 Hi, I'm Peter Adamson and you're listening to the History of Philosophy podcast, brought to you with the support of the Philosophy department at King's College London and the LMU in Munich, online at historyoffilosophy.net. Today's episode, More Rare than the Phoenix, Italian Women Humanists. I was just complaining in a recent episode about how people don't write letters anymore. But at the risk of sounding difficult to please, I have to say that when people did write letters they often weren't very interesting. College students wrote to mom and dad but just as an excuse to ask for money and don't get me started on the literary merits of the average love letter. It's for good reason that we say they are full of sweet nothings. The letters of Italian humanists are another case in point. Elegant though they are, they tend to follow predictable motifs. There's the Epistle of Consolation, sharing in the grief of losing a loved one before saying, it's time to pull yourself together. Then there's the letter in which the recipient's eloquence is extravagantly praised and the response to such a letter, where the done thing is to respond with even more extravagant false modesty. Closely related is the plea for patronage, a showpiece of verbal dexterity in which fulsome praise of some rich person is used to entice that rich person to pay for more of the same. Most characteristically, there is the letter that is not about much of anything apart from the fact that one is writing a letter. It begins by apologizing for not writing sooner, goes on to apologize again for having to be brief, and then closes with the admonition that the recipient should reply as soon as possible. Renaissance rhetoric is at its purest when it uses beautiful, well-balanced Ciceronian sentences to say nothing. The epistolary art was so prized by the humanists and so central to their project of refined self-representation that it became standard for them to publish volumes of collected correspondence. Petrarch had already done so and his example was followed by such figures as Salutati, Poggio, Bruni, and Fidelfo. Remarkably, the Italian Renaissance also saw the publication of collections of letters by women. No less remarkable is the fact that these letters tend for the most part to read just like letters written by male humanists. Well-educated, aristocratic women showed that they too could use high-flowing Latin to appeal for patronage, offer consolation, and get through a whole letter without saying anything. Here we have a development such as we have hardly, if ever, seen before in our history of philosophy, women writing on equal terms with men. Since the humanists prized eloquence and linguistic facility above all else, women who excelled in rhetoric were able to participate in humanist discourse in a way that no medieval women had ever been able to participate in scholastic discourse. Writing letters was an obvious opportunity for them to do so because the substance of a humanist letter was its style. In fact, the letters are not really about nothing, they are about writing itself. This most self-conscious of literary forms was the perfect vehicle for women authors who were self-consciously laying claim to social terrain dominated by men. We already know that humanists were, with some exceptions and restrictions, in favor of offering their brand of education to girls and women. Remember Leonardo Bruni recommending a curriculum of classical education to a female correspondent. The result was that a significant number of women in 15th and 16th century Italy learned and even mastered Latin and Greek. An early example was Madalena Skrovennyi, praised for her learning in an encomium by Antonio Loshi. Later examples would include Olympia Morata who died in the middle of the 16th century and wrote extensively in Latin and Greek, and Tarquinia Molza who lived well into the 17th century and translated Plato's Carmadese and parts of his Credo into Italian. But in this episode I'm going to focus especially on three female humanists of Italy. In chronological order they are Isotta Nogarola who died in 1466, Laura Cerreta who died young at the close of the 15th century in 1499, and finally Cassandra who lived until an advanced age and died in 1558. We have collections of letters for all three of them as well as some independent works like Nogarola's Dialogue on the Sin of Adam and Eve, which we'll be looking at in the next episode. To attain the high level of education displayed in these letters, all three women had to be lucky in finding teachers. Nogarola was taught by a student of the great humanist Guarino Guarini, while Cerreta speaks of a nun who instructed her and frequently emphasizes her evening vigils, studying by candlelight. At one point she even criticizes those who waste their nights sleeping. These women were not merely allowed to learn Latin, they were enthusiastically celebrated for doing so. Here was a chance for men to show off their