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 Early Modern Women
in the Low Countries
Feminizing Sources and Interpretations of the Past

Susan Broomhall
and
Jennifer Spinks
EARLY MODeRN WOmeN
IN THe LOw COUNTRIeS
 Women and Gender in the
Early Modern World
Series Editors:
Allyson Poska, The University of Mary Washington, USA
Abby Zanger

The study of women and gender offers some of the most vital and innovative
challenges to current scholarship on the early modern period. For more than a
decade now, Women and Gender in the Early Modern World has served as a forum
for presenting fresh ideas and original approaches to the field. Interdisciplinary
and multidisciplinary in scope, this Ashgate book series strives to reach beyond
geographical limitations to explore the experiences of early modern women and
the nature of gender in Europe, the Americas, Asia, and Africa. We welcome
proposals for both single-author volumes and edited collections which expand and
develop this continually evolving field of study.

Titles in the series include:

Henrietta Maria
Piety, Politics and Patronage
Edited by Erin Griffey

Women and Portraits in Early Modern Europe

Gender, Agency, Identity
Edited by Andrea Pearson

Envisioning Gender in Burgundian Devotional Art, 1350–1530

Experience, Authority, Resistance
Andrea Pearson

Women, Identities and Communities in Early Modern Europe

Edited by Stephanie Tarbin and Susan Broomhall

Widowhood and Visual Culture in Early Modern Europe

Edited by Allison Levy
 Early Modern Women
in the Low Countries
Feminizing Sources and Interpretations of the Past

SUSAN BROOmHALL
The University of Western Australia

and

JeNNIfeR SpINKS
The University of Melbourne
First published 2011 by Ashgate Publishing

Published 2016 by Routledge

2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN
711 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10017, USA

Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business

Copyright © Susan Broomhall and Jennifer Spinks 2011

Susan Broomhall and Jennifer Spinks have asserted their right under the Copyright, Designs
and Patents Act, 1988, to be identified as the authors of this work.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised
in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or
hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information
storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers.

Notice:
Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are
used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe.

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data

Broomhall, Susan.
Early modern women in the Low Countries: feminizing sources and interpretations
of the past. – (Women and gender in the early modern world)
1. Women – Netherlands – Social conditions – 16th century – Sources. 2. Women –
Netherlands – Social conditions – 17th century – Sources. 3. Women – Belgium – Social
conditions – 16th century – Sources. 4. Women – Belgium – Social conditions – 17th
century – Sources.
I. Title II. Series III. Spinks, Jennifer.
305.4’09492’0903-dc22

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Broomhall, Susan.
Early modern women in the low countries: feminizing sources and interpretations of the
past / by Susan Broomhall and Jennifer Spinks.
p. cm. — (Women and gender in the early modern world)
Includes index.
ISBN 978-0-7546-6742-1 (hardback: alk. paper)
1. Women—Low counties—Social conditions. 2. Women—Low countries—History.
I. Spinks, Jennifer. II. Title.
HQ1149.B425B76 2010
305.409492’0903—dc22
2010037647

ISBN: 978-0-754-66742-1 (hbk)

ISBN: 978-1-315-57851-4 (ebk)
 Contents

List of Illustrations   vii

List of Tables   xi
Acknowledgements xiii

Introduction   1
1 Writing Elite Women into the Burgundian and Habsburg Netherlands   17
2 Visualizing Women’s Work in the Textile Trades at the Dawn of the
Golden Age   45
3 Memorializing Grief in Familial and National Narratives of
Dutch Identity   73
4 Imagining Domesticity in Early Modern Dutch Dolls’ Houses   99
5 The Rembrandt House and the Rubens House: Encountering Early
Modern Women through Heritage Sites   123
6 Sources and Settings: The Uses of Place for Tourism, Heritage,
and History   149
7 Purchasing the Past: Gender and the Consumption of Heritage   171
Conclusion: From Yesterday to Tomorrow: Seeing and Hearing Women
in the Low Countries   195

Works Cited   199

Index   233
This page has been left blank intentionally
 List of Illustrations

I.1 Exterior of the Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam, showing (to the left)

Cesar Boetius van Everdingen, A young woman warming her hands
over a brazier (allegory of winter), painting, c. 1650. Photo courtesy
of Jennifer Spinks. 2

1.1 Tomb of Margaret of Austria, Royal Monastery of Brou,

Bourg-en-Bresse. Photo courtesy of Alastair N. Ross. 36

1.2 Hans Memling, Triptych of William Moreel (and his wife

Barbara van Vlaenderberch), Altarpiece for the altar of Saints
Maurus and Giles in the Church of Saint James in Bruges, 1484.
Groeningemuseum, Stedelijke Musea Brugge © Lukas –
Art in Flanders VZW. 40

1.3 Master of the Holy Blood, Triptych of Jossine Lamsins, Joachim

Christiaens, and their patron saints, surrounding a central panel
depicting the Virgin with Child and Saints Catherine and Barbara,
c. 1520–25. Groeningemuseum, Stedelijke Musea Brugge
© Lukas – Art in Flanders VZW. 42

2.1. Isaac Claesz. van Swanenburg, Het spinnen, het scheren van de
ketting en het weven, painting, 1594–96, Stedelijk Museum
De Lakenhal, Leiden, inventory number S 421. Photo courtesy
of the collection Stedelijk Museum De Lakenhal, Leiden,
the Netherlands. 48

2.2. Isaac Claesz. van Swanenburg, Het ploten en kammen, painting,

1594–96, Stedelijk Museum De Lakenhal, Leiden, inventory
number S 420. Photo courtesy of the collection Stedelijk Museum De
Lakenhal, Leiden, the Netherlands. 55

2.3. Isaac Claesz. van Swanenburg, Het vollen en verven, painting,

1594–96, Stedelijk Museum De Lakenhal, Leiden, inventory number
S 422. Photo courtesy of the collection Stedelijk Museum
De Lakenhal, Leiden, the Netherlands. 57

2.4. Isaac Claesz. van Swanenburg, Het wassen van de vachten en het
sorten van de vol, painting, 1607–12, Stedelijk Museum De Lakenhal,
Leiden, inventory number S 419. Photo courtesy of the collection
Stedelijk Museum De Lakenhal, Leiden, the Netherlands. 59
viii Early Modern Women in the Low Countries

2.5. Isaac Claesz. van Swanenburg, De Stedemaagd tussen de Oude en de

Nieuwe Neringhe, painting, 1596–1601, Stedelijk Museum De
Lakenhal, Leiden, inventory number S 423. Photo courtesy of the
collection Stedelijk Museum De Lakenhal, Leiden,
the Netherlands. 60

2.6. Isaac Claesz. van Swanenburg, Het verlenen van de keuren aan de
Neringhe, painting, 1596–1601, Stedelijk Museum De Lakenhal,
Leiden, inventory number S 424. Photo courtesy of the collection
Stedelijk Museum De Lakenhal, Leiden, the Netherlands. 61

2.7 Historical wall panel incorporating the central figures from Isaac
Claesz. van Swanenburg, Het spinnen, het scheren van de ketting en
het weven (detail), Marktsteeg, Leiden, collection Stedelijk Museum
De Lakenhal, Leiden, the Netherlands. Photo courtesy of Jennifer
Spinks. 71

3.1 Willem Jacobsz. Delff after Michiel Jansz. Mierevelt, Portrait of

Louise de Coligny, engraving, 1627, Department of Prints and
Drawings, the British Museum, inventory number AN227468001.
© Trustees of the British Museum. 85

3.2 Bloodied linen shirt probably worn by Hendrick Casimir I of

Nassau-Dietz, stadtholder of Friesland, Groningen and Drenthe,
when he was mortally shot at the siege of Hulst, 1640, Rijksmuseum,
Amsterdam, inventory number NG-NM-1104. Photo courtesy of the
Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam. 89

3.3 Dirck van Delen, A family beside the tomb of Willem I in the Nieuwe
Kerk, Delft, 1645, Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam, inventory number
SK-A-2352. Photo courtesy of the Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam. 91

3.4 Römer with the arms and motto of Prince Maurice, glass, 1606,
Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam, inventory number BK-NM-697. Photo
courtesy of the Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam. 93

3.5 Gillis van Scheyndel, Funeral Procession of Prince Maurice at Grote

Markt in Delft, engraving (detail of lower left hand panel), 1625,
Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam, inventory number RP-P-OB-15.078.
Photo courtesy of the Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam. 94

3.6 Cornelis van Dalen after Adriaen van de Venne, Departure from this
life of His Royal Highness Frederick Henry, Prince of Orange etc.
anno 1647, engraving, 1647, Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam, inventory
number RP-P-OB-76.483. Photo courtesy of the Rijksmuseum,
Amsterdam. 97
 List of Illustrations ix

4.1 The Dolls’ House of Petronella Dunois, c. 1676, Rijksmuseum,

Amsterdam, inventory number BK-14656. Photo courtesy of the
Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam. 100

4.2 The Dolls’ House of Petronella Oortman, c. 1685–1705,

Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam, inventory number BK-NM-1010. Photo
courtesy of the Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam. 101

4.3 Jacob Appel, The doll’s house of Petronella Oortman, painting,

c. 1710, Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam, inventory number SK-A-4245.
Photo courtesy of the Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam. 113

5.1 Rubens House, Antwerp, with the original Flemish section to the left,
the Italianate addition to the right, and the gift shop in the foreground.
Photo courtesy of Jennifer Spinks. 127

5.2 Rembrandt House, Amsterdam. Photo courtesy of the Rembrandt

House Museum, Amsterdam. 128

5.3 Peter Paul Rubens, Rubens in his garden with Helena Fourment
(Helena Fourment with her son Nicholas), painting, c. 1631,
Bayerische Staatsgemäldesammlungen – Alte Pinakothek, Munich.
Photo courtesy of the bpk / Bayerische Staatsgemäldesammlungen. 135

5.4 Rembrandt van Rijn, Self-portrait with Saskia (The prodigal son), oil
on linen, c. 1635, Staatliche Kunstsammlungen, Dresden. Photo
courtesy of the bpk / Staatliche Kunstsammlungen Dresden /
Hans-Peter Klut. 136

5.5 Frans Harrewyn after Jacques van Croes, View of Rubens’s House in
Antwerp in 1692 (‘Parties de la Maison Hilwerue a Anvers’),
engraving, eighteenth century, Department of Prints and Drawings,
the British Museum, inventory number AN470263001. © Trustees
of the British Museum. 138

5.6 Entrance Hall (with a wooden cupboard similar to that owned by

Hendrickje Stoffels), Rembrandt House. Photo courtesy of the
Rembrandt House Museum, Amsterdam. 142

5.7 Kitchen (with a bed for the maid), Rembrandt House. Photo courtesy
of the Rembrandt House Museum, Amsterdam. 143

5.8 Rembrandt van Rijn, Saskia with pearls in her hair, 1634, engraving,
Department of Prints and Drawings, the British Museum, inventory
number AN22202001. © Trustees of the British Museum. 144
 Early Modern Women in the Low Countries

5.9 Rembrandt dolls’ house, Piet Design. Photo courtesy of Piet

Design. 145

5.10 Rembrandt dolls’ house images, Piet Design, detail (Hendrickje

Stoffels looking out the window). Photo courtesy of Piet Design. 146

6.1 Pieter d’Hont, statue of Trijn van Leemput, 1955, Utrecht. Photo
courtesy of Jennifer Spinks. 157

6.2 Sculpture of a nun wearing sunglasses, opposite the beguine complex,

Bruges. Photo courtesy of Susan Broomhall. 163

6.3 Exterior of the Mauritshuis, The Hague, showing a detail from

Johannes Vermeer, Girl with a Pearl Earring, painting, c. 1665–67.
Photo courtesy of B. de Praetere. 166

6.4 Vermeer tourism cube, Delft. Photo courtesy of Jennifer Spinks. 167

6.5 Vermeer Visitor Centre, Delft. Photo courtesy of Alicia Marchant. 169

7.1 Lace for sale in a shop near the Rubens House, Antwerp. Photo
courtesy of Jennifer Spinks. 183

7.2 Joep and Jeroen Verhoeven van Demakersvan, Lace Fence at the St
Janshuismolen as part of Kantlijnen, or the face of lace, Bruges,
2009. © Stad Brugge – Matthias Desmet. 188

7.3 Viktor & Rolf, Emina doll, ‘The Fashion Show,’ Autumn/Winter
2007–2008 (from exhibition The House of Viktor & Rolf).
Photo © Peter Stigter. 190

7.4 Our Lady of Succour and Victory, 1585, wearing dress designed by
Ann Demeulemeester, 2001, in Saint Andrew’s church, Antwerp.
Sint Andrieskerk Antwerpen © Lukas – Art in Flanders VZW. 193
 List of Tables

4.1 Rooms Listed in Contemporary Southern German Dolls’

Houses xxx

4.2 Rooms Listed in Dutch Dolls’ Houses xxx

This page has been left blank intentionally
 Acknowledgements

Many friends and colleagues have been instrumental in the development of this
project. We are grateful to David Barrie, Dagmar Eichberger, Joanne McEwan,
Dolly MacKinnon, Jeremy Martens, Susie Protschky, Jacqueline Van Gent, and
Charles Zika for their feedback on early drafts of various chapters. Erin Jackson Vis
kindly shared with us the findings of her honours dissertation, ‘Painting Women:
Exploring identity in the visual egodocuments of artistic women in the Dutch
Republic (1650–1750).’ The anonymous reviewers for Ashgate were immensely
helpful in helping us tease out the precision of our argument, and editor Erika
Gaffney has been a particular help through all stages of the process. We thank
Cedric Beidatsch, Rudolf Dekker, Femme S. Gaastra, Manfred Horstmanshoff,
Heidi A. Müller, and Jet Pijzel-Dommisse for their helpful advice, discussions
and exchange of literature on various aspects of the project. We would especially
like to thank Lisa Keane Elliott and Alicia Marchant for their research work and
participation in this project over several years.
We are grateful to the galleries, museums, and individuals that have been
involved in providing us with image permissions for this work, and particularly
wish to thank Mechtild Beckers, Manon Billiet, Iris Labeur, Norbert Ludwig,
Elisabeth Rijkels, Alastair N. Ross, Anne Schulte, Peter Stigter, and Caro
Verbeek. We also thank the editors of the journals Cultural and Social History
and Parergon for permission to reprint articles which form part of Chapters 2 and
4. We are grateful for the financial support of a University of Western Australia
Research Development Award which supported the first research work towards
this project and for a publication grant from the Research and Research Training
Committee, Faculty of Arts, the University of Melbourne, that provided support
at its completion.
Finally, Sue thanks Tim, Fionn and Cai for their unpaid labour as argument
analysts, image spotters, and front cover decision-makers. Jenny thanks Ted for
travelling to various location with her, and especially for talking about canals
and architecture in Amsterdam. Jenny and Sue thank each other for patience,
good humour, and making the process an enjoyable testimony to the value of
collaborative work in the humanities.
This page has been left blank intentionally
 Introduction

As cold visitors wrapped in coats and scarves approached Amsterdam’s famous

Rijksmuseum in winter several years ago, they were confronted and enticed inside
by an enormous image on the building’s exterior of a woman in a paradoxically
cosy, domestic setting (Figure I.1).
A blown-up detail from the c. 1650 painting A young woman warming her
hands over a brazier (allegory of winter) by Cesar Boetius van Everdingen, this
image and its re-use presents and reconstructs ideas about women and the past.
Indeed, women feature prominently in the images of the medieval and early modern
Low Countries that are presented to visitors. Likewise, they appear frequently on
the covers and pages of both scholarly and popular texts that analyse this region
and period. Academic historian Lisa Jardine, whose books often appeal to broad,
non-specialist audiences, uses the 1656 painting The Procuress by Delft artist
Jan Vermeer on the cover of her latest book, Going Dutch. The design focuses
attention on the woman’s flushed face and the male hand creeping around to her
breast, tantalizing readers with ideas about the relationship between Dutch identity,
women, sexuality, and Golden Age art.
Our book asks what the use of sources such as these mean for understandings of
the past that are produced in scholarly, art, heritage, and cultural tourism domains.
What are the intersections between the selection of source materials used, and the
narratives developed, in these different spheres? How do art, heritage or tourist
interpretations of the past and women’s experiences in it impact upon scholarly
histories? Conversely, how does academic scholarship influence narratives about
and also for women created in other contexts such as heritage and tourism? In this
text, we argue that if a key goal of feminist historical scholarship is to document
and include women’s diverse experiences in order to develop richer interpretations
of the past, then we need answers to questions such as these, exploring the here and
now as much as the past and its evidence. We need to understand the relationships
between different narratives, different interpretive contexts, and the sources that
they use as they conceptualise, authorise, and canonise versions of the past, and
we need to identify how the processes of source selection and interpretation are
themselves gendered.
Our aim in this book is therefore to study the production and use of sources in
various contexts to create narratives of the past. We examine sources created by
early modern women of the Low Countries across a range of media to document
their thoughts and experiences. In addition, we analyse sources in which early
modern women were represented by their contemporaries. Adopting an explicitly


