ABSTRACT

From the fourteenth century, if not before, the Italian word civilta, or civilita, or cognates, came to denote, among other ideas, the demeanour, bearing and manner characteristic of morally upright cives. Lay and clerical preoccupations with women's chastity ensured that modestia remained the measure of a woman's comportment in civil society. A man, young or old, should be modesto, commented Stefano Guazzo in La civil conversatione, but nevertheless he should not appear timid or diffident. Christian monasticism exemplified this assimilation of male and female comportment. The monastic ideal removed the incentive to differentiate the comportment of male and female religious. Within their separate convents the same disciplina corporis equally suited both sexes. It fortified the soul, male or female, for spiritual conversation with God. It rendered an individual, male or female, an obedient, rational member of a sexually homogenous community.