Antonia Pulci, Renaissance Playwright

 Antonia Tanini Pulci (7 May, the feast of St. Domitilla)

Although an English translation of Antonia Pulci's sacre rappresentazioni (literally "holy performances," or one-act sacred plays) has sat on my bookshelf for nearly thirty years, I somehow never got around to posting an essay here about the fifteenth-century Florentine writer.

Opening images in Bartolomeo de' Libri's 
1495 edition of Antonia Pulci's 
Rappresentazione di santa Guglielma
(from the Biblioteca Europea di
Informaziow e Cultura digital library)

I was reminded of that failure a few months ago when I wrote about Guglielma of Milan, an "unofficial" saint and posthumous heretic whose religious activities were officially suppressed. But those efforts to eradicate the life and afterlife of Guglielma and her story failed.

In 1425, some 140 years after Guglielma's death in 1281, a friar living in Ferrara, Antonio Bonfadini, wrote her vita, a saint's life. This work, filled with incredible and entirely made up detail, does not seem to have been widely read--only one manuscript copy survives. 

But this vita or some version of it somehow found its way to the Florentine writer Antonia Pulci. Her sacra rappresentazione about Guglielma, The Play of Saint Guglielma (Rappresentazione di Santa Guglielma), preserved and popularized the story of Guglielma.

Antonia Tanini, later Pulci, was born around the year 1452, nearly thirty years after Bonfadini composed his life of Guglielma. She was the daughter of a Florentine merchant, Francesco d'Antonio di Giannotto Tanini, and his wife, Jacopa da Roma. The couple had seven children, including Antonia--six daughters and one son.* Francesco also had two children born out of wedlock, a son born before his marriage and a daughter born during his marriage.

Francesco Tanini's children were all well educated, Antonia and her sisters as well as her brothers. In their edition of Antonia Pulci's plays, James Wyatt Cook and Barbara Collier Cook note that Antonia received a "careful literary and religious education." Her plays demonstrate both the extent of her learning and "her mastery of several sorts of Italian verse." Later in her life, continuing to educate herself, she hired a tutor to instruct her in Latin.

Some three years after her father's death, when she was about eighteen years old, Antonia Tanini was married to Bernardo Pulci, a member of a distinguished Florentine family. Unfortunately, Bernardo's older brother bankrupted the family--while Bernardo may have been rich in literary aspirations and political patronage (he was supported by the Medicis), he was not a wealthy man. As a banker and speculator he was unable to retrieve the family's fortunes, and the couple lived in straitened circumstances. 

The title page of of Pulci's 
Rappresentazione di
Santa Domitilla:
"INCOMINCIA La rapresentatione di san-
 cta Domitilla uergine facta & compo-
 sta in uersi per mona Antonia
 dōna di Bernardo pulci lāno [l'anno]
M CCCC LXXXIII"

But as Elissa B. Weaver notes in her biographical essay on Antonia Pulci, "All of the Pulcis were writers." By 1483, Pulci herself had also begun to write, and at least three of her sacre rappresentazioni were printed in a two-volume collection of thirteen plays published in Florence in that year: Rappresentazione di Santa Domitilla, Rappresentazione di Santa Guglielma, and Rappresentazione di San Francesco. A fourth play in this collection, on Joseph, the son of Jacob, may also have been written by Pulci.** (One of her husband's plays is also printed in this anthology.)

In 1488, Bernardo Pulci died, leaving Antonia a widow. After her husband's death, Antonia Pulci became a tertiary, a "third order sister"--that is, while she continued to live in the secular world, she lived a religious life, as if she were inside a convent. 

Antonia Pulci did spend some of her time in the Dominican convent of San Vincenzo, known as Annalena, and some of the time at her mother's home. It was during this time that she sought out Francesco Dulciati to instruct her in Latin. 

In 1500, after securing the return of her dowry from the Pulci family (evidently she was entitled to the return since she and Bernardo had not had children), she seemed to have taken "more formal vows" and founded a house for Augustinian tertiaries, Santa Maria della Misericordia. She was enclosed there on 26 February 1500. It was there that she died on 26 September 1501.

Her foundation survived for three decades after Pulci's death, but it was eventually dissolved, seemingly because it was located outside the walls of the city of Florence, a somewhat dangerous location. The tertiaries moved inside the city, to the convent of San Clemente, near the friary of San Gallo, where Pulci's Latin teacher had become prior. 

Francesco Dulciati wrote a brief biography of Antonia Pulci some years after her death. In this, he attributes to Antonia Pulci a play about Joseph, the son of Jacob (likely the sacra rappresentazione on that subject in the 1483 anthology). He also says she wrote a play on the topic of the Prodigal Son and another on Saul and David. Two plays on these subjects survive in later publications and are likely Pulci's. Dulciata also claims that, after her husband's death, Antonia Pulci continued to write, but religious poetry rather than plays, including a poem on the body of Christ, a copy of which, signed by Pulci herself, he says he has in his possession.

Opening text pages in Bartolomeo de' Libri's 
1495 edition of Antonia Pulci's 
Rappresentazione di santa Guglielma
(from the Biblioteca Europea di
Informazione Cultura digital library)

I've linked to several accessible sources above, including Cook and Cook's edition of Antonia Pulci's plays. Interestingly, this 1996 edition, published as a volume in the University of Chicago's The Other Voice in Early Modern Europe series, was revised. In 2010, as part of the Toronto Series of The Other Voice in Early Modern Europe, a bilingual edition, with a "fresh translastion" by James Wyatt Cook and edited by Elissa B. Weaver, published the "five plays securely authored by Antonia Pulci." (The earlier Cook and Cook volume had included "seemingly later plays" relying on "a tradition of attribution and internal correspondences with the plays of unquestioned provenance.") For this later volume, Saints' Lives and Bible Stories for the Stage: A Bilingual Edition, click here.

I have not addressed the performance issues of Pulci's plays in my post. For a larger discussion of convent theater, you may also enjoy Elissa B. Weaver's Convent Theatre in Early Modern Italy: Spiritual Fun and Learning for Women.

*In their 1996 edition of Pulci's rappresentazioni, editors James Wyatt Cook and Barbara Collier Cook write that Francesco had five children born "in wedlock," but they list seven. (See Florentine Drama for Convent and Festival, Seven Sacred Plays, trans. James Wyatt Cook, eds. James Wyatt Cook and Barbara Collier Cook, 11). 

