Abstract
This chapter aims at showing that, against the traditional narratives of the history of philosophy and science, a large number of women actively contributed to the scientific debate. In particular, two exemplar figures are considered here, the Italian learned ladies Camilla Erculiani and Margherita Sarrocchi. Erculiani’s (Letters on Natural Philosophy, 1584) deal with some of the most debated topics of that time, including the presumed female intellectual inferiority, the nature of the soul, planetary influences, and physical causes of the deluge. The correspondence between Sarrocchi and Galilei (1611–1612) offers an excellent analysis of the consequences of his astronomical observations.
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Notes
- 1.
However, the gender prejudice was not exclusively Aristotelian, and not all the Aristotelians adopted this position v.g., see Piccolomini (1560).
- 2.
For Camilla Erculiani’s biography and the circumstances of the publication of Lettere, see Carinci (Carinci 2013, 202–229).
- 3.
Andrea Dudith, an Italian-Hungarian diplomat and ecclesiast, said he had attended, with Bathory, the lectures given by the humanist Francesco Robortello and the historian Carlo Sigonio in Padua; see Dudith1992. On the presence of Hungarian students in Padua, see Bónis (1973, 234).
- 4.
The volume is divided into two parts: the first one consists of some Latin and Greek poems, while the second one, written in Italian in 1583, is entitled: Del giardino de’ poeti, in lode del serenissimo re di Polonia, libro secondo, Venetia:Guerra, in Viridarium poetarum tum Latino, tum Graeco, tum vulgari eloquio scribentium, Venetiis: Ad signum Hyppogriphi. 1583.
- 5.
On women’s imperfection and their ‘natural’ deficiencies, see Speroni (1978, 565–584, in part. 583), dealing with ‘donnesca imperfezione’ (womanly imperfection).
- 6.
Under the pseudonym of Prodicogine Filarete, a Paduan author railed against the explicit and spiteful slanders of Onofrio Filiriaco, and wrote in 1584 a Difesadelledonne contra la falsa narratione di Onofrio Filiriaco, Padova: Meietti.
- 7.
About fifty years before the publication of Erculiani’swork, Pietro Pomponazzi, in Padua, had supported the teaching of philosophy in the Italian vernacular and the Paduan Accademia degli Infiammati led by SperoneSperoni, Alessandro Piccolomini and Benedetto Varchi, had promoted the use of the vernacular in the communication of scientific knowledge and philosophy.
- 8.
Diodorus Siculus (1542), vernacularization of the extant books of Diodorus’s Biblioteca storica; Erculiani refers to book i: Come il mondo e le cose, secondo gli antichi fisiologi e gli storici si formassero, Chap. I, Sect. 1, 6.
- 9.
Erculiani’s reference to Marcus Aurelius is taken from de Guevara (1568), vol. I, Chap. xl, 63.
- 10.
- 11.
As regards the critique of infinity in nature, Erculiani refers to the effective synthesis of Aristotle by Piccolomini (1576, ii, 21r): ‘How important it is for natural philosophy, to seek and examine if there is to be found any natural body of infinite size’.
- 12.
Piccolomini (1551, ff. 3v-4r, 5v).
- 13.
Maria Gondola is also one of the interlocutors in her husband’s Neoplatonic dialogues, in which Francesco Patrizi also features: see di Gozze (1581).
- 14.
The recent critical edition of Lettere di Filosofia naturale (Erculiani 2016) also includes Maria Gondola’s letter of dedication to Discorsi sulle Meteore, and the letters addressed to Erculiani by Sebastiano Erizzo, a Venetian translator of Plato.
- 15.
On the same issue, see Rabitti (2000, 399–433).
- 16.
Similar feminist ideas can be traced in the work of the Polish philosopher Andre Glaber De Kobylin, author of some Problemes aristoteliciens (Problematy arystoteliczne, published many times: 1535, 1535, 1542). In particular, see Gadkio skladności czlonkówczlowieczych (Tales about the Harmony of Human Limbs), ed. J. Rostafiński, Kraków, 1893, in Bogucka (2004).
- 17.
According to Moderata Fonte, changing men’s mind is a difficult task, ‘even harder than modifying the shape of trees, and when they do change their mind, it’s sometimes for the worst,’ (Fonte 1988, 112–113).
- 18.
- 19.
On the Flood as a natural phenomenon, see di Gozze (1584, 56r).
- 20.
- 21.
- 22.
See De gen. et corr. I, 5, 320b 18–20 and Met. VII 8, 1033b 29–32.
- 23.
See Avicenna, De diluviis, in Alonso Alonso (1949, 38–39).
- 24.
See the entry Giacomo (Jacopo) Menochio, written by C. Valsecchi, in Dizionario Biografico degli italiani, 2009 vol. 73.
- 25.
- 26.
See Piccolomini (1576, I, c75v). He made a distinction between the domain of the natural philosopher and that of the ‘divine’ theologian or metaphysician, which cannot be confused because of the considerable diversity of the subjects they investigate.
- 27.
- 28.
Three sonnets appear in the collection edited by Bergalli (1726, 111–112).
- 29.
- 30.
An international conference was recently held at the University of Calabria on the figure and work of Sirleto, on the occasion of the fifth centenary of his birth, entitled Il cardinal Sirleto (1514–1585). Il sapientissimo calabro e la Roma del XVI secolo, whose publication is forthcoming.
- 31.
- 32.
‘Virago’ refers to the traditional subordination of women to men (see Genesis 2,23), debated in several Renaissance treatises dealing with the querelles des femmes, starting from Cornelio Agrippa of Nettsheim (1529), see Agrippa (1990, 50–51).
- 33.
See Burckhardt (2014, 164).
- 34.
In this dialogue, Tarquinia Molza embodies the typically Renaissance ideal of the perfect woman, the new Diotima, who explains her theory about love, inspired by psychological and naturalistic investigations. Patrizi (1963, 101–102).
- 35.
See Scott-Baumann (2008).
- 36.
- 37.
Marinella (1601, 130), aware of the hostility to which women are subjected, proudly calls for the need to make their virtuous actions and their scientific works known far and wide: ‘and I, encouraged by the opinion of Gorgias and Plutarch, say that the cheer for the works of women, in the sciences and other virtuous enterprises, must resonate not just in their own towns, but in various other provinces.’
- 38.
See Bolzoni (1989, 193–216).
- 39.
- 40.
It is not a coincidence that Vincenzo Maggi (1545, 46c), in the second part of his amazing work, stated that if men had not developed their ancient virtues, they would have been surpassed by women.
- 41.
For historical references and a reconstruction of the scientific environment to which the correspondents refer, see Favaro (1894, 6–31); Gabrieli (1933, 694–727); the correspondence is included in Galilei, 1965, a reprint of the edition by Favaro 1890–1909, vol. X Carteggio 1574–1610, 18–318, and vol. XI, Carteggio 1611–1613, 1966, 191–382. The epistolary exchange between Sarrocchi, Galilei and Valerio is now included in Sarrocchi (2016). See also Ray (2016), which contains the first complete annotated English translations of Margherita Sarrocchi’s seven extant letters to Galileo and Galileo’s one surviving letter to Sarrocchi.
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Plastina, S. (2020). Letters on Natural Philosophy and New Science: Camilla Erculiani (Padua 1584) and Margherita Sarrocchi (Rome 1612). In: Ebbersmeyer, S., Paganini, G. (eds) Women, Philosophy and Science. Women in the History of Philosophy and Sciences, vol 4. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-44548-5_4
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