for the fulfilling of that which I Iudged must be the end, & labour of my whole Life, namly a liveing to the service of others’.70 Moore adopted a radical approach to women’s civic and political agency in serving the larger church body politic: women must be answerable to God and their conscience. She was not alone in justifying this approach. The same concept of asserting freedom of conscience is found in works by Civil War women in the early 1640s. In petitions written in 1642, women associated with the Levellers, who advocated popular sovereignty, extended suffrage, equality before the law, and religious tolerance, appealed first and foremost to the right of conscience. In A True Copie of the Petition of the Gentlewomen, and Tradesmens-wives, in and about the City of London, of 4 February 1642, the petitioners assert that with their husbands they shared the common privilege of the ‘liberty of our conscience and the freedome of the Gospell’, which meant the freedom to think, believe, and worship according to their conscience.71 Sectarian women like Katherine Chidley, a vocal defender of the Leveller movement, took the right of conscience a step further by maintaining that if the state church infringed on the believer’s conscience, the believer had a right to resistance and could dissent and oppose the church.72 In a post-scriptum to her final reply to Rivet, Moore wrote that for the French theologian the word ‘public’ encompassed only an ‘ecclesiastical and political office’. But for her the word meant so much more: it indicated all that pertained to the common good of the church, ‘all that directly involves the state of the entire body, considered itself as an entirety’ (21/3/11A). Writing to Ranelagh from Utrecht in July 1643 (her letter precedes by two months the start of her correspondence with Rivet), Moore broached the matter of serving the church universal in accordance with the directives of one’s free conscience: I have beene long of this Opinion that every one whose conscience doth evidence in any Measure a Union with Christ ought to make it their principall aime & consequently their Worke to render themselves serviceable Members to the rest of that body to which they are conjoyned with & by Christ the Head.73 70  Moore to Ranelagh, 5 May 1545, in Moore, 71. To Moore’s intense dismay, Hartlib published her letter. Cited in Turnbull, 248. 71  Anonymous, A True Copie, 5. Cited in Broad and Green 2009, 146. See Arnoult, who describes the petitioners’ advocacy of freedom of conscience before God as ‘sovereignty of the soul’. 72  Broad 2007, 79. 73  Moore to Jones, 8 July 1643, in Moore 2004, 18.

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Her ensuing correspondence with Rivet, far from deterring her, only confirmed for her the appropriateness of her convictions. Moore’s emphasis on the right of conscience was also a core belief of her friend Lady Ranelagh who, in her political letters in the 1650s, argued that church and state had to respect liberty of conscience and liberty of the subject. The church consisted of all members of Christ’s body and had to show tolerance for different forms of worship. Although a long-standing member of the Anglican Church, Ranelagh attended Presbyterian services, invited Presbyterians to her home in 1661, and actively supported other Protestant forms of worship.74 She also served the church universal through living as a single woman, even though still married. In 1641, she left her dissolute husband and later sued for separation.75 Moore, however, was unable to combine marriage with her dream of serving the church universal. She would have hoped to continue travelling at Dury’s side. But several pregnancies – a boy born in January 1649 and sickly by nature, and a daughter in May 1654 – as well as financial difficulties kept her at home in England to raise her children and attempt to earn money by possibly distilling and selling perfumes.76 Dury left England for exile on the Continent in February 1661, never to return. He left Moore in dire financial straits. She died in 1664, aged 51; he died in 1680, aged 84. Since Hartlib died in March 1662, no further letters among his papers after that date contain information about Dorothy Moore and her family.77 Some 25 years later, Van Schurman reached the same conclusions as Dorothy Moore and Lady Ranelagh about the primacy of freedom of conscience and the need for the established church to respect diverse forms of worship. In 1669 she abandoned her life as a universally admired icon of female learning to follow her spiritual calling in the separatist household of the mystical Jean de Labadie. No man or representative institution was able to prevent her course of action. Could the Moore–Rivet debate have been a factor in her forging later her own independent path? Rivet would have kept her apprised of his correspondence with Moore and of his implacable opposition to the threat that Moore represented. He may have most willingly spread rumours in 1642 about her impending marriage to Dury because he disapproved of a single woman engaging in a public life of ministry that involved travel and public speaking. Certainly, Dorothy Moore’s thinking, even though condemned by Rivet, was not forgotten by her covenant friend, for it allowed greater freedom to both women to pursue their individual calling.

74

 Connolly 2007, 293.  Hunter 1997, 303. 76  Turnbull, 260–61, 267. Pal 2012, 166–7. Since the Irish Revolt of 1641, Moore no longer received the rent from part of her estate worth more than 400 pounds a year. 77  Turnbull, 297. 75

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Van Schurman and Makin If any enquire where this education may be performed, such may be informed that a school is lately erected for gentlewomen at Tottenham High Cross … Where, by the blessing of God, gentlewomen may be instructed in the principles of religion and in all manner of sober and virtuous education. Bathsua Makin, An Essay to Revive the Ancient Education of Gentlewomen, Postscript (1673)

Knowledgeable in eight languages, Bathsua Makin was the first pro-feminist writer in England to defend the savante in the context of a logical and coherent advanced educational programme for girls. Over three-quarters of her anonymous publication An Essay to Revive the Ancient Education of Gentlewomen, in Religion, Manners, Arts & Tongues. With an Answer to the Objections against This Way of Education (London, 1673) defends a woman’s right to study ‘the whole encyclopedia of learning’.78 A brilliant linguist, she invented a simplified shorthand system. She was one of only three Englishwomen in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries to publish a collection of Latin and Greek verse.79 As a royal tutor and later as schoolmistress, she became the first English female professional educator and the first erudite woman in England in the seventeenth century with broad transnational interests. The rediscovery of Bathsua Makin (1600–ca. 1681) occurred in the 1990s.80 Factual errors of her biography have been corrected. She was thought the daughter of John Pell, rector of Southwick, Sussex, rather than of Henry Reynolds (also Reginald[s]), and the sister, rather than sister-in-law, of the mathematician John Pell (no relation to the rector). Studies to date address important aspects of her educational career and publications, such as her contribution to the teaching of languages in England and her work as a pioneer linguist; her influence on Mary Astell’s college for women; the Querelle des femmes rhetoric in An Essay; and her sense of female solidarity and networking with the Hartlib circle and the second generation of Comenian educators, particularly Mark Lewis, Makin’s representative in publicizing a school for girls at Tottenham High Cross.81 While scholars have noted the influence of Van Schurman on Makin largely in connection with the Dutch savante’s high visibility in An Essay (Van Schurman is extolled some five times  Teague 1998, 115. All citations from An Essay come from Teague’s edition.  The other two are Rachel Jevon and Elizabeth Tollet. Cited in Stevenson 2005a, 376. 80  On Makin’s life, see Brink; and Teague 1993. Stevenson 2005a, 378, extends Makin’s year of death to 1681 or thereafter on the basis of a Latin poem Makin addressed in 1681 to Robert Boyle. On this poem, see Pal 2012, 206. 81  On Makin and languages, see Salmon 1994 and 1996; on Makin and Mary Astell, see Teague 2000; on Makin and the Querelle des femmes, see Miller 1997; Stanton 2000a, 2000b; and Stevenson 2000b; on Makin’s sense of female solidarity, see Shabert; on Makin’s networking, see Pal 2012, chapter 6. 78 79

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throughout), none has offered a comparative study of the numerous parallels, even in several instances the very same wording, between Van Schurman’s arguments in the Dissertatio logica, her treatise on women’s higher studies, and Makin’s Essay.82 Makin’s pro-feminist arguments, including their very expression, owe much to Van Schurman. Even more striking, Van Schurman’s example reinforced Makin’s choice to adopt the persona of a savante. She wrote An Essay not merely for practical purposes and financial gain, as has been argued.83 One cannot properly state that unlike the male intellectuals of her time ‘she would not have written to establish her identity as an intellectual. Everything Makin wrote served to advance her economic position.’84 To the contrary, Makin’s networking with members of the Hartlib circle, her acquaintances with learned courtiers, Parliamentarians, and Royalist intellectuals, her learning and educational philosophy, and her references to Van Schurman as one of the best linguists, orators, logicians, and theologians of her day positioned her as a serious intellectual in the Republic of Letters. Van Schurman corresponded with Makin in 1645 and in 1646. Her two Greek letters to Makin appear in the Opuscula.85 To contextualize this correspondence requires a synopsis of aspects of Makin’s life story that pertain to her publications and teaching career. I shall examine Van Schurman’s letters to Makin (none from Makin to Van Schurman are extant) and analyse the intertextual influence of Van Schurman’s Dissertatio logica on Makin’s An Essay. I propose that Makin may have planned, if not written, a portion of An Essay in the 1640s while she was corresponding with Van Schurman; she would have then waited until the 1670s to complete and publish the expanded treatise when she set up a school for girls at Tottenham High Cross. Bathsua Makin’s Publishing and Teaching Career Like many continental humanist daughters, Bathsua Makin was educated in an academic household under the tutelage of her father, Henry Reynolds, master of a private grammar school from 1602 to 1625. She attended the school and also taught there, assisting her father. At 16 she published a collection of Latin, Greek, Hebrew, French, and Italian poems that included verses from the New Testament 82  Scholars Mitzi Myers (180) and Ina Schabert (223–5) observe that Makin is indebted to Van Schurman’s Dissertatio logica, as translated by Clement Barksdale in The Learned Maid (1659), but stop short of showing the close parallels between Van Schurman’s and Makin’s writings. Jean Caravolas states that Makin, ‘in her feminist endeavors, was strongly influenced’ by Van Schurman, but ‘in educational matters … followed primarily the ideas of Jan Amos Comenius’ (79). He offers, however, no analysis of Van Schurman’s textual influence. 83  Stevenson and Davidson 2001b, 219. 84  Teague 1993, 9. 85  Van Schurman to Bathsua Makin, [31] October 1645 and [31] April 1646, in Opuscula, 164–6. See further on for the dating of these letters.

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in seven languages, entitled Musa Virginea Graeco-Latino-Gallica [The Virgin Muse Greek-Latin-French, 1616].86 In these multilingual poems, she eulogizes members of the English royal family: King James I, his wife Anne of Denmark, his son Charles (later Charles I), and his daughter Elizabeth, the future Queen of Bohemia. Her humanist courtly patronage collection presents her in a close intellectual relationship with her father: the title page publicizes his grammar school at St Mary Axe parish, near London.87 Her encomiastic poems show her keen sense of the contested political issues of her day, such as the king’s Oath of Allegiance in 1608 and his policy to keep the peace in Europe through negotiating Protestant and Catholic marriage alliances for his children. Makin’s expressed mistrust of the Pope and Catholicism aligned her and her family with James’s Protestant subjects. About a year or two after her Musa Virginea, she published an early shorthand system, the Index Radiographia (before 1619), which she dedicated to Queen Anne. The index presents a simplified method of transcribing the spoken word, a method particularly useful for taking notes on sermons, which her father and she used in their classes. Only a single sheet of this work remains.88 At age 21 or 22 she married Richard Makin (1599–ca. 1659), a court employee. Simonds D’Ewes, who attended Henry Reynolds’s school from 1616 to 1618, records her marriage on 4 March 1621/22 in his unpublished diaries, where he calls her ‘the greatest scholler, I think, of a woman in England’. He describes her wedding party as filled with ‘much companye’ and ‘good discourse’. Seeing the couple the next day for supper, he recalls that they read together ‘some good newes from the Palatinate’, indicating their common interest in the restoration of the Palatinate. That same year, on 22 August and 11 October, D’Ewes writes that he visited his old schoolmaster Henry Reynolds to discuss specifically matters related to the intervention in the Palatinate on behalf of Elizabeth of Bohemia.89 Along with her father, Bathsua Makin followed closely the dramatic events unfolding on the Continent. During the next two decades, from 1622/23 to 1642, between six and eight children were born to Makin, keeping her busy with raising them; several, however, did not survive the critical first year of life. Additionally, she took care 86

 Makin’s multilingual collection features poems in Latin, Greek, Hebrew, French, Italian, Spanish, and German. She also knew Syriac. Sir Simonds D’Ewes 1845, 1: 63, praises her scholarly achievement, noting that she had ‘an exact knowledge in the Greek, Latin, and French tongues, with some insight also into the Hebrew and Syriac’. 87  See Makin 2000. On Makin’s patronage collection as a marketing tool for her father’s school, see Saunders 2002. 88  For the title page, see Makin 2000, n.p. The title includes the following statement: ‘Also, the Invention of Radiography, which is a speedy and short writing with great facility to be practized in any language, viz. in far less tyme, than the learning of the two first Secretary let[ter]s do require.’ A copy of the page at the Houghton Library, Harvard, is an engraved card measuring 3¾ × 4 in., containing samples of script, including ‘radiography’, or shorthand, in four languages. 89  D’Ewes 1974, 68–9, 92, 101.

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of her ailing father, who died on 4 April 1635, bequeathing his library to her. Her husband worked as a minor court official in the 1620s and 1630s but lost his place and later attempted to regain it. His failure led to her gaining a living by teaching when she became the royal tutor to Princess Elizabeth Stuart (1635–50), youngest daughter of Charles I. She remained the princess’s principal language tutor for about a decade, from when Elizabeth was five years old to a year before her death at age 15. During the 1630s and 1640s Makin cultivated her court connections, which included her father’s former pupil Sir Simonds D’Ewes and the king’s Scottish physician George Eglisham, who had contributed an epigram to her Musa Virginea.90 She also strengthened her relations with the leading Comenians of the period such as her brother-in-law John Pell, Samuel Hartlib, and John Dury, even possibly meeting Jan Amos Comenius on his first visit to London in October 1641; Comenius commented during his visit on a system of shorthand, which may have been Makin’s Index Radiographia.91 In the 1650s Makin encountered economic troubles, depending on her brotherin-law John Pell for her house rent while her husband was away. When her husband died in 1659, she became a tutor to Lucy, Dowager Countess of Huntingdon, and her daughter Elizabeth Hastings, Lady Langham, to whom she taught Greek, Latin, Hebrew, French, and Spanish. She also inducted the countess in the study of the arts, ‘subservient to divinity, in which … she [the countess] excels’, as she relates later in An Essay.92 Her tutelage of Elizabeth Hastings likely ended when the latter married in 1662, but she continued nevertheless to tutor other members of the extended Hastings family, most notably Maria Hastings and her brother Theophilus, who later became the seventh Earl of Huntingdon.93 She had other pupils as well, among them the children of Alice Hastings, Lady Clifton, who was Lucy Huntingdon’s sister-in-law; Elizabeth Drake, who was the mother of Ladies Elisabeth (Robinson) Montagu and Sarah (Robinson) Scott; Lady Mildmay; Elizabeth Thorold; and the daughters of Nicolas Love, a London physician.94 In the late 1660s and 1670s she worked closely with second-generation Comenians, Arthur Brett, Ezeral Tonge, Thomas Stacey, and especially Mark Lewis, a schoolteacher who published educational textbooks and pamphlets and directed 90

 George Eglishham (fl. 1612–42), who studied at Leiden, also wrote a commendatory poem praising Makin. Cited in Binns, 103–4. 91  Comenius visited England between September 1641 and June 1642 as a guest of Hartlib. Members of Hartlib’s circle discussed plans for him and Dury to create his ‘pansophist’ (all wisdom) college to reform the teaching of the sciences and languages. The purpose of such a college was, according to Thomas Rae 1970, 34, ‘to achieve the unity of all knowledge and thereby to promote the unity of the churches as well as both religious and political peace’. On Comenius’s visit to England, see Rae 1970, 30–36; Turnbull, 60. The outset of the Civil War in August 1642 aborted the plan. 92  Teague 1998, 115. 93  Teague 1998, 85. 94  Teague 1993, 11; Teague 1998, 60–61.

