Laura Cereta's life is much like the lives of other Quarttrocento women humanists. All came from wealthy, often aristocratic, families who lived in the Renaissance cities of Northern Italy. Learning was valued in all of their homes, often with a tradition of learning in the family extending back several generations. Each girl's father strongly supported her desire for an education, tutoring her himself, choosing her tutor for her, or sending her to a convent for her education. Early in life they were heartily encouraged and strongly supported in their studies: their families, male humanists, and even their cities hailed them as prodigies. But when these women entered their adult years and continued to pursue a dream of having a humanist career, the praise turned to disdain and hostility. The social structure of Renaissance Italy had no place for a learned woman. Upon reaching adulthood, most of the women either entered religious orders to continue their studies or married and gave up their studies.

      Laura Cereta was educated in both Latin and Greek. Shortly after her marriage to Brescian businessman Pietro Serina, Cereta flouted convention by beginning a literary correspondence in Latin with local humanists. In the end, she may have succumbed to pressure to give up her intellectual life, but she was widowed after 18 months when her husband became a victim of the plague. She dealt with her profound grief by entering the world of humanism.

      Alternately praised and condemned for her humanist intellectual activities, Cereta considered most male flattery as condescension: that being a learned woman was unusual was a slight against womankind. Cereta was by any definition a feminist, most times staunchly defending womenkind, and at other times, pleading with women to better their lives by bettering themselves.

      Six months after publishing her only volume of letters in 1488, Cereta's father, her strongest emotional support for her work, died. Finding no support for her work and attacked by both men and women from all sides, Cereta never published again. She never remarried, nor did she enter religious orders. She did find a more socially acceptable outlet for her humanist intellect.

      Living two generations after the great Quarttrocento feminist humanist Isotta Nogarola (1417-1461/8), Laura Cereta's comments on the creation story in Genesis echo her predecessors words. Indeed, King states that Cereta made clear in other works that she was familiar with Nogarola's work. From this tiny comment, we see that a nascent feminist movement was being born. Nogarola's work and knowledge of it was preserved and transmitted from one generation to another. Never again would a generation pass when knowledge of our feminist predecessors died away. Perhaps only a tiny group of women would remember our foremothers, but they were remembered and their works were preserved and transmitted from one generation to another. We do indeed stand on the shoulders of a long list of giants.

      In a letter entitled "Curse against the Ornamentation of Women" written to Augustinus Aemilius, Cereta denounces women who are more interested in their physical adornment, cosmetics, and jewels, than in adorning their minds. Like many women writers of Quarttrocento Italy, and unlike Nagorola's work, Cereta's work in general and this work in particular, is largely secular. Cereta encourages women both to forsake their lustful cravings for material possessions and to delight in the adornment of their character - their honor, their virtue, and their minds. With that, here is Cereta's brief reference to Nagorola's work:

      "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 be 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]."

      Margaret L. King and Albert Rabil, Jr (eds.), Her Immaculate Hand, Medieval & Renaissance Texts & Studies, Binghampton, NY, 1992

Return to Women's History Month 2000 Table of Contents

e-mail sunshine@pinn.net