In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:

C zech scholarship has always understood the important role played by women in the life of medieval Bohemia.1 But —as in the popular monograph Wives and Lovers of Czech Kings2 —medieval women are more usually regarded as wives, lovers, and mothers rather than as subjects in their own right. In fact, some of the most accomplished works written in medieval Czech and Latin were commissioned by female readers. In this chapter, I will trace a long line of female literacy in Bohemia, from Saint Agnes’s correspondence with Saint Clare of Assisi in the thirteenth century to the noblewomen of the early modern period who wrote letters to their family members. As we shall see, the important phenomenon of Czech women writers in the National Revival and the equally central role of women’s writing in contemporary Czech literature have their roots in an ancient and illustrious pedigree of medieval and early modern female literacy. Women Readers and Writers in Medieval Bohemia The principal role played by women writers in the medieval and early modern period was that of correspondents, which usually assumed the form of seeking or giving advice on religious or secular matters to clerics , rulers, and relatives.3 But women of the intellectual stature of Radegund , Hildegard von Bingen, Héloïse, Catherine of Siena, and Christine de Pisan —to name only the most important medieval exponents of the ars dictaminis—were the exception rather than the rule, a fact not altogether surprising when we consider that in the Middle Ages women were generally perceived as intrinsically lecherous, feeble-minded, and garrulous, the instigators of man’s expulsion from the Garden of Eden, as delineated in chapters 2 to 3 of Genesis. From the time of the apostle Paul, whose letters form about half of the New Testament and who transformed Christ’s teachings into a systematic set of beliefs, women were presented in a negative light. The second-century writer Tertullian linked all women with Eve: “You are the Devil’s gateway. You are the first deserter of the divine law. . . . You destroyed so easily God’s image, man. On account of your desert, that is death, even the Son of God had to die.”4 Women’s speech was seen as especially threatening to male well33 CHAPTER 2 ✣ A Literature of Their Own Women Readers and Writers in Medieval Bohemia being, and the most effective way to enjoin female silence was to deny them access to education more readily available to men.5 Misogynistic discourse enjoyed great prominence in the monastic movements of the eleventh and twelfth centuries and spared only a few early medieval women, mostly queens or great aristocrats.6 In the second half of the twelfth century, however, the role of women in the history of salvation came to be evaluated in a less negative fashion, partly as a consequence of the growing cult of the Virgin Mary.7 The church’s new openness was motivated by the pragmatic desire to counter the burgeoning heretical movements that provided a spiritual haven for female religious excluded from the official church hierarchy.8 One of the new monastic movements popular with women were the Franciscans. Saint Francis received Saint Clare and her first companions in person into his newly founded monastic movement. Most of the holy women associated with the Franciscans in the thirteenth century came from Provence and Italy, but these Mediterranean regions did not have a monopoly on female lay piety.9 In Poland Queens Salomea (d. 1268) and Kinga (d. 1292) joined the Order of Poor Clares as widows, and in the Bohemian Lands so did Saint Agnes of Bohemia (1211–82).10 Saint Agnes was following in the saintly footsteps of her ancestor Ludmilla, the first Christian martyr in the region.11 In 1233 Agnes founded and became the first abbess of the Convent of the Poor Clares at Prague (Na Františku). She had important connections in the church and corresponded (in Latin) with Pope Gregory IX and Clare of Assisi in order to strengthen links between the Bohemian branch of the Franciscan order and its spiritual home in Italy.12 Agnes’s letters to Clare have not survived but Clare’s four letters to Agnes are still extant.13 They reveal that Agnes was eager to emulate the Franciscan way of life and that she asked for clarification about the Poor Clares’ rules on fasting as a prelude to establishing a similar rule for her own foundation...

Share