The Instruction of a Christian Woman

2. Later Childhood

Once she has been weaned and has begun to speak and walk, all her games should be with girls her own age. Her mother, nurse, or an older woman of good character should be present to guide these games and pleasures of the mind toward decency and virtue. No boys or men should be present, and she should not grow accustomed to enjoying men’s company. By nature, our love lasts longest for those with whom we shared the hours and pleasures of childhood. This affection is more persistent in a woman, whose disposition is more inclined toward pleasure. At an age when she cannot yet distinguish good from evil, she should not even be taught about evil. Her still unformed mind should be filled with sound beliefs.

The opinion of those who want their children to know both good and evil is poisonous. Only then, they say, will their children pursue virtue more effectively and avoid vice. How much better and more useful it is to know nothing of evil, as well as to refrain from doing it! How much happier, too! Who has not at least heard that we all became miserable at the hour when the first parents of the human race came to know good and evil? Fathers who insist that their children should know and experience evil deserve children who know it. When those children regret doing wrong, they may remember that they learned to do it at their fathers’ instigation.

Even while she does not understand things, she should not learn unchaste or lewd words or improper gestures. She will reproduce them when she is stronger and understands more. For many people, things they have grown accustomed to saying or doing slip out without their knowledge or notice. Sometimes they escape even when people resist and try to hold them back, bursting out against their will. This happens still more often with evil things, which the human mind holds onto more stubbornly.

Parents should take care never to approve any improper action of hers with laughter, words, or gestures, or, most shamefully of all, welcome it with kisses and embraces. The girl will often try to repeat whatever she thinks pleases her parents most. Everything in her earliest years should be chaste and pure, at least for the sake of her conduct, whose first outlines are drawn from these habits of infancy.

I would like to quote some words of Cornelius Tacitus about the character of the ancient Romans: “Long ago, each person’s own son, born of a chaste mother, was brought up not in the chamber of a purchased nurse but in his mother’s lap and bosom. Her chief praise was to guard the home and serve her children. An older female relative was also chosen, to whose approved and tested conduct the entire offspring of a particular family might be entrusted. In her presence it was lawful neither to say what was shameful to say nor to do what seemed dishonorable to do. And she regulated not only the children’s studies and conduct but even their relaxations and games with a certain holiness and modesty. Thus we have learned that Cornelia, mother of the Gracchi, Aurelia, mother of Caesar, and Atia, mother of Augustus, presided over their upbringing and brought up distinguished children. This discipline and strictness had this purpose: that each person’s nature, pure and whole and twisted by no corruptions, should at once seize upon honorable arts with all its heart.” Those are his words.

This shows the methods and practices by which those ancient people rose to such brilliant virtue that we cannot now bear even to look at it. And he is describing males. How much care do we think they took with females? The playful amusements children need should therefore contain nothing that could hinder proper instruction. Nothing obscene should creep into their minds, and the girl should not acquire a fondness for chatter. Even then, through play, she should practice things that will be useful later.

She should be guided by chaste little stories. Dolls should be removed: they are a kind of image of idolatry, and they teach and increase a desire for dressing up and adornment. I prefer the little tin or lead models of household furnishings that are so plentiful here in the Low Countries. They make a pleasant plaything for a small child. Meanwhile, in the course of playing, she learns each object’s name and use.

3. Early Training

When she seems ready to learn to read and write and understand things, she should begin learning what will develop her mind and help her care for and manage a home. I set no particular age. Aristotle and Eratosthenes thought children should begin in their seventh year; Chrysippus and Quintilian, in their fourth or fifth. I leave this decision entirely to the parents’ good judgment. They should judge by the child’s character and condition, provided indulgence does not get in the way. Some parents pamper their children and fear for them so much that they shield them from all work lest they fall ill. While they think they are strengthening their children’s bodies and vigor, they weaken and break them.

Parental indulgence does great harm to children. It offers them unrestrained freedom for a thousand vices, and indeed thrusts it upon them. It especially harms a girl, for she is largely held in check by fear alone. Without it, she loosens the reins of her nature. If she is inclined toward evil, she rushes headlong into it. She does not turn out good unless her own disposition and nature make her so, as is true of some women.

