Isotta Nogarola

Isotta Nogarola was born in 1418 (Parker, 2002). Isotta was a trailblazer for women humanists in northern Italy making it a common area for others to follow in her footsteps during the Renaissance (King, 2023). She was one of the first major woman philosophers of the Renaissance and her intellectual discussions challenged the gender gap (Boršić & Karasman, 2015). Isotta argued that men are responsible for their own actions starting with Adam (King, 2023). She learned that taking on the responsibility of being a learned woman was not without strife. Rhetoric education for women at the time was intended only provide them the skills necessary for their domestic life (Boršić & Karasman, 2015). Isotta’s education proved skillful beyond her sex (Parker, 2002). Men and women both made disparaging accusations against her with the intent of undermining her intellectual fervor and scholarly insights.

Isotta and her sister were young when their father died (Parker, 2002). Their illiterate mother valued humanist education and sought out Martino Rizzoni to tutor her daughters when Isotta was eight. Rizzoni agreed to teach the girls to read and write Latin. Isotta attempted to correspond with her tutor’s master, Guarino Veronese as a young woman of 19. When he failed to respond because she was a woman, she reproached him a year later lamenting her vexation towards his lack of response (King, 2023). She compared women to donkeys and men to Oxen. She explained that the ox could not help dragging the more fragile donkey in the mud because of his brute strength. Neither animal would help her: “ ‘the donkeys tear me with their teeth and the ox stabs me with their horns’ ” (p. 73). The exchange made her vulnerable to the hostility of both sexes and she felt humiliated.

Self-deprecation was not an uncommon rhetorical device for women to use in letter writing (Boršić & Karasman, 2015). We can find previous examples of this device in the rhetoric of Saint Catherine da Siena’s letters. Catherine frequently references herself as the “wretched daughter” or “unworthy” (Forbes, 2024, p. 139). Isotta still managed to write in eloquent Latin despite her self-deprecation (Boršić & Karasman, 2015). Eloquence in a woman was a despised trait. Isotta moved to Venice around the same time as her second exchange with Veronese (Parker, 2002). Venice was not kind to her public candor. She began to understand the cost of being an educated woman in the public eye. A Venetian man charged her with “unnatural corruption” because of her eloquence (p. 14). Education and eloquence for a woman was largely viewed as unnatural and unfitting, therefor a woman who exhibited these traits was viewed as unchaste and corrupt.

According Bizzell (1992), public speaking — in Isotta’ s case, public correspondence — was fanatically forbidden. Women who stepped out of those boundaries were often disgraced and accused of promiscuity. Isotta had become a victim of Renaissance slut shaming because she did fit the description of an ideal woman. Bizzell attributes this condemnation of public speaking to the story of Lucretia: “a Roman matron who gave an eloquent oration before a male audience on the topic of why she should be executed along with her rapist in order to preserve the ideal of chastity” (p. 52). Lucretia stabbed herself at the end of her speech.

The greatest honor for a woman of the Renaissance was her chastity (Strathern, 2016). Women were guarded over, secluded, and even sent to convents for safe keeping (Lamichhane, 2012). If a woman became unchaste, it was believed that God would severely punish her. Some laws permitted women to be beheaded for indulging in severe depravity (Strathern, 2016). Although she was cleared, even Saint. Catherine da Siena could not escape erroneous charges. She had been accused of appearing unchaste because she practiced public speaking (Franciscan Media, 2023). Isotta was deeply pained by her accusers (King, 2023). In 1441, Isotta returned to Verona where she isolated herself (Parker, 2002). Isotta turned to religious writing: a more suitable and proper form of writing for a woman. This removed her from public ridicule to public praise. Isotta’s letter writing had carved a semi-private pathway for educated women to engage in semi-public discourse (Boršić & Karasman, 2015). She entered religious debates and challenged gender perceptions through correspondence.

The belief during this time was that because God created man in his image, men were more noble and morally superior to woman (Lamichhane, 2021). This spiritual view of men and women barred women from holding any public positions and in most cases an education. Women were seen as sinners, especially if they had a thirst for knowledge. Isotta challenged the views of men and women in her correspondence with Ludovico Foscarini (Boršić & Karasman, 2015). She and Foscarini publicly debated, through correspondence, who was responsible for original sin. Sometime between 1451 and 1453, Isotta privately published those writings and produced her literary masterpiece: Dialogue on the Equal or Unequal Sin of Adam and Eve. She defends Eve while still contextualizing Renaissance notions of female fragility: “Isotta argues for a weaker thesis, i.e., if these negative qualities are part of a woman’s God-given nature, then she cannot be held responsible, for if there is no free will, there is no sin” (Boršić & Karasman, 2015, p. 47). The two conclude that both Adam and Eve were equally responsible for original sin. According to Parker (2002), Isotta’s published work is the quintessential experience of female humanism. The notion of equal responsibility between Adam and Eve created the foundations for early feminism. When Isotta died in 1466, she was praised for her chastity and not her literary genius. It was her grand nephew nearly a century later who gave her literary genius proper recognition.