Margherita Sarrocchi

Girolamo Francino, S. Ceciliæ (1588)

Margherita Sarrocchi was born in Gragnano in the Neapolitan area around 1560. Her father was one Giovanni; the name of her mother is not known.[1]

After the death of her father, she was educated in Rome, first at the monastery of Santa Cecilia in Trastevere, then by Guglielmo Sirleto, the Vatican librarian, the scholar Rinaldo Corso, and finally by Luca Valerio, the mathematician and Greek scholar.[1]

In 1599, she married Carlo Birago, a Piedmontese gentleman. She was widowed in 1613, as evidenced by a letter from Valerio to Galileo dated August of that year.[1]

Sarrocchi and Galilei probably met in person in 1611 in Rome, where the scientist stayed from 29 March to 4 June to demonstrate to the members of the Curia the validity of his scientific discoveries which had been made public with the publication of the Sidereus Nuncius. The direct correspondence occurred between 29 July 1611 and 9 June 1612. This handful of letters, together with an exchange of letters with Galileo's circle, testifies to the credit that Sarrocchi enjoyed among the intellectuals of her day, even for skills in astronomy, geometry and physics.[1]

Sarrocchi was a member of the Roman academies of the Umoristi and Ordinati and of the Accademia degli Oziosi in Naples.[1]

The Scanderbeide, inspired by the exploits of the Albanian freedom fighter Scanderbeg, was published in Rome by Lepido Faci in 1606, incomplete (eleven cantos out of the intended twenty-four) and with many errors. It did not appear again until 1623, when it was published, posthumously, in Rome, for Andrea Fei, in twenty-three cantos, in an almost complete state.[1][2]

Rinaldina Russell, professor emerita of European languages and literatures at the City University of New York, Queen's College, has produced a partial translation of the Scanderbeide into English prose for the University of Chicago Press: Scanderbeide: The Heroic Deeds of George Scanderbeg, King of Epirus (October 2006).

• Cox, Virginia (2011). The Prodigious Muse: Women's Writing in Counter-Reformation Italy. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press.
• Mostaccio, Sara (24 September 2019). "Chi è Margherita Sarrocchi, la prima donna a scrivere un poema epico". Elle.com.
• Pezzini, Serena (2017). "SARROCCHI, Margherita". Dizionario Biografico degli Italiani, Volume 90: Salvestrini–Saviozzo da Siena (in Italian). Rome: Istituto dell'Enciclopedia Italiana. ISBN 978-8-81200032-6.
• Ray, Meredith K. (26 February 2016). "First female epic poet, forgotten voice of the Renaissance and Galileo's pen pal". WHYY.org.
• Ray, Meredith K. (2016). Margherita Sarrocchi's Letters to Galileo: Astronomy, Astrology, and Poetics in Seventeenth-Century Italy. New York: Palgrave Macmillan.
• Reichenbach, di Giulio (1936). "SARROCCHI, Margherita". Enciclopedia Italiana di Scienze, Lettere ed Arti (Treccani.it)
• Verdile, Nadia (2014). "Margherita Sarrocchi". Enciclopedia delle donne (enciclopediadelledonne.it)
• "Sarròcchi, Margherita" (2021). Enciclopedia De Agostini (sapere.it)
• "Sarròcchi, Margherita" (2017). Enciclopedia on line (Treccani.it)