Part 14

To think that the Renaissance with this provision of ample opportunities for feminine education was the first epoch of this kind in the world's history would be to miss sadly a host of historical facts and their significance. Unfortunately history has been so written from the standpoint of {213} man and his interests, that this phase of history is not well known and probably less understood. History has been too much a mere accumulation of facts with regard to war, diplomacy and politics. While we have known much of heroes and battles, we have known little of education, of art, of artistic achievement of all kinds. We have known even less of popular movements. We have known almost nothing of the great uplift of the masses which created the magnificent arts and crafts of the Middle Ages, that we are just beginning to admire so much once more, and our admiration of them is the best measure of our own serious artistic development. Kings and warriors and kings' mistresses and ugly diplomacy and rotten politics, have occupied the centre of the stage in history. Surely we are coming to a time when other matters, the human things and not the animal instincts, will be the main subject of history; when fighting and sex and acquisitiveness and selfishness shall give place in history to mutual aid, uplift, unselfishness and thoughtfulness for others.

As soon as history is studied from the standpoint of the larger human interests and not that of political history, it is easy to find not only traces but detailed stories of feminine education at many times. Before the Renaissance the great phase of education had been that of the universities. The first of the universities was founded down at Salerno around a medical school, the {214} second that of Bologna around a law school and the third that of Paris with a school of philosophy and theology as a nucleus. This seems to be about the way that man's interests manifest themselves in an era of development. First, he is occupied mainly with his body and its needs; then his property and its rights, and finally, as he lifts himself up to higher things, his relations to his fellow-man and to his Creator come to be profound vital interests. Such, at least, is the story of the origin of the universities in the thirteenth century.

The surprise for us who are considering the story of feminine education and influence is what happened at Salerno. Here some twenty miles back from Naples, in a salubrious climate, not far from the Mediterranean, where old Greek traditions had maintained themselves, for Southern Italy was called Magna Graecia, where the intercourse with the Arabs and with the northern shores of Africa and with the Near East, brought the medical secrets of many climes to a focus, the first modern medical school came into existence. In the department of women's diseases women professors taught, wrote text-books and evidently were considered, in every sense of the word, co-ordinate professors in the university. We have the text-book of one of them, Trotula, who is hailed as the founder of the Salernitan School of Women Physicians, the word school being used in the same sense as when we talk of a school of {215} painting, and not at all in the sense of our modern women's medical schools. Trotula was the wife of the professor of medicine at the university, Plataerius I, and the mother of another professor at the university, Plataerius II, herself a professor like them.

There are many other names of women professors at the University of Salerno in this department. Women, however, were not alone allowed to practise this single phase of medicine, but we have licenses granted to women in Naples, of which at this time Salerno was the university, to practise both medicine and surgery. It seems to have been quite common, I should say, at least as common as in our own time for women to study and practise medicine, and their place in the university and the estimation in which their books were held, show us that all the difficulties in the way of professional education for women had been removed and that they were accepted by their masculine colleagues on a footing of absolute equality.

Probably the most interesting feature of this surprising and unexpected development of professional education for women is to be found in the conditions out of which Salerno developed. The school was originally a monastic school under the influence of the Benedictine monks from Monte Cassino not far away. The great Archbishop Alphanus I, who was the most prominent patron and who had been a professor there, was himself {216} a Benedictine monk. How intimately the relations of the monks to the school were maintained can be realized from the fact that when the greatest medical teacher and writer of Salerno, Constantine Africanus, wanted to have leisure to write his great works in medicine, he retired from his professorship to the monastery of Monte Cassino. His great friend Desiderius was the abbot there, and his influence was still very strong at Salerno. Desiderius afterwards became Pope, and continued his beneficent patronage of this Southern Italian university. In a word, it was in the midst of the most intimate ecclesiastical and monastic influence that this handing over of the department of women's diseases to women in a great teaching institution occurred. The wise old monks were thoroughly practical, and though eminently conservative, knew the needs of mankind very well, and worked out this solution of one series of problems.

