Antonia Pulci, Florentine Drama for Convent and Festival

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Florentine Drama for Convent and Festival
Antonia Pulci

The Other Voice in Early Modern Europe

Antonia Pulci
(1452 - 1501)

"A gratuitous and invidious misogyny sometimes appears in writing about the lives of saints (hagiography). Sometimes misogyny even typifies the personal writings of nuns. The perception of women as the weaker and less rational vessel, responsible for the Fall, and more subject to sin, pervades even the works of such a figure as St. Teresa of Avila, the Spanish religious mystic (1515-82).
In none of Antonia Pulci's (1452-1501) plays, however, do examples of such misogyny appear. On the contrary, Pulci's female saints and her secular women are typically more intelligent, more rational, more constant in their purposed, more compassionate, and more emotionally stable than their male counterparts. In their respective plays Pulci's heroines, and even her minor characters, are presented as the proactive forces who themselves change and who produce change. Once Saints Theodora, Domitilla, and Guglielma have embarked on courses of action, they follow through. They are good at predicting the consequences of their actions, and they accept those consequences unflinchingly." p. 3
"Even though women who are other than Christian and less than good - pagans, false friends, and prostitutes - do appear in Pulci's plays, their misapprehensions and vices arise from their choices, circumstances, and rearing, never from innate weaknesses associated with their gender. Her female characters' propensity to act in ways that match their reasoned words and her own regular refusal to allow those characters to conform to anti-female stereotypes or to express derogatory views about women mark her drama distinctively with another voice. And Antonia Pulci's voice, Christine de Pizan's apart, is one of the earliest to be raised in Renaissance Europe.
Beyond this principled refusal to pander to popular antifeminist attitudes, another aspect of Pulci's plays that identifies them with an emergent European female consciousness appears in her frequent heightening of realism, through the expression of "womanly concerns." Apart from her activity as a playwright - an enterprise in which, as a woman, she was perhaps unique in her place and time - Pulci pursued a not atypically bifurcated career, first as a wife and primary care-giver to her nieces (she never had children of her own), and later as a Augustinian tertiary and as founder of an order, the sisters of Santa Maria della Misericordia. Many situations that Pulci developed in her plays reflect these womanly concerns and her piety as well." p. 4
"The choice between marriage or convent faced virtually every young woman in Renaissance Italy; Pulci herself faced it - certainly after the death of her husband, and presumably before her marriage as well." p. 5
"The scenario - a choice between convent or brothel - was all too possible for unmarried women in fifteenth- and early sixteenth-century Florence. Women needed substantial dowries to marry, and even well-to-do Florentine families often could not muster the resources to assure appropriate matches for all their daughters. Despite efforts by the community to address this problem - like establishing a bank, the monte di dote, where money could accumulate to provide dowries - many young women found themselves destined from birth to the certain prospect of the religious life or, failing that, to the life of the courtesan." pp 7-8
"Three sorts of female communities appear in her plays: the convent, the brothel, and the seraglio." p. 8
"Domitilla, Guglielma, Rosana, and Theodora all become the objects of unwelcome masculine attentions - a concern of women throughout history. the Emperor Domitian and his dependent, Aurelianus, try to force St. Domitilla to marry. the governor of Syria twice unsuccessfully woos Theodora - first for himself and then for another. On her first refusal he condemns her to a life of prostitution, on her second to death. Guglielma's brother-in-law attempts to seduce her, and only the intervention of a providential indisposition prevents Rosana from becoming his concubine. Pulci does not flinch from confronting this aspect of womanly concerns." pp 8-9
"The prospective behavior of husbands once they acquired power over their wives was a perennial concern of European women for whom divorce was rarely if ever an option. Conceivably Antonia Pulci - whose own father had, on one occasion at least, ill-treated her mother with his infidelity - appeals here to her own experience in putting such a sentiment into the mouth of her heroine." p. 9-10
"Steadfast freedom from misogyny, committed female characters of heroic energy, great intelligence, unshakable though credible virtue, and situations reflecting womanly concerns all contribute to "the other voice" - the voice of an emergent, European female consciousness as it manifests itself in Antonia Pulci's plays." page 10
      Biographical information: pp 10-21
      Second child of seven children fathered by up-and-coming banker Francesco d'Antonio de Giannotto Tanini (5 in wedlock, 2 out-of-wedlock)
      probably educated in a fashion typical of the daughter of an upper-middle merchant - vernacular reading and writing, commercial mathematics, and accounting instead of the humanist Latin grammar and literature married Bernardo Pulci, a poorly-paid member of the Florentine literary clan, at age 18 with poverty nipping at their heels, the Pulcis began writing sacred dramas for popular performance and publication in Florence
      given lucrative position by Lorenzo de Medici in 1476, but gave it up for reasons of ill-health in 1477
      rehired in 1484 where he remained until his death in 1487
      Antonia's brother urged her to remarry - or enter a convent, She refused to do both. Rather, she donned religious garb, committed herself to a Christian life as a pinzochere, but continued to live in family house, coming and going as she saw fit.
      She supported herself from proceeds of her dowry, which passed to her control because she had no children and a little money raised from her plays.
      Perhaps anticipating death, she officially became an Augustinian sister in 1500 and shortly thereafter founded her own order
      From the Play of Saint Flavia Domitilla
      The story to this point: Domitilla, a young pagan virgin, meets the man, Aurelianus, selected by Emperor Domitian to be her husband and fall madly in love. Her Christian servants fail in an attempt to convert her to Christianity and entice her into a convent using profound philosophical and religious arguments. There follows the following exchange:
      One of the mentioned servants answers and says to Domitilla:
When you have been united with your spouse,      129
The title of virgin you'll lose,
and whether he will kindly be to you
Is hidden from you, for one's often blithe,
But knows not why; always, to know about
the future is unsure, and so one weights
These outcomes: you today a maiden's gown
Wear, then you'll be a woman and a wife,      136
      And you, who could not even entertain
The very notion that your virginal
nobility might be defiled, would to
A pagan base submit and bend yourself
To every pleasure of his, transform your life,
Your habits, and your manners, and your style,
His every vile commandment would perform
So that his appetite might sated be.       144
      All these husbands put their best for forward:
When their lady is engaged to them
How humble, then, they wish to seem, and mild -
At least until they've led her to their home.
However, secrets like those you can't know -
If you have not first spent some time with him
You will be filled with fear and full of doubt.
Be sure you think about such outcomes well.      152
Domitilla answers and says:

