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cahnLast post, we had (among other things) Danish kings and their favorites; Louis XIV and Philippe d'Orléans; reviews of a very shippy book about Katte, a bad Jacobite novel, and a great book about clothing; a fic about Émilie du Châtelet and Voltaire; and a review of a set of entertaining Youtube history videos about Frederick the Great.
How not to raise a child: the Ferdinand of Parma edition
Date: 2023-03-15 02:39 pm (UTC)- We all know about FW and his free-thinking kids. Even AW, whom he was relatively nice to, had the attitude that too much religious ostentation was a bad thing, although so was mocking religion *cough* Fritz.
- We know about Cosimo III de Medici and his two libertine sons (and GG was something of a freethinker until his deathbed conversion).
- We have recently learned about Pietists Christian VI and Sophia Magdalena of Denmark and their libertine children, Frederik V and Louise the possibly-pregnant-out-of-wedlock. Frederik, incidentally, was not a Deist, there are a lot of references to God and praying in his letters...but let's just say he was not his parents when it came to religion.
- Struensee's father was Francke's successor as pastor in Halle. Struensee, talking to a pastor before his execution, said his father was much too hard on him. Winkle, the academic biographer I'm currently reading, just says that that was normal. He also says that FW was a perfectly normal father, and that nothing that happened to Fritz was unusual.
More convincingly, Barz, the romanticizing biographer, says Struensee père was the kind of authoritarian father whose children have to either turn out exactly like him or exactly opposite him, no middle ground. And sure enough, one son turned out just like him and the rest abandoned religion and became Deists or atheists. Struensee also had a reputation as a libertine; he seems to have been pretty sexually active, although rumors of his decadence in other ways may have been exaggerated.
But there are also some cases where a more liberal upbringing resulted in a child who felt the need to go in an extreme religious direction. This write-up is mostly about Ferdinand, Duke of Parma, but there's also the other obvious case: Tsarevitch Alexei, murdered son of Peter the Great. We'll cover Ferdinand's education in the first post, since I have far more detail about it, and then do a compare-and-contrast with Alexei's in the second post.
Ferdinand of Parma's Genealogy
Who was Ferdinand, Duke of Parma? He was the younger brother of Isabella of Parma (ViennaJoe's wife). As you may remember, that means his mother was the favorite daughter of Louis XV, the one who kept wanting to go back to Versailles and bug Dad for money, and her father was Don Philip, the younger son of Philip V "the Frog" of Spain and Isabella Farnese of Parma. As part of the conclusion to the War of the Austrian Succession, Parma was given to Don Philip as a sort of French client state. You may remember that Isabella had been fighting for her Parma inheritance since she married Philip way back in 1714, because she wanted something to pass on to her sons (Philip the Frog already having a son from his first marriage to inherit Spain).
Ferdinand was born in 1751, died in 1802, and married MT's daughter Maria Amalia. He is thus also first cousin to butt-groping Ferdinand over in Naples, because Naples-Sicily went to Philip and Isabella's oldest son Don Carlos (future Charles III of Spain) as a result of the War of the Polish Succession.
Ferdinand's younger sister Maria Luisa will marry her first cousin, Don Carlos's son, future Charles IV of Spain, and she will become queen of Spain in 1788.
Ferdinand himself, being the only son of his parents, will become Duke of Parma at the age of 14, in 1765.
How Ferdinand's education was supposed to go
His parents wanted a modern, enlightened prince. So they made the surprising, especially in Italy, choice not to involve the Jesuits in his education. The idea was that he should be a good Catholic but not a bigot, and be prepared for ruling a principality, not for theological debates.
Instead, they got, among other people, the Abbe de Condillac, who was admired by Voltaire, and who influenced Rousseau, Diderot, d'Alembert, and the encyclopedia.
Condillac sets out to teach via a new method, which he describes as involving cooperation rather than authority. A child learns by having their natural curiosity stimulated, and the student should understand what they're learning, not just memorize and recite. They should learn to think.
Now, the philosophes of this era are big believers in education. They subscribe to a "tabula rasa" theory, in which the child is a blank slate and only their upbringing governs how they will turn out. As Leibniz says, training makes everything possible, even to teaching bears to dance.
So you can imagine the philosophes are very excited that one of them is in charge of the upbringing of a prince. They keep a close eye on developments in Parma, and all the news about young Ferdinand that comes out of there is discussed in salons in Paris.
No pressure.
How Ferdinand's education actually went
So this whole idea about an education where the teacher isn't an authority figure but more of a guide who helps the student learn to think for themselves sounds great. But what happens when the student does things that you don't want him to do, like
1) being excessively religious,
2) hanging out with the lower classes, doing lower class things,
3) speaking the Parmesan dialect of Italian,
? And worse, LIES about it, because you've forbidden all these things?
