70 WOMAN IN SCIENCE 



was not only one of the most learned women of her time but 

 was probably also the most learned queen England has ever 

 produced. There were, however, no university professors 

 or poets of eminence among the English women, as there 

 were in Italy and Spain, and their creative work was prac- 

 tically nothing. 



Since the time of Hroswitha, Gertrude, the Matildas and 

 Hildegard, the learned woman has never been the ideal 

 woman in Germany. When Olympia Morati was on her 

 way from Ferrara to Heidelberg to take the chair of Greek, 

 she found the daughters of professors and humanists de- 

 voting themselves to sewing and embroidery instead of art 

 and literature. Anna, the eldest daughter of Melanchthon, 

 was almost alone among the German women of the Renais- 

 sance who had a knowledge of Latin. 



In Prance the most learned woman of her time was un- 

 doubtedly Margaret of Angouleme, queen of Navarre. So 

 great was her knowledge and so enthusiastic was she in 

 promoting the study of the Latin and Greek classics that 

 Michelet, with something of exaggeration, perhaps, calls 

 her "the amiable mother of the Renaissance in France." x 

 She was noted for her devotion to the study of Scripture 

 and theology as well as Greek and Hebrew. She always 

 had around her, or was in correspondence with, the most 

 distinguished scholars, poets, artists, philosophers and the- 

 ologians of the age, and undoubtedly did much, as a patron- 

 ess of men of letters, toward furthering the literary move- 

 ment in France. She is, however, chiefly known to modern 

 readers by her Heptameron a work which reveals too 

 clearly the tastes of her associates and the manners and cus- 

 toms of the time. 



iTo the poet Eonsard, she was a woman beyond compare, as is 

 evinced by the following lines of a pastoral ode addressed to her: 



"La Eoyne Marguerite, 

 La plus belle fleur d 'elite 

 Qu'onques la terre enfanta." 