While Cook and Cook note that Antonia "was the daughter of a Florentine family whose fortunes as bankers were beginning to rise," Elissa B. Weaver's 2004 entry on Pulci for Italian Women Writers indicates that Antonia's father was a Florentine merchant. Because of Weaver's detailed archival work on this subject, I've followed her identification of Antonia's father as a merchant.

There has also been some confusion about the surname of Antonia's father, as noted by Weaver: 

Confusion regarding Antonia's name entered into literary history in the late nineteenth century, and from that time on she was thought to have belonged to the Giannotti family. This was the result of a misinterpretation of her father's name, undoubtedly based on a document from the period when he did not use a surname but two patronymics, the second of which was 'di Giannotto'. He appears in early tax records as Francesco d'Antonio di Giannotto in order to distinguish himself from others in his gonfalone (district of the city) named Francesco d'Antonio. When the family began to use a surname they took it from an earlier ancestor named Tanino.

Antonia Pulci's name is still noted as "Antonia Giannotti" in the  Dizionario Biografico degli Italiani, for example (available here). In her biographical essay (2000), Anna Laura Saso claims that the surname Tanino "appears to be erroneous" (erronea appare). 

**On the complicated history and understanding of this collection of plays, widely attributed to the printer Antonio Miscomini, see Nerida Newbigin's "Antonia Pulci and the First Anthology of Sacre Rappresentazioni (1483?)," La Bibliofilia 118, no. 3 (2016): 337-62. There are different opinions about the date of publication of this volume, but Newbigin reasons that the volumes were likely published in 1483, and I've accepted her date of publication here.

Rokeya Sakhawat Hossain's "Ladyland"

Rokeya Sakhawat Hossain's "Ladyland"

Last fall, I read Michael Dirda's Washington Post review, "'Tis the Season for Horror and Weird Tales. Here Are Some Favorites." Now, I am not a reader of fantasy, science fiction, or horror, though my son is, and Christmas was coming. I not only read Dirda's review, but I bought some of the books he recommended for Christmas, including Joshua Glenn's collection of short stories, Voices from the Radium Age. I wrapped it up, put the book under the tree, and never thought about it again. Until a few days ago, when my son handed me the book and told me I needed to read the first story, Rokeya Sakhawat Hossain's “Sultana's Dream,” published in 1905.

I didn't know what to expect, or why my son wanted me to read it, but now I do! I've spent a lot of time reading, teaching, and writing about a recurring theme in writing by women: the dream of finding or creating a private and secluded retreat from the world of men. 

These imagined “women’s worlds” may be very small, a single room, for example, perhaps most famously Virginia Woolf's "a room of one's own." 

But many women writers are much more ambitious, fantasizing about cities (like Christine de Pizan's Book of the City of Ladies), even entire countries (like Charlotte Perkins Gilman's Herland), created for and inhabited exclusively by women.

I even wrote a book, Reading Women's Worlds from Christine de Pizan to Doris Lessing: A Guide to Six Centuries of Women Writers Imagining Rooms of Their Own.

And so my son's recommendation to me of Rokeya Sakhawat Hossain's short story, "Sultana's Dream," republished in Glenn's Voices from the Radium Age.

In the story, which appeared a decade before Gilman's Herland, Rokeya Sahkawat Hossain's narrator, Sultana, is resting on a chair in her bedroom while "thinking lazily of the condition of Indian womanhood." In her dream, she meets a woman whom she takes for her friend, Sister Sara. With "Sara," she walks out of her room and through a garden into the town around them--and it's at this point that she realizes the woman she is with is not her friend, but a stranger.

She is at first anxious--not only is she with someone she doesn't know, but as she tells the stranger, "as being a purdahnishin woman I am not accustomed to walking about unveiled." But she soon realizes that "there was not a single man visible."

Sultana finds herself in Ladyland, a place "free from sin and harm," a place where "Virtue herself reigns." And, notably, a place where men are "in their proper places": shut indoors, where they can be kept out of trouble.

What follows is a delightful overview of a world-turned-upside-down. Women know everything, do everything, create everything, and control everything. . . . And rather than getting and maintaining their position by force, women rule with their brains.

In reading a bit about Rokeya Sakhawat Hossain, I learned she wrote a novella with a similar theme, Padmarag: "Her novella Padmarag is similarly utopian in its depiction of a women-run school and welfare center, and is both feminist and anti-colonial in its outlook." (Quoted from the Penguin edition’s description of the work.)

Rokeya Sakhawat Hossain
(c. 1880-1932)

The novella's focus on the important of education for women and the creation of "a woman-run school and welfare center" puts me in mind of Mary Astell's A Serious Proposal to the Ladies . . . 

You can read "Sultana's Dream" online at Other Women's Voices (click here).

A Penguin edition that contains both "Sultana's Dream" and Pradmarog, edited by Barnita Bagchi and with an introduction by  Tanya Agathocleous, is also available (click here). 

An excellent introduction to Rokeya Sakhawat Hossain and her work is by Roushan Jahan, ed. and trans., "Sultana's Dream" and Selections from The Secluded Ones, accessible through the Internet Archive (click here).

For a website dedicated to Rokeya Sakhawat Hossain, you may want to check out the Hossain Memorial website--there you will find a biographical essay, bibliography, photo gallery, letters and speeches, along with a wealth of assorted material. 

And if you like science fiction and fantasy, don't forget Joshua Glenn's collection of short stories, Voices from the Radium Age!

Herrad of Landsberg, Abbess, Author, and Artist

Herrad of Landsberg, abbess of Hohenburg Abbey (died 25 July 1195)

The exact date of Herrad of Landsberg's birth is unknown, but most sources agree that she was probably born about the year 1130, making her about thirty years younger than Hildegard of Bingen, to whom she is sometimes compared. 

Although Herrad's place of birth was widely thought to be the castle of Landsberg, located in Alsace, France, more recent scholarship has called into question Herrad's association with the noble family associated with this castle. Today scholars prefer to identify her as Herrad of Hohenburg, though it is often hard to avoid the older name. (And I've used it here.)

