1. Even though women continued to receive inferior education compared to males, Renaissance humanism did provide the basis for re-examining the nature of females. The questioning of authority and ideas "paved the way for an intellectual tradition that freed women from cultural prejudice and social subordination" (King, Introduction: xvi). Treatises about marriage and family were not important because they redefined femaleness but because they made the topic of women's nature an intellectual concern.

2. The print culture resulting from the invention of the printing press made reading materials accessible.

3. Initially the Reformation with its emphasis on reading scripture to make peace with God was a boon to female education. However, during Elizabeth I's rein the English Protestants viewed Latin , the language of scholarship, as popish (King 70).

4. Generally the education of Renaissance women was a private affair. There were no large institutions of learning for women, and they did not traditionally attend grammar school. Petty schools, which were elementary vernacular schools, provided little opportunity for the classical education necessary for participation in the intellectual community.

5. Private households were responsible for the education of their daughters. As the head of his domain, the father determined if and to what his extent his female offspring would be educated. Desiring subordination from women, few fathers valued education for their daughters ( 185) beyond basic reading and writing. Mothers' attitude towards education of their daughters is typefied by the didactic works written in the seventeenth century by Dorothy Leigh and Elizabeth Joceline, who indicated professional goals for their boys and Bible study, housewifery, writing, and good words for their girls; '"other learning a woman needs not" (185).

6. Some of the great households did provide a classical education for their daughters through the employment of humanist tutors. Jane and Katherine Grey, the Seymour and Howard women were educated by humanist tutors. However, "since these families suffered disgrace, exile, or execution, they did not become models for larger families" ( 252).

7. Typically the Elizabethan aristocracy did not follow the court's example in the education and treatment of women. An exception is the household of Sir Thomas More, who personally supervised the education of his three daughters and his one adopted daughter. However, he cautioned his brilliant daughter Margaret against seeking a public audience for her writing. Her father and her husband were to be her only readers. More told Margaret that "because of the great love you bear us, you regard us-your husband and myself-as a sufficiently large circle of readers for all that you write" (186).

8. Henry VIII's two daughters, Mary and Elizabeth Tudor, received exceptional instruction. Juan Vives, a Spanish humanist, based their curriculum on the pedagogical guide, Instruction of a Christian Woman. The book was written for the instruction of Princess Mary and was translated into six languages, including English. The guide advocated a classical curriculum as well as Christian Latin poets, the Latin Bible, Paraphrases by Erasmus and Thomas More's Utopia. The curriculum included drills in both Latin and Greek although Vives recommended that Latin be taught with caution. In spite of recommending a classical curriculum for women, Vives still subscribed to the prevailing attitude that women must be chaste, silent, and obedient. To him education should prepare the female mind for virtue. He wrote, '"most of the vices of women in this our age and in ages past. . .are the products of ignorance, whence they never read nor heard those excellent sayings and monitions of the Holy Fathers about chastity, about obedience, about silence, women's adornments and treasures" (166). He distinguished between classical education for men that must prepare them for public life and that for women which should cultivate the mind and make them obedient to duties and virtue. '" Men must do many things in the world and must be broadly educated; but only a little learning is required of women'" ( 165). According to Vives, female studies should shape the morals and develop virtue. Therefore, women should pursue the studies of wisdom and the way to lead a holy life. He prescribed guidelines for female authorship: rhetoric should not be a concern since a woman's silence is desirable, women should not write verses , and they should restrict all writing to the subject of chastity ( 165).

9. Desiderius Erasmus, a Dutch humanist, urged education for women in his book, The Institution of Marriage, which he dedicated to Henry VIII's first wife, Catherine of Aragon. However, he saw education as a more effective means than needlework in chasing away idleness, preserving virginity, and enhancing matrimonial relationships ( 181).