Woman in Science / With an Introductory Chapter on Woman's Long Struggle for Things of the Mind

by J. A. Zahm

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."