Woman in Science Part 8

13, the learned bishop of Hippo writes: "Quia igitur viro nec domina nec ancilla parabatur, sed socia, nec de capite, nec de pedibus, sed de latere fuerat producenda, ut juxta se producendam cognosceret, quam de suo latere sumptam didecisset." Again the same ill.u.s.trious doctor declares that woman was formed from man's side in order that it might be manifest that she was created to be united with him in love--in consortium creabatur dilectionis.

[44] Cf. _Hortus Deliciarum_, by Herrad de Lansberg, folio with one hundred and ten plates, Strasburg, 1901, and _Herrade de Landsberg_, by Charles Schmidt, Strasburg.

The erudite academician, Charles Jourdain, says of Herrad's great work "L'encyclopedie qu'on lui doit, _l'Hortus Deliciarum_, embra.s.se toutes les parties des connaissances humaines, depuis la science divine jusqu'a l'agriculture et la metrologie, et on s'etonne a bon droit qu'un tel ouvrage, qui supposait une erudition si variee et si methodique, soit sorti d'une plume feminine. Quelle impression produirait aujourd'hui l'annonce d'une encyclopedie qui aurait pour auteur une simple, religieuse? Parlerons-nous des femmes du monde? Il n'existe d'elles, au XXe siecle, non plus que dans les siecles precedents aucun ouvrage comparable a _l'Hortus Deliciarum_." _Excursions Historiques et Philosophiques_, p. 480, Paris, 1888.

[45] See _Revelationes Mechtildianae ac Gertrudianae_, edit, Oudin, for the Benedictines at Solesmes, 1875.

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

"The contributions of nuns to literature, as well as incidental remarks, show that the curriculum of study in the nunnery was as liberal as that accepted by the monks, and embraced all available writing whether by Christian or profane authors. While Scripture and the writing of the Fathers of the Church at all times formed the groundwork of monastic studies, Cicero at this period was read by the side of Boethus, Virgil by the side of Martia.n.u.s Capella, Terence by the side of Isidore of Seville. From remarks made by Hroswitha we see that the coa.r.s.eness of the Latin dramatists made no reason for their being forbidden to nuns, though she would have seen it otherwise; and, Herrad was so far impressed by the wisdom of the heathen philosophers of antiquity that she p.r.o.nounced this wisdom to be the 'product of the Holy Spirit also.'

Throughout the literary world, as represented by convents, the use of Latin was general, and made possible the even spread of culture in districts that were widely remote from each other and practically without intercourse."

[47] _The Lady_, p. 71, by Emily James Putnam, New York, 1910.

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

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

[50] See _Womankind in Western Europe_, p. 288 et seq., by Thomas Wright, London, 1869.

[51] "Pertinere videtur ad haec tempora Betisia Gozzadini non minus generis claritate quam eloquentia ac legum professione ill.u.s.tris....

Betisiam Ghirardaccius et nostri ab eo deinceps scriptores eximiis laudibus certatim extulerunt." _De Claris Archigymnasii Bononiensis Professoribus a Saeculo XI usque ad Saeculum XIV_, Tom. I, p. 171, Bologna, 1888-1896.

[52] L'ecole de Salerne, p. 18, par C. Meaux, Paris, 1880. Among the most noted of these women was Trotula, who, about the middle of the eleventh century, wrote on the diseases of women as well as on other medical subjects. Compare the att.i.tude of the school of Salerno towards women with that of the University of London, eight hundred years later.

When, in the latter half of the nineteenth century, women applied to this university for degrees in medicine, they were informed, as H.

Rashdall writes in _The Universities of Europe in the Middle Ages_, Vol.

II, Part II, p. 712, Oxford, 1895, that "the University of London, although it had been empowered by Royal Charter to do all things that could be done by any University, was legally advised that it could not grant degrees to women without a fresh Charter, because no University had ever granted such degrees." Cf. also Haeser's _Lehrbuch der Geschichte der Medicin_, Band I, p. 645, et seq., Jena, 1875. Verily, the so-called dark ages have risen up to condemn our vaunted age of enlightenment!

