t corresponded with that which in man was the mark of
the perfect cavalier. It may cause the reader some astonishment to learn
that the contemporaries of the infamous Caesar spoke of his 'moderation'
as one of his most characteristic traits. By this term, however, we must
understand the cultivation of the personality in which moderation in man
and modesty in woman were part and manifestations of a liberal
education.

It is true that in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries emancipated
women did not sit on the benches of the lecture halls of Bologna,
Ferrara, and Padua, as they now do in many universities, to pursue
professional studies; but the same humane sciences to which youths and
men devoted themselves were a requirement in the higher education of
women. Little girls in the Middle Ages were entrusted to the saints of
the convents to be made nuns; during the Renaissance parents consecrated
gifted children to the Muses. Jacopo da Bergamo, speaking of Trivulzia
of Milan, a contemporary of Lucretia, who excited great amazement as an
orator when she was only fourteen years of age, says, "When her parents
noticed the child's extraordinary gifts they dedicated her to the
Muses--this was in her seventh year--for her education."

The course of study followed by women at that time included the classic
languages and their literature, oratory, poetry, or the art of
versifying, and music. Dilettanteism in the graphic and plastic arts of
course followed, and the vast number of paintings and statues produced
during the Renaissance inspired every cultivated woman in Italy with a
desire to become a connoisseur.

Even philosophy and theology were cultivated by women. Debates on
questions in these fields of inquiry were the order of the day at the
courts and in the halls of the universities, and women endeavored to
acquire renown by taking part in them. At the end of the fifteenth
century the Venetian, Cassandra Fedeli, the wonder of her age, was as
well versed in philosophy and theology as a learned man. She once
engaged in a public disputation before the Doge Agostino Barbarigo, and
also several times in the audience hall of Padua, and always showed the
utmost modesty in spite of the applause of her hearers. The beautiful
wife of Alessandro Sforza of Pesaro, Costanza Varano, was a poet, an
orator, and a philosopher; she wrote a number of learned dissertations.
"The writings of Augustinus, Ambrosius, Jerome, and Gregory, of Seneca