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a school for boys at Tottenham High Cross.95 Makin founded a school for girls, which is publicized in the postscript to An Essay. Van Schurman’s Exchange with Makin The two Greek letters from Van Schurman to Makin, which appear in the Opuscula,96 are dated [31] October 1645 and [31] March 1646. The first, a reply, relates her pleasure in reading Makin’s letter, which, she notes, exhibits a high level of Greek eloquence. She is amazed that Makin had found the time to keep up with Greek in the midst of so many domestic cares and ‘the din of armed camps’, references to Makin’s busy home life and the tumult of the Civil War. She praises most notably a treatise or essay which Makin had mentioned to her: ‘I highly esteem’, Van Schurman writes, ‘your essay on the beautiful [or on virtue]’; and she appreciates especially Makin’s placing theology above all the other disciplines. Lastly, she encourages her to produce in the Princess Royal ‘a second Elizabeth, under whose holy and glorious reign your island once so extraordinarily flourished’.97 In her second missive, written a few months later, she requests a reply, stating that Makin would do her the greatest favour in writing to her more often about her activities. She is especially keen on getting news again about ‘the present study on virtue’, the ‘discourses’ of the Princess Royal, and the state of the church in England.98 Several factors, according to Joyce Irwin, support the dating of Van Schurman’s first letter in 1645, and not 1640 as printed in the Opuscula: letters in the Opuscula are generally arranged chronologically by year and this letter appears among others dated the same year; Van Schurman states in her second letter to Makin that she had not yet received the latter’s reply to her first letter written ‘not long ago’; Van Schurman’s concern over the state of the church in England makes more sense in the mid-1640s than in 1640 when the Civil War had not yet begun; Makin’s royal pupil would have been only five years old in 1640 and too young for instruction in Latin, Greek and Hebrew, whereas by 1645 when she was nine to 10 years of age, she could, in Makin’s words, ‘write, read, and in some measure understand Latin, Greek, Hebrew, French, and Italian’;99 finally, Van Schurman’s first letter to Makin probably coincides with her letter to Simonds D’Ewes penned the same day on 31 October 1645, which would have been carried with her letter to Makin by a messenger to England.100 How did Makin and Van Schurman become acquainted? Simonds D’Ewes could not have informed Makin about Van Schurman, since Van Schurman’s 95

 Salmon 1996, 248.  Opuscula, 164–6. 97  Schurman 1998, 68. 98  Van Schurman to Makin, [31] March 1646, in Beek 1995b, 32. 99  Teague 1998, 116. 100  Schurman 1998, 68n35. Van Schurman to D’Ewes, Latin letter, Papers of Sir Simonds D’Ewes, BL, Harleian MS. 376, fol. 150. 96

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letter to him on 31 October 1645 states that it was Makin who had introduced her to D’Ewes: As to what you write concerning the most Learned Matron, Mrs Bathsua Metkins [Makin], that she has boasted so splendidly of my diligence in the more sublime studies, and that you were then stirred with an incredible desire to speak with me, this I impute to both your courtesy in granting so easy an assent and to her undeserved affection towards me.101

Indeed, Van Schurman was replying here to a self-introductory letter from D’Ewes where he states that Frédéric Rivet, André Rivet’s youngest son, and Makin, whom he had met while a student at her father’s school, had spoken in glowing terms about Van Schurman.102 Frédéric Rivet worked in London from 1639 to 1648 as secretary to Albert Joachimi, the Dutch ambassador to England, who was a close friend of D’Ewes. An enthusiastic admirer of Van Schurman, he had informed other male scholars, most notably Marin Mersenne, of Van Schurman’s learning.103 Another possible connection between Makin and Van Schurman is Queen Elizabeth of Bohemia, the aunt of Princess Mary Stuart, who could have alerted Van Schurman to her niece’s tutor, Bathsua Makin. Van Schurman was acquainted with the queen, of whom she sketched a portrait which Claude Joly, in his account of the visit of the Duchesse de Longueville to Van Schurman in 1646, had admired.104 Van Schurman may have also heard about Makin from John Pell, Makin’s brother-in-law, who was appointed in 1643 to the chair of mathematics at the Athenaeum Illustre at Amsterdam, and then moved in 1646 to Breda’s Academy, where he worked alongside André Rivet. Pell, an active member of the Hartlib circle, knew John Dury and Dorothy Moore. Given Dury’s and Moore’s interest in the education of girls, the latter could also have apprised Van Schurman of Makin’s work with Princess Elizabeth. Finally, Samuel Torshell, Princess Elizabeth’s chaplain and one of her tutors, who worked alongside Makin, had translated most of Van Schurman’s letter of 6 November 1637 to Rivet on the education of women, and had included it in The Womans Glorie. A Treatise Asserting the Due Honour of that Sexe, and Directory wherein that Honour 101  Van Schurman to D’Ewes, Latin letter dated 31 October 1645, in Schurman 1659, 48–9; also in Opuscula, 218. 102  D’Ewes to Van Schurman, Latin letter dated 17 January 1645, BL, Harleian MS. 378, f. 76. Cited in Pal 2012, 193. 103  Mersenne, in a French letter dated 23 May 1638, in Mersenne 1933–88, 7: 213–14, informs André Rivet of his son’s praise of Van Schurman’s letters on the education of women. On Joachimi’s ambassadorship, see Geyl, 6, 14, 18–23, 45; and McGee, 158. On Frédéric Rivet, see Tulot 2005, unpaginated. 104  Joly, 152, states: ‘she showed us some small portraits she had made, which were painted so close to nature and with colours so well applied, that I recognized among them without difficulty the Queen of Bohemia, whom I had seen at The Hague’. See Beek 1995b.

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consists (1645). The Womans Glorie was written for Princess Elizabeth on the occasion of a sermon which Torshell preached at Whitehall on her ninth birthday on 28 December 1644. As we will learn later, Torshell held up Van Schurman as a model for the young princess. The Nucleus of ‘An Essay’ In replying to Makin, Van Schurman draws attention to her ‘essay on the beautiful [or on virtue]’. Several reasons lead me to conjecture that this essay or treatise could have constituted the start, perhaps even the nucleus, of Makin’s first attempt at writing on the education of women. Translations of Van Schurman’s Greek include ‘I very highly value such a disquisition about Beauty’ and ‘I value your essay concerning the beautiful’.105 A more accurate translation of the Greek term that Van Schurman uses, kala, must take into account the Platonic notion of beauty related to virtue. In Plato’s Symposium, Diotima, the wise woman of Mantinea, teaches that visible beauty is the reflection of an eternal and immutable Beauty perceived with the mind through ‘true examples of virtue’.106 Van Schurman’s reference could thus be understood as: ‘I value your essay on virtue.’107 Moreover, a similar wording appears in her next letter to Makin where she requests news of the latter’s ‘present study on virtue’.108 Third, in An Essay, Makin legitimizes advanced education for girls by referencing the ancient teaching of virtue founded upon religious principles. Teaching virtue lies at the heart of An Essay, where she defines education as instruction ‘in the principles of religion and in all manner of sober and virtuous education’.109 Fourth, Makin may have thought of publishing a work – possibly this treatise on virtue – since she had a portrait of herself prepared for that purpose during the 1640s while she was tutoring Princess Elizabeth. We know that William Marshall did an engraved portrait of Makin, intending it as a frontispiece (Figure 7.1).110 He died in 1650, which suggests that Makin’s publication would have been planned sometime in the 1640s, perhaps in 1645 because it reproduces in its composition several aspects of a portrait of John Milton which Marshall did for Milton’s Poems (1645).111 The figures in both portraits are similarly positioned against an open window with a set of draperies 105  Van Schurman to Makin, [31] October 1645, in Beek 1995b, 32; and Schurman 1998, 68. 106  Plato, 212A. 107  Van Schurman to Makin, [31] October 1645, in Opuscula, 164, ‘τοιαύτω περὶ τὰ καλὰ διατριβὴν περὶ πλείστου ποιῶ’ 108  Van Schurman to Makin, [31] April 1646, in Opuscula, 166, ‘διατριβὴ περἰ τῆς ἀρητῆς.’ The term Van Schurman uses here, ‘arete’, refers to the highest set of virtues or excellence making up good character. 109  Teague 1998, Postscript, 149. 110  Salmon 1996, 256. 111  Skerpan-Wheeler, 108n9.

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William Marshall, Bathsua Makin, ca. 1649. Engraving. National Portrait Gallery, London

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drawn back to one side, within an oval frame with a ribbon bearing a motto and lines of verse below the portrait.112 However, there is another portrait that more closely resembles Makin’s: Van Schurman’s 1640 self-portrait is strikingly similar in pose, dress, facial features, and composition (see Figure I.1). Furthermore, Van Schurman’s 1640 self-portrait is the frontispiece to her Opuscula: it presents her unapologetically as a savante; so does Makin’s portrait. Both women appear in a plain oval frame with a ribbon bearing their name and a Latin distich below the frame; both wear a similar-looking dark dress, with a laced bodice and long ample sleeves, a white collar enclosing the neck and shoulders, with two pointed ends; both wear their hair in a bun tucked into a row of gleaming white pearls. While Van Schurman sits against a plain background, Makin is positioned holding a book before a window open on to a wood, with a heavy drape to the side. Makin is identified in the frame as ‘Bathsua Makin Princip. Elizae Latinis, Graecis, & Hebraeis’ [‘Bathsua Makin. (Tutor) to Princess Elizabeth in Latin, Greek, and Hebrew’]. At the top of the frame are two emblems – ‘Constantia Coronat’ [‘Constancy Crowns’] and ‘Virtuti Nullum Solstitium’ [‘For Virtue, No Solstice’] – the latter from a 1627 emblem book by Jacob Cats.113 The distich in Makin’s portrait reads: ‘Forma nihil, si Pulchra perit; sed pectoris alma / Divini species, non moritura viget. W. M. sculpsit’ [‘Physical form is nothing if Beauty dies; but the Divine image in the heart, if it does not die, flourishes’]. A final reason for suggesting that Makin’s treatise on virtue is an early reflection on the serious learning of girls is that public interest in educational reform for the young, including upper-class children of both sexes, was at an all-time high in England in the mid-1640s; by the 1650s, however, that impulse was being diverted into other directions, such as foreign policy, relations between England and Holland, and the governance of the country.114 Milton’s tractate On Education (1644), John Dury’s treatises on education written in 1646 (described below), and Samuel Torshell’s The Womans Glorie (1645) commented on the serious education of youth; of the three educators, only Torshell addresses the right of aristocratic young girls, specifically Princess Elizabeth, to advanced learning. As we will learn, Van Schurman was a principal influence on Torshell’s treatise.115 112

 Both portraits may simply be following a fairly standard format, given the commercial context for this particular art form. Milton was unhappy with his portrait. He played a practical joke on Marshall, giving him a Greek epigram to add below his portrait, which stated that it had been ‘drawn by an ignorant hand’ and ‘a rotten artist’. Marshall did not know Greek. See The Poems of John Milton, ed. John Carey and Alastair Fowler (Harlow: Longmans, 1968), 291–2. I thank Charles Huttar for this reference. 113  Jacob Cats, Sinne- en minnebeelden (1627) (Portraits of Morality and Love), 277, http://emblems.let.uu.nl/c162746.html (accessed September 2013). William Marshall was also known for his engraving of emblems. 114  Rae 1970, 48–9. 115  Other sympathizers of women’s education included J. Heydon, Advice to a Daughter in opposition to the Advice to a Sonne (London, 1649, 1658), and Richard

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How do Milton’s, Dury’s, and Torshell’s educational views differ from Makin’s? Milton’s On Education (reissued in 1673, the same year of publication as An Essay) differs principally in that he proposes ancient classical and humanist training for elite male students only; they alone are to be taught in private academies between the ages of 12 and 21. Milton’s tract includes several Comenian principles common also to Baconian and humanist pedagogy, such as moving from sensible and concrete examples to the abstract, encouraging delight in learning, and teaching languages with the purpose of imparting not just words but wisdom; but on the whole he disassociates himself from the reform programmes of the Hartlib circle.116 John Dury as well wrote brief, unpublished tracts on education (all dated 1646), aimed at convincing Parliament to undertake a national reform of the schools. Dury had been appointed tutor to Charles I’s youngest children in 1645/46 and would have been in contact with Makin, who was then Princess Elizabeth’s tutor. Like Milton, Dury is concerned primarily with the education of male students. The first of his tracts, Exercitatio of Schooling, advocates public primary and secondary schools for children of all classes, using three types of curriculum adapted to the ‘vulgar’, the ‘Learned’, and the ‘Nobles’. These schools would be useful ‘to all societies of men, to the Church, and to the present reformation of Church and State’. In a second tract, Concerning the Education of Nobles and Gentlemen, Dury suggests curricula and pedagogical methods adapted specially to the nobility, while in a third, A Transmarine School, he examines the teaching pedagogy of the Jesuits which he judged useful for developing not merely the acquisition of words and facts but their application to real-life situations.117 Nowhere does Dury discuss the higher education of girls. It was only in the late 1640s that he addressed very briefly the possibility of serious female education in his most comprehensive treatment of school reform, The Reformed School (ca. 1649): in addition to a traditional curriculum teaching girls ‘to become good and carefull housewives, loving towards their husbands and their children … and understanding in all things belonging to the care of a Family’, he allowed that: such as may be found capable of Tongues and Sciences (to perfect them in Graces and the knowledge of Christ for all is to be referred to him above the ordinary sort) are not to be neglected, but assisted towards the improvement of their intellectuall abilities.118 Brathwaite, Times Treasury or, Academy for Gentry: laying downe excellent grounds both divine and humane, in relation to sexes of both kindes (London: Brooke, 1652). 116  For Milton’s tract in relation to Comenian educational projects, see Lewalski. 117  Batten, 112–13; 136–7. Exercitatio of Schooling, which consists of only two pages, and Concerning the Education of Nobles and Gentlemen are in the Sloane Collection of the British Library, Sloane MSS. 649, fols. 52–6. See Adamson, 155. A Transmarine School, also in the Sloane Collection MSS. 649, fols. 74–81, is included in Corcoran, 236–47. 118  Dury, 26. The precise date of publication of The Reformed School is not known; 1649 is likely since a ‘Supplement to the Reformed School’ appeared in 1650. Cited in

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Dury considered establishing schools for noble girls and suggested that a panel of women further investigate the matter. These ‘virtuous matrons’ would discuss ‘what training will produce modest, discreet, and industrious housekeepers’.119 He proposed a ‘Directory concerning the Education of Girls’, but it was never included in The Reformed School. Hartlib, in his preface to The Reformed School, states that an all-male ‘Association’ had been formed to discuss the proposal for the school, but since: the Motion is not as yet come to maturitie in the Resolution of those that first made it … till there be further ground laid for the prosecuting of this Designe, it is needless to give the Directory concerning the Education of Girls.120

Dury also never gave women the right to teach except at the nursery stage of education. Thomas Rae, a specialist on Dury’s educational views, calls this oversight ‘a curious failure or omission’.121 Dury, however, was simply following Comenius, who restricted women to their role as principal teacher of the child until the latter reached the age of six.122 Samuel Torshell, in The Womans Glorie, also sidesteps women as teachers and tutors to older female students, although he believes that women are as capable as men in all areas. He entitles his first chapter ‘That women are capable of the highest improvements, and the greatest glory to which man may be advanced’, agreeing with Plutarch on ‘the equall virtue of man and woman’. Women are also equally learned, as proven, he writes, by ‘that great Ornament of the Netherlands, Anna Maria van Schurman’ whose principal letter to Rivet on the education of women he translates nearly in its entirety.123 But in Chapter 8, on ‘The question, whether women may be Teachers’, he falls back on scriptural exegesis, citing prescriptive passages by St Paul on women’s silence, and prohibiting women from ‘preaching’ Adamson, 138. 119  Dury, Some Proposals toward the Advancement of Learning (ca. 1650–53), Hartlib Papers, paraphrased in Turnbull, 53. 120  Dury, 20–21; Adamson, 142. Dury states, in The Reformed School, 22, that the ‘Association’ should not accept any women among its members because they are not ‘free persons’. Webster 1970, 206, suggests that either Dorothy Moore’s proposed tract on women’s education or Adolphus Steed’s essay on the same topic (both included in Turnbull, 117–21) could have been planned for inclusion in Dury’s ‘Directory concerning the Education of Girls’. Teague 1998, 91n13, proposes that Makin wrote the ‘Directory’, which later became the nucleus of An Essay. But Hartlib, in his preface to Dury’s Reformed School, explains that even though the ‘Directory’ had been planned it was never written since no formal resolution concerning the prospect of a girls’ school was ever forthcoming. 121  Rae 1970, 151. 122  On the role of the mother in the Comenian ‘school of infancy’, see King 2008. 123  Torshell, 1, 34. Torshell translated most of Van Schurman’s letter to Rivet of 6 November 1637, and Rivet’s brief letter to Van Schurman of 1 March 1632, including both in chapter 3 of The Womans Glorie.

