Paternal Tyranny (The Other Voice in Early Modern Europe)

PAT E R N A L TYRANNY

THE O T H E R VO ICE IN E AR LY M O D E R N EUROPE

A Series Edited by Margaret L. King and Albert Rabil Jr. RECENT BOOKS IN THE SERIES

CASSANDRA FEDELE

F R A N C¸ O I S P O U L L A I N D E L A B A R R E

Letters and Orations

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Edited and Translated by Diana Robin M A R I E L E J A R S D E G O U R N AY

Introductions and Annotations by Marcelle Maistre Welch Translation by Vivien Bosley

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S I S T E R B A RT O L O M E A R I C C O B O N I

Edited and Translated by Richard Hillman and Colette Quesnel

Life and Death in a Venetian Convent: The Chronicle and Necrology of Corpus Domini, 1395--1436

ANNIBAL GUASCO

Edited and Translated by Daniel Bornstein

Discourse to Lady Lavinia His Daughter Edited, Translated, and with an Introduction by Peggy Osborn A N N E - M A R I E - L O U I S E D ’ O R L E´ A N S ,

M A R I´ A D E S A N J O S E´ S A L A Z A R

Book for the Hour of Recreation Introduction and Notes by Alison Weber Translation by Amanda Powell

DUCHESSE DE MONTPENSIER

Against Marriage: The Correspondence of La Grande Mademoiselle

M A D E L E I N E D E S C U D É RY

Edited and Translated by Joan DeJean

Translated, and with an Introduction by Karen Newman

The Story of Sapho

O LY M P I A M O R A T A

The Complete Writings of an Italian Heretic

LUCREZIA TORNABUONI DE’ MEDICI

Edited and Translated by Holt N. Parker

Edited and Translated by Jane Tylus

J A C Q U E L I N E PA S C A L

JUAN LUIS VIVES

‘‘A Rule for Children’’ and Other Writings

‘‘The Education of a Christian Woman’’: A Sixteenth-Century Manual

Edited and Translated by John J. Conley, S.J.

Edited and Translated by Charles Fantazzi

Sacred Narratives

A rc a n gela Ta ra b otti

P AT E R N A L TYRANNY

 E dited a n d Tran slated by Letiz ia Pa n izza

THE UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO PRESS

Ch i ca g o & Lon d on

Arcangela Tarabotti, 1604–52 Letizia Panizza is research fellow in the Department of Italian at Royal Holloway, University of London. She is the editor of Women in Italian Renaissance Culture and Society and coeditor of A History of Women’s Writing in Italy. She also wrote the introduction to Lucrezia Marinella’s The Nobility and Excellence of Women and the Defects and Vices of Men, published by the University of Chicago Press. The University of Chicago Press, Chicago 60637 The University of Chicago Press, Ltd., London © 2004 by The University of Chicago All rights reserved. Published 2004 Printed in the United States of America 12 11 10 09 08 07 06 05 04 03 1 2 3 4 5 ISBN: ISBN:

0-226-78965-9 (cloth) 0-226-78966-7 (paper)

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication data Tarabotti, Arcangela. [Semplicita ingannata. English] Paternal tyranny / Arcangela Tarabotti ; edited and translated by Letizia Panizza. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 0-226-78965-9 (alk. paper)—ISBN 0-226-78966-7 (pbk. : alk. paper) 1. Monastic and religious life of women—Italy—Venice. 2. Women—Italy— Venice—Social conditions. 3. Patriarchy—Religious aspects—Catholic Church. 4. Women—Religious aspects—Catholic Church. I. Panizza, Letizia. II. Title. BX4220.I8 T3713 2004 305.42—dc21 2003002121 ⬁ The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of 䡬 the American National Standard for Information Sciences—Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ANSI Z39.48-1992.

CONTENTS

Ack now le dg m e nts v ii Se rie s Editors’ Introductio n

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Vo lum e Ed ito r’s Intro duct io n

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Vo lum e Ed ito r’s Bib lio graph y

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Paternal Tyranny

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Dedication 37 Book One 43 Book Two 85 Book Three 123

A p pe nd ix O ne : Arcange la Tara bo t t i 155 A pp e ndix Tw o : Fe rrante P allavic in o Se rie s Ed ito rs’ B ib lio graphy Inde x

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ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

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y special thanks go to Francesca Medioli, friend and colleague, with whom I have shared numerous conversations about Tarabotti over many years. I would also like to extend warm thanks to Susan Haskins, Diana Robin and Elissa Weaver for suggestions and advice on a number of points; Roberto Bruni for generously sharing his expertise about early Italian printed editions; Donatella Diani and Katie Macrae for checking the Vulgate Biblical quotations; and finally to series editor Albert Rabil Jr. for his determination to bring Tarabotti to a modern English-speaking public. This translation was supported by a generous grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities. Letizia Panizza, London, October 2002

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THE OTHER VOICE IN E A R LY M O D E R N E U R O P E : INTRODUCTION TO THE SERIES Margaret L. King and Albert Rabil Jr. THE OLD VOICE AND THE OTHER VOICE

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n western Europe and the United States, women are nearing equality in the professions, in business, and in politics. Most enjoy access to education, reproductive rights, and autonomy in financial affairs. Issues vital to women are on the public agenda: equal pay, child care, domestic abuse, breast cancer research, and curricular revision with an eye to the inclusion of women. These recent achievements have their origins in things women (and some male supporters) said for the first time about six hundred years ago. Theirs is the “other voice,” in contradistinction to the “first voice,” the voice of the educated men who created Western culture. Coincident with a general reshaping of European culture in the period 1300–1700 (called the Renaissance or early modern period), questions of female equality and opportunity were raised that still resound and are still unresolved. The other voice emerged against the backdrop of a three-thousandyear history of the derogation of women rooted in the civilizations related to Western culture: Hebrew, Greek, Roman, and Christian. Negative attitudes toward women inherited from these traditions pervaded the intellectual, medical, legal, religious, and social systems that developed during the European Middle Ages. The following pages describe the traditional, overwhelmingly male views of women’s nature inherited by early modern Europeans and the new tradition that the “other voice” called into being to begin to challenge reigning assumptions. This review should serve as a framework for understanding the texts published in the series the Other Voice in Early Modern Europe. Introductions specific to each text and author follow this essay in all the volumes of the series.

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Series Editors’ Introduction TRADITIONAL VIEWS OF WOMEN, 500 B.C.E.–1500 C.E.

Embedded in the philosophical and medical theories of the ancient Greeks were perceptions of the female as inferior to the male in both mind and body. Similarly, the structure of civil legislation inherited from the ancient Romans was biased against women, and the views on women developed by Christian thinkers out of the Hebrew Bible and the Christian New Testament were negative and disabling. Literary works composed in the vernacular of ordinary people, and widely recited or read, conveyed these negative assumptions. The social networks within which most women lived—those of the family and the institutions of the Roman Catholic Church—were shaped by this negative tradition and sharply limited the areas in which women might act in and upon the world. Greek biology assumed that women were inferior to men and defined them as merely childbearers and housekeepers. This view was authoritatively expressed in the works of the philosopher Aristotle. Aristotle thought in dualities. He considered action superior to inaction, form (the inner design or structure of any object) superior to matter, completion to incompletion, possession to deprivation. In each of these dualities, he associated the male principle with the superior quality and the female with the inferior. “The male principle in nature,” he argued, “is associated with active, formative and perfected characteristics, while the female is passive, material and deprived, desiring the male in order to become complete.”1 Men are always identified with virile qualities, such as judgment, courage, and stamina, and women with their opposites—irrationality, cowardice, and weakness. The masculine principle was considered superior even in the womb. The man’s semen, Aristotle believed, created the form of a new human creature, while the female body contributed only matter. (The existence of the ovum, and with it the other facts of human embryology, was not established until the seventeenth century.) Although the later Greek physician Galen believed there was a female component in generation, contributed by “female semen,” the followers of both Aristotle and Galen saw the male role in human generation as more active and more important. G R E E K P H I L O S O P H Y A N D F E M A L E N AT U R E .

1. Aristotle, Physics 1.9.192a20–24, in The Complete Works of Aristotle, ed. Jonathan Barnes, rev. Oxford trans., 2 vols. (Princeton, 1984), 1:328.

Series Editors’ Introduction In the Aristotelian view, the male principle sought always to reproduce itself. The creation of a female was always a mistake, therefore, resulting from an imperfect act of generation. Every female born was considered a “defective” or “mutilated” male (as Aristotle’s terminology has variously been translated), a “monstrosity” of nature.2 For Greek theorists, the biology of males and females was the key to their psychology. The female was softer and more docile, more apt to be despondent, querulous, and deceitful. Being incomplete, moreover, she craved sexual fulfillment in intercourse with a male. The male was intellectual, active, and in control of his passions. These psychological polarities derived from the theory that the universe consisted of four elements (earth, fire, air, and water), expressed in human bodies as four “humors” (black bile, yellow bile, blood, and phlegm) considered, respectively, dry, hot, damp, and cold and corresponding to mental states (“melancholic,” “choleric,” “sanguine,” “phlegmatic”). In this scheme the male, sharing the principles of earth and fire, was dry and hot; the female, sharing the principles of air and water, was cold and damp. Female psychology was further affected by her dominant organ, the uterus (womb), hystera in Greek. The passions generated by the womb made women lustful, deceitful, talkative, irrational, indeed—when these affects were in excess—“hysterical.” Aristotle’s biology also had social and political consequences. If the male principle was superior and the female inferior, then in the household, as in the state, men should rule and women must be subordinate. That hierarchy did not rule out the companionship of husband and wife, whose cooperation was necessary for the welfare of children and the preservation of property. Such mutuality supported male preeminence. Aristotle’s teacher Plato suggested a different possibility: that men and women might possess the same virtues. The setting for this proposal is the imaginary and ideal Republic that Plato sketches in a dialogue of that name. Here, for a privileged elite capable of leading wisely, all distinctions of class and wealth dissolve, as, consequently, do those of gender. Without households or property, as Plato constructs his ideal society, there is no need for the subordination of women. Women may therefore be educated to the same level as men to assume leadership. Plato’s Republic remained imaginary, however. In real societies, the subordination of women remained the norm and the prescription.

2. Aristotle, Generation of Animals 2.3.737a27–28, in The Complete Works, 1:1144.

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Series Editors’ Introduction The views of women inherited from the Greek philosophical tradition became the basis for medieval thought. In the thirteenth century, the supreme Scholastic philosopher Thomas Aquinas, among others, still echoed Aristotle’s views of human reproduction, of male and female personalities, and of the preeminent male role in the social hierarchy. Roman law, like Greek philosophy, underlay medieval thought and shaped medieval society. The ancient belief that adult property-owning men should administer households and make decisions affecting the community at large is the very fulcrum of Roman law. About 450 B.C.E., during Rome’s republican era, the community’s customary law was recorded (legendarily) on twelve tablets erected in the city’s central forum. It was later elaborated by professional jurists whose activity increased in the imperial era, when much new legislation was passed, especially on issues affecting family and inheritance. This growing, changing body of laws was eventually codified in the Corpus of Civil Law under the direction of the emperor Justinian, generations after the empire ceased to be ruled from Rome. That Corpus, read and commented on by medieval scholars from the eleventh century on, inspired the legal systems of most of the cities and kingdoms of Europe. Laws regarding dowries, divorce, and inheritance pertain primarily to women. Since those laws aimed to maintain and preserve property, the women concerned were those from the property-owning minority. Their subordination to male family members points to the even greater subordination of lower-class and slave women, about whom the laws speak little. In the early republic, the paterfamilias, or “father of the family,” possessed patria potestas, “paternal power.” The term pater, “father,” in both these cases does not necessarily mean biological father but denotes the head of a household. The father was the person who owned the household’s property and, indeed, its human members. The paterfamilias had absolute power—including the power, rarely exercised, of life or death—over his wife, his children, and his slaves, as much as his cattle. Male children could be “emancipated,” an act that granted legal autonomy and the right to own property. Those over fourteen could be emancipated by a special grant from the father or automatically by their father’s death. But females could never be emancipated; instead, they passed from the authority of their father to that of a husband or, if widowed or orphaned while still unmarried, to a guardian or tutor. R O M A N L AW A N D T H E F E M A L E C O N D I T I O N .

Series Editors’ Introduction Marriage in its traditional form placed the woman under her husband’s authority, or manus. He could divorce her on grounds of adultery, drinking wine, or stealing from the household, but she could not divorce him. She could neither possess property in her own right nor bequeath any to her children upon her death. When her husband died, the household property passed not to her but to his male heirs. And when her father died, she had no claim to any family inheritance, which was directed to her brothers or more remote male relatives. The effect of these laws was to exclude women from civil society, itself based on property ownership. In the later republican and imperial periods, these rules were significantly modified. Women rarely married according to the traditional form. The practice of “free” marriage allowed a woman to remain under her father’s authority, to possess property given her by her father (most frequently the “dowry,” recoverable from the husband’s household on his death), and to inherit from her father. She could also bequeath property to her own children and divorce her husband, just as he could divorce her. Despite this greater freedom, women still suffered enormous disability under Roman law. Heirs could belong only to the father’s side, never the mother’s. Moreover, although she could bequeath her property to her children, she could not establish a line of succession in doing so. A woman was “the beginning and end of her own family,” said the jurist Ulpian. Moreover, women could play no public role. They could not hold public office, represent anyone in a legal case, or even witness a will. Women had only a private existence and no public personality. The dowry system, the guardian, women’s limited ability to transmit wealth, and total political disability are all features of Roman law adopted by the medieval communities of western Europe, although modified according to local customary laws.. C H R I S T I A N D O C T R I N E A N D W O M E N ’ S P L A C E . The Hebrew Bible and the Christian New Testament authorized later writers to limit women to the realm of the family and to burden them with the guilt of original sin. The passages most fruitful for this purpose were the creation narratives in Genesis and sentences from the Epistles defining women’s role within the Christian family and community. Each of the first two chapters of Genesis contains a creation narrative. In the first “God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them” (Gn 1:27). In the second, God created Eve from Adam’s rib (2:21–23). Christian theologians relied

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Series Editors’ Introduction principally on Genesis 2 for their understanding of the relation between man and woman, interpreting the creation of Eve from Adam as proof of her subordination to him. The creation story in Genesis 2 leads to that of the temptations in Genesis 3: of Eve by the wily serpent and of Adam by Eve. As read by Christian theologians from Tertullian to Thomas Aquinas, the narrative made Eve responsible for the Fall and its consequences. She instigated the act; she deceived her husband; she suffered the greater punishment. Her disobedience made it necessary for Jesus to be incarnated and to die on the cross. From the pulpit, moralists and preachers for centuries conveyed to women the guilt that they bore for original sin. The Epistles offered advice to early Christians on building communities of the faithful. Among the matters to be regulated was the place of women. Paul offered views favorable to women in Galatians 3:28: “There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free, there is neither male nor female; for you are all one in Christ Jesus.” Paul also referred to women as his coworkers and placed them on a par with himself and his male coworkers (Phlm 4:2–3; Rom 16:1–3; 1 Cor 16:19). Elsewhere, Paul limited women’s possibilities: “But I want you to understand that the head of every man is Christ, the head of a woman is her husband, and the head of Christ is God” (1 Cor 11:3). Biblical passages by later writers (although attributed to Paul) enjoined women to forgo jewels, expensive clothes, and elaborate coiffures; and they forbade women to “teach or have authority over men,” telling them to “learn in silence with all submissiveness” as is proper for one responsible for sin, consoling them, however, with the thought that they will be saved through childbearing (1 Tm 2:9–15). Other texts among the later Epistles defined women as the weaker sex and emphasized their subordination to their husbands (1 Pt 3:7; Col 3:18; Eph 5:22–23). These passages from the New Testament became the arsenal employed by theologians of the early church to transmit negative attitudes toward women to medieval Christian culture—above all, Tertullian (On the Apparel of Women), Jerome (Against Jovinian), and Augustine (The Literal Meaning of Genesis). T H E I M A G E O F W O M E N I N M E D I E VA L L I T E R AT U R E . The philosophical, legal, and religious traditions born in antiquity formed the basis of the medieval intellectual synthesis wrought by trained thinkers, mostly clerics, writing in Latin and based largely in universities. The vernacular literary tradition that developed alongside the learned tradition also spoke about female nature and women’s roles. Medieval stories, poems, and epics also

Series Editors’ Introduction portrayed women negatively—as lustful and deceitful—while praising good housekeepers and loyal wives as replicas of the Virgin Mary or the female saints and martyrs. There is an exception in the movement of “courtly love” that evolved in southern France from the twelfth century. Courtly love was the erotic love between a nobleman and noblewoman, the latter usually superior in social rank. It was always adulterous. From the conventions of courtly love derive modern Western notions of romantic love. The tradition has had an impact disproportionate to its size, for it affected only a tiny elite, and very few women. The exaltation of the female lover probably does not reflect a higher evaluation of women or a step toward their sexual liberation. More likely it gives expression to the social and sexual tensions besetting the knightly class at a specific historical juncture. The literary fashion of courtly love was on the wane by the thirteenth century, when the widely read Romance of the Rose was composed in French by two authors of significantly different dispositions. Guillaume de Lorris composed the initial four thousand verses about 1235, and Jean de Meun added about seventeen thousand verses—more than four times the original—about 1265. The fragment composed by Guillaume de Lorris stands squarely in the tradition of courtly love. Here the poet, in a dream, is admitted into a walled garden where he finds a magic fountain in which a rosebush is reflected. He longs to pick one rose, but the thorns prevent his doing so, even as he is wounded by arrows from the god of love, whose commands he agrees to obey. The rest of this part of the poem recounts the poet’s unsuccessful efforts to pluck the rose. The longer part of the Romance by Jean de Meun also describes a dream. But here allegorical characters give long didactic speeches, providing a social satire on a variety of themes, some pertaining to women. Love is an anxious and tormented state, the poem explains: women are greedy and manipulative, marriage is miserable, beautiful women are lustful, ugly ones cease to please, and a chaste woman is as rare as a black swan. Shortly after Jean de Meun completed The Romance of the Rose, Mathéolus penned his Lamentations, a long Latin diatribe against marriage translated into French about a century later. The Lamentations sum up medieval attitudes toward women and provoked the important response by Christine de Pizan in her Book of the City of Ladies. In 1355, Giovanni Boccaccio wrote Il Corbaccio, another antifeminist manifesto, although ironically by an author whose other works pioneered new directions in Renaissance thought. The former husband of his lover

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Series Editors’ Introduction appears to Boccaccio, condemning his unmoderated lust and detailing the defects of women. Boccaccio concedes at the end “how much men naturally surpass women in nobility” and is cured of his desires.3 W O M E N ’ S R O L E S : T H E F A M I LY . The negative perceptions of women expressed in the intellectual tradition are also implicit in the actual roles that women played in European society. Assigned to subordinate positions in the household and the church, they were barred from significant participation in public life. Medieval European households, like those in antiquity and in nonWestern civilizations, were headed by males. It was the male serf (or peasant), feudal lord, town merchant, or citizen who was polled or taxed or succeeded to an inheritance or had any acknowledged public role, although his wife or widow could stand as a temporary surrogate. From about 1100, the position of property-holding males was further enhanced: inheritance was confined to the male, or agnate, line—with depressing consequences for women. A wife never fully belonged to her husband’s family, nor was she a daughter to her father’s family. She left her father’s house young to marry whomever her parents chose. Her dowry was managed by her husband, and at her death it normally passed to her children by him. A married woman’s life was occupied nearly constantly with cycles of pregnancy, childbearing, and lactation. Women bore children through all the years of their fertility, and many died in childbirth. They were also responsible for raising young children up to six or seven. In the propertied classes that responsibility was shared, since it was common for a wet nurse to take over breast-feeding and for servants to perform other chores. Women trained their daughters in the household duties appropriate to their status, nearly always tasks associated with textiles: spinning, weaving, sewing, embroidering. Their sons were sent out of the house as apprentices or students, or their training was assumed by fathers in later childhood and adolescence. On the death of her husband, a woman’s children became the responsibility of his family. She generally did not take “his” children with her to a new marriage or back to her father’s house, except sometimes in the artisan classes. Women also worked. Rural peasants performed farm chores, merchant wives often practiced their husbands’ trades, the unmarried daughters of

3. Giovanni Boccaccio, The Corbaccio, or The Labyrinth of Love, trans. and ed. Anthony K. Cassell, rev. ed. (Binghamton, N.Y., 1993), 71.

Series Editors’ Introduction the urban poor worked as servants or prostitutes. All wives produced or embellished textiles and did the housekeeping, while wealthy ones managed servants. These labors were unpaid or poorly paid but often contributed substantially to family wealth. W O M E N ’ S R O L E S : T H E C H U R C H . Membership in a household, whether a father’s or a husband’s, meant for women a lifelong subordination to others. In western Europe, the Roman Catholic Church offered an alternative to the career of wife and mother. A woman could enter a convent, parallel in function to the monasteries for men that evolved in the early Christian centuries. In the convent, a woman pledged herself to a celibate life, lived according to strict community rules, and worshiped daily. Often the convent offered training in Latin, allowing some women to become considerable scholars and authors as well as scribes, artists, and musicians. For women who chose the conventual life, the benefits could be enormous, but for numerous others placed in convents by paternal choice, the life could be restrictive and burdensome. The conventual life declined as an alternative for women as the modern age approached. Reformed monastic institutions resisted responsibility for related female orders. The church increasingly restricted female institutional life by insisting on closer male supervision. Women often sought other options. Some joined the communities of laywomen that sprang up spontaneously in the thirteenth century in the urban zones of western Europe, especially in Flanders and Italy. Some joined the heretical movements that flourished in late medieval Christendom, whose anticlerical and often antifamily positions particularly appealed to women. In these communities, some women were acclaimed as “holy women” or “saints,” whereas others often were condemned as frauds or heretics. In all, although the options offered to women by the church were sometimes less than satisfactory, they were sometimes richly rewarding. After 1520, the convent remained an option only in Roman Catholic territories. Protestantism engendered an ideal of marriage as a heroic endeavor and appeared to place husband and wife on a more equal footing. Sermons and treatises, however, still called for female subordination and obedience.

THE OTHER VOICE, 1300–1700

When the modern era opened, European culture was so firmly structured by a framework of negative attitudes toward women that to dismantle it was a

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Series Editors’ Introduction monumental labor. The process began as part of a larger cultural movement that entailed the critical reexamination of ideas inherited from the ancient and medieval past. The humanists launched that critical reexamination. T H E H U M A N I S T F O U N D AT I O N . Originating in Italy in the fourteenth century, humanism quickly became the dominant intellectual movement in Europe. Spreading in the sixteenth century from Italy to the rest of Europe, it fueled the literary, scientific, and philosophical movements of the era and laid the basis for the eighteenth-century Enlightenment. Humanists regarded the Scholastic philosophy of medieval universities as out of touch with the realities of urban life. They found in the rhetorical discourse of classical Rome a language adapted to civic life and public speech. They learned to read, speak, and write classical Latin and, eventually, classical Greek. They founded schools to teach others to do so, establishing the pattern for elementary and secondary education for the next three hundred years. In the service of complex government bureaucracies, humanists employed their skills to write eloquent letters, deliver public orations, and formulate public policy. They developed new scripts for copying manuscripts and used the new printing press to disseminate texts, for which they created methods of critical editing. Humanism was a movement led by males who accepted the evaluation of women in ancient texts and generally shared the misogynist perceptions of their culture. (Female humanists, as we will see, did not.) Yet humanism also opened the door to a reevaluation of the nature and capacity of women. By calling authors, texts, and ideas into question, it made possible the fundamental rereading of the whole intellectual tradition that was required in order to free women from cultural prejudice and social subordination. A D I F F E R E N T C I T Y . The other voice first appeared when, after so many centuries, the accumulation of misogynist concepts evoked a response from a capable female defender: Christine de Pizan (1365–1431). Introducing her Book of the City of Ladies (1405), she described how she was affected by reading Mathéolus’s Lamentations: “Just the sight of this book . . . made me wonder how it happened that so many different men . . . are so inclined to express both in speaking and in their treatises and writings so many wicked insults about women and their behavior.”4 These statements impelled her to

4. Christine de Pizan, The Book of the City of Ladies, trans. Earl Jeffrey Richards, foreword by Marina Warner (New York, 1982), 1.1.1, pp. 3–4.

Series Editors’ Introduction detest herself “and the entire feminine sex, as though we were monstrosities in nature.”5 The rest of The Book of the City of Ladies presents a justification of the female sex and a vision of an ideal community of women. A pioneer, she has received the message of female inferiority and rejected it. From the fourteenth to the seventeenth century, a huge body of literature accumulated that responded to the dominant tradition. The result was a literary explosion consisting of works by both men and women, in Latin and in the vernaculars: works enumerating the achievements of notable women; works rebutting the main accusations made against women; works arguing for the equal education of men and women; works defining and redefining women’s proper role in the family, at court, in public; works describing women’s lives and experiences. Recent monographs and articles have begun to hint at the great range of this movement, involving probably several thousand titles. The protofeminism of these “other voices” constitutes a significant fraction of the literary product of the early modern era. About 1365, the same Boccaccio whose Corbaccio rehearses the usual charges against female nature wrote another work, Concerning Famous Women. A humanist treatise drawing on classical texts, it praised 106 notable women: ninety-eight of them from pagan Greek and Roman antiquity, one (Eve) from the Bible, and seven from the medieval religious and cultural tradition; his book helped make all readers aware of a sex normally condemned or forgotten. Boccaccio’s outlook nevertheless was unfriendly to women, for it singled out for praise those women who possessed the traditional virtues of chastity, silence, and obedience. Women who were active in the public realm—for example, rulers and warriors—were depicted as usually being lascivious and as suffering terrible punishments for entering the masculine sphere. Women were his subject, but Boccaccio’s standard remained male. Christine de Pizan’s Book of the City of Ladies contains a second catalog, one responding specifically to Boccaccio’s. Whereas Boccaccio portrays female virtue as exceptional, she depicts it as universal. Many women in history were leaders, or remained chaste despite the lascivious approaches of men, or were visionaries and brave martyrs. The work of Boccaccio inspired a series of catalogs of illustrious women of the biblical, classical, Christian, and local pasts, among them Filippo da T H E C AT A L O G S .

5. Ibid., 1.1.1–2, p. 5.

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Series Editors’ Introduction Bergamo’s Of Illustrious Women, Pierre de Brantôme’s Lives of Illustrious Women, Pierre Le Moyne’s Gallerie of Heroic Women, and Pietro Paolo de Ribera’s Immortal Triumphs and Heroic Enterprises of 845 Women. Whatever their embedded prejudices, these works drove home to the public the possibility of female excellence. At the same time, many questions remained: Could a woman be virtuous? Could she perform noteworthy deeds? Was she even, strictly speaking, of the same human species as men? These questions were debated over four centuries, in French, German, Italian, Spanish, and English, by authors male and female, among Catholics, Protestants, and Jews, in ponderous volumes and breezy pamphlets. The whole literary genre has been called the querelle des femmes, the “woman question.” The opening volley of this battle occurred in the first years of the fifteenth century, in a literary debate sparked by Christine de Pizan. She exchanged letters critical of Jean de Meun’s contribution to The Romance of the Rose with two French royal secretaries, Jean de Montreuil and Gontier Col. When the matter became public, Jean Gerson, one of Europe’s leading theologians, supported de Pizan’s arguments against de Meun, for the moment silencing the opposition. The debate resurfaced repeatedly over the next two hundred years. The Triumph of Women (1438) by Juan Rodríguez de la Camara (or Juan Rodríguez del Padron) struck a new note by presenting arguments for the superiority of women to men. The Champion of Women (1440–42) by Martin Le Franc addresses once again the negative views of women presented in The Romance of the Rose and offers counterevidence of female virtue and achievement. A cameo of the debate on women is included in The Courtier, one of the most widely read books of the era, published by the Italian Baldassare Castiglione in 1528 and immediately translated into other European vernaculars. The Courtier depicts a series of evenings at the court of the duke of Urbino in which many men and some women of the highest social stratum amuse themselves by discussing a range of literary and social issues. The “woman question” is a pervasive theme throughout, and the third of its four books is devoted entirely to that issue. In a verbal duel, Gasparo Pallavicino and Giuliano de’ Medici present the main claims of the two traditions. Gasparo argues the innate inferiority of women and their inclination to vice. Only in bearing children do they profit the world. Giuliano counters that women share the same spiritual and mental capacities as men and may excel in wisdom and action. Men and women are of the same essence: just as no stone can be more perfectly a T H E D E B AT E .

Series Editors’ Introduction stone than another, so no human being can be more perfectly human than others, whether male or female. It was an astonishing assertion, boldly made to an audience as large as all Europe. T H E T R E AT I S E S . Humanism provided the materials for a positive counterconcept to the misogyny embedded in Scholastic philosophy and law and inherited from the Greek, Roman, and Christian pasts. A series of humanist treatises on marriage and family, on education and deportment, and on the nature of women helped construct these new perspectives. The works by Francesco Barbaro and Leon Battista Alberti—On Marriage (1415) and On the Family (1434–37)—far from defending female equality, reasserted women’s responsibility for rearing children and managing the housekeeping while being obedient, chaste, and silent. Nevertheless, they served the cause of reexamining the issue of women’s nature by placing domestic issues at the center of scholarly concern and reopening the pertinent classical texts. In addition, Barbaro emphasized the companionate nature of marriage and the importance of a wife’s spiritual and mental qualities for the well-being of the family. These themes reappear in later humanist works on marriage and the education of women by Juan Luis Vives and Erasmus. Both were moderately sympathetic to the condition of women without reaching beyond the usual masculine prescriptions for female behavior. An outlook more favorable to women characterizes the nearly unknown work In Praise of Women (ca. 1487) by the Italian humanist Bartolommeo Goggio. In addition to providing a catalog of illustrious women, Goggio argued that male and female are the same in essence, but that women (reworking the Adam and Eve narrative from quite a new angle) are actually superior. In the same vein, the Italian humanist Maria Equicola asserted the spiritual equality of men and women in On Women (1501). In 1525, Galeazzo Flavio Capra (or Capella) published his work On the Excellence and Dignity of Women. This humanist tradition of treatises defending the worthiness of women culminates in the work of Henricus Cornelius Agrippa On the Nobility and Preeminence of the Female Sex. No work by a male humanist more succinctly or explicitly presents the case for female dignity. T H E W I T C H B O O K S . While humanists grappled with the issues pertain-

ing to women and family, other learned men turned their attention to what they perceived as a very great problem: witches. Witch-hunting manuals, explorations of the witch phenomenon, and even defenses of witches are not at first glance pertinent to the tradition of the other voice. But they do

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Series Editors’ Introduction relate in this way: most accused witches were women. The hostility aroused by supposed witch activity is comparable to the hostility aroused by women. The evil deeds the victims of the hunt were charged with were exaggerations of the vices to which, many believed, all women were prone. The connection between the witch accusation and the hatred of women is explicit in the notorious witch-hunting manual The Hammer of Witches (1486) by two Dominican inquisitors, Heinrich Krämer and Jacob Sprenger. Here the inconstancy, deceitfulness, and lustfulness traditionally associated with women are depicted in exaggerated form as the core features of witch behavior. These traits inclined women to make a bargain with the devil—sealed by sexual intercourse—by which they acquired unholy powers. Such bizarre claims, far from being rejected by rational men, were broadcast by intellectuals. The German Ulrich Molitur, the Frenchman Nicolas Rémy, and the Italian Stefano Guazzo all coolly informed the public of sinister orgies and midnight pacts with the devil. The celebrated French jurist, historian, and political philosopher Jean Bodin argued that because women were especially prone to diabolism, regular legal procedures could properly be suspended in order to try those accused of this “exceptional crime.” A few experts such as the physician Johann Weyer, a student of Agrippa’s, raised their voices in protest. In 1563, he explained the witch phenomenon thus, without discarding belief in diabolism: the devil deluded foolish old women afflicted by melancholia, causing them to believe they had magical powers. Weyer’s rational skepticism, which had good credibility in the community of the learned, worked to revise the conventional views of women and witchcraft. W O M E N ’ S W O R K S . To the many categories of works produced on the question of women’s worth must be added nearly all works written by women. A woman writing was in herself a statement of women’s claim to dignity. Only a few women wrote anything before the dawn of the modern era, for three reasons. First, they rarely received the education that would enable them to write. Second, they were not admitted to the public roles— as administrator, bureaucrat, lawyer or notary, or university professor—in which they might gain knowledge of the kinds of things the literate public thought worth writing about. Third, the culture imposed silence on women, considering speaking out a form of unchastity. Given these conditions, it is remarkable that any women wrote. Those who did before the fourteenth century were almost always nuns or religious women whose isolation made their pronouncements more acceptable.

Series Editors’ Introduction From the fourteenth century on, the volume of women’s writings rose. Women continued to write devotional literature, although not always as cloistered nuns. They also wrote diaries, often intended as keepsakes for their children; books of advice to their sons and daughters; letters to family members and friends; and family memoirs, in a few cases elaborate enough to be considered histories. A few women wrote works directly concerning the “woman question,” and some of these, such as the humanists Isotta Nogarola, Cassandra Fedele, Laura Cereta, and Olympia Morata, were highly trained. A few were professional writers, living by the income of their pens; the very first among them was Christine de Pizan, noteworthy in this context as in so many others. In addition to The Book of the City of Ladies and her critiques of The Romance of the Rose, she wrote The Treasure of the City of Ladies (a guide to social decorum for women), an advice book for her son, much courtly verse, and a full-scale history of the reign of King Charles V of France. W O M E N P AT R O N S . Women who did not themselves write but encouraged others to do so boosted the development of an alternative tradition. Highly placed women patrons supported authors, artists, musicians, poets, and learned men. Such patrons, drawn mostly from the Italian elites and the courts of northern Europe, figure disproportionately as the dedicatees of the important works of early feminism. For a start, it might be noted that the catalogs of Boccaccio and Alvaro de Luna were dedicated to the Florentine noblewoman Andrea Acciaiuoli and to Doña María, first wife of King Juan II of Castile, while the French translation of Boccaccio’s work was commissioned by Anne of Brittany, wife of King Charles VIII of France. The humanist treatises of Goggio, Equicola, Vives, and Agrippa were dedicated, respectively, to Eleanora of Aragon, wife of Ercole I d’Este, duke of Ferrara; to Margherita Cantelma of Mantua; to Catherine of Aragon, wife of King Henry VIII of England; and to Margaret, duchess of Austria and regent of the Netherlands. As late as 1696, Mary Astell’s Serious Proposal to the Ladies, for the Advancement of Their True and Greatest Interest was dedicated to Princess Anne of Denmark. These authors presumed that their efforts would be welcome to female patrons, or they may have written at the bidding of those patrons. Silent themselves, perhaps even unresponsive, these loftily placed women helped shape the tradition of the other voice. T H E I S S U E S . The literary forms and patterns in which the tradition of the other voice presented itself have now been sketched. It remains to high-

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Series Editors’ Introduction light the major issues around which this tradition crystallizes. In brief, there are four problems to which our authors return again and again, in plays and catalogs, in verse and letters, in treatises and dialogues, in every language: the problem of chastity, the problem of power, the problem of speech, and the problem of knowledge. Of these the greatest, preconditioning the others, is the problem of chastity. T H E P R O B L E M O F C H A S T I T Y . In traditional European culture, as in those of antiquity and others around the globe, chastity was perceived as woman’s quintessential virtue—in contrast to courage, or generosity, or leadership, or rationality, seen as virtues characteristic of men. Opponents of women charged them with insatiable lust. Women themselves and their defenders— without disputing the validity of the standard—responded that women were capable of chastity. The requirement of chastity kept women at home, silenced them, isolated them, left them in ignorance. It was the source of all other impediments. Why was it so important to the society of men, of whom chastity was not required, and who more often than not considered it their right to violate the chastity of any woman they encountered? Female chastity ensured the continuity of the male-headed household. If a man’s wife was not chaste, he could not be sure of the legitimacy of his offspring. If they were not his and they acquired his property, it was not his household, but some other man’s, that had endured. If his daughter was not chaste, she could not be transferred to another man’s household as his wife, and he was dishonored. The whole system of the integrity of the household and the transmission of property was bound up in female chastity. Such a requirement pertained only to property-owning classes, of course. Poor women could not expect to maintain their chastity, least of all if they were in contact with high-status men to whom all women but those of their own household were prey. In Catholic Europe, the requirement of chastity was further buttressed by moral and religious imperatives. Original sin was inextricably linked with the sexual act. Virginity was seen as heroic virtue, far more impressive than, say, the avoidance of idleness or greed. Monasticism, the cultural institution that dominated medieval Europe for centuries, was grounded in the renunciation of the flesh. The Catholic reform of the eleventh century imposed a similar standard on all the clergy and a heightened awareness of sexual requirements on all the laity. Although men were asked to be chaste, female unchastity was much worse: it led to the devil, as Eve had led mankind to sin. To such requirements, women and their defenders protested their innocence. Furthermore, following the example of holy women who had escaped

Series Editors’ Introduction the requirements of family and sought the religious life, some women began to conceive of female communities as alternatives both to family and to the cloister. Christine de Pizan’s city of ladies was such a community. Moderata Fonte and Mary Astell envisioned others. The luxurious salons of the French précieuses of the seventeenth century, or the comfortable English drawing rooms of the next, may have been born of the same impulse. Here women not only might escape, if briefly, the subordinate position that life in the family entailed but might also make claims to power, exercise their capacity for speech, and display their knowledge. T H E P R O B L E M O F P O W E R . Women were excluded from power: the whole cultural tradition insisted on it. Only men were citizens, only men bore arms, only men could be chiefs or lords or kings. There were exceptions that did not disprove the rule, when wives or widows or mothers took the place of men, awaiting their return or the maturation of a male heir. A woman who attempted to rule in her own right was perceived as an anomaly, a monster, at once a deformed woman and an insufficient male, sexually confused and consequently unsafe. The association of such images with women who held or sought power explains some otherwise odd features of early modern culture. Queen Elizabeth I of England, one of the few women to hold full regal authority in European history, played with such male/female images—positive ones, of course—in representing herself to her subjects. She was a prince, and manly, even though she was female. She was also (she claimed) virginal, a condition absolutely essential if she was to avoid the attacks of her opponents. Catherine de’ Medici, who ruled France as widow and regent for her sons, also adopted such imagery in defining her position. She chose as one symbol the figure of Artemisia, an androgynous ancient warrior-heroine who combined a female persona with masculine powers. Power in a woman, without such sexual imagery, seems to have been indigestible by the culture. A rare note was struck by the Englishman Sir Thomas Elyot in his Defence of Good Women (1540), justifying both women’s participation in civic life and their prowess in arms. The old tune was sung by the Scots reformer John Knox in his First Blast of the Trumpet against the Monstrous Regiment of Women (1558); for him rule by women, defects in nature, was a hideous contradiction in terms. The confused sexuality of the imagery of female potency was not reserved for rulers. Any woman who excelled was likely to be called an Amazon, recalling the self-mutilated warrior women of antiquity who repudiated all men, gave up their sons, and raised only their daughters. She was often said to have “exceeded her sex” or to have possessed “masculine virtue”—as

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Series Editors’ Introduction the very fact of conspicuous excellence conferred masculinity even on the female subject. The catalogs of notable women often showed those female heroes dressed in armor, armed to the teeth, like men. Amazonian heroines romp through the epics of the age—Ariosto’s Orlando Furioso (1532) and Spenser’s Faerie Queene (1590–1609). Excellence in a woman was perceived as a claim for power, and power was reserved for the masculine realm. A woman who possessed either one was masculinized and lost title to her own female identity. T H E P R O B L E M O F S P E E C H . Just as power had a sexual dimension when it was claimed by women, so did speech. A good woman spoke little. Excessive speech was an indication of unchastity. By speech, women seduced men. Eve had lured Adam into sin by her speech. Accused witches were commonly accused of having spoken abusively, or irrationally, or simply too much. As enlightened a figure as Francesco Barbaro insisted on silence in a woman, which he linked to her perfect unanimity with her husband’s will and her unblemished virtue (her chastity). Another Italian humanist, Leonardo Bruni, in advising a noblewoman on her studies, barred her not from speech but from public speaking. That was reserved for men. Related to the problem of speech was that of costume—another, if silent, form of self-expression. Assigned the task of pleasing men as their primary occupation, elite women often tended toward elaborate costume, hairdressing, and the use of cosmetics. Clergy and secular moralists alike condemned these practices. The appropriate function of costume and adornment was to announce the status of a woman’s husband or father. Any further indulgence in adornment was akin to unchastity. T H E P R O B L E M O F K N O W L E D G E . When the Italian noblewoman Isotta Nogarola had begun to attain a reputation as a humanist, she was accused of incest—a telling instance of the association of learning in women with unchastity. That chilling association inclined any woman who was educated to deny that she was or to make exaggerated claims of heroic chastity. If educated women were pursued with suspicions of sexual misconduct, women seeking an education faced an even more daunting obstacle: the assumption that women were by nature incapable of learning, that reasoning was a particularly masculine ability. Just as they proclaimed their chastity, women and their defenders insisted on their capacity for learning. The major work by a male writer on female education—that by Juan Luis Vives, On the Education of a Christian Woman (1523)—granted female capacity for intellection but still argued that a woman’s whole education was to be shaped around the requirement of chastity and a future within the household. Female writers

Series Editors’ Introduction of the following generations—Marie de Gournay in France, Anna Maria van Schurman in Holland, and Mary Astell in England—began to envision other possibilities. The pioneers of female education were the Italian women humanists who managed to attain a literacy in Latin and a knowledge of classical and Christian literature equivalent to that of prominent men. Their works implicitly and explicitly raise questions about women’s social roles, defining problems that beset women attempting to break out of the cultural limits that had bound them. Like Christine de Pizan, who achieved an advanced education through her father’s tutoring and her own devices, their bold questioning makes clear the importance of training. Only when women were educated to the same standard as male leaders would they be able to raise that other voice and insist on their dignity as human beings morally, intellectually, and legally equal to men. T H E O T H E R V O I C E . The other voice, a voice of protest, was mostly female, but it was also male. It spoke in the vernaculars and in Latin, in treatises and dialogues, in plays and poetry, in letters and diaries, and in pamphlets. It battered at the wall of prejudice that encircled women and raised a banner announcing its claims. The female was equal (or even superior) to the male in essential nature—moral, spiritual, and intellectual. Women were capable of higher education, of holding positions of power and influence in the public realm, and of speaking and writing persuasively. The last bastion of masculine supremacy, centered on the notions of a woman’s primary domestic responsibility and the requirement of female chastity, was not as yet assaulted—although visions of productive female communities as alternatives to the family indicated an awareness of the problem. During the period 1300–1700, the other voice remained only a voice, and one only dimly heard. It did not result—yet—in an alteration of social patterns. Indeed, to this day they have not entirely been altered. Yet the call for justice issued as long as six centuries ago by those writing in the tradition of the other voice must be recognized as the source and origin of the mature feminist tradition and of the realignment of social institutions accomplished in the modern age.

We thank the volume editors in this series, who responded with many suggestions to an earlier draft of this introduction, making it a collaborative enterprise. Many of their suggestions and criticisms have resulted in revisions of this introduction, although we remain responsible for the final product.

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Isabella Andreini, Mirtilla, edited and translated by Laura Stortoni Tullia d’Aragona, Complete Poems and Letters, edited and translated by Julia Hairston , The Wretch, Otherwise Known as Guerrino, edited and translated by Julia Hairston and John McLucas Giuseppa Eleonora Barbapiccola and Diamante Medaglia Faini, The Education of Women, edited and translated by Rebecca Messbarger Francesco Barbaro et al., On Marriage and the Family, edited and translated by Margaret L. King Laura Battiferra, Selected Poetry, Prose, and Letters, edited and translated by Victoria Kirkham Giulia Bigolina, “Urania” and “Giulia,” edited and translated by Valeria Finucci Francesco Buoninsegni and Arcangela Tarabotti, Menippean Satire: “Against Feminine Extravagance” and “Antisatire,” edited and translated by Elissa Weaver Maddalena Campiglia, Flori, a Pastorial Drama: A Bilingual Edition, edited and translated by Virginia Cox and Lisa Sampson Rosalba Carriera, Letters, Diaries, and Art, edited and translated by Shearer West Madame du Chatelet, Selected Works, edited by Judith Zinsser Vittoria Colonna, Sonnets for Michelangelo, edited and translated by Abigail Brundin Vittoria Colonna, Chiara Matraini, and Lucrezia Marinella, Marian Writings, edited and translated by Susan Haskins Marie Dentière, Epistle to Marguerite de Navarre and Preface to a Sermon by John Calvin, edited and translated by Mary B. McKinley Princess Elizabeth of Bohemia, Correspondence with Descartes, edited and translated by Lisa Shapiro Isabella d’Este, Selected Letters, edited and translated by Deanna Shemek Fairy-Tales by Seventeenth-Century French Women Writers, edited and translated by Lewis Seifert and Domna C. Stanton Moderata Fonte, Floridoro, edited and translated by Valeria Finucci Moderata Fonte and Lucrezia Marinella, Religious Narratives, edited and translated by Virginia Cox Francisca de los Apostoles, Visions on Trial: The Inquisitional Trial of Francisca de los Apostoles, edited and translated by Gillian T. W. Ahlgren Catharina Regina von Greiffenberg, Meditations on the Life of Christ, edited and translated by Lynne Tatlock In Praise of Women: Italian Fifteenth-Century Defenses of Women, edited and translated by Daniel Bornstein Louise Labé, Complete Works, edited and translated by Annie Finch and Deborah Baker Madame de Maintenon, Dialogues and Addresses, edited and translated by John Conley, S.J. Lucrezia Marinella, L’Enrico, or Byzantium Conquered, edited and translated by Virginia Cox Lucrezia Marinella, Happy Arcadia, edited and translated by Susan Haskins and Letizia Panizza Chiara Matraini, Selected Poetry and Prose, edited and translated by Elaine MacLachlan

Series Editors’ Introduction Eleonora Petersen von Merlau, Autobiography (1718), edited and translated by Barbara Becker-Cantarino Alessandro Piccolomini, Rethinking Marriage in Sixteenth-Century Italy, edited and translated by Letizia Panizza Christine de Pizan et al., Debate over the “Romance of the Rose,” edited and translated by Tom Conley with Elisabeth Hodges Christine de Pizan, Life of Charles V, edited and translated by Charity Cannon Willard Christine de Pizan, The Long Road of Learning, edited and translated by Andrea Tarnowski Madeleine and Catherine des Roches, Selected Letters, Dialogues, and Poems, edited and translated by Anne Larsen Oliva Sabuco, The New Philosophy: True Medicine, edited and translated by Gianna Pomata Margherita Sarrocchi, La Scanderbeide, edited and translated by Rinaldina Russell Madeleine de Scudéry, Selected Letters, Orations, and Rhetorical Dialogues, edited and translated by Jane Donawerth with Julie Strongson Justine Siegemund, The Court Midwife of the Electorate of Brandenburg (1690), edited and translated by Lynne Tatlock Gabrielle Suchon, “On Philosophy” and “On Morality,” edited and translated by Domna Stanton with Rebecca Wilkin Sara Copio Sullam, Sara Copio Sullam: Jewish Poet and Intellectual in Early Seventeenth-Century Venice, edited and translated by Don Harrán Arcangela Tarabotti, Convent Life as Inferno: A Report, introduction and notes by Francesca Medioli, translated by Letizia Panizza Laura Terracina, Works, edited and translated by Michael Sherberg Madame de Villedieu (Marie-Catherine Desjardin), Memoirs of the Life of Henriette-Sylvie de Molière: A Novel, edited and translated by Donna Kuizenga Katharina Schütz Zell, Selected Writings, edited and translated by Elsie McKee

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THE OTHER VOICE

T

he title of this series, “The Other Voice in Early Modern Europe,” could not be more appropriately applied than to Arcangela Tarabotti (1604– 1652), all of whose writings articulate her anger at life’s injustices to women in general, and at the injustices of seventeenth-century Venetian family, marriage, and religious life in particular. Tarabotti not only overcame the reticence, so strong in early modern women writers, about revealing deep personal emotions, longings, and opinions, especially when these meant condemning men; she resisted to a remarkable extent, and in one case overcame, attempts by them to silence her. Tarabotti cannot be placed in any conventional literary slot; her writings, including this one, both elude the usual categories and mix features of many of them. Paternal Tyranny is predominantly an invective against the oppressions of patriarchy; but it is also a treatise on the evils of forcing young girls into a life they are not suited for, a psychological autobiography on the torments of childhood and adolescence in the Venetian family of her day, a confession to God of a soul’s suffering, a literary critique of major texts of contemporary misogyny, a feminist commentary on the Bible, and finally, the first manifesto about women’s inalienable rights to liberty, equality, and universal education. Passages in Paternal Tyranny could have come from the circle of Mary Wollstonecraft or John Stuart Mill two centuries later. This book is Tarabotti’s j’accuse, in which the tone of an avenging angel remains a constant.1

1. Modern studies on Tarabotti were launched in 1960 with E. Zanette, Suor Arcangela Tarabotti monaca del Seicento veneziana (Venice and Rome: Istituto per la Collaborazione Culturale, 1960), which incorporates earlier articles and bibliography. While in some aspects an unparalleled source of information about Tarabotti’s life and milieu, Zanette does not take her protesta-

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Vo l u m e E d i t o r ’s I n t r o d u c t i o n TA R A B O T T I ’ S L I F E A N D W O R K S

Tarabotti was self-conscious and bitter about her physical appearance. She was lame, a condition that she alone, among all her siblings, inherited from her father and that gave him cause to judge her unmarriageable, fit therefore only for the convent. (The same condition had not prevented her father himself from marrying.)2 She put on a brave face. When someone insulted her in a letter, she registered the hurt—“you derided me to my face, and taunted me about that disability by which my father perhaps wished to brand me as his daughter”—but also engaged in counterattack: though her taunter was “sound of body,” he was “crippled in soul” and would be excluded from tions—or those of Moderata Fonte and Lucrezia Marinella—seriously. Tarabotti was nursing personal grievances, perhaps caused by an unhappy love affair, that colored her judgments. More objective reevaluations began with G. Conti-Odorisio, Donna e società nel Seicento: Lucrezia Marinelli e Arcangela Tarabotti (Rome: Bulzoni, 1979); see also P. Labalme, “Venetian Women on Women: Three Early Modern Feminists, Archivio Veneto 117 (1981): 81–109; D. De Bellis, “Arcangela Tarabotti nella cultura veneziana del XVII secolo,” Annali del Dipartimento di Filosofia, Università di Firenze 6 (1990): 59–110; M. King, Women of the Renaissance (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1991); and V. Cox, “The Single Self: Feminist Thought and the Marriage Market in Early Modern Venice,” Renaissance Quarterly 48 (1995): 513–81. See entries on Tarabotti by N. Costa Zalessow, in Scrittrici italiane dal XIII al XX secolo. Testi e critica (Ravenna: Longo, 1982); A. Niero in Dictionnaire de spiritualité, ascétique et mystique (Paris: Beauchesne, 1990); M. Gambier, in Le stanze ritrovate. Antologia di scrittrici venete dal Quattrocento al Novecento, ed. A. Arslan et al., 117–25 (Mirano and Venice: Eidos, 1991); E. Weaver in Italian Women Writers. A Bio-Biographical Sourcebook, ed. R. Russell 415–22 (Westport, Conn., 1994); and L. Panizza in volume 6 of the Encyclopaedia of the Renaissance, ed. P. Grendler, 109–11 (New York: Scribner’s, 1999). A collection of essays exclusively on Tarabotti and her social and cultural context is forthcoming in the series Sixteenth Century Essays and Studies and edited by E. Weaver, Arcangela Tarabotti (Kirksville, Mo.: Truman State University Press). Tarabotti’s six works, in order of publication (not composition) are as follows: (1) Il Paradiso monacale, con un soliloquio a Dio (Venice: G. Oddoni, 1643). (2) F. Buoninsegni and Suor A. Tarabotti, Satira e Antisatira (1651), ed. E. Weaver (Rome: Salerno, 1998); translation forthcoming in this series, also edited by E. Weaver. (3) Lettere familiari e di complimento (Venice: Guerigli, 1650), critical edition by M. Ray and L. Westwater (Turin: Rosenberg and Sellier, forthcoming). (4) Galerana Barcitotti, Che le donne siano della spetie degli huomini. Difesa della donne (1651), ed. L. Panizza (London: Institute of Romance Studies, University of London, 1994); translation by T.M. Kenney, “Women Are Not Human”: An Anonymous Treatise and Responses (New York: Crossroad Publishing Co., 1998). (5) Galerana Baratotti, La semplicità ingannata (Innocence Betrayed) (Leyden: G. Sambix [=Elzevier], 1654); translated with original title Tirannia paterna (Paternal Tyranny) in this book. (6) L’ Inferno monacale di Arcangela Tarabotti, ed. F. Medioli (Turin, 1990); translation forthcoming by F. Medioli and L. Panizza in this series. “Galerana Barcitotti” and “Galerana Baratotti” are pseudonyms. Note that only the first four of her writings were published in her lifetime. Printed with Lettere familiari is a poetic funeral lament in honor of her lifelong friend in the convent, Regina Donà (or Donato), Le Lagrime (Tears) (Venice: Guerigli, 1650), which belongs to the genre of penitential or mournful lyric poetry of the same name initiated by Luigi Tansillo in the sixteenth century and followed, among others, by Lucrezia Marinella in her 1606 Le Lagrime di San Pietro. Tarabotti is thought to have completed her version of Dante’s Divine

Vo l u m e E d i t o r ’s I n t r o d u c t i o n Christ’s great feast in the next life. On one occasion, she could even assert that her lack of physical attractiveness was compensated for by superior moral and spiritual qualities: 3

I have always had this maxim engraved in my memory: that without chastity no woman is beautiful, and that physical beauty cannot and should not claim a greater adornment than purity of heart. Indeed, recognizing that I am ugly and maimed in body, I have devoted myself to cultivating beauty of soul as the only kind that deserves to be desired and admired.4 As a child of eleven, she was sent as a boarder to the Benedictine Convent of Sant’Anna in Castello, the area of Venice near the famous Arsenale shipyards. When she was sixteen, in 1620, she took her first vows, and in 1623, her final vows. She was already a rebel, refusing to wear the religious habit or cut her hair.5 If Tarabotti is sometimes harsh about her companions, she is merciless about their parents, blaming them for abusing the convent and treating it as a dumping ground for their unwanted maimed, mentally retarded, and illegitimate daughters. Like Cain, who offered “the most contemptible things he possessed, a sign and proof of his heart’s meanness and wickedness, intent solely on material gain,” contemporary fathers do not offer as brides of Jesus their most beautiful and virtuous daughters, but the most repulsive and deformed: lame, hunchbacked, crippled, or simple-minded. They are blamed for whatever natural defect they are born with and condemned to lifelong prison. (book 1, 66) She was also appalled at the inadequacy of the instruction imparted to the young boarders, most of whom would go on to become nuns, and linked Comedy by writing a Purgatorio on the sufferings of mismatched wives to complement her Inferno monacale and Paradiso monacale; so far, no manuscript has surfaced. Mary Wollstonecraft (1759–1797) composed A Vindication of the Rights of Women; John Stuart Mill (1806–1873) composed On the Subjection of Women. 2. Tarabotti was born 24 February 1604 and died 28 February 1652. She had two brothers and four other sisters, only two of whom married. The other two were allowed to remain single. She kept in touch with her sister Lorenzina, who married Giacomo Pighetti, who is mentioned several times in her correspondence. There is no mention of her father Stefano, who died an old man in 1642. Her mother, Maria Cadena, died in 1649, only a few years before Tarabotti herself. Her death is recorded in a letter of Tarabotti to a close friend, Betta Polani (Lettere, 55), to whom she turns for comfort. 3. Lettere, 80. 4. Paradiso, translation from “Letter to the Reader,” appendix 1. 5. “Soliloquio a Dio,” Paradiso 8–9.

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Vo l u m e E d i t o r ’s I n t r o d u c t i o n women’s poor education inside and outside the convent to their general subjection. Fathers made sure that from an early age their daughters’ minds were stunted: You give them as a governess another woman, also unlettered, who can barely instruct them in the rudiments of reading, to say nothing of anything to do with philosophy, law, and theology. In short, they learn nothing but the ABC, and even then this is poorly taught. (I know from experience, so I can bear witness at length). (book 2, 99) At sixteen, she took her four vows of poverty, chastity, obedience, and stability—the latter was a characteristic of Benedictines, who were thereby bound to remain physically in the same convent for life and to be buried there. No wonder the thought of her convent both as a tomb in which she was buried alive as well as a prison recurs with such frequency.6 From vivid descriptions in Paternal Tyranny of the psychological blackmail employed by fathers, priests, and the religious themselves against recalcitrant young girls we can perhaps infer something of Tarabotti’s own experience: Too much, yes, too much does the behavior of the head of a family disgust me when he advises young girls to lock themselves in a cage! . . . [Fathers] prate on and on how their daughters must on no account ever think of renouncing the religious life to embrace holy wedlock and how the married state is full of trials and tribulations for a woman (book 1, 62) Even worse, daughters could be made to feel responsible for the financial survival of the family. Tarabotti compares fathers to Caiphas the high priest and his followers at Christ’s trial, who decreed that “[i]t was expedient that one man should die for the people” (Jn 18:14). “Just like them you say that 6. The practice of forcing young girls to enter the convent was denounced by the patriarchs of Venice. Giovanni Tiepolo, patriarch from 1619 to 1631, acknowledged in a letter to the Venetian Doge and Senate that many nuns were in convents “not because of a religious motivation, but pushed by their own families; they make a gift of their own liberty (so precious even to those lacking reason) not just to God, but to their native land, to the world, and to their closest relatives” (“non per spirito di devozione, ma per impulso dei loro, facendo della propria libertà (tanto cara a quelli che mancano dell’uso della ragione) un dono non solo a Dio, ma anco alla Patria, al Mondo et alli loro più stretti parenti”); in Silvio Tramontin, “Ordini e congregazioni religiose,” Storia della cultura veneta. Il Seicento, ed. G. Arnaldi and M. Pastore Stocchi, 23–60, 49 (Vicenza: Neri Pozza, 1983). Tiepolo’s solution, however, was merely to relax the rules to make life more bearable; social chaos would result if so many single women were to remain in the world.

