Women's Letters Across Europe, 1400–1700

Form and Persuasion

Jane Couchman, Ann Crabb, Ann Crabb

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2017
• ISBN:
  9781351871273
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Littérature
• Subtopic: Critique littéraire pour la littérature comparée

In response to a growing interest, among historians as well as literary critics, in women's use of the epistolary genre, Women's Letters Across Europe, 1400-1700: Form and Persuasion analyzes persuasive techniques in the personal correspondence of late medieval and early modern women. It includes studies of well-known women (Isabella d'Este, Teresa of Avila, Marguerite de Navarre, Catherine de Medicis), of those less-known (Alessandra Macigni Strozzi, Louise de Coligny, Glikl of Hameln, Argula von Grumbach, Luisa de Carvajal y Mendoza, Anna Maria von Schurman, Barbara of Brandenburg ) and of others virtually unknown to history (prosperous women like Elizabeth Stonor and Cornelia Collonello and pauper women seeking poor relief in Tours). Comprehensive in scope, Women's Letters Across Europe, 1400-1700 looks at women from England, Italy, France, Spain, Germany, and the Netherlands, and from various levels of society, encompassing the nobility, the gentry, the middle class, and the poor. Each of the essayists considers letters both as historical documents giving insights into women's lives, and as texts in which variations on epistolary forms are used for specific persuasive purposes. The authors of the essays analyze their subjects' capabilities and limitations as letter writers and the techniques they used to influence correspondents, setting these observations in the framework of the women's particular 'stories.' Taken together, the essays and the letter writers discussed therein illustrate in new ways how far from silenced many early modern women were, how they were able to adopt and adapt strategies from the epistolary conventions available to them, and how they could have an impact on their worlds through their letters.

Part One
Persuasion for Family and Personal Goals

Chapter Two
How to Influence Your Children: Persuasion and Form in Alessandra Macigni Strozzi's Letters to Her Sons

Ann Crabb

For many years the Florentine widow Alessandra Strozzi’s correspondence with her sons loomed large in her life:

It seems a year since I had your letters and not a month. And this is because I take little pleasure in other things … It rarely happens, even though I have understood what you said, that I don’t read your letters several times over, so that I can feel I am with you.

She described her life as follows:

I always wait for Wednesday and Thursday, the days the messenger comes, hoping for a couple of lines written in your hand. Although it bothers me when I don’t have letters from you by every messenger, if I do not, I wait for the next messenger and if I don’t get one then, I send to the bank to ask if they have had letters from you. If they have, I take comfort in the fact that you are well. And so I go passing the time.¹

Alessandra’s letters to her sons played down aspects of her life aside from her sons in order to please them, but, nonetheless, all evidence suggests that Alessandra was stating a core truth when she reminded her sons that they were at the center of her existence.² When Filippo, Lorenzo and Matteo were teenagers, she wrote, ‘I have no other good but you my three sons’. In later years, she wrote, ‘Remember to stay healthy, because I am dead without you, whereas you can live and be happy without me’. It must be noted that she did not mention her two daughters, Caterina and Alessandra, as necessary to her survival. She loved her daughters and saw them often, but, in her view, they did not belong to her as her sons did, because her daughters had married into other families—even though they lived nearby and her sons were far away.³

Born in 1407 into a patrician family, Alessandra was widowed at the age of 28 and left to raise five small children. Her husband Matteo and three of their children had died of plague soon after Matteo’s exile by the Medici government in 1434. Seventy-three of her letters survive, all except one to her sons, who lived abroad as merchant bankers and political exiles. Filippo, Lorenzo and Matteo started out as apprentice merchants in the companies of Strozzi cousins in Spain, the Low Countries and Naples, and by 1464 they, and particularly Filippo, had accumulated in Naples the largest fortunes of any Florentines of their era. The family correspondence covers the twenty-five years from 1446—when Alessandra’s sons were young teenagers—until her death in 1471 at age 64.

