Woman in Science Part 2

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 cooperating 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 role 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 a.s.sembly or senate of their own, known as the _Conventus Matronarum_. Hortensia, the daughter of the great orator Hortensius, pleaded the cause of her s.e.x 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 pa.s.sage:

"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 ill.u.s.trious 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 Moliere wrote his _Femmes Savantes_ and his _Precieuses 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 n.o.ble 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 n.o.bility 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 cooperation 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 Mycenae.[27]

They aided him not only by their sympathy and by purchasing for him, often at a great price, the ma.n.u.scripts he needed for his colossal undertaking, but also a.s.sisted 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 ill.u.s.trious 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 a.s.sistance 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 preeminence 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 n.o.bility 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 ill.u.s.trious 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 G.o.d. I pa.s.s 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 ill.u.s.trious women among the heathen? Does not Plato have Aspasia speak in his dialogues? Does not Sappho hold the lyre at the same time as Alcaeus 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 cla.s.sics of a later age--the letters of Madame Sevigne to her daughter.[29]

WOMAN AND EDUCATION DURING THE MIDDLE AGES

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 r.e.t.a.r.ded, 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 vita lampada tradunt_--and pa.s.sing 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 inst.i.tutions 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 n.o.ble inst.i.tution--all of whom were bishops. Five of them he describes as men of singular merit and sanct.i.ty--"_singularis meriti et sanct.i.tatis 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 cla.s.ses 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 Caedmon. "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 Caedmon, she did not hesitate to regard it "as a special gift of G.o.d, 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 Caedmon 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 impa.s.sioned. 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 Caedmon's verses resembled so closely certain pa.s.sages 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, acc.u.mulated, pa.s.sionate images, like a succession of lightning flashes," of the old Anglo-Saxon poet, a.s.serts that "Milton's Satan exists in Caedmon's as the picture exists in the sketch."[33]

Well could Caedmon'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 G.o.d 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 Caedmon 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 s.e.x."[34]

s.p.a.ce 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 a.s.sistance 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 ill.u.s.trious 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, n.o.blemen received her, and bishops gladly entertained her and conversed with her on the Scriptures and on the inst.i.tutions 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 cla.s.ses flocked to her as they did to the abbess of Whitby for guidance and a.s.sistance.

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 Anch.o.r.esses--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 circ.u.mstances."

"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 inst.i.tutions 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 n.o.ble 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 s.e.x 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 s.e.x during the long period of the Middle Ages. But however great their preeminence 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 cla.s.s-room, achieved distinction by their productive work. The Anglo-Saxon convents developed few writers, whereas those of Germany produced several who not only shed l.u.s.ter on their s.e.x but who also showed what woman is capable of accomplishing when accorded some measure of encouragement and full liberty of action.