SOURCE: Nash, Jerry C. “Renaissance Misogyny, Biblical Feminism, and Hélisenne de Crenne's Epistres familieres et invectives.” Renaissance Quarterly 50, no. 2 (summer 1997): 379-410.

In the following essay, Nash discusses de Crenne's use of the Bible as a source of arguments and anecdotes to refute misogynist views, reject male arguments about female inferiority, and portray women as moral exemplars.

And truly, I say to you, wherever the gospel is preached in the whole world, what she has done will be told in memory of her.

—Mark 14:9¹

Je t'admonneste de … te repentir, d'avoir detracté de celles, pour lesquelles extoller tous vertueulx se travaillent (K ii).

—Crenne²

We will begin where all early modern feminists, from Christine de Pizan to Hélisenne de Crenne and beyond, begin: in the beginning was the word, and the word was misogynist. This is the ideological, literary, and cultural context for reading and appreciating virtually every...