Glossary of Terms
On Civility
It has been argued that the word Civility is introduced – with most of its modern valences – by Erasmus in his sixteenth-century conduct book for children, De Civilitate Morum Puerilium (1530). In Erasmus’s book, “civility” refers to the virtuous manner of conducting oneself and of treating others in social situations. This term crystallizes the kind of self-restraint and accommodation to others that was becoming salient to daily life in the increasingly urban society of early modern Europe, whilst at the same time recalling the roots of the term in Ciceronian conceptions of civil society.
Starting with Erasmus’s book, the behaviour embraced under the umbrella of civility is broken down into the components of manners or etiquette, things as seemingly trivial as rules of dress or bodily comportment. However, such minutiae are constitutive of a much larger discourse of civility. As Pierre Bourdieu has argued, if all societies “set such store on the seemingly most insignificant details of dress, bearing, physical and verbal manners, the reason is that, treating the body as a memory, they form the fundamental principles of the arbitrary content of the culture”. [1] As such, the manner in which one handled one’s fork or delivered a compliment began to matter in early modern England, as civil behaviour came to be viewed as imperative to the advancement of individual, social, religious, and political objectives.
The advice contained within early modern books on Civil Conduct can be understood as holding significant symbolic value, as reflecting and contributing to the larger discourse of civility which prevailed at the time. This discourse was not, of course, entirely or even principally textual in early modern England; oral and bodily modes of communication were just as instrumental in promulgating norms of conduct as written texts. Unfortunately for cultural historians, however, these modes of conduct instruction have vanished along with the voices and bodies which conveyed them. What is left are conduct books, which can tell us about the ideals of civility. The imperative to pay more attention to one’s deportment – to how one behaves and seems in the presence of others – indicates a sea-change in historical attitudes toward the self.
[1] Pierre Bourdieu, Outline of a Theory of Practice, trans. Richard Nice, Cambridge Studies in Social and Cultural Anthropology 16 (Cambridge, 1977), p. 94.
The Conduct of a Gentleman
These books were designed to inform their readers about the requisite activities and internal virtues that befitted men of high social standing. Humfrey Braham’s The Institucion of a Gentleman (1568) is a notable example of this sub-genre of conduct literature.[1] Braham explains that he wrote this “litle booke” to “describe such a man as may be worthelye called maister” (sig. *5v). A gentleman should lead and command other men, without themselves engaging in manual labour.
The Institucion of a Gentleman informs Braham’s readers on “what offices, condicions, qualities and maners oughte to bee in a gentleman, & how he should differ from other sortes of men, as wel in condicions and behavor as also in apparel, & ornaments to his bodye belonging, not leaving unrehersed what games & pastimes be fit for a gentleman” (sig. *6r). A gentleman may be recognized through their behaviour, clothing, and leisurely activities, not only the esteemed “offices” they held in wider society. Braham’s text illuminates the fact that the exercise of moral virtue and honesty is a key feature of gentlemanly conduct, for “a man of Gentlenes … is to be called and holden an honest man, in that by hys honestye he is made Gentle, and by vyce ungentle” (sig. A8r).
Braham’s text also importantly shows that the title and notion of a gentleman was one that could be gained by those born into less economically prosperous or socially esteemed families. He explains that men “born of noble kindred descending of gentle blud” (sig. A8r) have the advantage of being brought up in a “gentle house” with “gentle maners and noble conditions” (sigs. A8r-v). Such men should “be learned, to have knowledge in tounges, and to be apte in the features of armes, for the defence of his cuntrey” (sig. A8v). Men born outside “gentle” families may become gentle by their “vertue, wyt, pollicie, industry, knowledge in lawes, valiency in armes, or such lyke honeste meanes”. Through these efforts a man may “becometh a welbeloued & high esteemed man, preferred then to great office” (B4r). These types of low born gentleman show “that vertue florisheth among us” (sig. B84r). Virtuous habits can help men retain and gain their status as gentlemen.
[1] Humfrey Braham, The Institucion of a Gentleman (London, 1568). STC 14105.