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and ‘teaching’ men; women must follow the ‘Law of Humilitie’ which allows them only to exhort one another in private.124 Even though Torshell was one of Princess Elizabeth’s tutors, he does not include any mention of the disciplines and books she should study. His prescriptions, which he delivered initially in the form of a sermon, are limited to the princess’s acquisition of moral and religious principles. Neither Milton nor Dury, nor Comenius or Torshell gave serious attention to higher studies for girls, or to women as their teachers. Makin thus found herself at odds with then current male thinking on women’s education, which would have led her to reflect on her own role as royal tutor and teacher, and the type of higher studies which Van Schurman had so eloquently advocated for women of some leisure and means. She may have withheld publication for fear of offending the very officials on whom she depended for patronage and her livelihood. Makin’s educational philosophy, furthermore, differed from that of girls’ schools which offered, over a period of one to three years, little beyond the social accomplishments of singing, dancing, needlework, and French.125 Charity and dame schools taught poor girls the basics of sewing. Some grammar schools which admitted girls gave only a vernacular education until they reached the age of nine, or until they could read English. Boarding schools operated as finishing schools with little attention to a serious education. A few female teachers opened girls’ schools, especially in Deptford, Putney, and Hackney outside London. Susanna Perwich taught at her parents’ school for girls, established in Hackney in 1643, until her death at age 25 in 1661. Called ‘Bohemia Palace’ from its connection to Queen Elizabeth of Bohemia, its doors were open to some 800 paying students over a period of 17 years. Teaching masters in music and dancing were prominent.126 Mrs Salmon directed another school for gentlewomen in Hackney which the writer Katherine Phillips attended in 1639,127 and towards the end of the century, charity schools for the poor employed female teachers. Puritan Commonwealth members criticized these schools. Edward Chamberlayne, for instance, condemned ‘the maiden schools in or about London where either through the unskilfulness or negligence or covetousness of the mistresses, too much minding their private profit, the success hath oft times not answered the expectations of their parents’.128 But neither did Anglican or Puritan clergymen recommend anything better. The popular advice manual of the Anglican Richard Allestree, The Ladies Calling (1673) – published in the same year as Makin’s An Essay – argues that since women’s souls are equal to men’s they deserve an education; however, since he espouses an Aristotelian biological view of female nature, he never defends serious 124

 Torshell, 159–60.  Sources for this sketch on the education of girls in England include Gardiner; Jewell; Lardy, 100–110; Kamm; Hobby 1988; O’Day, chapter 13; and Bowden, 85–96. 126  On Susanna Perwich, see Mendelson and Crawford 1998. On the high number of schools for prosperous girls in the vicinity of London, see Charlton, chapter 5. 127  Ballard, 287. 128  Chamberlayne, 2. Cited in Charlton, 133–4. 125

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education, and the schools he favours merely induct girls in modesty and piety as befitting Anglican devotional reform practices.129 For Makin, these schools shortchange the intellectual and moral well-being of girls who, in her estimate, are ‘bred low’ and ‘made to stoop to such follies and vanities, trifles and nothings, so far beneath them and unproportionable to their noble souls’.130 Defending the Savante Makin published An Essay some 13 years after her teaching contract with the Princess Royal had ceased. The educational programme she advocates is one adapted from her teaching aristocratic girls from the 1640s to the 1670s. In An Essay, she holds up as exemplars, by name, numerous elite female students who benefited from her three decades of tutoring, asserting that ‘were women thus educated now, I am confident the advantage would be great. The women would have honor and pleasure, their relations profit, and the whole nation advantage’ (110). Of Princess Elizabeth, she adds nostalgically, ‘had she lived, what a miracle would she have been of her sex!’ (110). So confident is she of her educational methodology that she dedicates An Essay to another Stuart princess, Mary (1662–94), daughter of James, Duke of York, the second son of Charles I. Mary later became joint sovereign of England, Scotland, and Ireland with her husband and first cousin William III of Orange-Nassau (1650–1702), from 1688 to her death in 1694. In 1673, when An Essay was published, Mary was 11 years old. Her mother, Anne Hyde, had died two years before, when Mary was nine, and in 1673 her father had taken as his second wife the Catholic Mary of Modena. Although highly intelligent, Mary’s education was haphazard. Her command of English punctuation and spelling was minimal, even if she had made good progress in French with her tutor Peter de Laine.131 Makin’s opening statement in her dedicatory epistle to Mary makes it clear that custom is to blame for the woeful state of women’s education (including her dedicatee’s): ‘Custom, when it is inveterate, hath a mighty influence: it hath the force of nature itself. The barbarous custom to breed women low is grown general amongst us’ (109). Makin’s essay is divided into two parts. These parts are noticeably asymmetrical: Part I covers 35 pages, while Part II covers the remaining seven pages. Part I adds to 14 common objections to women’s learning a reasoned defence of the ethical necessity and economics of women’s learning; Part II features a brief practical Comenian demonstration lesson on language learning. The pro-feminist arguments for the education of women in part one of Makin’s Essay reflect, in fact echo, Van Schurman’s educational vision. Makin had carefully

129

 Astell 2013, 19.  Teague 1998, 149 (hereafter page numbers in parentheses). 131  Waller, 85. 130

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read Van Schurman’s Dissertatio logica and letters to Rivet in the Opuscula, from which she quotes Frederik Spanheim’s encomium: Anna Maria Schurman of Utrecht (called by Spanhemius, ultimum Naturæ in hoc sexu conatum, et decimam Musam, Nature’s masterpiece amongst women, excelling the very muses) hath printed diverse works in Latin, Greek, French, and the Persian tongue; she understood the Arabic also. Besides she was an excellent poet. (117)132

Both Makin’s Essay and Van Schurman’s Dissertatio logica adopt the form of a disputation with a sustained polemical tone underlying their proofs and rebuttals. The close similarity between their objections and replies suggests that the portion of Makin’s Essay on the objections to women’s education came first, and that the appended Comenian pedagogical lesson was written later, perhaps in collaboration in the 1670s with Mark Lewis and other Comenians.133 Van Schurman begins her Dissertatio logica with the presumption that women with a modicum of wealth to free them from household chores and with some intellectual ability can profit from a serious education.134 Echoing Van Schurman, Makin also identifies the type of woman who can realistically benefit from such learning. She privileges women of leisure (the ‘Rich’) who, unlike the ‘poor’, are equipped with ‘natural competent parts’ and ‘endowments of nature’. She describes how these women should fill their leisure ‘in gaining arts and tongues and useful knowledge’, not in ‘trifles’ which ‘defile their souls’, turning them into ‘Beasts’. To teach these women merely to ‘frisk and dance, to paint their faces, to curl their hair’ is to ‘adulterate their bodies’ (128). She is concerned with the corrupt morals made infamous by the Restoration court of Charles II (1630–85) and his brother James (1633–1701). Endowed with reason, women can and should study all the disciplines. Her defence of a broad humanist learning follows very closely Van Schurman’s advice: [Makin] The whole encyclopedia of learning may be useful some way or other to them. Respect indeed is to be had to the nature and dignity of each art and science, as they are more or less subservient to religion, and may be useful to them in their station. (130)

 Spanheim, Lectori [To the Reader], in Opuscula, n.p.  Caravolas, 82, notes that the first part of Makin’s Essay is not written with Comenius in mind since Makin insists that the type of education she recommends is suitable only to gentlewomen of wealth. On the other hand, Comenius is ‘much more evident’ in the second part of the Essay where a lesson based on Comenian pedagogy is featured. Pal 2012, 229, suggests that Makin collaborated with Mark Lewis or Arthur Brett on the Comenian lesson. 134  Dissertatio, 11 (hereafter page numbers in parentheses and all emphasis added). 132 133

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Anna Maria van Schurman, ‘The Star of Utrecht’ [Van Schurman] … ‘all honourable disciplines, or the whole encyclopedia of learning, as it is called, are entirely fitting for a Christian woman (just as they are a proper and universal good or adornment of humanity)’; but it must be in accordance with the dignity and nature of the science or art and also in accordance with the girl’s or woman’s capability and fortune so that what is to be learned may follow in its own order, place, and time and be properly connected. First of all, account should be taken of those sciences or arts that have the closest connection with theology and moral virtue, and which primarily serve them. (12–13)

Makin, following Van Schurman, emphasizes that those arts and sciences which serve theology are the most useful and, therefore, the first to be mastered. So grammar, rhetoric, logic, ‘physic’ or medicine, the tongues, ‘especially the Greek and Hebrew: these will enable to the better understanding of the scriptures’, mathematics, geography, history, ‘music, painting, poetry, etc.’ are all important (130–31). Makin mentions the disciplines in the same order as Van Schurman, using at times the very same terms, as when she names logic ‘the key to all sciences’, concluding that music, painting, and poetry are ‘a great ornament and pleasure’; similarly, Van Schurman calls these disciplines ‘an excellent adornment and pastime’ (13). Makin agrees with Van Schurman that some disciplines, which she leaves unnamed, are more useful to ‘public employments’; but even here she thinks that since many female rulers – like Semiramis, the Queen of Sheba, Miriam and Deborah, Catherine of Medici and Elizabeth I – proved themselves so capable, these disciplines should be included in the curriculum. Van Schurman also believed that ‘we do not by any means concede that women should be excluded … from those things, least of all politics’ (13–14).135 After outlining the intellectual reasons for women’s advanced learning, Makin expands on the economic and moral benefits that accrue to their families, husbands, and not least the state. Unmarried women can support themselves through tutoring the children of wealthy households (133); they can serve their husbands; and they are useful to the ‘nation’ – one need look no further than to the Dutch, who have taken ‘great care … in the education of their women, from whence they are to be accounted more virtuous and, to be sure, more useful than any women in the world’ (135). She repeatedly refers to the virtues gained from advanced learning, such as can lead to the reformation of a nation: ‘Their [women’s] learning would stir up to a just emulation their sons, whom God and nature hath made superior’ (135).136 She draws several times on the humanist trope of the female erudite 135  Makin’s and Van Schurman’s humanist encyclopedism differs from Comenius’s and Dury’s defence of an encyclopedic education for boys, which rested on ‘pansophism’, meaning the harmony and unity of all learning. 136  Makin insists that she is not interested in the superiority of women or even their equality: ‘My intention is not to equalize women to men, much less to make them superior. They are the weaker sex, yet capable of impressions of great things, something like the

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living a life of service to family and country. Among her numerous examples, she references, in the same way as Van Schurman, Elizabeth I and Lady Jane Grey as unsurpassed exemplars. She cites Queen Elizabeth some 10 times in the course of An Essay, more than any other woman, calling her ‘the crown of all’, while Jane Grey, she writes, ‘surpassed [Olympia] Morata … She understood Hebrew also. There is a large discourse of her Learning (in which she took great delight) and Piety, in the Book of Martyrs’ (117).137 Other striking similarities to Van Schurman’s Dissertatio logica include both the structure of the two works and the type of common objections which each anticipates and answers. The Dissertatio logica includes 14 ‘Arguments’ and five objections and replies, while An Essay contains 14 ‘Objections’, each followed by a reply.138 Van Schurman’s 14 arguments legitimize the savante: 1) women are endowed with reason and should therefore study all the sciences and the arts; 2) they have a desire to learn; 3) they possess an ‘erect countenance’ allowing them to observe the heavens; 4) women of leisure need ‘a solid and enduring occupation’; 5) their lives are more tranquil and suited to literary study; 6) literary study leads to meditation of Scripture, especially for ‘a woman at home by herself rather than outside among others’; 7) arts and sciences are suitable for women because they lead to virtue and ‘virtue (as Seneca says) chooses neither rank nor sex’; 8) studies adorn and perfect the human mind; 9) they lead to greater reverence for God; 10) they fortify against heresies; 11) they teach prudence; 12) they lead to ‘greatness of soul’; 13) they delight; and 14) they combat ignorance (Dissertatio, 16, 20, 21). Van Schurman’s five objections of the ‘Adversaries’ are that the female mind is weaker; it is little inclined to study; there are no colleges or academies for women; women cannot participate in public duties, therefore advanced learning is useless; and women’s housebound, private ‘vocation’ requires that they ‘know little’ (29–36). As I noted earlier (Chapter 3), Van Schurman answers the last objection with the notion that a private woman resembles a private man because both have leisure time to fill with serious learning:

best of men’ (136). She follows here Van Schurman, who, in her final reply to Rivet on women’s education, on 24 March 1638, rebuked him for accusing her of ‘that hateful and vain assertion of the pre-eminence of our sex compared with yours’ (Dissertatio, 70). Stanton 2009b, 79, argues that Makin’s male speaker in An Essay advocates submission to the gendered hierarchy ‘not because it is implicitly right’ but because it is the best way to ensure acceptance of her ideas. 137  The reference is to John Knox. 138  A fifteenth objection – on the inordinate amount of time that it would take to teach girls not only housewifery, but all the disciplines reserved for boys – begins the second part of the Essay. In reply, a Comenian demonstration lesson is offered on how the teaching of English, for instance, by focusing on ‘things’ as opposed to simply ‘words’, takes far less time and is thus more efficient.

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if they [the Adversaries] understand here the vocation of private life, as opposed to public duties, we say that, for the same reason, men in private life would be denied the curriculum of the liberal arts or a higher degree of knowledge. (35)

Learning is gender neutral. Makin agrees with Van Schurman that if a liberal education is denied to women, then it must be denied to men: ‘I desire this may be taken notice of: that whatever is said against this manner of educating women may commonly be urged against the education of men’ (137). She restates repeatedly her defence of women’s private learning: It is private instruction I plead for, not public employment … There are other ends of learning, besides pleasing in the hall and appearing in the pulpit. Private persons (as I have before showed) may in many ways please themselves and benefit others. This objection will turn the point upon all men that are in a private capacity. (140)

Makin expands on Van Schurman’s five objections of the ‘Adversaries’ with 14 common objections to women’s advanced education, which range from practical objections – women should be taught needlework and housewifery [objection 1]; no man will want to marry them if they are to be educated [2]; they should not go against the customary ways of their sex [3] for fear of appearing ridiculous [12]; educated women will become proud and will refuse to obey their husbands [5]; if too learned they will abandon their household duties [7]; they have no time [8]; they have no desire to learn [9]; and they have no need of languages, given the numerous translations in English [13] – to theoretical objections (women are inferior to men [10], education leads to public sphere duties from which women are forbidden [6]); and, finally, to Scriptural objections (the model Wife of Proverbs 31 had leisure time and wealth and ‘no mention is made of arts and books’ [4 and 14]) (137–43). Conclusion Dorothy Moore’s newfound path of service in the church universal, following her correspondence with André Rivet, and Bathsua Makin’s defence of the higher education of women in some ways parallel the radicalism of Van Schurman. All three defied the restrictions imposed on women’s religious and educational self-definition. Van Schurman advocated equality in higher studies for women irrespective of the humanist utilitarian link between education and public duty which so much limited women’s educational access. She and Moore engaged in thinking that originated in a common source: the determination of their individual conscience and the conviction of women’s right to engage in occupations that enlarged their intellectual and spiritual horizons to make them more serviceable to family, church, and country. Makin, a professional educator, published An Essay

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to showcase the usefulness of teaching women an encyclopedic curriculum on the assumption that it would enable them, if economically hard-pressed, to earn a good living in a noble household: ‘Here is a sure Portion, an easy way to make them excellent. How many born to good fortunes, when their wealth has been wasted, have supported themselves and families too by their wisdom?’ (149). Like Van Schurman, she highlights the importance of encouraging daughters to pursue learning, because the chief profit of learning, she concludes, will be above all to themselves. They will acquire ‘delight and pleasure’, for no pleasure is greater than that of learning: ‘It is the first fruits of heaven and a glimpse of that glory we afterwards expect’ (133).

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Epilogue I’ve always done more than I ever thought I would. Becoming a professor – I never would have imagined that. Writing books – I never would have imagined that. Getting a Ph.D. – I’m not sure I would even have imagined that. I’ve lived my life a step at a time. Things sort of happened. Catharine Drew Gilpin Faust, 28th president of Harvard University1

A portrait of Anna Maria van Schurman appears in a collection of prints entitled Recueil de Portraits des personnes qui se sont distinguées tant dans les Armes que dans les belles Lettres et les Arts [ … ] [Series of Portraits of persons who distinguished themselves not only in Arms but in Belles-Lettres and the Arts, Paris, ca. 1726–54] (Figure E.1). These prints were engraved by Etienne Jahandier Desrochers (1668–1741) and his apprentices, and completed after his death by Gilles-Edme Petit.2 Van Schurman appears alongside other famous seventeenthcentury savantes such as the novelists Mme de Lafayette (1634–93) and Madeleine de Scudéry, and the poets Antoinette Deshoulières (1638–94) and Henriette de Coligny de La Suze (1638–73). But she differs from them in one startling respect, her plainness. Whereas the other women combine mondanité with learning, and intellectuality with elegance of costume and physical beauty, she is made to look ordinary and unattractive. Elise Goodman, in commenting on this portrait, states that Van Schurman had ‘no time to learn the art of makeup’.3 What are we to make of this portrait? What message might it implicitly convey to the viewer, then and now, especially when comparing it to the portraits of the other savantes featured in Desrochers’s collection? As this study draws to an end, questions remain about the reception beyond the seventeenth century not only of Van Schurman but also of erudite women in general. For the reception of Van Schurman in France, as I have argued, closely mirrors the recasting of the savante that increased its pace particularly during and after the 1650s and 1660s, and that gradually and inexorably forced the woman scholar to privilege publicly her social skills over her learning.  Sara Rimer, ‘A Rebellious Daughter to Lead Harvard’, New York Times, 12 February 2007. 2  The title to Desrochers’s volume was added later. The Bibliothèque des Estampes at the BnF owns six volumes of Desrochers’s prints entitled simply Oeuvres (call number: Ed. 89). Van Schurman’s portrait can be viewed in microfilm (call number: N2). On Desrochers, see Lewine, 144; Préaud, 106–7; and Portalis, 1: 750–54. Desrochers produced 600 portraits of men and women who lived for the most part during the reign of Louis XIV. 3  Goodman 2000, 69. 1

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Figure E.1

Anna Maria van Schurman, ‘The Star of Utrecht’

Anne Marie de Scurman [sic] (ca. 1726–54). Engraving, from Etienne Jahandier Desrochers, Oeuvres. Bibliothèque nationale de France, Paris

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The reception of the savante in the eighteenth century was closely linked to the heightened debate over the education of girls. The issue was not whether girls should be educated – the proliferation of pamphlets and treatises indicated that this was no longer a question – but what they should study. A majority of educational reformers still assumed, much like André Rivet, that because of the difference between the sexes, girls should not learn what was considered useless for their vocation as wives and mothers. Even female educators specializing in teaching girls voiced strong opposition to educating them beyond their proper roles, arguing time and again that they had no interest in forming erudite women. Mme de Miremont, for instance, plainly states that ‘women are doubtless not destined to pursue deep study, and I have never claimed to engage them in it’. Marie Le Masson Le Golft declared that although women had grounds to complain about the limited education they routinely received, the type of learning she offered did not ‘aim to form femmes savantes’. And, in the first year of the French Revolution, Mme Mouret wrote that, in educating the female sex, ‘I do not claim to produce ridiculously learned women’.4 The list goes on. Too much learning threatened a girl’s social position and, it was thought, interfered with household duties. As Nadine Bérenguier states, ‘since a display of erudition was a social disgrace for girls and women, it was in their interest not to have to conceal too much’.5 Given the opprobrium in which the savante was held, what kind of reception did Van Schurman receive? Who read her and why? And what can we say about her today? How can we hear her anew? Desrochers’s Portraits Desrochers’s portrait of Van Schurman superficially resembles an engraving of about 1661 or earlier by Cornelis van Dalen the Younger, after a monochrome panel painting in 1657 by Cornelis Jonson (or Janssens) van Ceulen (Figure E.2). Jonson van Ceulen (1593–1661), born to Flemish émigrés in London – like the Van Schurmans, his father was a Protestant refugee from Antwerp, with family ties in Cologne – moved after 1652 to Utrecht where he met Van Schurman and painted her. Considered in the ‘first rank’ of English portrait painters, he specialized in bust-length depictions of English gentry, professional, and court sitters.6 Van Ceulen’s portrait of Van Schurman, who was then 50–51 years old, features her in a wooden-looking or marble-like oval surround creating a trompe l’oeil effect with, in the frame’s four corners, emblems of the Seven Liberal Arts and the sciences she had mastered. These include a song book and a lute; 4

 Miremont, 1: 120; Le Masson Le Golft, 24–5; Mouret, no. 1, 16. Cited in Goodman 2009, 66. On eighteenth-century women educators, see Gargam 2013, 1: 473–528. On the contempt for femmes savantes in the eighteenth century, see Bérenguier, 90–96. 5  Bérenguier, 91. 6  Finberg, 1.

