I purpose to review the progress and achievements of woman in science
from her earliest efforts in ancient Greece down to the present time. I
shall relate how, in every department of natural knowledge, when not
inhibited by her environment, she has been the colleague and the
emulatress, if not the peer, of the most illustrious men who have
contributed to the increase and diffusion of human learning. But a
proper understanding of this subject seems to require some preliminary
survey of the many and diverse obstacles which, in every age of the
world's history, have opposed woman's advancement in general knowledge.
Without such preliminary survey it is impossible to realize the
intensity of her age-long struggle for freedom and justice in things of
the mind or fully to appreciate the comparative liberty and advantages
she now enjoys in almost every department of intellectual activity.
Neither could one understand why woman's achievements in science,
compared with those of men, have been so few and of so small import,
especially in times past, or why it is that, as a student of nature or
as an investigator in the various realms of pure and applied science, we
hear so little of her before the second half of the nineteenth century.
To exhibit the nature of the difficulties woman has had to contend with
in every age and in every land, in order to secure what we now consider
her inalienable rights to things of the mind, it is not necessary to
review the history of female education, or to enter into the details of
her gradual progress forward and upward in the New and Old Worlds. But
it is necessary that we should know what was the attitude of mankind
toward woman's education during the leading epochs of the world's
history and what were, until almost our own day, the opinions of
men—scholars and rulers included—respecting the nature and the duties
of woman and what was considered, almost by all, her proper sphere of
action. Understanding the numerous and cruel handicaps which she had so
long to endure, the opposition to her aspirations which she had to
encounter, even during the most enlightened periods of the world's
history, and that, too, from those who should have been the first to
extend to her a helping hand, we can the better appreciate the extent of
her recent intellectual enfranchisement and of the value of the work she
has accomplished since she has been free to exercise those God-given
faculties which were so long held in restraint.
The first great bar to the mental development of woman was the assumed
superiority of the male sex, the opinion, so generally accepted, that,
in the scheme of creation, woman was but "an accident, an imperfection,
an error of nature"; that she was either a slave conducing to man's
comfort, or, at best, a companion ministering to his amusement and
pleasure.
From the earliest times she was regarded as man's inferior and relegated
to a subordinate position in society. She was, so it was averred, but a
diminutive man—a kind of mean between the lord of creation and the rest
of the animal kingdom. By some she was considered a kind of half man; by
others, as was cynically asserted, she was looked upon as a mas
occasionatus—a man marred in the making. She was, both mentally and
physically, what Spencer would call a man whose evolution had been
arrested, while man, as in the modern language of Darwin, was a woman,
whose evolution had been completed.
When such views prevailed, it was inevitable that, so long as physical
force was the force majeure, a woman should be relegated to the
position of a slave or to that of "a mere glorified toy." Every man then
said, in effect, if not in words, of the woman who happened to be in his
power what Petruchio said of Katherine:
"I will be master of what is mine own,
She is my goods, my chattels; she is my house,
My household stuff, my field, my barn,
My horse, my ox, my ass, my everything."
Even after civilization had superseded savagery and barbarism, it was
still inevitable, so long as such views found acceptance, that woman
should continue to be held in vassalage and ignorance and to suffer all
the disabilities and privations of "the lesser man." She was studiously
excluded from civic and social functions and compelled to pass her life
in the restricted quarters of the harem or gyneceum. This was the case
among the Athenians, as well as among other peoples; for, during the
most brilliant period of their history, women, when not slaves or
hetæræ, were considered simply child-bearers or housekeepers.[1] A
girl's education, when she received any at all, was limited to reading,
writing and music, and for a knowledge of these subjects she was
dependent on her mother. From her earliest years the Athenian maiden was
made to realize that the great fountains of knowledge, which were
always available for her brothers, were closed to her. Her duty was to
become proficient in the use of the needle and the distaff, and, later
on, to learn how to embroider, to ply the loom and make garments for
herself and for the other members of her family.
Until she was seven years old, she was brought up with her brothers
under the eye of her mother. During this period of childhood she had a
certain amount of freedom, but, after her seventh year, she was kept in
the gyneconitis—women's quarters—"under the strictest restraint, in
order," as Xenophon informs us in his Œconomicus, "that she might
see as little, hear as little and ask as few questions as possible." On
rare occasions she was permitted to be a spectator at a religious
procession, or to take part in certain of the choral dances that
constituted so important a part in the religious ceremonies of ancient
Greece. Whether in public or in private, silence was always considered
an imperative duty for a woman.
But more than this. Not only was she expected to observe silence
herself, but she was also expected so to conduct herself that no one
would have occasion to speak about her. Pericles, in a celebrated
discourse, gave expression to the prevailing opinion regarding this
phase of female excellence when, on a notable occasion, he addressed to
a certain number of women the following words: "Great will be your glory
in not falling short of your natural character; and greatest will be
hers who is least talked of among men whether for good or for evil."[2]
From the foregoing observations it will be seen that the general
attitude of the Athenians toward woman was anything but favorable to her
intellectual development, or to her exerting any influence beyond the
limits of her own household. And what is said of the Greeks can be
affirmed, with still greater emphasis, of the other nations of
antiquity. Indeed, it can be safely asserted that, had they all entered
into a solemn compact systematically to discredit woman's mental
capacity and to repress all her noblest aspirations, they could not have
succeeded more effectually than by the methods they severally adopted.
In ancient Greece the condition of woman was little better than it is in
India to-day under the law of Manu, where the husband, no matter how
unworthy he may be, must be regarded by the wife as a god.
And yet, notwithstanding the dominant force of public opinion and the
strange traditional prejudices that possessed for the majority of people
all the semblance and commanding power of truth, woman was here and
there able to break through the barriers that impeded her progress in
her quest of knowledge and to defy the social conventions that precluded
her from being seen or heard in the intellectual arena.
One of the first and most notable of Greek women to assert her
independence and to emerge from the intellectual eclipse which had so
long kept her sex in obscurity, was the Lesbian Sappho, who, as a lyric
poet, stands, even to-day, without a superior. So great was her renown
among the ancients that she was called "The Poetess," as Homer was
called "The Poet." Solon, on hearing one of her songs sung at a banquet,
begged the singer to teach it to him at once that he might learn it and
die. Aristotle did not hesitate to endorse a judgment that ranked her
with Homer and Archilochus, while Plato, in his Phædrus, exalts her
still higher by proclaiming her "the tenth Muse." Horace and Ovid and
Catullus strove to reproduce her passionate strains and rhythmic beauty;
but their efforts were little better than paraphrase and feeble
imitation. Her features were stamped on coins, "though she was but a
woman," and, after her death, altars were raised and temples erected in
honor of this "flower of the Graces," of
"That mighty songstress, whose unrivaled powers
Weave for the Muse a crown of deathless flowers."
Second only to the "violet-crowned, pure, sweetly-smiling Sappho," as
her rival, Alcæus, calls her, were Gorgo, Andromeda and Corinna. The
last of these was the teacher of Pindar, the celebrated lyric poet, whom
she defeated five times in poetic contests in Thebes.[3] She was one of
the nine lyrical muses, corresponding to "the celestial nine," who dwelt
on the sacred slopes of Helicon.[4] Telesilla and Praxilla were two
others. The last named was by her countrymen ranked with Anacreon.
Scarcely inferior to Corinna were those ardent pupils of Sappho, who had
flocked from the sunny isles of the Ægean and the laurel-crowned hills
of Greece around "the fair-haired Lesbian" in her island home, which
was, at the same time, a school of poetry and music. The most gifted of
these were Danophila, the Pamphylian, and Erinna, whose hexameters were
said by the ancients to reveal a genius equal to that of Homer. She died
at the early age of nineteen and has always excited a pathetic interest
because, like so many others of her sex since her time—women and
maidens of the loftiest spiritual aspirations,—she was condemned to the
spindle and the distaff when she wished to devote her life to the
service of the Muses. The following is her own epitaph:
"These are Erinna's songs, how sweet, though slight!
For she was but a girl of nineteen years.
Yet stronger far than what most men can write;
Had death delayed, whose fame had equaled hers?"
Never before nor since did such a wave of feminine genius pass over the
fragrant valleys and vine-clad plains of Greece. Never in any other
place or time shone so brilliant a galaxy of women of talent and
imagination; never was there a more perfect flowering of female
intelligence of the highest order. According to tradition, there
appeared in the favored land of Hellas, when the entire population of
the country was not equal to that of a fair-sized modern city, within
the brief space of a century, no fewer than seventy-six women poets.
When we remember that the Renaissance produced only about sixty female
poets, though in a more extended territory and with a much larger
population, and that none of them could approach the incomparable
Sappho, or even many of her pupils, in the perfection of their work, we
can realize the splendor of the achievements of the female intellect in
the Hellenic world during the golden age of feminine poetic art.[5]
One would think that this phenomenal outburst of mental vigor, and
especially the marvelous achievements of Sappho, Corinna and those of
their pupils and followers, would have compelled the world for all
subsequent time to recognize the innate power of the female mind, and
perceive the wisdom—not to say justice—of according to women the same
advantages for the development of their inborn gifts as were afforded to
men. They had proved that, under favorable conditions, there was
essentially no difference between the male and the female intellect, and
that genius knows no sex. And this they demonstrated not only in poetry,
but also in philosophy and in other branches of human knowledge as well.
Among those who had especially distinguished themselves were Hipparchia,
the wife of the philosopher Crates; Themista, the wife of Leon and a
correspondent of Epicurus, who was pronounced "a sort of female Solon";
Perictione, a disciple of Pythagoras, who distinguished herself by her
writings on Wisdom and The Harmony of Woman, and Leontium, a
disciple and companion of Epicurus, who wrote a work against
Theophrastus, which was pronounced by Cicero a model of style.
And was not the school of Pythagoras at Crotona continued after his
death by his daughter and his wife, Theano? And did not this fact alone
manifest woman's capacity for abstract thought, as effectively as the
Lesbian school had demonstrated her talent for consummate verse?[6]
But it was all to no purpose. The comparative freedom and advantages
which Sappho, Corinna and their friends had enjoyed was soon—for some
reason scarcely comprehensible by us—taken from all the women of Greece
except the peculiar class known in history as hetæræ—companions.
These we should now rank among the demimonde, but the Greek point of
view was different from ours. The hetæræ were the friends and companions
of the men who spent most of their time in public resorts, and they
accompanied them to the gymnasium, to banquets, the games, to the
theater and other similar assemblies from which the wives and daughters
of the Athenians, during the golden age of Greece, were rigorously
excluded. For so great was the seclusion in which the wives of the
Greeks then lived that they never attended public spectacles and never
left the house, unless accompanied by a female slave. They were not
permitted to see men except in the presence of their husbands, nor could
they have a seat even at their own tables, if their husbands happened to
have male guests.
It was by reason of this strict seclusion and the enforced ignorance to
which they were subjected that we hear very little of the virtuous women
of this period of Greek history. We have records of a few instances of
filial and conjugal affection, but, outside of this, the names of the
wives and daughters of even the most distinguished citizens have long
since passed into oblivion. Only the hetæræ attracted public notice, and
only among them, during the period to which reference is now made, do we
find any women who achieved distinction by their intellectual
attainments, or by the influence which they exerted over those with whom
they were associated.
But strange as it may appear, these extra-matrimonial connections, far
from incurring the censure which they would now provoke, received the
cordial recognition of both legislators and moralists, and even those
who were considered the most virtuous among men openly entered into
these relations without exposing themselves to the slightest stigma or
reproach. Many of the hetæræ, contrary to what is sometimes thought,
were "of highly moral character, temperate, thoughtful and earnest, and
were either unattached or attached to one man, and to all intents and
purposes married. Even if they had two or three attachments but behaved
in other respects with temperance and sobriety, such was the Greek
feeling in regard to their peculiar position that they did not bring
down upon themselves any censure from even the sternest of the Greek
moralists."[7]
The most famous men of Greece, married as well as unmarried, had their
"companions," many of whom were as distinguished for their
accomplishments as for their wit and beauty. Thus Epicurus had Leontium,
Menander Glycera, Isocrates Metaneira, Aristotle Herpyllis, and Plato
Archlanassa, while Aristippus, the philosopher, Diogenes, the cynic, and
Demosthenes, the great orator, each had a companion bearing the name of
Lais.[8] More than this. So strongly had many of the hetæræ impressed
themselves on the esthetic sense of the beauty-loving Greeks that not a
few of them had statues erected in their honor, especially in Athens and
Corinth, and thus shared in the honor that hitherto had been reserved
exclusively for the goddess of beauty and love, fair Aphrodite.
The hetæræ from Ionia and Ætolia were particularly conspicuous for their
intelligence and culture. And all of them, whencesoever they came,
enjoyed unrestricted liberty and, unlike the wives of the citizens of
Athens, had free access to the Portico and the Academy and the Lyceum,
and were permitted to attend the lectures of the philosophers on the
same footing as the men. Thus, to mention only a few, Thais was a pupil
of Alciphron, Nicarete of Stilpo, and Lasthenia of Plato.
And so keen were their intellects and so marked was their progress in
the most abstract studies, that many of them were recognized as the most
distinguished pupils of their masters. This accounts, in part, for the
popularity of their salons, at which were gathered the most eminent
statesmen, poets, artists, philosophers and orators of the day. The
nearest approach in modern times to such trysting-places, where beauty,
wit and talent found a congenial atmosphere, were the celebrated salons
of Ninon de Lenclos, Mlle. de l'Espinasse and Mme. du Deffand. At these
reunions were discussed, not only the news of the day, but also, and
especially, art, science, literature and politics, and always to the
advantage of both guests and hostesses.
Possessing such freedom and enjoying such splendid opportunities for
culture and intellectual advancement, it is not surprising that the
hetæræ played so remarkable a rôle in the social and civic life of
Greece, and that they were able to wield such influence over their
associates, and that they often attained even the highest royal honors.
Nor is it surprising to read in Plato's Symposium the splendid tribute
which Socrates renders to Diotima of Mantinea, when, in discussing the
true nature of divine and eternal beauty, he speaks of her as his
teacher.
