ABSTRACT
Cassio’s anguished cry to Iago resonates much less strongly to modern ears than it did in the sixteenth century. Then, reputation was the enduring public identity of any person, constituting as it did the communal assessment of an individual’s worth. Within that process, a man’s reputation was more malleable, a many-faceted construct in which weakness in one aspect could be countered by greater achievement in another. A woman’s reputation and identity, however, characteristically rested on a much narrower basis and was more fixed. One reason was, as the Spanish humanist Juan Vives wrote in 1523, that although in their education
Vives’s works remained popular throughout the sixteenth century, not least because he also understood that a sound grounding in ‘chastity and honesty’ for women required specific supplementary education. His educational treatises were for women at the apex of the socio-political hierarchy; his primary female exemplar of the benefits of a sound humanist schooling was Katherine of Aragon, whom he met whenever he visited England. In 1524 he dedicated his Satellitium to her daughter, Princess Mary, outlining his recommended educational programme for her as presumptive heir to the English throne. He did so with such success that the work was used in the education of Mary, of her half-brother Edward and probably of their half-sister Elizabeth. But the comprehensive study of classical pagan and Christian authors which Vives outlined for Mary was always intended to support a woman’s concern with an impeccable reputation, quite as much as prepare her for some kind of regal role in later life.