Lisa Jardine, Going Dutch: How England plundered Holland’s glory (London,
2008). The 2009 paperback edition replaces the cover with a close-up of traditional blue
and white Dutch tiles showing a boat and windmill.
 Early Modern Women in the Low Countries

Fig. I.1 Exterior of the Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam, showing (to the left)
Cesar Boetius van Everdingen, A young woman warming her hands
over a brazier (allegory of winter), painting, c. 1650. Photo courtesy
of Jennifer Spinks.

feminist analysis, we suggest that understanding the practices through which

meanings are made for the past is critical to enable the advancement of sophisticated
and complex histories of women and gender.
The chapters that follow explore different historical aspects of women’s
experiences and the ways that they are presented in academic, museum, heritage,
and cultural tourism domains. We argue that the way these contexts have analysed
and employed diverse sources has been vital for how women’s experiences in the
early modern period have been understood to date. Each chapter examines a series
of sources, and we begin with those that are more frequently used in scholarly
domains, such as letters, manuscripts, prints, and paintings. We then deliberately
move towards more unusual sources, like dolls’ houses, cityscapes, building
interiors, and laceworks, that are employed much less frequently in scholarly
interpretations, but feature more prominently in other contexts in which history is
produced, such as heritage sites and museums. We explore how particular sources
serve as entry points to specific kinds of narratives or interpretive contexts, and
how others can be employed in a wider and more layered or nuanced range of
presentations of the past, and even used in complement, providing alternative
access points for viewers, readers, and visitors.
 Introduction 

Not all sources have been regarded as equal in scholarly historical work. In
order to analyse which sources are perceived as legitimate forms of evidence for the
past in a given historical context, it is vital to understand how different interpretive
contexts produce and validate knowledge. Debates about what knowledge is and
can be have long engaged scholars of history, museology, and tourism. Increasingly
sophisticated studies – albeit ones that rarely engage with medieval and early
modern materials – have explored how interpretations and their sources depend
on what creators, storytellers, designers, curators, or authors working with the past
and their consumers, audiences, recipients, visitors, or readers think knowledge
consists of. These are groups that may have different ideas about the ways in
which knowledge can be verified (if, indeed, this is considered an aim at all). Our
text teases out these debates by offering an analysis of the gendered practices
of source selection and historical interpretation in scholarly and other domains.
Crucially, this analysis highlights early modern women’s agency to narrate their
own lives for their contemporaries and posthumously for modern audiences – and
thus the rich opportunities for modern historians, curators, and tourist providers
to do so.

Scholarly Contexts

In order to effectively analyse sources and the interpretations that have been made
of them in varied historical contexts, we have employed an unusually broad range
of methodological approaches. It is therefore crucial to articulate the key fields of
practice that underpin our work. A critical context for our study is the extensive
body of historical, literary, and artistic scholarship on women of the Low Countries
in the late medieval and early modern periods. While this is a large field, there are
surprisingly few studies, in English, French, or Dutch, which explicitly employ
a wide range of sources in a broad analysis of women’s experiences during this
period. Yet this was an era in which the region is traditionally perceived to have
been at the height of its power and glory, and which generated an extraordinary


For an example of historical work informed by post-modern issues, see Alun
Munslow, The New History (Harlow, 2003), and for a more traditional position, see
Richard J. Evans, In Defence of History (London, 1997; new edition 2000). On new issues
in museology see Eileen Hooper-Greenhill (ed.), Museum, Media, Message (London,
1995), and Peter Vergo (ed.), The New Museology (London, 1989). On tourism, see Dean
MacCannell, The Tourist: A new theory of the leisure class (London, 1976); Nina Wang,
‘Rethinking Authenticity in Tourism Experience,’ Annals of Tourism Research, 26 (1999):
pp. 349–70; Gordon Waitt, ‘Consuming Heritage: Perceived historical authenticity,’
Annals of Tourism Research, 27 (2000): pp. 835–62; Erik Cohen, ‘Authenticity and
Commoditization in Tourism,’ Annals of Tourism Research, 15 (1998): pp. 371–86; and
Yvette Reisinger and Carol J. Steiner, ‘Reconceptualizing Object Authenticity,’ Annals of
Tourism Research, 33 (2006): pp. 65–86.
 Early Modern Women in the Low Countries

and varied range of cultural products. Instead, there is a vast range of close studies
that explore the experiences of a particular female cohort or pursue a particular
theme. Work has been conducted, for example, on the Dutch and Flemish beguines,
maidservants, and prostitutes, and on women as workers more generally.
Likewise, the emancipation of women in the Low Countries, especially in their
legal and economic circumstances, has been a topic of vigorous debate. Our study
contributes to scholars’ growing knowledge about female lives more broadly, by


Two edited collections that incorporate a range of historical approaches and themes
concerning women in the Northern or Southern regions, and during the medieval or early
modern periods, are Els Kloek, Nicole Teeuwen and Marijke Huisman (eds), Women of the
Golden Age: An international debate on women in seventeenth-century Holland, England
and Italy (Hilversum, 1994); and Ellen E. Kittell and Mary A. Suydam (eds), The Texture of
Society: Medieval women in the Southern Low Countries (Basingstoke, 2004).

Jeneke Quast, ‘Vrouwen in gilden in Den Bosch, Utrecht en Leiden van de 14e tot
en met de 16e eeuw,’ in W. Fritschy (ed.), Fragmenten vrouwengeschiedenis (2 vols, Den
Haag, 1980), vol. 1, pp. 26–37; Martha C. Howell, Women, Production, and Patriarchy in
Late Medieval Cities (Chicago, 1986); David Nicholas, The Domestic Life of a Medieval
City: Women, children and the family in fourteenth-century Ghent (Lincoln, 1985); Lotte
van de Pol, Het Amsterdams hoerdom: Prostitutie in de zeventiende en achttiende eeuw
(Amsterdam, 1996); Eric Bousmar, ‘Du marché aux bordiaulx. Hommes, femmes et rapport
de sexe (gender) dans les villes des Pays-Bas au bas moyen âge. Etat de nos connaissances
et perspectives de recherche,’ in Myriam Carlier, Anke Greve, Walter Prevenier and
Peter Stabel (eds), Hart en Marge in de Laat-Middeleeuwse Stedelijke Maatschappij.
Handelingen van het colloquium te Gent (22–23 augustus 1996) (Leuven, 1997), pp. 51–
70; Walter Simons, Cities of Ladies: Beguine communities in the medieval Low Countries,
1200–1565 (Philadelphia, 2003); Annette de Vries, Ingelijst Werk. De verbeelding van
arbeid en beroepin de vroegmoderne Nederlanden (Zwolle, 2004); Annette de Vries,
‘Toonbeelden van huiselijkheid of arbeidzaamheid? De iconografie van de spinster in relatie
tot de veerbelding van arbeid en beroep in de vroegmoderne Nederlanden,’ Tijdschrift voor
sociale en economische geschiedenis, 2 (2005): pp. 103–25, Elise van Nederveen Meerkerk,
‘Segmentation in the Pre-Industrial Labour Market: Women’s work in the Dutch textile
industry, 1581–1810,’ International Review of Social History, 51 (2006): pp. 89–216; and
Danielle van den Heuvel, Women and Entrepreneurship: Female traders in the Northern
Netherlands c. 1580–1815 (Amsterdam, 2007).

Martha C. Howell, The Marriage Exchange: Property, social place, and gender in
cities of the Low Countries, 1300–1550 (Chicago, 1998); Ellen E. Kittell, ‘Guardianship
over Women in Medieval Flanders: A reappraisal,’ Journal of Social History, 31/4 (1998):
pp. 897–930; Marc Boone, Thérèse De Hemptinne and Walter Prevenier, ‘Gender and Early
Emancipation in the Low Countries in the late Middle Ages and Early Modern Period,’ in
Jessica Munns and Penny Richards (eds), Gender, Power and Privilege in Early Modern
Europe: 1500–1700 (Harlow, 2003), pp. 21–39; Shennan Hutton, ‘“On herself and all her
property”: Women’s economic activities in late-medieval Ghent,’ Continuity and Change,
20 (2005): pp. 325–49; Kristi DiClemente, ‘The Women of Flanders and their Husbands:
The role of women in the Liber Floridus,’ Essays in Medieval Studies, 23 (2006): pp. 79–
86. Also see the material summarized in Laura van Aert, ‘Trade and Gender Emancipation:
Retailing women in sixteenth-century Antwerp,’ in Bruno Blondé, Peter Stabel, Jon Stobart
and Ilja Van Damme (eds), Buyers and Sellers: Retail circuits and practices in medieval
and early modern Europe (Turnhout, 2006), pp. 297–313.
 Introduction 

deliberately bringing together a wide array of women whose experiences and

identities have left traces that can inform historical narratives.
The writings and experiences of individual women, by contrast, have been a
more consistent focus of scholarly publication. These include biographical studies
of ‘great women’ such as Isabel of Portugal, the third wife of Philip the Good,
Duke of Burgundy. Studies of the lives and works of other late medieval and
early modern females foreground religious women, such as the mystic Hadewijch
of Antwerp or prophets and Pietists such as Antoinette Bourignon and humanist
scholar Anna Maria van Schurman. Such studies frequently analyse the ways
that women represented themselves and their worlds. We uncover new texts,
including letters and memoirs, that likewise tell us what women had to say, and
what opportunities they had to present their views.
A second important context for our study is scholarship that analyses the
production of history in academic, public, and popular domains, and how these
domains intersect. Historians have long debated how they should engage with
domains beyond academic lectures, tutorials, and textual presentations of their
scholarship, and the rise of the ‘celebrity historian’ attests to the continued vitality
of historical interest among non-specialist audiences. Ludmilla Jordanova has
argued that the scholarship of trained historians is crucial to understanding broader
domains and, further, that it is the responsibility of historians to attend to practices
of ‘public history.’ Many scholars now disseminate some of their research through
radio broadcasting, podcasts, texts designed for a general readership, presenting and
researching for television documentaries, curating exhibitions, advising historical
film productions, and creating personal websites. Yet the nomenclature ‘public’


On the key cultural patronage role of Isabel, see Claudine Lemaire and Michele
Henry, Isabelle de Portugal, duchesse de Bourgogne, 1397–1471: Exposition Bibliothèque
Royale Albert 1er, 5 octobre–23 novembre 1991, exhibition catalogue (Brussels, 1991);
Charity Cannon Willard, ‘The Patronage of Isabel of Portugal,’ in June Hall McCash
(ed.), The Cultural Patronage of Medieval Women (Athens GA, 1996), pp. 306–20; Eric
Bousmar, ‘La noblesse, une affaire d’homme? L’apport du féminisme à un examen des
représentations de la noblesse dans les milieux bourguignons,’ in J.-M. Cauchiés (ed.),
Images et représentations princières et nobiliaires dans les Pays-Bas bourguignons et
quelques régions voisines (XIVe–XVIe s.). Rencontres de Nivelles-Bruxelles (26 au 29
septembre 1996) (Neuchâtel, 1997), pp. 147–55; Monique Sommé, Isabelle de Portugal,
duchesse de Bourgogne: Une femme au pouvoir au XVe siècle (Villeneuve d’Ascq, 1998);
and Aline S. Taylor, Isabel of Burgundy: The duchess who played politics in the age of Joan
of Arc (Madison WI, 2002).

Joyce Irwin, ‘Anna Maria van Schurman and Antoinette Bourignon: Contrasting
examples of seventeenth-century Pietism,’ Church History, 60/3 (1991): pp. 301–31;
Emilie ZumBrunn and Georgette Epiney-Burgard, Women Mystics in Medieval Europe,
trans. Sheila Hughes (St Paul MI, 2003).

Ludmilla Jordanova, History in Practice (London, 2000); on public history see her
Chapter 6.

John Arnold, Kate Davies and Simon Ditchfield (eds), History and Heritage:
Consuming the past in contemporary culture (St Mary, 1998); and on exhibitions see
Ludmilla Jordanova, ‘Objects of Knowledge: A historical perspective on museums,’ ibid.,
 Early Modern Women in the Low Countries

or ‘popular’ history implies that what scholars produce in the academy is private
or in some way less engaged with contemporary interests and cultures. We prefer
to conceptualize historical understanding as a range of narratives, interpretations,
and presentations that occur in varied forums for differing purposes and audiences.
Interpretations that we examine in this study range from those produced in scholarly
books and articles, gallery displays, and museum signage to those which appear at
heritage sites and in tourist literature.
A third context that shapes our analysis stems from the burgeoning, intersecting
fields of museum and heritage studies with which, we suggest, academic historians
could productively engage in greater depth. In the chapters to follow, we analyse
a range of sources as diverse as paintings, dolls’ houses, and heritage interiors
in terms of their specific content but also, where possible, in terms of the
curatorial and institutional strategies and decisions that underpin their interpretive
presentation in museum, gallery, tourist, and other contexts. Audiences engage
with such materials on a variety of levels, from the intellectual to the sensual,
aided by presentation strategies, and this interaction is now receiving scholarly
attention.10 Likewise, museums and other cultural institutions are also increasingly
articulating broader, often socially complex missions (particularly when they
rely to some extent on public funds), and undertaking audience development for
financial as well as wider, cultural reasons.11 This involves balancing the symbolic
and actual ownership of cultural items by local residents alongside the perceived
needs of visitors, and has led to a rethinking of audience engagement from museum
and heritage perspectives.12 Clearly, there are many complex issues that must be
taken into account when deciding which stories, issues, and also historical periods
to prioritize.13

pp. 22–40, and also Vergo (ed.), The New Museology. We would also point to Natalie
Zemon Davis, who advised on the set of Le Retour de Martin Guerre (1982, directed by
Daniel Vigne); on this experience see her ‘“Any Resemblance to Persons Living or Dead”:
Film and the challenge of authenticity,’ The Yale Review, 76/4 (1987): pp. 457–82; and
Simon Schama’s work on documentaries for television; Simon Schama, ‘Television and
the Trouble with History,’ in David Cannadine (ed.), History and the Media (Houndmills,
2004), pp. 20–33.
10
For example, the sensory, ‘whole body’ interpretations of the past that sites
increasingly seek to promise visitors has been critiqued by historians such as Jordanova,
‘Objects of Knowledge,’ pp. 25–6.
11
See, for example, this report for the Arts Council England: Heather Maitland (ed.),
Navigating Difference: Cultural diversity and audience development (London, 2006).
12
Martin Selby, Understanding Urban Tourism: Image, culture and experience
(London, 2004), p. 50, drawing upon Gerry Kearns and Chris Philo, Selling Places: The
city as cultural capital past and present (Oxford, 1993).
13
Brian Graham, ‘Heritage as Knowledge: Capital or Culture,’ Urban Studies, 39
(2002): pp. 1003–17; Sheila Watson, ‘History Museums, Community Identities and a Sense
of Place: Rewriting histories,’ in Simon J. Knell, Suzanne MacLeod and Sheila Watson
(eds), Museum Revolutions: How museums change and are changed (London, 2007),
pp. 160–172. See also Gregory Ashworth, Brian Graham and John Tunbridge, Pluralising
Pasts: Heritage, identity and place in multicultural societies (London, 2007).
 Introduction 

