16th century CE

The 16th century CE appears as a period of sharp contrasts in women’s historical situation. Feudal customs had receded, but women lacked protection against claims that they belonged within the household; at the same time, a small number of women, especially those of rank or fortune, could gain influence or pursue exceptional public and intellectual lives. The gap between their opportunities and the constraints experienced by most women makes the period an example of how formal status and actual possibilities diverge.

Law and Domestic Constraint

By the 16th century, laws that would endure through the ancien régime were being codified. The book argues that the disappearance of feudal habits left women more exposed to men’s demands that they be confined to domestic life. Roman law’s influence remained visible, while assertions that women were naturally weak or foolish served as justifications for restrictions rather than their underlying cause: men first acted to their own advantage and then invoked women’s supposed nature to explain it.

This legal history forms part of a wider account in which a woman’s concrete situation cannot be read from abstract rights alone. Her economic role, family position, and access to resources could alter what she was able to do, even where her legal status remained restricted. The period’s exceptional women therefore do not represent a general transformation of women’s condition; their prominence instead reveals how unevenly opportunity was distributed.

Exceptional Political and Military Agency

Some women of the Italian Renaissance held sovereign power, while others took up arms. Girolamo Riario’s wife fought for Forli’s freedom, and Hippolyta Fioramenti commanded the Duke of Milan’s troops. During the siege of Pavia, Fioramenti led a company of noblewomen to the ramparts. In another example of collective action, Sienese women organized three thousand female troops, commanded by women, to defend their city against Montluc.

These cases show women entering forms of public action from which they were generally excluded. Their significance lies in their exceptional character: they demonstrate that women could act as political and military agents, but do not imply that such possibilities were commonly available.

Learning, Writing, and Reputation

Other women became known for learning and artistic accomplishment. The book names Isotta Nogarola, Veronica Gambara, Gaspara Stampa, and Vittoria Colonna, who was Michelangelo’s friend. Lucrezia Tornabuoni, the mother of Lorenzo and Giuliano de’ Medici, wrote hymns and lives of Saint John the Baptist and the Virgin. Their reputations place women’s intellectual work within the period’s account of Renaissance individualism, while the limited number of such figures underscores how restricted access to education remained.

Many of the distinguished women described were courtesans. Their professions could provide economic autonomy; combined with unconventional conduct and intellectual freedom, this allowed some to receive deferential admiration from men. They supported the arts and engaged with literature and philosophy, and some wrote or painted. Isabella da Luna, Caterina di San Celso, and Imperia—described as a poet and musician—are presented as inheritors of the tradition associated with Aspasia and Phryne. Yet the freedom available to many women of rank or fortune often took the form of license, and the orgies and crimes attributed to prominent Italian ladies and courtesans remained part of their legend.

Education and the Limits of Exception

Despite these achievements, women were still poorly educated in the 16th century. Anne of Brittany brought women to court, where women had previously not been seen, and sought to form a retinue of girls of honor. Her interest, however, was more in their upbringing than in their intellectual education. Among women who later distinguished themselves through thought, influence, and writing, most were noblewomen. The book cites the duchess of Retz, Mme de Lignerolles, the Duchess of Rohan and her daughter Anne, and, most famously, Queen Margot and Margaret of Navarre. Pernette Du Guillet may have been bourgeois, while Louise Labé was described as a courtesan who felt free to behave unconventionally.

The period’s exceptional women make visible both the reach and the boundary of individual agency. Political command, military participation, learning, and artistic work were possible, but were clustered among women with unusual status, resources, or independence. Against the broader legal pressure to confine women to the household, their achievements demonstrate possibility without amounting to equality.