Women In Renaissance Florence

In the traditional political history of Italy the people outside of the ruling class of the society were rarely studied. Only with the use of social history did the issues of class and gender begin to be debated by scholars. Numerous recent articles have done a great job of analysing particularly men of high status. In this paper I will look at the lower classes of Renaissance Florence. More specifically, I will center my focus on the lives of women during this era, how they were treated and viewed by people of other classes and how women were viewed and treated by men.

Social historians in recent years have started to look at the people who made up most of the population in cities, people who are usually ignored when looking at society,

and who were not influential power figures of the cities, women. In Florence, much like in many other cities and societies, historians rarely took the time to study women and their place in the society. More recently historians like Samuel K. Cohn, Jr. and Margaret L. King, among others, have started to explore women and people who did not hold power.
Samuel K. Cohn, Jr. has studied women in Florence as well as how the Black Death affected society. In his article “Women in the Streets, Women in the Courts, in Early Renaissance Florence”, Cohn looks at criminal court records, in contrast to previous historians, who tend to focus on analyzing personal letters and diaries. By analyzing these records and archives, Cohn maintains a clearer view of the artisan, worker and peasant families, people who usually are not addressed in letters or in diaries of aristocrats. As a result of his work on these criminal records, Cohn argues that women in the mid-fourteenth and fifteenth century started to lose their power. Cohn’s research shows a decline in the number of women in the criminal records in the years spanning between 1344-45. Seeing this trend poses the question of what caused the women of this time in Florence that allowed women to retreat with their social standings in the criminal court system? Women were losing their power and were being dismissed as people via the court. Throughout his article, Cohn addresses hypotheses as to why he believes this happened.
Another historian who has studied Renaissance women is Margaret L. King. Women in the family is a topic that King analyses in her chapter ”Women in the Family”. In the text of the chapter she defines the role of women in the family across different classes as well as location. Surprisingly, regardless of wealth, most women had responsibilities, although the rigorous work was usually expected to be performed by women on the lower end of the social spectrum than those on the higher end. Reading this article is helpful in understanding where women in Florence, Italy stood compared to men in the eyes of the society. King notes numerous examples of inequality and how women were oppressed. King lists the skills that many women had and needed to be helpful around the house as well as other skills. Some women worked in glass cutting and some women worked in textile production. She notes laws that benefited men and specifically disadvantaged women. The government would go out of there way to help men and limit the abilities of women. Overall, King’s research shows how useful and crucial women were in the family during the Renaissance in Florence.
Nicholas Terpstra's chapter in “Renaissance Teenagers: Working Girls” looks at working women during this time.

Young women were expected to work. From a young age, women needed to contribute to the family income for the family to survive. His chapter is helpful in understanding what happened to young women who were struggling. Terpstra notes that homes like that of the Pieta were set up to help these women. Terpstra’s argument really informs the reader on the struggle present for so many lower class women. He writes that the lives of these young women were unstable, due to the fact that these women were always on the move. In Terpstra's research, he found that when women left the house to pursue a job, more than a third returned shortly after leaving. In Terpstra’s work again we see the theme of women in lower positions being abused by men in higher

positions.
The articles of Margaret King, Samuel Cohn Jr., and Nicholas Terpstra show similarities in their articles. Both King and Cohn, for example, agree that women were affected by the changes in power that emerged in the fifteenth century. But these two historians also differ a bit, for example, Cohn spends more time than King in describing what other historians have done. Since King does not mention previous historians’ research and findings, she also does not criticize their work in the manner that Cohn does. Terpstra and Cohn are similar in the fact they both cite court cases regarding women. Cohn and Terpstra follow the story of women bringing men to court and succeeding in the lawsuit.
In some rare cases women were very close to their male counterparts in regard to power and expectations from society, prior to the apex of the Florentine Renaissance. We then start to see women being put at a disadvantage and men benefited from it. Women's position was further centered around the house. Women were expected by the society to sell goods they produced at home like flour, milk and eggs. King emphasizes that women's position was inside the home, and that their main job was childbearing. Women's retreat into the house makes sense. In numerous ways Florence is still recovering from the Black Death, and women were need to expand the family to help the family income.
All of these readings center the focus to the position of women. Women during Renaissance Florence were regarded as assets by the men as well as the society. Primary sources support this line of thinking. In The Society of Renaissance Florence: A Documentary Study, most sources mention women either as childbearers or when discussing dowries. This anthology of primary sources, shows numerous aspects of everyday life in Renaissance Florence. Many of these primary sources come from account books. The section concerning women and marriage in this anthology provides great insight that secondary sources cannot provide.
These primary sources pose Marriage as a business deal. Society viewed the most valuable part of marrying a woman the dowry that came with her. For example, in “The Marriages of Gregorio Dati”, “Her first cousins, Giovanni and Lionardo di Domenico Arrighi, promised that she should have a dowry of 900 gold florins...” they continue to discus assets that the wife would bring into the marriage. The tone of this document sounds like they are discussing a business deal and not the marriage of two happy people. A reason these primary sources are not emotional could be that they came from account books. None the less, this document is able to allow the reader to see how these deals were discussed but also how society viewed women.
“The Marriages of Gregorio Dati” has a lot of information regarding marriage during this time.

Gregorio Dati, according to the primary source, was married four times, and he documents the last three marriages. The manner in which he writes about these marriages does not show much emotion. Dati writes, for example:

“The dowry promised me was 600 florins. I went to dine with her that evening… The Saturday after Easter… I gave her the ring and then on Sunday evening, March 30, she came to live in our house simple and without ceremony.”

This excerpt is important when analysing how women were viewed by men and society. It shows the reader numerous practices. One is that the process was very quick, and this is also shown by his previous marriages. They were married within days of negotiating the marriage. A second interesting point is that wife is not present in the discussions, further proving the points that Cohn argues, namely that women had very little power. Lastly, there was no ceremony to celebrate the marriage. This speaks volumes to the reader. It further emphasizes that marriage was about the money, and women were objects used to get

money.
The primary source allows the readers to analyize how men felt about marriage as well. For example, a diary entry by Dati shows how he views women as well. The manner in which he speaks about them is not emotional. “Tuesday, at three in the afternoon she was buried in our grave… May God receive her soul in his glory.” He does not write what happened to his first wife, but his second and third wife die, and with both instances he does not mention how he felt with their passing. This could be interpreted as meaning that he cared very little for his wives. This could also be interpreted as he did not see this diary as the appropriate way to express his emotions. The only mention of mourning, in the entry, is when his son died. This again, is another example of how women had very little power and were viewed and used as objects.
Marriage negotiations show how women had little ability to voice their opinions publicly. “Marriage Negotiations: The Strozzi, 1464-1465” exemplifies how women were dismissed. “There aren't many young men of good family who have both virtue and property…. She has a small dowry.” Here the family was thinking of marrying the daughter to an exile. She did not have a big dowry so men would not be interested. The family believed that she would not be worthy of a man with a good reputation. The important thing here is that the family was making the decision for the woman. Also, important to note is that the family would rather marry her to someone in exile than keep her. This shows that some members of the society viewed women as a burden and the main goal was to get rid of them.
In closure, with help of social scientists we have been able to learn more about people in the lower classes of society. Much research has come out concerning women and their oppression. As shown above women in Florence during the Renaissance did not have a bright future. The primary sources discussed above show to the reader that the reality of women during this period. Women were dismissed in multiple arenas. For example, women’s job within the family, was to maintain the house and expand the family by giving birth. Women did not have a place in society outside of the home and how these women belong to their husbands. The secondary and primary sources show how women during this time were oppressed by the society.