Educating rich and poor girls in seventeenth-century Florence: Eleonora Ramirez di Montalvo, her lay conservatories and writings

My study of the Florentine educator, poet, and playwright Eleonora Ramirez di Montalvo (1602-59) builds on recent scholarship on the education of aristocratic women in the convent and explores uncharted paths on the education of rich and poor women in semi- and non-cloistered settings. A prolific writer and practitioner of education, Montalvo founded two lay conservatories for women in Florence---"Il Conventino," for the underprivileged, and "La Quiete," for the elite---creating unique semi-enclosed communities that preserved some degree of individual agency. Although lost to modern scholars, Montalvo was a major influence in her era who pushed the boundaries of expectations regarding the education of women by offering all classes of women a distinctive curriculum composed of her own administrative guides, poetry, and plays. She established herself as an influential theorist whose efforts provided a model for educational initiatives throughout Tuscany during the following century. Drawing on previously unexamined documents of Florentine archives and libraries, this dissertation argues that Montalvo, through her writings and the founding of her two lay conservatories, created extraordinary opportunities for the intellectual advancement and spiritual growth of elite and ordinary women alike.;In the Introduction, I juxtapose Montalvo's lay conservatories and their enduring success with other semi- and non-cloistered communities for women in early modern Europe which quickly departed from their founders' original design. I also provide an overview of Montalvo's works and other texts (i.e., contemporary writings about her) that I employ in this dissertation. In Chapter One, I present Montalvo's life, the history of the founding of her two conservatories, and the evolution of her writings. Chapter Two highlights Montalvo's Costituzioni ( Constitutions) and the innovative guidelines that she envisioned for her communities of women: the importance of free choice, a modified form of enclosure, and the participation of servants in learning and worship. In Chapter Three, I compare Montalvo's Istruzione alle maestre (Instruction for Teachers) to the version of her treatise that the Grand Duke Pietro Leopoldo (1747-92) would later include in the Costituzioni of his eighteenth-century Tuscan conservatories; I argue that Montalvo offered greater opportunities for spiritual learning and occupational development to the young women of her conservatories in the "restrictive" environment of the Counter Reformation than Leopoldo provided in the period of the Enlightenment.;Chapter Four examines Montalvo's spiritual comedies and dramatic hagiographies as effective tools for teaching her young women the virtues, religious history, speech, proper spiritual behavior, and the meditative practices of Ignatius of Loyola's Spiritual Exercises (1548). Chapter Five posits that Montalvo wrote her spiritual autobiography in verse not only to receive guidance and approval from her confessor(s), as most religious women of her era were required to do, but also to serve as a guide for her young women, helping them understand how they could communicate with God in order to receive spiritual direction for their own lives. My Conclusion suggests that further study of Montalvo's writings is warranted. Her dialoghi (dialogues) and orazioni (prayers) demonstrate that Montalvo intended to rectify what she perceived as misguided practices in the Florentine Church, specifically, the worship of images and an inappropriate devotion to the Virgin Mary. In the appendices, I provide transcriptions of three of Montalvo's unpublished works: two dramatic hagiographies, Vita di Sant'Orsola (Life of Saint Ursula) and Vita di Santa Margarita (Life of Saint Margaret ); and her spiritual autobiography, Vita di Eleonora (Life of Eleonora).