Video: Eve’s Innocence: Women’s Biblical Exegesis in Renaissance Venice

October 10, 2024

The Women's Studies in Religion Program (WSRP) at Harvard Divinity School was delighted to host Erminia Ardissino as she presented on biblical exegesis in Renaissance Venice aimed at rehabilitating the image of Eve. Ann D. Braude, Director of WSRP and Senior Lecturer on American Religious History at Harvard Divinity School, introduced Ardissino.

Erminia Ardissino is Professor Emerita of Italian Literature at the Università di Torino. She received her MA in romance languages at the University of Georgia in Athens, a PhD at Yale University, and a doctorate at the Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore in Milan. She has also taught as visiting professor in several universities across Europe and North and South America.

This event took place on October 10, 2024.

SPEAKER 1: Harvard Divinity School.

SPEAKER 2: Eve's Innocence, Women's Biblical Exegesis in Renaissance Venice. October 10, 2024.

ANN BRAUDE: Good afternoon. I'm just going to make a few words of introduction while you're getting your lunch so that we'll have plenty of time for this afternoon's lecture. I'm Ann Braude, the director of the Women's Studies in Religion Program, and I'm very happy to invite you to the first of our fall lectures. We have two more upcoming lectures this fall, and I think all of our research associates who will be lecturing during the year are here today. So I'm very happy to see them.

On November 7 at noon in this room, we'll have the chance to hear from Ghazal Asif Farrukhi-- can you wave Ghazal there-- who will speak to us about Hindu intimacies and the Muslim state in Pakistan. We look forward to that event. And then on December 3, we will hear from Zahra Mobellegh, who will speak to us on narrating for love and change, reading women's stories in search of a feminist Quranic narrator. And there's Zahra. Thank you.

Right there in front of you, you see a clipboard that has a mailing list where you can sign up if you would like to receive notices of future lectures in the Women's Studies and Religion Program. We never know if you're here because of your passion for Italian literature or if you want to know about further conversations in women's studies in religion. So please tell us, and we will keep you informed.

Today, it is my very great pleasure to introduce a distinguished scholar of Italian literature who has come to us thanks to the retirement requirements of the Italian University system, which have allowed us to poach a really wonderful Professor Emerita of Italian literature at the University of Torino. And this, of course, is Erminia Ardissino. I'm going to say I have to brag about you just a little bit before you come to the podium.

She has two doctorates, one her PhD in Italian literature from Yale University, and then an additional degree from the Catholic University of the Sacred Heart in Milan. And her research on Italian literature has a special focus on the relationship between the history of ideas and religious experience. And we're very happy that she has turned these formidable talents and training to the topic. I think this is one of the best lecture titles I've ever heard on Eve's Innocence-- question mark-- Women's Biblical Exegesis in Renaissance Venice.

[APPLAUSE]

ERMINIA ARDISSINO: Thank you so much to all of you for being here, and thank you especially to Ann Braude, the director of the Women's Studies in Religion Program, because this program and the Divinity School gave me a great chance to develop my project. And it's a rich context where I learned a lot, and I want to thank-- every conversation with Ann is inspiring, is rich, and the same I would say about my colleague scholars.

I don't mention all of them, but I'm very grateful to their friendship and their expertise that are of great help for developing my research. And last but not least, I would like to thank the officer. She is not here anymore. Tracy Wall, She is always behind us, but she is very important for us. So, yeah, you can see a wonderful illumination by a liturgical book that is now in the Bayerische Staatbibliothek is dated 1489.

And it shows the opposition that will be not really the topic of my talk, but the topic of many discussions in the history of Christianity. The Virgin Mary is represented here, giving the Eucharist to the church. So it's not only one, only her, but even the church. And Eve is on the opposite, giving the apple to the people and the evil-- and even the tree represents the opposition between salvation and death.

But our inquiry starts in Verona. Here, I gave a map of the Venetian Republic. What you see in green is the properties of the Serenissima. And that goes from Greek island to the land, and here is Verona, where our story starts. But our story starts really with education. At the beginning, really, was the chance for women to be educated.

