Introduction

by Christopher Francese (October 3, 2024)

Luisa Sigea (also known as Luisa Sigea Toletana, Luisa Sigea de Velasco, or Louisa Sigea, Latin form Aloysia Sygaea) lived from ca. 1522 to 1560 (on the date of her birth, see Bourdon and Sauvage 1970, 36–39). She astounded contemporaries with her linguistic and literary virtuosity. Active as a humanist scholar in court circles in Spain and Portugal from a young age, she gained celebrity by writing a letter to Pope Paul III in Latin, Greek, Hebrew, Classical Syriac, and Arabic, apparently at the age of 22 (Bourdon and Sauvage 1970, 38–39). Her precocious talent was nurtured by her pious and learned father, Diogo Sigeo, who taught Latin, Greek, and Hebrew in Toledo, Spain. She gained deep familiarity with classical literature, the Bible, and church fathers such as St. Jerome. Her own brief summary of her life, written in a letter to Philip II in 1559, is as follows: "though my place of origin is Tarançon, I was brought up in Portugal, and am of French stock, and I was educated in the Latin, Greek, Hebrew, Syriac, and, to some extent, Arabic, languages by my father and other tutors" (quoted in Stevenson 2005, 212). André de Resende (1498–1573) a Dominican friar considered the father of archaeology in Portugal, praised her as follows (in hexameter verse):

Then there is Sigea, a remarkable maiden, whom Mother Nature has produced expressly to be the one woman who could be a reproach to the supine efforts of men, and fill the lazy with great shame. For though scarcely twenty-one years old, tirelessly, day and night she never stops turning the Latin pages, she never stops turning the Greek pages, and the industrious poet scours Mosaic and Hebrew texts. She even runs without stumbling through the crags of Syriac and the rough paths of Arabic, skilled in five languages.

Altera Sygaea est, virgo admirabilis, unam 
quam natura parens ideo produxit, ut esset 
femina, quae maribus vitam opprobrare supinam 
posset, et ignavos magno adfecisse rubore. 
Nam quum septenas vix dum trieteridis annos 
computet, indefessa dies noctesque Latinas 
volvere non cessat chartas, non cessat Achaeas, 
Moseaque ac Solymos rimatur sedula vates; 
quin per Achemenios scopulos, Arabumque salebras 
currit inoffense, linguarum quinque perita.

This description derives from a letter (quoted by Serrano y Sanz 1903, 400) addressed to Maria of Portugal (1521–1527), an Infanta of Portugal and daughter of the Portuguese king Manuel I (1495–1521). 

Infanta Maria would go on to become an important figure in Sigea’s life. In 1542 Diogo Sigeo was invited by the Portuguese royal family to send his daughter to Ribeira Palace in Lisbon, the main residence of the kings of Portugal, where she was admitted, along with her sister Angela, as a chambermaid of Queen Catarina. There she soon joined the circle of cultivated women around the Infanta Maria (Bourdon and Sauvage 1940, 47–48). Manuel’s daughter by his third wife, the Archduchess Eleanor of Austria, Maria possessed an immense fortune deriving from both parents, and yet lay outside the line of royal succession. She established a court for herself and lived as a great Renaissance princess, supporting numerous artists and scholars, Luisa Sigea among them. Sigea taught Latin to the Infanta and was paid 16,000 reis per year, an amount higher than that received by other chambermaids. At court Luisa had access to the royal library and could dedicate herself to her literary pursuits (Frade 2016, 52–53).

The main work presented here, Syntra (or Sintra), was written in the early 1550s, probably 1553 (Stevenson 2005, 214). It is a 108-line poem in elegiac couplets in the style of classical Latin poets such as Ovid and Claudian, about the then thought-to-be-impending marriage of the Infanta Maria. The setting, which gives the poem its name, is the famously beautiful Sintra forest near Lisbon, site of the Palace of Sintra (Palácio de Sintra), rebuilt under King Manuel I.