Why, you have to beat him, of course. A lot.
Ferdinand wrote a "my life so far" when he was about 20 or so. A major portion of it consisted of "Man, I was beaten a lot by my tutors. I know I deserved it, because I was always sneaking off and lying about it, but I was kicked and punched and yelled at all the time."
Mom: "My son is great, even though he needs to be beaten a lot."
Older sister Isabella (future ViennaJoe's wife), "If I were raising a child, I would not beat them up, because it just backfires, and you get a defiant child." She writes a very-modern sounding treatise on her child-rearing opinions, at the age of like 16, which you can only imagine is based on her role as surrogate mom to Ferdinand and observing how he was being treated and how that was turning out.
She denounces the dangers of that excess of power that makes children violent, impatient, and stubborn, and the dangers of intransigence, which comes from hard-heartedness and meanness. It "does not mend, inspires no respect..., arouses hatred, revenge, and distrust, encourages deceit, kills all sensibility, makes hard and callous, and capable of all malice." On the other hand, she contrasts gentleness, "which is despised these days," but capable of winning the hearts of children, begetting approval, affection, and sincerity, training their minds and feelings, and making them agreeable and docile.
Ferdinand: "The happiest time of my life was when I was inoculated for smallpox, and I had to be quarantined for a few weeks from my tutors who had never had smallpox. Happiest. Time. Ever."
Why he was so into religion
So Ferdinand grows up into someone who is absolutely obsessed with religion. He will spend as much time as possible praying, venerating holy relics and icons, traveling from church to church, talking to clergy. He writes that he has a calling in life to become a monk.
He also writes that every time something terrible or stressful happened in his life, religion made him feel better. And a lot of stressful things happen, like:
1. He struggles to learn to read.
2. His mother spends most of her time in France, then dies.
3. His older sister/surrogate mom gets shipped off to Austria about a year after his mother dies.
4. His absentee dad dies by the time he's 14, leaving him alone in Parma.
5. He doesn't say this, but he gets beaten a lot.
Also, he doesn't complain about the workload, but it's immense, and other contemporaries side-eyed it.
Here's Condillac's syllabus for a six-to-seven year-old:
A multitude of religious writings; plays by Racine, Molière and Corneille; L'art poétique by Despréaux; works by Voltaire; Des tropes by Du Marsais; De l'origine des lois (Investigations into the Origin of the Laws) by Goguet, the textbooks Grammaire and L'art d'écrire; Newton's philosophy, in Emilie's translation, especially in the phenomena of the world and their explanation, which the Marquise provides; Maupertuis's Traité de la sphère and his Voyage au Nord "and all that he wrote about the system of the world", and the second part of Voltaire's Newton.
And Condillac promises everyone that the kid totally understands this! He brags that Ferdinand grasped the basis of philosophy in one month.
Meanwhile, said kid, looking back, says he struggled to learn to read, but one day he went and prayed to a saint about it and kissed an image of the saint, and then he was able to read. Relics also helped his stomachaches.
I'm going to armchair diagnose here, and propose that we have a very stressed child (later adult) here for whom religion is one of his self-soothing techniques. And he does it to excess in the same way some people drink to excess, gamble, visit prostitutes, take out their anger on other people, etc. Any time you see someone doing something to excess, there's a good chance it's taking their mind off their incredibly stressful life, and they don't have better coping methods.
So, of course Ferdinand turns into an adult who brings back the Inquisition in the 1760s when it's becoming outmoded, and who cares more about his religious duties than his secular duties.
How everyone reacted to how Ferdinand turned out
His tutors were very upset at him being so religiously obsessive. As noted, they beat him when they caught him, and even when he was older, Condillac wrote him letters scolding him. He should be a good Christian, Condillac said, but he should go into his room and pray quietly, not visit every church in the neighborhood and prostrate himself at the altar. Even the Pope wouldn't approve if he knew, says Condillac!
The letters REEK with classism. It's amazing. Like, you want to sympathize with the "enlightened" guys, but the "lower class" people Ferdinand spends his time with are probably not BEATING him and also making him read Newton at age 6.
Meanwhile, the tutors are showing off Ferdinand to visitors and writing letters to the rest of Europe about how great the educational program is going. These letters are, of course, passed around and read aloud in salons. The philosophes rejoice! Rousseau, d'Alembert, Voltaire, all of these people believe in the power of education!
But behind the scenes, Condillac is writing to Ferdinand, "Look, I tell everyone how great you are, but I leave out all the bad parts. You need to shape up or you're never going to be a good prince."
Understandably, Ferdinand does not "shape up," and word gets out that the much-vaunted modern education produced a pious bigot who would rather join a monastery and live in the 17th century.
Awkward.
