Holding the Reigns
WHEN WOMEN RULED THE WORLD: Making the Renaissance in Europe
BY MAUREEN QUILLIGAN
Liveright, 320 pp., $29.95
MAUREEN QUILLIGAN begins her provocative new book with a tirade: in 1558, the Scottish reformer John Knox published in which he declared, “To promote a Woman to bear rule, superiority, dominion, or empire above any realm, nation, or city is: (The seething italics are his.) Quilligan’s response to this rant reveals why she is such a good historian. She notes that the tract has “done history a real service” by pointing out how many women wielded sovereign authority in Knox’s day. He is not wrong, she continues, to see these queens, regents, and consorts as an army—they did indeed form a regiment, a close-knit group directed at Catholic, not Protestant, queens, but Elizabeth rejected the sectarian ploy. God’s order, to her mind, distinguished monarchs, both male and female, from other mortals, Catholic or Protestant or in between.
