Isotta nogarola tagalog biography of ferdinand

In , she moved to Venice to escape the war between the Venetian Republic and Milan. She returned to Milan in , befriended Ludovico Foscarini, a public official who was the son of the doge of Milan, and ran a salon for intellectual discussion. Foscarini became her close friend and confidant. Although he admired and supported her choices in life, he refused to make similar ones for himself when she encouraged him to abandon his worldly career.

Foscarini and a female contemporary, Costanza Varano Costanza Sforza , saw Nogarola's lifestyle as a stroke of independence, but for her it was a choice that bowed to convention. She lived on her own property, probably with her mother, Bianca Borromeo , and spent most of her time in a "book-lined cell. She corresponded with, and was visited by, the intellectuals of the region, especially Foscarini.

Much admired for their elegance and insight, Nogarola's letters were distributed widely, even outside of Italy. In the late s, of her letters could be found in one Parisian library. Among Nogarola's works, of particular interest is her dialogue on Adam and Eve, composed in and based on a correspondence with Foscarini, which was published posthumously by her descendent Count Francesco Nogarola.

Foscarini held the conventional position, based on the Bible and Saint Augustine's commentary, that Eve was responsible for the fall of humanity, but Nogarola argued that Eve was less responsible than Adam because she was weaker and had less knowledge. As Adam was stronger, she reasoned, he committed a greater sin and was responsible for the misery of all humanity, whereas Eve was responsible only for herself.

Moreover, Eve succumbed only to the innate human desire for knowledge. Nogarola's life became increasingly bleak, despite her intellectual success once she turned to religious study. Foscarini left Milan for another posting in Brescia and her mother died, leaving her alone. She had been chronically ill at least since , possibly as a result of emotional hardship, complaining of pain particularly in her stomach.

Her immersion in her studies had always been to the neglect of her health, and after her doctor died her health further declined. According to the story in the book of Genesis in the Old Testament the first part of the Bible , Adam and Eve were the first two people on Earth. They lived in the Garden of Eden , and they had no awareness of evil because they had been forbidden by God to eat apples from the tree of knowledge.

One day an evil serpent appeared in the tree and tempted Adam and Eve to eat an apple. Eve took a bite and then persuaded Adam to do the same.

Isotta nogarola tagalog biography of ferdinand

God later expelled them from the garden for committing the first sin. This story was used by Christian leaders to prove that because of Eve woman all humans are born with original sin —that is, sin is a part of human nature at birth—because she had tempted Adam man into an awareness of evil. On the question of who had committed the greater sin, Foscarini took Adam's side, presenting the traditional argument for Eve's guilt.

He pointed out that Eve's moral weakness, not the serpent evil , was the temptation that made Adam surrender to a sinful act. Nogarola defended Eve, saying that Eve was incapable of choosing between good and evil and therefore should not be held accountable. King and Albert Rabil, Nogarola wrote:. When God created man, from the beginning he created him perfect, and the powers of his soul perfect, and gave him a greater understanding and knowledge of truth as well as a greater depth of wisdom.

Thus it was that the Lord led to Adam all the animals of the earth and the birds of heaven, so that Adam could call them by their names. For God said: "Let us make mankind in our image and likeness, and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and the birds of the air, the cattle, over all the wild animals and every creature that crawls on the earth," making clear his own perfection.

But of the women he said: "It is not good that the man is alone; I will make him a helper like himself. For the good spreads itself, and the greater it is the more it shares itself. Therefore, it appears that Adam's sin was greater than Eve's…. At the time Foscarini was considered to be the winner of the argument. Nogarola had admitted that Eve was inferior to Adam in being unable to choose between right and wrong.

Nogarola produced a number of other works during the second period of her writing career. Among them was a study of the early Christian father Saint Jerome c. Six years later she sent a letter to Pope Pius II —; reigned —64 , urging him to start a crusade holy war against heretics those who do not adhere to the laws of God and the Catholic Church.

Nogarola's last five years were marked by illness. In , two years after her death, the humanist Giovanni Mario Filelfo dedicated a lengthy poem to her brother, in which he celebrated her achievement as a holy woman. He omitted any mention of Isotta Nogarola's intellectual work. King, Margaret L. Binghamton, N. Sunshine for Women.

Nonetheless, a few educators promoted classical education for women. During the fifteenth century humanism spread rapidly from Florence to the elite social classes in other Italian cities, such as Venice, Padua, Verona, Bologna, Milan, and Genoa, then extended south to Rome and Naples. Many scholars, writers, intellectuals, and patrons contributed to the development of humanism.

Women were active in the earliest stages of the movement, which created an environment for the free expression of their ideas. The first to emerge was Isotta Nogarola. Born into a literary family in Verona, she received a humanist education along with her sister Ginevra. During an intellectual career that spanned more than thirty years, Isotta wrote Latin prose and poetry and participated in learned conferences and debates.

She is most famous for her extensive correspondence with humanist friends. These letters demonstrate Nogarola's knowledge of early Christian and classical authors, as well as her awareness of current political events and the historical tradition of heroic women. The letters also show that she had close relationships with the intellectual and political leaders of northern Italy.

Many of the people who corresponded with Nogarola showered her with praise, suggesting that she was widely known for exceptional achievements. Quirini outlined a program of study that urged Nogarola to reach beyond literature written in Latin to read philosophical works in the original Greek. He argued that Greek philosophy the search for an understanding of reality through speculation is superior to Roman rhetoric the art of effective speaking and writing.

He suggested that a learned woman had the capacity to master the difficulties of philosophy. Of special interest is the letter exchange between Nogarola and the Italian humanist Ludovico Foscarini, who was a Venetian statesman and governor of Verona. This is Nogarola's best-known work. Ludovico begins: If it is in any way possible to measure the gravity of human sinfulness, then we should see Eve's sin as more to be condemned than Adam's [for three reasons].

Isotta: But I see things—since you move me to reply—from quite another and contrary viewpoint. For where there is less intellect and less constancy, there is less sin; and Eve [lacked sense and constancy] and therefore sinned less. Knowing [her weakness] that crafty serpent began by tempting the woman, thinking the man perhaps invulnerable because of his constancy….

For in Genesis 2 it appears that the Lord commanded Adam, not Eve, where it says: "The Lord God took the man and placed him in the paradise of Eden to till it and keep it," and it does not say, "that they might care for and protect it" "… and the Lord God commanded the man" and not "them" : "From every tree of the garden you may eat" and not "you" [in the plural sense] , and, [referring to the forbidden tree], "for the day you eat of it, you must die," [again, using the singular form of "you"].

Moreover, the woman did not [eat from the forbidden tree] because she believed that she was made more like God, but rather because she was weak and [inclined to indulge in] pleasure. Thus: "Now the woman saw that the tree was good for food, pleasing to the eyes, and desirable for the knowledge it would give. She took of its fruit and ate it, and also gave some to her husband and he ate," and it does not say [that she did so] in order to be like God.

And if Adam had not eaten, her sin would have had no consequences. Renaissance Quarterly. ISSN Women of the Renaissance. University of Chicago Press. ISBN The Monist. The Concept of Woman. Eerdmans Publishing. Further reading [ edit ]. External links [ edit ]. Authority control databases. Italian People Deutsche Biographie. Categories : births deaths Italian Renaissance humanists Writers from Verona 15th-century Italian women writers Italian feminists 15th-century writers in Latin Latin-language writers from Italy.