And I'm glad that Professor Friedrich in the convocation talk gave so much importance to education and what it will come out from my talk. In Verona, a century after Romeo and Juliet's love story, and a century and a half before Shakespeare was retelling it, we find one Guarino from Verona or Veronese scholar that was born in the city but traveled to Constantinople to learn Greek, taught in Florence and in Venice, and spent 10 years teaching Latin and Greek from 1420 to 1429 in the city before becoming a Professor, or better, a lecturer at the University of Ferrara.

The University of Ferrara maybe today doesn't say anything to us but was a leading University in Europe at the time. In fact, Copernicus got his degree in Ferrara. Isotta Nogarola. Isotta Nogarola and their sister Ginevra benefited indirectly from his teaching. The two sisters, supported by an illiterate mother, learned Latin from Guarino's friend Martino Rizzoni, who was the most qualified teacher in Verona at the time and well connected to Guarino and other distinguished literati of the period.

The sisters both became so familiar with Latin writers that they could read and interpret them in a way which was uncommon for women of the time. Ginevra is not-- oh, sorry, Ginevra notes on Latin text can be seen here in the margins in a manuscript of Justina's works that now is preserved near us in Beinecke Rare Books and Manuscripts Library in New Haven, Connecticut.

This Codex shows her cleverness in understanding and relating to Latin texts and literature, but our focus is on Isotta. Born in 1418, she obtained an education equal to that of a man of the time. She enjoyed classical literature, and her learning allowed her to read and annotate major Latin works and to extend their reading to the Bible.

She even enjoyed literary exchange with important scholars of the time, and she refused either to marry or to enter a convent, which were the typical paths for a woman in the period. She preferred to stay with her mother first, then in her brother's house. But the end of her life, the brother was not happy to have her in the house, so she was hosted by the friend Lodovico Foscarini. So the end of her life was not very happy.

This choice probably earned her a renown and a recognition unusual for a married woman, or even for a nun, to the point that she is recorded as the first woman to give a public talk in dialogue with a man. This dialogue is the beginning of our inquiry. In the middle of the 15th century, probably in 1451, Isotta was involved in a debate on the question of whether Adam and Eve bore equal responsibility for original sin.

Here is a copy of the manu-- not her own writing but is a copy. Her interlocutor was the humanist and the statesman, Lodovico Foscarini, a former judge and Venetian ambassador. He was also a good friend of Isotta and would take care of her in later years. The discussion at the title, the De Pari aut Impari, Evae atque Adae Peccato dialogus. It is recorded and constructed in the form of a dialogue, a format frequently used by humanists based on Latin models.

A letter by Matteo Borso-- it's a later letter-- is the only document giving information on the event. From this, it is possible to conjecture that the dialogue originated in a public dispute, although neither the place nor any organizational details are given. Isotta took advantage of the opening offered by humanism and attempt a secular reading of the sacred text in defense of Eve.

The Bible thus became a means to vindicate women's dignity and assert their parity with men in the midst of a patriarchal society intent on perpetuating the status quo and blaming women for the world's evils. Before Isotta, only Boccaccio had approached the topic of Eve's role in human history from a secular perspective. I say history with a certain worries but anyway.

Considering her primarily as mother of all living beings, a very beautiful woman sentenced to a life of pain. Boccaccio does not discuss either the fall or the relative guilt of Adam and Eve, and thus it does not engage with the question of responsibility for sin or of gender parity. Alpha Centauri after Bocaccio and Alpha Centauri before Isotta, Christine de Pizan, who was born near Bologna, maybe Christine de Pizan is the better-known women among those that I deal with today.

She wrote only in French, but she was born in Italy, near Bologna, although she moved to France when very young with her father, a physician of King Charles V. Christine de Pizan challenged the traditional interpretation of sin by defending Eve. She considered Eve less guilty thanks to her naivety. She says that, "because simplicity," I quote, "without hidden malice cannot be considered deceit."

