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ABSTRACT
The starting point of this article is an understudied piece of critical exegesis from 1657 titled Humble Reflections Upon Some Passages of the Right Honorable the Lady Marchionesse of Newcastles Olio. An obscure Englishwoman named Susan Du Verger composed this 164-page tract to refute a three-page essay on “A Monastical life” by the prolific poet, playwright, and philosopher, Margaret Cavendish. While there is now a substantial body of work on nuns and convents, this research largely overlooks how early modern women engaged with these topics in a scholarly manner. Along with elucidating the gamut of relevant patristic and ecclesiastical histories that were available in the English and French vernaculars, Humble Reflections provides a prompt for investigating Cavendish’s ideas on ecclesiastical order, ceremonies, and toleration. I propose that Cavendish refused to grace Du Verger with a direct response because her polemic disregarded the unofficial codes of conduct — friendship, transnational community, and inter-confessional co-existence — that were supposed to maintain peace within the Republic of Letters. In conclusion, this essay displays that Cavendish was actually a great admirer of monasticism, though not so much for its role in the spread of Christianity as for its place in the development of natural philosophy.
Acknowledgements
Many thanks to J.P. Vander Motten, Emily Mayne, Brenda Hosington, and the anonymous referee for their helpful comments on this article.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.
Notes
1. The only extant discussion of Humble Reflections is Narramore, “Du Vergers Humble Reflections”, but this article is exclusively concerned with the paratext rather than the theological material.
2. “A Monastical life” is in Cavendish, The World’s Olio, 28-31.
3. See Collins, “Susan DuVerger”, ODNB. Collins, however, does not acknowledge that Du Verger converted to Catholicism, despite her assertion in Humble Reflections that “I my selfe have bene a Catholike these many yeares” (104).
4. A manuscript note in a contemporary hand on the title page of the Bodleian copy of Diotrephe, or, An Historie of Valentines, Wood 275, suggests that it was actually published in 1643. On these translations and their religious import along with some additional bibliographical information, see Hosington, “Fact and Fiction in Susan Du Verger’s Translations”.
5. On women in the Republic of Letters, see Norbrook, “Women, the Republic of Letters, and the Public Sphere” and Pal, Republic of Women.
6. On the social, cultural, and political significance of monastic women, see Harline, The Burdens of Sister Margaret; Lowe, Nuns’ Chronicles and Convent Culture; McNamara, Sisters in Arms; and van Wyhe, Female Monasticism in Early Modern Europe.
7. Cavendish, Philosophical Letters, C1r.
8. Sarasohn, The Natural Philosophy of Margaret Cavendish, 127, n.4.
9. Conway and More, The Conway Letters, 234. On Cavendish and Conway, see Clucas, “The Duchess and the Viscountess” and Hutton, “Anne Conway, Margaret Cavendish and Seventeenth-Century Scientific Thought”.
10. The body of scholarship on rules and transgressions in the Republic of Letters is now vast. For an overview, see Haugen, “Controversy, Competition, and Insult in the Republic of Letters”. Of particular note are Goldgar, Impolite Learning; Malcolm, “Kircher, Esotericism, and the Republic of Letters”; Grafton, Worlds Made by Words; and the introduction to and essays in Die Europäische Gelehrtenrepublik.
11. Humble Reflections, A1v.
12. Humble Reflections, A2r.
13. Humble Reflections, 9. On the centrality of the Fathers to theological debates in early modern England, see Spurr, “‘A special kindness for dead bishops’” and especially Quantin, The Church of England and Christian Antiquity.
14. Humble Reflections, 7.
15. Humble Reflections, 9-10.
16. On debates over the “true church” and the perpetuity of Catholic doctrine, the key work is Milton, Catholic and Reformed, especially 128-72.
17. Humble Reflections, 14-5 and 66.
18. Humble Reflections, 15.
19. Humble Reflections, 54.
20. See Thacker, “Bede and History” and DeGregorio, “Monasticism and Reform in Book IV of Bede’s Ecclesiastical History”.
