A Simple Virgin Speaks: Authorial Identity and Persuasion in Isabella Cervoni's Oration to Pope Clement VIII

Abstract

ABSTRACTThis article analyzes Isabella Cervoni's Orazione [ … ] al santissimo, e beatissimo padre, e signor nostro, Papa Clemente ottavo, sopra l’impresa di Ferrara, con una canzone [ … ] a’ prencipi cristiani (Bologna: Giovanni Battista Bellagamba, 1598), a bold call to war through which the young female poet strategically inserts her voice into the complex political debate of the 1590s. Cervoni redeploys the words of well-known historians and poets, including Scipione Ammirato and Ludovico Ariosto, to bolster her historically, politically and religiously charged work. She portrays herself as, in turn, a divinely-inspired innocent, an erudite historian, and finally, a prophetic woman poet worthy of both patronage and consideration. This essay also considers Cervoni's unique work within the larger context of other writers who published similar polemics addressed to Pope Clement VIII and other rulers of Europe on the Ottoman threat in the final tumultuous years of the sixteenth century.