I only read the sections of this book dealing with Isotta Nogarola and Laura Cereta. So many books, so little time. . . .

From the Introduction

      1) "With one exception, Bruni commends the same education to women as to men. The exception, however, is significant. Bruni did not envision women in the public arena. It was not decorous, he believed, to see women speaking in public or taking on public functions. Study was perfectly appropriate to women, but not the public display of their learning. The tension that such an attitude might cause- and in this case did cause - is not difficult to see. Women are encouraged to become highly cultured, and in a way characteristic of men who, by virtue of that culture, become public figures; but they are denied the public arena for which these disciplines prepare them. That denial leads to difficulties for the learned women of the fifteenth century which are evident in their lives and works. In addition to excepting rhetoric as an appropriate object of study, Bruni also makes one other qualification: the education of women is to focus more heavily upon religion than that of men. This recommendation, echoed by other male humanists, as will be amply evident in the texts translated here, is related as well to attitudes that confined women to the private arena." pp. 15

      2) Regarding Maddalena Scrovegni (1356-1429), the first woman Italian humanist:

      "Lombardo della Seta, humanist and companion of Petrarch, dedicated to her a work on famous women (not lost) in which he praised her learning; and Antonio Loschi (1365-1441) wrote the letter and poem in her honor analyzed earlier." P. 16

      3) "The first generation of women humanists born during the quattrocento includes six of some renown: Isotta Nogarola (1418-66), her sister Ginevra Nogarola (1417-1461/8), Constanza Barbaro (b. after 1419), Cecilia Gonzaga (1425-51), Costanza Varano (1428-47), and Caterina Caldiera (d. 1463)." pp. 16-17

From the section on Isotta Nogarola

      1) "But her [Nogarola's] defense rests upon the denigration of her sex: Eve is weak and cannot be held as responsible as Adam who is strong and perfect." page 18

      2) "The first mentioned, Isotta Nagarola, is also perhaps the most famous and accomplished learned woman of the century. She learned Latin and Greek at an early age,- studying with Martino Rizzoni, a pupil of Guarino of Verona (1374-1460), one of the greatest humanist teachers of the Quarttrocento. Through Rizzoni, perhaps, Isotta, as well as her sister Ginerva, became known to the circle around Guarino. At the age of eighteen Isotta entered into correspondence with a number of these humanists, hoping to enter their circle and engage in literary discourse. During the next two years, she corresponded with Guarino's son, Girolamo, and with Giorgio Bevilacqua and Ludovico Cendrata, two of Guarino's disciples. Both sisters wrote to the son of the Venetian Doge, Giacomo Foscari, who showed their letters to Guarino. Guarino in a letter to Giacomo praised the two sisters, then reported on their talents to Leonello d'Este, son of the Duke of Ferrara, whose tutor Guarino was. At length Isotta wrote to Guarino himself, who did not respond. Isotta was made the laughing-stock of Verona, for it was public knowledge that she had written to Guarino. Shaken by this turn of events, she wrote to Guarino again, explaining to him how his silence had made her an object of ridicule. This, finally, drew from Guarino a reply praising Isotta and encouraging her in her studies?

      After two years, however, Isotta stopped writing. Why? The men with whom she corresponded praised her, but they praised her because she excelled other women in her learning, not because her learning equaled that of men. They also suggested that if Isotta would achieve her goals, she must cease to be a woman and become a man. This sentiment was more correct than perhaps the writers understood. For they were saying i effect that there was no place for a woman in the world of humanism.

      As if this message were not clear enough, one anonymous writer in Verona, calling himself "Pliny," addressed a letter to his friend "Ovid," in 1438 in which he accused Isotta of incest with her brother and, most striking of all, linked this outrageous accusation with her learning, remarking that the saying "of many wise men I hold to be true: that an eloquent women is never chaste; and the behavior of many learned women also confirms its truth." It is not surprising that by 1438 Isotta had given up her ambition to become a humanist.

      But the most striking thing about Isotta - what makes her unique among all learned women of the century - is that she did not give up her ideal of devoting herself to the life of the mind. After three years of indecision during which she lived in Venice (1438-1441), she returned to Verona, having decided neither to marry nor to accept religious vows, but to live in her own home (with her mother), devoting herself to sacred studies. This she did for twenty-five years. From 1453 we hear of bodily illness, perhaps associated with her [end of page 17] religious vigils, which may eventually have contributed to her death. The illness may well have been related to the fact that in order to maintain her intellectual life, Isotta had to pay a high price: perpetual chastity and isolation from other learned people.