Vo l u m e E d i t o r ’s I n t r o d u c t i o n convents are built on purpose for all kinds of women: ‘The religious life is their destiny—much better for one woman to be shut up to serve God than for a whole family to be ruined’ ” (book 3, 131). The use of “God’s will” to mask lying fathers’ selfish desires infuriates Tarabotti, and she mimics their twisted casuistry: There isn’t a leaf on a tree that moves without the divine will permitting (they say); God has willed these daughters of ours and their relatives to be born for the purpose of being enclosed in a convent; destiny—which derives from God’s inscrutable decisions—obliges them to submit to lifelong imprisonment, and if it were not meant to be so, His Divine Majesty would not allow it to happen! She punctures this hypocritical bubble with a defiant, “You liars! Not even the devil himself would have the impudence to speak thus” (book 3, 127).7 She notes that greed spreads throughout the family like a poison, as brothers brag to their sisters that they alone will inherit the family’s wealth. Addressing the incredulous reader, Tarabotti urges, See for yourself if you doubt the absolute truth of my words! Go and ask one of these children, who as yet cannot put two syllables together, let alone a whole word: ‘What will become of your sisters?’ Immediately, without a moment’s hesitation, prompted by that cunning disposition shaped by his father’s upbringing, he will say, ‘They’ll become nuns because I want to be rich!’ (book 1, 74)

7. E. Zanette was so struck by Tarabotti’s description of fathers’ devious arguments in Paternal Tyranny that he thought there must have been manuals written just for the purpose. Unfortunately, none has come to light. But plenty of grist for their mills could have been found, I believe, in the many treatises circulating in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries about the glories of the religious life and its superiority to marriage. See E. Zanette, Suor Arcangela, monaca del Seicento veneziano (note 1), 94–95. The superiority of virginity over marriage was accepted doctrine since the early Church, and affirmed most emphatically by Saint Jerome in his letters and polemical tracts against Jovinianus and Helvidius. See J.N.D. Kelly, Jerome: His Life, Writings and Controversies (London, 1975); and E.F. Rice, Jr., Saint Jerome in the Renaissance (Baltimore and London: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1988). In its regulations about marriage issued in 1563, the Council of Trent reiterated this hierarchy. See A. Turchini, “Dalla disciplina alla ‘creanza’ del matrimonio all’indomani del Concilio di Trento,” in Donna, disciplina, creanza cristiana dal XV al XVII secolo, ed. G. Zarri, 205–14 (Rome: Edizioni di Storia e Letteratura, 1996). Before the Council of Trent, there had been a vigorous campaign of tracts, essays, and dialogues to promote the dignity of marriage. See M. F. Fubini Leuzzi, “Vita coniugale e vita familiare nei trattati italiani fra XVI e XVII secolo,” in the same collection, 253–67. For further documentation corroborating Tarabotti, see F. Medioli, “Monacazioni forzate: donne ribelli al proprio destino,” in Clio. Rivista trimestrale di studi storici 30 (1994): 431–54.

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Vo l u m e E d i t o r ’s I n t r o d u c t i o n Mothers stay silent. Tarabotti gives no indication that her own mother ever spoke up for her, or any other mother for their daughters—a witness of their powerlessness and their obligation as wives to obey their husbands.8 Once daughters were safely behind the grille never to come out again, fathers felt relieved at having got rid of a financial “burden.”9 The money saved from not paying out a dowry could be channeled into dowries for one or two favored daughters or preserved for a son’s inheritance or, Tarabotti also suggests, squandered by fathers for their own interests. This parental unfairness toward their own offspring never ceased to exasperate Tarabotti. Most girls forced to enter the convent accepted their lot to a greater or lesser degree; they knew they could do little or nothing to change it.10 All of Tarabotti’s compositions testify that she did not accept hers. If she was forced to live a lie, as she frequently confesses, it was all the more important for her to be true to herself in what she wrote. Tarabotti’s first published work, Il Paradiso monacale (Convent Life as Paradise), came out in 1643, when she was almost forty and had been in the convent for over twenty-five years. The one recorded event that affected her from the date of her final vows, 1623, to the book’s publication was the formal visitation to the convent of Federico Cardinal Cornaro (or Corner) in 1633. Of an old patrician Venetian family, he was known for his learning and piety and for putting into practice the reforming ideals of the Council of Trent.11 According to Tarabotti, he succeeded in changing her outward observance of the rule for the better but not her heart: “He made me amend my vanities. I cut off my hair, but I did not uproot my emotions. I reformed my life, but my thoughts flourish rampantly, and just like my shorn hair, grow all the more.”12 Though she laments her lack of a proper education and the deficiencies of the convent library, the Paradiso presupposes many 8. In L’Inferno monacale (44), Tarabotti mentions mothers who collude with fathers and religious superiors in forcing girls to enter the convent. 9. Tarabotti accuses fathers of yielding to “diabolical suggestions about ridding themselves of impediments to the line of inheritance: the house is relieved of the burden of females before they themselves are capable of making a free choice about their state in life.” See book 2, 90. 10. See F. Medioli, “To Take or Not to Take the Veil: Selected Italian Case Histories, the Renaissance and After,” in Women in Italian Renaissance Culture and Society, ed. L. Panizza, 122–37 (Oxford: European Humanities Research Centre, 2000), for examples of some women who were released from their vows or who escaped, and for the conditions needed. 11. Paradiso (note 1), “Soliloquio a Dio,” 12, 24–26. See also the entry by G. Gullino in volume 29 of the Dizionario Biografico degli Italiani (Rome: Treccani, 1960): 185–88, who attributes Tarabotti’s “conversion” to the cardinal. 12. “Fecemi corregger le vanità. Recisi i capelli, ma non sradicai gli affetti. Riformai la vita, ma i pensieri, ch’apunto a guisa di capelli tagliati, più crescono, vanno pullulando.” Paradiso 26.

Vo l u m e E d i t o r ’s I n t r o d u c t i o n years of reading and writing, of exchanging and discussing literature, of visits by outsiders to the convent parlor (for nuns, the closest meeting place in Venice to a salon), of the circulation of partial or even whole manuscripts, and of editorial help in preparing her text for publication. To some extent, Tarabotti’s persona of the unlettered nun cut off from the world of learning is a ruse serving to deflect criticism but also to draw approval for what she has accomplished under such adverse circumstances. In her own address “To the Reader” of Paradiso monacale, she pleads, Do not expect from me a fine vocabulary, elegant tropes, pleasing descriptions, lofty opinions, and wide learning. These are qualities belonging to great intellects, not to me; my mind is poorly endowed. Just ponder a moment: what charm can there be in the manner of writing of a women who has not had any imaginable enlightenment in Latin language or literature or any other discipline to assist her in the art of composition; and who, for the rules of spelling and grammar, makes use of nothing beyond a dictionary? What style, what explanations, what sharpness of understanding can be discerned there? A person who has never been taught how to read and write, and who does not even recall learning how to read—although she has enjoyed it extremely—simply cannot possess sufficient preparation to compose without making all kinds of mistakes. (appendix 1, 156) From the Paradiso, it transpires that she had written two other books, the contents of which had circulated at least partially in manuscript. The printer, Guglielmo Oddoni, cheerfully tells the reader to “[e]xpect in a short while other compositions from the same very famous hand, more spicy, perhaps, as they are far better suited to worldly tastes: I hope that Paternal Tyranny will be the first.”13 The second was L’Inferno monacale, mentioned explicitly at the very end of Paternal Tyranny: “There is another book of mine, soon forthcoming, where [my thoughts] will appear with their same native simplicity to prove to you that in those places constructed by your fraudulent self-interest reign all the pains of Hell” (book 3, 152–53).14

13. “Attendi in breve altre compositioni dalla stesssa celebratissima penna forse più piccanti per esser assai più aggiustate al gusto del secolo. La Tirannia Paterna spero che sarà la prima.” Paradiso, “A chi legge,” no pagination. 14. In her own “Letter to the Reader” (appendix 1), Tarabotti states explicitly that she has composed two other books, each divided into three parts, but that they “were abruptly snatched from my hands.” She does not say who did this or for what reason. It is also unclear if Oddoni already had two other manuscript copies of these books when he announced their imminent

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Vo l u m e E d i t o r ’s I n t r o d u c t i o n In all three books, Tarabotti shows herself to be relatively well-read in contemporary literature, prose, and poetry, as well as in the Bible and spiritual writings, a fact that leads us to wonder who encouraged her in her worldly reading and in her writing for a public outside the convent. What emerges is that Tarabotti was the only woman writer in Venice to enjoy the company, support, and financial patronage of one of the most distinguished, talented, and powerful aristocrats of the age, Giovanni Francesco Loredan, founder of the prestigious Venetian literary academy, the Incogniti, in 1627, and its leading light until his death in 1661. The Academy, furthermore, had the reputation for promoting anticlerical if not anti-Catholic sentiments and had become known as libertine—all of which makes it more incongruous for a Benedictine nun, however rebellious, to be attached to it. It may be that her brother-in-law, Giacomo Pighetti, a lawyer from Brescia and an art collector, and member himself of the Incogniti, first befriended her, lent her books, and introduced her to more illustrious members of the Academy, including Loredan. All the same, it was a remarkable achievement for Tarabotti to have Loredan’s letter to another Venetian patrician Giovanni Polani singing her praises in the front of Paradiso, with a play on her composition as a “Terrestrial Paradise” for its “trees of learning, boughs of phrasing, flowers of conceits and fruits of knowledge.”15 Equally prestigious was the dedication of her own correspondence, Lettere familiari e di complimento of 1650, to Loredan, who acted as an editor and benefactor. Loredan in turn included some letters to her, varying in tone, in his own Lettere.16 Tarabotti’s Antisatira, furthermore, was in answer to a Satira delivered in Loredan’s Academy and led to an acrimonious

publication. In an autograph letter to Angelico Aprosio dated a year earlier, 1642, Tarabotti states she has finished both Paternal Tyranny and Paradiso monacale. See F. Medioli, “Alcune lettere autografe di Arcangela Tarabotti: autocensura e immagine di sé,” Rivista di letteratura e storia religiosa 32 (1996): 135–55. 15. “Lo credei un Paradiso Terrestre, mentre gli alberi dell’eruditione, le frondi della frase, li fiori de’concetti, i frutti delle scienze . . . mi necessitavano a crederlo tale.” Letter to Signor Giovanni Polani, no pagination; also in Loredan’s Lettere del Signor Gio: Francesco Loredano Nobile Veneto (Venice: Guerigli, 1658), 49–50. Polani’s sister, Betta, was a nun and close friend of Tarabotti in the same convent of Sant’Anna. Her family supported her in her desire to leave. On the Incogniti, see G. Spini, Ricerca dei libertini, 2d ed. (Florence: La Nuova Italia, 1983); and on Loredan, see M. Miato, L’Accademia degli Incogniti di Giovan Francesco Loredan, Venezia (1630–1661) (Florence: Olschki, 1998). 16. Loredan was furious at Tarabotti’s satirical attack on Buoninsegi (Loredan, Lettere, 243–44) and hurled back the usual misogynist commonplaces. But he is also full of praise for other works and appreciated the dedication of her letters to him. The third part of one of his novels, Hibraino (Abraham), was dedicated to her with the comment, “I know with how much keenness you read modern novels and with how much application, to the glory of your sex, you study the most famous authors” (“So con quanta curiosità non solo legge i Romanzi moderni, ma con quanta applicatione a gloria del suo sesso studia gli Autori più rinomati”) (Lettere, 435).

Vo l u m e E d i t o r ’s I n t r o d u c t i o n dispute with him. Her Paternal Tyranny, finally, takes issue with at least two works of the Incogniti: first and foremost, Loredan’s own L’Adamo, and then Ferrante Pallavicino’s Corriero svaligiato (121–22 and appendix 2).17 These first three works also share common themes, although with different emphases, regarding the religious life and the social, ethical, and theological problems of forcing women to lead a way of life they find repugnant. Although there has been controversy about whether Tarabotti underwent a conversion, there is agreement that the Paradiso monacale did allow her to present herself as a good Christian. All the same, she sharply contrasts the “true” nun, who gladly embraces the religious life, and for whom Tarabotti is full of praise, with the “false” one, a nun only in appearance: The voluntary sacrifice of one’s heart is more pleasing to God than anything else offered up to Him, whether forcibly or by persuasion . . . [and I believe that] numberless women, true living flames of the church . . . who have chosen for themselves through their own free will and have taught others the true path to eternal salvation, have succeeded in conforming themselves to God’s heart and are passionately loved by Him in return; but women forced [on this path] are little if at all pleasing to Him, and deserve to be banished from his mercy.18 Where does Tarabotti place herself? Certainly not among the former. She had not chosen the religious life, so she did not deserve the love God gives to the “voluntary sacrifice of one’s heart.” On the other hand, whatever she felt, in the eyes of the church and society she had consented to vows and could be punished for not keeping them. The publication of Paradiso served 17. The only other woman writer in Venice contemporaneous with Tarabotti was Lucrezia Marinella, prolific poet and novelist and author of a polemical work defending women, L’eccellenza et nobiltà delle donne, con i difetti e mancamenti degli huomini (1601), now in this series: The Nobility and Excellence of Women. With the Defects and Vices of Men, trans. A. Dunhill and intro. L. Panizza (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1999). There is no evidence of letters between Marinella and members of the Incogniti or between her and Tarabotti. It may be that Marinella was too religiously conservative to approve of Tarabotti. In her very last work, she shows no sympathy with religious who rebel against the rules and regulations of their orders. See my introductory essay to Marinella, 15. 18. “L’oblatione volontaria del cuore sia più grata a Dio di qual si voglia cosa che gli venga offerta, o forzatamente, o per altrui persuasione, [e credo che] le numerosissime donne faci vive della Chiesa . . . c’hanno per propria volontà eletto per se stesse, & insegnato ad altre la strada vera della salute eterna, siano riuscite conforme al cuore di Dio, e siano svisceratamente da lui riamate, ma poco, anzi nulla grate gli siano le sforzate, come degne d’esser in esoso alla di lui misericordia” (Il Paradiso monacale, 50). The couplet serving as epigraph to Paternal Tyranny expresses similar sentiments.

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Vo l u m e E d i t o r ’s I n t r o d u c t i o n as an open act of reparation for the scandal of the two previous works that had circulated in manuscript. It was a palinode that made a strong case for the opposite point of view, but it did not necessarily mean that the author embraced this view for herself.19 It is Tarabotti’s most labored work, with quotations in Latin and Italian from the Old and New Testaments, early Christian writers like Saints Augustine and Ambrose, spiritual writers like Saint Bernard, and vernacular poets like Dante, Ariosto, Tasso, and Guarini. She was deeply insulted to learn that Angelico Aprosio considered her works “full of faults” (imperfettissime) and at the same time declared that they were too learned to have been written by her. She retorted, “My offspring never had any other father than my unlettered mind, and no mother other than my own ignorance.”20 In another letter to the Duke of Parma, Ferdinando Farnese, she refers to Aprosio’s Maschera scoperta as written by the same person who doubted that the Paradiso “can be the fruit of my own labors.”21 Tarabotti soon laid herself open once again to the charge of worldliness. A year later, in 1644, she brought out a short tract in direct answer to an earlier one published in Venice in 1638, Contro ‘l lusso donnesco, satira menippea (Against Women’s Luxury. Menippean Satire), by Francesco Buoninsegni of Siena, friend of Loredan. In her Antisatira, she dons the persona of the confidante of married women who turn to her as their advocate, begging her to answer

19. Medioli rejects the “conversion” hypothesis most strongly on the grounds that Tarabotti went on trying all her life to publish Paternal Tyranny and was successful, although it came out two years after her death. Her later works also continued to arouse scandal. I would agree with Medioli in that there was no conversion in the sense of a complete change of heart and way of life. But judging from her own “Letter to the Reader” in Paradiso (translated into English in appendix 1), I am inclined to see the conversion as more of a crisis in which she tries to change and reaches a compromise: she cannot be a true nun, but she can and is moral and devout. Although disclaiming a literary education, she knows enough about rhetoric to adopt different personas for her writings. In the autobiographical “Soliliquio a Dio” (Paradiso,1–33), she is a new Augustine. She shows herself to be repenting of former worldliness and attachment to “vanities,” but not serious sin. In her “Letter to the Reader,”(appendix 1)in fact, she admits she is assuming a penitential role, but in case readers jump to any conclusions, she denies utterly any accusation of unchastity: “I am speaking before God, in whose sight I believe it is best to exaggerate one’s faults humbly in order to appease his most just anger more easily and regain his favor . . . . On the other hand, I have never deviated from what is owing to the honor that the conditions of my birth, my upbringing, and my own gifts demand of me. If I have been carried away in vain and youthful frivolities, my sense of honor always kept me within the limits of a chastity so unsullied that it could boast the name of purest innocence.” 20. Tarabotti explicitly admits in one of her letters that she had more difficulty writing Paradiso than writing Paternal Tyranny or Convent life as Inferno (Lettere, 69); “I miei parti non hebbero giamai altro Padre che il mio rozzo ingegno, né altra Madre che la mia stessa ignoranza,” Lettere, to Padre [Aprosio], no date, 24–25. 21. “possa essere frutto de’miei sudori” (Lettere, 34).

Vo l u m e E d i t o r ’s I n t r o d u c t i o n the ridicule poured on women by Buoninsegni for their seemingly excessive love of clothes, hairstyles, and adornments. Tarabotti resorted to her favorite principle of equal standards: if men ridiculed women, women could exercise the corresponding right to criticize men for their love of luxury displayed in items like fancy lace collars and cuffs, padded stockings, and expensive wigs. Indeed, if men first divested women of ignorance by educating them, women would soon give up worldly vanities. The trouble was that men kept women at arm’s length from learning so that when the need arose, “they do not know how to defend themselves nor do they want to.”22 Her final work, published under the pseudonym Galerana Barcitotti in 1651, a year before her death, was also directed specifically at refuting a particular tract: Che le donne siano della spezie degli uomini (Women Do Belong to the Species Mankind), subtitled Difesa delle donne (A Defense of Women). It was an answer to an Italian translation attributed to “Orazio Plata Romano,” Che le donne non siano della spezie degli uomini. Discorso piacevole (Women Do Not Belong to the Species Mankind. An Amusing Speech), published in 1647.23 The Italian was based on an anonymous Latin tract circulating since 1595, Disputatio nova contra mulieres. Qua probatur eas homines non esse (An Amazing Debate against Women, by Which It Is Proved That They Are Not Men). The tract quoted Scripture to “prove” that women do not have a rational soul, cannot make ethical choices, and cannot therefore be saved. Even as a joke against those who would abuse Scripture to prove any doctrine, the author’s thesis once again was at the expense of women’s ignorance: “With your fallacious arguments you have aimed to attack women who cannot answer your wicked lies because they lack an education and with your poisoned minds you strive to kill their innocent

22. For Buoninsegni’s tract and Tarabotti’s answer, see the critical edition with introductory essay by Elissa Weaver (note 1 above); Weaver discusses the furor following the publication of Tarabotti’s work, revealing that Buoninsegni himself remained good-humored with respect to Tarabotti (Weaver, 25–27). For further details on Aprosio’s attempts to prevent publication see Emilia Biga, Una polemica antifemminista del ‘600. La Maschera scoperta di Angelico Aprosio (Città di Ventimiglia: Quaderno dell’Aprosiano 4, Civica Biblioteca Aprosiana, 1989), 49–112; and Quinto Marini, “Angelico Aprosio da Ventimiglia,” in Frati barocchi, 153–79; for Tarabotti, 170– 73 (Modena: Mucchi, 2000). Marini concludes that Aprosio made himself so objectionable to the Incogniti that he had to leave Venice. See also D. De Bellis, “Attacking sumptuary laws in Seicento Venice: Arcangela Tarabotti,” in Women in Italian Renaissance Culture and Society, ed. L. Panizza, 227–42 (note 10). 23. See the critical edition with introductory essay by L. Panizza (note 1). Tarabotti dismantles “Plata” paragraph by paragraph, calling each section of his an “inganno” (“illusion”) and refuting it with her “disinganno” (“disillusion”). For the identity of “Plata”—the finger points to Loredan or a close associate—an analysis of her arguments, and the context and reception of the tract, see my introductory essay to Che le donne, vii—xxx. Tarabotti was right in calling the work heretical; it was placed on the Index in 1651.

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Vo l u m e E d i t o r ’s I n t r o d u c t i o n souls.”24 An incandescent Tarabotti dismantles the sophistries of the original tract like an expert logician or lawyer, and she spots the misreading of passages from Scripture like a trained theologian. In addition, she attacks the author by a series of animal metaphors—he is in turn a goat, a chameleon, an ass, a wolf, a mole, a serpent, a crow, a cuckoo, a spider, a wasp—that invert the misogynistic opposition of (rational) male versus (irrational) female. It is the anonymous (male) author, not his female adversary, who ends up stripped of a human soul. Quotations she had used earlier in Paternal Tyranny from Genesis and the New Testament to assert women’s moral and intellectual equality are now put to a similar purpose with equal effectiveness. With the publication in 1650 of her Lettere familiari e di complimento, Tarabotti’s persona entered a public, secular domain. (I have left them to the last, as they shed light on the analysis of Paternal Tyranny to follow next.)25 Dedicated to Loredan, they bore his coat-of-arms on the title page. Inside was a Dedicatory Letter from Tarabotti acknowledging his patronage. She had achieved her goal as a literary figure who corresponded as a social and intellectual equal with members of the Venetian elite: aristocracy, clergy, and the top men of letters of her age, many of whom were Incogniti; and she makes these impressive relationships known to all her readers. The letters testify to a cultural exchange between peers: Tarabotti sends out her own works and asks for advice and comment, but she also receives works of other writers and is sometimes asked for advice. (In conducting herself thus, she was defying instructions of the Venetian Patriarch himself, who specifically warned nuns against writing and receiving letters of any kind.26 ) To her physician Francesco Pona, author of erotic and anticlerical novels,27 she confesses to feeling mortified when other Incogniti have shown him 24. “Voi, con sofistici argomenti, vi sète messo ad assalir a quel sesso che per mancanza di studi non può risponder alle vostre inventate malvagità, e col veleno de’vostri caratteri procurate d’uccidere l’anime de’semplici” (Che le donne, 6). 25. Until the critical edition promised by Ray and Westwater (note 1), the 1650 edition of the letters, although not entirely reliable, will have to be used. They are not in chronological order, lack a date, and often withhold the names of the addressees. For revealing discrepancies between published and manuscript letters, see F. Medioli, “Alcune lettere autografe di Arcangela Tarabotti: Autocensura e immagine di sé” (note 14). 26. Says Patriarch Giovan Francesco Morosini. “They [nuns] should refrain . . . from writing and receiving letters to avoid sin, for when it is done with a bad intention, it becomes a mortal sin” (“S’astenghino . . . di scriver lettere e dal riceverne, per schivare il peccato, che quando sia a mal fine, si fa mortale”). Quoted by E. Zanette, Arcangela Tarabotti, 366. 27. Pona’s satirical novel, La lucerna, first published in 1625, incurred the condemnation of the Index. Modern edition by Giorgio Fulco (Rome: Salerno, 1973). One episode is about a young nun—one of the many transformations of the male narrator—escaping to meet her lover; see 123–27.

Vo l u m e E d i t o r ’s I n t r o d u c t i o n her writings (Lettere, 76–77) and reports that she has received a motet of the famed musical composer Vittoria that Pona wants for his own daughter in a monastery (Lettere, 241). She corresponds also with Angelico Aprosio, Augustinian bibliophile, who turned into her bitterest enemy at the time of her Antisatira;28 Girolamo Brusoni, a fugitive Carthusian priest who wrote sympathetically about the plight of nuns like Tarabotti in his novels, but then attacked her after her death and sided with Aprosio;29 Giovan Francesco Busenello, the most acclaimed opera librettist of the age, who came to visit her masked;30 and Count Pier Paolo Bissari of Vicenza, writer of short stories, various poetic compositions, and a successful libretto, La Bradamante, based on Ariosto’s warrior heroine, put to music by Francesco Cavalli in 1650 and highly praised by Tarabotti (Lettere, 280).31 The letters reveal to what extent Tarabotti did value her own writings, how driven she was to circulate them and have them published, and how sensitive she was to criticism. When she thought she was near death, she entrusted her writings to her best friend who had left the convent, Betta Polani; they are “the most precious things I have, and that pain me the most to leave behind.”32 Many letters testify to her determination in overcoming the obstacles she encountered in publishing Paternal Tyranny. She is indefatigable. She accuses one (anonymous) author of plagiarizing her Paternal Tyranny for his own story about “nuns forced to take the veil” (Lettere, 291–92). She turns to Vittoria Maria della Rovere, Duchess of Tuscany, to obtain permission to

28. For his extreme misogyny displayed in his quarrels with Tarabotti, see Emilia Biga, Una polemica antifemminista del ‘600 (note 22 above); see also A. Asor-Rosa’s entry in Dizionario Biografico degli Italiani, vol 3, 650–53; and Quinto Marini, “Angelico Aprosio da Ventimiglia” (note 22 above). 29. See entry by G. De Caro in Dizionario Biografico degli Italiani, vol. 14: 712–20; the analysis of his novels in G. Spini, 247–53; and Girolamo Brusoni, ed. G. Benzoni (Rovigo: Minelliana, 2001). Between 1640 and 1642, he wrote four novels, one of which, Le turbolenze delle Vestali (The Turmoils of Vestal Virgins), set in ancient Rome, dealt with the unhappy lives and loves of Vestal virgins, all too similar to contemporary Venetian nuns. When published in 1658 with a changed title, Gli amori tragici, it was put on the Index. For his attack on Tarabotti in Sogni di Parnaso, see this introduction, 26–27. 30. Lettere, 206. Tarabotti also asked Enrico Cornaro to intercede on her behalf with the poet; she wanted him to write a piece for her close friend who died in the convent, Regina Donà (Lettere, 155–56). Busenello wrote libretti for several operas including “L’Incoronazione di Poppea,” 1642) (“The Coronation of Poppea”), which was put to music by Claudio Monteverdi. See entry by M. Capucci, in Dizionario Biografico degli Italiani vol. 15, 512–15. 31. See entry by G. Ballistreri, Dizionario Biografico degli Italiani, vol. 10, 688–89; and E. Zanette (note 1), 327–31. Bissari remained on good terms with Tarabotti, praising her in public in his own Accademia Olimpica in Vicenza. 32. Tarabotti requests Polani burn her manuscripts after her death (Lettere, 47).

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Vo l u m e E d i t o r ’s I n t r o d u c t i o n print from Rome or Florence (Lettere, 136–37). Unsuccessful, she seeks support from French visitors. She writes directly to the great French bibliophile, friend of the Incogniti and librarian of Cardinal Mazarin, Gabriel Naudé, when he comes to Venice (Lettere, 184–86). Perhaps during a visit of Naudé, she is told of greater “freedom of conscience” in France and how Paris, compared with Venice, is a “women’s Paradise.” The latter comment is repeated to Mazarin himself (Lettere, 186–88). She receives some cooperation from the French ambassador in Venice, Nicolas Bretel de Gremonville, and his wife; when he dies, she writes to his wife and daughters, whom she taught in the convent, but also to another Frenchman, Louis de Matharel, to retrieve her book. When she had not heard from Matharel for over a year, she writes frantically to Renata di Claramonte, Marchesa di Galeranda, and begs her to do something (Lettere, 219). On receiving proofs (perhaps partial), she is furious at the number of misprints, and tells the Marchesa that she does not want the printing to go ahead (Lettere, 230). In this letter, Tarabotti shows herself ready to sacrifice the money she made making lace to cover her publication costs. Another letter tells us that she has “rebaptized” her book, by which she must mean giving it the new name of La semplicità ingannata (Innocence Betrayed) and probably adding the introductory addresses “To God” and “To the Reader.” The original title placed blame for women’s condition firmly on patriarchy, on political and cultural structures designed to prevent women from entering public life as equals. The revised title shifts attention to women as innocent victims whose destiny it is to suffer. Difficulties in publishing this book and its companion, Convent Life as Inferno, were compounded because they offended not only ecclesiastical authorities with their “bad publicity” for the religious life, but also the majesty of the state with their condemnation of Venetian policy about dowries and restricting marriages. Tarabotti herself acknowledged as much: “I realize the subject matter is scandalous because it goes against our political as well as against our Catholic way of life” (Lettere, 317). Loredan himself had two sisters in convents; he held high political offices and kept strictly to the aristocratic policy of restricting marriages, though supportive of Tarabotti on many counts. He could allow her fame, but not liberty. In a letter to a young aristocratic relative, Laura Pasqualigo, who had appealed to Loredan against the desires of her family to place her in the convent against her will, Loredan is heartless. Her family’s honor and status must come first: “Marriage is desirable for young people, preserving the decorum of society. But if one looks closely, one will find more thorns than roses, more reason for despair than happiness.” Laura must put out of

Vo l u m e E d i t o r ’s I n t r o d u c t i o n her mind any idea of getting married both to safeguard her family’s reputation and to preserve her own peace of mind: You have been born noble, of a distinguished family, but since you do not have a dowry to match your birth, you must either marry beneath you, or hazard the inconvenience of poverty. You will encounter universal contempt if you stain nobility with inferior alliances . . . . Those marriages are always unhappy where the partners are unequal by birth but equal in poverty.33 It is not unlikely that Loredan was instrumental in suppressing Paternal Tyranny and Convent Life as Inferno and in compensation, perhaps, promoting the Paradiso and her letters. It may also be no coincidence that the changed title, La semplicità ingannata, comes straight out of Eve’s speech to God in Loredan’s L’Adamo. When asked to explain herself for tempting Adam and bringing about the downfall of the human race, Eve responds: “My simplicity . . . was deceived by the cunning of the serpent” (“La mia semplicità . . . è stata ingannata dalla sagacità del serpente,” 52), a sentiment that removes guilt from Eve. For Loredan, that would have been unintentional. Tarabotti, on the other hand, may have felt that for once Loredan was speaking the truth and enjoyed catching him in contradiction. Tarabotti’s death in February 1652 at the age of forty-eight was probably hastened by tuberculosis. She often describes her exhaustion and fevers in letters, and the prescribed cure of the time, the application of leeches. At one point, she says she is so weak and emaciated she cannot even recopy her own writings and would like someone to perform this task for her (Lettere, 287). She was presumably buried in the convent cemetery.

C O N T E N T A N D A N A LY S I S

At a first glance, Tarabotti’s Paternal Tyranny appears a loosely put together invective against the patriarchy of her day, beginning with the family, then moving outwards as in concentric circles to convent life in Venice, and finally to the organization of Venetian political life itself. The sense of looseness is added to by the lack of divisions within the books, frequent jumps from one line of thought to another, and Tarabotti’s own admission of returning to a main point after digressing. On closer inspection, her short address to 33. This letter is partially quoted with discussion in L. Menetto and G. Zennaro, La storia del malcostume a Venezia nei secoli XVI e XVII (Abano Terme: Piovan, 1987), 104–5.

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Vo l u m e E d i t o r ’s I n t r o d u c t i o n the Venetian Republic at the beginning of Paternal Tyranny establishes the unifying fundamental opposition coloring all three books: the one republic in the Italian peninsula boasting political liberty exercises the most execrable tyranny against its own women, depriving them of liberty granted even to foreigners. Tarabotti’s task will therefore be to expose the tyranny that patriarchy struggles to conceal, overturn the arguments that buttress it, and restore and enhance the liberty that has been wrongfully suppressed. Much of the emotional pull of her book lies, I believe, in her ambivalence about herself. She is at once hopeful and despairing: hopeful in that she writes to reach others who will listen to her message; despairing in that her own fate has been sealed. As she concludes in her address to Venice, “Once you have lost liberty, there remains nothing else to lose.” Tarabotti has lost; her readers must take up her cause. The dismantling of the structures supporting tyranny takes place on many overlapping planes: theological, political, social, and psychological. In all three books, Tarabotti is engaged in debates against adversaries she does not immediately identify. Three authors stand out, all published in Venice, whose works surface not just once or twice, but several times: First in time is Giuseppe Passi’s Dei difetti donneschi of 1599, already refuted brilliantly by Lucrezia Marinella’s The Nobility and Excellence of Women (1600, 1602, 1620); second is Gian Francesco Loredan’s parody of Genesis, defending Adam against Eve, L’Adamo (The Life of Adam) of 1640;34 and third is Ferrante Pallavicino’s vitriolic epistolary satire, also misogynistic, Il corriero svaligiato (The PostBoy Robbed of His Bag). On her own side she lines up the Bible, in particular, the book of Genesis and the New Testament; Dante’s Divine Comedy, and an anonymous Italian translation of Agrippa’s The Nobility and Preeminence of the Female Sex,35 the writings of contemporary Venetian women such as Lucrezia

34. L’Adamo di Gio. Francesco Loredano nobile Veneto (Venice: Valvasense, 1640). The edition I follow bears the date 1666. It was translated twice into English. See The Life of Adam (1640) of Giovan Francesco Loredano, facsimile reproduction of 1659(Gainesville, Fla.: Scholars Facsimiles and Reprints, 1967); also printed in 1779. There is a French translation of 1695. 35. Henricus Cornelius Agrippa’s Declamation on the Nobility and Preeminence of the Female Sex, trans. and ed. Albert Rabil, Jr. (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1996), was first published in Latin in 1529. Probably because of Agrippa’s Protestant and occultist leanings, this tract appeared anonymously in Italian about the middle of the century and was soon adapted by other Italian writers. Agrippa’s own arguments encouraged a rehabilitation of Eve and the role of women in the Bible. It is not possible to say which version Tarabotti used. See Rabil’s introduction to this work, 27–29. Earlier, Isotta Nogarola had cautiously attempted to diminish Eve’s “guilt” in a treatise letter of about 1450. See M. King and A. Rabil, Jr., Her Immaculate Hand (Binghamton, N.Y.: Medieval and Renaissance Texts and Studies, 1983), 57–69. On the paradoxical nature of such attempts, see F. Daenens, “Superiore perché inferiore: il paradosso della

Vo l u m e E d i t o r ’s I n t r o d u c t i o n Marinella and the slightly earlier Moderata Fonte, and vernacular poets like Ariosto, Tasso, and Guarini. Most remarkable throughout Paternal Tyranny is Tarabotti’s narrative voice. She is not a nun lamenting her own condition, engaged in special pleading, or acting in her own interests, but more like a modern investigative journalist, committed to making unwanted truths known to a cynical world about an unjustly treated group. When speaking of nuns who freely choose the religious life, she comments, Our age is not worthy of such exemplars; nor can I speak about them. I can only relate what I have heard or read, since even when it comes to the modern condition of religious forced to take vows, I am only able to have an imperfect and shadowy knowledge, as I am a layperson. (book 1, 64–65) In her final peroration against male tyranny, she also distances herself, this time to convey her own inexperience compared with the difficulty of her task: Just outrage and imprecations against your enormities should come from a voice other than mine or be written down in another hand. I am a simple woman . . . with no experience of your diabolical way of life . . . . It is impossible for a person like myself to describe your waywardness and evils when I have always led a life far from such practices. (book 3, 152) There is further ambivalence about her identity in the above quotations; whether placing herself within or without the convent, she is an outsider. It may not be right to call her a nun at all, since she herself makes the distinction between a true nun who takes her vows freely and a monaca forzata, a nun by force and therefore a nun only in appearance. Tarabotti has no word for a layperson held against her will in a convent for life. “Prisoner” comes nearest. Book 1 is strongly theological. Tarabotti lays before the reader proof from the Old Testament, assisted by Dante, that from the beginning of the human race, God never “wished there to be women enclosed in monasteries against their wills” and certainly did not entrust men with the task of determining the fate of their daughters, knowing that “men . . . submit women to their own mainly wicked and depraved wills” (48). Genesis is united with Dante’s proclamation about free will being the greatest gift that superiorità della donna in alcuni trattati italiani del Cinquecento,” in Trasgressione tragica e norma domestica, ed. Vanna Gentili, 11–41 (Rome: Edizioni di Storia e Letteratura, 1983).

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Vo l u m e E d i t o r ’s I n t r o d u c t i o n God gave human beings at creation. Those who would diminish, if not eliminate, women’s free will by postulating an innate moral “infirmity” designed by God are contradicted: “Divine Providence created both Adam and Eve in a state of innocence with choice and free will—and the woman did not lack such a matchless gift” (44). Fathers who force daughters either to take religious vows or marry have no authority to do so; in fact, they disobey God’s will and commit a grave sin. When God spoke to Adam of Eve as an adiutorium simile sibi (“a helper like unto himself”) (Gn 2:18), He was not giving Adam a servant subject to him, but a companion and equal: What arrogant presumption is yours, then, you liars, when you repeat time and again that woman serves man as a help only with respect to reproduction; and that for the rest she is an imperfect animal, meant, fittingly, to live in subjection to him as the unstable, weak, and frail sex. . . . If she is similar to you, O proud one, she is not inferior. If she has been given to you as your help, she ought not to serve you like a slave, as you repeat endlessly when you employ false reasoning on your side contrary to Holy Scripture and to the words of God, Who cannot lie. (50) Tarabotti’s insistence that the command, “Increase and multiply and fill the earth and subdue it” (Gn 1:28) was given to both Adam and Eve, and not just to Adam, follows correctly the Latin Vulgate commands given in the plural: Crescite et multiplicamini et replete terram et subjicite eam.36 Her point is that increasing the human race and ruling and controlling the earth are exercises of authority belonging to both sexes, not just to the male. Her shifting of blame for the Fall from Eve to Adam serves the same purpose. The usual line was that Eve was far more culpable: she listened to the serpent, ate first of the

36. The reader may need to be reminded of the sequence of the Genesis narrative, especially regarding Adam and Eve. In chapter 1, God creates the heavens and the earth and then “man” in His own image, but the Vulgate then specifies “male and female”: masculum et feminam creavit eos (1:27). The command to increase and multiply is in the plural. In chapter 2, God makes man (singular) from the dust or clay, places him in Paradise, and forbids him alone to eat of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil (2:17). God has Adam (by himself) name all the living animals on earth; only then does God make Adam an adiutorium simile sibi (“a helper like himself”), that is, Eve (2:21). The Vulgate does not specify which side of Adam the rib was taken from. In chapter 3, the serpent (not gendered) tempts Eve first, who eats the forbidden fruit and gives it right away to Adam, who also eats (3:6). God reproaches Adam first, who blames Eve, who blames the serpent; and God punishes all three, in reverse order: serpent, Eve, Adam. God expels Adam from Paradise by name, Ejecitque Adam (3:24), although it is clear from the next chapter that they were together.

Vo l u m e E d i t o r ’s I n t r o d u c t i o n forbidden fruit, and gave it to Adam, who also ate. Tarabotti, on the other hand, highlights Adam’s failure to take responsibility for his deed when God called him to account. Like a coward, he “excused himself by accusing his wife” (51). Since he was rational and morally superior to Eve, he “should not have fallen . . . nor should he have given faith to words promising him that he would be like God—words making him similar to haughty Lucifer” (53). Eve’s “sin” was much lighter by comparison; an innocent, trusting wife, she allowed her ungrateful husband to strip her of all authority. Tarabotti composes a set speech for God, who is shocked by Adam’s lies and calls Eve to His side to enlighten her about male cunning. “Truly, the devil stands for the male,” He tells an ingenuous but far from depraved Eve, who from now on will cast on to you the blame for his failings and will have no other purpose than deceiving you, betraying you, and removing all your rights of dominion granted by my omnipotence. (52) While the debate about Eve’s versus Adam’s guilt for the Fall had been simmering away for centuries within the framework of the querelle des femmes, Tarabotti’s radical reassessment of Genesis redresses distortions she had most definitely read in Loredan’s biblical novel, L’Adamo, subtitled “The Life of the First Man” and first published in 1640. Loredan’s fiction is all about Adam, God’s preferred creature, to whom alone is given a share in God’s divinity. All creation, says God to Adam in one of many set speeches, “is at the sole disposal of your dominion;” to Adam alone is also given the task of naming all living creatures, “according to your pleasure, so that they may obey you more willingly, and with greater reason be obliged to obey your orders.” In these commands, Loredan has God use the singular “tu” and carefully avoids God’s commands in Genesis, chapter 1, to both Adam and Eve.37 Eve, on the other hand, appears on the Paradise scene as a reluctant afterthought on God’s part. Rhetorical questions about Eve posed by Loredan invite guesses that bear no relation to Genesis whatsoever. For example, Why did God put Adam to sleep when drawing out his rib to form Eve? God was afraid that Adam might contradict Him as, endowed with the gift of prophecy, Adam could foretell all the damage brought upon the human race by her creation. Why was woman made from man? To warn woman that she must recognize with submission the cause of her existence. Why was the rib taken from 37. All creation is “alla sola dispositione del tuo dominio . . . . Imponi loro [the animals] il nome a tuo piacimento accioché più volentieri t’ubbidiscano e con magggior ragione siano obligati a i tuoi comandi” (L’Adamo, 16).

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Vo l u m e E d i t o r ’s I n t r o d u c t i o n Adam’s left (sinistro) side? To show that woman must be the heart of man, not the head. In addition (and here, Loredan makes a pun on the double meaning of sinistro in Italian), since woman was destined to bring upon man a sinister future, God wanted her to take her origin in his left (sinistro) side.38 Points from Loredan’s L’Adamo spill over into books 2 and 3. Not only does Loredan declare Eve to be naturally weak and cunning, and lying to be “innate in the female sex,” but he even gives the serpent the face of an attractive young girl. Tarabotti is enraged. “There are those who say that the devil’s perverse spirit took the form of a young virgin . . . and only in this way persuaded her . . . to taste the forbidden fruit.” Such writers she dubs “humbug zealots” (book 2, 121). Full blame rests with Adam alone, asserts Tarabotti, adroitly adapting Saint Paul: “Through one man sin entered the world, and through a woman grace” (book 2, note 79). When Loredan argues that Adam would not have sinned without Eve’s bad influence (“I’ve sinned without truly sinning . . . that companion of mine,” Adam says, “has corrupted my obedient actions and contaminated my duty of loyalty”39), Tarabotti consistently maintains the opposite. When God reproaches Eve after the Fall for her alleged “gullibility” (credulità), Loredan has Him exaggerate: “You will always be subject to man, and he will exercise over you a never-ending rule.” Eve will no longer console her husband, but add to his torments.40 As a final exaltation of Adam, Loredan delivers a long eulogy of this first man, first father, and first saint. Eve is consigned to oblivion: The Bible does not mention how long Eve lived, perhaps because we ought not to know about the death of one who deserved to die before she was born, since from her originated all the miseries of the human race.41 38. See L’Adamo, 20–21, and 22. 39. “Io ho peccato senza peccare . . . quella compagna ha corotti gli atti della mia ubbidienza, e contaminato i doveri della mia fedeltà” (L’Adamo, 50). 40. “Sarai sempre soggetta all’huomo, ed egli esercitarà sovra di te un perpetuo comando” (L’Adamo, 55). Tarabotti is most insistent on the equal authority of husband and wife in marriage, but in Counter-Reformation terms, also most deviant. The catechism based on the decrees of the Council of Trent and prepared for the instruction of the laity by their parish priests makes it clear that in marriage and the family there is only one head, the husband. The wife is subject to him. After God, she should love him and seek to please and respect him above all others, even happily carry out his orders as long as they are not contrary to the laws of God. See the chapter “Del Sacramento del Matrimonio,” in Catechismo, cioè Istruttione secondo il Decreto del Concilio di Trento, a’ Parochi, 315–32. (Venice: Aldo Manuzio, 1582). 41. “De gl’anni d’Eva non fa mentione la Scrittura, forse perché non si deve sapere la morte di colei che meritava di morire prima che nascere, essendo da lei originate tutte l’ infelicità al genere umano” (L’Adamo, 90).

Vo l u m e E d i t o r ’s I n t r o d u c t i o n Tarabotti explicitly quotes this damning judgment in book 3, naming Loredan for the first time. She rebuts: “[Loredan] could have said something far more reasonable, truthful, balanced, and less far-fetched, as he ought, namely, that there is no mention of Eve ever having died because, on the contrary, she deserved to be considered immortal” (book 3, 134). She also dismisses the charge of gullibility (book 3, 136–38). In book 2, Tarabotti turns her attention to the social and political aspects of patriarchy that harm women, intensifying her attack on themes merely touched on in book 1 and addressing fathers directly as if she were a prosecuting lawyer in court. Men’s betrayal of their daughters’ trust, the evils of the contemporary marriage market and women’s enforced ignorance, and the injustices of the double sexual standard in adultery laws all come under her scrutiny. For abusive fathers, Tarabotti invokes a vindictive God who will not fail to smite sinners. Comparing Jephte (Jgs 11:30–40), who sacrificed his only daughter because of a rash vow, to modern fathers, she finds Venetian counterparts far more culpable: “They are not offering sacrifices in thanks for military victories, but yielding to diabolical suggestions about ridding themselves of impediments to the line of inheritance” (90). Neither are religious superiors, eager to boost the number of nuns in their convents, spared: “Political expediency . . . the father of all error, contaminates even these supreme ministers, who end up giving their permission for women to become nuns” (92) and thereby collude in the deception. What threat would all those women, sentenced to convents, be to the state if they were allowed to remain single or marry, even if their number made up an army? Tarabotti confronts the Venetian patriarchy, knowing that ignoble financial considerations influence their conduct: If you believe that numerous daughters are prejudicial to reasons of state—since, if they all married, the nobility would increase and families be impoverished by paying out so many dowries—then, without greed for gain, accept the companions God has destined for you. In any case, it would be more decent for you to pay out money when taking a wife, just as you do in purchasing slaves, than for them to consume fortunes in purchasing a master. (95) Evidently, Tarabotti had no sympathy for Loredan’s defense of the marriage market set out in his letter to Laura Pasqualigo (above, note 33). Women’s ignorance also serves expediency. Men’s false superiority over women can be maintained only by keeping them so. “I would make a great mistake were I to attribute learning to women when they are so wondrously stripped of it,” Tarabotti opines sarcastically, “not through lack of native intelligence, but lack of schooling. When you bestow on them the quality

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Vo l u m e E d i t o r ’s I n t r o d u c t i o n of ‘imperfect,’ you do so not in virtue of their merit, but of your ambition” (97). Just as becoming learned is impossible for men without social structures like schools, universities, and a teaching profession, so also for women. But Tarabotti reveals a further excuse for keeping women ignorant: “Women cannot be permitted to study grammar, rhetoric, logic, philosophy, theology, and the other sciences because by attending school they would easily lose their chastity” (109). Tarabotti is full of anger at the underlying duplicity driving these prohibitions: Do not scorn the quality of women’s intelligence, you malignant and evil-tongued men! Shut up in their rooms, denied access to books and teachers of any learning whatsoever, or any other grounding in letters, they cannot help being inept in making speeches and foolish in giving advice. Yours is the blame, for in your envy you deprive them of the means to acquire knowledge . . . . So shameless are you that while reproaching women for stupidity you strive with all your power to bring them up and educate them as if they were witless and insensitive . . . . As soon as you men catch sight of a woman with pen in hand, you start ranting and raving. . . . (99) Tarabotti is particularly scathing about Venetian laws denying women the chance to hold any kind of public office whatsoever. As for the freedom men have to go to famous universities like Padua, Bologna, Rome, Paris, and Salamanca, “We have never even been granted permission to attend lectures in Venice’s state schools” (book 2, note 102). Tarabotti is especially outspoken in book 2 about the double sexual standard concerning adultery. According to widespread custom and, more specifically, her target Giuseppe Passi’s Dei donneschi difetti, an adulterous married woman was more “justly” condemned and punished than the lover, married or not. Passi drew on lawyers and philosophers of all ages to support his view that a wife’s “adultery must be punished by the sword, by fire, by stones, whips, blows, banishment, and the most harsh and cruel punishment of every kind.”42 Tarabotti answers the case for a wife’s greater guilt advanced by Passi: a husband’s honor is lost through his wife’s sin (consequently, he has a right to kill her to restore it); a husband’s line and property may be threatened by illegitimate sons he then (unknowingly) rears; and, finally, a 42. Passi, Dei donneschi difetti, (Venice: I.A. Somasco, 1599), 75–76. The whole chapter on adultery, 74–100, quotes with approval tales of husbands punishing wives by cutting off their noses, drowning them, and the like. The only remedy is to keep wives locked up with no liberty whatsoever. For Passi’s views on men’s greater dishonor, see 89–91; on husbands never sure of children, 88–89; on wives killing husbands, 94–96. For Passi, see also my introductory essay to Lucrezia Marinella, The Nobility and Excellence of Women, 15–19.

Vo l u m e E d i t o r ’s I n t r o d u c t i o n husband is more likely to be murdered than a wife, either by her or her lover. Tarabotti refutes the first count confidently with Saint Paul’s assertion of the equal sexual rights of husband and wife (1 Cor 7:4) over one another and the consequence that both lose or maintain honor by their own conduct. Men have contradicted divine commands to suit their own interests: “God did not grant you full liberty to sin . . . . He allows you to put aside your wife if you catch her in flagrante, but you have made it legal to kill her on the slightest suspicion” (111). Tarabotti also reminds husbands that it takes two to commit adultery and produce an illegitimate child; it is common knowledge, she adds, that more men importune women to commit adultery than the other way around. And, finally, she recalls examples of men who have killed to commit adultery, the most important being King David who sent away Uriah, the husband of Bathsheba, to die in battle so he could lie with her. Only in book 3, however, will Tarabotti openly identify Passi and his book: “What indecent accusations, what obscene, sarcastic, disgusting applications of his material to the dignity of women’s worth one reads there!” (146). Book 3 takes up strands from book 1 about woman’s liberty and the Bible by presenting a feminist reading of the New Testament, another striking feature of Tarabotti’s theology, drawing, perhaps, initial inspiration from Agrippa, but going far beyond to establish gender equality as a fundamental Christian doctrine.43 Paternal tyrants are reminded that Christ Himself, the model of all Christians, respected women’s free will. Tarabotti dwells on the story of the Samaritan woman and on the women who consoled Christ during His Passion and death and to whom He appeared first after His resurrection. They provide her with evidence that women are not just more devout than men, but show greater loyalty and fortitude, virtues contrary to their innate “infirmity.” As if conscious of treading on forbidden ground by discussing Scripture and needing to establish her orthodoxy, she opens book 3 with a fulsome praise of the Virgin Mary, the sum of all virtues and role model for all women, virgins and mothers. When misogynists insult women, Tarabotti asks pointedly, do they realize they insult their own mothers who bore them and the mother of God as well? There are passages in book 3 that Tarabotti may have added at the time she changed the title and decided upon the introductory addresses. They point to the layered texture of her book, a continual “work in progress.” First of all, Tarabotti identifies all three of her adversaries, including her patron, 43. Declamation, 77 and 64–65, respectively. See T. Dean and K. J. P. Lowe, eds., Marriage in Italy, 1300–1650 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998) for essays that shed light on Tarabotti’s criticisms of marriage, the dowry, the double standard, adultery, and parental rights.

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Vo l u m e E d i t o r ’s I n t r o d u c t i o n Loredan, who was still alive. She names Giuseppe Passi (already referred to) and she gives precise, unmistakable indications of one of Ferrante Pallavicino’s notoriously misogynistic fictional letters in his Corriero svaligiato, first printed in 1641 (see appendix 2), taking it apart section by section. It may be she felt freer to attack famous people by name—a dangerous practice as it could bring retaliation—once she thought her book was going to be published outside Italy. Furthermore, when discussing Pallavicino’s Corriero, she exclaims, “Just as well he was put to death before the book’s publication!” (147). Since Pallavicino was put to death in 1644, this comment would make sense only if she added it after she had finished the main part of Paternal Tyranny before 1643. Even if she is confusing Corriero svaligiato with Il Divortio Celeste, another blasphemous book full of imaginary letters published in 1643, but not in circulation until after his death, the comment would have to have been added after 1644. In book 3, there is also the refutation of a charge that Christ appeared after His resurrection first of all to women, gossips by nature, to ensure that the news would spread quickly (book 3, note 144). This accusation, found in Orazio Plata’s work of 1647 about women not being human beings, was refuted by Tarabotti in her last work of 1651 and must therefore have been added at some time after 1647. In book 3, finally, Tarabotti suggests she has been accused of “libertine” tendencies and begs the reader not to believe that what she has said springs from an unwise desire for liberty of conscience and an inclination to live subject to no authority: I disagree with those who say that it is all right for each and every person to damn himself as he wishes . . . . For the same reason, I shall exalt in eternity those convents inhabited by young girls called to God . . . who . . . have willingly withdrawn from the world’s stormy seas. (128) A similar plea had been entered in her letter “To the Reader,” added when Tarabotti changed the title to Innocence Betrayed. There, she reports hostile responses to her work, in particular, first, that I nurture within myself a particular contempt for men; and second, that I loathe the religious life and consequently seek that original liberty experienced in the Golden Age, agreeing with the author who wrote, “Whatever brings pleasure, that you may do.” (40 and note 8)

Vo l u m e E d i t o r ’s I n t r o d u c t i o n Both reports from accusers must have been added after she had received responses to at least whatever part of Paternal Tyranny had been circulating in manuscript. They are remarkably similar: she refuses to be subject to men; she is bringing bad publicity to the religious life, and she expresses a deviant notion of liberty, more typical of Protestants than Catholics, and smacking of anarchy and abandonment to the senses. The Holy Office’s condemnation, censura, of 1660, discussed below, would confirm Tarabotti’s fears, but ignore her defense. Her search for liberty, just as much as her exposure of paternal tyranny, would be silenced with a heavy hand.

RECEPTION E A R LY R E C E P T I O N . In her lifetime and also in the decades following her death, Tarabotti and her works were the objects of controversy. Her pleas for radically changing women’s status were not just misunderstood, but were seen as socially and politically threatening. Attacks of Angelico Aprosio about the Paradiso, but especially about her Antisatira, have been mentioned.44 Some criticisms seem aimed at the tone of Tarabotti’s writings. She appears twice in a collection of fictional dispatches from Apollo about the state of letters in the world, La Segretaria di Apollo, by the Incognito, Antonio Santacroce, published anonymously around the time of Tarabotti’s death. In one dispatch “To the Female Sex,” a group of educated and virtuous women including Vittoria Colonna and Michela [sic] Tarabotti, deliver a request to Apollo, the all-wise ruler and judge of Parnassus, for women to be freed from subjection to men. There may be a few women “in intellect and character not inferior to men,” Apollo allows; nevertheless, he does not want to change the status quo. That would disturb the natural order—for judged as a whole, “women are without brains” and known to be proud, irascible, moody, and spiteful. But change would also disturb the social order requiring male domination. Indeed, “Woe to men if women did possess brains!”45 In a specific dispatch to Tarabotti, Apollo refuses to admit the one book meant to assure Tarabotti’s respectability, the Convent as Paradise (which he calls the Paradiso claustrale) precisely because it is not scandalous enough!

44. See notes 22 and 28 above. 45. “Sono tutte [le donne] senza cervello. . . . Guai a gli huomini se le donne avessero cervello!” La Secretaria di Apollo (Amsterdam: Blum & Conbalense, 1653), 193–94. See G. Spini, Ricerca dei libertini (note 15), 254–57, for this work, seen mainly as a tribute to Ferrante Pallavicino and his antityrannical views.

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Vo l u m e E d i t o r ’s I n t r o d u c t i o n We have not wished to accept your book called Paradise of the Cloisters in our kingdom, so as not to introduce matters arousing ridicule—which would cause your good reputation to be damaged . . . . Indeed, we cannot understand how these two words, “Paradise” and “cloisters” go together, as we know very well that the cloister is the dwelling place of envy, discord, and persecution and other conditions more suitable to Hell. You would have done better to call your book, The Cloisters as Inferno.46 Had he heard of Tarabotti’s L’Inferno monacale, or Paternal Tyranny? Girolamo Brusoni, who had corresponded with Tarabotti, is sympathetic to young girls who rebel against convent discipline in his novels, but in Sogni di Parnaso, a series of four fictional dialogues, he turns on Tarabotti for her contentiousness. The invective is long, personal, and made more venomous by being delivered by the only woman speaker.47 “The world is less blind than this philosophess of Erebus is crippled in body and soul . . . . As for her tongue, she can’t forgive God Himself; she speaks ill of her father, and instead of expressions of praise and thanks to those who look after her and do her good, she’s given to curses and calumny.”48 Another interlocutor derides her appearance: “She’s an old woman by now, and uglier than sin,” but reveals an influential Tarabotti who runs in effect a marriage counseling service from the convent parlor: What that poor little woman can’t do for herself, she gets her friends and followers to do for her. She never fails to have a band of them, as long as she’s exercising her role of counselor and instructor of mis-

46. “Non abbiamo voluto accettare il libro vostro, intitolato Paradiso Claustrale; affine di non introdurre nel nostro Regno materia di riso, con detrimento . . . della vostra buona fama. . . . E per verità noi non sappiamo come possano accordarsi queste due parole, Paradiso Claustrale; sapendo molto bene che ne’ Chiostri sono solite di abitare la invidia, la discordia, la persecuzione, ed altre cose più proprie dell’Inferno: onde meglio avereste voi fatto a intitolare il vostro libro, Inferno Claustrale” (La Segreteria di Apollo, Dispatch to Arcangela Tarabotti, 199). 47. This rare dialogue appeared without date or name of publisher. I am grateful to the librarian of the Accademia dei Concordi at Rovigo and to Marta Fattori for obtaining a photocopy for me. Spini thinks it was published about 1650 (Ricerca dei libertini, 248–51). For Brusoni (1614(?)— 1686), see note 29 above. 48. “Il mondo non è così cieca come ella è zoppa di corpo e d’ingegno, questa filosofessa dell’Erebo . . . . Da una lingua, che non la perdona allo stesso Dio, e che non sa che dir male di chi l’ha generata; e di chi la sostenta e benefica escono a lode e a gloria le maldicenze e le calunnie” (Sogni di Parnaso, 47–48). Erebus is a mythological name of a region of the underworld full of darkness.

Vo l u m e E d i t o r ’s I n t r o d u c t i o n matched wives and witless women. She advises and teaches them— just look at her writings!—to abandon themselves to luxury, debauchery, sacrilege, and irreligion under the title of convenience, justice, holiness, and religion.49 The above judgments and the ones arising from the continued discussions about her Antisatira came from a circle, mainly of Venetian acquaintances, who at least knew her personally. The condemnation of the Holy Office in 1660, drawn up by the consultor (or referee) Brother Francesco Antonio Ricci, came from another world entirely that knew next to nothing about Tarabotti, her writings (except for Paternal Tyranny), or the Venetian social and cultural context. By failing to acknowledge her adversaries, Giuseppe Passi, Loredan, and Ferrante Pallavicino, he implies that there was nothing wrong with their arguments, only with Tarabotti’s refutations.50 Canon law, decrees of church councils, including the Council of Trent, and papal bulls are repeatedly cited. The censura shows that Tarabotti had reason to be alarmed by her critics. The Holy Office is mainly concerned with preserving the sanctity and good name of the religious life. Paternal Tyranny is therefore condemned for the effect it would have either in deterring young girls from entering at all or discouraging those who entered from taking permanent vows. Tarabotti’s mere announcement of L’Inferno monacale at the very end of Paternal Tyranny is enough for it to be damned in advance: “In order to curtail its insolence, I declare that work, in which the Author attempts to show that all the kinds of punishment which are in Hell can be plainly found in holy convents, to be prohibited in its entirety.”51 49. “essendo ormai vecchia e più brutta del peccato” (Sogni di Parnaso, 50); “Ma quello che non può quella femminetta per se medesima, il fa per mezzo delle sue amiche e partigiane; né possono mancarlene molte mentre fa professione di consigliera e di maestra delle mal maritate e delle mal provedute; e le consiglia ed ammaestra (parlano i suoi scritti) a darsi con merito di convenienza, di giustizia, di santità, e di religione al lusso, alle dissolutezze, ai sacrilegi, e all’empietà” (Sogni di Parnaso, 50–51). 50. Thanks to the opening of the archives of the Holy Office, the censura of Tarabotti’s book is now available. See Archivio della Congregazione per la Dottrina della Fede, Indice, Protocolli, IIa, 33, KK (1650–59), fols. 364r–367v. For the full text of the censura in Latin and a commentary in Italian, see Natalia Costa-Zalessow, “La condanna all’Indice della Semplicità ingannata di Arcangela Tarabotti alla luce di manoscritti inediti,” in Nouvelles de la République des Lettres (2001.1), 97–113, and for some of the same material in English, see also Costa-Zalessow, “Tarabotti’s La semplicità ingannata and Its Twentieth-Century Interpreters, with Unpublished Documents Regarding its Condemnation to the Index,” Italica 78, no. 3 (2001): 314–25. 51. “In quo ostendere nititur in sacris monasteriis omnia poenarum genera quae in Inferno sunt manifeste reperiri, ad eius audaciam retundendam opus istud omnino prohibendum censeo” (fol. 367v).