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Figure E.2

Anna Maria van Schurman, ‘The Star of Utrecht’

Cornelis van Dalen the Younger, Anna Maria van Schurman (ca. 1661). Print engraving after a painting by Cornelis Jonson (or Janssens) van Ceulen (1657). Collection Martena Museum, Franeker

a caduceus and a globe; a spinning wheel; a tulip flower needlepoint and a sheet with a pencilled woman; a set square and a compass; and, finally, a palette, some brushes, and a maulstick. A putto to the side holds up an oval image of a laurel tree symbolizing her fame. She is depicted in three-quarter length, against a swath of heavy drapery, with the tower of the Cathedral of Utrecht in the distance. She

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looks thoughtfully and self-assuredly at the viewer, with one hand lightly touching the ribbon of her bodice and the other holding a small octavo book. Her hair, its curls gracefully framing her face, is combed back into a chignon. She wears a simple but fashionable bodice, with bows retaining her large collar, ample flowing sleeves, and a delicate shawl wrapped over her arm. Jonson’s portrait honours an intellectual of immense learning, who also retains a certain measure of grace, femininity, and attractiveness. On the banner below the frame, Constantijn Huygens’s Latin sestet, composed on 12 April 1661, captures the awe in which she stood as ‘The Star of Utrecht’.7

Figure E.3

7

Jan Lievens, Anna Maria van Schurman (1649). Oil on canvas. National Gallery, London

 ‘Such trust in heaven [or in a chisel], such confidence is there, / Is this the face of the divine Schurman that shines in the lower sphere? / Learn, Sculptor, what serious madness there is in such an undertaking: / This, you say, this is the shadow of the Star of your age? / Are you offering a likeness of her in whom / No age has ever produced a second? Constanter.’ On this portrait, see Wheelock 2012.

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Similarly, the Dutch painter Jan Lievens (1607–74), born in the same year as Van Schurman, produced in 1649 a refined oil portrait of her (Figure E.3). She was then at the height of her fame, having just published the Opuscula the year before. Huygens patronized Lievens, and may have commissioned the portrait.8 Van Schurman gazes at the viewer with a composed and dignified countenance. She holds an open book with blank pages, perhaps a friendship album in which she is about to write. Her writing materials – an open inkstand, a quill, and a pot of sand to blot her copy – await her on a table adorned with an oriental rug. Her furbordered dark velvet mantle, open at the neck, reveals a delicately embroidered shirt. Her full lips, slight smile and blush, and the string of small pearls retaining her hair resemble the features of her pastel self-portrait of 1640.9 Jan Lievens depicts her as a gracious, engaging savante. Desrochers’s rendering, on the other hand, is a bust-length portrait of Van Schurman with a creased forehead, a doughy face, bulging eyes and dark rings, an oversized nose and pinched lips. Her bodice and white collar are startlingly plain. Her quizzical look indicates a sense of being out of place among the other savantes gracing the collection. Little in this unvarnished and puzzling depiction, with the exception of the background vaguely suggesting rows of books, identifies her as an intellectual. Only the French sestet reveals her as internationally famous: From her childhood, instructed in the deep sciences, Of eight languages she had a vast knowledge. And one saw, one after the other, in her learned hand, The set square, brush, scissors, and chisel. Of her learned talents, charmed Holland Made her renown fly in all Climates.10

Her depiction seems a world apart from Madeleine de Scudéry’s, also in the same volume. The French writer is cast as a beautiful and glamorous salonnière, wearing a fancifully exotic plumed headdress, a bejewelled gown, a pearl necklace, and diamond earrings. The expository verses celebrate her as a bel esprit and the Sappho of her century. Scudéry and the other female intellectuals in Desrochers’s collection embody the rococo motif of the belle savante; they attract the viewer. But Van Schurman’s portrait is the opposite; the type of femme savante she embodies, with ancient and modern languages, a full range of academic disciplines, ‘deep sciences’, and membership among the savants held little market currency.11 8

 On Lievens’s portrait, see Wheelock 2008, 166–7.  For her pastel self-portrait, the first in the Netherlands using the medium of pastel, see Brouwer, 16. For the specially designed box containing, it is thought, her writing materials, which is on display at the Museum Martena, see Brouwer, 30. 10  B.N. Estampes, N2 folio, 259352. 11  Desrochers’s aesthetic mirrors the prejudice of thinkers of the period who thought erudition gravely altered a woman’s attractiveness to the extent of robbing her of sexuality. 9

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Comparing Van Schurman with the classicist Anne Le Fèvre Dacier (1645–1720), the only other contemporary French female scholar of comparable stature, is enlightening.12 Dacier is also depicted in Desrochers’s collection as unattractive. According to Elise Goodman, ‘Desrochers meticulously, almost ruthlessly, details her prominent, irregular nose and her elderly jowl: bulging features that he exaggerates to underscore her strong character.’13 But the sestet, written by François Gacon (1667–1725), a supporter of Mme Dacier, downplays her unattractiveness by indicating that she had acquired her learning from her famous father and equally renowned husband, and that, as a translator, in imitating them, she had herself become a model to imitate.14 Gacon’s poem highlights the manoeuvring Dacier undertook to be acceptable to society. The daughter of the Huguenot philologist Tanneguy Le Fèvre (1615–72), she grew up in an academic household in Saumur where her early education resembled Van Schurman’s. According to an anecdote which, for Éliane Itti, ‘has every appearance of being authentic’, while she was sitting in on her brothers’ lessons, her father surprised her one day at whispering the answer; whereupon he decided to teach her Latin and Greek, and soon she caught up with her siblings in her grasp of ancient texts (41). She went on to publish scholarly French translations and commentaries of Callimachus, Florus, Dares, Dictys, Anacreon, Sappho, Aristophanes, Plautus, Terence, and Homer among others. She worked in Paris as a professional woman, much the same as Gournay. Her mentors and patrons included – in addition to her father and her philologist husband André Dacier – Pierre-Daniel Huet, Gilles Ménage, who dedicated his Historia Mulierum Philosophorum to her, and Paul Pellisson. She disregarded the trend of Les Belles Infidèles of adapting the source text to the tastes of the reading public; instead she adhered closely to the source text, even to the extent of respecting its aesthetic, ethical, religious, and social peculiarities. Emmanuel Bury remarks that ‘she refused a literature that was purely worldly entertainment … [and] a conception of belles lettres that ghettoized lettered learning in the feminine world of the salons’.15 Dacier, then, a professional scholar and the most accomplished Hellenist of her time, tempered public condemnation, just as Van Schurman tried to do. Suzanna van Dijk underscores the ambivalence with which her contemporaries at first See Gargam 2014, 85–6. 12  This sketch of Dacier is indebted to Farnham; Bury 1999b; Pieretti; and Itti. There are some notable differences between Dacier and Van Schurman. A woman from the gentry, Dacier was a professional classical translator who lived by her pen and wrote for the most part in French. Raised a Huguenot, she and her husband André Dacier converted to Catholicism in September 1685 and were rewarded with a pension by the king. 13  Goodman 2000, 76. 14  Gacon, who wrote many of the poems accompanying Desrochers’ portraits, published Homère vengé (Paris, 1715) in support of Dacier’s stance in the quarrel over Homer. 15  Bury 1999b, 219.

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viewed her, particularly when she intervened in the quarrel over Homer in 1710/11 with a new translation of the Iliad, thereby renewing the hostilities between ancients and moderns. They had trouble reconciling her polemical stance with her being a ‘dame’, a lady. But after her death in 1720, she was universally admired as a savante whose ‘modesty’ demonstrated that, excepting the two-year lapse of the quarrel, she respected feminine norms of behaviour: ‘posterity approved of her for having manifested it [modesty] sufficiently, if one considers her life as a whole. Having fulfilled this condition of modesty, Mme Dacier was able to keep a solid reputation until the nineteenth century.’16 Like Van Schurman, Dacier throughout her life underplayed her vast learning by orchestrating her public image, first with the help of those closest to her, beginning with her father, and then with friends and sponsors, who praised her especially as a devoted wife, exemplary mother, and consummate housekeeper – Van Schurman’s sponsors opted to praise her especially for her consummate modesty and retiring personality. When Huet inquired from Dacier’s father one day how he might help improve the family’s finances, her father responded: As for my daughter, she is about 24 years old. She knows the same things as her brother, nothing more, for it has been only three years since I took her on, and began to teach her. She is very modest and does not want people to know that she knows either Greek or Latin.17

He minimized the true extent of her learning, even the age at which she first started learning Greek and Latin, because, notes Itti, ‘a femme savante is rarely sought out’ (43). She likewise had friends who defended her reputation. After her death, the novelist Anne de Bellinzani Ferrand wrote to an unnamed Sorbonne theologian about her first visit to Dacier’s home. Expecting her in deep study, she was ‘surprised’ at seeing her occupied with her spindle: ‘I found her spinning, with a judicious politeness, far from all affectation, talking to the women of things one ordinarily speaks to them about.’18 Whether Dacier was spinning or not, this posthumous anecdote shows how her public persona conformed to social expectations. Apart from scarce notes in her translations on the female condition, she never advocated female education and stayed clear of Querelle des femmes polemical writing (Itti, 295). Her cautious management of her scholarly persona ultimately paid off. The contemporary memoirist Duc de Saint Simon (1675–1755) granted her an accolade for being such an accomplished salonnière: With all her learning, she showed none of it … one took her for a woman of wit, and a very ordinary one, who spoke of coiffure and fashions with the 16

 Dijk 1988, 223.  Tanneguy Le Fèvre to Huet, Latin letter dated 21 May 1671, translated in Itti, 43. 18  Anne de Bellinzani Ferrand to Monsieur L’abbé R. docteur en Sorbonne, French letter dated 21 January 1721, in Bonnefon 1906, 327. 17

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other women, and of all the other trifles [‘bagatelles’] that make up ordinary conversations, with a naturalness and a simplicity as if she were not capable of anything better. (Itti, 300)

Dacier’s intent mobilizing of her public profile belongs to the trend of promoting the cultivated woman, a process already at work for over a century, beginning with the salons of the late sixteenth century. This trend accelerated during and after the decades of the 1650s and 1660s.19 The term ‘femme cultivée’ [cultivated woman], however, did not exist; such a woman was called a ‘savante’, a ‘savante femme’, or a ‘précieuse’.20 Marguerite Buffet, who taught middle-class women in the 1660s and published a manual on correct French usage, in her New Observations on the French Language … with the eulogy of the Illustrious Savantes (1668), spoke of cultivated women, whom she in effect called illustres sçavantes. These women, she points out, are illustrious not because they know Latin and Greek, but because they speak and write elegant French. For this they earn a top spot on Mount Parnassus rather than a place in the Republic of Letters: ‘When a woman is savante, one can tell her in good faith that she deserves the first rank on Parnassus, and one should not pass her off as a Plato or an Aristotle, as some men have done.’21 Buffet’s exemplars are for the most part French salonnières, known for their bien dire – it is for her exemplary French that she praises Van Schurman so extensively (see Chapter 6). Their example, she argues, would lead her pupils to realize that they can ‘scorn trifles [la bagatelle] to attach themselves to the most beautiful and most useful things’, such as ‘how to speak well and write well’; they can cultivate learning appropriate to salon usage without betraying their rank and the respect of their peers or neglecting the duties of their sex, or even jeopardizing their femininity. They can be cultivated as well as femmes, women attuned to salon sociability and to their household occupations (174–5). Buffet’s nationalistic pride in the superiority of French is central to her praise of contemporary salonnières, whom she likens to ‘heroines’ who have shown the world their mastery of French. As we return to Desrochers’s portrait of Van Schurman, another factor, her Labadism, must be kept in mind. Although the portrait’s accompanying sestet makes no reference to it, Van Schurman’s choice to live in a sectarian household darkened her reputation. French bio-bibliographies mentioned it, starting with Louis Moréri in 1674 and continuing with Jean-Pierre Nicéron’s Mémoires … des hommes illustres, compiled between 1729 and 1745, and contemporaneous 19

 Timmermans, 68, states that Mme de Villeroy and Mme de Retz, whose salons flourished during the last quarter of the sixteenth century, as ‘great humanist ladies, prepared the evolution of the feminine salons which, from the reign of Louis XIII onwards, cease to be receptive to humanist culture’. 20  One said ‘cultiver l’esprit’ [cultivate the mind] or ‘cultiver la connoissance’ [cultivate knowledge]. See Dictionnaire de l’Académie françoise (1694), 1: 298; and Timmermans, 331. 21  Buffet, 35.

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with Desrochers’s collection. Nicéron, in an otherwise positive eulogy based in large part on Pierre Yvon’s biography of Van Schurman, describes her break with the Dutch Reformed Church, which led her to ‘carry out her devotions outside the [Protestant] Temples’. Soon after, he writes, ‘she attached herself to the wellknown Labadie, whose sentiments and practices she embraced, and whom she then followed everywhere’. Nicéron ends his entry with a final summation: ‘they say that she loved to eat Spiders’, meaning that she had gone mad.22 He was voicing the diagnosis of a good number of Enlightenment physicians for whom greatly erudite women were prone to dementia and other disorders of the mind.23 JacquesGeorge de Chauffepié, a Protestant minister, in his entry on Van Schurman in 1756, cites an unnamed critic who, in his Histoire Curieuse du Sieur Jean de Labadie [Curious Story of Monsieur Jean de Labadie, n.d.], reports: ‘She had the weakness to marry (without the honour of marriage) the interests of Labadie, and become the protector of his violence and fits of rage.’ Jean-Noël Paquot also maintained that her scholarly talents and writings were completely wasted because of her adherence to Labadism: ‘her talents have not been of much use to her, since they ended up precipitating her into fanaticism; and they have not been useful either to the public, since there is almost nothing to learn from her writings’.24 Van Schurman’s Eighteenth-Century Admirers But Van Schurman had admirers throughout the eighteenth century. Literary women and men valued her intellect and educational vision. They include, for instance, the anonymous Monsieur N.C., Johanna Dorotheâ von Lindner Zoutelandt, Mme de Château-Thierry Galien, Philibert Riballier, and Charlotte Cosson de la Cressonnière. In 1718, Monsieur N.C., a pedagogue for whom academic studies were entirely compatible with a woman’s duties, gives Van Schurman as an example of the legitimacy of a humanist education for women: ‘The City of Amsterdam, does it not have Mlle Schurman, who equalled and even surpassed the most clever in the profession [of learning]?’ Nor is Van Schurman an exception to her sex; most women, he thought, are capable of studying if only one were to change the course of their education: ‘One should change the direction of the education of girls, one should inculcate in them the principles of the sciences, and one will find that there is little or no difference between them and men in this regard.’ Women like Van Schurman, he remarks, can be found in ‘all sorts of cities, who surpass in merit and capacity the most intelligent men’.25 Nonetheless, although he thinks that women are capable of learning all the disciplines, the 22

 Nicéron, 22. For Moréri, Labadie was a profiteer who ‘attached himself to her with all the care of a vain and self-interested man’ (285). 23  Gargam 2014, 85. 24  Chauffepié, 211; Paquot, 663. 25  Monsieur N.C., 11, 12–13. See Gargam 2013, 1: 482–3.