A "self portrait,"
Herrad of Hohenburg,
detail from 
Hortus deliciarum

Little is known about Herrad's early life. There is no surviving evidence about her parents, where she might have been born, or when she may have entered the the Augustinian convent of Hohenburg, where she would spend her life and where she became abbess. 

While her former identification with the noble family of Landsberg castle is almost certainly incorrect, Herrad is likely to have had some aristocratic connection in order to have become abbess of such an institution.

The abbey of Hohenburg had been restored by the Holy Roman emperor Frederick Barbarossa, who placed it under the direction of the abbess Rilinda of Bergen. While Herrad would succeed her as abbess, probably about 1176, the exact date isn't known. And, as Joan Gibson notes, "Although Herrad acknowledges that she was instructed by Rilinda's 'admonitions and examples', it is not certain that Herrad was in fact a pupil of Rilinda, nor even necessarily educated at the abbey of Hohenburg."

Not is it clear when Herrad began compiling the encyclopedic work for which she is today remembered, the Hortus deliciarum or Garden of  Delights. The title, with its reference to a garden, clearly recalls Paradise, but it also refers to the nature of the work itself, as a florilegium, a collection of extracts. And here is the playful simile Herrad's uses in her preface, addressed to the nuns in her convent: 

I myself, the little bee, composed this book titled Garden of Delights, and drew from the sap of the diverse flowers of Holy Scripture and from philosophical works, inspired by God, and I constructed it by my love for you, in a manner a honeycomb full of honey for the honor and the glory of Jesus Christ and the Church.

A collection of 1,160 "textual extracts," Herrad's encyclopedia includes poetry, prose, and dialogue as well as song texts accompanied by musical notation, and some 340 illustrations in its 324 folios (648 pages). The sources from which Herrad draws for her encyclopedia include some classical authors (though not poets--her illustrations include Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, the Muses, and Odysseus), the philosopher Boethius, the writings of the Church Fathers, including St. Augustine, and more contemporary philosophers, among them, notably, Hildegard of Bingen.

The final illustration from
Hortus deliciarum,
Herrad address her sisters,
caption identifying her as
"Herrat hohenburgensis abbatissa"

As Thomas Head writes in his entry on Herrad in the Encyclopedia of Continental Women Writers, the collection "provided information on a wide range of biblical, theological, spiritual, and historical topics," though its specific purpose--and its intended audience--aren't altogether certain.

Again, it has been widely said that Herrad intended her encyclopedia for the education of the novices at the abbey, though more recent scholarship has questioned that assumption. The collection was certainly addressed to members of the community, as her preface indicates, but its specific audience and purpose have been debated. As Gibson notes, the encyclopedia contains material on marriage, so lay women may also have been "considered" as part of the audience for whom the the "garden" was intended. "Although there is a general agreement that the Hortus deliciarum is a remarkable and very important work of the late twelfth century," she writes, "it is nevertheless extremely difficult to classify."

However difficult it may be to classify, the encyclopedia itself was the product of Herrad's wide-ranging knowledge. Abbess Rilinda may have had some part in its origins, but Herrad is its singular inspiration, and she worked closely on all aspects of its production. 

As if to compound the many difficulties and uncertainties associated with the manuscript, the Hortus deliciarum no longer exists. Well, the original manuscript no longer exists. After the abbey of Hohenburg burned in 1546, the contents of its library went to the bishop of Strasbourg. The manuscript eventually wound up in the municipal library in the Central Registry of Strasbourg in 1803. It was destroyed in 1870, during Prussian bombardment of Strasbourg during the Franco-Prussian War.

What remains of Herrad's "garden of delights" are copies of the miniatures made in 1818 by Christian Moritz Engelhardt (head of the Strasbourg police!) and various (incomplete) copies of its texts, sketches, and tracings made before the book's destruction. (Evidently one man who copied parts of the manuscript took it to Paris and kept it for ten years!) Two scholars, A. Straub and G. Keller, produced a reconstruction of the Hortus deliciarium, beginning work in 1879 and publishing in 1899 (after Straub's death in 1891). It is from this late nineteenth-century "edition" that the illustration I have used here--Herrad addressing the nuns of her convent--is taken.

Herrad of Hohenburg died on 25 July 1195. 

For a discussion of the manuscript, you might start with the website of the Bibliothèque Alsatique du Crédit Mutuel (click here). It's particularly good on the history of the manuscript from the time it entered the municipal library in Strasbourg until its destruction. It also offers a gallery of illustrations that have been given some color.

A colorized version of
the final manuscript illustration,
Bibliothèque Alsatique

To view 12 black-and-white drawings made by Engelhardt in 1818, turned into copperplates, and now digitized, click here. You can see Engelhardt's drawing of the final manuscript illustration, Herrad and the convent's nuns, which was later reproduced by Straub and Keller in their reconstructed edition.

I've already linked you, above, to this nineteenth-century "facsimile." In 1979, the Warburg Institute produced a "partial facsimile" of the Hortus deliciarum with commentary by Rosalie Green, Michael Evans, Christine Bischoff, and Michael Curschmann. It is now considered the best available edition, but only 750 copies were produced. (As of this writing, two copies are available on Amazon--one for the low, low price of $2,160, the other $4,458.03--three cents???!!!)

I find Joan Gibson's "Herrad of Landsberg," to which I've already linked you, to be the best overall analysis. Her essay is in A History of Women Philosophers . . . , vol. 2, edited by Mary Ellen Waithe. (Which is also ridiculously expensive, so I've linked here to what's available via Google Books.)

Gwerful Mechain, Fifteenth-Century Author of "Playfully Erotic Poems"

 Gwerful Mechain, Welsh poet (c. 1462-1505)

A "playfully erotic" detail from a
fifteenth-century Book of Hours,
Bibliothèque de Genève, Ms. lat. 33

In his introduction to the poems of Gwerful Mechain, Donald Foster writes that she "is the only female poet of medieval Wales with a substantial body of work to have survived." 

Foster speculates that Mechain's work--perhaps as many as thirty-eight poems survive--may have been preserved "because the male scribes who controlled the transmission of Welsh poetry were amused by Gwerful's saucy and frank celebration of sexual intercourse." 

But Mechain's work also seems also to have survived because of her "respect" for the "complex Welsh poetic meters." She knows the tradition, but she can also play with it. And play with it she does.

