The representative pagan woman had her shortcomings and her disabilities. She had also her virtues. If she had less of the spirit of religion, she had equally the spirit of patriotism, of culture, of honor, and of duty. There was a finer sensibility among the Christian women, and a stronger instinct of self-sacrifice. None of us will depreciate the beauty of those traits, but without the firmness of fiber that is fostered by trained intelligence, they have their dangers. When they mark the permanent attitude of one class toward another which in no wise recognizes any corresponding duty, they inevitably result in the servility of the one and the tyranny of the other. Such was the relative position of men and women in the dark ages. Even chivalry which paid a tribute to weakness was largely a theory, or a fashion that offered a new path to glory, and does not bear too close a scrutiny, though it tempered the condition of women and modified the character of men, upon whom it reflected great honor. Its ideals were fine, but the gulf between the ideal and its attainment in daily life was often a very wide one. There were conspicuous examples of feminine courage and heroism as well as talent, but the lives of women in these ages were not, as a rule, pleasant ones, in spite of a certain halo of romance that was thrown about them. No doubt it was their suffering and helplessness that sent so many of them into convents where they frequently found a state of morals little better than the one from which they fled. It was not until the Renaissance brought back the old spirit of learning and a vigorous intellectual life among women that they combined the sweetness of Christian virtues with the dignity and strength born of knowledge and a measure of freedom, took the rightful position that belongs to the mothers of the race, and once more played a distinctly civilizing and beneficent rôle on the world’s stage. THE LEARNED WOMEN OF THE RENAISSANCE [Illustration: Decorative image] · Glorification of Women in the Fifteenth and Sixteenth Centuries · · Their New Cult of Knowledge · · Bitisia Gozzadina · · Ideals of the Early Poets · · Dante · Petrarch · Boccaccio · Medieval Saints · · Catherine of Siena · Women in Universities · · Precocious Girls · Olympia Morata · · Women Poets · Veronica Gambara · · Vittoria Colonna · · High Moral Tone of Literary Women · · An Exception · Tullia d’Aragona · [Illustration: Decorative image] I