Nine Worthies

Classification

The Nine Worthies comprise a triad of triads as follows:

Pagans

• Hector
• Alexander the Great
• Julius Caesar

Jews

• Joshua
• David
• Judah Maccabee

Christians

• King Arthur
• Charlemagne
• Godfrey of Bouillon

Cultural references

Literature

The Nine Worthies were also a popular subject for masques in Renaissance Europe. In William Shakespeare's play Love's Labour's Lost the comic characters attempt to stage such a masque, but it descends into chaos. The list of Worthies actually named in the play include two not on the original list, Hercules and Pompey the Great. Alexander, Judah Maccabee, and Hector also appear on stage before the show collapses into complete disorder. The worthies are also mentioned in Henry IV, Part 2 in which Doll Tearsheet is so impressed by Falstaff's bravery in fighting Ancient Pistol that she says he is "as valorous as Hector of Troy, worth five of Agamemnon, and ten times better than the Nine Worthies".

Don Quixote evokes the Nine Worthies in Volume I, Chapter 5, telling a peasant (who is trying to get him to admit who he is) "I know that I may be not only those I have named, but all the Twelve Peers of France and even all the Nine Worthies, since my achievements surpass all that they have done all together and each of them on his own account".

Art

The Nine Worthies had not devolved to folk culture even in the seventeenth century, for a frieze of the Nine Worthies, contemporary with Shakespeare's comedy, was painted at the outset of the seventeenth century at North Mymms Place, Hertfordshire, an up-to-date house built by the Coningsby family, 1599.

The Cloisters, in New York City, has important portions of an early 15th-century tapestry series illustrating the surviving five of the Nine Worthies: King Arthur, Joshua, David, Hector, and Julius Caesar.

I Nove Prodi, a fresco by the Maestro del Castello della Manta, an anonymous master, painted c. 1420 in the sala baronale of the Castello della Manta, Saluzzo, Italy. The series also includes depictions of their female counterparts.

Montacute House has sculptures of the Nine Worthies spaced along the upper eastern façade on the exterior of the long gallery piers. These figures are dressed in Roman armour.

Nine Worthy Women

In the late fourteenth century, Lady Worthies began to accompany the Nine Worthies, though usually not individualized and shown as anonymous Amazon-styled warriors. In later years, nine of the "Most Illustrious Ladies of All Ages and Nations" were chosen from scripture, history and legend to be placed alongside their male counterparts, though the choices for the Lady Worthies were not usually standardized and often varied by region, author and artist.

Eustache Deschamps added neuf preuses (women) to the list of neuf preux, including Penthesilea, Tomyris, and Semiramis. Together with their male counterparts, they precede Henry VI as he enters Paris in 1431, and figure in Le Jouvencel (1466). The list of preuses was however less fixed, and not always structured in pagan, Jewish and Christian triads. Thomas III of Saluzzo has: Deiphille, Synoppe, Hippolyte, Menalyppe, Semiramis, Lampetho, Thamarys, Teuta, Penthésilée. By conrast, the anonymous 15th Century work Triomphe des Neuf Preux lists Deborah, Judith, Esther, Susanna, Lucretia, Boudica, Mariamne, Clotilde, and "Andegona" (possibly Antigone).

A very fine set of Siennese fifteenth century panel paintings, attributed to the Master of the Griselda Legend and others, now incomplete and widely dispersed, showed male and female worthies - the remaining paintings were reunited in a 2007 exhibition at the National Gallery, London.

In the German Renaissance, Hans Burgkmair made a set of six woodcuts, each showing three of the "Eighteen Worthies". In addition to the usual males, his prints showed the Pagan Lucretia, Veturia and Virginia, the Jewish Esther, Judith and Jael, and the Christian Saints Helena, Bridget of Sweden and Elizabeth of Hungary. Burgkmair was in touch with Augsburg Renaissance Humanist circles, who may have helped choose the group. Apart from Veturia, mother of Coriolanus, who tried to save Rome from defeat by her son, the other pagan two were examples of chastity, responsible for no heroic acts except their defence of their own virtue. In contrast, two of the Jewish women, Judith and Jael, are known for their personal assassination of leaders opposed to Israel. Judith carries a sword in one hand and Holofernes's severed head in the other, and Jael carries the mallet with which she hammered a peg in the head of Sisera. The "Power of Women" and female violence was an interest of German artists at the time, and Lucas van Leyden, Albrecht Altdorfer and others made prints of Jael in the act.

The Christian trio of saints, all very popular in Germany at the time, are all women who had been married - Bridget became an abbess as a widow. In addition, like three of the male worthies, Elizabeth of Hungary was an ancestor of Burgkmair's patron Maximilian I, Holy Roman Emperor, and Helena was a Roman Empress. Unlike the other two groups, who all face each other, apparently in conversation, these three all look down, and may illustrate the female virtue of silence. Burgkmair's conception was not widely followed. For example, in Elizabethan and Jacobean England, the lists took on a significantly more Anglocentric slant. In his 1586 book The Blazon of Gentrie, John Feare names Minerva, Semiramis, and Tomyris for the Pagans, Jael, Deborah, and Judith for the Jews, and Maud, Elizabeth of Aragon, and Joanna of Naples (probably Joanna II) for the Christians. By contrast, Thomas Heywood's The Exemplary Lives and memorable Acts of Nine of the Most Worthy Women of the World: Three Jews. Three Gentiles. Three Christians (1640) introduced Boudica, Penthesilea, and Artemisia for the Pagans, and Elphleda, Margaret, and Elizabeth for the Christians. With the Jewish heroines, Fearne and Heywood are almost identical, with the only difference being that Heywood chose Esther over Jael.

Nine Worthies of London

Nine Worthies of London is a book by Richard Johnson, written in 1592, which borrows the theme from the Nine Worthies. The book is subtitled Explaining the Honourable Excise of Armes, the Vertues of the Valiant, and the Memorable Attempts of Magnanimous Minds; Pleasaunt for Gentlemen, not unseemly for Magistrates, and most profitable for Prentises, celebrated the rise of nine famous Londoners through society from the ranks of apprentices or commoners.

The nine were Sir William Walworth, Sir Henry Pritchard, Sir Thomas White, Sir William Sevenoke, Sir John Hawkwood, Sir John Bonham, Christopher Croker, Sir Henry Maleverer of Cornhill, and Sir Hugh Calverley.

The term "Nine Worthies" was later used to refer to nine of the privy councillors of William III: Devonshire, Dorset, Monmouth, Edward Russell, Carmarthen, Pembroke, Nottingham, Marlborough, and Lowther.