In the long polemical tradition of attacks against women, and their defense, Lucrezia Marinella's treatise occupies a unique place. It is the only formal debating treatise of its kind written by a woman; it presents a stunning range of authorities, examples, and arguments, which in sheer quantity no other woman had hitherto amassed; and it mounts a blistering attack on men for exactly the same vices Passi had dared to accuse women of. Marinella also brings to new heights the line of argument launched by Agrippa that women are not only equal to men morally and intellectually, but in many respects excel them." pp. 2-3

      Marinella's treatise was one of the last distinguished chapters in the history of Renaissance praises and defenses of women (see the Editor's Introduction to the Series). Although she names authors who attack women beginning with Aristotle, she is not explicit about authors who praise them. Even when referring to her contemporary, Moderata Fonte, Marinella quotes Fonte's chivalric poem, Floridoro, rather than the longer prose dialogue, The Worth of Women. Marinella's arguments about the superiority of women had their origin in Agrippa, whom Marinella could have read in an anonymous Italian translation of 1549. It is even more likely that she used Lodovico Domenichi's The Nobility of Women (La nobilita della donne) of 1549, the longest Renaissance dialogue in praise of women, and one which makes copious use of Agrippa. She may have read as well Tommaso Garzoni's Lives of Illustrious Women from Holy Scripture with a Discourse . . . on the Nobility of Women (Le vite delle donne illustri della scrittura sacra con un discorso. . . della nobilita delle donne) of 1588. Surprisingly, she does not make use of Castiglione's ample vindication of women's equality in book 3 of Il cortegiano, maybe because it had been censured or had simply fallen out of favor by Marinella's day, or because Domenichi had a speaker declare that his own treatise makes Castiglione's redundant. On the other hand, Ariosto's narrative poem, Orlando furioso, is a rich mine for Marinella of opinions, episodes, and characters that bring into the foreground women's moral and intellectual eminence. She also makes use of her literary, historical, and philosophical education in the debate, particularly her knowledge of the flourishing Italian lyric tradition that she herself was part of." pp. 18-19

      Marinella's contemporaries understood her best. Lucio Scarano, we have seen, appreciated her exceptional talents, calling her "the adornment of our century" and comparing her to the Greek poetess Corinna. For Sansovino, the three great Venetian women of letters were Cassandra Fedele, a Latin humanist of the late fifteenth century; Moderata Fonte, who died in 1590 and is mentioned affectionately by Marinella; and Marinella herself." p. 29

      Outside Italy, two outstanding women scholars contemporary with Marinella, Marie de Gournay, adopted daughter of Montaigne, and Anna Maria van Schurman in Holland (regarded as the most learned woman of her age), show scant familiarity with the Italian scene. The former does not seem to have heard of any Italian women writers, while the later names The Nobility and Excellence of Women and Gournay's The Equality of Men and Women (L'Egalité des hommes et des femmes), published in Paris in 1622, to disapprove of both of them." p. 31

      "The French Protestant scholar and philosopher Pierre Bayle, author of the major encyclopedia of the late seventeenth century, Dictionnaire historique et critique, supplies a brief entry for Marinella, concentrating on The Nobility and Excellence of Women. He admires her high intelligence while remaining doubtful about her subject matter. Indeed, what he says about Marie de Gournay's The Equality of Men and Women could be applied with equal relevance to Marinella: "A person of her sex must scrupulously avoid these kinds of disputes." The victories that Italian women gained in challenging men intellectually were thus disregarded.

      In the eighteenth century, Marinella's works all but disappeared from sight. Indicative is Rosa California's Brief Defense of Women's Rights of 1794, composed in the heat of the French Revolution. Defending women's rights against misogynists, including Giuseppe Passi, she takes the trouble to compile a bibliography of all writing favorable to women that she and her sister have found. Neither Marinella nor Moderata Fonte nor Arcangela Tarabotti is mentioned. A few years earlier, however, in 1773, Abbate Conti had provided a few footnotes on Marinella, Fonte, and Bronzino in his Italian translation of a noted French essay on women by Thomas, who now found reasons for women's inferiority in physiology. In Ginevra Canonici Fachini's biographical compilation of women writers of 1824, there is a short paragraph on Marinella. " pp. 31-32

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