Many of the hetæræ were not only the models but also the inspirers of
the most famous painters and sculptors of antiquity. Thus, Lais was the
companion and inspirer of Apelles, the most noted painter of Greece,
while Phryne, said to have been the most beautiful woman who ever lived,
was the inspirer of the peerless Praxitiles, who, in reproducing her
form, succeeded in bequeathing to the world what was undoubtedly the
most lovely representation of "the human form divine" that ever came
from a sculptor's chisel.[9]
On account of the relations of the hetæræ, especially those of the
fourth and fifth centuries B.C., with the greatest men of their time,
the writers of antiquity thought them of sufficient importance to
preserve their history. One author has left us an account of no fewer
than one hundred and thirty-five of them. But, of all those whose names
have come down to us, by far the most noted, accomplished and
influential was the famous Aspasia of Miletus. In many respects she was
the most remarkable woman Greece ever produced. Of rare talent and
culture, of extraordinary tact and finesse, of a fascinating personality
combined with the grace and sensibility of her sex, together with a
masculine power of intellect, "this gracious Ionian," as has well been
said, "stands with Sappho on the pinnacle of Hellenic culture, each in
her own field the highest feminine representative of an esthetic race."
At an early age she won the passionate love of the great statesman
Pericles, after which she entered upon that marvelous career which
secured for her a place in the front rank of the most eminent women of
all time. "Her house became the resort of all the great men of Athens.
Socrates was often there. Phidias and Anaxagoras were intimate
acquaintances, and probably Sophocles and Euripides were in constant
attendance. Indeed, never had any woman such a salon in the whole
history of man. The greatest sculptor that ever lived, the grandest man
of all antiquity, philosophers and poets, sculptors and painters,
statesmen and historians, met each other and discussed congenial
subjects in her rooms. And probably hence has arisen the tradition that
she was the teacher of Socrates in philosophy and politics, and Pericles
in rhetoric. Her influence was such as to stimulate men to their best,
and they attributed to her all that was best in themselves. Aspasia
seems especially to have thought earnestly on the duties and destiny of
women. The cultivated men who thronged her assemblies had no hesitation
in breaking through the conventionalities of Athenian society, and
brought their wives to the parties of Aspasia; and she discussed with
them the duties of wives. She thought they should be something more than
mere mothers and housewives. She urged them to cultivate their minds,
and be in all respects fit companions for their husbands."[10]
She is said to have written some of the best speeches of Pericles—among
them his noted funeral oration over those who had died in battle before
the walls of Potidæa. As to Socrates, he himself explicitly refers to
her, in the Memorabilia, as his teacher. She is a notable character in
the Socratic dialogues and appears several times in those of Æschines,
while there is every reason to believe that she strongly influenced the
views of Plato, as expressed by him in the Republic respecting the
equality of woman with man.
She was continually consulted regarding affairs of state, and her
influence in social and political matters was profound and far-reaching.
This is evidenced by the abuse heaped upon her by the comic dramatists
of the time. Referring to the ascendancy which she had over Pericles,
she was called Dejanira, the wife of Hercules; Hera, the queen of the
gods and wife of the Olympian Jove. It was asserted by her enemies that
the Samian war had been brought about at her instigation and that the
Peloponnesian war had been undertaken to avenge an insult which had been
offered her. These and similar statements which, when not absurd, were
greatly exaggerated, show the boundless influence she wielded over
Pericles, and what an important part she took in the government of
Greece in the zenith of its glory.
But, however great her influence, we are warranted in asserting that it
was never exercised in an illegitimate manner. She was ever, as history
informs us, the good, the wise, the learned, the eloquent Aspasia. It
was her goodness, her wisdom, her rare and varied accomplishments, her
clear insight and noble purposes that gave her the wonderful power she
possessed and which enabled her, probably more than any one person, to
make the age of Pericles not only the most brilliant age of Greek
history, but also the most brilliant age of all time.[11]
But, notwithstanding the beneficent influence which Aspasia ever exerted
on those about her, notwithstanding the heroic efforts she had made to
liberate her own sex from the restrictions that had so long harassed and
degraded it, the wives and daughters of the citizens of Athens were
still kept in almost absolute seclusion and denied the opportunities of
mental culture which were so generously accorded the free-born hetæræ
from Asia Minor and the islands of the Ægean. Socrates, as we learn from
Xenophon, asserted woman's equality with man, while Plato taught that
mentally there was no essential difference between man and woman. He
concluded, accordingly, that women of talent should have the same
educational advantages as men. In The Republic as well as in the
Laws, when he refers to education—which he would make compulsory for
"all and sundry, as far as possible"—his views are far in advance of
those which have been entertained until the last half century. He would
have girls as well as boys thoroughly instructed in music and
gymnastic—"music for the mind and gymnastic for the body."[12]
In the Laws he contends that "women ought to share, as far as
possible, in education and in other ways with men. For consider:—if
women do not share in their whole life with men, then they must have
some other order of life."
Again he asserts "Nothing can be more absurd than the practice which
prevails in our own country of men and women not following the same
pursuits with all their strength and with one mind, for thus the state,
instead of being a whole, is reduced to a half."[13]
In The Republic he expresses the same idea when he affirms that "the
gifts of nature are alike diffused in both"—men and women—"all the
pursuits of men are the pursuits of women."[14]
These opinions of Socrates and Plato are so at variance with those of
their contemporaries, and so contrary to the custom that then obtained
of excluding all but free-born hetæræ from the advantages of education
and culture, that we cannot but think that they were due to the profound
influence which had been exercised directly or indirectly by Aspasia on
both of these great philosophers. Be this as it may, neither the efforts
of Aspasia nor the teachings of Socrates and Plato were able to remove
the bars to intellectual development from which the women of Greece had
so long suffered. A change in customs and laws concerning the rigid,
oriental seclusion of women did not come until much later, and then it
was under a new régime—that of the Cæsars—while complete equality of
men and women in school and college was not recognized until long
centuries afterward.
It is interesting to speculate regarding what Greece would have become
had she developed her women as she developed her men. Never in the
history of the world were there in any one city so many eminent
men—poets, orators, statesmen, painters, sculptors, architects,
philosophers—as in Athens, and yet not a single native-born Athenian
woman ever attained the least distinction in any department of art or
science or literature. We cannot conceive for a moment that Greece's
fertility in great men and barrenness in great women was due to the fact
that the mothers of such illustrious men were ordinary housewives and
entirely devoid of the talent and genius which gave immortality to their
distinguished sons. The careers of Aspasia and the achievements of
Sappho, Corinna, Myrtides, Erinna, Praxilla, Telesilla, Myrus, Anytæ and
Nossidis, Theano and her daughter, to mention no others, absolutely
preclude such an assumption.
The women in Greece, there can be no doubt about it, were as richly
endowed by nature as were the men, and only lacked the opportunities
that men enjoyed to achieve, in every sphere of intellectual activity, a
corresponding measure of success. They were extraordinary types, these
women of ancient Greece; for among them we find the dignified Roman
matron, the chatelaine of the Middle Ages, the brilliant woman of the
Renaissance and the cultured mistress of the French salon. But all
their talent, power and genius counted for naught.
Had the civilization of Greece been a woman's civilization, as well as a
man's civilization, had there been a federation of all the Greek states,
as Aspasia seems to have striven for, instead of a number of small and
independent city-states; had the women of Hellas been allowed the same
liberty of action in intellectual work as was granted to the Italian
women during and after the revival of letters, and had they been
encouraged to develop all their latent powers that were so
systematically suppressed, and to work in unison with the men for the
welfare and advancement of a united nation, it is difficult to imagine
what a dazzling intellectual zenith a supremely gifted people, "full
summ'd in all their powers," would have attained. Their capacity for
work and for achieving great things would have been doubled and their
power as a political organization would have been practically
irresistible.
"We are the only women that bring forth men," said Gorgo, the wife of
Leonidas. The Spartan mothers, who had more of liberty than their
Athenian sisters, did, indeed, bring forth warriors of undying renown;
but it was the mothers of Athens who, notwithstanding all their
grievous disabilities, gave to the world all the greatest masters in
art, literature, and philosophy—the men who through the ages have been
the leaders and the teachers of humanity, and who seem destined to hold
their exalted position until the end of time.
The failure of the men of Greece to avail themselves of the immense
potential power, which they always kept latent in their women, was the
occasion of a terrible nemesis in the end. For this failure, coupled
with the frightful license introduced by a class of educated women, like
the hetæræ, without legal status or domestic ties, and the wave of
corruption that subsequently followed the advent of the countless
dissolute women who flocked to the Hellenic cities from every part of
the East, paved the way for the nation's downfall and for its ultimate
conquest by the resistless Roman legions that swept the once glorious
but ill-fated country of Pericles and Aspasia.
The condition of women in Rome, especially from 150 B.C. to 150 A.D.,
was quite different from what it was in Athens, even during her palmiest
days. Owing to the lack of authentic documents we know but little of the
history of the Roman people during the first five hundred years of their
existence, but we do know that during this period many and important
changes were effected regarding the social and civil status of women.
In the first place the Roman matron had much more freedom than was
accorded the Greek wife during the age of Pericles. Far from being kept
in oriental seclusion, like her Athenian sister, she was at liberty to
receive and dine with the friends of her husband, and to appear in
public whenever she desired. She went to the theater and the Forum; she
took part in all reputable entertainment, whether public or private.
Besides this, she had more and greater legal rights than Greek women
had ever known, and was treated rather as the peer and companion of man
than as his toy or his slave.
Besides this, foreign women were never so conspicuous in Rome as in
Athens. Even after Greece had become a Roman province, and after Græcia
capta Romam cepit—when Greek ideas and Greek customs were introduced
into the capital of the Roman world—it was still the Roman matron that
was supreme. And, although many Greek women, some of them of rare beauty
and culture, found their way to Rome, especially under the empire, they
were always kept in the background and never succeeded in achieving
anything approaching the ascendancy which distinguished them during the
time of Aspasia. Their influence in literature and politics was almost
nil.
In the case of the women of Rome, on the contrary, it may well be
questioned whether woman has ever wielded a greater influence than she
did during the three centuries that followed the reign of Augustus. But
she did not attain to this position of preëminence without a long and
bitter struggle. Every advance toward the goal of social and
intellectual equality was strenuously contested by the men, who wished
to limit the activities of their wives to the spindle, the distaff and
the loom and the other occupations of the household. For, as in Greece,
the generally accepted view was that woman, in the language of Gibbon,
"was created to please and obey. She was never supposed to have reached
the age of reason or experience." And her noblest epitaph, it was
averred, was couched in the following words:
"She was gentle, pious, loved her husband, was skillful at
the loom and a good housekeeper."[15]
As to her mental work, far from being considered on its own merits or as
a factor in the world's growth, it was flouted as
"Mere woman's work
Expressing the comparative respect
Which means the absolute scorn."
As early as 450 B.C., when the laws of the Twelve Tables were
promulgated, the girls of Rome received instruction in reading, writing
and arithmetic. "Up before dawn, with a lamp to light the way, and an
attendant to carry her satchel, the little Roman maiden of seven years,
or over, would trudge off to the portico where the schoolmaster wielded
his rod.[16] For some years this life continued, with but few holidays,
and those far between, until she attained some proficiency in the
rudiments. Then, most probably, her education in the scholastic sense
came to an end. Her brothers and boy schoolmates, if their parents
wished it, could proceed from the primary school to the secondary, where
geography, history and ethics were taught; where the art of elocution
was assiduously practiced and the works of the great Greek and Roman
poets were carefully read and expounded; but it was enough for the girl
to have learned how to read, write and cipher; she had then to learn her
domestic duties."[17]
With the extension of the empire and the consequent enormous increase in
wealth and the rapid progress in social and intellectual freedom, there
was a notable change in the character of the education given to women,
at least to those of the wealthier and patrician families. This was, in
great measure, due to the wave of Hellenism which, shortly after the
conquest of Greece, broke upon the Roman capital with such irresistible
force. To the large and rapidly increasing number of women of keen
intellect and lofty aspirations, whose minds had hitherto been confined
to the comparatively barren field of Roman letters, the splendid
creations of Greek genius came as a revelation. To become thoroughly
versed in Greek poetry and proficient in the teachings of Greek
philosophy was the ambition of scores of Roman women, who soon became
noted for the extent and variety of their attainments, as well as for
their rare culture and charming personality.
Among the pioneers of the intellectual movement in Rome, and one of the
most beautiful types of the learned women of her time, was the
celebrated daughter of the elder Scipio Africanus—Cornelia, mother of
the Gracchi. She is famous on account of her devotion to her two sons,
Tiberius and Caius. She was their teacher; and it was her educated and
refined mind that, more than anything else, contributed to the formation
of those splendid characters for which they were so highly esteemed by
their countrymen. Plutarch informs us that these noble sons of a noble
mother "were brought up by her so carefully that they became beyond
dispute the most accomplished of Roman youth; and, thus, they owed
perhaps more to their excellent upbringing than to their natural
parts."[18] One is not surprised to learn that this noble lady was
almost idolized by the Romans, and that they erected a statue to her
with the inscription, "Cornelia, Mother of the Gracchi."
Scarcely less distinguished and accomplished was another Cornelia, the
wife of Pompey, the Great. "Besides her youthful beauty," writes
Plutarch, in his Life of Pompey, "she possessed other charms, for she
was well versed in literature, in playing on the lyre, and in geometry,
and she had been used to listen to philosophical discourses with profit.
Besides this, she had a disposition free from all affectation and
display of pedantry—blemishes which such acquirements usually breed in
women."[19]
Then there was the cultured and devoted Aurelia, the mother of Julius
Cæsar. It is safe to say that this eminent man was as much indebted to
his mother for his success and greatness as were Tiberius and Caius
Gracchus to the benign influence and careful teachings of the gentle and
virtuous Cornelia. Highly educated and of commanding personalities, both
these women, like many others of their time, contributed much to the
making of Roman history by the success they achieved in molding the
characters of some of the greatest men of their own or of any age.
It is a splendid tribute that Cicero, in his Orator, pays to Lælia
when he tells of the purity of her language and the charm of her
conversation. "When I listen," he declares, "to my mother-in-law,
Lælia—for women preserve the traditional purity of accent the best
because, being limited in their intercourse with the multitude, they
retain their early impressions—I could imagine that I hear Plautus or
Nævius speaking, the pronunciation is so plain and simple, so perfectly
free from all affectation and display; from which I infer that such was
the accent of her father and his ancestors—not harsh like the
pronunciation to which I have just referred, not broad nor rustic nor
rugged, but terse, smooth and flowing."[20]
These are a few of the cultured and learned women who shed glory on
their country by the refining influence which they exerted in the quiet
and unostentatious precincts of the family circle. But there were others
who chose a wider field for their activities, and who, by reason of
their unerring judgment, well-poised and highly cultivated minds, had so
won the confidence of the nation's greatest leaders that they were
frequently consulted on important affairs of state. Thus, Cicero tells
us of an interview which he had at Antium with Brutus and Cassius.
