User:Amythwire/sandbox

Laura Cereta
Laura Cereta (September 1469-1499) was an Italian renaissance humanist and is included among the third generation of Quattrocento women humanists who "florished between 1480 and 1500." She wrote all of her letters between the ages of sixteen eighteen and may have been the only woman humanist of the century to use the invective, a genre of writing invented by Petrarch and his followers. Her works takes Lucian as a model rather than Cicero.

Life
Cereta was born into the Brescian upper-middle class to Silvestro Cereto, an attorney and magistrate in Brescia, and Veronica di Leno. She was the eldest of six siblings and had two brothers and three sisters. Historians know very little of Cereta's father except that "he was responsible for the fortifications of cities allied to Brescia." As a young girl, Cereta would accompany her father to the cities where he oversaw military construction. Her father's career required knowledge of mathematics and Cereta herself was enamored with this subject from a very early age, which may have been due to his interest and knowledge. Her interest however, turned eventually from mathematics to moral philosophy, classical literature, and sacred studies. Cereta recollected that, during her childhood, she was "cuddled and catered to by the entire household" and attributed this love and attention to her being the first-born who, she believed, was often "best loved."

At the age of seven, Cereta was sent to a monastery for schooling while her brothers were sent to the "humanist school of Giovanni Olivieri in Brescia." According to Diana Robin, "Such an educational route for upper-middle-class girls cannot have been that unusual, since by the last quarter of the fifteenth century, Brescia alone had ten monasteries for women with a combined population of roughly 800 nuns residing in them." While in the monastery, Cereta learned reading, writing, embroidery, and the fundamentals of Latin. When Cereta was nine, she was taken out of the convent and then returned nine months later for further instruction on the Latin canon. At the age of 11, Cereta returned home again to help care for her brothers and sisters. These domestic responsibilities did not hinder her studies however, and she continued to study and write at night after everyone else had gone to bed. According to Albert Rabil, "Although Cereta was trained in both sacred and secular literature, the classic citations far outweigh those from religious tradition, reflecting the depth of the passion she developed for her classical studies."

Around the end of 1484 or the beginning of 1485, Cereta left her family home to marry Pietro Serina, a Venetian merchant whose shop was located on the Rialto; she was fifteen years old at the time of her marriage. According to extant letters, their marriage was not always a happy one. Serina was away on business in Venice during July, August, and September of 1485; letters written to him during his absence suggest they were having difficulty relating to each other through written correspondence. Cereta is rare in that her studies did not cease after her marriage but rather intensified. After eighteen months of marriage, a plague broke out in Venice to which Serina's brother, Niccolai, and then he himself fell victim. She was left childless and after an intense grieving period, she recovered not, as she says, "through weeping," but through resuming her studies; she wrote a plethora of letters to learned members of society,both men and women, in and out of Brescia and "sought to enter into the world of humanism"

It is believed that Cereta lectured publicly in Brescia between 1489-1499 after her husband's death; there is however, no evidence to support this other than the testimony of her own letters. Scholar Diana Robin asserts, "Many of her epistolary essays would have readily lent themselves to presentation in the urban academies and salons of late Quattrocento Brescia and its environs."

In 1488, Cereta edited her letters and dedicated them to Cardinal D.D. Ascanius Maria Sforza in hopes that his position would lend legitimacy to her work; there is no knowledge as to whether she published or wrote anything in the last eleven years of her life

Cereta died suddenly in 1499 at the age of thirty from unknown causes; a funeral mass was said in the Church of San Domenico amid great public mourning and she was buried in the cathedral Although her work was well-known in Brescia during her lifetime, neither Cereta nor the more widely known scholar Cassandra Fedele (1465-1558) published their collections during their lifetimes. Cereta circulated copied manuscripts of her letters and "participated in at least one informal learned academy at the monastery of St. Chiara. The first printed edition of her collected letters came out in Padua in 1640; however, the first translated version of her book from the original Latin was not published until 1997.