Strategies of exhibition and display have not developed ahistorically, but are
themselves constructed in ways that reflect current concerns, even if audiences
are not always aware of or exposed to the processes by which such decisions are
made.14 Some new museology theorists would argue that such exposure should
be a central curatorial aim. Charles Saumarez Smith, for example, has argued
that the ‘best museum displays are often those which are the most evidently self-
conscious, heightening the spectator’s awareness of the means of representation,
involving the spectator in the process of display.’15 Museums, galleries, and
heritage sites often seek to educate audiences in a variety of ways, about the past,
about themselves, about the politics of display and narration, but always through
experiences that are enjoyable and accessible. Where does the presentation of
medieval and early modern women’s experiences fit alongside such imperatives?
Through an examination of varied sources, settings, and themes of the past, we
explore the significance of gender as a factor in the development of a variety of
modern interpretive sites, subjects, and strategies.
The depiction of women in the art of the Low Countries has been the subject of
particular interest to scholars of gender, art, and culture and a mainstay of popular
exhibitions.16 Simon Schama devotes a chapter of his influential 1987 book, The
Embarrassment of Riches: An Interpretation of Dutch Culture in the Golden Age, to
images of the housewife and whore.17 Wayne E. Franits and Nanette Salomon have

14
David Dean, Museum Exhibition: Theory and practice (London, 1994), and Hooper-
Greenhill (ed.), Museum, Media, Message.
15
Charles Saumarez Smith, ‘Museums, Artefacts, and Meanings,’ in Vergo (ed.), The
New Museology, pp. 6–21, see p. 20; and also Warren Leon, ‘A Broader Vision: Exhibits
that change the way visitors look at the past,’ in Jo Blatti (ed.), Past Meets Present: Essays
about historical interpretation and public audiences (Washington, 1987), pp. 133–52; and
Michael Wallace, ‘The Politics of Public History,’ in ibid., pp. 37–53.
16
On the Burgundian era, see Eric Bousmar, ‘Iconographie et genre. Le cas des
Pays-Bas bourguignons (XVe siècle): quelques pistes et résultats de recherche,’ in Etudes
féministes en Belgique 1997–2000. Vrouwenstudies in België. Actes du colloque/Akten
van het colloquium (Brussels, 2002), pp. 127–36; Dagmar Eichberger (ed.), Women of
Distinction: Margaret of York and Margaret of Austria, exhibition catalogue (Leuven and
Turnhout, 2005); Andrea G. Pearson, Envisioning Gender in Burgundian Devotional Art,
1350–1530: Experience, authority, resistance (Aldershot, 2005); and also the broader studies
of northern art included in Alison G. Stewart and Jane L. Carroll (eds), Saints, Sinners, and
Sisters: Gender and Northern art in medieval and early modern Europe (Aldershot, 2003).
For Dutch art, see Patricia Phagan, S.W. Pelletier, and William U. Eiland (eds), Images
of Women in Seventeenth-Century Dutch Art: Domesticity and the representation of the
peasant (Athens GA, 1996); Yvonne Bleyerveld, Hoe Bedriechlijk dat die Vrouwen Zijn:
Vrouwenlisten in de beeldende kunst in de Nederlanden circa 1350–1650 (Leiden, 2000);
and Klaske Muizelaar and Derek Phillips, Picturing Men and Women in the Dutch Golden
Age: Paintings and people in historical perspective (New Haven, 2003).
17
Simon Schama, The Embarrassment of Riches: An interpretation of Dutch culture
in the Golden Age (London, 1987). Schama’s interpretations of the position of women in
the Dutch Golden Age have not been unchallenged by feminist scholars. See for example
 Early Modern Women in the Low Countries

examined male-authored representations of women in two typical recent studies.18

Individual female artists, notably Judith Leyster, have also been recovered through
curatorial work and academic scholarship, and integrated into wider analyses of
female painters of the period.19 Feminist researchers have explored the complex
intersections of museum culture and art history, and museums as particular sites of
debate in feminist historiography, sometimes seen as exclusionary of women and
women’s histories and activities.20 These are debates that have made us think more
deeply about the ways that traces of the past can be conveyed through different
media. For, as Didier Maleuvre has argued:

Art warrants a different historical thinking because the work of art makes history
in an essentially different way than other artifacts do. Art constitutes a caesura
of history, hence of experience and of the subject: it cuts into the very concept
of the subject of culture in a way that calls into question ideas of immanence,
naturalism, and authenticity.21

The vexed issue of what versions and levels of ‘reality’ might be embedded within
artworks has special relevance in relation to the early modern imagery of the Low
Countries. Intensely detailed portraits, illusionistic still life imagery, and genre
scenes of taverns, kitchens, and the like all explicitly recall the everyday and have
made the concept of ‘realism’ crucial to understanding Dutch and Flemish art.
Over the last few decades, art historians have vigorously debated whether typical
artworks of this period should primarily be viewed as symbolic allegories or

the contributions to this field by authors in Kloek, Teeuwen, and Huisman (eds), Women of
the Golden Age. And for his work on Rembrandt and Rubens (Simon Schama, Rembrandt’s
Eyes (New York, 1999)), criticised from an explicitly feminist perspective, see Mieke
Bal, ‘Women’s Rembrandt,’ in Griselda Pollock and Joyce Zemans (eds), Museums after
Modernism: Strategies of engagement (Oxford, 2007), pp. 40–69.
18
Wayne E. Franits, Paragons of Virtue: Women and domesticity in seventeenth-
century Dutch art (Cambridge, 1993); Nanette Salomon, Shifting Priorities: Gender and
genre in seventeenth-century Dutch painting (Stanford, 2004).
19
James A. Welu and Pieter Biesboer, Judith Leyster: A Dutch master in her world
(New Haven, 1993); Frima Fox Hofrichter, Judith Leyster: A woman painter in Holland’s
Golden Age (Doornspijk, 1989); and Fredrika H. Jacobs, Defining the Renaissance Virtuosa:
Women artists and the language of art history and criticism (Cambridge, 1999).
20
The debates are briefly summarised in Jordanna Bailkin, ‘Picturing Feminism,
Selling Liberalism: The case of the disappearing Holbein,’ in Bettina Messias Carbonell
(ed.), Museum Studies: An anthology of contexts (Oxford, 2004), pp. 260–272, see p. 261.
21
Didier Maleuvre, Museum Memories: History, technology, art (Stanford, 1999),
p. 3. This has been a feature of the work of feminist scholars: see for example, Norma
Broude and Mary D. Garrard (eds), Feminism and Art History: Questioning the litany
(Boulder CO, 1982); see particularly ‘Art History and its Exclusions: The example of Dutch
art,’ pp.183–99; Norma Broude and Mary D. Garrard (eds), The Expanding Discourse:
Feminism and art history (New York, 1992) and Norma Broude and Mary D. Garrard (eds),
Reclaiming Female Agency: Feminist art history after postmodernism (Berkeley, 2005).
 Introduction 

instead as scenes that aspire to ever-increasing levels of reality in depicting life in

the Dutch Republic.22 This is particularly important in assessing the representation
of women. Is the image of a kitchen maid at work under the eye of a male visitor
a celebration of industry, a warning against immorality, or a cosy scene designed
to remind buyers of their own homes? Or, indeed, might it imply all of these
possibilities, but prioritize some over others? Historians are increasingly using
visual sources for their potential to open up new historical questions and to
reach different and wider audiences.23 Our study builds upon such scholarship by
exploring visual images as one of a range of important sources that offer evidence
for distinct narratives of the past; sources that move particularly easily from
scholarly texts to museum spaces.
Finally, there is a broad literature on heritage and cultural tourism that analyses
the modern presentation of discrete sites and material objects in order to gauge their
meanings to past and modern cultures. Scholars of tourism, leisure, and historical
geography have been at the forefront of research into the presentation of history
in touristic and heritage domains.24 They have explored the contributions that a
variety of stakeholders, from operators to tourists themselves, play in the shaping

22
For overviews of these debates see Wayne E. Franits (ed.), Looking at Seventeenth-
Century Dutch Art: Realism reconsidered (Cambridge, 1997); David Freedberg and Jan de
Vries (eds), Art in History, History in Art (Santa Monica, 1991); and J. Bruyn, ‘A Turning-
Point in the History of Dutch Art,’ in Ger Luijten and Ariane van Suchtelen (eds), Dawn of
the Golden Age: Northern Netherlandish art 1580–1620, exhibition catalogue (Amsterdam,
1993), pp. 112–21.
23
Peter Burke, Eyewitnessing: The use of images as historical evidence (London,
2001); and Charles Zika, ‘Writing the Visual into History: Changing cultural perceptions of
late medieval and renaissance Germany,’ in his Exorcising our Demons: Magic, witchcraft
and visual culture in early modern Europe (Leiden, 2003), pp. 523–79.
24
The commodification of history into a consumable product – heritage – has
been a point of focus within recent literature, as the past has become an increasingly
valuable component of experiential cultural tourism. See Greg Richards, ‘Production and
Consumption of European Cultural Tourism,’ Annals of Tourism Research, 23 (1996):
pp. 261–83; Jan van der Borg, Paolo Costa, and Giuseppe Gotti, ‘Tourism in European
Heritage cities,’ Annals of Tourism Research, 23 (1996): pp. 306–21; Peirce Lewis, ‘Taking
Down the Velvet Rope: Cultural geography and the human landscape,’ in Blatti (ed.), Past
Meets Present, pp. 23–9; and Elizabeth Collins Cromley, ‘Public History and the Historic
Preservation District,’ in ibid., pp. 30–36. The most significant heritage studies are David
Lowenthal, The Past is a Foreign Country (Cambridge, 1985); David Lowenthal, The
Heritage Crusade and the Spoils of History (London, 1996); Patrick Wright, On Living
In An Old Country: The national past in contemporary Britain (London, 1985); Robert
Hewison, The Heritage Industry: Britain in a climate of decline (London, 1987); John Urry,
The Tourist Gaze: Leisure and travel in contemporary societies (London, 1990); and Nezar
AlSayyad, Consuming Tradition, Manufacturing Heritage: Global norms and urban forms
in the age of tourism (London, 2001)
10 Early Modern Women in the Low Countries

of narratives of the past.25 Tourism has been perceived as partly concerned with
people’s search for the authentic outside of their everyday lives.26 The literature
that has explored this concept has focused predominantly on the reception of
objects, sights or sites as authentic by tourists, and the implications of this both for
host cultures and for tourists’ constructions of identity.27 Heritage and museological
studies have also been concerned with the articulation of past and place since the
late 1990s, although their focus is generally on the ways in which place-based
heritage impacts on the resident or citizen rather than the foreign visitor.28 Yet, in
an important theoretical paper, Mary-Catherine E. Garden observed that scholars’
inability as yet ‘to grasp how heritage sites work and what they “do” over time will
impact on our understanding of heritage as a social construction and will have a
notable effect on the ways in which we understand how both heritage and heritage
sites change and grow over time.’29 Furthermore, she argues that:

Rather than locating an analysis in whether a site is ‘good’ or ‘bad’ or whether

it offers a ‘real’ version of the past, it is much more useful and rewarding to
consider how a site uses the components of its tangible landscape to create a
distinct place of the past.30

Following her work, one key aspect of our study will be to examine how ‘distinct
places of the past’ are presented to visitors to the Low Countries today.
To date, little attention has been paid to the Netherlands or Belgium in the
literature of tourism and heritage research. The Low Countries are rarely recognized
in scholarly literature as a destination of special interest within European cultural
tourism. Analyses of Italy, France, and England are instead dominant. We argue,
however, that a study of the heritage and tourism programmes of the Low

25
Martin Young, ‘The Social Construction of Tourist Places,’ Australian Geographer,
30 (1999): pp. 373–89; Martin Young, ‘The Relationship between Tourist Motivations and
the Interpretation of Place Meanings,’ Tourism Geographies: An International Journal
of Tourism Space, Place and Environment, 1 (1999): pp. 387–405; Gaynor Bagnall,
‘Performance and Performativity at Heritage Sites,’ Museum and Society, 1/3 (2003):
pp. 1–33; and Mike Crang, ‘Magic Kingdom or a Quixotic Quest for Authenticity?,’ Annals
of Tourism Research, 23 (1996): pp. 415–31.
26
MacCannell, The Tourist.
27
See note 2, above.
28
David Uzzell, ‘Creating Place Identity through Heritage Interpretation,’ International
Journal of Heritage Studies, 1 (1996): pp. 219–28, see p. 228; on heritage for residents
of Dutch cities see Elke Ennen, ‘The Meaning of Heritage According to Connoisseurs,
Rejecters and Take-it-or-leavers in Historic City Centres: Two Dutch cities experienced,’
International Journal of Heritage Studies, 6 (2000): pp. 331–49; and Emma Stewart and
Val Kirby, ‘Interpretive Evaluation: Towards a place approach,’ International Journal of
Heritage Studies, 4 (1998): pp. 30–44, see p. 44.
29
Mary-Catherine E. Garden, ‘The Heritagescape: Looking at landscapes of the past,’
International Journal of Heritage Studies, 12 (2006): pp. 394–411, see p. 395.
30
Ibid., p. 408.
 Introduction 11

Countries addresses particularly valuable issues. Firstly, the medieval and early
modern period is a central focus of tourists’ historical encounters with the Low
Countries; these periods are presented as the pinnacle of their influence, from
which the ‘glory’ of the Golden Age emerged. Secondly, the Low Countries should
hold particular significance for feminist historians because of the high visibility of
many potential historical sources from this period that are female-focused (artwork,
dolls’ houses, and beguine dwellings, for example). Finally, some tourism research
has suggested that ‘while women adopt particular gendered roles as tourists or
are reified and objectified within postcards, tourist brochures and sex tourism, we
[that is, women] are frequently invisibilised within heritage tourism.’31 The Low
Countries, we suggest, provide an opportunity to study a possibly unique situation:
a region with a cultural heritage sector that is frequently sustained by a strong
visual presentation of women.

Sources, Data, and Methods

This study employs a complex set of methods to assess the diverse range of
sources and contexts outlined above. Although the study of early modern women
is increasing, it is still relatively rare that understanding of women’s experiences
is analysed through their own forms of self-expression. In this text therefore we
use a wide variety of often under-utilized sources, from written evidence such as
memoirs and letters, to painted and printed artworks, and other material objects
such as dolls’ houses, clothes, furnishing, interior spaces, and tombs. Our interest
in gendered expressions of self in these sources engages with current scholarship
about ego-documents that has emerged from Germany and the Netherlands in
particular.32 Scholars such as Ariane Baggerman, Rudolf Dekker, and Lotte van
de Pol have been vital in creating methodologies for analysis of ego-documents

31
Cara Aitchison, Nicola E. McLeod, and Stephen J. Shaw, Leisure and Tourism
Landscapes: Social and cultural geographies (London, 2000), p. 127. On this point see also
Cara Aitchison and Carole Reeves, ‘Gendered (Bed)Spaces: The culture and commerce
of women only tourism,’ in Cara Aitchison and Fiona Jordan (eds), Gender, Space and
Identity: Leisure, culture and commerce (Brighton, 1998), pp. 47–68; V. Kinnaird and D.
Hall, ‘Understanding Tourism Processes: A gender-aware framework,’ Annals of Tourism
Research, 17 (1996): pp. 95–102; and Annette Pritchard and Nigel J. Morgan, ‘Privileging
the Male Gaze: Gendered tourism landscapes,’ Annals of Tourism Research, 27 (2000):
pp. 884–905.
32
For Germany, see for example Claudia Ulbrich, ‘Zeuginnen and Bittstellerinnen.
Uberlegungen zur Bedeutung von Ego-Dokumenten für die Erforschung weiblicher
Selbstwahrnehmung in der ländlichen Gesellschaft des 18. Jahrhunderts,’ in Winifried
Schulze (ed.), Ego-Dokumente. Annäherung an den Menschen in der Geschichte (Berlin,
1996), pp. 207–26; and Claudia Ulbrich and David Sabean, ‘Personenkonzepte in der frühen
Neuzeit,’ in C. von Braunmühl (ed.), Etablierte Wissenschaft und feministische Theorie im
Dialog (Berlin, 2003), pp. 99–112.
12 Early Modern Women in the Low Countries

and personal narratives in Dutch history.33 Recent work has shown a continuing
preference for study of textual materials. These are of interest to us here, but we
would also argue that a wider variety of source types warrant more attention.34
These include, in our study, a mixture of textual and non-textual sources produced
by women, including an elite woman’s courtly advice manuals and memoirs,
women’s familial and political letters, female-authored account books, and works
commissioned by female patrons. We support our analysis of the female voices
and experiences that these offer through a careful reading of male-authored
sources which indicate expectations of women. We use the words and images
produced by contemporary travellers, artists, and authors, evident in archival
records, testaments, and material goods to highlight diverse facets of women’s
representation, presentation, and experiences. Our analyses of all such sources
are conscious of the constraints on expression in the relevant media or genres.
As feminist scholars, we are attentive to questions of methodology that underpin
analysis of gendered identities and notions of power. Women rarely controlled the
production of historians’ sources, and gender ideologies inflect those that remain
in important ways for male and female historical subjects.35
A further significant aspect of our analysis is the examination of what might
best be termed the ‘afterlives’ of women from the late medieval and early modern
period. We argue that many of the male-authored sources from that period continue
to inform modern presentations of women’s experiences by historians in various
fields, as well as institutional and independent tourism providers, in ways that
deserve closer interrogation by feminist researchers. Our methodology for these
sources combines content analysis of historical narratives presented in literature
available to visitors on-site, such as brochures, pamphlets and signage detailing
town walking tours and site guides, with an ethnographic interpretation of Dutch
and Belgian sites as visitor-scholars ourselves.36