Besides the men, there were present on this occasion three women, who
took an active part in the discussion. These were Servilia, the mother
of Brutus, Porcia, the wife of Brutus and the daughter of Cato, and
Tertulla, the wife of Cassius and sister of Brutus. The views of the
women were not without effect, and so confident was Servilia of her
power that she engaged to have a certain clause in one of the decrees of
the Senate expunged. This is but one of many similar instances which
might be adduced from the lives of the women of Rome who took an active
part in politics. As we learn from Tacitus, their counsels and
assistance were considered of peculiar value by the Commonwealth. For,
when some of the sterner old moralists wished to exclude women from all
participation in public affairs, the Senate, after a heated debate,
decided by a large majority that the coöperation of women in questions
of administration, far from being a menace, as some contended, was so
beneficial to the state that it should be continued.
Among other noteworthy makers of Roman history, besides those just
mentioned, is Livia, the wife of Augustus and the mother of Tiberius. So
great was her influence and so persistent was her activity in government
affairs, that it is sometimes asserted that she was the prime mover of
most of the public acts of both these rulers. This woman, whom Ovid
describes as having the features of Venus and the manner of Juno, and
who, he declares, "held her head above all vices," was credited with
having the benevolence of Ceres, the purity of Diana and the wisdom and
craft of Minerva—"a woman," as was said by one of her contemporaries,
"in all things more comparable to the gods than to men, who knew how to
use her power so as to turn away peril and advance the most deserving."
Then there was the gracious, the virtuous, the self-sacrificing Octavia,
sister of the Emperor Augustus, who was so successful in composing grave
differences between her brother and her husband, and who so exerted her
influence for peace during the troublous times in which she lived that
she lives in history as a peacemaker. In marked contrast to this gentle
and sympathetic woman was the energetic and heroic Agrippina, the wife
of Germanicus. In many respects she was the most commanding personality
of her age, and exhibited in an eminent degree those sterling qualities
which we are wont to associate with the strong, dignified, courageous
women of ancient Rome, who gave to the world so many and so great men in
every sphere of human endeavor. "She was," as Tacitus informs us, "a
greater power in the army than legates and commanders, and she, a woman,
had quelled a mutiny which the emperor's authority could not check."[21]
She was, indeed, as has well been said, "a woman to whom one might
address an epic but never a sonnet."
I have referred to these distinguished women because they are
embodiments of the best types of the noble, patrician families who made
the great Roman empire the admiration of all time, and because they
exhibit the wonderful advance that had been made in the general status
of women since the days of Pericles and Aspasia. I have referred to
them, also, to show what women are capable of achieving in the difficult
and complicated affairs of public life, when they are accorded the
necessary freedom of action and when they are properly equipped for work
by education and by association with men of learning and experience.
Comparing the secluded and illiterate Greek wife with the free and
highly accomplished Roman matron, we find almost as much difference
between the two as there is between a child and a fully developed
woman—all the difference there was between the unsophisticated young
wife, not quite fifteen, of whom Xenophon gives us such a charming
picture,[22] and the highly educated and competent mother of the
Gracchi.
Of the Greek maiden we are told that, before her marriage she "had been
most carefully brought up to see and hear as little as possible and to
ask the fewest questions"; that her whole experience before her marriage
"consisted in knowing how to take the wool and make a dress, and in
seeing how her mother's handmaidens had their daily spinning tasks
assigned to them." Cornelia, on the contrary, was not only, as we have
seen, highly accomplished, but also one who, after her husband's death,
was quite prepared, as Plutarch assures us, to undertake the management
of the extensive property which he left his family, and who, we may well
believe, would also have been qualified, had the occasion demanded it,
to perform with distinction the same duties that fell to the lot of the
gifted wives of Germanicus and Augustus.
Nothing in the history of Greek and Roman womanhood more strikingly
illustrates than the two instances given the vast difference in the
status of the wives of Greece and Rome, or exhibits more clearly the
advantages accruing to early training and thorough mental development.
If there was any difference in talent or intellect between the Greek and
the Roman woman it was, so far as we can determine, in favor of the
Greek. The sole reason, then, for such a marked difference in their
capacity for work and for achieving distinction in intellectual and
administrative fields of action arose from the lack of education in the
Athenian wife and the fullest measure of educational freedom enjoyed by
the Roman. That Aspasia, in spite of all the odds against her, was able
to rise to such a pinnacle of glory does not prove that she was the
superior of her countrywomen—the mothers of the greatest poets, artists
and philosophers of all time—but it exhibits rather her good fortune in
being able to effect a partnership with the greatest statesman of
Greece, and one who was at the same time fully able to appreciate all
her rare mental attainments and give her marvelous genius free scope for
development by coöperating with him in making the period during which he
held the reign of power the most brilliant one in the annals of human
progress.
Plato, referring to the oriental seclusion to which Athenian wives were
condemned, speaks of them as "a race used to living out of the
sunshine," and that, too, among a people that habitually lived out of
doors. We have already seen how much greater freedom Roman women enjoyed
and how much more important was the rôle they played in public as well
as private life; but we have not told all. They not only went to, but
presided over, public games and religious ceremonies. They were admitted
to aristocratic clubs and had, under the empire, a regular assembly or
senate of their own, known as the Conventus Matronarum. Hortensia, the
daughter of the great orator Hortensius, pleaded the cause of her sex
before the tribunal of the triumvirs, and so eloquent and effective was
her speech that she not only won her case, but also won the praise of
the critic, Quintilian, for her splendid oratorical effort.
Yet more. A certain woman in the Roman possessions in Africa had so
impressed her fellow citizens by her intellectual capacity and
administrative ability that she was chosen as one of the two chief
magistrates of the place. She is known in history as Messia Castula,
duumvira. It is true that the men of the older school, who would limit
woman's activities to the distaff and the loom, strongly objected to the
increasing freedom and power of women, and endeavored to counteract
their influence; but all to no purpose. And it was the crabbed old Cato,
the Censor, who growled in undisguised disgust:—"We Romans rule over
all men and our wives rule over us."
But great as were the freedom and educational advantages of the Roman
women, the startling fact remains that, with the exception of a few
fragmentary verses of slight merit and of questionable authenticity, we
have absolutely no tangible evidence of the Roman woman's literary
ability while under pagan influence. We have seen, in considering her
intellectual attainments—especially after the introduction of Greek art
and letters into the City of the Seven Hills—that every woman who
pretended to culture was obliged to be familiar with the Greek as well
as with the Latin authors, that her education was deemed incomplete
without a knowledge of Greek poetry, oratory, history and philosophy,
but the fact is indisputable that Roman women were not producers like
their Greek sisters, and that in no instance did their productions reach
anything like the supreme excellence of the creations of a Corinna or a
Sappho. There was, it is true, Sulpicia, of whom Martial writes: "Let
every girl, whose wish it is to please a single man, read Sulpicia; let
every man, whose wish it is to please a single maid, read Sulpicia;"
but, if the few amatory verses that are credited to her represent the
highest flights of the Roman women in the domain of poetry, then,
indeed, were they far behind not only Sappho and Corinna, but also far
behind scores of their pupils. Martial does indeed speak of a young
maiden in whom were combined the eloquence of Plato with the austere
philosophy of the Porch, and who wrote verses worthy of a chaste Sappho;
but this was evidently a great exaggeration, for we have no other
evidence of her existence.
The creative work of Roman women was, so far as we are able to judge,
quite as limited in prose as it was in poetry. Agrippina, the mother of
Nero, was one of the few prose writers whose name has come down to us.
From her memoirs it was that Tacitus received much of the material
incorporated in his Annals.
That some of the women had literary ability of a high order is indicated
by a letter of Pliny to one of his correspondents, in which occurs the
following passage:
"Pomponius Saturninus recently read me some letters which he averred had
been written by his wife. I believed that Plautus or Terence was being
read in prose. Whether they were really his wife's, as he maintains, or
his own, which he denies, he deserves equal honor, either because he
composes them or because he has made his wife, whom he married when a
mere girl, so learned and so polished."[23]
Scarcely less distinguished for her taste in literature, and for her
talent as a letter writer, was Pliny's wife, Calphurnia, who, at his
request, wrote to him in his absence every day and sometimes even twice
a day. According to Cicero, his daughter Tulia was "the best and most
learned of women"; but her literary work, it is probable, did not extend
much beyond her letters to her illustrious father. Nevertheless, what
would we not give to possess these letters—to have as complete a
collection of them as we have of those of the great orator and
philosopher. They would be of inestimable value and would be absolutely
beyond compare, except, possibly, with the letters of Mme. du Deffand or
of Elizabeth Barrett Browning of a much later age.
Considering the number of educated women that lived in the latter days
of the Republic and during the earlier part of the Empire, and their
well known culture and love of letters, it is reasonable to suppose that
they may have written much in both prose and verse of which we have no
record. Literary productions must have more than ordinary value to
survive two thousand years, and especially two thousand years of such
revolutions and upheavals as have convulsed the world since the time of
the Pax Romana, when all the world was at peace under Augustus.
How much of the literary work of the women of to-day will receive
recognition twenty centuries hence? Some of it may, it is true, find a
place in the fireproof libraries of the time; but who, outside of a few
antiquarians, will take the trouble to read it or estimate its value? A
few anthologies containing our gems of prose and poetry will probably be
all that our fortieth century readers will deem worthy of notice. In
view of the chaotic condition of Europe for so many centuries, the
wonder is not that we have so little of the literary remains of Greece
and Rome, but rather that we have anything at all.
As one might expect, the literary women of Rome, as well as those who
ventured to take part in public affairs, had their critics. The
satirists of the time were as unsparing of their ridicule as they were
long afterward when Molière wrote his Femmes Savantes and his
Précieuses Ridicules. And as for men of the old conservative type, a
learned woman was as much an object of horror as is a militant
suffragette in conservative England to-day. "No learned wife for me,"
exclaims Martial, "but rather a well-fed slave."[24]
And Juvenal had no more love for educated women than have some of our
contemporaries for a blue-stocking housekeeper. He gives his opinion of
them in the following characteristic fashion:
"That woman is a worse nuisance than usual who, as soon as she reclines
on her couch, praises Virgil; makes excuses for doomed Dido; pits bards
against one another and compares them, and weighs Homer and Mars in the
balance. Teachers of literature give way, professors are vanquished, the
whole mob is hushed, and so great is the torrent of words that no lawyer
or auctioneer may speak, nor any other woman."[25]
But if learned women had their enemies and detractors they also had
friends and defenders. Among these was the Stoic philosopher, C.
Musonius Rufus, who lived in the time of Nero. Like Plato, he contended
that women should have the same training as men and that the faculties
of both should be equally developed. The gist of his teaching is
contained in the statement that:
"If the same virtues must pertain to men and women, it follows,
necessarily, that the same training and education must be suitable for
both."[26]
Our brief sketch of women's work in ancient Rome would be incomplete
without some reference to the famous Ecclesia Domestica—Church of the
Household—on the Aventine, and the distinguished women who were its
chief ornaments. During the time of Pope Damasus, and not long before
the sacking of Rome by Alaric, the Ecclesia Domestica was a kind of
conventual home to which had retired, or in which were frequently
gathered, some of the most noble and learned women of the city. Among
the most notable of these were Marcella and her friends, Paula and
Eustochium.
For beauty of character and nobility of purpose and rare mental
endowments they recall the best traditions of a Cornelia or a
Calphurnia, while so great was their purity of life and so unbounded was
their charity to the poor and suffering that they were honored by being
numbered among the saints of the early church. But what specially
distinguished them among all the great women of the Roman world was
their great and varied learning. In this respect they probably were far
in advance of all their predecessors. For, in addition to a thorough
knowledge of Latin and Greek literature, history and philosophy, they
had, under the great theologian and orientalist, St. Jerome, become
proficient in Hebrew and deeply versed in Scripture.
Special mention should be made of Paula and her daughter Eustochium; for
it is probable that, had it not been for their influence on Jerome, and
their active coöperation in his great life work, we should not have the
Latin version of the Scriptures that is to-day known as the Vulgate.
This is evinced from the letters of the saint himself and from what we
know of the lives of these two remarkable women, who, as St. Jerome
informs us in the epitaph which he had engraved on Paula's tomb in the
Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem, were descended from the Scipios,
the Gracchi and the Pauli on the mother's side, and on the father's side
from the half-mythical kings of Sparta and Mycenæ.[27]
They aided him not only by their sympathy and by purchasing for him,
often at a great price, the manuscripts he needed for his colossal
undertaking, but also assisted him by their thorough knowledge of Latin,
Greek and Hebrew in translating the Sacred Books from the original
Hebrew into Latin. So great was Jerome's confidence in their scholarship
and so high was his appreciation of their ability and judgment that he
did not hesitate to submit his translations to them for their criticism
and approval. After he had completed his version of the first Book of
Kings, he turned it over to them, saying: "Read my Book of Kings—read
also the Latin and Greek translations and compare them with my version."
And they did read and compare and criticise. And more than this, they
frequently suggested modifications and corrections which the great man
accepted with touching humility and incorporated in a revised copy.
More wonderful still, the Latin Psalter, as it has come down to us, is
not, as is generally supposed, the translation from the Hebrew of
Jerome, but rather a corrected version made from the Septuagint by his
illustrious collaborators—Paula and Eustochium.
It is safe to say that no two women were ever engaged in a more
important or more difficult literary undertaking—one requiring keener
critical sense or more profound learning—than were Paula and
Eustochium, or one in which their efforts were crowned with more
brilliant success than were those of these two supreme exemplars of the
grace, the knowledge, the culture, the refinement of Roman
womanhood—the crowning glories of womanhood throughout the ages.
St. Jerome showed his grateful recognition of the invaluable assistance
received from his devoted and talented co-workers by dedicating to them
a great number of his most important books. This scandalized the
pharisaical men of the time, who looked askance at all learned women and
resented particularly the preëminence given to Paula and her
accomplished daughter. But their reproaches provoked a reply from the
saint that was worthy of the most chivalrous champion of woman, and
revealed, at the same time, all the nobility of soul of the roused "Lion
of Bethlehem." It is not only a defence of his course, but also a
splendid tribute to his two illustrious friends, and a tribute also to
the great and good women of all time.
