FOOTNOTES:

"No,It isn't decent, and for many reasons,That womankind should study and know too much.To teach her children what is right and wrong,Manage her household, oversee her servants,And keep expenses within bounds, should beHer only study and philosophy.Our fathers, on this point, showed great good sense;They said a woman always knows enoughIf but her understanding reachesTo telling, one from t'other, coat and breeches.Their wives, who couldn't read, led honest lives,Their households were their only learned theme,And all their books were thimble, thread and needles.With which they made their daughters' wedding outfits.But now our women scorn to live like that;They want to write and all be authoresses.They think no knowledge is too deep for them."[77]

Molière's intention in writing these justly famous comedies was not, as is so often asserted, to ridicule women of learning, but only those superficial pedants who affected knowledge or loved to make a display of the little knowledge they happened to possess. The result, however, was quite different from what had been intended, for the poet's pleasantries were taken so seriously, that even women of real learning, in order to avoid ridicule, were condemned to absolute silence. The comic dramatist, Destouches, expressed the prevailing opinion when he wrote:

"Une femme savanteDoit cacher son savoir, ou c'est une imprudente."[78]

Few French women thereafter had the courage to defend their sex, as did their sisters in Italy, and the result was that, with a few exceptions, like Mme. du Châtelet, Sophie Germain, and Mme. Lepaute, there were no more learned women in France for fully two centuries.

Never did satire and ridicule accomplish more, except probably in the case ofDon Quixote—that masterly creation of Cervantes which dealt the death-blow to knight-errantry—than didLes Femmes SavantesandLes Précieuses Ridicules. The learned woman became as much an object of derision in France as was the knight-errant in Spain.

It was not, however, in the nature of the French woman, with all her vivacity and energy, to be suppressed entirely or to be relegated for long to the background in things ofthe mind. But, not then daring to face the ridicule which was inevitable, if she devoted herself to science or philosophy, she sought a substitute for her intellectual activity in the salon.

The first salon was established by an Italian woman, the Marquise de Rambouillet, in 1617, and was modeled after the famous reunions held at the court of Urbino under Elizabetta Gonzaga, a century before. Although it never exhibited the splendor of its Italian prototype, the Hôtel de Rambouillet was for more than fifty years the most important literary center of the kind in France. Here, owing to the tact, esprit, and magnetic personality of Mme. de Rambouillet, were gathered the most distinguished men and women of the time. Among them were poets, philosophers, statesmen, ecclesiastics and ladies of rank, whose names still dazzle us by their brilliancy. Bossuet, Molière, La Fontaine, Corneille and the great Condé were there; so were Fléchier, Balzac, Voiture, Saint-Evremont, Descartes and La Rochefoucauld; and so, too, were Mme. de Sevigné, the Duchess of Montpensier, Madeleine de Scudéry, La Comtesse de La Fayette, Charlotte de Montmorency, and Cardinal Richelieu who got from this noted salon the idea which led to his greatest foundation—the French Academy.

It was Mme. de Rambouillet who, through her reunions in her exquisiteChambre Bleue, for the first time brought together elements that were previously considered as belonging to different castes. It was she, also, who created modern society with its purely intellectual hierarchy, by having the representatives of the nobility meet men of science and letters on an equal footing. It seems to us now the most natural thing in the world for a great savant, a great poet, or a great philosopher, to be received in the same salon with the Duchess of Montpensier—La Grande Mademoiselle—but it was far from being so when the brilliant young Italian matron—for she was a daughter of thenoble Roman family of the Savelli—began her epoch-making work in the Hôtel de Rambouillet, where, after overcoming countless difficulties and prejudices, she eventually succeeded in bringing together, and in enlisting in a common cause, the nobility of birth and the nobility of intellect, and introducing into the exclusive set of Paris the same kind of social coteries that had so long been popular in Urbino and Ferrara.

The Hôtel de Rambouillet was the exemplar of that long series of salons which, for two centuries, were the favorite trysting-places of the talent, the wit, the beauty of Europe, and which exerted such a potent influence on society and on the progress of science and literature. The mistress of the salon was supreme, and she maintained her supremacy by her tact, sympathy, intelligence and mental alertness, rather than by learning and superior mental power.

Indeed, it is a singular fact that very few of thesalonièreswere learned women. The most gifted and the most learned of them were Mlle. Lespinasse, Mme. de Staël, and Mme. Swetchine. Mme. Geoffrin, who was of bourgeois origin, was so devoid of education that Voltaire said she was unable to write two lines correctly. And yet, despite her educational limitations, she became, by her own unaided efforts, the queen of intellectual Europe.

And, if we may judge by their portraits, most of the great leaders of salons were homely, if not positively ugly, and many of them were advanced in years. Thus, Mme. du Deffand—the female Voltaire—was sixty-eight years old and blind when her friendship with Horace Walpole, one of the wittiest Englishmen who ever lived, began—a friendship that endured until her death at the age of eighty-three. The face of Mlle. de Lespinasse was disfigured by small-pox and her eyesight was impaired; and yet, without rank, wealth or beauty, she was the pivot around which circled the talent and fashion of Paris, and whose personal magnetism was so great that the state, the church,the court, as well as foreign countries, had their most distinguished representatives in her salon.

Here she received and entertained her friends every evening from five until nine o'clock. "It was," writes La Harpe, "almost a title to consideration to be received into this society." So great was the influence exerted by Mlle. de Lespinasse that she bent savants to her will by the sheer force of genius. Her salon became known as "the ante-chamber of the French Academy"; for it was asserted that half the academicians of her time owed their fauteuils to her active canvass in their behalf. And so successful was she in opening the lips and minds of her habitués, whether an historian like Hume, a philosopher like Condillac, a statesman like Turgot, a mathematician like d'Alembert, a litterateur like Marmontel or an encyclopedist like Condorcet, that it was said of her that she made "marble feel and matter think."

She was a veritable enchantress of the great and the learned of her time. She did not, however, wield her magic wand through her learning, or the accident of birth, or the physical attractions of person, but solely by reason of her wonderful vivacity, charm of mind, and exquisite tact, which consisted, as those who knew her well tell us, "in the art of saying to each that which suits him," and in "making the best of the minds of others, of interesting them, and of bringing them into play without any appearance of constraint or effort." This rare faculty it was which secured for her a supremacy in the world of thought and action that has been accorded to but few women in the world's history. Vibrant with emotion and passion, she reminds one of the gifted but hapless Heloise. Marmontel, who had such a high opinion of her judgment that he submitted his works for her criticism, as Molière had submitted his to Ninon de Lenclos, describes her as "the keenest intelligence, the most ardent soul, the most inflammable imagination that has existed since Sappho."

But aside from what she achieved indirectly through the habitués of her salon, what has this supremely clever woman left to the world? Only a few love letters to a heartless coxcomb.

And what have the other noted salonières from the time of the Marquise de Rambouillet to that of Mme. Swetchine—full two centuries—bequeathed to us that is worth preserving? With the exception of the works of Mme. de Staël, whom Lord Jeffrey declared to be "the greatest female writer in any age or country," we have little more than certainMémoiresandCorrespondanceswhose chief claims to fame rest on the vivid pictures which they present of the manners and customs of the time and of the celebrities who were regarded as the chief ornaments of the salons which they severally frequented. Most of these works were posthumous; for few women, after Molière's merciless scoring of learned women, had the courage to appear in print. Even Mme. de Scudéry, one of the most gifted and prolific writers of the period, gave her first novel to the world under her brother's name. And so tabooed was female authorship that Mme. de La Fayette, one of the most brilliant of theprécieuses, disclaimed all knowledge of herPrincesse de Clèves, while her masterpiece,Histoire d'Henriette d'Angleterre, was not published until after her death.

The truth is that the period of the salon was for the most part a period of contrasts and contradictions. At first the better educatedsalonièreswere chiefly interested in belles-lettres. Then they devoted themselves more to science and philosophy, and finally, during the years immediately preceding the Revolution, they found their greatest pleasure in politics. As for the men, while professing to adore women, they had little esteem for them, and still less respect. Often, it is true, the women who frequented the salons were deserving neither of respect nor of esteem.

Sydney Smith spoke of those under the old régime as "women of brilliant talents who violated all the common duties of life and gave very pleasant little suppers." It was certainly true of many of them—even of some of the most distinguished—such, for instance, as Mme. d'Epinay, Mme. du Deffand, Ninon de Lenclos and Mme. Tencin, the mother of D'Alembert. There was little in their manner of life to distinguish them from thehetæræof ancient Athens, and it was probably owing to this fact, as well as their wit and brilliancy, that many of them attained such preëminence as social leaders. The statesmen, philosophers, men of science and letters of France, like those of Greece more than two thousand years before, wanted distraction and amusement. That the mistresses of the salons should be women of learning was of little moment. The all important thing for their habitués was that they should be good entertainers—that they should be witty, tactful and sympathetic—and, if ignorant, that they should be brilliantly ignorant, and, at the same time, enchantingly frank and naïve.

Strange as it may appear there was as much hostility to learned women at the close of the eighteenth century as there was in the time of Louis XIV. And the remarkable fact is that the strongest opponents of women's education were found among the most prominent writers and scholars of the day—men who, like their predecessors of old, based their opposition on the assumed mental inferiority of woman. Thus, to Rousseau, woman was at best but "an imperfect man," and, in many respects, little more than "a grown-up child." Search after abstract and speculative truths, principles and axioms in science, "everything that tends to generalize ideas is outside of her competence." That means that women are to be excluded from the study of mathematics and the physical sciences, because they are incapable of generalization, abstraction, and the mental concentration that these subjects demand. Eventhe masterpieces of literature, according to him, are beyond their comprehension. In a word, feminine studies, Rousseau will have it, should relate exclusively to practical and domestic matters and he endorses the words of Molière that

"It is not seemly, and for many reasons,That a woman should study and know so many things."

Diderot, Montesquieu, Voltaire and the Encyclopedists share the views of Rousseau. Diderot declares that serious studies do not comport with woman's sex, while Montesquieu would limit female education to mere accomplishments.

But this is not all. Antagonistic as these men were to the education of the daughters of the nobility and the well-to-do, they were entirely opposed to the education of the children of the poor. "The good of society," it was averred, "demands that the instruction of the people extend not beyond their occupations." "The poor," declares Rousseau, "have no need of instruction," and Voltaire and the Encyclopedists say, "Amen."[79]

Very little need be said about the education of women in Germany during the period we have been considering. When there was any at all, it was of the most rudimentary character, while as to books, they were limited to the kind recommended by Byron for the women of modern Greece—"booksof piety and cookery." The attitude of the Germans generally toward female education, for centuries past, was clearly defined by the Kaiser Wilhelm II, when, a few years ago, he publicly stated: "I agree with my wife. She says women have no business to interfere with anything outside of the four K's, that is,Kinder,Kirche,Küche,Kleider—children, church, kitchen, clothes."

There was, however, during the period we are now considering, one remarkable example of a learned woman of Teutonic origin. This was the famous Anna Maria van Schurman, who was one of the most gifted women that ever lived. She was, probably, as near to being a universal genius as any one of her sex of whom we have knowledge. Artist, musician, poet, philosopher, theologian, linguist, she was the admiration of the scholars of the world and the pride of the Low Countries—the land of her birth. She lived when Holland was in the van of human progress and amidst of the splendors of the Dutch Renaissance. She was the friend and correspondent of the most distinguished scholars and most noted celebrities of her time. Among these were Voet, Spanheim, Descartes, Gassendi, Constantine Huyghens, Princess Elizabeth of Bohemia, Queen Christina of Sweden, and Cardinal Richelieu. To go to the Netherlands, it was then said, without seeing Anna van Schurman, was like going to Paris without seeing the king. She was hailed as "The Tenth Muse," "The Sappho of Holland," "The Oracle of Art," "The Star of Utrecht."

That, however, which gave the greatest renown to the "Learned Maid," as Anna was called, was her extraordinary knowledge of languages. For, besides being proficient in the chief modern tongues of Europe, she was well acquainted with Latin, Greek, Hebrew, Syro-Chaldaic and Ethiopic. The oriental languages she studied as an aid to the better understanding of Holy Scripture.

She was the author of several works, among which was an Ethiopic grammar which was acclaimed by the professorsof the Dutch universities as a marvelous achievement. Her best known volume is designatedOpuscula. It was brought out by the Elzevirs in Leyden and went through several editions. It is composed of letters and short treatises in French, Latin, Greek and Hebrew—in verse as well as prose.

