ABSTRACT
Since the age of the Reformation, a woman’s destiny was defined by matrimony and, accordingly, a girl’s education had to prepare her for this. Ideas regarding how this could be achieved travelled among the learned humanists, from Italy and Spain to the Netherlands and France and to the countries north of the Alps, the British Isles and Scandinavia. Men like Erasmus of Rotterdam, Thomas More and Juan Luis Vives, as well as religious reformers like Martin Luther, considered girls’ education a prerequisite for the improvement of Christian community life. For the sake of right living in this world and salvation in the world yet to come, girls had to be prepared spiritually and practically to become Christian wives, mothers and housekeepers. Due to the early age of marriage, most treatises on matrimony published in the first half of the sixteenth century took it for granted that girls had to be further educated within wedlock by their husbands.