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class-conscious Monsieur N. C. intends his treatise mostly for aristocratic pupils, who can benefit from their studies in a private setting and for whom only certain disciplines such as philosophy, rhetoric, logic, poetry, history, beaux arts, and medical knowledge based on chemistry and botany are useful to their social roles. Johanna Dorotheâ von Lindner (1670–ca. 1737), who published under the surname Mme de Zoutelandt, the name of her first husband, was a prolific translator. Her broad interests ranged from economics, politics, and medicine to cross-cultural anthropology and theology. In 1730 her second husband, the Sieur Boisson (dates unknown), an engineer who worked for the French king, requested a royal privilège for a two-volume set of her French translations of Johan van Beverwijck (in volume 1)26 and Van Schurman (in volume 2).27 In her preface to the second volume she mentions two reasons for the publication. First, she wished to add these new translations to those she had already published, namely her memoirs of Johan de Witt, the leader of the Dutch Republic between 1653 and 1672; her memoirs on various cultural practices of the Dutch provinces and German courts; and a polemical work, Babylon Unmasked, that features a dialogue between two Dutch women renouncing Calvinism for Catholicism, written to defend her own conversion to the Roman faith. The second reason, implied rather than stated, is that, after finishing Babylon Unmasked, she wanted to warn others against Calvinism; she concludes her preface by lauding Van Schurman as: [a] Phoenix which is rarely found; the advantage that I have over her is that of being enlightened by the Light of true Faith, and that it pleased God to draw me away from my Heresy; this grace was not given to that Savante Girl.28

She is especially drawn to Van Schurman’s essays on medicine and theology. She translates Van Beverwijck’s Dutch version of Van Schurman’s De Vitæ Termino (7–25), as well as her treatise on the statement in John 9 over Jesus’ healing of a blind man with saliva and mud (30–37). Although she thought that Van Schurman was wrong in her adherence to Calvinism – curiously, but understandably, she does not mention her Labadism – her admiration for Van Schurman’s intellect is palpable. Her preface highlights Van Schurman’s polyglot writings. Van Schurman ‘excelled in Poetry, Philosophy, and Theology’, and had been not only a student but also an ‘Academician at the Famous University of Utrecht’ (n.p.). She draws attention to Van Schurman’s ‘perfect’ modesty which made her ‘one of the Marvels of her Century and of her Sex’. In short, ‘Mademoiselle Schurman possessed a truly masculine mind, without ever making any display of her learning’ (2). Another admirer is Mme Galien (1709–56), a pseudonym for a writer from Château-Thierry in Picardy, who signed her works ‘Mme de Château-Thierry Galien’. She seems to have presided over her own salon for which she wrote an 26

 Beverwijck 1730.  Schurman 1730. 28  Schurman 1730, preface, n.p. 27

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apology of famous historical women. Confronted one day at dinner by a misogynist guest who gave vent to his contempt for femmes savantes, she was challenged to come up with a defence of women; should she win his approval, he would publish her work. Mme Galien’s Apologie des dames (1748) offers loosely related stories about women from the Bible, antiquity, and contemporary times who distinguished themselves in the sciences, politics, and the arts. She explores the diversity of female talent in France and other countries and continents, including Africa, in all fields of human industry and war. She favours ‘the savantes and those who are more peaceful’ over the Amazons, whom men prefer. Among Dutch women she singles out Van Schurman for her languages, fine arts, curiosity cabinet, and standing among the learned.29 Van Schurman was still remembered in the last quarter of the eighteenth century. Philibert Riballier (1712–85), a younger brother of Ambroise Riballier, a trustee at the Paris faculty of theology, published along with Charlotte Cosson de la Cressonnière (1740–1813) a pedagogical work on the education of women. The ‘radical intellectual feminism’ of Riballier and Cosson was foundational to their programmatic vision of educational equality for women.30 Their eulogy of Van Schurman references Colletet, the Question celebre, and the Dissertatio logica.31 Both advocates challenged the state to finance the education of girls of all social classes in all of the higher disciplines. A Voice for Today Marguerite Buffet, Monsieur N. C., Mme Galien, Johanna Dorotheâ von Lindner, Philibert Riballier, and Charlotte Cosson de la Cressonnière; these admirers of Van Schurman all lauded her intellect, educational vision, and artistic talents. They shared with her an ability to translate their aspirations for a better educated female citizenry into lessons that could inspire their contemporaries to raise their sights higher. In this book I endeavoured to trace the vital role that Anna Maria van Schurman played in the debate over women’s education and to examine her rich epistolary connections with leading male scholars and savantes of the period. Her bold advocacy of higher education for women has taken centuries to realize. Today, for the first time, there are more women than men in American universities; for the first time in three decades many more young women are postponing their working lives to pursue higher education; and many in their 20s and 30s view today’s economic lull as an opportunity to upgrade their skills through further education. Today’s American women between 30 and 44 constitute the first generation in which more women than men hold college degrees, and women’s wages are 29

 Galien, 157, 201 (1st edn 1737). On Galien, see Aragon.  Gargam 2013, 1: 486. 31  Riballier, 98. 30

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correspondingly increasing faster than men’s.32 Several universities are now led by female presidents, including Harvard, founded in 1636, the year in which Van Schurman delivered her Latin ode on the inauguration of the University of Utrecht, challenging its professors to include women students. However, the very same issue of unequal treatment that Van Schurman confronted in her day still remains with us: the struggle to be taken seriously in the sciences; the challenge for parents to encourage their daughters as much as they do their sons; the difficulties of balancing work and home, children and careers; the lesser valuing of women at the top of corporate America and the correspondingly greater number of women in ‘pink collar’ jobs such as receptionist, teacher, and social worker, which have more limited trajectories than fields dominated by men.33 The American Association of University Women has recently called for a new “growth mindset” to encourage more girls and women to enter science-related fields.34 Van Schurman powerfully argued that they are capable of studying all the liberal arts and the sciences, and that her contemporaries needed a new ‘mindset’ to allow them into higher learning for the betterment of their lives and of society, no matter the sacrifices and difficulties. More than ever, her words hold true for us today. They illustrate the connections between the early modern period and our own, and they remain touchstones for our own continuing efforts to involve and support women in higher education and in the fulfilment of their lives.

32  Women earn about 57 per cent of the undergraduate and 60 per cent of the master’s degrees in American universities. See Catherine Rampell, ‘Instead of Work, Younger Women Head to School’, New York Times (29 December 2011): A4; Sam Roberts, ‘More Men Marrying Better Educated, Wealthier Wives’, New York Times (19 January 2010): A20. 33  Kaplaniak, 21, notes that ‘such disparity typically costs women more than $400,000 in lost earnings over the course of their careers’. A recent McKinsey Global Institute report estimates that ‘the world economy would be $28.4 trillion (or 26%) richer’ if women’s participation in the workforce was on a par with men, cited in ‘The Power of Parity’, The Economist, September 26, 2015. 34  ‘Why so few? Women in Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics’ (2010) (http://www.aauw.org/research/why-so-few/) (accessed July 2013).

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Appendix 1 Translated Latin Documents 1.1 Van Schurman to Jacob Cats, 16221 Anna Maria van Schurman greets the Most Illustrious Gentleman, JACOBUS CATZIUS. Although nothing is rightly judged more holy or loveable than virtue itself, who, o most illustrious Sir, would think it shameful for me to love and cherish you who in our time recall its living image? And so that the numerous gifts of your heavenly talent might not be without peer, hasn’t your humanitas alone richly merited this honourable affection?2 Certainly, for I owe to it the fact that you, almost forgetting your reputation and splendour, not only deemed it worthy to visit me in so friendly a fashion, to know me more deeply, and to ask zealously after my studies (or rather, my trifles); but you also of your own accord thought it worthy to promise me some fame from them. And since neither concealment nor contempt for them [my studies] falls to a noble maiden who is just now initiated into the Muses, receive this brief letter, such as it is, as a token both of my sincere love for you and of my everlasting regard. And so, forever, from me farewell, best of men. My parents very affectionately greet you, your wife, and your children. I also do the same. 1.2 Johan Godschalk van Schurman to Caspar Barlaeus, 5 December 16293 To the Gentleman, C. BARLAEUS. There is nothing that I would conceal from you any longer, Most Famous Sir, about my love for you, and your benevolence. For even if I forgive you perhaps for those sublime studies which you have interrupted, I do this not without a good reason since the impetus for my modesty has broken the chain of what was holding me back. For I hold such a great admiration for your incomparable mind ever since I read your Panegyric to the Prince4 that you seemed to have spoiled for 1

 Opuscula, 168–9.  Humanitas, a key term used in epistolary exchanges between savants, has the Ciceronian sense of the love of bonae literae. 3  University of Leiden, MS. PAP 2; also Schotel, Part 2: 112. 4  In his Dissertatio de bono principe (1633), Barlaeus attacks Machiavelli. 2

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me the eloquent writers of a past age and even a more recent age. You spoke so charmingly and so gravely, but yet with such an excellent clarity of style, or elegant language. Since my studies have become known to you recently, I did not think it inappropriate to send you these little verses on the same subject, that I wrote to be rather light and rather brief as is my custom. And on account of this alone, I thought they might be a little less tiresome. I have but one unsurpassed sister, who does not shrink from such studies, and who is quite well known; I don’t know if you have heard of her. Your writings have won her full attention. She desires very much that I send you her greetings. I will write more thoroughly to you another time about her intellect, how she spends her time, and how her studies are progressing. Farewell, most erudite of men, and please, I beg you, do not spurn this friendship which has begun under such auspicious omens. The letter which you wish to be sent to me, send it also to Buchelius,5 a man who is on most friendly terms with me: I understand that he exchanges letters with you all the time. Again, farewell, most learned Sir, so dear to me, on whom my entire soul depends. Most dedicated to you, Johan Godschalk van Schurman. Utrecht, 5 December 1629 1.3 Van Schurman to André Rivet, 18 March 16356 Anna Maria van Schurman sends hearty greetings to the most illustrious Gentleman, ANDREAS RIVETUS. At last I have returned to myself, o Reverend and most beloved Father in Christ; until now, I was distracted by a series and variety of studies. Wherefore I, having been (so to speak) restored to myself, thought that I owed you [this letter] as first fruits. Indeed, I had decided to address you in Hebrew so that whatever was in progress might not any longer keep in suspense [your] paternal affection and concern, but I was afraid that no rationale would be able to match a longer delay needing an excuse. Moreover, I do not want to keep from you the news that I have recently visited Monsieur Descartes,7 a man of great, or rather (as they say) unheard-of-knowledge, who seems not to hold a high opinion of the common or received progress of humane letters, saying that none of these add anything to true Knowledge, and that he has found another way to reach the truth much more quickly and certainly.

5

 Aernout van Buchell (Arnoldus Buchelius, 1565–1648), a Utrecht antiquarian and lawyer, was a close friend of the Van Schurman family. 6  Horst, 282–3. 7  Van Schurman visited Descartes on his arrival in Utrecht in March 1635.

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Of all of these [humane letters], I consider Professor Reneri8 their patron and, as it were, their guarantor; however, I thought – since (as our same Reneri asserts) you know this man – that you especially had to be consulted. Farewell. My mother greets you and your beloved Lady Wife very lovingly. I do the same. At Utrecht, 18 March, 1635 She to whom nothing is more lasting than to remain among the number of your friends Anna Maria van Schurman 1.4 Van Schurman to Jacobus Revius, 31 March 16369 To the exceptionally pious and remarkably learned Sir JACOBUS REVIUS, Pastor of the congregation at Deventer. Reverend and splendid Sir! I have long been in your debt from which I am not seeking to free myself thoughtlessly. It is not a characteristic of my little intellect to reciprocate your knowledge of many languages and all kinds of subjects. Beyond that, the reason for my silence has not been slight given the failing health of my dearest mother; and this has kept me so obsessively focused for so long on the duties arising from my filial devotion through these many months that at this point I have failed our friendship. But now, after I have begun to catch my breath again for a little while, I could not help but transmit my greetings to you first among the many others, and also these verses which I recently published in praise of our Academy that has just come into being and which I am sending to you for your attention.10 These have always pleased me as a poet. ‘Let me tell thee, he who hides well his life, lives well.’11 But I am not unaware that the mores of this century are taking us by force somewhere else; and also the torrent of opinions, as it were. But if these [verses] are not displeasing to you in any way, then I am all the more gratified. Farewell to you and to yours. She, who loves you and cherishes you in Christ. Anna Maria à Schurman Utrecht, 31 March 1636 8

 Hendrik Reneri (1593–1639) was appointed professor of philosophy at the newly established Utrecht Athenaeum on 18 June 1634. On Reneri, see Bunge, chapter 2. 9  In Schotel, 2: 106–7. Jacobus Revius (Jakob Reefsen, 1586–1658) was a poet, Calvinist theologian, church historian, acclaimed Hebrew scholar, and pastor for 27 years at Deventer. 10  Van Schurman sent Revius her Latin ode on the inauguration on 16 March 1636 of the University of Utrecht. 11  Ovid, Tristia, 3. 4. line 25.

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1.5 Van Schurman to Johann van Beverwijck, 163912 Anna Maria van Schurman greets the Most Illustrious Gentleman, JOHANNES BEVEROVICIUS. I have seen your treatise, most Famous Sir, which you have entitled Of the Excellence of the Female Sex: but I have seen it only as if in passing,13 both because of various little tasks wherein I am even against my will many times engaged, and because I feared, lest by keeping it with me, I might become a hindrance to you, and have more regard for my own desire than your design. Truly, I admired your notable kindness whereby you have been pleased, not only by your most elegant style, to assert the glory of the learning and wisdom of our sex (which alone is the one thing that I lately requested of you),14 but also favour so much our cause as to equal us everywhere to men, I might even say prefer us above them in some things.15 Do not think I am altogether of your viewpoint,16 especially since you raised so many examples of illustrious women to such sublime celebrity that your discourse seems to give them more envy than admiration. Since this is the case, I vehemently entreat you, yea by our inviolable friendship I beseech you, that you not (as according to your accustomed favour toward me, you seem to intend) dedicate this book to me.17 For you are not ignorant with what evil eyes the majority of men (I mean not so much men of the lowest rank, whom it is easy to condemn, as men who are highly esteemed) look at what tends to our praise. So that, they think we are well dealt with if we merely obtain their pardon for aspiring to these higher studies; they would be very displeased if they suspected me of having given the least occasion of sounding forth our praises in this way.18 I need not, therefore, use many words to prevail upon you not to give our adversaries new matter for calumny, after you have done so much in this work to stop their hearts [from doing so]. But if you are looking for some illustrious name, distinguished above all others, to place in the frontispiece to this book, you will not find, in my view, any more auspicious than the name of N.N.19 For you cannot 12

 Opuscula, 187–90.  The words ‘as if’ are in Greek. 14  In her previous letter to Van Beverwijck, dated 21 January 1638, Van Schurman states how pleased she would be were he to defend women’s higher studies. 15  Van Beverwijck argues that women have the same virtues as men, even showing superiority to men when given the opportunity. But men’s envy prevents women from displaying these virtues. 16  The Greek for ‘your viewpoint’ means ‘voting the same’. 17  Van Beverwijck did not heed Van Schurman’s plea. He dedicated the second part of the work to her, describing her as a woman above her sex. See Beverwijck 1643, 2: 88, 96–8. 18  Van Schurman frequently issues such warnings to her admirers. 19  N.N. stands for anonymous. Van Beverwijck dedicated the first book to Anna van Blocklandt, the wife of Cornelis Boy, who wrote most of the verses for the volume. The 13

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but receive much favour from this Heroine who, since she delights exceedingly in belles lettres and the study of Languages, is safely placed above all danger of envy. And the chief thing is that she is able both by her authority and example to grant no small splendour to our cause. Farewell, Distinguished Sir. 1639 1.6 Johan van Beverwijck to Van Schurman, from Dordrecht, 30 April 164020 Johann van Beverwijck greets the Most Noble Maiden in birth and aptitude, ANNA MARIA VAN SCHURMAN. There is an old debate among educated men over the virtues of Women. Thucydides, a most serious author, was the first to attribute praise to the woman about whom there is little to be said whether in a good or bad way.21 He was thinking of course that, like the body, so also the fame (as Tacitus says, the peril is no less for a good reputation as for a bad reputation)22 of a good woman must be hidden at home; nor should it reach the public. The most prudent philosopher, Plutarch, agrees with Gorgias’s opinion that the reputation of a woman rather than her beauty should be well known to many people.23 You, the immortal ornament of Virgins,24 subscribe to his [Plutarch’s] opinion and one cannot argue with that. Although nature in no way would refuse your perspective and erudition would grant you this as well, you seem nevertheless to want to keep these things hidden and you repudiate the glory that rightfully comes to such deeds. But in vain do you attempt to suppress the distinction given to someone like you who does not want it. For, even though you do not consciously act this way, a shadow cast by virtues that one so admires naturally follows as a consequence even when glory flees the person to whom it is naturally linked. And, indeed, you ‘forget your way of life’, a thing useless to you and to others.25 ‘Virtue hidden’, says the lyric poet [Horace], ‘differs little from laziness buried’.26 That beautiful little body of yours is broken by so many sufferings, so many night vigils and insomnia; is there so much pain that you keep hidden that you can 1643 Latin edition is dedicated to Mary Stuart, Princess Royal. 20  Dissertatio, preface, 3–7. 21  Thucydides, ‘Pericles’ Funeral Oration’, in History of the Peloponnesian War, Book 2, chapter 45, section 2. 22  Tacitus, Annales, Agricola, Book 1, chapter 5, section 3. 23  Plutarch, Bravery of Women, in Moralia. 24  Van Beverwijck uses the words ‘immortale Virginum decus’, a reference to Virgil’s praise of the warrior maiden Camilla, who was dedicated to the virginal goddess Diana in Virgil’s Aeneid, lines 535–600. 25  Greek saying in Plutarch’s Moralia, De latenter vivendo [On living secretly]. 26  Horace, Epodes and Odes, Book 4, poem 9, line 29.

