Women As Liars: Moral Gender Questions in Medieval French and Italian Educational Standards

Abstract

After nearly five decades of studying women and gender in medieval Europe, it is worth examining those routes of ideas that represented the daughters of Eve as a sort of lying race. Indeed, without this kind of investigation, the history of the medieval mentality would lack an essential component. This contribution analyses lies as real historical evidence of gender issues. Medieval gender rules provided for only two options: “male” or “female”. This perspective yoked people to their biological features, but also morally differentiated between men and women at birth, a binary distinction that became a social and formative fact from that point on. This investigation identifies the impact of the Latin Church Fathers (Augustine and Jerome) on the dualistic allegorical representations (Truth vs. Falsehood) by artists and some vernacular writers of didactic moral literature in French and in Italy. The explicit instructions imparted during the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, by Richard de Fournival on the sentimental education of adults and by both Filippo da Novara and Francesco da Barberino on the control of the verbal behaviour of baby girls, are highlighted. Finally, important evidence is presented on Christine de Pizan, whose thoughtful, and very public, testimony at the beginning the fifteenth century provides a detailed account of the repercussions of the Truth versus Falsehood debate on the life of her contemporaries.