The De nobilitate foeminei sexus: Agrippa and the excellence of women

Among Agrippa's works, one of the most widely read in the sixteenth century concerns not magic but the condition of women. It is the Declamatio de nobilitate et praecellentia foeminei sexus, the declamation on the nobility and excellence of the female sex, written at Dole in 1509 and dedicated to Margaret of Austria. Long left in manuscript, it was printed in Antwerp in 1529, when its dedicatee had become governor of the Netherlands and the author's patron. The book immediately enjoyed European success.

A paradoxical declamation

The declamation was a rhetorical genre much loved by the humanists: a brilliant speech arguing a thesis that was often surprising, displaying the speaker's skill. Agrippa does not merely defend women against traditional accusations, but asserts their superiority over men. The arguments come from the Bible, theology, natural philosophy and history, woven together with the skill of a lawyer who knows every resource of persuasion and is not afraid to push as far as paradox.

Some are exegetical. The name of Eve, Agrippa observes, means life, while that of Adam refers to the earth. Woman was created last, as the completion of the divine work, and she was formed in the earthly paradise, whereas man had been shaped outside it. After the resurrection, moreover, Christ appeared first to women, a sign of their spiritual dignity. Agrippa adds arguments drawn from the physiology of the time, such as the greater beauty and modesty of the female body.

Nature and custom

The most modern passage of the treatise concerns the causes of women's subordination. According to Agrippa, women are not inferior by nature: their condition depends on the laws, customs and education imposed by men. Excluded from study, from public office and from preaching, they are forced from childhood into a domestic life that leaves no room for their talents. It is a surprising denunciation for the period, even if it is set within a rhetorical work.

To support his thesis Agrippa recalls many illustrious women of antiquity and sacred history: prophetesses, queens, sages, martyrs. It is a learned catalogue linked to an already long tradition, from Boccaccio with his De mulieribus claris to Christine de Pizan with her City of Ladies, written at the beginning of the fifteenth century.

The querelle des femmes and the book's fortune

Agrippa's treatise belongs to the so-called querelle des femmes, the literary debate on the nature and worth of women that ran through Europe between the late Middle Ages and the early modern period. His declamation became one of the most cited texts of this dispute. It was translated into several languages: in English, for example, it appeared in 1542 in David Clapham's version, and it went through numerous French and German editions.

Scholars still debate how far Agrippa really believed what he wrote. Choosing the declamatory genre allowed him to argue an extreme thesis without fully committing himself, and the dedication to a princess also had a practical purpose. Nevertheless many of the treatise's arguments, above all the one about custom as the cause of inequality, reappear in later works and make the De nobilitate an important document in the history of ideas about women.