A Mother's Influence and Authority

The letters show that Alessandra’s sons listened to her advice not only in childhood but also in adulthood. They also indicate that her ability to persuade was based on her role as mother. According to moralists, fathers were expected to exercise absolute authority over sons until the sons were 18 or 25 (with advice on age varying between liberal humanists and conservative churchmen), whereas widowed mothers were expected to consult with sons by the time the sons were in their mid teens, as Alessandra did with her dependable eldest son Filippo.⁴ However, Alessandra’s position was strengthened by factors beyond the basic expectations for a mother. She supported her children from her large dowry until her daughters were married and her sons were earning, since their father’s patrimony had been taxed away after his exile; when financial pressures lessened she sent her sons money to invest so they could set up in business. She managed her and their affairs in Florence with practical efficiency, as shown by the account book in which she noted financial transactions and important family matters, and as shown by the able way she made use of her network of contacts. Nonetheless, her success in getting her sons to do as she wanted was based largely on their recognition of her maternal love and the resulting obligation they felt to please her.

Alessandra’s love was not unselfish: Her sons were expected to become men she could admire—successful in the world and good Christians—partly for her sake, in recompense for her devotion and in order to bring her consolation after a hard life. To back up her exhortations, she inserted proverbs and religious messages, as well as demonstrations of her good judgment and competence, which gave her advice more weight than it would have had on its own. When Alessandra’s son Filippo was a teenager, she reminded him to do a good job for the cousin for whom he was working:

Remember to do honor to the one who has done honor to you … and doing your duty … [Niccolò] will give you advancement and aid, and you will raise up your house again and make me content … Thus, everything is in your hands, your honor and profit and my happiness … I pray God to give you the grace and virtue that you need.⁵

Her second son Lorenzo had a period of seriously bad behavior in his early twenties, chasing women, gambling, and taking money from the company’s cashbox to pay for these pastimes. Alessandra tried to influence him to improve:

I hear that you do not behave as I would want. It fills me with sorrow and a great fear that you will come to ruin. … He who does not do as he ought, will receive what he does not expect. Of all my troubles, your failings affect me most … I don’t know why you follow your desires, first and foremost because it displeases God, and then because it upsets me greatly, and the harm and shame that will come from it I leave you to consider … Don’t throw away my criticisms, which are made with love and tears.⁶

The youngest brother, Matteo, died of malaria in Naples in 1459 at the age of 25 and that crisis shows the depth of her love for Matteo and her other sons, but also how she depended on her remaining sons to console her. She signed her first letter after hearing the news ‘your poor little Mother’. She was trying to accept that God, who had given her Matteo, had taken him back; however, she deeply regretted that she had not been in Naples ‘to see and touch my sweet son while he was alive. I would have been comforted and could have given comfort to him and to you’. Alessandra felt great pain in her heart, she wrote, but was helped by knowing that Filippo had done all that was humanly possible and that Matteo had died a Christian death, with all the sacraments. However, she still could not rest, because she was so worried that the strain of Matteo’s illness and death would cause Filippo’s own health to fail:

May God forbid that I live so long as to have more things like this … I beg you to resign yourself to what happened, out of love for me, and look after yourself … What would I, a mother full of trouble, do without you two?⁷

After Matteo’s death, Alessandra and Filippo thought that Lorenzo, who had grown into a responsible merchant, should leave Bruges and join Filippo in Naples. The brothers should work together, even though they did not get along particularly well, so that, if anything happened to either of them, ‘God forbid’, their persons and their possessions would not be lost at once. Alessandra wrote to her husband’s cousin Jacopo:

It is my job to unite them, so that I can be content in the little time I have left to live. Moreover, if I die, I want them to be adjusted to each other in such a way that they will not quarrel but be good brothers who live in peace. It is up to me to do it, and to get them together while I live.⁸

Part of a mother’s influence came from her role as mediator, persuading family members to get along.

