Normal Schools for Poor Spinsters: A New Approach to Welfare in the Reform Project of Pietro Leopoldo, Grand Duke of Tuscany

Abstract

Escaping poverty through education, work, and moral and religious instruction – this was the goal of the Normal Schools for spinsters, founded in Florence by Grand Duke Pietro Leopoldo in 1778. The Leopoldine Schools introduced a new approach to welfare for women: secular, state-run, and aimed at preventing poverty – instead of remedying it through charity or confinement – through the training of useful citizens who contributed to the state’s welfare. The institution aimed to enable their cultural and professional development of poor girls, thereby granting them an active role in society and a new sense of personal and social worth. While their education conformed to a specific ideal of womanhood and was shaped by a vision imposed from above, the Leopoldine Schools represented an innovation in eighteenth-century Italy, given their secular nature and their focus on improving the condition of women and the poor within a civic and eudemonistic perspective.