Victoria Fox and Brandie Siegfried, English

Introduction

The purpose of this project was to recover source documents regarding the life of a significant 16th-century woman who has been otherwise largely left out of history. Barbara d’Austria, daughter of Holy Roman Emperor Ferdinand I and Anna of Bohemia and Hungary, was an intensely religious and ambitious woman who was said to have used her own funds to provide shelter for women who had been displaced by an earthquake. But other than this general knowledge, and a few poems written at her marriage celebration by Torquato Tasso, little else has been developed regarding her life and influence. After scouring the library with BYU librarians and finding very little, Dr. Siegfried and I decided that her history. As I note below, she is of more than passing importance.

Methodology

I conducted my research at the British Library in London. Because of limited time, I worked through a pre-ordered list of documents, assigning importance first on primary sources, then on secondary sources, giving priority to those that were closer to Barbara’s own time period, or which were focused on her life specifically.

I was able to locate only one document that addressed Barbara’s life directly and completely. Unfortunately, this work was only in Italian, a language that I could not read. There were many passing references to Barbara in other works, but none that focused on her life except for this one. While this certainly frustrated the research process, it is also a valuable indicator that this is an area that would be fruitful for further study, given the importance of her time period and the significant figures among whom her name was mentioned in other works.

I had anticipated that finding information on her life would be difficult, so I had ordered second-tier materials that would provide a greater context for her life. This group included all the works within the British Library’s collection, that I could find, that mentioned Barbara in passing.

Before leaving for the British Library, I had also created a tree of Barbara’s family and social connections. Before arriving at the library, I ordered books that referenced the figures that appeared to have had significant roles in Barbara’s life. This, along with the historical context, proved to be the most fruitful avenue of research during my time at the British Library. Of particular importance was Renee de France, Barbara’s mother-in-law. Because I could read French, I was able to access important primary source materials that, while not mentioning Barbara specifically, nonetheless provided invaluable information about the intrigues and struggles during Barbara’s life, particularly during her reign as duchess of Ferrara.

Results

While there were many fascinating intrigues during Barbara’s time at court, the line of research that fascinated me the most was in relation to the ways in which women attained power religiously during a time when politically and socially, they were often powerless. Barbara herself, known for her devout Catholic practice, used religious institutions as a mean of exercising power. This was most obvious in her efforts to create a home for women and girls following devastating natural disasters, but I also believe that there were more subtle ways in which she exercised power during her time at Ferrara.

To understand this, however, I found it necessary to contextualize her life within the religious and political reforms of both her native Austria and her married home in Italy. Barbara d’Austria was born on the 30th of April, 1539, twenty two years after Martin Luther nailed his 99 thesis on the door of Wittenberg Castle church, and six years before the Catholic church responded with their own reforms at the Council of Trent. Her parents, Holy Roman Emperor Ferdinand I and Anna of Bohemia and Hungary, were matched in a political union that solidified the acquisition of the Hungarian and Bohemian crowns by the Habsburg Imperial court, to which Ferdinand belonged. The acquisition of Hungary-Croatia and Bohemia, and the ensuing strategic match between Barbara’s parents, gave the Habsburgs considerable political power against their Ottoman enemies and, more importantly, against internal threats from German princes who opposed their aggressive efforts to reform and unite the Holy Roman Empire.

Before the late fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries, the Habsburgs had little more power than the German princes; European governance was characterized primarily by strong local networks, and central power was weak. Lands were governed by agreements between rulers, the Church, and local elites, who held considerable autonomous power. Rulers could extract money from crown lands and dependant groups like Jewish and foreign merchants, but they had little infrastructure reach and weak aristocratic power. Royal courts, even at the beginning of the Habsburg dynasty, were small and moving, with little public function other than warfare.

Barbara’s childhood marinated in the political realities of the Habsburg struggle to centralize power in a fractured kingdom. Throughout the course of her childhood, the Imperial court used patronage as a means of weakening the stronghold of the old, local upper nobility by favoring those who brought merit and political loyalty over rank, to the point of granting court positions to well-educated commoners. Traditionally the hierarchy at court reflected the established social hierarchy, with the sons of upper nobility serving in the most important positions and those of lower nobility serving in those of lesser importance. The Habsburgs upset this balance—and asserted their power—by granting to lower nobility and commoners the entitled positions of the upper nobility. This began in the reign of Frederick III (1440-1493) and Maximilian I (1493-1519), so that by the time Barbara was born in 1539, the court had endured, and in many ways still in the midst of, a profound cultural shift.