21. Humble Reflections, 40 and 85.
22. Humble Reflections, 46.
23. Humble Reflections, 46-61 and 114-23.
24. Humble Reflections, 46-7.
25. The most significant studies to date are Haugaard, “Renaissance Patristic Scholarship” and Vessey, “English Translations of the Latin Fathers”.
26. Haugaard, “Renaissance Patristic Scholarship”, 45.
27. See Goodrich, Faithful Translators, especially 29-66.
28. Humble Reflections, 27.
29. See British Library, Humble Reflections, 699.b.35 and Humble Reflections, 105.
30. For an overview of the libraries in mid-seventeenth-century Paris, see Lister, An Account of Paris, 93-110.
31. Humble Reflections, 18.
32. For the significance of Baronius to Catholics, see Pullapily, Caesar Baronius, Counter-Reformation Historian, and, as an authority on monasticism, see Machielsen, “Sacrificing Josephus to Save Philo”. On the part of Baronius’s history that was translated into English—volume XII by Richard Lassels—see Hosington, “‘If the past is a foreign country’”.
33. Humble Reflections, 16-8.
34. Humble Reflections, 155 and 14.
35. Vessey, “English Translations”, 826. On Augustine’s reception in early modern England, see Ettenhuber, Donne’s Augustine and Quantin and Mandelbrote, “Augustine in the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries”.
36. Haugaard, “Renaissance Patristic Scholarship”, 43.
37. Quantin, The Church of England and Christian Antiquity.
38. See Milton, Catholic and Reformed, 317-8.
39. Humble Reflections, 89.
40. On Jean-Pierre Camus, see Worcester, France and the Preaching of Bishop Camus and Descrains, Jean-Pierre Camus.
41. Du Verger, Admirable Events, 90.
42. Worcester, France and the Preaching of Bishop Camus, 129-30.
43. Cavendish, The World’s Olio, 30.
44. See Biot, The Rise of Protestant Monasticism and especially Jürgensmeier and Schwerdtfeger, Orden und Klöster.
45. Humble Reflections, 7.
46. Erasmus, The praise of folie (unpaginated).
47. On the writers that followed Bacon in composing essays, see Kiernan, “Introduction”, Essayes, xlix-lii.
48. See Scott-Baumann, Forms of Engagement, especially 38-42.
49. On the commonplace book, see Blair, “Humanist Methods in Natural Philosophy”; Beal, “Notions in Garrison”; Grafton, “Les Lieux Communs Chez les Humanistes”; and Moss, Printed Commonplace-Books.
50. The World’s Olio, A4r.
51. On these settings, see Whitaker, Mad Madge, 107-36.
52. Humble Reflections, 93 and 109.
53. On Bacon’s coupling of these works, see Colclough, “‘The Materialls for the Building’” (2010). Most of the scholarship on Cavendish and Bacon has emphasised the relationship between The Blazing World and The New Atlantis: see O’Neil “Introduction”, Observations, xiii-xiv; Cottegnies, “Utopia, Millenarianism, and the Baconian Programme”; and Aït-Touati, “Making Worlds: Invention and Fiction in Bacon and Cavendish”. A fuller discussion of how Cavendish read Bacon can now be found in Begley, “Margaret Cavendish, The Last Natural Philosopher”, 38-60 and 214-41.
54. Cavendish, Sociable Letters, 146.
55. The World’s Olio, 46.
56. Bacon, The Essayes, 54.
57. For discussions of the above passage in terms of Lucretius and Cavendish’s supposed atheism, see Wilson, Epicureanism at the Origins of Modernity, 27-30; Walters, Margaret Cavendish: Gender, Science and Politics, 133-4; and Battigelli, Margaret Cavendish and the Exiles of the Mind, 55-6.
58. For the lack of a clear distinction between religion and superstition in Lucretius, see Cottegnies, “Michel de Marolles’s 1650 Translation”, 182-3.
59. The World’s Olio, 30. For a fuller discussion of the above passage in Bacon, see Lancaster, “Natural Histories of Religion”, 258-61.
