 Although many of Marinella’s works, especially the long poem L’Enrico, overo Bisantio acquistato (1635), include philosophical themes, The Nobility stands as her most important, and perhaps her only uncontestable, contribution to philosophy. It is a contribution to a debate about the nature and the merits of women, which had its origin in The Book of the City of Ladies (1405) by Christine de Pizan (an argument for the moral superiority of her sex) written in response to The Romance of the Rose (~1275) by Guillaume de Lorris and Jean de Meun, in which women were vilified. Polemical works arguing that men were superior to women, or that women were superior to men, had proliferated in subsequent centuries, in French, Italian, Latin, German, Spanish and English. Such treatises generally relied on some combination of argument (usually drawn from ancient sources), examples, and citations from scripture and from literary or philosophical authorities.