“There remains nothing to lose for the one who has lost liberty”: liberty and free will in Arcangela Tarabotti’s (1604–1652) radical criticism of the patriarchy

ABSTRACT

This article examines the concepts of liberty and free will in Arcangela Tarabotti’s work Paternal Tyranny (1654) and the role these concepts play in Tarabotti’s criticism of the patriarchy. It is argued that liberty is a key concept, through which the radical nature of the treatise becomes apparent. The first part reconstructs Tarabotti’s understanding of women’s liberty and free will and its theological and political implications (2). Based in this analysis, it is evident that Tarabotti exposes the disregard of women’s free will and liberty as sacrilege in relation to God and ecclesiastical institutions and as tyranny in relation to women and political institutions (3). The following part reconstructs Tarabotti’s tackling of the impediments of women’s free will in the family, the church, and the state. It is shown that Tarabotti politicized and criminalized well-established practices of women’s suppression in society (4). The last part provides evidence that Tarabotti’s treatise was considered to be politically dangerous, which caused insurmountable problems for publishing the work in Italy and France and eventually led to the condemnation of the work once it was published in Holland. The article concludes that Tarabotti’s text should be read as a radical political treatise (5).

KEYWORDS:

• Arcangela Tarabotti
• liberty
• free will
• patriarchy
• tyranny
• Radical Enlightenment

Notes on contributor

Sabrina Ebbersmeyer is Associate Professor of Philosophy at the University of Copenhagen, Denmark. Her main areas of expertise are Renaissance and Early Modern philosophy, as well as feminist history of philosophy. Her books include the monograph Homo agens (de Gruyter 2010), a translation of the letter exchange between Elisabeth of Bohemia and René Descartes into German (Fink 2015), Women, Philosophy and Science: Italy and Early Modern Europe (Springer 2020, co-edited with Gianni Paganini), and Elisabeth of Bohemia (1618-1680): A Philosopher in her Historical Context (Springer 2021, co-edited with Sarah Hutton).

Notes

1 Panizza, “Introduction,” 1.

2 Ibid., 25.

3 See, e.g. Westwater, “A Rediscovered Friendship,” 67, 85, 88; Cox, “The Single Self,” 539.

4 For example, Tarabotti is not mentioned in Jonathan Israel’s Radical Enlightenment (2001) or in the more recent volume Reassessing the Radical Enlightenment (2017), edited by Steffen Ducheyne. A notable exception is Francesca Medioli, who has suggested reading Tarabotti’s “intellectual biography” in the context of radical circles: see Medioli, “Des liaisons dangereuses?”

5 In her monograph The Radical Enlightenment (1981), Margaret Jacob focuses on the period after 1690; the chapter on Italy in Jonathan Israel’s Radical Enlightenment (2001) also starts later and investigates figures such as Giambattista Vico (1668–1744), Paolo Matteo Doria (1662–1764), and Pietro Giannone (1676–1748): see Israel, Radical Enlightenment, 664–83. Also, the collective volume edited by Ducheyne, Reassessing the Radical Enlightenment, focuses on the period 1690–1720 and later; the same holds true for Martin Mulsow’s Radikale Frühaufklärung.

6 Criticism of religion plays a central role in the major interpretations of the Radical Enlightenment, see e.g. Jacob, The Radical Enlightenment, and the prominent characterization in Israel, Radical Enlightenment, 11–12.

7 See the overview of the development of the notion Radical Enlightenment provided by Stjernfelt, “Radical Enlightenment,” esp. 95–9.

8 The role of religion in the development of women’s radical thought has been stressed by many scholars: see e.g. Green, “Catharine Macaulay’s enlightenment faith”; Taylor, “The Religious Foundations”; and the collected volume edited by Apetrei, “Women, Feminism and Religion.”

9 On Tarabotti’s life, see Zanette, Suor Arcangela.

10 Tarabotti took the first vow in 1620 (vestizione), the professione in 1623, and the last (consacrazione) in 1629.

11 Arcangela Tarabotti, Paradiso monacale (1643), Antisatira (1644), Lettere familiari e di complimento (1650), Le Lagrime D’Arcangela Tarabotti (1650), Che le donne siano della specie degli uomini (1651).