She should therefore learn to read and write while also learning to work with wool and flax. These two arts, handed down from that innocent age to later generations, are very useful in household affairs and preserve frugality, which women should be especially eager to practice. I will not go into smaller details, lest anyone think I am pursuing matters beneath my purpose. But I certainly do not want a woman to lack skills practiced with her hands, even if she is a princess or queen.

What else would she rather do, or do better, when she has no household business? Talk with men or other women, of course. About what? Will she always talk and never be silent? Perhaps she will think. About what? A woman’s thoughts move quickly and are generally unsteady, wandering and roving. Through their own instability, they will slip I know not where.

Reading is best, and I especially recommend it. But once she is tired of reading, I cannot bear to see her idle. Nor should she imitate those Persian women who, surrounded by companies of eunuchs, immersed themselves in songs, revels, and constant, endless pleasures. To keep from growing tired of them, they continually changed their pleasures, each one beginning as the last ended. Yet even this variety could not fill their minds with pleasure. Something was always missing, both from each pleasure and from them all. Weariness, and even the first taste, immediately brought boredom. Then they returned to pleasures they had rejected, only to turn away in great uneasiness from those they had expected to enjoy most. Since none satisfied them, they rejected them all. These things certainly do not truly nourish the mind. Their minds were always rushing toward something different, as though passing through things foreign to them.

For good minds, however, honorable work is refreshing in itself, and its results are wonderfully pleasing. We consider the hours spent on it well used. Only the weariness of constant effort calls us to rest. If that weariness allowed us to continue, we would not want to change our activity.

Saint Jerome wants Paula to learn to work with wool, hold a distaff, set a basket in her lap, turn a spindle, and draw out the warp threads with her thumb. She was a woman of the highest nobility, from the families of the Scipios and Gracchi, whose pedigree also displayed Agamemnon, that chief of kings. Jerome also commands Demetrias, equally noble and wealthy, to keep wool in her hands. She should either draw out the warp threads with her thumb or turn spindles in their small bowls to twist the weft. She should gather yarn spun by other women into a ball or arrange it for weaving. Working with wool has always been an honorable woman’s occupation and skill.

When Roman women married, they all brought a spindle and distaff with wool to their husband’s house. They touched the doorposts with wool and crowned them with it, as a religious observance. The bride was then told to sit on a woolly hide, so that she might learn what she was to do at home. Next she said to her husband, “Where you are Gaius, I am Gaia.” Gaia was Tanaquil, an Etruscan woman of the highest rank, as frugal as any woman, and the wife of King Tarquinius Priscus. She devoted great labor and care to working with wool. For this reason she was worshiped as a goddess, and a distaff was added to her statue as a memorial to her chastity and industry. At weddings people also frequently called out “Thalassio,” as though they were saying the little basket in which wool is placed, to remind the bride of her work. Doing this work was therefore evidence that a woman was prudent and chaste.

After a dispute arose about their wives, the royal young men, Tarquin’s sons and relatives, hurried to Rome. They found the other royal daughters-in-law feasting with their companions. But late at night they found Lucretia sitting in the middle of the house, occupied with wool among maidservants working by lamplight. Everyone agreed that she deserved the praise for chastity. After the whole dominion of the Roman people came under Augustus’s power, he wanted his daughter and granddaughters to become accustomed to working with wool. Charlemagne did the same. In describing a frugal, chaste girl, Terence says, “Seeking her livelihood by wool and weaving.” Solomon, in his praise of a holy woman, says that “she sought wool and flax and worked by the counsel of her own hands.”

I do not think it matters whether the work involves wool or flax. Both serve the necessities of life and are most honorable occupations for women. Hannah, Elkanah’s wife, is said to have made little tunics for her son Samuel with her own hands every year. The most chaste Penelope, queen of Ithaca, passed the twenty years of her husband Ulysses’s absence by weaving. The queens of Macedonia and Epirus wove and sewed garments with their own hands for their husbands, brothers, sons, and parents. Alexander the Great showed the Persian queens some of these garments, made by his mother and sisters.

Historians say that among ancient Spanish women a prize was publicly offered in a competition for whoever had spun or woven the most. At appointed times, they brought their work into public view to be judged. The more work each woman had done, and the more diligently she had worked, the greater the honor. Many women still show the same zeal for frugality today and display their diligence in their work. Among the best women, sitting idle is shameful. Queen Isabella, Ferdinand’s wife, wanted her four daughters to learn to spin, sew, and embroider. Two became queens of Portugal. We see the third as queen of Spain and mother of Emperor Charles, and the fourth as queen of Britain, the most holy wife of Henry the Eighth.

