Avicenna
Avicenna was born in Afshana, a village near Bukhara (in present-day Uzbekistan), the capital of the Samanids, a Persian dynasty in Central Asia and Greater Khorasan. His mother, named Sitāra, was from Bukhara; his father, Abdullāh, was a respected Ismaili scholar from Balkh, an important town of the Samanid Empire, in what is today Balkh Province, Afghanistan. His father worked in the government of Samanid in the village Kharmasain, a Sunni regional power. After five years, his younger brother, Mahmoud, was born. Avicenna first began to learn the Quran and literature in such a way that when he was ten years old he had essentially learned all of them.
Maddalena Campiglia
Maddalena Campiglia was born in Vicenza on April 13, 1553, an illegitimate child of Polissena Verlato and Carlo Campiglia. Both nobles and widowers, parents of two sons older than Maddalena, the two regularized their union only in 1565.
During her studies, the young Campiglia showed particular interest in literature, philosophy and music. Also important for her intellectual development was the attendance of the cultural society of the 16th century that met in the province of Vicenza at the villa owned by her cousin Elena, married to the Marquis Guido Sforza Gonzaga. Here she met: Curzio Gonzaga, Marquis of Palazzolo, poet and diplomat, a friend of writers and artists, who gained Campiglia's trust to the point of being designated by her in the will as curator of her writings; Bernardino Baldi and Torquato Tasso.
Presumably at the villa Gonzaga she met Dionisio da Colzè (or Calzé) whom she married in 1576; the marriage lasted till 1580, the year in which she separated and began to live alone. There was, by imposition of Campiglia, a white marriage, as can be deduced from the acts of separation from which it can also be understood her lack of predisposition towards motherhood.
In 1580 it also began her literary production, with writings of a religious nature in which, however, the nonconformist spirit was already visible. According to Campiglia, virginity had to be lived not as a constraint but as an effective means of achieving female independence from the male gender. As incarnation par excellence of this principle, she indicated the Virgin Mary who, according to her, had spontaneously voted for chastity and because of the greatness of this choice she had been chosen by God. She expressed this concept in "Discorso intorno all'Annunciazione della Vergine", printed in Vicenza in 1585.
The most recognized work of Campiglia was "Flori", a "boscareccia" fable inspired by the "Aminta" of Torquato Tasso that earned her the compliments of the poet himself. It was printed in Vicenza in 1588 and it was dedicated to Curzio Gonzaga. Flori is a virgin nymph devoted to the cult of Diana, who, struck by the death of her beloved friend Amaranta, despite the love of her girlfriend Licori, is destined to fall in love with the first man she meets. Although in love with the shepherd who meets the nymph, she accepts only a chaste marriage.