Of more value, if less striking, than the productions named were the "Learned Maid's" writings in favor of the intellectual enfranchisement of her own sex. In a letter to Dr. Rivet, Professor of Theology in Leyden, she declares:

"My deep regard for learning, my conviction that equal justice is the right of all, impel me to protest against the theory which would allow only a minority of my sex to attain to what is in the opinion of all men most worth having. For, since wisdom is admitted to be the crown of human achievement, and is within every man's right to aim at in proportion to his opportunities, I cannot see why a young girl, in whom we admit a desire of self-improvement, should not be encouraged to acquire the best that life affords."

To those who objected that the distaff and the needle were sufficient to occupy women's minds, Anna Maria made answer that the words of Plutarch—"It becomes a perfect man to know what is to be known and to do what is to be done"—applied with equal truth to a perfect woman.[80]

In England, until the latter part of the nineteenth century,the educational status of women was but little better than in Germany. During the Stuart period schools for girls were so scarce that most of those who received any education at all obtained it at home under private tutors. Even then it rarely embraced more than reading, writing, needlework, singing, dancing and playing on the lute or virginal.[81]

As to the higher studies for women, Lady Mary Wortley Montagu writes as follows: "My sex is usually forbid studies of this nature and folly reckoned so much our proper sphere that we are sooner pardoned any excesses of that than the least pretensions to reading or good sense. We are permitted no books but such as tend to the weakening or effeminating of the mind. Our natural defects are in every way indulged, and it is looked upon as in a degree criminal to improve our reason or fancy we have any.... There is hardly a creature in the world more despicable or more liable to universal ridicule than that of a learned woman: these words imply, according to the received sense, a tattling, impertinent, vain and conceited creature."[82]

Higher studies for their daughters were regarded by the generality of men, the same writer tells us, "as great a profanation as the clergy would do if the laity would presume to exercise the functions of the priesthood."

Referring to the handicaps suffered by the women of England in the pursuit of knowledge, the same writer declares: "We are educated in the grossest ignorance, and no art is omitted to stifle our natural reason; if some few get above their nurses' instructions, our knowledge must be concealed and be as useless to the world as gold in the mine."

Lord Chesterfield, inHis Letters to His Son, expresses the opinion of his contemporaries when he writes on the same subject as follows: "Women are only children of a larger growth; they have an entertaining tattle, sometimes wit; but, for solid reasoning, good sense, I never in my life knew one who had it, or who reasoned or acted consequentially for twenty-four hours together.... A man of sense only trifles with them, plays with them, humors and flatters them as he does a sprightly forward child; but he neither consults them about nor trusts them with serious matters, though he often makes them believe he does both, which is the thing in the world which they are proud of; for they love mightily to be dabbling in business, which, by the way, they always spoil, and, being distrustful that men in general look upon them in a trifling light, they almost adore that man who talks to them seriously and seems to consult and trust them."[83]

And this was written by that "mirror of politeness and chivalry" whose name has for two centuries been synonymous with that of a perfect gentleman! And Lady Montagu was compelled to pen her caustic and pathetic plaints during the age of Pope, Steele, Addison, Swift,[84]Johnson, Dryden and Goldsmith—the most brilliant pleiad of literary men that England had known since the days of Shakespeare.

So unnatural for women were literary and scientific pursuits regarded by all classes that the few who attained any eminence in them were classed as abnormal creatures who deserved no more consideration than did thePrécieusesacross the Channel. And so great was the power of public sentiment against women writers that Fanny Burney was afraid to acknowledge the authorship ofEvelina. Even in Jane Austen's days, the feeling that a woman, in writing a book, was overstepping the limitations of her sex was so pronounced that she never actually avowed the authorship of those charming works which have been the delight of three generations of readers. It was this same sentiment that caused the Brontë sisters and George Eliot, as well as many other notable women, to write under pseudonyms. They feared to disclose theirsex lest their works, if known as the productions of women, should beipso factobranded as of inferior merit.

During the period in question women fared no better in the United States than in England. They were subject to the same educational debarment and were the victims of the same snobbery and intolerance. The Pilgrim Fathers and their descendants for many generations made no secret of their belief in the mental inferiority of woman, and applied to her the gospel of liberty contained in the following words of Eve to Adam as given inParadise Lost:

"My author and dispenser, what thou bidstUnargued I obey; so God ordains;God is thy law, thou mine: to know no moreIs woman's happiest knowledge and her praise."

To the Puritan of New England, as to the Puritan Milton, the relative attainments of woman and man were tersely expressed in Tennyson's couplet:

"She knows but matters of the house,And he, he knows a thousand things."

To us one of the most astounding facts in the educational history of New England is the long time during which girls were without free school opportunities. Thus, although schools had been established within twenty years after the Pilgrims landed at Plymouth Rock, it was not until a century and a half later that their doors were opened to girls. The public schools of Boston were established in 1642, but were not opened for girls until 1789; and then only for instruction in spelling, reading and composition, and that but one half of the year. There was no high school in Boston, the vaunted Athens of America, until 1852.

Harvard College was founded in 1636 for the education of "ye English and Indian youth of this country in knowledge and godlyness," but in this institution no provisionwas made for women and its doors are still closed to them.

"The prevailing notion of the purpose of education," declares Charles Francis Adams, in speaking of Harvard College, "was attended with one remarkable consequence—the cultivation of the female mind was regarded with utter indifference; as Mrs. Abigail Adams says in one of her letters, 'it was fashionable to ridicule learning.'"[85]

It was not until 1865 that Matthew Vassar, "recognizing in women the same intellectual constitution as in man," founded the first woman's college in the United States. This was soon followed by similar institutions in various parts of this country and Europe. In less than ten years thereafter Girton and Newnham colleges were founded at Cambridge, England, in order that women might be enabled to enter upon a regular university career.

In all the universities of England, Scotland and Ireland, except Oxford, Cambridge[86]and Trinity College, Dublin,women are now admitted to all departments, pass the same examinations as the men and receive the same academic degrees. Germany, whose institutions for the higher education of men have so long been justly famous, was exceedingly slow to open its universities to women, and then only after the most stubborn opposition of those who still maintained that the studies of women should be limited to the three R's and their occupations confined to the four K's. But even in this conservative country the cause of woman has at length triumphed, and she now enjoys educational advantages that a few decades ago were deemed forever impossible.

And so it is in every civilized country. Woman's long struggle for complete intellectual freedom is almost ended, and certain victory is already in sight. In spite of the sarcasm and ridicule of satirists and comic poets, in spite of the antipathy of philosophers and the antagonism of legislators who persisted in treating women as inferior beings, they are finally in view of the goal toward which they have through so many long ages been bending their best efforts. Moreover, so effective and so concentrated has been their work during recent years that they have accomplished more toward securing complete intellectual enfranchisement than during the previous thirty centuries.

From the former home of the Vikings to the romantic land of the Cid, from the capital of Holy Russia to the fair metropolis of the Golden Gate, women are now welcomed to the very institutions from which but a few years ago they were so systematically excluded. They attend the same courses as men, pass the same examinations and receive the same degrees and honors. Their sex is no longer a bar to positions and employment that only ageneration ago were considered proper only for the proud and imperious male. They have proved beyond cavil that genius knows not sex, and that, given a fair opportunity, they are competent to achieve success in every department of human effort.

Thus, to speak only of Europe, there are to-day women professors in the universities of Norway, Sweden, Switzerland, France, Greece and Russia, as there have been in Italy since the closing years of the Dark Ages. They lecture on science, literature, law and medicine, and in a manner to extort the admiration of their erstwhile antagonists. In Germany and Hungary there are women chemists and architects, while it is a matter of record that the best construction work done on the trans-Siberian railroad was that in charge of a woman engineer.

As an illustration of the marvelous change which has been brought about during the last three-quarters of a century in the educational status of woman, I can do no better than transcribe a few passages from a work by Sir Walter Besant describing the transformation of woman during the reign of Queen Victoria; for it applies to all civilized countries as well as to England.

"The young lady of 1837 has been to a fashionable school; she has learned accomplishments, deportment and dress. She is full of sentiment; there was an amazing amount of sentiment in the air about that time; she loves to talk and read about gallant knights, crusaders and troubadors; she gently touches the guitar; her sentiment, or her little affectation, has touched her with a graceful melancholy, a becoming stoop, a sweet pensiveness. She loves the aristocracy, even although her home is in that part of London called Bloomsbury, whither the belted earl cometh not, even though her papa goes into the City; she reads a deal of poetry, especially those poems which deal with the affections, of which there are many at this time. On Sunday she goes to church religiously and pensively,followed by a footman carrying her prayerbook and a long stick; she can play on the guitar and the piano a few easy pieces which she has learned. She knows a few words of French, which she produces at frequent intervals; as to history, geography, science, the condition of the people, her mind is an entire blank; she knows nothing of these things. Her conversation is commonplace, as her ideas are limited; she can not reason on any subject whatever because of her ignorance; or, as she herself would say, because she is a woman. In her presence, and indeed in the presence of ladies generally, men talk trivialities. There was indeed a general belief that women were creatures incapable of argument, or of reason, or of connected thought. It was no use arguing about the matter. The Lord had made them so. Women, said the philosophers, can not understand logic; they see things, if they do see them at all, by instinctive perception. This theory accounted for everything, for those cases when women undoubtedly did 'see things.' Also it fully justified people in withholding from women any kind of education worthy the name. A quite needless expense, you understand."

Her amusements, we are told, were "those of an amateur—a few pieces on the guitar and the piano and some slight power of sketching or flower painting in water-colors." The literature she read "endeavored to mold woman on the theory of recognized intellectual inferiority to man. She was considered beneath him in intellect as in physical strength; she was exhorted to defer to man; to acknowledge his superiority; not to show herself anxious to combat his opinions....

"This system of artificial restraints certainly produced faithful wives, gentle mothers, loving sisters, able housewives. God forbid that we should say otherwise, but it is certain that the intellectual attainments of women were then what we should call contemptible, and the range of subjects of which they knew nothing was absurdly narrowand limited. I detect the woman of 1840 in the character of Mrs. Clive Newcome, and, indeed, in Mrs. George Osborne, and in other familiar characters of Thackeray."

Then Sir Walter, turning to the young Englishwoman of 1897, thus describes her:

"She is educated. Whatsoever things are taught to the young man are taught to the young woman; the keys of knowledge are given to her; she gathers of the famous tree; if she wants to explore the wickedness of the world she can do so, for it is all in the books. The secrets of nature are not closed to her; she can learn the structure of the body if she wishes. The secrets of science are all open to her if she cares to study them.

"At school, at college, she studies just as the young man studies, but harder and with greater concentration. She has proved her ability in the Honors Tripos of every branch; she has beaten the senior wrangler in mathematics; she has taken a 'first-class' in classics, in history, in science, in languages. She has proved, not that she is a man's equal in intellect, though she claims so much, because she has not yet advanced any branch of learning, of science, one single step, but she has proved her capacity to take her place beside the young men who are the flower of their generation—the young men who stand in the first class of honors when they take their degree....

"Personal independence—that is the keynote of the situation. Mothers no longer attempt the old control over their daughters; they would find it impossible. The girls go off by themselves on their bicycles; they go about as they please; they neither compromise themselves nor get talked about; for the first time in man's history it is regarded as a right and proper thing to trust a girl as a boy insists upon being trusted. Out of this personal freedom will come, I dare say, a change in the old feelings of young man to maiden. He will not see in her a frail, tender plant which must be protected from cold winds;she can protect herself perfectly well. He will not see in her any longer a creature of sweet emotions and pure aspirations, coupled with a complete ignorance of the world, because she already knows all that she wants to know....

"Perhaps the greatest change is that woman now does thoroughly what before she only did as an amateur."[87]

Yes, the world is beginning at last to realize the truth of the proposition which the learned Maria Gaetana Agnesi so eloquently defended nearly two centuries ago—to wit, that nature has endowed the female mind with a capacity for all knowledge, and that, in depriving women of an opportunity of acquiring knowledge, men work against the best interests of the public weal.[88]

We are at the long last near that millennium which Emerson had in mind when, in 1822, he predicted "a time when higher institutions for the education of young women would be as needful as colleges for young men"—that millennium for which women have hoped and striven ever since Sappho sang and Aspasia inspired the brightest, the noblest minds of Greece.