own Latin by bestowing lavish, if somewhat condescending, praise, and they did not hesitate to do so. Cassandra Fedele especially was widely admired, the admiration unfailingly linked to wonderment that a young lady could display such gifts. The humanist Angelo Poliziano waxed enthusiastically about this girl who preferred to stitch with a pen rather than a needle and rather cover papyrus with ink than her skin with white powder. Both he and Cassandra's relative, Baltazaré Fedele, compared her to women of antiquity famous for their eloquence, like Aspasia and Sappho. Baltazaré added that she was more rare than the phoenix, combining proper female virtue with the intellectual abilities more usually associated with men. Others praised her as a unique glory and jewel of the female sex, as having surpassed her sex, and as proving that a manly mind can be born in a person of the female sex. One might wonder whether all these admiring men were laying it on a bit thick, even by the standards of humanist encomium. The leading scholar of women humanists in Italy, Margaret King, has remarked that Fedele's works were actually quite typical, even mediocre, in comparison to the productions of contemporary humanists. One is forced to conclude, says King, that Fedele was praised beyond her merits. It reminds me of the compliments I sometimes get here in Munich as an American who can speak German more or less competently. My managing it at all is so unusual that it hardly matters what I say. In the case of Fedele, the welcome she received was in part politically motivated. Lodovico Maria Sforza spoke of her as an ornament for the greatness of Venice's empire. She was seen as the human equivalent of a stylish humanist epistle, praised to the skies as culturally significant but only as a showpiece. In the previous century, Isarotta Nogarola, whom King rates much higher, had ironically been somewhat less celebrated. But one correspondent did write of being incredulous when told of her attainments, since I knew that men rarely received such praise I found it very difficult to concede that a woman might. Even her great friend and confidante, Ludovico Foscarini, applauded Nogarola in terms that put her squarely in her place. In Isarotta, whom none surpass in virtue, that sex greatly pleases which is otherwise burdened by the frailty of lesser women. This sort of thing left Laura Cheretta unimpressed. She denied that she was unique, insisting that many women had achieved a comparable degree of cultivation, among them Nogarola and Fedele, both of whom she mentions by name. In her view, men who saw her as extraordinary were simply underestimating the capabilities of women. Cheretta was under no illusions about the dynamics of power that usually kept women from competing fairly with men despite their gifts. An afteristic remark found in one letter to a male correspondent sums it up well, yours is the authority, ours the inborn ability. She sought to compete with men nonetheless, just as did Nogarola and Fedele before her. All three of them displayed an open desire for literary renown. After Nogarola's death, she was given the honor of a eulogy by the humanist scholar Giovanni Falolfo, who noted with approval that she gave herself to the pursuit of fame and glory in all her efforts. During her life, she had come to learn that dealings with male scholars could both enhance and tarnish a reputation. When praised by her teacher's teacher, Guarino Guarini, she wrote one of those letters thanking him for his praise, saying that thanks to him, she had achieved immortality and need no longer be anxious about the public's opinion and estimation of me. But when another letter she sent him was ignored, this brought scorn and mockery down upon her. Naturally, she wrote again to complain. At the second time of asking, Guarini responded supportively, but also chastised her for effectively being female. Up to now, I believed and trusted that your soul was manly, and that brave and unvanquished you could face all adversities, but now you seem so humbled, so abject, and so truly a woman, that you demonstrate none of the estimable qualities that I thought you possessed. Cassandra Federe was equally concerned with her own reputation and saw her quest for glory in terms Guarini might have recognized as a kind of transcending of gender boundaries. She wrote, at the beginning of my labors, when I had abandoned feminine concerns and turned to those pursuits that pertain not only to honor during this brief life, but to the enjoyment of God's majesty, I considered that I would find immortal praise among men. And so my goal has been to exercise my virile, burning, and incredible, though not improper I hope, desire for the study of the liberal arts, so my name will be praised and celebrated by excellent men. And elsewhere, more succinctly, it is a very sweet victory indeed, to outstrip men of eloquence. As for Laura Cerreta, early in her career she too sought to win