She should also learn to cook. I do not mean the dirty tavern cooking practiced by public cooks, with excessive amounts of food for large numbers of people, or cooking that serves excessive pleasure and gluttony. I mean sober, clean, moderate, frugal cooking. As an unmarried girl, she can prepare food for her parents and brothers; as a married woman, for her husband and children. She will earn considerable gratitude from both if she does not leave everything to the maidservants, but attends to it and prepares it with her own hands. Her parents, husband, and children will enjoy this food more than food served by maidservants, especially when they are ill.

No one should think the kitchen degrading. It is necessary: without it, we neither recover from illness nor live in health. Even Achilles, a king and a king’s son, the most outstanding of heroes, did not disdain it. When Ulysses, Ajax, and Phoenix came to negotiate his reconciliation with Agamemnon, Achilles prepared the tables, tied up his clothing, and attended to the kitchen and the food himself. He was going to welcome these excellent princes, whom he held most dear, to a pleasant, sober banquet. This also serves frugality and cleanliness. When the mistress or daughter of the household is present, everything is done more elegantly and cleanly, and, let me add, more carefully and at less expense.

What is this great concern for their hands, or this great disdain for the kitchen, that they cannot bear even to be present or to watch what a beloved parent, husband, or son will eat? Women who act this way should know that a hand is more defiled when offered to another man than when dipped in soot. It is more shameful to be seen at a dance than in the kitchen, and baser to handle dice or playing cards skillfully than to handle food. It is less becoming for a virtuous woman to taste a drink handed to her by another man at a revel than to taste a little broth she will give her own husband.

The woman I am instructing will therefore be skilled in this art. At every age, it will help her win her family’s greater affection and bring dishes to the table that have been prepared more properly and cleanly, and at less expense. Here, and in Spain and France, I have seen people recover on food cooked by their wives, daughters, or daughters-in-law, and afterward love them far more than before. On the other hand, I have seen husbands hate their wives, fathers-in-law their daughters-in-law, and fathers their daughters, because the women said they did not know how to prepare meals. Indeed, I believe the chief reason men in these Low Countries spend so much time eating and drinking in taverns is women’s negligence and idleness in cooking. This forces men to shun their homes and seek elsewhere what they cannot find there.

4. The Education of Girls

Educating a girl requires far more care than most people believe. From the very beginning, human bodily nature inclines toward shameful deeds and moves toward them of its own accord, as the sacred writings declare. The many wicked people we meet everywhere push us in the same direction, teaching or encouraging evil. Wherever you turn, evil words and deeds force themselves before your eyes. We perish through our own inclination toward evil; we perish through so many examples and so great a conspiracy against good. Worse still, the devil’s deadly assault wounds us more bitterly than all the rest. If nothing stands on the side of good, no warnings, no instruction in wisdom and right living, what remains for wretched human beings at the furthest extremes of wickedness? We would be fortunate if even knowing what is right could protect us from so many evils attacking us. How much less can we be safe without any protection, stripped of good counsel?

I have said that fathers act foolishly when they want their children to know both good and evil. Those who let them know neither are equally at fault. If only we could live among so many wicked people without knowing wickedness! But unless you teach what is good, it can remain unknown. Evil cannot stay hidden, however hard you try to conceal it. It appears on every side, thrusts itself forward, and refuses to remain in darkness. Many people distrust learned women, as though clever learning gave natural wickedness additional help. Would not men deserve the same suspicion if clever learning were added to an evil disposition? The education I want for the whole human race is sober and chaste. It should guide people and make them better, rather than arm or encourage them to pursue their depraved desires.

For a woman, this education consists of guidance for life and examples of upright conduct. If knowing these things is harmful, I cannot see how ignorance will help. Do you want your daughter to understand evil while knowing nothing of good? Must she possess what leads her into wickedness, yet know nothing of what draws her away from it? Are you so unfair to the knowledge of good that you think it will harm her, while knowledge of the worst things does no harm? When the vice she has grown used to attacks her, how can virtue protect her if she knows nothing about it? If you accept that view, why do we bring girls to sermons? Why do we teach and discipline them ourselves, or urge them toward better things? I suppose we had better send them away to the country, weaken and suppress whatever intelligence they have, and finally turn human beings into beasts. That will certainly keep them further from learning.

