The Saber and Scroll Journal Volume 8, Number 2, Winter 2019 | Page 49

es of Quattrocento Venice:
arola’s Humanist Career
1
as well,” according to Allen. 44 Other evidence
could be found in the writings
of religious women, such as Catherine
of Siena (1347-1380), who disregarded
the traditions of her time and successfully
wrote about men’s manipulation of
women in marriage alliances, albeit with
a theological element. 45 They proved
they had authority, reasoned, and wrote
with wisdom, and they showed that
women could be equal to men. Plato’s
theories were in direct contrast to Aristotelianism,
however. Venetians were
closed to any idea of a new concept of
woman and intensified Aristotelianism
when they became a terra firma empire
in the late fourteenth century, coming
into contact with Florence’s civic humanism.
Venice was able to expand onto
mainland Italy and become a terra firma
empire after its triumph over Genoa
in 1381. Then, between 1404 and 1406,
it absorbed the city-states of Padua, Vicenza,
and Verona, where they sent representatives,
equipped with their strong
Aristotelian values, laws, and government
practice, to each government
council. Therefore, when Isotta was
born in Verona in 1418 and entered its
humanist circles in 1436, it was under
the rule of Aristotelian Venice. It was
during Venice’s mainland expansion
and occupation that the intelligentsia,
or the all-male intellectual elite (patricians)
who ruled and ran the governments
of the Venetian empire, came
into contact with Florence’s humanistic
movement. However, they were uninterested
in developing a civic humanist
culture for their empire and strengthened
Aristotelianism instead.