      Her isolation was significantly broken for only one short period during these years, 1451-1453, when she entered into correspondence with Ludovico Foscarini, a Venetian nobleman and humanist. In his letters he encourages her chastity and, like Loschi before him, links learning with chastity. To insure the union, he cherished and commends to Isotta his image of her locked in her little cell with Christ and urges her to remain there. When she received an unexpected proposal of marriage at the age of thirty-five in 1453, she referred the matter to Foscarini, who wrote back much agitated that she should think of giving up the chastity to which she had bound herself. She accepted his advice.

      The most significant of her writings comes out of this period of her intense relationship to Foscarini: a dialogue on the respective responsibilities of Adam and Eve for the fall. Foscarini defended Adam, Nogarola Eve. But her defense rests upon the denigration of her sex: Eve is weak and cannot be held as responsible as Adam who is strong and perfect. Isotta paid a high price indeed for her right to continue her studies. The wonder is that she continued at all." pages 17-18

      3) "A number of similarities in the lives of these women humanists emerge from the biographies just presented. All of them were from substantial, most from aristocratic, families in the urban centers of Northern Italy. All came from homes in which learning was valued; in many cases the tradition of learning in the family extended back several generations. In every case the learning of the girls was strongly supported by their fathers. In at least two cases the fathers were the principal if not the only teachers; in other cases the fathers chose tutors who taught the young women, perhaps alongside their brothers.

      In every case the women, as young girls, were encouraged and strongly supported in their studies. They were recognized by their families, by male humanists, and by their cities as prodigies. Those women, however, who aspired to continue a humanist career into their adult years were not greeted with the encouragement or praise they had received as prodigies, but icily and with hostility. There was simply no place for the learned woman in the social environment of Renaissance Italy. What was a young girl to do who had been encouraged, had excelled, and had grown to love studies to dream of a humanist vocation?" page 25

      4) "Most of the literature produced by women is secular, which is not at all to say that it is anti-religious or impious, but only that religion was not their primary concern as humanists." page 27

      5) From Isotta Nogarola's letters to Ludovico Foscarini

      "[In] Ecclesiasticus 5 [it says]: "God from the beginning created man and placed him in the palm of his counsel and made clear his commandments and precepts. If you wish to preserve the commandments, they will preserve you and create in you pleasing faith." Thus Adam appeared to accuse God rather than excuse himself when he said: "The woman you placed at my side gave me fruit from the tree and I ate it."

      [Next you argue] that the beloved companion could have more easily deceived the man than the shameful serpent the woman. To this I reply that Eve, weak and ignorant by nature, sinned much less by assenting to that astute serpent, who was called "wise," than Adam - created by God with perfect knowledge and understanding - in listening to the persuasive words and voice of the imperfect woman." page 66

      6) From Isotta's first letter to Ludovico:

      " But I see things - since you move me to reply - from quite another and contrary viewpoint. For where there is less intellect and less constancy, there there is less sin; and Eve [lacked sense and constancy] and therefore sinned less. Knowing [her weakness] that crafty serpent began by tempting the woman, thinking the man perhaps invulnerable because of his constancy. [For it says in ] Sentences 2: Standing in the woman's presence, the ancient foe did not boldly persuade, but approached her with a question: "Why did God bid you not to eat of the tree of paradise?" She responded: "Lest perhaps we die." But seeing that she doubted the words of the Lord, the devil said: "You shall not die," but "you will be like god, knowing good from evil."

      [Adam must also be judged more guilty than Eve, secondly] because of his greater contempt for the command. For in Genesis 2 it appears that the Lord commanded Adam, not Eve, where it says: "The Lord God took the man and placed him in the paradise of Eden to till it and to keep it ," (and it does not say, "that they might care for and protect it") ". . . and the Lord God commanded the man" (and not "them"): "From every tree of the garden you may eat" (and not "you" [in the plural sense]), and [referring to the forbidden tree], "for the day you eat of it, you must die," [again, using the singular form of man more highly than the woman.

