SECT. XVI.
CVII. I think it is now time to depart from the labyrinths of physics, and to enter on the open and pleasing plains of history, and to persuade by examples, that the understandings of the women, are not inferior to those of the men, even for the attainment of the most difficult sciences. This is the best method, which can be fallen upon to convince the vulgar, who are generally more influenced by examples, than arguments. To recite all that occur, would be tiresome, and therefore, I shall only mention some of those women, who, in these latter ages, have been the most eminently distinguished for their learning, and who have flourished in our own country Spain, and in the neighbouring kingdoms.
CVIII. Spain, which strangers hold cheap in this particular, has, to the honour of literature, produced many women, remarkably eminent for all sorts of learning. The principal ones are the following.
CIX. Donna Anna de Cervaton, lady of honour to the Germanic Queen de Fox, second wife of Don Ferdinand the Catholic; she was a most celebrated woman, but more so on account of her learning and rare talents, than for her uncommon beauty, which was so striking, that she was generally allowed to be the finest woman about the court. In Lucio Marino Siculo, may be seen the Latin letters which that author wrote her, and the lady’s answers in the same idiom.
CX. Donna Isabel de Joya, in the sixteenth century, was esteemed a woman of great learning. It is told of her, that she preached in the church of Barcelona, to the amazement of a great concourse of auditors. I suppose the prelates who permitted it, judged that the injunction of the Apostle, which in the First Epistle to the Corinthians, prohibits women to speak in the church, admitted of some exceptions, in the same manner the injunction did, which prohibits them to teach in the Epistle to Timothy; for it is a fact, that Priscilla, who was the companion of this same apostle, taught and instructed Apollo Pontonicusin the evangelic doctrine, as appears from the Acts of the Apostles; and that afterwards passing to Rome in the pontificate of Paul III. she, in the presence of the cardinals, much to their satisfaction, explained many of the difficult passages in the books of the subtile Scotus; but what redounded most of all to her honour, was her having converted in that capital of the world, a great number of Jews to the catholic faith.
CXI. Luisa Sigea, a native of Toledo, but of French extraction, besides being skilled in philosophy, and sound literature, was ornamented in a singular manner, with a knowledge of languages, for she understood Latin, Greek, Hebrew, Arabic, and Syriac; and it is said, she wrote a letter to pope Paul III. in each of these languages. Her father, Diego Sigea, being afterwards called to the court of Lisbon, as preceptor to Theodosius of Portugal duke of Braganza; the infanta Donna Maria of Portugal, daughter of the king Don Manuel, and of his third wife, Donna Leonora of Austria, who was a great lover of letters, took much pleasure in the company of the learned Sigea; who afterwards married with Francisco de Cuevas, the Lord of Villanasur, and a cavalier of Burgos, from which marriage, as Don Luis Salazar informs us in his history of the house of Farnese, there descended a fine progeny, which are now living in Castile.
CXII. Donna Oliva Sabuco de Nantes, a native of Alcaraz, was a woman of sublime penetration, and of an elevated genius, eminent for her knowledge of physical, medicinal, moral, and political matters, as may be seen by her writings; but the thing which most illustrated and distinguished her, was her new phisiological system, where, in opposition to all the antients, she maintained, that it is not the blood which invigorates the body, but a white fluid issuing from the brain, which pervades the whole nervous system; and she attributes almost all disorders to this vital dew being vitiated. This system, which the incuriosity of Spain neglected, the curiosity of England embraced with eagerness, and now we receive from the hands of strangers as their invention, that, which in reality was originally our own. Fatal genius of Spaniards, who, in order that what is produced in their own country should seem pleasing to them, must have it first monopolized by strangers, and afterwards by those strangers sold to them again. It seems also, that this great woman was beforehand with Renard Descartes, in broaching the opinion, that the brain was the seat of the rational soul, though she did not, like Descartes, confine its habitation to the pineal gland only, but supposed it to occupy the whole substance. The confidence which Donna Oliva had in her own abilities to defend her singular opinions, was such; that in an epistle-dedicatory addressed to count Barajas, president of Castile, she intreats him to use his authority, to convene together the most learned natural philosophers, and doctors of medicine in Spain, and that she would undertake to convince them, that the physics, and medicinal doctrines, which were taught in the schools, went all on erroneous principles. She flourished in the reign of Philip II.
CXIII. Donna Bernarda Ferreyra, a Portuguese lady, the daughter of Don Ignatio Ferreyra, a knight of the order of St. Jago, besides knowing and speaking with ease various languages, understood poetry, rhetoric, philosophy, and the mathematics. She left many poetical writings; and our famous Lopez de Vega, had such a veneration for the extraordinary merit of this lady, that he dedicated to her his elegy, intituled La Philis.
CXIV. Donna Juana Morella, a native of Barcelona, was a woman of wonderful learning. Her father having killed a man, was obliged to fly, and carried her with him into Lyons in France, where this extraordinary child, betaking herself to study, made so rapid a progress, that at twelve years of age (which was in the year 1607) she defended conclusions in philosophy publicly, which she afterwards committed to writing, and dedicated to Margaret of Austria, queen of Spain. At the age of seventeen, according to the relation of Guidon Patin, who lived at that time, she entered upon public disputations in the jesuits college at Lyons. She understood philosophy, music, and jurisprudence, and it is said, that she spoke fourteen languages. She took the veil, in the Dominican convent of saint Præxedis at Avignon.
CXV. The celebrated nun of Mexico, Sor Juana Ines de la Cruz, is so well known to every body by her learned and ingenious poetical works, that it is needless to say any thing in her eulogium. I shall only mention, that the least of her accomplishments was her talent for poetry, although that was the thing, for which she was most celebrated. Many Spanish poets have been superior to her in point of poetical genius, but perhaps no one has equalled her, with regard to her universal knowledge, in all kinds of faculties. Her poetry was natural, but she wanted energy. In the critical part of the sermon of father Viera, he gives her credit for her ingenuity; but to speak the truth, she was not equal in that respect, to that learned jesuit himself, of whom she was the opponent: nor is there any thing extraordinary, in a woman’s being found inferior to a man, who, for elevation of thought, reasoning with perspicuity, and explaining himself with clearness, has not yet been equalled by any preacher whatever.
CXVI. The panegyric of the late duchess of Aveiro, is also needless, as her memory is still recent at court, and all over Spain.