"There are people, O Paula and Eustochium," exclaims the Christian
Cicero, vibrant with emotion and in a burst of eloquence that recalls
one of the burning philippics of Marcus Tullius, "who take offence at
seeing your names at the beginning of my works. These people do not know
that Olda prophesied when the men were mute; that while Barach was
atremble, Deborah saved Israel; that Judith and Esther delivered from
supreme peril the children of God. I pass over in silence Anna and
Elizabeth and the other holy women of the Gospel, but humble stars when
compared with the great luminary, Mary. Shall I speak now of the
illustrious women among the heathen? Does not Plato have Aspasia speak
in his dialogues? Does not Sappho hold the lyre at the same time as
Alcæus and Pindar? Did not Themista philosophize with the sages of
Greece? And the mother of the Gracchi, your Cornelia, and the daughter
of Cato, wife of Brutus, before whom pale the austere virtue of the
father and the courage of the husband—are they not the pride of the
whole of Rome? I shall add but one word more. Was not it women to whom
our Lord first appeared after His resurrection? Yes, men could then
blush for not having sought what the women had found."[28]
Time has spared a joint letter of Paula and Eustochium to their friend
Marcella—a letter which exhibits so well the rare culture and literary
ability of the writers that we cannot but lament that we have not more
of the correspondence which was carried on between the learned inmates
of the Church of the Household on the Aventine and Paula's convent home
near the Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem. Such a collection would be
beyond price, as it would complete the picture of the age so well
sketched by St. Jerome; and, as a contribution to the literary world, it
would have a value not inferior to that of those exquisite classics of a
later age—the letters of Madame Sevigné to her daughter.[29]
The period of nearly a thousand years intervening between the downfall
of Rome in A.D. 476 and the taking of Constantinople by the Turks in
1453 is usually known in history as the Middle Ages. By some it is
considered as synonymous with the Dark Ages, because of the decline of
learning and civilization during this long interval of time. The former
designation seems preferable, for, as we shall see, the latter is more
or less misleading. During the "wandering of the nations" in the fourth
and fifth centuries, and the long and fierce struggles between the
barbarian hordes from the north with the decadent peoples of the once
great Roman empire, there was, no doubt, a partial eclipse of the sun of
civilization; but the consequent darkness was not so dense nor so
general and long-continued as is sometimes imagined. The progress of
intellectual culture was, indeed, greatly retarded, but there was no
time when the light of learning was entirely extinguished. For even
during the most troublous times there were centers of culture in one
part of Europe or another. At one time the center was in Italy, at
another in Gaul, and, at still another, it was in Britain or Ireland or
Germany.
But whether it was in the south, or the west or the north of Europe that
letters flourished, it was always the convent or the monastery that was
the home of learning and culture. Within these holy precincts the
literary treasures of antiquity were preserved and multiplied. Here
monks and nuns labored and studied, always keeping lighted the sacred
torch of knowledge—Et quasi cursores vitaï lampada tradunt—and
passing it on to the generations that succeeded them. That any of the
great literary masterpieces of Greece and Rome have come to us, in spite
of the destructive agencies of time and the wreck of empires, is due
wholly to the unremitting toil through long ages of the zealous and
intelligent inmates of the cloister.
Of the monastic institutions for men there is no occasion to speak,
except in so far as they contributed to the intellectual advancement of
woman. In some cases the women of the cloister owed much to
ecclesiastics for their literary training; but there are not wanting
instances in which the nuns took the lead in education and had the
direction of schools which gave to the church priests and bishops of
recognized scholarship.
Practically the only schools for girls during the Middle Ages were the
convents. Here were educated rich and poor, gentle and simple. And in
these homes of piety and learning the inmates enjoyed a peace and a
security that it was impossible to find elsewhere. They were free from
the dangers and annoyances that so often menaced them in their own homes
and were able to pursue their studies under the most favorable auspices.
Among the first convent schools to achieve distinction were those of
Arles and Poitiers in Gaul, in the latter part of the sixth century. The
Abbess of Poitiers is known to us as St. Radegund. She not only had a
knowledge of letters rare for her age, but wrote poems of such merit
that they were until recently accepted as the productions of her master,
the poet Fortunatus,[30] who subsequently became bishop of Poitiers.
Far more notable, however, than the convents of Arles and Poitiers was
the celebrated convent of St. Hilda at Whitby. Hilda, the foundress and
first abbess of Whitby, was a princess of the blood-royal and a
grand-niece of Edwin, the first Christian king of Northumbria. Her
convent and adjoining monastery for monks soon became the most noted
center of learning and culture in Britain. And so great was her
reputation for knowledge and wisdom that not only priests and bishops,
but also princes and kings sought her counsel in important matters of
church and state.
As to the monks subject to her authority, she inspired them with so
great a love of knowledge, and urged them to so thorough a study of the
Scriptures, that her monastery became, as Venerable Bede informs us, a
school not only for missionaries but for bishops as well. He speaks in
particular of six ecclesiastical dignitaries who were sent forth from
this noble institution—all of whom were bishops. Five of them he
describes as men of singular merit and sanctity—"singularis meriti et
sanctitatis viros," while the sixth, he declared, was a man of rare
ability and learning—"doctissimus et excellentis ingenii." Of this
number was St. John of Beverly, who, we are told, "attained a degree of
popularity rare even in England, where the saints of old were so
universally and so readily popular."[31] Hilda governed her double
monastery with singular wisdom and success; and, so great was the love
and veneration she inspired among all classes that she merited the
epithet of "Mother of her Country."
Celebrated, however, as Hilda was for her great educational work at
Whitby, she is probably better known to the world as the one who first
recognized and fostered the rare gifts of the poet Cædmon. "It is on the
lips of this cowherd," as Montalembert beautifully expresses it, "that
the Anglo-Saxon speech first bursts into poetry. Indeed, nothing in the
whole history of European literature is more original or more religious
than this first utterance of the English muse."[32]
As soon as Hilda discovered the extraordinary poetic faculty of Cædmon,
she did not hesitate to regard it "as a special gift of God, worthy of
all respect and of the most tender care." And, in order that she might
the more readily develop the splendid talents of this literary prodigy,
the keen discerning abbess received Cædmon into the monastery of monks,
and had him translate the entire Bible into Anglo-Saxon. "As soon as the
Sacred Text was read for him he forthwith," as Bede declares, "ruminated
it as a clean animal ruminates its food, and transformed it into songs
so beautiful that all who heard were delighted."
As his poetical faculty became more developed, his profoundly original
genius became more marked, and his inspiration more earnest and
impassioned. It was this Northumbrian cowherd, transformed into a monk
of Whitby, who sang before the abbess Hilda the revolt of Satan and
Paradise Lost, a thousand years earlier than Milton, in verses which may
still be admired even beside the immortal poem of the British Homer. So
remarkable, indeed, in some instances is the similarity in the
productions of the two poets that F. Palgrave, one of the most competent
of English critics, does not hesitate to declare that certain of
Cædmon's verses resembled so closely certain passages of the Paradise
Lost that some of Milton's lines seem almost like a translation from the
work of his distinguished predecessor. And M. Taine, in his History of
English Literature, referring to the "string of short, accumulated,
passionate images, like a succession of lightning flashes," of the old
Anglo-Saxon poet, asserts that "Milton's Satan exists in Cædmon's as the
picture exists in the sketch."[33]
Well could Cædmon's first biographer, the Venerable Bede, say of him,
"Many Englishmen after him have tried to compose religious poems, but no
one has ever equaled the man who had only God for a master." And not
without warrant does the eloquent Montalembert, in the masterly work
just quoted, pen the following statement: "Apart from the interest which
attaches to Cædmon from a historical and literary point of view, his
life discloses to us essential peculiarities in the outward organization
and intellectual life of those great communities which in the seventh
century studded the coast of Northumbria, and which, with all their
numerous dependents, found often a more complete development under the
crozier of such a woman as Hilda than under the superiors of the other
sex."[34]
Space precludes my telling of other convents which were centers of
literary activity, and of nuns who distinguished themselves by their
learning and by the benign influence which they exerted far beyond the
walls of the cloister. I cannot, however, refrain from referring to that
group of learned English nuns who are chiefly known by their Latin
correspondence with St. Boniface, the Apostle of Germany, and by the
assistance which they gave him in his arduous labors. Conspicuous among
these was St. Lioba, who, at the request of Boniface, left her home in
England to found a convent at Bischopsheim in Germany, which, under the
direction of its learned and zealous abbess, soon became the most
important educational center in that part of Europe. Teachers were
formed here for other schools in Germany and Lioba's biographer tells us
that there were few monasteria feminarum—monasteries of women—within
the sphere of Boniface's missionary activities for which Lioba's pupils
were not sought as instructresses.
Like her illustrious countrywoman, St. Hilda, the abbess of Bischopsheim
was the friend and counselor of spiritual and temporal rulers.
Charlemagne, that eminent patron of scholars, had a great admiration for
her and gave her many substantial proofs of his esteem and veneration.
"Princes," writes her biographer, "loved her, noblemen received her, and
bishops gladly entertained her and conversed with her on the Scriptures
and on the institutions of religion, for she was familiar with many
writings and careful in giving advice. She was so bent on reading that
she never laid aside her book except to pray or to strengthen her slight
frame with food or sleep."[35] She was thoroughly conversant with the
books of the Old and the New Testaments and was, at the same time,
familiar with the writings of the Fathers. It is not surprising, then,
that she was regarded as an oracle, and that all classes flocked to her
as they did to the abbess of Whitby for guidance and assistance.
From what has been said of the accomplishments and achievements of the
Anglo-Saxon nuns just mentioned, it is evident that they were, of a
truth, women of exceptional worth and of sterling character. And it is
equally clear that their pupils must have shared in the education and
culture of their distinguished teachers.[36] Many of them, in addition
to having a wide acquaintance with literature, sacred and profane, were
also mistresses of several languages. A woman's education, at this time,
was not complete unless she could write Latin and speak it fluently. The
author of that most interesting early English work, Ancren Riwle—Rule
of Anchoresses—presupposes in his auditors, for whose benefit his
instructions were given, a knowledge of Latin and French, as well as of
English. In certain convents Latin was almost the sole medium of
communication,—to such an extent, indeed, that a special rule was made
prohibiting "the use of the Latin tongue except under special
circumstances."
"As long as the conventual system lasted the only schools for girls in
England were the convent schools where, says Robert Aske, 'the daughters
of gentlemen were brought up in virtue.' From an educational point of
view, the suppression of the convents was decidedly a blunder." Thus
writes Georgiana Hill in her instructive work on Women in English
Life, and there are, we fancy, but few readers of her instructive pages
who will not be inclined to agree with her conclusions.[37] Lecky speaks
of the dissolution of convents at the time of the Reformation as "far
from a benefit to women or the world."[38] And Dom Gasquet declares
"that destruction by Henry VIII of the conventual schools where the
female population, the rich as well as the poor, found their only
teachers, was the absolute extinction of any systematic education of
women for a long period."[39]
But this is not all. The strangest and saddest result, consequent on the
suppression of the convents, was that men were made to profit by the
loss which women had sustained. The revenues of the houses that were
suppressed had been intended for the sole use and behoof of women, and
had been administered by them in this sense for centuries. When they
were appropriated by Henry VIII, it never occurred to him or his
ministers to make any provision for the education of women in lieu of
that which had so ruthlessly been wrested from them. Thus the nunnery of
St. Radegund, together with its revenues and possessions, was
transformed into Jesus College, Cambridge, while from the suppressed
convents of Bromhall in Berkshire and Lillechurch in Kent funds were
secured for the foundation and endowment of St. John's College, also at
Cambridge. Similarly, the properties of other nunneries, large and
small, were appropriated for the foundation of collegiate institutions
at Oxford, all of which were for the benefit of men.
And so it was that, in a few short years, the great work of centuries
was undone and women were left little better educational facilities than
when the Anglo-Saxon nuns began their noble work in a land that was
enveloped in "one dark night of unillumined barbarism."
One would have thought that Elizabeth, who was so highly educated, and
who did so much for the supremacy of her country on land and sea, would
have bethought herself of the necessity of doing something for the
education of her female subjects. But no. She did nothing for them, and
the founders of the endowed grammar schools, during her reign, gave
never a thought to the educational necessities of the girls. They made
provision only for the boys. In this respect, however, the "Virgin
Queen" was but following in the footsteps of the male sovereigns and
legislators who had preceded her, and who, although affecting an
interest in having women "sensible and virtuous, seem by their conduct
toward the sex to have entered into a general conspiracy to order it
otherwise."
The truth is, when anything was achieved for the intellectual
advancement of women it was due either to private instruction or to the
result of a protracted struggle on the part of women themselves for what
they deemed their indefeasible rights. Had they relied on the
spontaneous action of men and on legislation in favor of female
education to which men had given the initiative, they would to-day be in
the same condition of ignorance and seclusion and servitude as was the
Athenian woman twenty-five centuries ago, and would occupy a status but
little above that of the inmates of oriental harems and zenanas.
The Anglo-Saxon nuns were, as we have seen, specially distinguished for
their learning and for the splendid work they performed for the
education of their sex during the long period of the Middle Ages. But
however great their preëminence in these respects, they were not without
rivals. There were, besides the schools, already named, conducted by St.
Lioba and her companions, also flourishing schools in Germany under the
direction of native nuns, whose success as educators was as marked as
that of Lioba or Hilda, and who, in addition to their labors in the
class-room, achieved distinction by their productive work. The
Anglo-Saxon convents developed few writers, whereas those of Germany
produced several who not only shed luster on their sex but who also
showed what woman is capable of accomplishing when accorded some measure
of encouragement and full liberty of action.
One of the most noted writers of her age was the famous nun of
Gandersheim, Hroswitha, who was born in the early part of the tenth
century. She was the pupil of the abbess Gerberg, who was of royal
lineage, and one of the most zealous promoters of learning and culture
in Saxony during the forty-two years of her rule in the convent to which
she and her favorite pupil gave undying renown.
Hroswitha's literary work consists of legends and contemporary history
in metrical form and of her dramas written in the style of Terence. As a
writer of history and legends she ranks with the best authors of her
time, while as a writer of dramas she stands absolutely alone. Hers,
indeed, were the first dramatic compositions given to the world during
the long interval that elapsed between the last comedies of classic
antiquity and the first of the miracle plays which had such a vogue
between the twelfth and the sixteenth century.
Her dramas, which, of all her works, have attracted the most attention,
are seven in number. They deal with the moral and mental conflicts which
characterized the period of transition from heathendom to Christianity.