FOOTNOTES:[1]DemosthenesIn Neæram, 122. Τας μεν γαρ ἑταιρας ἡδονης ἑνεκ' εχομεν, τας δε παλλακας της καθ' ἡμεραν θεραπεις του σωματος, τας δε γυναικας του παιδοποιεισθαι γνησιως και των ενδον ζυλακα πιστην εχειν.As indicative of the comparative value of men and women, as members of society, in the estimation of the Greeks, Euripides makes Iphigenia give utterance to the following sentiment:"More than a thousand women is one manWorthy to see the light of life."[2]Της τε γαρ, ὑπαρχουσης ζυσεως μη χειροσι γενεσθαι ὑμιν μεγαη η δοξα'και ἡς αν επ' ελαχιστον αρετης περι η ψογου εν αρσεσι κλεος η. Thucidides,History of the Peloponnesian War, II, 45."Phidias," Plutarch tells us in hisConjugal Precepts, "made the statue of Venus at Elis with one foot on the shell of a tortoise, to signify two great duties of a virtuous woman, which are to keep at home and be silent. For she is only to speak to her husband or by her husband."[3]Ariosto, referring to the undying fame of Sappho and Corinna, expresses himself in words as beautiful as they are true, as witness the following couplet:Saffo e Corinna, perche furon dotte,Splendono illustri, e mai non veggon notte.—Orlando Furioso, Canto XX, strophe I.[4]The nine "Terrestrial Muses" were Sappho, Erinna, Myrus, Myrtis, Corinna, Telesilla, Praxilla, Nossis and Anyta.The Greek poet Antipater embodies the names of the "Terrestrial Nine" in an epigram which is well rendered in the appended Latin translation:Has divinis linguis Helicon nutrivit mulieresHymnis, et Macedon Pierias scopulus,Prexillam, Myro, Anytæ os, fœminam Homerum,Lesbidum Sappho ornamentum capillatarum.Erinnam, Telesillam nobilem, teque Corinna,Strenuum Palladis scutum quæ cecinit.Nossidem muliebri lingua, et dulsisonam Myrtin,Omnes immortalium operatrices librorum.Novem quidem Musas magnum cœlum, novem vero illasTerra genuit hominibus, immortalem lætitiam.[5]Cf.Poetriarum octo, Erinnæ, Myrus, Mytidis, Corinnæ, Telesillæ, Praxillæ, Nossidis, Anytæ fragmenta et elogia, by J. C. Wolf Hamburg, 1734. See also the charming memoir "Sappho" by H. T. Wharton, London, 1898, andGriechische Dicterinnen, by J. C. Poestion, Vienna, 1876.[6]SeeMulierum Græcarum quæ oratione prosa usæ sunt fragmenta et elogia Græce et Latine, by J. C. Wolf, London, 1739,Historia Mulierum Philosopharum, scriptore Ægidio Menagio, Lugduni, 1690,Griechische Philosophinnen, by J. C. Poestion, Norden, 1885, andLe Donne alle Scuole dei Filosofi GreciinSaggi e Note Critiche, by A. Chiappelli, Bologna, 1895.[7]Woman: Her Position and Influence in Ancient Greece and Rome and Among the Early Christians, pp. 58 and 59, by James Donaldson, London, 1907.[8]There were several hetæræ named Lais. One of them, apparently a native of Corinth, was celebrated throughout Greece as the most beautiful woman of her age.[9]For information respecting the hetæræ the reader is referred to theLettersof Alciphron, to Lucian'sDialogueson courtesans, and more particularly to theDeipnosophistsof Athenæus, Chap. XIII. See alsoThe Lives and Opinions of the Ancient Philosophers, by Diogenes Laertius, Bohn Edition, London.[10]Donaldson, op. cit., pp. 61 and 62.Adolph Schmidt, one of the late biographers of Aspasia, accepts these statements as true and credits to Aspasia the making of both Pericles and Socrates. His views are also shared by other modern writers who have made a special study of the subject.According to some writers an indirect allusion to Aspasia's intellectual superiority is found in theMedeaof Euripedes in the following verses of the women's chorus:"In subtle questions I full many a timeHave heretofore engaged, and this great pointDebated, whether woman should extendHer search into abstruse and hidden truths.But we too have a Muse, who with our sexAssociates to expound the mystic loreOf wisdom, though she dwell not with us all."[11]It is proper to add that certain modern writers will not admit that Aspasia was ever an hetæra in the sense of being a courtesan. After Pericles had divorced his first wife, he lived with Aspasia as his second wife, to whom he was devoted and faithful until death. According to Greek law, which forbade Athenian citizens to marry foreign women, he could not be her legal husband; but, there can be no doubt that he always treated her with all the respect and affection due to a wife. His dying words: "Athens entrusted her greatness and Aspasia her happiness to me," clearly evince her nobility of character and the place she must ever have occupied in the great statesman's heart.The most important notices in ancient writings, respecting Aspasia, are found in Plutarch'sPericles, Xenophon'sMemorabiliaof Socrates and Plato'sMenexenus. Among the most valuable of modern works on the same subject isAspasie de Milet, by L. Becq de Fouquières, Paris, 1872. Cf. alsoAspasie et le Siècle de Pericles, Paris, 1862;Histoire des Deux Aspasies, by Le Comte de Bièvre, Paris, 1736, and A. Schmidt'sSur l'Age de Pericles, 1877-79.[12]Under the term music, Plato, like his contemporaries, included reading, writing, literature, mathematics, astronomy and harmony. It was opposed to gymnastic as mental to bodily training. Both music and gymnastic, however, were intended for the benefit of the soul.[13]The Dialogues of Plato, Laws, VII, 805, Jowett's translation, New York, 1892.[14]Op. cit.,The Republic, V, 451 et seq. and 466.[15]It was the boast of the Emperor Augustus that all his clothes were woven by his wife, sister or daughter. Suetonius, in hisLives of the Twelve Cæsars, informs us that this great master of the worldfiliam et neptes ita instituit ut etiam lanificio assuefaceret.[16]This type of the old Roman schoolmaster is alluded to in the following well known verses of Martial:"Quid tibi nobiscum est, ludi scelerate magister,Invisum pueris virginibusque caput?Nondum cristati rupere silentia GalliMurmure jam saevo verberibusque tonas.">—Lib. IX, 79.which have been rendered as follows:Despiteful pedant, why dost me pursue,Thou head detested by the younger crew?Before the cock proclaims the day is nearThy direful threats and lashes stun my ear.Martial elsewhere refers to "Ferulaeque tristes, sceptra pedagogorum"—melancholy rods, sceptres of pedagogues—and it appears from one of Juvenal's satires that "to withdraw the hand from the rod" was a phrase meaning "to leave school."[17]Woman Through the Ages, Vol. I, pp. 110, 111, by Emil Reich, London, 1908.Schoolhouses among the Romans, as well as among the Greeks, were quite different from our modern, well-equipped buildings. Usually, at least, in earlier times, instruction was given in the open air, in some quiet street corner or intabernæ—sheds or lean-tos—as in certain Mohametan countries to-day. Horace refers to this inEpistolaXX, Lib. I, when he writes:"Ut pueros elementa docentemOccupet extremis in vicis balba senectus."In such schools the pupils sat on the floor or the bare ground, or, if the lessons were given on the street, they sat on the stones. There were no desks, or, if there were any benches, they had no backs. The pupils were, therefore, perforce obliged to write on their knees.Cf.Historical Survey of Pre-Christian Education, pp. 278 and 346, by S. S. Laurie, London, 1900.[18]Cf. hisTiberius Gracchus. Cicero says of them, "Non tam in gremio educatos quam sermone matris."[19]Ibidem,Life of Pompey.[20]De Oratore, Lib. III, Cap. XII.[21]"Potiorem iam apud exercitus Agrippinam quam legatos, quam duces; compressam a muliere seditionem, cui nomen principis obsistere non quiverit."Annales, Lib. I, Cap. 69.[22]Œconomicus, VII, 5, 6.[23]Epistolæ, Lib. I, 16.[24]Sit mihi verna satur, sit non doctissima conjux.Epigrammata, Lib. II, 90.Martial's taste in this respect was the same as that of Heine, who said of the woman he loved: "She has never read a line of my writings and does not even know what a poet is," and the same as that of Rousseau, who declared that his last flame, Therèse Lavasseur, could not tell the time of day.[25]Satire VI, 434-440.[26]Joannis Stobæi Florilegium, Vol. IV, p. 212, Teubner's edition, 1857.[27]The following is the epitaph as written by St. Jerome, "the Christian Cicero":Scipio quam genuit, Pauli fudere parentes,Gracchorum soboles, Agamemnonis inclyta proles,Hoc jacet in tumulo, Paulam dixere priores,Euxtochii genetrix, Romani prima senatus,Pauperiem Christi et Bethlehemitica rura secuta est.[28]In his preface to theCommentary on Sophonius.[29]For an exhaustive account of the lives and achievements of St. Jerome and his noble friends, Paula and Eustochium, the reader is referred toL'Histoire de Sainte Paule, by F. Lagrange, Paris, 1870, andSaint Jerome, La Société Chrétienne à Rome et l'Émigration Romaine en Terre Sainte, by A. Thierry, Paris, 1867. Cf. alsoWoman's Work in Bible Study and Translation, by A. H. Johns inThe Catholic World, New York, June, 1912.[30]SeeHistoire de Sainte Radegonde, Reine de France, in Chap. XX, par Em. Briand, Paris, 1897.[31]Historia Ecclesiastica Gentis Anglorum, Lib. IV, Cap. 23.[32]The Monks of the West, Book XI, Chap. II.[33]Vol. I, pp. 46 and 49, New York, 1871.[34]Op. cit., Book XI, Chap. II.It will interest the reader to know that Cædmon has a place among the saints in theActa Sanctorumof the Bollandists. See the special article on him in Vol. II, p. 552, under the caption of "De S. Cedmono, cantore theodidacto."[35]Woman Under Monasticism.Chapter IV, § 2, by Lina Eckenstein, Cambridge, 1896. In this chapter is an interesting account of the Anglo-Saxon nuns who were among the correspondents of Boniface.[36]The reader will recall Chaucer's account in theCanterbury Talesof the wife of the well-to-do miller of Trumpyngton:"A wyf he hadde y-comen of noble kyn;She was y-fostred in a nonnerye.There dorste no wight clepen hir but 'Dame;'What for hire kynnrede and hir nortelrie,That she had lerned in the nonnerie."—Reeve's Tale.[37]Pp. 78, 79, London, 1897.[38]History of European Morals, Vol. II, p. 369, New York, 1905.[39]Henry VIII and the English Monasteries, London, 1895.[40]The English Historical Review, July, 1888.Another recent writer affirms without hesitation that "Hroswitha has earned a place apart in the Pantheon of women poets and writers. She alone in those troublous times of the tenth century recalls to our minds the existence of dramatic art; her name, indeed, deserves to be rescued from oblivion and to become a household word."Fortnightly Review, p. 450, March, 1896.[41]Histoire de l'Éducation de Femmes en France, Tom. I, p. 72 et seq. par Paul Rousselot, Paris, 1883.A certain jurisconsult of the thirteenth century, one Pierre de Navarre, expressed the sentiment of many of his contemporaries when he wrote the following paragraph:"Toutes fames doivent savoir filer et coudre; car la pauvre en aura mestier et la riche conoistra mieux l'œuvre des autres. A fame ne doit-on apprendre lettre ni escrire, si ce n'est especiaument pour estre nonain, car par lire et escrire, de fame sont maint mal avenu."[42]Opera Omnia S. Hildegardis, Tom. 197, Col. 48 of Migne'sPatrologiæ Cursus Completus. Cf. alsoNova S. Hildegardis Opera, edidit Cardinalis Pitra, Paris, 1882, andDas Leben und Wirken der Heiligen Hildegardis, von J. P. Schmelzeis, Freiburg im Breisgau, 1878.[43]It was Peter Lombard, whoseSentences"became the very canon of orthodoxy for all succeeding ages," who, in marked contrast with those of ancient and modern times that regarded woman as the inferior or slave of man, asserted her equality with him in a sentence that should be written in letters of gold. "Woman," he declares,Sententiarum, Lib. II, Disp. 18, "was not taken from the head of man, for she was not intended to be his ruler, nor from his foot, for she was not intended to be his slave, but from his side, for she was intended to be his companion and comfort."In this view the great Schoolman but follows the teachings of St. Augustine. For in his commentary,De Genesi ad Litteram, Lib. 9, Cap. 13, the learned bishop of Hippo writes: "Quia igitur viro nec domina nec ancilla parabatur, sed socia, nec de capite, nec de pedibus, sed de latere fuerat producenda, ut juxta se producendam cognosceret, quam de suo latere sumptam didecisset." Again the same illustrious doctor declares that woman was formed from man's side in order that it might be manifest that she was created to be united with him in love—in consortium creabatur dilectionis.[44]Cf.Hortus Deliciarum, by Herrad de Lansberg, folio with one hundred and ten plates, Strasburg, 1901, andHerrade de Landsberg, by Charles Schmidt, Strasburg.The erudite academician, Charles Jourdain, says of Herrad's great work "L'encyclopédie qu'on lui doit,l'Hortus Deliciarum, embrasse toutes les parties des connaissances humaines, depuis la science divine jusqu'à l'agriculture et la métrologie, et on s'étonne à bon droit qu'un tel ouvrage, qui supposait une érudition si variée et si méthodique, soit sorti d'une plume féminine. Quelle impression produirait aujourd'hui l'annonce d'une encyclopédie qui aurait pour auteur une simple, religieuse? Parlerons-nous des femmes du monde? Il n'existe d'elles, au XXesiècle, non plus que dans les siècles précédents aucun ouvrage comparable àl'Hortus Deliciarum."Excursions Historiques et Philosophiques, p. 480, Paris, 1888.[45]SeeRevelationes Mechtildianæ ac Gertrudianæ, edit, Oudin, for the Benedictines at Solesmes, 1875.[46]In her scholarly work onWoman Under Monasticism, p. 479, Lina Eckenstein writes as follows regarding the studies pursued in the convents of the Middle Ages:"The contributions of nuns to literature, as well as incidental remarks, show that the curriculum of study in the nunnery was as liberal as that accepted by the monks, and embraced all available writing whether by Christian or profane authors. While Scripture and the writing of the Fathers of the Church at all times formed the groundwork of monastic studies, Cicero at this period was read by the side of Boethus, Virgil by the side of Martianus Capella, Terence by the side of Isidore of Seville. From remarks made by Hroswitha we see that the coarseness of the Latin dramatists made no reason for their being forbidden to nuns, though she would have seen it otherwise; and, Herrad was so far impressed by the wisdom of the heathen philosophers of antiquity that she pronounced this wisdom to be the 'product of the Holy Spirit also.' Throughout the literary world, as represented by convents, the use of Latin was general, and made possible the even spread of culture in districts that were widely remote from each other and practically without intercourse."[47]The Lady, p. 71, by Emily James Putnam, New York, 1910.[48]Eckenstein, op. cit., p. 478.[49]Ut. Sup., 479-480.[50]SeeWomankind in Western Europe, p. 288 et seq., by Thomas Wright, London, 1869.[51]"Pertinere videtur ad hæc tempora Betisia Gozzadini non minus generis claritate quam eloquentia ac legum professione illustris.... Betisiam Ghirardaccius et nostri ab eo deinceps scriptores eximiis laudibus certatim extulerunt."De Claris Archigymnasii Bononiensis Professoribus a Sæculo XI usque ad Sæculum XIV, Tom. I, p. 171, Bologna, 1888-1896.