When the next great university, that of Bologna, was founded, it developed, as I have suggested, around a law school. Irnerius revived the study of the old Roman law, and his teaching of it attracted so much attention that students from all over Europe flocked to Bologna. Law is different from medicine in many respects. The right of women to study medicine will readily be granted, their place in a system of medical education is manifest. With regard to law, however, there can scarcely be grave question as to the {217} advisability of woman studying it unless economic conditions force her to it. This was particularly true at a time when woman could own no property and had no rights until she married. In spite of the many inherent improbabilities of this development, the law school was scarcely opened at Bologna before women became students in it. Probably Irnerius' daughter and some of her friends were the first students, but after a time others came and the facilities seem to have been quite open to them. As out of the law school the university gradually developed, opportunities for study in the other higher branches were accorded to women at Bologna. We have the story of their success in mathematics, in philosophy, in music and in astronomy.

According to a well-known and apparently well authenticated tradition, one distinguished woman student of Bologna, Maria Di Novella, achieved such success in mathematics about the middle of the thirteenth century that she was appointed professor of mathematics. Apparently the faculty of Bologna had no qualms of educational conscience nor betook themselves to such halfway measures as one of our modern faculties, which accords a certificate to a woman that she has passed better in the mathematical tripos than the Senior Wrangler, though they do not accord her the Senior Wranglership. The story goes on to say that Signorina Di Novella, knowing that she was pretty, and fearing that her {218} beauty would disturb the minds, at least, of her male students, arranged to lecture from behind a curtain. This would seem to indicate that the blue-stockings of the olden time could be as surpassingly modest as they were intelligent. I remember once telling this story before a convent audience. The dear old Mother Superior, who had known me for many years, ventured to ask me afterwards, "Did you say that she was young?" and I said yes, according to the tradition; "and handsome?" and I nodded the affirmative, "Well, then," she said, "I do not believe the rest of the story." But then, after all, what do dear old Mothers Superior know about the world or its ways, or about handsome young women or their ways, or about the significance of traditions which serve to show us that even pretty, intelligent women can be as modestly retiring and as ready to conceal their charms as they are to be charmingly courteous and careful of the feelings of others?

It was not alone in law and mathematics, however, that women were given opportunities for the higher education and even for professional work at the University of Bologna. In medicine, as well as in law, women reached distinction. The first great professor of anatomy of modern times is Mondino, whose text-book on dissection, published at the beginning of the fourteenth century, continued to be used in the medical schools for two centuries. One of his assistants was {219} Alessandra Giliani, one of the two university prosectors in anatomy. At the Surgeon General's Library in Washington, in one of the early printed editions of Mondino's work, the frontispiece shows a young woman making the dissection before him preparatory to his lecture. To her, according to an old Italian chronicle, we owe the invention of methods of varnishing and painting the tissues of cadavers so that they would resemble more their appearance in the living state, that they might be preserved for further use, thus avoiding to some extent the necessity for constant repetition of the deterrent work of dissection, even more deterrent at that time.

It is curiously interesting to find that another great improvement in the teaching of anatomy, invented in Italy nearly four centuries later, came also from a woman teaching at an Italian university, Madame Manzolini. The tradition connecting these two women is unbroken. There is not a century from the thirteenth to the eighteenth in which there were not distinguished women professors at the universities of Italy, and, therefore, also students in large numbers.

Just how many women students there were we do not know. It might seem to be a comparatively easy problem to find out just how many there were at any given time by looking up the registers of the universities. Once in Bologna itself I got hold of the old university registers, confident that now I would learn just what was {220} the proportion of women students at the university. I was utterly disappointed, however, Italian mothers had, so far as the settlement of this question is concerned, the unfortunate habit occasionally of giving boys' names to girls, and girls' names to boys. They called their children after favorite saints. A girl might well be called Antonio, for the feminine form was not in common use in earlier times. Many boys had for first name Maria. It used to be the custom in Venice for every child, no matter what its sex, to receive from the Church the two names Maria Giovanni, and then the parents might add what other names they pleased. The names of royalty, with their frequent use of mingled masculine and feminine names, show how much confusion can be worked to any scheme for the determination of the sex of students at the old universities by this, for us, unfortunate habit.