33
Rudolf Dekker (ed.), Egodocuments and History: Autobiographical writing in its
social context since the middle ages (Hilversum, 2002); Lotte van de Pol, ‘Research of
Egodocuments in the Netherlands: Some thoughts on individuality, gender and text,’ in
Gabriele Jancke and Claudia Ulbrich (eds), Vom Individuum zur Person. Neue Konzepte
im Spannungsfeld von Autobiographietheorie und Selbstzeugnisforschung (Berlin, 2005),
pp. 233–40; and Arianne Baggerman and Rudolf Dekker (eds), Egodocumenten: Nieuwe
Wegen en Benaderingen (Amsterdam, 2004).
34
Daniela Hacke, ‘Conference Report: Ego-documents of women in early modern
German cities. 19 Feb. 2001,’ published 15 April 2004, see http://www.h-net.org/announce/
show.cgi?ID=127288.
35
Our approach is guided by the groundbreaking analysis in Sara Mendelson and
Patricia Crawford, Women in Early Modern England, 1550–1720 (Oxford, 1998).
36
On place meaning-making in such texts, see James S. Duncan and Nancy Duncan,
‘(Re) reading the Landscape,’ Environment and Planning D: Society and Space, 6 (1988): pp.
117–26; and for similar approaches see Seyhmus Baloglu and Ken W. McCleary, ‘A Model
of Destination Image Formation,’ Annals of Tourism Research, 26 (1999): pp. 808–99.
 Introduction 13

Various members of our research team travelled separately to the Low

Countries to encounter historical tourism and heritage sites as visitor-scholars,
adopting a phenomenological methodology. Our approach was informed by the
work of David Crouch and others on embodiment, especially in thinking through
the distinctions between how tourists experience destinations and how scholars
analyse tourist locations.37 Both the authors of this book undertook exploration of
most of the sites included in this text twice each, and we also employed two further
historians, Alicia Marchant and Lisa Keane Elliott, to collect additional data from
sites, museums, places, and galleries, in the cities and countryside of the Low
Countries. On location, the team collected tourist materials such as guidebooks,
brochures, and advertisements produced by tourist bureaux, art galleries, museums,
town councils, private operators, and monument owners that were made available
to the English-speaking tourist visiting the Low Countries, and which offered
historical representations. We focus on English-language materials that most
broadly represent the non-local, traveller-tourist sector.38 These include signage,
brochures, and didactic panels deploying historical images and artworks, and
other media through which a sense of the past was used to engage the traveller. We
created photographic diaries of signage, street art, memorials, and other relevant
touristic features, and documented use of interactive screen-based as well as audio
materials available on-site. We made notes of the ways in which different visitors
interacted with objects and sites. In all, hundreds of textual documents, thousands
of photographs, and the notes from our respective experiential diaries were
analysed for this study. As we have worked on this project in formal and informal
ways over the last five years, we have shared accounts of personal travel narratives
and the ways that they have changed our approach to the project.

Book Structure

We have chosen the term the ‘Low Countries’ to reflect our wide-ranging coverage
that begins with the fifteenth-century Burgundian Empire (governed largely from
Flanders), continues through the separate entities of the Dutch Republic and

37
David Crouch, ‘Tourism Representations and Non-Representative Geographies:
Making relationships between tourism and heritage active,’ in Mike Robinson et al. (eds),
Tourism and Heritage Relationships: Global, national and local perspectives (Sunderland,
2000); David Crouch, ‘Places Around Us: Embodied lay geographies in leisure and tourism,’
Leisure Studies, 19 (2000): pp. 63–76; see also Soile Veijola and Eeva Jokinen, ‘The Body
in Tourism,’ Theory, Culture and Society, 6 (1994): pp. 125–51; and Chris Rojek and John
Urry, Touring Cultures: Transformations of travel theory (London, 1997).
38
Indeed, materials are often only available in Dutch and/or French, as well as English,
so that English is, it seems, generally assumed to be a common language for all tourists who
do not read Dutch or French.
14 Early Modern Women in the Low Countries

Spanish Netherlands in the seventeenth century,39 and finishes with the most recent
presentations of medieval and early modern women in scholarly, museum, heritage,
and cultural tourism contexts in the Netherlands, Northern France and Belgium. As
the scope of this material indicates, we do not intend to comprehensively examine
one region or period, but instead to present and analyse a range of focused case
studies chosen for their ability to reveal facets of the way sources can speak for,
by, or about women in historical interpretations.
Each chapter therefore studies a set of source types from a thematic perspective
in order to articulate the processes by which women’s experiences and self-
expression are or could be brought to bear on historical narratives. While historic
and modern sources are examined in synergy within each chapter, our focus moves
from predominantly early modern concerns to modern ones over the course of the
text, and as such, from sources more familiar to historical scholars to those that
have had relatively little impact on academic interpretations. In Chapter 1, we
focus on elite women’s voices and experiences in narratives of the Burgundian
and Habsburg Netherlands. The chapter explores the kinds of representations
that are created about the past using women’s own voices and experiences of this
period and interrogates what source materials can be used in this way. Chapter
2 investigates how visual sources can be used to support or develop narratives
about women’s urban labour in the textile trades. Both the industry and artistic
conventions were undergoing change at the turn of the sixteenth century. We
analyse Leiden artist Isaac Claesz. van Swanenburg’s late sixteenth- and early
seventeenth-century painting cycle of The Old and New Trades as a contemporary
presentation of female involvement in the textiles trade, and explore the use made
of van Swanenburg’s images within modern presentations of women’s work and
place in the Golden Age. Shifting to an elite context, the third chapter looks at
women’s production of correspondence in order to secure financial and moral
support for the widow and children of William the Silent after his assassination.
It explores how articulations of grief by William’s widow, Louise de Coligny,
helped to place the Nassau dynasty at the heart of the history of the fledgling
Dutch Republic and to support a narrative of Orange sacrifice to the State that
survives today. Yet presentations of the family constructed from the texts, images,
and objects in museum displays, we argue, too often overlook such female dynastic
work and prioritize the contribution of Nassau men to the family’s history. Our
fourth chapter examines dolls’ houses curated and exhibited by early modern Dutch
women who, in doing so, found a way to represent their domestic experiences. Yet
perhaps these objects offered a significant opportunity for women to present their
domestic roles and responsibilities, and we contrast their presentation to that found

39
In the case of the Dutch Republic, Jonathan Israel characterizes the post-1702
period as one of decline. Jonathan I. Israel, The Dutch Republic: Its rise, greatness, and
fall 1477–1806 (Oxford, 1995), p. 956. In the southern Netherlands, the rule of the Spanish
and then Austrian Habsburgs was interrupted by French invasion in 1701 and a change to a
policy of greater accommodation with the north. Ibid, p. 976.
 Introduction 15

in early modern conduct and emblem books for girls and women. The chapter
further analyses the ways in which modern curation of the houses in museums
today produces yet another version of early modern domesticity.
We then shift focus with three final chapters that place contemporary
interpretive practices in heritage buildings, modern places, and museums at centre
stage. Chapter 5 offers a comparative analysis of the homes belonging to artists
Rembrandt van Rijn and Peter Paul Rubens, open to the public today in Amsterdam
and Antwerp respectively. We propose that the women associated with these artists
have themselves become important cultural figures who are used as ways to access
aspects of the lives of women in the past. In the sixth chapter, we examine the use
of sites and spaces such as beguine houses and other urban domestic structures in
developing narratives of the past. The use of place as a source for understanding
historical experience, we argue, appears to provide opportunities for exploratory
and unusual presentations of women’s lives, including those often nameless
women who lived in communities. Finally, Chapter 7 proposes that modern-day
female visitors are encouraged to feel part of a continuity from the early modern
to the present, by connecting subjectively with historically inspired images
and objects, such as jewellery, craft objects, and clothing, that are traditionally
gendered female. We argue that representations of the past in popular culture
resonate through visitors’ purchase of souvenirs that seem to offer a means of
access to the lives of early modern women.
Throughout the process, we have tried to remain alert to our own experiences
as scholars, as tourists, and as women. By analysing a diverse range of materials
from sometimes unusual methodological perspectives, we hope to open up ideas
about encountering women from the past that develop most fruitfully through
comparison of sources in different media and interpretations created in varied
contexts. While we have regretfully left many women’s experiences to one side as
we worked on this project, we have discovered other female voices that we never
expected to find and stories that are only now finding ways to be heard.
This page has been left blank intentionally
 Chapter 1
Writing Elite Women into the
Burgundian and Habsburg Netherlands

We travelled regularly to the Netherlands and Belgium while working on the

research that unfolds in the following chapters. On one such trip, Sue was locating
images and monuments depicting women in Bruges, and particularly women
connected to the cultural and political flourishing of the Burgundian and Habsburg
courts, which brought the Low Countries to wider European prominence. While
visiting the Onze-Lieve-Vrouw church, her four-year-old daughter Fionn asked if
she could help with the research. Sue explained that she was looking for images
of ‘old-fashioned ladies’ but said that apart from the ‘big duchess lying down’
there were not many in the building. ‘But what about her, mummy?’ Fionn asked,
pointing at a triptych. Yes, but they weren’t really the sort we were looking for,
Sue replied, explaining that since her husband was pictured alongside her, it was
really more about him. ‘What about that one? She looks like she’s a mummy,’
Fionn pointed to a memorial stone described on the plaque as ‘Jan van de Velde
and family.’ Well that was really more about her husband too and what he wanted
to say about himself, Sue answered. ‘Why don’t those ones count?’ Fionn asked.
It was a question, we realized, which demanded a response. This chapter is
our answer. It explores the kinds of narratives that are created today about the
past using women’s own voices and experiences from this period. What sources
are used in different narrative contexts such as museums, galleries, churches, and
academic books and articles, and why is this the case? How does such source
selection and presentation affect the stories that can be told about women’s lives
in the late medieval Low Countries? In asking these questions, we open this book
with a chapter that positions our overarching, key historiographical argument at
the foreground of the analysis. We argue that curatorial and academic historical
practices intersect in important ways that have not been hitherto analysed in
terms of their implications for scholarship on early modern women. We consider
here how scholarly historical vision is produced – by which we mean how some
original materials are in the line of sight of scholars while others are not – and
examine the impact on scholarly interpretations of contemporary narratives about
the past created in domains such as art and heritage tourism. To do so, we explore
how a range of sources such as artworks, monuments, and written texts that were
produced by and for women from the late medieval period are used to produce
modern narratives about the Burgundian and Habsburg period for popular, touristic,
and academic consumption.
In the first section of this chapter we explore why only certain women have
entered into historical interpretations of the Burgundian and Habsburg period,
where they are typically visualized as individual and exceptional women of power,
18 Early Modern Women in the Low Countries

rather than embedded in a wider analysis of female possibilities for action and
political endeavour. We then move to examine what alternative and rarely used
textual sources such as memoirs and letters produced by women could elucidate
about their experiences. Recent exhibitions and catalogues are combining
textual, visual, and material sources, we suggest, in ways which provide rich and
productive opportunities to develop new interpretations of the period. In the third
section, we explore how historical scholarship on ego-documents could enrich the
presentation of material sources, especially visual ones, commissioned and thus in
important respects produced by women, in art history and museological contexts
where they have tended to be viewed in isolation. In each section we consider
how sources are used in modern settings and presented to form interpretations of
the past, and we consider how the connections among different contexts shape
the narratives that can be developed. We suggest that to date a relatively limited
view of female experiences has predominated, and that this could become more
nuanced and detailed through an increasing interaction of sources and contexts, and
a willingness to think more widely about what aspects of women’s achievements
and lives are worth paying attention to.

Women in Power

The duchesses of Burgundy, and especially the biographical details of their

lives, have featured prominently in both academic scholarship and more popular
presentations of medieval women in the Netherlands. Women such as Isabel of
Portugal, third wife of Philip the Good, and Margaret of York, third wife of Charles
the Bold, have become iconic figures. The challenges faced by women as rulers and
as regents have been articulated through the life stories of Mary of Burgundy and her
daughter Margaret of Austria. Bookshops across Burgundy and Flanders are filled
with richly illustrated texts on the various duchesses, their covers drawing upon the
many well-known portraits of the women concerned. The titles offer an indication


See Monique Sommé, Isabelle de Portugal, duchesse de Bourgogne: Une femme
au pouvoir au XVe siècle (Villeneuve d’Ascq, 1998); Aline S. Taylor, Isabel of Burgundy:
The duchess who played politics in the age of Joan of Arc (Madison WI, 2002); and
Dagmar Eichberger (ed.), Women of Distinction: Margaret of York and Margaret of Austria,
exhibition catalogue (Leuven and Turnhout, 2005).

Eleanor Tremayne, The First Governess of the Netherlands: Margaret of Austria
(New York, 1908); Max Pierre Marie Bruchet, Marguerite d’Autriche: Duchesse de Savoie
(Lille, 1927); Ghislaine de Boom, Marguerite d’Autriche-Savoie et la pré-Renaissance
(Brussels, 1946); Jane de Iongh, Margaret of Austria, Regent of the Netherlands, trans.
M.D. Herter Norton (New York, 1953); Georges-Henri Dumont, Marie de Bourgogne (Paris,
1982); and Ursula Tamussino, Margarete von Osterreich: Diplomatin der Renaissance
(Graz, 1995); Jean-Pierre Soisson, Marguerite: Princesse de Bourgogne (Paris, 2005); as
well as the wonderfully titled novel: Pamela Hill, Here Lies Margot: A novel based on the
life of Margaret of Burgundy, who knew all the rulers of 15th century Europe and married
three of them (New York, 1958).
 Writing Elite Women into the Burgundian and Habsburg Netherlands 19

of the way the duchesses’ lives are often presented through their involvement in
contemporary European high politics. Isabel of Portugal is successively a ‘woman
in power in the fifteenth century,’ ‘the Duchess who played politics in the age of
Joan of Arc’ and most recently, a ‘woman of power at the heart of Europe in the
Middle Ages.’ Mary of Burgundy, whose short life complicates the biographical
approach, becomes the passive foil for contemporary events. Mary’s story is that
of ‘the Revolt of Ghent,’ she is a ‘princess in chains,’ then ‘witness to a great
enterprise at the birth of European nationalities,’ and represents ‘the fragility of the
times.’ These women, we are told, were no mere pawns of their fathers, brothers,
sons, or husbands. Each is lauded for her political acumen, tenacity, and ingenuity.
Isabel of Portugal ‘earned a reputation as a formidable diplomatic, political, and
financial player.’ Margaret of Austria, queen, princess, duchess, and regent in the
service of Habsburg ambitions, was ‘the most willing, the most determined, the
most cultivated’ of all the great women who graced the European political stage of
her era who ‘together, founded a new European order.’
Feminist scholarship may perhaps take some credit for these texts, having
prioritized the recovery of documents and objects by and about women that
underpin such biographical works. Indeed, feminism may also contribute more
broadly to the number of female travellers seeking publications and especially
souvenirs, as we explore in more detail in Chapter 7. An earlier generation of
scholars of Burgundy such as Johan Huizinga, Otto Cartellieri, and Joseph Calmette
generally had little to say about individual women of power. Feminist research has,
however, highlighted the particular ways in which the various duchesses were able
to manoeuvre politically through social and cultural means, and recent biographies
such as those discussed above, by contrast to the earlier scholarship, often discuss
the struggle of female access to power, or female forms of power, although they
are rarely, if ever, explicitly grounded in a feminist theoretical paradigm.