[52]L'École de Salerne, p. 18, par C. Meaux, Paris, 1880. Among the most noted of these women was Trotula, who, about the middle of the eleventh century, wrote on the diseases of women as well as on other medical subjects. Compare the attitude of the school of Salerno towards women with that of the University of London, eight hundred years later. When, in the latter half of the nineteenth century, women applied to this university for degrees in medicine, they were informed, as H. Rashdall writes inThe Universities of Europe in the Middle Ages, Vol. II, Part II, p. 712, Oxford, 1895, that "the University of London, although it had been empowered by Royal Charter to do all things that could be done by any University, was legally advised that it could not grant degrees to women without a fresh Charter, because no University had ever granted such degrees." Cf. also Hæser'sLehrbuch der Geschichte der Medicin, Band I, p. 645, et seq., Jena, 1875. Verily, the so-called dark ages have risen up to condemn our vaunted age of enlightenment![53]Die Entstehung der Universitäten des Mittelalters bis 1400, Band I, p. 233, Berlin, 1885, von P. Heinrick Denifle, assistant archivist of the Vatican Library, andHistoire Litéraire de la France, Commencé par des Religieux Bénédictins de S. Maur et Continué par des Membres de l'Institut, Tom. IX, 281, Paris, 1733-1906.[54]"Une de ces nuits lumineuses ou les dernières clartés du soir se prolongent jusqu'aux premières blancheurs du matin."Documents Inédits, p. 78, Paris, 1850.[55]The Universities of Europe in the Middle Ages, Vol. I, p. 31, Oxford, 1895.[56]A Short History of the Renaissance in Italy, p. 277, London, 1893.[57]Cecelia Gonzaga, a pupil of the celebrated humanist, Vittorino da Feltre, read the Gospels in Greek when she was only seven years old. Isotta and Ginevra Nogorola, pupils of the humanist, Guarino Verronese, likewise distinguished themselves at an early age by their rare knowledge of Latin and Greek. In later years all three enjoyed great celebrity for their learning, and were, like Battista di Montefeltro, women of genuine humanist sympathies. Cecelia Gonzaga's scholarship was in no wise inferior to that of her learned brothers, who were among the most noted students of the famous Casa Zoyosa in Mantua, where Vittorino da Feltre achieved such distinction as an educator in the early part of the Italian Renaissance. The learned Italian writer, Sabbadini, beautifully expressed the relation of women to Humanism, when he declares, in hisVida di Guarino, "L'Humanismo si sposa alla gentilezza feminile,"—humanism weds feminine gentility.[58]Among them are the pictures of Caterina Vigri, which are preserved in the Pinacoteca of Bologna and in the Academia of Venice.[59]No less an authority than the illustrious sculptor, Canova, declared that her early death was one of the greatest losses ever suffered by Italian art.[60]It was also said of the Venetian artist, Irene di Spilimbergo, that her pictures were of such excellence that they were frequently mistaken for those of her illustrious master, Titian.[61]Among these works may be mentionedIl Merito delle Donne, by Modesta Pozzo di Zorgi, Venice, 1600;La Nobilità e l'Excellenza delle Donne, by Lucrezia Marinelli, Venice, 1601;De Ingenii Muliebris ad Doctrinam et Meliores Litteras Aptitudine, by Anna van Schurman, Leyden, 1641;Les Dames Illustres, by Jaquette Guillame, Paris, 1665, andL'Egalité des Hommes et des Femmes, by Marie le Jars de Gournay, Paris, 1622. The last named work was by the celebratedfille d'alliance—adopted daughter—of Montaigne. It is to her that we owe thetextus receptusof theEssaisof the illustrious litterateur.[62]The Women of the Renaissance, p. 290, by R. de Maulde la Clavière, New York, 1901.[63]CalledLa Latina, because of her thorough knowledge of the Latin language.[64]The famous Hellenist, Roger Ascham, tells of his astonishment on finding Lady Jane Grey, when she was only fourteen years of age, reading Plato's Phædo in Greek, when all the other members of the family were amusing themselves in the park. On his inquiry why she did not join the others in their pastime, she smilingly replied: "I wit all their sport in the park is but a shadow to that pleasure I find in Plato. Alas, good folk, they never knew what true pleasure meant."[65]To the poet Ronsard, she was a woman beyond compare, as is evinced by the following lines of a pastoral ode addressed to her:"La Royne Marguerite,La plus belle fleur d'éliteQu'onques la terre enfanta."[66]Cf. Œuvres de Lovize Labé, nouvelle edition emprimée en caractères dits de civilité, Paris, 1871.[67]The French poet, Jean Dorat, who was then professor of Latin in the Collège de France, expresses this fact in the following strophe:"Nempe uxor, ancillæ, clientes, liberi,Non segnis examen domus,Quo Plautus ore, quo Terentius, solentQuotidiane loqui."[68]A prominent writer of the time, Jean Bouchet, expressed the prevailing opinion regarding the education of the women of the masses in the following quaint sentence: "Je suis bien d'opinion que les femmes de bas estat, et qui sont contrainctes vaquer aux choses familières et domestiques, ne doivent vaquer aux lettres, parce que c'est chose repugnante à rusticité; mais, les roynes, princesses et aultres dames qui ne se doib vent pour révérence de leur estat, appliquer à mesnage." Cf. Rousellot'sHistoire de l'Éducation des Femmes en France, Tom. I, p. 109, Paris, 1883.His ideal of a woman of the peasant type was apparently Joan of Arc, who, according to her own declaration, did not know a from b—"elle déclarait ne savoir ni a ni b."[69]Clavière, op. cit., p. 415.[70]The noted English divine, Thomas Fuller, chaplain to Charles II, recognized the irreparable loss to women occasioned by the destruction of the nunneries by the Reformers. "There were," he tells us in his quaint language, "good she schools wherein the girls and maids of the neyghborhood were taught to read and work.... Yea, give me leave to say, if such feminine foundations had still continued, ... haply the weaker sex, besides the avoiding modern inconveniences, might be heyghtened to a higher perfection than hitherto hath been attained."Church History, Vol. III, p. 336, 1845.[71]M. Thureau Dangin, the perpetual secretary of the French Academy, wrote, "La tradition ne veut pas d'académiciennes."[72]Carlyle, in a lecture on Dante, and theDivina Commedia, declares that "Italy has produced a greater number of great men than any other nation, men distinguished in art, thinking, conduct, and everywhere in the departments of intellect." He could with equal truth have said that Italy has produced more great women than any other nation.[73]Medical Women, p. 63, et seq., by Sophia Jex-Blake, Edinburgh, 1886, andPioneer Work in Opening the Medical Profession to Women, Chap. III, by Elizabeth Blackwell, London, 1895.[74]Mme. Dacier was a remarkable exception chiefly because she was the daughter and pupil of one Hellenist before becoming the wife of another.[75]Lettres et Entretiens sur l'Éducation de Filles, Tom. I, pp. 225-231.Compare this superficial course of study at Saint-Cyr with the elaborate course mapped out by Lionardo d'Arezzo in a letter addressed to the illustrious lady, Baptista Malatesta. In the broad programme of education for women recommended by this eminent man of letters, "poet, orator, historian, and the rest, all must be studied, each must contribute a share. Our learning thus becomes full, ready, varied, elegant, available for action or for discourse on all subjects."Lionardo's curriculum of studies for women was quite as comprehensive as that required for men, "with perhaps a little less stress upon rhetoric and more upon religion. There was no assumption that a lower standard of attainment is inevitably a consequence of smaller capacity."Nor was this thorough study of letters by the women of Italy "unfavorably regarded by social opinion"; neither did it introduce "a new standard of womanly activity. Women, indeed, at this epoch, seem to have preserved their moral and intellectual balance under the stress of the new enthusiasm better than men. The learned ladies were, in actual life, good wives and mothers, domestic and virtuous women of strong judgment and not seldom of marked capacity in affairs." Cf.Vittorino da Feltre and Other Humanist Educators, pp. 122, 132, 197, by W. H. Woodward, Cambridge, 1905.[76]Thus, in a letter of hers to Mme. de Lauzun occurs a sentence like the following: "Il lia sy lontant que je n'ay antandu parler de vous." The duchess of Monpensier, daughter of Gaston d'Orleans, in a letter to her father exhibits a similar ignorance of her own language, when she writes: "J'ai cru que Votre Altesse seret bien ése de savoir sete istoire." Quoted by Rousselot in hisHistoire de l'Éducation des Femmes en France, Tom. I, p. 287.[77]Les Femmes Savantes, Act II, Scene 7.[78]Destouches, in hisL'Homme singulier, makes one of his female characters, who loves study, speak in the following pathetic fashion:"A learned woman ought—so I surmise—Conceal her knowledge, or she'll be unwise.If pedantry a mental blemish beAt all times outlawed by society,If 'gainst a pedant all the world inveighs,Shall pass unchecked in woman pedant's ways?I hold it sure, condemned my sex is quiteTo trifling nothings as its sole birthright;Ridiculous 'tis thought outside its 'sphere';The learned woman dare not such appear;Nay, she must even cloak her brilliancySo envy leave in peace stupidity;Must keep the level of the common kind,To subjects commonplace devote her mind,And treating these she must be like the rest.Lo, in such garb refinement must be dressed:That knowledge shall not make her seem unwise,She must herself in foolishness disguise."—Act III, Scene 7.[79]No one, however, went so far in his opposition to the education of women as the notorious SilvainMaréchal, the author ofProjet d'une Loi portant Defense d'Apprendre à Lire aux Femmes, who would have a law passed forbidding women to learn to read. He maintained that a knowledge of science and letters interfered with their being good housekeepers. "Reason," he avers, "does not approve of women studying chemistry. Women who are unable to read make the best soup. I would rather," he declares in the words of Balzac, "have a wife with a beard than a wife who is educated." See pp. 40, 50 and 51, of the edition of this strange work, published at Brussels, 1847.[80]In herProblema Practicum, addressed to Dr. Rivet, Anna van Schurman states and develops in true syllogistic form a series of propositions in defense of her thesis in favor of the higher education of women. Two of these propositions are here given as illustrative of her points of view:I. Cui natura inest scientiarum artiumque desiderium, ei conveniunt scientiæ et artes. Atque feminæ natura inest scientiarum artiumque desiderium. Ergo.II Quidquid intellectum hominis perficit et exornat, id femmæ Christianæ convenit. Atqui scientiæ et artes intellectum hominis perficiunt et exornant. Ergo. SeeNobiliss. Virginis Annæ Schurman Opuscula, pp. 35 and 41, Leyden, 1656, and herDe Ingenii Muliebris ad Doctrinam et Meliores Literas Aptitudine, Leyden, 1641. Cf. alsoAnna van Schurman, Chap. IV, by Una Birch, London, 1909.[81]A writer of the seventeenth century gives the following as the popular programme of female study: "To learn alle pointes of good housewifery, spinning of linen, the ordering of dairies, to see to the salting of meate, brewing, bakery, and to understand the common prices of all houshold provisions. To keepe account of all things, to know the condition of the poultry—for it misbecomes no woman to be a hen-wife. To know how to order your clothes and with frugality to mend them and to buy but what is necessary with ready money. To love to keep at home." How like the German four K's and the words on the sarcophagus of a Roman matron—lanifica,frugi,domiseda—a diligent plyer of the distaff, thrifty and a stay-at-home.[82]The Letters and Works of Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, Vol. II, p. 5, Bohn Edition, 1887.[83]Letter XLIX, London, Sept. 5, O. S., 1748.Walpole, writing in 1773, makes the following curious declaration: "I made a discovery—Lady Nuneham is a poetess, and writes with great ease and sense some poetry, but is as afraid of the character, as if it was a sin to make verses." And Lord Granville tells us of an eminent statesman and man of letters who, in the early part of the last century, was so troubled on discovering in his daughter a talent for poetry that he "appealed to her affection for him, and made a request to her never to write verses again. He was not afraid of her becoming a good poetess, but he was afraid of the disadvantages which were likely to be suffered by her, if she were supposed to be a lady of literary attainments."[84]It was Swift who had such a low opinion of woman's intellect that in writing to one of his fair correspondents he told her that she could "never arrive in point of learning to the perfection of a schoolboy." Lady Pennington, strange to say, seems to have shared his views, for in a manual of advice to young ladies, she declares: "A sensible woman will soon be convinced that all the learning the utmost application can make her master of will be in many points inferior to that of the schoolboy." "At the time the Tatler first appeared in the female world any acquaintance with books was distinguished only to be censured," and it was then considered "more important for a woman to dance a minuet well than to know a foreign language."[85]The wife of President John Adams, descended from the most illustrious colonial families, writing in 1817, regarding the educational opportunities of the girls of her time and rank, expressed herself as follows:"Female education in the best families went no farther than writing and arithmetic, and, in some few and rare instances, music and dancing." According to her grandson, Charles Francis Adams, "The only chance for much intellectual improvement in the female sex was to be found in the families of the educated class, and in occasional intercourse with the learned of the day. Whatever of useful instruction was secured in the practical conduct of life came from maternal lips; and, what of farther mental development depended more upon the eagerness with which the casual teachings of daily conversation were treasured up than upon any labor expended purposely to promote it."Familiar Letters of John Adams and His Wife, Abigail Adams, During the Revolution, With a Memoir of Mrs. Adams, by Charles Francis Adams, pp. X and XI, New York, 1876.[86]When the students of Girton and Newnham in 1897, after passing the Cambridge examinations—many of them with the highest honors—applied for degrees, "the undergraduate world was stirred to a fine frenzy of wrath against all womankind," and an astonished world saw re-enacted scenes scarcely less disgraceful than those which characterized the riotous demonstrations which, seventeen years before, had greeted seven young women at the portals of the University of Edinburgh.[87]The Queen's Reign, Chap. V, London, 1897.[88]Proposition third, of herPropositiones Philosophicæ, Milan, 1738, reads as follows:"Optime etiam de universa Philosophia infirmiorem sexum meruisse nullus infirmabitur; nam præter septuaginta fere eruditissimas, Mulieres, quas recenset Menagius, complures alias quovis tempore floruisse novimus, quæ in philosophicis disciplinis maximam ingenii laudem sunt assecutæ. Ad omnem igitur doctrinam, eruditionemque etiam muliebres animos Natura comparavit: quare paulo injuriosius cum feminis agunt qui eis bonarum artium cultu omnino interdicunt, eo vel maxime, quod hæc illarum studia privatis, publicisque rebus non modo haud noxia futura sint verum etiam perutilia."This admirable work, with its one hundred and ninety-one propositions, is commended to those who may have any doubt regarding the learning or capacity of the Italian women who have been referred to in the preceding pages.