Curiously enough, it was during the thirteenth century when the development of feminine education in the early university period was at its height, that certain changes in the domestic economy of the Bolognese are worthy of notice. Two kinds of prepared food became popular, if they were not, indeed, both invented at this time. One of them, bearing the classic name Bologna, is still with us, has spread throughout the world, and is likely to continue to be an important article of food for many centuries more. Another form of prepared food was a sort of dessert called Bologna {221} pudding, prepared from cereals, and which can still be purchased in Bologna, though foreigners, as a rule, do not care much for it. These two articles of food modified materially the preparation of food for meals at this time. It was possible to buy both of these, as now, ready made, and so the housewife was spared the bother and trouble and expenditure of time required for this work. We have here one phase of the origin of the delicatessen stores. This sort of change in domestic economy has always been noted whenever women have gone out of the home for other occupations and have become something less--or more--than the housewives and mothers they were before. Such changes in the dietary, however, in the direction of ready-made food are never popular with men. One German historical writer has been unkind enough to say that this is one of the reasons why the higher education gradually became much less popular, or at least attracted less attention than before. "Women want things for themselves, and if they are opposed insist on getting them," is the way this cynic Teuton puts it. "If, after a time, however, having got what they want, they find that the men do not like them to have it, they gradually abandon it." According to him Bologna and Bologna pudding saved the stooping over the kitchen range, or whatever took its place in those days, and gave all classes of women more opportunity for intellectual development or at least {222} for occupation with things different from household duties, but after a time the more or less resentful attitude of the men brought about a change. However that may be is hard to say.

Another interesting feature of the history of these times connected in some way with feminine education or, at least, with feminine occupation with other things besides their households, was a great devotion to a particular breed of pet dogs of which one hears much in the accounts of the life at Bologna at this time. Here, once more, the German cynic has had his say. He has suggested that, whenever women became occupied with things outside their home, with a consequent diminution in the number of children, they are almost sure to find an outlet for their affections in devotion to dogs and other pets. Apparently he would suggest that they literally go to the dogs. It is very curious that just during this thirteenth century, when feminine education at Bologna is at its height, one hears so much of these pets. At other times in the world's history, when women have taken to intellectual interests and especially when there has been a fall in the birth-rate, this same attention to pet animals is worthy of study.

After the thirteenth century there seems to have been a reaction against these pets. It is to be hoped that there is no connection between this and the prepared foods spoken of, but the decline in the popularity of pets and of woman's {223} occupation with intellectual interests went hand in hand. For all of this I am indebted to German authorities whose attitude towards feminine education may somewhat prejudice them and, indeed, probably does so, but these things are only mentioned as showing certain views that are held. The interesting thing for us is that after a period of somewhat more than a century of rather intense interest on the part of the women in nearly every phase of the intellectual life, there is then a diminution of interest, so that by the end of the fourteenth century women, even where feminine intellectual life was vigorous, are occupied almost without exception as they were before the university period, mainly with domestic concerns.

While feminine education was so common in the ecclesiastically ruled universities of Italy, the custom did not spread in Western Europe. The reason is not far to seek. All of the western universities owe their origins to Paris. Oxford was due to a withdrawal of English students from Paris, Cambridge to a similar withdrawal from Oxford. Many of the Scotch universities are grandchildren of Paris. All of the French universities are direct descendants, except Montpellier. The Spanish universities have a similar relation. The experience with feminine education at Paris had been unfortunate. The Heloise and Abelard incident came in a formative stage of the university. It settled unfavorably the {224} whole question of feminine attendance at universities for the west. It seems a small thing to have such a wide and far-reaching influence, but it is very often on little things that the success or failure of great social movements of any kind depends. We have practically no record of any relaxation of university regulations in this matter in the west. Perhaps the Teutonic character was opposed to it, perhaps the Teutonic women were less anxious for it, being more occupied with Church and children and their home, but there was none, and its absence is responsible for the feeling so common among us, that now for the first time in the world women are enjoying the opportunity for the higher education.

Even the university epoch, however, is not the first phase of opportunities for the education of woman in modern history. Far from it, indeed, we can find much more than traces of a feminist movement in other centuries before this, and, indeed, in many of them. When Charlemagne established schools for his people and invited Alcuin, the English monk, to develop educational institutions for his people, the first and most important school was that of the imperial palace where Alcuin himself taught. In this the women of Paris were given opportunities quite as well as the men; indeed, they seem to have taken a more vivid interest and their example seems to have been the highest incentive for many of the men to take up a work so foreign to their natures, {225} for as yet they had all the barbarous instincts of their Gothic ancestors, only slightly tamed and modified by two or three centuries of gradual uplift and religious training of character. There are letters from the women of the palace, and especially Charlemagne's daughter, to Alcuin, discussing phases of his teaching and suggesting problems and questions with regard to the matters which he had been making the subject of his instruction.

