ogy, and the study of literature, her great favorite being
PETRARCH. She was widowed within 18 months of being
married off when she was 15, by which time she had
begun corresponding in Latin with humanist scholars in
Brescia and the Veneto, as well as with Casandra FEDELE.
Her scholarly activities attracted attention, and criticism,
in Brescia, to which she responded with passion, defend-
ing the right of women to be educated. In 1488 she
brought out a volume of her letters, but such was the hos-
tility to female scholarship that she published no more, al-
though she resisted the exhortations of her male critics to
retire, as they deemed fit, to the contemplative life of a
nunnery.
Cervantes Saavedra, Miguel de (1547–1616) Spanish
novelist, poet, and dramatist
One of the large family of a poor and unsuccessful doctor
at Alcalá de Henares, Cervantes had little formal educa-
tion apart from a period at a Madrid school run by a fol-
lower of Erasmus. In 1569 he went to Italy, joined the
Spanish army there, and was wounded in the naval battle
of Lepanto (1571), losing the use of his left hand. After
completing military service, he boarded a ship for Spain in
1575 with a written commendation by Don John of Aus-
tria, but was seized by Algerian pirates and held captive by
the Turks in Algiers for five years while he vainly tried to
raise the necessary ransom. When it was finally paid by
the Trinitarian Friars in 1580 and he returned to Spain, he
hoped for some reward for past services but was ignored.
His marriage in 1584 was an unhappy one and his first at-
tempt to earn a living by writing, the pastoral romance La
Galatea (1585), was hardly successful. He had a somewhat
better return on his early plays for the Madrid theater, but
his circumstances did not improve. In 1587 he was forced
to leave Madrid to work in Andalusia as a tax collector. He
was imprisoned two or perhaps three times for debt or
trouble with his bookkeeping and spent a number of years
living in Seville. After Part I of his great masterpiece DON
QUIXOTEappeared (1605), he spent the final and most
productive years of his life in Madrid. Despite his fame
and the immense success of Don Quixote, his grave in
Madrid was unmarked.
Though Cervantes wrote verse and included many
poetic passages in his prose works, he acknowledged that
he had little talent for it. Early lack of success in the the-
ater did not discourage him from making a second at-
tempt, and he collected his later plays in Ocho comedias y
ocho entremeses (1615). The entremeses, one-act prose
farces, proved especially congenial to his gift for comic di-
alogue and social satire. The 12 short stories collected in
Novelas ejemplares (Exemplary Novels; 1613) contain his
most interesting work after Don Quixote. A long romance,
Persiles y Sigismunda, was published posthumously
(1617) and translated into English two years later.
Further reading: P. E. Russell, Cervantes (Oxford,
U.K.: Oxford University Press, 1985).Cesalpino, Andrea (1519–1603) Italian physician and
botanist
Cesalpino was born at Arezzo, studied at Pisa, and in 1555
succeeded Luca Ghini as director of the Pisan BOTANIC
GARDEN. He moved to the Sapienza in Rome in 1592. De
plantis libri XVI (1583) starts with botanical principles;
following Aristotle’s division of plants into trees, shrubs,
shrubby herbs, and herbs, Cesalpino’s pioneering classifi-
cation concentrated on fruits and seeds, neglecting
broader affinities. The greater part of his book contains
descriptions of about 1500 plants, but with less advice on
their uses than the herbalists provided.Cesarini, Julian (1398–1444) Italian churchman
Cesarini was born in Rome and studied at Perugia and
Padua, where he was a friend of NICHOLAS OF CUSA. He oc-
cupied several posts in the papal Curia, and in 1425 was
sent on a diplomatic mission to John, Duke of Bedford, re-
gent of France for Henry VI. In 1426 he was made a car-
dinal and transferred to England, where he met Cardinal
Beaufort and the humanists patronized by Duke Humfrey
of Gloucester. In 1431 he was appointed papal legate in
Bohemia, Germany, Hungary, and Poland, to direct a cru-
sade against the HUSSITES. He presided at the Council of
BASLE, which opposed the policy of Pope Eugenius IV and
attempted to limit the papal power. Later, at the Council
of Ferrara, which transferred to Florence, he negotiated a
settlement with the Greek Orthodox Church. In 1442 he
went to Hungary to preach a crusade against the Turks,
and was killed during the flight after the defeat of the
Christian forces at Varna, Bulgaria.chain of being The doctrine that all natural entities,
whether mineral, vegetable, or animal, are linked in a sin-
gle, continuous, unbroken sequence. It originated with
Plato and began to lose its appeal only with the geological
revolution of the late 18th century. The animal and veg-
etable kingdoms, it was claimed, are so connected that it
was impossible to distinguish between the highest plant
and the lowest animal—and so on throughout all parts of
the natural world. Considered hierarchically the chain (or
ladder) of being joined the lowest natural form in a con-
tinuous sequence ultimately to God himself. Further, ac-
cording to the related principle of plenitude, the chain
extended throughout the whole of nature. This latter view
was apparently dramatically confirmed during the late Re-
naissance period by observations made through the newly
invented MICROSCOPE. Every green leaf was shown to be
swarming with animal life, while the animals themselves
were also shown to be similarly inhabited.
Further reading: Arthur O. Lovejoy, The Great Chain
of Being: A Study of the History of an Idea (Cambridge,cchhaaiinn ooff bbeeiinngg 9 999