A Biographical Dictionary of the Celebrated Women of Every Age and Country/Fidelis, (Cassandra)
FIDELIS (CASSANDRA), a Venetian Lady, Died 1558, aged 100.
Descended from ancestors who had changed their residence from Milan to Venice, and had uniformly added to the respectability of their rank by their uncommon learning, she began at an early age to prosecute her studies with great diligence, and acquired such a knowledge of the learned languages, that she may with justice be enumerated among the first scholars of the age.
The letters which occasionally passed between Cassandra and Politian, demonstrate their mutual esteem, if indeed such an expression be sufficient to characterize the feelings of Politian, who expresses, in language unusually florid, his high admiration of her extraordinary acquirements, and his expectation of the benefits which the cause of letters would derive from her labours and example. In the year 1491, the Florentine scholar made a visit to Venice, where the favourable opinion he had formed of her writings was confirmed by a personal interview.
"Yesterday," says he, writing to his great patron Lorenzo de Medicis, "I paid a visit to the celebrated Cassandra, to whom I presented your respects. She is indeed, Lorenzo, a surprizing woman, as well from her acquirements in her own language, as in the Latin; and, in my opinion, she may be called handsome. I left her, astonished at her talents. She is much devoted to your interest, and speaks of you with great esteem. She even avows her intention of visiting you at Florence, so that you may prepare yourself to give her a proper reception."
From a letter of this lady's many years afterwards to Leo X. we learn, that an epistolary correspondence had subsisted between her and Lorenzo de Medicis; and it is with concern we find, that the remembrance of this intercourse was revived, in order to induce the pontiff to bestow upon her some pecuniary assistance, she being then a widow, with a numerous train of dependants. She lived, however, to a far more advanced period, and her literary acquirements, and the reputation of her early associates, threw a lustre over her declining years; and, as her memory remained unimpaired to the last, she was resorted to from all parts of Italy as a living monument of those happier days to which the Italians never reverted without regret. The letters and orations of this lady were published at Pavia in 1636, with some account of her life. She wrote a volume of Latin poems also, on various subjects.
She is thus spoken of by M. Thomas, in his Essay on Women:
"One of the most learned women in Italy, who wrote equally well in the three languages of Homer, Virgil, and Dante, in verse and in prose; who possessed all the philosophy of her own and the preceding ages; who, by her graces, embellished even theology; sustained thesises with eclat, and many times gave public lessons at Padua; who joined to her serious knowledge agreeable talents, particularly music, and exalted her talents by her virtue. She received homage from sovereign pontiffs and kings; and, that every thing relating to her might be singular, lived more than a century."