Even this reading does not look at the complex problem created by the role attributed to Eve in the fall and the unbalanced relationship then established between men and women. The defense offered by Nogarola is more systematic. She suggests new interpretive possibilities which cleanse Eve of the infamy which she received from traditional biblical Exegesis.

Foscarini begins the dialogue stating that Eve was more responsible than Adam for the fall. He accuses her of wishing to be similar to God and of enticing Adam to do wrong and says that her guilt is shown by the fact that she received the harshest punishment. Isotta consequently laid out an interpretation of the complex passage of Genesis with the aim of declaring Adam to be guiltier than Eve.

She maintains, as did Christine de Pizan, that Eve is less guilty because she ate the fruit due to her natural fragility of character. It was Adam who disrespected God's command as stated in Genesis 2, 15, 17. An error would not have had consequences if Adam had not eaten. She acted only because she was weak and inclined to pleasure.

In fact, God passed his sentence only after Adam's sin. Therefore, it would never have damned the progenitors if the man had not fallen. Even St. Paul had written that if Adam had not eaten the fruit, they would not have fallen.

Isotta, therefore, states that Eve was not dangerous to posterity, but only to herself, but that Adam spread the infection of sin to himself and to all future generations. If frailty becomes a defense, his author's effort to examine the deeper reasons that lay behind the action, and then to defend the behavior of the mother humanity represents a new interpretation of Genesis.

This new interpretation makes the supposed natural differences between the sexes of central importance, overcoming the medieval scholastic methods of interpretation without exploring the philological and humanistic ones. Isotta therefore suggests that it was a complicit relationship in which the progenitors were equally guilty. She invokes patristic authorities, such as Augustine, Ambrosius Gray, Gregory the Great, and even broaches the topic of the rebellion of the angels, which supports the importance of the question of the fall.

The weight of the guilty is attributed to Adam according to Isotta. Because Eve was weak, inconstant, ignorant, and therefore excusable, while Adam's corner divine command, and so committed the more serious transgression. Adam had great understanding that Eve so bore greater responsibility when they both sinned.

Indeed, his sin required the incarnation of Christ. God made man to be remedied. Above all, he was endowed with free will, and so was independent and responsible for his own acts. But above all, it is worthy of notice that Isotta maintains that Eve's desire for knowledge is a principle which renders women equal to men, and it is less heavy than Adam's transgression.

And here, yes, it's here. So I quote some conclusion by Isotta. Yet it is clearly less a sin to desire the knowledge of good and evil than to transgress against the divine commandment, since the desire for knowledge is a natural thing, and all men, by nature, desire to know.

Eventually, the dialogue affirms, Eve desire for knowledge as positive, an Aristotelian idea extended to women. In his author's version, Eve's desire for knowledge is confirmed as legitimate, and it should be forever, as it should be for every human being, sorry, for every human being.

The defense does not humiliate the women, but it is a paradoxical defense, which ultimately establishes the imperfection of women. The dialogue between Isotta and Lodovico included, in several manuscripts, was published by Paulus Manutius in 1563 in Venice, a time in which the defense of women were more popular, perhaps because they responded firstly to public interest in women and their role, and even because of the place that art and poetry gave to women in Renaissance.

The printed edition is, however, heavily edited. Not only have the arguments been changed, but the interlocutors too. And the third person, a man, was been added. But we have manuscript. We have a good deal of manuscripts that preserve the former version of the dialogue, so we can rely on them for having what should be the original dialogue.

Nevertheless, as Foscarini states in his last speech, the dialogue became known and sparkled, I quote, "sparkled and shined" amid the shadows. In fact, the issue was briefly revived a few years later in Venice by Moderata Fonte.

OK. In The Worth of Women, where it is clearly revealed their nobility and their superiority to men, published posthumously in 1600, Moderata Fonte, whose real name was Modesta Pasi de Giorgi, but who choose a professional name suggesting her to be a modest poetic spring, was first an autodidact.