After a description of the forest and surrounding mountains (lines 1–44), Sigea, looking out from the palace, sees a water nymph appear from a pool and converses with her (45–76). The nymph recounts a meeting on Mt. Olympus where Jupiter predicted a glorious marriage for Maria (lines 77–86). The speaker then asks the nymph exactly when this reassuring prophecy is to be fulfilled, and the nymph promises it will come to pass within a year (87–98). The poem ends with an earnest prayer for the fulfilment of the prophecy, along with a hint that its fulfilment might lead to literary immortality for the author herself (99–108).

At this time (early 1550s) negotiations were underway for the marriage of Maria to Philip II of Spain, then in his mid-20s. Philip was the son of the Holy Roman Emperor, Archduke of Austria, and King of Spain Charles V. Philip had been helping to govern the most extensive empire in the world since the young age of sixteen. The engagement was broken off at the last minute due to Charles’ insistence that Philip marry the new queen of England, Mary I, known as Mary Tudor. But at the time of the writing of the Syntra this had not yet happened. The tone of the poem is one of joyous anticipation of honor and imperial power for Maria (haec reget imperium fēlīx, cum nūpserit, orbis, 85). Reading between the lines, however, one can glimpse, as Jane Stevenson puts it, "something of the pressures, and humiliations, of the lives of princesses, since it is apparently written in response to depression and anxiety on the infanta's part: the reassurances offered by the Nymph suggest that she felt life was passing her by, and despaired of her future” (Stevenson 205, 213–14).

The style is characterized by elegant periphrases and mythological references familiar to readers of classical Latin poetry. For example, the arrival of dawn is described as follows: līquerat Aurōram Cephalus, “Cephalus had left Aurora" (line 47). When Jupiter smiles, he is adrīdēns vultū: "smiling with respect to his face,” i.e. "with a smile on his face" (line 75), a turn of phrase that recalls Vergil but is closer to words used by Silius Italicus in his epic Punica. This commentary does not aim to notice all such classical phrases and allusions, but a few significant ones are mentioned in the notes. Probably the most significant classical resonance is with Jupiter’s prophecy of greatness for the Romans in the first book of Vergil’s Aeneid (1.254–271).

Sigea’s major work, not included here, was Duarum virginum colloquium de vita aulica et privata (Dialogue of two maidens on court life vs. private life). Composed in 1552 but not fully published until 1905 (Serrano y Sanz 1905, 419–471; the best modern edition is that of Sauvage 1970), this is a lengthy philosophical dialogue in the style of Cicero’s Tusculan Disputations on the question of which is the better life for a learned woman, the worldly life at court, or a more secluded life of religious piety and study. While this work has yet to be translated into English, excerpts from it, from the Syntra, and from Sigea's preserved letters, have been translated by Edward V. George (2002). A few occasional poems in Spanish are also preserved (Serrano y Sanz 1905, 405–409).

Sigea corresponded with some of the major figures of her day. Besides the letter to Pope Paul III, we have letters to Philip II, Queen Mary of Hungary, governor of the Netherlands, and to various prominent Catholic clerics and diplomats. A collection of twenty-two surviving letters has been admirably edited, annotated, and translated into French by Louis Bourdon and Odette Sauvage (1970). 

We present those letters written to women: three to Queen Mary of Hungary (numbers 13–15 in the numbering of Bourdon and Sauvage) and one written to a young girl at the Spanish court, Magdalena de Padilla, with advice and encouragement to continue her study of the humanities and not to become distracted by the shallow social life of the court (number 16). All these are included in a manuscript now in the Madrid National Library, which has been digitized and made freely available (MSS 18672/98). This manuscript seems to have been created in the 18th century (Serrano y Sanz 1905, 409). While we have followed Bourdon and Sauvage’s edition, we have also checked the Madrid MS in cases of doubt.

