Here, more than in Salerno, more than in any other city in the world, was, for long centuries, witnessed a blooming of female genius that has, since the time of Gratian and Irnerius, given the University of Bologna preeminence in the estimation of all friends of woman's education and woman's culture. For here, within the walls of what was for centuries the most celebrated university in Christendom, women had, for the first time, an opportunity of devoting themselves at will to the study of any and all branches of knowledge. And it can be truthfully affirmed that no seat of learning can point to such a long list of eminent scholars and teachers among the gentler sex as is to be found on the register of Bologna's famous university. For here, to name only a few, achieved distinction, either as students or as professors, such noted women as Bitisia Gozzadina, Bettina and Novella Calendrini, Dorotea Bocchi, Giovanna and Maddalena Bianchetti, Virginia Malvezzi, Maria Vittoria Dosi, Elisabetta Sirani, Ippolita Grassi, Properzia de Rossi, Maria Mastellagri, Laura Bassi, Maddelena Noe-Candedi, Clotilda Tambroni and Anna Manzolini. In this honor list we have a group of savantes that were famed throughout Europe for their attainments in law, philosophy, science, ancient and modern languages, medicine, and surgery--the rivals, and sometimes the superiors, in scholarship of the ablest men among their distinguished colleagues. It would be a pleasure to recount the achievements of these justly celebrated daughters of Italy; but lack of space precludes the mention of more than one of them. This was Maria dalle Donne, who was born of poor peasants near Bologna, and who at an early age exhibited intelligence of a superior order. After pursuing her studies under the ablest masters, she obtained from the University of Bologna, _maxima cum laude_, the degree of doctor in philosophy and medicine. On account of her knowledge of surgery, as well as of medicine, she was soon afterward put in charge of the city's school for midwives. When Napoleon, in 1802, passed through Bologna he was so struck by the exceptional ability of the young _dottoressa_ that, on the recommendation of the savant Caterzani, he had instituted for her in the university a chair of obstetrics--a position which she held until the time of her death, in 1842, with the greatest credit to herself and to the institution with which she was identified. Maria dalle Donne is a worthy link between that long line of women doctors, beginning with Trotula, who have so honored their sex in Italy, and those still more numerous practitioners in the healing art who, shortly after her death, began to spring up in all parts of the civilized world.[209]