A Cyclopaedia of Female Biography/Mattugliana Mea
MATTUGLIANA MEA.
Among the women who gave lustre to the literature of Bologna during the fifteenth century, was Bartolomea, whom her contemporaries universally called Mea. She is supposed to have been the wife of Michele Mattugliani, or Mattugani, a man honoured and respected by his fellow-citizens, both for his own merit, and for the elevated situation to which his birth entitled him. She is represented as beautiful, accomplished, and learned. A modern Bolognese writer has indulged his imagination with the probabilities of a romantic attachment between her and the young Carlo Cavalcabo; but this is mere fantasy: we have nothing to authenticate, or even afford the slightest base for such a legend. On the contrary, Mea appears to have been a prudent, virtuous wife. Carlo Cavalcabo, elevated to the lordship of Bologna in 1405, took pleasure in a select society of intellectual persons. He addressed to the Bolognese poetess' a poetical epistle which breathes nothing but the most respectful friendship. She replied to it by an answer in terza rima, which is the only one of her works now-extant. The poetry is graceful, sweet, and of an elevated moral tone. She enumerates the titles and honours of Cavalcabo, gives him just praise without adulation; in a dignified manner she thanks him for attributing so much merit to her, while she modestly disclaims his praises; she says they will be to her an incentive to improvement. Then follows a learned account of those women who have honoured their sex by virtue, with deprecations for those who have sought other than honest fame. She concludes by exhorting the Lord of Cremona to meritorious enterprises.