Renaissance Humanism
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The sparkling Duomo in the darkness
Stone outlined in green and rose and white As if a paper cut out of a giant’s hand As if the stone itself glows with inner light Tourists, unthinking, circumambulating this glimmering Kaaba Like them, I am in awe, shivering at its wonder Tier upon tier, panel upon panel drawing eye upward Into lost and questioning darkness above This endless flow of humanity, come to worship its beauty Do we do well to come here? And in the beauty, do we find some echo of the nameless? Do we see the price paid for its making? The darkness hidden in the light? The craftsmen who made it are gone now…
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Laura Terracina: For Who is Enemy to Woman
“How dare you raise hand, against so young and beautiful a vision?” With such words does Laura Terracina (1519 – 1577) defend her sex. Born in Naples, she was the most published poet of Italy’s sixteenth century and a feminist before the word “femminista” existed. She was part of a movement of italian Renaissance women writers whose existence is often overlooked in the historical record. So much were women absent from tellings of the Renaissance and so mixed their lived experience, that it caused Joan Kelly to famously ask “Did women have a Renaissance?” While the answer is complex, the Renaissance saw for the first time in Europe, substantial publication…
