The Age of Reformations and Women

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The Age of Reformations andWomens Lives
Pieter de Hooch The Bedroom (1658-1660)
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I. Background The Three Strands of Western
Misogyny

1. Greek Philosophy and Womens Inferiority

• Aristotelian Dualities
• Physiological and Psychological Implications

Superior Inferior Action Inaction
Completion Incompletion
Possession Deprivation Hot
Cold Rational Irrational
Male Female
Raffaello Sanzio (Raphael) School of Athens,
detail (1509-10)
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2. Roman Law and Womens Dependence

• Paterfamilias, patria potestas, and manus
• Legal personhood
• T.E.s Resolution of Womens Rights (1632)
• If a man beat an outlaw, a traitor, a pagan,
  his villein, or his wife, it is dispunishable,
  because by the law common these persons can have
  no action.

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3. Christianity

• Eve, Mary, and the Magdalene
• the Inherent Contradiction
• The Official Role of Women St. Pauls
  Epistles

Rembrandt St. Paul at his Writing Desk (1629-30)
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For as many of you as were baptized into Christ
have put on Christ. There is neither Jew nor
Greek, there is neither slave nor free, there is
neither male nor female, for you are all one in
Christ Jesus. Galatians 327-8I permit
no woman to teach or to have authority over men
she is to keep silent. For Adam was formed
first, then Eve, and Adam was not deceived, but
the woman was deceived and became a transgressor.
Yet women shall be saved through bearing
children, if she continues in faith and love and
holiness with modesty. I Timothy 211-15
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II. Implications Medieval and Renaissance Roles

• The Ideal Woman
• Daughter, Wife, Mother
• Nun
• Outside the Norm
• Widows
• Prostitutes
• The Nag

Vermeer Woman Sewing (1657-8)
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• Did Women Have a Reformation?

• The Seminal Question Did women have a
  Renaissance?
• Protestant Reforms the
• Protestant Wife

a. Religious Gender Ideology Differentiated
Equality
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Now hereupon St. Paul concludeth that there is
neither Greek nor Jew male nor female, but that
Jesus Christ is one in all of us, and all we are
one in him Yet notwithstanding, St Paul meant
not to say that there be no diversity of degree
for we know that there are masters and servants,
magistrates and subjects in a household there is
the good man which is the head and the good wife
which ought to be the subject. We know that this
order is inviolable, and our Lord Jesus Christ is
not come into the world to make such confusion as
to abolish that which was established by God his
father - John Calvin,
Sermon on the Epistle of St. Paul to the
Galatians
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• The Priesthood of All Believers and Women
  Preachers
• Luthers View
• Margaret Fell Womens Preaching Justified (1666)
• 3. Argula Von Grumbach (1520s)

But how far they wrong the apostles intentions
in these scriptures Let this word of the Lord,
which was from the beginning, stop the mouths of
those who oppose womens speaking in the power of
the Lord for he hath put enmity between the
woman and the serpent
Argula Von Grumbach (the first female Protestant
preacher, 1520s-30s)
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• Clerical Celibacy, Marriage as the Call, and the
  Closing of Nunneries pros and cons
• Post-Trent Catholicism, Saints, and Mysticism
• Rigid enclosure
• The New Orders Education and Charity
• Angela Merici and the Ursulines (1535)
• Vincent de Paul and the Daughters of Charity

Angela Merici, ca. 1535
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• Mystics and Saints
• St. Teresa of Avila (1515-82)

Gian Lorenzo Bernini St. Teresa in
Ecstasy (1647-52)
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• Equal Opportunity Persecution Prostitutes,
  Witches, and Infanticides
• The Criminalization of Prostitution
• The Doctrine of Satanic Witchcraft
• Malleus Maleficarum (1486)
• The Early Modern Difference conscious agreement
• The Likely Suspects
• Infanticide
• Melefica or Pragmatic Choice?
• The Likely Suspects