12 Simona Bortot, who prepared the critical edition of the work (published in 2007), used the title of the printed version, La semplicità ingannata (hereafter referred to as SI), whereas Letizia Panizza used the original title for her English translation (published in 2004), Paternal tyranny (hereafter referred to as PT). As Lynn Lara Westwater has shown, Tarabotti’s last wish, as documented in a letter to Ismaël Boulliau, was to publish the work under the double title La Tirannia paterna overo Semplicita ingannata: see Westwater, “A Rediscovered Friendship,” 74.

13 Libero arbitrio: SI, 178, 180, 181, 182, 191, 194, 201, 235, 238, 248, 253, 270, 286, 308, 329, 347, 351; voluntà libera: SI 181, 191, 194, 209, 278; libertà: SI, 191, 211, 222, 223, 233, 235, 240, 249, 251, 256, 270, 278, 286, 292, 311, 330, 349, 351, 390.

14 On forced claustration and the policy of marriage limitation in Venice during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, see Cox, “The Single Self,” 530–58.

15 SI, 178.

16 Augustine, De trinitate (10.11): “Remotis igitur paulisper ceteris quorum mens de se ipsa certa est, tria haec potissimum considerata tractemus, memoriam, intellegentiam, uoluntatem.” This trichotomy became very common in Christian thought: see e.g. Dante Alighieri, Purgatorio, c. XXX, vv. 83–4: “memoria, intelligenza e voluntade/in atto molto più che prima agute.” For on overview on Augustine’s concept of free will, see Couenhoven, “Augustine of Hippo.”

17 PT, 44 (transl. modified)/SI, 180–1.

18 On moral responsibility and free will, see Rossi and Warfield, “The Relationship.”

19 As is well known, Martin Luther had challenged the church teachings on free will in his works De libertate Christiana (1520) and De servo arbitrio (1525), in which he argued that salvation is not dependent on human free will. The council of Trent reacted to Luther’s teaching and condemned it. However, Tarabotti distances herself throughout the text from Luther and his teaching (see explicitly SI, 258 and 300) and aligns herself on the topic of free will with the doctrine of the Catholic Church.

20 PT, 44/SI, 181: “ambidue fossero indifferentemente arricchieti di questo prezioso tesoro del libero arbitrio.”

21 PT, 51 (transl. modified). SI, 194: “poiché prima d’Adamo mangiando il pomo, diede a divedere che la sua voluntà era libera e non legata e dipendente de quella del maschio.”

22 SI, 194: “Tanto la femina, quanto il maschio nacquero liberi, portando seco, come doni preziosi di Dio, l’inestimabile tesoro del libero arbitrio.” Later in the text, she repeatedly comes back to free will as a gift granted to women by God: see PT, 78/SI, 248 and 308.

23 SI, 253.

24 Ibid., 329 and 347.

25 Ibid., 347: “questi divini decreti, che concedono libertà ad ogn’uno,” SI 278: “l’arbitrio […] è libero e indipendente per tutti.”

26 Ibid., 250: “L’aver ricchezze, l’esser nobile, saggio, di sanità intatta, sono doni da felicitar qual si sia creatura mortale; ma se tali grazie e prosperità s’avranno da goder in una prigione, il tutto riuscirà sprezzabile e odioso.”

27 Ibid., 270 and 249.

28 Ibid., 278.

29 PT, 79; SI, 249.

30 See Deslauriers, “Patriarchal power as unjust.” Tarabotti also relates to more recent political struggles in Italy when repeatedly referring to Dante’s praises of liberty, e.g. most prominently at the beginning of book one of her treatise: see, PT, 44/SI, 181.

31 This understanding of liberty was made prominent in recent times by the works of Philip Pettit (see Pettit, Republicanism and “Keeping Republican Freedom Simple”) and Quentin Skinner (see Skinner, Liberty before Liberalism and “A Third Concept of Liberty”).

32 Tarabotti, L’Inferno monacale, 27–8:

Sul’ali della fama vola ad ogn’angolo più rimotto dell’universo che palesa come Voi, Serenissima Regina, concedete a qual si sia natione della vostra bella metropoli libertà non circonscritta [ … ]. Ell’è una grand’ingratitudine che quella patria che è protetta parcialmente dalla Vergine, [ … ] inganni e privi di libertà con forza le sue vergine e donne.

