WOMAN'S LONG STRUGGLE 45 



Among her legends the one entitled The Lapse and Con- 

 version of Theophilus has a special interest as being the 

 precursor of the well-known legend of Faust. 



In Hroswitha's time, as in our own, there were people 

 who were strongly opposed to the higher education of 

 women. There were others who would deny them even the 

 elements of an education who declared that they should 

 be taught anything rather than reading and writing, which 

 were a cause of temptation and sin that their knowledge 

 should be confined solely to the duties of an ordinary house- 

 wife, that their books should consist solely of thimble, 

 thread and needles "Et leurs livres, un de, du fil et des 

 aguilles." Some, it is true, were willing to make an ex- 

 ception in favor of nuns; but, as to all others, the less 

 they knew the better it was for their spiritual, if not 

 for their temporal, welfare also. 1 To those who were 

 thus minded, Hroswitha pithily replied that it was not 

 knowledge itself but the bad use of it that was danger- 

 ous "Nee scientia scibilis Deum offendit, sed injustitia 

 scientis." 



Among other women who were Hroswitha's equals in 

 knowledge, if not in literary attainments, were several 

 other nuns who illumined the closing centuries of the Mid- 

 dle Ages. Chief among these were St. Hildegard, "the 

 sybil of the Rhine"; Herrad, the noted author of the 



our minds the existence of dramatic art; her name, indeed, deserves 

 to be rescued from oblivion and to become a household word." Fort- 

 nightly Review, p. 450, March, 1896. 



1 Histoire de I' Education de Femmes en France, Tom. I, p. 72 

 et seq. par Paul Kousselot, 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 1'ceuvre des autres. A 

 fame ne doit-on apprendre lettre ni escrire, si ce n' est espeeiaument 

 pour estre nonain, car par lire est escrire, de fame sont maint mal 

 avenu. ' ' 



