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Excerpt, Juan Luis Vives' The Instruction Editors and annotators: Jen Janke and Krista Kutz.
INTRODUCTION | TEXT | NOTES | WORKS CITED | RELATED SITES | SOURCE | PRINTER COPY Juan Luis Vives wrote De Institutione Feminae Christianae, or The Instruction of a Christian Woman in 1523. Vives had finished this on the Easter Sunday of this year and presented it to Queen Catherine of Aragon, ostensibly to illustrate how the education of her daughter, Mary Tudor, should be. The text discusses what women should read (including, in contrast to other treatises on women's education, Latin) and how they should be brought up, from infancy to adolescence. Like many other treatises on women's education, however, Vives's treatise endorses chastity and virginity as some of the most important outcomes of female education, even though Vives suggests that he emphasizes chastity less than do some of his humanist peers. In De Institutione, Vives might endorse the study of Latin because, according to recent translator C. Fantazzi, Catherine of Aragon "wished her children to be educated in the new humanist learning, especially Latin" (xxiv). Writing in the midst of a European debate about the character of women, Vives is neither overtly misogynist (hating all women) nor feminist. Vives' family having previously been shamed for their Jewish roots during the Spanish Inquistion, Vives may have been writing to Catherine of Aragon to obtain favor that he had been unsuccessful at gaining in Spain. Fantazzi characterizes Vives' ideal woman as "an angelic creature; the bride of Christ destined for a life of seclusion, subordination and self-sacrifice" (xxvii). Vives' ideals of femininity, however, are lived up to only in name by several of the heroines we have studied this semester. According to Vives, the unmarried Christian woman should be a virgin, which The Changeling's Beatrice only pretends to be; the ideal woman should curb her speech, as Ben Jonson's Epicoene only appeared to do, her identity as a silent woman being a farce; and the ideal woman should remain chaste to her husband, as Elizabeth Cary's Mariam remained to Herod only in body, her loyalty (understandably) having strayed. Vives' ideas would become influential to Thomas Elyot, among others, and in 1529, the first English translation of De Institutione was published. The section below is from that translation, from Vives' chapter on virginity. Nowe wyl I talke altogether with the mayde her selfe: whiche hath within her a treasure without comparison/ that is the pureness bothe of body and mynde. Nowe so many thynges come unto my remembrance to saye/ that I wote1 nat where is beste to begynne: whether it were better to begynne where as saynt Augustyne2 doth/ whan he wyll intreate of holy virginitie. All the holle Churche is a virgin/ married unto one husbande Christe/ as saynt Paule writeth unto the Corinthians.3 Than what honoure be they worthy to have/ that be the members of hit/ whiche kepe the same office in flesshe/ that the holle Churche kepeth in faythe/ whiche foloweth the mother of her husband & lorde: for the churche is also a mother and a virgyne. Now there is nothynge that our lorde delyteth more in / than virgins: nor wherein angelles4 more gladly abyde/ and playe with/ and talke with: for they be virgins also them selfe/ & theyr lorde: Whiche wolde have a virgine unto his mother/ and a virgine to his most dere disciple/ and the churche his spouse a virgine. And also he marythe unto hym selfe other virgins/ and goth unto marriages with virgins. And whither so ever he goeth/ that lambe without spotte whiche made us clene with his blode/ an hundred and xl thousande virgins folowe hym.5 It is written in the canticle6: Our syster is a lytel one/ and hath no breastes.7 Whether that be the sayenge of Christe or angels to the soule/ in whom standeth the very virginite pleasant unto god. All glorie of the kynges doughter is inward sayth David in the psalme. There is that golden clothying/ there is the garment set and powdred with so many virtuous and precious stones. Be nat proude mayde that thou are holle of body. Yf thou be broken in mynde: not because so many hath touched thy body/ if many men have persed thy mynde. What avayleth8 hit/ thy body to be clene/ whan thou hearest thy mynde and thy thought infected with a foule and an horrible blotte9: O thou mayde/ thy mynde is wyddred by burnnyng in mannes heate: nor thou fretest nat with holy love: but hast dryded by all the good fatnes of the pleasures of paradise.10 Therfore art thous the folishe mayde/ and haste no oyle11: and whyle thou runnest12 to the sellar13/ art shutte forth: and as our lorde in the gospell thretneth/ whan thou commest agayne/ and knockest/ thou shalte be answered: who art thou: I knowe the nat. Thou shalte say than: knowest thou nat those body closed and untouched of men: our lorde shall say agane: I se nat the body: I se the soule open unto men/ and unto devylles worse than men/ and often knocked at. Thou art proude mayde/ bycause thy beaty hath no cause to swell: when thy mynde is swollen nat with manes fede/ but with devylles. For here howe well thy spouse tyketh the/ thou knowest nat they selfe O most goodly of all women: come forth and folowe the steppes of thy flockes/ and fede thy kyddes by the tentes of the herdmen.14 Thou knowest nat/ howe [of] all only virginitie is good/ thou are nat my spouse: come forthe/ and go after the steppes of those flockes whom thou hast norysshed in thy mynde: And sayth thou dost nat fede my kyddes/ fede thyne owne: Thou lovest nat me so muche/ that am only the highest and the best herdman. Tary nere the tentes of the herdman/ whom thou foloweth. For if thou folowedest me/ only one herdman shuld be knowen unto the/ and nat many. For he wyle have all to be playne and even. Thy worthe swelleth nat/ nor there is no cause why: nor lette nat thy mynde than swelle: nor let there be no cause why.
1. know
Back Cueiner, E.S.,& Simpson, J.A. The Oxford English Dictionary. Oxford, England: Clarendom Press, 1989. Damrosch, David,& Jordan, Constance,& Carroll, Clare. The Longman Anthology British Literature. New York, New York:Addison-Wesley, 1999. Fantazzi, C., translator. De Instututione Feminae Christianae (C.Fantazzi,Trans.). New York, NY: C. Mathecussen. Jacobus de Voragine, The Golden Legend. Ryan, William Granger, trans. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1993. Site on Mary Tudor, about whom Vives addressed. Vives, Juan Luis. The Instruction of a Christian Woman. Richard Hyrd, trans, 1540. (From STC microfilm.)
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