In 1584, a short and remarkable book appeared in print: Letters on Natural Philosophy, written by a Paduan apothecary named Camilla Erculiani. Recently-rediscovered after centuries of obscurity, this book is the only work of natural philosophy published by a woman in sixteenth- century Italy that we currently know of. It may also be the first work published in Europe by an author of any gender to offer a systematic account of the human capacity to cause catastrophic harm to the global environment. Erculiani placed the blame for such a planetary catastrophe squarely on the human body. Citing Galen and the Book of Genesis while also drawing on her own expertise as a medical professional, Erculiani argued that mankind’s divinely-created physical embodiment had destroyed the natural equilibrium of elements and triggered the global disaster of Noah’s Flood – a process which she feared might be repeated in the near future as the human population of the earth again grew too large for the planet to bear. This paper situates Erculiani’s unique contribution to Renaissance science and medicine at the confluence of several powerful forces in 16th-century Europe, including the Reformations, the Little Ice Age, the Scientific Revolution, and Renaissance feminism. In its emphasis on embodied sin as a world-changing force, Erculiani’s Letters on Natural Philosophy illuminates the crucial role of religious belief in the emergence of an environmental consciousness which linked the imperfection of the human body to the degradation of the global environment.
