In the century following Christine de Pizan's publication of The Book of the City of Ladies (1405), there was a veritible explosion of works defaming and defending women. Womankind's defenders made lists of faous women, rebutted accusations made against women, advocated for educational and professional opportunities for women, and defined woman's proper role at home, in society and the church, and in the public realm. Some of the male writers wrote for financial gain or for the patronage of a powerful woman at court, to amuse their friends, family, and acquaintances, to win their lady-love's heart, or to entertain themselves by engaging in an intellectual dual. A few men even believed what they wrote. Henricus Cornelius Agrippa was one such man.

      At the ripe old age of 23, the already well-known and highly regarded Agrippa delivered Declamations as a lecture in Latin in 1509 at the University of Dôle. Declamation was not published until 1529 when Agrippa fell on hard times and began publishing his works. Dedicated to Margaret, Duchess of Austria and regent of the Netherlands, the publication of Declamations led to his appointment in 1529 as the imperial archivist and historiographer at her court.

      Although Agrippa himself did not consider Declamations to be among his major works, Declamation was, to put it kindly, used, or unkindly, plagarized, either directly or indirectly, by defenders of womankind for hundreds of years. Almost as soon as his work was published in Latin, translations began appearing in French, English, Italian, and German, appearing in English as late as 1652 as The Glory of Women.

      In a book that pays homage to the moral, intellectual, and physical, not equality, but superiority of woman over man, Agrippa uses a multitude of arguments to defend, yeah, even to pronounce the superiority of, Eve. Agrippa commonly cites a misogynist argument which defames women only to turn the argument inside-out to both defend women and to denigrate men. Using arguments that had become commonplace by his time, indeed, repeating some of de Pizan's arguments, Declamations addresses the religious and secular disadvantages of women in a wide variety of areas. Repeating some of the points de Pizan had rasied a century and a quarter earlier, Agrippa nonetheless injected new elements into the debate by turning the tables on Adam.

1. Eve when translated from the Hebrew means Life while Adam when translated from Hebrew means earth. And Eve is ranked as far above Adam as Life is ranked above Earth.
2. In a complicated exposition on the Hebrew letters in the names of God (YHWH), Eve, and Adam, Agrippa notes that two of the letters in Eve's name are found in the name of God while none of the letters of Adam's name are found in the name of God. Similarily, the Hebrew name for "to live" and the Hebrew name for "to be" (the roots of the names of Eve and God, respectively) share the same root. In his age, letters and names and their relationships were important symbols.
3. God rested after creating woman because he could not imagine a superior being to her which it was possible for him to create.
4. Woman was created in Paradise while man was created outside of Paradise and transported into Paradise for the creation of woman.
5. Woman was made of a better raw material than man since woman was made from something purified and man was made from the vile clay. Consequently woman is more able to receive the divine light than man.
6. Jesus, the salvation of the world, was given by and because of woman, while the law of "wrath and curse" was given by and because of man.
7. Man, not woman, brought sin and death into the world by eating of the forbidden fruit. Original sin is transmitted to us from our father, not from our mother.
8. Man sinned in knowledge, woman sinned in ignorance, so her error was much less than his. Because Adam was the worse sinner, Christ took the form of a man, not a woman.
9. Woman, not man, "crushed the head of the serpent."

      Here is Agrippa's commentary in his own words.

      "So let me begin my subject at the beginning. Woman was created as much superior to man as the name she has received is superior to his. For Adam means earth, but Eve is translated as life. And as far as life is to be ranked above earth, so far is woman to be ranked above man." p. 44

      "Cyrpian also argued against the Jews that the first man received his name from the four cardinal directions - Anatolie, Dysis, Arctos, Mesemfrios - which signify East, West, North, and South. And in the same work, Cyprian interprets the name of Adam to mean "because the earth was made flesh," although such an interpretation is in disagreement with the tradition of Moses, since, in Hebrew, the name is written, not in four letters, but in three. However, let us not criticize the exposition of so holy a man, who did not understand Hebrew. Many hallowed interpreters of Holy Scripture have been ignorant of this language without their having come to grief over it. But even if one cannot agree to give me a similar license and permit me to derive the etymology of the name of Eve in honor of women according to my judgment, one should at least grant my right to say that, according to the mystical symbols of the kabbalists, the name Eve itself has more affinity with the ineffable name of the all-powerful divine tetragammaton than the name Adam, which accords with the name of God neither in letters nor in form nor in number.

      We shall abstain from these mysteries for now; they have been read by few, understood by even fewer, and require a much more extended discussion than it is convenient to include here. For the moment we shall search out the excellence of woman, not only according to her name, but according to the facts themselves, her duties, and her merits. For this, let us (as they say) search the Scripture, and, starting with the beginning of creation itself, let us show what dignity superior to that of man woman has obtained from her place in the order of creation.

