ABSTRACT
Both the women Latinists of the Italian Renaissance and those of sixteenthcentury England are receiving an increasing amount of attention. The Latinists of Protestant Europe, by contrast, are barely visible.1 The Reformation, however, was seen quite clearly by many educated women as the opening of a new world of possibilities: the emphasis on individual study and questioning, which did not seem at the outset to make any distinction of gender, was welcomed by many:
For example, the highly educated French princess Marguerite d’Angoulême, sister of Francis I, was a known supporter of, and sympathizer with, the reform movement in France.3 Similarly, in Germany and Switzerland, educated women were vehement in the support of both reform and counter-reform.4
