WOMAN'S LONG STRUGGLE 47 



nature of one 's relations, it would be difficult to find in any 

 age relations that were more select or more cosmopolitan. 



But her astonishing collection of letters is the slightest 

 product of her intellectual activity. She is without doubt 

 the most voluminous woman writer of the Middle Ages. 

 Her works on theology, Scripture and science make no less 

 than six or eight large octavo volumes. The Bollandists, 

 than whom there is no more competent authority, express 

 their amazement at the amount and quality of Hildegard 's 

 work. Witness the following language of one of their num- 

 ber: ''Although we may not be surprised that our saint 

 was interrogated regarding secret things by so many men 

 eminent both by reason of their dignity and their learning, 

 I am nevertheless forced to recognize with stupefaction 

 that a woman without instruction, and who had not ac- 

 quired knowledge by study, was consulted concerning the 

 most difficult questions of theology and the most subtle of 

 Holy Scriptures, and that she gave, without hesitation, the 

 answers that were demanded by theology and Scripture. ' ' 1 



Is it, then, surprising that the famous William of 

 Auxerre, after a critical examination of her works, should 

 compare her with Peter Lombard, the celebrated "Master 

 of the Sentences, ' ' 2 and one of the most learned of the 



i Opera Omnia S. Hildegardis, Tom. 197, Col. 48 of Migne's Pa- 

 trologicB Cursus Completus. Cf. also Nova 8. Hildegardis Opera, 

 editlit Cardinalis Pitra, Paris, 1882, and Das Leben und Wirken der 

 Reiligen Hildegardis, von J. P. Schmelzeis, Freiburg im Breisgau, 

 1878. 



a It was Peter Lombard, whose Sentences l ' 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 in-- 

 ferior or slave of man, asserted 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 