This played out most obviously in Barbara’s education, as education rose in importance to the extent that it facilitated upward mobility (for lower nobles and wealthy commoners) or a maintenance of the threatened status quo (for upper nobility). Of particular importance was moral and religious education, which was thought to teach a child to put familial and Imperial interests above his own. Strict religious education become the outward indication of a loyal Imperial servant–the most prized but most difficultly measured characteristic in demand at the Habsburg court. The religious focus of education was also a product of the Reformation, as the battle between Catholics and Protestants drew itself into court politics. The number of educational institutions increased at this time, and irregardless of their religious affiliation, all emphasized the strict religious morality that the Habsburgs required of their courtiers. The Habsburgs remained loyal to the Catholic Church, however, and viewed Protestants with increasing suspicion. Though they didn’t bar Protestants from serving at court, they promoted Catholics at a five times greater rate.

Barbara’s own education, grounded within the Catholic loyalties of her family, was carried out in Innsbrook at the side of her sisters. While Barbara was born and raised outside the Imperial court of Vienna, she should not be seen as standing outside of court politics. In fact, her residence at Innsbrook provided her with even closer first-hand experience with changing class dynamics. Habsburg efforts to keep the German princes in line were quite effective, with increasing percentages of the upper positions at court being occupied by nobles who had gained those positions during Barbara’s childhood, all held within their family for less than 50 years. The commoners and lower nobility whose children would later fill these positions were wealthy enough to provide an education for their children, but did not have the connections that would allow their children to be educated at the royal court at Vienna. This was especially vital, because as the Habsburgs emphasized merit and loyalty in their promotion of lower ranks to higher positions in their court, the upper nobility, desperate to maintain their superiority, emphasized the manners and court etiquette that one could only learn by growing up within a royal environment–an advantage reserved for higher ranks, and thus a means of maintaining some remnant of the former status quo. Innsbrook and other courts of its stature became the points of entry for the sons of wealthy commoners who needed to learn the manners and traditions of the court, in addition to their education, in order to advance politically. These children worked at Innsbrook in exchange for the opportunity to be educated with the children of the Emperor. This was true of Hieronymus Beck, who worked as a page at Innsbrook and was educated with the children of Ferdinand I. Beck would become a prominant noble and the owner of a significant Huminist library, so we know more about the specifics of his life and education than we do for Barbara. But knowing this was a common practice, it was likely that Barbara interacted with many children of lesser or common rank in the course of her childhood, a level of connection with commoners that is hard to imagine for royal children before this time. It is of little wonder, then, that the social projects of her adult life took such a progressive turn.

The political climate in Ferrara was no less tumultuous when Barbara married into the powerful Este family. Her husband, Alfonso II, was the last of the Este heirs, and his failure to produce a son with his previous wife had caused great contention, especially as the Papal throne looked to the possibility of inheriting the Este lands, should no heir be produced. Unfortunately, while Barbara and Alfonso had a happy marriage, it would be childless, as would his marriage to his third wife. Alfonso II thus represents the end of the Este line, just as Ferrara sunk into the great religious contentions of the Reformation and Counter-Reformation.

This is where Renee of France and her life became increasingly valuable in my research, as it provided a picture of what these contentions looked like with the Este household. Renee and her son Alfonso were continually at odds, to the point that she left Italy permanently, in order to return to her native France. Renee had come to Ferrara as a devout Catholic and left as a radical Protestant—one of his strongest supporters and allies in Italy. Barbara herself followed much the same pattern. While she did not rebel religiously, she found a path of social reformation that left significant legacies in Ferrara, and while not much research has been performed on her life (at least in the English-speaking world), her work left networks and even buildings that would remain a strong institutional force in Ferrara for centuries. I was able to locate, in my research, confirmation that Renee and Barbara had indeed written many letters to one another. Despite their different religious affiliations and the conflicts between Renee and Alfonso, it was obvious from the secondary material, particularly in French, that Renee and Barbara enjoyed a close relationship. While these letters were not within the British Library’s collections and, indeed, I am not certain that they exist in any collected form in other collections, I do believe that this would be a fruitful path of study for someone with more resources and time to dedicate to this project, who could work in Italian and French archives to locate these letters, or other mentions of them in secondary works. I conducted a lot of research on Renee’s life in hopes of finding more information on Barbara, and while I will not write about this aspect of my research in this report, I do wish to point out that there was a rich history of religious criticism, rebellion, and change preceding Barbara’s time at Ferrara. I believe that this provided the opening for Barbara’s social and charitable work.

