[38] History of European Morals, Vol. II, p. 369, New York, 1905.
[39] Henry VIII and the English Monasteries, London, 1895.
[40] The English Historical Review, July, 1888.
Another recent writer affirms without hesitation that "Hroswitha has earned a place apart in the Pantheon of women poets and writers. She alone in those troublous times of the tenth century recalls to our minds the existence of dramatic art; her name, indeed, deserves to be rescued from oblivion and to become a household word." Fortnightly Review, p. 450, March, 1896.
[41] Histoire de l'Éducation de Femmes en France, Tom. I, p. 72 et seq. par Paul Rousselot, Paris, 1883.
A certain jurisconsult of the thirteenth century, one Pierre de Navarre, expressed the sentiment of many of his contemporaries when he wrote the following paragraph:
"Toutes fames doivent savoir filer et coudre; car la pauvre en aura mestier et la riche conoistra mieux l'œuvre des autres. A fame ne doit-on apprendre lettre ni escrire, si ce n'est especiaument pour estre nonain, car par lire et escrire, de fame sont maint mal avenu."
[42] Opera Omnia S. Hildegardis, Tom. 197, Col. 48 of Migne's Patrologiæ Cursus Completus. Cf. also Nova S. Hildegardis Opera, edidit Cardinalis Pitra, Paris, 1882, and Das Leben und Wirken der Heiligen Hildegardis, von J. P. Schmelzeis, Freiburg im Breisgau, 1878.
[43] It was Peter Lombard, whose Sentences "became the very canon of orthodoxy for all succeeding ages," who, in marked contrast with those of ancient and modern times that regarded woman as the inferior or slave of man, asserted her equality with him in a sentence that should be written in letters of gold. "Woman," he declares, Sententiarum, Lib. II, Disp. 18, "was not taken from the head of man, for she was not intended to be his ruler, nor from his foot, for she was not intended to be his slave, but from his side, for she was intended to be his companion and comfort."
In this view the great Schoolman but follows the teachings of St. Augustine. For in his commentary, De Genesi ad Litteram, Lib. 9, Cap. 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 illustrious 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.