The second child of Cicilia and Hieronimo Pozzo, Fonte was orphaned at one-year of age and went with her brother Leonardo to live with her grandmother and her second husband, Prospero Saraceni. Sent to a convent for her early education, Fonte returned home at age 9 to begin serious study especially of reading and writing Latin by availing herself of Saraceni's library and learning and questioning her brother each day about his daily lessons as he returned from school. Like all educated Venetian women, she also learned to draw, to paint, and to play the lute and harpsichord.

      After her biographer, Nicolo Doglioni, married Saraceni's daughter, Moderata went to live with them. Doglioni encouraged her studies and her writing, helping her to publish her early works. Doglioni choose her husband, de' Zorzi, a lawyer and one of three men responsible for the Venetian Republic's water management, an important and prestigious job in a city where travel was more often by boat or gondola than by carriage. After 10 years of marriage and 3 children, Moderate died in childbirth during the birth of her fourth child.

      Like so many women of her time, most of Fonte's writings were produced before her marriage due to the demands placed on her time by her husband and growing family. Fonte may be giving us a clue to her self-image by her chosen pen name: Moderata (self-regulation through reason) Fonte (fountain or spring). Her works include:

• Floridoro (1581), an epic poem with a female knight
• Le feste ( The Celebrations, 1581) a verse musical drama in honor of Doge Niccolo da Ponte
• La Passione di Cristo (The Passion of Christ), a religious poem on Christ's crucifixion
• La Resurrezione di Cristo (Christ's Resurrection, 1592)
• Il merito delle donne (The Worth of Women, published posthumously 1600)

      Famous in her own time and in the centuries to come, Fonte's poems have been incorporated in anthologies of Italian poetry for centuries. Indeed, she was well known even in the last century; Thomas Wentworth Higginson mentions her among accomplished women in his work, Women And The Alphabet: A Series of Essays (Boston and New York: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1881).

      Best remembered today for The Worth of Women, Fonte was a staunch defender of women. Published posthumously in 1600 by her daughter when interest in the woman question revived with the publication of Giuseppe Passi's misogynist The Defects of Women, Worth was among the earliest defenses of women written by a woman. As a note, Lucrezia Marinella's On the Nobility and Excellence of Women (1600) was published in the same year also in response to Passi's tract.

      By the time Fonte wrote Worth, books in defense of women had become an established literary genre, complete with an established repertoire of arguments, authorities, and examples and ranged from brief polemical tracts to vast, weighty, documented, academic tomes. The dialog was also an established genre. Yet, Fonte managed to breath new life into both literary traditions: Worth is the one of the first dialogues which takes place only among women (among women other than prostitutes, that is), 7 noble Venetian women.

      On the first day of their two day conversation, after being joined by one of their company who had been away on her honeymoon, the women discuss the pleasures and pitfalls of marriage which leads them to discuss the foibles, follies, and charms of men. A leisurely, spontaneous, meandering conversation, such as the conversation between friends, Worth is a frank, open, honest discussion of problems in the institution of marriage and of the restrictions placed on women by society. Fonte notes that men deceive women into believing that they love them when they are really interested in their dowry, greedy fathers and brothers cheat their daughters / sisters out of their dowry, men squander the family fortune on prostitutes or mistresses, and men entice women into compromising positions then abandon them (resulting in women becoming prostitutes). Indeed, in a sharp break with tradition, Fonte strongly defends prostitutes as women corrupted by men then abandoned and scorned by them. Worth begins by following the established tradition of the defense of women. The women discuss the biological and cultural factors determining gender roles, the role of literature and history in perpetuating misogyny, the relative dignity and guilt of Adam and Eve, and a long list of classical exempla of notable women

      On the second day, Fonte breaks new ground in the defense tradition by allowing the women to discuss most of the knowledge of her time in an encyclopedic fashion ostensibly in an attempt to find a cure for men's misogyny. Possibly as Fonte's way of showing that women were capable of mastering about types of knowledge, of empowering women by making knowledge accessible to them, or of encouraging women to study the all subjects, the conversation of the second day does eventually return to a discussion of men and marriage, at the prompting of an increasingly irate Leonora. Possibly as a sop to public opinion, the women eventually decide, rather unconvincingly, that women should marry because men really aren't so bad, after all.