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be of benefit to no one? Do you know so many languages that you have become silent? Have you instructed that noble mind of yours with so many disciplines that you think that all those arts must remain without glory? But outstanding maidens, whose minds the great Prometheus shaped from the better clay, are unable to take on his example for themselves.27 Neither are you in your hidden state encouraging the pursuit of those arts for the purpose of virtue and knowledge. If, indeed, Plutarch held the right opinion that just as light makes us not only clear but also in turn useful, so too does knowledge produce not only glory but those activities that lead to virtue. Perhaps you will say that light and splendour flee from you because there are many people who prevent your sex from [entering] the sacred space of Minerva. But I say that you have refuted their opinion no less elegantly than learnedly. For this reason you should bear with an even disposition the fact that your letters to the Reverend and Very Noble RIVETUS have been published negligently enough last year in Paris; now, however, they have been corrected in a polished and elegant type and they are coming to light. I have attached your Dissertatio logica on the same argument, which was once shared with me. I have thrown a white stone28 into my book concerning the excellence of the female sex, which you are worthy to look upon. The most learned Theologians Colvius and Lydius, the greatest admirers with me of your virtues, have added their contribution to this edition. Farewell, honour of ours, and miracle of the centuries. Dordrecht, 30 April 1640 1.7 Johan van Beverwijck to the Readers, 164129 To the Readers. What I offer you here, dear Reader, a proof of the most fertile intellect of the Maiden who has no equal, is brief when compared with all that she has achieved and won. But because of her modesty this [book], however small, has been wrested from her and on account of her modesty she has scarcely allowed it to be published with her consent; nor would we have obtained this from her, and although some already had copies [of the letters], these were published, not on account of her expectation of making them public nor by the permission of those from whose hands they had received them; this is being done for the public good. With great difficulty, at last we have obtained [permission] from her that they [the samples of her writing] will be published here in a cleaner fashion and that they will be added to her work which we are producing. Nor have we lost hope that if these 27

 Prometheus, a Titan in Greek myth, created men out of clay and defended them against the hostility of the gods. 28  Stones of white chalk were used to signify approval in a law case, while charcoal signified condemnation. Horace, Satires, 2: 3. 246. 29  Dissertatio, 7–8.

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samples are pleasing to you and whet your appetite, this publication will be very pleasing to us as well. May she herself, from her ample provisions, within a few days, give more generously than she is accustomed to and fulfil your desire with an abundant hand. Farewell. 1.8 Van Schurman to Pierre Gassendi, 21 December 164430 Anna Maria van Schurman sends her greetings to the most Illustrious Gentleman, M. PETRUS GASSENDUS. Most famous Sir, most appreciated by God, you have recently portrayed me in your most kind letter as the epitome of virtue in such a way that I would not desire any other image to be made of my eternal memory, if it entirely matches grace and truth well; but as I understand it, you, otherwise a most vigorous defender of truth, have been led astray, either by the breath of some flattering story or by a too excessive support for me, so that, heaping praises upon me, you expressed rather the lustre of your mind more than my likeness; not lightly would I sin against your genius and truthfulness unless I released you as soon as possible from this error, whatever sort it is. I perceive that you have received so kindly my little dissertation about the more polished studies of maidens that it has added not a little to your opinion about me.31 Indeed, what I argue is greatly to be praised in this writing, quite apart from the fact that I have tried in earnest to defend a liberal cause, indeed a most just cause in my opinion, so far as modesty permits me to say so. But the proof of your love for genuine wisdom is clear since you do not even scorn the least spark of it in our sex; and you do not hesitate to cherish or to raise it up with your extraordinary favour. And yet, even if I had set my mind not to send letters to strangers, still, deservedly, your nature and your excellent beneficence, which are bestowed on the entire literary world, exempt you from the number of those people to whom I do not write. I should incur the anger of the Graces if I did not show, at least with another letter, how much I congratulate myself that you have deigned to sanction my way of life with your praise. Indeed, I desire to please only the few and the good (since being pleasing to the many displeases the wise), and you especially whom I see equipped with such arms and resources that you have recently vindicated the honour of ancient philosophy itself; in such a way that, if it is necessary, you would easily be able to protect the common cause of the good arts and letters against their professed enemies or certainly those contemptuous of feminine glory. Farewell. 30

 Opuscula, 212–14. This letter is dated ‘12 Kal. Jan, 1644’, which would place it on 21 December 1643. However, since it is a reply to a letter by Gassendi on 15 July 1644, it should be dated ‘12 Kal. Jan, 1645’, or 21 December 1644. 31  The Dissertatio logica.

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1.9 Van Schurman to Simonds D’Ewes, 31 October 164532 Anna Maria van Schurman sends a pious greeting to the most Illustrious Gentleman, SIMONDS D’EWES. I have received your letter with a cheerful face, Illustrious Sir, as is suitable for one filled with the spirit of a most refined humanitas and the purest candour. And truly, I would not have delayed my answer for so long except that, for various reasons, some time ago, I decided to write infrequently to my countrymen and to foreigners very rarely. Nevertheless, when recently I learned from the most noble and most faithful Lord Strickland33 how much you excel in honour and every sort of praise of your learning, my maidenly humility (not being accustomed to concede that such a virtue is not inferior to any other) does not blush to defer to your affable and noble virtues. And so, contemplating these virtues, I have eagerly laid hold of my pen so that by means of a letter I might announce to everyone the honour that these virtues justly demand. Also, your most favourable opinion concerning my sex has encouraged me to do so, which I heartily wish I were able to confirm as easily with my example as with my reasons (as you indeed judge me too kindly). As to what you write concerning the most learned matron, Mrs Bathsua Metkins [Makin],34 that she has boasted so splendidly of my diligence in the more sublime studies, and that you were then stirred with an incredible desire to speak with me, this I impute to both your courtesy in granting so easy an assent and to her undeserved affection towards me. Certainly, you attribute to me such glory of learning that, if I should admit it willingly, I would greatly offend the laws of truth and modesty. Nevertheless, I will not deny that you make it so that I delight greatly in the noblest as well as the best things, although they sometimes exceed my powers of comprehension. And I beseech you not to think that I am unaffected with the turmoil in your country, for whose safety my prayers do not cease. Wherefore, you will have done me a great favour if you would not refuse to share with us (being partners in the same cause) whatever can be achieved by your greatest and most honourable assembly either in peace or in war.35 32  Opuscula, 217–19. A lawyer, antiquarian, and diarist, Sir Simonds D’Ewes (1602–50) dedicated his life to the study of historical and legal antiquities. 33  Lord Walter Strickland (ca. 1598–1671) was parliamentary ambassador to the States General of the United Provinces from 1642 to 1651. Recruited in 1645 to the Long Parliament while still residing at The Hague, he sought to impede the influence of Queen Henrietta Maria’s relations with the Court of Orange on Dutch attitudes toward Parliament. Huygens may have introduced her to Strickland since he was close friends with Anna Morgan, who wedded Strickland in August 1646. On Anna Morgan, see Jardine, 160–62. 34  Van Schurman wrote on or close to the same day a Greek letter, dated 31 October 1645, to Makin. This letter is included in Opuscula, 165–6. 35  In 1640 D’Ewes was a member of the Long Parliament as a reformer of church and state. He took lengthy notes of the proceedings and the characters and motives of the antimonarchical members. His views were judged too moderate for him to be entirely trusted, and he left Parliament in December 1645.

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Farewell, incomparable patron of the Muses, along with your most noble wife, whom I humbly entreat you to salute as if with my very own words. 31 October 1645 1.10 Van Schurman to Frederik Spanheim, from Utrecht, 3 May 164736 ANNA MARIA VAN SCHURMAN greets the Most Illustrious Gentleman, FREDERIK SPANHEIM. If, of all the Orators, that most famous Tullius [Cicero] never stood up to speak without fear, according to Plutarch, then you will not be surprised, Revered Sir, that I am reluctant and have doubts about publication of this type of letter. These letters were welcomed by friends on account of the intimacy of a private conversation and as a confirmation of my affection and love. But to those who look upon them as strangers, they will seem of little pleasure and usefulness. I am not ignorant of how much weight you are able to lend them by your approval and recommendation; and because there is scarcely any shortcoming in your great intellect and spirit, you will not run into any kind of criticism. I ask that you take care not to give in to your natural inclination toward kindness and that you not let up too much on the gravitas of your judgement. I will say no more about this now since my brother, who is about to bring you this letter, will say more about these things to you in person. Farewell, my dearest friend, and show favour upon my studies, as you usually do. Utrecht, 3 May 1647 1.11 Frederik Spanheim to the Readers, 164837 You have here, Reader, a Work such as previous generations have not seen, and which, as it relates to the honour and glory of our age, will thus someday continue to contribute to the admiration of posterity. At the same time, the Low Countries display to you a Maiden not only instructed in the erudite languages, which belong to the learned exclusively, but also in nearly every aspect of learning. You might rightly say that her admirable nature and mind, capable of all things, are the ultimate attempt of nature in this sex. Along with these attributes, there are innumerable others, all of which are scarcely able to be counted, so prodigiously did the liberal kindness of God pour itself forth upon one person. If she has a vast understanding, a nature for which nothing is inaccessible, she also has a skilful hand obedient to such a Guide. Nor is her nature unable to perform anything that she does not accomplish on every occasion, always to the amazement of those watching. But 36

 Opuscula, 243–4.  Opuscula, n.p.

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these gifts are by far inferior to those which she especially displays, piety without pretence, modesty beyond example, and a wondrous virtue of character and of life that are exemplary. And, even though she deserves to be greatly praised, she, nevertheless, does not desire any praise. And, this in itself is beyond praise. Reader, you must not believe that this most Noble Maiden voluntarily advances into the public eye; she does not advance herself willingly, but she is being promoted by those who have decided that it is in the public’s best interest, lest such great virtue be completely hidden at home. And, indeed, the things that are on display for you here have been wrested away from her, rather than obtained from her by asking. There are certain aspects in others’ writings, which truly guard their most elegant hand that is most incomparable in every mark, just as the Griffins guard their own gold.38 However, by no means must you impute it either to my curiosity or to my leisure that I have wanted this matter to have been revealed, but rather to the curiosity and leisure of several of her closest Friends, who demanded it from me with prayers and with zeal for arousing everyone to the serious imitation of such an example. You will even see that this Tenth Muse has been aroused by various inquiries (on the part of certain people) to display her most successful talent and to unfold her own riches. Reader, admire along with us the person who has provoked admiration from Royalty and what this stole-clad teacher of the Muses and the Graces teaches us by her example and equally by her pen; and what she values as her own distinguished honour, consider it also to be yours, as PIETY and, certainly, VIRTUE. Leiden, July 1648

 Herodotus, Histories, 4. 13. 1.

38

Appendix 2: Eulogy of Anna Maria van Schurman by Isaac Bullart, 1682 1

I do not know if I should believe, or if I ought to admire what has been published on Anna Maria [van] Schurman. Several learned people have considered her the most ingenious and learned girl of our times; and it seems when hearing them that Antiquity has no one comparable to her. Truly if there is no exaggeration in the eulogies given to her, we can regard her as a person who has acquired much glory on account of the beauty of her mind, but who could have acquired an incomparably brighter one by renouncing the Heresy [229] that she professed and in which she died a few years ago. She came from a family from Antwerp, which for over a century held an honourable rank among the Magistrates of this city. Frederik, her grandfather, was a native [of Antwerp]: but since he adhered to Heresy, he was forced to leave it behind and retire with his family to Germany, where he raised the young Frederik his son in the same errors. The latter was studious and had wit. He showed it well in some Memoirs which he presented in the year 1618 to the States [General] of the United Provinces, containing very important advice which he gave them for the security and glory of the Republic; and even as a mark of his zeal, he served for some time in their army as a volunteer. His wife was a Lady from the Country of Juilliers,2 from the noble house of Herft [Harff]. She gave birth in Cologne to Anna Maria van Schurman on 5 November 1607. This girl, born for the Sciences and the Arts, learned their rudiments in her childhood with an amazing facility. At the age of seven, she started speaking Latin, taught by a Preceptor who taught this language to her older brothers. At the same time she was instructed in sewing by her mother; but since she despised this vulgar exercise, instead of applying herself to it, she would cut with her scissors into paper with great dexterity all the figures that her inventive mind suggested to her; then she learned to design flowers with a crayon and a pen to apply them with a needle to tapestry; and having seen two or three times only Magdalena van de Passe engrave, she acquired through her work and natural capacity a great habit of engraving. Her father seeing with what vivacity of mind she undertook all things, and hearing her recite with a forceful emphasis the Sayings which she found from a few 1

 Bullart, 228–32. Bullart (1599–1672) was a bio-bibliographer.  The Duchy of Juilliers, North Rhine, Germany.

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Latin Authors, promised himself none other than that this studious daughter would one day embody the glory of her sex and of her family. In this agreeable hope of his he completed her education himself in Latin; and bypassing the formalities of the Schools, he gave her Seneca, so that by unveiling the beauties of this language, he could also fortify her mind through a solid and laborious reading. Even though she was only 10 years old, she applied herself with assiduity; and to penetrate even further into the sentiments of this grave Philosopher and render them intelligible to the uninitiated she wrote a Flemish and a French version of what she found most remarkable in this book. After this she learned the Greek language with a success, which increased even more the astonishment and joy of her Father; so much so that in 1623, when sick and on his death bed, he exhorted her to continue her studies, assuring her that she would acquire a renown incomparably more precious that anything he could leave her in his dying. Since then she did not cease to work until she could enlighten her mind through reading what is worth investigating in the writings of secular Authors from Antiquity. Wanting to satisfy her own desires as well as those of her Father, she requested from the Directors of the Academy of Leiden that she be given in each School an elevated loge from where she could hear, without being seen, the lectures and public disputations with an attention so deep that nothing was capable of distracting her from them. Having thus discovered the secrets of Eloquence and of Philosophy, she wanted to penetrate those of the Hebrew tongue which she learned from Gisbertus Voetius, who was teaching in this Academy.3 She applied herself also to the study of Chaldean, Syriac, and Ethiopian; and she accustomed herself to writing [230] Letters, the major as well as ordinary ones, in all of these Idioms; and she made them so familiar to herself that she could speak and write with these Nations without the need for an interpreter. She thus achieved this rare knowledge which rendered her so renowned to the World, and that she communicated to the Public in several Latin Books; in one of these she treats the Question of whether it is expedient that Girls be learned. She has written letters in Hebrew, Greek, Latin, and French that they say are very polished and effective. Her poetry is no less elegant; and the Latin Epigrams that one sees from her have a sharpness that makes them very agreeable. Therefore, this learned girl was held in her age in such esteem that one spoke of her only with admiration. The Queen of Poland, Marie de Gonzague, who was passing through Utrecht (where she [Van Schurman] had her residence) in the month of December 1645 to go to Poland, honoured her with a visit and after having spent some time with her in her Cabinet she left it marvellously satisfied with her conversation. The Queen of Bohemia and the Princess Louise her daughter,4 who also glorified themselves in being learned, often conversed with her through letters, and had no 3

 Voetius taught at Utrecht, not Leiden as Bullart supposed  Louise Hollandine of the Palatinate (1622–1709), second daughter of Elizabeth Stuart and Frederick V, was a talented portrait painter in the style of Gerard van Honthorst. It is not known whether she wrote to Van Schurman. Bullart is likely confusing her with her older sister Elisabeth, who corresponded with Van Schurman. 4

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greater pleasure than the one they received from this agreeable communication of the mind. What this ingenious Girl has accomplished with her hands in the Arts is no less esteemed. Not satisfying herself with her knowledge of the Sciences which she possessed, and with speaking the languages of Europe and Asia, she learned to play the Lute so as to entertain herself sometimes with the sweet charm of the Music which she understood perfectly as well. Moreover, she painted Miniatures exceedingly well, drew with pencil and pen, engraved on copper with a stylus, sculpted very neatly on wood, modelled metal and wax figurines; in a word she handled with an incredible ability all sorts of substances to give them the shape she wanted. After painting Miniatures of her Parents, she did the same for herself with the help of a mirror, then engraved it with a stylus and with etching as is seen in this copy; and she sent it to several Ladies among her friends, adding these verses which she composed [231] [see Figure 5.4].5 ‘If the maiden is seen only in a half image, / It is because not even the biggest canvas can capture the whole.’ She also did an effigy in wax; on this subject she composed this Epigram, no less ingenious than filled with moral teaching: ‘I had not intended to cheat death, / By sculpting my own effigy in solid bronze: / Instead, my likeness, which I have expressed in wax, behold / I am giving to a fragile form what will soon die.’ After all this what else can I add for the glory of this illustrious Girl except that I restate what a French Muse, and a Latin one have already stated in her praise in these Verses? Vainly Rome publishes The Miracles of Cornelia, And wrongly Greece boasts Of Sappho the beautiful sçavante Who, in Apollo’s art, acquired such honour. Illustrious Daughters of Parnassus, You must cede your place To this new Star of Utrecht; You speak but one language, But ANNE, more learned, and wiser, Speaks French, Arabic, Hebrew, Latin, and Greek. May Ancient Roman records be silent on the mother of the Gracchi, And may Captured Greece be silent about its own Sappho: May the Romans yield, and may the Greek Muses, also, For something greater shines in the Batavian land.