Some of them exhibit poetic talent of a high order as well as the
inspiration and courage of genius. They reveal also a wide acquaintance
with the classic authors of Rome and Greece, besides a knowledge of many
of the Christian writers. They are, likewise, distinguished by
originality of treatment, complete mastery of the material used, as well
as by genuine beauty of rhyme and rhythm. In form, all the plays
preserve the simple directness of their model, Terence, while, in
conception, they embody the noblest ideals of Christian teaching. In
marked contrast to her model, who invariably exhibits the frailties and
lapses of woman, Hroswitha's plays turn on the resistance of her sex to
temptation, and on their steadfast adherence to duty and to vows
voluntarily assumed. A recent English writer, W. H. Hudson, in an
appreciative estimate of the work of this learned Benedictine nun
expresses himself as follows:
"It is on the literary side alone that Hroswitha belongs to the classic
school. The spirit and essence of her work belong entirely to the Middle
Ages; for beneath the rigid garb of a dead language"—she wrote in
Latin—"beats the warm heart of a new era. Everything in her plays that
is not formal but essential, everything that is original and individual,
belongs wholly to the Christianized Germany of the tenth century.
Everywhere we can trace the influence of the atmosphere in which she
lived; every thought and every motive is colored by the spiritual
conditions of her time. The keynote of all her works is the conflict of
Christianity with paganism; and it is worthy of remark that in
Hroswitha's hands Christianity is throughout represented by the purity
and gentleness of woman, while paganism is embodied in what she
describes as the vigor of men—virile robur."[40]
Among her legends the one entitled The Lapse and Conversion of
Theophilus has a special interest as being the precursor of the
well-known legend of Faust.
In Hroswitha's time, as in our own, there were people who were strongly
opposed to the higher education of women. There were others who would
deny them even the elements of an education—who declared that they
should be taught anything rather than reading and writing, which were a
cause of temptation and sin—that their knowledge should be confined
solely to the duties of an ordinary housewife, that their books should
consist solely of thimble, thread and needles—"Et leurs livres, un dé,
du fil et des aguilles." Some, it is true, were willing to make an
exception in favor of nuns; but, as to all others, the less they knew
the better it was for their spiritual, if not for their temporal,
welfare also.[41] To those who were thus minded, Hroswitha pithily
replied that it was not knowledge itself but the bad use of it that was
dangerous—"Nec scientia scibilis Deum offendit, sed injustitia
scientis."
Among other women who were Hroswitha's equals in knowledge, if not in
literary attainments, were several other nuns who illumined the closing
centuries of the Middle Ages. Chief among these were St. Hildegard, "the
sybil of the Rhine"; Herrad, the noted author of the Hortus
Deliciarum—Garden of Delights—and Matilda and Gertrude, those
remarkable mystical writers, whose descriptions of heaven and hell so
closely resemble those in the Divina Commedia that many writers are of
the opinion that the great Florentine poet must have been familiar with
the accounts which they gave of their visions.
St. Hildegard was for a third of a century the abbess of the convent of
St. Rupert at Bingen. So great was her reputation for sanctity and for
the extent and variety of her attainments that she was called "the
marvel of Germany." She is without doubt one of the most beautiful and
imposing as well as one of the greatest figures of the Middle
Ages—great beside such eminent contemporaries as Abelard, Martin of
Tours and Bernard of Clairvaux. People from all parts of the Christian
world sought her counsel; and her convent at Bingen became a Mecca for
all classes and conditions of men and women. But nothing shows better
the immense influence which she wielded than her letters of which nearly
three hundred have been preserved.
Among her correspondents were people of the humble walks of life as well
as the highest representatives of Church and State. There were simple
monks and noble abbots; dukes, kings and queens; archbishops and
cardinals and no fewer than four Popes. Letters came to her from the
orient and the occident, from the patriarch of Jerusalem, from Queen
Bertha of Greece, from Frederick Barbarossa, Philip the Count of
Flanders, St. Bernard, the professors of the University of Paris; from
Henry II of England, and from his grand-daughter Eleonora, "The Damsel
of Brittany." It is safe to say that no woman during the Middle Ages
exercised a wider or more beneficent influence than did this humble
Benedictine abbess of Bingen on the Rhine and had unsought so large a
number of distinguished correspondents. And, if we accept the criterion
that influence is measured by the number and nature of one's relations,
it would be difficult to find in any age relations that were more select
or more cosmopolitan.
But her astonishing collection of letters is the slightest product of
her intellectual activity. She is without doubt the most voluminous
woman writer of the Middle Ages. Her works on theology, Scripture and
science make no less than six or eight large octavo volumes. The
Bollandists, than whom there is no more competent authority, express
their amazement at the amount and quality of Hildegard's work. Witness
the following language of one of their number: "Although we may not be
surprised that our saint was interrogated regarding secret things by so
many men eminent both by reason of their dignity and their learning, I
am nevertheless forced to recognize with stupefaction that a woman
without instruction, and who had not acquired knowledge by study, was
consulted concerning the most difficult questions of theology and the
most subtle of Holy Scriptures, and that she gave, without hesitation,
the answers that were demanded by theology and Scripture."[42]
Is it, then, surprising that the famous William of Auxerre, after a
critical examination of her works, should compare her with Peter
Lombard, the celebrated "Master of the Sentences,"[43] and one of the
most learned of the Schoolmen, and write that Hildegard is
Sententiarum Magistra—Mistress of the Sentences—and that "in her
works the words are not human but divine"? Has any woman writer ever
received higher praise, and from one so competent to express an opinion
as the scholarly divine of Auxerre?
Herrad, the gifted abbess of Hohenburg in Alsace, was a contemporary of
Hildegard, and, like her, was noted for her culture and wide range of
knowledge. She is chiefly known for her Hortus Deliciarum, a
remarkable work, encyclopædic in character, which she wrote for the nuns
of her convent and which was designed to embody in words and in pictures
the knowledge of her age.
Nothing that time has bequeathed to us gives us a clearer conception of
the manifold activities of a mediæval nunnery, of the industry, talents
and enthusiastic love of learning of its inmates, than Herrad's
wonderful Garden of Delights. Nor is there any other work that gives
us a better knowledge of the manners, customs and ideals of the twelfth
century, or one that, in its particular sphere, is of more value to the
student of art, philology and archæology. It exhibits Herrad's intense
interest in the intellectual advancement of her nuns and pupils as well
as her superior talent and acquirements. Unfortunately the manuscript
copy of this work was destroyed at the time of the bombardment of
Strasburg by the Germans in 1870, and our knowledge of it is limited to
portions of it which had previously been transcribed or to accounts left
of it by those who had examined it before its destruction. Of such
exceptional value was this unique work that the editor of the great
collection of pictures, which illustrates this remarkable book, does not
hesitate to declare that "Few illuminated manuscripts had acquired a
fame so well deserved as the Hortus Deliciarum of Herrad."[44]
No sketch, however brief, of the literary nuns of mediæval Germany would
be complete without some reference to the learned religious of the
convent of Helfta, near Eisleben in Saxony. Of the abbess Gertrude we
read that her enthusiasm for knowledge was so great that she not only
inspired others with the same enthusiasm, but that she was an incessant
collector of books, which she had her nuns transcribe. Among her most
distinguished subjects were two religious by the name of Matilda, one of
whom was her sister, and a third, who, to distinguish her from the
abbess, is known as "Gertrude the Great."
The writings of these nuns were inspired by that great mystic movement
which then prevailed in various parts of Europe and are among the most
impassioned productions of the age. For this reason they still have a
special claim on the attention of students of art and literature, as
well as those of theology and mysticism. Impressed by the similarity of
their ideas and descriptions as compared with those found in Dante's
great masterpiece, there are not wanting scholars who contend that the
prototype of the Matelda in the earthly paradise of the Purgatorio was
none other than one of the Matildas of the famous convent of Helfta.[45]
The writings of Hroswitha, Hildegard, Herrad, Gertrude and the Matildas,
to speak of no others, are the best evidence of the studious character
of the nuns of mediæval times, and of their devotion to the cause of
education. They command, likewise, our admiration for the system of
training which made such development possible, and show that, in certain
departments, the schools as then conducted were on as high a plane as
any we have to-day.[46] They show us, too, that nuns and convent-bred
women of the age in question were of quite different mental calibre from
that of the "gentle lady of chivalry living in her bower, playing upon
her lute and waiting patiently for the return of her triumphant
knight," and quite different, too, from that of the castle
lady-loves—whose sole attractions were often no more than youth and
beauty—who inspired the impassioned lyrics of troubadour and
minnesinger.
A recent writer sums up in a few words the status and the
accomplishments of the lady of the abbey in the following paragraph:
"No institution of Europe has ever won for the lady the freedom and
development that she enjoyed in the convent in early days. The modern
college for women only feebly reproduces it, since the college for women
has arisen at a time when colleges in general are under a cloud. The
lady-abbess, on the other hand, was part of the two great social forces
of her time, feudalism and the Church. Great spiritual rewards and great
worldly prizes were alike within her grasp. She was treated as an equal
by the men of her class, as is witnessed by letters we still have from
popes and emperors to abbesses. She had the stimulus of competition with
men in executive capacity, in scholarship, and in artistic production,
since her work was freely set before the general public; but she was
relieved by the circumstances of her environment from the ceaseless
competition in common life of woman with woman for the favor of the
individual man. In the cloister of the great days, as on a small scale
in the college for women to-day, women were judged by each other as men
are everywhere judged by each other, for sterling qualities of head and
heart and character."[47]
Nor is this all. Never was woman more highly honored, never was her
power and influence greater than during the period of conventual life
extending from Hilda of Whitby to Gertrude and the Matildas of Helfta,
and especially during that golden period of monasticism and chivalry
when cloister and court were the radiant centers of learning and
culture. Abbesses took part in ecclesiastical synods and councils and
assisted in the deliberations of national assemblies. In England, they
ranked with lords temporal and spiritual, and had the right to attend
the king's council or to send proxies to represent them, while in
Germany, where they held property directly from the king or emperor,
they enjoyed the rights and privileges of barons and, as such, took part
in the proceedings of the imperial diet either in person or through
their accredited representatives. In Saxony, the abbesses had the right
to strike coins bearing their own portraits, notably the abbesses of
Gandersheim and Quedlinburg. In England they were invested with
extraordinary powers, and in certain cases owed obedience to none save
the Pope. In Kent abbesses, as representatives of religion, came
immediately after bishops.
Possessing such power and prestige, it is not surprising to learn that
abbesses wielded great influence in temporal as well as spiritual
matters; that it pervaded politics and extended to the courts of kings
and emperors. Thus, Matilda, the abbess of Quedlinburg, together with
Adelheid, the mother of Otto III who was but three years old at the time
of his father's death, practically ruled the empire. At a later period
during the prolonged absence in Italy of Otto III, the control of
affairs was entrusted to the abbess alone; and so successful was her
administration, and so vigorous were the measures which she adopted
against the invading Wends, that she commanded the admiration of all. In
view of these facts, the learned authoress of Woman Under Monasticism
is fully warranted in declaring as she does "The career open to the
inmates of convents in England and on the Continent was greater than any
other ever thrown open to women in the course of modern European
history."[48]
"The educational influence of convents during centuries," continues the
same writer, "cannot be rated too highly. Not only did their inmates
attain considerable knowledge but education in a nunnery, as we see from
Chaucer and others, secured an improved standing for those who were not
professed."[49] It prepared the way for, if it did not train, those
highly educated women who appeared during the time of the transition
between the Middle Ages and what is now designated as the Modern Period.
Among these were Christine de Pisan, who was a prolific writer on many
subjects in both prose and verse, and who, it is said, was the first
woman to earn a livelihood by her pen.[50] There were also some of those
remarkable women who lectured on law in the University of Bologna, among
whom were Bettina Gozzadini,[51] who, some writers will have it,
occupied the chairs of law in her alma mater as early as 1236, and the
celebrated Novella d'Andrea, of the following century, who frequently
acted as a substitute for her father, a professor of canon law in the
university, and who, by reason of her varied and profound knowledge,
held a prominent place among the most learned men of her time. Both of
these noted women were worthy prototypes of that long list of learned
Italian women who, during the Renaissance, won such honor for themselves
and such undying glory for their country. Not less remarkable were
several women of the school of Salerno, who, during its palmiest days,
distinguished themselves as teachers, writers and medical
practitioners,[52] and the still more remarkable daughters of one
Mangord, a professor of Paris, whose daughters taught Sacred
Scripture.[53] There were few in number, it is true, but they were the
worthy prototypes of those learned and brilliant women who achieved such
distinction and glory for their sex during that most interesting period
of history known as the Renaissance.
By the Renaissance we understand not only a phase in the development of
the nations of Europe but also that period of transition between the
mediæval and the modern world during which the latent spiritual energies
of the Middle Ages developed into the intellectual forces and moral
habits of thought which now pervade the civilized world. Various dates
are assigned for its starting point. Among them is the fall of
Constantinople in 1453, when there was a great influx of scholars from
the famed metropolis on the Bosphorus to the Italian peninsula, who
brought with them those forgotten treasures of science and literature
which were so instrumental in producing that interesting phenomenon
known in history as the Revival of Learning. But whatever date be
assigned for the beginning of the Renaissance, whether it be the year
when Constantinople fell into the hands of the Turk or the fateful
millennial year which was to witness the termination of all things,
there certainly was never at any period a distinct breach of historical
continuity between the old order and the new.
This is particularly true of Italy where the Renaissance had its origin.
For here, during the entire mediæval period, there never was a time when
the study of antiquity was completely neglected; when the traditions of
the old Roman culture had died out, or when the art and the literature
of the classical ages of the past had ceased to exert an influence on
artists and scholars. Ozanam was, then, right when he declared that the
night of the Dark Age, which in Italy intervened between "the
intellectual daylight of antiquity and the dawn of the Renaissance,"
was, in reality, like "one of those luminous nights in which the fading
brightness of evening is prolonged into the first beaming of the
morning."[54]
So much, indeed, was this the case that those who have made the most
profound study of the Middle Ages recognize a first Renaissance in the
twelfth century, which was not less real than the Renaissance par
excellence of the fifteenth century, a renaissance which counts such
masters of Latinity as Abelard, John of Salisbury and Hildebert of
Tours, and such schools as that of Chartres, where classical Latin was
taught with as much thoroughness as in the great universities of Europe
during the brilliant age of the humanists. It was then, as Rashdall
truly observes, that "a revival of architecture heralded, as it usually
does, a wider revival of Art. The schools of Christendom became thronged
as they were never thronged before. A passion for enquiry took the place
of the old routine. The Crusades brought different parts of Europe into
contact with one another and into contact with the new world of the
East—with a new religion and a new philosophy, with the Arabic
Aristotle, with the Arabic commentators on Aristotle, and eventually
even with Aristotle in the original Greek."[55]
Roughly speaking, the Renaissance attained its culmination during the
second half of the fifteenth century. It was during this period that
gunpowder and printing with movable types were invented—the first
completely revolutionizing the methods of warfare and the second
marvelously facilitating the diffusion of knowledge. And it was during
the same period also that Vasco da Gama doubled the Cape of Good Hope,
that Columbus crossed the Sea of Darkness and that Copernicus laid the
foundation of modern astronomy.