      Moreover, the woman did not [eat from the forbidden tree] because she believed that she was made more like God, but rather because she was weak and [inclined to indulge in] pleasure. Thus: "Now the woman saw that the tree was good for food, pleasing to the eyes, and desirable for the knowledge it would give. She took of its fruit and ate it, and also gave some to her husband and he ate," and it does not say [that she did so] in order to be like God. And if Adam had not eaten, her sin would have had no consequences. For it does not say: "If Eve had not sinned Christ would not have been made incarnate," but "If Adam had not sinned." Hence the woman, but only because she had been first deceived by the serpent's evil persuasion, did indulge in the delights of paradise; but she would have harmed only herself and in no way endangered human posterity if the consent of the first-born man had not been offered. Therefore Eve was no danger to posterity but [only] to herself; but the man Adam spread the infection of sin to himself and to all future generations. Thus Adam, being the author of all humans yet to be born, was also the first cause of perdition. For this reason the healing of humankind was celebrated first in the man and then in the woman, just as [according to Jewish tradition], after an unclean spirit has been expelled from a man, as it springs forth from the synagogue, the woman is purged [as well].

      Moreover, that Eve was condemned by a just judge to a harsher punishment is evidently false, for God said to the woman: "I will make great your distress in childbearing; in pain shall you bring forth children; for your husband shall be your longing, though he have dominion over you." But to Adam he said: "Because you have listened to your wife and have eaten of the tree of which I have commanded you not to eat" (notice that God appears to have admonished Adam alone [using the singular form of "you"] and not Eve) "Cursed be the ground because of you; in toil shall you eat of it all the days of your life; thorns and thistles shall it bring forth to you, and you shall eat the plants of the ground, since out of it you were taken; for dust you are and unto dust you shall return." Notice that Adam's punishment appears harsher than Eve's for God said to Adam: "to dust you shall return," and not to Eve, and death is the most terrible punishment that could be assigned. Therefore it is established that Adam's punishment was greater than Eve's.

      I have written this because you wished me to. yet I have done so fearfully, since this is not a woman's task. But you are kind, and if you find any part of my writing clumsy you will correct it." p 58-61

      "I had decided that I would not enter further into a contest with you because, as you say, you assault my fortress with my own weapons. [The propositions] you have presented me were so perfectly and diligently defended that it would be difficult not merely for me, but for the most learned men, to oppose them. But since I recognize that his contest is useful for me, I have decided to obey your honest with. Even though I know I struggle in vain, yet I will earn the highest praise if I am defeated by so mighty a man as you.

      Eve sinned out of ignorance and inconstancy, and hence you contend that she sinned more gravely, because the ignorance of those things which we are obligated to know does not excuse us, since it is written: "He who does not know will not be known." I would concede your point if that ignorance were crude or affected. But Eve's ignorance was implanted by nature, of which nature God himself is the author and founder. In many people it is seen that he who knows less sins less, like a boy sins less than an old man or a peasant less than a noble. such a person does not need to know explicitly what is required for salvation, but simplicity, because [for him] faith alone suffices. The question of inconstancy proceeds similarly. for when it is said that the acts which proceed from inconstancy are more blameworthy, [that kind of] inconstancy is understood which is not innate but the product of character and sins.

      The same is true of imperfection. For when gifts increase, greater responsibility is imposed. When God created man, form the beginning he created him perfect, and the powers of his soul perfect, and gave him a greater depth of wisdom. Thus it was that the Lord led to Adam all the animals of the earth and the birds of heaven, so that Adam could call them by their names. For God said, "Let us make mankind in our image and likeness, and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and the birds of the air, the cattle, over all the wild animals and every creature that crawls on the earth," making clear his own perfection. But of the woman he said: "It is not good that the man is alone. I will make him a helper like himself." And since consolation and joy are requirements for happiness, and since no one can have solace and joy when alone, it appears that God created woman for man's consolation. For the good spreads itself, and the greater it is the more it shares itself. Therefore, it appears that Adam's sin was greater than Eve's. [As] Ambrose [says]: "In him to whom a more indulgent liberality has been shown is insolence more inexcusable."

      "But Adam's companion," [you argue], "is not excused because Adam was appointed to protect her, because thieves who have been trustingly employed by a householder are not punished with the most severe punishment like strangers or those in whom the householder placed no confidence." This is true, however, in temporal law, but not in divine law, for divine justice proceeds differently from temporal justice in punishing [sin.}

