Nor were women content to study and teach in their native countries. When S. Boniface needed teachers in Germany to complete the conversion and civilization of the country, he endeavored to enlist the enthusiasm of the English women of learning and piety; and Chunehilt and her daughter Berathgilt were the first to listen to his appeal. They are called by the historian valde eruditæ in liberali scientia. The Abbess Lioba, distinguished for her scholarship and her executive ability, also accepted the invitation of Boniface, and thirty nuns, of whom she was the head, reached Antwerp after a stormy passage, and were received at Mentz by the archbishop, who conducted them to the convent at Bischofsheim, which he had erected for Lioba. S. Boniface declared that he loved Lioba on account of her solid learning—eruditionis sapientia. Walburga, a subordinate of Lioba, went into Thuringia, and became abbess of the Convent of Heidesheim, where she and her nuns cultivated letters as diligently as in their English home. The church herself watched over these efforts of women to elevate their sex; for the Council of Cloveshoe, held in 747, exhorts abbesses diligently to provide for the education of those under their charge. In so great admiration and affection did S. Boniface hold Lioba that he requested that her remains might be buried in Fulda, so that they might together await the resurrection. Lioba survived the saint twenty-four years, during which she erected many convents and received signal assistance from Charlemagne.
The convent schools maintained by these disciples of S. Boniface were not the only ones in which women obtained more culture than is accorded to them in our own boastful time. At Gandersheim the course of study included Latin and Greek, the philosophy of Aristotle, and the liberal arts. One of the abbesses of this convent was the author of a treatise on logic “much esteemed among the learned of her own time.” It would be easy enough to continue this record; to carry on the chain of woman’s assistance—always under the guidance of religion—in the educational development of Europe. It is not easy to avoid dwelling on the aid she rendered in the foundation of colleges; of the standing which she attained in the universities, where, both as student and professor, she won with renown and wore with modesty the highest degrees and honors.
The catalogue of that metropolis of learning, the University of Bologna, a papal institution, contains the names of many women who appeared to enviable advantage in its departments of canon law, medicine, mathematics, art, and literature. The period which produced Vittoria Colonna, who received, her education in a convent, discovers Properzia de’ Rossi teaching sculpture in Bologna; the painter Sister Plautilla, a Dominican; Marietta Tintoretto, daughter of the “Thunder of Art,” herself a celebrated portrait-painter, whose work possessed many of the best qualities of her father’s; Elizabeth Sirani, who painted and taught in Bologna; and Elena Cornaro admitted as a doctor at Milan. We find a woman architect, Plautilla Brizio, working in Rome in the XVIIth century, building a palace and the Chapel of S. Benedict. In the papal universities, as late as the XVIIIth century, women took degrees in jurisprudence and philosophy; among them, Victoria Delfini, Christina Roccati, and Laura Bassi, in the University of Bologna, and Maria Amoretti in that of Pavia. In 1758 Anna Mazzolina was professor of anatomy in Bologna, and Maria Agnesi was appointed by the pope professor of mathematics in the University of Bologna. Novella d’Andrea taught canon law in Bologna for ten years. A woman was the successor of Cardinal Mezzofanti as professor of Greek. Statues are erected to the memory of two women who taught botany in the universities of Bologna and Genoa. It is well to mention these facts as a sufficient reply to the flippant charge, too frequently made, that the Catholic Church is “opposed” to the higher education of women.
The relation of women in religion to the education and refinement of the present day can be lightly passed over. In the convent schools in every part of the world young women receive the best education now available for their sex. The demands of society have affected the curriculum. It is not as abstract or classical or thorough as in the time of Lioba and Hrotsvitha, but it is the best; and it will return to the classical standard as quickly as women themselves make the demand. In a word, the orders of teaching women in the Catholic Church are, we repeat, a sufficient answer to Mr. Gladstone’s sneer at the status of women in religion. It was out of these that arose Catherine of Sienna—orator, scholar, diplomate, saint. Of these was S. Teresa, whom Mgr. Dupanloup characterizes as one of the greatest, if not the greatest, prose writers in the Spanish literature. Of these have been hundreds, thousands, of women, who, moved by the Spirit of God to his service, have found within convent-walls opportunities for culture which society denies, and who, in the carrying out of his divine will, have made more sacrifices, attained higher degrees of perfection, and lived lives of sweeter perfume and nobler usefulness, than the mind of Mr. Gladstone appears to be able to conceive. A religion which makes conquests enough among women, since it can inspire, control, and direct them thus, is the religion which must conquer the world.
Finally, Mr. Gladstone forgot the subtle power of mother and wife, and the marriage laws of the Catholic Church. The mother’s influence for good or evil, but especially for good, to which she most inclines, is second to none that moves the heart of man. Whether it be Cornelia, pointing to the Gracchi as her jewels; or Monica, pursuing and persuading S. Augustine; Felicitas, exhorting her seven sons to martyrdom; or the mothers of S. Chrysostom, S. Basil, and S. Anselm, converting their children to firmness in holiness; or whether it be the untutored mother of the savage, or the unfortunate head of a household setting an unwomanly example, the mother’s voice, issuing from the quivering lips or coming back silently from the tomb, is heard when all other sounds of menace, of appeal, of reproach, or of tenderness fail to reach the ear. Every mother makes her sex venerable to her son. The mother’s love is above all logic; it destroys syllogisms, refutes all argument. It cannot be reasoned against; and when the salvation of the child is the motive, there is no power given to man to withstand its seduction. “It shrinks not where man cowers, and grows stronger where man faints, and over the wastes of worldly fortune sends the radiance of its quenchless fidelity.” Christ himself upon the cross was not unmindful of his mother; yet he was God! Says the greater Napoleon, “The destiny of the child is always the work of the mother.” To the end of time she will be, as she has ever been,
“The holiest thing alive.”
The faith of the mothers, if they believe in it, must become the faith of the sons and the daughters. That the Catholic mother believes, even Mr. Gladstone will hesitate to deny. In no faith but the Catholic have mothers accompanied their sons to martyrdom. In no faith but the Catholic is the mother taught to believe, while still a child at her mother’s breast, that she will be held responsible for the eternal welfare of her children; that they must be saved with her, or she must perish with them. For this salvation she will toil and pray and weep; for this she will spend days of weariness and nights without sleep; for this religion will keep her heart brave, and her lips eloquent, and her hand gentle and strong. For this she will work as neither man nor woman works for aught else; and for this she will lay down her life, but not until the sublime purpose is accomplished! That done, she is ready to die. For
“Hath she not then, for pains and fears,
The day of woe, the watchful night,
For all her sorrow, all her tears,