5  The caption beneath the portrait states: ‘Edme de Boulonnois fecit’. Boulonois was an engraver active in Brussels, who, with N. de Larmessin, engraved the plates for Bullart’s Academie.

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Index

Ablancourt, Nicolas Perrot d’ 132−3 Académie Française 13, 23, 24n99, 25n103, 119, 122–3, 130–31, 319 academies, see circle(s) Aemilius, Antonius 85, 138n79, 183 Àgreda, Sor Maria de 14 Alais, Peace of 12, 211 Albret, Jeanne d’ 201, 211n97, 213, 311 album amicorum 43, 79, 302, 323, 331 alliance d’amitié 207–8 famille d’alliance 38, 200, 325 fille d’alliance 92, 165, 329 mother–daughter 121, 192, 200, 201, 206 père d’alliance 28, 101–3, 151 sœur d’alliance 13, 45, 55, 64, 200 Alva, Fernando Alvarez de Toledo, Duke of 34 Amama, Sixtinus 77 Amazons 57, 199, 286, 318 Amesius (William Ames) 40 Amsterdam, and 10–11, 39, 41, 47–8, 64–7, 71, 74, 79, 84, 100, 171, 193, 272 Athenaeum Illustre 8, 43–4, 46, 171, 249 Amyraut, Moïse 104 Angennes, Julie d’ 119 Anne of Austria, Queen of France 24, 26, 51, 55, 90, 121, 124, 143, 149, 173, 207, 214 Aretius, Jacobus (James Martin) 50 Aristotle 78n43, 82n65, 89, 95–7, 109n33, 138, 217, 230, 271, 327 Aristotelianism 81n59, 96 Arminius, Jacobus 311 Astell, Mary 15, 18n71, 42, 73n15, 82, 100, 117, 155, 184, 232n37, 244, 256n129, 292, 331 Athena, see Minerva

Aubignac, François d’ 147 Aubigné, Agrippa d’ 21, 37n22, 211−13, 292, 300 Aubigné, Françoise d’, Marquise de Maintenon 14 Augustine 88, 95 Bacon, Francis 239, 253 Baerle, Suzanna van 81n61 Bagno, Guidi di, Gian Francesco de’ Conti 120 Baillet, Adrien 49n80, 76n34, 84n80, 89n106–91, 292 Balzac, Jean-Louis Guez de 10, 21, 51, 164, 203, 218, 293, 316 Ban, Jon Albert (Bannius) 47, 90 Barksdale, Clement 5, 43, 186–7, 229n25, 245n82, 293, 301, 304 Barlaeus, Casparus (Caspar van Baerle) 44–7, 71, 74, 93, 96, 160, 277, 292 Baudius, Dominicus 193 Bayle, Pierre 51, 81n59, 210n92–211n93, 214, 293–4 Beverwijck, Johan van, and 46–7, 50, 53–4, 57, 83, 107–8, 121, 157–8, 167, 168, 170–72, 178, 186–8, 195, 204, 222, 226, 273, 280–82, 293, 300, 315, 324 Van de wtnementheyt des vrouwelicken Geslachts 47, 53, 108, 172, 195n24, 293, 324 Blocklandt, Anna van 46–7n74, 280n19 Boccacio, Giovanni 19–20, 190 Bochart, Samuel 60–61, 99, 291 Boësset (Boisset), Antoine 90, 326 Boulliau, Ismaël 120n8, 324, 333 Bourbon, Nicolas 119 Bourbon-Condé, Anne-Geneviève de, Duchesse de Longueville 55, 60, 124

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Bourdelot, Pierre Michon de 61 Bourignon, Antoinette 55, 303, 318 Boyle, Catherine, see Jones Boy, Cornelis 47, 280n19 Boyle, Robert 42, 226, 233, 244n80 Brachart, Charlotte de 151, 293 Brahe, Tycho 199 Brongersma, Titia 188 Bruneau, Marie, Mme des Loges 22–3, 119, 147, 203–4, 221 Buchelius, Arnoldus (Aernout van Buchell) 76, 78–9, 92, 168, 172n67, 189, 199, 207, 213n109, 278, 291–3, 326 Buffet, Marguerite 29, 150–52, 271–4, 293, 304, 314, 323 Bullart, Isaac 293 Buxtorf, Johannes 63 Calvin, John, Calvinist, Calvinism 5–6, 13, 21, 34–7, 44–5, 63–6, 73, 87, 90, 103–4, 112−14, 149, 174, 205–8, 234−8, 273, 279n9, 315, 321, 326–7, 332 Cardinal Mazarin, see Mazarin Cardinal Richelieu, see Richelieu Castiglione, Baldassare 22, 293 catalogues of illustrious women or femmes illustres 19–20, 24, 107, 120, 127, 150, 190–91, 199, 209, 212, 215, 217, 222, 280 Catholic Church 11, 42−3, 205 Cats, Jacob 5, 37–40, 46, 78–9, 94n124, 107, 252, 277, 294 Cavendish, Margaret, Duchess of Newcastle 82, 100, 117, 213, 304 Cereta, Laura 38, 190–91n9, 294 Ceulen, Cornelis Jonson (or Janssens) van 265–6, 333 Chapelain, Jean 21−3, 51−2, 61n137, 122–4, 130, 164, 167, 220, 293–4 Chappuzeau, Samuel 23n93 Charles I, King of England 4n2, 11−12, 186, 227–9, 246–7, 253, 256–7 Charles II, King of England 257 Charlotte-Brabantine de Nassau, Duchesse de la Tremoille 103, 184n105, 214, 299

Chauffepié, Jacques-George de 43n52, 62n145, 272, 294 Chenu, Jean 135, 137n76 Chidley, Katherine 236, 242 Christina of Sweden, Queen 42, 55, 60, 77n39, 214n114, 303 Cicero, Ciceronian 39, 70, 101n4, 114, 138, 155, 158, 180, 217, 220, 230, 277n2, 285, 294, 304 circle(s), as literary academies 14, 20–35, 48, 60, 71, 74, 83, 86, 94, 116, 126, 131, 140, 157, 171, 253, 259, 306 cabinet 24, 48, 51, 61, 110n38, 122–3, 131, 153, 161, 167, 171, 183, 203, 218, 274, 288, 297, 309 coteries 12, 21, 45–7, 171, 193, 201, 204 country estate 46, 193n15 Hôtel de Rambouillet 22–3, 47, 51, 60, 129–37, 147, 220 mondain academies 55, 112 Muiden Circle 47–8 networks 1, 6, 34–60, 90, 101, 122, 154, 183, 203–4, 233, 244–5, 304 salons 7–30, 48–55, 82, 88, 112–52, 164–5, 192, 201–23, 268–73, 304–27 civic activism, and 238–9 common or public good 28, 59, 108, 137–8, 170, 181, 228, 238–42, 282 Clerselier, Claude 128 Coligny, Louise de 184n105, 201, 211−12, 294, 310−11 Colletet, François 147 Colletet, Guillaume 5, 7, 27, 29, 119–21, 123–5, 129–35, 137–48, 150–51, 174–5, 207, 221, 274, 291–2, 300, 306–7, 319, 324 Colonna, Vittoria 201 Colvius, Andreas 4n5, 46, 78–79n49, 83, 86–7, 104, 168–72, 184, 282, 331 Comenius, Jan Amos 43, 126, 227, 239, 245n82, 247n91, 254–5, 257n133, 258n135, 298, 309, 325, 332 Condé, Louis de, Duc de Longueville 123, 212

Index Conrart, Valentin 5, 13–14, 22, 103–4, 122–4, 128, 130, 133, 147, 153, 164, 167, 175, 185, 189, 203, 214–15, 218–19, 291, 293, 302, 307, 319, 328 contentio, see Schurman Conway, Anne, see Finch Corneille, Pierre 10, 146 correspondence, as letters network(s) 49, 90 manuscript 20, 23, 29n114, 51n89, 122–4, 153–6, 162–3, 170–71, 200 published 180–81, 291 unpublished 67, 155, 179, 192, 198, 206, 214 Cossé Brissac, Marie de, Maréchale de La Meilleraye 143 Coste, Hilarion de 24, 125, 205, 294 Counter-Reformation 13, 25, 129, 147, 216, 311, 327 Counter-Remonstrants 35n10, 73 Coutel, Madame 55 Crenne, Helisenne de 151, 295 Cressonnière, Charlotte Cosson de la 272, 274, 299 Crucius, Jacobus (Jean de la Croix) 148, 295 Cyprian, St 44, 295 Dacier, Anne Le Fèvre 23, 42, 269–71, 306, 309, 314, 318, 325 Dalen the Younger, Cornelis van 265–6 Des Hayons, Thomas 44, 295 Des Roches, Catherine 20–21, 185, 201, 295, 304 Des Ursins, Charlotte, Vicomtesse d’Auchy 21–4, 119, 127, 130, 147, 292 Descartes, René, Cartesian 28, 42, 49, 57, 69–70, 74, 76, 81–91, 94–100, 104, 109n37, 130, 164, 171, 216, 227, 278, 292, 294–5, 299, 306, 310, 312, 315, 318, 323, 325–8, 331–3 Deshoulières, Antoinette 23, 165, 263 Desrochers, Etienne Jahandier 263–5, 268–9, 271–2, 292 Desmarets, Samuel 104, 312

337

D’Ewes, Simonds 5, 54, 58–60, 186, 240, 246–9, 284, 292, 295, 323 Dordrecht 8, 35, 45–6, 57, 73, 83, 86, 93, 168, 172, 281–2, 293, 303–4, 328 Du Bartas, Guillaume Salluste 10, 37, 111, 295, 305 Du Bosc, Jacques, and L’Honneste femme 24n99, 295 La Femme héroïque 143, 209 Du Chesne, Charles 51, 160–3, 166, 173–4, 207, 319 Du Moulin, Marie 13, 14n52, 42, 45, 55, 60, 64, 77, 122, 124, 153, 215, 221, 222n155, 291, 305, 320 Du Moulin, Marie, Sr 42n49, 61n134, 103, Du Moulin, Pierre (Molinaeus) 13, 58, 103, 122, 185, 213 Du Puy, Jacques 8, 48–9, 51, 52n94, 121, 167, 171, 298 Du Puy, Pierre 8, 48, 51, 52n94, 167, 171 Du Soucy, François, Monsieur de Gerzan 24, 125, 295 Duarte, Francisca 47–8 Dulignon, Pierre 64 Duroy, Hendrik (Henricus Regius) 76 Dury, John 46, 85, 227–9, 232, 234, 242–3, 247, 249, 252–5, 258, 296, 298, 304, 316, 321, 326, 332 Dutch Republic 8–12, 28, 30, 33, 37, 44n59, 47n72, 48, 53, 69, 77, 98, 107, 154, 168, 273, 308–9, 315, 318, 321, 326, Dutch Revolt 10, 73 Education, and charitable day schools 13 colleges 8, 21, 100, 116, 259, 303 boarding schools 13, 14, 255 literacy 14, 17, 107, 109 petites écoles 13 university(ies) 8–10, 20, 28, 40–42, 69–72, 81–5, 97, 103, 110, 115–16, 138, 154–7, 167, 171n62, 178–9, 187–90, 196, 217–18, 275 Éléonore de Roy, Princesse de Condé 212

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Elizabeth I, queen 10, 209, 213, 229, 258–9, 315 Elisabeth of Bohemia, daughter of Elizabeth Stuart 5, 42, 55, 65, 82, 87n96, 88n102, 93, 94–5, 100, 103, 128, 149, 171, 209–10, 213–14, 299 Elizabeth Stuart, Queen of Bohemia 11, 45, 50n85, 65n159, 228n17, 234, 288n4 Elizabeth Stuart, daughter of Charles I 4n2, 247 Elstob, Elizabeth 55, 100 Elzevier(s) 9, 26, 104, 120n8, 153, 155, 166–8, 175–6, 185, 188, 293, 300 Elzevier, Abraham 167 Elzevier, Bonaventura 167 engraving(s) 2, 39n27, 182–3, 190–91, 213n109, 215, 251, 264–6, 287, 317 Epicurus 96–7, 130 Epinay, Louise d’ 17 epistolary, as network(s), connections, exchanges 6, 30, 86n91, 92n119, 101, 112, 122, 155, 172, 191–2, 207, 231, 274, 277 private letters 170–71, 180 treatise 103 Erasmus, Desiderius 36, 108, 129, 190, 296 Ernecourt, Barbe d’, Comtesse de Saint-Baslemont 143 Erpenius, Thomas 8, 77–8, 167 exemplarity 30, 53, 181, 190–91, 205–7, 209, 221–2, 231, 307–8, 317, 319, 327 Fabricius, Christoffel 34 famille d’alliance, see alliance Faret, Nicolas 25, 134, 296 Farnese, Alexander, Duke of Parma 34 Feckenham, John 139 Fedele, Cassandra 19, 38, 70, 121, 296, 327 fille d’alliance, see alliance Finch, Anne, Viscountess Conway 82, 155, 294, 315, 318 Fonte, Moderata 117 Forget, Marie 91n116 Foxe, John 37, 139, 296, 303 Franeker 8, 40–41, 70, 77, 79n49, 83n71, 211n96, 308

Frederik Hendrik, Prince of Orange 11, 45, 211, 319 Frederick V of Bohemia 11, 50n85, 65n159, 228n17, 288n4, 326 French Academy, see Académie Française Fronde 12, 24, 61, 119, 124, 144, 214, 332 Galen 108, 127 Galien, Mme de Château-Thierry 29, 272–4, 296, 303 Galilei, Galileo 42, 89 Garasse, François 129, 296 Gassendi, Pierre 5, 28, 42–3, 58–9, 70, 89, 92, 95–7, 130, 186, 283, 296, 326, 328, 331–2 Gaston d’Orléans, Duc d’Anjou 5, 124–5, 312, 316 Gersdorff, Henrietta von 55, 178 Gilberto, Domenico da Cesena 121, 169, 204, 296 Giorida, Sitti Maani 77n39, 304 Girard, Guillaume 51–2 Godewijck, Margaretha van 43, 46, 83, 330 Golius, Jacobus 77–8, 84, 332 Gonzague, Charles de, Duc de Nevers 147 Gonzague-Nevers, Louise Marie de 55, 60, 78 Gournay, Marie le Jars de 4–5, 7, 16–18, 21, 23n93, 29–30, 42, 54–5, 92, 112n45–113, 117, 119, 121, 127n43, 151, 165–6, 189, 191–206, 221–2, 269, 296, 301, 303–4, 312, 314, 318, 320, 324, 329 Gregory of Nazianzus 237 Grenaille, François de 124, 296 Grey, Jane, Queen of England 37, 139, 209, 213, 229, 259, 321 Grotius, Hugo 8, 104, 171, 186n118, 193n19, 304 Guillaume, Jacquette 29, 150–52, 296, 304 Harff, Agnes von 35, 62 Harff, Eva von 34, 41, 287 Harff, Sibella von 35, 62 Hartlib, Samuel 122, 126n 36, 227–8n22, 231n33–234, 236n53, 239, 241–5, 247, 249, 253–4, 298, 310, 316, 321, 332–3

Index Hazzard, Dorothy 236 Heinsius, Daniel (Heyns) 5, 8, 10, 33, 39, 40, 54, 58, 107, 168, 193, 291, 204 Heinsius, Nicolaas 61, 193, 125n32 Henri III, King of France 160n28 Henry IV, King of France 11 Henrietta Maria, Queen of England 11, 227n15, 232, 239n58, 284n33 Heyblocq, Jacob 43, 302, 331 Herbert, Mary Sidney, Countess of Pembroke 201 Hinckelmann, Abraham 78 honnêteté, honnête 13, 20–29, 52, 82, 88, 126, 131–11, 146, 215–19, 295–6, 311, 323, 334 Hoobius, Johanna 53 Hooft, Pieter C. 37, 47–8, 193 household academy 38, 53, 54 Huet, Pierre-Daniel 66, 203, 269–70, 296, 309, 328 Huguenots 10–12, 103, 147, 193, 205–6, 222, 306, 320 humanism, humanist 6–19, 38, 58, 70, 84, 97, 108–17, 131, 151–2, 176, 190–97, 203, 209–18, 239, 245–6, 253–60, 271n19, 272 Hutchinson, Lucy 67 Huybert, Charlotte de 53, 329 Huygens, Constantijn 5, 37, 39n28, 45–7, 50, 57n117, 62–5, 79, 81n61, 83–4, 90–92, 181, 267–8, 284n83, 294–5, 297, 310, 319, 323, 330, 332–3 Ignatius Martyr, St 43 Inglis, Esther 81, 327 Irson, Claude 25, 297 Jacob, Louis, de Saint-Charles 29, 120, 123, 135, 148, 152, 292 Jacob, Paul 33, 56, 120, 125 James I, King of England 11, 50n85, 213n109, 227n16, 246, 317 Joachimi, Albert 232, 249 Joan of Arc 123–4, 143–4, 215, 239, 291, 298, 302, 312 Johnson, Samsson 228

