Novella d'Andrea

Novella d'Andrea, 19th century painting by Marie-Éléonore Godefroid

Novella d'Andrea (Bologna, 1312–1333 (or around 1346^[1] or 1366^[2]) was an Italian legal scholar and professor in law at the University of Bologna.

As the daughter of Giovanni d'Andrea, a professor in Canon law at the University of Bologna, she was educated by her father and reportedly took over his lectures at the university during his absence.^[3] According to Christine de Pisan, she talked to the students through a curtain so they would not be distracted by her beauty.^[4] Some suggest that she married the lawyer Giovanni Calderinus or the professor John of Legnano, but, according to others sources she married the lawyer Filippo Formaglini in 1326.^[1][5] She died young. Her father supposedly gave his work about the decretals of Pope Gregory IX the name Novellae to her memory.

Her sister, Bettina d'Andrea, is reported to have taught law and philosophy at the university at Padua, where her husband Giovanni Da Sangiorgio^[6] was also employed, until her death in 1335.

References

1. "Novèlla nell'Enciclopedia Treccani". www.treccani.it. Retrieved 28 May 2017.
2. Will and Ariel Durant (1953). The Story of Civilization: The Renaissance; a history of civilization in Italy from 1304-1576 A.D, page 4. Simon and Schuster. ISBN 0-671-61600-5.
3. Schiebinger, Londa (1991). The mind has no sex?: women in the origins of modern science (1st Harvard pbk. ed.). Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press. ISBN 067457625X.
4. Marylinn Desmond (1998). Christine de Pizan and the Categories of Difference, page 80. University of Minnesota Press.
5. Joseph Fr Michaud, Louis Gabriel Michaud (1822). Biographie universelle ancienne et moderne, volume 31. Michaud.
6. M Valery (1831). Voyages Historiques Et Litteraires En Italie, page 116, footnote. Chez le Normant.

• Uglow, Jennifer S. The Macmillan Dictionary of Women's Biography, Macmillan, 1982, ISBN 978-1-4039-3448-2