The "New Learning," as Humanism was generally called, rapidly overwhelmed the old, barren scholasticism and ecclesiasticism. Every monastery and university became a battleground where Humanism fought Scholasticism to the death.
Under the quickening influence of the "New Learning," free Latin schools for boys were established over all Germany. The poorest boy might attend any or all of the schools. Thus arose the specifically German educational system of "wandering students," with its good and evil influences.
At first little was done, educationally, for the girls. There were a very few small, poorly equipped public schools where daughters of artisans and laborers received religious teaching and slight rudimentary instruction in reading, spelling, and writing. Girls belonging to noble and patrician families were usually taught in convents. Music, dancing, embroidery, deportment, and, above all, the supervision of a large household were the studies upon which wealthy parents insisted for their daughters. But the brighter girls soon became curious about the "New Learning" of which their fathers and brothers spoke so frequently. Sastrow, in his biography, writes:
"One of my five younger sisters, Catherine, was an excellent, amiable, lovely, pious maiden. When my brother, Johannes, came home from Wittenberg, where he was a student, she bade him tell her how one could say in Latin, 'This is, truly, a beautiful maiden.' He replied, 'Profecto formosa puella.' She asked farther how one could say, 'Rather so.' He replied, 'Sic satis.' Some time after, three students, sons of gentlemen, came from Wittenberg to see our town. They had been recommended to the hospitality of the burgomaster, Herr Nicholas Smiterlow, who was desirous to entertain them well and have good society for them. As he had three grown-up daughters, my sister Catherine was invited among other guests. The students exchanged all kinds of jokes with the maidens, and as young fellows are wont to do also said things to one another in Latin that it would not have been seemly to say before maidens in German. At last one said to the other, 'Profecto formosa puella,' whereupon, my sister answered, 'Sic satis,' Then the students were much afraid, fancying she had also understood their former amatory talk."
Enthusiasm for the "New Learning" quickly spread among German women of the higher class. Among the princesses, Matilda of the Palatinate was especially famed for her love of learning. She was a generous patron of the fine arts, and, a rarer trait among humanistic scholars, she was also an admirer of the literature of her fatherland. She made a collection of ninety-four works on the old court poetry, and delighted in the national folk songs orally preserved. Matilda encouraged the poets of her court to write poetry after the ancient methods. She ordered many valuable works translated into German. Through her influence the university of Tubingen, in Wurtemberg was established.
The "New Learning" stole into the convents and made many proselytes among the nuns. Aleydis Raiskop, of Goch, to whom Butzbach dedicated a book, was renowned for her classical scholarship. She composed seven homilies on Saint Paul and translated a work on the mass from Latin into German. In the same convent with Aleydis lived an artist nun, Gertrude von Buchel, to whom Butzbach also dedicated a book, Celebrated Painters. Richmondis von der Horst, abbess of the convent of Seebach, corresponded in Latin with Trithemius who highly praises her various writings. Of the nun Ursula Canton, one of her admirers exclaims: "Her equal in knowledge of theological matters, of the fine arts and in eloquence and belles lettres, has not been seen for centuries."
Among German Humanists, Charitas Pirkheimer, of Nürnberg, stands preeminent. Through her brother, Willibald Pirkheimer, the friend and generous patron of Albrecht Durer, Erasmus, and a host of lesser Humanists, Charitas corresponded with many renowned men. Christopher Scheurl, "The Cicero of Nürnberg," said that in all his life he had known only two women, the pious Cassandra of Venice and Charitas of Nürnberg, who, "for their gifts of mind and fortune, their knowledge and high station, their beauty and their prudence could be compared with Cornelia, the mother of Laelius and Hortensius." In a letter to Charitas, Scheurl praises her for "preferring the book to the wool and the pen to the spindle."
These literary preferences, however, did not spoil Charitas Pirkheimer for practical life. As abbess of Saint Clare's she showed great administrative ability. Her annual reports of receipts and expenditures are models of clearness and accuracy. To manage, without serious friction, a large nunnery composed wholly of aristocrats (only the daughters of Nürnberg patricians and nobles were eligible as members) was no easy task. But Charitas seems to have made herself beloved and respected by every sister. She kept her nuns busy with such good result that Saint Clare tapestries became famous throughout Europe, and orders from private and civic patrons poured in faster than they could be filled.
No more splendid fight was ever made by any woman for conscience' sake than that of Charitas Pirkheimer to preserve the integrity of her convent after the storm of the Reformation broke over Germany. And in the fight she conquered. The Lutherans succeeded in closing the houses of every other conventual order, both male and female, in Nürnberg; but Saint Clare's, through the valor of its abbess, remained intact until the last nun died late in the century. But it was a long, a bitter, and, often, a humiliating fight that Mother Charitas waged. Persecution was continued for years. The abbess and her nuns were denied the sacraments and confession. Three Lutheran preachers in turn, one of them a coarse, vile man, were installed at Saint Clare's. Spies were placed in the convent to see that the nuns "did not put cotton into their ears to shut out the preaching." The convent school was broken up and all revenues ceased. Poverty sorely pinched the women of the convent. Insulting rhymes and obscene pictures were flung over the walls of the garden. The maids sent out to buy bread were hooted and even roughly handled by brutal men and fanatical women. A letter which Charitas wrote to Jerôme Emser, thanking him for his Defence of the Faith, was printed with scurrilous marginal notes. The day had not yet dawned when a woman could, "with seemliness," said Willibald Pirkheimer, "enter the field of public disputation." Pirkheimer told his sister, in somewhat brutal language, that she had "better have held her woman's tongue."
Just when the future looked most dark for Saint Clare's, Philip Melanchthon sweetest, calmest, sanest spirit of the Reformation came to Nürnberg. He visited his old friend, Charitas Pirkheimer, in her convent. "Would to God," Charitas writes afterward, "that every one were as discreet as Master Philip. We might then hope to be rid of many things that are vexatious." Melanchthon quietly put a stop to the persecutions of the convent. From the date of his visit Saint Clare's remained comparatively undisturbed.