While a substantial body of work exists, little biographical detail about Mechain's life is available. She was one of five children born to a Welsh nobleman, Hywel Fychan from Mechain, Powys. Her mother was a woman named Gwenhwyfar. She was married to a man named John ap Llewelyn Fychan, with whom she had a daughter, Mawd. And that's it.

Mechain may or may not have had a sexual relationship with the poet Dafydd LLwyd--the two exchange some frank verses, among them his poem in praise of a penis and her response, variously translated as "The Female Genitals," "To the Vagina," or "Cunt," depending on the squeamishness of the translator.

In her Broadview edition of Mechain's poetry, Katie Gramich goes with "To the Vagina," as she does in her online essay, to which I've linked, above. There Gramich refers to her "blushes" when reading aloud the Welsh version of the poem, with its "extremely rude words." I prefer Donald Foster's approach--in translating the Welsh, he titles the poem "Cywydd [Welsh verse form] of the Bush," which seems to be the meaning of the title in its original, "Cywydd y Cedor," Instead of Gramich's use of the obscure "quim" in her English translation of the Welsh cedor, Foster goes for the gusto--in addition to the "bush" of the title, he uses "twat," "snatch," and "cunt." That's my kind of translation. 

Another detail from Bibliothèque de Genève,
Ms. lat. 33 (This manuscript has nothing
to do with Gwerful Mechain except for its few
--and randomly placed--explicitly 
sexual illustrations . . .
weird in a book of hours, but okay)

I also appreciate Foster's observation that, in this poem, Mechain writes back to the Petrarchan catalogue of the female beloved's beauties: she "lampoons the newly fashionable tradition of hyper-praising every female body part except the unmentionable one that the woebegone male lover has had in the back of his mind although not on the tip of his tongue." (For more on how a female writer responds to Petrarch's anatomization of the female body, click here and here.)

As vital and joyful as Mechain's "playfully erotic poems" are, she also addresses angry lines to her husband in "To Her Husband for Beating Her," a simple, frank curse that you will not forget: 

Through your heart’s lining let there be pressed, slanting down,

A dagger to the bone in your chest.

Your knee smashed, your hand crushed, may the rest

Be gutted by the sword you possessed.

(translated from the Middle Welsh by A.M. Juster)

In addition to Gramich's online essay and her edition of Gwerful Mechain's poetry, you may enjoy Danièle Cybulskie's "Gwerful Mechain and the Joy of (Medieval) Sex" (here) and Lauren Cocking's "On the Gleefully Indecent Poems of a Medieval Welsh Feminist Poet" (here).

Click here for the Dictionary of Welsh Biography entry for Gwerful Mechain.

The phrase "playfully erotic poems," used in the title of my post, comes from Katie Gramich. 

I have posted on Mechain today, 1 March, because it is the saint's day of St. David, patron saint of Wales.

Garsenda of Forcalquier, "A lady doesn't dare uncover her true will"

Garsenda, countess of Forcalquier (7 October 1209), regent (?) of Provence, and poet 

It is easy to get your Garsendas confused--the Garsenda I am writing about today, Garsenda of Forcalquier, was the daughter of a woman named Garsenda and the mother of yet another woman named Garsenda.

Garsenda, as she is depicted on 
her seal

The eldest Garsenda, also known as Garsenda of Forcalquier, was born about 1160, the daughter of William IV, count of Forcalquier, and Adélaïde de Béziers. This Garsenda (I suppose we could refer to her as Garsenda I) married Rainou (or Rénier) of Saban, and gave birth to our Garsenda (Garsenda II) about the year 1180.

The elder Garsenda was William IV's only child and heir, but she predeceased her father, probably dying about the year 1193. Her daughter, our Garsenda (or Garsenda II), thus became her grandfather's heir.

In the mean time, William IV had become part of an "anti-Catalan" alliance that had gone to war against Alfonso II, king of Aragon (and also the count of Provence--for the time being, Forcalquier was independent of Provence). But in 1193, William IV was compelled to sign the treaty of Aix-en-Provence in order to settle this conflict. (To see their "accord," click here and scroll to p. xxx.)

According to its terms, his granddaughter (and now heir) Garsenda would marry Alfonso, the second son of Alfonso of Aragon and his queen, Sancha of Castile (in 1185, his father had made the younger Alfonso the count of Provence, though the king himself would continue to govern it himself until his death in 1196). In her discussion of this agreement, writer Meg Bogin notes that the purpose of this alliance is "transparent": Garsenda's marriage would be "the token of her family's subjection."

As one of the key provisions of the treaty, William had retained for himself until his death the right of usufructus, the right to enjoy the use of his county of Forcalquier. But a conflict soon arose--according to Jean-Pierre Papon, the eighteenth-century historian of Provence, the marriage settlements might have been agreed upon, but the ceremony itself would not be held for "a few years." 

It is this delay that seems to have triggered the conflict between Garsenda's grandfather and her husband. William "revoked part of the rights to Forcalquier." To underscore his intentions, William IV married off his remaining granddaughter, Garsenda's younger sister, Béatrix, and threatened to leave Forcalquier to her.*

Even as Alfonso went to war with his wife's grandfather, his court in Provence attracted a circle of poets. One of these poets, the troubadour Gaucelm Faidit, writes Alfonso into his work, characterizing Alfonso as his rival for the love of a woman named Jourdaine d’Embrun, while another, the Catalan troubadour Ramon Vidal, describes his visit to Alfonso's court at Aix-en-Provence and praises Garsenda for her patronage. A third troubadour, Elias de Barjols, refers to Alfonso as his literary patron. 

During this period of political conflict and courtly culture, Garsenda gave birth to two children, a son, Ramon Berenguer (born in 1198) and a daughter, Garsenda (Garsenda III), known as Garsenda of Provence, probably born around the year 1200. 

The conflict between Garsenda's grandfather and husband came to an abrupt end when both men died in 1209. In February, Alfonso died in Palermo, Sicily, where he had traveled for his sister's wedding, and William died the following October. While their deaths marked an end to their disputes, it did not mean that Garsenda would quietly inherit Forcalquier and her son, Provence. 

