ABSTRACT
Sometime in the late 1570s, Angela di Fais, daughter of Piero the master linen-weaver, gathered up her few possessions in an act of desperation and fled the home of her husband, Bartolomeo de Albertis, a wine porter in the city of Venice, to return to her natal family. Taking lodging with Andrea Gabrieli, organist at the Basilica of San Marco in Venice, she may have helped to support herself by practicing the craft of weaving for the next few years, until her family retained counsel to plead her case to Church authorities. In the protracted ecclesiastical and communal proceedings which followed, Angela’s objective was to obtain permission to leave her marriage without obligation to return; her husband’s, to oppose her at every turn. 1
