Chaste Widows

"To this little Treastise, I have adioyned the WIDDOWES GLASSE, the which I humbly intreate you, to present, in my Name, to your two most worthy Sisters, who for the long, constant & most exemplar professio of that noble and worthy state of chast Widdowhood, may seeme to clayme a iust Title therunto."

Lessius, Leonardus. The treasure of vowed chastity in secular persons. Also the widdowes glasse. Trans. I.W. P. Saint Omer: English College Press, 1621.

I was planning to look at widows during this time to better understand what behavior was traditionally expected of them. If this is a typical example though - and it was the only one I found - then widows are expected by some to be chaste. Based on the book's title his dedication seems to be going towards secular individuals, not just widows, who have chosen chastity over remarriage or sinning through fornication. A woman like Margery Kempe would probably embody the type of average person who is choosing chastity for her own life. What was interesting to me was that prior to studying this play, the only widow I can think of is Anne Hathaway, Shakespeare's wife, who was a widow when they married. The accounts I had read of this never seemed to indicate that marrying a widdow was some societal abnormality, though that Shakespeare did and an older woman at that, seemed always something of a point of confusion.

Knowing the feelings of the Jesuit priest who wrote this, might not shed as much illumination as would a text by a secular person, but it does put the desires of both the Cardinal and of Ferdinand into a more complete image of what was expected by society at the time. Widows were expected to be chaste because they had already given of themselves to their husbands. Now that this duty of serving one's husband had been fulfilled, there was no further need of the women to once again be in a position to engage in sexual activity where and when it could be avoided appropriately, as is the case with a widow like the Duchess.