In November, in an effort to protect her children's inheritance from disaffected (and self-interested) Provençal rivals, Garsenda executed a "donation" in which she ceded Forcalquier to her young son, Ramon Berenguer, joining it once more to Provence and thus ending Forcalquier's period of independence.** (To see the "donation" of Garsenda, click here and scroll to p. xxxviii.)

In his will, Alfonso of Provence had named his elder brother, Pedro of Aragon, as his son's guardian, so Garsenda sent the boy to the Templar Castle of Monzón (according to some accounts, Ramon Berenguer was "kidnapped" and held captive there). Pedro also gave the regency of Provence to his uncle, Sancho (the brother of Alfonso of Aragon). As for Forcalquier, newly rejoined to Provence? A nephew of William IV's now claimed the county and the title for himself.

With her son in Spain, Garsenda remained in Forcalquier, Deprived of any role in government, she nevertheless enjoyed, in Papon's words, the "honors" that were due to her rank and birth. In the difficult years after her husband's death, she continued to patronize troubadour poets, and, in the courtly tradition, two of them, Elias de Barjols and Gui de Cavaillon, claimed to have been in love with her--according to the brief biography, or vida, included in manuscript collections of his poetry, Elias de Barjols dedicated two songs to her, praising her merit, her courtesy, her honesty, and her taste. 

Despite the pleasures of her court, Garsenda witnessed members of her own family attempt to acquire her son's inheritance for themselves. The attempts of both the pope and the emperor to secure peace in Provence were not successful. And then, in 1213, when Pedro of Aragon died, Sancho became regent of Aragon and passed the regency of Provence (and Forcalquier) to his son, Nuño Sánchez, inflaming the situation in the disputed territory even more. It was at this point, in the hope of reducing tensions, that Garsenda herself was recognized as regent of Provence.

The donation of Garsenda to her son, made in 1209, was ratified in 1214. (To read the ratification, click here and scroll to p. xliii.) In November of 1216, Ramon Berenguer finally left (or escaped) the fortress of Monzón and headed to Provence, in order to reclaim his inheritance. Once there, he reunited with Garsenda. At last, on 29 June 1220, he was able to dispatch the warring claimants who, in his absence, had sought his inheritance.

As for Garsenda? Although she was nominally the regent of Provence in 1213, after Nuño Sánchez returned to Spain, she does not seem to have exerted much power, although her mere presence in Provence was crucial. By remaining there, despite all the dangers, she maintained her son's interest in the disputed territory. 

Garsenda stayed in Provence after her son reestablished his rights as count, her continued presence there, as historian Mariacristina Varano notes, representing a kind of "guarantee" in his effort to establish his "new power." In 1225, Garsenda of Forcalquier retired to the abbey of La Celle. 

Although some sources suggest that Garsenda of Forcalquier may have lived until 1242 or even 1257, it seems most likely that she died in 1232 (Varano, p. 750). She is buried in the abbey of La Celle.

Garsenda of Forcalquiet's tomb,
Abbey of La Celle
(photo by Michel Wal)

Garsenda did more than support--and perhaps inspire--troubadour poetry. She herself is credited as the author of one of the few surviving troubadour lyrics by women, a tenson, a  literary dispute in which the two debaters speak in turn. In this two-stanza tenson, the lines of the female speaker are by Garsenda, the lines by the male speaker usually identified as composed by Gui de Cavaillon.

Here is Garsenda's stanza, first in its original Occitan, and then in Meg Bogin's translation:

Vos que.m semblatz dels corals amadors, ja non volgra que fossetz tan doptanz; e platz me molt quar vos destreing m'amors, qu'atressi sui eu per vos malananz. Ez avetz dan en vostre vulpillatge quar no.us ausatz de preiar enardir, e faitz a vos ez a mi gran dampnatge; que ges dompna no ausa descobrir tot so qu'il vol per paor de faillir.

You're so well-suited as a lover, I wish you wouldn't be so hesitant; but I'm glad my love makes you the penitent, otherwise I'd be the one to suffer. Still, in the long run it's you who stands to lose if you're not brave enough to state your case, and you'll do both of us great harm if you refuse. For a lady doesn't dare uncover her true will, lest those around her think her base.

Garsenda's daughter, Garsenda of Provence, viscountess of Béarn (Garsenda III), was a formidable woman. To read Jennifer Speed's "The Notorious Garsenda of Provence," click here.

And our Garsenda, Garsenda of Forcalquier, also had four notable granddaughters. Her son married Beatrice of Savoy, and we have met the couple's four daughters before, the "four queens": Margaret of Provence, Eleanor of Provence, Sanchia of Provence, and Beatrice of Provence. 

*For an extended discussion of William IV's war with Alfonso of Aragon, the settlement of the conflict, the details of the marriage negotiations, and the ongoing conflict between William IV and his new son-in law, see Mariacristina Varano's Espace religieux et espace politique en pays provençal au Moyen Âge (pp. 460-82).

**Forcalquier's independence lasted about a hundred and fifty years.

Saint Walpurga, Writer and Missionary

Saint Walpurga of Heidenheim (died 25 February 777/9)

Born in Devon, England, probably about the year 710, Walpurga was the daughter of Richard of Wessex, an Anglo-Saxon chieftain under King Ine, and a noblewoman named Wuna, who seems to have died about the time of Walpurga's birth. (At some point, both of Walpurga's parents are recognized as saints--Saint Wuna's feast day is 7 February.)

A sixteenth-century portrait
of St. Walpurga
by the Master of Messkirch

In 720, Richard is convinced by his two sons--Walpurga's brothers (both of whom also become saints)--to undertake a pilgrimage to the Holy Land. While preparing for this journey, Richard of Wessex decides to leave his daughter, then about eleven years old, in the care of the abbess of Wimbourne Abbey. According to some traditions, however, it is the girl herself who asks to be left in the abbey rather than with relatives.

Wimbourne was a double monastery, housing both monks and nuns who followed the Rule of St. Benedict under the direction of an abbess.* Walpurga spent twenty-six years at Wimbourne, where she received an excellent education. The nuns of Wimbourne were trained in Latin and at least some Greek, and they put their language study to use with both sacred texts and the work of the early Church Fathers. The abbey also specialized in producing manuscripts and fine needlework.