The question of how Tarabotti’s thought on liberty draws on the tradition of political thought in Venice deserves more attention. Some indication is found in Deslauriers, “Patriarchal Power as Unjust,” 720. For political theory in Venice during the late Renaissance and the concept of republican liberty, see Bouwsma, Venice and the Defense.

33 SI, 349. With the term “liberty of conscience,” she takes up a term that became prominent in Luther’s writings and was subsequently hotly disputed: see, Reiner, “Gewissen.” However, the term was not invented by Luther: see Saarinen, “Renaissance Ethics,” 88.

34 PT, 49. SI, 188: “Perciò torno a replicare che il pretendere di levar la libera volontà alla donna, è un contrapondersi immediatamente alle determinazione dell’Omnipotente.” SI 191. See also “e che questo sarebbe stato un levar alla creatura quell’arbitrio, ch’Ei si compiacque ch’ella ottenesse libero, obligandola all’altrui volontà, che per lo più è iniqua e sclelerata.”

35 SI, 209.

36 Ibid.

37 Ibid., 238. See also PT, 67–8/SI, 230 and 201.

38 SI, 246 and 270.

39 Ibid., 270.

40 Ibid., 273.

41 See PT, 79; 80; PT, 93/SI, 272; 94/274; 108/308; 131/353; 357; 149/385; 151/389; 390.

42 See Aristotele’s Nicomachean Ethics (VIII.10; 1160b24f.): “One may find resemblances to the constitutions and, as it were, patterns of them even in households. […] The association of man and wife seems to be aristocratic; for the man rules in accordance with his worth.” See Aristotle, Politics (I.12; 1259a39-b4):

A husband and father, we saw, rules (archein) over wife and children, both free, but the rule differs, the rule (archē) over his children being a royal (basilikōs), over his wife a constitutional (politikōs) rule. For although there may be exceptions to the order of nature, the male is by nature fitter for command than the female, just as the elder and full-grown is superior to the younger and more immature.

On the distinction between the rule over women and over slaves and their respective forms of obedience, see Deslauriers, “Political Rule Over Women in Politics I.”

43 SI, 191: “È nondimeno tale e tanta inettevolezza virile, ch’a se stessa solo attribuisce le grazie, favori, e privilege dispensati dalla divina bontà senza niuna parzialità, indifferentemente, tanto all’uno quanto all’altro sesso dell’umana spezie.”

44 PT, 51/SI, 194: “Constituì l’uno e l’altro dominatori del mondo, senza parzialità alcuna. Non disse ad Adamo: ‘signoreggerai la donna’.”

45 SI, 334; PT, 124/SI, 334.

46 SI, 389, 263, 389.

47 Frequently, Tarabotti calls men hypocrites and refers to their selfish motives, which they try to cover behind apparently pious intentions. See PT, 43, 61, 82, 86, 112, 121, 150.

48 SI, 202. See also SI, 205: “la temerità umana vuole usurparsi auttorità di violentar il feminil arbitrio.”

49 SI, 385, 149.

50 SI, 251: “miserius servitude quid possumus aut dicere aut excogitare?”

51 Ibid., 264.

52 See Ibid., 209; see also Ibid., 254: “padri, fratelli e parenti”; Ibid., 272–3: “padri e parenti”; Ibid., 215: “genitori e congionti.”

53 Ibid., 267–8.

54 Ibid., 240.

55 Ibid., 253.

56 PT, 120/SI, 329. Tarabotti repeats the same argument later in the text: see PT, 129/SI, 350.

57 PT, 77/SI, 245; PT, 78/SI, 247.

58 SI, 239.

59 SI, 215: “Signori eminentissimi, serenissimi e illustrissimi.” Zanette (Suor Arcangela, 418) observed that the last two terms were of longstanding use, whereas the title eminentissimi became assigned to cardinals only in 1630.

60 PT, 72/SI, 238.

61 On the decrees about complete enclosure, see the references given by Borto in SI, 239, n. 260; see esp. Medioli, “Monacazioni forzate.”

62 PT, 72 (transl. modified). SI, 238–9:

poiché non puoi restituirle quel libero arbitrio che ingannevolmente le hai rapito, essendo a lui proibito, anche col occorso di legitime cause, di violar la claustura, sotto pene, censure e scomuniche, che non si minaccioano né pur a maggiori micidiali e più crudi assassini che vivano.