Discussion

In discussing Barbara’s life and in setting up the possibilities for further research in this area, it is important to note that reform in Ferrara was locally rooted, influenced but not imported from northern Europe. It is also notable that Savonarola, one of the fiercest critics of Catholic power in Italy—a man who Martin Luther regarded as a forerunner— actively enlisted female mystics, visionaries, and prophetesses in his following. The power of female religious networks, which both Barbara and Renee capitalized on, were in place long before Barbara’s birth in Austria.

In the generation before Barbara, even before Renee’s adulthood, the teachings of Savonarola had gained increasing power. Prominent religious and political leaders were loathe to publicly display their sympathies with Fra Girolamo, remaining quietly but firmly devoted to his message of reformation. It was in this environment that the teachings of Northern reformists such as John Calvin and Martin Luther would find fertile ground.

The court and city of Ferrara where Barbara would find herself following her marriage to the Duke Alfonso II d’Este is a revealing microcosm of these conditions. Savonarola was in correspondence with Alfonso’s father, Ercole. Ercole sought out Savonarola after the 1494 invasion and his subsequent popularity because he was trying to establish Ferrara’s religious superiority over other cities, and there were no prominent religious authorities in Ferrara. Savonarola, born in Ferrara, was a close choice. After establishing a relationship, Ercole continuously sought Savonarola’s political advice, which was in keeping with contemporary patterns of rulers’ relationships with their court prophets. The duke, in turn, supported the publication of Savonarol’s works. Ferrara was the only town besides Florence that carried out reforms based on Savonarola’s teachings.

Ercole even went to great lengths using many connections to get Lucia Brocadelli—a prominent Savonarolan mystic—to Ferrara. Lucia Brocadelli also likely had a hand in convincing Ercole to provide the dowries for impoverished sisters, allowing them to form a strong community of female religious order in Ferrara. Brocadelli, a fierce critic of Pope Alexander, was eventually forced out of Ferrara by papal loyalists, and from the 16th to 18th centuries individuals and groups suppressed evidence of the influence of female mystics on Savonarolan reform outside Tuscany.

Yet despite this turn of fate, Savonarolan mystics continued to take an important role in reformation movements in Ferrara. While the writings of the historical Savonarola expressed a mistrust of female spirituality, but the martyred Savonarola was entirely different. He encouraged them to recount their visions to his other followers, and he revealed his prophecies to them, thereby granting them authority as his spiritual successors. The male followers, eager to prove the divine inspiration of Fra Girolamo’s campaign, welcomed these visions, giving the women tangible authority, power, and independence within their religious community.

These visions and the support system also gave female mystics voice to challenge the male-dominated church hierarchy. The relations between male and female Savonarolans were unequal yet reciprocal as they fought for moral and ecclesiastical reform. Male followers served as confessors, spiritual directors, and hagiographers of the visionary women affiliated with their movement. Savonarola’s female followers were more often suspected of disobedience or unorthodoxy than their clerical allies, and more consistently incurred the disapproval of their Dominican leaders. This suggests that they were more willing to criticize authority—more determined and less cautious.

Conclusion

This research into female mysticism in Italy proved to be the foundation of what I hope will one day be a full investigation of the ways in which religious reform allowed women to find access to power in ways that had before been blocked to them. There is obviously a strong heritage of bold criticism that runs between the female followers of Savonarola, the female Evangelicals in Northern Italy, and the social reforms of Barbara herself. In continuing this project, I hope to tie these threads together, working on a thesis that focuses on the ways in which religious strife, in Italy in particular, created cracks within social and political institutions, cracks which women like Brocadelli, Renee, and Barbara could seize upon and push against in order to find avenues to power in a world that was ruled by men—by kings and priests. My research into Barbara’s life and the context of political, social, and religious change in Italy made it very clear that women were not as powerless as they are written in history. Part of the reason that we don’t see this power is because our histories have been so focused on the male perspective and story. This is why the study of women like Barbara, who at first seem to have a small role, prove the importance of female perspectives and stories. It is clear that there was more going on beneath the surface of Italian politics, even of violent religious reform, and that the women of this time were innovative and bold in their pursuit of their own vision of God and the world. While it is clear that much more time and resources would be required to uncover the details of Barbara’s own life—and hopefully, through her letters, her own voice and perspective—I believe that my research made a clear case for her value within the historical context of reform in 16th-century Europe.