Walpurga's father never got to the Holy Land. He reached Rome, then traveled with his sons to Lucca, where he died. (Willibald, the older of Walpurga's brothers, completed the pilgrimage to the Holy Land, then went on to Byzantium, eventually returning to Italy to live as a monk in Monte Cassino. Winebald, the younger of the two brothers, stayed in Rome and entered a monastery).

In 737, Wuna's brother Winfrid (later St. Boniface) recruited both of his nephews to accompany him on a mission to Germany. His call for evangelizing eventually included women--evidently Boniface was the first to include women as missionaries. In 748, a group of nuns from Wimbourne, Walpurga among them, traveled to the Franks to undertake their missionary work.

As part of their successful mission, Willibald and Winebald founded the double monastery of Heidenheim in 752, with Winebald serving as abbot. Walpurga was established as the abbess, governing the nuns. After Winebald's death in 761, Abbess Walpurga became the head of the double monastery.

On 25 February 777 or 779 (accounts vary), Walpurga died and was buried at the monastery founded by her brothers, where she had lived for some twenty-five years. About a hundred years after her death, her remains were translated--that is, they were removed to the cathedral of Eichstatt (Bavaria), with the aim of interring her remains with those of her brother, Wllibald, who had been consecrated as bishop there.  According to tradition, the beasts pulling the cart with Walpurga's body stopped at a small church used by the canonesses at Eichstatt and refused to move further--so her relics were interred there. Later, a church was built in her honor.

Walpurgis Night (30 April) celebrates her feast day, 1 May, which commemorates her the arrival of her relics in Eichstatt and Walpurga's canonization.

An extended account of St. Walburga's life is Emmanuel Luckman's "St. Walburga: Medieval Nun, Free Woman," in Miriam Schmitt and Linda Kulzer's Women Monastics: Wisdom's Wellsprings.

*In this, Wimbourne Abbey might be compared to Hilda's Whitby.

Francisca de Nebrija, Humanist and Academic

Francisca de Nebrija/Lebrija (5 July)

Francisca de Nebrija was the daughter of the humanist scholar Antonio de Nebrija and Doña Isabel Montesinos de Solis. Her father was born Antonio Martínez de Cala, but Latinized his name as "Aelius Antonius Nebrissensis"--"Nebrissensis" the Latin version of his native birthplace, Lebrija. In Spanish, he was thus known as Antonio "de Nebrija" or "de Librija." His daughter's name is similarly confusing, at times given as "de Nebrija," at times as "Lebrija."*

The list of female writers and scholars
appended to Nicolás Antonio's 1672
Modern Spanish Writers
(image from Google Books)

Aside from the name of her father and mother, little else is known about Francisca's life. The reason for posting about Francisca de Nebrija today is thus a bit odd--her father died on 5 July 1522. Since I can find no dates for Francisca's life,  not even a birth date nor death date, I am posting about  her  today.

Although no biographical information survives, Francisca de Nebrija does occupy a place in history, however scant the evidence. What is said about her is brief but often repeated: she was tutored by her father, a distinguished poet and lexicographer, she substituted for him as a teacher of rhetoric at the University of Alcalá, and she may have assisted him in his research and writing. 

The entry for Nebrija in The Feminist Encyclopedia of Spanish Literature indicates she was born in the sixteenth century, but since her father was born in 1444 and died in 1522, at the age of 78, it seems likely that Francisca was born in the late fifteenth century. 

As Emilie Bergmann notes in "Spain's Women Humanists," although "[c]enturies of repetition established the commonplace" about both Francisca de Nebrija and her contemporary, Luisa de Medrano--that they lectured on rhetoric at the University of Salamanca--little evidence survives.

For example, in his massive Modern Spanish Writers (Bibliotheca hispana nova, first published in 1672), Nicolás Antonio includes an appendix, "Gynaeceum Hispanae Minervae," listing the names of Spanish women known for their writing--but whose work had (already) been lost (if you click this link, the appendix begins on p. 337). The five-line entry for "Francisca de Lebrixa" notes that she is the daughter of Antonio "Nebrissensis," that she taught the art of rhetoric, and that her teaching was applauded by all. 

The entry for Francisca "de Lebrixa" in Nicolás Antonio's
1672 Modern Spanish Writers
(image from Google Books)

Such an account of Francisca de Nebrija was still being given in the nineteenth century. In his Escritoras y eruditas Espanolas (Spanish [Women] Writers and Scholars), Diego Ignazio Parada included a brief account of Francisca de Nebrija among other "teachers and writers in Latin prose," writing that she substituted for her father when he was ill and when he was occupied with other business. While noting that no work by her hand survives, Parada suggests that she may well have contributed to some of her father's works.

A note of caution is sounded by Mary Agnes Canon in her 1916 The Education of Women in the Renaissance. In a chapter on the educated women in Spain and Portugal during the Renaissance, she calls Francisca de Lebrija "her father's right hand in his literary labors." She also notes that some scholars have "conjectured" that she might have contributed to her father's work. but, Canon observes, there seems to be "no warrant for the conjecture," since nothing survives.

Which takes us back to Bergmann. Like the scholar Beatriz Galindo, "La Latina," Francisca de Lebrija is a female scholar whose scholarship, unfortunately, has been lost. 

*I am using "Nebrija" as this is the way her name is spelled by Elizabeth T. Howe in her brief entry in The Feminist Encyclopedia of Spanish Literature.

The name of Francisca "de Lebrija" is included on the Heritage Floor in Judy Chicago's massive art installation, The Dinner Party.

Marguerite St. Leon Barstow Loud: An "Imagination of No Common Order"

Marguerite St. Leon Barstow Loud, poet (born 17 April 1812)

In the preface to Wayside Flowers: A Collection of Poems by "Mrs. M. St. Leon Loud," editor Park Benjamin describes the volume's intended readers as those who "love tenderness and purity of thought, joined to simplicity and grace of expression." 

Marguerite St. Leon Barstow Loud,
frontispiece from Wayside Flowers, 1851

The poems are "like those 'wildlings of nature,' from which they borrow their title" (by the way, Benjamin has created the title). They are "the spontaneous productions of a fertile soil," "the free growth of an unartificial mind." They represent "nature's growth," not "exotics." And thus are better than "cultivated efforts."

