Medea Norsa

Norsa was born to Michele Norsa and Silvia Vittoria Krosna in Trieste on 26th August, 1877,[3] the oldest of four children.[4] After Silvia's death in 1886, her father married Caterina Giovanna Furlani in 1894 and had three more children.[4]

Norsa studied at a girls' school in Trieste from 1891 and took the maturità exam in classics in 1900 at another school in Koper.[4] She then left for university in Vienna, initially to study Italian literature.[5] However, she then moved to the Istituto di Studi Superiori in Florence in 1901 after one year in Vienna. Some scholars have argued that Norsa's year in Vienna and subsequent transfer to an Italian university was a typical practice of Italian scholars in the Austro-Hungarian empire, to which Trieste belonged at the time.[4] In 1906, she earned a degree in literature with full marks from the University of Florence, with a dissertation on Sophocles' Ajax and Aeschylus' Seven Against Thebes.[3]

In December 1906, she began to collaborate with her mentor Girolamo Vitelli and obtained a diploma from the school of palaeography, still at the Istituto di Studi Superiori.

Between 1907 and 1911, Norsa returned to Trieste and worked as a teacher at her former school.[3] In this period, she also published part of her university dissertation in the school's journal.[4][6]

In 1911, Norsa returned to Florence to work with Vitelli on the first volume of Papiri Greci e Latini della Società Italiana (PSI), which was published in 1912. Their ongoing collaboration continued up to Vitelli's death in 1935, and resulted in 11 volumes of the series.[5]

For much of her career, Norsa continued to teach, first in licei classici in towns in Tuscany, then in Florence where she also obtained a university teaching post in classical papyrology in 1924.[3]

Norsa was made conservator of the papyrus collection at the University of Florence in 1925. In 1935, she succeeded Vitelli as head of the Istituto Papirologico at the same university, which took on its founder's name to become the Istituto Papirologico Girolamo Vitelli.[7] She remained in the position until 1949, overseeing excavations at Antinoopolis and another two fascicules of the PSI.[8][7] However, anti-Semitism directed against her under Italian fascism made this period difficult. Mario Capasso has argued that the reason for her not having been appointed professor at the University of Florence during this period was that the university considered her Jewish.[9] Norsa's application to visit Egypt for the second season of the Antinoopolis excavation in 1939 prompted an enquiry by the government into her racial status, meaning she was not able to go.[3] The enquiry eventually declared her to be mista non ebrea (mixed, not Jewish).[3]

During her time at the Institute, Norsa played a key role in the acquisition of further papyri and ostraka, using funds offered by Enrico Rostagno,[3] and maintained a network of other papyrologists and antiquities dealers.[10][11] She is credited with the recognition and publication, in 1937, of a fragment of Sappho found on an ostracon (Sappho 2).[12][9]

In 1947-8, Norsa stepped down as head of the papyrology course at the University of Florence and was replaced by Vittorio Bartoletti,[3] another student of Vitelli.[10] She retired from the position of head of the Istituto Papirologico in 1949,[3] and was made the honorary president of the Association Internationale de Papyrologie in the same year.[9]

In 1993, a posthumous festschrift was published in her honour entitled Omaggio a Medea Norsa, edited by Mario Capasso.[9]

Norsa's house had been bombed in 1944 during the Second World War, destroying all of her books and papers and killing her sister-in-law, Eugenia.[3][9] Unable to afford any rebuilding work, she spent the rest of her life as a temporary guest first at the Laurentian Library, then at various religious institutions.[3] She suffered a stroke in 1947 and then a period of ill health that prompted her gradual retirement from teaching and leadership of the Institute.[9]

The last three years of Norsa's life were spent at a care home run by Dominican nuns.[9] She died in Florence on July 28th, 1952, aged 74.[5]

• (with Girolamo Vitelli) Papiri greci e latini, I-XIII, Firenze 1912-1953.
• 'La collezione fiorentina di papiri greci e latini,' Atene e Roma, n.s. 2., 1921, pp.202-207.
• Papiri greci e collezioni italiane: scritture documentarie. Roma 1929-1933.
• (with Girolamo Vitelli) Il Papiro Vaticano Greco 11: 1. Phaborinou peri phyges. 2. Registri fondiari della Marmarica, Città del Vaticano, 1931.
• (with Girolamo Vitelli) 'Frammenti di scolii agli Aitia di Callimaco.' Bulletin de la Société Royale d'Archéologie d'Alexandrie 28, 1933, pp. 123–132.
• (with Girolamo Vitelli) Diegeseis di poemi di Callimaco in un papiro di Tebtynis, Firenze 1934.
• 'Un frammento di fisica aristotelica in un papiro fiorentino,' Annali della Scuola Normale Superiore di Pisa 7, 1938, pp. 1–12.
• La scrittura letteraria greca dal secolo IV A.C. all’VIII D.C., Firenze 1939.
• 'Due frammenti fiorentini del papiro di Bacchilide P.Brit.Mus. 733. Una circolare ai pagarchoi della Tebaide del secolo VIII,' Annali della Scuola Normale Superiore di Pisa 10, 1941, pp. 155–170.

• 'Un frammento del Romanzo di Nino,' in Scritti dedicati alla memoria di Ippolito Rosellini nel primo centenario della morte (4 giugno 1943), Firenze, 1945, pp. 191–197.
• Papiri greci delle collezioni italiane. Scritture documentarie dal III sec. a.C. al sec. VIII d.C., Roma, 1946.
• 'Papiro Vaticano greco n. 2037A,' Aegyptus 32, 1952, pp. 232–240.

• http://mnorsa.altervista.org/2017/medea-norsa-contenuti-biografici/