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Vo l u m e E d i t o r ’s I n t r o d u c t i o n Tarabotti’s stirring case for Eve’s greater innocence and Adam’s greater guilt is swept away brusquely (and by implication all similar Renaissance defenses from Isotta Nogarola and Agrippa down to Tarabotti’s own time): “It is contrary to the plain evidence of Scripture, which teaches that Eve was deceived by the serpent, ate [of the fruit], transgressed God’s command, and was justly punished by Him.”52 And Tarabotti’s equally stirring pleas for liberty, the moral and intellectual equality of the sexes, and the right of women to choose freely their state in life are reduced, as Tarabotti also feared, to license. Tarabotti had denied she was invoking the liberty of the Golden Age or “freedom of conscience” in the sense of doing whatever one wanted. Wrenching her words from their context, Ricci condemns her all the same and tars with the same reductionist brush other passages about liberty: The author shamelessly upholds that liberty which should rather be called license, and which is defined by Cicero, Paradoxa, 1, as “the power of living as you wish,” which our Holy Fathers have condemned as contrary to the spirit. It is also an obvious error to say that a nun loses her freedom of choice in the cloister, since freedom of choice cannot be separated from the will itself, as all theologians commonly teach. And what she states about woman being given exclusively to her husband as a helper, smacks of Lutheranism.53 Tarabotti’s quotes from Scripture are deemed faulty, even misleading, and her understanding of doctrine confused. Brother Ricci concludes that Paternal Tyranny contains “statements that are plainly erroneous in matters of 52. “Quod apertis Scripturae testimoniis adversatur, quae docet Evam a serpente deceptam comedisse, Dei mandatum transgressam, ab eoque iuste punitam fuisse” (fol. 367r). Similarly, Tarabotti’s praise of women (“woman is the sum of all perfection,” etc.) is put down with no understanding of rhetorical conventions governing the genre: “Dum mulieris laudes nimium extollere cupit, multipliciter errat” (“When she wants to extol the praises of women excessively, she errs in several ways”) (fol. 367r). The same kind of accusation could be leveled at rhetorical debates written by men. 53. “Auctor impudenter libertatem illam commendat, quae licentia potius dicenda est, et a Cicer[one], 1, Parad[oxa Stoicorum] definita potestas vivendi ut velis, quam perpetuo SS. Patres tanquam spiritui contrarium damnarunt. Dicere autem quod monialis per clausuram libertatis arbitrium amittit, manifestus error est, cum liberum arbitrium sit a voluntate ipsa inseparabile, ut Theologi omnes communiter docent. Et quod asserit foeminam ad mariti dumtaxat adiutorium datam Lutheranismum sapit” (fol. 366v). Ricci is looking for bones to pick. Cicero’s definition, from one of the most popular works of practical ethics for the Renaissance, is taken out of context: the liberty Cicero describes belongs only to the wise and virtuous man who follows duty unswervingly; it is certainly not license (see Paradoxes 5.33–35). Tarabotti, as seen, always makes a distinction between women who choose to take vows and women who are forced to; only the latter have their liberty taken away. Likewise, Tarabotti never says that women are made only for marriage and not the cloister or the single life.

Vo l u m e E d i t o r ’s I n t r o d u c t i o n faith, outrageous, misleading, and offensive to the ears of the pious, and scandalous.”54 In the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, Tarabotti sometimes appears in biographical collections, with distortions about her name and writings. Ginevra Canonici Fachini’s is typical: Tarabotti is “Trabotti,” with no dates of birth or death supplied. She wrote four works: Antisatira; La semplicità ingannata, described as a romanzo or novel; Lettere famigliari; and Le lagrime.55 M O D E R N R E C E P T I O N . In the twentieth century, on the other hand, Tarabotti’s reception has grown by leaps and bounds. Her overturning of the assumptions of patriarchy, her call for greater personal freedoms for women, and her emotional intensity and anger are seen as constituting a unique voice in early modern Europe. Where Brusoni judged her a spirit of darkness, we now acclaim her as a bearer of light. As seen above (note 1), nearly all her works have now been published or will soon be published in modern editions and translations, the exception being the one work meant to make her respectable in her lifetime, the Paradiso monacale. Tarabotti has been studied from different perspectives, some overlapping: Venetian history, social and cultural history, and history of spirituality and the religious life and, since the 1980s, as a main figure of women’s history and the history of women’s writing. Further exploration is needed—I speak of Paternal Tyranny—on Tarabotti’s theology and interpretation of the Bible, on her notions of liberty and of inner consent as the only criterion of a binding law, on her style (her use of vivid metaphors and her translation-defying syntax, for example), and on her methods of reading and writing and using her sources.

NOTE ON THE TEXT

This translation follows the 1654 Elzevier edition: La Semplicità ingannata di Galerana Baratotti. In Leida. Appresso Gio. Sambix. It numbers 304 pages, beginning with book 1. “Sambix” was one of the associated printers used by Elzevier for clandestine publications. I have examined copies in the Leiden University Library, the Biblioteca Civica, Padua (which kindly provided me with a photocopy); the British Library, London; the Vatican Library, Rome; and

54. “Propositiones manifeste erroneas in fide, temerarias, male sonantes, piarumque aurium offensivas, et scandalosas” (fol. 367v). 55. Prospetto biografico delle donne italiane rinomate in letteratura dal secolo decimoquarto fino a’ giorni nostri (Venice: Alviso, 1824), 162. For other mentions, see Costa-Zalessow, “Tarabotti’s La semplicita` ingannata” (note 50 above).

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Vo l u m e E d i t o r ’s I n t r o d u c t i o n the Exeter Cathedral Library (the existence of this last copy was brought to my attention by Roberto Bruni).56 The title page bears the emblem of a sphere with a zodiac band, and on the page facing the start of book 1 is printed the couplet: “La divozion forzata / Al signore non è grata,” preserved and translated below (42). Nothing is as yet certain about the final stages of the journey of Tarabotti’s manuscript from France to the Elzevier press in the Protestant Netherlands. This edition is not the same as the one used by E. Zanette, in the Marciana Library, Venice, which he assumed was the only one.57 It has stars instead of a sphere, numbers 191 pages, and is bereft of the couplet. It may be a pirate edition. I first reported the difference I found between the two in my edition of Che le donne (x, note 8).58 There is, finally, a manuscript of La semplicità, also in the Biblioteca Civica, Padua. It may be a copy of one of the printed editions.59 Manuscript copies were sometimes made of clandestine printed works, especially if they were difficult to obtain. But until a detailed comparison of all three is done as part of the preparation for a critical edition, it is not yet possible to determine the precise relation of the manuscript to the two printed editions and of the printed editions to one another. I have used Tarabotti’s original title Tirannia Paterna and restored the “Address to the Most Serene Venetian Republic,” first published by Medioli in L’Inferno monacale (see book 1, note 1). I have also translated the introductory material of La semplicità and the entire contents of all three books, with the exception of a short section in book 3 continuing a praise of the Virgin Mary that contains much repetition. I have also added as appendices Tarabotti’s letter “To the Reader” from her Paradiso Monacale, a defense of her character 56. See Alphonse Willems, “L’Officine de Leyde. Jean et Daniel Elzevier,” in Les Elzevier. Histoire et Annales Typographiques, 183, n. 740 (Brussels: G. A. Van Trigt, 1880), for a detailed description of La Semplicità. Willems pronounces it a true Elzevier, listed in catalogues of the press going back to 1656 and 1675, and calls it “a satire against parents who force their daughters to enter the religious life, and at the same time a defense of the female sex.” I am grateful to Dr. R. Breugelmans of the Leiden University Library for his help in finding this information and pointing out that Sambix was a genuine name, used as a “cover” for Elzevier. 57. E. Zanette, Suor Arcangela (432–40), also speculates that the work was printed in Venice with Loredan’s assistance in 1651, just before Tarabotti died. He misreads the date on the title page. 58. The Elzevier edition had been described long before Zanette by Count Pietro Leopoldo Ferri, in Biblioteca Femminile Italiana raccolta, posseduta e descritta (Padua: Crescini, 1842), 560. It was in his own library and is now part of the Biblioteca Civica in Padua. 59. Zanette thinks it may have been used by the printer (Suor Arcangela, 435); militating against that view is the copying of details from the printed title page: “La semplicità ingannata di Galerana Baratto In Leda appresso Gio. Sambix.” There is no date. For a description, see G. Abate and G. Luisetti, Codici e Manoscritti della Biblioteca Antoniana di Padova (Vicenza: Neri Pozza, 1975), 614. MS 614, Scaff. XXII. The editors hold that “it is obviously a copy of the published edition.”

Vo l u m e E d i t o r ’s I n t r o d u c t i o n and unpolished style useful for Paternal Tyranny; and Ferrante Pallavicino’s Letter 5 from Il Corriero svaligiato, an insulting invective against women that Tarabotti deconstructs in book 3. Finally, all headings within the three books have been inserted by me as an aid to the reader. Translations of biblical quotations and corresponding English names follow the Roman Catholic Douay version, translated from the Vulgate and published early in the seventeenth century. Just as Tarabotti writes in Italian but always quotes the Bible in Latin, I tried in the translation to maintain a distance by using a modern English for Tarabotti and a more archaic English for the Bible. I have standardized Tarabotti’s indiscriminate use of “convento” and “monastero” to refer to religious houses for women, acceptable in Italian, to “convent.” In the notes, I have attempted, where possible, to give sources that would have been accessible to Tarabotti: Italian vernacular translations of classical authors (her Latin, as she confesses herself, was limited); and sixteenth- and seventeenth-century printed editions of Italian works to which she refers. Almost always, Tarabotti writes as if speaking directly to someone, from God and the Virgin Mary to the tyrannical fathers in general or an individual father. She frequently uses parenthetical expressions and colloquial idioms and metaphors. She creates neologisms and maintains a sarcastic and parodic tone of voice except when addressing sacred figures. I have tried to render these swings of tone and subject matter and resorted to contractions and dashes, question marks and exclamation points, and quotations within longer set speeches—practices that might not seem appropriate to a flat, impersonal essay style, but which help to convey the emotional intensity of her denunciations.

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VOLUME EDITOR’S BIBLIOGRAPHY

P R I M A RY S O U R C E S

Agrippa, Henricus Cornelius. Declamation on the Nobility and Preeminence of the Female Sex. Translated and edited by Albert Rabil Jr. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1996. Boccaccio, Giovanni. Libro delle donne illustri. Translated from Latin and with additions by Giuseppe Betussi, and more additions by M. Francesco Serdonati. Florence: F. Giunti, 1596. . Concerning Famous Women. Latin with facing English translation by Virginia Brown. Cambridge, Mass.: I Tatti Renaissance Library, Harvard University Press, 2001. Brusoni, Girolamo. Sogni di Parnaso. N.p.: n.p., ca. 1650–51. Canonici Fachini, Ginevra. Prospetto biografico delle donne italiane rinomate in letteratura dal secolo decimoquarto fino a’ giorni nostri. Venice: Alviso, 1824. Council of Trent. Catechismo, cioè Istruttione secondo il Decreto del Concilio di Trento a’ Parochi. Venice: Aldo Manuzio, 1582. Dolce, Lodovico. De gli ammaestramenti pregiatissimi, che appartengono alla educatione et honorevole, e virtuosa vita virginale, maritale, e vedovile libri tre. Venice: Barezzo Barezzi, 1622. Fonte, Moderata. Il merito delle donne. Venice: Domenico Imberti, 1600. Translated as The Worth of Women by Virginia Cox. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1997. . Tredici canti del Floridoro. Venice: Rampazetti, 1581. Loredano, Gian Francesco. L’Adamo. Venice: Valvasense, 1640. . The Life of Adam. Facsimile reproduction of 1659. Gainesville, Fla.: Scholars Facsimiles and Reprints, 1967. . Lettere. Venice: Guerigli, 1658. Marinella, Lucrezia. La nobiltà et eccellenza delle donne. Venice: Battista Ciotti, 1601. Translated as The Nobility and Excellence of Women by Anne Dunhill. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1999. . De’ gesti heroici e della vita maravigliosa della Serafica S. Caterina da Siena. Venice: Barezzo Barezzi, 1624. Pallavicino, Ferrante. Il corriero svaligiato. Norimbergh: Hans Jacob Stoer, 1641. Critical edition by Armando Marchi. Parma: University of Parma, 1984.

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Vo l u m e E d i t o r ’s B i b l i o g r a p h y Passi, Giuseppe, I donneschi difetti. Venice: I. A. Somasco, 1599. Pentolini, Don Francesco Clodoveo Maria, Le Donne illustri, Canti dieci. 2 vols. Livorno: Vincenzo Falormi, 1776, 77. Santacroce, Antonio. La Segretaria di Apollo. Amsterdam: Blum & Conbalense, 1653. Settala, Lodovico. De ratione instituenda et gubernanda familia. Milan: 1626. Tarabotti, Arcangela. Il Paradiso monacale, con un soliloquio a Dio. Venice: G. Oddoni, 1643. . F. Buoninsegni and Suor A. Tarabotti. Satira e Antisatira (1644). Edited by Elissa Weaver. Rome: Salerno, 1998. Translated and with an introduction by Elissa Weaver. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Forthcoming. . Lettere familiari e di complimento. Venice: Guerigli, 1650. Critical edition by Meredith Ray and Lynn Westwater, Turin: Rosenberg and Sellier. Forthcoming. . Che le donne siano della spetie degli huomini. Difesa della donne (1651). Edited by Letizia Panizza. London: Institute of Romance Studies, University of London, 1994. Translated by Teresa M. Kenney, “Women Are Not Human”: An Anonymous Treatise and Responses. New York: Crossroad Publishing Co., 1998. . La semplicità ingannata. Leyden: G. Sambix [=Elzevir], 1654. Translated with original title Tirannia paterna (Paternal Tyranny) in this volume. . L’ Inferno monacale di Arcangela Tarabotti. Edited by Francesca Medioli. Turin: Rosenberg and Sellier, 1990. Translated by Francesca Medioli and Letizia Panizza, Convent Life as Hell. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Forthcoming. . Le Lagrime . . . per la morte dell’Illustrissima signora Regina Donati. Printed at end of Lettere familiari. Venice: Guerigli: 1650.

S E C O N D A RY S O U R C E S

Studies Benzoni, Gino, ed. Girolamo Brusoni. Avventure di penna e di vita nil Seicento veneto. Rovigo: Minelliana, 2001. Biga, Emilia. Una polemica antifemminista del Seicento: La maschera scoperta di Angelico Aprosio. Città di Ventimiglia: Quaderno dell’ Aprosiano 4, Civica Biblioteca Aprosiana, 1989. Conti-Odorisio, Ginevra. Donna e società nel Seicento: Lucrezia Marinelli e Arcangela Tarabotti. Rome: Bulzoni, 1979. Costa-Zalessow, Natalia. “Tarabotti’s La semplicità ingannata and Its Twentieth-Century Interpreters, with Unpublished Documents Regarding Its Condemnation to the Index. Italica 78, no. 3 (2001): 314–25. . “La condanna all’Indice della Semplicità ingannata di Arcangela Tarabotti alla luce di manoscritti inediti.” Nouvelles de la République des Lettres 1 (2000): 97–113. Cox, Virginia. “The Single Self: Feminist Thought and the Marriage Market in Early Modern Venice.” Renaissance Quarterly 48 (1995): 513–81. De Bellis, Daniela. “Arcangela Tarabotti nella cultura veneziana del XVII secolo.” Annali del Dipartimento di Filosofia, Università di Firenze 6 (1990): 59–110. Dean, Trevor, and K. J. P. Lowe, eds. Marriage in Italy, 1300–1650. Cambridge: Cambridge University Pres, 1998. King, Margaret. Women of the Renaissance. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1991.

Vo l u m e E d i t o r ’s B i b l i o g r a p h y Kuehn, Thomas. Law, Family and Women: Towards a Legal Anthropology of the Renaissance. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1991. Labalme, Patricia. “Venetian Women on Women: Three Early Modern Feminists.” Archivio Veneto 117 (1981): 81–109. . “Women’s Roles in Early Modern Venice: An Exceptional Case.” In Beyond Their Sex: Learned Women of the European Past. Edited by P. Labalme, 129–52. New York: New York University Press, 1980. Laven, Mary. Virgins of Venice: Enclosed Lives and Broken Vows. Harmondsworth and Middlesex: Viking Penguin, 2002. Levi Pisetsky, Rosita. “Il gusto barocco nel costume italiano del Seicento.” Studi Secenteschi 2 (1961): 89–94. Medioli, Francesca, “Alcune lettere autografe di Arcangela Tarabotti: autocensura e immagine di sé.” Rivista di letteratura e storia religiosa 32 (1996): 135–41, 146–55. . “Monache e monacazioni nel Seicento.” Rivista di Storia e Letteratura Religiosa 33 (1997): 670–93. Menetto, L., and G. Zennaro. Storia del malcostume a Venezia nei secoli XVI e XVII. Abano Terme: Piovan Editore, 1987. Miato, Monica. L’Accademia degli Incogniti di Giovan Francesco Loredan (1630–1661). Florence: Leo S. Olschki, 1998. Panizza, Letizia. “Polemical Prose Writing, 1500–1650.” In A History of Women’s Writing in Italy. Edited by Letizia Panizza and Sharon Wood, 65–78. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000. . Women in Italian Renaissance Culture and Society. Oxford: European Humanities Research Centre, 2000. Schutte, Anne Jacobson, Thomas Kuehn, and Silvana Seidel Menchi, eds. Time, Space, and Women’s Lives in Early Modern Europe. Sixteenth-Century Essays and Studies, 57. Kirksville, Mo.: Truman State University Press, 2001. Spini, Giorgio. Ricerca dei libertini: la teoria dell’ impostura delle religioni nel Seicento italiano. 2d ed., revised and amplified. Florence: La Nuova Italia, 1983. Tramontin, Silvio. “Ordini e congregazioni religiose.” In Il Seicento, 4/I of Storia della cultura veneta. Edited by G. Arnaldi and M. Pastore Stocchi. Vicenza: Neri Pozza, 1983. Weaver, Elissa, ed. Arcangela Tarabotti. Sixteenth-Century Essays and Studies. Kirksville, Mo.: Truman State University Press. Forthcoming. Zanette, Emilio. Suor Arcangela Tarabotti monaca del Seicento veneziano. Venice-Rome: Istituto per la Collaborazione Culturale, 1960. Zarri, Gabriella, ed. Donna disciplina creanza cristiana. Rome: Edizioni di Storia e Letteratura, 1996. . Il monachesimo femminile in Italia dall’ alto medioevo al secolo XVII. Verona: Il Segno dei Gabrielli, 1997.

Entries on Tarabotti in Encyclopedias and Anthologies Costa-Zalessow, Natalia. Scrittrici italiane dal XIII al XX secolo. Testi e critica, 153–62. Ravenna: Longo, 1982. Gambier, Madile. In Antonia Arslan, Adriana Chemello, and Gilberto Pizzamiglio, Le stanze ritrovate. Antologia di scrittrici venete dal Quattrocento al Novecento, 117–25. Mirano and Venice: Eidos, 1991.

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Vo l u m e E d i t o r ’s B i b l i o g r a p h y Niero, A. In Dictionnaire de spiritualité, ascétique et mystique, 17–25. Paris: Beauchesne, 1990. Panizza, Letizia. In Encyclopaedia of the Renaissance. New York: Scribner’s, 1999, 6: 109– 11. Weaver, Elissa. In Italian Women Writers. A Bio-Biographical Sourcebook. Edited by Rinaldina Russell, 415–22. Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 1994.

PAT E R N A L TYRANNY

T O T H E M O S T S E R E N E V E N E T I A N R E P U B L I C1

A

s far as the remotest corners of the known world, the wings of Fame bear aloft the news of how you, Most Serene Queen, grant unconditional liberty to people dwelling in your beautiful city, whatever their nationality; even those who crucified the Son of your Most Holy Protector, the Virgin Mary, are its beneficiaries.2 From the first foundations of your city on these lagoons, Fame penetrated its depths and drew forth Paternal Tyranny. Hidden under the majesty of your senators’ garments, Fame has at last set its seat in the Ducal Palace and dominates the entire city. It has its vassals following as a rule in the train of the city’s princes, just as a shadow follows the body casting it. Your most noble lords have found this infernal monster of Paternal Tyranny so welcome that they have gladly embraced it and given it their ears. I can only fear that my own Paternal Tyranny, by one of the most unlettered writers who ever put pen to paper, may not prove pleasing in your sight. This Paternal Tyranny is a gift that well suits a Republic that practices the abuse of forcing more young girls to take the veil than anywhere else in the world. My book does not deserve to be dedicated to other rulers, as it might cause them too much outrage. It is fair, however, to dedicate my book to your great senate and its senators, who, by imprisoning their young

1. This sarcastic address to the Venetian Republic personified is the original introduction to Paternal Tyranny preserved in the manuscript of L’Inferno monacale, which was published by Francesca Medioli (Turin: Rosenberg and Sellier, 1990), 27–28. It was replaced, along with the title La semplicità ingannata (Innocence Betrayed)—we do not know exactly when—by the two more conciliatory prefatory pieces that follow, the “Address to God” and the “Letter to the Reader.” 2. A reference in general to Venice’s relatively tolerant policies toward foreign residents, including Jews, who were nevertheless obliged to live in a designated area, the Ghetto.

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P a t e r n a l Ty r a n n y maidens so they chant the Psalter, pray, and do penance in their stead, hope to make you eternal, most beautiful virgin Republic, Queen of the Adriatic.3 If it pleases you to hear it said that in your fortunate origins, the liberty that was believed to have died with Cato of Utica4 is instead reborn, do add to your merits by allowing me the benefits of your favors that you scatter to all and sundry with such liberality. To you, then, I dedicate and consecrate this first offspring of mine, a fancy of a woman’s mind. I shall not beseech you to deflect the tongues of detractors, because without fail I shall encounter spiteful censure from no others than your own nobles, who are part of you, and your own subjects, who are subordinate to you. I declare explicitly that there is no intention in my writings to criticize religion itself or to enter into debates—except against those fathers and relatives who act violently in making their daughters don the religious habit. What else is it but deep ingratitude when that country under the special protection of the Virgin Mary, that country which once triumphed against the uprising of Baiamonte Tiepolo by means of a woman,5 finds itself engaged in degrading, deceiving, and denying liberty to its own young girls and women more than any other kingdom in the world? I shall not wheedle you into finding excuses for me, nor inveigle you into believing my sincerity. In any case, once you have lost liberty, there remains nothing else to lose. A D D R E S S T O G O D6

O most merciful Lord of Lords, You are well aware that my Innocence Betrayed, dictated by a simple heart, will not be well received in this treacherous world. 3. Tarabotti’s sarcasm about fathers’ hypocritical rationalizations related to forcing daughters to pray on their behalf finds variations and elaborations throughout her book. 4. Marcus Porcius Cato, usually referred to as Cato of Utica, was a stern Stoic and Roman statesman of republican loyalties. He took his own life in 46 B.C.E. rather than submit to Julius Caesar, whom he saw as a tyrant. Tarabotti always refers to him in connection with liberty, prompted by Dante. See note 67 below. 5. In 1310, Baiamonte Tiepolo plotted a coup d’état with his rebel forces against Doge Gradenigo, but when a woman killed the standard-bearer, the rebel forces scattered. The incident helped the Venetian army to regain control and defeat the insurgents. See G. Tarcagnota, Delle Historie del mondo, vol. 3 (Venice, 1598), 601. 6. This “Address to God” and the following “To the Reader” are modeled on the similar conciliatory addresses, also to God and the Reader, of her first published work, Il Paradiso monacale of 1643. That the addresses were added at a later date is revealed by Tarabotti’s admission of criticisms (4), which could only be the case if her manuscript had already circulated and provoked replies. The criticisms are discussed in my introduction above.

Dedication That is why I dedicate it to You, whose gaze is not arrested by outer appearances, but pierces right through to the marrow of my good intentions. These lines owe their existence to You, who are Truth itself, not to others, as their final aim is to display the truth. To You, then, I offer them, together with my soul’s most fervent sentiments; and prostrate on the ground I beseech you to forgive my foolhardy flight and blame instead my pen’s zeal. You know well, dear and most beloved Lord, that if I were to dedicate this labor of mine to earthly princes, it would be rejected—perhaps prohibited—because of their “reasons of state”; and, deemed prejudicial to men’s self-seeking political interests, it would be shunned by everybody else in general. Some individuals would think ill of it and show their disdain. Since we are in such a perfidious world that innocent young girls, deceived by their very own family, have no other refuge than forced enclosure in a convent against their wills, this true offspring of mine, just like some abandoned virgin, could not find, nor wish, other support than Your mercy. To this I recommend my work and my very self in the hope that both may remain unharmed by the deep watery pits the mouths of my detractors are already preparing for me. I know too well that only Your omnipotence is a shield strong enough to defend truth and innocence from the poisoned shafts of angered tongues. With the aid of the most Holy Spirit’s rays, pour into men’s hearts a belief in the sincerity of my words; they are not pronounced lightly, are not spoken out of self-interest, and do not lie. Rather, they spring from zeal for Your most holy religion and the spiritual enrichment of Your truly devout nuns. While declaring to the entire world with You as my witness that I have not exaggerated against the deceivers out of contempt, but under the compulsion of conscience (for I have heard about their harshness from others’ accounts), and adoring You in spirit and in truth, it remains for me to implore You to grant me, however unworthy, Your grace and salvation.

TO THE READER

Here is my Innocence Betrayed, which at last sees the light of day to reveal to the world the most savage deceit that malicious cunning has known how to perpetrate in the guise of kindness. I would like to persuade you that my words are founded on the unshakeable truth; from others, I imagine you will probably hear a thousand lies, stories, rumors, and calumnies regarding me. Not that I pay any attention; for just as the first law of the madhouse is believing that one can be all things to all men—which no writer, however famous, has ever succeeded in doing—so there have never lacked types like

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P a t e r n a l Ty r a n n y carping Aristarchus7 and never will till the end of time. Anyone who does not wish to know the truth must of necessity conceal it with lies; and so you will hear discordant opinions united in the sole aim of arousing hatred for my book just because it is so resolutely opposed to wrongdoing. Two of the main impertinent remarks you will hear expressed are, first, that I nurture within myself a particular contempt for men; and, second, that I loathe the religious life and consequently seek that original liberty experienced in the Golden Age, agreeing with the author who wrote Whatever brings pleasure, that you may do.8 Dear Reader, please answer on my behalf. My mind detests the wickedness of such thoughts; and my writings are not the first that may appear to run contrary to their authors’ way of life—many saints, after all, discussed abuses that they themselves never perpetrated. You may also add that my heart has never had any personal reason for growing angry against the male sex, although it cannot bear to recall without irritation those devious words proffered by the first man when he blamed the woman given to him by God as a partner (Gn 3:12). I condemn men’s vices, not man himself; and I condemn enforced religious life, not those women called by the Holy Spirit who voluntarily seclude themselves in convents to serve God. Stricken by a guilty conscience, some men will say that I speak with excessive temerity about all men in general. They are greatly mistaken. If they behave justly, they will be protected from my attacks and those of others. I separate the just from the wicked (who are the subject of my discourse), since not all men are bad and not all women are good. You must decide, dear Reader, if the complaints of the present author ring true or deserve blame. If you do not count yourself among the number I berate, consider my writings as worthy of your attention and not mere pinpricks against the male sex. On the contrary, written without guile, they are intended to abound to God’s honor, even though entirely opposed to man’s self-interested politicking.

7. Aristarchus of Samothrace (ca. 217–145 B.C.E.), librarian at Alexandria, was famed as the most fastidious literary critic and scholar of antiquity. Here he stands as the figure of the pedantic faultfinder. 8. “Quel che a te piace, lice.” Tarabotti slightly adapts the famous verse from the chorus (end of act 1) of Torquato Tasso’s pastoral drama, Aminta, in praise of the Golden Age, when people followed the law of pleasure engraved by Nature in their hearts: “S’ei piace, lice” (If it brings pleasure, it is permissible). After the Fall, however, pleasure was not guided by a clear mind and the laws of church and state were deemed necessary to guide men and women along the path of morality.

Dedication But let everyone think and say what they wish! Little do I care. My one and only purpose is to show that at no time in the world’s history, in no legislation whatsoever promulgated by His Divine Majesty, ancient or modern, does one find a precept that commands, or a document that teaches or exhorts, the sacrifice of virgins to the Lord by enclosing them against their wills.9 He is indeed well pleased by the voluntary vow of virginity more than all other sacrifices offered up to Him, but at the same time He abhors what is done by force and what is holy only in name—the condition of nuns involuntarily shut up (although altogether innocent) as if they were criminals sentenced to life imprisonment. You must know that I blush a little at my own audacity in putting pen to paper, lacking as I do all book learning. On the other hand, as a Catholic I am full of good will and long to make plain for the sake of Christianity and the welfare of souls the immense cruelty and treachery of men. I refer to those who out of pure greed and social ambition dedicate innocent babes in the womb to a living Hell—for that is what the cloister means to nuns forced to live there.10 I wish I possessed the eloquence of a Cicero or a Demosthenes,11 not because I seek applause, but so my words strengthened by rhetorical gifts might penetrate men’s hearts more sharply and draw forth the fruits I long for with all my being. In this corrupt age, alas, few men are not tainted by the great fault I speak of, at least in giving their tacit approval. And so my words will bear little or no fruit and will remain unheeded, condemned as the offspring of a deranged mind stripped of religion and accused of imprudence, since in this false world, as the proverb goes, “Speaking the truth incurs hatred.”12 But I do not value the opinion of men concerned only with their own interests. My one satisfaction lies in an upright conscience; enough for me the divine gaze, never deceived, piercing into the heart’s innermost recesses. So please put aside, kind Reader, any suspicion about me; and if you do not want to be counted among the betrayers, make sure that your daughters or

9. Tarabotti is implying that the Bible provides neither church nor state with grounds for binding young girls by vows to the religious life, a position associated with Protestantism: Luther and Calvin had abolished monasteries and convents because they could not find Biblical evidence for taking vows of poverty, chastity, and obedience. 10. To speak of the cloister as Hell was not just a metaphor. Women forced to take vows for life against their wills were often not able to keep them. By breaking their vows, however, they would be committing mortal sin, which merited eternal punishment in Hell. 11. Marcus Tullius Cicero (106–43 B.C.E.) and Demosthenes (384–322 B.C.E.) were the two most famous orators of classical Latin and Greek antiquity. 12. “Veritas odium parit.” (Terence Andria 1.1.41).

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P a t e r n a l Ty r a n n y any other female relatives of yours who have no wish to become nuns enjoy a true Christian education at home accompanied by modest retirement from the world. Do not enclose their bodies in a repulsive prison in order for their wretched souls to be cast subsequently into the infernal tomb. I kindly beg you to have pity on my failings; and if you become bored by my prattle, be patient. Do not think that I lay claim to any ability, only to the truth, whose tongue I make my own. If I accomplish nothing else of good, at least may I awaken remorse in the consciences of wicked men. I wish you prosperity.







La divotion forzata, Al signore non è grata. [Piety by the sword / pleaseth not the Lord.]13

13. This little couplet is found only in the Elzevier edition and was removed for the pirated Venice edition of the same date, 1654. By implying that true piety requires only a good heart, the couplet would be interpreted by Catholics as downplaying the role of the church and its institutions and would therefore be suspect.

BOOK ONE

THE CRIME OF ENFORCED ENCLOSURE

M

en’s depravity could not have devised a more heinous crime than the wanton defiance of God’s inviolable decrees. Yet day in and day out, men never cease defying them by deeds dictated by self-interest. Among their blameworthy excesses, pride of place must go to enclosing innocent women within convent walls under apparently holy (but really wicked) pretexts. Men dare to endanger free will, bestowed on men and women alike by the Divine Majesty; they force women to dwell in life-long prisons, although guilty of no fault other than being born the weaker sex— and consequently more deserving of compassion, assistance, and support, rather than being locked up forever in dungeons. The pagan philosopher Heraclitus of Ephesus, flourishing at the time of the sixty-ninth Olympiad, lived continually in deep gloom. People observed him most of the time with his eyes brimming with tears and his head bowed down with sad thoughts; he was a bundle of suffering and melancholy bemoaning the degree and extent of human wretchedness.14 Following Heraclitus’s example, every Christian’s eyes should gush with streams or turn into founts of perpetual tears as they meditate on the doubtful salvation of so many women put behind convent walls under the pseudonym of “nuns.” But these men do not weep; on the contrary, the most Catholic and spiritual of them—or rather the most hypocritical—consider it their right to offer up young creatures to God in unlawful sacrifice for the sake of

14. Heraclitus (fl. ca. 500 B.C.E.) was one of the first Greek natural philosophers and was usually portrayed weeping at the human condition. It was customary to contrast him with Democritus (b. 460–457 B.C.E., d. ca. 357 B.C.E.), who was portrayed laughing at the same human condition. An Olympiad was a period of four years reckoned from the celebration of one Olympic game to another, beginning 776 B.C.E. The sixty-ninth Olympiad would mean 276 years from 776 B.C.E., or 500 B.C.E.

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P a t e r n a l Ty r a n n y preserving their own advantages. (Unlike the Blessed Virgin Mary, these young girls have been conceived in original sin; and unlike John the Baptist, they have not been sanctified in their mothers’ wombs. They come into the world tainted by sinful dispositions.15) What a gross abuse, what an unforgivable error, what a wicked decision, and what sheer audacity is this deed when Divine Providence, after all, has granted free will to His creatures, whether male or female, and bestowed on both sexes intellect, memory, and will! By means of these three faculties they are able to shun avoidable evil and pursue the good of their choice by their own voluntary inclination, not servile fear. In the Garden of Eden, Divine Providence created both Adam and Eve in a state of innocence with choice and free will—and the woman did not lack such a matchless gift. Both sexes were endowed with this precious treasure of free will without distinction. Dante himself esteemed it so highly that he says in Paradiso: The greatest gift the magnanimity of God, as He created, gave, the gift most suited to His goodness, gift that He [M]ost prizes, was the freedom of the will.16 We read that the first man and woman enjoyed the Garden’s delights for only seven hours before they contended with one another in disobeying the divine command.17 The Divine Maker could have created them free from guilt and established them from the start in the state of grace, but He did not do so. Rather, He wished to show how much a voluntary act pleased Him; thus His beloved prophet declares, “I will freely sacrifice to thee” (Ps 53:8). But lest it seem that I wish to enter into debates unsuitable to my state in life, I put aside the subject of free will, which has been disputed by the 15. A point similar to that made in note 8 above. If women are already inclined to wrongdoing by original sin, it will be all the more difficult, if not impossible, for them to keep their vows of poverty, chastity, and obedience, especially when forced into the religious life. John the Baptist was sanctified when Mary visited his mother Elizabeth (Lk 1:41). 16. Lo maggior don che Dio per sua larghezza fesse creando, ed alla sua bontate più conformato, e quel ch’ e’ più apprezza, Fu della volontà la libertate. (Par. 5.19–22) Dante quotations from La Divina Commedia, ed. Giuseppe Scartazzini and Giuseppe Vandelli (Milan, 1929). All English translations are from Dante Alighieri, The Divine Comedy, trans. Allen Mandelbaum (London: Everyman’s Library, 1995); here, 398. Tarabotti quotes from Dante more times in this work than in any other, treating him as a philosopher and theologian. 17. Tarabotti follows the view expressed by Adam in Dante’s Paradiso 26.139–42.

Book One most serious and respected authorities, to say only this: When that ineffable Goodness and incalculable Splendor fell in love with the sacred Idea of Godmade-man in His own divine mind, He wished, before actually shaping this person, to prepare a stage, or theater, where all the worldly delights enjoyed daily could be displayed.18 So God began with consummate divine skill to design the world: “In the beginning God created heaven and earth” (Gn 1:1). In six days, He adorned it with all perfection: He separated the waters, created fish, birds, and plants; and He did this for the sole purpose of His creature admiring and enjoying the work of His divine hands and finding it both useful and pleasant. Woman, the compendium of all perfections, was the last to be created. I speak of material creation; otherwise, she existed from all eternity, the firstborn of all creatures generated by the breath of God Himself. This is conveyed by the Holy Spirit through the mouth of Solomon, where the author introduces the Most Holy Virgin to sing of herself, “I came out of the mouth of the Most High, the firstborn before all creatures” (Sir 24:5). Mary, a woman like all others, was not obliged to beg for her existence from a man’s rib! She was born before time itself as well as before other men who, blinded by ambition to rule the world on their own, pass over this infallible truth in silence: that in the divine mind, woman was created ab eterno. “I was set up from eternity, and of old before the earth was made. The depths were not as yet, and I was already conceived” (Prv 8:23–24).19 Men’s perversity will not allow them to confess the following truth with their own words, so we will force them to admit it with the words of Holy Scripture: woman gave perfection to man, and not vice versa as certain rather dim-witted preachers would have it.20 After the Lord had created the universe and all the animals—as I have just said—it is written, “And God saw all the things that He had made, and they were very good” (Gn 1:31). He 18. The interpretation of Christ as the Word, or Logos, existing as the archetypal Idea in the divine mind before becoming man was widely diffused, but Tarabotti could have found an elaboration of this view, together with the metaphor of creation as a spectacular theater, in Torquato Tasso’s Italian cosmological poem, Il mondo creato (1595), 3.1–57, and especially 6.1– 53. Tasso, in turn, took the theater image from the Greek Father of the Church, Basil, in his commentary on Genesis, Homiliae IX in Hexaemeron, Patrologia Graeca 29.73–74. 19. Tarabotti would have come across these passages from Sirach (or Wisdom) and Proverbs applied to the Virgin Mary in the liturgy for feast days dedicated to her. The Feast of the Immaculate Conception, 8 December, for example, uses Proverbs 8:22–35 for the Lesson. See also book 3, note 1. 20. The “dim-witted preachers,” however, are expressing traditional Catholic teaching about women’s subjection to male authority in the family, in marriage, in the state, and in the church. See my introduction, note 40.

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P a t e r n a l Ty r a n n y then set about shaping the proudest animal of all; but when He had finished, He did not deem His work perfect and so did not recognize it as good. For this reason, Genesis does not add the same words as before; but foreseeing that without woman man would be the compendium of all imperfections, God said after some thought, “It is not good for man to be alone, let us make him a help like unto himself” (Gn 2:18). Thus He willed to bring forth a companion for man, who would enrich him with merits and be the universal glory of the human race. If the Maker of the Universe, as He was creating such a beautiful machine, had first of all created man, and then all the other delights—that is, the animals and the plants—and woman last, truth’s enemies would say that she had been created from a coarser matter, so to speak. With great disdain, they would then bring the above Scripture verse to bear against women. But since they cannot prove by this argument that women are less because of when or where they were made, they turn to blaming her time and again as the guilty party for the sin of our first parents. They continue to lie, of course, since the fault was man’s, and he sinned to the detriment of the innocent woman, just as one reads in the book To Peter on Faith: “If the man had not sinned, the woman would give birth without pain and still remain a virgin.”21 I shall discuss below which sex caused the fall from grace and which one has the greater reason for remorse.22

S U P E R I O R I T Y O F W O M A N I N G O D ’ S C R E AT I O N ; H E R F O RT I T U D E A N D M A N ’ S W E A K N E S S

Since the omnipotent Lord had kept the creation of such a beautiful work as woman to the end, He willed to single her out, bear witness to her blessings, and make the whole world rejoice in her splendor. The Supreme Craftsman’s power, wisdom, and love for us shine forth in all His other works; but with her, the finishing touch to such a wonderful fabric, He willed that all those catching sight of her should marvel. He thus ordained that she would have the power to dominate and subdue the fiercest, wildest hearts to willing service by virtue of her glance and restrained modesty. God made proud man in the Damascene field; but from one of his ribs He made woman in the Garden of Eden. Even if I were not a woman, I would 21. The work De fide ad Petrum diaconem was attributed to Augustine of Hippo, although it is now grouped with his apocryphal writings. It is a short summary of beliefs that must be firmly held, such as one finds in the Apostles’ Creed. I was not able to find the quotation Tarabotti uses in the two editions consulted: Cologne, 1473; and Augsburg, 1475. 22. See below, this same book 1, 51–53. This issue is also at the heart of Tarabotti’s later Che le donne siano della spezie degli uomini (1651), ed. L. Panizza (London, 1994).

Book One infer that on account of the quality of the matter from which she was made, and also of the place where she was made, woman is nobler, more refined, stronger, and worthier than man.23 I do not wish to set sail on the open sea with such contrary winds blowing; on the other hand, nor must I pass over in silence men’s folly when they extol their own strength to Heaven and cast our own “weakness” into the deepest abyss. What liars you men are! True strength lies in conquering one’s own passions. Which sex is stronger than the female one in this respect—forever virtuous, resistant to every push and pull of ill-conceived thoughts and desires? You are formed from the earth’s dust—is there anything less solid? On the other hand, consider the strength of a rib—hard bone—from which we women were made, and you will come to remain dissatisfied with yourselves. Besides, everybody knows how much stronger women are in conceiving and bearing children, whom they carry for nine months without tiring. You cruel, inhuman men, forever preaching that evil is good and good is evil, glory in your strength just because you wage war among yourselves, killing one another like wild beasts. This is where your strength lies! On the other hand, you do not have the power to resist a caress or a tear or a flutter of a pair of eyes glancing at you by chance, not choice. You always fall, overcome by the weakness of your own senses. If fortitude lies in bearing misfortunes and insults, in what ways are you strong when you spill others’ blood without reason, when you take innocent lives inflamed by a word or some groundless suspicion? As Horace said, For this very reason, live bravely And, when adversity comes, may you front it with hearts full of courage.24

23. The view that Adam was created outside Paradise in the Damascene field from red clay was generally accepted by many commentators on Genesis. Tarabotti could have come across it in Boccaccio’s “Life of Eve” in Famous Women, trans. Virginia Brown, 14–17 (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2001). It was used by Henricus Cornelius Agrippa to advance woman’s superiority in his 1529 Declamation on the Nobility and Preeminence of the Female Sex, ed. and trans. Albert Rabil, Jr. (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1996), 48 and 48 n. 33, which Tarabotti would have read in an anonymous Italian translation, or in the many works following the same arguments (see Rabil’s introduction, 27–29). Agrippa’s point is that Adam was made from the dust in a field reserved for animals and then taken into Paradise, while Eve was made from superior living matter in Paradise, where angels, too, were also created. Tarabotti may even have read it in Lucrezia Marinella’s first version, 1600, of her Della nobiltà e l’eccellenza della donna (fol. 5vo), which was removed from her later 1602 and 1620 versions, translated as The Nobility and Excellence of Women (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1999). 24.

Quocirca vivite fortes, Fortiaque adversis opponite pectora rebus. (Sat. 2.2.135–36) Translation by C. E. Passage in The Complete Works of Horace (New York, 1983), 63.

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P a t e r n a l Ty r a n n y And Cato gave the following precept: Do not surrender your spirit in adversity.25 Swaggering is not the same as strength; one needs to resist, to persevere, and to remain constant in Christian fortitude. How can it be that you can boast of such a virtue when you are nothing but inconstant? You have mistakenly attributed fortitude to yourselves, you liars. For those who destroy humankind with arms cannot be called strong; but, those who fill the world with children and good works just as we do can be. Listen to Solomon speaking about women; he agrees with me: “Strength and beauty are her clothing” (Prv 31:25). With unspeakable courage women conceive you, bear you in their wombs, bring you into the world, nourish you with their milk, and teach you—even if once grown up you turn to vice under the influence of your own evil genius.

NO EVIDENCE IN GENESIS FOR RELIGIOUS VOWS

So go on complaining against women; I’ll leave you to croak and return to weaving the thread of my argument: “On the seventh day God ended his work which he had made: and he rested . . . from all his work which he had done” (Gn 2:2). God rested, not because He was tired—since at a nod He could bring forth everything from nothing, but as a sign that the works made with His hands were complete, although His favors remain without measure as we see daily how He grants ever new ones. Gazing at the perfections of this great edifice, or into these deep mysteries, I do not find literally or symbolically a hint of a shadow that God wished there to be women enclosed in convents against their wills. These edifices exist because of human—or rather, inhuman—contrivance and nothing else. The blessed Creator, in whose mind the numerous future procreation of the human race was as present, could have entrusted to our first father Adam the task of founding religious orders of women dedicated to His service. But He did not do so, as He could foresee the resulting mistakes and injuries brought about in His church by men’s attempts to erase His gift of free will; men would rather submit women to their own mainly wicked and depraved wills. What we see daily taking place, practiced more than anything else in this corrupt age, I count as an abuse, for nowhere in Genesis and nowhere at 25. “Rebus in adversis animum submittere noli” (Distichs 2.25). Dionysii Catonia de Moribus ad Filium (Amsterdam, 1759). Cato’s Distichs were widespread as a school text throughout Europe in the Middle Ages and the Renaissance.

Book One all in the length and breadth of Holy Scripture is it recorded even fleetingly by His Divine Majesty that He is served by the closeting of women involuntarily. It is, in short, an impious, malicious invention of men who bestowed the name of monache (“nuns”) on those unhappy souls perhaps to play the fool—thereby mocking God who wanted Adam to name all things. For the name is derived from that foul beast said in fabulous stories to be the devil’s making. He tried to mimic the heavenly Creator in attempting to create a being like man.26 Nuns who are forced to be so are truly like apes; but even more lacking in reason than apes are those men who, full of guile and without any spirit of truth, want to bend women’s opinions to their own. Mimicking what they have seen other men do, they use violence to force women into the cloister or, as the saying goes, “to drown themselves in a glass of water!” On the other hand, women who voluntarily withdraw to a solitary cell after experiencing the world’s vanities and men’s deceptions are truly praiseworthy and full of prudence. They contemplate the Godhead and the loftiness of their own souls created in the likeness of God and then rise with the mind’s eye to contemplate His grandeur and gaze upon His immensity. Here more is gained by silence than can be expressed by the spoken word. Stunned and blinded by this holy and awesome ecstasy, the soul finally leaves the senseless body and, one can say, is transformed into its beloved. These are the nuns worthy of our praise and admiration, but in our age such privileges are granted to few and only to those brought up by their families to exercise their free will and who have therefore chosen such a life prompted by the breath of the Holy Spirit alone.

F R E E W I L L B E L O N G S E Q U A L LY T O M E N A N D W O M E N ; T H E R E I S N O S U B O R D I N AT I O N

Let me now return to my main point: any attempt to remove free will from a woman is a direct contravention of the Almighty’s decision when He ordained that all living things should reproduce themselves, but to man and woman He commanded “Increase and multiply” (Gn 1:22) as if to make clear that He did not wish anything from them without their common consent. Man’s foolishness is nonetheless so great that he would attribute to himself alone all the graces, favors, and privileges dispensed by divine goodness equally and impartially to one sex as much as to the other. 26. Monaco in Italian is a homonym and can mean both “monk” and “ape”; monaca can mean “nun” or “female ape.” Tarabotti also calls nuns simie or “apes” when they “ape” a religious life they have no desire to follow.

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P a t e r n a l Ty r a n n y Let me add that if woman had been deprived of freedom’s bounty, God would not have given her to man, since she is “A help like unto himself” (adiutorium simile sibi) (Gn 2:18). God furthermore did not give woman to man as a help inferior to himself; woman’s creation was one of parity—indeed, its circumstances were marked by greater excellence—in which both were made similar in knowledge and with equal claims to eternal glory. As soon as His Majesty said the word “help,” He immediately added, “like unto himself,” implying that woman is of just as much value as man. So do not boast about your superiority; remember that just as from one good work is drawn an even better one, so woman drawn from the first beautiful work of the divine hand turns into a creature of higher excellence, grace, and beauty than you are! Remember that she must be alike in ruling: the mistress of your possessions and the family. “They shall be two in one flesh” (Gn 2:24), said the Lord. You exchange souls reciprocally, crossing the boundaries, as it were, of mere human nature:27 your soul is hers, and hers is yours. You cannot then oppress her without sinning. Do you not recall that the apostle Paul obliges you to honor your wife: “Husbands, love your wives, as Christ also loved the Church” (Eph 5:25). What arrogant presumption is yours, then, you liars, when you repeat time and again that woman serves man as a help only with respect to reproduction; and that for the rest, she is an imperfect animal meant, fittingly, to live in subjection to him as the unstable, weak, and frail sex. With all your lies in this matter and in others, you contradict the commands of your very Maker and reveal yourself as the devil’s offspring: “You are of your father the devil, and the desires of your father you will do” (Jn 8:44). You cannot deny your sonship, you evil sorcerers, whose words have seduced the whole world into believing that women must be excluded from ruling. In this way you have made them subject to your ruses: a simple woman of dim intellect is taken in by your insinuations and imagines she is weaker than you and an inferior being, although God Himself, by saying that woman is a “help like unto himself” has resolved all doubts about the equality of the sexes. If she is similar to you, O proud one, she is not inferior. If she has been given to you as your help, she ought not serve you like a slave, as you repeat endlessly when you employ false reasoning on your side contrary to Holy Scripture and to the words of God who cannot lie. The Creator of all things

27. Tarabotti uses a neologism coined by Dante, transumanar. See Paradiso 1.70–71: “Transumanar significar per verba / non si poria . . .’ ” (“Passing beyond the human cannot be / worded”). Dante’s sense is that of passing beyond the limits of the human, whereas Tarabotti stresses a crossing over. See also book 2, 120 and note 74.

Book One said to both man and woman, “Increase and multiply, and fill the earth, and subdue it, and rule over the fishes of the sea, and the fowls of the air, and all living creatures that move upon the earth” (Gn 1:28). He established both sexes as rulers of the world, without discrimination. He did not tell Adam, “You will rule over woman.” Both male and female were born free, bearing with them, like a precious gift from God, the priceless bounty of free choice. If in God’s eyes woman is not less privileged than you with respect to her physical or spiritual qualities, why do you wish her to seem created with such great inequality, you enemies of the truth, proclaiming her to be subject to your impulsive, mad whims? In short, woman is deserving of less respect than you only when you have reduced her to this state by your scheming.

A D A M M A I N LY T O B L A M E F O R T H E F A L L , N O T E V E

God’s greatest gift to the nobler sex cannot be taken away, that is, woman cannot be subject to man because even before Adam ate of the apple, she showed that her will was not tied to his. If he alone had the grace of free will and was superior to Eve, she would not have sinned at all, despite the serpent’s promptings and insinuations, for the simple reason that she could not have made choices without her husband’s consent. And even though the sin committed by Eve is reported by all men (as interested parties, to free Adam from blame) as the source of our mortality, it was nothing more after all than a simple mistake she made, deep in thought, upon hearing, “And you shall be as gods” (Gn 3:5).28 The same Holy Scripture that cannot lie proves the contrary, to the confusion of those men who assert that our loss of immortality was the fault of our first mother. The Prime Mover, just and perfect in His every operation, cannot be in error. After Eve’s disobedience in eating the forbidden fruit, He did not first call the woman to reproach and blame her as the main guilty party, the prime source of sin. He said instead, “Adam, where art thou?” (Gn 3:9) for no other reason than to advertise Adam as the principal source of our woe. The Highest Wisdom, to whom are revealed our thoughts, words, and deeds, could not have been mistaken in naming the first sinner. So what did the first man do so as not to deviate minimally from his true image, the devil, father of lies? He excused himself by accusing his wife!

28. Throughout these pages about Eve, Tarabotti is engaging in covert polemics with her patron, Gian Francesco Loredan, author of a Biblical novel, L’Adamo (Venice, 1640), which exalted Adam as an all-perfect creature who did not need nor wish the company or “help” of Eve. See introduction, 19–21. Tarabotti returns to condemning the novel at the end of book 2; see note 75.

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P a t e r n a l Ty r a n n y Forever slanderers, forever false, forever seducing women: you were barely in the world and you blame your help whom—you say—you love so tenderly, and at whose tears, pleadings, attractions, and wiles you cast yourself into disobeying the Most High. What kind of constancy can one hope for from such monsters? He falls for a woman’s simple and natural charm and then immediately condemns her as guilty before the divine tribunal; the woman, on the other hand, who loves her husband sincerely and wants truly to help him become a god, suggests all lovingly, the ingénue, that he eat of the tasty fruit. Oh, the depravity of these blasphemers! Eve is deceived by the serpent’s cunning, and you place all the blame on her. Adam falls for a charming request, and you excuse him. He knew he was offending his God; he was not deceived by cunning, but beseeched by an innocent and sincere creature. Have you ever heard of greater wickedness than shielding yourself against your own faults with another’s innocence? But listen to our blessed God who alone judges righteously. Once He heard Adam’s lies (remember, he tried slipping out of the wrong he did by blaming his wife!), He was amazed, so to speak, at such abominable fraud; so calling Eve to His side, He said, Why were you so gullible, so ingenuous, as to lend your ears to the serpent’s perfidious, cunning fictions when he told you, “No, you shall not die the death” (Gn 3:4)? Why, in your garb of innocence, did you fall at the devil’s urging? Truly, the devil stands for the male, who from now on will cast on to you the blame for his failings and will have no other purpose than deceiving you, betraying you, and removing all your rights of dominion granted by my omnipotence. Because of your credulity, “I will multiply thy sorrows . . . in sorrow shalt thou bring forth children” (Gn 3:16), since it stands to reason that such an ungrateful animal as man should prove himself even more so to his own mother, who undergoes mortal pains at his birth—after nourishing him with her own substance and bestowing unimaginable tenderness on him for nine months. I foresee, on the contrary, that the sincerity of your expression will be a true and living reflection of your feelings toward your husband; but, carried away by wifely sentiment, you will make your false partner the master of your wishes and allow him to strip you of all authority. Thus, because you are so trusting, so yielding to his demands, it can be said of you, “Thou shalt be under thy husband’s power, and he shall have dominion over thee” (Gn 3:16). These words are not a sentence for the punishment that you deserve; rather, you will fall into the traps prepared for you by such an

Book One ungrateful monster, overcome now by promises, now by threats, and sometimes even by entreaties. Do not, as a result, let your constancy be dismayed, for you will be rescued from the injustices suffered at the hands of their arrogant claims to dominion: there will come a woman who will crush the head of the serpent in revenge and for the universal glory of her whole sex. Meanwhile, I say to you, Adam, who listened to your wife’s words in order then to subjugate her, “Cursed is the earth in thy work . . . Thorns and thistles shall it bring forth to thee” (Gn 3:17–18).29 God did not therefore curse the deeds of the first woman, as He did the first man; His wrathful pronouncement meant that the fall and overcoming of the more innocent sex should come as no surprise to us. Man, who boasts of being strong, should have resisted; there is no excuse for his sin.

A D A M , T H E F AT H E R O F P R I D E A N D M E N D A C I T Y

But let us return to Eve, the innocent one who fell for the devil’s deceptions. No judicious person will be astonished by her behavior. Rather, let such a person be amazed at Adam, to whom God revealed many profound matters about future happenings like the Flood and the Last Judgment, so that he might be more vigilant in keeping the divine law—all this in addition to taking a rib during that deep sleep to shape a sweet companion for him. The male who boasts of his strength should not have fallen but should have withstood that little breeze of ambition; nor should he have given faith to words promising him that he would be like God—words making him similar to haughty Lucifer, who had also claimed for himself the power to become like his Creator. What brazen audacity of that shameless creature who finds no equal in the history of vainglory because he is the father of pride itself! So puffed up was he that right after his own creation he dared to rebel against his Maker by relying on his own strength, or rather his nothingness. That is why he lost with all his descendants the life of the true light—that is, grace—and remained defiled with the stain of the first sin that, to his greater shame, he committed in Paradise. The prophet Isaiah regards him as fallen from his first glory, stripped of all splendor, darkened and stained by the fumes of the infernal fire and breaks out into this mocking, but somber taunt: 29. This speech Tarabotti has God make to Eve parallels the several speeches that Loredan has God make to Adam and that Adam makes to Eve in L’Adamo. God speaks directly to Eve in Loredan’s novel only after the Fall, in reproach and recrimination.

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P a t e r n a l Ty r a n n y How art thou fallen from heaven, O Lucifer, who didst rise in the morning?. . . . / And thou saidst in thy heart: “I will ascend into heaven, I will exalt my throne above the stars of God, I will sit in the mountain of the covenant, in the sides of the north. / I will ascend above the height of the clouds, I will be like the most High.” / But yet thou shalt be brought down to hell, into the depth of the pit. (Is 14:12–14) If Lucifer fell from the greatest heights to the greatest depths because of pride, the same follows for you men, swollen with conceit and bent on carrying out your perverse determinations. If with Satan you crave greater glory than God’s by taking away free will from women, so with Satan may you fall into that horrendous kingdom whose foundations have been laid by pride! If you would not accompany your daughters to wealthy and noble wedding rites with high-ranking and wealthy spouses, as your vainglory requires, then join them at least in more modest marriages. Divide up your estates and wealth among them without preference, for that is the will of God. Do not aim at raising one of them to the summit of worldly pomp by casting the others down into a chaos of wretchedness and damnation’s abyss. Temper the wealth of your sons, and remember that your daughters are also your flesh and blood; do not wish to constrain the feelings that God has left free to all His creatures.

FA L S E V I E W S A B O U T T H E N E E D F O R W O M E N ’ S C H A S T I T Y

But maybe one of these men would argue the other side, namely, that the human race would multiply to such an extent that one may no longer make use of that first command of Genesis, “Increase and multiply and fill . . . the earth” (Gn 1:22). I reply that this does not justify the arbitrary authority of cruel men to dispose of thousands of innocent lives at whim by thrusting them in prisons and barbarically sacrificing them to Pluto, for they are souls in despair, rather than to God. Let us be clear: Christ did not desire the virginity of an imprisoned body with the contradiction of freely roaming desires. Only once in all the Gospels did Christ exhort our sex to a life of chastity, not an enclosed life, and even then in the form of a parable and as a counsel of perfection.30 Saint Paul said, likewise, “Concerning virgins, I have no commandment of the Lord; but I give counsel” (1 Cor 7:25). On 30. Tarabotti may be thinking of Christ’s recommendation about men “who have made themselves eunuchs for the kingdom of heaven;” that is, who choose to be celibate. See Matthew 19:12. As for a parable addressed specifically to women, Tarabotti may be alluding to the parable of the five wise virgins and the five foolish ones (the former filled their lamps with oil in

Book One the other hand, he preached magisterially to men on how pleasing it was to God whenever they led celibate and pure lives. Some men with little understanding of Christian precepts make it appear that laws about virginity and temperance are necessary only for women, almost as if they are obliged to keep these laws even by force. Nor do these false investigators of the Gospels realize that when blessed Jesus explained to His disciples His desire for their perfection and gave them the counsel of virginity, He was speaking to men and did not include women of any sort. The opinions of the male sex have gone so far that they make all kinds of obscenity and depravity lawful, yet hold as just the subjection of women in every walk of life. They also practice continually vilifying them, accusing them of “frailty” and calling them infirm, weak, and fickle in all they do. Whence it is that a Latin poet once sang with all the usual malice of his sex, Woman: forever a variable and fickle thing!31 Many others, contradicting such falsity, have truly confessed the instability of their own sex. Most suitably, Lodovico Ariosto’s wisdom dictated, Oh the weak, inconstant minds of men! How ready we are to vacillate, how ready we are to change our ideas! 32

readiness for the arrival of the bridegroom and admission to the wedding feast; the latter did not bother and were shut out). See Matthew 25:1–13. The wise virgins preserve their virginity for Christ, the Bridegroom, and gain Heaven; the foolish virgins “squander” their virginity. 31. “Varium et mutabile semper foemina” (Virgil Aeneid 4.569). This refutation of woman’s frailty is answering specific quotations from Giuseppe Passi, I donneschi difetti (Venice, 1599) on woman’s inconstancy, 225–28. He begins with the Latin quotation, not identifying Virgil; continues with an Ariosto passage, in which a Saracen warrior and arch-misogynist Rodomont laments the fickleness of women, “Oh feminile ingegno (egli dicea) / come ti volgi e muti facilmente, / contrario oggetto proprio de la fede” (“O feminine mind (he said) / how easily you turn and change; / you are the very opposite of constancy!”) (Orl. fur. 27.117); and also adds three verses from a Petrarch sonnet with the words about woman being “cosa mobil per natura” (“a fickle thing by nature”). Canzoniere 183:12. 32. O degli uomini inferma e instabil mente! come sian presti a variar disegno! Tutti i pensier mutamo facilmente. (Orl. fur.29.1) Quotations from Ariosto, Orlando furioso, ed. MarcelloTurchi (Milan, 1982). Translations from G. Waldman, Ludovico Ariosto, Orlando furioso (Oxford, 1983). Note that the offensive adjectives that are usually applied to a woman’s mind—inferma and instabile—are here thrown at men in a parody and rebuttal of Rodomont. Note the similarity of “muti facilmente” (applied by Rodomont to women) and “mutamo facilmente” (applied by Ariosto to men). Tarabotti, however, fails to recognize the Petrarch verse even though Passi had identified it (I donneschi difetti, 225), and goes on to attribute it to Ariosto!