Oh, dear. No work at all, then, right? The poems just happen????? Without intention, work, craft, effort?

In his last months of life, Edgar Allen Poe happily accepted the "relatively lucrative opportunity" to edit Wayside Flowers--he writes to a correspondent that he is on his way to Philadelphia to edit the work of the "poetess," whose wealthy husband had hired him. Poe writes, "[t]he whole labor will not occupy me 3 days." (Poe had been offered $100 by Marguerite Loud's husband--Poe had earned only $166 the entire year before.)*

Oh, dear. On the website of the Edgar Allen Poe Society of Baltimore, Marguerite St. Leon Barstow Loud is identified as a "minor American poet."

Aside from this rather disparaging information--and from Benjamin's preface in the volume of poetry, Wayside Flowers--not all that much is known about Marguerite St. Leon Barstow Loud. No Wikipedia entry, for example!!! (As of 2022, an entry has been added!)

Marguerite St. Leon Barstow was born in Wysox, Pennsylvania, the daughter of Seth T. Barstow and his wife, Clarissa Woodruff. According to Benjamin, both parents were from New England, and Marguerite's father was a successful physician. 

In his preface to Wayside Flowers, Benjamin also indicates that Marguerite St. Leon's education was an informal one--her mother was her teacher, her parents both loved poetry, and the home had an "ample library

Her date of birth has been variously given. She died in Kenyon, Minnesota, and her gravestone indicates that she was born on 17 April 1812, but there are questions about this date, principally the fact that some sources indicate she was married in 1824--which would make her only twelve years old at the time of her marriage. Thus other dates for her birth are suggested--even a date of "ca. 17 April 1800" (see the University of Virginia's Collective Biographies of Women database)!

But the preface to her volume of poetry specifically addresses the date of her marriage as well as explaining the source of the confusion--Marguerite St. Leon Barstow was married in 1834, not 1824, an erroneous date that appeared in Caroline May's 1848 The American Female Poets.**

Title page of the 1851 Wayside Flowers

So there's no need for anyone to twist themselves into pretzels or question the date of birth on her headstone. Marguerite Barstow was born in 1812, and she married in 1834. Her husband, John Loud, was a successful piano manufacturer in Philadelphia. The couple had three daughters: Caroline, was born in 1834, Clara in 1837, and Darwina in 1842. 

Edgar Allen Poe died before he could travel to Philadelphia to edit Wayside Flowers. The book was finally published in 1851, and it did not sell well. Of the 550 copies that were printed, 360 copies were returned, unsold, to the Louds.

In his discussion of Poe's intention to edit Wayside Flowers and Poe's death, Matthew Pearl notes that "according to electronic library database Oasis, only fourteen original copies of the book are held by American libraries."

Which may account for the fact that Loud's elegy, "The Stranger's Doom," one of the earliest poems that seems to be about Poe's death, has "attracted little critical attention."

But, thankfully, you don't have to search out one of the few print copies of Marguerite St. Leon Barstow Loud's Wayside Flowers. It is now readily available online (this link takes you to a copy made available by the HathiTrust Digital Library).

Poe himself seemed to think well of Marguerite Loud as a poet. Of her he wrote in 1841:

Mrs. M. ST. LEON LOUD is one of the finest poets of this country; possessing, we think, more of the true divine afflatus than any of her female contemporaries. She has, in especial, imagination of no common order, and unlike many of her sex whom we could mention, is not content to dwell in decencies forever. 

While she can, upon occasion, compose the ordinary metrical sing-song with all the decorous proprieties in which are in fashion, she yet ventures very frequently into a more ethereal region. We refer our readers to, a truly beautiful little poem entitled the “Dream of the Lonely Isle,” lately published in this Magazine. 

Mrs. Loud’s MS. is exceedingly clear, neat and forcible, with just sufficient effeminacy and no more.

Marguerite St. Leon Barstow Loud died on 4 November 1889. She was seventy-seven years old. 

Detail from headstone of
Marguerite St. Leon Barstow Loud
(photo by Dave Vangsness,
posted at Find a Grave)

*The link here is to a .pdf version of Matthew Pearl's "A Poe Death Dossier: Discoveries and Queries in the Death of Edgar Allen Poe"--using the search function, you will locate all the references to Marguerite St. Leon Barstow Loud.

**The link here is to the edition of 1854, which reprints the 1824 date in its biographical note for "Marguerite St. Leon Loud."

Update, 22 April 2022: I am deeply grateful for a wealth of material sent to me by a descendant of Marguerite St. Leon Barstow, her third great granddaughter. 

The detail Marguerite's descendant provides has allowed me to correct the name of Marguerite's youngest daughter, Darwina. One of the sources I consulted when writing my original post had given the name as "Davina," and I hadn't noticed it correctly spelled elsewhere. 

Darwina, as it turns out, is a family name. On the origin of this name, Marguerite's third great granddaughter writes that Seth Barstow, Marguerite's father, had named his first son (b. 1809) after the English physician and philosopher Erasmus Darwin. But this boy died when he was very young, just a week after the birth of Marguerite St. Leon in 1812, and so Seth Barstow named his next-born child, a daughter, "Darwina" (b. 1815). In 1841, Marguerite St. Leon named her youngest daughter Darwina. (One of Marguerite's brothers, in turn, named two of his daughters after his sisters, a younger Marguerite St. Leon, born in 1837, and a younger Darwina, born in 1843.)

Marguerite's own "seemingly exotic name" is also explained by her descendant, who writes that "Marguerite St. Leon" was a character in philosopher William Godwin's 1799 novel, St. Leon: A Tale of the Sixteenth Century. (Godwin was the husband of Mary Wollstonecraft and the father of Mary Shelley.)

Darwina Francis Loud, Marguerite's daughter, is herself a writer, though not a poet (or at least not a published poet). In the midst of the Civil War, she headed south in 1864, engaged in the work of educating black soldiers, recognizing that, in this endeavor, she is "a pioneer." In the summer of 1865, when she was twenty-four years old, Darwina Loud was sent to what she describes as "the lonely camp of a regiment of black soldiers" in the "swamps and woods of Mississipipi." Upon her arrival at Midway Station in August 1865, she decides "to commence a little journal of daily events as they transpire." She continues to record her experiences through September, her "last night in Midway," when she is filled with uncertainty. 