But this wonderful half-century constituted only a small portion of the
period embraced by the Renaissance. From the fall of Constantinople
until it attained the highest phase of development in England, the
Renaissance covers a period of nearly two centuries. The progress of the
intellectual and moral movement which it represented, from the land of
its birth, to the northern and western parts of Europe, was
comparatively slow. Thus, while Italy was exhibiting the full effulgence
of the re-birth, England was still in the feudal condition of the Middle
Ages. A striking illustration of this truth is seen in the fact that "a
brother of the Black Prince banqueted with Petrarch in the palace of
Galeazzo Visconti—that is to say, the founder of Italian humanism, the
representative of Italian despotic state-craft, and the companion of
Froissart's heroes met together at a marriage feast." "In Italy," as
Symonds has shown, "the keynote was struck by the Novella, as in
England by the drama."[56] The supreme exponents of the Renaissance as
manifested in literature were, without doubt, Ariosto in Italy, Rabelais
in France, Cervantes in Spain, Camoens in Portugal, Erasmus in the
Netherlands and Shakespeare in England.
Considering the splendid achievements of men during the Renaissance in
every department of intellectual activity, one would imagine that women
also would have attained to a somewhat proportionate distinction, at
least in literature and the arts. But, outside of Italy, this was far
from being the case. In France, Spain, Portugal and England there were,
it is true, a certain number of women who won distinction by their
talents and learning, but these were the exceptions which but served to
throw into greater relief the prevailing ignorance of the great mass of
their sex, which had few, if any, of the advantages of instruction, even
in the most elementary branches of knowledge.
The Italian women, as we have already seen, had commanded marked
recognition for their talents and learning even before the close of the
Middle Ages. The most famous of these were among those who, having
obtained the doctorate, became lecturers and professors in the great
university of Bologna. The existence and accomplishments of some of
these may, perhaps, be more or less legendary, but there can be no doubt
that many of them, some before the time of the Renaissance, had gained a
European reputation for the breadth and variety of their attainments.
But it was during the Renaissance that the remarkable flowering of the
intellect of the Italian woman was seen at its best. While the women in
the other parts of Europe, especially in England and Germany, were
suffering the ill effects consequent on the suppression of the convents,
which, for centuries, had been almost the only schools available for
girls, the women of Italy were taking an active part in the great
educational movement inaugurated by the revival of learning, and winning
the highest honors for their sex in every department of science, art and
literature. Not since the days of Sappho and Aspasia had woman attained
such prominence, and never were they, irrespective of class-condition,
accorded greater liberty, privileges or honor. The universities, which
had been opened to them at the close of the Middle Ages, gladly
conferred upon them the doctorate, and eagerly welcomed them to the
chairs of some of their most important faculties. The Renaissance was,
indeed, the heydey of the intellectual woman throughout the whole of the
Italian peninsula—a time when woman enjoyed the same scholastic freedom
as men, and when Mme. de Staël's dictum, Le génie n'a pas de sexe,
expressed a doctrine admitted in practice and not an academic theory.
It would require a large volume, or rather many volumes, to do justice
to the learned women of Italy who conferred such honor upon their sex
during the period we are considering. Suffice it to mention a few of
those who achieved special distinction and whose memories are still
green in the land which had been made so illustrious by their talent and
genius.
That which the modern reader finds the most surprising in the Italian
women of the Renaissance is their enthusiasm for the literæ
humaniores—the Latin and Greek classics—and the proficiency which so
many of them, even at an early age, attained in the literature and
philosophy of antiquity. It was no uncommon thing for a girl in her
teens to write and speak Latin, while many of them were almost equally
familiar with Greek.[57] Thus Laura Brenzoni, of Verona, had such a
mastery of these two languages that she wrote and spoke them with ease,
while Alessandra Scala was so familiar with them that she employed them
in writing poetry. Lorenza Strozzi, who was educated in a convent and
eventually became a nun, was distinguished for her great versatility,
for her profound knowledge of science and art, as well as for her
proficiency in Latin and Greek. Her Latin poems were so highly valued
that they were translated into foreign languages. Livia Chiavello, of
Fabriano, was celebrated as one of the most brilliant representatives of
the Petrarchan school. Her style was so pure and noble that, had
Petrarch not lived, she alone would have upheld the honor of the vulgar
tongue. So successful was Isotta of Rimini in the cultivation of the
Muses that she was hailed as another Sappho. Cassandra Fedele, of
Venice, deserved, according to Polizian, the noted Florentine humanist,
to be ranked with that famous universal genius, Pico de la Mirandola. So
extensive were her attainments that in addition to being a thorough
mistress of Latin and Greek, she was likewise distinguished in music,
eloquence, philosophy and even theology. Leo X, Louis XII of France, and
Isabella of Spain were eager to have her as an ornament for their
courts, but the Venetian senate was so proud of its treasure that it was
unwilling to have her depart. Catarina Cibo, of Genoa, was another
prodigy of learning; for, besides a knowledge of Latin and Greek,
philosophy and theology, she was well acquainted with Hebrew. Donna
Felice Rasponi, of Ravenna, devoted herself to the study of Plato and
Aristotle, of Scripture and the Fathers. But, for the extent and variety
of her attainments, Tarquinia Molza seems to have eclipsed all her
contemporaries. She had as teachers the ablest scholars of an age of
distinguished scholars. Not only did she excel in poetry and the fine
arts, but she also had a rare knowledge of astronomy and mathematics,
Latin, Greek and Hebrew. And so great was the esteem in which she was
held that the senate of Rome conferred on her the singular honor of
Roman citizenship, transmissible in perpetuity to her descendants. The
Sovereign Pontiff and the flower of the Roman prelacy begged her to take
up her residence in the Eternal City, but she could not be prevailed
upon to leave the land of her birth.
In the arts of sculpture and painting the women of Italy, during the
Renaissance, were no less illustrious than they were in science,
literature and philosophy. Indeed, many of the treasures in the Italian
churches and art galleries that still delight all lovers of the
beautiful are from the chisel and the brush of women who achieved
distinction between three and four centuries ago.[58]
Probably the most famous sculptress was Properzia de Rossi, whose
ability was so remarkable that she excited the envy of the men who were
her competitors.[59] Among painters there was Suor Plantilla Nelli, who
was a nun and prioress in the convent of Santa Catarina in Florence.
Both Lanzi and Vasari bestow high praise on her work and declare some of
her productions to be of rare excellence. There were also Maria Angela
Crisculo, of whose splendid work many examples are still preserved in
the churches of Naples, and Lavinia Fontana of Bologna, who exhibited
such extraordinary ability as an artist that some of her pictures passed
for the work of her great contemporary, Guido Reni.[60] Still more
remarkable were the achievements of four sisters of the noted family
Anguisciola of Cremona. So admirable was the work of the eldest sister,
Sofonisba, that Philip II invited her to his court in Spain, where she
excited the amazement of every one by the splendid canvases which she
executed for her illustrious patron and for the members of the royal
family.
Of the fifty female poets who flourished in Italy during the Renaissance
the most eminent were Gaspara Stampa, Veronica Gambara, and Vittoria
Colonna. Of such merit and exquisite finish were the productions of
their Muse that they are still read with never failing pleasure. So
highly did Cardinal Bembo,—the famous "dictator of letters"—value the
scholarship and critical acumen of Veronica Gambara that he never
published anything without previously submitting it to her judgment. But
far more eminent as a poet was the noble and accomplished Marchesa of
Pescara, Vittoria Colonna, who, on account of her talents and virtues,
was named La Divina. The friend and adviser of scholars and the
confidante of princes, she represented, as has truly been said, "the
best phases of the Renaissance, its learning, its intelligence, its
enthusiasm, its subtle Platonism, combined with a profound religious
faith and the trace of the mysticism of a simpler age." The chorus of
universal praise which was sung by her contemporaries is well echoed by
Ariosto when he writes of her: "She has not only made herself immortal
by her beautiful style, of which I have heard not better, but she can
raise from the tomb those of whom she speaks or writes and make them
live forever." But it was as the friend and inspirer of Michaelangelo
that she is best known to us to-day. "Without wings," he writes to her,
"I fly with your wings; by your genius I am raised to the skies; in your
soul my thought is born."
Among those who specially distinguished themselves for their profound
scholarship, as exhibited in the halls of universities, were Dorotea
Bucca, who occupied a chair of medicine in the University of Bologna,
where, by reason of her rare eloquence and learning, she had students
from all parts of Europe; Laura Ceretta, of Brescia, who, during seven
years, gave public lectures on philosophy; Battista Malatesta, of
Urbino, who taught philosophy with such marked success that the most
distinguished professors of the day were forced to recognize themselves
as her inferiors; and Fulvia Olympia Morati, who "at the age of fourteen
wrote Latin letters and dialogues in Greek and Latin in the style of
Plato and Cicero," and who, when she was scarcely sixteen, "was invited
to give lectures in the University of Ferrara on the philosophical
problems of the Paradoxes of Cicero." So great, indeed, was her
knowledge of the ancient languages that she was offered the
professorship of Greek in the University of Heidelberg; but death cut
short her brilliant career before she could enter upon her duties in
this famed institution of learning. It was female professors of this
type—masters of Greek and Latin letters, who in the words of a recent
writer, "sent forth from Italy such students as Moritz von Spiegelberg
and Rudolph Agricola, to reform the instruction of Deventer and Zwoll
and prepare the way for Erasmus and Reuchlin."
In the preceding list of learned women—and but a few only have been
named of the many who in every city of importance conferred undying
glory on their sex—it is clear that the Renaissance in Italy was,
indeed, the golden age of women. Never in history had they greater
freedom of action in things of the mind; never were they, except
probably in the case of the English and German abbesses of the Middle
Ages, treated with more marked deference and consideration or fairness;
never were their efforts more highly appreciated or more generously
rewarded, and never was their success more highly and enthusiastically
applauded. Temporal and spiritual rulers, princes and cardinals, Popes
and emperors vied with one another in paying just tribute to woman's
genius as well as to woman's virtue. The nun in the cloister as well as
the lady in the palace shared in the general enthusiasm for learning,
and they enjoyed throughout the peninsula the same opportunities as men
and received the same recognition for their work. Everywhere the
intellectual arena was open to them on the same terms as to men.
Incapacity and not sex was the only bar to entrance.
But the men of those days, especially scholars of the type of Bembo,
Politian and Ariosto, were liberal and broad-minded men, who never for a
moment imagined that a woman was out of her sphere or unsexed because
she wore a doctor's cap or occupied a university chair. And far from
stigmatizing her as a singular or strong-minded woman, they recognized
her as one who had but enhanced the graces and virtues of her sex by the
added attractions of a cultivated mind and a developed intellect. Not
only did she escape the shafts of satire and ridicule, which are so
frequently aimed at the educated woman of to-day, but she was called
into the councils of temporal and spiritual rulers as well.
Woe betide the ill-advised misogynist who should venture to declaim
against the inferiority of the female sex, or to protest against the
honors which an appreciative and a chivalrous age bestowed upon it with
so lavish a hand. The women of Italy, unlike those of other nations,
knew how to defend themselves, and were not afraid to take, when
occasion demanded, the pen in self-defense. This is evidenced by
numerous works which were written in response to certain narrow-minded
pamphleteers—miseri pedanti, pitiful pedants,—who would have the
activities of women limited to the nursery or the kitchen.[61]
A striking characteristic of these learned women was the entire absence
of all priggism or pedantry. Whether lecturing on law or philosophy, or
discoursing in Latin before Popes and cardinals, or taking part in
discussions on art and literature with the eminent humanists of the day,
they ever retained that beautiful simplicity which gives such a charm to
true greatness of mind and is the best index of true scholarship and
noble, symmetrical womanhood.
Nor did the rare intellectual attainments of these daughters of Italy
destroy that harmony of creation which, some will have it, is sure to be
jeopardized by giving women the same educational advantages as men. So
far was this from being the case that there were never more loyal and
helpful wives nor more devoted and stimulating mothers than there were
among those women who wrote verses in the language of Sappho, or
delivered public addresses in the tongue of Cicero. Still less did their
serious and long-protracted studies entail any of the dangers we hear so
much of nowadays. The large and healthy families of many of them prove
that intellectual work, even of the highest order, is not incompatible
with motherhood; and still less that it, per se, conduces, as is so
often asserted, to race-suicide. These facts are commended to the
consideration of our modern opponents of the higher education of women
and to those militant conservatives and old-time reactionaries who are
still averse to opening the doors of some of our older universities to
women—even such universities as Oxford, several of whose colleges were
founded on the revenues derived from suppressed educational institutions
which had been built and used for generations for the sole behoof of
women.
But distinguished as were the women of Italy for their culture and
scholarship, they were yet more distinguished as patrons of learning, as
leaders and inspirers of the eminent men who were the chief
representatives of the Renaissance. Reference has already been made to
the influence of Vittoria Colonna on Michaelangelo—"who saw with her
eyes, acted by her inspiration, was lifted by her beyond the stars"—but
this is only one of many similar instances that might be adduced.
Indeed, to the student of the Italian Renaissance, the most interesting
feature of it was, not its women doctors and professors, but those noble
and accomplished ladies who made the courts of Ferrara, Mantua, Milan
and Urbino the most noted intellectual centers of Europe.
The most beautiful ornaments of the first three courts were Renée,
duchess of Ferrara; Isabella d'Este, marchioness of Mantua, and Beatrice
d'Este, duchess of Milan. They were all women of exceptional learning
and culture, and each was the center of a galaxy of talent such as is
rarely witnessed in any one place.
Among the men attracted to their courts were the most illustrious
scholars, artists, poets and musicians of the Renaissance. Here they
found congenial homes and breathed an atmosphere made fragrant by the
appreciation shown by their charming hostesses for their power and
genius. Here they found inspiration and a stimulus that spurred them on
to their greatest achievements. In Ferrara, where it was said that
"there were as many poets as there were frogs in the country round
about," were gathered the most gifted poets of the Renaissance who had
been attracted there to recite their latest masterpieces. Among them
were Clement Marot, the first poet of modern France, and Ariosto, the
immortal author of Orlando Furioso. There were the great painters,
Titian and Bellini, and the illustrious poet, Torquato Tasso, whose love
subsequently immortalized Renée's youngest daughter Leonora.
