![]() ![]() The most substantial surviving epistolary collections in Latin were by Laura Cereta from Brescia and Cassandra Fedele from Venice who were both from the mercantile or citizen ranks in which female learning was the exception. Angela Nogarola, for example, was one of the most highly educated women of her day. ![]() These female scholars corresponded freely with some of the more modest dynastic families and their level of competence in Latin depended on the choice of the individual family. They also composed poems in Latin which they addressed for the most part to family members. Similarly, their highly rhetorical letters were aimed at powerful clans. Hence, their works were political in character-diplomatic performances with specific dynastic-political ends. Their education was viewed as socially ennobling since it could enhance a family’s visibility and cultural standing. Maddalena Scrovegni from Padua and Angela Nogarola d’Arco are a few of the isolated precursors to a larger group of learned women who derived from the leading families of the Venetian Republic such as Isotta Nogarola, Angela’s niece Ginevra Nogarola, Isotta’s sister Costanza Barbaro Costanza Varano and Caterina Caldiera. However, their social status and family background had crucial implications for their scholarly careers.Īround the mid fifteenth-century a substantial group of wealthy women citizens and from noble families received a sufficiently serious Latin education from humanist tutors to attract the attention and praise of contemporary humanists. Whether they wrote in humanist Latin or in the vernacular, they found a generally hospitable audience. Venetian women writers flourished in the island republic. ![]()
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