A Cyclopaedia of Female Biography/Fidelis, Cassandra
FIDELIS, CASSANDRA,
A Venetian lady, died 1558, aged 100. Descended from ancestors who had changed their residence from Milan to Venice, and had uniformly added to the respectability of their rank by their uncommon learning, she began at an early age to prosecute her studies with great diligence, and acquired such a knowledge of the learned languages, that she may with justice be enumerated among the first scholars of the age. The letters which occasionally passed between Cassandra and Politian, demonstrate their mutual esteem, if indeed such an expression be sufficient to characterize the feelings of Politian, who expresses, in language unusually florid, his high admiration of her extraordinary acquirements, and his expectation of the benefits which the cause of letters would derive from her labours and example. In the year 1491, the Florentine scholar paid a visit to Venice, when the favourable opinion he had formed of her writings was confirmed by a personal interview.
From a letter written by this lady, many years afterwards, to Leo the Tenth, we learn that an epistolary correspondence had subsisted between her and Lorenzo de Medicis; and it is with concern we find, that the remembrance of this intercourse was revived, in order to induce the pontiff to bestow upon her some pecuniary assistance, she being then a widow, with a numerous train of dependants. She lived, however, to a more advanced period, and her literary acquirements, and the reputation of her early associates, threw a lustre upon her declining years; and, as her memory remained unimpaired to the last, she was resorted to from all parts of Italy as a living monument of those happier days, to which the Italians never reverted without regret. The letters and orations of this lady were published at Pavia, in 1636, with some account of her life. She wrote a volume of Latin poems also, on various subjects