339

Joly, Claude 60, 79, 249, 297 Jones, Katherine, Lady Ranelagh 226, 242, 310, 318 Justinian (Digesta) 115 Kabbalists 99, 209 Koelman, Jacobus 64 L’Angelier, Abel 165, 201, 304 L’Aubespine, Madeleine de, Mme de Villeroy 200, 297, 304 La Cruz, Sor Juana Inés de 43, 318, 323 La Forge, Jean de 29, 149, 297 La Guette, Catherine Meurdrac de 143, 324 La Mothe-le-Vayer, François de 171, 205, 297, 331 La Rochelle 11–12, 193n19, 205, 210, 211n97, 213, 222 La Sablière, Marguerite de 130 La Tour d’Auvergne, Henri de, Duc de Bouillon 12, 44n58, 211n96, 332 La Tremoille, Claude de, Duc de Thouars 103, 174, 211n96 Labadie, Jean de 6, 28, 63–4, 66–7, 243, 272, 302, 328, 333 Laet, Johannes de 8, 54, 92, 294 Lafayette, Marie-Madeleine Pioche de la Vergne, Comtesse 263, 343 Lamarque, Antoine 66 Le Duc, Rolet 125, 135, 291, 300 Le Gendre, Marie 304 Le Laboureur, Jean 60, 78, 297 Le Moyne, Pierre, and 220n143, 221n150, 297 Gallerie des femmes fortes 24, 26, 143, 209, 297 Leiden University 8, 48, 103, 167, 308, 326 leisure 1, 13, 27, 75, 79, 82, 105–7, 110–11, 114–17, 127, 129, 134, 146, 164, 179, 197, 199, 215, 218, 239, 255, 257, 259–60, 286 Lemens, Clara van 34 Lescailje, Katharina 43, 314 Lesclache, Louis de 25, 128 Leusden, Johannes 77 Lewis, Mark 244, 247, 257

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Lievens, Jan 34, 267–8 Lipsius, Justus 8, 58, 87, 121, 138, 193, 206, 209, 218, 220, 297, 319–20 Locke, John 42 Loeberia, Dorothea 55, 178 Louis XIII, King of France 5n11, 10n40, 11–12, 51n89, 60, 90, 125, 160, 198, 206, 271n19, 329 Louis XIV, King of France 12, 24n100, 27, 66, 123–4, 263n2, 316 Loynes, Antoinette de 54, 201 Ludolf, Hiob 77 Luther, Martin 73, 205 Lydius, Jacobus 46, 148, 168, 170–72, 282 Makin, Bathsua Reginald 4n2–5, 8, 15, 18, 30, 55, 60, 73n15, 100, 117, 186, 189, 213, 225, 229–30, 244–60, 284, 297, 305, 307, 309, 323–4, 328, 330–31 Malherbe, François de 21, 119, 203 Marguerite de Navarre 19, 191, 201, 307 Marie de Medici, Queen of France 60, 124, 211, 309 Marinella, Lucrezia 58, 113, 117, 191, 197, 297 Mazarin, Jules, Cardinal 61, 120–25, 298 mentoring, see Schurman Menuret, Jean 64 Mercier, Anne (Mme Saumaise) 42, 54, 176, 334 Merian, Maria Sibylla 67 Merlau, Johanna Eleonora van 55, 67 Mersenne, Marin 8, 43, 48–51, 57, 85, 89–90, 92n117, 96, 104, 164, 249, 298, 306 Merveil, Anne de 55, 230 Meursius, Johannes 102 Middelburg 8, 11, 64, 235 Milton, John 226, 250, 252–3, 255, 321, 329 Minerva (or Pallas Athena) 4, 34, 53, 57, 70–72, 92n119, 122, 143–5, 195–6, 282 Mirandola, Pico della modesty, see Schurman

Montaigne, Michel de 165, 192–3, 198, 200, 202–3, 205, 222, 298, 306, 320, 329 Montpensier, Anne Marie Louise d’Orléans, Duchesse (La Grande Mademoiselle) 5, 124–5, 128, 130, 134, 144, 149n108, 221n154, 298 Moore, Arthur 226 Moore, Dorothy 5, 8, 15, 30, 46, 52, 55, 186, 189, 213, 225–43, 249, 254, 260, 298 Morata, Olympia Fulvia 49, 259 More, Henry 155 More, Margaret 38 More, Mary 117 More, Thomas 108, 146 Morel, Camille de 54n102, 201 Morel, Diane de 54n102, 201 Morel, Jean de 54n102, 201 Morel, Lucrèce de 54n102, 201 Morris, John 54, 294 Motteville, Françoise Bertaut de 149, 152 Muiden circle, see circles Museum Martena 40–41, 66, 79n49, 211n96, 266, 268n9, 308 Nadere Reformatie or Further Reformation, see Reformation Naudé, Gabriel 121–2, 135, 148, 160, 183, 204, 221, 298, 310, 327 network(s), see circles New Philosophy, New Philosophers 69, 74–5, 85, 126, 191, 216 Nicéron, Jean-Pierre 29, 271–2, 298 Nogarola, Isotta 38, 190 Norris, John 155, 292 Ogle, Sir John 46 Ogle, Utricia, see Swann oriental languages 4n5, 50, 70, 76–7, 81, 97, 99, 131, 161, 167–8, 187, 199, 203 Owen, John 67 Pallandt, Anna van (Pallantia) 207 Pallas Athena, see Minerva

Index Pantogalus, Meletios 44 Paquot, Jean-Noël 51, 272, 298 paralipsis 145, 156 Parent, François 75 Parlement, of Paris 12, 56n110, 119, 125, 175, 210 Parthenay, Catherine de, Dame de Rohan–Soubise 206, 210–11, 213–14, 299, 333 Passe, Magdalena van de 184, 213n109, 287 Passe, Crispijn van de, Sr 1, 3, 18, 79, 184 patronage 1, 10, 24, 30, 65, 123, 175, 189, 246, 255, 329 Paula 63 Paulet, Angélique 48 Peiresc, Nicolas-Claude Fabri de 42, 171, 324 Pelletier, Pierre du 125 Pellisson, Paul 147, 218, 269 Penn, William 66–7, 299 père d’alliance, see alliance Petrarch (Francesco Petrarca) 19, 183 Piscopia, Elena Lucrezia Cornaro 43, 322 Pizan, Christine de 231, 334 Plutarch (Lucius Plutarchus) 26, 108, 138, 168, 180, 183, 230, 254, 281–2, 285, 299 Poliziano, Angelo 19 Polyander, Johannes, or Johannes van den Kerckhoven 104 Pons, Antoinette de, Marquise de Guercheville 204 portraiture, as self-portrait(s)1, 48, 54, 81, 123, 149, 175–6, 181–4, 188, 215, 230, 252, 268, 306 self-fashioning 15, 181, 183–4 Poullain de La Barre, François 18, 83, 109, 115, 117, 125, 142n87, 299 Protestantism 11, 148, 205, 210, 213, 310, 318 publication, as manuscript 20, 23, 51n89, 122–4, 153–6 print 24, 29, 153–5, 164, 185–8 privilège d’auteur 154–67 scribal, as 153 unauthorized publication 155–60, 170

341

Pure, Michel de 25 Puritan(s) 9, 11, 40, 62, 73, 186, 207, 227, 239, 255, 308, 310 Querelle des femmes 7, 19, 88, 112, 124, 135, 137, 142–3, 152, 237, 244, 270, 306–7, 314, 325 querelle des savantes 22 Questiers, Catharina 184 Quintillian 108, 155, 297 Rambouillet, Catherine de Vivonne, Marquise de, see Vivonne Reefsen, Jakob (Jacobus Revius) 45, 85n83, 157, 187, 279, 299 Reformation 13–14, 25, 38 63–4, 73, 99, 129, 210, 235, 253 Reformed Church (of the Low Countries) 6, 9–10, 35, 62, 65, 73, 168, 214, 221, 240, 272 Remonstrants 35n10 Renaudot, Théophraste 24, 81, 125–7, 129–30, 299, 319, 323, 329, 333 Renée de France 210 Reneri, Henricus (Henri Régnier or Henricus Renerius) 42, 84–5, 98, 104, 279 repos 146 Republic of Letters 4, 6–7, 25, 38–9, 45, 50, 53, 58, 90–92, 104, 131, 151–4, 171–6, 183–8, 192–211, 230, 245, 271 Respublica mulierum (a women’s Republic of Letters) 190, 230 retraite 127, 130, 221 Riballier, Philibert 29, 272, 274, 299 Richelieu, Armand Jean du Plessis, Cardinal de 10n40, 12, 23n97, 51, 120, 124–6, 147, 163, 193, 205, 210–11 Richesource, Jean de Soudier de 25, 127–8, 299 Rivet, André (Andreas Rivetus) 5, 7, 26, 28–9, 40, 42, 45, 54, 59–60, 69, 75, 79, 84–5, 87–88, 90–92, 94, 96–7, 101–6, 108, 110–16, 122–4, 128–9, 131, 134–45, 151–63, 166–79, 185–200, 206–7, 214–15, 231–43,

342

Anna Maria van Schurman, ‘The Star of Utrecht’

249, 254, 257–60, 265, 278, 291, 294, 299–300, 306, 308, 312–13, 325 Rivet, Frédéric 49, 249 Rohan, Anne de 5, 7, 29, 42, 54, 147, 174, 189, 192–3, 197n33, 206–14, 221, 300, 306 Rohan, Henri, Duc de 11, 147, 206, 212, 310, 312 Rohault, Jacques 25, 128 Romieu, Marie de 142, 200 Sainte-Marthe, Scévole de 119n1, 132, 300 Sainte-Maure, Catherine de, Comtesse de Brassac 149, 203 Sales, François de 147, 165, 167, 193, 331 salons, see circle(s) Sappho 24–5, 87, 217–18, 220, 223, 268–9, 289, 304, 308, 312 Sarrau, Claude 8, 103n7, 175, 294 Scaliger, Joseph Justus 8, 48, 77, 87, 121, 334 Schomberg, Jeanne de, Duchesse de Liancourt 129, 204, 300 Schoock, Maarten 74, 86n90, 98, 295 Schotanus, Bernardus 41 Schotanus, Meinardus 41, 176n82 Schurman, Anna Maria van, and calligraphy 39, 79–80, 160 celibacy 43, 164 contentio 29, 101, 114, 141, 145, 151, 180 disputation 5, 74–6, 85, 85n87, 91–5, 97, 106, 197, 219, 257, 288, 331 languages 4, 10, 15–16, 36, 40, 46–7, 50, 61, 67, 70, 75–82, 97–9, 109, 122, 125, 130–40, 148–50, 161, 167, 178, 187, 198–204, 218, 222, 229, 274, 279, 281, 285, 289 medicine 4, 273 modesty 29, 33, 45, 52, 58, 61, 96, 106, 143, 145, 153, 155–68, 170–72, 178–88, 197, 219–22, 233, 237, 240, 270, 273, 277, 282–6, 325 political efficacy 114, 152 prudentia 138–9 sermo 101, 104, 114, 141, 151 theological linguistics 100

tutors (mentors, and sponsors) 34, 38, 41, 101 Works Amica Dissertatio 5, 7, 29, 37, 49, 51, 155, 158–68, 170, 173–4, 187–8 De vitæ termino 50, 157–8, 176, 273 Dissertatio 5n9, 7, 9, 18, 28–9, 33, 49, 55, 58, 81, 87, 95–6, 101, 105–10, 126, 134–58, 162–6, 168–74, 178, 186–8, 196–7, 207, 214, 230, 245, 257, 259, 274, 282–3 Eukleria 6, 35, 37, 39, 41, 42n44, 55, 56nn108, 109, 58–9, 63, 66–7, 97–8, 301, 303 Learned Maid 43, 157, 186, 188, 245n82, 301 Opuscula 1n1, 5n7, 9, 29, 33, 37n17, 39–41, 52, 101, 125, 156, 162, 173–88, 225, 229, 248, 257, 268, 300, 305 Pensées d’A.M. de Schurman Sur la Reformation 65, 301 Question celebre 5, 27, 29, 56, 119–52, 175, 188, 215, 274, 300 Schurman, Frederik van 34–6, 38, 40–42, 44, 44n59, 94 Schurman, Johan Godschalk van 34, 38, 40–41, 44, 63–4, 88n103, 90, 199, 277–8, 291 Schurman, Willem van 34 Schütz, Johann Jakob 66 Schweling, Johannes 63 scribal publication, see publication Scriverius, Petrus 8 Scudéry, Madeleine de 7, 10, 12, 16–17, 23–7, 30, 42, 55, 124, 127–8, 130, 144, 149, 164, 189, 192, 209, 214–23, 263, 268, 291, 301–2, 309, 312–13, 316, 320, 324 Secundus, Gaius Plinius (Pliny the Elder) 86, 108 Sedan 44, 49, 221 Séguier, Pierre 125n33, 167 Seneca, Lucius Annaeus 26, 36, 63, 88, 111, 138, 218, 229–30, 259, 288, 301

Index Senneterre, Madeleine de 203 Smetius (Johannes Smith) 88n103, 176n82, 183n101 Somaize, Antoine Baudeau de 29, 148, 301 Sommelsdyck, Lucia van 66 Sophia von der Pfalz, Electress of Hanover 65–6, 291, 301 Sorel, Charles 29, 149, 302 Souvré, Madeleine de, Marquise de Sablé 21–3, 28, 147, 310 Spanheim, Frederik 1, 57n113, 104, 153, 175–6, 178–81, 184–6, 188, 214, 257, 285 Spener, Philipp Jakob 66 Staackman, Willem 41 Stoics, Stoicism 86–7, 138, 218 Strick, Maria 80–81 Strickland, Lord Walter 284 Stuart, Mary, Duchess of York, Queen of England 11, 227n15, 232, 249, 281n19 Suchon, Gabrielle 43, 109, 117, 164–5, 302 Swann, Utricia Ogle 46, 62, 90, 92, 176 Tacitus 133, 168, 176n82, 281n22, 299, 348 Tarabotti, Arcangela 120–21, 180n89, 185, 302, 329, 333 Teellinck, Johannes 62 Teresa of Avila, St 14 Tesselschade, Maria, see Visscher Thibault, Gérard 79, 332 Thott, Birgitte 55, 77n39, 201n53 Thou, Jacques-Auguste de 210 Thucydides 168, 281 Torshell, Samuel 186, 249–50, 252–5, 302 translation 7, 9, 27, 29, 77, 119–24, 129, 131–4, 151, 173–5, 186–8, 198, 200, 214, 222, 250, 260, 269–70, 273, 293, 299, 301, 304–5, 314, 332 Tulp, Nicolas 47 tutor(s), see Schurman Ulpian (Domitius Ulpianus) 115, 146 Urfé, Honoré d’ 36, 161 Ursuline(s) 13n51 Utenhove, Karel 207n77 Utrecht, city and Academy of Utrecht 70, 74, 84

343 Achter de Dom 41 Illustre Latin School 70, 74, 84 Utrecht Cathedral 41, 266 University of Utrecht 28, 41, 53, 70, 105, 110, 116, 187, 196, 275

Valois, Marguerite de 20, 22, 119, 121, 124, 204, 218, 320 Vaugelas, Claude Favre de 130, 203 Veer, Cornelia van der 43 Vervoorn, Elisabeth 46 Villedieu, Marie-Catherine Desjardins de 128n47, 165n44, 319 Visitandine(s) 13n51 Visscher, Anna Roemers 10, 39, 47, 79, 62, 79–80, 302, 325 Visscher, Maria Tesselschade Roemers 47, 48n77, 62, 79–80, 302, 325 Vives, Juan Luis 108, 113–14, 129, 190, 302 Vivonne, Catherine de, Marquise de Rambouillet 21–2, 29, 51, 119, 123, 128, 130, 146, 220, 320 Voet, Gijsbert (Gisbertus Voetius) 28, 41, 59, 62, 63–5, 69–100, 105, 153, 156, 181, 227, 234–5, 288, 316, 327–8 Vorstius, Adolphus 40, 168, 172 Vossius, Cornelia 47, 54 Vossius, Gerardus Joannes 42n49, 46, 54, 171, 326 Waesberge, Johann van 75, 176, 300 Walloons 10 Wars French Wars of Religion 11–12, 69 English Civil Wars 10, 69, 225, 235n52 Thirty Years’ Wars 69 William of Orange (or William the Silent), Stadholder of Holland, Zeeland, and Utrecht 11 women, and education 4, 13–8, 27–30, 49, 55, 57, 70, 84, 88, 100, 108, 110, 123, 125–9, 137, 152, 160, 192–201, 244–61 higher learning 14, 26, 28, 49, 57, 69, 72–81, 87, 115–16, 134, 195–6, 217, 222–9, 236, 275

344

Anna Maria van Schurman, ‘The Star of Utrecht’

Wooley, Hannah 55, 302 Wroth, Mary Sidney 201, 317 Yvon, Pierre 34, 37–8, 41, 56–7, 59–62, 64, 67, 99, 104, 110, 153, 272, 302

Zayas, Maria de 18 Zesen, Philipp von, 167–8 Zoutelandt, Joanna Dorotheâ von Lindner de 272–3, 293, 301