Do the philosophes question their methods? No. Of course not.
In fact, Voltaire, who started out quipping that "The Infante of Parma will be in good company. He will have a Condillac and a Leire (a renowned atheist) with him. If he still manages to be pious, God's grace must be very strong indeed," ends up saying, "I hoped for a little from the Infante, the Duke of Parma, considering the good education he had; but where there is no soul, education can do nothing either; I heard that this prince spends the day visiting monks and that his Austrian and superstitious wife will be in charge. O poor philosophy! what will become of you? Still, we must stand firm and fight to the end." (Emphasis Badinter's.)
According to Badinter, the philosophes never actually acknowledge the contradiction between the "tabula rasa" theory they've been espousing and their sudden belief that there's something in the child that cannot be shaped by a philosophe armed with the right methods.
Condillac writes a summary of "the course of study for the instruction of the prince of Parma" repeating what he said in the 1740s, before Ferdinand was even born. Much like Fritz digging out his anti-German pamphlet from Rheinsberg, Condillac's post-Ferdinand summary doesn't take into account anything that happened in the intervening decades, except to comment at the end that "There are thankless situations; there is a certain ground in which it is very difficult to lay the foundations: one may even make a mistake and the building collapses altogether."
But, you know. Carry on like nothing happened.
Diderot, of course has the luxury of claiming he believed in phrenology all along, and the anatomical differences in skulls and diaphragms show that there must be some inborn differences.
Mostly the philosophes just pretend Parma never happened. Certainly no one ever entertains the possibility that a different education would have produced a different child.
Except some people who meet Ferdinand and aren't fancy philosophes prove to have common sense. The French envoy tells Ferdinand, "If I'd been your tutor, I would have made you visit 6 churches a day once you started going through this phase," and Ferdinand laughs and admits that would have totally turned him off religion.
And MT's envoy has this opinion:
The Infante had a good character spoiled by his upbringing. "He has aptitudes of mind and understanding, but under the semblance of a brilliant upbringing these aptitudes have been spoiled and this understanding overwhelmed." He even credits him with an exceptional memory and "a great desire to learn." Instead of nurturing these talents, "he was forced by undignified methods to study diligently astronomy, navigation, and mathematics... He was smothered in history full of metaphysics... which he could not mentally digest. Hence his aversion to any kind of study and his flight from all diligence. The poisoning of his original respect for the two teachers by an extremely violent, deeply felt hatred has corrupted his heart. That taught him to be evasive and false."
The Marquesa de González said he admired the work of the philosophes, but this kind of workload is how you get a ten-year-old man and a twenty-year-old child. And sure enough, Ferdinand is taking heat in his twenties for childish pranks and wanting to play rather than work (heavy dose of classism here; it's the "lower-class" guards and servants who are teaching him these pranks).
And, of course, we've seen Isabella's opinion of his education when he was still a child.
So basically, the philosophes don't come off very well in this story.
How much of it was real anyway
There's also the question of how much of Ferdinand's precociousness when he was a kid was real. When he was being shown off to visitors, was he just prepped in advance and could only handle questions he'd been told to expect in advance? How much did he understand of what he was saying?
Contemporary accounts differed, and apparently we can't actually tell. He had some interest in literature and the sciences when he got older, was willing to be inoculated (I mean, his sister had just died of smallpox the year before, and his mother had died a few years before that), supported astronomy, etc. But he remained one of the most passionate supporters of the Church in the most throwback possible way.
So, he is full of contradictions, accounts of his life and personality are full of contradictions, the philosophes are full of contradictions when their theories run up against reality...and the one contradiction Badinter never addresses to my satisfaction is that his tutors supposedly endorsed education that treated the teacher more as a friend and supporter than as an authority figure to be feared...and yet were beating him regularly. All she says is that this was normal, everyone got beaten in those days, no one except Isabella ever questioned it. Which is not totally satisfactory to me.
Re: How not to raise a child: the Ferdinand of Parma edition
Date: 2023-03-16 05:27 pm (UTC)"MT wrote detailed teaching instructions for her children and kept a tight supervision on them. This according to Badinter proves she was a bürgerliche Mutter more than an aristocratic one. Not true! She knew the kids would have to represent Team Habsburg and that's what they were educated for! Doesn't mean she didn't love them, but Badinter is taking all the 18th century effusiveness way too literally and is sentimentalizing MT, and also, what's this with reproducing judgey statements from the sources without checking, like Joseph's second wife being ugly? Boo, hiss."
Ferdinand's younger sister Maria Luisa will marry her first cousin, Don Carlos's son, future Charles IV of Spain, and she will become queen of Spain in 1788.
