An important contribution to early public debates on the nature of women written by a cardinal in the Roman Catholic Church.

Pompeo Colonna’s In Defense of Women (1530), presented in this volume in Latin and English translation, is one of several important defenses of women composed in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries by male advocates of women’s moral and intellectual worth. Known as a cardinal and a warrior, but also as an active participant in sixteenth-century Italian literary circles, Colonna addresses the work to his cousin Vittoria Colonna, the most renowned Italian woman poet of the era, who, he writes, had urged him to undertake it. His Defense not only refutes arguments of women’s inferiority and incapacity but, remarkably, asserts their ability to hold political office and govern. It contains original Latin text and a critical introduction by Franco Minonzio. It also features a foreword by Margaret L. King, as well as a postscript by King, tracing the separate male-authored and female-authored Renaissance defenses of women.
 

Pompeo Colonna (1479–1532) was a mercenary captain before becoming a cardinal of the Catholic church. Margaret L. King is professor emerita of history at Brooklyn College and the Graduate Center, City University of New York. Franco Minonzio is an Italian classical philologist, historian of science, and author.
 

Acknowledgments

Illustrations

Abbreviations

Foreword

Introduction

In Defense of Women
Book One
Dedicatory Letter to Vittoria Colonna
A Woman Is Not an Imperfect Creature
The Charges against Women Refuted
Book Two
On the Fortitude, Magnanimity, and Constancy of Women
On the Liberality and Beneficence of Women
On the Temperance and Continence of Women
On the Wisdom and Prudence of Women
On Justice

Apologia mulierum
Liber primus
Mulierem non esse animal imperfectum
Obiectorum solutio
Liber secundus
De fortitudine, magnanimitate atque constantia mulierum
De liberalitate et beneficentia mulierum
De temperantia et continentia mulierum
De sapientia et prudentia mulierum
De iustitia

Postscript: The querelle des femmes: Male- and Female-Authored Texts

Table: The querelle des femmes: Selected Male- and Female-Authored Texts

Glossary of Names

Bibliography
Index