      We know that, among all that was created by the best and greatest God, the essential difference consists in the fact that certain things live forever, while others are subject to corruption and change, and that, in the course of this creation, God advanced following an order that consisted in beginning with the more noble of the first group and ending with the most noble of the second. Thus, he created first the incorruptible angels, then the souls (for Augustine affirms that the soul of our first parents was created at the same time as the angles, before the body was fashioned). Then he created the incorruptible bodies, such as the heavens and the stars, and elements that, although incorruptible, are nonetheless subject to various changes. And from them he formed all other things that are subject to corruption, proceeding again by ascent, from the more insignificant through all degrees of humor to the perfection of the universe. Thus were created first minerals, then vegetables, plants and trees, followed by animated beings, and finally brute beasts, in order: reptiles, fish, birds, quadrupeds.

      Again after all this he created two human beings in his image, man first, then woman, in whom the heavens and the earth, and every embellishment of both, are brought to perfection. For when the Creator came to the creation of woman, he rested himself in this creation, thinking that he had nothing more honorable to create; in her were completed and consummated all the wisdom and power of the Creator; after her no creation could be found or imagined. Since, therefore, woman is the ultimate end of creation, the most perfect accomplishment of all the works of God and the perfection of the universe itself, who will deny that she possesses honor surpassing every other creature? Without her the world itself, already perfect to a fault and complete at every elevel, would have been imperfect; it could only be perfected in the creature of all others by far the most perfect. For it is unreasonable and absurd to think that God would have finished so great a work with something imperfect.

      Since the world itself has been created by God as a circle of absolute perfection, it is fitting that the circle be perfected by this particle capable of being the link that unites perfectly the beginning of the circle with its end. That is how, at the time of creation, woman was the last in time of all things created; in the conception of the divine mind, however, she was first of all, as much in prestige as in honor, as was written about her by the prophet: "Before the heavens were created, God chose her and chose her first." Indeed, it is a commonplace among philosophers to say (I cite their own words): "The end is always the first in intention and the last in execution." For a woman was the last work of God, who introduced her into our world as the queen of a kingdom already prepared for her, adorned and prefect in everything. It is therefore right that every creature love, honor, and respect her; right also that every creature submit to and obey her, for she is the queen of all creatures and their end, perfection, and glory, absolute perfection. This is why Wisdom says of her: "She glorifies her noble birth by living with God, for even the Lord of all has loved her."

      How far woman surpassed man in nobility of race by reason of the order in which she was created the sacred word bears witness most abundantly to us. Woman in fact was fashioned with the angels in Paradise, a place absolutely full of nobility and delight, while man was made outside of Paradise in the countryside among brute beasts and then transported to Paradise for the creation of woman. It is for this reason that woman, thanks to a particular gift of nature -as if the particularly eminent place of her creation had accustomed her to it - is not subject to vertigo, nor are her eyes troubled when she looks down from however great a height, although these troubles are frequent among men. Moreover, if a man and a woman are equally in danger of drowning, and if no outside help intervenes, the woman maintains herself longer on the surface of the water, while the man is not long in sinking and heading toward the bottom.

      The conection between the nobility of a place and the notoriety of an individual are clearly confirmed by the civil laws and the sacred canons; and custom in every nation pays special attention to assess not only men but also every living being and even every thing, judging that the more honorable place of origin, the more noble they are. This is why Issac recommends to his son Jacob not to take a wife from the country of Canaan, but from Mesopatamia in Syria, because they are of a higer status. The same point of view in the passage in John where Philip says: "We have found Jesus, son of Joseph of Nazareth." Nathaniel responds to him: "Can anything good come from Nazareth?

      Let us now go on to other things. Woman is superior to man by reason of the material of her creation, because she was made not from something inanimate, not from vile clay as man was, but from a purified material, endowed with life and soul, I mean a reasonable soul, sharing the divine intelligence. In addition, man has been made by God from the earth, which, according to its own nature, so to speak, produces animals of every kind when the celestial influences cooperates with it. But woman has been created by God alone, outside of every celestial influence and of every spontaneous action of nature, without the contribution of any force, and she is found with an absolute cohesion, complete and perfect. Man lost one rib from which woman, that is, Eve, was formed during the sleep of Adam, a sleep so profound that he did not even feel that the rib God took from him and gave to the woman had ever been removed. Thus, man is the work of nature, woman the creation of God. Therefore, woman is generally more capable than man of receiving the divine light with which she is often filled, something one can see even today in her refinement and extraordinary beauty." pages 46-50