You know, before you wrote this, I never put it together that this younger sister, aka the same one Joseph would have married if his "if I have to marry again, only a sister of Isabella!" offer had been accepted, was the Queen who is an important supporting player in Feuchtwanger's Goya novel "This is the hour", the same Queen famously portrayed by Goya in an unidealized fashion in his family portrait of the Spanish Bourbons along with the rest of the familyl, but it's extremely noticiable for Maria Luisa, especially if you compare Goya's painting with the standard pretty princess painting taken of her when she was still unmarried. Granted, Goya painted her 14 pregnancies (half the kids survived) and partial loss of teeth later, but royal portraits used to ignore such rl business, and thus it is still a revolutionary portrait, from the official court painter, no less. Despite her looks, Maria Luisa is supposed to have had lots of love affairs and had one particular favourite lover, Manuel Godoy, whom she made de facto Prime Minister. Alas, he was completely over his head, especially since he was the one who had to deal with Napoleon Bonaparte, and thus the Spanish royals ended up first in French polite imprisonment/exile and then in Rome. After Napoleon's defeat, Maria Luisa's oldest surviving son did become King but explicitly said he did not want his parents plus Manuel Godoy (still living with Maria Luisa and Carlos) back in Spain, so they all died in Rome.
So you ssee what I mean about the art revolution in an age of revolutions - Maria Luisa, standard court painting portraying her shortly after her marriage:
Maria Luisa, portrayed by Goya in 1789, the very year of the French Revolution:
The famous Bourbon family portrait by Goya:
(Feuchtwanger, btw, found her interesting, not least because as you can see by the last two portraits, she kept employing Goya, this wasn't a one time thing. She said yes to this depiction.)
Poor Ferdinand her brother: anyone who makes a six or seven years old read Newton, in Émilie's translation or otherwise, has no business calling themselves a teacher at all, even leaving aside physical brutality. As for physical punishment being the norm of the era, I would like to point out that Luise Henriette, mother of F1, explicitly was against this (and against shouting) and argued for "douceur" to be used instead, almost a century earlier, even. And while Leopold Mozart was the ultimate stage dad in one sense, - which included lots of instrument practice - he actually didn't overwhelm either of his kids with what he taught them -and as far as I recall from the biographies did not use physical punishment, either.
Re: How not to raise a child: the Ferdinand of Parma edition
Date: 2023-03-16 05:36 pm (UTC)I found this one today! Good to know Stollberg-Rilinger gives it the thumbs-down.
I've been really wishing I had another book on the upbringing of Ferdinand of Parma, because right now, I'm just reporting what Badinter says, and you had already advised me to beware of her. :/
So you ssee what I mean about the art revolution in an age of revolutions
That is definitely a difference! And yeah, very interesting that she said yes to it.
As for physical punishment being the norm of the era, I would like to point out that Luise Henriette, mother of F1, explicitly was against this (and against shouting) and argued for "douceur" to be used instead, almost a century earlier, even.
I know, I was thinking of her specifically! It wasn't *everyone*, though of course it was more common then than now...and even contemporaries thought FW was over-the-top! Seckendorff, whom you do not imagine would have been soft on his hypohetical kids, said Fritz looked like an old man at age 12 or whatever, from the regimen his father was putting him through.
Re: How not to raise a child: the Ferdinand of Parma edition
Date: 2023-03-17 07:19 am (UTC)Absolutely. (BTW, the way Jochen Klepper in his FW centric novel spins this is saying that it's not FW's regiment as such that exhausts Fritz so much, it's the fact that in his supposed spare time, his mother - who is the big villain of the novel, remember - makes him learn and do all the courtier stuff, which FW is unaware of, with the result there's no free time at all and Fritz looks like an old man at age 12, but it's SD's fault, not FW's. Now you can do this in a novel, which doesn't claim to be a non-fictional biography, but were it a biography, I would point out that once Fritz - and all the other sons - left female custody at age 7 and were handed over to male governors, their entire schedule was planned by FW, and the governors reported to FW.) FW: NOT a normal German Hausvater. No matter how many later historians claim the opposite.
ETA: Forgot in the earlier comment: Maria Luisa as Empress of Austria is certainly fodder for thought. She must have had an iron constitution (14 pregnancies, lots of lovers), so likely she would not have died young, she would not have been intimidated by Joseph’s Isabella issues (not knowing what her relationship with her older sister was, I can’t say whether Joseph’s grief for her would have formed a bond or would have been another reason for a bad relationship as it was with poor Josepha of Bavaria), and she would have had the ego not to be intimidated by MT and the other Habsburgs, either. Whether or not Joseph would have consumated the marriage, she’d have taken lovers, and probably would have gotten pregnant. (According to her confessor, not one of her children were her husband’s in rl, but then the very fact the confessor breached the confessional makes him less than trustworthy.) Which would have been… interesting. Does Joseph put up with it in the interest of not having sex but wanting an heir related to Isabella? Does he think Leopold’s kid should be his heir because Habsburg blood? Does Leopold pull a Heinrich and Ferdinand and declare he’s not willing to stand back in favour of a bastard? Enquiring minds want to know…
Re: How not to raise a child: the Ferdinand of Parma edition
Date: 2023-03-18 09:28 pm (UTC)You know, I'm willing to believe the stress of being caught in the crossfire of the marital warfare *also* contributed to Fritz looking exhausted by contemporary standards, but yeah, no, that doesn't make SD solely responsible here. Also, wow the patriarchy: both parents give him work to do, but the father's entitled to and the mother isn't, so it's her fault if he's tired. Right.