63 SI, 251.

64 Ibid., 271; PT, 82/SI, 254.

65 SI, 272.

66 Ibid., 226.

67 Ibid., 350.

68 Ibid.

69 Ibid., 351.

70 PT, 92/SI, 272.

71 PT, 89 (transl. modified)/SI, 266.

72 This dedication was not included when the work appeared in print in 1654. Tarabotti used it as the preface for her work Inferno monacale, which remained unpublished until 1990, when it was edited by Medioli (see Tarabotti, L’Inferno monacale). However, Panizza included the dedication in her English translation of Paternal Tyranny.

73 Tarabotti, L’Inferno monacale, 27.

74 Ibid., 38. Ibid., 27: “Ell’è una grand’ingratitudine che quella patria che è protetta parcialmente dalla Vergine […] più di qual si vogl’altro dominio del mondo avvilisca, inganni e privi di libertà con forza le sue vergini e donne.”

75 Ibid., 28: “che ad ogni modo non resta che perdere a chi a perduto la libertà.”

76 SI, 286.

77 PT, 100 (transl. modified). SI, 286:

In quanti regni è permessa un’estrema libertà alle donne? In quante città esercitano elle quei carichi che fra di noi sono esercitati dagli uomini? In Francia, e nella Germania, e in molte provincie del Settentrione, le donne governano le case, maneggiano i denari, tengono registro delle mercanzie, e fino le gentildonne vanno alle publiche piazze per gl’interessi della famiglia, godendo di quella libertà e valendosi di quel libero arbitrio ch’hanno ottenuto dal Dator d’ogni bene, senza tanti riguardi e rispetti, anzi abusi e rigori, che si costumano in questa nostra città.

Tarabotti does not give any proof for her statement that the situation of women in Venice was worse than in Germany, France, and the Northern Provinces. Bortot comments in a footnote on this passage that – at least during the late Middle Ages and especially the fourteenth century – Venetian women were not in as bad a position as depicted by Tarabotti. See Footnote 102 on SL, 286, and the literature quoted by Bortot.

78 PT, 136/SI, 362–3.

79 SI, 390.

80 PT, 110/SI, 311.

81 PT, 113/SI, 316.

82 PT, 49/SI, 191.

83 PT, 97/SI, 280: “I would make a great mistake were I to attribute learning to women when they are so wondrously stripped of it, not through lack of native intelligence but lack of schooling.”

84 PT, 99/SI, 283:

Shut up in their rooms, denied access to books and teachers of any learning whatsoever, or any other grounding in letter, they cannot help being inept in making speeches and foolish in giving advice. […] As Socrates said in Plato’s Symposium, women do not lack intellect or a natural disposition to succeed in every undertaking and every kind of learning equally to man.

The list of women philosophers making the same argument (including e.g. Christine de Pizan, Laura Cereta, Moderata Fonte, and Mary Wollstonecraft) is very long. On women and education during the Renaissance, see the overview article by King, “Women and Learning.”

85 PT, 102/SI, 292.

86 PT, 102/SI, 292: “How can the spirit [l’ingenio] of those ever wake up, who are denied the entrance to the Senate and the exertion of management.”

87 SI, 288, 307.

88 PT, 101/SI, 288.

89 PT, 133/SI, 357.

90 This following brief summary of Tarabotti’s publishing attempts is indebted to Lyn Lara Westwater, who provided a detailed reconstruction of the manuscript circulation in Italy and France based on Tarabotti’s correspondence and additional documents. See Westwater, “A Cloistered Nun Abroad.”

91 See e.g. Tarabotti’s letters to Pietro Paolo Bissari (1595–1661), an intellectual from Vicenza, (Tarabotti, Lettere familiari, 49), to the writer Girolamo Brusoni (1614–1686) (ibid., 201, 277), both members of the Accademia degli Incogniti, and to Francesco Da Mulla (ibid., 243) and Paolo Donado (ibid., 297), whose identities are not quite clear.

