Abstract
Thomas Bentley’s Monument of Matrones (1582) is an anthology of devotional writing by an Elizabethan layman, directed primarily toward women. It gathers prayers and hymns by biblical women and prayers and meditations written by “godlie women in our time” (Bentley 1582, sig. F2r), along with a collection of household devotions, a prayer collection solely for women, scripture directions for women’s conduct, and stories of women found in the Bible. As one of the only Elizabethan printed books particularly for a female readership and as the sole source for some texts written by women, the volume is valuable for the study of women’s piety and the opportunities religion gave for reading and writing. At the same time, as the product of a male compiler, the Monument provides a picture of an elite Elizabethan man’s ideas about women’s nature and social condition. Despite subscribing to a view of women as subject to male authority and propounding a limited range of domestic virtues, Bentley celebrates women writers as heroes and calls upon his readers to emulate their example, evidence that writing had gained a place among the practices characterizing a godly woman.
Similar content being viewed by others
References
Atkinson, Colin, and Jo B. Atkinson. 1991. “Subordinating Women: Thomeas Bentley’s Use of Biblical Women in ‘The Monument of Matrones’ (1582).” Church History 60 (3): 289–300.
———. 2000. “The identity and life of Thomas Bentley, compiler of The Monument of Matrones (1582).” Sixteenth Century Journal 31 (2): 323–48.
Felch, Susan, ed. 2008. “Introduction.” In Elizabeth Tyrwhit’s Morning and Evening Prayers. Edited by Susan Felch, 1-69. Ashgate: Burlington, VT.
Hanebaum, Simone. 2014. ‘Monuments of Antiquities worthy memory’: History, Memory, and Identity in Early Modern England. MA thesis, Department of History, Simon Fraser University.
King, John. 2005. “Thomas Bentley’s Monument of Matrons: The Earliest Anthology of English Women’s Texts.” In Strong Voices, Weak History: Early Women Writers and Canons in England, France, and Italy, edited by Pamela Joseph Benson and Victoria Kirkham, 216-38. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press.
Shagan, Ethan H. and Debora Shuger, eds. 2016. Religion in Tudor England: An Anthology of Primary Sources. Baylor University Press.
Silva, Andie. 2020. The Brand of Print: Marketing Paratexts in the Early English Book Trade. Leiden: Brill.
Stróbl, Erzsébet. 2012. “Institutionalized Adoration: Prayers for and about Queen Elizabeth in Thomas Bentley’s The Monument of Matrons (1582).” In New Perspectives on Tudor Cultures, edited by Zsolt Almasi and Michael Pincombe, 199-221. Newcastle upon Tyne, UK: Cambridge Scholars.
White, Micheline. 1999. “A Biographical Sketch of Dorcas Martin.” Sixteenth-Century Journal 30 (3): 775-92.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Section Editor information
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2022 The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer Nature Switzerland AG
About this entry
Cite this entry
Narveson, K. (2022). Bentley, Thomas, Monument of Matrones. In: The Palgrave Encyclopedia of Early Modern Women's Writing. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-01537-4_310-1
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-01537-4_310-1
Received:
Accepted:
Published:
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, Cham
Print ISBN: 978-3-030-01537-4
Online ISBN: 978-3-030-01537-4
eBook Packages: Springer Reference Literature, Cultural and Media StudiesReference Module Humanities and Social SciencesReference Module Humanities