Women's Education

During the 1300's children of both sexes attended school in Florence. Women from the nobility or upper classes often had obligations that required literacy. With the rise of the Medieval university household were able to employ poor university students as tutors and on such occasions girls were sometimes permitted to to join the tutoring sessions of their brothers.

The subject of education for women, however, was a hotly debated issue throughout the Middle Ages. As education was directly connected with the church it was inevitable that the church's views of women should have led predominated. St. Thomas of Aquinas,1225-1274, who was perhaps one of the great teachers of the period declared what was clearly a widely supported notion regarding women: "The woman is subject to man on account of the weakness of her nature . . . Man is the beginning of woman and her end, just as God is the beginning and end of every creature. Children ought to love their Father more than they love their mother."

Medieval society, and particularly the powerful domains of church and state, clearly had no place for well-educated women.

Despite the restrictive social codes a number of women did assert their talents in as writers, poets, composers and artists. One of the most remarkable women of the time was the poet Christine de Pizan. Not only was she able to earn her living as a writer, but her arguments with the leading clerics of her day on the rights of women represent one of the first declarations of feminism to be articulated.

Source:  http://www.csupomona.edu/~plin/ls201/medieval3.html

Although the above mainly focuses on the 1300's and the end of the Medieval Era, the Education of the Renaissance for women was closely related to these practices and guidelines.