92 Tarabotti, Letters Familiar and Formal, 147.

93 Tarabotti, Lettere familiari, 280.

94 Tarabotti, Letters Familiar and Formal, 112.

95 Ibid., 209.

96 See her letters to Naudé and Mazarin (Tarabotti, Lettere familiari, 194–7). To Mazarin she wrote:

Meanwhile I pray the depths of your mercy, since you are the Astraea of this monarchy, not to allow that the city of Paris, which is called a Paradise for women, become for me an Inferno in which I lose forever a work that I gave to be published to one who deceitfully denies me it. (Tarabotti, Letters Familiar and Formal, 188–9)

97 Ibid., 219.

98 Westwater reconstructed the relation between Tarabotti and Boulliau; she also presented and translated the letter exchange: see Westwater, “A Rediscovered Friendship.”

99 Boulliau to Tarabotti, 2 February 1652: “De libello tuo – Sollicitam [^te] esse ex epistola tua nuperrime ad me data deprehendi, verum in tuto, quantum penes [^me] fuit, loco jacet. Apud Johannem Elzevirium Lugduni Batavorum (vulgo Leyden) Typographum celeberrimum deposui, qui (^*edend) – edendum ac typis mandandum suscepit, mihique spem fecit in publicum brevi proditurum” (in Westwater, “A Rediscovered Friendship,” 126).

100 Ibid., 95.

101 Ibid., 126: “Per id tempus quo in Hollandia adhoc morabar, legendum quibusdam Italicæ linguæ peritis obtulerat, quibus opus tuum valde gratum & acceptum fuit.”

102 This second edition is extremely rare; so far, only one exemplar is identified in Venice. Venice, Biblioteca Nazionale Marciana, Misc. 2825.3.

103 Padova, Biblioteca Antoniana, scaffale XXIII, codice 614. The catalogue description states that this is “evidentemente una copia della stampa fatta”: see Abate and Luisetto, Codici e manoscritti della Biblioteca Antoniana, 614. This statement is obviously based on the fact that the publisher and the place (Sambix and Leiden) are mentioned on the front page of the manuscript. Panizza follows the same line of reasoning. However, no year of publication is given, so others have suggested that this manuscript might have been used to prepare the publication for print (see Zanette, Suor Arcangela, 434). For a detailed description of the two printed editions and the manuscript, and how all three relate to each other, see the “Nota al testo” provided by Bortot in SI, 153–67.

104 The full story of this condemnation has been reconstructed by Natalia Costa-Zalessow, who studied the documents dealing with the condemnation as preserved in the Vatican library and in the Archivio della Congregazione per la Dottrina della Fede (A.C.D.F.). See Vatican library, Codex Barb. lat. 3146 [Sacra Congregatio Indicis ab Anno 1654 per totum 1667], fols. 156-60. Archivio della Congregazione per la Dottrina della Fede. Indice, Protocolli, IIa, 33, KK (1650–1659), fols. 364r-367v. The documents preserved in the A.C.D.F. contain the official censure of Tarabotti’s work. It was prepared by Francesco Antonio Ricci for the Congregation of the Index, “as requested of him on February 3, 1659”: see Costa-Zalessow, “Tarabotti’s La semplicità ingannata,” 322.

105 The full Latin text of the censura with a commentary in Italian is provided by Costa-Zalessow, La condanna all’Indice.

106 Archivio della Congregazione per la Dottrina della Fede. Indice, Protocolli, IIa, 33, KK (1650–1659), fols. 366v. Translation by Panizza in Tarabotti, Paternal Tyranny, 28.

107 SI, 256. See also the passage mentioned above, in which Tarabotti explicitly refrained from unrestricted liberty, SI, 349.

108 See PT, 84/SI, 258; PT, 106/SI, 300 and PT, 137/SI, 365.

109 Claims about women’s right to liberty are also found in Moderata Fonte’s The worth of women (1600) and in Lucrezia Marinella’s The Nobility and Excellence of Women (1601). See Deslauriers, “Patriarchal Power as Unjust.”

110 See Panizza, who called the work a “manifesto” (Panizza, “Introduction,” 1). The term was discussed critically by Jansen, “Hell Hath No Fury.”

111 “So la materia esser scabrosa, ma contraria al politico vivere, non al cattolico.” Biblioteca Universitaria Genova, Manoscritti aprosiani, vol. E, VI, 22 p. 122. Published in Medioli, “Alcune lettere autografe,” 147.