Sommé, Isabelle de Portugal; Taylor, Isabel of Burgundy; and Daniel Lacerda,
Isabelle de Portugal, duchesse de Bourgogne (1397–1471): Une femme de pouvoir au
coeur de l’Europe du Moyen Age (Paris, 2008).

George Payne Rainsford James, Mary of Burgundy; or the revolt of Ghent (2 vols,
New York, 1837), vol. 1; André Besson, Marie de Bourgogne: La princesse aux chaînes
(Paris, 1958); Yves Cazaux, Marie de Bourgogne: Témoin d’une grande entreprise à
l’origine des nationalités européennes (Paris, 1967); and Marie-Françoise Barbot, Marie
de Bourgogne ou la fragilité des jours (Haroué, 2006).

Taylor, Isabel of Burgundy, p. 7.

‘la plus volontaire, la plus déterminée, la plus cultivée,’ ‘ensemble, elles fondent un
nouvel ordre européen,’ Soisson, Marguerite: Princesse de Bourgogne, p. 8.

Johan Huizinga, The Waning of the Middle Ages: A study of the forms of life, thought
and art in France and the Netherlands in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries (London,
1955; first published 1924); Otto Cartellieri, The Court of Burgundy: Studies in the history
of civilization (New York, 1929); and Joseph Calmette, Les grands ducs de Bourgogne
(Paris, 1949).
20 Early Modern Women in the Low Countries

Scholars have shown how artistic patronage and artistic representations offered
women ways to exercise and display power. Dagmar Eichberger, Lisa Beaven, and
Andrea G. Pearson have explored some of the possible meanings behind Margaret
of Austria’s commissions for diptychs depicting herself and her mother. They
have also examined the display of her portraits in distinct spaces, arguing that
such images demonstrate a woman’s approach to her devotional practices as well
as particularly female challenges of articulating connections to family, alliances,
authority, and power. Eichberger has considered how Margaret raised her own
status through collecting art and demonstrated both her piety and taste through a
careful selection of objects and images. Through attentively ‘reconstructing’ the
modes of display for this collection, she demonstrates the value of analysing display
and spatial strategies of presentation for feminist research concerned with women
of power.10 Eichberger’s research also informed her related exhibition project with
curator Joris Capenberghs, part of the larger project Mechelen 2005, A City in
Female Hands developed by Kris Callens.11 This year-long programme included


Charity Cannon Willard, ‘The Patronage of Isabel of Portugal,’ in June Hall
McCash (ed.), The Cultural Patronage of Medieval Women (Athens GA, 1996), pp.
306–20; Jennifer Spreitzer, ‘Framing Mary of Burgundy,’ Chicago Art Journal, 4 (1994):
pp. 2–13; Dagmar Eichberger, ‘A Renaissance Princess Named Margaret: Fashioning a
public image in a courtly society,’ Melbourne Art Journal, 4 (2000): pp. 4–24; Dagmar
Eichberger, ‘A Noble Residence for a Female Regent: Margaret of Austria and the “Court of
Savoy” in Mechelen,’ in Helen Hills (ed.), Architecture and the Politics of Gender in Early
Modern Europe (Aldershot, 2003), pp. 25–46; Dagmar Eichberger, ‘Car il me semble que
vous aimez bien les carboncles. Die Schätze Margaretes von Österreich und Maximilians
I,’ in Elisabeth Vavra (ed.), Von Umgang mit Schatzen (Vienna, 2007), pp. 139–52; Jean
C. Wilson, ‘“Richement et pompeusement paree”: The collier of Margaret of York and
the politics of love in late medieval Burgundy,’ and Ann M. Roberts, ‘The Horse and the
Hawk: Representations of Mary of Burgundy as sovereign,’ in David S. Areford and Nina
A. Rowe (eds), Excavating the Medieval Image: Manuscripts, artists, audiences: Essays
in honor of Sandra Hindman (Aldershot, 2004), pp. 109–33 and pp. 135–50; and Laura
D. Gelfand, ‘Regency, Power, and Dynastic Ritual Memory: Margaret of Austria as patron
and propagandist,’ in Ellen E. Kittel and Mary A. Suydam (eds), The Texture of Society:
Medieval women in the Southern Low Countries (Basingstoke, 2004), pp. 203–25.

Dagmar Eichberger and Lisa Beaven, ‘Family Members and Political Allies: The
portrait collection of Margaret of Austria,’ Art Bulletin, 77 (1995): pp. 225–48; Dagmar
Eichberger, ‘Margaret of Austria’s Portrait Collection: Female patronage in the light of
dynastic ambitions and artistic quality,’ Renaissance Studies, 10 (1996): pp. 259–79; and
Andrea G. Pearson, ‘Productions of Meaning in Portraits of Margaret of York,’ in Andrea
G. Pearson (ed.), Women and Portraits in Early Modern Europe: Gender, agency, identity
(Aldershot, 2008), pp. 35–54.
10
Dagmar Eichberger, Leben mit Kunst, Werken durch Kunst. Sammelwesen und
Hofkunst unter Margrete von Oesterreich, Regentin der Niederlande (Turnhout, 2002), see
especially pp. 58­–141, and pp. 372–434.
11
Eichberger (ed.), Women of Distinction. See http://www.mechelen2005.be/. Many
activities were aimed at a tourist and larger English-speaking scholarly market, as the
English edition of the catalogue demonstrates. See Kris Callens, ‘“City in Female Hands”
and “Women of Distinction,”’ in Eichberger (ed.), Women of Distinction, pp. 15–16.
 Writing Elite Women into the Burgundian and Habsburg Netherlands 21

town walks with a ‘specific focus on female, rather than the usual, rather male,
history’ attesting to ‘an evolving conscience of the female contributions to the
history of the city,’ while another, the Digitale Voormoeders project, worked with
a range of university scholars and with equal opportunity sponsors.12 The tourist
marketing of Mechelen as one in female hands during 2005 owes its development
to the research of feminist scholarship and attests to the rich possibilities of such
interactions between scholars, curators, tourist providers, and municipal councils.
In addition to elucidating elite women’s actual strategies of achieving,
exercising, and maintaining power, feminist scholars have also argued for a new
vision of political history that articulates the importance of gender to even the most
traditional concepts of political action.13 Yet elite women’s particular political roles,
strategies, and access to power, and their production of conventional historical
evidence such as written sources, have rarely been integrated into broader political
histories of the Burgundian and Habsburg Netherlands. The rich correspondence
of Margaret of Austria with her father, the Holy Roman Emperor, Maximilian I,
during her time as governor of the Habsburg Netherlands, has, for example, received
much less recent attention from historians than her artistic patronage has from
scholars of visual culture.14 On first reading, the letters may appear disappointing
for scholars seeking evidence of female political participation comparable to
that of male rulers. Margaret appears to present herself to Maximilian as the
obedient instrument of her father’s will. Many of the letters are not concerned
with what might be perceived as the key political events of her day but instead
with placements or recognition for loyal subjects.15 However, the social aspects of
politics have recently been emphasized through feminist studies of the importance
of cultures of networks, gossip, and intimacy, which offered women distinctive
forms of political action, and a means of access to the institutional structures of the

12
‘specifieke focus op het vrouwelijke thema, naast de gebruikelijke, eerder
mannelijke, geschiedenis,’ and ‘De publieksomgang in Dames met Klasse en de uitwerking
van een Historische Vrouwenwandeling, als aanzet tot een evoluerend bewustzijn van de
vrouwelijke bijdragen aan de geschiedenis van de stad, zijn daarvan geslaagde voorbeelden.’
Kris Callens, Feitelijk in Vrouwenhanden (Mechelen, 2006), quotations p. 35 and p. 16. See
http://www.mmmechelen.be/pdf/feitelijkinvrouwenhanden_eindverslag.pdf.
13
See Sara Mendelson and Patricia Crawford, Women in Early Modern England,
1550–1720 (Oxford, 1998), p. 346, and Janet Nelson, who has argued for the power of
medieval queenship as lying in the household domain at court in her ‘Medieval Queenship,’
in Linda Elizabeth Mitchell (ed.), Women in Medieval Western European Culture (New
York, 1999), pp. 179–207, see p. 205.
14
There are only 5 references to it in Soisson’s biography, Marguerite: Princesse de
Bourgogne, for example.
15
See Correspondance de 1’Empereur Maximilien Ier et de Marguerite d’Autriche,
sa fille, gouvernante des Pays-Bas de 1507 à 1519, ed. A. Le Glay (2 vols, New York, 1966;
original publication: Paris, 1839).
22 Early Modern Women in the Low Countries

political realm.16 In this light, we suggest that Margaret’s patronage of individuals

at court, and her networks and alliances to subjects, may deserve closer study as
signs of her own political force.
Certainly, we are yet to see political studies of the whole period written in ways
that encompass the full spectrum of political engagement even of the duchesses,
let alone a broader cohort of women.17 The production of biographically-based
studies, as one of the more significant contributions to the field by both academic
and popular authors alike, has had both advantages and disadvantages for the
study of elite women and power. On the one hand, it has opened up new evidence
and information of women’s experiences as political figures, and demonstrated
the broad popular and academic interest in their stories. On the other, it has
perhaps tended towards the isolation of individual women and positioned them
as exceptional figures, rather than providing opportunities to understand female
experiences of politics and power more broadly.

Textual Sources for Women’s Narratives of Their Experiences

Exhibitions including visual images of late medieval women provide another

means by which their stories remain present in historical narratives.18 Their
images are marketed through items such as magnets, calendars and postcards
for sale in museum and gallery gift shops. Visual sources do indeed articulate
elite women’s expressions and experiences of power, as the scholars discussed
above have shown. However there are other sources for women’s lives that receive
much less attention in exhibition and tourism contexts as well as within academic
scholarship. Significantly, these include important sources that elite women

16
Kristen B. Neuschel, Word of Honor: Interpreting noble culture in sixteenth-
century France (Ithaca, 1989); Sharon Kettering, ‘The Patronage Power of Early Modern
French Noblewomen,’ The Historical Journal, 32 (1989): pp. 817–41; Sharon Kettering,
‘The Household Service of Early Modern French Noblewomen,’ French Historical Studies,
20 (1997): pp. 55–85; Elaine Chalus, ‘Elite Women, Social Politics, and the Political World
of Late Eighteenth-century England,’ Historical Journal, 43 (2000): pp. 669–97; and
Elizabeth Horodowich, ‘The Gossiping Tongue: Oral networks, public life and political
culture in early modern Venice,’ Renaissance Studies, 19 (2005): pp. 22–45.
17
A first attempt to explore the impact of feminist research is Eric Bousmar, ‘La
noblesse, une affaire d’homme? L’apport du féminisme à un examen des représentations de la
noblesse dans les milieux bourguignons,’ in J.-M. Cauchiés (ed.), Images et représentations
princières et nobiliaires dans les Pays-Bas bourguignons et quelques régions voisines
(XIVe–XVIe s.). Rencontres de Nivelles-Bruxelles (26 au 29 septembre 1996) (Neuchâtel,
1997), pp. 147–55.
18
See, for example, Margareta van Oostenrijk en haar Hof, exhibition catalogue
(Mechelen, 1958); Françoise Baudson, Van Orley et les artistes de la cour de Marguerite
d’Autriche, exhibition catalogue (Bourg-en-Bresse and Brou, 1981); and, more recently,
Claudine Lemaire and Michele Henry, Isabelle de Portugal, duchesse de Bourgogne, 1397–
1471: exposition Bibliothèque Royale Albert 1er, 5 octobre–23 novembre 1991, exhibition
catalogue (Brussels, 1991).
 Writing Elite Women into the Burgundian and Habsburg Netherlands 23

themselves produced, such as letters and memoirs as well as commissioned objects,

architecture, and monuments. We argue that documents like these, which present
women’s own expressions of their lives – that is, ego-documents – could provide
exciting new interpretive angles in academic as well as exhibition, heritage, and
tourism narratives about elite women of this period.
Historians and archivists currently understand ego-documents as sources that
bear the explicit imprint of authorship, that contain autobiographical content, and
that potentially provide insight into historical subjectivities. Defined by Jacques
Presser as ‘those documents in which an ego deliberately or accidentally discloses
or hides itself,’ the term ego-document has been applied to a diverse range of
historical source materials, from judicial records and autobiographies, to diaries,
family archives, household inventories, and personal correspondence.19 Rudolf
Dekker has previously suggested that few ego-documents by women remain
outside of the context of religious texts such as conversion narratives of pietistic
women.20 While historians have focused upon written forms of expression like
these, they have not typically looked at women’s patronage, their commission
of self and other portraits, in addition to many of their other forms of written
expressions, as forms of ego-documents. We suggest that a re-conceptualisation of
women’s expressions that sees a greater variety of genres as ego-documents would
allow scholars to more effectively bring early modern women’s articulations and
presentations of identity to bear on narratives of the past.
Using one detailed example, we explore here the potential for such sources
to add to our understanding of elite female engagement in Burgundian and
Habsburg political structures. Studies of politics in the Low Countries to date have
had relatively little to say about the role of elite women in shaping the ritual and
propaganda for which the Burgundian court was renowned.21 Yet the manuscript

19
Rudolf Dekker, ‘Jacques Presser’s Heritage: Egodocuments in the study of history,’
Memoria y Civilización, 5 (2002): pp. 13–37.
20
Rudolf Dekker, ‘Getting to the Source: Women in the medieval and early modern
Netherlands,’ Journal of Women’s History, 10 (1998): pp. 165–88, see p. 176. See also van
de Pol, ‘Research of Egodocuments in the Netherlands.’
21
Walter Prevenier and Wim Blockmans, ‘Propaganda and the Legitimation of
Power,’ in their The Burgundian Netherlands (Cambridge, 1986), pp. 214–40; Peter J.
Arnade, Realms of Ritual: Burgundian ceremony and civic life in late medieval Ghent
(Ithaca, 1996); Lawrence M. Bryant, ‘Making History: Ceremonial texts, royal spaces,
and political theory in the sixteenth century,’ in M. Wolfe (ed.), Changing Identities in
Early Modern France (Durham, 1997), pp. 46–77; Wim Blockmans and Esther Donckers,
‘Self-Representation of Court and City in Flanders and Brabant in the Fifteenth and
Early Sixteenth Centuries,’ in Wim Blockmans and Antheun Janse (eds), Showing Status:
Representation of social positions in the late middle ages (Turnhout, 1999), pp. 81–112; and
Rolf Strom-Olsen, ‘Dynastic Ritual and Politics in Early Modern Burgundy: The baptism
of Charles V,’ Past and Present, 175 (2002): pp. 34–64. Perhaps the work of Eric Bousmar
has most critically engaged with gender in the Burgundian court context: Eric Bousmar, ‘La
place des hommes et des femmes dans les fêtes de cour bourguignonnes (Philippe le Bon
– Charles le Hardi),’ in J.-M. Cauchiés (ed.), Fêtes et cérémonies aux XIVe–XVIe siècles.
24 Early Modern Women in the Low Countries

work of a fifteenth-century Burgundian noblewomen, Eleanor de Poitiers, detailing

matters of precedence and ceremony at the fifteenth-century Burgundian court,
provides unique evidence for the meanings and practice of ritual conduct in the
ducal household, particularly that of Philip the Good and Isabel of Portugal. Here we
will highlight some of the ways in which a female ego-document can shed light on
women’s participation in court politics. We argue that it highlights the complexities
and significance of the culture of honour which women and men negotiated on a
daily basis at the fifteenth-century Burgundian court. Importantly, by comparison
to contemporary male authors Georges Chastellain (1415–75) and Olivier de La
Marche (1425?–1502), oft-cited chroniclers of the court’s elaborate ritual practices,
Eleanor de Poitiers’ text provides an additional insight into the importance of gender
in the determination and application of such ritualized codes.22
Eleanor de Poitiers (1444/46?–1509) composed Les Honneurs de la Cour in
the 1480s, as a result of her first-hand observations of Burgundian court life.23
Her parents, Jean de Poitiers, seigneur d’Arcis-sur-Aube in Champagne, and
Isabel de Sousa, a descendent of a bastard branch of the royal house of Portugal,
were both in the service of the dukes of Burgundy.24 Eleanor’s mother was lady-
in-waiting to Isabel of Portugal, and Eleanor herself entered court at the age of
seven and in 1458 became a demoiselle d’honneur to Isabel of Bourbon, countess
of Charolais.25 Eleanor later became dame d’honneur to Jeanne de Castille, when