Does Joseph put up with it in the interest of not having sex but wanting an heir related to Isabella? Does he think Leopold’s kid should be his heir because Habsburg blood?
Ooh, that is interesting. I haven't read more than a couple hundred pages of selections from Beales (yet! one day!), so you're in a better position to say than I am.
Leopold, given his feelings about Joseph, yeah, probably does what Gustav's siblings did in Sweden and causes a scandal about the royal bastard.*
Things would get interesting in Vienna!
Even more so if Leopold causes the scandal while MT is still alive, parallel to Stockholm, or, as you called it, "the Dallas of Rokoko Scandinavia." Actually, never mind what would Joseph and Leopold do--if Maria Luisa is married to Joseph for the 15 years or so while MT is alive, and she's sleeping around all over the place, how does Mrs. Chastity Commission take it? Does ML get actually confined to house arrest? The Dallas plot thickens!
* Btw, I couldn't remember what the deal was with Heinrich and Ferdinand, and searching through salon history traced it back to an Asprey claim that you were dubious about.
"Princes Henry and Ferdinand -- second and third in line to the throne -- informed the king that they would never allow a bastard to take away their legitimate rights to succession. The king was forced to arrange a divorce."
But that was 2 years ago, do you remember if we came up with more evidence in favor of this episode? It often happens that we're skeptical or outright disbelieving, and then more evidence turns up!
Re: How not to raise a child: the Ferdinand of Parma edition
Date: 2023-03-19 02:59 pm (UTC)Even more so if Leopold causes the scandal while MT is still alive, parallel to Stockholm, or, as you called it, "the Dallas of Rokoko Scandinavia." Actually, never mind what would Joseph and Leopold do--if Maria Luisa is married to Joseph for the 15 years or so while MT is alive, and she's sleeping around all over the place, how does Mrs. Chastity Commission take it? Does ML get actually confined to house arrest? The Dallas plot thickens!
So it does. Hmmmm. You know, on the one hand, Maria Luisa never faced someone as powerful and intimidating as MT in her actual life - which is how she came to call the shots in Spain - so in a scenario where as a young woman she's faced with MT as a mother-in-law, there's the chance she might have been discreet enough for MT not to get wise until after the first few "grandkids" are already born, and then there's the problem of saving international face, not to mention that Maria Luisa is a Bourbon and MT is inveested in the French/Austria alliance and doesn't want to jeaopordize Marie Antoinette's chances to become Queen of France.
On the other hand: MT has a strong sense of dynasty and definitely wants a grandkid of hers, not some strangers, to succeed. In addition to her disapproving of Maria Luisa sleeping around on a moral basis, I mean. Moreover, she has possibilities that are facesaving and still stop short of testing how much Louis XV cares about his granddaughter. She can, for example, make life hell for anyone Maria Luisa has an affair with by not promoting them and their families anymore and instead sending them to some backwater place in the most backward corner of her realms. In rl, Maria Luisa being the most powerful person at court certainly was a reason why despite losing whatever looks she started out with, she never lacked lovers. If instead even the suspicion of someone having an affair with her means depending on your social station, you end up in a poverty ridden backwater and/or as a prison guard, I dare say there won't be many volunteers.
Re: How not to raise a child: the Ferdinand of Parma edition
Date: 2023-03-21 11:05 pm (UTC)Ah, right, I'd forgotten about that too. There is too much to remember!
At any event, as I said in a former discussion: the moral is don't read other people's letters, Heinrich!
Hee!
If instead even the suspicion of someone having an affair with her means depending on your social station, you end up in a poverty ridden backwater and/or as a prison guard, I dare say there won't be many volunteers.
Very convincing conclusions. Though now I'm suspecting that MT and ML end up butting heads on a lot of issues in this AU.
Re: How not to raise a child: the Ferdinand of Parma edition
Date: 2023-04-01 10:51 pm (UTC)I don't have much to say about this AU but I am enjoying it a LOT :D
Re: How not to raise a child: the Ferdinand of Parma edition
Date: 2023-04-01 10:50 pm (UTC)Heeeee I always enjoy your synopses so much, even the ones of reviews in the paper :D
(Feuchtwanger, btw, found her interesting, not least because as you can see by the last two portraits, she kept employing Goya, this wasn't a one time thing. She said yes to this depiction.)
