Christine de Pisan was perhaps also the first woman, who opened a sharp protest against the narrow views many men of her time had in regard to woman’s abilities and position. Defying the prejudice of woman’s inferiority, she gained a complete victory in her literary skirmishes over several clergymen of high standing. In Germany the cities of Nuremberg, Augsburg, Strassburg and Basel became the centers of learned societies, who gathered around scholars like Schedel, Pirckheimer, Agricola, Peutinger, Reuchlin and Brant. Here also Dürer, Holbein, Cranach, Schongauer and Vischer enriched the world with works of art that rank among the greatest of the Middle Ages. But most important of all, in Germany that great religious movement started which was in truth the Teutonic Renaissance: the Reformation, in which Luther, Melanchton, Hutten and Erasmus were the leading spirits. Kindred movements were started in Switzerland by Zwingli, in France by Lefevre d’Estaples, Berquin and Calvin; in England by Wycliffe, Bilney, Cranmer and Cromwell. While so numerous men and women strove for greater physical and intellectual liberty, ecclesiastic despotism, to prevent anybody from thinking independently, denounced all free thinkers as heretics who must be exterminated by fire and sword. The life of many brilliant men and women ended at the stake or on the scaffold. But far greater numbers perished through obscure superstition, for the spread of which the Church was in the first place responsible. [Illustration] [Illustration: ACCUSED OF WITCHCRAFT. After a painting by F. Piloty. ] THE DARKEST CHAPTER IN WOMAN’S HISTORY. The belief in witchcraft, witches, evil spirits and devils is as old as humanity. It prevailed among all primeval people as well as among all nations of the classic past and the middle ages. It still exists among many nations who call themselves civilized. Witches have been and are feared as persons, who maintain intercourse with evil spirits, demons or devils. They are believed to be able, through the assistance of these spirits, of inflicting injury on other people, who attract their dislike and hatred. In former times people were convinced, that such witches could transform themselves into animals, clouds, water, rocks, trees or anything else; that they could cause disastrous thunderstorms, hail, invasions of grasshoppers, whirlwinds and droughts; that they could steal the dew and the rain, hide the moon and the stars, and produce plagues in men and cattle.