Choosing between marriage and career is an age-old dilemma, and a 15th-century letter reveals the advice one woman gave to another on this very question:
Cassandra Fedele (1465-1558) was arguably the most prominent female intellectual in medieval Venice. She gained fame as a speaker in Venice and was even offered a position at the Spanish court (despite the Venetian Doge forbidding it). Her reputation piqued the interest of Alessandra Scala, daughter of the Florentine Chancellor. Alessandra was only 16 years old but had already earned a reputation for her poetry and Greek scholarship.
The two women began to correspond, and Alessandra apparently sought Cassandra’s advice on whether or not she should marry. Here is Cassandra’s reply, written on January 18, 1492:
From your very elegant letter I clearly see (a judgement which gave me great pleasure) that you do not consider our friendship to be a common one, for not only did you want me to know all about you, but you also wanted me to advise you on the same matter. So, my Alessandra, are you at a loss as to whether to devote yourself to a Muses or to a human being? I think that in this matter you must choose which nature you more prefer. Plato asserts that advice taken is received according to the readiness of the one who receives it; for this reason it is very easy for you to make that choice, but no decision violently imposed will last forever.
Two years later, Alessandra married the Greek poet Michele Marullo, whom Cassandra herself also married in 1500, but after her husband’s death in 1520, she remained in Venice and worked as director of an orphanage. Her final public speech was given just two years before she died, aged 93.
This letter, along with more than 50 others, is published in Corresponding Renaissance: Letters Written by Italian Women, 1375-1650 (Oxford University Press, 2016), edited and translated by Lisa Cabolicia.
Top image: Cassandra Federer by Frederick William Barton