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P a t e r n a l Ty r a n n y Despite men’s malign propensities, that blessed tongue exposes without prejudice the defects of men as well as women in various parts of his truthful poem and gives us to understand that we are all subject indiscriminately to frailty—although his being a man may have led him to keep silent about women’s greater merit. The same men who accuse women of instability and levity should not therefore oblige them to perpetual vows, for I do not think that one can find a greater madness than wishing a spirit born free to bind herself by an irrevocable decision, yet that is precisely what men contrive. Why did the same Ariosto say, “femina, cosa mobil per natura” (“woman, a fickle thing [mobile] by nature”)? He was mistaken, of course, and meant to say: “a noble [nobile] thing by nature.”33

IF WOMEN ARE FICKLE, WHY FORCE THEM T O B E C O N S TA N T ?

God does not wish to interfere with or oppose the will of His creatures; indeed, He permits us all to dispose of our wills as we please. It is male foolhardiness that grants itself the right to violate women’s free wills and then regale them with unjust invectives against their “fickleness” and “inconstancy.” If wise King Solomon affirms that we are all as fickle as leaves and more unstable than the wind34—although he himself displays a fragility greater than glass!—why do you cruel men wish to sentence women irrevocably and unjustly to perpetual imprisonment, tied down by indelible sacraments with the knots of oaths made on sacred altar stones under pain of ecclesiastical censure and excommunication? At this point one needs the voices of all Catholic and secular writers, of moderns and ancients, and of believers and heretics to join with mine in describing fully men’s profound madness. They are the ones in need of a new Astolfo who would ascend beyond the clouds to the moon in search of their wits!35 33. Passi also notes that the same phrase is found in Tasso Aminta 1.2.279 (but not Ariosto); I donneschi difetti, 227. 34. Many passages from the books of the Old Testament attributed to Solomon underline the ephemeral quality of human life: the main theme of Ecclesiastes is “Vanity of vanity, all is vanity.” For the image of life as grass, see Psalm 89:6: “In the morning, man shall grow up like grass; in the morning he shall flourish and pass away; in the evening he shall fall, grow dry, and wither”; and Psalm 102:15: “[God] remembereth that we are dust; man’s days are as grass, as the flower of the field so shall he perish.” But here, I think, Tarabotti is trying to contradict Passi, who compares woman’s instability to leaves and wind, quoting Ovid Elegies 2, by finding passages from a higher authority (the Bible) that is critical of men as well as of women. 35. Astolfo is a character in Ariosto’s Orlando furioso who is given the task to seek mad Orlando’s lost wits on the moon. See especially Orl. fur. 34.69–92.

Book One And just how, if you please, can these extreme opposites be matched together: natural fickleness and an immutable state of life, shifting sense of purpose and firm commitment, inconstancy of mind and a fixed dwelling place in a convent? And that not through their own choice but through another’s determination, imposed on those bodies and souls that you say have inconstancy as their proper attribute. How is it, you cruel men—I am tempted to say butchers—can assign dwellings to women, and confined ones at that, which they may never change? It is further presumption to imagine that you can rein in the varied sentiments of a sex that—if one is to believe what you say—draws its unstable temperament from the maternal womb and that is therefore deemed, as if by natural inheritance, to have inconstancy at the heart of all things amorous as well as furious. But fathers, too, should recall that when they gave life to their offspring, they also passed on their own defects, as men are much more fickle in their sentiments than women.

S O L O M O N A F I N E E X A M P L E O F M A L E I N C O N S TA N C Y

Let that embodiment of wisdom, King Solomon, be my clear proof, for although he reproached women for their fickleness and levity with endless zeal, he allowed himself to be led astray a thousand times. He changed his mind from one moment to the next, harboring as many desires as there were objects of his gaze. I am amazed that a king endowed with divinely infused wisdom could err in accusing women of instability and blame them for his own faults; that he could be so little wise in knowing himself—the quality that defines the truly wise man, and is valued not only by the greatest sages of this world, but by God Himself, as the perfection needed for understanding this microcosm of ours: “Know thyself,” as the saying goes. I shall gladly inform you that this sage of sages failed to know himself, and if I thought I was becoming too bold by using my pen against the most knowledgeable of all men, one who was granted illustrious favors by His Divine Majesty so that from the farthermost provinces of the earth queens abandoned their kingdoms to come and see him and hear him, I would disregard the matter. But let us recall: “The queen of the south . . . came from the ends of the earth to hear the wisdom of Solomon” (Lk 11:31). This great queen arrived (from Sheba) and was so amazed at his superhuman wisdom that she exclaimed, “Blessed are your man servants” (3 Kgs 10:8). I touch on a sensitive issue, and if my present theme is an important one among men, I shall seize on that everyday saying, “Fortune favors the bold.” Taking courage then into my hands, I say that I do not know what spurs could have goaded such a wise king, who should have been more resolute in the face of contrary

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P a t e r n a l Ty r a n n y emotions than a mountainside to the winds or a cliff to the waves, given his royal role and the torrents of divine favors poured over him as well. He starts by exaggerating our inconstancy to our detriment, while he—according to your own false opinions—is one of the most perfect men born of a father, gifted with intelligence and grace. He then takes leave of his senses because of women, whom he also despises. He neglects to worship the true God and adores as many false idols as the women he loves, or rather does not love. (I say this, as love cannot take root where it finds so many contrary sentiments and so many objects of desire.) Finally, he loses the fruits of the many favors, graces, and privileges he acquired—all the fault of his own fickleness. Might he try to claim in his defense that he was inconstant in spiritual matters in order to be constant in love? He goes about from city to city rounding up women, adoring various idols in public, giving scandal to his own people. He searches only for the sex he then despises by calling women names like “unstable” and “indecisive”; and in a matter of such importance as the salvation of his own soul, he makes himself known as the very idea of inconstancy. That Solomon, so glorious, so exemplary, about whom the Bible says, “Not even Solomon in all his glory” (Mt 6:29), commits such excesses in sins of inconstancy that he loses his reputation, and Scriptures say of him, “And thou didst bow thyself to women: and by thy body thou wast brought under subjection” (Sir 47:21). Could anyone fall into greater inconstancy? Not only does he adore the pleasures of the senses and the comeliness of idolaters, but he also degrades himself by worshiping vain idols in order to please them, hard of heart to the highest good. Finally, he hurls himself headlong into the very abyss of faults he so detested in the female sex: “Thou that preachest that men should not steal, stealest” (Rom 2:21). Physician, heal thyself!36

C O N D E M N AT I O N O F T Y R A N N I C A L F AT H E R S

Let us now return to the original depravity. How can you deceivers harbor in your breasts hearts so cruel as to inflict torment on the bodies of your own daughters, made of your flesh and blood? How can you suffer the loss, perhaps, of their souls? They are of such noble natures that Christ would descend once more from Heaven to earth and suffer death on the cross were it necessary to save any one of them. And how can you risk casting into Hell’s abyss your own souls along with theirs, for you are guilty of grievous mortal sin having done violence to the wills of young girls, which was granted 36. Tarabotti builds up a contradictory picture of Solomon to show that even the wisest of men, revered by the fabled queen of Sheba, can be guilty of extreme inconstancy and misogyny.

Book One freely to them by God with such abundant generosity? You deserve eternal torments, along with the greatest tyrants in history, more, I say, than all the Neros and the Diocletians.37 Persecuting and slaughtering the holy martyrs so ruthlessly, they harmed their bodies, not threatening in any way their souls. Indeed, as many drops of blood shed by the martyrs are transformed into as many sparkling rubies in their crowns of glory! These tyrants did not have the light of Christian faith; they therefore fell into savagery and presumed to increase their own religion with an impious piety. But you, you are tyrants from Hell, monsters of nature, Christians in name, and devils in deeds. You presume to take part in executing God’s will at the very moment you deeply offend it. You presume, I say, to examine hearts seen only by God’s eyes; your mad presumption disposes of the free choice of creatures still in their mothers’ womb, without waiting for them to tell you toward which state in life their talents incline them. Dante understood this well; in the following verses he denounced the folly of fathers who abused the natural inclinations of their sons: But if the world below would set its mind on the foundation Nature lays as base to follow, it would have its people worthy. But you twist to religion one whose birth made him more fit to gird a sword, and make a king of one more fit for sermoning, [S]o that the track you take is off the road.38 It would be better for these innocents whom you deceive and incarcerate if their days of birth were also their days of death! Whenever I see one of these hapless young girls, betrayed by their very own parents, I am reminded of what happens to a pretty little bird: from within the tree’s foliage or along riverbanks, it delights the ear with sweet chirping and charming song, soothing the hearts of its audience—when suddenly it’s trapped in a treacherous net, robbed of precious liberty. The same befalls these unhappy

37. Nero (54–68 C.E.) and Diocletian (240–312 C.E.) were Roman emperors who were notorious for their depravity and cruelty; they both persecuted Christians. 38. E se ‘l mondo là giù ponesse mente al fondamento che natura pone, seguendo lui, avria buona la gente. Ma voi torcete alla religione tal che fia nato a cignersi la spada, e fate re di tal ch’ è da sermone: Onde la traccia vostra è fuor di strada. (Par. 8.142–48) Mandelbaum translation, 417.

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P a t e r n a l Ty r a n n y creatures: born under a star of ill omen, they spend their childhoods crying and cooing with their tongues still wet with milk, moving their delicate limbs in charming gestures. They bring delight to the ears and joy to the hearts of their savage parents, who think of nothing else but hiding their faces as soon as possible and burying them alive in the cloister for the rest of their lives, bound by indissoluble knots. If they still draw breath, their words may well be, “The sorrows of death surrounded me” (Ps 17:5). His Divine Majesty never conjured up, I say, nor ordained this excess; and even if He permits other sins and errors, He neither advises nor orders them. Only men’s rashness makes such foul sacrilege permissible.

I F M A R R I A G E V O W S C A N B E D I S S O LV E D , WHY NOT RELIGIOUS VOWS?

When there are just reasons, the sacrament of marriage itself may be dissolved by divorce, although it was established in Paradise in the age of innocence, practiced and thus confirmed by Old Testament patriarchs and prophets, recognized by Christ Himself, and given the final seal of approval by the very Blessed Virgin Mary (although her marriage was exceptional, for her virginity was left intact). So the knot of matrimony, despite its sanctity, may nevertheless be dissolved under certain conditions—or at least come to an end with the death of a partner. Why, then, must nuns be condemned to keep their vows forever by the sacrament of their religious profession, with no appeal whatsoever? Your ambition alone, added to your overweening insolence in taking no account of God’s will, allows you to damn your own flesh to a monastic hell, where these innocents remain in spite of beatings, insults, and torments. Christ Himself, on the other hand, gave His disciples the following precept: “And when they shall persecute you in one city, flee into another” (Mt 10:23). For private individuals to commit such enormity through self-interest— cursed be self-interest!—is an abominable abuse of power, but for religious superiors and rulers to allow it makes one reel in horror at their insensitivity. The prince’s eye, we know, guards not only the “interests of state,” but the salvation of souls as well; he ought not to allow so many to perish wretchedly by thus subordinating their salvation to these same interests.

APPEAL TO THE RULERS OF VENICE

Most Eminent, Serene, and Illustrious Lords, how greatly, how greatly should your souls be moved to compassion by the streams of tears from these

Book One desperate prisoners! Your minds, too, should show a little consideration in providing for their woeful condition. Are you not aware that, “All that is in the world is the concupiscence of the flesh, and the concupiscence of the eyes, and the pride of life” (1 Jn 2:16)? These poor wretches are formed of the same flesh and blood as yourselves; so when it shall be said to you, “Give an account of thy stewardship” (Lk 16:2), you will have no sound excuse in your defense. You know only too well that the vast number of women in religious life cannot reach spiritual perfection because they are unfortunately compelled to that state by parents and family. It is not theirs to say, “This is my rest forever and ever: here will I dwell for I have chosen it” (Ps 131:14). The greater part is not moved, like Saint Anthony, the desert father, by Christ urging them, “Go sell what thou hast . . . and come, follow me” (Mt 19:21).39 Rather, their hearts are turned to the world; they long for their portion of the goods, theirs by right, which has been taken away unlawfully. And yet God has shown that He loathes actions springing from a reluctant disposition, since He requires only our hearts: “My son, give me thy heart” (Prv 23:26). Only women like Saint Clare and Saint Catherine of Siena who voluntarily renounce the world—indeed, against their parents’ wills—should be enclosed within the cloister.40 But men today imprison women to avoid expense and make life easier for themselves by enjoying every kind of luxury, indulgence, and superfluous vanity, to the point of satisfying their vile lusts with prostitutes, losing their wealth in gaming houses, and spending money like water in the satisfaction of every base whim. Men like this who abuse the law of Christ for political interests deserve to have their names effaced from the Book of Life! 39. What we know of the life of Anthony comes from a life written by Athanasius. Tarabotti would more likely have read of him in Saint Augustine’s Confessions, bk. 8, chap. 6; and especially chap. 12: just as Anthony was converted on reading the Matthew verse, so Augustine claims to have been moved to embrace Christianity on reading the same verse. Tarabotti could also have read about Saint Anthony in the Dominican, Domenico Cavalca’s Vite dei Santi Padri (Lives of the Holy Fathers), written in Italian in the fourteenth century and published many times in the fifteenth, sixteenth, and seventeenth centuries; and in the most accessible collection of saints’ lives, the Legenda aurea, published in Latin and translated into Italian. See Legendario delle Vite de’Santi, Reverendo Padre Fra’ Giacobo di Voragine dell’ Ordine de’ Predicatori, tradotto già per Nicolò Manerbio Venetiano (Venice: Matteo Valentini, 1592). 40. Saint Clare (1347–86), a follower of Saint Francis of Assisi, founded a religious order for women called the Poor Clares, dedicated to imitating Christ’s absolute poverty. Saint Catherine of Siena (1347–80) founded a religious community of women and was the first great woman writer of letters in Italian. Lucrezia Marinella, Tarabotti’s contemporary, composed a lengthy praise of her life and miracles in six books: De’ gesti heroici e della vita maravigliosa della Serafica S. Caterina da Siena (Venice, 1624).

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P a t e r n a l Ty r a n n y There is nothing more powerful in the world than example, whether for good or evil; one good work is worth more than a thousand sermons. That is why it is said of Christ Our Lord that He first began to do good deeds and then began to teach. But you parents of nuns, on the other hand, are numbered among those Christ Himself condemns: “For they bind heavy and insupportable burdens, and lay them on men’s shoulders; but with a finger of their own they will not move them” (Mt 23:4). Too much, yes, too much does the behavior of the head of a family disgust me when he advises young girls to lock themselves in a cage! Their pretexts appear ludicrous to the same girls, only too aware of how they are being tricked with seemingly big, generous promises, but in fact with lies and cunning. They prate on and on how their daughters must on no account ever think of giving up the religious life to embrace instead the state of matrimony and how the married state is full of trials and tribulations for a woman. They even quote from Saint Jerome to this effect: Then come the prattling of infants, the noisy household, children watching for her word and waiting for her kiss, the reckoning up of expenses, the preparation to meet the outlay . . . . Where there is the beating of drums, the noise and clatter of pipe and lute, the clanging of cymbals, can any fear of God be found? . . . The unhappy wife must either take pleasure in them, and perish, or be displeased , and provoke her husband. The passage ends as follows: Suppose you find me a house where these things are unknown . . . yet even there, the very management of the household, the education of the children, the wants of the husband, the correction of the servants, cannot fail to call away the mind from the thought of God.41 And so fathers continue in their depictions of the woes and miseries of marriage, inveighing against their own state of life, veiling the truth as they

41. The Perpetual Virginity of Blessed Mary, against Helvidius, in St. Jerome: The Principal Works, A Select Library of Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, trans. W. H. Fremantle (New York and Oxford, 1893), 2d ser., vol. 6, 345. The tract was composed about 383 C.E. The above quotation comes from a long section ideally suited for fathers to use as propaganda for the religious life and against the married state. A little further on, Jerome pronounces married life and holiness to be mutually exclusive: “For so long as the debt to marriage is paid, earnest prayer is neglected.” Jerome’s main blast against marriage, used by misogynists in the Middle Ages and the Renaissance, including Giuseppe Passi, is the tract Adversus Jovinianum, in which virginity is praised not only as spiritually “more perfect,” but also as “more natural.”

Book One are used to do whenever it suits them. Then they write satires, and with their slanderous pens portray women as liars guilty of every fault under the sun. (I do not write these things to praise my own sex—I know all too well the saying that self-praise is deafening—but to make known that we are still of far greater worth than men.) I know only too well the “defects” of our sex: we are “imperfect,” just as Aristotle opined; but you “perfect” animals surpass us in your wiles, your cunning, and your cruelty. It may be madness to praise oneself, but I cannot accept the opinions of those sublime, learned intellects whose great abundance of lying conceits is a crime against women’s innocence and goodness. I know, too, that the same philosopher said it was madness to blame oneself; all the same, when I confess that woman is full of “defects”—proud, inconstant, changing her mind—I wonder how far men outshine her in the same qualities. From the first day of creation you have been bragging about your own superiority over us, on no substantial grounds whatsoever; and indeed if you have made yourselves “superior,” this is not because of natural talents or achievements, but impudent usurpation. In contrast, we gladly declare ourselves your inferiors in “defects,” and yield the victorious palm of vice to you!42 In canon law one reads that women should not shear their tresses, given them, the canonists say, by the Lord as a sign of submission. But I believe the contrary: women’s hair is a sign of both liberty and superiority, and since she is free and not subject, she should not allow her head to be shorn. How can it be right for women to crop their own hair, thereby removing from themselves the greatest attraction and adornment received from nature? In Leviticus, God forbade priests to cut off their hair at all: “Neither shall they shave their head, nor their beard” (Lv 21:5). Thus He confirmed the Nazarenes’ law on preserving their heads of hair. To wear one’s hair long was held in great esteem at that time, and a shaved head was the mark of servitude. Let my proof be Ezekiel, the prophet, who states that Nebuchadnezzar punished the people of God by shaving their heads. The prince of philosophers says, “Hair is a sign of liberty.”43

42. Tarabotti’s use of the word “defects” and references to Aristotle suggest that she probably has in mind once more Giuseppe Passi’s I donneschi difetti (note 31), which quotes the Aristotelian commonplaces throughout. See also the series editors’ introduction above, x–xii, for frequently used commonplaces. 43. Ezekiel describes the destruction of Jerusalem, but not by Nebuchadnezzar. Although there is no mention of shaved heads and oppression, there is an allegory about the judgments of God foretold by the hair and beard of the prophet being shaved off, divided into three parts, and

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P a t e r n a l Ty r a n n y O unjust and treacherous men, why do you wish to remove the mark of liberty from those as free as you are? Women may serve Jesus Christ just as well by living a withdrawn life in their own homes. Modest, chaste, and devout, they can live with a simplicity and unworldliness arising from the promptings of the Holy Spirit and follow the practice of so many young virgins of the past whose hearts were their cloisters, the place where only heavenly thoughts were permitted. Thus virgins preserved intact their virginity for their heavenly bridegroom—may the whole world be full of them!

M E R I T S O F A F R E E LY C H O S E N R E L I G I O U S L I F E

Let heaven and earth know that my speech is moved by true zeal for divine worship, which the above reasons severely compromise. I would be willing to pour out blood as well as ink if it meant that cloistered nuns led a holy life, following the rules of their orders to the letter, for the honor and glory of the Catholic faith. I bear a holy envy of the religious life of true nuns, called by the Holy Spirit to follow their vocations: giving good example and performing holy deeds for the glory of God in the highest, their own salvation, and the encouragement of devout souls desirous of walking along the path of perfect virtue. These nuns deserve to enjoy the virginal crown in Heaven. Saints Euphrosina and Teresa of Avila were like that; the former dedicated herself to God as a young girl against her parents’ wishes, and the latter made such progress in the religious life that she left volumes of writings in which even the learned are amazed to read by what means the Redeemer led her to perfect holiness—not to mention innumerable hordes of virgins whose praises I would like to sing in lofty style and with sublime conceits, since I revere them with all my heart.44 Our age is not worthy of such exemplars; nor can I speak about them. I can only relate what I have heard or read, since even when it comes to the modern condition of religious forced disposed of in three different ways (5:1–17). Also, in Ezekiel 44:20, among the regulations for priests of the temple is one about them not shaving their heads of hair. The “prince of philosophers” is, by definition, Aristotle; but I have not been able to identify a precise reference to shaving one’s hair and losing liberty. 44. In the Elzevier edition, the Italian reads “Euffrasia”; in the Venice pirate edition, “Eufrassina”; and in the manuscript, “Eufrasia.” The Legenda aurea lists three saints with similar sounding names: (1) Euphrasia, an ascetic nun from a noble Roman family; (2) Eufrosina, a virgin who entered a male monastery disguised as a man to escape her parents’ persecution and who died in sanctity; (3) Eufemia, mentioned by Marinella (Della nobiltà et l’eccellenza delle donne, 1602, 241), a virgin martyr put to death at the stake in 303 during the reign of the Emperor Diocletian. Only Eufrosina fits Tarabotti’s description, so I have used this name. Saint Teresa of Avila (1515–82) reformed the languishing Carmelite order for women and wrote many books on the spiritual life.

Book One to take vows, I am only able to have an imperfect and shadowy knowledge, as I myself am a layperson.45 It nevertheless pains me not to have at least eloquent speech and learning, as I might perhaps be able to restrain fathers or other men convinced of such wicked barbarity. I might exhort religious superiors as well to inquire more diligently whether the vocations of young girls are dictated by a heavenly spirit or rather a kind of human spirit deserving the title of infernal. Dear, immortal God, of how many, many evils are cruel spirits the source! What kinds of woe do they invent for wretched unwilling nuns! I can describe their state only by means of a comparison so repulsive it causes everyone who has colluded in this crime in any way to shudder.

CONVENTS ARE A LIVING HELL FOR T H O S E W I T H O U T V O C AT I O N

The place where these unfortunate women dwell—I refer always to unwilling nuns—can be likened to an inferno. The word is dreadful to hear, but a true comparison. Only Hell itself bears a likeness to the suffering of these enforced slaves of Christ. Over the gate of Hell, Dante says, are inscribed the words Abandon every hope, who enter here.46 The same could be inscribed over the portals of convents. Indeed, at such sorrowful entrances, one could intone mournfully with a voice like a dying swan, “The sorrows of death surrounded me . . . the sorrows of Hell encompassed me” (Ps 17:5–6). In this life, all adversity can be mitigated by hope, which provides relief even when in vain. But if “Hope that is deferred afflicteth the soul” (Prv 13:12), what can be said of an anguish that torments with the thought of eternal pain? This is an incomparable, if not incomprehensible torment. In like fashion, these enforced nuns experience a short Hell in this life as a prelude to the eternal Hell they are doomed to endure on account of your cruelty. We read in Genesis how Cain and Abel, the first two sons of Adam and Eve, both offered sacrifice to the Lord, different in kind and in intention. Cain offered the most contemptible things he possessed, a sign and proof of his heart’s meanness and wickedness, intent solely on material gain. Abel, on 45. One of the most open assertions by Tarabotti that she does not consider herself a nun, but an observer or reporter on religious life for women. For this persona, see introduction above, 65. 46. “Lasciate ogni speranza, voi ch’entrate” (Inf. 3.9), Mandelbaum translation, 68.

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P a t e r n a l Ty r a n n y the other hand, a biblical type of the innocent, gladly sacrificed the fattest, unblemished lambs of his herd to the Lord with sincere heart and thus symbolized the sacrifice of Christ on the cross. The Divine Majesty looked upon Abel’s offerings with benign compassion: “And the Lord had respect to Abel and to his offerings. / But to Cain and his offerings he had no respect” (Gn 4:4–5). Whereupon, enraged with envy, Cain drew his innocent brother to a secreted place away from the parental eye and brutally murdered him. For his purity and innocence, Abel was a figure of Christ Our Lord; Cain, perpetrator of fratricide, was in my opinion a perfect example of those followers of Lucifer I speak of. In imitation of the traitor of traitors, they seek out the most maimed creatures within their own households and consecrate these to the Lord, divine maledictions slipping their minds: “Cursed is the deceitful man that hath in his flock a male, and making a vow offereth in sacrifice that which is feeble to the Lord” (Mal 1:14). They do not offer as brides of Jesus their most beautiful and virtuous daughters, but the most repulsive and deformed: lame, hunchbacked, crippled, or simple-minded. They are blamed for whatever natural defect they are born with and condemned to lifelong prison. For these depraved fathers who sail the seas of the world blown by passions inimical to salvation, convents take the place of a ship’s bilge, where they cast all their filthy refuse and then boast of having offered up a sacrifice—even to the point of adorning the brows of illegitimate daughters, often born of adulterous liaisons, with holy veils. No wonder the religious life, in such a wretched state, falls into the abyss, since You have never seen a doe born of a cow, nor an eagle of a dove, nor sons, well-mannered, of an infamous mother.47 My final point: if murderous Cain slew the living flesh of his own innocent brother because he contradicted and opposed Cain’s impious counsel about there being no justice and no judge, no reward for the just in another

47.

Di vacca nascer cerva mai vedesti, né di colomba l’aquila, né figli di madre infame, di costumi buoni. (Ariosto, Satire V, 103–5) Tarabotti has altered Ariosto, who is advising a friend, when he chooses a wife, to consider the character of the girl’s mother. If she is upright, so too will be her daughter, “figlia.” The tercet was used by Passi (84) in a context exaggerating the difficulty of finding a decent girl or mother. In a rebuttal of Passi, I believe that Tarabotti bends the tercet’s meaning to condemn the sons, “figli,” born of women depraved by adulterous fathers.

Book One world, and no punishment for the wicked, male relatives are not so very different. They too seek to satisfy their every craving and show by their deeds that they believe that after death there is no pleasure and that the Lord does not see them. If they were not heretics, would they put to death— I don’t say an innocent brother—but their own long-suffering daughters and sisters, who will end their days feeling smothered, overwhelmed by despair at not finding some spiritual escape from the intricate labyrinth enclosing them. Oh, what dire happenings will befall these women! 48

F A T H E R S S H O U L D M A K E A L L O WA N C E F O R I N D I V I D U A L TA L E N T S A N D D E S I R E S

God did not grant one and the same will, one and the same desire, one and the same motivation to each and every woman; although He Himself is unchangeable and everlasting in Himself, He nevertheless takes pleasure in creation’s variety. The dispositions of those sinning are diverse; and if the great fabric of the world, created with such design and skill by the Eternal Artificer, did not abound in almost infinite variety, if everything were instead similar to everything else, it would not prove so delightful to the observer. As the Poet says, Nature is beautiful for its variety alone.49 If all human beings, already made of the same substance and of the same preordained number of limbs, were also entirely alike in all respects—in looks, height, complexion, proportion, and fine features—the very foundation of the wonder generated by God’s works would be ruined. With good reason one would forbear from saying, “Great and wonderful are thy works, O Lord God Almighty” (Rv 15:3). It is precisely variety and dissimilarity that arouse amazement in our intellect and make divine omnipotence abundantly clear to our eyes—whether one considers humans themselves or their inner talents, wild beasts, birds and fish, or plants, flowers, and fruits. Why, then, do you defy the works of the Most Just One by decreeing that many women should live all together, alike in dress, dwelling place, food, and conduct, when the Lord of Lords makes it a miracle of His infinite wisdom for all things He created to be different? Why do you want to bend to your whim contrasting wills created so by nature? It is nothing less than 48. Genesis 4:1–17. There is no allusion in the Biblical account to Abel opposing Cain’s “impious counsel.” 49. “Solo per variar natura è bella.” Quote unidentified.

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P a t e r n a l Ty r a n n y wanting to change and correct the deeds of a Creator who cannot err. For each young girl inclined to lead a secluded life, a thousand others will shun it. If a young girl is pleased to consecrate her life to God in a cloister, is granted supernatural grace, and is attracted by the Holy Spirit’s promptings, then do not fail to attend to her desire by giving her your blessing. Do not dissuade her from her good thoughts, for you would be guilty of sin; and whatever is against one’s conscience is sin. If, on the other hand, her inclination runs contrary to this life and she wants to live with modest means in the world, do not force her into the cloister, for I assure you that the eternal abyss awaits you as punishment. Little wonder that you men glory ostentatiously in such misdeeds with the same pride you dared display up to the Golden Age, full of ambition, treachery, and bestial idolatry. The enormity of thousands of iniquities, added to your incomparable arrogance, disgusted the Prime Mover so much that after warnings, sermons, threats, and portents mercifully sent for your correction—since you never repented—you were visited with deserved punishment. God’s anger was delayed for a hundred years because of His beloved Noah—“a just and perfect man in his generation” (Gn 6:9)—whom God protected from His divine wrath. You, on the other hand, you failed to mend your ways throughout such a long reprieve; you drew down the thunderbolts from the merciful hands of the King of Heaven, who grieved, one could say, at having to punish you. You alone opened the sluice gates of Heaven, whence the whole world was flooded, an ungrateful world, although still beloved of the Lord to such an extent that the most holy Trinity did not disdain to say, “Let us make man to our image and likeness” (Gn 1:26). Just consider what presumption, what kind of sin, what manner of offense against Heaven must have been the one that aroused the most loving heart of a God forever benign and abundantly compassionate to such savage and total destruction. Holy King Solomon, a sacred poet, said about our God, “The earth is full of the mercy of the Lord” (Ps 32:5). Ponder my words, judicious Reader, for I have undertaken to describe only in part the sacrilege of these inhumane men who mass together wealth, titles, and prestige for their male offspring (who then go on to dissipate the wealth, despise the titles, and sully the prestige with their dissolute life, vices, and degradation), but who cast away as wretches their own flesh and blood that happens to be born female. I believe it was said of them in prophecy, “[Jerusalem’s] filthiness is on her feet, and she hath not remembered her end” (Lam 1:9). This passage undoubtedly refers to the souls of men who never think about their mortality, but walk along the filthy road of sin, which leads to perdition. Their conduct leads one to believe that they truly imagine that happiness lasts forever in this temporary, precarious life; they wake up to

Book One their wretchedness too late, since “the thoughts of men . . . are vain” (Ps 93:11). Their chimerical hopes often delude them, as when, overtaken by divine justice (it cannot err!), they remain deprived of the sons meant to bring them glory and from whom they hoped for immortality in further progeny. The fathers themselves die of grief in ignominy, only to be shut up forever within a narrow tomb—a fitting punishment for having shut up their own daughters within four walls.

F U R T H E R R E F L E C T I O N S O N T H E C R U E LT Y O F M E N

I address once more Heraclitus and Democritus: if you two were still among mortals, how much would you, Heraclitus, find reason to weep bitterly for the unhappy state of those poor women born under malign influences! And how much would you, Democritus, mock the blindness of madmen whose only goal is satisfaction of the senses and worldly goods and attachments. The latter remind me of the vile, ungrateful raven Noah sent out from the ark, who was forgetful of Noah’s grace in saving his life, and greedy too (as men usually are in their deeds). This raven never came back but stayed to feed on the putrefying remains of the dead. Afterwards, Noah set free the dove, symbol of feminine innocence and loving simplicity; she came back to the ark many times without spattering herself in mud, olive branch in mouth, the harbinger of peace. Women are just like that: once set free, whether by chance or by the good sense of those who value women’s integrity, they fly innocently through the heavens. They are neither corrupted by worldly vices nor muddied by the filthy vanities men lure them into by a thousand cunning means. Men resemble the raven, an especially cruel bird known to kill its own young; but men not only destroy the bodies of their young, they risk the souls of their own daughters by imprisoning them so they die almost in despair. Men are bearers of bad tidings not only in their conduct and manners, but also in their loves and loyalties; for like the raven, they remain outside Noah’s ark—that is, the law of God—to feed on the dead. Woman, on the other hand, is like the pure, innocent dove; she returns to her dwelling place with her face blushing in modesty and the peace of God in her speech. It is no use men reminding us of supposedly wicked women like Semiramis, Cleopatra, Lesbia, or Messalina, since there are exceptions to every rule, as they say (even then, these women did not lack some good qualities worthy of note and eternal praise).50 And there are more women who live now and 50. All the women mentioned in this cluster are found in Boccaccio’s Famous Women, Tarabotti’s most likely source. Semiramis was a legendary military queen of Assyria and builder of Baby-

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P a t e r n a l Ty r a n n y in every age to come boasting a glorious panoply of virtuous qualities and the finest chastity than there are stars in high heaven or waves in the sea! Let them be used as models for women alive on earth! Let them add to the glory of God in Heaven! In short, women’s sublime merits, privileged by God, are plain to see; and they were enriched by Heaven with outstanding gifts at the time of creation, even though some sharp wits like to assert the contrary, especially about chastity and modesty. What need is there to search for conceits to display women’s good sense, kindness, and modesty when God, nature, and its own temperament and manners have adorned our sex with every good quality? If a woman is accidentally drowned, you will see her body float face down to show that even in death she maintains a modest demeanor, her hallmark. She is showing how she has passed humbly in fear and reverence before the seat of the Most High. If a member of the male sex perishes, he will float face up even after breathing his last, his body stiff with insolence, swollen with pride, as if, ploughing through the waves, he wishes to defy Heaven itself.51 The fact is, the world admires few modest men, ones who are all the more amazed at learning about dissolute women because it is so rare and out of keeping with women’s innate decency. The rarity of chaste and virtuous men is also a cause for wonder, as vice and dishonesty usually reign in them. One can truly say that few men in our times live righteously because so many false, treacherous ones fill the earth with such pestiferous monsters that it is necessary to use fire to cure flesh corrupted by depravity and sinfulness.

F U R T H E R D E N I A L S O F “ E V I D E N C E ” I N F AV O R OF ENCLOSING WOMEN

But let me return to the path from which I have digressed and which was to show that God never ordained religious orders for women, never spoke of making nuns by force. The second father of the human race, Noah, privileged by the Lord on high, alone in the bleak, universal desolation of the lon. Cleopatra (69–30 B.C.E.), queen of Egypt, was the mistress of Julius Caesar and then Mark Antony. She died by her own hand rather than submit to the triumphant Roman Emperor Octavian. Sappho, born on Lesbos about 612 B.C.E., was the most famous women lyric poet of Greece (Boccaccio does not mention that she celebrated the love of women for girls in her poetry and neither does Tarabotti). Messalina murdered her husband to become the third wife of Nero in 66 C.E. She was noted for her eloquence and knowledge of literature. 51. This seemingly absurd gender distinction about bodies thrown into water was a commonplace in medieval and Renaissance polemics for and against the status of women. See, for example, Agrippa (note 21 above), 49.

Book One world, deservedly found divinely ordained salvation and generated the human race with his seed, repopulating the earth anew. Because he was beloved of the Lord, he heard the same words uttered by God to our first parents: “Increase and multiply” (Gn 1:22). Nevertheless, when the world’s renewal took place, there was never the slightest indication or even the shadow of a hint that His Divine Majesty, like some cruel barbarian, entertained any idea of enclosing women alive by force, making them lifetime exiles from paternal mansions. Perhaps in those early ages human malice was not so acutely refined as to teach men how to perform such savagery. Since free will was shared by men and women alike, as was the beautiful fabric of the universe, such unworthy decisions would not be carried out. (I refer to the desire to banish a freeborn woman, granted furthermore as a partner and help to a husband, to perpetual confinement in a narrow cell.) What merit is there in confining a woman for life inside a dark, gloomy prison, you madmen? None at all. Neither in the sight of God nor of man, because where the will fails to give consent, merit is null and void. The same befalls nuns (they have never committed any serious wrongdoing, unless it is wrong to be excessively modest and innocent), betrayed by parents and relatives almost as they lie sleeping, one could say, and imprisoned. When they awaken and realize the treacheries that have taken place, they raise their hands to their heads to find themselves shorn of their special grace. They find themselves, too, entangled in a net from which they cannot extricate themselves, a net woven by human malice, stronger and more difficult to loosen than the god Vulcan’s.52 They despair of finding an escape and live dying, if they live at all, tormented by a thousand rages and anxieties—their bodies bound up in religious habits and their souls ready to fall into Hell’s abyss. They cannot attain Paradise because their inner hearts are in contrast to their outer garments; they are whitened sepulchers, similar to the hypocrites of whom Christ spoke, “You are like to whitened sepulchers, which outwardly appear to men beautiful, but within are full of dead men’s bones” (Mt 23:27). You men are the cause, the inventors of holy façades that are in reality criminal. How can you, in conscience, kneel down in front of your confessors knowing, as Dante says, One can’t absolve a man who’s not repented.53

52. Vulcan, the blacksmith god of fire, was improbably married to the goddess of beauty and love, Venus. Vulcan caught her with her lover Mars in a finely woven net. See Ovid Met. 4.169– 89. 53. “ch’assolver non si può chi non si pente” (Inf. 27.118). Mandelbaum translation, 178.

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P a t e r n a l Ty r a n n y You are unable to repent, for your heart is like Pharaoh’s—hard, stubborn, entangled in a thousand lusts and greedy deeds—and you have already committed a sin for which there is no forgiveness even if you wished. Coming down from the mountain, Moses broke the tablets of stone on which God had inscribed the Ten Commandments in His own hand.54 You men, forever ungrateful, break the law with your iniquities, the law received from Christ and ratified with His blood on Mount Calvary. Yet you pretend that only nuns have been bound by inviolable constitutions and decrees that can never in any way, or at any time, admit exception. What a diabolical invention of yours! If a thief does not promise to restore his ill-gotten goods to the vicar of Christ in confession, he will not hear the words “I absolve you” and likewise if a slanderer does not promise to restore another’s reputation that he has destroyed. Yet once they have made the required restitutions, they will not be denied restoration to the state of grace. But you cannot experience the same forgiveness, because once you have forced an unhappy soul into the cloister it is no use repenting. You cannot restore the free will you have stolen because you are prohibited from violating that same cloister even for lawful reasons under threats of punishment, of ecclesiastical censure, and of excommunication—threats which are not meted out even to the worst, most vicious murderers alive. And what about the punishments decreed by both earthly and heavenly justice awaiting the nuns themselves? If, however, Heaven’s justice approves of actions that, done against a woman, have the air of being in her favor, is this not a grave abuse worthy of being abolished from human customs? As it is, although you might want to, you cannot withdraw the deed, and if you were ever assailed by feelings of compassion towards your own flesh and blood, you would have to resign yourself to what is irreversible. You are powerless to help nuns leave the cloister once the false law of the world gave you the authority to cast them there. (I myself am convinced that cruelty will never leave your heart to give place to a tenderness you have never known; you surpass the wildest beasts—who, after all, experience some tender feelings—in your pitilessness and inhumanity.)

T H E L I E S O F F AT H E R S D E C E I V E T H E I R D A U G H T E R S ; T H E I R U N F A I R T R E AT M E N T O F S O N S

We should no longer be shocked at the bestiality of Emperor Nero, which is known far and wide. He murdered his mother by ripping out the womb that had lovingly nourished him for nine months. He rewarded Seneca, one 54. See Exodus 20 and 32.

Book One of the wisest (I almost say divine) philosophers, with death for his learned labors.55 We should be even far less shocked by sons who attack their parents or by disciples who attack their masters, however, than by the utter barbarity of fathers against their own daughters. With empty rhetoric they later veil their baseness with lying phrases, saying that it is only because they are so besotted with their daughters that they send them far away from the slings of unstable fortune, that they would only too gladly bestow generous dowries on them, but they could never be sure that their daughters would be happy, and certain of their happiness, for so many untoward events could befall them, of which this evil world is only too full. Alas! This is all pretense and open prevarication. “And they loved him with their mouth, and with their tongue they lied unto him” (Ps 77:36). The lying, flattering tongue pronounces an undying love; the truth is that, once inside, the young girl is forgotten, remembered every now and then, “once in a blue moon,” as they say, when her father has nothing else to think about or when his mood swings. But true love is proved by deeds. He would never think, of course, of shutting himself up among monks, even if he were beaten black and blue; nevertheless, so his daughter might understand how much more desirable liberty is among the severities of the cloister than all the desirable pleasures, ease, and comforts of life in the world, he preaches withdrawal and chastity for the ones he compels to enter. At the same time, footloose and fancy-free, he strives to enjoy every possible delight, drowning himself in a thousand vices. It can be said of him, “He is no longer a man, nor even alive.”56 You wicked dissimulators in religious disguise who exhort others to sanctity! Do you not realize that Saint Augustine knew your false heart and described it thus: “A feigned fairness is not fairness but a double wickedness, for it is wickedness and in addition pretense”?57 I would like to tell you an 55. Tarabotti has already referred to Nero as a persecutor of Christians, above, note 37. Seneca, Nero’s tutor, a Roman Stoic philosopher, was ordered to take his own life by Nero in 65 C.E. Nero also put his mother Messalina to death. The fullest accounts of Nero and Seneca are in Tacitus Annals 14.3; and Suetonius, Life of Nero, 34. Many legends exaggerated Nero’s cruelty, including one about him ripping out his mother’s womb. 56. “Né uomo è più, né vivo.” Another example of Tarabotti altering a quote in a polemical context to advantage her own side and refute a rival. In Lodovico Dolce’s book of advice for women, De gli ammaestramenti pregiatissimi, regarding their three states in life as virgins, wives, and widows (Venice: Barezzo Barezzi, 1622), Dolce quotes the following about the primacy of the virtue of chastity for women: “Chi si lascia di suo honor privare, / Nè donna è più, né viva” (“One who allows her honor to be lost, / Is no longer a woman, nor even alive”), 36. Tarabotti will repeat her own version of the quote in Che le donne, 67. The source is Petrarch, Canzoniere 262: 5–6. 57. “Simulata aequitas non est aequitas, sed duplex iniquitas, quia et iniquitas est, et simulatio.” Enarrationes in Psalmos, 63:11. CD Rom. Turnhout, Belgium: CETEDOC Library of Christian Latin Texts, 2002.

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P a t e r n a l Ty r a n n y exemplary tale, well known to all, which I shall not leave out here as it suits my purpose: Once upon a time, there was a son whose parents failed to guide him along the paths of virtue and salvation, even as he reached maturity. Still worse, through his father’s neglect, his crimes reached such a point that he ended up in the hands of the law and was condemned to death. At the dreaded moment, he asked as a last favor to be allowed to kiss his father. The onlookers were moved by such a request and expected a tender spectacle; but while they waited to see a loving gesture deriving from affection between father and son, the condemned wretch on embracing his father bit off his nose in a wild rage. It was a sign of the son’s innocence; for although his crimes had reduced him to the gallows, only the father was to blame for his sad end by having neglected to bring him up properly. I myself can guarantee the truth of this precept: children whose good upbringing starts at the earliest age not only learn to walk along virtue’s path, but preserve their civil behavior for life: Earliest use of the wine jar imparts the bouquet That is longest lasting.58 But if parents set a bad example for a child, letting him witness all kinds of lechery and hear all kinds of obscenities, they sow the seeds of arrogance in the child’s mind. When he is reminded of his noble birth, his arrogance will grow with his size and bring forth fruits worthy of the father’s lack of good sense. By disseminating bad habits in a tender mind, the father harms himself and his son. See for yourself if you doubt the absolute truth of my words! Go and ask one of these children, who as yet cannot put two syllables together, let alone a whole word, “What will become of your sisters?” Immediately, without a moment’s hesitation, prompted by that cunning disposition shaped by his father’s upbringing, he will say, “They’ll become nuns, because I want to be rich.” (These words are dictated by pride, the reason for these children from their infancy showing themselves to be wicked and evil, for it is said, “Pride is the root of all evil.”) The father takes satisfaction in hearing what his own cunning has contrived for his son to learn against us women. All 58.

Quo semel est imbuta recens, servabit odorem testa diu. (Horace Ep. 1.2.69–70) Translation by Passage, The Complete Works of Horace, 264.

Book One this occurs even before he reaches the age of reason (reason has been put to sleep), while the two chatter aimlessly. It’s enough for nothing else to be discussed in these doomed families, no other business to be dealt with. It may nevertheless happen—God rightly permitting—that in such a family the line is extinguished without issue on the sons dying and the daughters not being able to obtain release from their vows. These are truly divine chastisements; though grinding slowly, God’s mill does not fail.59

T H E D AY O F J U D G M E N T F O R M E N

Your death may signal the moment for someone you loathed in life to inherit your goods—all your money, sumptuous palaces, furnishings, and excessive luxuries. While your tormented soul, separated from its body but not from gold, will plunge into eternal suffering, it will leave behind in spite of yourself all the wealth you never wanted to part with, even to provide adequately for your own flesh and blood. With your damnation will come deprivation of the beatific vision; in comparison, all the most precious stones from the earth and the largest, whitest pearls of oyster shells from the sea are nothing more than insubstantial shadows. The tiniest atom of celestial glory, you see, is more precious than all the treasures squandered throughout the past centuries and enjoyed in the present or as many as the earth might yield in the future to satiate human greed up to the Day of Judgment. On that day, in fact, all deceptions will be revealed, all doubts solved, because the book of consciences will be open for all to see. As we are told, the Book of Seals will be opened on the Day of Judgment.60 To you who have exercised authority in the world, a favorable sentence will not be given. A just, righteous judge will sit in judgment, and he will not be partial to sex or rank or position because God “made the little and the great” (Wis 6:8). Woe to those who have failed to distinguish right from wrong, who have cloaked their evil works with the pretense of goodness! God will not respect crooked men because they are powerful; rather, each one will be rewarded or punished according to his deserts. The Majesty who scrutinizes our heart’s least thought, each and every fault, each and every merit, will leave no evil deed unpunished and no good deed unrewarded. Then the light will dawn as to whether you are allowed all vices just because you are male or whether you are under greater obligation to conquer 59. See another exemplary anecdote in book 2, 88, about a similar situation. 60. The opening of the Book of Seven Seals, and the ensuing doom and destruction, are described in Revelation, chaps. 5–8.

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P a t e r n a l Ty r a n n y your passions and overcome your impulses by your vain claim to be “the stronger sex.” Then it will be made known if your fornications, adulteries, thefts, slayings, blasphemies, and all your other sins have been recorded in that awesome book, inscribed in adamantine for all eternity without hope of erasure: you will be obliged to satisfy the demands of divine justice for never ending pain. Then you will discover whether you have permission to indulge in false love affairs with women of every rank, and the protestations that you are now making about being in love with every single one of them will be turned against you—you will feel such remorse you will want to repent, but it will no longer be possible. As for the poets feeding you with conceits so you may play the role of the perfect paramour—a thousand tales of fictitious gods—their eloquence will fail you. Those artificial turns of phrase will be useless in defending you against the pricks of your own conscience. How might these wretches assist you if (as Dante relates in his Inferno) all lying poets will have to refine their lying tongues, not in Vulcan’s fabled forge, but in the true forge of eternal fire?61 Believe you me, you will all be equal in status then; it will be no use proclaiming I’m of illustrious birth, of no ordinary rank; I’m rich, I can do as I please. The laws are not made for me, but for women and other unfortunate creatures. As Solon says, even if a lowly beggar never trespasses, because he’s weak he’ll be caught and severely punished, for the law is as easy to break as a spider’s web. I do not have to suffer such an ignominious fate; I’m strong and able to resist; I’m an important figure. I can break the law without anyone accusing me, or still less punishing me.62

61. A reference, perhaps, to pagan poets and perhaps most of all to Ovid, whose Metamorphoses could be said to contain the “thousand tales of fictitious gods” mentioned by Tarabotti. Dante, whose guide for most of the underworld was the pagan epic poet Virgil, exalted poets as repositories of sublime wisdom—theological, political, and ethical. Virtuous pagans, including philosophers, poets, and historians, are placed in a privileged green field in Limbo, where they are not in pain, only unfulfilled because unaware of the truth of revelation. But there are no poets damned for their fictions in Inferno. The reference to “lying tongues” may nevertheless point to Ulysses, who is among those who gave fraudulent advice (Inf. 26) and is punished by flames consuming his “lying tongue.” He is the hero of Homer’s Odyssey, but his exploits are also recounted in Ovid, book 13. On the other hand, there are many poets in Purgatorio, where they are lightly punished for excessive love, not for lying. Tarabotti’s view may reflect current religious instruction about the dangers of explicitly pagan poetry to faith and morals. 62. Solon (fl. 6th c. B.C.E.), Athenian statesman and poet, was famed as a lawgiver and constitutional reformer. He released serfs and put Athens on the road to democracy, making him an unlikely choice for the admiration of Tarabotti’s cruel fathers. Solon’s accomplishments are listed in Diogenes Laertius’ Lives of Eminent Philosophers, vol. 1, trans. R.D. Hicks (Cambridge Mass.

Book One You fool! God’s eye observes you, and his righteous hand will punish you forever. Then you will comprehend what punishment your sins deserve, especially the wickedness of forcing women to become nuns. If these women (like the wretch condemned to death) were to bite off their fathers’ noses to indicate paternal responsibility for all the evils and sorrows befallen their daughters—beyond the principal one of denying them the sweet, free air of Heaven—you wouldn’t see a single man without this member missing. They would all be mutilated monsters!63 A similar punishment is meted out by earthly justice to those I shall call “Cupid’s legates,” or go-betweens, an understatement you will understand. A corresponding penalty should be meted out to you when you employ all your power in delivering your own daughters over to the devil, becoming— let me say it—Satan’s pimps. By shutting them up against their wills, you cause them to hate their very selves and fabricate a thousand castles in the air—a distraction hardly suitable for divine worship. What’s worse—you diabolical rather than loving playmates of Satan—your eloquence towards your daughters will merit the torments you deserve; and your vile and detestable service will find its recompense in eternal woes. Right and just it is, since you show an innate desire to do nothing or to make no effort without hope of a future reward. But what kind of reward, you fools? To gain eternal damnation, you strive hard, enmeshing yourselves in these errors of persuasion so as to appear the directors of a Catholic undertaking. You diligently weave your conceits, not merely to attain your goals, but to prove that you have committed such damnable sacrilege in a devout frame of mind and persuade the world that the sacrifice you offer to the devil should be believed a victim destined for the altar of God. You expect recompense, yet you will receive from Lucifer the same one that the foolish and falsely religious Thracians and London: Loeb Classical Library, reprint 1995), 46–69. One of the sayings attributed to him is the source of the spider metaphor: “Solon compared laws to spiders’ webs, which stand firm when any light and yielding object falls on them, while a large thing breaks through them and makes off” (59). Diogenes was translated into both Latin and Italian and printed countless times in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. An Italian translation, with added interpretations, comes close to what Tarabottti has her fathers say: “Le leggi son come le telle d’aragni, le quali solo gli animaletti piccioli ritengono, & gli grossi & possenti lasciano andare, & si rompono: intendendo per piccioli i poveri, i quali per ogni picciol diffetto caggiono nella rete, & per grossi i ricchi, et potenti, che trapassano rompendo tutte le leggi” (“The laws are like spiders’ webs, which catch only tiny insects, and let the large and strong ones pass through, and break the net. By tiny insects [Solon] means the poor, who are caught in webs for every minor infraction; by the large and strong, he means the rich and powerful, who pass through breaking all the laws.”), Compendio delle Vite de’ Filosofi Antichi Greci et Latini et delle Sentenze, e Detti loro notabili, tratte da [Diogene] Laerzio . . . (Venice: G. Brugnuolo, 1598), fol. 3ro. 63. See above, this book, 74.

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P a t e r n a l Ty r a n n y receive from their Mohammed.64 For them, there will be no lack after death of infinite savage, eternal torments. When you believe you’re at the summit of worldly success, you’ll realize you are nothing, enjoying nothing but vanities, indeed, becoming one with vanity itself: “Vanity of vanities is every living man” (Eccl 1:2, adapted). You even boast wittily about how you’ve extricated your family from the burden of its young women and done it prudently, with not a few advantages to your credit—how you’ve done some good deals by shutting the poor young innocents in the cloister. You consider yourselves wise—shrewd—but you will finally realize what Solomon thought of you when he wrote, “The number of fools is infinite” (Eccl 1:15). Yes indeed, you act like madmen, for you don’t give a thought to the end you’ll come to and struggle to line your pockets by delivering wretched women to the poorhouse, rejoicing in the deprivations of your own offspring. The Holy Spirit had you in mind with these words: “They are glad when they have done evil, and rejoice in most wicked things” (Prv 2:14). What boasts and mirth can be more foolish than claiming to have performed your last deeds of gallantry by showing cruelty? You’ll deny in vain, O brutes, your heart of stone for as long as so many diverse torments, and your own daughters’ tears, fail to move you to pity. The ancient poets feigned, not without reason, that mankind was born from stones that Pyrrha and Deucalion threw over their shoulders.65 Plainly we see that by throwing over your shoulders love for your own flesh and blood, you shut up hearts of stone within your human breasts. That’s what you’re like, you who, taken in by your blind passions, deceive your young girls. You think you’re completely happy upon seeing yourselves afloat in a sea of riches; the words of the Lord God in the Apocalypse to the man who thought himself both fortunate and happy fall on your deaf ears: “Thou . . . knowest not that thou art wretched, and miserable, and poor, and blind, and naked” (Rv 3:17). And all this befalls you because, by denying women that exceptional gift of free will granted to them by God, you make yourself wretched for all eternity. How short on intelligence, blind in intellect, and lacking in grace you are!

64. Thracians, whose territory corresponded to present-day Bulgaria, were considered a ferocious and warlike people. Some were converted to Christianity, and of these some were won over to Islam, which may be why Tarabotti calls them apostates. 65. Deucalion, the son of Prometheus, was married to Pyrrha. After a deluge sent by Jupiter, they were the progenitors of a new race, which sprang forth from stones thrown over their shoulders. See Ovid Met. 1.381–415.

Book One L I B E R T Y I S O F G R E A T E R VA L U E T H A N L I F E I T S E L F

Christ Our Lord pointed out two ways for us to follow, one leading to Heaven’s light and the other to Hell’s darkness. When He became man to save us, He did not say, “I insist that you take the road to salvation against your wishes because I’ve died for you”; He left the decision in our hands. Indeed, He warned us, “How narrow is the gate and strait is the way that leadeth to life, and few there are that find it! . . . Wide is the gate and broad is the way that leadeth to destruction, and many there are that go in thereat” (Mt 7:14, 13). Yet you imagine—prompted by worldly interests—that the road to salvation is easy for the women you’ve enclosed in a convent, as if it’s enough to be shut up within the straitened conditions of two cloister walls to rise to Heaven. You take it upon yourselves to correct our most loving God’s decisions, though He invites us, persuades us, and promises grace if on our part we cooperate with Him. If we insist on losing our souls, He laments: “Destruction is thy own, O Israel: thy help is only in me” (Hos 13:9). You try forcibly to save them and with a tyrant’s yoke deprive them of liberty valued so dearly—many have voluntarily submitted themselves to that frightening warrior, death, whose scythe triumphs indiscriminately over all, rather than to remain without it. When the Carthaginians wanted to avoid the burden of subjugation to Rome, they put their own city to the torch, preferring to shed luster on themselves rather than submit to Roman chains and lose their free status.66 Cato of Utica took his own life rather then lose liberty, as did Saul the Hebrew king, Brutus, Cassius, and other famous princes and senators.67 Liberty is the most precious gift of life, and the sweetest. So said Plato, thanking the gods for having been born a Greek and not a barbarian—that is, free and not a slave. So if liberty is the dearest, most desirable human joy, slavery and confinement must be without doubt a woman’s most unbearable and odious misfortune, for she must suffer what God granted her to be taken 66. The destruction of Carthage (146 B.C.E.) was the final act of the Punic Wars between Rome and Carthage. 67. For Cato, see above, note 4. Dante makes Cato, although a pagan, the guardian of the shores of Purgatory for his willingness to sacrifice his own life rather than submit to tyranny. Tarabotti follows Dante’s generous judgment. Brutus and Cassius collaborated in the assassination of Julius Caesar; they both took ship to Thrace in 42 B.C.E. and engaged with Antony and Octavian at Philippi, a battle they lost. Cassius killed himself after the first battle, and Brutus after the second. King Saul, elder rival of the more famous King David, fought the Philistines with David, then grew jealous and made attempts on his life. Grievously wounded in battle by Philistine archers, he fell on his sword (1 Kgs 31:4).

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P a t e r n a l Ty r a n n y away by men. Being wealthy, noble, intelligent, and perfectly healthy are gifts to make any creature rejoice; but if such blessings and good fortune must be enjoyed in a prison, they will seem despicable, even odious. Is there anyone who would not crave his liberty more than any other good fortune? Liberty bears no comparison with other goods that once enjoyed leave one satiated. Liberty holds pride of place among mortals, a heavenly gift from the hands of our universal benefactor: You cannot sell liberty for all the gold that is; This heavenly gift surpasses the world’s wealth.68 Let Cleopatra bear witness: a noble lady on whom fortune showered an abundance of earthly happiness. Young, beautiful, rich, she was queen of Egypt, one of the happiest women alive. Yet rather than be subject to Julius Caesar and allow him to use her as a trophy in his triumphal processions, she chose to take her own life by clasping a poisonous asp to her arm rather than die in servitude.69 (High-minded, noble women have always thought slavery worse than death.) What do you envious men say to that? Her qualities show you, in contrast, to be spiteful liars whenever you dare to attribute the title of “fragile” to our sex. Even when defenseless, she knew how to conquer one of the world’s greatest heroes and bravely outstrip a man who wanted this great queen’s presence to vaunt his own exploits. Liberty, and nothing else, the priceless gift of the King of Heaven, enables fish to dart about in the sea, birds to fly in the air, wild beasts to roam the forests. If a treacherous hand captures a bird and imprisons it—even in a golden cage, fed on dainty morsels, it nonetheless is always watching, seeking with its beak to create a gap for an escape to freedom. If it ever succeeds, it gladly abandons its morsels and cage adornments and jubilantly returns to enjoy solitude and windy currents, risking death rather than safe life in a cage, its liberty compromised. Now if dumb animals know instinctively that nothing is more wretched than slavery—as Cicero, the father of eloquence, says in De natura deorum, “What can we speak of or imagine more wretched than slavery?”70—why, like tyrants, do you wish to enslave 68.