Aristotle asks why flute players and musicians hired for festivals and celebrations, whom ordinary Greeks called Dionysiac performers, always devoted themselves to pleasure. Why did they never amount to any good, but live their whole lives wickedly, with ruined morals? His answer is that they constantly live among pleasures and feasts. They never hear philosophy’s guidance for holy living or see anyone living rightly. They know no way to live except what they have learned through hearing, seeing, or practice. All they have heard, seen, or grown used to is pleasure seeking and beastlike behavior: discordant voices and shouting; people dancing, kissing, laughing, eating, drinking, and vomiting; people overflowing with excessive joy and casting aside all concern for their minds and morals. They inevitably reproduce these things in their conduct and throughout their lives.

You will rarely find a wicked woman who knows, or at least considers, how great a good chastity is. She does not consider the great crime she commits by losing it, or the great good she exchanges for a shameful, trivial, fleeting semblance of pleasure. She does not consider the host of evils she admits when she casts chastity out. Nor does she weigh bodily pleasure for what it is: an empty, foolish thing, not worth even lifting a hand for. Still less is it worth throwing away something beyond which nothing in a woman can be more beautiful or excellent. She does not consider how trivial and vain it is to fuss over her appearance, grooming, refinement, and costly adornment, or how destructive it is to draw other people’s eyes and desires toward herself.

A woman who has learned to think about these matters, whether through natural virtue and goodness of mind or through study, will never bring herself to do something shameful when holy counsel has filled and fortified her heart. If she does, despite so many lessons in uprightness and so many holy warnings and exhortations pulling her back, we can infer what she would have become had she heard nothing about virtue.

Indeed, if we look back and examine earlier ages, we will find hardly any learned woman who was unchaste. Almost all women’s faults in this and earlier centuries have arisen from ignorance. These faults are certainly more numerous among Christian women than they ever were in any pagan or barbarian society. Such women have neither read nor heard the holy fathers’ excellent warnings about chastity, solitude, silence, and women’s ornaments and dress. If they had learned these things in any way, matters could never have reached this intolerable insolence. The fathers’ arguments and authority would have checked shameful deeds as they began and suppressed them as they spread.

Someone may bring forward a few pagan women from all recorded history: Sappho, the great poet, whose love for Phaon was not sufficiently chaste; Leontium, Metrodorus’s concubine, who wrote against Theophrastus; and Sempronia, learned in Greek and Latin, whose chastity, Sallust reports, was far from sound. As though I could not set against these three six hundred women whom learning raised to the greatest virtues, among both our own people and the barbarians! But before doing that, I will discuss these three. Authorities of great reputation believe that the highly learned lyric poet Sappho of Lesbos was not the woman desperately in love with Phaon. They hold that she was a different woman, great in learning and equally great in self-restraint.

Leontium, meanwhile, was not already learned when she came to Metrodorus. She received her education in his house, and it was an education that contributed very little to good conduct: Epicurean teaching, which measures everything by pleasure. That explains her fury against Theophrastus, who attacked pleasure. Sempronia’s education was not the kind we allow a good woman, instruction in morality and how to live well. She had merely cultivated a somewhat more polished manner of speaking, on which we do not want so much effort spent. The same answer could be given about Sappho.

Now let us draw up the ranks of learned women. Cornelia, mother of the Gracchi, comes forward, herself a model of chastity who taught her sons. So do the Laelias and the Mucias; Portia, Brutus’s wife, who drew deeply on her father Cato’s wisdom; and Cleobulina, daughter of Cleobulus, one of the Seven Sages. Cleobulina devoted herself so completely to learning and wisdom that she rejected all love and remained a virgin. Pythagoras’s daughter followed her example, directing her father’s school after his death and leading a company of virgins. Theano, born at Metapontum, belonged to the same school and discipline. Distinguished also for prophecy, she shone with exceptional chastity.

