{"product_id":"orationes-dialogi-epistolae-carmina-tam-latina-quam-graeca-4e1oguep","title":"Orationes, Dialogi, Epistolae, Carmina, tam Latina quam Graeca.","description":"\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eThe second edition of the collected writings of one of the most learned women of the sixteenth century, Ferrarese poet, writer, humanist and Protestant convert Olympia Fulvia Morata (1526-1555), partially annotated in an early hand.\u003c\/strong\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eMorata’s writings were published only after her death, collected and edited by her friend and correspondent, the humanist Celio Secondo Curione (1503-1569). The first edition, printed by Perna in 1558, was dedicated to early Spanish Reformer Isabella Manriquez Bresegna (1510-67); the present is dedicated to Queen Elizabeth I of England.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eContained here are Morata’s writings in both Latin and Greek, including commentary on Cicero and others, her Latin translation of two books of the \u003cem\u003eDecameron\u003c\/em\u003e, copious correspondence with contemporaries, both men and women; poetry, epigrams, her translations of the psalms into Greek hexameters and Sapphics - ‘regarded by contemporaries as her most brilliant creations’ (Levin, p.270) and interpreted and set to music by her husband - as well as letters, eulogies and epitaphs in praise of her after her death at the age of just 29. Not included here, and known to be lost, are a defence of Cicero, dialogues in imitation of Plato, and commentaries on Homer (p.269). ‘Morata wrote in a brilliant, flexible, idiomatic Latin. Her letters are vivid documents not only of her life and times, but also to the troubles of early Protestantism’ (p.270).\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eMorata’s life was short but extraordinary. Born in Ferrara in 1526, her father, a university professor and humanist, ensured her education in Greek and Latin from an early age. Gaining a reputation as something of a prodigy, and aged just 12-13, Olympia was brought to the Ferrarese court to be a study companion to Anna d’Este, the daughter of Duke Ercole II and his French wife - and Protestant sympathiser - the Duchess Renée of France. Under Renée’s influence the court became something of a haven for ‘Lutheran bandits from France’; those who visited included Clement Marot, Vittoria Colonna and Calvin himself. After Anna’s death and Morata’s removal from the court in order to care for her dying father, she married a German Protestant, Andreas Grünthler in 1550 and they moved to Germany in search of religious tolerance, and to evade the Roman Inquisition. “Their marriage was conceived by the couple themselves as a match between equals and looked upon by their friends as such. The lack of condescension in her contemporaries in speaking about the pair is striking” (p.269). Caught in the siege of Schweinfurt in 1553-54 - which Morata described in her letters - they escaped to Heidelberg, though much of Morata’s writing was lost as a result of the upheaval, and her health suffered; it is thought that she died from the lingering effect of fever, possibly tuberculosis, contracted during the seige, a few days short of her thirtieth birthday.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThere are manuscript annotations in the margins of this volume in two different hands, one seventeenth-century, and one a little later, late eighteenth or early nineteenth. The early manuscript notes begin on p.1, with ‘Pentesilea’ underlined in the text and a careful, fulsome biography of the Amazon queen in the margins surrounding it: ‘Amazonum regina quae teste Justino Lib. 2 offera sive (ut alii) Orithyae successit in regno…’; subsequent notes in this hand follow this mode, with words and references - paradoxa, Etna, fortuna - underlined in the text and explained in the margins. The notes feel deliberate and careful, and perhaps rather young; they drop off after the first 25 pages, save for later underlining, inked marginal marks, and a couple of lines in Greek inn the outer blank margin of p.277.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eTextblock slightly trimmed, touching annotations, marginal stain pp.270-271 not touching text, final two leaves crudely cut along outer margin, not affecting text.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eProvenance: 1. Early inscription to foot of t.p., recording donation. 2. Nineteenth-century stamp to verso of t.p., ‘Herzöglischer S. Meiningischer Bibliothek’, the library of the Dukes of Saxe-Meiningen. 3. Stamp of the Stadtbibliothek Hamburg to verso of t.p., indicating sale as a duplicate: “Bibl. Hamburg: Publica Duplum vendita”. 4. The Apel family of lawyers and merchants; their manor house in Ermlitz, near Leipzig, the family’s residence from 1771 to 1945, housed an extensive library which included valuable manuscripts, incunabula, books and rare musical instruments, and graphic works. The collection was confiscated after 1945 under land reforms in the Soviet Occupation Zone, and a significant portion of the library ended up at 5. ‘Univ. und Landesbibliothek Halle (Saale)’ ink stamp in lower margin of p.100, their barcode and later ‘ULB Sachsen-Anhalt Ausgescheiden’ stamp to rear pastedown, indicating its withdrawal from the collection and return to 6. the Apel family, indicating that this was, along with the portion of their library that had been confiscated, restituted to the family in 2003.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eVDI6 M6287**.** A.R. Larsen, C. Levin, D. Robin (eds)., \u003cem\u003eEncyclopedia of Women in the Renaissance: Italy, France and England\u003c\/em\u003e (Santa Barbara 2007).\u003c\/p\u003e\n","brand":"Maggs Bros.","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":67730425643317,"sku":"262933","price":2750.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0669\/0045\/9677\/files\/262933_03.jpg?v=1792159738","url":"https:\/\/store.maggs.com\/products\/orationes-dialogi-epistolae-carmina-tam-latina-quam-graeca-4e1oguep","provider":"Maggs Bros.","version":"1.0","type":"link"}