Note 11 — Chapter VII · RENAISSANCE AND REVOLUTION

The chief purpose of this essay dispenses me from ranging over the familiar ground of the women of the Renaissance.[11] The picture that Boccaccio gives of men and women cultivating letters on an equal footing was found in most of the Italian cities. At Venice, Rimini, Urbino, Mantua, Padua, Bologna, and the other great cities, women often formed intellectual centres, and vied with the men in production. Frau Braun tells of a woman-professor of theology at Bologna; of two female authorities on canon law, Novella d’Andrea and Maddalena Buonsignori; of an Isotta Nogarola who spoke before popes and emperors, and a Cassandra Fedele who taught at Padua. What the poetess Vittoria Colonna was to Michael Angelo the whole world knows.