She learned how to read and write from her brother's books and exercises. As a boy, he had a tutor at home. But later, she had a good education in Latin and music given by her uncle. She became a well known writer, thanks to her epic poem, Floridor, published in Venice in 1581.

The Worth of Women is the record of a conversation that takes place over the two days among seven women of different ages and different social status, variously widowed, married, in search of a husband. Designed on the formal model of Boccaccio's Decameron, it deals with the relationship between the two genders, but the conversation ranges widely and incorporates an encyclopedic overview of the natural and social worlds, all in relation to female gender. Eve's guilt is considered in a short passage on the first day, when in the middle of a section, praising women, the dissenting voice of Lucretia recalls their association.

Donna, Donna. Danno, I'm sorry. Donna, Donno. So women like damage. Citing as evidence the harm caused by Helen of Troy. And then a second woman, Corinna, associates instead women with gifts. Donna, Donno.

Donation sent from heaven to bring goodness and beauty to the world. While a third speaker, Elena, lists Eve's actions as a second example of harm done by women. Moderata Fonte seems to repeat his author's argument and defensive, as having had an intellectual interest in the forbidden fruit that is, a strong desire for knowledge.

Adam instead had only a sensual appetite. Moderata agrees with previous interpretations that God punished the ancestors after the fall of Adam, not after the transgression of Eve. In her interesting synthesis of classical literature with biblical readings, Moderata Fonte shows a clear awareness of women's dignity and right to equality.

Moreover, Moderata Fonte also brought two religious poems on the passion and resurrection of Christ, in which she gives an important role to evangelical women as heralds of the good news of salvation, making them comparable to the apostles, a strong attempt to assign importance to the role of women in the four gospels and then in Christianity.

But let's go back to Eve in the same year in which the work by Moderata Fonte was published, Lucrezia Marinella gave to print The Nobility and Excellence of Women and the Defects and Vices of Men also in Venice. Venice was a printing center at the time. And she tells that she was invited by the publisher.

That was a very good and important publisher in Venice at the time. And that wanted to win the competition with the other publisher that published the work by Moderata Fonte. So she says that she wrote the book in two months, in July and August 1600.

Lucrezia Marinella was really the daughter of a physician, who gave her a broad education with a compass, medicine, and alchemy, as well as literature and philosophy. Her argument in defense of women is based on the superiority of women's bodies from which women's moral excellence follows, leading in turn to their intellectual superiority.

Marinella, trained by her father to have an open minded philosophical and medical viewpoint, makes a plea for women's freedom, power, and equality, considering their situation in political and social terms. For the first time, the exclusion of women from civic life is specifically linked to misogynist writing.

I should add that the Republic of Venice, being a Republic, didn't have a court. So the women were excluded in some way by the fee-- from the feast and all the courtly life that involved generally the wives, or queens, or other people belonging to the court.

So they were quite excluded. So in some ways, she reflects on this attitude and the exclusion of women from the social life, and she attributes it to misogynist. The question of default and the respective responsibilities of Adam and Eve is addressed in chapter 5, which reiterates the arguments already seen that Eve was not at fault, not having been explicitly instructed by God.

And as a result, and I quote, yeah, "the original scene is more dependent on the man's will than the women's. And likewise, God himself showed it, saying, Adam ubi es. He did not call Eve, but he called Adam to remind him of the fault committed."

Men, therefore, have no reason to consider a woman as the root of evil. The devil tempted the first woman only because of her superiority and perfection, says Marinella, knowing that if she fell, Adam would too. She adds that the perfect supremacy of women is realized in the Virgin Mary, whereas throughout and forever, the sin committed.

Nevertheless, in the second edition of this work, published only one year later, this argument is removed. Although other more philosophical reasons are given in support of female superiority, all biblical references are erased. Even in the life of the Virgin Mary, a work combining prose and poetry of the following year, 1602, Marinella does not mention the fall, although the places the Virgin Mary-- she places the Virgin Mary as the antithesis of Eve, a configuration that may have prompted some mention on the issue.

