Catholic Culture in Early Modern England

2. Women Catholics and Latin Culture

2 Women Catholics and Latin Culture Jane Stevenson The focus of this essay is on English Catholic culture, but it should not be forgotten that a number of significant Catholic women writers in other parts of Europe, some of whom were in religious orders, also used Latin. They include the humanist nun and Latin poet Suor Lorenza Strozzi1 and Sóror Violante do Céu, who published her Rhythmas varias in Rouen in 1646 and “cultivated the sacred Latin muses.”2 Particularly when one is talking about individuals conversant with Latin, influence from outside the English-speaking tradition should never be discounted, but in any case early modern Catholic culture was not, and could not be, entirely English. Any Catholic education in England had to take place within the family, and women could not take up the religious life in England. Whereas in Catholic countries many upper-class girls were educated in convents, and some of them decided to stay there (or even became the victims of forced vocations), this was not the case in England . Englishwomen became nuns only because they had evolved a deeply held belief that they had a vocation for the religious life and were prepared to undergo considerable risk and difficulty to attain this state. Early modern Catholic Englishwomen could therefore be found all over the Catholic world but particularly in France, Spain, and the Spanish Netherlands (modern Belgium ). Many of the women who went abroad for the sake of religion kept in touch with sisters or daughters at home: the Aston family of Tixall are par-  ticularly well attested in this respect. There might therefore be reason to think a priori that although the best-known early modern women scholars, such as the Cooke sisters and Lucy Hutchinson, were Puritans, elite Catholic women’s education might be at least as language conscious as that of Anglicans or Nonconformists , and there is some evidence that this is the case. We should not forget the usefulness of Latin in early modern Europe.3 To begin with, a reading knowledge of Latin opened up the Bible to Catholics , which was important, since the Catholic Church resisted the vernacularization of the liturgy. Catholic translations of the New and Old Testaments came out in 1582 and 1602 respectively, and while there was less stress on lay Bible reading in Catholic than in Protestant communities, educated Catholics might well read their Bible. It is perfectly clear that some did so in Latin. The learned Jane Owen certainly read the Latin Bible, for she quotes it freely: “Gods sacred Word assureth you, that you may buy Heauen with Good Workes: Venite possidete paratum vobis regnum; Esurivi enim, et dedistis manducare , &c. Matth. 25.”4 “It may be said of you, as was said of Cornelius the Centurion, Act. 10 Elleemosinae vestrae commmoratae sunt in conspectu Dei.”5 The Book of Hours was the “woman’s book” par excellence;6 and though English and bilingual editions were issued by Catholic presses in centers such as Antwerp and St Omer’s, Latin texts were used by some women. Jane Dormer could read the Office of Our Lady in Latin before she was seven.7 Mary Ward’s first plan for her institute (1612) lays down that “[the sisters] shall daily recite piously and devoutly the greater canonical hours or the office of the Blessed Virgin, according to each one’s ability”; ability in this context means Latinity.8 As Mary Ward suggests, women who went into religion had a particular need for Latin because they were required to sing the Office. The constitutions of the English Benedictine nuns of Cambrai and Paris specifically state that the Divine Office and profession ceremonies were sung in Latin by the quire nuns. In the late Middle Ages, nuns often had often done so uncomprehendingly . The early German humanist Conrad Celtis jeered: “They sing, and they do not understand what they ask in the sacred song, / Like a cow mooing in the middle of the marketplace.”9 However, this was not the practice in early modern convents. Quire nuns, who sang the Office, either arrived with some command of Latin or began to learn it. Witness Paula, née Elizabeth, Hubert: “His daughter came over, and was received here, but finding herself very weak, and not apt to learn Latin, she would not undertake Women Catholics and Latin Culture  [3.137.178.133] Project MUSE (2024-04-25 07...