      "So then the blessing has been given because of woman, but the law because of man, and this was a law of wrath and curse; for it was to the man that the fruit of the tree had been prohibited, and not to the woman who had not yet been created. God wished here to be free from the beginning, it was therefore the man who committed the sin in eating, not the woman, the man who brought death, not the woman. And all of us have sinned in Adam, not in Eve, and we are infected with original sin not from our mother, who is a woman, but from our father, a man. Moreover, the ancient law ordained the circumcision of all males but left women uncircumcised, deciding without doubt to punish original sin in the sex that had sinned. And besides, God did not punish woman for having eaten, but for having given to the man the occasion of evil, which she did through ignorance, tempted as she was by the devil. The man sinned in all knowledge, the woman fell into error through ignorance and because she was deceived. For she was also the first whom the devil tempted, knowing that she was the most excellent of creatures, and, as Bernard says: "The devil, seeing her admirable beauty and knowing that this beauty was the same that he had known in the divine light when he possessed it, that he enjoyed beyond all the other angels in conversation with God, directed his envy against the woman alone, by reason of her excellence."

      Christ, born into our world in the greatest humility, took the more humble male sex and not the more elevated and noble female sex, in order to expiate by this humility the arrogant sin of the first father. In addition, because we have been condemned on account of the sin of the man and not of the woman, God wished that this sin be expiated by the sex that had sinned and that atonement come through the same sex that had been deceived in ignorance. This is why God said to the serpent that the woman, or rather, according to a better reading, the seed of the woman, would crush his head, and not the man or the seed of the man. Perhaps also this explains why the priesthood was conferred by the church on man rather than on woman, because every priest represents Christ, and Christ represents the first person who sinned, that is, Adam himself. One can thus understand the canon that begins with the words "this image" to assert that the woman has not been made in the image of God, that is to say, in corporeal resemblance to Christ.

      Moreover, God - I speak of Christ - has not chosen to be the son of a man, but of a woman, whom he has honored to the point that he became incarnate from a woman alone. For Christ is called son of man because of a woman, not because of a husband. This is an extraordinary miracle, which causes the prophet to be astounded, that a woman has encircled a man as a protection, since the male sex has been engulfed by a virgin who carried Christ in her body.

      Moreover, when Christ rose from the dead, he appeared first to women, not to men. And it is well known that after the death of Christ some men abjured their faith, although no text attests that women abandoned the faith and the Christian religion. Still further, no persecution, no heresy, no aberration in faith ever occurred because of the deeds of women; one know that it was otherwise with men. Christ was betrayed, sold, bought, accused, condemned, suffered the passion, was put on a cross, and finally delivered to death only by men. Even more, he was denied by Peter who loved him and abandoned by all the other disciples; only some women accompanied him to the cross and the tomb. Even a pagan, the wife of Pilate, made greater efforts to save Jesus than any of the men who had believed in him. Add to this the fact that theologians almost unanimously agree that the church at that time dwelled only in a single woman, the Virgin Mary, which makes it fitting to call the female sex religious and holy." pages 62-65

      "The excellence, goodness, and innocence of women can be amply enough proved by the fact that men, not women, are the origin of all evils. In fact, the first human creature, Adam, because he dared to transgress the law of the Lord, closed the doors of heaven and made us all subject to sin and death. For we have all sinned and we die in Adam, not in Eve. Moreover, his eldest son [Cain] opened the doors of Hell: he was the first envious person, the first homicide, the first fratricide, the first who despaired of the mercy of God. The first bigamist was Lamech. The first to get drunk was Noah; the first to bare the shamefulness of his father was Ham, the son of Noah. The first to be at once tyrant and idolater was Nimrod. The first adulterer was a man; the first incestuous person was a man." page 70

      From Declamation on the Nobility and Preeminence of the Female Sex by Henricus Cornelius Agrippa, 1529, translated, edited, and introduced by Albert Rabil, Jr, University of Chicago Press, 1996

      This works is also in print as Female Pre-eminence: Or the Dignity and Excellency of that Sex, above the Male. An Ingenious Discourse: Written Originally in Latine, by Henry Cornelius Agrippa, Knight, Doctor of Physick, Doctor of both Laws, and Privy-Counselor to the Emperor Charles the Fifth. Done into English, with Additional Advantages, translated by. H. C. [Henry Care] London, Printed by T. R. and M. D. and are to be sold by Henry Million, at the Sign of the Bible in Fleet-Street, 1670 (reprinted in The Feminist Controversy of the Renaissance by Scholars' Fascimilies and Reprints, Delmar, New York, 1980) (same work as above, just different translation of the title)

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