a claim for her literary skills, at one point expressing the hope that she would be a second Laura to achieve immortality, the first being Petrarch's beloved. Like Nogarola, she suffered from a degree of envious criticism, especially in response to an early satirical work, a funeral elegy in honor of a donkey, which she admitted was written out of a desire for fame. But as she matured, Cerreta came to see this as a hollow pursuit. We should study the liberal arts to become virtuous, not to win praise. Indeed, all three of our protagonists faced questions about their ultimate goals after establishing a humanist pedigree. Learned women were forced to choose between family life and a life of the mind. A vivid example is provided by Iso-ta Nogarola and her sister Geneve. Whereas Geneve's literary activities stopped as soon as she was married, Iso-ta was able to continue her studies but only by swearing herself to lifelong chastity in residing with a male relative. In keeping with this pious and ascetic lifestyle, she started to focus more on religious literature like the Church Fathers, whose influence shows itself increasingly in her writing. Cassandra Fidelu too was aware of this problem and admitted to facing a choice between scholarship and marriage. And so it proved. After marrying in 1499, she produced little in the way of a literary legacy in the last half century and more of her life. On this score, Laura Cerreta is the exception that proves the rule, because she did marry but her husband died soon thereafter. You might remember that when faced with the same situation, Christine de Pizan consoled herself with the thought that this would at least give her an opportunity for continued scholarship. Cerreta was less cheerful, remarking in several letters that the death of her husband had deprived her of the desire for learning. She is still awake at night but to grieve, not to study. Yet, as we can see from the fact that these letters exist, she likewise took advantage of her widowed status to keep writing. Writing about what? Well, if humanists more generally tended to write letters about writing letters, then women humanists tended to write letters about writing as women. Just as their male correspondents always praised them as female humanists and not just humanists, so the female humanists themselves allude to their sex on a regular basis. In many cases they seem to accept a subordinate status. The letters of all three authors are littered with passages where they admit to being an unlearned or insignificant girl, excuse themselves for their girlish letters, lament their mere womanly ability, and so on. Federer liked to refer to herself as a bold little woman, constantly apologizing for troubling her correspondents by sending what were in fact carefully crafted literary productions. But remember, false modesty was typical of humanist letters in general, so perhaps we should not take all this too seriously. Occasionally, one of the authors does seem sincerely to regret being female. Nogarola, when complaining of the abuse she received after being ignored by Guarini wrote, here the blame falls more upon the envious men, a theme she sounds elsewhere when complaining about men who consider learning and women a plague and public nuisance. Federer met with the same sort of envy but optimistically said that she could rise above it, thereby following the example of both Christ and the philosophers. Which brings us neatly onto the question you've probably been waiting for. Did these female humanists also follow the example of some male humanists by engaging with philosophy? We've already seen plenty of evidence that in the Italian Renaissance, the study of eloquence was a kind of gateway drug to the intoxications of pagan philosophical thought, and our women humanists fit this picture. The scholar Laura Curini advised Nogarola to build on her humanist studies by delving into Aristotelianism, the works of the scholastics, and even the writings of thinkers from the Islamic world like Avicenna, Alhazali, and Iverroes. Cassandra Federer said herself that she had dared to set sail on the vast sea of philosophy, and spoke of her labors studying through the night wholly fixated on studies in the peripatetic philosophers. She was praised for her resulting philosophical facility by no less a judge than Angelo Poliziano, who thought she could compare favorably with Pico della Mirandola. Unfortunately, we don't see too much direct evidence of that facility in the letters. Federer does make a joke about Aristotelian logic at one point, and refers in passing to philosophical issues, like whether rhetoric can overwhelm free will with its persuasive power. She's also acquainted with a range of ancient philosophical figures whom she tends to see through rose-tinted glasses. Thus, she presents the presocratic philosopher Empedocles, in unduly optimistic terms, with his principle of love as a force that binds the universe together. She