Olympia Fulvia Morata: ‘Glory of Womankind Both for Piety and for Wisdomʼ

Chapter 6 Olympia Fulvia Morata: ‘Glory of Womankind both for Piety and for Wisdomʼ

Lucia Felici

Olympia Fulvia Morata was an extraordinary figure in the sixteenth century European culture, especially in the German, Italian speaking realms, and has been called the ‘miracle of the centuryʼ.1 Her reputation in the sixteenth century as an exceptional humanist scholar, exile religionis causa, and as someone aware of female dignity in the intellectual sphere, accompanied her in Italy and Germany, where she found refuge. Here is where she earned the respect and the admiration of the community of scholars. Her sudden death subtracted her from the honours of first graduated woman poet to which she seemed destined. Her fame allowed to claim that she was the first university Professor of Greek in the Empire. The construction of her myth, which began immediately after her death, increased the peculiarity of the story of Morata: she became an ex- emplary intellectual, religious, and feminine model of the Renaissance and the Protestant Reformation; an icon in the reformed martyrology; an example of intellectual woman in the Frauenfrage in the German culture of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.2 Her fame shows no sign of fading even today. Being the subject matter of several studies, she is referred to in the Deutsche Literatur

1 Hess U., “Lateinischer Dialog und gelehrte Partnerschaft. Frauen als humanistische Leitbilder in Deutschland (1500–1550)”, in Brinker-Gabler G. (ed.), Deutsche Literatur von Frauen (Munich: 1988) I, 113–148, 139. 2 Daenens F., “Olympia Morata. Storie parallele”, in Honess C. – Jones V. (eds.), Le donne delle minoranze. Le ebree e le protestanti dʼItalia (Turin: 1999) 101–112; Peyronel Rambaldi S., “Olimpia Morata e Celio Secondo Curione: un dialogo dell’umanesimo cris- tiano”, in Méchoulan H. – Popkin R.H. – Ricuperati G. – Simonutti L. (eds.), La formazi- one storica dell’alterità. Studi di storia della tolleranza nell’età moderna offerti a Antonio Rotondò (Florence: 2001) I, 93–133; Dörner A., “Vom Selbstbild zum Vorbild: Olympia Fulvia Morata und die Konstruktion eines protestantischen Frauenmodells im 16. Jahrhundert”, in Burschel P. et al. (eds.), Vorbild- Inbild-Abbild. Religiöse Lebensmodelle in geschlechter- geschichtlicher Perspektive (Freiburg i. B.: 2003) 53–81; Svandrlik R., “Il mito di Olimpia Morata nella cultura tedesca tra Otto e Novecento”, in Fragnito G. (ed.), Olimpia Morata: cultura umanistica e Riforma protestante tra Ferrara e l’Europa. Atti del Convegno internazi- onale, Ferrara, Palazzo Bonacossi, 18–20 novembre 2004, special issue of Schifanoia. Notizie dell’Istituto di studi rinascimentali di Ferrara 28/29 (2007) 349–354.

© koninklijke brill nv, leiden, 2018 | doi:10.1163/9789004371125_008 148 Felici von Frauen as the ‘most important woman for the German Humanism of the first half of the sixteenth centuryʼ.3 In the analysis of the contribution of Italian emigration in Germany, Morata is of great interest both in itself and for the model that she gradually embodied. Beyond mythologisation, the fame of Morata was not undeserved. She offered a complete synthesis of the changes taking place in the spheres of knowledge and religion, as well as in the valorisation of women, typical of the humanistic movement and the spiritual reform of the sixteenth century. Her literary production, her epistolary – although it has come down to us only in a posthumous and incomplete edition4 – and her life outline an all-round image of a reformed scholar of the sixteenth century, engaged in the intellectual and religious life, consistent in her choices and lucid in claiming the value as a woman. The judgements of Italian and German contemporaries, attest her profile of ‘most learned woman ( femina doctissima)ʼ, ‘clever beyond her sex (supra sexum ingeniosa)ʼ and ‘divine (plane divina)ʼ for her religiosity.5 Certainly the voice of Morata was not the only one. A new model of woman, ‘learned and Christianʼ, mainly defined by Erasmus in view of the overall re- newal of the Christian society – first of all with the Magdalia of the Colloquia familiaria – then enriched with the Reformation of a new dimension of religious equality and commitment, allowed, as is well known, greater participa- tion for women in spiritual and intellectual life, with a different awareness and legitimation.6 The cultural phenomena of which Morata became the interpret- er led to a great flowering of women’s literature in Italy at the time.7 Also in the German Empire there were notable examples of women engaged in the religious and intellectual spheres, from Caritas Pirckheimer, Margarete Peutinger and her daughters, to the “heroines” of the Protestant Reformation such as Katharina Zell, Elisabeth Cruciger, Elisabeth von Braunschweig-Lüneburg.8

3 Hess, “Lateinischer Dialog” 138. 4 See below. 5 Morata O., The Complete Writings of an Italian Heretic, ed. H.N. Parker (Chicago & London: 2003) 61, 63; Curione Celio Secondo, Olympiae Fulviae Moratae Foeminae doctissimae ac plane divinae Opera omnia (Basel, Pietro Perna: 1558). 6 Thomson J.L., Calvin and the Daughters of Sarah. Women in Regular and Exceptional Roles in the Exegesis of Calvin, his Predecessors, and his Contemporaries (Geneva: 1992); Brown S.M., Women, Gender, and Radical Religion in Early Modern Europe (Leiden – Boston: 2007); Stjerna K., Women and the Reformation (Oxford: 2009). 7 Dionisotti C., Geografia e storia della letteratura italiana (Turin: 1999). 8 Hess, “Lateinischer Dialog”; Becker-Cantarino B., “Religiöse Botschaft, Erziehung und Erbauung”, in Brinker-Gabler (ed.), Deutsche Literatur von Frauen I, 149–184; Domröse S., Frauen der Reformationszeit (Göttingen: 2010).