Rencontres de Lausanne (23 au 26 septembre 1993) (Neuchâtel, 1994), pp. 123–43; Eric
Bousmar and Monique Sommé, ‘Femmes et espaces féminins à la cour de Bourgogne au
temps d’Isabelle de Portugal (1430–1457),’ in Jan Hirschbiegel and Werner Paravicini (eds),
Das Frauenzimmer. Die Frau bei Hofe in Spätmittelalter und früher Neuzeit. 6. Symposium
der Residenzen-Kommission der Akademie der Wissenschaften in Göttingen [...], Dresden,
26. bis 29. September 1998 (Stuttgart, 2000), pp. 47–78, as well as Boone, De Hemptinne
and Prevenier, ‘Gender and Early Emancipation in the Low Countries.’
22
For the establishment of this argument, see an earlier work by Susan Broomhall,
‘Gendering the Culture of Honour at the Fifteenth-Century Burgundian Court,’ in Stephanie
Tarbin and Susan Broomhall (eds), Women, Identities and Communities in Early Modern
Europe (Aldershot, 2008), pp. 181–93.
23
The text’s modern editor, Jacques Paviot, ascribes to it the somewhat misleading
title Les Etats de France. Previously it has been known as Les Honneurs de la Cour.
The Burgundian traditions derived from the French protocols of precedence, although
Burgundian rituals did differ significantly and were noted by contemporaries as more
rigorous than those observed at the French court. Jacques Paviot, ‘Les Honneurs de la cour
d’Eléonore de Poitiers,’ in Geneviève Contamine and Philippe Contamine (eds), Autour
de Marguerite d’Ecosse: Reines, princesses et dames du XV siècle. Actes du colloque de
Thouars (23 et 24 mai 1997) (Paris, 1999), pp. 163–79, see p. 165.
24
Jacques Paviot, ‘Les Honneurs de la cour d’Eléonore de Poitiers,’ see pp. 163–4;
and also duplicated in his modern edition of the text, ‘Eléonore de Poitiers, Les Etats de
France (Les Honneurs de la Cour),’ Annuaire-Bulletin de la Société de l’histoire de France
(1996/1998): pp. 75–137.
25
Although we would normally use surnames for female historical figures, just as for
men, in some cases we use first names, as here, to avoid confusion with a location of the
same name, such as Poitiers.
 Writing Elite Women into the Burgundian and Habsburg Netherlands 25

the latter married Philip the Fair, son of Maximilian of Austria and Mary of
Burgundy, in October 1496.
Eleanor opens her text by explaining that it will document, from her observations
at the court of Burgundy, ‘the honours which must be done and undertaken in the
court of princes, each according to his estate, without increasing, exceeding or
diminishing them.’26 Both memoirs and conduct texts for women proliferated in the
late medieval period, although few texts in either genre were composed by female
authors. Eleanor’s work is not an historical text in the interpretive and analytical
style of Georges Chastellain nor the reflective style of Olivier de La Marche in his
memoirs of ducal court life intended to inform Philip the Fair.27 Nor is her work
a courtesy book of moral and social precepts for women at court, drawing on
biblical, historical, and fictional exempla as did earlier Francophone composers of
female conduct texts such as Geoffroy de La Tour Landry, Le Mesnagier de Paris,
and Christine de Pizan.28 Eleanor’s text, we suggest, is rather an innovative hybrid
composition: an eye-witness historical account of court life designed to provide
real-life examples and instruction on ceremonial ritual.
The importance of lavish spectacles and elaborate court ritual to the maintenance
of prestige and rank in the Burgundian Empire has been widely noted by historians,
and few would contest the ability of such activities to carry significant political
meanings.29 Certainly fifteenth-century contemporaries stressed the importance
of correct observation of court protocol, and saw such matters as essential to