My mother suffered, as I well recall,
So many torments throughout all her life;
Because of her husband's jealousy alone
Bore very great distress, and if I were
to think that I would follow such a path,
The garments of the world I'd never don,
Though I don't think my spouse Aurelian
Would act like this because he is so kind.      160
One of the servants says to Domitilla:

That which I tell you often comes to pass,
Lo, some keep mistresses or concubines,
and some their ladies batter painfully,
Torment them with harsh discipline so cruel;
Many scornful outbursts, too, they bear;
One needs to think through all things to their end -
About the pangs of childbirth and the woes
So grievous when the children are brought forth.      168
      Sometimes, as well, when coming forth, a child
Will be born dumb, deformed, or senseless, whence
The mother will experience great grief,
For one who's born blind by the world is scorned;
Consider now if you'd have great regret
For ever having borne a child like these.
Sometimes the children, too, when they are born,
May be the causes of their mother's death.      176
The other servant arrives and says:

O sacred maidenhood, what worthy joy
You bring to God, and to the angels dear
Who for eternity in heaven live
And with their bright and shining maker reign!
How blest whoever may, beneath you sign,
that journey undertake, whoever scorns
This bitter life so trouble-filled to find
Another life more tranquil and serene.      184
      With penitence can one atone for sins,
But once virginity is lost, no more
Can it return to its first state again;
Who doesn't understand this, woe to her!
Though every other virtue conquers and
With joy is welcomed midst the saints in heave'n,
Just as the queen is greater than the rest,
So is virginity the glory true.      192
      It wafts a sweet aroma up to God.
If you preserve this, for a spouse you'll have
A noble youth both pious and benign,
Who will not ever go away from you,
That is Christ Jesus, who with yearning for
His brides rejoices greatly in high heav'n.
here certain joy, here true repose - she's blest
Who is devoted to so great a spouse.      200
      Whichever of these two most pleases you,
Choose one: take either this Aurelian
Who must die, leave his riches in default,
a fleeting hope for such long suffering;
Or, if you Jesus wish for your true spouse,
And him alone to serve is your desire,
Untroubled sweetness infinite to you
he'll give, and after death will give you life.      208
Domitilla answers her two servants and says:

Truly I seem to feel my heart unfold,
Such power have your words, and what within
I feel I can't tell you, but I'm much grieved
I took a spouse because I wish
To serve Christ Jesus and his holy law -
Be one who wants to flee the world and each
Vain thought - yet I desire to go away
From my intended spouse, Aurelian.      216
      I'm not going to tell you how the play ends. It's rather cute, get the book and read for yourself how Domitilla escapes from the marriage ordered by the Emperor to enter a convent and live happily everafter.
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last updated February 6, 1999