Elisabeth of Bohemia, Philosopher and Princess-Abbess

Elisabeth of Bohemia  (born 26 December 1618)

Elisabeth of Bohemia was the daughter of Frederick V, elector of the Palatine (a German territory that was part of the Holy Roman Empire) and his wife, Elizabeth Stuart, daughter of James Stuart, the English king who had succeeded Elizabeth Tudor as ruler of England. 

Elisabeth of Bohemia,
c. 1636

First, a few words about Elisabeth of Bohemia's parents. The glamorous teenaged couple--Elizabeth Stuart was later called the "Queen of Hearts"--was married in a dazzling Valentine's Day ceremony in 1613, the ceremony itself following fireworks displays, pageants, and extravagant celebrations (including a mock sea battle on the Thames), accompanied by dozens of wedding poems written for the occasion (John Donne contributed one), and followed by weeks of feasting. (For an extended description of the festivities, you can read Richard Cavendish's "The Marriage of the Winter Queen," from History Today, by clicking here.)

The journey of the elector of the Palatinate and his new electress to Heidelberg was equally lavish. Once in Heidelberg, Elizabeth gave birth to three children (she ultimately gave birth to thirteen), including Elisabeth, the subject of today's post. In 1619, Frederick and Elizabeth were offered the throne of Bohemia, and the golden couple became--briefly--king and queen of Bohemia. 

But Elizabeth Stuart is now best known as the "Winter Queen," signifying the brevity of her reign. Frederick and Elizabeth assumed the throne of Bohemia in November 1619--within a year, the Protestant couple had been run out of Bohemia by Frederick II, the Catholic Holy Roman emperor, who took possession of the Palatinate as well. The two were exiled, taking up residence in The Hague. Frederick V died in 1632, just thirty-six years old. The Winter Queen lived for another thirty years. She returned to England on 26 May 1661, just after the restoration of her nephew, Charles II, and died in London less than a year later, on 13 February 1662. 

A formidable woman who was a skilled player in the games of international politics, Elizabeth Stuart is now largely a forgotten figure. For a quick read, Lisa Jardine's "The Winter Queen of Bohemia," written for the BBC Magazine, will suggest why you need to know more about Elizabeth Stuart.

And now for the subject of today's post. While her mother was, for more than thirty years, "one of the foremost power brokers for the Protestant cause in Europe," Elisabeth of Bohemia was an equally accomplished daughter.

When her parents left for Prague in 1619, Elisabeth and her siblings remained behind with their grandmother, Louise Juliana of Orange, who had been regent of the Palatinate for her son, Frederick V--she had also discouraged her son from taking the throne of Bohemia, fearful of just the sort of religious conflict that did, indeed, erupt. Frederick V's deposition was the trigger for the Thirty Years' War.

Elisabeth would remain with her grandmother until 1628, but the two could not stay in the Palatinate--once the emperor had captured Bohemia and turned his attention on Frederick's German territories, Louise Juliana fled with Elisabeth to Berlin, taking refuge there with her daughter, Elizabeth Charlotte, the wife of the elector of Brandenburg. (In 1631, after Elisabeth had rejoined her parents in The Hague, Berlin was under siege, and Juliana Louise relocated with the rest of the Brandenburg court to Konigsberg, in east Prussia.)

Despite the turmoil, Elisabeth received an excellent education. In 1639, she began a correspondence with the Dutch scholar Anna Maria van Schurman, whose response, filled with praises for Elizabeth Tudor and Jane Grey, acknowledged Elisabeth's English connections.

Elisabeth met Descartes while he was in The Hague, and the two began a philosophical exchange--initiated by Elisabeth of Bohemia in 1643, the correspondence continued until Descartes' death in 1650. Fifty-eight letters survive--thirty-two from Descartes and the remaining twenty-six from the princess Palatinate.

In her excellent overview of Elisabeth of Bohemia's philosophical work for the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, Lisa Shapiro notes that Elisabeth is not merely soliciting answers from Descartes but is, instead, developing and expressing her own philosophical views. "It is evident from the correspondence," Shapiro writes, "that Elisabeth has a remarkable and wide-ranging critical philosophical acumen. Careful reading of her side of the correspondence does suggest she has some positive philosophical commitments of her own, on matters including the nature of causation, the nature of the mind, explanations of natural phenomena, virtue, and good governance."

