Sic exempla virum uxores accepta sequuntur.[1169]
Eulalia, the wife of Probus, was fond of reading the involved writings of Sidonius,[1170] who does not think it too much to expect from a wife that she will be interested in literature. For he reminds a friend that marriage need not interfere with his studious habits: have not Marcia, Terentia, Calpurnia, Pudentilla, Rusticiana, and many others ‘held the light for those who read’?[1171] We may conclude, therefore, that while a large number of girls received a home-education, chiefly in spinning and household crafts,[1172] many of them attended the schools and became interested in literature.[1173]
If there was an increasing liberalism about women’s education in pagan circles (to take the references from Ausonius and Sidonius under this head), the principle of a woman’s right to education assumed much wider and more active proportions among the Christians.
The spread of monasticism naturally affected a large number of women. Marcella was the first of the noble ladies at Rome to take the veil, and set an example which was so extensively followed that by 412 Jerome could boast ‘crebra virginum monasteria’.[1174] Avitus in 517 called together a Church Council at Epao (a small village south of Vienne), which regulated in one of its canons the admission to the ‘monasteria puellarum’,[1175] and he refers elsewhere to the cloister founded by Leonianus where Remilia was brought up (sub regulari disciplina nutrita).[1176] The nuns learnt weaving and spinning,[1177] but the various ‘Regulae’, though somewhat later than our period, make it probable that a portion of their time, at least, was spent in reading and writing.
From these scattered data the point that emerges is that there was a change of attitude towards the education and intellectual capacity of the ordinary woman.
Jerome showed quite clearly that he had no contempt for the feminine mind as such. He considers Paula and Eustochium competent judges of his Latin translation of the Bible, and treats their suggestions as coming from intellectual equals.[1178] The number of books dedicated to them is remarkable, though not when we remember that they inspired the translation.[1179] They, and many other women like Blaesilla, Felicitas, and Fabiola were adepts in Greek, Latin, and Hebrew, and frequently consulted Jerome on points of interpretation, as did women from all parts of the Empire, including Gaul. For if the rhetorical tradition was one and universal in the West, Christian teaching in the fifth century was almost more so. ‘If Augustine from his retreat at Hippo dictated a new treatise against the heresies of his time, all the churches of Italy, of the Gauls and of Spain listened with attention. Thus, at first sight, we can only discover one sole Latin Literature which, so to speak, began the education of all the races of the West.’[1180]
Sedulius, who had taken the side of liberalism in the matter of pagan literature, when discussing the dedication of his Carmen Paschale makes Macedonius mention many learned presbyters. ‘Nor need you be ashamed’, he continues, ‘to follow the example of Jerome the interpreter of the divine law, the student of the library of heaven (caelestis bibliothecae cultoris), in submitting to women, high born and of known high character, women in whose minds the passion for sacred reading has built the sober home of wisdom, the documents of your inmost reasoning. Who would not wish, would not be ambitious, to please the superb judgement of a Syncletice...?’ And he goes on to describe Perpetua, whose wisdom (gemina resplendens lampade) lends lustre to that of her sister.[1181]