It would be easy to think that this incident of the Palace School did not mean very much and that its passing influence did not make itself felt widely nor for long. The state of education at this time must not be forgotten. Only the clergy, as a rule, had leisure for it. All the rest of the world were engaged either in the frequent wars or in a tireless struggle for subsistence as farmers, merchants and craftsmen. The nobility neglected education just as much as the upper classes always do, though there were certain fashions which gained a foothold and that seem to show that they had some interest. Many a nobleman of the mediaeval centuries, however, boasted that he could not sign his own name. He was rather proud of the fact that he had not lowered himself to mere book knowledge. There were large numbers of the clergy and the monks, however, and these were the scholars of the period.

There were also at this time large numbers of religious women, and these in their leisure hours {226} spent much time at educational matters and some of them accomplished lasting results. The mother of the family, the court dame, the wife of the nobleman, whose castle was much more the home of work than it has ever been at any time since, had but little leisure for the intellectual life. The nuns devoted themselves to beautiful handiwork, to the composition as well as the transcription of books and to the cultural interests generally.

It has always been true, as a rule, that the woman who accomplished anything in the intellectual life must be either a celibate, or at most, the mother of but a child or two. The mother of a large family, unless she is extremely exceptional, cannot be expected to be productive in the intellectual life. She has not the time for original work, and still less for the filing process necessary for appropriate expression. There are rare exceptions, but they only prove the rule. One of the two forms of production apparently women must give up to devote themselves to the other. The nuns in the Middle Ages, in the retirement of their convents, gave themselves much more than we are likely to think possible, to literary and scientific production. Within the past year I have published sketches of two distinguished women of the tenth and twelfth centuries whose books show us the intellectual interests of the women of this time. Only that women were having opportunities for mental development {227} these would not have been written, and as they were written for women, it is evident that those interests were quite widely diffused. One of these two authors comes in what is sometimes called the darkest of the Dark Ages, the tenth century; the other was born in the eleventh. They serve to show how much more intense than we are likely to think was the interest of the time in things intellectual. Without printing and without any proper means of publication, somehow these women succeeded in making literary monuments that have outlasted the wreck and ruin of time, and that have been of sufficient interest to mankind to be preserved among vicissitudes which seemed surely destined to destroy them.

One of the two ladies was Roswitha, or Hrotswitha, a nun of Gandersheim, in what is now Hanover, who in the tenth century wrote a series of comedies in imitation of Terence, probably not meant to be played but to be read. She says in the preface that the reason for writing them was that so many religious were reading the indecent literature of classical Rome, with the excuse that it was necessary for the cultivation of style or for the completion of their education, that she wanted and had striven to write something moral and Christian to replace the older writings. That preface of itself ought to be enough to show us that in the nunneries along the Rhine, of which we know that there were many, there must have been a much more {228} widespread and ardent interest in literature, and, above all, in classic literature, than we have had any idea of until recently. Hrotswitha, to give her her Saxon name, was only a young woman of twenty-five when she wrote the series of stories and plays thus prefaced, and while her style, of course, does not compare with the classics, worse Latin has often been written by people who were sure that they knew more about Latinity than any nun of the obscure tenth century could possibly have known.

The other woman writer of about this time was Hildegarde, the abbess of a monastery along the Rhine, born at the end of the eleventh century, who wrote a text-book of medicine, which was the most important document in the history of medicine in this century. The nuns were the nurses and the hospital attendants and in the country places, to a great extent, the physicians of this time. In the cities there were regular practitioners of medicine, but the infirmarian of a monastery cared for the ailing monks and the people on the monastery estates when ill, and often they were many in number, and the infirmarian of a convent did the same thing for the sisters and for at least the women folk among the people of the neighborhood. It was in order to gather together and preserve the medical traditions of the monasteries and convents that Hildegarde, who afterwards came to be known as St. Hildegarde, wrote her volume on medicine. It has been recently {229} issued in the collection of old writings called "Migne's Patrologia," and has drawn many praises from historical critics for the amount of information which it contains. These two, Hroswitha and Hildegarde, furnish abundant evidence of the intellectual life of the convents of this old time and more than hint at how much has been lost that might have helped us to a larger knowledge of them.