60. The World’s Olio, 34. On Catholicism and superstition, see Shawcross, “‘Connivers and the Worst of Superstitions’”. For a more High Church perspective, see Seth Ward’s poem in the British Library: “Whilst to the superstitious we tell / The monstrous piety of a monkish cell / How true religion fought once at Rome / What throngs of martires there received this doom” (Add. MS 4457, ff. 231).
61. On the manner in which Bacon's and Montaigne’s essays differ, see Kiernan, “Introduction”, Essayes, especially xiviii; Villey, Montaigne et François Bacon; Lee, “The English Renaissance Essay”; Hovey, “‘Mountaigny Saith Prettily’”; and Murphy, “Of Sticks and Stones”. On Florio’s borrowing from Bacon, see Hamlin, “Florio’s Montaigne and the Tyranny of ‘Custome’”, 516-17.
62. Suzuki, “The Essay Form as Critique”, 3-4.
63. Bacon’s “Of Delayes” and “Of Innovations” are particularly notable for proceeding through pros and cons (see Bacon, Essayes, 68-9 and 75-6). For “Antitheta Rerum”, see Bacon, Works, I, 688-706. On Cavendish’s corresponding manner of abstracting from particular natural philosophical insights to reach general principles, see Begley, “Margaret Cavendish, The Last Natural Philosopher”, 214-41.
64. The World’s Olio, 83-4.
65. On classical inventio and Bacon as an early modern proponent, see Wallace, Francis Bacon on Communication and Rhetoric, especially 51-85 and Vickers, “Bacon and Rhetoric”.
66. On the five stages of composition, see Vickers, In Defence of Rhetoric, 62-7.
67. The World’s Olio, 26.
68. In this regard, see Jardine, Discovery and the Art of Discourse, 32-42 and Lewis, “Francis Bacon and Ingenuity”, especially 120-3. For the Aristotelian background, see Spranzi, The Art of Dialectic Between Dialogue and Rhetoric.
69. The World’s Olio, 15.
70. Humble Reflections, 90.
71. Humble Reflections, 51.
72. Cavendish, The World’s Olio (1671), 58.
73. See the fair copy in the Bodleian Library: Clarendon MS 109, fol. 13.
74. The World’s Olio, 28.
75. The clearest statement of this sentiment is Hobbes, Leviathan, 1108.
76. See Malcolm, “Introduction”, Leviathan, especially 3-4, 52, 145.
77. The World’s Olio, 31.
78. The World’s Olio, 29. For a relevant discussion of debates surrounding ceremonies, see Sprinks, Sacraments, Ceremonies and the Stuart Divines, especially 56-62.
79. Clarendon MS 109, ff. 20. Also see Cavendish, The Life of William Cavendish, 168.
80. The World’s Olio, 30 and 51.
81. Humble Reflections, 95.
82. See Whitaker, Mad Madge, 47-83.
83. See Vander Motten and Daemen-de Gelder, “Margaret Cavendish, the Antwerp Carmel and The Convent of Pleasure”.
84. English Convents in Exile, 1600-1800, Vol. 4, 515.
85. Battigelli, Margaret Cavendish and the Exiles of the Mind, 12.
86. See Akkerman and Cornoraal, “Mad Science Beyond Flattery” and Broad, “Margaret Cavendish and Joseph Glanvill”.
87. See Haugen, “Imaginary Correspondence”.
88. The most comprehensive discussion of Cavendish’s ideas on gender is Boyle, “Margaret Cavendish’s Nonfeminist Natural Philosophy”.
89. The World’s Olio, A4r.
90. On Cavendish’s books in Oxford, see Poole “Margaret Cavendish’s Books”. For how one early modern reader used her work to orientate his understanding of institutionally established contemporaries, see Begley, “‘The Minde is Matter Moved’”.