[1]DemosthenesIn Neæram, 122. Τας μεν γαρ ἑταιρας ἡδονης ἑνεκ' εχομεν, τας δε παλλακας της καθ' ἡμεραν θεραπεις του σωματος, τας δε γυναικας του παιδοποιεισθαι γνησιως και των ενδον ζυλακα πιστην εχειν.As indicative of the comparative value of men and women, as members of society, in the estimation of the Greeks, Euripides makes Iphigenia give utterance to the following sentiment:"More than a thousand women is one manWorthy to see the light of life."

As indicative of the comparative value of men and women, as members of society, in the estimation of the Greeks, Euripides makes Iphigenia give utterance to the following sentiment:

"More than a thousand women is one manWorthy to see the light of life."

[2]Της τε γαρ, ὑπαρχουσης ζυσεως μη χειροσι γενεσθαι ὑμιν μεγαη η δοξα'και ἡς αν επ' ελαχιστον αρετης περι η ψογου εν αρσεσι κλεος η. Thucidides,History of the Peloponnesian War, II, 45."Phidias," Plutarch tells us in hisConjugal Precepts, "made the statue of Venus at Elis with one foot on the shell of a tortoise, to signify two great duties of a virtuous woman, which are to keep at home and be silent. For she is only to speak to her husband or by her husband."

"Phidias," Plutarch tells us in hisConjugal Precepts, "made the statue of Venus at Elis with one foot on the shell of a tortoise, to signify two great duties of a virtuous woman, which are to keep at home and be silent. For she is only to speak to her husband or by her husband."

[3]Ariosto, referring to the undying fame of Sappho and Corinna, expresses himself in words as beautiful as they are true, as witness the following couplet:Saffo e Corinna, perche furon dotte,Splendono illustri, e mai non veggon notte.—Orlando Furioso, Canto XX, strophe I.

[3]Ariosto, referring to the undying fame of Sappho and Corinna, expresses himself in words as beautiful as they are true, as witness the following couplet:

Saffo e Corinna, perche furon dotte,Splendono illustri, e mai non veggon notte.—Orlando Furioso, Canto XX, strophe I.

[4]The nine "Terrestrial Muses" were Sappho, Erinna, Myrus, Myrtis, Corinna, Telesilla, Praxilla, Nossis and Anyta.The Greek poet Antipater embodies the names of the "Terrestrial Nine" in an epigram which is well rendered in the appended Latin translation:Has divinis linguis Helicon nutrivit mulieresHymnis, et Macedon Pierias scopulus,Prexillam, Myro, Anytæ os, fœminam Homerum,Lesbidum Sappho ornamentum capillatarum.Erinnam, Telesillam nobilem, teque Corinna,Strenuum Palladis scutum quæ cecinit.Nossidem muliebri lingua, et dulsisonam Myrtin,Omnes immortalium operatrices librorum.Novem quidem Musas magnum cœlum, novem vero illasTerra genuit hominibus, immortalem lætitiam.

[4]The nine "Terrestrial Muses" were Sappho, Erinna, Myrus, Myrtis, Corinna, Telesilla, Praxilla, Nossis and Anyta.

The Greek poet Antipater embodies the names of the "Terrestrial Nine" in an epigram which is well rendered in the appended Latin translation:

Has divinis linguis Helicon nutrivit mulieresHymnis, et Macedon Pierias scopulus,Prexillam, Myro, Anytæ os, fœminam Homerum,Lesbidum Sappho ornamentum capillatarum.Erinnam, Telesillam nobilem, teque Corinna,Strenuum Palladis scutum quæ cecinit.Nossidem muliebri lingua, et dulsisonam Myrtin,Omnes immortalium operatrices librorum.Novem quidem Musas magnum cœlum, novem vero illasTerra genuit hominibus, immortalem lætitiam.

[5]Cf.Poetriarum octo, Erinnæ, Myrus, Mytidis, Corinnæ, Telesillæ, Praxillæ, Nossidis, Anytæ fragmenta et elogia, by J. C. Wolf Hamburg, 1734. See also the charming memoir "Sappho" by H. T. Wharton, London, 1898, andGriechische Dicterinnen, by J. C. Poestion, Vienna, 1876.

[6]SeeMulierum Græcarum quæ oratione prosa usæ sunt fragmenta et elogia Græce et Latine, by J. C. Wolf, London, 1739,Historia Mulierum Philosopharum, scriptore Ægidio Menagio, Lugduni, 1690,Griechische Philosophinnen, by J. C. Poestion, Norden, 1885, andLe Donne alle Scuole dei Filosofi GreciinSaggi e Note Critiche, by A. Chiappelli, Bologna, 1895.

[7]Woman: Her Position and Influence in Ancient Greece and Rome and Among the Early Christians, pp. 58 and 59, by James Donaldson, London, 1907.

[8]There were several hetæræ named Lais. One of them, apparently a native of Corinth, was celebrated throughout Greece as the most beautiful woman of her age.

[9]For information respecting the hetæræ the reader is referred to theLettersof Alciphron, to Lucian'sDialogueson courtesans, and more particularly to theDeipnosophistsof Athenæus, Chap. XIII. See alsoThe Lives and Opinions of the Ancient Philosophers, by Diogenes Laertius, Bohn Edition, London.

[10]Donaldson, op. cit., pp. 61 and 62.Adolph Schmidt, one of the late biographers of Aspasia, accepts these statements as true and credits to Aspasia the making of both Pericles and Socrates. His views are also shared by other modern writers who have made a special study of the subject.According to some writers an indirect allusion to Aspasia's intellectual superiority is found in theMedeaof Euripedes in the following verses of the women's chorus:"In subtle questions I full many a timeHave heretofore engaged, and this great pointDebated, whether woman should extendHer search into abstruse and hidden truths.But we too have a Muse, who with our sexAssociates to expound the mystic loreOf wisdom, though she dwell not with us all."

[10]Donaldson, op. cit., pp. 61 and 62.

Adolph Schmidt, one of the late biographers of Aspasia, accepts these statements as true and credits to Aspasia the making of both Pericles and Socrates. His views are also shared by other modern writers who have made a special study of the subject.

According to some writers an indirect allusion to Aspasia's intellectual superiority is found in theMedeaof Euripedes in the following verses of the women's chorus:

"In subtle questions I full many a timeHave heretofore engaged, and this great pointDebated, whether woman should extendHer search into abstruse and hidden truths.But we too have a Muse, who with our sexAssociates to expound the mystic loreOf wisdom, though she dwell not with us all."

[11]It is proper to add that certain modern writers will not admit that Aspasia was ever an hetæra in the sense of being a courtesan. After Pericles had divorced his first wife, he lived with Aspasia as his second wife, to whom he was devoted and faithful until death. According to Greek law, which forbade Athenian citizens to marry foreign women, he could not be her legal husband; but, there can be no doubt that he always treated her with all the respect and affection due to a wife. His dying words: "Athens entrusted her greatness and Aspasia her happiness to me," clearly evince her nobility of character and the place she must ever have occupied in the great statesman's heart.The most important notices in ancient writings, respecting Aspasia, are found in Plutarch'sPericles, Xenophon'sMemorabiliaof Socrates and Plato'sMenexenus. Among the most valuable of modern works on the same subject isAspasie de Milet, by L. Becq de Fouquières, Paris, 1872. Cf. alsoAspasie et le Siècle de Pericles, Paris, 1862;Histoire des Deux Aspasies, by Le Comte de Bièvre, Paris, 1736, and A. Schmidt'sSur l'Age de Pericles, 1877-79.

