Moderata Fonte and Lucrezia Marinella on Genesis

The third part is entirely devoted to the intellectual and biblical debates of seventeenth-century Venice, which first trumpeted the excellence of women and then took a new misogynist turn. This chapter considers two texts on the value of women published in the same year, 1600, promoting the value of women in comparison with men. First it discusses the work The Worth of Women by Moderata Fonte, tracing her main arguments and biblical sources, stressing the role of the conversation’s leading character, a dimessa . It then presents the treatise by Lucrezia Marinella, The Nobilities and Excellences of Women . Both works discuss the Fall and propose a skillful interpretation in defense of Eve. However, the most intriguing element is that Marinella’s work in its second edition, published just one year later in 1601, becomes The Nobility and Excellence of Women and is deprived of all the biblical references formerly used in defense of Eve and women. What reason lies behind these changes? Are they related to a change of heart on the part of the author, or to censorship of Bible translations recently enforced by the Catholic Church.