A similar artistic and intellectual supremacy was held by Isabelle
d'Este. For portrait painters she had Titian and Leonardo da Vinci,
while, as decorators of her home, she had Bellini and Perugino, whose
compositions she herself arranged, even in the minutest details. So it
was likewise in the gay and brilliant court of Beatrice d'Este, in
Milan,—a place where artists and scholars of all nationalities were
always sure of a cordial welcome.
But the ideal center of intellectual culture was the court of Urbino,
the central figure of which was the learned and accomplished Elizabetta
Gonzaga. This picturesque city of the eastern slope of the Apennines was
then to Italy what Athens had been to Greece in the days of Pericles;
and Elizabetta was to its court what Aspasia was in her own matchless
salon—the magnet which attracted all the artists and men of letters of
the age.
Castiglione, whose great work, The Courtier, was partly written as a
memorial of the peerless woman who inspired it, gives us a vivid picture
of "the fair ladies, with their quick intelligence and ready sympathy,"
discussing questions of art, literature, philosophy and Platonism, with
the most eminent scholars and artists of Europe. But Castiglione
confesses that he is unable to give us more than the mere outline of the
picture. "To paint the polished society of Urbino," as has been well
said, "we should need colors no palette contains—transparencies of the
Grecian sky, the indigo of certain seas, the liquid azure of certain
eyes. For more than a century the court of Urbino was regarded as the
supreme exemplar. In the seventeenth century, the Hotel de Rambouillet
was still striving to make itself a copy of it; unluckily such things as
these are not easily copied."[62]
We are not surprised, then, at being told that "men moulded by Italian
ladies"—such ladies as graced the court of Urbino—"could be
distinguished among a thousand." Still less are we surprised to note the
immense difference between the refined and brilliant discussions of The
Courtier as compared with the coarse tales of the Decameron and
Heptameron. And we can understand the marvelous influence which
Castiglione's matchless work—inspired by the beloved Duchess
Elizabetta—had upon the masters of English literature—on Shakespeare,
Ben Jonson, Spenser, Marlow, Shelley.
Cardinal Bembo, who was one of the most assiduous frequenters of this
famous court, in writing of Elizabetta, does not hesitate to declare: "I
have seen many excellent and noble women, and have heard of some who
were as illustrious for certain qualities, but in her alone among women,
all virtues were united and brought together. I have never seen nor
heard of any one who was her equal, and know very few who have even come
near her."
It was Castiglione's experience at the court of Urbino, where he was a
daily witness of the irresistible influence of Elizabetta, that made him
give expression to the sentiment, "Man has for his portion physical
strength and external activities; all doing must be his, all inspiration
must come from woman." It was also this keen student of the mysterious
workings of woman's genius and of her secret, all-pervading influence,
at times and in places least suspected, who penned the notable
statement—worthy of the Renaissance—"Without women nothing is
possible, either in military courage, or art, or poetry, or music, or
philosophy, or even religion. God is truly seen only through them."
Only a few words are necessary to tell of the learned women of the
Renaissance outside of Italy. On account of its intimate connection with
the Italian peninsula, Spain was the second country in Europe to
experience the effects of the new intellectual movement. Among the
educated Italians whom Isabella, the Catholic, had attracted to her
court were the brothers Geraldini, whom she appointed as teachers of her
children. Of her daughter, Juana, Juan Vivès, the eminent Spanish
scholar, says she was able to make impromptu speeches in Latin, while
Catherine, who became the wife of Henry VIII, excited the admiration of
Erasmus by the extent and accuracy of her knowledge. It was from
Salamanca that Isabella summoned her own teacher of Latin, the learned
Beatrix Galindo,[63] who was a professor of rhetoric in the university
long before Elizabeth of England had studied the language of Virgil
under Ascham.
Then there was Francisca de Lebrixa who often filled the chair of her
father, who was professor of history and rhetoric in the University of
Alcala, and Isabella Losa, of Cordova, who, among her other
acquirements, counted a knowledge of Greek and Hebrew. To his learned
daughters, Gregoria and Luisa, Antonio Perez, minister of Philip II,
wrote saying: "Do not imagine, when you are writing to me, that you are
addressing Cicero or some Greek author; lower your style to my level."
There were also Isabella de Joya, who commented on Scotus Erigena;
Catherine Ribera, the bard of love and faith; Doña Maria Pacheco de
Mendoza; Bernarda Ferreyra, to whom, on account of her rare scholarship,
Lopez de Vega dedicated his beautiful elegy Phillis; Juana Morella,
who, besides having a profound knowledge of music, philosophy, divinity
and jurisprudence, was the mistress of fourteen languages; Juana de la
Cruz, the famous Mexican nun whose poetry of superior merit, as well as
her exceptional attainments in many branches of knowledge, won for her
the epithet of the "Tenth Muse"; Luisa Sigea, who besides being a poet
was a mistress of the classical and several oriental languages,
including Hebrew and Syro-Chaldaic, and other learned women whom "no one
was astonished to see taking by main force the first rank in the spheres
of literature, philosophy and theology."
So profoundly had the Renaissance affected the women of a limited circle
in England, that Erasmus could declare without exaggeration: "It is
charming to see the female sex demand classical instruction. The queen
is remarkably learned and her daughter writes good Latin. The home of
More is truly the abode of the Muses."
The queen of whom Erasmus speaks is Catherine of Aragon, who was
educated in Spain, who was a pupil of Vivès, and who, besides having a
thorough knowledge of Latin and Greek, was well acquainted with several
modern languages. The daughters of Sir Thomas More were among the most
learned women of their time and were, indeed, worthy of dwelling in "the
home of the Muses."
Lady Jane Grey read Plato in the original at the age of thirteen.[64]
Anne, Margaret and Jane Seymour were likewise celebrated for their
knowledge of the classics, as were Anne Boleyn and Mary Stuart, who both
received their education in France, and especially Queen Elizabeth, who
was not only one of the most learned women of her time but was probably
also the most learned queen England has ever produced. There were,
however, no university professors or poets of eminence among the English
women, as there were in Italy and Spain, and their creative work was
practically nothing.
Since the time of Hroswitha, Gertrude, the Matildas and Hildegard, the
learned woman has never been the ideal woman in Germany. When Olympia
Morati was on her way from Ferrara to Heidelberg to take the chair of
Greek, she found the daughters of professors and humanists devoting
themselves to sewing and embroidery instead of art and literature. Anna,
the eldest daughter of Melanchthon, was almost alone among the German
women of the Renaissance who had a knowledge of Latin.
In France the most learned woman of her time was undoubtedly Margaret of
Angoulême, queen of Navarre. So great was her knowledge and so
enthusiastic was she in promoting the study of the Latin and Greek
classics that Michelet, with something of exaggeration, perhaps, calls
her "the amiable mother of the Renaissance in France."[65] She was noted
for her devotion to the study of Scripture and theology as well as Greek
and Hebrew. She always had around her, or was in correspondence with,
the most distinguished scholars, poets, artists, philosophers and
theologians of the age, and undoubtedly did much, as a patroness of men
of letters, toward furthering the literary movement in France. She is,
however, chiefly known to modern readers by her Heptameron—a work
which reveals too clearly the tastes of her associates and the manners
and customs of the time.
With the exception of Margaret of Navarre, there were but few literary
women of more than ephemeral reputation during the French Renaissance.
Among these Louise Labé deserves mention, as she was the most
distinguished poetess in France during the sixteenth century.[66] She,
like Margaret, was the center of a coterie of men of letters; but the
reunions over which she presided, as well as those of the author of the
Heptameron, were entirely lacking in the dignity and refinement of
those of the polished court of Urbino in the days of the peerless
Elizabetta Gonzaga.
From what has been said respecting the rare learning of the women of the
Renaissance, one might infer that women in general enjoyed special
educational facilities during this period of intellectual activity.
Paradoxical as it may seem, the very contrary was the case. For, as
history tells us, the education of the Renaissance was essentially
aristocratic. It was only for the women of the nobility and for the
wives and daughters of scholars, while the great majority of the sex
remained in a state of complete illiteracy.
The environment of the daughters of scholars was peculiarly favorable to
their intellectual development, and learning was in a certain measure
their natural heritage. They did not receive their education in schools,
for there were then few or no schools for girls, but from their fathers
or from the men of letters who frequented their homes. A typical home of
this kind was that of the noted savant, Robert Estienne of Paris,
printer to Francis I. Here the language of conversation was Latin, not
only for the members of the family but also for the servants as
well.[67] Under such conditions we are not surprised to be informed
that the girls, as well as the boys, learned to speak Latin as well as
their mother tongue. And listening, as they did, to the daily
discussions on art and literature by the most learned men of a most
learned age, it was inevitable that they should acquire those vast
stores of knowledge on all subjects that so excite the astonishment of
our less studious women of to-day.
With the daughters of the nobility it was the same. In their youth they
had, under the paternal roof, the benefit of the instruction of the most
eminent masters of the time. And as they grew up their constant
intercourse with learned men and the part they took in all literary and
social assemblies, which were so prominent a feature of the period,
enabled them to complete their education under the most favorable
auspices, and to have, before they were out of their teens, a fund of
information on all subjects that could not be obtained so well, even in
the best of our modern institutions of learning.
It was to these daughters of the élite—ingenuæ puellæ—that Erasmus
and Vivès addressed their treatises on education. They were the
privileged class at whose disposition were placed all the treasures of
Greek and Latin letters. It was, then, an easy matter for them to write
poetry and dissertations in the languages of Horace and Plato. And it
was often a necessity for them to speak Latin, for it was then the
universal language of the learned—the language that was understood
everywhere—in England as in Italy, in Germany as in France, in Flanders
as well as in Spain and Portugal.
It was then that The Republic of Letters was a reality as never before;
that the man of letters was, of a truth, "a citizen of the world"; that
his country was wherever the cult of letters had priests or devotees. He
was what the ballad singer was during the Middle Ages, but with more
dignity and seriousness. He was the agent and representative of
intellectual life, the living symbol of the unity and solidarity of the
human mind. And as in time he linked the past to the present so likewise
in space he bound all peoples together and belonged equally to all. Such
was Erasmus of Holland, who was equally at home in France and
Switzerland, in Italy and England—everywhere received with the honor
accorded to princes of the blood royal. Such was Vivès, of Spain, the
teacher of Catherine of Aragon, of Mary, the daughter of Henry VIII—at
one time professor in Louvain, at another in Oxford—always and
everywhere an ardent exponent of humanism for women as well as for men.
Such was Politian and such were scores of his contemporaries, who
carried the torch of knowledge from castle to castle and from court to
court, where maidens equally with youths enjoyed all the advantages
derivable from the lessons of such distinguished teachers and such
eminent leaders of culture.
For it was a peculiarity of the scholar of the Renaissance that he was a
great traveler—seeking knowledge wherever it was to be found—and
carrying it with him whithersoever he went. He journeyed from university
to university, everywhere exchanging views with his intellectual
compeers, and everywhere diffusing the knowledge he had so laboriously
acquired. The consequence was a wonderful uniformity of education among
the higher classes—among women as well as among men—something that was
never known before. Through the generally diffused knowledge of Latin,
the common literary medium of communication, all the nations of Europe,
even those at war with one another, were brought together in an
intellectual brotherhood and in a way which gave scholarship a power and
a prestige that accrued to the benefit of women and men alike.
But the educational advantages enjoyed by the women of the Renaissance
were not for the bourgeoisie—not for the daughters of peasants,
tradesmen and artisans. They were solely, as has been stated, for the
benefit of the children of princes or of scholars—of those only who
could claim either nobility of birth or nobility of genius.[68] Even the
most zealous of the humanists would have been surprised if they had been
asked to diffuse a portion of their light among the women of the masses.
For education, as they viewed it, was something solely for the
elect—for ladies of the court and not for women of a lower condition.
So far as the rest of womankind was concerned, their occupation was
limited, according to a Breton saying, to looking after altar, hearth,
and children—"La femme se doit garder l'autel, le feu, les enfants."
It was about this time, too, that men began, especially in France and
Germany, to revive the anti-feminist crusade which had so retarded the
literary movement among the women of ancient Greece and Rome. They
refused to hear women and intellect spoken of together. The Germans
recognized no intelligence in them apart from domestic duties, and
seemed to belong to that strange race, that has not yet died out, which
believes woman to be "afflicted with the radical incapacity to acquire
an individual idea." "What the Italians called intelligence a German
would call tittle-tattle, trickery, the spirit of opposition. They
rejected such gratifications and had no intention of allowing Delilah to
shear them."[69]
In the estimation of Luther, the intellectual aspirations of women were
not only an absurdity, but were also a positive peril. "Take them," he
says, "from their housewifery and they are good for nothing." He treated
the humanist Vivès, preceptor of Mary Tudor, as "a dangerous spirit,"
because the learned Spaniard was an ardent advocate of the higher
education of women. As to abstract and severe studies they were for
girls, according to one of Luther's contemporaries, but "vain and futile
quackeries." For an accomplished woman to quote the Fathers or the
ancient classical writers was to provoke ridicule, because to do so was
considered an indication of pedantry or affectation. Montaigne gave
expression to the age-old prejudice against woman by refusing to regard
her as anything but a pretty animal, while Rabelais, the coryphæus of
the French Renaissance, declared that "Nature in creating woman lost the
good sense which she had displayed in the creation of all other things."
Such being the views of the great leaders of thought and formers of
public opinion respecting the mental inferiority of woman—views which,
outside of Italy, had, with few exceptions, the cordial approval of the
supercilious, cockahoop male—is it necessary to add that the
Renaissance did nothing for popular education? The masses of women,
especially after the suppression of the convent schools in England and
Germany, were, in many parts of Europe, and notably in the two countries
mentioned, in a worse condition than they were during the Dark Ages.[70]
The period following the Renaissance was not a brilliant one for woman,
especially outside of Italy. For in this favored land, even after the
decadence in literature that followed the glorious cinquecento,
intellectual life opposed so effective a barrier to the forces of
extinction which were at work in other parts of Europe, notably Germany
and England, that there were still in every part of the peninsula from
the fertile plains of Lombardy to the sunny Ionian sea, learned and
cultured women who were eager to emulate the achievements of their
illustrious sisters of Italy's golden age of art, and letters. We do
not, it is true, find among them a Properzia de Rossi, a Veronica
Gambara, or a Vittoria Colonna; but we find many earnest and
enthusiastic students in every department of knowledge.