Something happened. Was it the fact of the final prohibition of biblical translations issued in Rome in 1596? Was it fear of accusations that could be made in a city like Venice that had so many nests of heresy?

This is difficult to detect. It's almost impossible, as no documents are left. But we have to underline that this was an age of severe censorship and mainly of self-censorship. So Lucrecia Marinella would later carry out a vault face on the issue of women's dignity in her exhortation to women, in which she advises women to stay in the home and to renounce to every intellectual ambition, must have felt uncomfortable, even in 1601, in using the biblical texts and arguments in defense of Eve.

This work, the exhortation to women, is much lighter. It's after 1642. This certainly meant a less favorable climate for women. Their condition became, in fact, more difficult in the mid-century, when a misogynist trend tightened its grip on Venice, initiated by the Academia Degli Incogniti, which passed judgment on issues which reflected badly on women's dignity.

I put here-- right. Well, stop. OK. The emblem of the Academia Degli Incogniti because we have to talk about them more in the following pages. But let's go back to women writers.

This was exactly that misogynist ward of the Academia Degli Incogniti, the environment which the first woman I shall discuss was fighting. The most skilled author of the four that we consider Arcangela Tarabotti, was a nun who, in the middle of the 17th century, vehemently attacked the patriarchal custom of condemning women to the convent to safeguard familial wealth.

Born as Elena Cassandra in 1604, she entered the convent of Santa Anna in Costello at the age of 12 to be educated. She was then induced by her family to become a nun, taking her vows as Benedictine in 1620 with the name of Arcangela and leaving the rest of her life faithfully in the convent.

But in the convent and from the convent, she could weave intellectual relationships, as witnessed by her collection of letters, including professional friendship with the leader of the Academy of the Incogniti, Giovan Francesco loredan. She devoted herself to writing with exceptional results, receiving the attention of the literary world in Venice and abroad across Europe, as well as in Italy.

Her pamphlet That Women are of Species of Man, Defense of Women, gave here the modern cover because I couldn't find the one issued in 1651. But this book was probably published abroad.

But recently, this publisher has been considered wrong. So somebody-- some scholars suggested that what probably published near Venice. But we don't know for sure. So it's not a real serious question.

She published it under the fake name of Gallerani Bertotti because it contains a strong and articulate answer to respond to the pamphlet. I always-- sorry. I made-- OK. No. Yes. To this pamphlet, Che Le Donne non Siano Della Spetie Degli Huomini.

So women are not of the human species. That was the Italian translation by this Orazio Plata that is a known-- is a fake name, also, published in 1647 of this pamphlet published in 1595 in Germany, in Frankfurt, that support the thesis that women are not human beings, but are another species between men and animals.

So this pamphlet, a terrible pamphlet, was contradicted in the same year by a Lutheran pastor, priest, Simon Gedicht. By the way, this one is anonymous. Scholars have detected this name Valens Acidalius, but it is not sure that is.

But Simon Gedicht wrote a contradictory essay, affirming the opposite. And both the translation and the original text have been declared prohibited by the Catholic Church very soon because of the thesis so extreme that they supported.

So besides apparently attitude with which Tarabotti defines the pamphlet as lying, shopistic, false, blasphemous, sacrilegious, erring from truth, full, diabolical, charging it with the most negative qualities in the sphere of the sacred, she also uses a more subtle argumentation, raising doubts in the readers precisely by refuting the anonymous author's interpretations of the sacred texts on which he based his argument.

Because all the arguments by the anonymous writer are based on the biblical text and even on the gospels. It primarily concerns human interpretation of texts. So it's the work done by Arcangela. Tarabotti is an hermeneutical effort to interpret differently and to show the mistakes that the. anonymous author made in interpreting the sacred scriptures.

So she also relies on the fact that differences of interpretation had been the object of long debates and had made readers accustomed to possible divergence of opinion. Repeatedly, she expresses her disappointment on the hermeneutical process of the so-called heretic. She calls him the author heretic, which she considered false and deceptive.

