But the highly prized ladies of romance, the abbesses with all their pomp and influence, the women poets, philosophers, and orators of Greece and Rome, all lose interest when compared with the story of the learned women in Italy during the Renascence. When we come to the actual flowering time of their genius the list is so long as to make selection difficult. "Never in history," says Mozans, "had they greater freedom of action in things of the mind; never were they, except probably in the case of the English and German abbesses of the Middle Ages, treated with more marked deference and consideration or fairness; never were their efforts more highly appreciated or more generously rewarded.... Everywhere the intellectual arena was open to them on the same terms as to men. Incapacity and not sex was the only bar to entrance."[12] When the great Cardinal Bembo said, "Little girls should learn Latin; it completes their charm," he was expressing the attitude of the best Italian scholars towards learning for women. Intellectual attainments were not only counted appropriate for women, but they were recognized as a distinct added attraction. Every city of importance had women whose renown was a source of civic pride. Women not only studied under tutors, but they apparently attended classes in the great universities, and even occupied important chairs in the most distinguished faculties.[13] The outcome of a general investigation along the lines indicated would doubtless go to prove that in all civilized nations, in all ages of their progress, there have been individual women who by force of native endowment and through some favorable conjunction of circumstances, have risen into prominence in realms not ordinarily open to the women of their time, and that there have been various interesting epochs when women have responded in fairly large numbers to some exceptional intellectual stimulus. 2. PERIOD OF HENRY VIII AND ELIZABETH