On the Nobility and Excellence of the Female Sex

BY HENRY CORNELIUS AGRIPPA original: "HENRICI COR. AGRIP." Henry Cornelius Agrippa (1486–1535) was a famous German polymath, physician, and legal scholar whose defense of women was radical for its time.

...it is never necessary to come. Finally, with a wondrous sense of decency, nature itself has arranged the private parts of women so that they do not project as they do in men, but remain within, set aside in a more secret and safer place. Furthermore, nature bestowed more modesty upon women than upon men. For this reason, it has very often happened that a woman suffering from a dangerous abscess of the groin chose death rather than submit herself to the sight and touch of a surgeon to be healed. And they retain this honest modesty even when dying and when dead, as is most clearly seen in those who perish in water. For, Pliny as Pliny Referring to Pliny the Elder’s Natural History, a massive encyclopedia from the 1st century AD that served as a standard reference for natural phenomena in the Renaissance. records and experience bears witness, a woman [who has drowned] lies face down, nature sparing the shame of the deceased, whereas a man floats on his back.

Added to this is the fact that the most dignified part of a human being—by which we differ most from the beasts and indicate our divine nature—is the head, and most especially the face within it. Indeed, the head in men is deformed by baldness, whereas woman, by a great privilege of nature, does not go bald. Moreover, the face in men is often so disfigured by that most hateful beard and covered with dirty hairs that they can hardly be distinguished from wild beasts; in women, on the contrary, the face always remains pure and graceful. Hence, in the Law of the Twelve Tables The Law of the Twelve Tables (c. 450 BCE) was the foundation of Roman law. Agrippa here interprets an ancient rule against women scratching their faces in mourning as a prohibition against shaving, to preserve their natural hairless beauty., a provision was made that women should not shave their cheeks, lest a beard might ever grow out and their modesty be hidden. This is also the most evident proof of the cleanliness and purity of a woman to everyone: that once a woman has been cleanly washed, however often she is rinsed afterward in pure water, the water itself receives no mark of impurity...