Un palimpsesto pedagógico. La educación de las mujeres en los Dísticos de Catón de León de Arroyal (1797)

This essay analyzes the central role of gender in Enlightened and liberal imaginaries and in the ways these reinterpreted the past. The case study is that of Spanish liberal writer León de Arroyal and his translation (or rather, rewriting) of the pedagogical work of sixteenth-century humanist Erasmus of Rotterdam. Considering Arroyal's proposal for women's education in relation to the rest of his pedagogical and political writings, his personal experience, the intellectual traditions he draws from and other contemporary proposals in Spain and Europe is highly revealing. It shows the weight Christian humanism, in its more restrictive and severe form, had on women's education, in contrast with male education, presided by the classic ideals of civic republicanism.