Women's Education and the Defense of Eve

The first part of the volume is devoted to the emergence of women’s writing in fifteenth-century Italy, which was closely intertwined with biblical interpretation, with women finding encouragement and support for their cultural agency in the Bible. This chapter starts by presenting how the lack of education for women in the early modern period was slowly changing when Humanism and the new social and economic conditions promoted some level of learning for women in a few highly cultured families. It discusses the cases of some learned young women in Italy and the distress they felt when they had no opportunity to make the most of their cultural knowledge and interest. The focus is on Isotta Nogarola, who took part in a debate with the statesman Lodovico Foscarini in the middle of fifteenth century in Verona, discussing the relative responsibility of Adam and Eve for Original Sin. The chapter discusses the arguments she brings to defend Eve, especially the claim that women have a right to knowledge, an Aristotelian idea eventually extended to women, and compares Nogarola’s concerns with the biblical arguments of Christine de Pizan, who is considered the originator of the querelle des femmes .