Jerome reports that the ten Sibyls were virgins. We likewise read that Cassandra and Crisse, prophetesses of Apollo and Juno, were virgins. This was almost a common characteristic of women who prophesied. Only as a virgin did the Pythia at Delphi give answers to those who consulted her. The first of these, Phemonoe, is said to have invented heroic verse. Valerius Martial tells us that Sulpicia, Calenus’s wife, wrote guidance about marriage that she had first put into practice in her own life:

“Let all girls read Sulpicia,” he says, “who desire to please one man. Let all husbands read Sulpicia who desire to please one wife. She teaches chaste and pious loves, play, delights, and wit. Whoever has rightly judged her poems will say that no woman is holier.”

It is established that no husband in that age was happier than Calenus with Sulpicia as his wife. Hortensia, daughter of the orator Hortensius, so closely resembled her father in speaking that this deeply honorable and respected woman addressed the triumvirs appointed to establish the republic on behalf of her sex. Later generations read her speech not only to admire and praise a woman’s eloquence but also to imitate it, as they read Cicero or Demosthenes. Aedesia of Alexandria, a relative of the philosopher Syrianus, amazed her age with both her immense learning and her purity of conduct. Corinna of Tanagra, Archelodorus’s daughter, a remarkably wise young woman, defeated the poet Pindar five times in a poetry contest. Erinna of Teos died in Plato’s age before she was twenty. She is said to have equaled Homer in the majesty of heroic verse, though Homer himself is compared to Apollo.

Eunomia, a Christian virgin and daughter of the rhetorician Nazarius, equaled her father in eloquence, as we read in Jerome. Paula, educated through her husband Seneca’s learning, also followed his example in conduct. Seneca himself laments that his mother Albina, at her husband’s command, received only an introduction to the teachings of the wise, rather than a full education in them. Argentaria Polla, Lucan’s wife, corrected the Pharsalia after his death and is also said to have helped him write it. She was distinguished in birth, wealth, beauty, intelligence, and chastity. In Statius, Calliope speaks to Lucan about her:

“Nor shall I give only the brilliance of poems, but shall dedicate to your marriage torches a learned woman worthy of your talent, such as gracious Venus and Juno would give, in beauty, simplicity, affability, wealth, blood, charm, and grace.”

Diodorus the dialectician had five daughters distinguished in the arts and in chastity. Philo, Carneades’s teacher, recounted their history. Zenobia, queen of the Palmyrenes, knew both Greek and Latin and wrote a history. I will recount her extraordinary self-restraint, and that of certain other women, in the next book.

What shall I say of Christian women? Of Thecla, Paul’s disciple, worthy of so great a master? Of Barbara, taught by Origen Adamantius? Of Catherine of Alexandria, daughter of Costus, who defeated the greatest and most experienced philosophers in debate? Her namesake Catherine of Siena, a virgin, left highly learned works that bear witness to her intelligence and shine with the purity of her most holy soul. Nor do we envy paganism its prophetesses. We have four virgin prophetesses in one household, Philip’s daughters.

In Jerome’s time, all the holy women were highly learned. If only some of today’s elderly theologians could equal their learning! Jerome writes to Paula, Laeta, Eustochium, Fabiola, Marcella, Furia, Demetrias, Salvina, and Herontia. Ambrose, Augustine, and Fulgentius write to others. All these women deserve admiration for their intelligence, learning, and lives. Valeria Proba, who loved her husband devotedly, assembled poems about Christ the Lord from Virgil’s verses. Historians describe Eudocia, wife of Theodosius the Younger, as no less distinguished for her knowledge of affairs and uprightness than for her imperial position. The poem assembled from Homer’s verses that circulates is said to be hers. The letters and learned books of Hildegard, the German virgin, are readily available.

Our own age has seen the four learned daughters of Queen Isabella whom I mentioned earlier. Throughout this land, people tell me with praise and admiration that Joanna, Philip’s wife and the mother of the present Charles, replied in Latin without preparation to the Latin speeches customarily delivered to new rulers in each town. The British say the same of their queen, Joanna’s sister. Everyone says the same of the other two, who died in Portugal. In human memory, no women have been more sincerely chaste than these four sisters, or had purer and more unblemished reputations. No queens have been more welcome or beloved among their peoples. None have loved their husbands more or obeyed them more submissively. None have more carefully kept themselves and their entire households free from stain, or disliked foulness and wantonness more. None have fulfilled every requirement of a good woman more completely or precisely.