Beyond her interest in Cartesian philosophy, Elisabeth's correspondence with Descartes illustrates a wide range of interests and involvements: 

The correspondence . . . reveals her to have been involved with an appointment in mathematics to the University of Leiden and in negotiations on a number of matters, including the imprisonment of her brother Rupert in conjunction with his efforts around the English Civil War, negotiations of the marriage of her sister Henrietta, negotiations of the Treaty of Westphalia, and the finances of her family after the end of the Thirty Years War.

After Descartes' death, Elisabeth returned to Heidelberg in 1653 where her brother, Charles Louis, had been restored as elector of the Palatinate. Disturbed by her brother's abandonment of his wife, Elisabeth managed to secure the release of her sister-in-law, Charlotte of Hesse-Kassel and move on with her to to Hesse.

In 1660 she joined the convent of Herford Abbey. The eighth-century convent was the oldest in Saxony, at one time an imperial abbey within the Holy Roman Empire. Although it was now a Protestant convent, it retained its status, and in 1667 Elisabeth of Bohemia became its head, with the title of "princess-abbess."

The Abbey of Herford,
where Elisabeth of Bohemia
served as princess-abbess

As Shapiro notes, Elisabeth also had a keen interest in political philosophy--this may have helped to make her an effective administrator of the convent, its lands, and the surrounding community; she also welcomed those from oppressed religious sects, in particular the Quakers, and engaged in an ongoing correspondence with members of the Quaker community.

Of course you won't find an entry on Elisabeth of Bohemia in the Encyclopedia Britannica--the only mention of her is in the entry for Descartes, where she is mentioned in connection to his 1644 Principles of Philosophy: "He dedicated this work to Princess Elizabeth (1618–79), daughter of Elizabeth Stuart, titular queen of Bohemia, in correspondence with whom he developed his moral philosophy."

Lisa Shapiro's edition of Elisabeth of Bohemia's correspondence with Descartes, The Correspondence between Princess Elisabeth of Bohemia and René Descartes, contains an excellent biographical and critical introduction as well as carefully edited translations of the original letters. 

You might also enjoy Elizabeth Godfrey's 1909 biography, A Sister of Prince Rupert: Elizabeth Princess Palatine and Abbess of Herford. It's available at the Internet Archive, by clicking here.

(And, by the way, we've already met Elisabeth of Bohemia's younger sister, Sophia of Hanover, who is also to be noted for her contributions to philosophy.)

Anna Maria van Schurman--One More "Tenth Muse"!!

Anna Maria van Schurman (born 5 November 1607)

Born in Cologne, the daughter of Frederik van Schurman and Eva von Harff, who had fled from Antwerp to avoid increasing conflicts between Catholics and Protestants, Anna Maria van Schurman was a prodigy. She was widely recognized and admired for her skill in languages (she reputedly knew fourteen, including Arabic and Syriac), philosophy, poetry, music, and painting.

Anna Maria van Schurman, 1649,
portrait by Jan Lievens

And, of course, she became known as "the Tenth Muse"! How many women have I posted about this year who have been awarded that "praise"! I know it's meant as high praise, but, really--any and every highly regarded and accomplished woman becomes the "Tenth Muse."*

Anyway, after about five years, the family returned to the Netherlands, settling in Utrecht, where Anna Maria would spend the better part of her life. She was sent briefly to a local French school, but after two months returned home, where she was tutored along with her brothers, the children's education supervised and directed by their father.

By 1620 and still in her early teens, she was recognized by the Dutch artist, poet, and translator Anna Roemers Visscher, who praised Schurman's knowledge of the classical languages, her drawing, and her musical accomplishments as a singer and as a performer--in particular, she excelled at the harpsichord and lute.

(By the way, Anna Roemers Visscher was herself described as a muse and a second Sappho, her sister Maria Tesselschade Visscher described as, you guessed it, "the Tenth Muse." See what I mean?)

By the 1630s, Schurman was corresponding with a number of scholars, including André Rivet, a French Huguenot theologian at the University of Leyden, and the Dutch theologian Gisbertus Voetius, rector of the University of Utrecht.

