Woman in Science Part 7

--Lib. IX, 79.

which have been rendered as follows:

Despiteful pedant, why dost me pursue, Thou head detested by the younger crew?

Before the c.o.c.k proclaims the day is near Thy direful threats and lashes stun my ear.

Martial elsewhere refers to "Ferulaeque tristes, sceptra pedagogorum"--melancholy rods, sceptres of pedagogues--and it appears from one of Juvenal's satires that "to withdraw the hand from the rod"

was a phrase meaning "to leave school."

[17] _Woman Through the Ages_, Vol. I, pp. 110, 111, by Emil Reich, London, 1908.

Schoolhouses among the Romans, as well as among the Greeks, were quite different from our modern, well-equipped buildings. Usually, at least, in earlier times, instruction was given in the open air, in some quiet street corner or in _tabernae_--sheds or lean-tos--as in certain Mohametan countries to-day. Horace refers to this in _Epistola_ XX, Lib.

I, when he writes:

"Ut pueros elementa docentem Occupet extremis in vicis balba senectus."

In such schools the pupils sat on the floor or the bare ground, or, if the lessons were given on the street, they sat on the stones. There were no desks, or, if there were any benches, they had no backs. The pupils were, therefore, perforce obliged to write on their knees.

Cf. _Historical Survey of Pre-Christian Education_, pp. 278 and 346, by S. S. Laurie, London, 1900.

[18] Cf. his _Tiberius Gracchus_. Cicero says of them, "Non tam in gremio educatos quam sermone matris."

[19] Ibidem, _Life of Pompey_.

[20] _De Oratore_, Lib. III, Cap. XII.

[21] "Potiorem iam apud exercitus Agrippinam quam legatos, quam duces; compressam a muliere seditionem, cui nomen principis obsistere non quiverit." _Annales_, Lib. I, Cap. 69.

[22] _Oeconomicus_, VII, 5, 6.

[23] _Epistolae_, Lib. I, 16.

[24] Sit mihi verna satur, sit non doctissima conjux. _Epigrammata_, Lib. II, 90.

Martial's taste in this respect was the same as that of Heine, who said of the woman he loved: "She has never read a line of my writings and does not even know what a poet is," and the same as that of Rousseau, who declared that his last flame, Therese Lava.s.seur, could not tell the time of day.

[25] Satire VI, 434-440.

[26] _Joannis Stobaei Florilegium_, Vol. IV, p. 212, Teubner's edition, 1857.

[27] The following is the epitaph as written by St. Jerome, "the Christian Cicero":

Scipio quam genuit, Pauli fudere parentes, Gracchorum soboles, Agamemnonis inclyta proles, Hoc jacet in tumulo, Paulam dixere priores, Euxtochii genetrix, Romani prima senatus, Pauperiem Christi et Bethlehemitica rura secuta est.

[28] In his preface to the _Commentary on Sophonius_.

[29] For an exhaustive account of the lives and achievements of St.

Jerome and his n.o.ble friends, Paula and Eustochium, the reader is referred to _L'Histoire de Sainte Paule_, by F. Lagrange, Paris, 1870, and _Saint Jerome, La Societe Chretienne a Rome et l'emigration Romaine en Terre Sainte_, by A. Thierry, Paris, 1867. Cf. also _Woman's Work in Bible Study and Translation_, by A. H. Johns in _The Catholic World_, New York, June, 1912.

[30] See _Histoire de Sainte Radegonde, Reine de France_, in Chap. XX, par Em. Briand, Paris, 1897.

[31] _Historia Ecclesiastica Gentis Anglorum_, Lib. IV, Cap. 23.

[32] _The Monks of the West_, Book XI, Chap. II.

[33] Vol. I, pp. 46 and 49, New York, 1871.

[34] Op. cit., Book XI, Chap. II.

It will interest the reader to know that Caedmon has a place among the saints in the _Acta Sanctorum_ of the Bollandists. See the special article on him in Vol. II, p. 552, under the caption of "_De S. Cedmono, cantore theodidacto_."

[35] _Woman Under Monasticism._ Chapter IV, -- 2, by Lina Eckenstein, Cambridge, 1896. In this chapter is an interesting account of the Anglo-Saxon nuns who were among the correspondents of Boniface.

[36] The reader will recall Chaucer's account in the _Canterbury Tales_ of the wife of the well-to-do miller of Trumpyngton:

"A wyf he hadde y-comen of n.o.ble kyn;

She was y-fostred in a nonnerye.

There dorste no wight clepen hir but 'Dame;'

What for hire kynnrede and hir nortelrie, That she had lerned in the nonnerie."

--_Reeve's Tale._

[37] Pp. 78, 79, London, 1897.

[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'education 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'oeuvre 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 _Patrologiae 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, a.s.serted 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.