That which most impresses the student of education during this period of
Italian history is not the splendor of art and letters in court and
castle, which so dazzled Europe during the time of Renée of Ferrara and
Elizabetta Gonzaga of Urbino. We find, it is true, a goodly number of
women who won distinction as poets and artists; but it is rather those
who were devoted to more serious studies that arrest our
attention—women who attained eminence in physical and natural science,
in mathematics, in the classical and oriental languages, in philosophy,
law and theology. Space precludes the mention of more than a few of
these, but these few may be accepted as typical of many others almost
equally distinguished.
Chief among those of whom their countrymen are specially proud are
Rosanna Somaglia Landi, of Milan, linguist and translator of Anacreon;
Maria Selvaggia Borghini, of Pisa, translator of the works of
Tertullian; Eleonora Barbapiccola, of Salerno, who translated into
Italian the Principa Philosophiæ of Descartes; Maria Angela
Arginghelli, of Naples, who was famed for her profound knowledge of
physics and the higher mathematics and who gave an Italian version of
Stephen Hales' Vegetable Statics. Then there was Clelia Grillo
Borromeo, of Genoa, who was so distinguished in science, mathematics,
mechanics and languages that a medal was struck in her honor bearing the
inscription, Gloria Genuensium—glory of the Genoese; and the still
more famous Elena Cornaro Piscopia, of Venice, who was truly a prodigy
of learning as well as a paragon of virtue. In addition to a knowledge
of many modern, classical and oriental tongues, she exhibited remarkable
proficiency in astronomy, mathematics, music, philosophy and theology.
After a course of study in the University of Padua and after the usual
examination and discourse in classic Latin on some of the questions of
Aristotelian philosophy, she had the doctorate of philosophy conferred
on her in the cathedral of Padua, in the presence of thousands of
learned men and applauding students from all parts of Europe. But not
content with conferring on this extraordinary woman the ring, wreath of
laurel and the ermine mozetta—the usual insignia of the doctorate—the
University, as a special mark of distinction, had a medal coined in
honor of the illustrious graduate bearing her effigy, with the words, as
the decree of the University expressed it, ad perpetuam rei memoriam.
That there was nothing superficial about this young woman's knowledge of
languages, it suffices to state that she was able to speak Latin and
Greek as fluently as her own Italian, and that so profound was her
knowledge of divinity that there were many distinguished ecclesiastics
in both Italy and France who favored conferring on her the doctorate in
theology.
Among other young women who obtained the doctorate in various
universities were Maddalena Canedi-Noe and Maria Vittoria Dosi who,
after the usual course of study in the university of Bologna, obtained
the degree of doctor of civil law, and Maria Pellegrina Amoretti, who
received the degree of doctor in both canon and civil law in the
University of Pavia and with it the doctor's cap—berreto dottorale.
But more remarkable for learning than any of these university graduates
was Maria Gaetana Agnesi, one of the most extraordinary women scholars
of all time. On account of her wonderful knowledge of languages she was
called "The Oracle of Seven Tongues." This, however, is not her chief
title to fame. It is rather her marvelous achievements in the domain of
the higher mathematics. After the appearance of her most noted work,
Instituzioni Analytiche, she would at once have been elected a member
of the French Academy of Sciences had not the laws of this learned body
precluded the admission of women.[71] That great Mæcenas of learning,
Benedict XIV, showed his appreciation of Maria Gaetana's exceptional
attainments by appointing her—motu proprio—to the chair of higher
mathematics in the University of Bologna. A similar honor had, in the
preceding century, been conferred on Marta Marchina, of Naples, when, on
account of her rare knowledge of letters, philosophy and theology, she
was offered a chair in the Sapienza, in Rome, an honor which her modesty
and love of retirement caused her to decline.
We have seen that women professors achieved distinction in the Italian
universities even as early as the closing centuries of the Middle Ages.
The same was true during the Renaissance, and it has been equally true
during the period that has elapsed since the cinquecento.
Among the most eminent of those who taught in the universities were
Laura Bassi, who had the chair of physics in the University of Bologna,
and Clotilde Tambroni, professor of the Greek language and literature in
the same institution of learning. So thorough was her knowledge of the
language of Plato that it was the opinion of her contemporaries that
there were then only three persons in Europe who equaled her in her
mastery of this classic tongue. It was this distinguished Hellenist who
graciously delivered the address when one of her countrywomen, Maria
dalle Donne, received her doctorate in medicine and surgery. After her
graduation Dr. dalle Donne was given charge of a school for midwives in
which she rendered the greatest service to her sex. Even the chair of
anatomy in the University of Bologna was held by a woman, Anna
Morandi-Menzolini, and her work was of the highest order. The same
position was held by another woman, Maria Petraccini-Terretti, in the
University of Ferrara.
What a contrast between the attitude of the universities of Italy and
those of other parts of the world toward women as students and
professors! For a thousand years the doors of the Italian universities
have been open to women, as well as to men; and for a thousand years
women, as well as men, have received their degrees from these noble and
liberal institutions, and occupied the most important positions in their
gift, and that, too, with the approval and encouragement of both
spiritual and temporal rulers. For these wise and broad-minded men did
not regard it unwomanly for Laura Bassi to teach physics, for Clotilde
Tambroni to teach Greek, for Dorotea Bucca to teach medicine, for Maria
Gaetana to teach differential and integral calculus, for Anna Morandi to
teach anatomy, for Novella d'Andrea to teach canon law, or even, if we
may believe Denifle, one of the best of authorities, for the daughters
of a Paris professor to teach theology.[72] Yes, what a contrast,
indeed, between the Universities of Bologna and Padua, with their long
and honored list of women graduates and professors, and the
Universities of Cambridge and Oxford from which women have always been
and are still excluded, both as students and professors.
Contrast, also, the honors shown to women as students and professors of
medicine in Salerno, in the thirteenth century, with the riots excited
among the chivalrous male students of the University of Edinburgh, when,
less than a half century ago, seven young women applied for the
privilege of attending the courses of lectures on medicine and surgery
in that institution. And contrast the sympathy and encouragement of
Italy with the almost brutal opposition which women in our own country
encountered when, but a few decades ago, they applied for admittance to
the medical schools of New York and Philadelphia. The difference between
the Italian and the Anglo-Saxon attitude toward women in the
all-important matters in question requires no comment.[73]
One reason for the great difference between the women of Italy and those
of other parts of Europe in the matter of higher education during the
period we have been considering was the old Roman spirit of independence
of the former and their always insisting on what they regarded as their
natural and indefeasible rights. Following the example of the matrons of
ancient Rome, they insisted on being treated as the equals of men, and,
as a consequence, they demanded in the intellectual order all the
advantages that were accorded to men. They would never admit their
mental inferiority to man, and woe betide the luckless wight who even
insinuated such inferiority. The shafts of satire and ridicule were at
once directed against him by a score of women who were able to use the
pen as well as, if not better than, himself. Sometimes, however, such an
one was taken seriously, and then the result was a book by some clever
woman to prove that there was no difference in the intellectual power of
the two sexes—that, if there was a difference, it was in favor of the
gentler sex. There is quite a large number of such works in Italian; and
it must be said that the women always met the arguments of their
adversaries in a manner that does them the greatest credit.
It was probably because of their insistence on the equality of the
sexes, as well as because of their achievements in every department of
mental activity, that the educated women of Italy enjoyed so many
privileges denied their sisters in other parts of Europe. Thus, in
addition to being treated as the equals of men in the universities, they
met them on an equal footing in the art, literary and scientific
societies and academies, in the proceedings of which they always
exhibited an active and enthusiastic interest. In these reunions the
women gained strength of mind and independence of character from the
men, while the men imbibed refinement and gentleness from the women.
Compare this condition with the systematic exclusion of women from
similar societies in other countries—even in this twentieth century of
ours—and one of the not least potent reasons for the intellectual
supremacy of the women of Italy will be apparent.
Next after Italy, France was the country in which, during the
post-Renaissance period, women enjoyed the greatest advantages of mental
development. But we look in vain, even during the age of Louis XIV, for
that flowering of the female intellect that, at the same period,
rendered the daughters of Italy so famous. It is true that there was a
certain number of learned women in France during the seventeenth
century, and notably during the golden age of Louis XIV, for during this
period the traditions of the Renaissance were perpetuated and there was
still a lingering love of letters, at least among certain classes of the
aristocracy.
Prominent among those who attracted attention for their learning were
Gilberte and Jaqueline Pascal, of the celebrated convent of Port Royal;
Marie-Eleanore de Rohan and Gabrielle de Rochechouart, both, like the
Pascal sisters, inmates of the cloister; Marie Cramoisy, wife of the
first director of the royal printing office, and Mlle. de Luynes, a
friend of Pascal. All these counted among their attainments a writing
knowledge of Latin, but were far from being able, like the Italian women
above mentioned, to speak it with the same fluency as they did their
mother tongue.
In addition to the learned French women just named, there was Elisabeth
de Rochechouart, a niece of Mme. de Montespan, who was able to read
Plato in Greek, and Anne de Rohan, Princess of Guéméné, who surprised
her countrymen by studying Hebrew. Then there were Mme. de Grignan,
Marie Dupré, Louise Serment, Anne de La Vigne, who, like the Princess
Palatine, Elisabeth, and Christine of Sweden, were ardent disciples of
Descartes, and took the lead among the femmes philosophes of their
time.
But for profound and varied scholarship Mme. Dacier, the daughter of the
erudite Tanquil Le Fevre, was the most famous of all the women of her
time in France. Possessed of rare power of eloquence and beauty of
style, together with an extraordinary capacity for criticism, there was
not a man in Europe who did not respect her judgment in matters of
literature and culture. But that for which she was specially celebrated
was her exceptional knowledge of Latin and Greek. She not only
translated the Iliad and the Odyssey but also several other of the
ancient classics. None of her contemporaries had a more thorough mastery
of the tongues of Homer and Virgil, nor did any of her countrymen
contribute more than she toward the advancement of the knowledge of the
literature of ancient Greece and Rome. So highly prized was her version
of the Iliad that it was translated by Ozell into English. Her version
of Plato's Phædo was also translated into English and published by a
New York bookseller more than a century after her death. The scholarly
Menagius, in his Historia Mulierum Philosopharum, did not hesitate to
pronounce her the most learned woman of all time—Feminarum quot sunt,
quot fuere doctissima.[74]
To Mme. de Maintenon, the morganatic wife of the Great Monarch, is due
the Institut de Saint-Cyr, the first state school for girls founded in
France. It was, however, solely for the daughters of the nobility. And,
although it was from the first under the direction of the foundress, a
woman who was before all else a teacher as well as one of the most
enlightened women of the most literary and philosophic age France ever
knew—the age when the French language was perfected, the age of the
Academy, of Boileau, Molière, Racine, Bossuet, Descartes—the studies
prescribed in this institution, which was under the special patronage of
the king, were of the most elementary character. They comprised reading,
writing, arithmetic, grammar, music, drawing, dancing, and the elements
of history, mythology and geography. As to history, Mme. de Maintenon
was satisfied if the pupils of Saint-Cyr knew enough not to confound the
kings of France with those of other nations, and were able to avoid
mistaking a Roman emperor for the Emperor of China or Japan; or the King
of Spain or England for the King of Persia or Siam. And yet, restricted
as it was, her programme of studies was more complete than that of any
other girls' school in the kingdom. One of her reasons for not insisting
on a more thorough course was that "women never know but by halves, and
the little that they do know usually makes them proud, haughty and
talkative and disgusted with solid things."[75]
In Saint-Cyr, the best girls' school in the kingdom, there was not a
word about the first principles of philosophy, nor about the physical
and natural sciences recommended by Fénelon. The elements just referred
to, combined with a goodly amount of esprit—bien de l'esprit—were
considered quite sufficient to prepare the future wives of the nobility
for all the duties they would be called upon to perform.
Mme. de Maintenon had probably been unconsciously influenced by what she
had seen at the court of her liege lord, where the greater part of the
women were extremely ignorant. Even Mme. de Montespan, the king's
favorite, and for years the leading figure at the court, was no
exception. So ignorant was she that she was not even able to spell the
simplest and most common words.[76]
And so it was with the most illustrious ladies of France. Many of them
were so devoid of instruction that they were unable either to read or to
write. Even the teachers in Saint-Cyr were so deficient in the simplest
rudiments of an education that Mme. de Maintenon found it necessary to
correct their letters, in order to teach them the most essential rules
of epistolary correspondence. In reality, the women of the age of Louis
XIV did not trouble themselves about an education as we understand it.
Endowed with esprit, with a natural and acquired taste for things
intellectual, they were satisfied with such knowledge as they could
glean from reading or conversation, and with comparatively few
exceptions, showed no disposition to devote long years to study in
school, much less in a university, as did their sisters to the south of
the Alps.
The foundress of Saint-Cyr had likewise been influenced by her
environment as well as by the court—an environment which was becoming
daily more and more unfavorable to the education, especially anything
approaching the higher education, of women. A young woman's education
was considered complete when she was able to read, write, dance and play
some musical instrument. Anything more was deemed superfluous and
deserving of censure and ridicule rather than praise.
It was at this time that Molière's two celebrated plays, Les Femmes
Savantes and Les Précieuses Ridicules, were given to the world. These
well-known productions, replete with the author's brightest flashes of
wit, and abounding in his most effective shafts of satire, produced at
once an immense sensation. As soon as published, they were in the hands
of everybody. Those who were opposed to the education of women—and the
number was daily increasing—had recourse to them as to arsenals which
supplied them with just the arms they had so long needed to decide in
their favor the long warfare which they had been conducting against the
gentler sex. The views of the bourgeois Chrysale as expressed to his
sister, Belise, were so in harmony with their own that they loved on
every occasion to repeat with him:
"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 be
Her only study and philosophy.
Our fathers, on this point, showed great good sense;
They said a woman always knows enough
If but her understanding reaches
To 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 savante
Doit 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 of Don Quixote—that masterly creation of Cervantes which dealt
the death-blow to knight-errantry—than did Les Femmes Savantes and
Les 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 of the 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 exquisite
Chambre 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 the noble 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 the salonières were
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 certain Mémoires and
Correspondances whose 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 the précieuses, disclaimed
all knowledge of her Princesse 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 educated
salonières were 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 the hetæræ of 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. Even the 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—"books
of 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 professors of the Dutch universities as a
marvelous achievement. Her best known volume is designated Opuscula.
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, in His 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 the
Précieuses across the Channel. And so great was the power of public
sentiment against women writers that Fanny Burney was afraid to
acknowledge the authorship of Evelina. 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 their sex lest their
works, if known as the productions of women, should be ipso facto
branded 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 in Paradise Lost:
"My author and dispenser, what thou bidst
Unargued I obey; so God ordains;
God is thy law, thou mine: to know no more
Is 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 provision was 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 a generation 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 narrow and
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.