      [You argue further that] "the fragility of the woman was not the cause of sin, but rather her inordinate appetite for seeking that which was not suited to her nature," which [appetite] is the product, as you write, of pride. Yet it is clearly less a sin to desire the knowledge of good and evil than to transgress against a divine commandment, since the desire for knowledge is a natural thing, and all men by nature desire to know. And even if the first impulse of sin] were this inordinate appetite, which cannot be without sin, yet it is more tolerable than the sin of transgression, for the observance of the commandments is the road which leads to the country of salvation. [It is written]: "But if thou wilt enter into life, keep the commandments;" and likewise: "What shall I do to gain eternal life? Keep the commandments." And transgression is particularly born of pride, because pride is nothing other than rebellion against divine rule, exalting oneself above what is permitted according to divine rule, by disdaining the will of God and displacing it with one's own. Thus Augustine [writes] in On nature and Grace: "Sin is the will to pursue or retain what justice forbids, that is, to deny what God wishes." Ambrose agrees with in his On Paradise: "Sin is the transgression against divine law and disobedience to the heavenly commandments." Behold! See that the transgression against and disobedience to the heavenly commandments is the greatest sin, whereas you have thus defined sin: "Sin is the inordinate desire to know." Thus clearly the sin of transgression against a command is greater than [the sin of] desiring the knowledge of good and evil. so even if inordinate desire be a sin, as with Eve, yet she did not desire to be like God in power but only in the knowledge of good and evil, which by nature she was actually inclined to desire.

      [Next, as to your statement] that those words, "if Adam had not sinned," confirm you in your view [of Eve's damnability], since Eve may have so sinned that, like the demons, she did not merit redemption, I reply that she also was redeemed with Adam, because [she was] "bone of my bone and flesh of my flesh." And if it seems that God did not redeem her, this was undoubtedly because God held her sin as negligible. For if man deserved redemption, the woman deserved it much more because of the slightness of the crime. For the angel cannot be excused by ignorance as can the woman. For the angel understands without investigation or discussion and has an intellect more in the likeness of God's - to which it seems Eve desired to be similar - than does man. hence the angel is called intellectual and the man rational. Thus where the woman sinned from her desire for knowledge, the angel sinned from a desire for power. While knowledge of an appearance in some small can be partaken of by the creature, in no way can it partake in the power of God and of the soul of Christ. Moreover, the woman in sinning thought she would receive mercy, believing certainly that she was committing a sin, but not one so great as to warrant God's inflicting such a sentence and punishment. But the angel did not think [of mercy]. Hence Gregory [says in the] fourth book of the Moralia: "The first parents were needed for this, that the sin which they committed by transgressing they might purge by confessing." But that persuasive serpent was never punished for his sin, for he was never to be recalled to grace. Thus, in sum, Eve clearly merited redemption more than the angels.

      [As to your argument] that the woman also suffers all the penalties inflicted on the man, and beyond those which are common [to both] she alone gives birth in sorrow and has been subjected to man, this also reinforces my earlier point. As I said, the good spreads itself, and the greater it is the more it shares itself. So also evil, the greater it is the more it shares itself, and the more it shares itself the more harmful it is, and the more harmful it is the greater it is. Furthermore, the severity of the punishment is proportional to the gravity of the sin. Hence Christ chose to die on the cross, though this was the most shameful and horrible kind of death, and on the cross he endured in general every kind of suffering by type. Hence Isidore writes concerning the Trinity: "The only-born Son of God in executing the sacrament of his death, in himself bears witness that he consummated every kind of suffering when, with lowered head, he gave up his spirit." the reason was that the punishment had to correspond to the guilt. Adam took the fruit of the forbidden tree; Christ suffered on the tree and so mad satisfaction [for Adam's sin]. [As] Augustine [writes]: "Adam disdained God's command" (and he does not say Eve) "accepting the fruit from the tree, but whatever Adam lost Christ restored." [For Christ paid the penalty for sin he had not committed, as it says in] Psalm 64: "For what I have not taken, then I atoned." Therefore, Adam's sin was the greatest [possible], because the punishment corresponding to his fault was the greatest [possible] and was general in all men. {As the] apostle [says]: "All sinned in Adam."