The most important notices in ancient writings, respecting Aspasia, are found in Plutarch'sPericles, Xenophon'sMemorabiliaof Socrates and Plato'sMenexenus. Among the most valuable of modern works on the same subject isAspasie de Milet, by L. Becq de Fouquières, Paris, 1872. Cf. alsoAspasie et le Siècle de Pericles, Paris, 1862;Histoire des Deux Aspasies, by Le Comte de Bièvre, Paris, 1736, and A. Schmidt'sSur l'Age de Pericles, 1877-79.

[12]Under the term music, Plato, like his contemporaries, included reading, writing, literature, mathematics, astronomy and harmony. It was opposed to gymnastic as mental to bodily training. Both music and gymnastic, however, were intended for the benefit of the soul.

[13]The Dialogues of Plato, Laws, VII, 805, Jowett's translation, New York, 1892.

[14]Op. cit.,The Republic, V, 451 et seq. and 466.

[15]It was the boast of the Emperor Augustus that all his clothes were woven by his wife, sister or daughter. Suetonius, in hisLives of the Twelve Cæsars, informs us that this great master of the worldfiliam et neptes ita instituit ut etiam lanificio assuefaceret.

[16]This type of the old Roman schoolmaster is alluded to in the following well known verses of Martial:"Quid tibi nobiscum est, ludi scelerate magister,Invisum pueris virginibusque caput?Nondum cristati rupere silentia GalliMurmure jam saevo verberibusque tonas.">—Lib. IX, 79.which have been rendered as follows:Despiteful pedant, why dost me pursue,Thou head detested by the younger crew?Before the cock proclaims the day is nearThy direful threats and lashes stun my ear.Martial elsewhere refers to "Ferulaeque tristes, sceptra pedagogorum"—melancholy rods, sceptres of pedagogues—and it appears from one of Juvenal's satires that "to withdraw the hand from the rod" was a phrase meaning "to leave school."

[16]This type of the old Roman schoolmaster is alluded to in the following well known verses of Martial:

"Quid tibi nobiscum est, ludi scelerate magister,Invisum pueris virginibusque caput?Nondum cristati rupere silentia GalliMurmure jam saevo verberibusque tonas.">—Lib. IX, 79.

which have been rendered as follows:

Despiteful pedant, why dost me pursue,Thou head detested by the younger crew?Before the cock proclaims the day is nearThy direful threats and lashes stun my ear.

Martial elsewhere refers to "Ferulaeque tristes, sceptra pedagogorum"—melancholy rods, sceptres of pedagogues—and it appears from one of Juvenal's satires that "to withdraw the hand from the rod" was a phrase meaning "to leave school."

[17]Woman Through the Ages, Vol. I, pp. 110, 111, by Emil Reich, London, 1908.Schoolhouses among the Romans, as well as among the Greeks, were quite different from our modern, well-equipped buildings. Usually, at least, in earlier times, instruction was given in the open air, in some quiet street corner or intabernæ—sheds or lean-tos—as in certain Mohametan countries to-day. Horace refers to this inEpistolaXX, Lib. I, when he writes:"Ut pueros elementa docentemOccupet extremis in vicis balba senectus."In such schools the pupils sat on the floor or the bare ground, or, if the lessons were given on the street, they sat on the stones. There were no desks, or, if there were any benches, they had no backs. The pupils were, therefore, perforce obliged to write on their knees.Cf.Historical Survey of Pre-Christian Education, pp. 278 and 346, by S. S. Laurie, London, 1900.

[17]Woman Through the Ages, Vol. I, pp. 110, 111, by Emil Reich, London, 1908.

Schoolhouses among the Romans, as well as among the Greeks, were quite different from our modern, well-equipped buildings. Usually, at least, in earlier times, instruction was given in the open air, in some quiet street corner or intabernæ—sheds or lean-tos—as in certain Mohametan countries to-day. Horace refers to this inEpistolaXX, Lib. I, when he writes:

"Ut pueros elementa docentemOccupet extremis in vicis balba senectus."

In such schools the pupils sat on the floor or the bare ground, or, if the lessons were given on the street, they sat on the stones. There were no desks, or, if there were any benches, they had no backs. The pupils were, therefore, perforce obliged to write on their knees.

Cf.Historical Survey of Pre-Christian Education, pp. 278 and 346, by S. S. Laurie, London, 1900.

[18]Cf. hisTiberius Gracchus. Cicero says of them, "Non tam in gremio educatos quam sermone matris."

[19]Ibidem,Life of Pompey.

[20]De Oratore, Lib. III, Cap. XII.

[21]"Potiorem iam apud exercitus Agrippinam quam legatos, quam duces; compressam a muliere seditionem, cui nomen principis obsistere non quiverit."Annales, Lib. I, Cap. 69.

[22]Œconomicus, VII, 5, 6.

[23]Epistolæ, Lib. I, 16.

[24]Sit mihi verna satur, sit non doctissima conjux.Epigrammata, Lib. II, 90.Martial's taste in this respect was the same as that of Heine, who said of the woman he loved: "She has never read a line of my writings and does not even know what a poet is," and the same as that of Rousseau, who declared that his last flame, Therèse Lavasseur, could not tell the time of day.

[24]Sit mihi verna satur, sit non doctissima conjux.Epigrammata, Lib. II, 90.

Martial's taste in this respect was the same as that of Heine, who said of the woman he loved: "She has never read a line of my writings and does not even know what a poet is," and the same as that of Rousseau, who declared that his last flame, Therèse Lavasseur, could not tell the time of day.

[25]Satire VI, 434-440.

[26]Joannis Stobæi Florilegium, Vol. IV, p. 212, Teubner's edition, 1857.

[27]The following is the epitaph as written by St. Jerome, "the Christian Cicero":Scipio quam genuit, Pauli fudere parentes,Gracchorum soboles, Agamemnonis inclyta proles,Hoc jacet in tumulo, Paulam dixere priores,Euxtochii genetrix, Romani prima senatus,Pauperiem Christi et Bethlehemitica rura secuta est.

[27]The following is the epitaph as written by St. Jerome, "the Christian Cicero":

Scipio quam genuit, Pauli fudere parentes,Gracchorum soboles, Agamemnonis inclyta proles,Hoc jacet in tumulo, Paulam dixere priores,Euxtochii genetrix, Romani prima senatus,Pauperiem Christi et Bethlehemitica rura secuta est.

[28]In his preface to theCommentary on Sophonius.

[29]For an exhaustive account of the lives and achievements of St. Jerome and his noble friends, Paula and Eustochium, the reader is referred toL'Histoire de Sainte Paule, by F. Lagrange, Paris, 1870, andSaint Jerome, La Société Chrétienne à Rome et l'Émigration Romaine en Terre Sainte, by A. Thierry, Paris, 1867. Cf. alsoWoman's Work in Bible Study and Translation, by A. H. Johns inThe Catholic World, New York, June, 1912.

[30]SeeHistoire de Sainte Radegonde, Reine de France, in Chap. XX, par Em. Briand, Paris, 1897.

[31]Historia Ecclesiastica Gentis Anglorum, Lib. IV, Cap. 23.

[32]The Monks of the West, Book XI, Chap. II.

[33]Vol. I, pp. 46 and 49, New York, 1871.

[34]Op. cit., Book XI, Chap. II.It will interest the reader to know that Cædmon has a place among the saints in theActa Sanctorumof the Bollandists. See the special article on him in Vol. II, p. 552, under the caption of "De S. Cedmono, cantore theodidacto."

[34]Op. cit., Book XI, Chap. II.

It will interest the reader to know that Cædmon has a place among the saints in theActa Sanctorumof the Bollandists. See the special article on him in Vol. II, p. 552, under the caption of "De S. Cedmono, cantore theodidacto."

[35]Woman Under Monasticism.Chapter IV, § 2, by Lina Eckenstein, Cambridge, 1896. In this chapter is an interesting account of the Anglo-Saxon nuns who were among the correspondents of Boniface.

[36]The reader will recall Chaucer's account in theCanterbury Talesof the wife of the well-to-do miller of Trumpyngton:"A wyf he hadde y-comen of noble kyn;She was y-fostred in a nonnerye.There dorste no wight clepen hir but 'Dame;'What for hire kynnrede and hir nortelrie,That she had lerned in the nonnerie."—Reeve's Tale.

[36]The reader will recall Chaucer's account in theCanterbury Talesof the wife of the well-to-do miller of Trumpyngton:

"A wyf he hadde y-comen of noble kyn;She was y-fostred in a nonnerye.There dorste no wight clepen hir but 'Dame;'What for hire kynnrede and hir nortelrie,That she had lerned in the nonnerie."—Reeve's Tale.

[37]Pp. 78, 79, London, 1897.

[38]History of European Morals, Vol. II, p. 369, New York, 1905.

[39]Henry VIII and the English Monasteries, London, 1895.

[40]The English Historical Review, July, 1888.Another recent writer affirms without hesitation that "Hroswitha has earned a place apart in the Pantheon of women poets and writers. She alone in those troublous times of the tenth century recalls to our minds the existence of dramatic art; her name, indeed, deserves to be rescued from oblivion and to become a household word."Fortnightly Review, p. 450, March, 1896.

[40]The English Historical Review, July, 1888.

Another recent writer affirms without hesitation that "Hroswitha has earned a place apart in the Pantheon of women poets and writers. She alone in those troublous times of the tenth century recalls to our minds the existence of dramatic art; her name, indeed, deserves to be rescued from oblivion and to become a household word."Fortnightly Review, p. 450, March, 1896.

[41]Histoire de l'Éducation de Femmes en France, Tom. I, p. 72 et seq. par Paul Rousselot, Paris, 1883.A certain jurisconsult of the thirteenth century, one Pierre de Navarre, expressed the sentiment of many of his contemporaries when he wrote the following paragraph:"Toutes fames doivent savoir filer et coudre; car la pauvre en aura mestier et la riche conoistra mieux l'œuvre des autres. A fame ne doit-on apprendre lettre ni escrire, si ce n'est especiaument pour estre nonain, car par lire et escrire, de fame sont maint mal avenu."

[41]Histoire de l'Éducation de Femmes en France, Tom. I, p. 72 et seq. par Paul Rousselot, Paris, 1883.

A certain jurisconsult of the thirteenth century, one Pierre de Navarre, expressed the sentiment of many of his contemporaries when he wrote the following paragraph:

"Toutes fames doivent savoir filer et coudre; car la pauvre en aura mestier et la riche conoistra mieux l'œuvre des autres. A fame ne doit-on apprendre lettre ni escrire, si ce n'est especiaument pour estre nonain, car par lire et escrire, de fame sont maint mal avenu."

[42]Opera Omnia S. Hildegardis, Tom. 197, Col. 48 of Migne'sPatrologiæ Cursus Completus. Cf. alsoNova S. Hildegardis Opera, edidit Cardinalis Pitra, Paris, 1882, andDas Leben und Wirken der Heiligen Hildegardis, von J. P. Schmelzeis, Freiburg im Breisgau, 1878.

[43]It was Peter Lombard, whoseSentences"became the very canon of orthodoxy for all succeeding ages," who, in marked contrast with those of ancient and modern times that regarded woman as the inferior or slave of man, asserted her equality with him in a sentence that should be written in letters of gold. "Woman," he declares,Sententiarum, Lib. II, Disp. 18, "was not taken from the head of man, for she was not intended to be his ruler, nor from his foot, for she was not intended to be his slave, but from his side, for she was intended to be his companion and comfort."In this view the great Schoolman but follows the teachings of St. Augustine. For in his commentary,De Genesi ad Litteram, Lib. 9, Cap. 13, the learned bishop of Hippo writes: "Quia igitur viro nec domina nec ancilla parabatur, sed socia, nec de capite, nec de pedibus, sed de latere fuerat producenda, ut juxta se producendam cognosceret, quam de suo latere sumptam didecisset." Again the same illustrious doctor declares that woman was formed from man's side in order that it might be manifest that she was created to be united with him in love—in consortium creabatur dilectionis.

In this view the great Schoolman but follows the teachings of St. Augustine. For in his commentary,De Genesi ad Litteram, Lib. 9, Cap. 13, the learned bishop of Hippo writes: "Quia igitur viro nec domina nec ancilla parabatur, sed socia, nec de capite, nec de pedibus, sed de latere fuerat producenda, ut juxta se producendam cognosceret, quam de suo latere sumptam didecisset." Again the same illustrious doctor declares that woman was formed from man's side in order that it might be manifest that she was created to be united with him in love—in consortium creabatur dilectionis.

