Anna Maria van Schurman

Anna Maria van Schurman (b. 1607–d. 1678) was regarded throughout the 17th century as the most learned woman not only of the Netherlands but also of Europe. She was “the Star of Utrecht,” “the Tenth Muse,” “a miracle of her sex.” As the first woman to attend non-officially a university, she was also the first to advocate, boldly, that women should be admitted into universities. A brilliant linguist, she mastered at least fourteen languages and was the first Dutch woman to seek publication of her correspondence. Her letters in several languages to the intellectual men and women of her time reveal the breadth of her interests in theology, philosophy, medicine, education, literature, painting, sculpture, embroidery, and instrumental music. Van Schurman advocated higher studies for women in a Latin scholastic disputation and in two Latin letters to her mentor, the French Calvinist theologian André Rivet (b. 1572–d. 1651). Her letters, with Rivet’s reply, were first published in 1638 in Paris in an unauthorized version, and again, with her treatise and exchanges with other scholars, in Leiden in 1641. In 1646, the French literary historian and poet Guillaume Colletet (b. 1598–d. 1659) translated these letters into French, publishing them in Paris under the title Question célèbre: S’il est necessaire, ou non, que les Filles soient sçavantes (A famous question: Whether it is necessary or not for girls to be learned). Van Schurman’s treatise on women’s learning was translated into English in 1659 by the educator Clement Barksdale (b. 1609–d. 1687), as The Learned Maid or, Whether a Maid May Be a Scholar? In 1639 she also completed a treatise, De Vitae Termino (On the temporal limits of life), on the roles that God and physicians play at the end of human life. Her most famous work—Opuscula Hebræa, Græca, Latina, Gallica: Prosaica & Metrica (Minor works in Hebrew, Greek, Latin, and French: In prose and verse)—appeared in 1648 at the height of her fame. In 1666, van Schurman met Jean de Labadie (b. 1610–d. 1674), the founder of the Labadist community, and her life was radically reoriented. She devoted herself to a new form of piety, one shaped by Catholic mysticism in addition to her Calvinist background. She continued her writing, however, arguing in her mature treatise of 1673, Eukleria seu Meliores Partis Electio (Eukleria or choosing the better part, referring to Mary’s choice, Luke 10:41–42) that her former ways of knowing God had left her spiritually bankrupt. Her previous theological teachers disowned her for her choices, but she writes of “joy unspeakable” in her new community. The Eukleria is a fine display of her erudition, marshaled to demonstrate the very limitations of learnedness, in favor of a life more singularly dedicated to God.