334 ANDREW J. SHIPMAN MEMORIAL 



It was the noble women of the conventual institutions who 

 kept alive the flame of learning throughout the ages of the 

 Church. Women throughout all the ages, from the fall of 

 the Roman Empire to the time of the so-called Reformation, 

 were taught exactly as men were, the same books, the same 

 branches of learning and the same intellectual acquirements. 

 They did good solid work in the convents, exactly as their 

 brothers did in cloister or college. 



Practically the only schools for girls during the Middle 

 Ages were the convents. Here were educated rich and poor, 

 gentle and simple. Here they were free from the annoyances 

 and dangers which menaced them often in their own homes 

 and prevented their study. 



Among the great educators of the early Saxon times was 

 the Abbess St. Hilda, of the Convent of Whitby. Her con- 

 vent was known as a centre of learning and culture. She was 

 the one who discovered the poetical gifts of the poet Csedmon. 

 Although he was a serf and a keeper of the cows in the fields, 

 she had him taught to read and developed his wonderful gifts. 

 It was this Northumbrian cow-herd, transformed into a monk, 

 who sang the revolt of Satan and Paradise Lost a thousand 

 years earlier than Milton. 



There was also the famous nun of Gandersheim, in middle 

 Germany, the Abbess Hroswitha, who lived in 930. She was 

 novelist, dramatist and critic. Her dramatic compositions 

 are best known, and how good they were is shown by the fact 

 that Ellen Terry two years ago scored a success in one of them 

 in London. I can bear personal witness to the brilliant Latin 

 dialogue of a few of them. She put the most modest apology 

 to her works for a nun turned author: "Let those who are 

 not pleased with this work remember that it pleased her who 

 wrote it." 



And there was Hildegard, the Abbess of St. Rupert, at 

 Bingen-on-the-Rhine, who lived during the early Crusades. 

 Her works on theology. Scripture and science make up six 

 large octavo volumes. Herrad, the Superior of Hohenburg, 

 in Alsace, had the widest knowledge, and wrote her famous 

 book, "Hortus Deliciarum," or "Garden of Delights," one of 

 the first encyclopedias of the Middle Ages, which was illus- 

 trated by innumerable illuminated miniatures. It is a picture 