It was in her correspondence with Rivet that Schurman took up the question of women's education, specifically the subject of “whether the study of letters is fitting for a Christian woman,” the topic of a brief dissertation she wrote for him in 1632. While she defends women's capacity for education, Anna Maria van Schurman is more cautious about women and certainly never argues for their equality. 

Schurman knew the work of both Marie le Jars de Gournay and Lucrezia Marinella, for example, but she disapproved of both of them. In her correspondence with Rivet on the subject of women’s education, she denies the arguments of those who have made the “invidious and groundless assertion of the preeminence” of women. Schurman says that her “maidenly modesty” and “innate shyness” have been troubled by Marinella’s work, and while she “can by no means disapprove of the little dissertation of the most noble Gournay,” neither does she entirely approve of it. 

The virtues of women “ought to be proved rightly,” Schurman asserts, but instead of undertaking the proof herself, she writes that she “very much desire[s] that role be handed over” to Rivet, “a sublime herald of the virtues.” Her treatise on the subject, Num feminæ Christianæ conveniat stadium litterarum? (Whether a Christian Woman Should Be Educated) is, as editor Joyce Irwin observes, "purely academic, a formal exercise in logic": "Nowhere does she suggest changes in the power structure of political or religious institutions."

And the question of whether women "ought" to be educated was further qualified--only women who had private means ("those women who enjoy wealth as their lot in life") and women who were unmarried and thus had no children to care for--the "study of letters" is "appropriate" for a woman who needs to follow a pastime at home." 

Anna Maria van Schurman's association with Voetius dates to 1636, when he enabled her to attend lectures at the University of Utrecht. It is frequently claimed online that Schurman was the first female student at the university, which is not quite the case at all--she could attend some lectures, sitting in a special niche that concealed her from male students, but she was never formally enrolled as a student. 

By this point, too, René Descartes came to know of Schurman, and she was impressed by his philosophy. In 1640, Descartes visited Schurman in Utrecht, but was disappointed by the turn in her thinking. "This Voetius has blighted Miss Schurman," Descartes wrote, "for she did have an eminent talent for verse, painting and other pleasures. But in the past five or six years he has gained complete mastery over her. She is occupied entirely with theological deliberation, which has caused her to lose contact with all cultured society."

By the 1650s, Schurman withdrew from her intellectual pursuits--whether from "deepening piety" or "because family obligations" became more pressing. She dedicated twenty years to caring for two elderly, blind aunts and then, after their deaths, she joined a religious community in Friesland, where she died in May of 1678.

Anna Maria van Schurman's correspondence with André Rivet, including her "logical dissertation" on women's education, was published in Paris in 1638 as Amica Dissertatio inter Annam Mariam Schurmanniam et Andr. Rivetum de capacitate ingenii muliebris ad scientia, though she would claim this was published without her consent.

Three years later, in 1641, she published Dissertatio de ingenii Muliebris ad Doctrinam et meliores Litteras aptitudine in Leyden (later translated and published in English as The Learned Maid or, Whether a Maid may be a Scholar. Her collected works, including letters and poems, Opuscula Hebraea, Graeca, Latina, Gallica, prosaica et metrica, was published in 1648.

Her autobiography, defending her choice to follow the Labadie religious sect, Eukleria seu Meliores Partis Electio (Eucleria, or Choosing the Better Part), was published in 1673.

In addition to her familiarity with the work of Gournay and Marinella, she corresponded with Gournay as well as with another women we have met, Bathsua Makin. She was also visited in Utrecht by Queen Christina of Sweden. 

Joyce Irwin's edition of Schurman's works is Anna Maria van Schurman: Whether a Christian Woman Should Be Educated and Other Writings from Her Intellectual Circle.

And here's the only mention of Anna Maria van Schurman in my favorite love-to-hate resource, the Encyclopedia Britannica (it comes from an entry on glassmaking!): "engraving was practiced there [Venice] widely by talented amateurs in the 17th century, among them Humanists such as Maria Tesselschade Roemers Visscher, her even more famous sister Anna Roemers Visscher and Anna Maria van Schurman. The latter two decorated their glasses with flowers and insects drawn with a gossamer touch, often accompanied by epigrams in Latin or Greek capitals. . . ." Sheesh!!!

*You can access my posts about various women called the "Tenth Muse" by clicking the label, below.