The World's Debt to the Catholic Church

Ordinarily feminine education is presumed to have developed only in very recent generations and to have flourished just in proportion as the Church lost ground in its influence over life and above all over education. Any such opinion would be amusing only that it is so amazing, for it presumes that we are the first generation that ever afforded women a chance for the higher education. What is the meaning in that case of the women of the Renaissance who not only in Italy but in every other country in Europe, in France, Spain, England, and even Germany are deservedly so famous for their intellectual influence and the taste they displayed in a great artistic period? What of the many details that we have of women professors teaching in the universities of Italy, as during the Renaissance time they taught in the universities in Spain? As a matter of fact there is not a single century since the twelfth when there have not been women professors at the universities of Italy. What of the wonderful stories that have been told us in recent years of the fine opportunities for education afforded in the Benedictine nunneries? What of Brigid of Ireland, who founded the great school of Kildare, which attracted women students from many countries, and what of Hilda of Whitby, abbess of a monastery following the Celtic tradition, the patroness of our first great English poet Caedmon.

There is manifestly a long history of feminine education, and it is when this is told that the place of the Church and her influence as regards the provision of education for women can be properly understood. The appreciation of the place of women in Christianity and of the value of an education for her came in the generations immediately following Constantine's edict which gave the Church full freedom to express herself and to shape her policy according to the needs of humanity. Before the end of the fourth century we find groups of women not only afforded full opportunity to develop their intellect and secure education but also to use their intellects to the highest advantage in the life of the time. The establishment of the Order of Deaconesses in the first century of Christian history shows that the Church wished to use the heart of woman for the benefit of mankind, and now came the recognition of the value that her mind might have in the same great field.