Writing/Letters
While many of her letters concern private, familial matters, which were considered "taboo" in a humanist letter book, she also wrote letters regarding themes that anticipate modern feminism; these themes include "the oppression of women in marriage, the right of women to gain access to higher education, the history of women's contributions to scholarship, and women's participation in the commodification of urban culture through their increasing demand for luxury goods. Cereta's attention and demand for change in the social, legal and economic status of women wouldn't erupt until the end of the sixteenth century with Venetian feminist, whom Cereta's works laid the foundation for including Moderata Fonte, Lucrezia Marinelli, and Arcangela Tarabotti.

According to Albert Rabil, "Her Latin style is classic in form, certainly far from the relative simplicity of medieval Latin. In fact, her Latin is at times fairly complicated and overstylized, and although she is often clear enough, there are some passages where her meaning is difficult to grasp" and that, "although she adopts classical form in general, she does not hesitate to use words characteristic of medieval Latin. Many male peers believed that Cereta's father had written for her because "no woman could be learned enough to write such letters," to which she responded that she was "pleased to have herself compared so favorably to her father." In her letters, she expresses delight in her intellect and presents herself as a unique individual,"incorporating her likes and dislikes, her feelings and motivations." She felt the desire and need to make her name immortal through writing, much like Petrarch had. She also, however, expressed anxiety regarding her work in a male-dominated sphere of secular letters and worried that her history would be forgotten.

In two letter essays, one on marriage and the second on women and education, Cereta borrowed from Boccaccio's De mulieribus claris much like Christine de Pizan had in Le Livre de la Cite des Dames. According to Patricia Rancroft, "Like Christine de Pizan, Laura Cereta challenges Boccaccio's main theme that intellectual women are an exception to the rule and then processed to prove the reverse thesis by carefully manipulating Boccaccio's catalogue." She was, however, not a feminist in a modern sense as her "attitude towards contemporary women was at times ambivalent: she was angry at men for treating women not as adult equals but like dogs or children" and was "angry at women for their complicity in their own oppression."

Cereta's father, who she considered her strongest male supporter, died six months after she circulated her first volume of letters. The letters written by the only correspondent that responded to Cereta, Dominican Friar, Tommaso of Milan, are preserved; in his letters he criticized her for taking her critics seriously and counseled her to turn towards religion rather than humanism.

