An Identity of One's Own. Olympia Morata, a learned lady in the Renaissance

Olympia Morata (Ferrara 1526-Heidelberg 1555) is a figure that deserves further insights and research. Woman of deep culture, a writer in Latin and in Greek, she lived at the Este Court of Ferrara at the time when the Duchess Renata of France was spreading the Calvinist religious faith in her entourage. Olympia embraced this faith unreservedly and it costs her escape and exile from Ferrara to take refuge in Germany, where she died at just 29 years. Olympia is therefore a wonderful example of a cultured woman of serious religious devotion, traits that appear in prayer, dialogue, letters, in both Latin and Greek. After her death, from 1558 Celio Secondo Curione collected her literary heritage and published it in various editions. Quite famous in the narrow circle of the Reformed, she was then forgotten and her work still need a good translation from Latin and an appropriate critical edition that overcomes and integrates the one carried out by Lanfranco Caretti in 1940 and 1954.