Such were Maria Gaetana Agnesi, who was
invited by the Pope and the university to lecture in mathematics at
Bologna (and declined the invitation to give herself to the service of
the poor), and Lucretia Helena Gomaro Piscopia, who taught philosophy
and theology! and Laura Bassi who lectured in physics, and Clara von
Schur-man who became proficient in Greek, Hebrew, Syriac, and Chaldaic
in order to study Scripture "with greater independence and judgment,"
and the Pirk-heimer family of Nuremberg, Caritas and Clara and others,
whose attainments were conspicuous in their day. But there is something
unfamiliar about all these names; they do not belong so much to the
history of the world as to the curiosities of literature and learning.
The world has not felt their touch upon it; we should scarcely miss them
in the galleries of history if their portraits were taken down.
The women who have been really great, whom we could not spare out of
their place in history, have not been the student women or the
remarkably learned. The greatest women have taken their place in the
life of the world, not in its libraries; their strength has been in
their character, their mission civilization in its widest and loftiest
sense. They have ruled not with the "Divine right of kings," but with
the Divine right of queens, which is quite a different title, undisputed
and secure to them, if they do not abdicate it of themselves or drag it
into the field of controversy to be matched and measured against the
Divine or human rights of kings.
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