“Women in the Renaissance”

The free will of Duns-Scot, the nominalism of Ockham, and scholasticism itself, which, by unconsciously providing elements of free analysis conducive to scientific investigation, led to its self-destruction, caused the concepts of Thomas Aquinas to enter into crisis. It was an unsatisfactory but fundamental phase of evolution that would free philosophy from theology and bring about the definitive victory of free analysis over theological prejudice, the impetus for humanistic studies, and scientific experimentation.

Petrarch, reviving classical thought, combined his efforts and promoted the renewal of intellectual interest with frank scientific progress to open the luminous road of the Renaissance.
Humanism, declaring war on the abuse of monastic ignorance, was the sap of the reformist doctrines that, stratified in a complex and sometimes crude way, introduced freedom of thought in a still imperfect mold. Its fusion with science resulted in Maritime Discoveries, the Industrial Revolution, the Encyclopedia, the fall of Feudalism, and the French Revolution. The printing press made the dissemenation of culture possible, and soon felt its effects, banishing scholastic philosophy, which was still powerful, to generalize Cartesian philosophy as the work of individual thought, leading to a reflective awareness of its power.
In art, there was an obsessive preoccupation with subjecting imagination to observing natural phenomena and form to the anatomical detailing of beings. Spirits are convulsed in investigating universal truth and seek to extract it from science or locate it in naturalistic art.
Neo-paganism brought about the sublimation of women.
Feminine spiritual expression is glorified by form, by its idealization. Platonism of love transcends the crude materialization of instinct. The reign of spirit, form, and color began for women.

The greats of art arrive. They are also navigators of unheard-of discoveries. Once the relative strength of thought is verified, it frees itself by postulating independence and personalism, put cumulatively at the service of art. Emotion is externalized through form, through the power of life. The woman is the synthesis of all the natural harmonies synchronized in her vegetative splendor.
The great navigators finally reach the goal of their luminous journey. They are the Carpaccios, the Bellini, the Ucelo, the Signorelli, Michelangelo, Raphael, Mantegna, Perugino, Botticelli, and the gigantic figure of Vinci.
Luxury, the “corrupter of souls,” as the reformers vainly shouted, logically had a throne reserved in this ferment of aesthetic motifs to exercise the tyranny of its most delirious expression. The brocades of Francesca d’Allisi, covered in pearls by Golconda, and the sumptuousness of Maria Farneso’s bridal procession are the shrill cry of the liberation of the burel. However, the luxury that had culminated in the decadence of so many civilizations was not a specific factor of dissolution in the Renaissance. Humanity had embarked on a vertiginous march based on thought, an instrument of culture and progress.
For Michelet, the Renaissance was the discovery of the world through the victory of justice and reason. A no from Luther to the Pope lifted half of Europe… Columbus disproved centuries and tradition… Copernicus subjected observation to reason, which he made prevail against the knowledge of all the learned and the people’s instinct.
The situation of women was proportional to the methodical secularization of ideas. The effervescence of the intellectual movement spread and recruited female yearnings, finally awakened by demands that were more temporal than spiritual. However, still indecisive, solicited by such antagonistic points of view, and unable to repress long-rooted tendencies, she became fragmented in a disturbing struggle for values. And here she is at the forefront of this general compromise with the ostentatious plasticization of the multiformity of Beauty, distorted in the ostentatious speculation of vanities. She is now the servant of the dogma of luxury. This is the “mare magnum,” where the inexhaustible flows of gold’s great potential flow.
However, it doesn’t allow itself to be totally defeated. It is the stagy unity of its personalism that preserves it. Humanism is recruiting followers. Pedro Paulo Ribera’s book already includes 845 biographies of famous women. The female elites specialize in erudition, which is replacing the old feminine skills of limited domestic application. Enlightened spirits are boldly asserting concepts that were foolhardy not so long ago.
An obscure French widow, Cristina de Pisan, who writes to support herself and her two children, has a vision of the extent of women’s duties, set out in a long-winded and irregular way but remarkable as a work of anticipation. Mary Astell later gave a more constructive character to her postulate, arguing for the scientific education of women. In Germany, Agrippa von Nettesheim criticized the stilted education given to the young women of his time, warning them of the dangers of idleness. His voice was soon drowned out by the thunder of reform, which piously reserved for women their rightful place according to its particular interpretation of the scriptures. And it was still taking refuge in the New Testament that Edward Coke in England later removed women’s right to vote by denying them the right to appear in court as witnesses.

The talent of Anne-Marie de Shurman, sculptor, philologist, painter, etc., the political genius of Elizabeth of England, the extraordinary impetus given by Elizabeth the Catholic to colonial expansion and other factors of unification and wealth in Spain, finally undermined by the establishment of the Inquisition, all this ebullience recorded for the first time in history, spread to us, opening the halls of Santos-o-Velho and the Paços de Sintra.
The feminine talents of the time suffered the concomitant limitations of the substantial part of the ideas, further aggravated by the cerebral lethargy of the previous phases. They were more reproductive than profound. They were based on erudition and the eclecticism of humanistic resources, which undoubtedly represented considerable progress. The immortal muses of the Renaissance, who inspired the geniuses, were not just the fortuitous and aesthetic motifs of artistic construction. They went further. They extracted from the uber-fertile womb of this outburst of ideas the conscious process of valuing themselves.

This was translated from a piece wirrtn by Natálaia Correia for the newspar Sol
it appeared on the September edition of 1947, during the Salazar dictatorship. She was only in her mid twenties. (13-09-1947, p.8)

A series of writing under the titled of “A Brief History of Women and with subtitle – “Slavery; idolatry; sacrifice; emancipation.”

This series is part of the Cátedra Natália Correia, at PBBI-Fresno State.