She uses also, among other arguments, one familiar to us, of course, the defense of women through Eve, who was considered not guilty for original sin. She argues using St. Paul words, per uni hominum peccatum mundum. So she states that men made the scene first, thus Adam alone is responsible for original sin.

Eve was not aware of God's prohibition on eating the fruit, as God expressed it before she has been created, she had been created. Tarabotti follows her antecedents, but with lively consciousness of self-- and self-awareness and a broader aim. She defends women's freedom to choose their own path in life, seeking to encourage doubts about harmful entrenched practices and the male control of so many spheres, even salvation, as their argument springs from close consideration of the scriptural text, the authority superior to any earthly authority from which the Venetian rulers, no less than the church leaders, derive their laws, she feels supported by God.

In fact, her arguments do not arise from a skeptical attitude toward truth, whether philosophical or methodological, but arise from confrontation with an authority beyond the human inquiry and an entity considered absolute, therefore, to be trusted. Even if she was quite learned and in touch with the Venetian academic milieu, she was mainly moved by a search for equity, which could challenge the inequities which faced women.

At the time, she was looking for an absolute truth with which could be found only in the transcendent entity in which she believed. Her first effort, as a defender of Eve, was made mainly in the earlier book paternal tyranny. It's here. No. Why?

Paternal tyranny that was published after her death, so was posthumous. This is the frontispiece of the first edition that was issued in Leiden, the Netherlands, under the name of galerana? Barrettoti. And it brings the title that was not given by Arcangela Tarabotti, who gave the title Paternal Tyranny.

And the contemporary, our contemporary. Modern editions, in English, preserve the title Paternal Tyranny. The Italian edition preserves the title given by the publisher in 1652. So this was the first defense of Eve that she wrote, but went to print much later with even the risk of the loss of the manuscript.

The book is dedicated to God, as the only one who can defend the author as she exposes a truth that nobody wants to see, not church representatives, who are supposed to ensure the religious motivation of girls choices, nor the state, which has its own [SPEAKING LATIN] the control of population for maintaining the custom of sending to convent girls, not families, who save paying of a significant dowry.

But the book is much more than just an exposure of patriarchal oppression masked as religiosity. Arcangela discusses the position of women in society and denounces gender inequality, defiantly defending the opposite view that men and women are equal, a parity, which depends on God's will. She starts her defense on women using the first chapters of Genesis, which she closely studied, to construct her argument.

The Bible is, of course, the most important reference point for Tarabotti, who did not enjoy a formal education and was mainly self-taught. Her defense draws its arguments mostly from the Gospels, the letter of St. Paul, and other biblical books, such as Proverbs and the Book of Wisdom, showing-- she was a nun, so she was used to practice the Bible.

So the story of Adam and Eve is discussed in depth in the first chapter. Arcangela starts by affirming the gifts of free will, intellect, and memory given by God to men and women equally in order to avoid evil. The gift of free will, also given to women, is evidently a pivotal argument in her essay. She even quotes Dante, in which she calls freedom the greatest-- in the passage when Dante calls freedom the greatest gift of God given to human beings.

Women, being created in heaven as final creature, is the most perfected of everything, a compendium of all perfections, states Arcangela. In fact, after Adam's creation, God is not satisfied, and declaring that it is not good for man to be alone, offers him a [SPEAKING LATIN] help like unto himself. Mentioned in other passages from the sacred scriptures, Arcangela states that women was [SPEAKING LATIN] in the mind of God as the anticipation of the Virgin Mary.

She concludes woman is noble, more refined, stronger, and worthier than men. It is sufficient to consider the matter from which their bodies are made, dust for men, bone for women to perceive the differences. Women, in fact, have the greatest duty of the world, that of carrying a child for nine months, to which they give birth with great suffering.

So I can quote at least a sentence. Yes. God-- she states that eventually, "God, furthermore, did not give women to men as a help inferior to him. Women's creation was one of parity, indeed, its circumstances were marked by greater excellence, in which both were made similar in knowledge and with equal claims to eternal glory."

