In the Labyrinth

By the Work of Hands, We Heal Ourselves.

I am heading to the desert for a while and bringing new projects along....looking forward to the dry cool nights, and the stars high overhead.

And then I found these fall beauties from Madeleine Tosh! Let's see how fast I can knit while trying to finish preparing a second novel for re-release (Flight of Michael McBride) and spend time up in the mountains of the Mogollon Rim. Forget covid, forget elections, forget strife. Just be a maker....

Maidens and Marriage: The Conservatorio of Santa Caterina della Rosa

The legal case against Alessio Lonrenziano (Thomas Cohen: Love and Death in Renaissance Italy) highlights some interesting aspects of how economically disadvantaged young girls and women navigated the complexities and dangers of life in the mid-1500s. There were numerous forms of protection offered to such females through the Church and the charity work of powerful aristocratic women. Santa Caterina della Rosa was founded by St. Ignatius Loyola in 1542 and set up to serve as a refuge for the daughters of prostitutes and other girls whose virtue might have been at risk. The "zitelle" (maidens) were housed in a conservatorio (an institution for protecting the girls' maidenheads and their reputations. ) The young girls would be fed, clothed, and educated in the domestics arts to prepare them for eventual marriage.

Men in the administration screened potential suitors, allocated dowries (between 50-100 scudi), policed marital morals and disbursed funds. Even after successful marital arrangements were made, the couple would continue to be assessed to ensure a continued moral and respectable marriage, which did serve to protect the young brides from being exploited by their husbands. The upper-class women of the organization and the nuns were important because they had access to the girls in clausura (seclusion) and could help in their character formation. (There were institutions organized for adult women as well, those who were reformed prostitutes with children, widows with no family to care for them, who needed a refuge but did not plan to become nuns.)

Before entering the conservatori the girl was to be appraised, her virginity vouched for, and her hymen inspected by two midwives. The girls usually stayed about seven or eight years, pretty much hidden from sight. Though once a year on November 25th, Saint Caterina's feast day, in a much-anticipated event, the girls, dressed in plain smocks and aprons, processed through the city as eager bachelors look over the potential brides to be. (In some cases, the conservatori kidnapped girls languishing in dangerous living conditions to protect them from being sexually exploited.)

There are conflicting schools of thought on the lives of cloistered girls. One argument suggests that the enclosure of girls restricted the girls' lives and acted as a forerunner to institutions like the poorhouse, the madhouse, and the penitentiary. I see these options more at work in Great Britain rather than Italy which originated many charitable institutions intended to help people, from the first hospitals, orphanages and women's' shelters in Europe. The other argument is that in a world that held real dangers for females of any age without family and kinsmen to protect them, the conservatori offered safety and a path to successful marriages that benefited young women. Families and the young women themselves took steps to secure their future, relying on the well-ordered institutional system within and without the conservatori. And those women who chose to resist, or flee at least had a minimal education that could provide them with work. 

The girls also ate well, according to modern archaeological digs and the bones of beef and lamb and porchetta (suckling pig). There were also found majolica ceramics -- bowls with each girl's name inscribed on it and brightly decorated with designs, flowers, and animals.

An interesting side-note: One of the more essential objects a young woman could hold in her hand was a handkerchief, especially one that she had hand-embroidered --like the girls in the conservatori. In this case, a young woman unable to make up her mind whether she wants to accept a marriage proposal or be a nun, drops her handkerchief for the prospective bridegroom, which he takes as a sign of her interest in him. But it is more than an invitation, Cohen argues, it is considered a form of a pledge. "When Shakespeare had Othello kill his wife for a dropped handkerchief, the playwright made good Renaissance sense because such a gift was not a symbol but a sign, a pledge, with all the solidity the culture invested in such things given."

I went searching through art images of the 16th century and was astonished to discover how many formal portraits of women from all classes included a handkerchief held in one hand -- like a calling card or an invitation, or an opportunity. 

People Inconvienced by Objects and Thoughts

I do love these wildly imaginative graphite portraits by Stefan Zsaitsits of People Inconvienced by Objects and Thoughts. They look almost exactly the way my head feels right after a day of juggling too many things and trying to get some writing squeezed in there somewhere. Though it does look as though, for today  anyway, this may be the only writing I manage here.

How I See Myself In the Stones

Every morning we hike at sunrise to watch the sun lift in the east and light up the Flat Irons in the west. The path is full of river stones and rocks. And at this one, I stop and say hello -- for it seems to me a perfect description of my working life: weaving, writing, and knitting. And I think, yes, even broken into three fragments, it is still whole.