In my Valencia, I see Mencia Mendoza growing up, the daughter of the marquis of Zenete. I hope she will one day be celebrated. If queens would allow private women to be mentioned after them, I would add my fellow citizen Angela Zabata, with her astonishingly quick and capable mind for every kind of learning, and her exceptional chastity and prudence. Then I would add Thomas More’s daughters, Margaret, Elizabeth, and Cecilia, and their kinswoman Margaret Gigia. Their father was not content for them to be exceptionally chaste. He took care that they should also be exceptionally learned, believing that this would make their chastity truer and firmer. Neither that most wise man nor others who share his view are mistaken.

Study first occupies the whole mind, then raises it to the contemplation of the most beautiful things, drawing thoughts away from shameful matters. If a shameful thought slips in, a mind fortified with guidance for living well immediately drives it out, or refuses to listen to anything so base and filthy. It has other pleasures to attract it, pure, lasting, and deeply honorable. For this reason, I think, antiquity regarded Pallas, goddess of intelligence and the arts, and all the Muses as virgins. A heart devoted to wisdom recoils from lust as something radiant recoils from soot, or something clean from stains. It also recoils from the shallow, trivial amusements that tempt girls’ frivolous minds: dances, little songs, and similar wanton and foolish games. “A woman devoted to letters,” says Plutarch, “will never amuse herself with dances.”

“But what studies should shape a woman?” someone will ask. “And what should she learn from them?” I touched on this at the beginning of the discussion: the study of wisdom that shapes conduct toward virtue and teaches people to live in the best and holiest way. Eloquence does not concern me. A woman does not need it; she needs uprightness and wisdom. There is no shame in a woman’s silence. Failing to think rightly and living badly are foul and abominable. Yet I would not immediately condemn eloquence in women. Quintilian, and Saint Jerome following him, report that it was praised in Cornelia, mother of the Gracchi; Hortensia, daughter of Quintus Hortensius; and Eunomia, daughter of Nazarius.

If a holy and learned woman can be found to teach, I would prefer her. Otherwise, let us choose a man who is either elderly or, at least, thoroughly virtuous and of proven character. He should be married, with a wife who is neither ugly nor unloved. Only then will his desire for other women be at its lowest. These matters must not be overlooked, since chastity is the chief concern in a woman’s education, and perhaps the only one. When she learns to read, give her books that guide her conduct. When she learns to write, her models for copying should not be idle verses or some wanton or empty little song. Give her a serious saying, a wise and holy short maxim from Scripture or the philosophers’ works. Repeatedly writing it will fix it more firmly in her memory.

I set no limit to a woman’s learning, just as I set none to a man’s, except that a man should know a greater number and variety of subjects. This knowledge should benefit both him and the republic, through its practical use and through his teaching and spreading it to others. I want a woman to devote herself entirely to the part of philosophy that shapes and improves conduct. Let her learn for herself alone, or at most for her children while they are young, or for her sisters in the Lord. It does not suit a woman to lead schools or act or speak among men. Teaching others in public first wears away all or much of her modesty and sense of shame, and then gradually casts them off. If she is good, it is more fitting for her to stay at home and be unknown to others. In an assembly, let her remain modest and silent, with lowered eyes, so that some may see her but no one hear her.

The apostle Paul, the chosen vessel, gives the Corinthian church holy instruction: “Let your women be silent in the church. For they are not permitted to speak, but to be subject, as the law commands. But if they desire to learn anything, let them question their own husbands at home.” He writes to his disciple Timothy: “Let a woman learn in silence, with all subjection. But I do not permit a woman to teach, or to have authority over a man, but to be in silence. For Adam was formed first, then Eve; and Adam was not deceived, but the woman, being deceived, was in transgression.”

A woman, then, is a weak creature, with feeble judgment and easily deceived, as Eve, the mother of mankind, showed when the devil caught her with a slight argument. For this reason she should not teach. Once she has convinced herself of a false opinion, she may use a teacher’s authority to pass it to her hearers and readily draw others into her error, since students willingly follow their teacher. I have not forgotten that some women, like some men, have little aptitude for learning. We must not abandon their education. What you cannot teach in writing, teach by speaking. Let them learn from other educated women of their own age, either as those women read or as they recount what they have read.