Alessandra mostly used sentiment to influence her sons but, as a mother, she had the right to demand obedience and could expect that her sons would at least give it lip service. Alessandra continued in her letter to Jacopo: ‘I beg you … if you see [that Lorenzo] does not plan to make this move [to Naples], out of love for me tell him I do not wish him to disobey’. She went on to back up her order by combining the terminology of the theologian with that of the citizen pursuing advantage, writing that Lorenzo should heed her because the request was ‘licit’ and because it would be ‘useful and honorable’ for him. She finished her comments to Jacopo with a warning: ‘Let me tell you, if he doesn’t give me this happiness, it will be the worse for him’.⁹ Jacopo’s death and Lorenzo’s position as executor complicated Lorenzo’s plans, but he recognized his obligation:

My dearest mother, in good faith, if this matter of Jacopo had not happened, I would have mounted my horse this May as you command me. I would have gone there to obey you, and because I want to as much as either [you or Filippo]. Be content … that my excuse is legitimate and honest.¹⁰

Lorenzo’s words show that the wishes of the eldest son also backed up the demands of the mother. A few months later Lorenzo went to Naples.

The most striking examples of Alessandra’s invoking authority came in 1464, with authority coming partly from her position as mother, but also from her superior knowledge of conditions in Florence and from her sons’ recognition of her cautious good judgment. In 1458 the Medici government extended the bans of exile of 1434 to the exiles’ sons, including the Strozzi brothers. Then in June 1464 Cosimo de’ Medici died, raising hopes that attitudes might soften enough to allow the exiles to return. Although Florence’s formal government was a male monopoly, in practice much of the city’s political life went on outside its formal institutions, a trend that was increasing under the Medici. Politics were so closely tied to the patrician social world that a woman like Alessandra could find out what was happening and make use of personal connections for political purposes. She wrote:

Do not doubt that when I hear anything at all, the right people will be approached … Neither relatives nor friends will be overlooked, neither because of lack of money nor lack of will. No effort will be spared. However, first we must wait for some moves to be made and some indications of the opinions of those who govern.

She was staying in the country during an outbreak of plague, and gave an edge to her comments by saying that if there had been any developments she ‘would not have been kept away [from Florence] by twenty a day dying of plague’.¹¹

At this stage, Piero de’ Medici had not yet fully replaced his father as first citizen and decisions were made by a group of principal citizens. It seemed a good time to test attitudes toward the Strozzi brothers and, partly for this purpose, the Strozzi brothers’ patron, the king of Naples, arranged to send Filippo Strozzi to Florence to buy fine cloth for the upcoming wedding of the king’s son to the duke of Milan’s daughter. As an exile, Filippo needed a safe-conduct, and mona Alessandra and her sons-in-law consulted with the important citizens and obtained their agreement, provided that the king of Naples sent them personal letters requesting the safe-conduct. Then, it was decided in Naples that Lorenzo should make the journey instead of Filippo. Alessandra strongly opposed the substitution because it would harm ‘the larger and more important request for the smaller one’, that is, it would annoy those who had agreed to the safe-conduct for Filippo, so that they would be less receptive to ending the exile. Alessandra was willing to act on her opinion: She wrote that if the Strozzi brothers’ representative came bearing letters asking for the change and she saw them first, she would not allow him to deliver them, because it would not be to Filippo and Lorenzo’s advantage.¹² Alessandra’s attitude shows her self-confidence but also an awareness that she might not be able to control what happened, in case her sons chose to have the letters delivered without showing them to her. In the event, her sons respected her opinion, even if they did not follow it blindly. The bearer of the letters wrote to the Strozzi brothers that he had handed Alessandra the letters asking for the safe-conduct for Lorenzo as soon as he arrived in Florence. The Strozzi circle then met and decided they should ask their best friend among the principal citizens, messer Agnolo Acciaiuoli, what they should do, and when messer Agnolo saw no problems with delivering the letters, they did so. Afterward, Alessandra wrote that her earlier doubts had been allayed by the kind words she had heard about Lorenzo’s visit.¹³

In early February 1465, Lorenzo arrived at San Chirico, just outside the 50-mile limit allowed to exiles, and Alessandra took another strong stand, warning him not to enter Florence. She and her advisers had learned that the safe-conduct might not be enough to prevent an enemy from having Lorenzo arrested as a rebel for entering the city while an exile. To be secure, the government needed to command him to enter. When an opponent of the exiles refused to agree to issue the command, friendly principal citizens sent Alessandra a message not to worry, because the safe-conduct was good enough, given that Lorenzo was on business for the king of Naples. However, Alessandra asserted: ‘I did not wish to put your person at risk on the basis of words alone. They did not risk anything ...