CVII. I think it is now time to depart from the labyrinths of physics, and to enter on the open and pleasing plains of history, and to persuade by examples, that the understandings of the women, are not inferior to those of the men, even for the attainment of the most difficult sciences. This is the best method, which can be fallen upon to convince the vulgar, who are generally more influenced by examples, than arguments. To recite all that occur, would be tiresome, and therefore, I shall only mention some of those women, who, in these latter ages, have been the most eminently distinguished for their learning, and who have flourished in our own country Spain, and in the neighbouring kingdoms. CVIII. Spain, which strangers hold cheap in this particular, has, to the honour of literature, produced many women, remarkably eminent for all sorts of learning. The principal ones are the following. CIX. _Donna Anna de Cervaton_, lady of honour to the Germanic Queen de Fox, second wife of Don Ferdinand the Catholic; she was a most celebrated woman, but more so on account of her learning and rare talents, than for her uncommon beauty, which was so striking, that she was generally allowed to be the finest woman about the court. In Lucio Marino Siculo, may be seen the Latin letters which that author wrote her, and the lady’s answers in the same idiom. CX. _Donna Isabel de Joya_, in the sixteenth century, was esteemed a woman of great learning. It is told of her, that she preached in the church of Barcelona, to the amazement of a great concourse of auditors. I suppose the prelates who permitted it, judged that the injunction of the Apostle, which in the First Epistle to the Corinthians, prohibits women to speak in the church, admitted of some exceptions, in the same manner the injunction did, which prohibits them to teach in the Epistle to Timothy; for it is a fact, that Priscilla, who was the companion of this same apostle, taught and instructed Apollo Pontonicusin the evangelic doctrine, as appears from the Acts of the Apostles; and that afterwards passing to Rome in the pontificate of Paul III. she, in the presence of the cardinals, much to their satisfaction, explained many of the difficult passages in the books of the subtile Scotus; but what redounded most of all to her honour, was her having converted in that capital of the world, a great number of Jews to the catholic faith.