| Elizabeth was fortunate to be born in
the lull flush of Renaissance enthusiasm for education. Women had always been
educated of course, for had not St. Paul said that women were men's equals in
the possession of a soul? But to the old idea that they should be trained in
Christian manners and thought was now added a new purpose: to quicken the spirit
and train them in the craft and eloquence of the classical authors of Greece and
Rome. Critics were not wanting, morbidly obsessed with the weaknesses of the
sex-- its love of novelty and inborn tendency to vice -- to think women
dangerous enough without adding to their subtlety and forwardness; but they were
not able to stem the tide. Henry VII's mother was one of the first to indicate the new trend. She knew enough French to translate "The Mirror of God for the Sinful Soul" and was the patron of Caxton, the first English printer, and a liberal benefactor to the universities. Sir Thomas More's daughters studied Greek, Latin, philosophy, Astronomy, Physic, Arithmetic, Logic, Rhetoric and Music. In his household women were treated as men's equals in conversation and wit, and scholars boasted of them in letters to friends abroad. The movement was strengthened from abroad by Catherine of Aragon, Henry VIII'S Spanish Queen. In the Spain of her childhood ladies were the friends of scholars Vives, one of the most refreshing figures in the history of education, to write a plan of studies for the education of her daughter Mary. This was the heritage into Which the sharp-witted child Elizabeth entered. At six years old, it was said, she was precociously intelligent and had as much gravity as if she had been forty. Little is known of her education until her tenth year, when she became the pupil of the Cambridge humanists, Roger Ascham and William Grindall, but she was already learning French and Italian and must have been well grounded in Lation. Ascham helped her to form that beautiful Italian hand she wrote on all special occasions and with him she spent the morning on Greek, first the New Testament and then the classical authors, translating them first into English and then back into the original. The afternoons were given over to Latin, and she also studied Protestant theology, kept up her French and Italian and later learned Spanish. When she was sixteen Ascham wrote: " Her mind has no womanly weakness, her perseverance is equal to that of a man, and her memory long keeps what it quickly picks up." Though it is easy to be cynical about the reputed accomplishments of the great, Elizabeth was notoriously quick and intelligent and had a real love of learning. Even as queen she did not abandon her studies. |