91. Conway and More, The Conway Letters, 234.
92. Philosophical Letters, 316
93. Philosophical Letters, 492.
94. See Philosophical Letters, 210.
95. On Cavendish’s supposed heterodoxy, see Smith, “Claims to Orthodoxy” and Cottegnies, “Brilliant Heterodoxy”.
96. On debates surrounding Hobbes and heterodoxy, see Rose, “Hobbes Among the Heretics?”.
97. See Hobbes, Leviathan, especially 956-1010.
98. On the rise of natural theology, see Fischer, “The Scientist as Priest”; Ben-Chaim, “Empowering Lay Belief”; and Mandelbrote, “The Uses of Natural Theology in Seventeenth-Century England”.
99. Sociable Letters, 173.
100. Clarendon MS 109, fol. 20.
101. On the printing of vernacular Bibles and the changing religious landscape of seventeenth-century England, see Mandelbrote, “The Authority of the Word”; Reedy, The Bible and Reason; and Green, Print and Protestantism in Early Modern England.
102. On Flecknoe’s connection to Cavendish in a different setting, see Fitzmaurice, “Margaret Cavendish, Richard Flecknoe, and Raillery”. More generally, see Vander Motten and Daemen-De Gelder, “‘Whom Should I Rely Upon but the Best Able to Support Me?’”.
103. Flecknoe, A Farrago of Several Pieces, 29-30.
104. “Ob profligatos errores, sublata dogmatum dissidia & pacem reipublicae literariae restitutum” (W. Cavendish and M. Cavendish, A Collection of Letters and Poems (London, 1678)), 85.
105. See Jaumann, “Introduction”, Die Europäische Gelehrtenrepublik, 11-19.
106. Sociable Letters, 29-30.
107. Humble Reflections, 100.
108. See Du Verger, Admirable Events, A3r-A5r and Diotrephe, A2r-A3v.
109. See Fitzmaurice, “Paganism, Christianity, and the Faculty of Fancy” and Rogers, The Matter of Revolution, 177-211. For a more historically nuanced discussion of latitudinarianism, see Spurr, “‘Latitudinarianism’ and the Restoration Church”.
110. On the Act of Uniformity and its relationship to religious tolerance, see Goldie, “The Theory of Religious Intolerance in Restoration England”; Walsham, Charitable Hatred; and especially Spurr, “The Church of England, Comprehension and the Toleration Act of 1689”.
111. Cavendish, Philosophical and Physical Opinions, A2v.
112. The most significant source on Protestant reformers and natural philosophy is of course Webster, The Great Instauration.
113. On monastic orders and natural philosophy, see French and Cunningham, Before Science and the introduction to and essays in Feingold, Jesuit Science and the Republic of Letters.
114. Philosophical and Physical Opinions, A2v.
115. See, for example, Kellett, “Performance, Performativity, and Identity”; Dash, “Single-Sex Retreats in Two Early Modern Dramas”; Sierra, “Convents as Feminist Utopias”; and Chalmers, “The Politics of Feminine Retreat”.
116. Cavendish, The Convent of Pleasure, 11.
117. Convent of Pleasure, 34-5.
118. Philosophical and Physical Opinions, A2v. On sympathy more generally, see Moyer, “Sympathy in the Renaissance”.
119. Philosophical and Physical Opinions, 6. On the medical nature of Philosophical and Physical Opinions, see Begley, “‘The Minde is Matter Moved’”.
120. Letters and Poems, 158-9. While the poem is unattributed in Letters and Poems, Flecknoe’s authorship is clear from his Collection of the Choicest Epigrams, 137-8 and A Farrago of Several Pieces, 13-14.
121. For the expansiveness of the Cavendish library, see Noel, Bibliotheca nobilissimi principis.
122. For the claim that Cavendish’s exile is a metaphor for her isolation, the most notable sources are Battigelli, Margaret Cavendish and the Exiles of the Mind and Rees, Margaret Cavendish: Gender, Genre, Exile.
123. The World’s Olio, A6v.
124. On debates surrounding Elizabeth I not only as a leader but also as a learned woman, see Benkert, “Translation as Image-Making” and Shenk, Learned Queen.
125. See Maclean, Renaissance Notion of Woman, especially 60-2.