Non bene pro toto libertas venditur auro Hoc coeleste bonum preterit orbis opes. Aesop, fable about the wolf and the dog, in Leopold Hervieux, ed., Les fabulistes latins 5 vols. (Paris: Firmin-Didot, 1893–99), 2: 412. G. Passi uses the same quote in Dello stato maritale (On Marriage) (Venice, 1602), 12, citing Horace. 69. Octavian, not Julius Caesar, was the Roman general who finally conquered Alexandria in Egypt (30 C.E.), and would have brought Cleopatra to Rome in triumph. See also note 50 above. 70. “Miserius servitute quid possumus aut dicere aut excogitare?” I cannot find this quotation in De natura deorum, although in the Paradoxes, Cicero discusses the proposition that “Only the wise

Book One woman’s noble soul by means of barbaric laws? This is too cruel a deprivation of liberty because vows of obedience bind them, made eternal by oaths you force nuns to take, furthermore, so they are no longer in charge of their own lives. Yet if obedience is such a precious virtue in God’s eyes—He descended from Heaven to earth to practice it, “becoming obedient until death” (Phil 2:8)—I declare it is useless and of no value or merit whatsoever when not voluntary.

N U N S ’ V O W S D E P R I V E T H E M O F L I B E RT Y

Suppose—rather, take it as beyond doubt—that more than a third of the nuns forced to take vows experience feelings contrary to what they profess. They yield through fear, not desire, to the slings of outrageous fortune you have wickedly devised for them. Entertain for a while the vision of those hearts forever afflicted, overflowing with bitterness and resentment: if there was one Judas among the twelve apostles, you may well conclude that among such a large number of miserable nuns, many with little or no peace of soul suffer evils caused by your irreligion. Remember, therefore, that in calling His disciples to follow him, Our Blessed Lord never behaved harshly or with threats and tricks, but always kindly and with loving tenderness. To one He said, “Follow me” (Mt 8:22); to another, as to Matthew himself, He infused this grace with a single loving glance; and even to the ones cured of physical ills, He asked first if they wanted to be well: “Wilt thou be made whole?” (Jn 5:6), He said to the sick man by the pool. In short, those heavenly ears were pleased to hear “I want it” freely given; God wants us to agree freely to His favors, which He then grants; and so He would capture His followers by treating them kindly. On the other hand, you would tie up the bodies of the freeborn by threats, insults and injuries; you would restrict them forever to one place, trouble their souls, and dispose of their wills. They possess no less than you all the advantages of free choice, which can be taken away only by death; yet you still condemn them to a living hell, torturing and burdening them with such inviolable and cruel obligations it would make a stone weep. Once vows have been made, duty commands their fulfillment; but when the heart is contrary, when its sentiments are not in accord with its own verbal assent and satisfaction, I think more harm will result to your soul than a nun’s breaking of the rules will result to hers. In the case of a nun’s unchastity,

man is free, and only the fool is a slave” and expresses sentiments similar to Tarabotti’s about the wretchedness of being enslaved to the passions (40).

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P a t e r n a l Ty r a n n y wouldn’t it be better by far if you chastised her with all the rigors of earthly justice—threats, punishments, and keeping her in prison—without forcing her to take vows involving divine justice? It makes no sense to lay siege to these women by bundles of legal restrictions on top of the mortification of isolation and having to dwell for life in the same convent, which are punishments enough. Did an ungrateful fate ordain these rules, or the harshness of cruel parents who say, Let what I decide be taken as fate’s decrees.71 Such are the scandalous abuses born within the bosom of the Roman Church, deriving from no other source than men’s greed and arrogance, as I have shown, in giving advantage to males at the expense of denying females the dowry owed them. But should we be so amazed at men’s pride sailing into such vast seas to drown there, if we remember the second age of the world, after the Flood, when the reckless Nimrod attempted to alter Heaven’s laws by building a tower? His aim was to build it so high its turrets would arrive at God’s kingdom—Nimrod wanted to wage war against the Almighty to revenge the slaughter of his ancestors in the Flood. “Come,” the fool roared, “let us make a city and a tower, the top whereof may reach to heaven: and let us make our name famous before we be scattered abroad into all lands” (Gn 11:4). So it is written in Moses’ chronicles.72 What vain ambition! What insolence! It almost rivals Satan’s; at any rate, such foolhardiness could only take hold in a male breast; and it provoked the most violent thunderbolts not from the false, but from the true, just Jupiter. I have made a most reasonable comparison between Nimrod’s blind presumption and your evil doings, you fathers, brothers, and relatives of enslaved nuns, who resemble so many Nimrods. Your tower is a convent, an invention of your pride. Instead of a temple of God, it becomes an arena of combat against His Divine Majesty, where the rules of religious life are continually broken. From the construction of Babel, whose foundations were laid over Hell, there arose seventy-two languages, each one incomprehensible to all the others. From the construction of the cloister’s walls, founded on your self-interested greed and your diabolical vainglory, as I have shown, there arise not a diversity of tongues, but of opinions, whence all unwilling nuns live in confusion, their thoughts and points of view clashing one with 71. “Sia destin ciò che voglio” (Tasso Ger. lib. 4.17). Pluto/Lucifer is addressing the demonic troops before their battle with the Christian armies. 72. The first five books of the Old Testament, called the Pentateuch, were thought to have been written by Moses.

Book One the other. You are the main reason for all this, because you bury the women you brought into the light, entombing them alive: they are all the fruits of your subterfuges and profanity.

N U N S S U R PA S S M O N K S I N V I RT U E

If you care to know, the fault for women falling into errors they would never have dreamed of lies not with their “nature,” supposedly inclined to evil, but with your bad treatment. Consider how far nuns surpass men in goodness and conduct—I speak of men who don with ease a religious habit but never a religious life—even when these nuns have been dressed in the habit against their wills. What shameless spectacles have come to light throughout the ages from men in religious life—or rather, from monsters who despise true religion! You want to claim for yourselves an indecent liberty, although bound by the same vows as nuns, deeming that the restrictions of rigid observance are necessary for them alone. There was once a monk like you called Sergius, the teacher and preacher of the cursed Mohammed.73 The Pelagians, Arians, and Manichees—heretical sects—originated for the most part within the cloisters; succumbing to ambition, these hermits thought to make the world their oyster by spreading heresy.74 The Catholic Church has suffered no greater persecution than

73. Tarabotti’s reference to “Sergio monaco” corresponds most closely to a Sergius, Patriarch of the Greek Church in Constantinople in the seventh century, who taught a new doctrine about the nature of Christ that was condemned by the Latin Lateran Council of 649. He accepted that there were two natures in Christ, divine and human, but only one source of energy. His doctrine was called Monothelitism (there were other versions of his doctrine), and it spread to Syria, Armenia, and Egypt, where Islam also spread in the seventh century and made converts. Tarabotti’s information could have been gathered from G. Tarcagnota, Delle Historie del mondo (above, note 5), vol. 3, 295, where a “Sergio monaco e heretico” (“the monk and heretic Sergius”) is called a companion of Mohammed. His heresy is the one just described. 74. The Pelagians were founded by Pelagius in the fourth century, who was called a “voluntarist” in that he believed that human beings could achieve virtue and salvation by the efforts of their own will, without divine grace, a doctrine rigorously fought by Saint Augustine. In his exaltation of free will, Pelagius denied that original sin had damaged one’s ability to be ethical. His teaching was condemned by the Council of Carthage in 411–12, although versions of it were revived at the time of the sixteenth-century Reformation. The Arians, founded by Arius, a priest of Alexandria also of the fourth century, were basically anti-Trinitarian. Only God the Father was truly God; Christ (God the Son) was not fully divine, and neither was the Holy Spirit. The Incarnation did not mean that God became man. In Tarabotti’s time, these views were held by Unitarians and anti-Trinitarians, especially the Socinians, founded by Lelio (1525–62) and Fausto (1539–1605) Sozzini. The movement was strong in Poland, and then England. The Manichees, founded by a Persian, Mani, in the third century, taught that there were two creative forces, one good (the spirit or soul) and one evil (the body and material

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P a t e r n a l Ty r a n n y from a monk who apostatized, that false Luther. Yet despite so many shameful, profane deeds committed by the male sex, our own age has seen a work published entitled De regimine monialium (On the Religious Life of Nuns).75 I say these false religious—I speak with respect of good ones—should pay attention to bridling their senses and submitting themselves to the obedience prescribed by their order’s rule. They are not allowed every pleasure, nor are they allowed to crave and procure favors and ecclesiastical preferments by dishonest means and simony so they can then squander their benefices scandalously. But above all, they should stop interfering with ways to regulate nuns, whose activities could serve them as an example of how to lead a good life. These false monks, who cause scandals so damaging to the church, become recognized as proxies, stewards unworthy of authority and unworthy members of the body of Christ.

creation). There is an unending struggle between the two principles. In the Middle Ages, the Cathars and the Albigensians were offshoots of the Manichees. 75. Martin Luther (1483–1546), an Augustinian monk, was the founder of the German Protestant Reformation. He preached justification or salvation by faith alone and stood against the primacy of the pope and the infallibility of General Councils of the Church. He was excommunicated in 1521. The tract Tarabotti refers to is probably Tractatio de Monialibus by Francesco Pellizzari, S. J. (Venice: Paulo Baleoneo, 1646), a detailed manual concerning every aspect of the religious life for nuns and following the rules and regulations brought in after the Council of Trent. I am grateful to Elissa Weaver for this reference. Tarabotti is asserting her own religious orthodoxy in this section by showing no sympathy for any form of heresy, and especially for Luther. She thereby clearly distances herself from accusations of sympathy for Protestantism.

BOOK TWO

A D M O N I T I O N T O F AT H E R S W H O A C T AGAINST THEIR DAUGHTERS’ INTERESTS

G

ood and evil resemble one another so much in appearance, although they contrast so much in reality, that anyone lacking the eagle eye of prudence will find it hard to tell them apart. It is because of this that mortals delude themselves; and as the Philosopher says, all desire to grasp the good, which is “by its very nature made knowable,” and therefore “desired by all”; and likewise all desire to shun evil.1 But while evil resides among men detested, disguised, and unrecognized, many end up grasping it, thinking they have embraced its opposite precisely because appearances deceive. Indeed, the true good cannot be found on earth, although you madmen boast that you can grant it—when you cannot, except as an illusion— to those women you drive into the convent to endure solitude, perpetual servitude, and poverty, all repulsive things in themselves. Your belief is only too truly mere appearance, the opposite of a good, for so many— rather, countless—evils arise from it. Saint John Chrysostom says that the monastery is the house of mourning and penitence; who lives there has the proper task of grieving, mortifying the flesh, and self-flagellation.2 Yet if we 1. “The Philosopher” is Aristotle. For the good desired by all see Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics, chap. 1, in Latin translation with commentary by Thomas Aquinas: “Nam bonum est quod omnia appetunt, et per consequens voluntas per se refugit malum” (“For the good is what all beings desire, and as a consequence, the will of itself shuns what is evil”), In Decem Libris Ethicorum Aristotelis expositio (Turin and Rome, 1949), 500. As for the good sharing itself, see Summa Theologiae, IIIa Pars, Quaestio 1, art. 1 (Turin and Rome, 1956). On the appropriateness of the Incarnation, Thomas Aquinas, paraphrasing (pseudo) Dionysius the Areopagite, On the Divine Names, chaps. 1 and 4, says, “Ipsa autem natura Dei est bonitas . . . pertinet autem ad rationem Dei ut se aliis communicet” (“God’s very nature is goodness . . . it belongs, however, to the purpose of what is good to communicate itself and share itself with others”). 2. An early Greek Christian writer (ca. 347–407 C.E.) and “Doctor of the Church,” Chrysostom was bishop of Constantinople and famous as a preacher of homilies (his name means “golden-

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P a t e r n a l Ty r a n n y do not walk along this way to Paradise of our own choice, we cast ourselves in despair into Hell. The ancient pagan philosophers were better than you who are or ought to be Christians. They praised a frugal, even austere, life, withdrawn from the public eye, and they taught it by example, having first practiced it themselves. You instead want to be a Midas in wealth and a Heliogabalus in vice, striving to make Solomon’s words your own: “And whatsoever my eyes desired, I refused them not: and withheld not my heart from enjoying every pleasure” (Eccl 2:10). Then you go on preaching piety, withdrawal from the world, and thrift—all of which reveals your self-interest—so that under the pretext of fairness, you may waste your life in licentiousness like a Sardanapalus.3 You want your own flesh and blood to make vows to high heaven to struggle against their natural instincts and senses, difficult to repress even for that chosen vessel, Saint Paul.4 Although confirmed in grace by the Holy Spirit so as not to commit mortal sin, he would still confess: “But I see another law in my members, fighting against the law of my mind and captivating me in the law of sin” (Rm 7:23). You want your daughters to bow their heads at every insult, and when struck on one cheek, promptly turn the other; whereas you cannot even bear someone to cast you a leering glance without wanting to get rid of him body and soul—to redeem which soul the Giver of Life was pleased to die suffering torments. You make sure they imitate Pythagoras in their silence,5 whereas your obscene language, inane tittle-tattle, swearing, slander, and curses resound everywhere. In short, you would have them so many Platonic Ideas of virtue, so many mirrors of holiness, whereas you remain the very Idea of iniquity, the portrait

mouthed”). He was popular in the Renaissance as a model of Christian oratory. Giuseppe Passi quotes him frequently for his ascetic stance. I cannot locate this reference. 3. Midas (738–696 B.C.E.) was a historical king of Phrygia, who entered mythology for his magical power to turn anything he touched into gold. Heliogabalus (Elagabalus), Roman emperor in the years 218–22 C.E., took his name from the Syrian sun god; he was reputed for decadence and corruption and for obscene rites in magnificent temples. Sardanapalus, a king of Assyria, was also known for his decadence and excess and became the archetype for a weak, effeminate ruler. He burned himself to death together with his treasures rather than allow others to take them. 4. Paul himself frequently uses the metaphor of vas meaning “vessel,” “utensil,” or “pot” to refer to human beings who can be used by God for good or bad ends. See Romans 9:21 and 2 Timothy 2:20–21. Because of the belief that he was chosen or elected by God as an equal to the apostles to spread the gospel, Paul himself was known as the “chosen vessel.” 5. Pythagoras (fl. 6th c. B.C.E.) was one of the earliest Greek philosophers and a mathematician. His disciples were enjoined to keep silence for five years listening to their master before they participated in discussion.

B o o k Tw o of ungodliness. If they were ever to arrive at such a state of sanctity as to be canonized as saints, I am more than certain that your meanness would then grieve at their abundant goodness: you are not interested in your daughters’ holiness, but in shoving them out of the house with the least damage to your purse and without diminishing those money bags that drive you out of your mind. How much you fools delude yourselves! How far your daughters’ wills differ from your whims, though they must pass the pillars of Hercules of your cruelty, inscribed “Thus far and no further.”7 They must set sail on an ocean of infinite hardships without ever arriving at a friendly port! But dear fathers and interested relatives, do not fear any great holiness from them. Even if they had the gift of reaching perfection, you’d make them change their minds with your desire to impose your will on theirs. The result is they spend their days with everything else in mind other than becoming holy, even though—because they can do nothing else—they submit to your exceeding harshness. The fruit of your inhuman behavior will be nothing but repentance and shame, and because of this (slightly altering Petrarch) I shall sing, 6

And of your severity, shame is the fruit.8

A T R U E S T O RY I L L U S T R AT I N G T H E A B O V E

What greater disgrace can befall you than the desolation of your house, arising from the curses of your veiled, imprisoned daughters turned into slaves and visited upon you by Heaven’s immutable justice. You may dispose of their bodies, but they lose their souls. The God who always was and always will be just will not fail to deliver your deserved punishment; the longer it takes to come, the more severe it will be, whether regarding temporal or spiritual goods. May the following true story of a recent event verify what I say. It is no fiction: 6. The Platonic Ideas were not ordinary mental concepts, but abstract essences—Beauty, Goodness, Truth—existing outside the mind; individual examples were reflections of the Ideas. 7. The ancients thought that the straits of Gibraltar closing the Mediterranean marked the end of the mapped-out world; going beyond would be courting disaster. According to legend, Hercules placed two pillars there, one on either side of the strait, with the motto given by Tarabotti. For his exploits, see Ovid Metamorphoses 9.102–401. 8. “E del vostro rigor vergogna e` il frutto.” Petrarch’s verse reads: “et del mio vaneggiar vergogna è il frutto” (“and of my raving, shame is the fruit”), referring to his sensual passion for Laura; see Canzoniere, sonnet 1, line 13, in Petrarch’s Lyric Poems, trans. and ed. R. M. Durling (Cambridge, Mass., 1976).

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P a t e r n a l Ty r a n n y There lived a gentleman who enjoyed numerous offspring, namely, three sons and a daughter, as well as many blessings of fortune including wealth and an enviable way of life. The daughter was forced to enter the cloister by her own father’s cruelty, not God’s calling. The eldest son was forced to seek refuge in one of the strictest religious orders because of his father’s bad conduct; the second also withdrew to a monastery to escape his father’s barbarity. Infatuated with his third son, who became his favorite, the father brought him up with every indulgence so he could then be joined in holy matrimony. He was the one who assumed all the honors and titles that make up the luxuries and comforts of a generously provided-for marriage. Then suddenly there arrived a shaft from the divine thunderbolt. Dante may say: The sword that strikes from Heaven’s height is neither hasty nor slow, but all the more severe the more it is delayed.9 It arrives nonetheless, when least expected, to strike those who have offended His Divine Majesty. This same son who was the beginning and the end of the paternal heart’s every thought and desire stabbed his own wife to death with a thousand blows—this unfortunate woman was faithful and decent and had done nothing wrong—as she was about to give birth to their first child. In one fell swoop he severed the life of two innocents, mother and son. (From this, learn how Heaven abhors your seemingly zealous deeds—mere fictions—devised with all that wickedness, and executed with just as much promptness.) The wretch married a second time and produced offspring, but everything came to the violent end that his horrendous crime deserved.10 People of good sense will always consider it one of the worst, most grievous felonies known, however ingenious men show themselves to be in finding new ways to offend God and their neighbors. To what extent the above-mentioned father was devastated by all these tragic happenings, let his own conscience bear witness. He must have felt tormented by a continual sense of guilt.

9.

La spada di qua su non taglia in fretta, Tanto più grave è alfin quanto più tarda. (Par. 22.16, adapted) The second and third lines of the tercet in Dante read differently: “né tardo, ma’ ch’ al parer di colui / che disiando o temendo aspetta” (“nor slow, except as it appears / to him who waits for it—who longs or fears”). Translation from Dante by Mandelbaum, 482. 10. Tarabotti fails to say what happened. Has something been left out in the manuscript, or by the printer?

B o o k Tw o T H E B I B L E S H O W S T H AT G O D P U N I S H E S S A C R I F I C E S M A D E I N B A D FA I T H

Up to this point, I think I have provided enough proof that the King of Heaven does not welcome having unwilling, even coerced, victims sacrificed to Him. Rather, it is an abomination in His eyes as something He never commanded either in the first age of humankind or the second. As for the third age, it may be possible to detect a few shadowy traces to the effect that the divine will is disposed towards and also pleased by genuine nuns willingly withdrawing from the world. Nonetheless, I do not allow this to persuade me that He takes pleasure in having as brides the souls of women who cannot do anything else. Of course, I believe the religious life to be praiseworthy, valuable, and angelic; but it must also be a reality and not a pretense, voluntary and not enforced. And it is truer than true that from Adam up to Noah; from Noah to the father of all believers, Abraham; from Abraham to God’s beloved, Moses; from Moses to the prophets; and from the prophets to Christ, there is no law to be found where the Almighty commanded women to leave the world wearing the religious habit in order to mimic, parrot-like, the lives of saints. In those ages, one could find men with fine qualities—ones now finding no place in your breasts—whose good example you could and should follow in valuing and loving your own daughters more. Take Jephte, a courageous captain as we read in the book of Judges (11:30–40); he feared God as much as his enemies feared him and his strength. He promised the Lord that if he and the people of Israel triumphed against the Ammonites, he would offer up in sacrifice the first living thing to cross his path. He did return triumphant, but the first living thing to approach him—O woeful, doomed triumph!— was his only daughter, decked out in her wedding garments and rejoicing in her father’s good fortune. At a sight before so charming, now so bitter, his generosity to God was overcome by fatherly attachments. He was struck down by remorse and wept uncontrollably, blaming himself for victories that led to such a great loss. Yet because of the vow he had made, he felt bound to sacrifice the very apple of his eye. Disheartened, the father cried out in love: “Thou hast deceived me, and thou thyself art deceived!” (11:35). His obedient daughter comforted him thus: “Do unto me whatsoever thou hast promised, since the victory hath been granted to thee, and revenge of thy enemies” (11:36), adding: “Grant me only this . . . . Let me go . . . and bewail my virginity for two months with my companions” (11:37). The sorely grieving father granted her wish, and as soon as she returned from lonely, forbidding places, he fulfilled his vow. Jephte would have been wrong not to keep his word to God, author of his being, by failing to sacrifice his own

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P a t e r n a l Ty r a n n y daughter to whom he had given life. He decided resolutely to conform his will to that of the Divine, though he was by no means invulnerable to human emotion, making him aware of his rash vow before his beloved daughter’s death. He may have experienced some consolation knowing that her suffering was brief; she would soon be snatched from Limbo to rise to glory once the First-Born of all Ages shed His precious blood for the redemption of all. The example of the great captain Jephte was unique. (When Abraham, at God’s commands, was about to slit the throat of his only son, an angel came down to prevent him from doing so—otherwise he would have died of anguish.) The example of Jephte was unique, as I said, because there are innumerable other fathers who sacrifice their daughters not in order to fulfill a vow, but rather to satisfy their selfish appetites with greater ease. They are not offering sacrifices in thanks for military victories, but yielding to diabolical suggestions about ridding themselves of impediments to the line of inheritance: the house is relieved of the burden of females before they themselves are capable of making a free choice about their state in life. But your daughters are not “impediments” or “burdens” to be rid of! For you, those names refer simply to whatever might hold you back in offending God. Unlike Jephte, you give them plenty of time to weep for their maidenhoods. Even before they have the faintest idea about what state in life the Holy Spirit might call them to, before they have heard the word “chastity” you seal them up bodily in a prison and tie them down by the most binding vows your malice has been able to invent. Not for them the chance to see the wise and generous design with which God created Heaven and earth (for our common utility and pleasure, by the way, placing all animals under our dominion as proof of His kindness and greatness). You behave as if the Heavenly Mover had created all the world’s adornments for your pleasure alone, and we women had been created of matter different from yours. Your sacrifices resemble Cain’s (as I’ve explained above),11 which His Divine Majesty did not approve of, and your punishment will fit your crime. I beg you to offer up your heart! Yes, offer it up to divine justice, emptied of cruelty, removed from bribery, theft, fraud, and lusts and cleansed of every vice, for “A sacrifice to God is an afflicted spirit: a contrite and humbled heart, O God, thou wilt not despise!” (Ps 50:19). He disdains sacrifices of unwilling virgins, so you will certainly not enter into eternal happiness for having clothed your daughters in plain, funereal garments; nor for enclosing them in the cloister’s tomb after making them die to the world despite themselves. You need to do good and remember that God commanded you to do 11. See book 1, note 48 and related text.

B o o k Tw o unto others as you wish others to do unto you. Struck by one single blow, Jephte’s holy daughter breathed her last. Amid the sufferings of a detested prison, poor nuns, on the other hand, are never delivered from a continual death even in the next life. They endure fifty and sixty years on earth, sometimes even a hundred, and they may then lose the priceless treasure of their soul, just as they lost their liberty while alive.

DANTE, NOT MODERNS, UNDERSTOOD T H E VA L U E O F L I B E R T Y

As I mentioned above, liberty is valued even by dumb animals, not to speak of rational beings. As Dante said, Now may it please you to approve his coming; he goes in search of liberty—so precious, as he who gives his life for it must know.12 In every age, liberty was truly the most priceless of treasures and worthy of the highest esteem. Whoever steals this treasure, therefore, is a wicked marauder. You are worse: by making use of holy pretexts to strip women of their free wills, you deserve to be called sacrilegious. The place where nuns without vocation are confined, and the vow of obedience to which they are subjected, denies them this priceless jewel. When humble resignation to God’s will is neither spontaneous, nor free, nor divinely inspired, it becomes a crushing, unbearable torment to women born in the world only to find themselves banished from it. Mere common sense is not enough for these unfortunates to resist such fierce blows. They are inconsolable, rebellious; there is no remedy for their grief. Dante says of the damned souls, They execrated God and their own parents and humankind, and then the place and time of their conception’s seed and of their birth.13 12.

Or ti piaccia gradir la sua venuta libertà va cercando, ch’è sì cara, come sa chi per lei vita rifiuta. (Purg. 1.70–72) Virgil, Dante’s guide, requests Cato of Utica (94–46 B.C.E.), a Roman suicide, to guide Dante up the slopes of Mount Purgatory. For Cato, See book 1, notes 4 and 67. Translation by Mandelbaum, 219. 13. Bestemmiavano Dio e lor parenti, l’umana spezie e ‘l luogo e ‘il tempo e ‘l seme di lor semenza e di lor nascimenti. (Inf. 3.103–5) Translation by Mandelbaum, 71.

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P a t e r n a l Ty r a n n y Do you really think, you enemies of God and your own flesh and blood, you will be able to live for long among worldly pleasures and carnal delights when those women’s souls, redeemed by a loving Christ who shed His blood, suffer so much? When they rightly curse you a thousand times and, as vengeance for so many misfortunes, call down on your heads imprecations, calamities, and scourges from Heaven? How can a father’s heart enjoy unnecessary furnishings in the home, a large wardrobe, and gold in the coffer when his offspring live buried alive (I don’t know whether from devotion or old age) within crumbling walls and clothe their still-breathing corpses in coarsely woven rags among a thousand never-dying deaths brought on by wretched poverty? Among the host of torments endured, not least is the worm of conscience. It never leaves their hearts, for they know they are at fault in not observing their rule; they know they are nuns only according to the letter of the law; they know they cannot benefit from the religious life. They tell themselves that God could not have agreed (except in allowing it) to their cruel imprisonment, that He never concerned Himself with such a wicked law, and that it must therefore be a fabrication of their fathers and families.

R E L I G I O U S S U P E R I O R S C O L L U D E W I T H F AT H E R S

At this point, my pen takes flight—too boldly?—in censuring religious superiors as accomplices. They should concern themselves only with God’s service and the rigid observance of papal decrees; their one aim lies in nurturing souls within the bosom of Holy Mother Church far away from the sinful world, under the celestial inspiration of the Holy Spirit rather than the earthly opinion of men. Political expediency, however, the father of all error, contaminates even these supreme ministers, who end up giving their permission for women to become nuns.14 Many do subject themselves to the yoke—not Christ’s, who said, “My yoke is sweet and my burden light” (Mt 11:30), but to a contrary, harsh and heavy one, such as the kind sometimes used to tame a fierce bull-calf. (Instinctively, he tries to shake it off, laboring in vain.) This yoke is truly a tiresome burden, a violent servitude, and a deplorable state. If innocent women offered to yoke themselves voluntarily, I would compare their sufferings to the torments of holy martyrs whom the

14. Tarabotti will expand on the role of elder nuns and religious superiors in inveigling young girls to enter the religious life in her second book, L’Inferno monacale, ed. F. Medioli (Turin, 1990), 31–34. A translation with an introduction and notes by F. Medioli and L. Panizza is forthcoming in this series.

B o o k Tw o Emperor Decius and other tyrants shut in lions’ cages to be devoured. Just as the martyrs went on to receive a noble and longed-for crown, so nuns who undergo torments for their whole lives rightly claim the martyr’s title and can compare their cross to the savage torments of pagan infidels. 15

R E B U T TA L O F E X C U S E S M A D E B Y F AT H E R S A N D F U RT H E R C O N D E M N AT I O N

You fathers and families of the daughters I speak of, don’t excuse yourselves with words like these: “I knew nothing about such details, I only wanted my daughter to preserve her marvelous virginity, and so I removed her from the toils and troubles of the human condition.” The fact is, the world has been doing just this per omnia saecula seculorum (through all the ages of the world) and knows what happens to these so-called nuns. Your lame excuses haven’t a leg to stand on. Besides, you know your own consciences as clearly as the rays of the sun shining at midday. You know how many nuns—once they have loosened the bridle of modesty, stained their chastity by indecency and fled the detested prison—have dishonored their families as well as God. You’re the only ones to blame, for all these serious abuses wouldn’t happen if you didn’t block up your ears like deaf asps to your daughters’ pleas! This is not holiness on your part, but bestiality. Do you imagine that you please God by these impure sacrifices? Don’t do so! Your whims are no match for God’s eternal law. And don’t go about bragging as if an angel from the Empyrean on high came down on behalf of the Prime Mover ordering you to imprison these poor things denied every good.16 You’re acting out of self-interest, for the sake of worldly vanity and amassing wealth. Go on, go on and pile up your treasures, and if your vaults are not enough, bury them in your hearts! It’s all the same: You blind ones! What use is it to labor so much? You will return, all of you, to great mother earth, [A]nd of your name hardly a trace will remain.17

15. Gaius Messius Quintus Decius, Roman Emperor during 249–51 C.E., was another persecutor of Christians, like Nero and Diocletian. Decius believed that the restoration of state cults was necessary for the preservation of the Roman Empire. 16. The highest and purest of the heavens according to the Ptolemaic earth-centered system, where the element of fire existed without matter. 17. O ciechi, il tanto affaticar che giova? Tutti tornate a la gran madre antica, E ‘l vostro nome a pena si ritrova. (Petrarch, Triumph of Death, 88–90)

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P a t e r n a l Ty r a n n y As for you, you’re so presumptuous you expect forgiveness from God’s mercy. Don’t ever hope for it! Your bad temper has taken you well beyond the pale; don’t worry, a suitable punishment awaits you. If I may put it this way, all the devils in Hell and all the punishments tormenting all the damned souls would not be enough to punish you as much as you deserve—so grave is the sin that lies at the root of so many other sins and errors harming Christianity itself.

H E R O D ’ S S L A U G H T E R O F I N N O C E N T B A B E S WA S L E S S C R U E L T H A N PAT E R N A L T Y R A N N Y

If you don’t mend your ways, the soul of Herod himself will have a less hellish place than yours amid the flames. His almost unheard of cruelty consisted in slaughtering innocent babes, even his own sons, yet his tyranny was still less severe than yours. He executed savagely through fear of losing a kingdom. The Magi had sown suspicion in his heart. He knew the prophecies about a King of the Jews being born in that region so, moved by a natural desire not to lose the pleasures and grandeur of a royal crown, he preferred personal honor to the life of his own kingdom’s newly born. Once ambition took the place of clemency, he unleashed impiety, ordering the pitiless massacre of the innocents.18 It amounted, one could say, to enriching Heaven with angels who, as Saint John said, “follow the Lamb whithersoever he goeth” (Rv 14:4). Before knowledge entered the doors of the senses to introduce the filth of sin into these immaculate angels, they entered the portals of Paradise. Their very first conscious act was to pour out their blood for their Creator who welcomed them to the glory of the Blessed. What a holy sacrifice! What a happy death was theirs! What thanks should be given for the cruelty visited upon them! Blessed are sons led to their heavenly dwelling by a father’s brutality, to that blessed land they might have turned their backs on after the age of reason, led astray by their errors!

W O M E N A R E N O T H R E AT T O A F AT H E R ’ S P O W E R A N D W E A LT H ; E V I L S O F T H E D O W R Y

You families of abused nuns surpass Herod’s ungodly tyranny. Admit it yourselves since there is no reason for your authority to feel threatened. Women can’t pretend to take away your kingdom, not even those legal rights you’ve

18. See Matthew 2:13–23.

B o o k Tw o usurped over them so presumptuously. It’s true that if all unwilling nuns had stayed in the world, their number would make up an army; but they wouldn’t be concerned with coups d’état. They’d be happy to stay in their fathers’ houses, exempt from the first two vows of poverty and obedience that bind them with heavy ropes; the third, chastity, is our own decision. If you believe that numerous daughters are prejudicial to reasons of state—since, if they all married, the nobility would increase and families be impoverished by paying out so many dowries—then, without greed for gain, accept the companions God has destined for you. In any case, it would be more decent for you to pay out money when taking a wife, just as you do in purchasing slaves, than for them to consume fortunes in purchasing a master. Since you already imitate the wild Thracians in constructing harems for women, why not imitate them also in killing newly born males, preserving only one per family?19 It would be less of a sin than burying your flesh and blood alive. Are you afraid of women in our world multiplying? What cowards! These are no longer the times of the brave Amazons who discreetly killed their male children so as not to be their subjects.20 The spotless souls of the innocents killed by Herod rose to Heaven washed from original sin by their own blood; on the other hand, a good number of unwilling nuns, buried alive, will descend into Hell and find their fathers already tormented there. The sight of their faces will cause nuns more affliction than Hell itself, as with curse after curse they will damn the moment of their own births—but even more their fathers’—while the latter will cry out: We have erred from the way of truth, and the light of justice hath not shined unto us, and the sun of understanding hath not risen upon us. / We have wearied ourselves in the way of iniquity and destruction, and have walked through hard ways, but the ways of the Lord we have not known. (Wis 5:6–7) With good reason they’ll exaggerate their ignorance since there is no greater ignorance imaginable than wishing to dictate rules and laws to one’s Lord and God.

19. The Thracians, a group of tribes inhabiting what is now Bulgaria, were considered, like the Scythians, to be wild and ferocious by ancient historians. See also book 1, note 64. 20. In Boccaccio’s biographies of Martesia (Marpesia, Marpessa) and Lampedo, queens of the Amazons, it is stated how they killed their male children and carefully brought up their daughters for the military arts. See Famous Women, 50–55.

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P a t e r n a l Ty r a n n y R E S P E C T F O R G O D ’ S L AW U R G E D U P O N F AT H E R S A N D F A M I L I E S

In Sparta, Lycurgus’s laws were so revered that Spartans would have died rather than transgress them. What then should Christians do to observe the commandments given by God? To safeguard perpetual obedience to his laws, Lycurgus went into voluntary exile, making his subjects first swear allegiance to the law until his return.21 Our own truly wise Lycurgus, I mean Christ, left the Kingdom of Heaven so that the human race would walk along the path of laws leading to Paradise. For thirty-three years He lived in exile from His heavenly fatherland and then, after freeing us from original sin by His Passion and death and the sacrament of Baptism, He restored our free will. He wanted us to choose a way of life elected by free will—unless after much forethought we ourselves decided to renounce it by religious vows in order not to risk perdition or follow the itch of sensuality and so lose our inheritance. This was the law made by Almighty God from our creation, then validated and renewed at Christ’s death by His sufferings and wounds. As for you fools, you think it wise to bind those unhappy women in a Gordian knot that no one can untie, except death’s scythe, so going against divine laws that grant liberty to all.22 You think it wise to surround them by an impenetrable wall, without noticing that there is a courtroom within where your blind ignorance about your errors is continually put on trial. O minds blinded by palpable darkness! O intellects blackened by every kind of vice! Is it not crass stupidity and perfidious malice to call your crime a holy deed? Let me remind you once again what Solomon says in Ecclesiasticus: Woe to them that call good evil and evil good. Woe to them that are of double heart, and to wicked lips, and to the hands that do evil, and to the sinner that goeth on the earth two ways. (Sir 2:14) Is there any heart more false than man’s? Are there any lips more wicked or hands more deadly in doing evil? An ungrateful creature, a diabolical sphinx, a monster with a hundred tongues and a hundred hearts, man has banished

21. Lycurgus (fl. 8th c. B.C.E.), an ancient lawgiver, was the traditional founding father of the Spartan constitution and therefore of the Spartan state. 22. A knot formed by an ancient king of Phrygia that only Alexander the Great was able to undo—by cutting through it; hence a problem so intricate and complicated that it demands a drastic solution.

B o o k Tw o truth from his sight. He speaks with a honeyed but lying tongue; what he says forever differs from his thoughts and deeds, strive as he may to make his speech sincere.

WOMEN’S LEARNING IS HAMPERED BY LACK OF PROPER SCHOOLING

But now I hear their voices resounding in my ears: “Just look at this shameless woman who dares to enter the debating arena and accuse us of ignorance. Is it not the case that women are guilty of massive ignorance, shrouded as they always are in a thousand foolish errors? Is it not the case that we deceive them just as we please?” In this I do not disagree; I would make a great mistake were I to attribute learning to women when they are so wondrously stripped of it, not through lack of native intelligence but lack of schooling. When you bestow on them the quality of “imperfect,” you do so not in virtue of their merit, but of your ambition. Let us consider for what reasons they do not grow up learned. How many of you, my wise gentlemen, are like King Solomon who sacrificed vast numbers of unblemished animals to the Lord to obtain that loving answer: “Ask what you wish.” When Solomon requested wisdom, His Divine Majesty immediately granted it in such profusion that each and every one of us remains astounded by his sublime knowledge.23 How many are like Aesop, who fell asleep profoundly ignorant and tongue-tied as well and awoke to find himself deservedly endowed with the precious jewel of understanding?24 None at all, because in order to possess wisdom, you need learned teachers. All philosophers and men of learning have gained their knowledge by studying; nobody was ever born with infused wisdom, except for Christ, who is wisdom itself. I remember reading about the philosopher Gorgias of Leontini who spent his whole long life studying, When the moment of death came upon him—the just tribute paid to nature—he exclaimed: “I do not regret leaving this world, but I regret having to do so just as I was beginning to learn 23. See Wisdom 7:7–8: “Wherefore I wished, and understanding was given me; and I called upon God, and the spirit of wisdom came upon me / And I preferred her before kingdoms and thrones, and esteemed riches nothing in comparison of her.” 24. Aesop, reputedly an uneducated Greek slave, was the author of the most famous collection of animal fables, translated into Latin and Italian, and published countless times in the Renaissance. It was accompanied by a Life of Aesop by Maximus Planudes, which tells of his sudden ability to overcome his stammering.

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P a t e r n a l Ty r a n n y something.”25 In the light of his words, there is nobody on earth who could appear fully learned; nobody who could boast about having learned enough. Solon of Salamis, one of the seven wise men of Greece, can testify to the truth of this. After enjoying a long life of 133 years, he arrived at death’s door. His friends gathered around his bed, comforting him by discussing moral issues. Still eager for knowledge, Solon lifted his head; and when asked why he did this, he said he wanted to learn something new before he died.26 In short, I note that all philosophers, all lawgivers and other learned men of the world have overcome their ignorance by studying and teaching one another in order to acquire the name of wise men. Pythagoras, Aristotle, and Socrates are famous because they taught when alive, and now dead they still teach us. Only the just, God’s servants, can become perfect in true Christian wisdom without going to school; the one and only Master of divine love is sufficient for them. Those humble fishermen, “filled with the Holy Spirit . . . began to speak with divers tongues” (Acts 2:4), confounding the worldly wise. Saint Peter, the prince of the apostles, converted three thousand people to the faith in a single day with his divine eloquence; he never learned to adorn his sermons with rhetorical tropes. Saint Catherine of Alexandria had not yet reached thirteen years of age when she was betrothed to Christ, the Word incarnate, who gave the maiden a wedding ring. Her mind was filled with doctrine; and speaking fluently with a holy rhetoric, she fearlessly debated about the true faith against the sophisms of fifty pagan doctors. She triumphed gloriously. There is no praise, however exaggerated, worthy of touching her wisdom’s excellence.27

25. Gorgias of Leontini (ca. 483–376 B.C.E.) was one of the most influential of the Greek sophists and known mainly as a teacher of rhetoric. He is the main interlocutor in Plato’s dialogue Gorgias, where he is given the suspect power of persuading and dissuading others at will. The anecdote reported here is not in Diogenes Laertius, but in the Italian compendium reported above (book 1, note 62), where Gorgias says, “Muoio . . . mal volontieri, non pe’l dolor della morte, ma perchè hora mi toglie, ch’io cominciava a sapere qualche cosa” (“I die unwillingly, not because of the pain of death, but because it takes me away just as I was beginning to learn something”); Compendio delle Vite de’ Filosofi. 26. The anecdote about Solon is not found in Diogenes Laertius, but in the compendium just referred to above; for Solon, see book 1, note 62: Solon “levò il capo. Et dimandato che cosa chiedeva, disse che fatto ciò aveva per meglio intendergli, et imparare. Così morì.” (Solon “raised his head; and when asked what he wanted, he said he had done so to hear [his companions] better, and learn something. And in this manner, he died.”) Compendio delle Vite de’ Filosofi, fol. 3ro. See also Plutarch’s Life of Solon, chaps. 2 and 31. 27. The standard reference work in the Middle Ages and the Renaissance for the tales of the saints was Jacobus de Voragine’s De vitis sanctorum, more popularly known as the Legenda aurea. It was published many times both in Latin and Italian translation throughout the sixteenth century and includes the life of Saint Catherine of Alexandria.

B o o k Tw o MEN ARE TO BLAME FOR WOMEN’S LACK OF LEARNING

Do not scorn the quality of women’s intelligence, you malignant and eviltongued men! Shut up in their rooms, denied access to books and teachers of any learning whatsoever, or any other grounding in letters, they cannot help being inept in making speeches and foolish in giving advice. Yours is the blame, for in your envy you deprive them of the means to acquire knowledge. As Socrates said in Plato’s Symposium, women do not lack intellect or a natural disposition to succeed in every undertaking and every kind of learning equally to men.28 But in any case, to your shame, they can add one more boast to their perfect qualities: instead of turning out dull and stupid, they become sincere and trustworthy in whatever they do. You, on the contrary, use knowledge to take in your neighbor and practice countless mean tricks and vices. So shameless are you that while reproaching women for stupidity you strive with all your power to bring them up and educate them as if they were witless and insensitive. You give them as a governess another woman, also unlettered, who can barely instruct them in the rudiments of reading, to say nothing of anything to do with philosophy, law, and theology. In short, they learn nothing but the ABC, and even then this is poorly taught. (I know from experience, so I can bear witness at length.) As soon as you men catch sight of a woman with pen in hand, you start ranting and raving; you order them under penalty of death to put aside their scribbling and attend to “feminine” tasks like needlework and spinning; you quote Solomon’s words about the prudent woman: “She hath sought wool and flax, and hath wrought by the counsel of her hands” (Prv 31:13). (As if our intellects could find no more appropriate occupation than spinning!) Virgil on the other hand describes Camilla’s intelligence and bravery, and Torquato Tasso does likewise in praising his valiant Clorinda: Her proud hand did not deign to bow to Arachne’s tasks, to the needle and spindle.29

28. This would appear to be a reference to Socrates’ praise of the wise priestess Diotima, Symposium (201d), who instructs him in the philosophy of love that ends in ecstasy. 29.

A i lavori d’Aracne, all’ago, ai fusi, Inchinar non degnò la man superba (Ger. Lib. 2.39) Camilla was the queen of the Volsci who fought against Aeneas and was known for her bravery as a warrior in book 11 of Virgil’s Aeneid. Clorinda was likewise a warrior heroine on the pagan side in Tasso’s Gerusalemme liberata, ed. Claudio Varese and Guido Arbizzoni (Milan, 1983). Arachne, expert at spinning and weaving, challenged the goddess Athena and was turned into

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P a t e r n a l Ty r a n n y W O M E N H AV E G R E A T E R L I B E R T I E S E L S E W H E R E T H A N I N I T A LY

You’ve taken leave of your senses in subjecting women! One sees your great folly carried out in our Italian cities rather than right reason or the commands of human and divine law. In how many other kingdoms do women enjoy truly great liberty? In how many other cities do women perform public roles that are here exercised only by men? In France, Germany, and many northern provinces, women run households, handle money, and keep accounts of merchandise; even noblewomen shop in the marketplace for their families’ needs. They enjoy liberty and make use of that free will granted by the Giver of all good things without the reservations and restrictions—or rather constraints and insults—that we grow accustomed to in this city of ours.30 Well may we say Alas, their ancient savage feelings oppressed our ancient liberty.31 What understanding can a woman have of business, of dealing and trading, if she is kept far from all commerce, documents, and discussions, like some unfortunate bird shut up—rather, buried—in intolerable confinement? She’s worse off than a dumb animal, as often deprived as she is of looking up at the sky (a blessing shared by all living things) and hidden from Heaven’s gaze—it may be she deserves to possess it more than gaze upon it! Nonetheless, even in such heavy torpor and forced lethargy, one can still come across women possessing only the liveliness of an untutored mind who give birth to wondrous creations of intelligence. They have no training or acquaintance with any master in this world and cause the most sublime spirits alive to gasp. Let the proof be a young woman closely related to me, a spider for her effrontery. See Ovid Metamorphoses 6.1–145. For Camilla and Arachne, see also Boccaccio, Famous Women, chaps. 39 and 18. 30. The opinion that more women in Italy and especially Venice were enclosed within domestic or monastic spaces than in Germany and France was diffused widely in the Italian Renaissance. Agrippa, known in an anonymous Italian translation, may be partially responsible, for he reports that women in northern Europe participated actively in military activities and public life (see Agrippa, 94). The Roman historian Tacitus wrote a treatise that also portrayed women enjoying equal status with men (Germania, chap. 8). In addition, Venetian merchants would bring back first-hand reports from their travels north of the Alps. 31. Ah, che l’antico lor barbaro affetto la nostra antica libertade oppresse. Source unidentified.

B o o k Tw o gifted with abundant wit and talents. In no time she reached the point of competing with Apollo in music and poetry, with Apelles in painting, with Minerva in learning, and with Nature herself in sculpting small animals so realistically that, but for the fact they do not move or fly away, you would think they were alive. Ariosto bore witness to woman’s intelligence, noting that if only they had the chance to study, Their fame would soar so high, that maybe male fame never reached such a height.32 Even I must confess, however, that illiteracy is our proper condition. We are brought up in it, thanks to your decisions, which want us to remain in ignorance as far as possible. But you do well (in terms of your own political interests) to keep us away from intellectual pursuits, since you realize that once knowledge is added to a woman’s natural lively disposition, she would usurp the honors and earnings you amass by unlawful means—I mean exercising the profession of jurist and lawyer. If these offices were held by women, there would be greater justice. We would not leave our clients stripped of their wealth by greed for gain, as you do.

EXAMPLES OF ILLUSTRIOUS WOMEN AND FOOLISH MEN

In proof of what I say, divine Plato approves of such offices being exercised by women; and according to Cornelius Tacitus, the Germans respected women’s counsels to the extent of believing some hidden divinity resided in them.33 Ariosto does not differ when he writes Many pieces of advice given by women are better as the result of intuition than reflection, for this is a particular gift of their sex among so very many that heaven has granted them.34

32.

Tanto il lor nome sorgeria, che forse viril fama a tal grado unqua non sorse. (Orl. Fur. 37.2) The long authorial introduction to this canto accuses male writers of hiding women’s accomplishments, even lying about them. 33. In Plato’s Republic 7 (540c), women are brought up practicing the martial arts and also share public offices with men. Tacitus’s Germania is mentioned above, note 29. See also Marinella’s chapter, “Of women’s noble actions and virtues,” in The Nobility and Excellence of Women, 77–83. 34.

Molti consigli de le donne sono meglio improviso, ch’a pensarvi, usciti;

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P a t e r n a l Ty r a n n y Wise Emperor Augustus, Seneca writes, took the advice of his Livia in matters of great consequence. King Ferdinand of Aragon boasted that all his good deeds were the result of listening to his wife, Queen Isabella: he conquered the kingdom of Granada and the Canary Islands. There was a time in the history of Athens when women attended meetings in the senate just like men. The Emperor Justinian submitted his most important matters of state to his prudent wife in order to take her judgments into consideration.35 Only ignorant, dull men of vulgar understanding pour scorn on women. (It is no accident that even the name “lady” begins with the same letter of the alphabet as “lord,” the name for God. This must be ordained on high to indicate that their merit reaches heavenly heights.36 As for the pronouns “he” and “him,” they begin with H, an imperfect letter, formed merely by the breath, which hardly deserves to be called a proper letter. In just this way, man himself is no more than an imperfect breath that lives only for the moment and does not last.37) But let me return to making it known that if we women do not have the means of acquiring learning, we do not lack ability. How on earth can women’s intelligences be stimulated when they are denied entrance to political bodies such as our Venetian Senate? When they are denied the chance to develop practical skills to do with management and public service? When they are deprived totally of enlightenment, as well as the freedom men have to attend lectures at famous universities like Padua, Bologna, Rome, Paris, and Salamanca? We have never even been granted permission to attend lectures in Venice’s state schools!38

che questo è speziale e proprio dono fra tanti e tanti lor dal ciel largiti. (Orl. Fur. 27.1) 35. Lucrezia Marinella’s chapter, “On prudent women, and those expert at giving advice,” in The Nobility and Excellence of Women, 114–18, seems to be the main source here for Livia, Justinian, and the custom in Athens—but not Isabella. Agrippa also reports Justinian consulting his wife (91). For Isabella of Castile, see Giuseppe Betussi’s continuation of Boccaccio, with a list of contemporary women, including Isabella. 36. Tarabotti compares the Italian words donna (“woman”) and divinità (“divinity”). Although it hardly constitutes “proof” to moderns, this kind of word game was popular in the Middle Ages and Renaissance with misogynists, who associated donna and danno (“ruin”). See Passi’s chapter 1 of I donneschi difetti, which is dedicated to bizarre etymologies for the various synonyms for women. Both Fonte and Marinella engage in producing counteretymologies, the main one being that donna is associated with dono (“gift”). See Fonte’s The Worth of Women, ed. and trans. V. Cox (Chicago and London, 1997), 92–93, and Marinella’s The Nobility and Excellence of Women, 47, and note 14. 37. Tarabotti here uses huomo (“man”); the word is now written, however, without the once aspirated H. 38. Venice’s state schools, paid for by the Republic itself, were outstanding for providing a humanist education with some of the best available teachers to the Venetian citizen class who

B o o k Tw o LEARNING IS OF LITTLE BENEFIT TO MEN

The so-called stronger sex—I would say “savage”—taunts us, calling us stupid. And what about men? Any one of them might study for years on end, attending public lectures every day in every discipline from the greatest masters of the age. In the end, he has learned nothing but all the arts of wrongdoing practiced today; he is left more stupid than when he began, because nothing deserving the name of right-doing has penetrated his thick intellect. How many have no doctrine and are not doctors, yet have been granted a doctorate, and can boast nothing else of wisdom’s adornments than a fancy diploma all covered in gold letters? The emperor Licinius was so incapable of learning how to read and write that it took him two years to reach the point of signing a decree. Heraclides Livius could not even master the ABC and after a long period managed only to waste his father’s fortune on tutors. Seneca reports that another dolt studied Virgil for ten years in succession, and when asked whether he understood the poem, said yes, but he still wasn’t sure whether Aeneas was male or female! I do not know if one could find a greater dunce than Philolaus the Theban. When asked what Jupiter intended to do by transforming himself into a bull and abducting Europa, he answered in all seriousness that Jupiter wanted a cow in heaven to provide cheese for the gods up there who were suffering from a prolonged famine. Margite was not even sure what it meant to be a man, according to Suidas, and could not even count up to five. In old age he used to ask who had brought him into the world!39 What stupidity! If you could cloak it with the name of simplicity, you would do so gladly. But the name of “simple” cannot be applied to men would enter public service. Women were admitted only to primary schools, where they learned to read and write in Italian but did not study Latin and Greek. See P. Grendler, Schooling in Renaissance Italy. Literacy and Learning, 1300–1600 (Baltimore and London, 1989). For Venetian schools, see in particular 42–70. Tarabotti makes one of her strongest pleas here for women’s education; it is to be set side by side with what she says in L’Inferno monacale and other works. See also appendix 1 of this translation, the “Letter to the Reader” from her Paradiso monacale of 1643. 39. Some of these examples of crass stupidity are part of a repertoire Tarabotti has picked up from another chapter (not included in the English translation) in Lucrezia Marinella’s The Nobility and Excellence of Women on ignorant and ridiculous men (Venice, 1602, 318–21) that includes both Licinius and Heraclides Licius (Livius in Tarabotti). Marinella says that a “Britonione” could not even learn his ABC—a nonachievement that Tarabotti bestows on Heraclides. The incident reported by Seneca and the example of Philolaus the Theban, as well as Margite, a character from Homer fabled for his stupidity, are Tarabotti’s additions. Suidas was not an author, but a Greek lexicon with much historical and literary information. Licinius was made Roman Emperor in 308 C.E. Philolaus of Corinth became a lawgiver at Thebes (Aristotle Politics 2.9.6). I cannot identify Heraclides Livius.

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P a t e r n a l Ty r a n n y under any pretext whatsoever, when so many are worldly wise, fraudulent, cunning—and flatterers as well. The number of fools and dunces is large; the number of ignorant men pretending to be educated is infinite; but hardly a single sincere, decent, and candid man can be found. Only too truly did the ancient Egyptians depict the hieroglyph for ignorance as a man with ass’s ears. The Greeks depicted it as a naked young boy astride an ass, blindfolded, and holding a rod.40 One couldn’t portray better the blindness and poor judgment of some men: engaged from a tender age with tutors, attending classes year in year out, lashed a thousand times—yet they remain dullards and can do no good. At last, they are granted a degree of doctor in quattroque.41 Then with their supposed doctorships they turn around and bestow the names of “ignorant” and “incompetent” on women buried in a dark, withdrawn life, without tutors or the company of educated persons to enlighten them. These same women nevertheless bear marvelous fruits despite what men say with their unwillingness to confess it. Moderata Fonte is an example; she illustrated the point I’m making in the following profound and beautiful stanza: If, when a daughter was born, a father were to have her engage in the same pursuits as a son, the girl would not prove inferior or unequal to her brother in any lofty and glorious enterprise; whether she were placed alongside him in the ranks of an army or set to learn some liberal art. But because girls are given a different kind of upbringing, their abilities are not rated highly.42

40. The ass is a recognized image of stupidity—hence “asinine.” 41. Tarabotti is punning on “doctor in utroque iuris,” a doctor of both civil and canon law, and the number quattro (“four”) found in several idiomatic expressions to signify a derisory amount. Here, it is the doctor’s degree that is worth little or nothing. 42. Se quando nasce una figliuola, il padre La ponesse col figlio a un’opra eguale, Non saria nelle imprese alte e leggiadre Al frate inferior, né diseguale; O la ponesse in fra l’armate squadre Seco, o a imparar qualche arte liberale, Ma perché in altri affari viene allevata, Per l’educazion poco è stimata. Tredici canti del Floridoro 4.5; quoted in M. Fonte, The Worth of Women, trans. V. Cox, appendix, 262. Tarabotti mentions and quotes Fonte several times in her own works, always with affection and respect.

B o o k Tw o EXAMPLES OF ILLUSTRIOUS WOMEN OF LEARNING

Who first wrote in Latin, if not a woman? Diotima was proficient in philosophy and the other disciplines. She possessed such a marvelous intellect that she taught the greatest philosopher of the age, Socrates. Divine Plato praises her in the Symposium. She was peerless in penetrating the secrets of nature: the kinds of elements there are, what space is, the movements of the heavens, the orbits of the stars and planets, remote causes, and matters not known well to learned men of science. Sappho of Lesbos was second to none in poetic achievements; it is said she made other famous poets of her age like Alcaeus and Stesichorus blush when they read her works. Plato, Aristotle, and Antipater called her the tenth Muse. Who was wiser than Sosipatra, whose wondrous merits were so many and so great (so Eunapius relates) that the ancients thought this famous woman had been nursed by a divine breast? What shall I say of Elena Flavia Augusta, daughter of Celius, king of Brittany, who dedicated herself with such enthusiasm to Sacred Scripture that she composed a book of divine providence, surpassing everyone else in philosophical speculations. Her extraordinary skills enabled her to write fearlessly about sensitive, intricate subjects such as the immortality of the soul. What shall I say about the Paulas, the Eustochiums, the Fabiolas, and other holy virgins deservedly mentioned by Fathers of the Church for their skills in studying Scripture and universal learning?43

H E R E S I E S O R I G I N AT E D W I T H M E N , N O T W O M E N

You men, admit your lies when you say that if women were to study, they could easily fall into errors about the profound mystery of the Incarnation and the Holy Trinity. These are your false, vain assumptions. All the works a woman’s intellect brings forth and writes down are adorned with Catholic thoughts and born of a devout, pious mind, even though not formally educated. In the pure, brilliant sun of their doctrines, you will not discern a taint of heresy or the faintest odor of unbelief—though your own works abound in errors, for you are unfaithful even to God. As sound Christian 43. This section on learned women owes a great deal to Agrippa (79–94) and most of all to Marinella’s long chapter on learned women in The Nobility and Excellence of Women, 83–93. Marinella names Elena Flavia Augusta, daughter of Celius, king of Brittany, who, she says, “wrote books on Divine Providence and the immortality of the soul” (85). Tarabotti also names her, as we see. Paula, Eustochium, and Fabiola were early Christian followers of Saint Jerome, who dedicated letters to the first two, and wrote a funeral oration for the third. Tarabotti praised Moderata Fonte above and will extol modern Italian writers below.

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P a t e r n a l Ty r a n n y believers, women have never fallen for the Manichaeans or the Donatists! No woman upholds the opinions of Nestorius, who wickedly preached that Christ had not only two natures, human and divine, but was two persons. We do not stumble over Epicurus, who asserted that God does not look after the universe by means of divine providence. Women detest the iniquity of Sabellius and Eunomius who believed that faith alone without works is sufficient for salvation. They abhor the thought of Jovinianus who did not judge it immodest for monks and nuns to break their celibacy. (Nuns may loathe their imprisonment, but their proclaimed, natural modesty loves chastity, the inseparable, eternal partner of the female sex.) Arius, that most evil heretic who refused submission to the church, and blasphemous Mohammed, who has misled the greater part of the Eastern world, were both men, not women. As are also Martin Luther, Calvin, and King Henry VIII: one of them denied the Incarnation, another Mary’s Virgin Birth. All of them damned souls, misbegotten monsters of Nature, who lie instinctively and by choice! As a counterbalance, let me propose Lucrezia Marinella, splendor of poetry, a soul thriving in chaste and modest settings, a true standard of great virtue. Among the numerous products of her intellect, she has brought to light The Life of the Virgin Mary, Empress of the Universe, written in a high style, with such elegant, pleasing, and learned fluency that it excites amazement in the finest minds.44 There are women who have glorified the printing presses with all kinds of excellent compositions: Maddalena Salviati, Margherita Sarrocchi, Isabella Andreini, Laura Terracina, Veronica Gambara, Vittoria Colonna, and countless others.45 Many other famous women have surpassed the worthiest, most famous people ever celebrated in letters for intelligence, moral integrity, the government of kingdoms, and refined manners. You may accuse me of bias, so I’ll leave you to hear their glorious deeds proclaimed from truth’s own mouth. 44. Note that Tarabotti does not mention Marinella’s The Nobility and Excellence of Women, which has clearly inspired her, especially in this book 2, for reasons that have to do, probably, with the practice of naming main sources in a general, indirect way, if at all. 45. Maddalena Salviati (Salvetti Acciaioli, d. 1610) composed a collection of lyrics, Rime toscane; Margherita Sarrocchi (1560–1618?) wrote a long epic poem, Scanderbeide; Isabella Andreini (1562–1604) was an actress, poet, and dramatist, whose pastoral play Mirtilla was published and performed several times; Laura Terracina (ca. 1519–77) composed nine books of lyrics, two of which used Ariosto’s Orlando furioso to set the themes; Veronica Gambara (1485–1550) was also a lyric poet; and Vittoria Colonna (1490–1547), the most celebrated of all women poets, was drawn to a spirituality characteristic of the early Reformation. These women are represented in sixteenth-century Renaissance anthologies of poetry. Andreini, Colonna, Sarrocchi, and Terracina will be published in this series.