That's fascinating! Thank you for the portraits -- that's definitely interesting and I can see why Feuchtwanger would be intrigued by that.
Poor Ferdinand her brother: anyone who makes a six or seven years old read Newton, in Émilie's translation or otherwise, has no business calling themselves a teacher at all, even leaving aside physical brutality.
Ha, yes.
Re: How not to raise a child: the Halle-Denmark edition
Date: 2023-03-21 03:30 pm (UTC)So Christian VII ends up deeply skeptical about Christianity (in a way his father seems not to have been--of course, *his* beloved mentor, Moltke, was a devout Christian, which may have played a role). Christian gets out of going to church whenever he can, and at one point, he provokes his devout and bigotted brother-in-law by debating with him whether Christ even lived or not.
On a no doubt related note, we have this story about the effects on Christian of being constantly beaten by his governor as a child:
Even when he was already king, he experienced a morbid fear of the guards. Whenever he had to walk by them, he waited until a moment when he had the feeling they didn't see him, then rushed quickly by, finally to breathe out in relief, as if he had outrun a great danger.
I should also point out that Christian does a lot of running wild in the city, sleeping around and breaking windows, after he becomes king--the very thing his governor had beat him in hopes of preventing! Meanwhile, in Parma, the tutor is beating Ferdinand in hopes of preventing his future as a reviver of the Inquisition. You guuuuuys!!
For Struensee, we have fewer details, but according to him:
My father was an upright man, who acted according to his convictions, but I think he was too hard on me...That Jesus allows us everything harmless, that the morality of Christianity doesn't forbid us innocent pleasures, was never said to me. Everything I wanted, without differentiation, was cast as a sin. Wearing cuffs, powdering my hair, that was declared in all seriousness as godless, as being obviously sinful debaucher.
Eventually Struensee comes to the conclusion that everything his teachers say about religion was just based on what *their* teachers said, ad infinitum, that none of them are dealing with the contradictions in Scripture (which he concludes was written by humans and not divinely inspired), that the Old Testament God is really vengeful, that the pious churchgoers don't actually behave any better than anyone else, and finally that there's no immortal soul.
I was struck by the description that Francke was constantly frustrated that the products of his schools, if they went on to the local university, got a reputation as the wildest students, and he never understood why. To anyone with an understanding of psychology, though, it should be obvious. It might also be of interest to
Speaking of the university, it's worth nothing that Halle in the early 18th century had a Janus-like reputation as a bastion of Enlightenment as well as the center of Pietism, because it was settled by refugees in both cases, the establishment not being a fan of either new religious sects *or* freethinkers.
By the way, we talked about how, when Struensee's father, Francke's successor, said that the Pietists were being persecuted under Fritz, we suspected what he really meant was that they weren't allowed to do the persecuting any more and had to tolerate equals. Well, Winkle our academic Struensee biographer gives at least one example where Fritz apparently *did* do some persecuting:
In 1745, some students got into fights at the theater. The Rector of the University of Halle forbade comedians from entering the city. Fritz--I'm struggling a bit with his German here, but the gist is clear--he blames the clergy, not the comedians, insults Francke (this is the son of *the* Francke), says performances should continue, demands a public apology by Francke, and I think proof that the comedian was present at the apology? Or that Francke was present at the performance? Then he fines Francke, Jr. 20 Taler, even though the authorities protested that Francke had nothing to do with any of this. Here's Fritz's German if you want to help:
«Da ist das Geistliche Mukerpack Schuld daran. Sie Solen Spillen und Herr Francke oder wie der Schurke heißt, Sol darbei Seyndt, umb die Studenten wegen seiner Närischen Vohrstelung eine öfentliche Reparation zu thun, und mihr Sol der atest vom Comedianten geschiket werden, daß er dargewesen ist.»
Now, I'm with Fritz that banning comedians is the wrong solution to the problem of out-of-control students, but if Francke, Jr. really wasn't involved in that episode, then Fritz may have been scapegoating out of personal dislike, because, as Wilhelmine says, Francke, Sr. was responsible for a good deal of the suffering she and Fritz went through as children.
Re: How not to raise a child: the Ferdinand of Parma edition
Date: 2023-04-01 10:41 pm (UTC)Now, the philosophes of this era are big believers in education. They subscribe to a "tabula rasa" theory, in which the child is a blank slate and only their upbringing governs how they will turn out. As Leibniz says, training makes everything possible, even to teaching bears to dance.
These sweet summer children. I thought that too before I had kids! (Clearly they did not pay attention to their own kids, those of them who had them.)