[53] _Die Entstehung der Universitaten des Mittelalters bis 1400_, Band I, p. 233, Berlin, 1885, von P. Heinrick Denifle, a.s.sistant archivist of the Vatican Library, and _Histoire Literaire de la France, Commence par des Religieux Benedictins de S. Maur et Continue par des Membres de l'Inst.i.tut_, Tom. IX, 281, Paris, 1733-1906.

[54] "Une de ces nuits lumineuses ou les dernieres clartes du soir se prolongent jusqu'aux premieres blancheurs du matin." _Doc.u.ments Inedits_, p. 78, Paris, 1850.

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

[56] _A Short History of the Renaissance in Italy_, p. 277, London, 1893.

[57] Cecelia Gonzaga, a pupil of the celebrated humanist, Vittorino da Feltre, read the Gospels in Greek when she was only seven years old.

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

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

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

[60] It was also said of the Venetian artist, Irene di Spilimbergo, that her pictures were of such excellence that they were frequently mistaken for those of her ill.u.s.trious master, t.i.tian.

[61] Among these works may be mentioned _Il Merito delle Donne_, by Modesta Pozzo di Zorgi, Venice, 1600; _La n.o.bilita e l'Excellenza delle Donne_, by Lucrezia Marinelli, Venice, 1601; _De Ingenii Muliebris ad Doctrinam et Meliores Litteras Apt.i.tudine_, by Anna van Schurman, Leyden, 1641; _Les Dames Ill.u.s.tres_, by Jaquette Guillame, Paris, 1665, and _L'Egalite des Hommes et des Femmes_, by Marie le Jars de Gournay, Paris, 1622. The last named work was by the celebrated _fille d'alliance_--adopted daughter--of Montaigne. It is to her that we owe the _textus receptus_ of the _Essais_ of the ill.u.s.trious litterateur.

[62] _The Women of the Renaissance_, p. 290, by R. de Maulde la Claviere, New York, 1901.

[63] Called _La Latina_, because of her thorough knowledge of the Latin language.

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

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

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

[66] Cf. Oeuvres de Lovize Labe, nouvelle edition emprimee en caracteres dits de civilite, Paris, 1871.

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

"Nempe uxor, ancillae, clientes, liberi, Non segnis examen domus, Quo Plautus ore, quo Terentius, solent Quotidiane loqui."

[68] A prominent writer of the time, Jean Bouchet, expressed the prevailing opinion regarding the education of the women of the ma.s.ses in the following quaint sentence: "Je suis bien d'opinion que les femmes de bas estat, et qui sont contrainctes vaquer aux choses familieres et domestiques, ne doivent vaquer aux lettres, parce que c'est chose repugnante a rusticite; mais, les roynes, princesses et aultres dames qui ne se doib vent pour reverence de leur estat, appliquer a mesnage."

Cf. Rousellot's _Histoire de l'education des Femmes en France_, Tom. I, p. 109, Paris, 1883.

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

[69] Claviere, op. cit., p. 415.

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

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

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

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

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

[75] _Lettres et Entretiens sur l'education de Filles_, Tom. I, pp.

225-231.

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

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

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

Woodward, Cambridge, 1905.

[76] Thus, in a letter of hers to Mme. de Lauzun occurs a sentence like the following: "Il lia sy lontant que je n'ay antandu parler de vous."

The d.u.c.h.ess of Monpensier, daughter of Gaston d'Orleans, in a letter to her father exhibits a similar ignorance of her own language, when she writes: "J'ai cru que Votre Altesse seret bien ese de savoir sete istoire." Quoted by Rousselot in his _Histoire de l'education des Femmes en France_, Tom. I, p. 287.

[77] _Les Femmes Savantes_, Act II, Scene 7.

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

"A learned woman ought--so I surmise-- Conceal her knowledge, or she'll be unwise.

If pedantry a mental blemish be At all times outlawed by society, If 'gainst a pedant all the world inveighs, Shall pa.s.s unchecked in woman pedant's ways?