B o o k Tw o Besides, it would be rash for me to undertake such an impossible task: you see, there are more just, chaste, wise, and learned women in the world than vapors arising from the seas, stars in the firmament, and grains of sand on the shore! Our sex constitutes the world soul, humanity’s glory, history’s splendor, and the one and only encyclopedia for all husbands. If I were to counterbalance the vast multiplicity of heretics and false Christians (from whose number few men are excluded) on one side with a corresponding number of just, true women on the other, I would say that the women outnumber the men. Yet I refrain from passing judgment, since there are so many open and clandestine disciples of the above heretics that, all put together, they could easily outnumber good women. Though dead, Portia and Penelope live on in our memory for their chastity; Julia, wife of Pompey, for faithfulness to her husband; Hortensia for her marvelous eloquence, and Hypsicratea for her practical wisdom.46 You yourselves provide proof from the exemplum of a Roman emperor’s desires that all sublime qualities reign in a worthy woman’s heart. This ancient ruler knew the greater advantages of woman’s condition over man’s and even attempted, by admittedly vain and risible means, to be counted among them.47 Another emperor, Nero, tried to become pregnant in order to participate in our privileges.48 On the other hand, one has never found a woman who of her own choice and by lying arts has wanted to look like and be mistaken for a man. She has never even allowed such crazed ideas to enter her mind. Nature herself teaches women that they are graced with so many merits there is no need for them to yearn for a transformation into men; in no way are they inferior but indeed superior. One of the finest indicators of the superiority of nobility, rulers, and royalty is their ability to give audience to their subjects in their own palaces and to entertain there vassals and foreigners with a ready supply of enjoyments for their comfort and ease. Now what fool would deny that God has 46. With the exception of Hortensia, this cluster of women is made up of examples of marital fidelity and culled from Boccaccio’s Famous Women. Portia was the daughter of Marcus Cato and the wife of Brutus; Penelope was the wife of Ulysses, who remained loyal during his long travels; Julia, the daughter of Julius Caesar, became the wife of Pompey. Hortensia, on the other hand, the daughter of a Roman orator Hortensius, was also an accomplished orator; and Hypsicratea, queen of Pontus, accompanied her husband on his military expeditions against the Romans. With the exception of Penelope, these women are also praised by Valerius Maximus, Boccaccio’s source, in De factis et dictis memorabilibus. 47. Tarabotti does not give the name of this Roman emperor. 48. Another elaboration of the evil legend of Nero, who did have his mother Agrippina murdered in 59 C.E. See also above, book 1, notes 37 and 55.

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P a t e r n a l Ty r a n n y granted this privilege especially to women in view of their superior reason and their domination over men? It is more difficult to obtain an audience from a naturally chaste woman than it is from the greatest emperor; and, once obtained, just imagine what satisfaction and what happiness a man would feel as a result. From this, one can draw the conclusion that women’s status brings with it dominion and superiority, not subjection or slavery. You trumpet your own praises that redound to your blame—as the saying goes, “Praise from one’s own mouth deafens.” Honoring oneself is the fool’s attribute. Cato noted, following Aristotle, “Do not heap praise or blame on yourself; only fools do so.”49 A greater mixture of spitefulness as well as foolishness cannot be imagined, let alone practiced: you inflate the worth of your own male sex and unfairly despise ours, but only after calling up ranks of the learned disciplines, knowing how ill equipped we are to defend ourselves. Like cowardly, treacherous, soldiers, you attack a defenseless enemy, then boast of victory. You forbid women to learn so they are incapable of defending themselves against your schemes and then proclaim how stupid they are and how you triumphed over them. Under the outer rind of fiction, the ancients disguised an inner core of truth. To make known women’s affinity with all the disciplines, they imagined that the Muses were women: wisdom naturally belongs to women, as well as firing minds to excellent deeds. Minerva, the goddess of wisdom, was depicted in female guise because the ancients thought women to be cleverer and more intellectually brilliant than men.

EVE IS PROOF OF WOMEN’S THIRST FOR KNOWLEDGE

The serpent in the Garden of Eden was able to induce Eve to eat of the forbidden fruit only by suggesting that she would become wise: “You shall be as gods, knowing good from evil” (Gn 3:5), He said; Eve thus consented to the cursed tempter through her thirst for knowledge—hardly a blameworthy desire. From this incident, one can draw evidence that we dullards are not incapable of valuing wisdom, as you brutes would have the world believe. And though women are prevented from perfectly mastering the arts and sciences on account of your rash tyranny, they are spurred on continually to gain knowledge. Our ancient mother set us a true example: as soon as she was created, she used her free will given by God; her first act was to gaze upon the tree

49. “Nec te collaudes, nec te culpaveris ipse. Hoc faciunt stulti.” See Cato Distichs, 2:16, and book 1, note 25 above.

B o o k Tw o that would bear the fruit of knowledge. Desire pursued her eye; overcome, she aroused the same desire in Adam. It was his excessive gullibility that deprived the whole human race of the happy state of innocence.50 Once again my ears resound with a single protest from all men: women cannot be permitted to study grammar, rhetoric, logic, philosophy, theology, and the other sciences because by attending school they would easily lose their chastity. Men have learned from experience that occasions of sin cause even the wisest men to waver; their emotions and senses cannot resist the vivacious charm of a beautiful face or the darts of a pair of brilliant, flattering eyes. As Dante said in Paradiso, So—does my memory recall—I did after I looked into the lovely eyes of which Love made the noose that holds me tight.51 And another more modern poet has also said: The sweet flashing of two lovely eyes, the curve of a lovely brow, and the charm of a lovely face, the parting of smiling lips between pearls and corals: here’s the cause for the heart to oft overflow.52 A beautiful woman’s eyes are truly Cupid’s messengers as all the best writers say; in the eyes, Cupid unfurls the banners of his dominion; from there he threatens ruin, conflagration, destruction to the world. So, then, the reason a woman must not appear in male society is the power of her divine attractiveness, is it? But aren’t you men supposed to be the brave sex? Do you not boast about being stronger than we are? What cowards you are, and no less untruthful, when you don’t have it within you to resist a passing glance in your direction! The fault for the many downfalls caused by women’s beauty lies not with them but solely, on the contrary, with your foul, untrammeled male libido. Who are the ones who lay siege 50. Tarabotti is rewriting Loredan’s account of Eve’s fall in his Life of Adam. She condemns the book explicitly below, book 3, 134–38. See also the introduction, 19–21. 51. Così la mia memoria sì ricorda ch’io feci, riguardando ne’ begli occhi, onde a pigliarmi fece Amor la corda. (Par.28.10–12) Translation by Mandelbaum, 512. 52. Il dolce sfavillar di duo begli occhi, l’arco di’ un bel ciglio, e l’aria d’un bel viso, l’aprir fra perle, e fra coralli un riso, onde avien, che sovente il cor trabocchi. Source unidentified, although all the vocabulary is Petrarchan.

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P a t e r n a l Ty r a n n y to chastity’s tower by means of glances, letters, gifts, spies, go-betweens, and hidden and open sallies—all for the purpose of capturing it? It’s of no avail for these unfortunate women to lead a secluded life to get rid of your supplications. You’ve decided to blame women for your crimes, not understanding that God made them beautiful so that you would struggle against your sensuality and thereby merit a reward for your victory. Would it not be better for you to behave like a brave knight in battle who doesn’t just flee danger, but advances to meet it? Stand firm in your struggle against a charming face. “The life of man upon earth is a warfare,” said Job (Jb 7:1), and the palm of victory goes to him who triumphs. Saint Paul added, “He is not crowned, except he strive lawfully” (2 Tm 2:5). You must fight and conquer, therefore, and not blame a woman’s innocent attractions for your cowardice. Whenever I read certain kinds of tales, I find myself laughing at your solemn foolishness. You vain men hate women’s beauty because your impure hearts prevent you from enjoying her presence without lust; whereas you ought to admire God’s profound wisdom and take pleasure in His work, saying, “Thou hast given me, O Lord, a delight in thy doings” (Ps 91:5). If only you were able to penetrate from her external loveliness to the contemplation of her soul’s gifts, you might dampen down the greedy desires of sensuality. I would like to know, after all, if women can be called unchaste, fornicators, and adulteresses without the collaboration of men? Since this is impossible, you and not they are the ones who should be punished, for you, not unlike Satan himself, are guilty of seduction and treachery.

R E B U T TA L O F M I S O G Y N I S T A R G U M E N T S A G A I N S T W O M E N ’ S A D U LT E R Y

With artful casuistry, you spread it around that adultery is more justly condemned and punished in the wife than the husband on three counts: the damage done to the husband’s honor; the possibility of inheritance by illegitimate sons; and the threat to the safety of the husband’s life (since the adulterer supposedly kills the husband to protect his own life and allow himself greater freedom to sin).53 But these are not reasons; they are the

53. In this vehement rebuttal of the double standard in adultery, Tarabotti’s main target is Giuseppe Passi, I donneschi difetti, chap. 12, “Delle donne adultere e vagabonde,” (“Of adulteresses, and women of no fixed abode”), 74–100. Passi condones severe penalties for a woman’s adultery, including death, accusing her of bringing her husband and the family’s honor into disrepute; of causing uncertainty about true and illegitimate sons and heirs; and of endanger-

B o o k Tw o ravings of evil, unbridled thoughts to allow yourself greater freedom to commit crimes without fear of reproof. You strive to appear wise with these farfetched opinions, all the time showing yourselves to be utterly blind about your soul’s well-being. You busy yourselves over the meaning of Saint Paul’s words to the Corinthians: “The wife hath not power of her own body, but the husband”; and erroneously proceed no further to what he immediately adds (removing any reason for you to grow proud): “And in like manner the husband hath no power of his own body, but the wife” (1 Cor 7:4). You are just as much obliged to submit to your wives as they are to your whims. Open up your mind’s eyes, and see that God did not grant you full liberty to sin, as you foolishly boast to all. He allows you to put aside your wife if you catch her in flagrante; but you have made it legal to kill her on the slightest suspicion. You bloodthirsty butchers, forever devising wicked and tyrannical laws to cover up your own brutality! If the virtues of love and fidelity should accompany husband and wife in holy matrimony without distinction, let it be conceded that wives, following your example, kill all unfaithful husbands. Of course this adulterous generation would raise such an outcry that Christ’s words to His followers, demanding a sign to prove He was the genuine Messiah, would be appropriate: “An evil and adulterous generation seeketh a sign” (Mt 12:39). As women did not take part in this impudent request, they were not included in the answer. There has never been a shadow of a doubt that the adulterer is the man who encourages, beseeches, and urges the woman to sin, from which it follows that he and not the woman is to blame for ruining a family’s honor. But let me now refute you using your own weapons. First you claim that a woman of base lineage who marries into a noble family cannot lower her husband’s status, just as a noble lady cannot raise the status of a commoner whom she marries. On these foundations laid down by you wily men, let me build a similar analogy. Women can neither increase nor diminish a husband’s honor; but, on the contrary, a husband can give or take away nobility. It should follow, therefore, that a woman’s dishonorable conduct—which always finds its source in the man’s instincts and desires—cannot bring dishonor to a house, but rather it is the man’s defects, the same man who boasts of dispensing honors to others.54 You’re the weavers of your own shameful intrigues; you ing her husband’s life. While husbands should not commit adultery themselves, Passi does not approve of punishing them. 54. Tarabotti once more catches her adversary in contradiction.

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P a t e r n a l Ty r a n n y let everyone know that a woman is so dear to you not because of a true ardent love, but because of your bestial lust requiring a variety of sensual delights. This is why you cast into oblivion the honor of a friend, godparent, neighbor, relative, and sometimes even your own brother. Herod murdered John the Baptist, the precursor of Christ, while pursuing his shameful love for Salome. Paris betrayed King Menelaus, who had greeted him as a foreign guest with every pomp and circumstance. In return, Paris abducted his wife. Writers disseminate the view that the beautiful Greek Helen was the ruin of Troy—yet she had little or no fault at all. The first sparks igniting the Trojan fires were her husband’s foolishness in departing from the palace and Paris’s attempts on his life. God’s reproof of adulterous King David is ample testimony that men deserve greater punishment than women in violating the marriage bed. He said nothing to Bathsheba, who fell on being tempted by the king. Your lying, insulting tongues never cease preaching that the fons et origo of all fornication and adultery is woman. As they are supposedly cunning and shrewd in hiding their desires, they inveigle men to their dooms with charms and flattery—at least, this is how your evil minds would have it. Many of you are enemies of our sex, and still you know how to go to extremes, without opposition, or any fault on woman’s part, in a way that deserves the most burning outbursts of God’s anger, since only Heaven’s fire is a fitting scourge for them. I have said enough to convince you against the three reasons for which you condemn adultery in women more than in men. Now that the first has been solved, the answer to the second appears clear and without contradictions, for without your participation and your intrigues, illegitimate children would not be born, whose inheritances you usurp. As for solving the last, remember that it was the above-mentioned King David who, unknown to Bathsheba, had her husband Uriah killed. History books are full of many other murderous adulterers. You cruel hypocrites want to oblige women to remain indoors, almost to the point of denying them the sight of the sky above, while you become disciples more of Islamic than Christian customs. You permit yourselves to enjoy as many prostitutes as you can afford, even letting your wives and children endure hardships to buy their embraces. In the Old Testament, men were permitted to take more than one wife—in recognition of men’s lechery and women’s continence—but women were never allowed to take more than one husband, a custom no country has ever permitted. Women would never countenance such a dissolute way of life anyway, as their chastity is so superior. There should be little surprise, on the other hand, if men follow Islamic law in taking many wives, as the majority of them are as faithless as infidels.

B o o k Tw o S A I N T PA U L H I M S E L F C O N D E M N S T H E D O U B L E S E X U A L S TA N D A R D

Just listen to Saint Paul agreeing with me on the reciprocal obligations between husband and wife: “If any brother hath a wife that believeth not, and she consent to dwell with him, let him not put her away. And if a [believing wife] hath a husband that believeth not, and he consent to dwell with her, let her not put away her husband” (1 Cor 7:12–13). Throughout the Scriptures, male and female are on an equal footing when it comes to marital legislation. See how the apostle Paul appreciates women’s naturally Catholic soul and sides with it. He speaks of “a believing wife” and does not use the same adjective for the husband; he knows only too well that men live without religion and without faith, swamped in a quagmire of heresy and of offenses against God and mankind. Paul even confesses—note that he is one of your own sex—that all men’s benefits derive from women: “The unbelieving husband is sanctified by the believing wife” (1 Cor 7:14). He was aware that your insatiable lust would rather banish women from Paradise itself than forego enjoying them carnally.

M E N A R E FA L S E L O V E R S

Unfortunately two-faced, you work on behalf of women’s worth despite yourselves, for you do for them what you do not want to do for God. The mean man does without his gold; the proud man kneels to beseech his lady, indeed enters upon sordid ways unworthy of his age and condition: but in your case this is not virtue, as your aim is vice. You’re out of your mind when you strive to make women believe your wiles and false passions with promises made under oath, having learned from the ancient poets to feign the faithful lover. Ariosto, the Ferrara swan, truly made manifest your cheating oaths when he sang, To compass his desire, a lover forgetful that God sees and hears all things spins a web of promises and oaths all of which are in time scattered by a breath of wind.55

55.

L’amante, per aver quel che desia, senza guardar che Dio tutto ode e vede, aviluppa promessi e giuramenti, che tutti spargon poi per l’aria i venti. (Orl. Fur. 10.5)

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P a t e r n a l Ty r a n n y Only you got what you deserved for all your protestations! If only women were wise enough to agree with the wisest of poets when he said in the person of Olympia, betrayed and abandoned, Flee, wise ladies, flee your own harm: where you believed to find love, you’ll experience scorn where you hoped for fidelity, you’ll find deceit and after that, a spiteful tongue you’ll find; that our sex offends, and calls it treacherous whenever it has more than one proof of our faith.56 With the devices and fables supplied by poets, you portray yourselves as true lovers, all for the sake of getting your way with us. One could say of you what a poet on your side said falsely of women: “Her promises of fidelity, how empty they are!”57 You’re living proof of these sentiments and, besides, once you’ve got what you wanted, how quickly you turn to dally with others. You make it your profession to capture fortresses guarded by the severest chastity, telling your lady how her beauty has stolen your heart, how you long only for the miracle of her favors among a thousand deaths, wounds, and mournful sighs—and all the time you strut about with foppish airs and graces, with loose language and rough hands, stung by lust: “Whoever loves, also dies.”58 The poet who wrote it lies as much as all of you. Further still, you write letters and compose sonnets and madrigals with other poetic fabrications. Pretending despair, or depicting sudden changes in a wounded heart, you cry out over the Mongibello in your breasts!59 Then Ariosto is warning women readers about the faithless youth Bireno, who abandoned beautiful and devoted Olympia. 56. Fuggan, fuggan saggie il proprio danno. La ove credesi amor, sdegno si prova, la ove sperano fe, trovano inganno, e poi lingua livida si trova, che ‘l nostro sesso ingiuria, e infido il chiama, dove si ha di sua fe piu` d’una prova. This is not Ariosto, although the advice is similar to that Ariosto gives to his lady listeners/readers as he comments on the faithless Bireno (Orl. Fur. 10.1–9). Source unidentified. 57. “Sue promesse di fé, come son vote.” Petrarch, Trionfo d’Amore 3.180. Petrarch is describing the falseness of Cupid, the god of love. Tarabotti is rebutting Passi again, who misuses this verse to accuse women (I donneschi difetti, 229). Although Passi had given Petarch’s Trionfi as his source, Tarabotti was not able to check his accuracy. 58. “Et moritur, quisquis amat.” Source unidentified. 59. In this caricature of the foolish lover, Tarabotti seems to be alluding to Ariosto’s portrayal of pathetic Sacripante, Orl. fur. 1.40, whose heaving breast he compares to the bellows of Vulcan in “Mongibello” or the volcano Etna.

B o o k Tw o you draw the strange consequence of deeming it necessary to entomb the women who cause the troubles you strive so hard to bring about!

WOMEN ARE SEDUCED AND THEN PUNISHED BY MEN

Why on earth publish lying fictions just when you dedicate yourselves to assaulting the Fortress of Chastity as Cupid’s disciples? You preach a sheltered life for women, digging up evidence from the tale of Bathsheba: while bathing in an open place she made even King David lie—that holy prophet whose heart was in tune with God’s. Ask yourselves, witless ones, who was the true cause of her fall, and then deny it if you can. It was nothing else but the king’s lust. Uriah’s wife was at home, minding her own affairs bathing— whether for enjoyment or necessity, it matters little—but David eyed her too. Her beauty inflamed him, and his eyes were the gateway to his heart; by various ruses he obtained the satisfaction his sensuality demanded. What blame can one possibly attribute to that innocent woman, overwhelmed by the splendor of the king’s majesty? She is more worthy of pardon than the royal harp player: she allowed herself to be overcome by a force from on high, as it were; he succumbed to the pull of flesh doomed soon to rot and darts from two eyes that pierce only those wanting to be wounded.60 Whoever paid attention to your stories would believe that Dina’s curiosity—she was the patriarch Jacob’s daughter—to see the city of Salem was the reason for the slaughter of so many men. But if you look at the facts, you would realize that it was Prince Sichem’s unbridled lust, coupled with his violation of the girl, that brought about the catastrophe.61 You don’t mention at all chaste Susanna, her honor threatened by the lust of two old men within the privacy of her own garden: then her life was threatened as well, had she not been delivered at a single stroke from shame and death by God.62 There is no lack of examples of betrayed and violated women. Lucretia was raped by King Tarquin the Proud; by slaying herself with her own hand she provided ample testimony of our sex’s chaste will and the betrayal,

60. See 2 Kings 11. David caused Bathsheba’s husband Uriah to be slain in battle in order to marry her. 61. See Genesis 34. Dina was raped by Sichem, who then asked for her hand in marriage. After going along with the marriage deceitfully, Dina’s brothers killed Sichem, his family, and all the men in Sichem’s city in revenge. 62. See Daniel 13. Tarabotti does not give the prophet Daniel credit for trapping the two old men into confessing their crime of spying on Susanna and then trying to blackmail her. Daniel put the old men on trial, found them guilty, and so restored Susanna’s honor.

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P a t e r n a l Ty r a n n y cruelty, perverse lust, and treachery of men.63 One could weave story upon story about deceived, raped, and abandoned women who would rather die than live once they were dishonored. Decent people confirm that the proper abode of chastity is a woman’s breast and its companion shame is a shield against your proven perfidy. So when women refuse to listen to your version of these myths, fables, and histories, they preserve their honor intact. Just think, how many young virgins allowed their flesh to be lacerated by iron rakes, tormented by barbs, pulled limb from limb on the wheel rather than yield to man’s lust? In resisting, these pure doves won for themselves the palm of victorious martyrdom. They truly deserve the virgin’s crown, for even against the whole world they would have stood firm. How many more willingly drowned themselves at sea, how many slayed themselves with their own hands to escape your infamous desires?

F AT H E R S D R I V E D A U G H T E R S T O D E S PA I R O N E A RT H AND IN THE NEXT LIFE

In contrast, women shut up in convents for reasons of paternal avarice, who struggle for years without respite against inner turmoil, what reward may they claim for their virginity if they spend their lives drowning in a sea of despair? There is no eloquence to persuade human minds of the reality of this state of life in which involuntary—and therefore false—nuns experience one misfortune after another and then eternal torments. Their lives have beginnings and no ends; gnaw but do not consume; kill but do not put to death. Souls in Purgatory may hope for deliverance from their punishments thanks to the prayers of family and friends; but entombment in a convent is just like damnation in Hell, where there is never precious relief for suffering, never the sprouting and blooming of hope. Even after death, their very bones remain buried within the same walls until the Day of Judgment. Forcing another’s free will is a crime against God, who wants our willing hearts—especially those of virgins—not bodies, remaining fixed in one place forever. As for the Vestal Virgins of Rome—such a small number in that age we could count them on our fingers, while now their number can be counted in the thousands—only a girl dwelling in Italy with three brothers and a noble father would be eligible. They transgressed their vows of chastity under pain of death; nevertheless, at the end of three years they could choose to change their state. What a blessed law that prevented a lifetime’s regret, 63. The classic account of Lucretia’s death is found in Livy History of Rome 1.58–60.

B o o k Tw o caused by having to follow the same routine day in and day out! Pagans who lived according to the laws of Nature showed more prudence than we Christians who should be capable of following the laws of God. Whether noblemen or commoners, today’s men think only of what costs them less and all determine where their women shall reside according to their own selfish interests not the desires of their unhappy victims. Just imagine, dear Reader, what a strange mixture of flora and fauna one finds in a harvest of women gathered together from the most diverse backgrounds. Men take no notice of the resulting harm done to all. Wars, famine, uprisings, plagues, and other dire events all take their sources from this abuse, horrendous in the eyes of God. Though it cries out for vengeance, you new Pharaohs with your hardened hearts do not melt at the births of your own daughters, for you have already prepared their tombs in your mind. Perhaps you await a new Moses who will strike you with his serpent’s rod the same way he struck the Egyptians.64 He will come, I promise you, if not shortly then certainly on the Last Day, when the avenging angel will make you listen to your daughters crying out for justice. It will serve you nothing then to say, “I give tithes of all I possess” (Lk 18:12), because the tithes of daughters you offer to God will be turned into cries of damnation against you at a Throne no longer merciful.65 You will see how responsible you are for their transgressions against the rules of religious life, you who falsely consecrated them to the Lord of the Universe in the first place. Perhaps the Divine Goodness may be prompted to open the jaws of the earth, as He once did for Dathan and Abiron,66 and swallow you up in the abyss. You will then experience burial alive in Hell’s raging jaws, as happened before to others perhaps less guilty of worldly ambition—your vice par excellence—which has led you to a crime so awful it cannot be sufficiently exaggerated by the human tongue.

F A L S E R E A S O N S A R E G I V E N F O R I N C A R C E R AT I N G WOMEN IN THE CLOISTER

Some fathers among you seek an excuse by saying that since evil has increased so much in the world today, it is necessary to remove women from

64. Exodus 4:1–4. 65. Imagery about the Last Day is taken from Revelation 18–21. 66. Dathan and Abiron rebelled against the leadership of Moses during the journey of the Israelites from Egypt to the Promised Land and were punished for blasphemy. See Numbers 16:1–33.

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P a t e r n a l Ty r a n n y danger to the safety of a convent. I don’t understand how you who profess to be Solomons in the flesh can be so stupid as to use evidence suitable for the nursery to defend your iniquity—I can’t listen to it without laughing! How dare you argue that you push women into the cloister because they are more shameless than ever, that as the world has reached a maximum of sinfulness, women are proving more unfaithful and wicked day by day? Rubbish! Yet I grant you that the world has grown worse in one respect: you force young women to become nuns when death itself is preferable.67 Tell me, what sorts of crime are committed today that were unknown in ancient times, indeed, going back to the beginnings of the human race? Take murder, now surpassing all measure in my view: Adam’s first-born son killed his own brother—and there was no woman to blame. If you bring forth the murder committed by David out of love for Bathsheba, I answer that it was not her fault, but David’s savage nature, his overweening ambition. If we speak of adultery, Jacob said to his son Ruben, “Thou wentest up to thy father’s bed and didst defile his couch”(Gn 49:4), and the prophet David, beloved of the Lord, as we have seen above,68 shows us that adultery, sprouting up everywhere in profusion today, was practiced in ancient times too. If only King David were imitated for his repentance as much as for his adulteries! If we look for incest, we find the tale of Lot and his daughters and of Ammon who violated his sister. Even so long ago, enormities of the worst sort were committed, as demonstrated by the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah, destroyed by fire. No woman was the guilty party.69 Rahab who saved the Israelite spies, and likewise Tamar, who deceived her father-in-law disguised as a harlot, show us that there were always women ready to sell their honor even in those distant times.70 As for thefts, lies, sacrileges, schisms, heresies, disobedience of God’s laws, Holy Scripture is full of examples, especially by His ungrateful chosen people. Recall the lack of respect towards the priests by those rude young men of Samaria shouting behind Eliseus, “Go up, thou bald head; go up, thou bald head” (4 Kgs 2:23). The prophet Jeremiah was stoned by his people, and Zacharias 67. These reported arguments also bring to mind Giuseppe Passi, who does not, however, urge women into the cloister but counsels stricter control of women in the home. For a summary of Passi, see my introduction to Marinella, The Nobility and Excellence of Women, 15–18. 68. See note 60 above and related text. 69. For the story of Lot, the death of his wife, and the destruction of the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah, see Genesis 19. While women were not to blame for the destruction of the two cities, Lot’s daughters did arrange incest. Since the human race had to be regenerated, they gave their father much wine and lay with him. Ammon was one of the sons resulting from the incest. 70. For Rahab, see Joshua 2 and 6:22–25; for Tamar, see Genesis 38:12–26.

B o o k Tw o was likewise killed. His Divine Majesty had them in mind when the Scriptures speak of the unhappy, cursed city: “Jerusalem, Jerusalem, thou that killest the prophets, and stonest them that are sent to thee” (Mt 23:37). So you see, there is not more wickedness in the world, as I said above, except in one respect: the imprisonment of hapless young girls by force, forever, and for dishonorable aims. Thus the excuse you proffer is empty and hypocritical, especially because you forbid sin and then cause an even greater number of sins of a worse sort. 71

PAT E R N A L T Y R A N N Y D E F I L E S V E N I C E A N D T H E C H U R C H

You fathers, I say, you fathers defile our age with the hideous iniquity of immuring women against their will. You do not want our own age to lack tyrants who enslave the children of Israel! Indeed, your tyranny surpasses ancient Egypt’s to the same extent that the Israelites hoped at least more than once to be delivered by God’s mercy: And drawn on by a bold hope, they bear at length what is most repugnant.72 But nuns who have taken vows against their wills have no breath of hope. I know well how you scorn my truths, how you all look askance at me; but you shall not carry on a whispering campaign against me saying that my words are contrary to the Holy Council of the Church (for example, that I thought their decrees were faulty, and, in particular, those of the Council of Trent). Let me proclaim loud and clear, once and for all, that I know that those holy impeccable fathers, gathered in the sacred consistory, inspired by the Holy Spirit who guided their every decision, established a most holy decree in setting up convents of nuns, an institution more divine than human. But one must grasp the implications of their divinely inspired doctrines: they speak of women who are determined to enter the religious life of their own free wills, called only by God and not under human constraint.73 These women are full of heavenly grace as they sigh and weep to be admitted with their 71. Both of these are Old Testament prophets, each with his own book. 72. E lusingati da speranza ardita soffrir lunga stagion ciò che più spiace. Tarabotti slightly adapts Tasso Gerusalemme liberata 7.13, where an individual shepherd recounts his trying experiences at court (“Pur lusingato da speranza ardita / Soffrii lunga stagion . . .” 73. For The Council of Trent’s decrees about the religious life, see “De Regularibus et Monialibus,” in Concilium Tridentinum, 281–98 (Venice: H. Polus, 1593). It is stated plainly that the bishop or his vicar must determine whether a girl is entering the convent willingly and for

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P a t e r n a l Ty r a n n y heavenly groom to that place apart longed for by the bride in the Song of Songs. Inebriated by the Holy Spirit, they bestow the name of Paradise on the convent, and the name of Heaven on their cells in which, surpassing their human nature,74 they are transformed into godlike creatures. It is for nuns like these that the Council of Trent’s holy fathers ordained lifelong enclosure; their sublime intellects were sure that perpetual separation from the world would not prove harsh to such innocent hearts eager to follow their groom. If you do not believe this is true, read the fulminations and excommunications directed at those who would inveigle, entice, or persuade any young girl to become a nun. From this, think through, you who are mere men, what sort of punishment will fall upon those cursed by God who not only entice but force wretched girls to don the religious habit, using frightful threats added to an intransigent determination. They show no respect for God or the saints, disguising their wicked intentions behind decrees of pontiffs and councils that they have not understood and still less observed. They even bring forth the weighty judgments of the Council of Trent, which, working piously in all things, and especially in the present matter, grasped only too well that there is no greater offense before God than forcibly denying to His creatures that unconditional freedom of will that He Himself granted to them. In confirmation of the above, let it be known that when the sacred cardinals resolved to impose clausura on monasteries, they promulgated an edict about women who did not give their spontaneous consent to be enclosed for life: it was said they could freely depart without any guilt or fault or shame whatsoever. I take this as another sign or rather incontrovertible proof that one must not offer to God in sacrifice bound bodies, but loving hearts.75 So let everyone understand that the wicked deed I chastise and detest is in no way prejudicial to the everlastingly just intentions of the successors of Saint Peter, and of cardinals, bishops, and councils. I revere them with all

pious reasons or whether she is being forced or persuaded (293). Anyone, whether clerical or lay, who forces young girls or widows to enter is condemned, anathemati (293). At the same time, as Tarabotti would also read, if anyone was forced to take vows, he/she must apply for a dispensation before five years are completed. 74. Tarabotti uses again a word coined by Dante, transumanar, to describe how the human soul is transformed into a divine one in order to be joined with God. See book 1, 50, and note 27. 75. See note 73 above, and Francesco Pellizzari’s book, Tractatio de Monialibus (see book 1, note 75). Pellizzari expands on Trent’s decrees. Any kind of blackmail or psychological pressure from the family of the young girl entering the convent is an impediment to taking the vows binding her to the religious life. See Pellizzari, 49–50.

B o o k Tw o my heart and soul as elected by God for the safekeeping and guidance of Christianity.

F U R T H E R C E N S U R E O F F A T H E R S , A N D , I M P L I C I T LY , O F G . F. L O R E D A N ’ S L I F E O F A D A M

With your false piety, O false man, proceed with your corruption of God’s houses and cloisters by crowding them by violent means, as if press-ganging slaves for galleys. Fabricate your elaborate lies against women’s liberty; pierce their consciences with the mortal blows of despair. Make war against innocent hearts, spite your own misbegotten flesh with your sordid ways: your iniquity will reap the harvest of eternal conflagration. Devote yourselves to betraying good, innocent women with tricks inspired by the devil so as not to deviate from his style of taking in our first mother. Human nature’s enemy knew that a masculine appearance would bring with it a lying air and that shrewd women would not easily lend faith to a monster who speaks the truth only when he confesses to be the father of lies. He therefore appeared to Eve with a woman’s face to win her over more surely. He may have also supposed that Eve would never have entered into conversation with a strange man, given her innate modesty and unswerving chastity as a married woman. Consequently, there are those who say that the devil’s perverse spirit took the form of a young virgin—the type who is pure of heart, who speaks simply and honestly—and only in this way persuaded her (in knotted, twisted, lying words), with promises of knowledge and divinity, to taste the forbidden fruit.76 These are the customary features of your fictions, you humbug zealots of young maidens’ honors. Under your seemingly tranquil gaze, you hide the serpent’s sting of bad faith and foul deformities of heart. You never cease striving to show those simple souls how the Inferno to which you damn them has the appearance of the joys of Paradise. Your disclaimers—that the young things wanted it so, that your intention on the other hand was to marry them off, that you would never commit such a crime for all the tea in China—are once again falser than false, and ungodly as well. Oh, you wicked hypocrites, you devils incarnate, not unlike your master in your feigned expressions, your calculated betrayals, your false promises 76. Tarabotti finishes her book 2 with the most obvious condemnation of Loredan’s Vita d’Adamo, without actually naming her patron or the book. See introduction, 19–21, and for Loredan’s name, book 3, 134.

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P a t e r n a l Ty r a n n y and all the rest, as only you know better! Not for nothing is the word “demon” (demone) of the masculine gender, as if the female sex does not deserve to have attributed to it any of the names of Hell’s infernal monsters.77 You nevertheless persist in burdening us innocents with all the guilt of Eve’s first sin: writers never stop censuring and striking her, making her guilty of lèse majesté, without of course realizing that they are madmen who speak out of immoderate self-interest with the aim of unburdening themselves of the guilt that was entirely the man’s. Adam alone, not Eve, was commanded not to eat the forbidden fruit—which means that his sin, not hers, brought ruin to the world. If only Eve had sinned, the harm would not have reached us today, as theologians affirm, including Saint Anselm in De conceptu virginali.78 From Adam alone, therefore, descends our rack and ruin; and for that reason the apostle Paul says, “Through one man sin entered the world, and through a woman grace.”79

77. An allusion to letter 5 of Ferrante Pallavicino’s Corriero svaligiato, translated in appendix 2, where Pallavicino portrays woman as an evil demon. This letter is dismantled in book 3, 146– 49 and notes 59 and 60. 78. Saint Anselm composed prayers to Mary and meditations on events of her life, like her birth, the Annunciation, the Nativity (of Christ), the Purification, and the Assumption; see Patrologia Latina, vol. 184 (1864), cols. 709–1016. I have not found a passage that corresponds to Tarabotti’s allusion. 79. Tarabotti alters Saint Paul to suit her argument. He says, “By one man [Adam] sin entered into this world . . . much more the grace of God, and the gift by the grace of one man Jesus Christ hath abounded unto many” (Rm 5:12, 15). Saint Paul does not name Mary. Usually Eve and Mary are placed in antithesis, which puts the blame on Eve for the Fall. Tarabotti wants to avoid placing blame on Eve as much as possible, to place it all on Adam instead.

BOOK THREE

P R A I S E O F T H E V I R G I N M A RY WHO CONFOUNDS ALL MISOGYNISTS

There is no doubt that just as ingratitude reigns over the vices, so it also provides the ground for every sin; for if it did not drive men’s hearts, they would lose their lives a thousand times over rather than offend God, who has granted them a superabundance of favors. O truly ungrateful souls! But if you cannot refrain from answering the good His Divine Majesty has bestowed upon you with evil in your every action, at least refrain from extending your ingratitude towards the Virgin Mary: cease speaking ill of her sex—and treating it even worse! Not one of you can deny that divine grace entered the world through her. She alone, full of so many attributes, and worthy of the highest praise, can boast, I alone have compassed the circuit of heaven, and have penetrated into the bottom of the deep, and have walked in the waves of the sea. And have stood in all the earth, and in every people. (Sir 24:8–9)1 As the mother of all graces, responsible for their distribution, she opened Heavenly Jerusalem’s gateway, which was closed to mankind for centuries. She filled this hemisphere of ours with true light, banishing the darkness of sin and conquering death itself. There was never found prophet, patriarch, judge, captain, king, or saint—however innocent, zealous, mighty, just, or courageous he or she might be—able to placate the divine wrath caused by original sin. It proved necessary for a woman to reconcile the human race to the Lord. It was she who was able to draw Him to her wishes, so to speak, and to that peace through which we yearn for the Kingdom of Heaven. She 1. In this chapter from Sirach (or Ecclesiasticus) the words spoken by Wisdom personified have been traditionally attributed to the Virgin Mary in the liturgy and devotional writings of the church.

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P a t e r n a l Ty r a n n y was our ambassadress, whose eloquent intercession obtained not only a truce for the age-old strife between the human race and Satan, but also a joyous victory over him. How can it ever occur to you liars to say that “woman” (donna) means “ruin” (danno), when it is precisely a woman, supremely excellent in every virtue, who has raised you from the ruin and blindness that you have largely brought upon yourselves by contravening God’s commands?2 With what temerity dare you call us women “timid” or “cowardly”? Remember, it was a woman of great valor who wandered through Heaven’s vastness assisted only by divine grace, unafraid of penetrating into the abyss. Indeed, she was a brave warrior armed with heavenly virtues, who trod under foot and crushed the proud serpent’s head, thus taking revenge on the deception he contrived against the first woman.3 Finally, how can you deny the authority woman has in Heaven and on earth when you confess the Virgin Mary to be the Empress of the Universe? There never was and there never will be any man raised to such honor and privilege by His Divine Majesty. But He was so pleased with Mary that He came to dwell for nine months within her most pure womb. He chose her as the treasury of Heaven’s most precious gifts, the living spring of His grace. She alone is worth all the other saints put together, and through her our female sex was enriched with more graces and favors than the entire human and angelic natures. Although His Divine Majesty had endowed Adam with innumerable privileges, shaped him with strong limbs, and made him the supreme ruler of Paradise, He realized that Adam would fall, inflamed by a nod from his sweet innocent wife.4 His Majesty also knew that his beloved Noah would beget the accursed Ham, whose descendant Abram lied to King Abimelech, saying that his wife Sara was his sister.5 David, whom He also loved, turned out to be ambitious, and in addition, an adulterer and a murderer.6 Moses was

2. A play on words already denounced in book 2, 102. 3. Tarabotti blends imagery from the above chapter from Sirach with the prophecy from Genesis visually represented in so many paintings of the Virgin Mary: “And the Lord God said to the serpent: I will put enmities between thee and the woman, and thy seed and her seed: she shall crush thy head, and thou shalt lie in wait for her heel” (3:14–15). 4. Tarabotti again refutes the view that Eve was responsible for Adam’s fall. It seems likely that she has Loredan’s The Life of Adam as her immediate target once again. 5. Noah fathered three sons, Sem, Ham, and Japheth, from whom all mankind was descended after the Flood. Noah cursed Ham for seeing his father naked and drunk, but Abram lied to the pharaoh in Egypt about his wife, not to Abimelech, as recalled by Tarabotti. See Genesis 9:20–27 and 12:10–20. 6. Tarabotti has already listed David’s crimes in book 2, 115.

Book Three at one point an unbeliever. Though favored by God as much as is possible here on earth, Solomon was an idolator.8 And finally, Judas Maccabeus, the strong warrior, glorious for his many victories, erred in the end by showing himself too gullible.9 In short, the Prime Mover, long before He became incarnate, discovered flaws even in the most just men, and His divine intelligence could not discern any one of them suited to open the door closed by Adam’s disobedience. 7

M A RY, A W O M A N , I S T H E S T R O N G E S T A N D M O S T F A I T H F U L O F A L L G O D ’ S C R E AT U R E S

Remaining true to His love for ungrateful mankind, Our Lord resolved to choose a woman who could be rightly acclaimed “the strong woman”—to the confusion of all ungrateful monsters, I mean, you men. This was the Virgin Mary, called the Queen of Angels, Lady of Paradise, Empress of Heaven and Earth. On hearing her name, the devils tremble, the angelic Powers bend their knees, and the Cherubim, Seraphim, and all the blessed in Heaven adore her!10 What lofty honors this most glorious woman received; of her Saint John wrote in the Apocalypse, “No woman has been seen like her, nor anyone following after.”11 Her superb adornments were of such a kind that Dionysius the Areopagite is said to have exclaimed in amazement, “If I knew not God existed, I would adore her as God!”12 Her strength led Solomon to describe her thus: “Terrible as an army set in array” (Sg 6:3); it can well be said of her that she was a virile woman. Adam fell for the charms of a fleeting, seductive beauty, while Mary not only resisted, she destroyed for

7. See Numbers 20:12: “And the Lord said to Moses and Aaron: Because you have not believed me, to sanctify me before the children of Israel, you shall not bring these people into the land, which I will give them.” 8. See above, book 1, 57–58, where a whole section is devoted to Solomon’s inconstancy. 9. Probably a reference to Judas Maccabeus’ alliance with the Romans who then betrayed the Jews and slaughtered Judas (1 Maccabees 8 and 9). 10. Powers, Cherubim, and Seraphim are three of the nine hierarchies of angels described by Pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagite in The Celestial Hierarchies. The nine are (beginning from the lowest) Angels, Archangels, Thrones, Principalities, Powers, Virtues, Dominions, Seraphim, and Cherubim. 11. N. Costa-Zalessow in “La condanna all’Indice della Semplicità ingannata di Arcangela Tarabotti alla luce di manoscritti inediti,” Nouvelles de la Republique des Lettres, 2002; 1: 97–113, note 67, has identified the phrase as coming from a sermon of Saint Bernard on Revelation 12. 12. Tarabotti quotes in Italian, which suggests an indirect source, or perhaps apocryphal material attributed to Dionysius, who did not write anything specifically on the Virgin Mary. See Patrologia Greca, vols. 90–91.

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P a t e r n a l Ty r a n n y all time the fiercest enemies. She shook off the senses, struggled with the devil, and sent him back, beaten and overcome, as the prophecy foretold: “She shall crush thy head” (Gn 3:15). Her humility triumphed over the false pride of those fools who thought they could reach the stars by building a tower.13 She instead rose above the heavens—by plunging into the abyss of submission when she spoke the following words to the heavenly messenger: “Behold the handmaid of the Lord” (Lk 1:38). She gave birth to salvation and our only solace. If our Heavenly Father made a promise to the first who saw the rainbow that in the future it would be a sign of divine peace with the world for a hundred years: “I will set my rainbow in the clouds, and it shall be the sign of a covenant between me, and between the earth”(Gn 9:13), He promised a more joyous and lasting peace with the words, “And a great sign appeared in the heaven: A woman clothed with the sun” (Rv 12:1). In her alone did the Holy Trinity entrust the mystery of the Incarnation; in her alone for nine months did the Holy Trinity entrust within her sealed womb Heaven’s most precious treasure—to confound men’s treacherous tongues, croaking their usual lies about “women’s loquaciousness.” Men’s foolhardy dreams devised impossible machinations; one woman alone, declaring herself the handmaid of the Lord, became a strong tower, reaching beyond the stars and making of them a crown for herself: “the tower of [Mary], which is built with bulwarks: a thousand bucklers hang upon it, all the armor of valiant men” (Sg 4:4). If the Holy Spirit was the architect and builder of this tower, will it not be fully armed? Not only was Mary a treasure chest of God’s secrets, a tower that reached the heavens, but also a temple within which are adored all the wonders of the Almighty God Most High.14 Prostrate at the feet of your mercy, I beseech you, Blessed Virgin Mary and most chaste mother, do not regard the poverty of my gifts, but rather gaze upon the ardor of my devotion—I am your adoring servant—with your usual compassion. Open your sweet lips, most merciful one, and pronounce your benediction, which humbly on my knees I beg you to grant, and in virtue of which I shall no longer be the Devil’s plaything, but rather remain filled with heavenly favors. Just one sound from those lips of which

13. A reference to the Tower of Babel, and the resulting confusion of tongues. See Genesis 11:3–9. 14. In the Bible, the tower is of David, not Mary. The imagery attributed to the Bride in the Song of Songs was applied to Mary in the Middle Ages and forms part of the Litany of the Blessed Virgin Mary, still used in Catholic services: Mary is called a tower of ivory, a garden enclosed, a fountain sealed up, an army in array, the morning star. The names “fair as the moon” and “bright as the sun,” however, are from Revelation 12.

Book Three the Psalmist said, “Grace is poured abroad in thy lips” (Ps 44:3), and I shall not fear all Hell’s treacheries.

R E T U R N T O T H E F AT H E R S ’ F A L S E P E R S U A S I O N S

The devotion owed to the Empress of the Angels has made me digress, dear Reader. Let me now return to my earlier path of exposing the wiles of the worldly wise—I mean, those ignorant of Christian living—who huff and puff to fill monasteries with women of the most diverse social conditions. Their one aim is to rid their households of honest young girls and replace them with wicked, filthy and unchaste ones, all to suit their lusts and serve their own convenience. This infamous lot mouths words like the following: There isn’t a leaf on a tree that moves without the divine will permitting; God has willed these daughters of ours and their relatives to be born for the purpose of being enclosed in a convent; destiny—which derives from God’s inscrutable decisions—obliges them to submit to lifelong imprisonment; and if it were not meant to be so, His Divine Majesty would not allow it to happen!15 You liars! Not even the devil himself would have the impudence to speak thus. I do not deny that if it were the will of God, who is the absolute Lord of all, to oppose your wickedness, you would not be able to commit sin; but I also know that the human will, as I have shown above, is free and autonomous for all.16 They continue: “Entrance into the religious life is always God’s will.” Once again, they lie. They have no regard for God’s will in any matter; their only counselors are their purses and treasure chests. What inspires the thought of vocations is gold’s glitter, not the Holy Spirit’s rays; silver’s siren song, not heavenly voices. So rather than release treasures from locked chests, they imprison misbegotten innocents, denying them the treasure of this world’s light. Those advised by money will end up stumbling into the abyss. Judas, motivated by greed, resolved to sell Jesus, his master, for thirty pieces of silver—Jesus who was the treasure of all heavenly treasures.17 Persuaded by similar considerations, you betray your own daughters and relatives. You 15. See above, book 1, 62–63, for similar reasons used by fathers to persuade their unwilling daughters, which sound like a well-rehearsed catalogue. 16. See book 1, especially 44–46, 49–51. 17. Matthew 26:14–16.

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P a t e r n a l Ty r a n n y will never reach a moment when you can say “Enough!” because if you are not satisfied with much, you are hardly going to be happy with little. You admit you are never satisfied with many incomes, yet at the same time imagine you’ll be satisfied with gaining a wretched dowry—while all along the goldsmith is making you a golden chain (which serves to bind you to greed’s chariot and drags you to worship her triumphs), and you are chasing after benefices, incomes, and lucrative titles. You remind me of what was said once to the Moon by her mother (it is in Plutarch, reported by Cliombolo’s mother).18 When the Moon asked her to make her a dress that fitted properly, the mother answered: “How can I do that when you are never still in any one place; one minute you wax, another you wane, and yet another you’re full, circling on your path?” Likewise, how can you say, “Enough!” when swollen with insatiable cravings, plus your multiple excommunications, and the prick of your consciences caused by the violence used in getting rid of women from your houses: all these torment you, so you never find an hour’s peace, still less, a moment’s? Your desires forever plague you, they pursue you; what is worse, now you want one thing then another; now longings, then hatreds, making you as changeable as the moon. Each one of you can apply that proverb to himself: “But a fool is changed as the moon” (Sir 27:12).

TA R A B O T T I D E F E N D S H E R S E L F : S H E I S N O T A L I B E RT I N E

You should not believe that what I may have exaggerated so far springs from an unwise desire for liberty of conscience and an inclination to live subject to no authority: I disagree with those who say that it is all right for each and every person to damn himself as he wishes. May such a grievous error be far from my mind! I give my approval to the view that each one of us should serve God and lead a holy life in the state of life he or she has chosen.19 For the same reason, I shall exalt in eternity those convents inhabited by young girls called by God; young girls who have beseeched God at great length saying: “Show, O Lord, thy ways to me and teach me thy paths” (Ps 24:4); who feel the holy flames of love of God and the religious life being kindled in their souls; who run rejoicing to serve their Bridegroom because it is not unfitting to serve such a worthy lover. They have willingly withdrawn from the world’s stormy seas. But others enclosed by force lead wretched 18. Although Plutarch did compose an essay, “On the Phases of the Moon,” included in his Moralia, translated from Greek into Latin, and Italian—Tarabotti might have had access to a translation by Marc’Antonio Gandino and others, published in Venice in 1597, and again in 1614—there is no reference to this story. 19. The attacks reported here, and Tarabotti’s self-defense, are similar to what she says in “To the Reader.”. Was this section added to an earlier manuscript? See 23–25.

Book Three lives; they blame a destiny that does not exist for their sufferings, as well as God who permits but does not agree with their fates. They live as if excommunicated together with their sordid fathers and relatives. Their hearts do not find rest in the cloister, but continually plot futile escapes from prisons where they must die.

T H E H E I N O U S N E S S O F F AT H E R S ’ C R I M E S ; G O D S E E S A L L

If it is true that our mad intellects are accustomed for the most part to desire most what is most forbidden: We ever strive for what is forbid, and ever covet what is denied,20 just imagine what it must be like for those unfortunate wretches. They are bound within a few square yards, they never have the chance to look up at the stars, they are obliged to make their own a motto, which once upon a time a faithful lover had emblazoned on his coat of arms in proof of his constancy: Semper idem, “Always the same.” At the same time, they tear themselves apart, victims of a rabies caused by your criminal bites. If it is also true—as it most certainly is—that the Holy Father has condemned any violation of the laws regarding clausura with the threat of excommunication, a threat that includes those aiding and abetting the violation, just imagine the anathema falling on its initiators! Since it is you heads of families, you, I say, who are excommunicated, little wonder if your houses never find a moment’s peace, plagued by troubles coming from the irate hands of the hierarchy: hands that have exterminated provinces, ruined kingdoms, destroyed republics, and laid waste to cities. Excommunication (and interdict) are the most severe punishments by which the church chastises and brings low its enemies. How many struck by this arrow have come to a dreadful end? Although the bishop (or archbishop) present may be taken in by the answers young novices give to his questions, although he may pretend to know nothing about your excessive cruelty—and you, on your part, know how easy it is to fool his intentions—Our Divine Lord who scrutinizes hearts is never confused by lies, or half-truths, or surface appearances.

FA L S E P R O F E S S I O N O F V O W S I S N E V E R G O D ’ S W I L L

God’s presence pervades all places; He sees and hears all; He carefully watches whatever we mortals do, every step we take, every journey we 20. “Nitimur in vetitum semper cupimusque negata” (Ovid Amores 3.4.17). English translation by G. Showerman (Cambridge, Mass., and London: Loeb Classical Library, reprint 1996).

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P a t e r n a l Ty r a n n y make, whether day or night; He sees us in every season, in the most secret places, the most hidden corners. Listen to David, who could not find shelter from the divine gaze: “If I ascend into heaven thou art there, if I descend into hell thou art present” (Ps 138:8). Seneca, a pagan philosopher, knew this truth: “There is nothing which is hidden from God,” he says, “God is always within us; He knows our most innermost thoughts.”21 Do you think you can fool God, who reads our hearts, into believing that you act from holy, sincere motives, when in reality you do just the opposite? When you say, “God’s will calls women to the cloister, since without God’s permission one could not draw a single breath,” you are making assumptions that smack of heresy. If it were so, then God’s will would have to collude with all sorts of wickedness, sordid dealings, and other enormities you habitually practice. When you get rid of decent women in your families, all you think of is making wrongdoing easier. Remember: His Divine Majesty has given you free will, and if you wish, divine grace; but if you despise His gifts, He allows you—not without sorrow, if one can say that of God—to hurl yourself off the precipice like a raging animal. In persisting in your sins, you often lose your moral sense, to your greater detriment. The rules governing the entry of young girls into the religious life require them to beg and beseech to be admitted and, furthermore, that they spend whole years inside to test their vocations. If they prove unfit, they leave the convent free. These requirements are not put into practice nowadays. As long as they take the veil, “everything’s all right.” No matter how much they protest, their prayers and tears are in vain. So they go through the rites in appearance only; they embrace Jesus, their bridegroom, feigning the ceremony; they offer Him their hearts mouthing the words, in fact belonging still in the world. Your iniquity deserves a divine thunderbolt, consisting as it does in consoling your daughters with false words: “You must conform yourself to the Supreme Will; you cannot go against the destiny compelled by the stars”—as if God Himself had to hold you back from not sinning! You resemble the high priest Caiphas at Christ’s trial, who spoke thus to the rabble when trying to cover his evil intentions with the mantle of public 21. Tarabotti reports Seneca in Italian, suggesting a translation or an indirect source. The passages that come closest are in Epistolae morales (Letters to Lucilius), 83.1–2: “Nihil Deum clausum est. Interest animis nostris et cogitationibus mediis intervenit—sic intervenit, dico, tamquam aliquando discedat” (“Nothing is shut off from the sight of God. He is witness of our souls, and he comes into the very midst of our thoughts—comes into them, I say, as one who may at any time depart”); and also Ep. 41.2 “Sacer intra nos spiritus . . . malorum bonorumque nostrorum observator et custos” (“There dwells a holy spirit within us . . . the witness and guardian of our good and bad deeds”). Seneca, vols. 2 and 1, trans. R. M. Gummere (Loeb Classical Library, 1962).

Book Three expediency: “It was expedient that one man should die for the people” (Jn 18:14). He wished to infer that Christ’s death was foretold, that it had to happen, otherwise a whole race might perish. A diabolical opinion, exemplary for you! Even if the sibyls and the prophets had foretold the death of God’s only Son, it does not follow that Christ’s traitors were necessarily forced to collude in His death sentence and in the Lamb of God’s persecution and crucifixion. Just like them you say that convents are built on purpose for all kinds of women: “The religious life is their destiny—much better for one woman to be shut up to serve God than for a whole family to be ruined.” If popes and Council decrees have established that women should observe lifelong clausura, this is no reason for them to be made nuns against their wills! You grasp the outer rind of the church’s intentions, failing to penetrate the inner marrow: in serving the Lord, all He wants is our hearts.22 Furthermore, there is nothing, however enjoyable, useful, and dear it may be, that does not satiate when enjoyed too often. For nuns, variety, the spice of life that is pleasing to all and in keeping with our human nature, is banished because nuns must always be the same and do the same, whether working, entertaining, resting, eating, or dressing. Wherever you go, whatever activity you engage in, that famous, abovementioned motto applies: Semper idem, “Always the same.” Need I say more? If a harsh blow of hostile Fortune strikes these already unfortunate creatures, they are unable, by turning their backs, to withdraw from her cruelty; for no matter what side of Fortune they detect, she will never impinge on their fate. For all other mortals, Fortune is unstable and variable, but for nuns fortune is invariably bad. If their state of life remains forever the same, how can their luck swing from bad to good? And if that is so, they can never taste even a crumb of the happiness that Fortune sometimes brings as she revolves her unstable wheel.

I N T H E N E W T E S T A M E N T, C H R I S T, R E S P E C T I N G W O M E N ’ S FREEDOM, NEVER FORCED THEM TO BECOME NUNS: T H E S A M A R I TA N W O M A N

To continue: as I draw near the conclusion of my first thoughts about clausura, I find that not only in the Old Testament—as I have already fully shown you—but also in the New, God neither ordained nor obliged anybody to employ such tyranny. Rather, during His pilgrimage in this valley of tears, 22. Tarabotti’s words here echo the couplet at the beginning: “Piety by the sword / Pleaseth not the Lord,” 42.

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P a t e r n a l Ty r a n n y it did not displease Him to make the acquaintance of many women as He wended his way through town and country. On the contrary, He granted them a large number of physical and spiritual favors while He was promulgating His law: He forgave some women their sins, He filled others with divine grace, He restored yet others to health. He was never scandalized to see any woman in the street; in fact, when the gospel says that “Jesus therefore being wearied with His journey, sat thus on the well” (Jn 4:6),23 He was waiting for the kind Samaritan woman in order to give her water to drink from that everlasting source, that deep well—if not that vast ocean—whose waters quench thirst forever for those who drink it. Our most merciful Redeemer waits for the beautiful woman: He does not use force, He does not constrain, He does not even call out and invite her to drink. He waits and waits, patiently, thirsting to save a soul lost by sensuous charms, until she happens to come to the well. And He does not grant her the water of salvation until she asks of her own will: “Sir, give me this water, that I may not thirst” (Jn 4:15). Even though she was a loose woman, He did not disdain bestowing His mercy on her. O peerless Samaritan! Born into the most despised nation in the world, that caused God to send bears and lions to tear its people to pieces in their beds,24 you alone recognized the true light and found in water the wine of divine grace that inebriates. About that wine, it has been rightly said, “Drink, O friends, and be inebriated, my dearly beloved!” (Sg 5:1); but not with that wine “wherein is luxury” (Eph 5:18).25 O woman of generous heart and open mind, you believed and confessed Christ to be God. By your own incomparable faith, you sowed faith’s seeds in Samaria, and because of you that people said: “We now believe, not for thy saying, for we ourselves have heard Him, and know that this is indeed the Savior of the world” (Jn 4:42).

C H R I S T T R E AT E D W O M E N , H I S M O S T F A I T H F U L DISCIPLES, AS EQUALS OF MEN

In matters regarding faith and salvation, women were always the first to recognize, confess, and give due glory to the King of Heaven—not only at His 23. Here starts a meditation on the New Testament episode of the Samaritan woman; see John 4:4–43. 24. In 2 Kings 18:24–28, the Samaritans are punished specifically for worshiping alien gods; but there is no mention of bears. There was continuing hostility between the two adjacent regions of Samaria and Judea down to New Testament times. 25. The latter verse reads in its entirety, “And be not drunk with wine, wherein is luxury; but be ye filled with the Holy Spirit.”