So this whole idea about an education where the teacher isn't an authority figure but more of a guide who helps the student learn to think for themselves sounds great. But what happens when the student does things that you don't want him to do, like
THE DOWNFALL OF MANY CHILD-REARING SYSTEMS, IN FACT
Older sister Isabella (future ViennaJoe's wife), "If I were raising a child, I would not beat them up, because it just backfires, and you get a defiant child." She writes a very-modern sounding treatise on her child-rearing opinions, at the age of like 16, which you can only imagine is based on her role as surrogate mom to Ferdinand and observing how he was being treated and how that was turning out.
I did not expect that the person I was going to have the most empathy with in this discussion was Isabella of Parma! (Much as I like her in general.) Because, yeah, when I was 16 or so I had Many Opinions about child-rearing, similar to Isabella's, based on watching my sister and my parents work together. (I don't think all my opinions at that age were correct, but the general principles were there that went forward to when I had my own kids.)
Meanwhile, said kid, looking back, says he struggled to learn to read, but one day he went and prayed to a saint about it and kissed an image of the saint, and then he was able to read. Relics also helped his stomachaches.
Aw, this poor kid :(((((
In fact, Voltaire, who started out quipping that "The Infante of Parma will be in good company. He will have a Condillac and a Leire (a renowned atheist) with him. If he still manages to be pious, God's grace must be very strong indeed," ends up saying, "I hoped for a little from the Infante, the Duke of Parma, considering the good education he had; but where there is no soul, education can do nothing either; I heard that this prince spends the day visiting monks and that his Austrian and superstitious wife will be in charge. O poor philosophy! what will become of you? Still, we must stand firm and fight to the end."
Aw Voltaire! The same guy who was like, "well you know Huguenots preach against the theatre, clearly legit that Calas killed his kid" before he learned more about it :P One thing I have to say about Voltaire, I feel like everything he does is wildly in-character.
According to Badinter, the philosophes never actually acknowledge the contradiction between the "tabula rasa" theory they've been espousing and their sudden belief that there's something in the child that cannot be shaped by a philosophe armed with the right methods.
Except some people who meet Ferdinand and aren't fancy philosophes prove to have common sense. The French envoy tells Ferdinand, "If I'd been your tutor, I would have made you visit 6 churches a day once you started going through this phase," and Ferdinand laughs and admits that would have totally turned him off religion.
Aww, I love that Ferdinand himself realizes that! That's kind of endearing.
was willing to be inoculated (I mean, his sister had just died of smallpox the year before, and his mother had died a few years before that)
Based on his previous statement, maybe also they told him that if he were inoculated that he would have to be apart from his tutors for a few weeks? I'm just imagining how this would go:
Tutor: You should be inoculated because SCIENCE.
Ferdinand: Ugh, no! This sounds awful! I could just pray to saints instead!
Tutor: But very sadly we would have to be parted for a few weeks and your educational program will be delayed. Even though I know inoculation is a good thing, I am ambivalent about how it will affect your education.
Ferdinand: uh, you know what? GO SCIENCE. I changed my mind, SIGN ME UP yes please!!
and the one contradiction Badinter never addresses to my satisfaction is that his tutors supposedly endorsed education that treated the teacher more as a friend and supporter than as an authority figure to be feared...and yet were beating him regularly. All she says is that this was normal, everyone got beaten in those days, no one except Isabella ever questioned it. Which is not totally satisfactory to me.
I... actually this makes a lot of sense to me. Kids who aren't behaving the way the parent expects can be VERY frustrating, and if a parent/tutor has not read the parenting books :PP I feel like they can easily find themself in a situation where they are like, "okay, I want to guide and be a supportive friend, but right now the kid is not in the place where I can do that, so I need to resort to other means to get the kid there, and THEN we'll start with the guiding thing." (Of course, I am not endorsing this at all!)
My thought of Condillac's view of how teaching Ferdinand would go:
Condillac: Here, read Newton's great work, and this commentary.
Ferdinand, after a few hours: I have now read it, and have the highest respect for Newton! However, sir, do you think that perhaps Leibnitz has a point here that Newton did not sufficiently understand?
Condillac, laughing gently: My child, let's discuss it! Why don't you characterize Leibitz and Newton's arguments for me, and we will go from there.
Ferdinand: Of course, esteemed tutor! Here is my argument -- [...]
Condillac: Ah, but have you considered that -- [...]
Ferdinand: What a good point, sir! I see now that Newton was correct. Thank you for your instruction!
My thoughts on how it actually went:
Condillac: Here, read Newton's great work, and this commentary.
Ferdinand: Don't wanna. I wanna go to church. People at church are nice! And don't make me read stuff!
Condillac: Whaa--? But Newton is so beautiful!