Arcangela is particularly interested in the question of free will given by God to women, as well as men-- as to men. In fact, her aim is to declare the equality of the sexes and above all, to remove the father's control over the daughters. Because the lack of respect shown to a daughter will transform her into a monkey. She talks about Simeon in Italia.

She finds much more evidence in the Bible to support her arguments. Jesus preaching is the primary examples she uses to support women's right to defend their will. Tarabotti's spirited defense as however, the taste of a bitter defeat, as she herself was forced to become a nun.

In fact, she presents herself as a lay writer, probably even in order to enjoy more freedom and to avoid her works to being recognized in Venetian society. The question of the fall was at the time, at the heart of a number of prose works published in the 1640s by members of the Venetian Academy of the incogniti.

So three members, Giovan Francesco Loredan, and Federico Malipiero, and Roberto Pona, each wrote a treatise in narrative form and the myth-- on the myth of Adam and Eve, and as an evident sign of the importance of these arguments in the early modern period.

The story by Loredan, the Addamo-- I'm near the conclusion. I will not keep you in the tale on the question of the three writers on our story. But at least we mentioned that by Loredan, because her writings, consider Adam, even not for the question of original sin, but just as the beginning of human history and the legislators, the need to repair all the problems given by the sin.

But Adam is, in his story, the legislature. So Loredan's writing looks to the past, so a kind of history, revealing a present obsessed with besmirching women, as is encapsulated in this observation, I quote, "the more women is estranged from her husband, the nearer she is to sin."

His writing was aimed at an audience that of the Incogniti, among whom misogyny thrived. Loredan, has the details of Adams refused details on the history, ethnic history, that is, Adam refused the apple, which is not in the biblical stories, not in Genesis, perhaps to create a more monumental plot, but perhaps even in order to transfer more responsibility to Eve.

Unfortunately, for Italian women, biblical exegesis, in their defense, was of limited impact, not only in such a new feudal context as Venice in the time, but across the Peninsula. Luckily enough, the ideas given by Tarabotti and Marinella especially moved to Europe, and they became well developed by French and English, and Netherlands women.

The overcoming of social inferiority and exclusion came in Italy from another direction, based again upon culture and learning. Only three decades later, after Tarabotti's writings at the Venetian University of Padua, Elena Lucrecia Cornaro Piscopia received her graduation in 1678.

She is known as the first woman in the world to gain a university degree. She took her degree in philosophy, not in theology. She wanted to graduate in theology, but she was not allowed. Above all, her dissertation was not on biblical interpretation. So we can close our talk. Thank you so much.

[APPLAUSE]

SPEAKER 1: I'm so struck by the radicalism of the women that you described and the loss of those voices moving forward. I mean, this is the women's history that, unfortunately, we learn over and over that women engage the Bible, they engage religious texts, they find liberating messages there, and then those voices are lost or suppressed, and then it has to be reinvented all over again, 50, 100 years, 500 years later.

And it's the loss of these voices. When you first began your presentation with this debate about whose fault is it, Adam or Eve, I can imagine that debate taking place today in many churches around the world.

And I mean, on the one hand, I could imagine that the thoughts would be debated, but it's hard to imagine a public debate. Because the people who would take this issue seriously would see it as resolved against Eve, and the people who-- and others might not take the debate seriously enough to think that it's worth having.

So I'm just so struck by the significance of your work and the fact that you have located-- the fact that this emerges in Italy, and then is lost, and then appears in France, which we tend to think of France as really the main source of feminism during this period. And who knows what came before the women that you're talking about, who the next scholar will have to rediscover.

But I'm so grateful to you for pushing the narrative backwards in the way that you've been able to do. I think this is really, really important work. And thank you for doing it.

ERMINIA ARDISSINO: Thank you.

SPEAKER 1: Thank you. And thank you for sharing it with us. We're very grateful.

[APPLAUSE]

SPEAKER 2: Sponsor, Women's Studies and Religion Program.