Book Three birth, at His miracles, and when He died for all mankind’s Redemption, but even before He was born they foretold His coming. Old, venerable Elizabeth cried out when Mary visited her, intoning the prophetic words, “And whence is this to me, that the mother of my Lord should come to me?” (Lk 1:43). The Tiburtine sibyl possessed such esteem, authority, and wisdom that she made Emperor Augustus bend his knee to adore the child Jesus in Mary’s arms. They appeared in the heavens surrounded by a bright halo.26 Glorying in the vastness of the Roman Empire, the Emperor was promulgating an edict in which he wished to be adored as divine. And what about the great prophetess Anna, who lived in the temple fourscore years a virgin, and “who departed not from the temple, in fastings and prayers serving night and day” (Lk 2:37)? Armed with unshakable faith, she won the honor of clasping the Son of the Eternal Father to her breast—indeed, she was the first woman to sing the praises of the newly born Redeemer, vying with the blessed swan, Simeon.27 And what is your response, you liars, to these truths—not fables—of sacred history, as time and again you contemptuously devise to rob us of our deserved dignity and respect? To accomplish your purpose better, you have buried some of us within a convent’s four walls, knowing that had we been free and assisted by an education, we would have made known to the world all your tyranny’s treacheries with truthful tongue and faithful pen! You give the name of “imperfect animal” to the woman, driven by spiteful envy far more than by the simple truth.28 On the other hand, you yourselves grow hair on your faces, thus imitating wild animals not just by your rough skins, but more precisely by your savage manners. You have made your likeness to irrational horned beasts complete by carefully twirling each side of your moustaches upward, you vain creatures, to look like two horns, anxious to brand above your mouths rather than above your heads a sign that marks you as perfect animals!29 26. Collections of alleged oracles of the ancient sibyls, interpreted as “proof” of the triumph of Christianity over paganism, were in circulation since the early church and printed many times in the Renaissance as Oracoli sibillini. The Tiburtine sibyl had poems attributed to her. 27. Luke 2:25–32. The Gospel records Simeon’s words, however, saying of Anna that she “confessed to the Lord; and spoke of him [the child Christ] to all that looked for the redemption of Israel” (Lk 2:38). 28. The condemnation of woman as an imperfect animal, or defective male, was repeated endlessly in misogynistic diatribes. The Latin expressions animal imperfectum and mas laesus are translations from Aristotle On the Generation of Animals 737a28 and 767b6–9. See introduction to the series, above, x–xi. 29. Tarabotti wrote an Antisatira in 1644 condemning male vanity in response to F. Buoninsegni’s Satira of 1641. See F. Buoninsegni and A. Tarabotti, Satira e Antisatira, ed. Elissa Weaver (Rome,

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P a t e r n a l Ty r a n n y Whenever I happen to read some fancy turn of phrase invented against our sex by your not-good will, there grows my conviction mixed with indignation of a truer than true principle I bear engraved in my mind. It is this: when a male writer or poet composes to the detriment of women, he tells lies and nothing else. His warped mind produces envy’s malformed offspring, not justice’s whole ones. Let us hear Sir Giovan Francesco Loredan, the glory of modern letters, the wonder of the universe, the sun whose rays of virtue dazzle us. The worlds’s eyes are turned towards him, gazing with pleasure. And what reason does he give in his novel, The Life of Adam, for not being able to find the death of Eve in Holy Scripture? He says one must not recall the death of a woman who should never have been born!30 He could have said something far more reasonable, truthful, balanced, and less far-fetched, as he ought, namely, that there is no mention of Eve ever having died, because, on the contrary, she deserved to be considered immortal. Men’s bile, in short, is striving incessantly to employ sophistry with their lies against the female sex; they never stop blaming us for no other reason than envy, for since they cannot lord it over us by their merits, they must do so by their tongues. Just as they say on purpose that the very word “woman” (donna) means “ruin” (danno), why don’t they also say that it means “God’s gift” (dono di Dio), the world’s enjoyment (delizia), goddess (dea) dispensing favors to the male? And why don’t they also say that “woman” (femmina) means nothing else but happiness (felicità),31 since the book of Ecclesiasticus confesses openly that where a woman is lacking, there is sadness and misery: “Where there is no wife, he mourneth that is in want” (Sir 36:27). Yet again, the painting of Cebes’s “The Banquet” depicts happiness in a woman’s garb.32

1998), where Tarabotti refers to the same fashion in men’s moustaches (29). Here, however, she compares them to “horns,” with the satirical allusion to the horns of the cuckold and the lecher. 30. Tarabotti is now explicit about Loredan’s authorship of the biblical—and misogynistic— novel, L’Adamo (The Life of Adam), attacked earlier for its glorification of Adam and condemnation of Eve. See book 1, 52–53, and book 2, 108–10 and 121. See also the introduction, 20–21. Loredan dismisses Eve in a few words just before a lengthy and fulsome praise of Adam. 31. Tarabotti has already referred to the widespread practice of deriving “true” meanings of a word from its supposed etymology. See book 2, note 36 and related text. As she shows here, it can be used both ways. The misogynistic link of donna with danno goes back to medieval diatribes. 32. Cebes of Thebes, of the fourth century B.C.E., was a character in Plato’s Phaedo and Crito. For the Renaissance, he was believed to be the author of a short moral-philosophical work, the Tabula (ascribed to him in error), in which there was a description of an ancient Greek allegorical painting, “The Banquet.” This work was published in Latin and Italian in the sixteenth century. Tarabotti may have known it in the Italian translation accompanied by moral essays: Discorsi morali di Agostino Mascardi su la Tavola di Cebete Tebano (Venice: Pelagallo, 1627).

Book Three Women need never exchange the least of their praiseworthy attributes for an infinity of the ones you claim to possess, O men; for they have been declared worthier than you by the first-born of Heaven when it pleased Him, because of your fault, to mingle His divinity with humanity. On finding the woman taken in adultery, accused perhaps by the very men who had made her sin, Our Merciful Lord struck fear into her accusers’ hearts with the words: “He that is without sin among you, let him first cast a stone at her” (Jn 8:7). As her accusers waited for her death sentence, they themselves were condemned as guilty. The woman had sinned, more perhaps because of men’s harassment than her own inclination. Just imagine, O Satan’s ministers, that a divine pronouncement were addressed to you in person: Let him who is sincere of heart, a keeper of my law, Catholic through and through, devout, driven by pure zeal, cleansed of vice, acting solely for the glory of my name, resolve to preserve the chastity of his daughters within four walls without deceit—let him, I say, be the first one to enclose them, and I shall be satisfied. Oh, you would all run away, your faces ashen with fear or reddened with shame, and your daughters would go free, protected by the same divine justice! The Canaanite woman’s unshakable faith could never be found in a man. Deafening the heavens, she cried out in the presence of the apostles and the multitude, “Have mercy on me, O Lord, thou Son of David: my daughter is grievously troubled by a devil” (Mt 15:22). Thus she won mercy, although she was unaccompanied in the streets. Insistent on being heard by that loving heart, she repeated her prayers; so after refusing her with harsh words, He let her hear sweet comfort. Besides the grace of her daughter’s healing—“Be it done to thee as thou wilt” (Mt 15:28)—she obtained glorious praise: “O woman, great is thy faith!” (Mt 15:28). It was as if He admired her boldness, for the many doubting bystanders knew little of such faith. A similar rival in faith was that other happy woman with a hemorrhage. Dismissed by the apostles and the Pharisees, she was so full of humility that she did not dare approach Christ to speak to Him. Rather she said to herself, “If I shall touch but the hem of His garment, I shall be whole” (Mk 5:28). The female sex has always been the solid rock on which were built the foundations of the Christian faith. There come to mind abundant examples proving this proposition beyond doubt. Among so many I cannot keep silent about Christ’s greatly beloved apostle. Still a known sinner, she entered Simon the Pharisee’s house, and in full view of all the invited guests threw

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P a t e r n a l Ty r a n n y herself fearlessly at His feet—He was yearning for her conversion—wiping and then anointing them with precious aromatic ointments.33 Was there ever such ardent love? She is not deterred by fear of the reproaches that could be leveled against her. She does not care about Judas’s fault finding, so like your own in feigning a zealous conscience when driven rather by base greed as he worries like you about wasting the priceless ointment. On the other hand, brave in affection, unshaken in her faith and contrition, she never stops shedding waves of tears to win her Lord’s mercy and drying His holy feet with her hair until she deserves to hear: “Thy sins are forgiven thee” (Lk 7:48). Christ’s divine eyes observed countless women in streets, in squares, in public places, and among the multitudes; yet He never commanded His Vicar Peter to bind them or put them under lock and key, as would be done today. Why? Because this practice is not God’s will, but contrived by human malice alone for the purpose of deceiving women. Instead, the Lord appeared to Mary Magdalene in a public way after His resurrection: “Tell us, Mary, say what thou didst see upon the way.”34

R E F U T A T I O N O F T H O S E W H O S AY T H A T W O M E N ’ S FA I T H I N C H R I S T I S G U L L I B I L I T Y

At this point, your customary sophisms and schemings will not fail, by which you would find shadows even where there were no bodies to cast them! You would attribute the zeal of these women’s faith—entirely holy and pious— to mere credulity, which you unfairly propagate as a specific attribute of the female sex. But woman’s heart is not as you think and describe, easily falling for the slightest false rumor. Women readily believe in Holy Mother Church, and they do not vacillate in a faith that allows no room for doubt. If they exaggerate, it is only in loving God and in practicing virtues and devout and holy deeds—although spiteful men never pass over an occasion to speak of female excess, never moderation, in any emotion whatsoever. But your lies gain little credit with us, for you are not men but wild beasts. As is well known to all whose intellects are not entirely blinded, every single one of you contaminates truth itself with a thousand falsehoods. Your fickle and vain arrogance leads you to imagine that every woman falls for the infatuated

33. Tarabotti follows Luke 7:36–50. From the sixth century, the “sinner” is usually (and incorrectly) identified as Mary Magdalene, but in similar incidents the woman is Mary, the sister of Martha: Mt 26:3–13, Mk 14:3–9, and Jn 12:3–8. 34. From the Sequence of the Easter Sunday liturgy, which Tarabotti would have read in her missal.

Book Three lover’s make-believe you describe in treacherous detail. You also promise yourselves great rewards at any young girl’s chance look in your direction, at a simple gesture, at a spontaneous smile; and you end up boasting that you are the one and only master of her heart and will. This is plain madness, since your discussions would persuade us that a woman’s thoughts are like yours, obscene and wild. But you are sorely deceived, for when you think women adore you, their laughter and glances are meant to mock, and they marvel at your vain conceit. Samson, all too gullible, was proof, just like all men deluding themselves too easily about their own supposed merits.35 They think we are languishing with love on their accounts, when they should remember how short-lived, how imaginary, were the successes of an Adonis or a Narcissus.36 If Samson had not presumed Delilah’s love, he would not have perished so wretchedly. Even the brave general Sisera, who fled from battle exhausted, longing to save his life, allowed himself to rest his weary limbs in his beloved’s house. After Jael refreshed him with food, she hammered a huge tent peg through his temples with her own hands.37 The unfortunate man perished like the other, deluded about being loved. You can learn from such stupidity how readily you men lend credence where it is misplaced. Instead of putting your faith in preachers, confessors, the Gospels and everything to do with our true and holy Catholic Faith, you wallow in wicked opinions. You follow heretics, Lutherans, and apostates; you agree with the evil opinions of Pelagius, who affirmed that a soul does not need grace to be saved; indeed, you are atheists who, neither knowing God nor believing in Him, foolishly confuse what is heavenly with what is profane.38 You may continue to insult women with your reproaches of excessive, inept gullibility; you will not move them to believe that you cloak them in 35. For the Samson and Delilah story, see Judges 16. Delilah gradually drew out of a reluctant Samson the secret of his strength: his uncut hair. Once shorn, Samson was captured, blinded, and put in prison by the Philistines. He recovered enough strength to take revenge and died while doing so. 36. Both Adonis and Narcissus were beautiful young men adored by women. The former, loved by Venus herself, was slain by a boar; and the latter, pursued by the nymph Echo, fell in love with his own image reflected in the water and wasted away. See Ovid Metamorphoses 10.503–739 and 3.402–510. 37. Judges 4:1–22. 38. Tarabotti would seem in this last paragraph to be attacking Loredan and members of the Accademia degli Incogniti, some of whom were sympathetic to Protestant views and accused of atheism. See introduction, 8 and note 15. For Pelagius and Luther, see book 1 above, notes 74 and 75, respectively.

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P a t e r n a l Ty r a n n y the religious habit for their own good! On the contrary, they will remain firm in the opinion that you imprison them in a Hell that you falsely call Paradise so that you can squander the money you save in shameful deeds, submerging yourselves in the slime of such filthy sins that the stench reaches High Heaven!

W O M E N ’ S S U P E R I O R L O YA LT Y A N D D E V O T I O N T O C H R I S T D U R I N G H I S PA S S I O N

But at this point let me avail myself of that modesty possessed by every woman and say that I shall not allow myself to be engulfed by the turbulent sea of your sordid deeds. I wish to turn to another matter that illustrates a tiny particle of your cruel savagery—from which not even the very Giver of Life was safe. After all, He was put to death by you, though mourned by the female sex with tears and tenderness. Tell me, perverse men, by whom was our Redeemer betrayed, tortured, and put to death? By men, without a doubt. Among the Twelve Apostles, I’ll show you wicked Judas who betrayed Him out of greed, Peter who denied Him, and the rest who fled. If it were not for the reverence that I must bear for the Vicar of Christ, the rock on which the church was founded, I would say that in Peter’s denial one recognizes the typical man’s treacherous behavior. As Dante says Long promises and very brief fulfillments.39 After he had promised Christ at the Last Supper, all courage and fervor, to follow Him forever without wavering—“Yea, though I should die with thee, I will not deny thee” (Mt 26:35)—it seemed that man’s most inner spirit could not change its course. Despite a holy determined will not to betray his master, Peter showed that fickleness, instability, and deceit are so common to your sex that even when the matter is about not abandoning one’s God, a prince of the apostles denied Him thrice: “I know not that man” (Mt 26:72). (Forgive me, Apostle Peter and Vicar of Jesus, if I compare you with such false people who do not resemble you in admitting their mistakes. At one glance from your beloved Lord, you left that loathed palace weeping bitterly for your sin. But nowadays men, stubborn in doing evil, persevere 39. “Lunga promessa, coll’attender corto” (Inf. 27.110), translation by Mandelbaum, 178. Tarabotti quotes the infamous advice of Guido da Montefeltro to Pope Boniface VIII: the Pope should feign making peace with his enemies besieged at Palestrina and, when they have surrendered, destroy the city and all within. This took place in 1298. But she also weaves the quotation into an earlier Dante allusion, Inf. 19.100–1, where Dante says he would use even harsher words to Pope Innocent III, guilty of simony, were it not for the respect he has for the pope’s office.

Book Three in their iniquities up to death’s door. Not even divine threats can tear them away from their sewers of sacrilege, whence they pass into Hell’s jaws. There they remain buried—a fitting sepulcher for those who bury alive their own baptized offspring.) But let us return to the question of who put our Redeemer to death. Pharisees and scribes, high priests, false witnesses, judges—all played roles in the somber tragedy of our Savior’s mortal sufferings performed for the whole world to see. Insults and injuries, mockery, beatings—a hard rock could not have withstood the pain—His flesh cut to pieces by whiplashes, hair plucked cruelly from His head and chin, the heaviest cross on the innocent Lamb’s back. This was the work of ungrateful men, nobody else. In handling his Lord’s Passion, man showed himself to be the most brutal of all animals as well as the most thankless and imperfect. Women, on the contrary, pitied Him, grieved for Him, and accompanied Him up to His last breath on the cross. The hearts of Jerusalem’s women, whether mothers, daughters, or wives of the dogs accusing and persecuting Him, were moved to compassion at such a spectacle. They wept for their God (unknown to you, who boast about your learning and knowledge of prophecies); and although respect for their dear ones and relatives should have forbidden feelings of mercy, nevertheless, the light of the True Good always dwelling in female hearts drew forth such abundant tears that the World’s Savior forgot His crushing burden. Overcome by compassion, He turned His face toward them, like a sun eclipsed by blows, blood, and spit, and said, “Daughters of Jerusalem, weep not over me, but weep for yourselves, and for your sons” (Lk 23:28).40 Let us consider a while these mysterious words: He did not say “weep . . . for your daughters,” but “for your sons,” because for sons, birth is mournful, life is bestial, and death, for most, unhappy. “For yourselves,” He said, meaning that women, who give birth to men, should weep for them as the cause of all the world’s evils. As far as they could, women repudiated the accusations made against their innocent Lord made man. Pilate’s wife sent a messenger to her husband sitting in judgment and pleaded on His behalf: “Have thou nothing to do with that just man” (Mt 27:19). She knew He was innocent. These compassionate women were not moved by self-interest. Only a natural inclination to do good drove them to mourn and keep busy protecting a God who appeared on the world’s stage in the guise of a criminal, the dregs of the earth. 40. I have changed the Douay “weep . . . for your children” to “weep . . . for your sons” as Tarabotti is playing on the ambiguity of the Latin and Italian noun filii/figli, which is used for both male and female children, but also specifically for male ones—the meaning Tarabotti wants here, as we shall see.

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P a t e r n a l Ty r a n n y So when at last the meek victim of the eternal Father was raised on the altar of the cross, His only refreshment, His sole comfort, was the sight of the fortitude of Mary who bore Him and the fearlessness of His loving disciple Mary Magdalene, accompanied by the other Marys who participated in the most painful spectacle on the stage of Mount Calvary, with Heaven’s eyes weeping at the injuries suffered by its Maker. They stayed there unflinchingly, oblivious of soldiers, butchers, and hangers-on around them; not even noticing the unsheathed weapons that glinted dangerously or fearing the rage and savagery that could befall them at the hands of those monsters. They stood firm, taking heart, numb with grief, stunned by such unheard of cruelty: but they never abandoned Him. So let your lying lips, O men, which oppress women as the weaker sex, a mass of defects, while their deeds tell the opposite story, be confounded and silenced forever!41

W O M E N ’ S F O RT I T U D E

Women proved themselves the courageous sex at Christ’s death, when the apostles instead fled. Their constancy was so unshaken that one could quote Boethius’s poem: No terror could discourage them [Tarabotti: us] at least / from coming with me on my way.42 How can they be weak when they faced death itself, when they have always been strong not only in suffering but in every other necessity? Who will deny Judith’s courage? With striking fearlessness, she severed the head of 41. With the reference to those who call women “piene di difetti,” Tarabotti seems to be alluding to the arch-misogynistic compendium of her time, Giuseppe Passi’s I donneschi difetti (Women’s Defects) (Venice, 1595, 1599, 1616), already refuted by Lucrezia Marinella’s On the Excellence and Nobility of Women (Venice, 1600, 1601, 1620); see also the translation A. Dunhill with introduction by L. Panizza (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1999). See the introduction above, 122, and below, 146–47. 42. Has saltem nullus potuit pervincere terror, Ne nostrum comites prosequerentur iter. The Consolation of Philosophy, I, Prologue Poem, 5–6. Tarabotti pulls these verses out of context and misquotes to suit her argument, giving Nos(us) saltem . . . for Has (them) saltem, and . . . prosequeremur (we will come) for . . . prosequerentur (they will come). Condemned to prison, Boethius is lamenting this change of fortune from prosperity to adversity and calls on the Muses who inspired his poetry in youth: “They were the glory of my happy youth / and still they comfort me in hapless age” (trans. V. E. Watts; Harmondsworth Middlesex: Penguin Classics, 1969.) Unable to rouse him from the melancholy into which he has sunk, they will be replaced by Lady Philosophy. Tarabotti has the verses apply to women willing to suffer persecution and follow Christ loyally.

Book Three Holofernes and freed her country from a deadly siege. What about Tamiris, queen of the Scythians, whose valor brought about a victory against proud King Cyrus?44 Then there was Penthesilea, queen of the Amazons, who distinguished herself at Troy by her prowess.45 Since they were Amazons, they were truly women, as trustworthy Darete Frigio tells us.46 Feminine courage shines out, documented in infinite histories; by it we have subordinated kings, emperors, and powerful armies. As to whether the greatest wise men fell prey to irresistible female beauty, let David, Samson, and Solomon tell their tales. The latter, in his book of Proverbs, says about one of us, “For she hath cast down many wounded, and the strongest hath been slain by her” (Prv 7:26). As I have already shown, a band of women witnessed with unshakable courage the horrors of Christ’s Passion and death, but only one of the apostles, John, proved reliable and brave. Because of his chastity, he deserves to be removed from the rest of you unchaste and lecherous men and counted as one of us. Women bear modesty, decency, and eternal chastity as an indelible mark. Christ noticed John’s unusual loyalty and rewarded him by leaving him to take His own place as the Virgin Mary’s son: “Woman, behold thy son, after that he saith to the disciple, Behold thy mother” (Jn 19:26–27). What a grace! What a unique gift and marvelous praise that in a few brief words He encloses all the encomiums that could be contained in volumes of the most eloquent orators! Dear Saint John, I adore your righteousness and constancy and beg you to grant me the love and sorrow that enabled you to follow your beloved Master and share His atrocious sufferings. Bring it about that, like you, I may follow in His footsteps, if not as closely, at least from afar, so I may 43

43. Judith 12–13. 44. Thamyris (or Tomyris), a legendary queen of the Scythians, defeated and killed the Persian King Cyrus, who invaded her territory and seemed at first victorious. A short biography can be found in Boccaccio’s Famous Women, trans. Virginia Brown (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2001), 198–203. 45. On Penthesilea, see Boccaccio, Famous Women, chap. 32. 46. “Darete Frigio” is the Italianized form of the name of a supposed Greek historian, Dares of Phyrgia, to whom was attributed a pre-Homeric history of Troy that survived only in Latin prose translation. This was published at the end of the fifteenth century together with another supposedly ancient history of Troy by Dictys of Crete. The Italian translation put the two together with the title Ditte Candiotto et Darete Frigio della guerra troiana (Venice, 1570). Says Frigio, “Sono le Amazoni donne bellicose et nel mestiero dell’armi famose fra gli huomeni: però da’ vicini non possono esser soggiogate” (40–41); (“The Amazons are warlike women, famous among men for their military skills; and for this reason they cannot be subjugated by their neighbors”).

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P a t e r n a l Ty r a n n y adhere to your holy example: “Look and make it according to the pattern, that was shewn thee in the mount” (Ex 25:40).

W O M E N ’ S K I N D N E S S A N D C O M PA S S I O N

But let us not be carried away in proving women’s courage to the extent of forgetting their other virtues. Let us take their charity, and discuss women’s worth, since the subject of the asp’s violence, the basilisk’s poison, and the fox’s duplicity—I speak in metaphor, about men—can never be fully exhausted by women. O Lord, with what compassion, worry, shoulders bowed down with grief, cheeks pearled with tears, choked anguish, did they wander—lost white doves with plaintive voices searching for their dead, adored Master! Anxiously they walked, heavy with sorrow, sometimes needing rest, although even then watching, hoping to see and hear what they so longed for. They never hesitated a moment in their faith, unlike the disciples on the way to Emmaus, who doubted the resurrection;47 and unlike Thomas, who needed tangible proof to believe.48 They were certain that sooner or later they would see their Lord resurrected, for whom all things are possible. The gospel itself testifies that before dawn broke in the east, they ran in great haste to the tomb, looking for their good Master; indeed, they would not leave Him alone, although buried, so they sat on the sepulcher weeping.49

D I G R E S S I O N O N T H E VA L U E O F W E E P I N G FOR MEN AS WELL AS WOMEN

I know that the usual mocker will not fail to object that I use women’s weeping as evidence of their kindness. Not surprisingly, a woman who is used to tears often pouring at will from her eyes will have dampened cheeks. But let these false ridiculers remember that even men, even the Lord God Himself, have made a show of weeping when they wished to display an intense emotion. And since emotions abound preeminently in us women, tears are also plentiful. Our Savior wept for his friend Lazarus: “And Jesus

47. Luke 24:13. 48. John 20:26–29. Thomas doubted until he placed his hand in the risen Christ’s side. 49. There are slight variations in the gospel accounts of the burial and resurrection. See Mt 27:61–66 and 28:1–8; Mk 16:1–9; and Lk 24:1–12. The combination of women sitting on the sepulcher and weeping is Tarabotti’s own flourish.

Book Three wept” (Jn 11: 35). He wept at the sight of the city of Jerusalem, foreseeing its destruction, as the Scriptures say: “Seeing the city, He wept over it” (Lk 19:41). If the blessed Christ knew how to weep, and chose to do so, then tears are not despicable. Rather, they are nature’s way of providing relief, an antidote to unburden the heart of its anguish. May I be allowed to mingle pagan examples with biblical ones? Xerxes is known to have wept over his vast armies as he pondered over how many would perforce meet their death. Alexander the Great also wept more than once after realizing the evil fruits of his madness, including the death of friends.50 Plato was not ashamed to describe how he and his friends mourned over the death of their dear master, Socrates: “Plerique nostrum eosque retinere quoddammodo lacrymas potuerimus” (“There were many of us who held back tears as much we could”), and so forth.51 But all these are heroes’ tears, fitting for compassionate hearts and held in contempt by wild breasts and by men similar to brutes (the larger part belong precisely here). Tears were often to be seen not only at the courts of the best princes, but also in the dwelling places of the greatest men of letters as a fitting response, a needed relief to Fortune’s dark dealings. In contrast, you are men so hard of heart as never to have wept over the Passion and death of our Redeemer. You, we read, treated Him cruelly, administering blows and lashes; you betrayed, abandoned, crucified, and put Him to death. For that reason, it pleased Our Savior to appear first to Mary, His mother, and Mary Magdalene in recognition of their compassion rather than to the other apostles and disciples—as He always appreciates and rewards the love and faith of pious followers.52 Thus He distinguished our sex by such a high honor and only afterward showed Himself as the risen Lord to men. When our sex receives these heavenly rays of divine gratitude in exchange, it is a glory that cannot be denied as a true boast of the female sex. 50. There is considerable literature about tears in the Renaissance that could have informed Tarabotti; in fact a whole genre of poetry is called lagrime. One of the most diffused collections was by Luigi Tansillo, Le lagrime di San Pietro (Venice, 1585, 1592). Lucrezia Marinella composed a lengthy moral commentary on Tansillo’s lyrics (Venice, 1606); and Tarabotti herself wrote a lament, Le Lagrime, for the death of her friend in the convent (see introduction, note 1). But for examples from the classical world, the moral essays of Agostino Mascardi on the Table of Cebes would have been a rich vein (see note 32 above). Mascardi has an essay on tears, 194–205. 51. Plato’s Apology (translated by Marsilio Ficino into Latin) gives the account of Socrates’ last moments. 52. The belief that Christ appeared first to His mother is not in the Gospels, but developed in apocryphal and popular literature in the Middle Ages and later.

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P a t e r n a l Ty r a n n y M E N A R E G R E AT E R C H AT T E R B O X E S T H A N W O M E N

As for the charge that the risen Lord appeared to women first because of their talkativeness, so that the news of His resurrection would spread, as it were, like lightning, it does nothing to take away our preeminence, but adds to your impudence.53 The Scriptures are full of your inability to hold your tongues—among hundreds of other faults—besides which you would now claim to be privy to God’s hidden thoughts. Are you really saying that the risen Christ needed women to spread the news of His resurrection, as if He, the omnipotent Lord, lacked the means to flash it instantly to the entire universe? The god Harpocrates is not fittingly sculpted as a man because men utter not only what they know, but also what they do not, even indeed what they would wish to be, and then preach as the gospel truth.54 On the other hand, wise Romans depicted the goddess Argirona with her lips sealed, wishing to convey that woman more than man was suited for silence.55 Nature conveys the same message by means of the cicadas: the females are silent, while the males croak raucously till death. His Divine Majesty did not convey to us rather than to men the news of His resurrection because the thought struck Him that we were chatterboxes, but because He wished to reward us worthily! He desired to honor the kind charity of those who had faithfully accompanied Him to His death, who had mourned Him, showed compassion, anointed Him, and believed in Him, even after His burial. When Mary urged the apostles gathered together at Pentecost to pray together, the Holy Spirit descended upon them. Her fervent prayers brought down the heavenly dove in tongues of fire, bringing wisdom and divine eloquence.56 In this way, the Catholic faith was spread throughout the world by ignorant men made learned and wise by divine grace. One could thus argue that true eloquence was brought down from Heaven to men on earth by a woman—yet you would accuse wretched women of our times of excessive garrulity.

53. See Orazio Plata, Che le donne non siano della spezie degli uomini, refuted by Tarabotti in Che le donne siano della spezie degli uomini (Women Are No Less Rational Than Men), ed. L. Panizza (London, 1994), 80–82. The Plata was published in 1647, and published again together with Tarabotti’s answer in 1651: both much later than the composition of Paternal Tyranny. Tarabotti could have possibly heard about the silly accusation, however, from Loredan, who may have been the author of Che le donne non siano . 54. Harpocrates was the Egyptian god of silence, represented with a finger on his mouth. 55. “Argirona” may be a corrupted form of Egeria (Aegeria), a nymph consulted by Numa Pompilius, the second king of Rome, who became his wife and instructress. 56. Acts 2, but there is no specific mention of Mary; her presence was added in later accounts.

Book Three O T H E R S P E C I A L V I R T U E S D I S P L AY E D B Y W O M E N

Whoever considers with a detached eye the special qualities and favors granted by the Creator to women, if he be without spite, will have to admit that they possess all of them in the highest degree. Generosity finds its center of gravity within the female breast, just as avarice within men. Mean, stingy Judas wanted the precious ointment Mary Magdalene poured over Christ’s feet to be sold—so he could keep the money! Women, on the contrary, “bought sweet spices, that coming they might anoint Jesus” (Mk 16:1). Our Lord dearly loved these expressions of generosity in women. Look how He brought about an exchange of hearts with Saint Catherine of Siena, wounding her breast with arrows worldly lovers madly boast about every day. He then exchanged His heart with hers, full of merciful sentiments, and kindness—which is why He endures with far too much clemency the offenses of sinners like you, and others, without seeking revenge.57 The Old Testament, too, gives glorious instances of women’s liberality, magnanimity, and generosity. The queen of Sheba showered King Solomon with precious gifts: And she gave the king a hundred and twenty talents of gold, and of spices a very great store, and precious stones: there was brought no more such abundance of spices as these which the Queen of Sheba gave King Solomon. (3 Kgs 10:10) There are other higher virtues innate to women: humility, piety, prudence, and, above all, chastity; they are not “accidents” as the logicians say, but “substances” of the female sex; and if they are “accidents,” they are inseparable from their subjects.58 And what sublime chastity shone in Mary’s face at the foot of the cross, when among the butchers and the rabble, she did not encounter a single soul so crude as not to show her respect! The Jews who crucified Mary’s Son did not harm the mother even by a single insult.

57. There were many lives of Saint Catherine of Siena that Tarabotti could have used, including one by her contemporary Lucrezia Marinella (See book 1, note 40); not to mention the account in the Legenda aurea (see book 1, note 39). 58. Tarabotti is using scholastic terminology to assert that virtue is part of woman’s nature, not an ephemeral quality that comes and goes, or that is not necessary for defining what one is or is not. Tarabotti is refuting accusations that women are not really human beings, neither moral nor rational, as found in Orazio Plata (see note 53 above).

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P a t e r n a l Ty r a n n y A F U RT H E R C A N T I C L E O F P R A I S E T O M A RY

How I would like my pen to take courage and chant canticles in her praise, as her name alone brings so much honor and glory to our sex that men should be silent forever, struck dumb by shame! This great Mother’s child would have us understand that the most precious jewel of His treasure chest should be, in part, the object of reverence. He caused a light to shine in her face that caused awe in those who gazed upon her, for He wanted each and every one to revere her as God’s wonder. She lived not only free from sin, but was its terror, ruin, and destruction. So should we be amazed if she appears as if clad in armor, wielding weapons against wild beasts brutalized by their hatred and scorn for Divinity itself? But all this is a mere trifle, so to speak, compared with the dumbfounding miracles of Divine Omnipotence accomplished in the Virgin Mary—all the more to remind us that the woman who was revered and served by her own Creator should also be respected by His most perverse creatures. If the blood, life, sufferings, and martyrdoms of the saints lay the foundations of the invincible bastion of the church, immaculate Mary, who takes up the cause of sinners before God, was the first cornerstone, the firm base providing solidity to the whole divine edifice. She may not have shed her blood with the martyrs, but she gave her blood to form the human members of God made man and took part in His Passion to the extent that she died a thousand times in life and so earned the title “Queen of Martyrs.” On account of her privileges, great glory redounds to our sex. It is high time for men to call a halt to their impudence, by which they vilify all women calling them the “idea” of imperfection itself. Their lying orations are built in the air, utter whims of their empty heads.

MISOGYNISTS NAMED AND UNNAMED ARE CONDEMNED

There is no one who speaks against women with greater prejudice than Giuseppe Passi, the author of Dei donneschi difetti.59 What indecent accusations; what obscene, sarcastic, disgusting applications of his material to the dignity of women’s worth one reads there! This vile man has written about the female sex with such vulgarity and bias that he would be a worthy candidate

59. Finally Tarabotti explicitly names the title and author of this infamous work, refuted by Lucrezia Marinella in The Nobility and Excellence of Women, and the Defects and Vices of Men (see note 41 above).

Book Three for King of the Mad gathered together by Tommaso Garzoni in his asylum. But perhaps Garzoni added insult to injury, having never even bothered to read this scribbler’s travails, who deserved to have a serpent rather than a woman of flesh and blood as a mother, if he was going to grow up reviling in print the sex that bore him. And there is also another modern author, whose name I shall pass over in silence. He too invents shameful insults against our sex with his satirical viper’s tongue in a loathsome work.61 What a liar, and malicious to boot, especially in letter 5—just as well he was put to death before the book’s publication!62 Little wonder if he defaces woman’s sacred features; he is guilty of sacrilege against the entire Catholic Church. He respects neither pope nor cardinals or the Roman Curia; and he uses strident vituperation to lash out against all Christendom. In letter 27, he compares himself to a four-toothed flea biting princes and nobles, who are God’s representatives on earth. In that role, they could administer dire punishments against him, whereas I have my pen alone to avenge myself.63 While Pallavicino may don the religious habit, he is certainly not familiar with religious customs, biting as he does with an evil tongue that renders him the likeness of the heretic Sergius, who knew only too well how to impress his listeners’ minds with false opinions.64 After an absurd catalogue of all female imperfections that would make a stone laugh, this ingrate alleges the doctrine of Pythagoras according to whom intellect is man’s “genius” or “demon.” But since woman, too, has a sort of intellect, her “genius” is evil in opposition to man’s. And since—he continues—an evil genius is attributed to demons (creatures ordained to destroy all good for us), they must be at work also in women, as the creatures who bring all ruin to the world. Such absurdities do not need me to labor in their refutation, except 60

60. L’ospedale de’pazzi incurabili (The Asylum of the Incurably Insane), published in 1586 and 1589. It is not a medical treatise but a compendium of all kinds of human folly. Passi’s tract was published in 1599, a good decade after Garzoni’s compendium. 61. Ferrante Pallavicino (1615–44), Il corriero svaligiato (The Post-Boy Robbed of His Bag) (Venice, 1641), an epistolary novel, is discussed in the introduction, 24. Modern edition by A. Marchi (Parma, 1984). His letter 5 that Tarabotti refers to is translated in appendix 2. 62. Pallavicino was put to death on Papal instructions in 1644, three years after the publication of Il corriero. Tarabotti may be thinking of an even more notorious tract, Il divorzio celeste (The Heavenly Divorce of Christ and His Church), which was published anonymously outside Italy in 1643 but not disseminated until after his death. 63. The image of Pallavicino as a four-toothed flea is not in letter 27. See the Italian edition by A. Marchi (Parma, 1984), 10–15. I have not been able to find the image in the other letters of Pallavicino’s epistolary novel. 64. For Sergius, see book 1, note 73.

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P a t e r n a l Ty r a n n y by repeating the above-mentioned truths about woman being the natural source of all good enterprises, never the reason for bad ones.65 I shall only add apropos that genius and demons are signified in Italian by masculine nouns as more appropriate to man’s nature and his evil deeds. This detractor has also blabbered on about woman being like the vine, forgetting that the simile may also be turned to woman’s advantage: from the vine, after all, nourishment of human life is pressed, that precious liquid that increases our bodily heat and therefore our vital fluids and life itself. He would have it that women are like the vine because after the fruits of the vine have been harvested, it is worthless and should be thrown into the bonfire. Women, I say, exceed the vine in fruitfulness; after enriching the world by childbearing, they are consumed by the flames of divine love; and weeping with life-giving tears for the horrendous sins of men, by their intercession save men from hell’s fires, so well-deserved by their many unjust faults. As for his claim that the Romans flailed their citizens with rods from the vine to signify that Heaven gave woman to man as the worst punishment in the world, I say they did so to signify the rule she holds over that insensitive animal called man. If she sometimes entwines and entangles herself with him, she also binds and traps him, as Divine Omnipotence has decreed. He wills her supreme authority over the male sex to be made manifest, as he is unworthy of any other treatment but prison and stripes. So it is simply not true that man, like staves to the vine, supports the woman who otherwise would fall spineless; rather, he approaches her to induce her to fall by countless ploys and be supported by him. A clever mind wishing to operate in a sinister fashion easily manages to invent chimeras that distort the true nature of things and force the strangest meanings from bits of arcane learning. And thus our most astute author wrongly interprets the custom of women of Tartary, who bore on their heads as their most precious ornament a human foot. The correct meaning is that woman, as quick and ready for noble deeds, runs with many feet along the path of virtue, keeping one united with her mind so she can walk securely on her way, without stumbling. She needs the extra assistance so as not to

65. For Pythagoras, see Diogenes Laertius 8.1.1–52. Pythagoras divides the soul into three parts: reason (the only immortal part), intelligence, and passion (both possessed by other animals as well). Demons (superhuman beings, guardians, and benefactors of mankind) are not evil according to Pythagorean doctrine and still less at work in women with the role of opposing men (30–32). Pallavicino is deliberately distorting the facts for the purpose of misogynist invective. From here to the end of this section, Tarabotti deconstructs Pallavicino’s letter 5.

Book Three fall into the snares and traps set for her innocent nature without end by the cursed “genius” of the male sex, who is always opposed to doing good. His interpretation, therefore, that there is no greater glory for a woman, a mindless creature with no sense, than to be subject to the male is obviously false. The contrary is true: that her greatest torment and suffering is to find herself subjected to the tyranny and inhumane whims of men. Further machinations against our sex involve our author alleging that whenever the Romans saw a woman appear in a public place or in the courts, they were struck with dread as if confronted by a menacing omen. If this were so, being frightened at the sight of a woman can only be attributed to cowardice, blindness, and ignorance. How else could a creature like a purest dove in every respect be likened to a sinister raven? We might rebut that they were terrified by a woman’s beautiful face because they thought she might be an angelic being from on high, sent to punish them for the unjust acts wicked men commit when they appear in court!

A FINAL BLAST AGAINST MISOGYNY AND ITS PRACTITIONERS

In short, these lying scribblers spend night and day reviling and belittling women with their fictions. In the end, they hold themselves up to scorn, because the very defects they assume to exist in us—and which have never reigned in the female breast—their own false consciences embrace. That is why they are able to discuss these defects so fully as qualities known and practiced. Your shamelessness in continually blaming us, you of the male sex, beggars description when you yourselves are the dens of all iniquity. The prophet Ezekiel had you in mind when he beheld in a vision a horrendous dragon “having seven horns and seven eyes” (Rv 5:6).66 Although the seven mortal sins signified here are of the feminine gender, do not forget that they are organs of this monster, examples of how all bad intentions come from the male. On the other hand, the most outstanding virtues are named with nouns of the feminine gender: faith, hope, charity, fortitude, temperance, and chastity. So too we speak of Holy Mother Church, and the highest forms of address are feminine: your Holiness, Your Majesty, Your Highness. The

66. The dragon is found in Revelation (not Ezekiel), where it has seven heads, ten horns, and seven diadems on its heads (12:3 and 13:1); it is Christ, the Lamb, who has seven horns and seven eyes, “which are the Seven Spirits of God.”

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P a t e r n a l Ty r a n n y mere sound of nouns of the feminine gender has the power of adding an aura of majesty to the highest titles and offices one can desire in the world.67 King Solomon, the wisest of men, and Alexander the Great, renowned through the centuries for his valor, recognized women’s worth with neverending homage. Women’s resplendence so overcame them that on some occasions, in their willingness to submit to women, Solomon forgot all about his wisdom and likewise Alexander about his triumphs.68 Not everyone knows, moreover, with what respect and affection these two consulted their mothers in administering their kingdoms and in other difficult and demanding undertakings. Poets possessed of a quasi natural antipathy for women—which leads them to insult the sex—have entertained in their fictions that the god Vulcan was born without a mother because he was lame, ugly, and covered in smoke from his smithy. I say he is the true portrait and type of those men who scorn women.69 Is it not time, you infirm intellects, to refrain from wasting your talents in damning the sex without which you would not be born? Are any of the greatest kings or rulers brought into the world without a woman? Mother Earth, who produces all things, and the goddesses Eternity and Providence, worshipped by the ancients, are all women. Your cleverness has something in common with suspect alchemists who promise to transform slippery mercury into gold and silver; you do the reverse, trying to change the noble metal of women’s virtues not into unstable mercury but into base metals such as lead. Your alchemy is detestable in God’s eyes! Somewhat like you were those hypocrites in the Pharisee’s house who murmured about Christ allowing Himself to be touched by Mary Magdalene’s sinful hands.70 They were never bothered by their own consciences, however, laden with evil doing and wickedness of all sorts. You hold your daughters in harsh prisons to prevent them, so you say, from falling into sin; and all along you are aiming to indulge your licentiousness. You sentence them to lifelong incarceration, though innocent of all crime, to take pos-

67. Suffice it to say that in Italian all these nouns are of the feminine gender. This kind of argument makes no sense in English, which does not distinguish between masculine and feminine nouns. 68. Alexander the Great (356–323 B.C.E.) had a reputation for being passionate. He married a princess of Sogdiana (modern Turkestan), Roxane. Tarabotti has referred before to King Solomon’s excesses; see esp. book 1, note 36 and related text. 69. Vulcan the blacksmith god of fire was married to Venus, whom he caught in a fine net with her lover Mars (Ovid Met. 4.169–89). But perhaps Tarabotti has in mind here Ferrante Pallavicino’s satirical novel, La rete di Vulcano (Vulcan’s net) (Venice, 1641). 70. Mark 14: 2–9.

Book Three session of their inheritances, without noticing your own collusion in their failings as nuns. You were never granted such unlimited authority, but you have arrogated it to yourselves—or rather, your puffed-up conceit, like Lucifer’s, has usurped the power. If only, if only you realized and recognized the depths of your depravity, you would hardly exalt yourselves to the heights of wanting to dominate the wills of others like tyrants and evil men! You wretches bring to mind the peacock, a noble bird that nevertheless falls for his own brilliantly colored plumage. Displaying his many-eyed feathered fan, he struts about showing off what is nature’s great gift, not his own, forgetting his misshapen feet. When he casts his eye downwards, however, and gathers that their ugliness corresponds little to his self-styled glory, he lets forth a shriek of mortification. He lowers his plumage, ashamed, and realizes that he has allowed his pride to rest in feathers, that is, levity itself. You, too, vainglorious men, determined to hold on to your superiority over women (which you have usurped) admire yourselves as the only ones adorned with several prize features like liberty, dominion, lordship, and public office. Though you have banished women from the same advantages with your evil tyranny unlawful to Christians, you are swollen with pride; you strut about like peacocks; you boast about the graces and favors you think you alone possess; and you imagine you can arbitrarily condemn your own offspring to the tomb before they die. Just lower your eyes, you fools, to the nothingness you are, to the ashes from which you came, to the foul feet of your deeds, muddied with vices from swirling swamps!71 Recognize that you are sewers of sin! Do not hide your vain thoughts like the peacock, but withdraw to a cave in the wilderness and do penance! Do not dare to raise your heads to Heaven, for your excesses make you unworthy to look up at the stars! It is vanity to believe that if you imitate an animal in pretentiousness, you would want to imitate it also in self-knowledge. You are indeed worse than any dumb animal. Listen to that melodious bard, Ariosto, who asserted truthfully, Every species of beast which dwells on this earth lives in peace among its kind— and if fight it must yet the male will never attack the female. 71. The reference to the vain peacock that needs to be deflated by looking at its ugly feet is also used later by Tarabotti in her Antisatira in a similar context of vain men who need to learn humility. See the edition by E. Weaver, 99, and note 211. Weaver identifies Valeriano’s Hieroglyphica, available in Italian translation, as the likely source.

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P a t e r n a l Ty r a n n y The mother bear goes safely through the forest with her mate. The lioness lays herself down beside the lion; the she-wolf lives secure in her consort’s company, and the heifer has no fear of the young bull.72 But man is more savage than any brute. He never ceases to tyrannize cruelly the female. She never feels safe, but fearful and anxious, unsure of her own life among treacherous and evil men who boast of terrifying her with a sinister glance. The pelican will give its life to nourish its young, feeding them on its own blood if necessary. Doves never abandon the nest unless in search of food for their newly born. Bears, tigers, snakes, basilisks, and all wild animals, however savage or poisonous, nourish and tenderly care for their offspring, without distinguishing male and female. Only in the human species does the male, only the male, more ruthless than any wild beast, more cruel than any monster, torment the body and perhaps the soul of his own flesh and blood, ruled and blinded by greed. He buries them alive in a tomb. Just outrage and imprecations against your enormities should come from a voice other than mine or be written down in another hand. What can I say or do? I am a simple woman, compassionate in heart, set face to face against your cruelty, with no experience of your diabolical way of life. I am a young woman reading books for my own edification, without any previous schooling in letters. It is impossible for a person like myself to describe your waywardness and evils when I have always led a life far from such practices. What marvel, therefore, if mistakes abound in my plain, unpolished sentences? If I were not sure of asserting the truth in everything I have said, if I did not have its shade to shelter me, I would blame my own boldness as rash for having dared to plunge into an account of those tyrannical barbarities that deserve rather a Demosthenes’ thunderbolts.73 I may not have carefully selected thoughts, but they are at least genuine and sincere. There is another book of mine, soon forthcoming, where 72.

Tutti gli altri animali che sono in terra, o che vivon quieti e stanno in pace, o se vengono a rissa e si fan guerra, alla femina il maschio non la face: l’orsa con l’orso al bosco sicura erra, la leonessa appresso il leon giace, col lupo vive la lupa sicura, né la iuvenca ha del torel paura. (Orl. Fur. 5.1) 73. See 41, note 11 and related text, for Demosthenes, also in the context of Tarabotti’s sense of inadequacy and desire for better rhetorical skills.

Book Three they will appear with their same native simplicity to prove to you that in those places constructed by your fraudulent self-interest reign all the pains of Hell.74 There is a river worse even than Cocytus, whose waters flow from the tears of unhappy women damned there. You will find there the rock of Sisyphus and the torment of Tantalus with countless other tortures and afflictions, all the more sorrowful as they are fact not fiction, continually experienced by those unfortunate women whose fate hangs on your cruel snares.75

74. A reference to L’Inferno monacale (The Convent Life as Inferno), important for establishing that it was completed after Paternal Tyranny. It will appear in this series. 75. Cocytus, one of the rivers of Hades mentioned by Dante, means “weeping,” as Tarabotti would have read in her Dante commentaries (on Inf. 14.119, for example). Sisyphus was punished for his cunning and robberies in Hades by endlessly rolling a stone up a hill, only to find it always rolled down again; Tantalus, punished for tricks he played on the gods, suffered from thirst he could never slake, though he was up to his chin in water (see Ovid Met. 4.460ff for both).

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APPENDIX ONE

A R C A N G E L A TA R A B O T T I , P A R A D I S O M O N A C A L E LIBRI TRE. CON UN SOLILOQUIO A DIO (VENICE: G U G L I E L M O O D D O N I , 1 6 5 3 ) , P P. 3 6 – 4 0

To the Reader: If my humble confession made to God in the preceding Soliloquy has not been a sufficient proof of my innocence, I fear you may have been too harsh a judge in my regard. But you should know that you will not be deprived of punishment: “Judge not, that you may not be judged” (Mt 7:1). If you find some of my explanations a little frank, especially concerning myself and my own deeds, please recall, courteous Reader, that the Tribunals of the Supreme Judge do not conform to those of the world, before which one strives to conceal crimes and provide excuses for the sake of obtaining pardon. I am speaking before God, in whose sight I believe it is best to exaggerate one’s faults humbly in order to appease His most just anger more easily and regain His favor. Do not let some false impression take you in, therefore, when I openly declare about myself that I did not reform any abuse in the religious life and that the gaze of the divine Eye Itself, penetrating our most innermost heart of hearts, discerned within me only those failings that I have found ingrained in the routine of convent life. I sinned against our Infinite Good, it is true, and my sins “are multiplied unto me above the sand on the sea” (Jer 15:8). On the other hand, I have never deviated from what is owing to the honor that the conditions of my birth, my upbringing, and my own gifts demand of me. If I have been carried away in vain and youthful frivolities, my sense of honor always kept me within the limits of a chastity so unsullied that it could boast the name of purest innocence. My wanton behavior went as far as my outer garments; my vanities were characteristic of my sex. I have always had this maxim engraved in my memory: that without chastity no woman is beautiful and that physical beauty cannot and should

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Appendix One not claim a greater adornment than purity of heart. Indeed, recognizing that I am ugly and maimed in body, I have devoted myself to cultivating beauty of soul as the only kind that deserves to be desired and admired. This is what Christian philosophers have taught me and what I have learned from pagan philosophers: we do not deserve praise for those privileges bestowed upon us by God and Nature, but for those that we acquire through our own efforts. These worthy sentiments were able to preserve me for some time, unharmed by the poisonous bites of defamatory tongues; yet it is also true that innocence itself is let down and remains disillusioned in this most unjust theater of the world. I do not wish to digress, therefore, into the subject matter of other people’s falsity, as I do not wish you to imagine that by constructing this Convent Life as Paradise I am nurturing grudges and rancor against anyone in particular. On the contrary, I assert that in all Christian sincerity, I have laid my case at the feet of that Most High Tribunal, before which the false witness of white-haired elders and the authority of worldly titles shall not prevail in any way over and against truths of the youthful, since up there self-interest is banished and wickedness not approved. Truth itself has risen to Heaven and has left us on earth a single cloak with which to cover deceit; it will triumph over lying and satirical tongues to my eternal honor. Let my Judge be Our Most Compassionate Lord who died among slanderous accusations hurled at Him. Let David, too, be my judge; he was God’s beloved and invoked the Lord to act as judge between himself and Saul, who was persecuting him unjustly: “Be the Lord judge, and judge between me and thee” (1 Sm 24:16). As for the rest, kind Reader, do not expect from me a fine vocabulary, elegant tropes, pleasing descriptions, lofty opinions, and wide learning. These are qualities belonging to great intellects, not to me; my mind is poorly endowed. Just ponder a moment: what charm can there be in the manner of writing of a woman who has not had any imaginable enlightenment in Latin language or literature or any other discipline to assist her in the art of composition; and who, for the rules of spelling and grammar, makes use of nothing beyond a dictionary? What style, what explanations, what sharpness of understanding can be discerned there? A person who has never been taught how to write and who does not even recall learning how to read—although she has enjoyed it extremely—simply cannot possess sufficient preparation to compose without making all kinds of mistakes. As you peruse these few pages, I do not want to put myself under the illusion that you will be impressed by how an ignorant woman, deprived of all acquaintance with literature, isolated, and kept far from all public affairs and discussions, whose mind remains unenlightened by rays of wisdom other

Appendix One than the light of natural intelligence, has been so bold as to offer Convent Life as Paradise to the world’s eyes. My reason is this: if I claimed to be learned, as almost all men do, I would not be the source of your amazement, which, in the opinion of the wisest men, was always the daughter of ignorance. If this Paradise, on the other hand, strikes you as having little learning and style, please attribute these failings to my observation of my vows as well as my duties in religious life. You should know that if I did go through the ceremonies of taking the veil, I did not respond to the voices of the Holy Spirit with the fervor I ought; nevertheless, you must not count me among those religious who, enclosed by force within the cloister, consequently change the Paradise of the convent into a Hell for themselves and for others. Neither should you believe that when I censure paternal tyranny and men’s unjust arrogance, I act in my own interests and out of grudges nurtured only by myself. On my word of honor, I testify that I have allowed my words to overflow in defense of my own sex only for the sake of refuting the wicked and false slander written by men over so many centuries to the detriment of women. I have composed two other books, each divided into three parts, full of truthful and concrete opinions, which were abruptly snatched from my hands.1 If they ever happen to see the light of day, let me assert before God and my superiors that I would be extremely mortified, not only because I recognize therein scandalous—or at least, not devout—opinions, but also because I understand how much more men look after their political interests than they care for divine precepts. If you consider the very short amount of time I took to fabricate them, with their many errors, you will see them as mere stillbirths of my sterile mind. My goal in these pages has been none other than to inform you that the cloisters inhabited by religious who have freely chosen to be there are a true Paradise, rendered such by the beauty of the virginal purity shining in these earthly angels. Be kind to my book’s shortcomings. Live happily and die in holiness.

1. The two books are Paternal Tyranny and Convent Life as Inferno. It is hard to take at face value Tarabotti’s apparent rejection of her two earlier works, especially when the publisher has just announced their forthcoming publication with glee.

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APPENDIX TWO

F E R R A N T E P A L L AV I C I N O , I L C O R R I E R O S V A L I G I A T O ( T H E P O S T- B O Y R O B B E D O F H I S B A G ) , E D I T E D B Y A R M A N D O M A R C H I ( PA R M A , 1 9 8 4 ; O R I G I N A L LY P U B L I S H E D I N V E N I C E , 1 6 4 1 ) , P P. 1 0 – 1 5 , L E T T E R 5

Ungrateful Woman:

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Recriminations were the last words I exchanged with you on my departure— but they are insufficient to mollify so easily a just rage like mine. Against you I unleashed my tongue, the repository of my feelings, making manifest to you the sentiments of a scorned heart. I was distraught about whether I should allow my hands to deal you blows in my search for revenge. But because I think it is vile to employ them in wounding or offending a woman, my own satisfaction requires me to use them in tearing you asunder with my pen—if there is still anything left of you to rend asunder, given that you are already nothing but rags of infamy and scattered remains of insult. I know how you mock my scorn: a woman never grieves unless she weeps tears of blood, and her normal tears are pure deceit in liquid form, the holding back of pretense. Nonetheless, I shall enjoy announcing to the world that you are the one and only reason for your sex to have become an abomination in my sight; the one and only reason forcing me to sing a palinode of vituperation such as you will read in these pages, once you have come to your senses. Your ingratitude has reached the limit in bad manners; it has taught me that there is nothing human in a woman but her face, with which she lies even when silent and warns how there is nothing to expect but falsity from a being who deceives at first sight. She shares the same genus of animal with man, appropriating for herself, however, all the bestial qualities that ensue, while differing from man in that she simply has no reason whatsoever: as a consequence, she acts like a brute animal. She shares nothing with a man except surface distinctions of declinations of nouns and pronouns, “he and

A p p e n d i x Tw o she,” “him and her”—clear proof that you women are joined together with us for the sole purpose of dragging us down from greatness and diminishing our happiness. Otherwise, if you are looking for sphinxes, panthers, tigers, and other wild beasts or monsters, cherchez la femme! A single woman, and you will find all the most savage animals and brutish natures together in one entity. As a rule, one does not find in your sex any rational capacity other than the will, so submerged by the passions that it has become an irrefutable axiom to say that woman is without judgment. Whether her lust is boundless or her rages out of control, she knows no moderation, a quality from which one is led to draw the conclusion that a person is human. So when she would have us believe that she has plundered some human traits—gentle appearances, tender charms, and courteous behavior—let it also be said that she has stolen seduction from the siren, cunning tricks from another monster, and that she dresses in disguise to accomplish treachery. Like an octopus camouflaged on the reef to capture its prey, she transforms herself with a show of male qualities to facilitate her lies. And for what reason do lovers impose on themselves a language denoting the privation of intellect? And how does it come about that once without reason they live without laws or rules, deserving nevertheless to have every failing forgiven, as one does for idiots and the mad? Without doubt, it is because they have the hearts of their beloved ladies inserted into their breasts by means of love’s power of transformation. And since their hearts are not joined up with their intellects, just how will they be capable of living their lives according to reason? Wretched is the man who makes a woman his soul and his nature a composite of bestial desires and deeds of madness! It must be believed that a woman, accustomed to “laying hold of the worse”1 from the moment of birth, when she has to choose between the urns of good and evil placed at the foot of Jupiter’s throne, will always grasp the evil urn as she comes forth from the god’s hands and imbibes its contents entirely. So it comes to be that with the proportions of intellect and will varying with stubbornness, while woman lays hold on to the evil qualities that dominate because of her unruly behavior, it must follow that man, too, approves only what is against reason. When the seeds of prudence—infused in human minds, as that wise

1. “Appigliarsi al peggio”: an echo of the closing verse of Petrarch’s canzone 264 in his Canzoniere, “et veggio ‘l meglio et al peggior m’appiglio” (“and I see the better but lay hold on the worse”). Petrarch’s Lyric Poems, trans. R. M. Durling (Cambridge, Mass., and London: Harvard University Press, 1976).

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A p p e n d i x Tw o man was wont to say—are sown in woman, they assume such a corrupt nature that their fruits scarcely resemble their origin. A person who is truly a man—I mean the perfect wise man—chooses a square stone as his throne to indicate the value of unchanging constancy, the unshakeable foundation of an eternity due to his merit. There will be no place for these glories in your sex, so changeable and inconstant that Fortune, the one wind by which the moral world is turned upside down, was clothed in female garb because of her unfair and unjust appearance. But let it be conceded that woman has a mind, which cannot be denied as they still partake of the species “human being.” We are still obliged to follow the doctrine of Pythagoras and believe that mind is our genius. That allows us to call woman the evil genius, in opposition to the good one. And if the title of evil genius belongs to demons, who are bent on taking away every good thing from us and are our guides to nowhere but the abyss, the same can be said just as well of women by whose intervention humanity is cast continually into the abyss from where it gazes on its greatness dispersed in ruins.2 And just tell me—so we don’t allow our discussion to totter on shaky foundations—when and where have women not been an ever-changing Hell? A kingdom, stable, alas, in misfortune so as to continue their torments and punishments against man? In their youth women torment us when they’re loveable and are a nuisance when they’re hateful; when they love us, they’re tyrants; when they don’t, they slay us. When they live afar, we’re in anguish; when they live near, we hear about all their troubles. What makes them pleasant also makes them haughty; and when they don’t have reason to grow proud, they’re despicable. Beautiful women are pitiless; ugly women lascivious; for which reason the man desiring them languishes, and if they desire him he groans, distressed by their tiresome requests. If they fail to be inhuman, they are nonetheless proud and greedy; and if they don’t suck your veins dry, they’ll do so to your moneybags. Even if they can’t bear to see the bodies of their swains stretched out at their feet, they boast about having you on your knees begging for favors.3 To the even greater detriment of reason, women’s perversity increases as the years pass by into old age. Their wrinkles further curtail the number of

2. This garbled version of Pythagorean doctrine, which Tarabotti attacks, finds its origin in Diogenes Laertius 8.1.1–52. See book 3 above, note 65 and related text. 3. The litany of marital woes goes back in much the present form to Saint Jerome’s antimarriage invective, Against Jovinianus, and finds its way into countless medieval and Renaissance invectives, including Boccaccio’s Corbaccio.

A p p e n d i x Tw o alluring pictures in the imagination of the rash lover, promising him a spectacle of happiness in the offing or a fertile field of human satisfaction. As more years pass and either the notoriety of their manner of living increases or their infamous desires become even better known, their furrows distort their faces all the more. They now enter the profession of “Love’s ambassadors”—or gobetweens—and reveal just what it is that deserves such major employment in the Kingdom of Debauchery.4 You can see which bad habits and what indecencies have been the price of their silver hair and what profligacy has wasted the gold of their blond tresses in youth. As for sleights of hand and superstitious beliefs, they are close to the top in the Kingdom of Demons and can demonstrate how their skills advance with the years. Once they’ve lost the bloom of youth, and with it the power to be wild beasts in tearing apart lovers’ hearts, they become the Furies’ disciples, all the better to harm others. Indeed, it is true that the Circes, the Medeas, the Medusas, and the Megaeras, while not real women, were true likenesses of qualities proper to women.5 The ancient Romans in their wisdom were aware of this; terror struck them whenever they caught sight of a woman in the public spaces in front of the courts. It was as if they’d seen an ill omen and so rushed to the Oracle seeking a remedy against such great horror. Since women are worse than those birds of ill omen, the ravens, they augur nothing but trouble and disaster to the human race. I have always found praiseworthy the analogy of woman with the vine: this plant is valuable only for its produce at the time of the grape harvest— otherwise it deserves only to be thrown into the fire. When alive, all women know only how to cry; in their buckets of tears, perhaps, they’re preparing a deluge that extinguishes the ardent feelings you know a man deserves. And lo! The flair your sex has for crying is a means to pave the way for pretense: either you shipwreck your lovers’ hardness of heart or you bring your own desires safely into port. And here is another analogy apropos: the ancient Romans punished their citizens by flailing them with vine rods, following perhaps Heaven’s decrees that mankind, the citizens of this world, do not have

4. Tarabotti picks up this insult about women and applies it scornfully to men; see above, book 1, 76–77. 5. The three Furies—Alecto, Megaera, and Tisiphone—were the goddesses of vengeance and, in general, any kind of avenging spirit or person. Circe was the siren in Homer’s Odyssey whose song lured sailors to her island where she turned them into swine. Medea, a sorceress, helped Jason to obtain the Golden Fleece, but when he betrayed her, she killed their children and burned Jason’s new bride to death. Medusa seduced Neptune with her golden hair and was punished by Minerva who turned her hair into serpents and gave her eyes the destructive magical power of turning all they looked upon into stone. Megaera was one of the Furies, as explained above.