omits to mention that he posited a second principle, strife, that tears it apart. Similarly, Epicureanism appears in a form made suitable for use by Christians, as Federer manages to make Epicurus a spokesman for the notion that we should not seek happiness in this life. Laura Charetta too presents an expurgated version of this particular Hellenistic school. She takes Epicurus' chief teaching to be a rejection of the passing pleasures of this life and even admires him for teaching that happiness comes from virtue rather than pleasure. That sound you hear is the heathenist Epicurus rolling over in his grave, or at least it would be if Epicureans thought it possible to survive death. While Charetta earns no marks here as a historian of philosophy, she scores points as a philosopher in her own right. She has ascribed to Epicurus the idea that the pleasures of this life are transient and thus ultimately empty. As she puts it in the same passage, bodily pleasures grow old, but we want goods that are permanent. This ethical principle is of course a familiar one and does go back to antiquity, albeit more to the Platonists than to the Epicureans. But it also relates to an abiding concern more distinctive of Charetta which runs throughout her letter-writing career, the question of the attitude we should take towards time and change. In fact, her views on this question themselves change over time. In earlier letters, she is very much concerned with the best use of time, which she sees as a kind of scarce resource. Hence the aforementioned advice not to fritter away your valuable time at night by sleeping. Hence too, complaints she makes about her limited time for study given domestic chores. Time is, as she puts it, not something that belongs to us, but passes relentlessly along with the motion of the sun. So, in this phase of Charetta's career, we can see her as exemplifying a more general tendency in the Renaissance and early modern Europe to think of time as a resource or commodity, one that can be squandered or used wisely. And for her, the best use of time is the study of the liberal arts and philosophy. However, as Charetta's thought develops, she comes to have a different, even a negative view towards time. This seems to go hand in hand with her abandonment of the pursuit of glory and with her experience of grief after the death of her husband. Like pleasure, she comes to see glory as a merely worldly good that has no lasting value and thus no real value at all. To concern oneself with this world is to make one's well-being depend on that which is undependable and unpredictable, since such things are ruled by fortune or rather by random chance. Here she refers to her husband's passing as a personal example. So, as she puts it, I abandoned my plan to seek fame through human letters, lest my mind bereft unhappy and unaware of the future should seek happiness through diligence. Life is not, after all, a valuable resource to be used wisely, but a brief vigil waiting for one's own death. Having given up on pleasure, glory, and all the other things that can be bought with time well spent, Charetta instead undertakes to focus on the eternity of God. His providential law is worth valuing because it remains the same through all the unpredictable ups and downs of earthly life. Charetta summons her rhetorical gifts in the service of Christian philosophy, Not I but God should be the object of my soul's desire, since I am subject to death. Since this mortal life of ours will live on after death I have renounced, for it is holier to do so, that glory, transitory and slipping, which being full of the contrariness of earthly beings, separates us from the true religion of pious faith. This is only one example of the less obvious philosophical themes that might be teased out of the works of women humanist authors, and I'm all for uncovering less obvious philosophical points of course, but we shouldn't forget the obvious ones. In this context by far the most obvious is the various status of women. So far it seemed that even when Renaissance men acknowledged women as equals, they could only do so by emphasizing the nearly miraculous exceptions provided by such women, so unusual that they are supposedly outnumbered by phoenixes. Not infrequently, they were moved to compare such figures to men, implicitly damning women in general even while complimenting one woman in particular. And some men were more explicit in their damnation as they argued straightforwardly for the inferiority of women. We've already seen how Christine de Pizan fought back against such attitudes. In the next episode we'll see that she wasn't the only one to do so. To the contrary, works in defense and praise of women, all women, not just the exceptional few, came to form a distinct genre within Renaissance Italian literature. So join me next time and hear how Izzotta, Nogarotta, and others stood up for the sisters here on The History of Philosophy without any gaps.