[44]Cf.Hortus Deliciarum, by Herrad de Lansberg, folio with one hundred and ten plates, Strasburg, 1901, andHerrade de Landsberg, by Charles Schmidt, Strasburg.The erudite academician, Charles Jourdain, says of Herrad's great work "L'encyclopédie qu'on lui doit,l'Hortus Deliciarum, embrasse toutes les parties des connaissances humaines, depuis la science divine jusqu'à l'agriculture et la métrologie, et on s'étonne à bon droit qu'un tel ouvrage, qui supposait une érudition si variée et si méthodique, soit sorti d'une plume féminine. Quelle impression produirait aujourd'hui l'annonce d'une encyclopédie qui aurait pour auteur une simple, religieuse? Parlerons-nous des femmes du monde? Il n'existe d'elles, au XXesiècle, non plus que dans les siècles précédents aucun ouvrage comparable àl'Hortus Deliciarum."Excursions Historiques et Philosophiques, p. 480, Paris, 1888.

[44]Cf.Hortus Deliciarum, by Herrad de Lansberg, folio with one hundred and ten plates, Strasburg, 1901, andHerrade de Landsberg, by Charles Schmidt, Strasburg.

The erudite academician, Charles Jourdain, says of Herrad's great work "L'encyclopédie qu'on lui doit,l'Hortus Deliciarum, embrasse toutes les parties des connaissances humaines, depuis la science divine jusqu'à l'agriculture et la métrologie, et on s'étonne à bon droit qu'un tel ouvrage, qui supposait une érudition si variée et si méthodique, soit sorti d'une plume féminine. Quelle impression produirait aujourd'hui l'annonce d'une encyclopédie qui aurait pour auteur une simple, religieuse? Parlerons-nous des femmes du monde? Il n'existe d'elles, au XXesiècle, non plus que dans les siècles précédents aucun ouvrage comparable àl'Hortus Deliciarum."Excursions Historiques et Philosophiques, p. 480, Paris, 1888.

[45]SeeRevelationes Mechtildianæ ac Gertrudianæ, edit, Oudin, for the Benedictines at Solesmes, 1875.

[46]In her scholarly work onWoman Under Monasticism, p. 479, Lina Eckenstein writes as follows regarding the studies pursued in the convents of the Middle Ages:"The contributions of nuns to literature, as well as incidental remarks, show that the curriculum of study in the nunnery was as liberal as that accepted by the monks, and embraced all available writing whether by Christian or profane authors. While Scripture and the writing of the Fathers of the Church at all times formed the groundwork of monastic studies, Cicero at this period was read by the side of Boethus, Virgil by the side of Martianus Capella, Terence by the side of Isidore of Seville. From remarks made by Hroswitha we see that the coarseness of the Latin dramatists made no reason for their being forbidden to nuns, though she would have seen it otherwise; and, Herrad was so far impressed by the wisdom of the heathen philosophers of antiquity that she pronounced this wisdom to be the 'product of the Holy Spirit also.' Throughout the literary world, as represented by convents, the use of Latin was general, and made possible the even spread of culture in districts that were widely remote from each other and practically without intercourse."

[46]In her scholarly work onWoman Under Monasticism, p. 479, Lina Eckenstein writes as follows regarding the studies pursued in the convents of the Middle Ages:

"The contributions of nuns to literature, as well as incidental remarks, show that the curriculum of study in the nunnery was as liberal as that accepted by the monks, and embraced all available writing whether by Christian or profane authors. While Scripture and the writing of the Fathers of the Church at all times formed the groundwork of monastic studies, Cicero at this period was read by the side of Boethus, Virgil by the side of Martianus Capella, Terence by the side of Isidore of Seville. From remarks made by Hroswitha we see that the coarseness of the Latin dramatists made no reason for their being forbidden to nuns, though she would have seen it otherwise; and, Herrad was so far impressed by the wisdom of the heathen philosophers of antiquity that she pronounced this wisdom to be the 'product of the Holy Spirit also.' Throughout the literary world, as represented by convents, the use of Latin was general, and made possible the even spread of culture in districts that were widely remote from each other and practically without intercourse."

[47]The Lady, p. 71, by Emily James Putnam, New York, 1910.

[48]Eckenstein, op. cit., p. 478.

[49]Ut. Sup., 479-480.

[50]SeeWomankind in Western Europe, p. 288 et seq., by Thomas Wright, London, 1869.

[51]"Pertinere videtur ad hæc tempora Betisia Gozzadini non minus generis claritate quam eloquentia ac legum professione illustris.... Betisiam Ghirardaccius et nostri ab eo deinceps scriptores eximiis laudibus certatim extulerunt."De Claris Archigymnasii Bononiensis Professoribus a Sæculo XI usque ad Sæculum XIV, Tom. I, p. 171, Bologna, 1888-1896.

[52]L'École de Salerne, p. 18, par C. Meaux, Paris, 1880. Among the most noted of these women was Trotula, who, about the middle of the eleventh century, wrote on the diseases of women as well as on other medical subjects. Compare the attitude of the school of Salerno towards women with that of the University of London, eight hundred years later. When, in the latter half of the nineteenth century, women applied to this university for degrees in medicine, they were informed, as H. Rashdall writes inThe Universities of Europe in the Middle Ages, Vol. II, Part II, p. 712, Oxford, 1895, that "the University of London, although it had been empowered by Royal Charter to do all things that could be done by any University, was legally advised that it could not grant degrees to women without a fresh Charter, because no University had ever granted such degrees." Cf. also Hæser'sLehrbuch der Geschichte der Medicin, Band I, p. 645, et seq., Jena, 1875. Verily, the so-called dark ages have risen up to condemn our vaunted age of enlightenment!

[53]Die Entstehung der Universitäten des Mittelalters bis 1400, Band I, p. 233, Berlin, 1885, von P. Heinrick Denifle, assistant archivist of the Vatican Library, andHistoire Litéraire de la France, Commencé par des Religieux Bénédictins de S. Maur et Continué par des Membres de l'Institut, Tom. IX, 281, Paris, 1733-1906.

[54]"Une de ces nuits lumineuses ou les dernières clartés du soir se prolongent jusqu'aux premières blancheurs du matin."Documents Inédits, p. 78, Paris, 1850.

[55]The Universities of Europe in the Middle Ages, Vol. I, p. 31, Oxford, 1895.

[56]A Short History of the Renaissance in Italy, p. 277, London, 1893.

[57]Cecelia Gonzaga, a pupil of the celebrated humanist, Vittorino da Feltre, read the Gospels in Greek when she was only seven years old. Isotta and Ginevra Nogorola, pupils of the humanist, Guarino Verronese, likewise distinguished themselves at an early age by their rare knowledge of Latin and Greek. In later years all three enjoyed great celebrity for their learning, and were, like Battista di Montefeltro, women of genuine humanist sympathies. Cecelia Gonzaga's scholarship was in no wise inferior to that of her learned brothers, who were among the most noted students of the famous Casa Zoyosa in Mantua, where Vittorino da Feltre achieved such distinction as an educator in the early part of the Italian Renaissance. The learned Italian writer, Sabbadini, beautifully expressed the relation of women to Humanism, when he declares, in hisVida di Guarino, "L'Humanismo si sposa alla gentilezza feminile,"—humanism weds feminine gentility.

[58]Among them are the pictures of Caterina Vigri, which are preserved in the Pinacoteca of Bologna and in the Academia of Venice.

[59]No less an authority than the illustrious sculptor, Canova, declared that her early death was one of the greatest losses ever suffered by Italian art.

[60]It was also said of the Venetian artist, Irene di Spilimbergo, that her pictures were of such excellence that they were frequently mistaken for those of her illustrious master, Titian.

[61]Among these works may be mentionedIl Merito delle Donne, by Modesta Pozzo di Zorgi, Venice, 1600;La Nobilità e l'Excellenza delle Donne, by Lucrezia Marinelli, Venice, 1601;De Ingenii Muliebris ad Doctrinam et Meliores Litteras Aptitudine, by Anna van Schurman, Leyden, 1641;Les Dames Illustres, by Jaquette Guillame, Paris, 1665, andL'Egalité des Hommes et des Femmes, by Marie le Jars de Gournay, Paris, 1622. The last named work was by the celebratedfille d'alliance—adopted daughter—of Montaigne. It is to her that we owe thetextus receptusof theEssaisof the illustrious litterateur.

[62]The Women of the Renaissance, p. 290, by R. de Maulde la Clavière, New York, 1901.

[63]CalledLa Latina, because of her thorough knowledge of the Latin language.

[64]The famous Hellenist, Roger Ascham, tells of his astonishment on finding Lady Jane Grey, when she was only fourteen years of age, reading Plato's Phædo in Greek, when all the other members of the family were amusing themselves in the park. On his inquiry why she did not join the others in their pastime, she smilingly replied: "I wit all their sport in the park is but a shadow to that pleasure I find in Plato. Alas, good folk, they never knew what true pleasure meant."

[65]To the poet Ronsard, she was a woman beyond compare, as is evinced by the following lines of a pastoral ode addressed to her:"La Royne Marguerite,La plus belle fleur d'éliteQu'onques la terre enfanta."

[65]To the poet Ronsard, she was a woman beyond compare, as is evinced by the following lines of a pastoral ode addressed to her:

"La Royne Marguerite,La plus belle fleur d'éliteQu'onques la terre enfanta."

[66]Cf. Œuvres de Lovize Labé, nouvelle edition emprimée en caractères dits de civilité, Paris, 1871.

[67]The French poet, Jean Dorat, who was then professor of Latin in the Collège de France, expresses this fact in the following strophe:"Nempe uxor, ancillæ, clientes, liberi,Non segnis examen domus,Quo Plautus ore, quo Terentius, solentQuotidiane loqui."

[67]The French poet, Jean Dorat, who was then professor of Latin in the Collège de France, expresses this fact in the following strophe:

"Nempe uxor, ancillæ, clientes, liberi,Non segnis examen domus,Quo Plautus ore, quo Terentius, solentQuotidiane loqui."

[68]A prominent writer of the time, Jean Bouchet, expressed the prevailing opinion regarding the education of the women of the masses in the following quaint sentence: "Je suis bien d'opinion que les femmes de bas estat, et qui sont contrainctes vaquer aux choses familières et domestiques, ne doivent vaquer aux lettres, parce que c'est chose repugnante à rusticité; mais, les roynes, princesses et aultres dames qui ne se doib vent pour révérence de leur estat, appliquer à mesnage." Cf. Rousellot'sHistoire de l'Éducation des Femmes en France, Tom. I, p. 109, Paris, 1883.His ideal of a woman of the peasant type was apparently Joan of Arc, who, according to her own declaration, did not know a from b—"elle déclarait ne savoir ni a ni b."

His ideal of a woman of the peasant type was apparently Joan of Arc, who, according to her own declaration, did not know a from b—"elle déclarait ne savoir ni a ni b."

[69]Clavière, op. cit., p. 415.

[70]The noted English divine, Thomas Fuller, chaplain to Charles II, recognized the irreparable loss to women occasioned by the destruction of the nunneries by the Reformers. "There were," he tells us in his quaint language, "good she schools wherein the girls and maids of the neyghborhood were taught to read and work.... Yea, give me leave to say, if such feminine foundations had still continued, ... haply the weaker sex, besides the avoiding modern inconveniences, might be heyghtened to a higher perfection than hitherto hath been attained."Church History, Vol. III, p. 336, 1845.

[71]M. Thureau Dangin, the perpetual secretary of the French Academy, wrote, "La tradition ne veut pas d'académiciennes."

[72]Carlyle, in a lecture on Dante, and theDivina Commedia, declares that "Italy has produced a greater number of great men than any other nation, men distinguished in art, thinking, conduct, and everywhere in the departments of intellect." He could with equal truth have said that Italy has produced more great women than any other nation.

[73]Medical Women, p. 63, et seq., by Sophia Jex-Blake, Edinburgh, 1886, andPioneer Work in Opening the Medical Profession to Women, Chap. III, by Elizabeth Blackwell, London, 1895.

[74]Mme. Dacier was a remarkable exception chiefly because she was the daughter and pupil of one Hellenist before becoming the wife of another.

