Work
All of Cornificia's work has been lost. Her reputation as a poet is based chiefly on the 4th century Chronicle of St Jerome (347–420 AD). In writing of her brother Cornificius, Jerome says "Huius soror Cornificia, cuius insignia extant epigrammata" (His sister was Cornificia, whose distinguished epigrams survive). This must mean that her work was still being read some four hundred years after her death.
Cornificia is one of the one hundred and six subjects of Giovanni Boccaccio’s On Famous Women (De mulieribus claris, 1362), which says of her -
| “ | She was equal in glory to her brother Cornificius, who was a much renowned poet at that time. Not satisfied with excelling in such a splendid art, inspired by the sacred Muses, she rejected the distaff and turned her hands, skilled in the use of the quill, to writing Heliconian verses... With her genius and labor she rose above her sex, and with her splendid work she acquired a perpetual fame. | ” |
The Renaissance humanist and feminist Laura Cereta wrote in a letter to Bibolo Semproni: "Add also Cornificia, the sister of the poet Cornificius, whose devotion to literature bore such a fruit that she was said to have been nurtured on the milk of the Castalian Muses and who wrote epigrams in which every phrase was graced with Heliconian flowers."
Read more about this topic: Cornificia
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