      The seven actors in the drama include:
      Adriana: "an elderly widow"
      Virginia: Adriana's young daughter of "marriageable age." "If it were up to me," said Virginia. "I'd prefer to do without one [a husband]. But I have to obey the wishes of my family." Adriana replies that since she is a wealthy heiress, her uncles have decided to safe-guard her fortune by marrying her off and maybe she will get lucky and have a good husband."
      Leonora: a young widow who was in no hurry to remarry. "Indeed," said Leonora, "For my part, I derive the greatest happiness from living in peace, without a man. For we all know what a marvelous thing freedom is." Later in response to Adriana's prodding of Leonora to remarry, Leonora replies, "Remarrying, eh? I'd rather drown than submit again to a man! I have just escaped from servitude and suffering and you're asking me to go back again of my own free will and get tangled up in all that again? God preserve me!"
      Lucretia: an older married woman. "To tell the truth," said Lucretia, "we are only ever really happy when we are alone with other women; and the best thing that can happen to any woman is to be able to live alone; without the company of men."
      Cornelia: a young unmarried woman. "I'd rather die than submit to a man! My life here with you is too precious for that, safe from the fear of any great rough man trying to rule my life." According to Lucretia, Corinna spends her life in study and is considered the scholar of the group.
      Helena: a young bride
      Leonora: a recently widowed, young women who is the hostess.

      All of the women except Helena, who was thought to be on her honeymoon, are gathered together at Leonora's home. Suddenly, Helena arrives, and, as can be expected after her long absence from the group of friends, she is greeted joyously. Immediately, her friends begin to ask her how she likes being married and from there the conversation becomes a debate on the pros and cons of marriage and, then, the foibles and follies of men. After a walk in the garden and some refreshments, as a diversion, they elect Adriana as the queen of their group who will moderate a debate on a topic on which they will decide. Adriana divides the women into 2 teams: Leonora, Corinna, and Cornelia are to speak of men's evil and Helena, Virginia, and Lucretia are to speak of men's charms.

      Eventually talk turns to the creation story of Genesis where Corinna echos many of the arguments which have been made since de Pizan's Book of the City of Ladies. Yet, Fonte through the voice of Corinna does add a new element to her interpretation of the story: men are so cruel to women because they are jealous of women's obviously superior nature. And Fonte's tone differs markedly from de Pizan's: where de Pizan is respectful of men, Fonte is almost a female supremacist.

      "Men were created before women," Corinna replied. But that doesn't prove their superiority - rather, it proves ours, for they were born out of the lifeless earth in order that we could be born out of living flesh. And what's so important about this priority in creation, anyway? When we are building, we lay foundations on the ground first, things of no intrinsic merit or beauty, before subsequently raising up sumptuous buildings and ornate palaces. Lowly seeds are nourished in the earth, and then later the ravishing blooms appear; lovely roses blossom forth and scented narcissi. And besides, as everyone known, the first man, Adam, was created in the Damascene fields, while God chose to create woman within the Earthly Paradise, as a tribute to her greater nobility. In short, we were created as men's helpmates, their companions, their joy, and their crowning glory, but men, thought they know full well how much women are worth and how great the benefits we bring them, nonetheless seek to destroy us out of envy for our merits. It's just like the crow, when it produces white nestlings: it is so stricken by envy, knowing how black it is itself, that it kills its own offspring out of pique." Fonte, page 60

      At this point, Helena broke in, "So who was the cause of the Fall, if not Eve, the first woman?"

      On the contrary, the blame lies with Adam," replies Corinna. "For it was with a good end in mind- that of acquiring the knowledge of good and evil- that Eve allowed herself to be carried away and eat the forbidden fruit. But Adam was not moved by this desire for knowledge, but simply by greed: he ate it because he heard Eve say it tasted good, which was a worse motive and caused more displeasure. And that is the reason why God did not chase them from Paradise as soon as Eve sinned, but rather after Adam had disobeyed him - in other words, he didn't respond to Eve's action, but Adam's prompted him to give both the punishment they deserved, which was and is common to all humankind. And, besides, how about the woman chosen above all others to redeem that sin? God never created any man (a man who was simply a man, that is) who could match that woman who was entirely a woman. Just you try finding me a man in all the annals and chronicles of ancient times, however wise and virtuous, whose merits stretch to the thousandth part of the rare excellencies and divine qualities of our Lady, the Queen of Heaven. I don't think you're going to have much luck there!" page Fonte, 93-94

      Moderata Fonte (Modesta Pozzo) and (edited and translated) Virginia Cox (1600), The Worth of Women,University of Chicago Press, 1996

      Rinaldinda Russell, Italian Women Writers: A Bio-bibliographical Sourcebook, [Greenwood Press, Westport, Connecticut, 1994] pp. 128-137

      Katharina Wilson, Encyclopedia of Continental Women Writers, Vol 2, Garland Press, 1991, pp-1004-1005

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