We decided not to include selections from the Colloquium, partly due to the somewhat greater difficulty and abstraction of the Latin. But its themes can be glimpsed in the letter to Magdalena de Padilla (#16). Here we see Sigea’s deep love of learning and the liberal arts, and her mixed feelings about court life. She is profoundly grateful to her royal patrons for making her intellectual life possible, clearly appreciative of the palace’s beauties and comforts, and eager to try to use her learning and position to influence the powerful for the good. Yet Sigea’s piety and seriousness made her wary of court politics, worldliness, frivolity, and superficiality. This conflict of values is a well-known humanist theme and is explored at length in the Colloquium.

The letters to Queen Mary of Hungary come from 1557, after Sigea left the employ of Maria of Portugal and was seeking employment for herself and her husband, Francisco de Cuevas, whom she married in 1557 (Stevenson 2005, 213). She had moved to the little village of Torres-Novas, near her husband’s home city of Burgos, and the couple had one daughter, Juana de Cuevas Sigea. In 1558, she brought them to Valladolid, numbered Sigea among her dames de maison, and gave de Cuevas the post of secretary (ibid.). But the post lasted only a few months. The Queen died shortly afterwards. The rest of Luisa's life was spent unsuccessfully trying to gain another position at court. She died in Burgos on October 13, 1560.

Cover image: detail from "Poetry, a woman with a laurel crown," engraving by Raphael Morghen (Italian, 1758-1833) after Carlo Dolci (Italian, 1616-1687). 1827. Metropolitan Museum of Art, 41.97.81.

Reference List

Bourdon, L. and O. Sauvage. 1970. “Recherches sur Luisa Sigea,” Bulletin des études portuguaises 31: 33–176. Includes the Latin text of the letters with French translation and notes, and a careful reconstruction of what can be known about her life.

Frade, Sofia. 2016. “Hic sita Sigea est: satis hoc: Luisa Sigea and the Role of D. Maria, Infanta of Portugal, in Female Scholarship,” in Women Classical Scholars: Unsealing the Fountain from the Renaissance to Jacqueline de Romilly, edited by Rosie Wyles and Edith Hall. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Pp. 48–60

George, Edward V. 2002. “Luisa Sigea (1522–1560): Iberian Scholar-Poet,” in Women Writing Latin: From Roman Antiquity to Early Modern Europe. Vol. 3: Early Modern Women Writing Latin, edited by Laurie J. Churchill, Phyllis R. Brown, and Jane E. Jeffrey. New York: Routledge. Pp. 167-188. Introduction, Latin text and English translation of excepts from Syntra, Colloquium, and letters.

Pérez, Raúl Amores. 2008. “Biografía de Luisa Sigea Toledana. Una taranconera del siglo XVI en la corte portuguesa y española.” In Melchor Cano y Luisa Sigea: Dos figuras del renacimento español, 167–265. Seminario de Estudios Renacentistas Conquenses. Tarancón: Excmo. Ayuntamiento de Tarancón.

Sauvage, Odette. 1970. Louise Sigée: Dialogue de deux jeunes filles sur la vie de cour et la vie de retraite (1552). Paris: Presses Universitaires de France. Introduction, Latin text and annotated French translation of the Colloquium.

Serrano y Sanz, Manuel. 1905. Apuntes para una biblioteca de escritores españolas desde el año 1401 al 1833. Tomo II. Madrid: Sucesores de Rivadeneyra. Pp. 394–471. Introduction (pp. 394–403), full Latin texts of the Syntra (pp. 403–405), letters, and Colloquium. Freely available at the Internet Archive.

Stevenson, Jane. 2005. Women Latin Poets: Language, Gender, and Authority from Antiquity to the Eighteenth Century. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Thiemann, Susanne. 2006. Vom Glück der Gelehrsamkeit: Luisa Sigea, Humanistin im 16. Jahrhundert. Göttingen: Wallstein.