      "Eve," [you say], "must bear responsibility for every fault of Adam because as Aristotle shows, whatever is the cause of the cause is the cause of the thing caused." This is true in the case of things which are, as you know better [than I], in themselves the causes of other things, which is the case for the first cause, the first principle, and "that on account of which anything is what it is." But clearly this was not the case with Eve, because Adam either had free will or he did not. If he did not have it, he did not sin; if he had it, then Eve forced the sin [upon him], which is impossible. For a Bernard says, "Free will, because of its inborn nobility, is forced by no necessity," not even by God, because it that were the case it would be to concede that two contradictories are true at the same time. God cannot do, therefore, what would cause an act proceeding from free will and remaining free to be not free but coerced. [As] Augustine [writes in his commentary] on Genesis: "God cannot act against that nature which he created with good will." God could himself, however, remove that condition of liberty from any person and bestow some other conditions on him. In the same way fire cannot, while it remains fire, not burn, unless its nature is changed and suspended for a time by divine force. No other creature, such as a good angel or devil can do this, since they are less than God; much less a woman, since she is less perfect and weaker than they . Augustine clarifies this principle [of God's supremacy] saying: "Above our mind is nothing besides God, nor is there anything intermediary between God and our mind." Yet only something which is superior to something else can coerce it; but Eve was inferior to Adam, therefore she was not herself the cause of sin. [In] Ecclesiasticus 15 [it says]: "God from the beginning created man and placed him in the palm of his counsel and made clear his commandments and precepts. If you wish to preserve the commandments, they will preserve you and create in you pleasing faith." Thus Adam appeared to accuse God rather than excuse himself when he said: "Thus Adam appeared to accuse God rather than excuse himself when he said: "The woman you placed at my side gave me fruit from the tree and I ate it."

      [Next you argue] that the beloved companion could have more easily deceived the man than the shameful serpent the woman. To this I reply that Eve, weak and ignorant by nature, sinned much less by assenting to that astute serpent, who was called "wise," than Adam - created by God with perfect knowledge and understanding - in listening to the persuasive words and voice of the imperfect woman.

      [Further, you say] that Eve persevered in her sin a longer time and therefore sinned more, because crimes are that much more serious according to the length of time they hold the unhappy soul in bondage. This is no doubt true, when two sins are equal, and in the same person or in two similar persons. But Adam and Eve were not equals, because Adam was a perfect animal and Eve imperfect and ignorant. {Therefore, their sins were not comparable, and Eve who persevered longer in sin, was not on that account more guilty than Adam].

      Finally, if I may quote you: "The woman was the example and the cause of sin, and Gregory emphatically extends the burden of guilt to [the person who provided] an example, and Christ condemned the cause of the ignorant Jews, because it was first, more than the learned Pilate's sentence when he said: "Therefore he who betrayed me to you has greater sin." I reply that Christ did not condemn the cause of the ignorant Jews because it was first, but because it was vicious and devilish due to their native malice and obstinacy. For they did not sin from ignorance. The gentile Pilate was more ignorant about these things than the Jews, who had the law and the prophets and read them and daily saw signs concerning [Christ]. For John 15 says: "If I had not come and spoken to them, they would have no sin. But now they have no excuses for their sin." Thus they themselves said: "What are we doing? for this man is working signs." And: "Art thou the Christ, the Son of the Blessed One?" For the [Jewish] people was special to God, and Christ himself [said]: "I was not sent except to the lost sheep of the house of Israel. It is not fair to take the children's bread and cast it to the dogs." therefore the Jews sinned more, because Jesus loved them more.

      Let these words be enough from me, an unarmed and poor little woman." page 63 - 67

      1) "In some respects the life of Laura Cereta parallels that of Cassandra Fedele, except that it is telescoped into one-third the life span. Laura was born the eldest of six children; two sisters and three brothers followed. She always felt most loved, and attributed this to the fact that she was the oldest. When she was seven she was sent to a convent for two years where she acquired the rudiments of reading and writing, but spent most of her time embroidering. At the age of nine she returned home amid great rejoicing, and her education was henceforth directed by her father, Silvestro, a member of the Brescian aristocracy. About him we know nothing except that he was responsible for the fortifications of cities allied to Brescia. As a young girl, Laura accompanied her father on journeys to these cities supervising military construction. Her father's occupation presupposes a knowledge of mathematics. Laura herself was very early taken with this subject, which may have been due to his interest and knowledge. Her own interest was quickly translated also into a fascination with astrology, and her letters reveal a detailed knowledge of the zodiac and predictions derived therefrom. Her father taught her also Latin and Greek, and she concentrated especially on Latin eloquence. Very early Petrarch became her model, and she yearned to emulate him. her interests turned from mathematics to moral philosophy, classical literature and sacred studies. These latter subjects became a consuming passion.

      At the age of fifteen she was married to a Brescian businessman, Pietro Serina and, at the same time, began a literary correspondence in Latin with the learned of her city and, outside it, in the Veneto. She found time for her studies by writing after everyone else had gone to bed. Cereta is unique among the women we have discussed in this respect. Her studies did not cease but rather became more intense after she married. Whether the patterns of the lives of other learned women might have been repeated in her own life we cannot know, for her husband died of the plague after they had been married for only eighteen months, leaving her childless. After a period of intense grief during which she yearned for death, she recovered herself not, as she says, through weeping, but through the resumption of her literary labors. Even more zealously, she wrote letters to the learned and sought to enter into the world of humanism. Most of her correspondents were local Brescians, unknown to us except in her letters. But some were humanists who attained something of a reputation, for example, Bonifacio Bembo and Ludovico Cendrata. She also wrote to Cassandra Fedele. None of these better known correspondents replied to her, even though she asked explicitly that they do so. Perhaps they did not consider her significant enough.

