Ein Streit, so alt wie die Welt : Josefa Amar (1749-1833), die Bibel und die 'Querelle des femmes'

Abstract

In the eighteenth century, the debate on the moral and intellectual capacity of women, their education and their eventual admission to the public sphere was even more lively than in the past, spreading to pedagogical literature, economic or social reform discourses, the criticism of manners, fiction and the periodical press, and involving a wider public. Within these discussions, biblical references (the exegesis of the Holy Scriptures or the invocation of the strong women of the Old Testament), which had occupied a central place in the secular tradition of the "querelle des femmes", diminished in importance. They were gradually replaced by others with more enlightened and secular roots, but they did not disappear altogether. Their persistence is better known in the Protestant world. The role they played in the Catholic world, where at the end of the eighteenth century the ban on translating the Holy Scriptures into vernacular languages was lifted, remains to be analyzed. This chapter examines, in its European and Hispanic context, the role of the Bible in the work of the enlightened Spanish writer Josefa Amar y Borbón (1749-1833), author of important texts in defense of gender equality. It analyses her defense of Latin learning for women, the combination of traditional and enlightened arguments in her work, and the place of the religious question in her thought and life. Consideration of these issues reveals the complex relationships between Christianity, feminism and modernity, and helps to reassess the Catholic Enlightenment.