Tearing Up The Canals: The Women's Regatta in Venice, 18th Century

 I am rather in love with this painting of the Women's Regatta in Venice by Gabriele Bella, 1730-1799 (click on for a larger view). I had no idea that women were accomplished rowers, though it does on reflection make a certain amount of sense. If one lives on the waters and the canals, or course every woman would have to know how to manage her own small boat if she wanted to get any where important. (This is the problem of being a tourist in Venice -- one always assumes someone else will row one around). 

Here's a bit more information from a nice post in Seductive Venice (indeed it is).

"Women had raced in regattas (boat races) since 1493. An island community like Venice, where every nonna knew how to row a boat, allowed its women to enter the races and processionals (or at least the women from the working class). The priests even blessed them. Regattas were usually held when a visiting dignitary came to town, and rowers showed off their skills or challenged others in order to keep fit for their jobs, such as did the gondoliers or workers at the Arsenale where they made boats."

The post also includes a lovely painted portrait of an especially skilled woman, five-time regatta winner Maria Boscola: "Maria had first raced in 1740, winning the red pennant for first place, with her partner and friend Emma, nicknamed La Garbina. But 24 years passed before women participated in the races again. These may have been the years that Maria bore and raised her children. She also grew enough vegetables that she could bring in to the Rialto market to sell, keeping her rowing arms strong for the 25 kilometer trip each market day." 

So, she took a little time off to keep up with her produce business and raise children -- but she kept herself in shape and ready for the day she could return to race. Pretty remarkable and determined! 

I do recommend having a read through the Seductive Venice blog -- it has lots of historical gems about women lives and activities in Venice and it is a delight to read.  

When Heroines Write Their Own Stories

Penelope Writes to Odysseus

I am still in awe of these amazing little Medieval illustrations of the classical Greek and Latin heroines of Ovid writing imaginary epistles. Ovid's work was translated into French by poet Octavien de Saint-Gelais, and it so delighted Louise of Savoy (1476-1531), mother of the future king Francis I of France, that she commissioned artist Robinet Testard to decorate a sumptuous manuscript of Ovid with these beautiful miniature portraits of the heroines writing their own stories. Each one is so different ..caught in the unique drama of her life -- some beautiful, some rather violent. (And really...so many bad husbands and rotten boyfriends...) Here's a sample of some of my favorites ...but do, stop by La Folia Magazine and indulge in all the others. All these heroines writing their own stories provides fuel and words for my own characters who are impatient to write down their (mis)adventures.

Medea Writes to Jason

 

Ariadne Writes to Theseus 

 

Hypsipyle Writes to Jason (double rotter)

The Voynich Manuscript: Magic, A Garden of Women, and a Secret Language

*Please note that posters in the comments provide links to pages that no longer exist -- sadly! Yale at one point removed the archive of images from public view. 

 

I am sitting at my desk transported by the digital images of the Voynich Manuscript, created sometime between the late 15th century and early 16th century. It is a most magical text, written in an unknown language or perhaps a cipher. It is illustrated with botanical drawings of unknown plants, strange designs and patterns that suggest spiral and circular gardens. And most wonderfully it is filled with the alchemical activities of women who seem to be the life force of this strange and fecund world. The women often appear nude with rounded bellies, sometimes in bathtubs, other times connecting roots, seeds, and pods through tubes and rivers.

Not much is known about its origin and what is known is as mysterious as the manuscript itself. It has been carbon tested and found to have been produced in late 1400's; it gets it's name from the Polish-American antiquarian bookseller, Wilfrid M. Voynich who purchased it in the 1920s; it was owned by the Emperor Rudolph II of Germany (1576-1612) who believed it to be the work of Roger Bacon (it wasn't --he's 13th century). There is Jesuit involvement -- the correspondence of 17th c. Jesuit scholar Athanasius Kircher who wrote references to it after receiving it from a Prague physician Johannes Marcus Marci. And much later in 1912, Voynich purchased the manuscript from Joseph Strickland S. J. at the Jesuit College at Frascati, near Rome. (Why does this all remind me of Umberto Eco's Name of the Rose?). And then there are about 150 years where no one knows who had it or where it was hiding.

And as far as the language goes -- no one has been able to translate it into any language. Some scholars thought it might be the work of an insane author -- but other linguists suggest there are two authors and the language appears too "organized" to be the work of a crazy person. Potential authors range from Leonardo da Vinci, Antonio Averlino, a 15th century Italian architect, English occultist John Dee, and an underground sect of Cathar heretics. Strangely, at least to me-- no one has suggested it might have been written and created by women.

Enjoy these few pages I pulled from the online collection -- and marvel at all that beautiful, mysterious work and give thanks to the internet. You can also read more about the Voynich manuscript here.

I want these to be plans for a garden -- circular, spiral, filled with female fertility connected to the moon, the stars, and the zodiac calendar.