Ferdinand: It's not. You know what's beautiful? THE HOLY RELICS.
Condillac: ARRRRGH! WHAT DO I EVEN DO WITH THIS.
Condillac: Okay, kid, I'm going to beat you into reading Newton. THEN you'll see how beautiful it is, and then we'll be at the level where we can have the cooperative friendly discussion I want! It's for your own good!
I think in modern culture (at least in my socioeconomic bracket) it's widely accepted that beating your kids is about the worst thing you can do (in a way that wasn't the case hundreds of years ago -- and even when I was growing up, spanking wasn't considered ideal, but also not bad in the same way it is today), so today, if you're subscribing to a cooperative education sort of viewpoint, when a kid isn't doing what you want, you're unlikely to beat them. But, for example, other punishments (nagging, withholding rewards, emotional punishment, guilt, etc.) ARE still widely used in some circles. So I believe a modern parent who endorses cooperative education (but especially who has large perhaps-unrealistic expectations) can still find themself in a situation where they are regularly using (non-physical) punishment, especially if they don't have a very coherent theory of punishments being not useful.
...And even knowing all that, did I snap at my kids the last morning when we were in a hurry and they were STILL not getting ready after I asked them four times? Yes. Yes, I did. (And if I were a different person, I'd be like, "and it was your fault! If only you'd done what I'd asked you to do like a reasonable [adult, haha] person, I wouldn't have had to snap at you!")
In conclusion: a) child-rearing is hard b) not least because the child is very often not gonna do what you expect the kid to do and it is legit frustrating c) however, that being said, expecting your child to fall into an extremely specific mold almost never works out well for anyone, not least because you are likely to resort to extreme means to try to force the kid into the mold so that you can carry out your program of supportive and cooperative friendship :PP
(Leopold Mozart: well, he had the advantages that he was instructing kids who were already that way inclined (potentially at least partially through genetics) and at least one of whom he had already noticed had exceptional ability and interest, and developing that ability and interest. So he didn't have to deal with what happens when the kid Just Is Not Interested. Maybe -- depending on how invested he was in the idea of musical children vs. the reality -- he would have beat them if they were tone-deaf and kept sneaking out on practice to play football, who knows. Maybe not. He does seem to have been much better than average at paying attention to what his kids needed, at least musically!)
Re: How not to raise a child: the Ferdinand of Parma edition
Date: 2023-04-01 11:58 pm (UTC)If I hadn't expected you to have such feelings, I wouldn't have finally followed through on my intention to do a write-up more than a year later! (Yes, write-ups of this sort are like pulling teeth.) You were very motivating!
(I actually don't have nearly as many feelings about Alexei.)
Understandable, since I have much less material to work with: my source there was a biographical essay of his tutor, not a monograph on the child-rearing practices. Badinter's book made me wish the Alexei essay collection had included an exact Russian parallel with lots of pedagogical detail!
is like telling their nervous system "IT'S LIONS FIGHT FIGHT" that I think is DIRECTLY RELEVANT here :P
DIRECTLY RELEVANT.
Aww, I love that Ferdinand himself realizes that! That's kind of endearing.
I know, right?
Tutor: You should be inoculated because SCIENCE.
Ferdinand: Ugh, no! This sounds awful! I could just pray to saints instead!
Tutor: But very sadly we would have to be parted for a few weeks and your educational program will be delayed. Even though I know inoculation is a good thing, I am ambivalent about how it will affect your education.
Ferdinand: uh, you know what? GO SCIENCE. I changed my mind, SIGN ME UP yes please!!
You are a genius, and headcanon accepted!
I... actually this makes a lot of sense to me. Kids who aren't behaving the way the parent expects can be VERY frustrating, and if a parent/tutor has not read the parenting books :PP I feel like they can easily find themself in a situation where they are like, "okay, I want to guide and be a supportive friend, but right now the kid is not in the place where I can do that, so I need to resort to other means to get the kid there, and THEN we'll start with the guiding thing." (Of course, I am not endorsing this at all!)
No, no, I'm not saying I didn't think of that myself. I came to all the same conclusions you did, for the same reasons. (We have similar intellectual backgrounds in this regard.) It's no different than Dirk the podcaster repeatedly commenting that after having their lands pillaged, their men killed, and their women children enslaved, the Saxons (later Slavs) still had not realized that the Christian God was omnibenevolent. :P
What I was saying was that if you, Badinter, are writing a monograph ABOUT the failure modes of this child-rearing system, you should maybe ADDRESS this point, instead of leaving it as an exercise to the reader. Any other book, I would have filed it under "well, can't cover everything," but in this case, it made the work feel very incomplete. Especially with all the time she spent on the other contradictions, like the whiplash from "pure tabula rasa" to "has no soul."