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

by J. A. Zahm

For it was a peculiarity of the scholar of the Renaissance that he was a great traveler—seeking knowledge wherever it was to be found—and carrying it with him whithersoever he went. He journeyed from university to university, everywhere exchanging views with his intellectual compeers, and everywhere diffusing the knowledge he had so laboriously acquired. The consequence was a wonderful uniformity of education among the higher classes—among women as well as among men—something that was never known before. Through the generally diffused knowledge of Latin, the common literary medium of communication, all the nations of Europe, even those at war with one another, were brought together in an intellectual brotherhood and in a way which gave scholarship a power and a prestige that accrued to the benefit of women and men alike.

But the educational advantages enjoyed by the women of the Renaissance were not for the bourgeoisie—not for the daughters of peasants, tradesmen and artisans. They were solely, as has been stated, for the benefit of the children of princes or of scholars—of those only who could claim either nobility of birth or nobility of genius.[68] Even the most zealous of the humanists would have been surprised if they had been asked to diffuse a portion of their light among the women of the masses. For education, as they viewed it, was something solely for the elect—for ladies of the court and not for women of a lower condition. So far as the rest of womankind was concerned, their occupation was limited, according to a Breton saying, to looking after altar, hearth, and children—"La femme se doit garder l'autel, le feu, les enfants."

It was about this time, too, that men began, especially in France and Germany, to revive the anti-feminist crusade which had so retarded the literary movement among the women of ancient Greece and Rome. They refused to hear women and intellect spoken of together. The Germans recognized no intelligence in them apart from domestic duties, and seemed to belong to that strange race, that has not yet died out, which believes woman to be "afflicted with the radical incapacity to acquire an individual idea." "What the Italians called intelligence a German would call tittle-tattle, trickery, the spirit of opposition. They rejected such gratifications and had no intention of allowing Delilah to shear them."[69]

In the estimation of Luther, the intellectual aspirations of women were not only an absurdity, but were also a positive peril. "Take them," he says, "from their housewifery and they are good for nothing." He treated the humanist Vivès, preceptor of Mary Tudor, as "a dangerous spirit," because the learned Spaniard was an ardent advocate of the higher education of women. As to abstract and severe studies they were for girls, according to one of Luther's contemporaries, but "vain and futile quackeries." For an accomplished woman to quote the Fathers or the ancient classical writers was to provoke ridicule, because to do so was considered an indication of pedantry or affectation. Montaigne gave expression to the age-old prejudice against woman by refusing to regard her as anything but a pretty animal, while Rabelais, the coryphæus of the French Renaissance, declared that "Nature in creating woman lost the good sense which she had displayed in the creation of all other things."

Such being the views of the great leaders of thought and formers of public opinion respecting the mental inferiority of woman—views which, outside of Italy, had, with few exceptions, the cordial approval of the supercilious, cockahoop male—is it necessary to add that the Renaissance did nothing for popular education? The masses of women, especially after the suppression of the convent schools in England and Germany, were, in many parts of Europe, and notably in the two countries mentioned, in a worse condition than they were during the Dark Ages.[70]

WOMAN AND EDUCATION BETWEEN THE RENAISSANCE AND THE TWENTIETH CENTURY

The period following the Renaissance was not a brilliant one for woman, especially outside of Italy. For in this favored land, even after the decadence in literature that followed the glorious cinquecento, intellectual life opposed so effective a barrier to the forces of extinction which were at work in other parts of Europe, notably Germany and England, that there were still in every part of the peninsula from the fertile plains of Lombardy to the sunny Ionian sea, learned and cultured women who were eager to emulate the achievements of their illustrious sisters of Italy's golden age of art, and letters. We do not, it is true, find among them a Properzia de Rossi, a Veronica Gambara, or a Vittoria Colonna; but we find many earnest and enthusiastic students in every department of knowledge.

That which most impresses the student of education during this period of Italian history is not the splendor of art and letters in court and castle, which so dazzled Europe during the time of Renée of Ferrara and Elizabetta Gonzaga of Urbino. We find, it is true, a goodly number of women who won distinction as poets and artists; but it is rather those who were devoted to more serious studies that arrest our attention—women who attained eminence in physical and natural science, in mathematics, in the classical and oriental languages, in philosophy, law and theology. Space precludes the mention of more than a few of these, but these few may be accepted as typical of many others almost equally distinguished.