26
‘des HONNEURS qui se doivent faire et entretenir es cour des princes, chacun
selon son estat, sans les croistre, exceder, ne diminuer,’ Eleanor de Poitiers, ‘Les Etats de
France (Les Honneurs de la Cour),’ ed. Paviot, p. 84.
27
Georges Chatellain, Oeuvres, ed. J.C. Kervyn de Lettenhove (8 vols, Brussels,
1863–66); Olivier de La Marche, Mémoires sur la maison de Bourgogne, ed. J.A.C. Buchon
(Paris, 1836). On Chastellain’s role as official chronicler to the Burgundian dukes, see
Graeme Small, Georges Chastelain and the Shaping of Valois Burgundy: Political and
historical culture at court in the fifteenth century (Woodbridge, 1997). See also for the
moral aspects of Chastellain’s work, Hélène Wolff, ‘Histoire et pédagogie princière au
XVe siècle: Georges Chastelain,’ in Louis Terreaux (ed.), Culture et pouvoir au temps de
l’Humanisme et de la Renaissance (Geneva, 1978), pp. 37–49.
28
Geoffroy de La Tour Landry, Livre du Chevalier de la Tour Landry pour
l’enseignement de ses filles (1370s), translated as The Book of the Knight of the Tower, ed.
M.Y. Offord, trans. William Caxton (Oxford, 1971); Le Mesnagier de Paris (1390s), ed.
Georgina E. Brereton and Janet M. Ferrier, trans. and notes Karin Ueltschi (Paris, 1994);
and Christine de Pizan’s Le Livre des Trois Vertus (1405), translated as The Treasure of the
City of Ladies, trans. Sarah Lawson (London, 1985). See Kathleen Ashley and Robert L.A.
Clark, ‘Medieval Conduct: Texts, theories, practices,’ in Kathleen Ashley and Robert L.A.
Clark (eds), Medieval Conduct (Minneapolis, 2001), pp. ix–xx; see pp. x–xi.
29
Prevenier and Blockmans, ‘Propaganda and the Legitimation of Power’; Bryant,
‘Making History’; Blockmans and Donckers, ‘Self-Representation of Court and City in
Flanders and Brabant,’ p. 110; and Strom-Olsen, ‘Dynastic Ritual and Politics in Early
Modern Burgundy.’
Exploring the Variety of Random
Documents with Different Content
 äBotleiungcn ü6cr 1. ÜJJofc flo)). 22, IG"— 19. 265 camus
altaria, sacella, templa, ciirrimus Romain, ad S. lacobum.' Interim
iiegligimus Captismum, Eiicliaristiam, Absolutionem et vocationem. Et
Papa hoc unuiu egit, ut tolleret locum fixum, seu tabcrnaculum, hoc
est, ministerium verbi. Ipse non curat, nee exereet verbum et sacrab
menta, sed tollit et borribiliter vcxat popuhim, indulgentiis replet
totum orbem, ubicunque loca et anguli electitü, ibi distribuit
indulgentius, ut confirmet errores et Idolomaniam. Econtra Deus
revocat nos ad locum, ubi est memoria nominis oius, ad
taberiiaculum nostrum, quod est ministerium verbi : ubi sonat
verbum, 10 et porriguntur Sacramcnta secundiim institutioneni
Christi, id verum Dei tabernaculum est. Si Papa pro se haberet
tantum testimoniuni, quod Deus secum locutus fuisset Romae,
quemadmodum cum Abraha in monte Morüa, quis posset ei
resistere? Nimc proprio ausu, sine verbo, sub Petri nomine tantas
ido16 latrias eonfirmat, et suis impudentissimis mendaciis totum
terrarum orbem replet, ut opes mundi ad se rapiat. Memorabile
itaque exemplum Abrahae est, qui habuit iustissimas causas aliquid
hoc loco instituendi: vocatus est ex Beerseba in montem Morüa
autoritate divina, praestitit sacrificium maximum et admirabile, quia
20 paratus fuit proprium filium immolare, et audivit verbum Dei de
coelo in timore et fidc: tarnen nihil tentat, non convocat populos ad
celebrandum aut colendum hunc locum. Moses hoc singulariter
descripsit nobis in exemplum et doctrinam, ut nihil tentemus, aut
audeamus in rebus divinis. In aliis rebus sive 25 politicib, sive
oeconomicis abunde est, ubi te exerceas, et facias offitium audenter
secundum verbum Dei. Sic contra Turcas iuberis esse audax, fortis et
confidens. Sed in religione prohibita est prorsus omnis audacia et
temeritas, omnia studia et electiones propriae, sicut passim ab
omnibus Prophetis taxantiir. 30 Abraham nihil addit ad religionem
ultra vocationem: quanquam hie locus sanetissimus esset, et
sanctissimae personae, Angeli, Abraham, Isaac ibi constitissent et
morati essent, tarnen avertit sese ab his omnibus, et abit. Cogitavit
enim: quod debui, feci, sacrificavi filium, sicut iussus sum: Non
autem mandat Deus, ut hie cultum instituam. Nihil igitur audebo, 35
atque ita ab omni temeritate et audacia abstinet, manet in timore
DOMINI, et expectat eius vocationem paratus obedire et sequi,
quocunque eum vocaret Deus. Doctrina igitur huius loci est, In
religione ante omnia quaerendum esse, quis iussit? Seneca ait. Non
quis, sed quid dicatur, attende. Id 40 praeceptum in oeconomia et
politia locum habet. In Ecclesia vero et religione invertendum est, et
quaerendum non Quid? sed Quis? In homine ') S. oben S. 229 Anm.
1.
 266 SDotlcfimgen ü6et 1. 9J?ofe bon 1535—45. est aliqua
sapientia ex luraine rationis divinitiis iiisito. Sed qiiia hominis
proprium est errarc et falli, ideo, quid dicatur. attendendum est, non
quis dicat, non innitendum personae. Sed in Ecclesia consideretur
Quis, Qualis, Quantus sit, qui iubet: id si non fit, Diabolus facilimo
immutat Quis, Qualis, Quantus, in Quid, Quäle, 5 Quantum. Achas
cogitat de insigni culhi Dco praestando, immolat filium exemplo
Abrahae. Sed peceat graviter. Nam Quis, hoc est, Dens non iussit:
Mincha sivo vitulum offerri mandavit, hoc ipse negligit, et Quid pro
Quis arripit. lo Haec in Ecclesia saepe moncnda et diligenter agitanda
sunt, ut siraus content! doctrina semel tradita. Hanc si secuti
essemus ante haec tempora, haud unquam cocnobia,
peregrinationes, indulgentias, sacrificia pro defunctis amplexi
essemus. Quilibet pastor in sua Parocbia doeuisset verbum Dei, et
Ecclesia acquievisset Yerbo, Baptismo, Caena Domini, Absolutione,
Con- u solationibus in morte et vita. Singuli deinde fecissent suum
offitium in functionibus civilibus et oeconomicis, sive servi essent,
sive domini, Magistratus seu subditus. Ista portenta Papisticarum
abominationum nunquam irrepsissent in Ecclesiam. Sic enira
Abraham se gerit, relicta religione, Angelis, conspectu Dei 20 in
monte Moriia, quo tum nuUus sanctior in toto erbe fuit. Sonuit enim
ibi vox et promissio divina: omnibus illis tergum vertit: tanti fecit
vocationem et ministerium verbi: Cum Deus nihil iubeat, nihil tentat,
sed revertitur ad operas oeconomicas, gubernat familiam, uxorem,
servos: ubi plane nihil spirituale aut ecclesiasticum apparet. ea enim
relinquit in 25 monte Moria, nee moratur eum Angelorum apparitio,
sed redit ad pucros et asinum. Haec si audiret religiosus aliquis
Heremita aut Monachus, detestaretur Abrahamum. Num enim is
sanctus Patriarcha est, qui relinquit locum tam sacrum, ubi Deus
habitat cum Angelis: et vadit ad asinum, 30 exercet opcra
oeronomica, popularia, sordida et stabularia? Qualis haec est
sanctitas? Mirum enim est, quantus sit apud istos contemptus
horum: et id unum religionem et sanctitatem ducunt, deserto
mundo, hoc est, patre, matre et civilibus offitüs secedere in angulum
desertum. Hieronymus alicubi tantopero praedicat hanc
sanctimoniam, ut dicat 35 matrcm et patrom occurrenteni monacho
ingressuro monasterium, et cupientem eum rctrahere, reiiciendum et
proculcandum esse. Impia haec et detestanda vox est. Quin te,
Hieronime, conculcamus, cum tua Bethlehem, cucullo et deserto.
Quia niiuisterio vorbi divini vocor, non in Bethlehem, sed in
parochiam ad Ecclesiam, ad audicmhun verbum Dei, 40 9 Mincha]
nnSB
 SDottefiiiiflcii ühtx 1. Tlo]e üap. 22, 19. 267 ibi liabitat
Deus, ibi sunt custodes Angeli, ibi audio honore esse afficiendos
pavcntes, servienduiii vocationi pie ei fidelitor. Si Dens alio ine
collocarc volet, vocabit me, sine vocatione, sequatur te et alios
Diabolus. Honorabo igitiir, non conciilcabo parentes propter verbuin
et mafi5 datum Dei. Si auteiii a Eaptismo, fide et obedientia Dei
dcficio, quod omnes Monachi fecerunt, quae potest esse sanctitas
aut cultus Dei? 'Proptev ME, inquit Christus, et propter NOMEN
MEÜM relinquctis wart. lo, 29 fratres, sorores, patrem, matrem,
uxorem, fiiios, agros': non vestro arbitrio aut electione deseretis
parentes, cum raaxime opera et ope vestra opus '0 habuerint. Similis
impietas apud ludaeos quoque invaluerat, quam taxat Christus.
Matth[aei 15. Cum sacrificium longo sanctius esse docerent, Woito.
15,5 quam obedientiam erga parentes: Corhan, hoc est, donum et
sacrificium plus tibi proderit, quam honor: atque ita tollebant specie
sanctitatis et religionis parentum statum et dignitatem, ad suam
avaritiam ex15 plendam. Haec doctrina ut multis hactenus agitata et
diligcnter explicata est: ita assiduo est repetenda propter
adolescentes et teneram aetatem, quae est seminarium Ecclesiae, ut
discant, ibi persistendum et manendum esse, ubi DEUS loquitm-, gt
ad ea officia adsuescant, quae sunt mandata divido nitus: nisi alio
vocentur, aut expellantur, ut quando Tyranni proscribunt, et eüciunt
suis functionibus pios. Spontanea electio et voluntaria iu religione
arridet quidem carni, et rationi est admodum plausibilis. Sed si
sequeris, perinde facis ac illi, qui relicto tabernaculo ad arbores et
lucos currebant. Id diabolicum est, non 25 divinum. Et Paulus etiam
damnat electitias religiones, ubi non adest verbum vocans, sed
tantum volimtas eligens et instituens. Moses igitur diligenter hoc
annotavit, quod non voluit Abraham manere in loco isto sacro, cum
peregisset sacrificium. Sed reversus est ad Laicas operas et sordidas,
et ad suos cultus liberos adhuc, nondum ulli loco alli30 gatos. Adhuc
enim vagabatur, non habebat cultum fixum: sed iubente Deo
quandoque oS'erebat. Redit igitur ad pueros sive servos et asinum:
atque ibi haud dubie instructo convivio cum servis et filio epulatus
est. Sacrificium enim convivium lautum et hilare adiunctum habet,
tanquam suum substantiale. 35 Sicut in lege, quando ofFerebantur
pecudes, adeps incendebatur, armus et pectusculum dabatur
sacerdoti. Reliqua caro erat offerentium, si non erat holocaustum.
Sedebant igitur coram Domino, et laeti epulabantiu", et gratias
agebant Deo. Fuit et gentibus usitatum, ut in sacrificüs epularentur,
et nos ex isto 40 ritu gentili diebus festis splendidius vivimus et
vestimus. Sic Abraham 12 Corban] -jai^
 268 SSotlcfititgcn über 1. OTofc tion 1535—45. qiioque
sedit in radicibus niontis apud asiniim, et cum scrvis et filio
convivatus est. Mira vero res est, quod post tantam tentationem de
immolando filio statim potuit sese colligere, et sereno aniino esse.
Apparet fuisse eis hoc in more, etiaiusi nondiim esset praeceptuiu in
lege, sicut postea a Mose .^ ordinatae sunt epulae post sacrificia.
Recepto igitur filio et mactato ariete uterque, parens et filius, ex
animo laetantur, et haud dubie totam rem magno gaudio servis
commemorarunt, et Deum gratis animis praedicaverunt. Post liaec
redierunt Beerseba ad Saram, undo egressi fuerant relicto
sanctissimo loco, sacrificio, Angelis et conspectu Dei. *" 22,2o-24Et
factum est, postquam haec gesta sunt, ut nunciaretur Abraliae a
dicente: Ecce, peperit et ipsa !Milca filios fratri tuo Nahor. Nempe UZ,
primogenitum suum, et Buz, fratrem eius, atque Kemuel, patrem
Syrorum. Sed et Chaesed, et Hazo, et Pildas, lidlapli atque Betuel.
Betuel vero genuit Rebeccam: octo istos i* genuit Milca Naher, frater
Abraham. Sed et concubina eius, nomine Rehuma, genuit quoque
Tabah et Gaham, Tahas et Maacha. Vicinae regiones sunt Syria et
Canaan. Sed Abraham ignoravit hactenua, quid fieret apud fratrem
Nachor, qui in Haran cum uxore sua man- so serat. Scribit igitur
3Ioses nunciatum ei esse de familia et sobole fratris: quod genuisset
ex Müca octo filios, et ex concubina quatuor, sunt duodecim
personae praeter Rebeccam. Meminit autem huius genealogiae
scriptui-a sancta. Primum , quia facit Nahor propemodum patrem
Patriarchae lacob recto numero et per- 25 fecto in prole masculina et
foeminina. Filios enim genuit duodecim et filiam unam,
quemadmodum et lacob. Deinde propter Rebeccam et sponsalia cum
Isaac aliquanto post contracta. Porro hie locus superiorem
quaestionem explicat capite undecimo, et ostendit. Nahor esse
maiorem natu fratre Abraha, quia tarn numero- 30 sam sobolem
habuit, quae hie recensetur. Item Bathuel habet filiam Rebeccam,
neptcm Nachor, quando Abraham octuaginta annos habet. Igitur
coniectura hinc sumitur Abraham non esse primogenitum. Apud
Hebraeos quidem habetur pro primogenito. Aran pro secundo. Nahor
pro tertio genito. Sed si hoc ita est, quoniodo Milca et Sara, fiiiae 35
Aran, potuerunt nuberc duobus fratribus: Nahor et Abrahae?
Soquitur enim Aran anno octavo aetatis duxissc nxorem, et gcnuissc
Saram, quod est absurdum prorsus. llanc ludaeorum opinionem
solus lyra iniiuignat, et concludit Abraham ultimo genitum esse, et
60. aniiis minorem fratre, idque probabilibus coniecturis et
argumentis probat, quae supra recen- « Buimus.
 Süotlcfungcii ühn 1. 9Jlo[e flnp. 22, 19—24. 269 Secl
Stephanus in actis magis mo movet, qiii ait Abraham esse «ipa. 7,4
egressum post mortem patris: inde seqiiitur, annos sexaginta
addendos esse ad aetatem Abraliac, qua egreditur, si historiam
inspicias, et annos Thare patris numeres. Sod si numeres ab anno
septuagesimo Abrahae, 5 sicut in Omnibus supputationibus vulgo fit,
intercidunt sexaginta anni, ut supra quoque monuimus. Sicut et in
libris Regum viginti anni desiderantur. Ita fere centura annos
amittimus. Yidetur autem singulari consilio scriptura sancta hos
annos abscondisse propter diem extremum, cuius horam aut annum
Deus ineognitum 10 esse voluit. Fieri enira potest, ut praevortat
cogitationes aut expectationem piorura annis 100, 160, aut amplius.
Altera quaestio de Sara sivc lisca et Milca supra tractata est. Fuerunt
tres fratrcs, Haran primogenitus, qui moritur in UR Chaldaeorum, et
relinquit duas filias: Milcam et liscam, quas Thare recipit in fideni et
15 tutelam suam. Medius frater est Naher. Tertius Abraham. "• Hi
duo duxerunt duas sorores, neptes sive filias fratris sui Haran, quia
tunc temporis eiusmodi nuptiae adhuc fuerunt liberae. Caeterum
inter illos duodeeim patres dicit Moses Kemuel esse pati-em
Syrorum. Sed hoc nomen prorsus exolevit et periit, neque ulla alia
eins 20 mcntio fit in sacris literis. UZ nomen habet a ligno, vel ab
arbore: faciunt vero et hunc patrem Syrorum, et hoc nomine
appellatur terra UZ, in qua Hiob natus est, ut^i'i't'i.i S. Hieronymus
dicit. Multi adfirmant Hiob ex stirpe et posteritate Esau fuisse, in qua
opinione et ego aliquando fui. Sed mutavi sententiam, et 25 magis
credo eum ex Mesopotamia in Syria oriundum esse. Inde enim
recitatur in historia eius vicinos Chaldaeos depopulatos agros
diripuisse domum, et abegisse pecora Hiob. Existimo igitur fuisse
Hiob potentem et opulentum dominum, qui aliquam partem
Mesopotamiae occupavit, vieinam Chaldaeis et Babiloniis. 30 JBhs
etiam princeps aliquis fuit, et tenuit patrem Mesopotamiae. Hinc
Elihu Buzites dicitur, filius Baracheel, qui tarn odiose disputat
adversus afflictum Hiob, et multis convitiis eum onerat. Apparet
igitur Nahor habuisse Ecclesiam satis magnam et celebrem, in qua
fuerunt multi magni viri, quales non habuit Abraham in sua Ecclesia.
35 Hieronymus autem scribit doctissimos scripturarum adfirmare,
hunc Elihu esse Bileam. Numeri 23., qui fuit insignis Propheta et
Doctor in Mesopotamia, qui revelata eloquia Dei, sicut ipse se iactat,
et multae illustres Prophetiae creditae sunt a Deo. Quando igitur
dicit: 'rex Moab 4. aKoje 23, 7 vocavit me Bileam de Haran', id est,
de Syria, significat se ex aliqua 40 parte vocatum, ubi hi patres
habitaverunt, qui hie recensentur, et apparet sane fuisse praestantes
viros, et tenuisse regnum aut Imperium florens et bene constitutum.
 270 SSotlefungcn übet 1. 531ofe uoit 1535—45. 2.qjctci2,i5
Moses scribit: Bileam fuisse filium Beor, quem Petrus Böser appellat',
et liabitasse super flumen filiorum Ammon, hoc est, super fluvium
Tigrim vel Eupbraten. Fuit magnus Vir, sed horribiliter lapsus est, ut
testatur eius historia. Habuit maximas Prophetias simiies Danielis
vaticiniis de Alexandre magno, b de Romano imperio vastaturo
regnum Israel et luda. Hunc igitur Bileam ortum esse dicunt a Buz,
filio Nachor, et attigit tempora Mose, qui duo fuerunt summi
Prophetae illius aetatis. Bileam ex Mesopotamia accersitus est contra
Mosen, qui venit ex Aegypto : et Bileam revera habuit verbum Dei,
et benedixit Israel. lo Caput vigesimum tertiuin. Caput xxm. 2S,
i.aPorro vita Sarae fuit centum annorum et viginti annorum atque
Septem annorum: Hi anni vitae Sarae. Et mortua est Sara in Kiriat
Arba, ipsa est Hebron in terra Chanaan. Ycnitquc is Abraham, ut
plangeret Saram, et fleret eam. ♦ Primum ne videamur ignorare, aut
non legisse ludaeorum cogitationes, Paucis eas recensebimus.
Comminiscuntur enim hoc loco mysteria annorum aetatis Sarae: quia
Moses non simpliciter dicit centum viginti septem annos, .sicut
usitate loquimur: sed singulis numeris singulos annos addit: Centum
20 anni, viginti anni, septem anni. Hoc ideo fieri dicunt, ut
significetur Saram tarn fuisse formosam anno centesimo, quam fuit
vigesimo: ac non minus pudicam et castam fuisse vigesimo anno,
quam fucrat anno septiino. Cüiicedamus sane illi- haec figmenta,
pietatis adfectu excogitata, ut commendetur insignis pudicitia et
forma honesta sanctissimae Patriarchae, 25 et talibus laudibus
dignissimac. Id enim et nos solemus post mortem amicorum et
projjinquorum, laudes et virtutes eorum rccitamus, vitia tegimus, et
quae digna sunt commendatione, proferimus, ut hac ratione luctum
et desidcrium nostrum leniamus. Sed ridiculuni fucrit, si velis liinc
generalem regulam aut Canonem 30 facere, et accomodarc ad
omnes annorum numeros. Sicut supra cum Patriarcharum anni
numerantur, si similis collatio unnorum vitae in singulis instituerctur,
absurdum plane foret. Miror autem eos hoc non perpendisse potius,
cur Moses dicat in plurali numero: vitae Sarae, quasi dicat. Sara
habuit vitas, illa utilior :i5 esset consideratio. De annis vitarum
Sarae. ') Vgl. Unsre Aitsg. Bibel 3, 307; neue Glosse (Jö4l) zu 4.
Mose 2>, 5.
 SBotlcfungcn über 1. ÜJioie Stap. 22, 20—24; 23, 1. 2. 271
Significatiu- enim ingens et infinita diversitas mutationum, casuum,
periculorum, et diversissima genera vitae, quae Sara vidit et tulit.
Nata est et nupsit in Babilone, mox educta cum marito haljitavit in
Haran, postea in terra Chanaan: ibi peregrinatus est Abraham:
tandem in Aegyp5 tum et Gerar vcnit. Has mutationes et migrationes
molestissimas sanctissima mater magno animo pertulit, et in omnem
eventum omnium malorum fuit tolerantissima. Ac talis revera vita
humana in Universum est, ut recte vitae possint dici propter
mirabilem omnium rerum vicissitudinem. Toties enim morimui", 10
quoties nova tontatio oritur, et vicissim vivificamur, quando erigimur