      Nonetheless, she became something of a phenomenon in Brescia itself and her peers there certainly did not ignore her. they attacked her. her male peers charged that her letters had been written for her by her father, because no woman could be learned enough to write such letters. To this she responded that she was pleased to have herself compared so favorably to her father, who she admired, and then proceeded to demonstrate her erudition in response to one and all. she may also have been the only woman humanist of the century to use that genre of writing invented by Petrarch and his followers, the invective. Cereta penned one against two of her male peers that rivals in vitriol those of Filefo, Poggio or Valla. Not only men but also women attacked her. To them she responded in a letter unique among learned women.

      Cereta was praised by other humanists as well as criticized by her peers. She refers in many of her letters to the adulation other heaped upon her. But she was through it in a way other learned women did not or, if they did, never publicly expressed. She recognized male flattery as condescension: to say that she was a learned woman and therefore unusual was to say something negative about women. Cereta was both perceptive and aggressive in her defense of women.

      In 1488 Cereta dedicated the first volume of her letters (the only one published) to Cardinal Maria Ascanio Sforza, hoping that his position would lend legitimacy to her work and that her work, in turn, would redound to his glory. Given the attitudes expressed in the letters of this volume, one might have expected much more from her pen. But she lived eleven more years without publishing anything further. Why such silence from a woman so determined, so perceptive, so positive about her self both as a woman and as a humanist?

      The answer appears self-evident: she found no acceptance in the world of humanism, which remained a male preserve. Only one correspondent wrote letter to Cereta which are preserved, a Dominican Friar, Tommaso of Milan. In them he upbraided her for taking her critics so seriously and, more especially, for responding to them in such strong language. In writing so, he believed, she reflected more a pagan than a Christian consciousness. He counseled her to turn away from her humanism to religion, not even to religious studies by to the religious life. Cereta had always found her strongest male supporter in her father. Six months after she published her first volume of letters he died. Bereft now of her strongest male affirmation, besieged all around by critics, male and female, rejecting her humanism, and counseled by her one male correspondent to give up her humanism, she succumbed. She never married again, and she did not enter the religious life. But she found a social role more acceptable to those about her than that of humanist intellectual, and her pen fell silent." pages 23-24

      2) "A number of similarities in the lives of these women humanists emerge from the biographies just presented. All of them were from substantial, most from aristocratic, families in the urban centers of Northern Italy. All came from homes in which learning was valued; in many cases the tradition of learning in the family extended back several generations. In every case the learning of the girls was strongly supported by their fathers. In at least two cases the fathers were the principal if not the only teachers; in other cases the fathers chose tutors who taught the young women, perhaps alongside their brothers.

      In every case the women, as young girls, were encouraged and strongly supported in their studies. They were recognized by their families, by male humanists, and by their cities as prodigies. Those women, however, who aspired to continue a humanist career into their adult years were not greeted with the encouragement or praise they had received as prodigies, but icily and with hostility. There was simply no place for the learned woman in the social environment of Renaissance Italy. What was a young girl to do who had been encouraged, had excelled, and had grown to love studies to dream of a humanist vocation?" page 25

      3) "Most of the literature produced by women is secular, which is not at all to say that it is anti-religious or impious, but only that religion was not their primary concern as humanists." page 27

      4) "Therefore, Augustine, you have had ample opportunity to see that I consider this splendid magnificence foolish, and I wish you would pay no attention to my age or at least my sex. For [woman's] nature is not to immune to sin; nature produced our mother [Eve], not from earth or rock, but from Adam's humanity. To be human is, however, to incline sometimes to good, but sometimes to pleasure. We are quite an imperfect animal, and our puny strength is not sufficient for mighty battles. [But] you great men, wielding such authority, commanding such success, who justly discern among your number so many present-day Brutuses, so many Curiuses, Fabriciuses, Catos, and Aemiliuses, be careful: do not therefore be taken by the snare of this carefully arranged elegance. For where their is greater wisdom, there lies greater guilt." February 12 [1487]." page 80

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