List of Works/ Letters

 * 1) Funeral Oration in Honor of Asellus  (1485) (On the Death of an Ass)
 * 2) To Ludovico di Leno (July 6, 1485)
 * 3) To Pietro Serina, her husband (July 14, 1485)
 * 4) To Benedict Arsagus, Papiensi (July 20, 1485)
 * 5) To Pietro Serina, her husband (July 22, 1485)
 * 6) To Benedict Arsagus, Papiensi (July 24, 1485)
 * 7) To John Olivieri, Grammarian (August 1, 1485)
 * 8) To Albert de Albertis (August 1, 1485)
 * 9) To Hippolytus and Basil, her brothers (August 3, 1485)
 * 10) To Boniface Bembo (August 5, 1485)
 * 11) To Pietro Serina (August 13, 1485)
 * 12) To Brother Ludovico de la Turre (August 25, 1485)
 * 13) To Brother Thomas of Florence, Preacher (August 29, 1485)
 * 14) To Veronia, her mother (September 5, 1485)
 * 15) To Constantine Boniface (September 5, 1485 or February 5, 1486)
 * 16) To Dominico Patusio, Lawyer (September 10, 1485)
 * 17) To Francis Prandonus (September 10, 1485)
 * 18) To Francis Prandonus (September 12, 1485)
 * 19) To Paul Zane, Bishop of Brescia (September 22, 1485)
 * 20) To Peter Stella (September 23, 1485)
 * 21) To Regimund Fotunatus, Natural Philosopher (October 15, 1485)
 * 22) To Albert de Albertis (October 15, 1485)
 * 23) To Clement Longulus, Grammarian (October 31, 1485)
 * 24) To Albert de Albertis (October 31, 1485)
 * 25) To Constantine Boniface (November 10, 1485)
 * 26) To Michael Baetus (December 12, 1485)
 * 27) To Helena Caesarea (December 20, 1485)
 * 28) To Felix Tadinus, Natural Philospher (December 31, 1485)
 * 29) To Sigismund de Buccis, Doctor of Laws (January 1, 1486)
 * 30) To Silvestro, her father (February 1, 1486)
 * 31) To Albert de Albertis (February 3, 1486)
 * 32) To Peter Zenus Patavius (February 3, 1486)
 * 33) To Bernard di Leno, Cousin (February 26, 1486)
 * 34) To Holy Pelegrina (February 26, 1486)
 * 35) To Ludovico Cendrata of Verona (March 15, 1486)
 * 36) To Jacob Basiliscus (April 29, 1486)
 * 37) To Albert de Albertis (May 7, 1486)
 * 38) To John Olivieri or Angelo Capello (June 5, 1486)
 * 39) To John Olivieri (June 7, 1486)
 * 40) To John Olivieri (June 13, 1486)
 * 41) To Diana Cereta, her sister (July 1, 1486)
 * 42) To Michael Baetus (July 6, 1486)
 * 43) To Michael Baetus (July 8, 1486)
 * 44) To Pietro Serina, her husband (July 17, 1486)
 * 45) To John Olivieri (August 1, 1486)
 * 46) To Albert de Albertis (August 5, 1486)
 * 47) To Felix Tadinus (August 10, 1486)
 * 48) To Michael Baetus (August 13, 1486)
 * 49) To Brother Thomas of Milan (September 10, 1486 or October 21, 1486)
 * 50) To Nazaria Olympia (November 5, 1486)
 * 51) To Barbara Alberta (November 21 or 26, 1486)
 * 52) To Julianus Trosculus (November 30, 1486)
 * 53) To Augustine Aemilius (February 6, 1487)
 * 54) To Augustine Aemilius (February 12, 1487)
 * 55) To Cassandra Fedele of Venice (April 13, 1487)
 * 56) To Francesca Fontana (April 13, 1487)
 * 57) To Felix Tadinus (May 1, 1487)
 * 58) To Albert de Albertis (May 7, 1487)
 * 59) To Frontonus Carito (July 1, 1487)
 * 60) Invective against Orestes Phronicus (July 1, 1487)
 * 61) To Alphonse Tiburtinus (July 20, 1487)
 * 62) To Veneranda, Abbottess of St. Chiara (August 13, 1487)
 * 63) To Boniface Bembo or Lorenzo Capreolo (August 22, 1487)
 * 64) To Albert de Albertis (August 23, 1487)
 * 65) To Louis Dandalus, Magistrate of Brescia (August 29, 1487)
 * 66) To Clement Longulus, Grammarian (October 1, 1487)
 * 67) To Martha Marcella (October 8, 1487)
 * 68) From Brother Thomas of Milan to Silverstro Cereta (October 9, 1487)
 * 69) A poem
 * 70) To John Olivieri (October 31, 1487)
 * 71) To Lucilia Vernacula (November 1, 1487)
 * 72) From Brother Thomas of Milan to Laura Cereta (November 4, 1487)
 * 73) To Brother Thomas of Milan (November 11, 1487)
 * 74) From Brother Thomas of Milan to Laura Cereta (November 25, 1487)
 * 75) From Brother Thomas of Milan to Laura Cereta (December 12, 1487)
 * 76) To her sister, Deodata di Leno, a nun (December 12, 1487)
 * 77) To Bibulus Sempronius (January 13, 1488)
 * 78) To Brother Thomas of Milan (February 4, 1488)
 * 79) To Bernard Laurinus, Grammarian (February 13, 1488)
 * 80) To Marius Bonus (January 26, 1487/1488)
 * 81) To Solitaria Europa (February 29, 1487/1488)
 * 82) To Lupus Cynicus (March 1, 1487/1488)
 * 83) To Cardinal Maria Ascanius Sforza (February 28, 1488)
 * 84) To Cardinal Maria Ascanius Sforza (March 1488)