et consolationem accipimus. Vide, quaeso, quanta varietas et
differentia est in singulorum vita, prima aetas est pueri septennis, ea
exacta succedit aliud septennium. Sicut id Philosophi et Medici
quoque monent, quando disputant de annis 15 climactericis, quibus
contingunt insignes mutationes. Et Paulus de se dicit .2. [sic!j
C'or^inthiorum 13.: 'Cum essem parvulus, loquebar ut parvulus, t-
9or. is, n sapiebam ut parvulus, cogitabam ut parvulus. Quando
autem factus sum vir, abolevi ea, quae erant parvuli.' Tales
mutationes sunt vitarum humani generis. Ideo tota illa successio
aetatum in singulis hominibus merito 20 vitae vocantur, quia quolibet
septennio mutamur in alium habitum, adfectum, sensum. Summa,
morimur et vivificamur. Tertio septenario subeunt cogitadones de
coniugio, cum fueris coniunx, succedunt curae domesticae aut
Reipublicae, quando legeris in senatum, adhiberis ad deliberationes
et consilia principum, ibi novos mores 25 et novam cutem induas
oportet. Plurimae enim ferendae erunt molestiae, onera, dlfficultatcs,
odia vicinorum et sociorum. Saepe eriam dignitatis et existimationis
dimiuutio. Hae tarn variae innovationes et mutationes faciunt varias
vitas. Id Moses significare voluit, quando dicit vätae Sarae, quasi
diceret, 30 saepe pro diversitate locorum et liominum, aninium et
mores diversos induit Sara: ubi venit in aliquem locum, quo putavit
se suaviter et tranquille victuram, coacta est mutare locum, et cum
loco consilia et adfectus. Ideo illa sancta mulier multas habuit vitas.
Haec digniora fuissent observatione. Quanquam facile crediderim
centesimo anno eam aeque formosam 35 fuisse, ac vigesimo anno
fuit. Deinde multo magis illud considerandum est, quomodo
Abraham pulchram orationem funebrem fecerit de Sara. K^ulla enim
alia matrona tam celebris est in sacris Uteris: describuntur anni,
vitae, mores eins et sepulchrum. Ideo Sara fuit unica illa gemma in
oculis Dei unice dilecta: 40 et merito inducitur a Petro exemplar
omnium sanctarum muUerum, quae i. 'jetri a, 6 appellavit, inquit,
Abraham Dominum, eins filiae factae estis vos', proponit eam
tanquam matrem omnibus matronis Christianis.
 272 Sotlefungen übet 1. Tlo]e üoii 1535—45. Äliarum
Patriarcharuni ne mortem quidem annotavit scriptura: ut de Eua nihil
meminit, quot annia vixerit, ubi mortua sit. Rachel scribitur laboribus
partus extincta esse. Reliquas omnes praeterit et involvit silentio,
adeo ut nee Mariae, matris Christi, mortem cognitam habeamus.
Sola Sara hanc gloriam habet, quod annorum numerus certus,
tempus mortis et locus 5 sepulchri describitur. Magna igitur laus est,
et certissimum argumentum fuisse eam preciosam in oculis Dei.
Pertinent autem haec non tarn ad Saram, quae iam defuncta est,
quam ad nos, qui sumus adhuc superstites. Maxima enim consolatio
est audire exituni et mortem istius sanctissimae Patriarchae et
omnium 10 patrum, quorum collatione nos nihil sumus, nihil difFerre
a nostra morte. Sed aeque deformem et ignominiosam fuisse, ac
nostra est. Corpora eorum sunt sepulta, corrosa a vermibus, defossa
in terram propter foetorem, non aliter ac si non fuissent sanctorum
exuviae, cum tamen fuerint sanctissimi homines, et quamvis
defuncti, tamen vere in Christo vivunt. is Propter nos igitur haec
scribuntur, ut sciamus sanctissimos patres et matres eadem passos,
quae nos pati solemus, de quibus tamen certum est, quod in oculis
Dei vivant, et quos ego credo resurrexisse cum Christo, Abraham,
Isaac, lacob, Adam etc. Atque haec videtur fuisse causa Abrahame,
cur tantopere laboraverit 20 de sepultura, ne mortua sua Sara
sepeliretur in aliena terra. Sicut idem de Isaac postea audiemus,
lacob item et loseph noluerunt in aegypto sepeliri, sed in terra
Chanaan. Haec cupiditas argumento est indidisse eis Deum hunc
animum, ut cuperent et vellent sepeliri in hac terra sibi promissa,
certa spe, resusci- 25 tandos se esse cum Christo. Ideo ibi locum
sepulchri esse voluerunt, ut non procul a venture semine
quiescerent. Hebron enim distat duobus aut tribus milliaribus ab
Hierosolyma. Igitur haud dubie cum Christo resurrexcrunt nobis in
consolationem, ne timeamus mortem, quando videmus illam
horribilcm figuram corporum nostrorum post mortem. 30 i.si)efi.4,i8
Hi, qui nullam spem habent resurrectionis futarae .1.
Thess|alonicensium 4., niliil curant, nee cogitant de futura vita. Nobis
vero haec scrij)ta sunt, ut recordomur, quomodo ab initio mundi
omnes sancti extincti sint, et redacti in eosdem foetores et cineros,
sicut 1. Cor^inthiorum 15. Paulus i.fiot. 15,43 ait: 'Seminatur in
ignominia', eandem corruptionem et ignominiam passi 35 sunt, non
obstante eo, quod fuerunt sancti carne et spiritu. Sic enim visum est
Deo ex vermibus, ex putredino, ex terra corruj)tissima et plena
foetoris excitar« corpus pulcherrimum supra omncin Horem.
balsamum, solem ipsum et Stellas. Haec ideo nioneo, ut adticiant
nos oxempla istorum sanctorum. Nam 40 qui infirmi fide sunt, magia
moventur, et dulcius quasi trahuntur ad consolationem hisce
exemplia inferioribus, (luam oxcmplo Ciiristi. (Juia enim
 fflorleiuiigcit über 1. Diofc Stap. 23, 1. 2. 273 Abraham,
Isaac, lacob, Sara sie inoriuiitur, cogitat pius aiiinms, quamvis
infirmus adhuc. Cur ego recuseni, aut abhorream a communi
omnium saiictorum sorte? Tnfirmis enim incurrit in oculos non tarn
imbocillitas prnpria, quam 5 horribiiis ilia species cadaverum. Ideo
cogitant: Si haberem talc corpus, quäle Christus habuit, quod mors
non potuit corrumpere, nee vermcs arrodere, maiore animo
summum diem expectarem. Mors Christi quando in exemplum
proponitui", videtur quodammodo non esse mors, quia tertia die
resurrexit. Magis igitur adficiuntur et eonfirmantur infirmi, quando
vident 10 corruptionem corporum Patriarcharum similem esse
nostrae corruptioni. Sed qni sunt fortiores in fido, contemnunt
simpliciter mortem, et ei süperbe ilhidunt et insultant. Quid est
mors? inquiunt, quid infernus? Christus, filius Dei, mortuus est, et
sub legem factus, is moriendo mortem devicit, et vitam nobis
restituit. 15 Si sie firmi essemus, et indubitanter eredere possemus
Christum pro nostris peccatis esse mortuum, et resurrexiase ad
nostram iustitiam et vitam, nihil terroris aut pavuris in nobis
haereret. Est enim mors Christi Sacramentum quoddam certificans
nos, mortem nostram nihil esse. Sed infirmi magis exemplis
moventm', quam Sacramento. Magnitudo enim personae 20 Christi
faeit, ut non tarn facile penetret animos, et persuadeat contemptum
mortis. Haeremus igitur in similitudine exemplorum, sicut ipse ego
aliquando plus delector exemplo Sarae, quam Christi. Causa est
infirmitas fidei: Dulcius arridet et magis consolatur me mors Sarae,
cum sciam fuisse 25 sanctiss'mam foeminam, et tamen audio tarn
turpiter mori, sepeliri, oblivioni tradi, tanquam raptam a conspectu
non tantum hominum, sed et Dei et Angelorura. Id si ipsi contigit,
non movebor, etsi mihi idem accidat. Sed quibus plus roboris animi
et fidei est, amplectuntur Sacramentum, 30 et quia eredunt pro se
filium Dei esse mortuum, insultant morti, et ludibrio habent Satanam
et infernum .1. CorLinthiorum 5. [!]: 'Mors, ubi sti- 1. Hot. is, 55
mulus tuus?' ColLOssensium 2.: 'expolians principatus et potestates
ti'aduxit soi. 2, 15 confidenter, palam triumphans de illis in
semetipsc' Ibi Paulus admodum ridicule et contemptim de morte
loquitur. 35 Quia Christus illi non solum est exemplum, sed etiam
Sacramentum, quod plenius et multo sublimius est exemplo.
Quicquid enim deest in exemplo, multipliciter et in infinitum supplet
sacramentum. Sara non est pro me niortua, nee potest mihi vitam
conferre. Haec autem maiestas et pondus est Sacramenti, quod
habet vim vivificativam, quae mihi redditura 40 est vitam in
resurrectione mortuorum. 33 delector /. K. Erl.] dilectur C. H.
2ut^et§ SQScrte. XUII 18
 274 SBotlcfungcn übet 1. 3Kofc bon 1535—45. Sarae
exeraplum est quasi Rhetorica trabens, alliciens et suadens
contemptum mortis. Sacramentum vero id facit et operatur in meo
corpore, quod in Abrahamo et multis sanctis resuscitatis factum est.
IJeo exemphx non sunt reiicienda: quia suaviter rhetoricantur. Sed
Cbristi exemplum, quia simul est sacramentum, est in nobis efficax,
non ' tantum docet sicut patrum exempbx. Sed efficit id, quod docet,
dat vitam et resurrectiouem et liberationem a morte. Sanctorum
exempla docent moriendum esse, et persuadent, ut mortem aequo
animo feramus. Christi autem exemplum ultra boc dicit: Surge, sis
vivus in morte, putredo tua fiet clarior et speciosior sole. Quia est
Sacra- lo mentum, quod testatur et certos nos facit, non tantum
docet aut suadet, sed necessario probat et concludit Christi mortem
nobis largiri vitam. Qui sunt igitur infirmi, et habent pavidas
conscientias, rccte faciunt, quando proponunt sibi exempla
sanctorum, quibus alant, et paulatim magis ac magis fidem
exuscitent. Deinde vero meminerint et hoc, quod in i5 exemplo
Christi deest, quo ad corporalem ignominiam. non enim ignominiose
corruptus et corrosus est, id abundo pensatum et impletum esse in
cruce et in horto, si quis vidisset horribiles illas angustias et poenas
spiritus et animae, quas sensit in horto, dixisset: O quam gloriosa
inors fuit Abrahae et Sarae prae illa cruce Christi. Quod igitur defuit
in corpore, -m impletum est in spiritu. De loci appellatione variae
sunt disputationes, Abrahae enim tempore i.fflioicis, inondum dictus
est Hebron, Sed Kiriath Arbe.^ Supra .18. Yallis Mamre vocatur, cur
id hat, gramnuitici certant. et adhuc sub iudice lis est. Noster
interpres vertit, in civitate Arbeae, ut sit nomen proprium Arbea.
Sicut 25 • nos germanice quaedam oppida vocamus Halberstad,
Carlstad. Si Etymologium spccte-, Kiriatli Arbo idem est, quod civitas
quatuor sive tetrapolis.- Hanc sequitur Hieronymus et appellationis
hanc causam assignat, quod sint ibi sepnlti quatuor Patriarchae cum
uxoribus suis. Adam, Abraham, Isaac et lacob. De tribus
posterioribus quidem non est ss dubium: Sed de Adam et Eua nemo
facile probaverit. ^'''' '*2o?7 ^-"^ losua autem colligere licet Hebron
ante vocatam esse Cariatli Arbe, et civitati nomen inditum esse a
principe quodam Arba, ([ui fuit magnus inter Enakin, id est, inter
illos gigantos. Fuit vir praestans sive virtute et sapicntia, sive viciis
infamis, aut quacunque de causa magnus 35 et celebris. Sic nobis
Carlstad vocatur a Carolo, qui fuit magnus inter Reges. Halberstad a
quodam Alberto, qui praestantissimus fuit nobilium. Nomen autem
habuit Arlia a numero, sicut liatiui Quiiitium, Octaviuin, Noniuin
dicimt. *o •) Vulg.: mortua est in civitate Arbee, quae est Hebron. ■)
Vyl. Uiisre Ausg. Bibel 3, ISO, 35.
 Sotlefimgen übet 1. 5Kofc Aap. 23, 1. 2. 275 Non igitur
probo illam opiiiioiicm Hieronymi, quod eo loco conditum esse ait
Adamum. Qiiia per diluvium totius orhis taiita dissipatio et confusio
facta est, ut priorum monumeutoruni nulla extiterint vcstigia. Sicut
totus mundus incomparabiliter deterior est factus priore illo, tum in
fruc,-. tibus, tum in hominibus. Paradisus laceratus et vastatus est,
neque quisquam novit, ubi Adam aut Eua, aut alii patres sint sepulti.
Ideo nee sepulclira, nee vestigia eorum ulla apparuerunt.
Comminiseuntur et aliam fabellam, dicunt Adam sepultum esse in
monto Calvariae, ubi postea Christus crucifixus est; quo volunt
significare 10 Christum mortuum in sepulchro Adae, vel ubi stetit
arbor scientiue. Pia figmenta sunt, sed mihi verisimile videtur locum
paradisi fuisse circa Hierosolimam. Mira vero res est et observatu
digna propter varias migrationes, quarum toties meminimus, quod
Moses dicit Saram mortuam in Hebron, ir, cum pauIo ante narravorit
habitasse Abraham, Saram et Isaac in Gerar, tutos benevolentia et
defensione Regis Abimelech. Cum nasceretur Isaac, fuit Sara
nonagenaria, hoc autem tempore Isaac est .37. annorum, cum
quibus simul et animi et corporis vires accrevisse necesse est. 20.
annos habuit, cum esset immolandus, ab co tempore 20 reliqui fuere
17. anni ad mortem matris Sarae. Interim mortims est Abimelech, et
successit alius, ut fit, dissimilis priori. Mutato autem rege, populi
etiam animus mutatus est, et cum in aula, tum in populo recruduit
odium et invidia erga Abraham, quem viderant hactenus crescere, et
magnas opes acquirere. Itaque iniustis odiis et iniuriis exagitatus et
pulsus 25 cessit, rediitque in vetus hospitium Hebron, alioqui nullam
causam migrandi habuisset. Abest autem forte Abraham peregre eo
ipso tempore, quo moritur Sara, occupatus negotiis domesticis,
vendendis fundis et possessionibus, quas tenuerat in Gerar, aut
similibus. Deus id ei non revelat, nee domi detinet, 30 sed sinit, ut
exspacietur. Misit autem haud dubie Sara nuncium, dum
decumberet, qui maritum revocaret, sed mors ipsam occupat,
antequam redeat. Cum igitur revertitur in Hebron, invenit domi
coniugem mortuam. Ista propter nos scribuntur, si quando eadem et
nobis accidant, ne quid inusitatum aut novum evenire cogitemus
prae illis sanctissimis et Deo 35 carissimis hominibus. Plena enim
luctus et doloris res est amittere suavissimam coniugem, et quidem
te absente. Venit autem, ut Moses inquit, ad plangondum Saram:
Non potest eam revocare in vitam, nee vocat eam amplius uxorem
suam, ut sequitur, sed mortuum simm, quod admodum patheticum
est. Obversata est haud 40 dubie oculis et animo ipsius virtus,
pietas. consuetudo totius vitae, mores placidi et suaves, ingenium
mite, reverens et amans mariti, quae omnia insignia in eo fuisse
toties dictum est. 18*
 27G SBorlefungen Hin 1. iKofe tion 1535—45. Sed quid
hoc? Moses dicit venisse Abrahamum ad plangendum et flendum.
Tantusnc vir ploravit, luxit, induit vestem lugubrem, incessit tristi et
demisso vultii? ubi ille victor et tiiumphator tot exiliorum et
peregrinationum per Syriam, Aegiptum et per totam terram Canaan?
qui profligavit quatuor reges, et Loth liberavit, filium dilectissimum
obtulit, o cuius nihil simile in ulla historia extat, voluit fieri mactatur
eins fihi, qui erat spes futurae posteritatis et promissionis, atque ita
illum summum adfectum fortiter vicit et occidit. Quare ergo flef.'
Quare hie non virum se praebet? Non ahter se gerit, ac si absque illo
tanto spiritu et motibus heroieis esset, non exer- "> citatus ullis
unquam periculis aut adversitatibus. Respondeo. Probat hoc exemplo
scriptura sancta, Deo non disphcere, plangere aut flere mortuos
parentes, coniugem aut aniicos. Imo Vitium est non flere. Sicut
mundus, qui totus est leprosus, doroQyiav, quae est non nioveri
adfectu et aniore coniugis, liberorum aut propinquorum, 's appellat
fortitudinem. Sed insania est et furor, non virtus. Sancti patres
fuerunt tenerrimi homines, et natui-a puriores, ideoque oTogyäi
excellentiores habuerunt, quam alii insensati. Quo enim sanctior quis
est, et quo propius Deum cognoseit, hoc magis intelligit et adficitur
creaturis. ä" Ad luctuni autem pertinet, ut ex animo doleas et
tristeris, adeo ut tristis vultus, lachryniae, gemitus, ploratus dolorem
ostendant. Ideo clare scribit Moses et commendat in Abrahame
planctum et fletum. Ac vide quoraodo ploret lacob propter loseph.
Moti igitur sunt sancti patres humanae naturae casibus et
calamitatibus, fleverunt cum flentibus, non fuerunt sti- ^i pites et
trunci, sed habuerunt motus et adfectus tenerrimos. Qiiia habuerunt
agnitionem Dei. Qui autem cognoseit Deum, etiam creaturam novit,
intelligit et amat. Quia divinitatis vestigia sunt in creatura. Cum in
principio crearet Deus eoelum et terram, primuni vestigium patris
erat substantia rerum, postea accessit forma. Tertio bonitas. Istam
^o difterentiam in creaturis observant soll pii, impii non agnoscunt,
neque enim Deum nee creaturas norunt: multo minus usum earum.
Pertinet autem ad usum rei spiritus sanctus. Qui usum rei videt,
spiritum sanctum videt, qui formam rei sive pulchritudinem cernit,
filium videt. Qui substantiam et durationcm rerum considerat, videt
patrem. '' llaec tria non j)08sunt separari, sub.stantia, forma et
bonitas. Avarus vero tantum videt in pecunia substantiam, figuram,
pondus: non autem, »luod sit vestigiuni. filii, aniinadvcrtit, ncc usum
rei, hoc est, ad quid |)rosit, (;ogitat, niniirum ad gloriam Dei
principalitcr, deindo ad utilitatein ])roximi. Impii non cernunt
bonitatem rerum, tamelsi substaii- ^o tiam ot formam aliipio modo
asjticiunt. Sic (taroQyoi; non videt usuin coniugis aut liberorum.
 SSorrcfangen ü6cr I. 3)?ofc Stap.^S, 1-4. 277 Abraiiam
autcm intellcxit, in quem usuin data sit ipsi Sara, non ad libidinem,
sed in adiutorium regondao familiae, generationis et cducationis
liberoruni. Iinpii quia hoc non intelligunt, non adficiuntur, sed tantum
saxa sunt. Ac sane shipor et uamgyla talis signnni est leprosac
naturae. » Scribuntur ergo haec in commendationeni Abrahac. et ut
discamns landabile esse, plorare pro amicis. Sicut supra capLitc 19.
ploravit proi.2Ro|ci9,27 Sodomitis, quamvis frustra. Qiiia cum simus
homines, sentirc nos oportet inclinationem conditam a Creatore, et
inditam cordi nostro, ne simus bestiis similcs. •J Diligenter igitur
notanda est liaec descriptio patriarcharum, quos ita ob oc'ulos nobis
posuit scriphira sancta, quod sint similes nobis, moveantiir humanis
adfectibus, loquantnr sicut homines: Quia humana loquela adfectus,
cor et anima sunt creaturae Dei, licet per peccatum originale viciata.
15 Spiritus sanctus laudat naturales adfectus, et quidem in summis
viris qui fuerunt clari virtute, pietate et rebus gestis: Non fuerunt
stipites, aut trunci, aut Trrt'r/ojuevoi, quales non moventur ulla re
sive laeta, sive tristi. Piorum est adfici calamitatibus. gaudiis. fortuna
bonorum, et dolere etiam de adversariorum periculis, et hoscc
adfectus gubernat in piis spiritus 20 sanctus. Sicut ergo quilibet alius
dolet de amissa uxore, sie et sancti luxerunt suorum interitum. Et est
honestus et pius luctus. Alii non lugentes gloriantur de quadam
fortitudine et constantia animi. Sed äaroo^'oi sunt et imperiti et
negligentes rerum, hoc est creaturarum Dei. 25 Luget igitur
Abraham, quia amisit Saram coniugem suam, piam et honestam
matronam. quae rexit familiam et totam domum satis magnam et
amplam, amisit lucernam domus suae, quae domesticis praeluxit
omni genere virtutum, fuitque regina reginarum et mater
matrumfamilias. Haec de adfectibus humanis et luctu de defunctis
praesens exemplum Abrahae 30 docet. Surgens itaque Abraham a
conspectu funeris sui, locutus est ad23,3.4 filiosHeth dicens:
Peregrinus et advena ego sum apud vos, date mihi possessionem
sepulturae apud vos, ut sepeliam mortuum meum a facie mea. 35
Lugcndi sunt defimcti, sed ita ut sit modus in rebus. ^ 'Super mor-
sic.22, lof. tuum plora', inquit Syrach .22. 'Sed modicum plora', hoc
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