"These ten feet of canvas walls shut in all the home I can call mine in all this beautiful great world, so full of happy homes and loving, generous hearts," she writes. "I wonder why I can't creep into some of them and find rest & shelter." The future is unclear: 

I went down to the branch school house this evening to take a farewell look at the spot where some few pleasant hours were spent. As I looked up into the green glimmering depths of the great oak, I thought of the future--where and how is it all to end?--What has the coming year in store for me?

Despite her feelings of despair (". . . I want something. I don't know what--I think it must be Christ I want. Oh, when shall I find him?"), Darwina closes out her diary with a long narrative "gleaned from the experience of one who for a year shared the interests and the adventures of the 52nd U.S. Colored Infantry." It is something of a summary of the history of the founding of the country, reflecting on the roles of both Christopher Columbus and George Washington--it is a history that requires "a close discrimination . . . between the glowing fancies of traditions and the matter of fact realities of truth."

Whatever doubts this remarkable young woman felt as she faced the future in September 1865, her life soon changed once again, and she found the home she had thought she might not find. Not long after she packed up her tent in Mississippi, on 22 October 1865, she married Edward Henry Burton in Illinois. Genealogical data posted on FamilySearch shows that the couple had at least seven children (including a daughter, named after Darwina's mother, Marguerite St. Leon). Darwina Loud Burton died in Hallett, Oklahoma, on 21 January 1897.

I have been given the very great gift of a typescript of Darwina F. Loud Barstow's diary sent to me by her third great granddaughter, but an edition by Margie Bearss and Rebecca Drake, published as Darwina's Diary: A View of Champion Hill--1865, is available. You can order it directly (click here), or you can find a used copy from Amazon (click here). 

Mary Morris Knowles: Poet, Artist, and Anti-Slavery Activist

Mary Morris Knowles, Artist and Activist (died 3 February 1807)

The daughter of prosperous Quaker parents, Moses and Mary Morris, the younger Mary Morris, born in Rugeley (Staffordshire) on 5 May 1733, was "carefully brought up in substantial and useful knowledge," according to one contemporary account. As she would demonstrate in her later life, she knew the classics well enough to cite them, she could write poetry, she could understand current scientific theories, she was familiar with botany, and she was fluent in French.

Mary Knowles, self-portrait in needlework
Royal Collection Trust

She would later write that when she was young, she was sometimes regarded as a "romantic chatter-brain" by her Rugeley neighbors, a description that belies her intellect, accomplishments, and activism.

Also said to be "the great beauty of Staffordshire," she would later downplay her appearance by describing herself as "a damsel of middle stature, and ruddy complexion," comparing herself to a milkmaid who is "blue" on a "frosty morning."

Her sense of humor and self-deprecation were accompanied by her determination. As a young woman, she resisted her parents’ authority to arrange  her marriage, declining a husband of her parents’ choice and insisting on her right to choose her own husband--which she eventually did. Her resistance, however, brought her into conflict not only with her parents but with important Quaker authorities.

In her satirical autobiography, Memoir of M. M., Spinster of this Parish, she reiterated her view of marriage: she planned to "bestow the treasure of my inestimable Self on some lucky, happy individual, as a very proper and suitable help meet."

Which is presumably what she did when she finally married in 1767, at the age of thirty-four. Her husband, Thomas Knowles, was also a Quaker, an apothecary by trade. Although she had consented to be a "proper and suitable help meet," at last, Mary Morris Knowles also made it clear that she did not intend to be "a poor passive machine . . . a mere smiling Wife."

But some aspects of marriage were unavoidable for an eighteenth-century women, no matter how determined or independent. The birth of her first child in July 1768 nearly killed her--and the baby, a boy, lived only a day. She wrote movingly of her experiences in letters and in poetry.

After this traumatic labor and delivery, Mary Knowles began creating embroidered pictures, her needlework an example of "needle painting," a technique "so highly finished, that it has all the softness and effect of painting."

As Knowles described her art, "my employment is working in divers colours, and fine-twined woolen, and it is work of curious devices, and of exquisite cunning in the art of the needle." She also produced "printwork"--she drew pictures onto silk or linen, then worked these images with lines of fine black silk stitches so that the finished piece looked like an engraving.

By 1771, Knowles's reputation as an artist had drawn the attention of Queen Charlotte, who commissioned Knowles to produce a needle painting of a portrait of George III. Knowles's version of Johann Zoffanny's portrait of the king brought her praise and an excellent "gift" (rather than a commission) from the queen--indicating that the relationship was personal rather than professional.

However the payment was regarded, it allowed Mary Knowles to fund her husband's training to become a doctor. After Thomas Knowles completed his education, the couple settled in London. He was successful in his career, while Mary Knowles developed a circle of literary and political friends and associates. At the age of forty, she also gave birth to a boy.

In London, Knowles became an active supporter of the abolitionist movement. She also met a young woman named Jane Harry--the daughter of an English planter and a Jamaican woman. After she converted to Quakerism, Harry's British guardian cut ties with her, and the young woman came to live with Knowles.

Knowles's argument for religious toleration--her support for Harry's decision to convert from Anglicanism to Quakerism--brought her into conflict with Samuel Johnson. James Boswell's account of their debate has, as Judith Jennings notes in her study of Knowles, had a long and negative effect on Knowles's reputation.

1803 engraving of
Mary Knowles
National Portrait Gallery

When Thomas Knowles died in 1786, he left a considerable estate, inherited by his wife. She did not remarry. She did continue her activism, and she also continued to write. In addition to her earlier autobiography and poetry, as well as the tract entitled "Compendium of a Controversy on Water-Baptism," she collected "A Poetic Correspondence" (between herself and a Captain Morris," and produced more tracts and poems supporting her political views. While most of these were circulated in manuscript, she eventually published her account of her dispute with Samuel Johnson, "Dialogue between Dr. Johnson and Mrs. Knowles" (1791).

Mary Morris Knowles died at the age of seventy-three on 3 February 1807.

My own interest in Mary Knowles began with her needle-painting--I came across her name when I was reading about the needle-painter Mary Linwood. I had no idea about her literary and political endeavors. Interestingly, however, there seems to be nothing much written about her artwork after her completion of the painting of George III.