Women Writing Latin

Early Modern Women Writing Latin

Laurie J. Churchill, Phyllis R. Brown, Jane E. Jeffrey, Laurie J. Churchill, Phyllis R. Brown, Jane E. Jeffrey

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2013
• ISBN:
  9781135377632
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: Literary Criticism
• Index: Literature

This book is part of a 3-volume anthology of women's writing in Latin from antiquity to the early modern era. Each volume provides texts, contexts, and translations of a wide variety of works produced by women, including dramatic, poetic, and devotional writing. Volume Three covers women's writing in Latin during the early modern period (1400-1700).

Elizabeth Jane Weston (1581–1612)

Brenda M. Hosington

Notwithstanding her renown throughout western Europe during her lifetime, and for some time after, as a gifted neo-Latin poet and learned woman, Elizabeth Jane Weston has until recently been relatively unknown to modern readers. This is despite the fact that she is the only woman to have drawn together and published a whole volume of neo-Latin writings. Such oversight is due in part to the neglect of neo-Latin literature in general, and of women neo-Latinists in particular.¹ However, it is also the result of her having lived in Prague under conditions that, after her death, became increasingly open to conjecture. Her success in creating a persona, which I discuss below, and her need to exercise discretion about her connections, particularly with her disgraced and discredited stepfather, the alchemist Edward Kelley, no doubt inspired many unfounded rumors. According to various catalogues and accounts of learned women, Weston was a Catholic refugee, a member of the English aristocracy, and a victim of Jewish moneylenders, to mention but a few misconceptions about her that were reported.²

Much has been elucidated concerning Weston’s life since the appearance in 1928 and 1929 of two studies published in Czech and first made available to Western readers by Susan Bassnet in 1988 and 1990.³ While Weston’s date of birth was originally given as November 2/8, 1582, the date that appears on her tomb in St. Thomas Cloister in Prague, we now know that she was born in 1581. Long believed by her contemporaries and later commentators to be a member of a wealthy English family named Weston, she was in fact born to John Wesson [Weston], clerk, and Joan Cowper and christened in Chipping Norton, Oxfordshire, some time between March 4 and October 31, 1581, as the parish records indicate.

Very shortly after her father’s death in May 1582, Elizabeth’s mother wed Edward Kelley, self-described alchemist and an assistant to Dr. John Dee. One year later Kelley whisked his wife off to Poland and thence to the court of Rudolph II in Prague.⁴ Elizabeth and her older brother, John Francis, were left in their grandparents’ care, if we are to believe Weston’s elegy for her mother entitled In Obitum Nobilis et generosœ Doñœ Ionnœ. Edward and Joan Kelley returned to England in October 1588 and in all probability the entire family left for Prague later that autumn.⁵ Kelley had become the emperor’s alchemist and when Rudolf made him eques aureus, an honor bestowed upon chosen members of the imperial court, he added “de Imany” to his name, thus claiming for himself the title of an ancient and aristocratic Irish family. It is to Kelley, then, that Weston and her admirers owed her claims of nobility rather than to John Weston, whose status as clerk dictates a humbler lineage.⁶

Kelley’s success in Prague was short-lived. In 1590 he was imprisoned by Rudolf only to be released some time after. During the next seven years he fell in and out of favor, spending time in prison and finally dying there in 1597. The family was destitute, their property was seized, and creditors were at the door. Elizabeth began to address poetry to members of the court at Prague and to internationally known scholars in the hope they would intercede for her family to Rudolf. She even wrote a letter and a verse appeal to James I of England on his accession to the throne, both of which fell on deaf ears. The replies of many of her dedicatees and hoped-for patrons encouraged her in her distress, although none seems to have held sway with the emperor.

In 1603, Elizabeth married Johannes Leo, a jurist at Rudolf’s court. At last her life attained some measure of financial security, although happiness was to alternate with sorrow, as her In Obitum makes clear. The couple had seven children in the nine years of their marriage, but only three survived her. Her beloved mother died shortly after the deaths of the first two children. Elizabeth herself was not to enjoy a long life. She died on November 23, 1612, at age thirty-one. Her passing inspired eulogies and epitaphs among poets and men of letters both in Bohemia and abroad, who lamented their “tenth Muse,” “fourth Grace,” and “learned Goddess,” a most celebrated poet “spinning the golden threads of song.”

The “songs” that Weston composed are found in two collections of her writings published during her lifetime, as well as in various pamphlets, anthologies, and miscellanies published by friends and correspondents after her death. The former were assembled, “polished,” and published by a Silesian aristocrat, Georg Martinius von Baldhoven, a devoted friend and admirer. The first collection was entitled Poëmata libri 1, 2, published in Frankfort-on-Oder in 1602. It was followed by an expanded version in 1608 entitled Parthenicôn libri iii, published in Prague and containing correspondence between Elizabeth and a wide circle of courtiers, humanists, and poets. Some of these, such as Melissus and Dousa, are luminaries of neo-Latin poetry, while others are theologians and scholars living as far afield as Tübingen and Leiden. The collection shows signs of revision in the poems that had appeared in the Poëmata. It proved popular and copies are still found in major libraries throughout the world. In 1723, Weston’s poetry was published in a third edition, entitled Opuscula, and edited by H. C. Kalckhoff. Elizabetha Jane Weston, Collected Writings, now brings together in a single edition all of Weston’s extant letters and poems, in print and manuscript, as well as all the writings known to have been addressed to her.⁷

Weston’s Poëmata and Parthenicôn conform to the models of Neo-Latin anthologies of ver...