Marcela Borelli

As we know, the sacred books of the three religions are not characterized by a gender-friendly approach. In the very beginning of the Old Testament we find the tale of the Fall of Man, where the serpent tempts Eve, who in turn tempts Adam to commit the original sin: to eat the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge. Eve’s guilt is taken for granted, and rarely discussed. The question of Eve’s guilt was first taken up in Augustine’s De Genesi ad Litteram, and was then later further systematized in Peter Lombard’s Sentences. Isotta Nogarola was a pioneer in taking this discussion beyond university walls, to the intellectual Veronese circles. When Isotta Nogarola pleads for Eve’s case in her Dialogue on the Equal or Unequal Sin of Adam and Eve, she may not be the first to defend Eve, but she has the merit of being a woman who is pleading for a woman’s case. We examine the background of this discussion in Isotta, focusing especially on the scholastic antecedents to this debate. Although most of the quotations cited by Isotta are attributed to early Christian and pagan authors—sources that are typical of humanistic literature—we will demonstrate that many of them are in fact taken from scholastic sources discussing original sin, which are the true immediate sources of Isotta’s dialogue.

En este trabajo ofrecemos la traducción del latín al castellano del Prólogo al Liber disputationum contra Symonem iudeum de Pedro de Cornwall, única sección del texto que se encuentra actualmente editada gracias a la labor de Richard W. Hunt. A ella se le suma, a modo de anexo, el breve intercambio final entre los personajes de Pedro y Simón que Hunt transcribió en la introducción a dicha edición. Ambas traducciones están precedidas por la presentación del autor y de la obra en su conjunto, y de un breve estudio crítico del texto tanto en sí mismo como en relación con su contexto de producción: los diálogos literarios de disputas interreligiosas que florecieron entre finales del siglo XI y principios del XIII.