[75]Lettres et Entretiens sur l'Éducation de Filles, Tom. I, pp. 225-231.Compare this superficial course of study at Saint-Cyr with the elaborate course mapped out by Lionardo d'Arezzo in a letter addressed to the illustrious lady, Baptista Malatesta. In the broad programme of education for women recommended by this eminent man of letters, "poet, orator, historian, and the rest, all must be studied, each must contribute a share. Our learning thus becomes full, ready, varied, elegant, available for action or for discourse on all subjects."Lionardo's curriculum of studies for women was quite as comprehensive as that required for men, "with perhaps a little less stress upon rhetoric and more upon religion. There was no assumption that a lower standard of attainment is inevitably a consequence of smaller capacity."Nor was this thorough study of letters by the women of Italy "unfavorably regarded by social opinion"; neither did it introduce "a new standard of womanly activity. Women, indeed, at this epoch, seem to have preserved their moral and intellectual balance under the stress of the new enthusiasm better than men. The learned ladies were, in actual life, good wives and mothers, domestic and virtuous women of strong judgment and not seldom of marked capacity in affairs." Cf.Vittorino da Feltre and Other Humanist Educators, pp. 122, 132, 197, by W. H. Woodward, Cambridge, 1905.

[75]Lettres et Entretiens sur l'Éducation de Filles, Tom. I, pp. 225-231.

Compare this superficial course of study at Saint-Cyr with the elaborate course mapped out by Lionardo d'Arezzo in a letter addressed to the illustrious lady, Baptista Malatesta. In the broad programme of education for women recommended by this eminent man of letters, "poet, orator, historian, and the rest, all must be studied, each must contribute a share. Our learning thus becomes full, ready, varied, elegant, available for action or for discourse on all subjects."

Lionardo's curriculum of studies for women was quite as comprehensive as that required for men, "with perhaps a little less stress upon rhetoric and more upon religion. There was no assumption that a lower standard of attainment is inevitably a consequence of smaller capacity."

Nor was this thorough study of letters by the women of Italy "unfavorably regarded by social opinion"; neither did it introduce "a new standard of womanly activity. Women, indeed, at this epoch, seem to have preserved their moral and intellectual balance under the stress of the new enthusiasm better than men. The learned ladies were, in actual life, good wives and mothers, domestic and virtuous women of strong judgment and not seldom of marked capacity in affairs." Cf.Vittorino da Feltre and Other Humanist Educators, pp. 122, 132, 197, by W. H. Woodward, Cambridge, 1905.

[76]Thus, in a letter of hers to Mme. de Lauzun occurs a sentence like the following: "Il lia sy lontant que je n'ay antandu parler de vous." The duchess of Monpensier, daughter of Gaston d'Orleans, in a letter to her father exhibits a similar ignorance of her own language, when she writes: "J'ai cru que Votre Altesse seret bien ése de savoir sete istoire." Quoted by Rousselot in hisHistoire de l'Éducation des Femmes en France, Tom. I, p. 287.

[77]Les Femmes Savantes, Act II, Scene 7.

[78]Destouches, in hisL'Homme singulier, makes one of his female characters, who loves study, speak in the following pathetic fashion:"A learned woman ought—so I surmise—Conceal her knowledge, or she'll be unwise.If pedantry a mental blemish beAt all times outlawed by society,If 'gainst a pedant all the world inveighs,Shall pass unchecked in woman pedant's ways?I hold it sure, condemned my sex is quiteTo trifling nothings as its sole birthright;Ridiculous 'tis thought outside its 'sphere';The learned woman dare not such appear;Nay, she must even cloak her brilliancySo envy leave in peace stupidity;Must keep the level of the common kind,To subjects commonplace devote her mind,And treating these she must be like the rest.Lo, in such garb refinement must be dressed:That knowledge shall not make her seem unwise,She must herself in foolishness disguise."—Act III, Scene 7.

[78]Destouches, in hisL'Homme singulier, makes one of his female characters, who loves study, speak in the following pathetic fashion:

"A learned woman ought—so I surmise—Conceal her knowledge, or she'll be unwise.If pedantry a mental blemish beAt all times outlawed by society,If 'gainst a pedant all the world inveighs,Shall pass unchecked in woman pedant's ways?I hold it sure, condemned my sex is quiteTo trifling nothings as its sole birthright;Ridiculous 'tis thought outside its 'sphere';The learned woman dare not such appear;Nay, she must even cloak her brilliancySo envy leave in peace stupidity;Must keep the level of the common kind,To subjects commonplace devote her mind,And treating these she must be like the rest.Lo, in such garb refinement must be dressed:That knowledge shall not make her seem unwise,She must herself in foolishness disguise."—Act III, Scene 7.

[79]No one, however, went so far in his opposition to the education of women as the notorious SilvainMaréchal, the author ofProjet d'une Loi portant Defense d'Apprendre à Lire aux Femmes, who would have a law passed forbidding women to learn to read. He maintained that a knowledge of science and letters interfered with their being good housekeepers. "Reason," he avers, "does not approve of women studying chemistry. Women who are unable to read make the best soup. I would rather," he declares in the words of Balzac, "have a wife with a beard than a wife who is educated." See pp. 40, 50 and 51, of the edition of this strange work, published at Brussels, 1847.

[80]In herProblema Practicum, addressed to Dr. Rivet, Anna van Schurman states and develops in true syllogistic form a series of propositions in defense of her thesis in favor of the higher education of women. Two of these propositions are here given as illustrative of her points of view:I. Cui natura inest scientiarum artiumque desiderium, ei conveniunt scientiæ et artes. Atque feminæ natura inest scientiarum artiumque desiderium. Ergo.II Quidquid intellectum hominis perficit et exornat, id femmæ Christianæ convenit. Atqui scientiæ et artes intellectum hominis perficiunt et exornant. Ergo. SeeNobiliss. Virginis Annæ Schurman Opuscula, pp. 35 and 41, Leyden, 1656, and herDe Ingenii Muliebris ad Doctrinam et Meliores Literas Aptitudine, Leyden, 1641. Cf. alsoAnna van Schurman, Chap. IV, by Una Birch, London, 1909.

I. Cui natura inest scientiarum artiumque desiderium, ei conveniunt scientiæ et artes. Atque feminæ natura inest scientiarum artiumque desiderium. Ergo.

II Quidquid intellectum hominis perficit et exornat, id femmæ Christianæ convenit. Atqui scientiæ et artes intellectum hominis perficiunt et exornant. Ergo. SeeNobiliss. Virginis Annæ Schurman Opuscula, pp. 35 and 41, Leyden, 1656, and herDe Ingenii Muliebris ad Doctrinam et Meliores Literas Aptitudine, Leyden, 1641. Cf. alsoAnna van Schurman, Chap. IV, by Una Birch, London, 1909.

[81]A writer of the seventeenth century gives the following as the popular programme of female study: "To learn alle pointes of good housewifery, spinning of linen, the ordering of dairies, to see to the salting of meate, brewing, bakery, and to understand the common prices of all houshold provisions. To keepe account of all things, to know the condition of the poultry—for it misbecomes no woman to be a hen-wife. To know how to order your clothes and with frugality to mend them and to buy but what is necessary with ready money. To love to keep at home." How like the German four K's and the words on the sarcophagus of a Roman matron—lanifica,frugi,domiseda—a diligent plyer of the distaff, thrifty and a stay-at-home.

[82]The Letters and Works of Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, Vol. II, p. 5, Bohn Edition, 1887.

[83]Letter XLIX, London, Sept. 5, O. S., 1748.Walpole, writing in 1773, makes the following curious declaration: "I made a discovery—Lady Nuneham is a poetess, and writes with great ease and sense some poetry, but is as afraid of the character, as if it was a sin to make verses." And Lord Granville tells us of an eminent statesman and man of letters who, in the early part of the last century, was so troubled on discovering in his daughter a talent for poetry that he "appealed to her affection for him, and made a request to her never to write verses again. He was not afraid of her becoming a good poetess, but he was afraid of the disadvantages which were likely to be suffered by her, if she were supposed to be a lady of literary attainments."

[83]Letter XLIX, London, Sept. 5, O. S., 1748.

Walpole, writing in 1773, makes the following curious declaration: "I made a discovery—Lady Nuneham is a poetess, and writes with great ease and sense some poetry, but is as afraid of the character, as if it was a sin to make verses." And Lord Granville tells us of an eminent statesman and man of letters who, in the early part of the last century, was so troubled on discovering in his daughter a talent for poetry that he "appealed to her affection for him, and made a request to her never to write verses again. He was not afraid of her becoming a good poetess, but he was afraid of the disadvantages which were likely to be suffered by her, if she were supposed to be a lady of literary attainments."

[84]It was Swift who had such a low opinion of woman's intellect that in writing to one of his fair correspondents he told her that she could "never arrive in point of learning to the perfection of a schoolboy." Lady Pennington, strange to say, seems to have shared his views, for in a manual of advice to young ladies, she declares: "A sensible woman will soon be convinced that all the learning the utmost application can make her master of will be in many points inferior to that of the schoolboy." "At the time the Tatler first appeared in the female world any acquaintance with books was distinguished only to be censured," and it was then considered "more important for a woman to dance a minuet well than to know a foreign language."

[85]The wife of President John Adams, descended from the most illustrious colonial families, writing in 1817, regarding the educational opportunities of the girls of her time and rank, expressed herself as follows:"Female education in the best families went no farther than writing and arithmetic, and, in some few and rare instances, music and dancing." According to her grandson, Charles Francis Adams, "The only chance for much intellectual improvement in the female sex was to be found in the families of the educated class, and in occasional intercourse with the learned of the day. Whatever of useful instruction was secured in the practical conduct of life came from maternal lips; and, what of farther mental development depended more upon the eagerness with which the casual teachings of daily conversation were treasured up than upon any labor expended purposely to promote it."Familiar Letters of John Adams and His Wife, Abigail Adams, During the Revolution, With a Memoir of Mrs. Adams, by Charles Francis Adams, pp. X and XI, New York, 1876.

"Female education in the best families went no farther than writing and arithmetic, and, in some few and rare instances, music and dancing." According to her grandson, Charles Francis Adams, "The only chance for much intellectual improvement in the female sex was to be found in the families of the educated class, and in occasional intercourse with the learned of the day. Whatever of useful instruction was secured in the practical conduct of life came from maternal lips; and, what of farther mental development depended more upon the eagerness with which the casual teachings of daily conversation were treasured up than upon any labor expended purposely to promote it."Familiar Letters of John Adams and His Wife, Abigail Adams, During the Revolution, With a Memoir of Mrs. Adams, by Charles Francis Adams, pp. X and XI, New York, 1876.

[86]When the students of Girton and Newnham in 1897, after passing the Cambridge examinations—many of them with the highest honors—applied for degrees, "the undergraduate world was stirred to a fine frenzy of wrath against all womankind," and an astonished world saw re-enacted scenes scarcely less disgraceful than those which characterized the riotous demonstrations which, seventeen years before, had greeted seven young women at the portals of the University of Edinburgh.

[87]The Queen's Reign, Chap. V, London, 1897.

[88]Proposition third, of herPropositiones Philosophicæ, Milan, 1738, reads as follows:"Optime etiam de universa Philosophia infirmiorem sexum meruisse nullus infirmabitur; nam præter septuaginta fere eruditissimas, Mulieres, quas recenset Menagius, complures alias quovis tempore floruisse novimus, quæ in philosophicis disciplinis maximam ingenii laudem sunt assecutæ. Ad omnem igitur doctrinam, eruditionemque etiam muliebres animos Natura comparavit: quare paulo injuriosius cum feminis agunt qui eis bonarum artium cultu omnino interdicunt, eo vel maxime, quod hæc illarum studia privatis, publicisque rebus non modo haud noxia futura sint verum etiam perutilia."This admirable work, with its one hundred and ninety-one propositions, is commended to those who may have any doubt regarding the learning or capacity of the Italian women who have been referred to in the preceding pages.

[88]Proposition third, of herPropositiones Philosophicæ, Milan, 1738, reads as follows:

"Optime etiam de universa Philosophia infirmiorem sexum meruisse nullus infirmabitur; nam præter septuaginta fere eruditissimas, Mulieres, quas recenset Menagius, complures alias quovis tempore floruisse novimus, quæ in philosophicis disciplinis maximam ingenii laudem sunt assecutæ. Ad omnem igitur doctrinam, eruditionemque etiam muliebres animos Natura comparavit: quare paulo injuriosius cum feminis agunt qui eis bonarum artium cultu omnino interdicunt, eo vel maxime, quod hæc illarum studia privatis, publicisque rebus non modo haud noxia futura sint verum etiam perutilia."

This admirable work, with its one hundred and ninety-one propositions, is commended to those who may have any doubt regarding the learning or capacity of the Italian women who have been referred to in the preceding pages.

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