It’s an age-old dilemma: choosing between marriage and a career. A letter from the fifteenth century provides insight into how one woman advised another on this very question.
Cassandra Fedele (1465-1558) was arguably the most prominent female intellectual in medieval Venice. She gained fame for delivering public orations in her city and was even offered a position at the Spanish court (though the Venetian Doge forbade her from accepting it). Her reputation piqued the interest of Alessandra Scala, the daughter of a Florentine chancellor. Despite being only sixteen, Alessandra was already gaining recognition for her poetry and scholarship in Greek.
The two women began corresponding, with Alessandra seemingly seeking Cassandra’s guidance on whether she should get married. Here is Cassandra’s response, written on January 18, 1492:
From your very elegant letter, I saw clearly that you did not judge ours to be a commonplace friendship (a judgment which gave me great pleasure), since you wanted not only for me to know everything about you, but also to advise you on these same matters. And so, my Alessandra, you are uncertain whether to dedicate yourself to the Muses or to a Man? On this matter, I think you must choose that to which nature made you more disposed. For Plato maintains that any advice which is received is received according to the readiness of the receiver. For this reason, it will be very easy for you to make that choice, whereas no violently imposed decision lasts forever.
Two years later, Alessandra married Michele Marullo, a Greek poet. Cassandra herself also married in 1500, but after her husband’s death in 1520, she remained in Venice, working as a director of an orphanage. Her last public speech was delivered just two years before her death at the age of 93.
It’s an age-old dilemma: choosing between marriage and a career. A letter from the fifteenth century provides insight into how one woman advised another on this very question.
Cassandra Fedele (1465-1558) was arguably the most prominent female intellectual in medieval Venice. She gained fame for delivering public orations in her city and was even offered a position at the Spanish court (though the Venetian Doge forbade her from accepting it). Her reputation piqued the interest of Alessandra Scala, the daughter of a Florentine chancellor. Despite being only sixteen, Alessandra was already gaining recognition for her poetry and scholarship in Greek.
The two women began corresponding, with Alessandra seemingly seeking Cassandra’s guidance on whether she should get married. Here is Cassandra’s response, written on January 18, 1492:
From your very elegant letter, I saw clearly that you did not judge ours to be a commonplace friendship (a judgment which gave me great pleasure), since you wanted not only for me to know everything about you, but also to advise you on these same matters. And so, my Alessandra, you are uncertain whether to dedicate yourself to the Muses or to a Man? On this matter, I think you must choose that to which nature made you more disposed. For Plato maintains that any advice which is received is received according to the readiness of the receiver. For this reason, it will be very easy for you to make that choice, whereas no violently imposed decision lasts forever.
Two years later, Alessandra married Michele Marullo, a Greek poet. Cassandra herself also married in 1500, but after her husband’s death in 1520, she remained in Venice, working as a director of an orphanage. Her last public speech was delivered just two years before her death at the age of 93.
This letter, along with over fifty others, can be found in Corresponding Renaissance: Letters Written by Italian Women, 1375-1650, edited and translated by Lisa Kaborycha (Oxford University Press, 2016).
Top Image: Cassandra Fedele by Frederic William Burton
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