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A p p e n d i x Tw o a punishment with a harsher scourge than you, a living vine; and we men do not have a greater torment than our union with or affection for women. Woman, furthermore, cannot deny that she is a vine; especially when her sole purpose is to bind man and entrap him like the vine, entwining herself in a mass of knots and cords. How I feel sorry for her in these bonds! She is driven by the need to be propped up, for otherwise she remains stripped of any value or substance. Unfortunate women are those without men to provide the support that remedies their own weakness! Without men they could not avoid being flung down at every moment, like the blind and the mad, into a thousand chasms.6 The women of Tartary understood this well: it was their custom never to allow their heads to be covered by a more precious headdress than the form of a human foot, to signify that woman, brainless and witless, finds her greatest glory in her subjection to man. Representing themselves in the act of being trodden underfoot, they paid homage to their noblest part; they were not foolish like other women, adorning their heads with treasures from robbed tombs or weighed down with braided chains dotted with gems.7 They may not be permitted to wield a scepter over man, but it is nonetheless true that they establish a proud rule over their empire of fleeting beauty just to distress him by the yoke of their foolish command. They are forever changeable and inconstant; their capricious whims drag behind them those hearts that under a malign influence of the stars are punished by the necessity to subject themselves to woman’s ruthless rigors. It is not easy to find a just mean in vituperating female perversity; the more wicked it is, the more their hypocritical sincerity betrays a man’s most loyal sentiments under a mantle of flattering lies. In my conversations with you, I have learned to what extent how, even when hurling the worst insults, one must needs confess the inadequacy of vocabulary in condemning woman. I shall draw this letter to a close, not because my contempt has been sufficiently satisfied, but because I do not wish to continue in a state of emotional turmoil caused by the memory of your betrayals—it dispels all peace of mind. I have described the reasons for making your sex loathsome, so you may be assured of my entirely perverted will in detesting you. May you remain with the same peace I am left with by your ingratitude; and may your punishments be everlasting, for which my torments, however brief, should reproach you. 6. The image of woman as a vine is picked up and condemned by Tarabotti in book 3, 148. 7. Another offensive image picked up by Tarabotti, book 3, 148–49, and given an opposite meaning. Pallavicino, in turn, is giving a satirical slant to the cult of hieroglyphs and emblems, the most popular collection of which was Andrea Alciati’s Emblemata, which went through numerous Latin and Italian editions from the mid-sixteenth to the mid-seventeenth centuries.

SERIES EDITORS’ BIBLIOGRAPHY

Note: Items listed in the volume editor’s bibliography are not repeated here.

P R I M A RY S O U R C E S

Alberti, Leon Battista (1404–72). The Family in Renaissance Florence. Trans. Renée Neu Watkins. Columbia, SC: University of South Carolina Press, 1969. Arenal, Electa and Stacey Schlau, eds. Untold Sisters: Hispanic Nuns in Their Own Works. Trans. Amanda Powell. Albuquerque, NM: University of New Mexico Press, 1989. Astell, Mary (1666–1731). The First English Feminist: Reflections on Marriage and Other Writings. Ed. and Intro. Bridget Hill. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1986. Atherton, Margaret, ed. Women Philosophers of the Early Modern Period. Indianapolis, IN: Hackett Publishing Co., 1994. Aughterson, Kate, ed. Renaissance Woman: Constructions of Femininity in England: A Source Book. London & New York: Routledge, 1995. Barbaro, Francesco (1390–1454). On Wifely Duties. Trans. Benjamin Kohl in Kohl and R. G. Witt, eds., The Earthly Republic. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1978, 179–228. Translation of the Preface and Book 2. Behn, Aphra. The Works of Aphra Behn. 7 vols. Ed. Janet Todd. Columbus, OH: Ohio State University Press, 1992–96. Boccaccio, Giovanni (1313–1375). Corbaccio or the Labyrinth of Love. Trans. Anthony K. Cassell. Second revised edition. Binghamton, NY: Medieval and Renaissance Texts and Studies, 1993. Bruni, Leonardo (1370–1444). “On the Study of Literature (1405) to Lady Battista Malatesta of Moltefeltro.” In The Humanism of Leonardo Bruni: Selected Texts. Trans. and Intro. Gordon Griffiths, James Hankins, and David Thompson. Binghamton, NY: Medieval and Renaissance Studies and Texts, 1987, 240–51. Castiglione, Baldassare (1478–1529). The Book of the Courtier. Trans. George Bull. New York: Penguin, 1967. Cerasano, S. P. and Marion Wynne-Davies, eds. Readings in Renaissance Women’s Drama: Criticism, History, and Performance 1594–1998. London & New York: Routledge, 1998.

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Series Editors’ Bibliography Christine de Pizan (1365–1431). The Book of the City of Ladies. Trans. Earl Jeffrey Richards. Foreward Marina Warner. New York: Persea Books, 1982. . The Treasure of the City of Ladies. Trans. Sarah Lawson. New York: Viking Penguin, 1985. Also trans. and intro. Charity Cannon Willard. Ed. and intro. Madeleine P. Cosman. New York: Persea Books, 1989. Clarke, Danielle, ed. Isabella Whitney, Mary Sidney and Aemilia: Renaissance Women Poets. New York: Penguin Books, 2000. Crawford, Patricia and Laura Gowing, eds. Women’s Worlds in Seventeenth-Century England: A Source Book. London & New York: Routledge, 2000. Elizabeth I: Collected Works. Ed. Leah S. Marcus, Janel Mueller, and Mary Beth Rose. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2000. Elyot, Thomas (1490–1546). Defence of Good Women: The Feminist Controversy of the Renaissance. Facsimile Reproductions. Ed. Diane Bornstein. New York: Delmar, 1980. Erasmus, Desiderius (1467–1536). Erasmus on Women. Ed. Erika Rummel. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1996. Ferguson, Moira, ed. First Feminists: British Women Writers 1578–1799. Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 1985. Gethner, Perry, ed. The Lunatic Lover and Other Plays by French Women of the 17th and 18th Centuries. Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann, 1994. Glückel of Hameln (1646–1724). The Memoirs of Glückel of Hameln. Trans. Marvin Lowenthal. New intro. by Robert Rosen. New York: Schocken Books, 1977. Henderson, Katherine Usher and Barbara F. McManus, eds. Half Humankind: Contexts and Texts of the Controversy about Women in England, 1540–1640. Urbana, IL: Indiana University Press, 1985. Joscelin, Elizabeth. The Mothers Legacy to her Unborn Childe. Ed. Jean leDrew Metcalfe. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2000. Kaminsky, Amy Katz, ed. Water Lilies, Flores del agua: An Anthology of Spanish Women Writers from the Fifteenth Through the Nineteenth Century. Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press, 1996. Kempe, Margery (1373–1439). The Book of Margery Kempe. Trans. Barry Windeatt. New York: Viking Penguin, 1986. King, Margaret L., and Albert Rabil, Jr., eds. Her Immaculate Hand: Selected Works by and about the Women Humanists of Quattrocento Italy. Binghamton, NY: Medieval and Renaissance Texts and Studies, 1983; second revised paperback edition, 1991. Klein, Joan Larsen, ed. Daughters, Wives, and Widows: Writings by Men about Women and Marriage in England, 1500–1640. Urbana, IL: University of Illinois Press, 1992. Knox, John (1505–72). The Political Writings of John Knox: The First Blast of the Trumpet against the Monstrous Regiment of Women and Other Selected Works. Ed. Marvin A. Breslow. Washington: Folger Shakespeare Library, 1985. Kors, Alan C., and Edward Peters, eds. Witchcraft in Europe, 400–1700: A Documentary History. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2000. Krämer, Heinrich, and Jacob Sprenger. Malleus Maleficarum (ca. 1487). Trans. Montague Summers. London: Pushkin Press, 1928; reprinted New York: Dover, 1971. Larsen, Anne R. and Colette H. Winn, eds. Writings by Pre-Revolutionary French Women: From Marie de France to Elizabeth Vigée-Le Brun. New York & London: Garland Publishing Co., 2000. de Lorris, William, and Jean de Meun. The Romance of the Rose. Trans. Charles Dahlbert.

Series Editors’ Bibliography Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1971; reprinted University Press of New England, 1983. Marguerite d–Angoulême, Queen of Navarre (1492–1549). The Heptameron. Trans. P. A. Chilton. New York: Viking Penguin, 1984. Myers, Kathleen A. and Amanda Powell, eds. A Wild Country Out in the Garden: The Spiritual Journals of a Colonial Mexican Nun. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1999. Russell, Rinaldina, ed. Sister Maria Celeste’s Letters to Her Father, Galileo. San Jose & New York: Writers Club Press, 2000. Teresa of Avila, Saint (1515–82). The Life of Saint Teresa of Avila by Herself. Trans. J. M. Cohen. New York: Viking Penguin, 1957. Weyer, Johann (1515–88). Witches, Devils, and Doctors in the Renaissance: Johann Weyer, De praestigiis daemonum. Ed. George Mora with Benjamin G. Kohl, Erik Midelfort, and Helen Bacon. Trans. John Shea. Binghamton, NY: Medieval and Renaissance Texts and Studies, 1991. Wilson, Katharina M., ed. Medieval Women Writers. Athens, GA: University of Georgia Press, 1984. , ed. Women Writers of the Renaissance and Reformation. Athens, GA: University of Georgia Press, 1987. , and Frank J. Warnke, eds. Women Writers of the Seventeenth Century. Athens, GA: University of Georgia Press, 1989. Wollstonecraft, Mary. A Vindication of the Rights of Men and a Vindication of the Rights of Women. Ed. Sylvana Tomaselli. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995. Also The Vindications of the Rights of Men, The Rights of Women. Ed. D. L. Macdonald & Kathleen Scherf. Peterborough, Ontario, Canada: Broadview Press, 1997. Women Critics 1660–1820: An Anthology. Edited by the Folger Collective on Early Women Critics. Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 1995. Women Writers in English 1350–1850: 15 published through 1999 (projected 30volume series suspended). Oxford University Press. Wroth, Lady Mary. The Countess of Montgomery’s Urania. 2 parts. Ed. Josephine A. Roberts. Tempe, AZ: MRTS, 1995, 1999. . The Poems of Lady Mary Wroth. Ed. Josephine A. Roberts. Baton Rouge, LA: Louisiana State University Press, 1983. de Zayas Maria. The Disenchantments of Love. Trans. H. Patsy Boyer. Albany, NY: State University of New York Press, 1997. . The Enchantments of Love: Amorous and Exemplary Novels. Trans. H. Patsy Boyer. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1990. S E C O N D A RY S O U R C E S

Akkerman, Tjitske & Siep Sturman, eds. Feminist Thought in European History, 1400–2000. London & New York: Routledge, 1997. Backer, Anne Liot Backer. Precious Women. New York: Basic Books, 1974. Barash, Carol. English Women’s Poetry, 1649–1714: Politics, Community, and Linguistic Authority. New York & Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996. Battigelli, Anna. Margaret Cavendish and the Exiles of the Mind. Lexington, KY: University of Kentucky Press, 1998.

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Series Editors’ Bibliography Beasley, Faith. Revising Memory: Women’s Fiction and Memoirs in Seventeenth-Century France. New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 1990. Beilin, Elaine V. Redeeming Eve: Women Writers of the English Renaissance. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1987. Benson, Pamela Joseph. The Invention of Renaissance Woman: The Challenge of Female Independence in the Literature and Thought of Italy and England. University Park, PA: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1992. Blain, Virginia, Isobel Grundy, & Patricia Clements, eds. The Feminist Companion to Literature in English: Women Writers from the Middle Ages to the Present. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1990. Bloch, R. Howard. Medieval Misogyny and the Invention of Western Romantic Love. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1991. Bornstein, Daniel and Roberto Rusconi, eds. Women and Religion in Medieval and Renaissance Italy. Trans. Margery J. Schneider. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1996. Brant, Clare & Diane Purkiss, eds. Women, Texts and Histories, 1575–1760. London & New York: Routledge, 1992. Briggs, Robin. Witches and Neighbours: The Social and Cultural Context of European Witchcraft. New York: HarperCollins, 1995; Viking Penguin, 1996. Brink, Jean R., ed. Female Scholars: A Traditioin of Learned Women before 1800. Montréal: Eden Press Women’s Publications, 1980. Brown, Judith C. Immodest Acts: The Life of a Lesbian Nun in Renaissance Italy. New York: Oxford University Press, 1986. Cervigni, Dino S., ed. Women Mystic Writers. Annali d–Italianistica 13 (1995) (entire issue). and Rebecca West, eds. Women’s Voices in Italian Literature. Annali d–Italianistica 7 (1989) (entire issue). Charlton, Kenneth. Women, Religion and Education in Early Modern England. London & New York: Routledge, 1999. Chojnacka, Monica. Working Women in Early Modern Venice. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2001. Chojnacki, Stanley. Women and Men in Renaissance Venice: Twelve Essays on Patrician Society. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2000. Cholakian, Patricia Francis. Rape and Writing in the Heptameron of Marguerite de Navarre. Carbondale and Edwardsville, IL: Southern Illinois University Press, 1991. . Women and the Politics of Self-Representation in Seventeenth-Century France. Newark: University of Delaware Press, 2000. Davis, Natalie Zemon. Society and Culture in Early Modern France. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1975. Especially chapters 3 and 5. . Women on the Margins: Three Seventeenth-Century Lives. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1995. DeJean, Joan. Ancients Against Moderns: Culture Wars and the Making of a Fin de Siècle. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1997. . Tender Geographies: Women and the Origins of the Novel in France. New York: Columbia University Press, 1991. Dixon, Laurinda S. Perilous Chastity: Women and Illness in Pre-Enlightenment Art and Medicine. Ithaca: Cornell Universitiy Press, 1995.

Series Editors’ Bibliography Dolan, Frances, E. Whores of Babylon: Catholicism, Gender and Seventeenth-Century Print Culture. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1999. Donovan, Josephine. Women and the Rise of the Novel, 1405–1726. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1999. De Erauso, Catalina. Lieutenant Nun: Memoir of a Basque Transvestite in the New World. Trans. Michele Ttepto & Gabriel Stepto; foreword by Marjorie Garber. Boston: Beacon Press, 1995. Erickson, Amy Louise. Women and Property in Early Modern England. London & New York: Routledge, 1993. Ezell, Margaret J. M. Writing Women’s Literary History. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1993. Ferguson, Margaret W., Maureen Quilligan, and Nancy J. Vickers, eds. Rewriting the Renaissance: The Discourses of Sexual Difference in Early Modern Europe. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1987. Fletcher, Anthony. Gender, Sex and Subordination in England 1500–1800. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1995. Frye, Susan and Karen Robertson, eds. Maids and Mistresses, Cousins and Queens: Women’s Alliances in Early Modern England. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999. Gallagher, Catherine. Nobody’s Story: The Vanishing Acts of Women Writers in the Marketplace, 1670–1820. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1994. Gelbart, Nina Rattner. The King’s Midwife: A History and Mystery of Madame du Coudray. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1998. Goldberg, Jonathan. Desiring Women Writing: English Renaissance Examples. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1997. Goldsmith, Elizabeth C. Exclusive Conversations: The Art of Interaction in Seventeenth-Century France. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1988. , ed. Writing the Female Voice. Boston: Northeastern University Press, 1989. & Dena Goodman, eds. Going Public: Women and Publishing in Early Modern France. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1995. Greer, Margaret Rich. Maria de Zayas. University Park, PA: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2000. Hall, Kim F. Things of Darkness: Economies of Race and Gender in Early Modern England. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1995. Hampton, Timothy. Literature and the Nation in the Sixteenth Century: Inventing Renaissance France. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2001. Hardwick, Julie. The Practice of Patriarchy: Gender and the Politics of Household Authority in Early Modern France. University Park, PA: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1998. Harth, Erica. Ideology and Culture in Seventeenth-Century France. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1983. . Cartesian Women. Versions and Subversions of Rational Discourse in the Old Regime. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1992. Haselkorn, Anne M. & Betty Travitsky, eds. The Renaissance Englishwoman in Print: Counterbalancing the Canon. Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 1990. Herlihy, David. “Did Women Have a Renaissance? A Reconsideration.” Medievalia et Humanistica, NS 13 (1985): 1–22.

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Series Editors’ Bibliography Hill, Bridget. The Republican Virago: The Life and Times of Catharine Macaulay, Historian. New York: Oxford University Press, 1992. A History of Women in the West. Volume 1: From Ancient Goddesses to Christian Saints. Ed. Pauline Schmitt Pantel. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1992. Volume 2: Silences of the Middle Ages. Ed. Christiane Klapisch-Zuber. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1992. Volume 3: Renaissance and Enlightenment Paradoxes. Ed. Natalie Zemon Davis and Arlette Farge. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1993. Hobby, Elaine. Virtue of Necessity: English Women’s Writing 1646–1688. London: Virago Press, 1988. Horowitz, Maryanne Cline. “Aristotle and Women.” Journal of the History of Biology 9 (1976): 183–213. Hufton, Olwen H. The Prospect Before Her: A History of Women in Western Europe, 1: 1500– 1800. New York: HarperCollins, 1996. Hull, Suzanne W. Chaste, Silent, and Obedient: English Books for Women, 1475–1640. San Marino, CA: The Huntington Library, 1982. Hunt, Lynn, ed. The Invention of Pornography: Obscenity and the Origins of Modernity, 1500– 1800. New York: Zone Books, 1996. Hutner, Heidi, ed. Rereading Aphra Behn: History, Theory, and Criticism. Charlottesville, VA: University Press of Virginia, 1993. Hutson, Lorna, ed. Feminism and Renaissance Studies. New York: Oxford University Press, 1999. James, Susan E. Kateryn Parr: The Making of a Queen. Aldershot and Brookfield: Ashgate Publishing Co., 1999. Jankowski, Theodora A. Women in Power in the Early Modern Drama. Urbana, IL: University of Illinois Press, 1992. Jed, Stephanie H. Chaste Thinking: The Rape of Lucretia and the Birth of Humanism. Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 1989. Jordan, Constance. Renaissance Feminism: Literary Texts and Political Models. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1990. Kelly, Joan. “Did Women Have a Renaissance?” In her Women, History, and Theory. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1984. Also in Renate Bridenthal, Claudia Koonz, and Susan M. Stuard, eds., Becoming Visible: Women in European History. Third edition. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1998. . “Early Feminist Theory and the Querelle des Femmes.” In Women, History, and Theory. Kelso, Ruth. Doctrine for the Lady of the Renaissance. Foreword by Katharine M. Rogers. Urbana, IL: University of Illinois Press, 1956, 1978. King, Carole. Renaissance Women Patrons: Wives and Widows in Italy, c. 1300–1550. New York & Manchester: Manchester University Press (distributed in the U.S. by St. Martin’s Press), 1998. Krontiris, Tina. Oppositional Voices: Women as Writers and Translators of Literature in the English Renaissance. London & New York: Routledge, 1992. Kuehn, Thomas. Law, Family, and Women: Toward a Legal Anthropology of Renaissance Italy. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1991.

Series Editors’ Bibliography Kunze, Bonnelyn Young. Margaret Fell and the Rise of Quakerism. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1994. Labalme, Patricia A., ed. Beyond Their Sex: Learned Women of the European Past. New York: New York University Press, 1980. Laqueur, Thomas. Making Sex: Body and Gender from the Greeks to Freud. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1990. Larsen, Anne R. and Colette H. Winn, eds. Renaissance Women Writers: French Texts/American Contexts. Detroit, MI: Wayne State University Press, 1994. Lerner, Gerda. The Creation of Patriarchy and Creation of Feminist Consciousness, 1000–1870. 2-vol. history of women. New York: Oxford University Press, 1986, 1994. Levin, Carole and Jeanie Watson, eds. Ambiguous Realities: Women in the Middle Ages and Renaissance. Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1987. Levin, Carole, et al. Extraordinary Women of the Medieval and Renaissance World: A Biographical Dictionary. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 2000. Lindsey, Karen. Divorced Beheaded Survived: A Feminist Reinterpretation of the Wives of Henry VIII. Reading, MA: Addison-Wesley Publishing Co., 1995. Lochrie, Karma. Margery Kempe and Translations of the Flesh. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1992. Lougee, Carolyn C. Le Paradis des Femmes: Women, Salons, and Social Stratification in Seventeenth-Century France. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1976. MacCarthy, Bridget G. The Female Pen: Women Writers and Novelists 1621–1818. Preface by Janet Todd. New York: New York University Press, 1994. (Originally published by Cork University Press, 1946–47). Maclean, Ian. Woman Triumphant: Feminism in French Literature, 1610–1652. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1977. . The Renaissance Notion of Woman: A Study of the Fortunes of Scholasticism and Medical Science in European Intellectual Life. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1980. Matter, E. Ann, and John Coakley, eds. Creative Women in Medieval and Early Modern Italy. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1994. (sequel to the Monson collection, below) McLeod, Glenda. Virtue and Venom: Catalogs of Women from Antiquity to the Renaissance. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1991. Mendelson, Sara and Patricia Crawford. Women in Early Modern England, 1550–1720. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1998. Merrim, Stephanie. Early Modern Women’s Writing and Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz. Nashville, TN: Vanderbilt University Press, 1999. Miller, Nancy K. The Heroine’s Text: Readings in the French and English Novel, 1722–1782. New York: Columbia University Press, 1980. Monson, Craig A., ed. The Crannied Wall: Women, Religion, and the Arts in Early Modern Europe. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1992. Newman, Karen. Fashioning Femininity and English Renaissance Drama. Chicago & London: University of Chicago Press, 1991. Okin, Susan Moller. Women in Western Political Thought. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1979. Ozment, Steven. The Bürgermeister’s Daughter: Scandal in a Sixteenth-Century German Town. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1995.

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Series Editors’ Bibliography Pacheco, Anita, ed. Early [English] Women Writers: 1600–1720. New York & London: Longman, 1998. Pagels, Elaine. Adam, Eve, and the Serpent. New York: Harper Collins, 1988. Panizza, Letizia, ed. Women in Italian Renaissance Culture and Society. Oxford: European Humanities Research Centre, 2000. and Sharon Wood, eds. A History of Women’s Writing in Italy. Cambridge: University Press, 2000. Perry, Ruth. The Celebrated Mary Astell: An Early English Feminist. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1986. Raven, James, Helen Small and Naomi Tadmor, eds. The Practice and Representation of Reading in England. Cambridge: University Press, 1996. Richardson, Brian. Printing, Writers and Readers in Renaissance Italy. Cambridge: University Press, 1999. Riddle, John M. Contraception and Abortion from the Ancient World to the Renaissance. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1992. . Eve’s Herbs: A History of Contraception and Abortion in the West. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1997. Rose, Mary Beth, ed. Women in the Middle Ages and the Renaissance: Literary and Historical Perspectives. Syracuse: Syracuse University Press, 1986. Rosenthal, Margaret F. The Honest Courtesan: Veronica Franco, Citizen and Writer in SixteenthCentury Venice. Foreword by Catharine R. Stimpson. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1992. Sackville-West, Vita. Daughter of France: The Life of La Grande Mademoiselle. Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1959. Schiebinger, Londa. The Mind has no Sex?: Women in the Origins of Modern Science. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1991. . Nature’s Body: Gender in the Making of Modern Science. Boston: Beacon Press, 1993. Shemek, Deanna. Ladies Errant: Wayward Women and Social Order in Early Modern Italy. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1998. Sobel, Dava. Galileo’s Daughter: A Historical Memoir of Science, Faith, and Love. New York: Penguin Books, 2000. Sommerville, Margaret R. Sex and Subjection: Attitudes to Women in Early-Modern Society. London: Arnold, 1995. Spencer, Jane. The Rise of the Woman Novelist: From Aphra Behn to Jane Austen. Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1986. Spender, Dale. Mothers of the Novel: 100 Good Women Writers Before Jane Austen. London & New York: Routledge, 1986. Sperling, Jutta Gisela. Convents and the Body Politic in Late Renaissance Venice. Foreword by Catharine R. Stimpson. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1999. Steinbrügge, Lieselotte. The Moral Sex: Woman’s Nature in the French Enlightenment. Trans. Pamela E. Selwyn. New York: Oxford University Press, 1995. Stuard, Susan M. “The Dominion of Gender: Women’s Fortunes in the High Middle Ages.” In Renate Bridenthal, Claudia Koonz, and Susan M. Stuard, eds. Becoming Visible: Women in European History. Third edition. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1998. Summit, Jennifer. Lost Property: The Woman Writer and English Literary History, 1380–1589. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2000.

Series Editors’ Bibliography Teague, Frances. Bathsua Makin, Woman of Learning. Lewisburg, PA: Bucknell University Press, 1999. Todd, Janet. The Secret Life of Aphra Behn. London, New York, & Sydney: Pandora, 2000. . The Sign of Angelica: Women, Writing and Fiction, 1660–1800. New York: Columbia University Press, 1989. Walsh, William T. St. Teresa of Avila: A Biography. Rockford, IL: TAN Books & Publications, 1987. Warner, Marina. Alone of All Her Sex: The Myth and Cult of the Virgin Mary. New York: Knopf, 1976. Warnicke, Retha M. The Marrying of Anne of Cleves: Royal Protocol in Tudor England. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000. Watt, Diane. Secretaries of God: Women Prophets in Late Medieval and Early Modern England. Cambridge, England: D. S. Brewer, 1997. Welles, Marcia L. Persephone’s Girdle: Narratives of Rape in Seventeenth-Century Spanish Literature. Nashville: Vanderbilt University Press, 2000. Whitehead, Barbara J., ed. Women’s Education in Early Modern Europe: A History, 1500–1800. New York & London: Garland Publishing Co., 1999. Wiesner, Merry E. Women and Gender in Early Modern Europe. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993. Willard, Charity Cannon. Christine de Pizan: Her Life and Works. New York: Persea Books, 1984. Wilson, Katharina, ed. An Encyclopedia of Continental Women Writers. New York: Garland, 1991. Woodbridge, Linda. Women and the English Renaissance: Literature and the Nature of Womankind, 1540–1620. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1984. Woods, Susanne. Lanyer: A Renaissance Woman Poet. New York: Oxford University Press, 1999. , and Margaret P. Hannay, eds. Teaching Tudor and Stuart Women Writers. New York: MLA, 2000.

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INDEX

Aaron, 125n. 7 Abel, 65–66, 67n. 48 Abimelech, 124, 124n. 5 Abiron, 117, 117n. 66 Abraham, 89, 90 Abram, 124 Adam, 16, 18–20, 21, 44, 48, 49, 51; to blame mainly for the fall, 51–53, 65, 89, 109; commanded to not eat forbidden fruit, 122; disobedience, 125; fallibility of, 124; falling for Eve’s charms contrasted with Virgin’s constancy, 124–26; father of pride and mendacity, 53–54; first-born son, 118; God’s punishment of, 53; greater guilt of, 28; Loredan’s praise of, 134n. 30 Adonis, 137, 137n. 36 adultery: double standards of, 22, 110–13, 113n. 53; laws concerning, 21 Aeneas, 99n. 29, 103 Aesop, 97, 97n. 24 Against Women’s Luxury, Menippean Satire (Contro ’l lusso donnesco, satira menippea), 10 L’Adamo (The Life of Adam), 9, 109n. 50 Agrippa, Henricus Cornelius, Declamation on the Nobility and Preeminence of the Female Sex, 16, 16n. 35, 23, 28, 47, 47n. 23, 70n. 51, 100n. 30, 102n. 35, 105n. 43

Agrippina, 107n. 48 Albigensians, 84n. 74 Alcaeus, 105 Alexander the Great, 96n. 22, 143, 150, 150n. 68 Alexandria, 80n.90 Alighieri, Dante. See Dante Amazons, 95, 95n. 20, 141, 141n. 46 Ambrose, Saint, 10 Ammon, 118, 118n. 69 Ammonites, 89 Andreini, Isabella, 106, 106n. 45 Anna (prophetess), 133, 133n. 27 An Amazing Debate against Women, by Which It Is Proved That They Are Not Men (Qua probatur eas homines non esse), 11–12, 112n. 23 Anselm, Saint, 122, 122n. 78 Anthony Abbot, Saint, 61, 61n. 39 Antipater, 105 Antisatira (Tarabotti), 8, 10, 13, 27 anti-Trinitarians, 83n. 74 Apelles, 101 Apocalypse, 78, 125, 125n. 11 Apollo, 101 “Apollo.” See Santacroce, Antonio Apollo’s Secretary (La Segretaria di Apollo). See Santacroce, Antonio Apostles, 81, 135, 138; cowardice of, 140 Aprosio, Angelico, 8n.14, 10, 11n.23, 13, 13n. 28; attack on Paradiso and Antisatira of, 25, 25n. 44

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Index Aquinas. See Thomas Aquinas, Saint Arachne, 99, 99n. 29 Argirona. See Egeria Ariosto, Ludovico, 10, 13, 17, 55, 15nn. 31, 32. See also individual works Aristarchus, 40, 40n. 7 Aristotle, 63, 63n. 42, 64n. 43, 85, 85n.1, 98, 105, 108; On the Generation of Animals, 133n. 28 Arius, Arians, 83, 83n. 74, 106 Astolfo, 56, 56n. 35, 64n. 43 Athena, 100n. 29 Athens, 102, 102n. 35 Augustine, Saint, 10, 46n. 61; Confessions, 61n. 39, 73, 73n. 57, 83n. 74 Augustus (emperor), 102, 133 Babel, 82 baptism, 96 Barcitotti, Galerana. See Tarabotti, Arcangela Basil, Saint, 45n.18 Bathsheba, 23, 112, 115, 118 Benedictine Order, 3, 4 Bernard, Saint, 10 Betussi, Giuseppe, 102n. 35 Bireno, 114nn. 55, 56 Bissari, Count Pier Paolo, 13, 13n. 31 Boccaccio, Giovanni, Famous Women, 47n. 23, 69n.50, 95n. 20, 100n. 29, 102n. 35, 107n. 46, 141nn. 44, 45 Boethius, 140, 140n. 42 Bologna, 22 Boniface VIII (pope), 138n. 39 Brusoni, Girolamo, 13, 13n. 29; Dreams of Parnassus (Sogni di Parnaso), 26, 26n. 46 Brutus, 79, 79n. 67, 107n. 46 Buoninsegni, Francesco, 10–11, 11n. 22 Busenello, Giovan Francesco, 13, 13n. 30 Caiaphas, 4, 130 Cain, 3, 65–67, 67n. 48, 90, 118 Calvary, 72, 140 Calvin, John, 106

Camilla, 99, 99n. 29 Canaanite woman, 135 Canary Islands, 102 Carthage, Council of, 83n. 74 Carthaginians, 79, 79n. 66 Cassius, 79, 79n. 67 Cathars, 84n. 74 Catherine of Alexandria, Saint, 98, 98n. 27 Catherine of Siena, Saint, 61, 61n. 40, 145, 145n. 57 Cato of Utica, 38, 38n. 4, 48, 48n. 25, 79, 79n. 67, 91n. 12, 108 Cavalca, Domenico, 61n. 39 Cavalli, Francesco, 13 Celius (king of Brittany), 105, 105n. 43 chastity, female, 54–56 chastity, fortress of, 115 Christ: on adulterous generation 111; appearance to women after Resurrection, 24, 136, 143, 143n. 52; as bridegroom, 130; on chastity, celibacy, 54, 54n. 30, 55, as child, 133; on Cross, 58, 66, 81, 89, 90, 92, 96 127; death and Passion of, 96, 141; on enclosure, 131–32; foretold, 131; “greatly beloved apostle,” 135–36; and the healing at Bethesda, 81, 89, 92, 96; on hypocrites, 71, 79; at Last Supper, 138; on marriage, 60, 61, 62, 71, 72, 79; as Messiah, 111; mystical marriage of, to Saint Catherine of Alexandria, 98; Nestorian view of, 106; put to death by men but mourned by women, 138–40; respect of, for women’s freedom, 23, 131–32; and Samaritan woman, 132, 132n. 23; as Savior of daughters, 58, 60, 61, 62, 66; treatment of women by, 132–35; trial of, 4; woman with hemorrhage, 135; and woman taken in adultery, 135; weeping for Lazarus, 142–43; as Word, 45n. 28, 98

Index Cicero, 28, 41, 41n. 11, 80–81, 81n. 70 Claramonte, Renata di, marchesa di Galeranda, 14 Clare, Saint, 61, 61n. 40 Cleopatra, 69, 69n. 50, 80, 80n. 69 Cliombolo, 128n. 18 Clorinda, 99, 99n. 29 Cocytus, 153, 153n. 75 Colonna, Vittoria, 25, 25n. 40, 106, 106n. 45 Convent Life as Inferno (L’Inferno monacale; Tarabotti), 7, 14, 15, 27 Convent Life as Paradise (Il Paradiso monacale; Tarabotti), 6, 7, 9–10 nn18, 19, 20, 15, 25, appendix 1, 155–57 convents, 65–67 Corinthians. See Paul, Saint Cornaro, Enrico, 13n. 30 Cornaro, Federico (cardinal), 6 Corriero svaligiato (Pallavicino), 9, 16, 17, 24, 27, 30–31, 122n. 77, 147, 147nn. 61, 62, 63, appendix 2, 158–62 Council of Trent. See Trent, Council of Cupid, 109, 115 Cyrus (king of Persia), 141, 141n. 44

Delilah, 137, 137n. 35 Della nobilta ed eccellenza delle donne (Marinella), 16, 17, 47n. 23, 64n. 44, 101n. 33, 102nn. 35, 36, 103n. 39, 105n. 43, 140n. 41, 146n. 59 Democritus, 43n. 14, 69 demon, 121 Demosthenes, 41, 41n. 11, 152, 152n. 73 Deucalion, 78, 78n. 65 Devil. See Serpent Dina, 115, 115n. 34 Diocletian, 59, 59n.37, 64n. 44, 93n. 15 Dionysus the Areopagite, 125, 125n. 12 Diotima, 99n. 28, 105 Disciples, 81; on way to Emmaus, 142 Divine Comedy, The (Dante), 16, 17, 38n. 4 Dolce, Ludovico, 73n. 56 Donatists, 106 donna, etymology of, 102, 102n. 36, 134, 134n. 31 dowries, 82, 94–95 Dreams of Parnassus (Sogni di Parnaso; Brusoni), 26, 26n. 46

Dante Alighieri, 10; Divine Comedy, 16, 17, 38n. 4; Inferno, 46, 46n. 45, 71, 71n. 53, 76, 76n. 61, 88, 88n. 9, 153, 153n.75; on liberty, 91, 91nn. 12,13; Paradiso, 44, 44nn. 16, 17, 50n. 27, 59, 59n. 38, 65, 71, 109, 120n. 74; Purgatory, 91–92, 138 Dares of Phrygia, 141, 141n. 46 Dathan, 117, 117n. 66 David (king), 23, 79n. 67, 112, 115, 118, 124, 124n. 6, 130, 141 Decius (emperor), 93, 93n. 15 Declamation on the Nobility and Preeminence of the Female Sex (Agrippa), 16, 16n. 35, 23, 28, 47, 47n. 23, 70n. 51, 100n. 30, 102n. 35, 105n. 43

Ecclesiastes, 56n. 34 Ecclesiasticus, 134 Echo (nymph), 137n. 36 Eden, Garden of, 44, 46, 108–09 Egeria, 144, 144n. 55 Egypt, Egyptians, ancient, 104, 117, 119 Elena Flavia Augusta, 105, 105n. 43 Eliseus, 118 Elizabeth, Saint, 133 enforced enclosure, 43–46, 65–67, 70–72, 129 Empyrean, 93, 93n. 16 Epicurus,106 Erebus, 26, 26n. 48 Eunapius, 105 Eunomius, 106 eunuchs, 54n. 30

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Index Euphrosina, Saint, 64, 64n. 44 Europa, 103 Eustochium, Saint, 105, 105n. 43 Eve, 15, 16, 18–20, 21; creation, 45–47, 47n. 23; death of, not found in Scriptures, 134, 134n. 30; deception by serpent, 53, 65, 121–22; dismissal of in Loredan, 134n. 30; God’s punishment of, 52–53, 53n. 29; innate modesty and chastity as married woman, 121; innocence, 28, 44, 51–52; less to blame for Fall, 51–53, 53n. 28; men blaming women for Eve’s sin, 122; as proof of women’s thirst for knowledge, 108–10; as sweet innocent wife, 124, 124n.4 Ezekiel (prophet), 63, 63n. 43, 149 Fabiola, Saint, 105 Fachini, Ginevra Canonici, 29 Fall, 18, 51–53 fame, wings of, 37, 10n. 21 fathers: admonitions to, 85–87, 96–97; daughter’s marriages and division of property, 54; daughters no threat to, 94–95; deception of daughters, 72–75; drive daughters to despair, 116–17; excuses for enclosing daughters, 93–94, 117–19, 127–28; greed, 127–28; should allow for individual talents, 67–69; tyranny, 23, 58–60, 117–19; wicked, 87–88 fathers of the church, 105 Ferdinand (king of Aragon), 102 Ferri, Count Pietro Leopoldo, 30 flood, 53, 80, 82 Fonte, Moderata, 17, 102n. 36; referred to by Tarabotti, 104, 104n. 42, 105n. 43 Fortune, 131, 143 France: compared with Italy, 100, greater “freedom of conscience” in, 14, 30; free will, 49–51; erasure of, by men, 48, 116t Frigio, Dario, 141, 141n. 46

Gambara, Veronica, 106, 106n. 45 Garzoni, Tommaso, 147, 147n. 60 Genesis, 12, 16, 17, 18n. 36, 19, 45– 48, 50–53, 54, 65–66; address to God, 38–39, 39n. 6; Germany, compared with Italy, 100 God, 14, 17, 18–20, 21, 50–53, 57, anger of, 112; discovers flaws of just men, 125; favoring of Solomon, 125, 125n.8; on hair, 63–64, 64n. 43, 68, 69–72, 75, 77, 78, 79, 81, 82, 86 n.4, 89, 90, 94, 95, 106; intervention with Susanna, 115; and King David, 112; will as false argument for enforced enclosure, 127; ubiquity and omniscience, 129–31 Golden Age, 24, 28, 40, 68 Golden Legend, The (Legenda aurea), 61n. 39, 64n. 44, 98n. 27 Gordian knot, 96, 96n. 22 Gorgias of Leontini, 97–98, 98n. 25 grace, 53 Granada, 102 Greeks, 104 Gremonville, Nicolas Bretel de, 14 Guarini, Guarino, 10, 17 hair, 63 Ham, 124 Harpocrates, 144 Heaven, 68, 79, 82, 88, 92, 95; king of, 96; fire, 112 Heliogabalus (emperor), 86, 86n. 3 Helen, 112 Helvidius, 5n.7 Hell, 58, 59; infernal monsters of, 121–22; monasteries as living Hell for women without vocation, 65, 71, 79, 82, 86, 94, 95, 117, 153 Henry VIII (king of England), 106 Heraclides Licius/Livius (emperor), 103 Heraclitus, 43, 43n.14, 69 Hercules, 87 Heresies, originated with men, 105–8 Herod, 94, 94n. 18, 95, 112

Index Holofernes, 141 Holy Office. See Rome Holy Spirit, 45, 78, 90, 92; inspiration and Council of Trent, 119, 120, 127; at Pentecost, 144 Holy Scripture, 45, 49; male examples of disobedience of God’s laws, 118–19 Holy Trinity, 105, 126 Homer, Odyssey, 76n. 61, 103n. 39 Horace, 47, 47n. 24, 74, 74n. 58 Hortensia, 107, 107n. 46 Hortensius, 107n. 46 Hypsicratea (queen of Pontus),107, 107n. 46 ignorance, ancient depictions of, 104 Il divortio celeste, 147n. 62 illustrious women, 101–102 Incarnation, 83n. 74, 105; denial of, 106 Incogniti, Academy of the, 8, 8n. 15, 9n. 17, 12, 13, 14, 137n. 38 Innocence Betrayed (La semplicitàà ingannata; Tarabotti), 14, 15, 24 Isabella (queen of Castile), 102, 102n. 35 Isaiah (prophet), 53–54 Islam, 78n. 64, 83n. 73; disciples of, 112; Islamic law, 112–13 Israel, 79, people of, 89; children of, 119 Jacob (patriarch), 115, 118 Jael, 137 Jephte, 21; and daughter 89–90, 91 Jeremiah (prophet), 118, 118n. 71 Jerome, Saint, 5, 5n. 7, 62, 62n. 41, 103n. 43 Jerusalem, heavenly, 123; daughters of, 139; city of, 143; destruction of, 143 Jesus. See Christ Jews, 145; king of the, 94 Job, 110 John, Saint (apostle), 94, 125; chastity of, 141; prayer to, 141–42

John, Saint (the Baptist), 44, 44n. 15, 94, 112 John Chrysostom, Saint, 85, 85n. 2 Jovinianus, 5n. 7, 106 Judas, 127, 136, 138, 145; and twelve apostles, 81 Judas Maccabeus, 125 Judges, 89 Judgment Day, 52, 75, 116, 117, 117n. 65 Judith, 140–41 Julia (wife of Pompey), 107, 107n. 46 Julius Caesar, 38n. 4, 70n. 50, 79n. 67, 80, 80n. 69, 107n. 46 Jupiter, 78n. 65, 82, 103 Justinian (emperor), 102, 102n. 35 lady (donna), etymology of, 102, 102n. 36, 134, 134n. 31 Laertius, Diogenes, 76n.62, 98nn. 25, 26, 148n. 65 Last Day. See Judgment, Day of Lampedo. See Amazons Last Judgment. See Judgment Day Last Supper, 138 Lateran Council, 83n. 73 Laura, 87n. 8 Lazarus, 142–43 Learning, of Little Benefit to Men, 103–4 Legenda aurea. See Golden Legend Lesbia, 69, 69n. 50 Lettere familiari e di complimento (Tarabotti), 8, 10n. 21, 12, 12n. 25 Leviticus, 63 Liberty: of Greater Value than Life, 79–81; Taken away by Vows, 81–83 libertine, 8 Licinius (emperor), 103 Life of Adam (L’Adamo; Loredan), 9, 109n. 50 Limbo, 76n. 61, 90 Livia, 102, 102n. 35 Loredan, Giovanni Francesco, 8, 8nn 15, 12, 14–15, 16, 16n. 34, 19, 20; defense of marriage market of,

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Index Loredan, (continued) 21, 23–24, 27, 30n. 57, 51n. 28, 53 n. 29; Life of Adam (L’Adamo), 9, 109n. 50; Tarabotti’s censure of, 121–22, 22n. 76, 124n. 4, 134, 134n. 30, 137n. 38 Lot and his daughters, 118, 118n. 69 Lucifer, 19, 53, 54, 66, 77, 151 Lucretia, 115, 115n. 63 Luther, 84–85, 85n. 75, 106; Lutheranism, 28; Lutherans, 137, 137n. 38 Lycurgus, 96 Magi, 94 Mani, Manichaeans, Manichees, 83, 83n. 74, 106 Margite, 103 Marinella, Lucrezia, 2n. 1, 9n. 17; Life of Saint Catherine of Siena, 61n. 40, 145n. 57; The Life of the Virgin Mary, Empress of the Universe, 106 and n. 44; The Nobility and Excellence of Women, 16, 17, 47n. 23, 64n. 44, 101n. 33, 102nn. 35, 36, 103n. 39, 105n. 43, 140n. 41, 146n. 59 Mark Antony, 70n. 50, 79n. 67 marriage vows, 60 Mars, 71n. 52 Martesia. See Amazons Mary (mother of Jesus), 23, 30, 37, 38, 44; Anselm on, 122n.78; appearance of Christ to, after resurrection, 143, 143n. 52; bearer of salvation, 126; as bride, 126n. 14; centrality of, in Redemption, 123– 24; at Crucifixion, 145; empress of universe, 124; fortitude, 125–26, 140; Further Canticle to, 146, 150; as handmaid of the Lord and strong tower, 126, 126n. 14; humility, 126; hymned by John the Evangelist and Dionysius, 125, 125nn11, 12; Immaculate Conception of, 45, Incarnation, 126; John, as son, 141; marriage of, 60; overcomes devil, 126; Paul’s reference to,

122, 122 n. 79; at Pentecost, 144; praise of, 123–25; Strongest and Most Faithful of God’s Creatures, 125–27; virgin birth, 106; visits Elizabeth, 133; as wisdom, 123, 123n. 1; as “woman clothed with Sun,” 126; Mary Magdalene, 135–36, 36n. 33; fearlessness, 140; appearance of Christ to after resurrection, 143, 143 n. 52; ointment of, 145 Matharel, Louis de, 14 Matthew, Saint, 54n. 30, 81 Maximus, Valerius, 107n. 46 Mazarin (cardinal), 14 men: arrogance, 68; betrayal and putting Christ to death, 139; ceaseless tyranny of female, 152 cruelty and propensity for war, 47; cruelty, 69–70; Judgment Day, 75–78; depravity and self-interest of, 43; as Greater Chatterboxes than Women, 144; inconstancy of, 57–58, 113–115; as liars, 47, 48, 63; at Passion and death of Christ as reason for His appearing to Virgin Mary and Mary Magdalene first, 143, 143n. 52; perversity of, 45–46; susceptibility to female blandishments of, 47; trumpeting own praises, 108; vanity, 133, 151; weeping, value of, 142–43; Menelaus (king), 112 Messalina, 69, 69n. 50, 72–73, 73n. 55 Messiah. See Christ Midas (king), 86 Mill, John Stuart, 1, 3n. 1 Minerva, 101, 108 misogynists, 23; Misogynists Are Condemned, 146–49 Misogyny: A Final Blast, 149–53; misogyny of poets, 150 modesty, nuns’ natural, 106 Mohammed, 78, 78n. 64, 83, 106 “Mongibello,” 114 monothelitism, 83n. 73

Index moon, 128 Morosini, Giovan Francesco (patriarch of Venice), 12 mortal sins, 149 Moses, 72, 82, 82n. 72, 89; “new Moses,” 117; as unbeliever, 124–25 Mother Earth, 150 Muses, 108 Nature, 102, 107; laws of, 117 Naudéé, Gabriel, 14 Narcissus, 137, 137 n. 36 Nazarenes, 63 Nebuchadnezzar, 63, 63n. 43 Nero (emperor), 59, 70n. 50, 72–73, 73n. 55, 93 n. 15, 107, 107n. 48 Nestorius, 106 New Testament, 16; feminist reading of, 23 Nimrod, 82 Noah, 68, 69, 70–71, 89; father of Sem, Ham, and Japheth, 124 Nogarola, Isotta, 16n. 35, 28 Numa Pompilius (king of Rome), 144n. 55 nuns, 49; More Virtuous than Monks, 83–84; vows 60; Vows Depriving Them of Liberty, 81–83; unchastity, 82–83 Octavian (emperor), 70n. 50, 79n. 67, 80n. 69 Oddoni, Guglielmo, 7 Old Testament, 16, 17, 82; polygamy in, 112 Olympia, 114, 114nn. 55, 56 Olympiad, 43 On the Religious Life of Nuns (De regimine monialium), 84, 84n. 75 original sin, 96, 123 Orlando furioso (Ariosto): on women’s intelligence, 56, 56n. 35, 101, 101n. 32, 106n. 45, 113–14nn. 55, 56, 151–52, 152 n. 72 Ovid: Amores, 3, 129; Elegies, 56n. 34; Metamorphoses, 71n. 52, 76n. 61, 78n. 65, 87n.7, 100n.29, 153n. 75

Padua, 22 Pallavicino, Ferrante: La rete di Vulcano, 150 n. 69; Il corriero svaligiato, 9, 16, 17, 24, 27, 30–31, 122n. 77, 147, 147nn. 61, 62, 63, appendix 2, 158–62; Il divorzio celeste, 147n. 62 Paradise, 25–26, 53, 71, 86, 94, 96, 120 Paris: compared with Venice, 22; “women’s Paradise,” 14 Paris (son of Priam), 112 Pasqualigo, Laura, 14–15, 21 Passi, Giuseppe: on adulterous women’s punishments, 110n. 53; condemnation by Tarabotti, 146– 47, 147n. 59, 60; On Women’s Defects (Dei difetti donneschi),16, 22–23, 23n. 42, 24, 27, 55n. 31, 56n. 34, 62n. 41, 63n. 42, 66n. 47, 86n. 2, 102n. 36; Tarabotti’s rebuttal of, 114, 114n. 57, 118n. 67, 140n. 41 Paul, Saint, 20, 23, 50, 54–55, 86; on Adam and Virgin Mary, 122, 122n. 79; on rights of husband over wife and vice versa, 111; On Double Standard, 113 Paula, Saint, 105, 105n. 43, 110 Paternal Tyranny (Tirannia Paterna; Tarabotti), 1, 4, 12, 13, 15–31 patriarchy, n. 38 Penelope, 107, 107n. 46 Pentecost, 144 Penthesilea (queen of Amazons), 141 Peter, Saint, 98; denial of Christ by, 138; successors of 120; vicar of Christ, 136 Petrarch, Francesco: Sonnets, 55nn. 31, 32, 87, 87n. 8, 93, 93n. 17; Triumph of Love, 114n. 57 Pharaoh, 72; “new Pharaohs,” 117 Pharisees, 135, 139 Philistines, 137n. 35 Philolaus the Theban, 103 “Philosopher, The.” See Aristotle Pighetti, Giacomo, 8 Pilate, wife of, 139

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Index Plata, Orazio, 11, 11n. 23, 24, 144n. 53, 145n. 58 Plato, 79; Apology, 143, 143n. 51; Phaedo and Crito, 134n. 32; Platonic ideas, 86–87, 87n. 6; Republic, 101, 101n. 33; Symposium, 99, 99n. 28, 105 Plutarch, 98n. 26, 128 Pluto, 54, 82n. 71 Polani, Betta, 13, 13n. 32 Polani, Giovanni, 8, 8n. 15 Pompey (emperor), 107 Pona, Francesco, 12–13 Portia, 107, 107n. 46 Post-Boy Robbed of His Bag, The (Il corriero svaligiato). See Pallavicino, Ferrante Prometheus, 78n. 65 prophets, 89 Proverbs, 141 Psalm, Psalmist, 127 Ptolemaic system. See Empyrean Purgatory, 116 Pyrrha, 78, 78n. 65 Pythagoras, 86, 86n. 5, 98, 147, 148 querelle des femmes, 19 Rahab, 118, 188n. 70 religious life, 64–65 religious superiors, 92–93 religious vows, 48–49; true religious vocation, 49; Vows, False, not God’s Will, 129–31 Revelation, 75n. 60, 117n. 65 Ricci, Brother Francesco Antonio, 27–29, 29n. 53 Rodomont, 55nn. 31, 32 Romans, 148, 149 Rome: compared with Venice, 22; Holy Office censura, 25, 27, 27n. 50, 79, 79n. 66 Rovere, Vittoria Maria della, duchess of Tuscany, 13–14 Roxane (wife of Alexander the Great), 150n. 68 Ruben, 118 Sabellius, 106 Sacripante, 114n. 59

Salamanca, 22 Salome, 112 Salviati, Maddalena, 106, 106n. 45 Samson, 137, 137n. 35, 141 Santacroce, Antonio, 25–26, 26nn. 45, 46 Sappho, 70n. 50, 105 Sara, 124 Sardanapalus (king), 86 Sarrocchi, Margherita, 106, 106n. 45 Satan, 54, 77, 82, 110; appearance to Eve with woman’s face, 121, 124 Satire (Ariosto), 66, 66n. 47 Saul (king), 79, 79n. 67 Scythians, 95n. 19 Seals, Book of Seven, 75, 75n. 60 Semiramis, 69, 69n. 50 Seneca, 72–73, 73n. 55, 102, 103, 103n. 39; on God’s omniscience, 130, 130n. 21 Sergius (monk), 83, 83 n. 73, 147, 147n. 64 Serpent, 50, 51, 52, 108; appearance to Eve in guise of woman to win her over, 121; devil’s plaything, 126; devil’s tricks, 121 Sheba, queen of, 57, 58n. 36, 145 sibyls, and prophets, 131; Tiburtine, 133, 133n. 26 Sichem (prince), 115 Simeon (prophet), 133 and n. 27 Simon the Pharisee, 135–36, 150 Sisera, 137 Sisyphus, 153, 153n. 75 Socinians, 83n. 74 Socrates, 98, 99, 105; death of, 143, 143n. 51 Sodom and Gomorrah, 118 Sogni di Parnaso (Dreams of Parnassus; Brusoni), 26, 26n. 46 Solomon (king), 45, 48, 56, 57–58, 58n. 36, 68, 78, 86, 96, 97, 97n. 23, 99; gives homage to women’s worth, 150; as idolator, 125, 125n. 8; “Solomons,” 118; susceptible to feminine beauty, 141, 145 Solon, 76, 98 Song of Songs, 120, 126, 126n. 14

Index Sosipatra, 105 Sparta, 96, 96n. 21 Stesichorus, 105 Suetonius, 73n. 55 Suidas, 103, 103n. 39 Susanna, 115, 115n. 62 Tacitus, Cornelius, 100n. 30, 101 Tamar, 118, 118n. 70 Tamiris (queen of Scythians), 141, 141n. 44 Tansillo, Luigi, 143n. 50 Tantalus, 153 Tarabotti, Arcangela LIFE: accusation of Lutheranism, 28; accusation of libertine tendencies, 24–25; attacks Loredan and Incogniti for Protestantism and atheism, 137; convent life, 14, 15; correspondence,12–15; on cutting her hair, 6; distances self from Protestantism, 83–84; dowries, 6; family wealth, 5; on fathers, 3,4, 5; as Galerana Baracitotti, 11; Holy Office, censura, 25, 27, 27n. 50; lamenting lack of education, 6; on literary output, 7; making lace to cover publication costs, 14; on mothers not supporting daughters, 6; own ugliness, 3; reading, 8; and reception of Paternal Tyranny, 25–29; reference to forthcoming books, 152–53, 153 n. 74; religious life, 9, 17; tuberculosis and death, 15; understanding of doctrine, 28; vows taken, 4 WORKS: Antisatira, 8, 10, 13, 27; Convent Life as Inferno, 7, 14, 15, 27; Convent Life as Paradise, 6, 7, 9–10 nn18, 19, 20, 15, 25, appendix 1, 155–57; Innocence Betrayed, 14, 15, 24; Lettere familiari e di complimento, 8, 10n. 21, 12, 12n. 25; Paternal Tyranny, 1, 4, 12, 13, 15–31; Women Do Belong to the Species Mankind, 11–12

“Tarabotti, Michela,” 25 Tarquin (king), 115 Tartary, women of, 148 Tasso, Torquato, 10, 17; Aminta, 40n. 8; Il mondo creato, 45n. 18; Jerusalem Liberated, 82, 82n.71, 99–100, 100n. 29, 119n. 72 Ten Commandments, 72 Teresa of Avila, Saint, 64, 64n. 44 Terracina, Laura, 106, 106n. 45 Theano (wife of Pythagoras), 148n. 65 Themistoclea (priestess), 148n. 65 Thomas, Saint (apostle), 142 Thomas Aquinas, Saint, 85n. 1 Thracians, 77–78, 95 Tiepolo, Baiamonte, 38 Tiepolo, Giovanni (doge), 4 To Peter on Faith, 46, 46n. 21 Trent, Council of: on clausura, 131; on marriage, 5n. 7, 6, 20n. 40; on religious life for nuns, 84n. 75; Tarabotti on, 119, 120, 120n. 75199n. 73, 120 Trinity. See Holy Trinity Troy, Trojans, 112 Ulysses, 76n. 61, 107n. 46 Unitarians, 83n. 74 Uriah, 23, 112, 115 Valerius Maximus, 107n. 46 Venice: Address To Rulers, 16, 37, 60–64; laws denying women public office, 22; patriarchy in, 1, 20–21; policy on dowries and marriage restriction, 14; state schools in, 102, 102n. 38; S. Anna, convent, Benedictine, 3 Venus, 71n. 52, 137n. 36 Vestal Virgins, 116–17 Virgil, 76n. 61, 76n. 61, 91n. 12, 103; Aeneid, 55, 55n. 31, 99n. 29 Vittoria, Tomas Luis de,12 Voragine, Jacobus de. See Golden Legend Vulcan, 71, 71n. 52, 76, 114n. 59, 150, 150n. 69

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Index Weeping, Value of for Men and Women, 142–43 Wisdom. See Mary (mother of Jesus) Wise and Foolish Virgins, 54–55n. 30 Wollstonecraft, Mary, 1, 3n.1 woman taken in adultery, 135; with hemorrhage, 135 woman of Samaria, 23, 132, 132n. 23 woman’s creation, 45–46; as “imperfect animal,” 133, 133n. 28 Women Do Belong to the Species Mankind (Che le donne siano della spezie degli uomini; Tarabotti), 11–12 Women Do Not Belong to the Species Mankind. An Amusing Speech (Che le donne non siano della spezie degli uomini. Discorso piacevole; Plata), 11, 11n. 23, 12n.24, 144n. 53, 145n. 58 woman, women: adultery, against misogynistic arguments, 10012; ambassadress and intercessor, 123–24; chastity, 70, 106, 112; Christ’s most faithful disciples, 132–36; courage, 140–41; desire for knowledge, 108–09; dowries, 82, 94–95; education, 99; Faith in Christ not Gullibility, 136– 38; accused of fickleness, 56–57; fortitude, 140; fortitude and loyalty at Passion, 23, 141; freedom in France, Germany, Holland, 100,

100n.30; generosity, 145; gullibility refuted, 136–37; gullibility as excuse to incarcerate, 137–38; hair, 63; illiteracy, 101; “imperfect animal,” 133n. 27; instability and levity of, 56; in business outside Italy, 100; instrument of Redemption, 123–24; Kindness and Compassion, 142; Lack of Learning, 97–98; Of Learning, 105; liberty, 28; liberty and Bible, 23; Liberty, Greater outside Italy, 100–01; loyalty and fortitude, 23; modesty, 46, 69, 70; modesty, decency and chastity, 141; moral and intellectual equality, 28; natural intelligence, 100–01; Other Special Virtues, 145; Seduced and Punished by Men, 115–16; solid rock of Christian faith, 132–36; states in life, 73 n. 56; strongest and most faithful of god’s creatures, 125–27; Superior Loyalty and Devotion During Passion, 138–40; superiority of, 46–48; superiority through childbearing, 47; virginity, 54–55; weeping, value of, 142–43 Xerxes, 143 Zacharias (prophet), 118–19