BIANCA CAPPELLO.

From an Original Painting by Cristofero Allori
in the Uffizi at Florence.

A DECADE
OF
ITALIAN WOMEN.

BY
T. ADOLPHUS TROLLOPE,
AUTHOR OF "THE GIRLHOOD OF CATHERINE DE' MEDICI."

IN TWO VOLUMES.
VOL. II.

LONDON:
CHAPMAN AND HALL, 193, PICCADILLY.
1859.
[The right of Translation is reserved.]

LONDON
BRADBURY AND EVANS, PRINTERS, WHITEFRIARS.

CONTENTS.

TULLIA D'ARAGONA.

Born, about 1510. Died, about 1570.

OLYMPIA MORATA.

Born, 1526. Died, 1555.

ISABELLA ANDREINI.

Born, 1562. Died, 1604.

BIANCA CAPPELLO.

Born, 1548. Died, 1587.

OLYMPIA PAMFILI.

Born, 1594. Died, 1656.

ELISABETTA SIRANI.

Born, 1638. Died, 1665.

LA CORILLA.

Born, 1740. Died, 1800.

A DECADE OF ITALIAN WOMEN.

TULLIA D'ARAGONA.

(About 1510—about 1570.)

CHAPTER I.

MY LORD CARDINAL'S DAUGHTER.

One remarkable circumstance among those which specially characterised the great intellectual movement in Italy in the sixteenth century, was the large part taken in it by women. The writers of literary history,—a class especially abundant to the south of the Alps,—enumerate a surprisingly long catalogue of ladies more or less celebrated for their works. The list of poetesses registered by Tiraboschi as flourishing during the first half of the sixteenth century, consists of some forty names. And he intimates, that it might have been made much longer, had he thought it worth while to record every name mentioned by the chroniclers of such matters, who preceded him. A great many more are noticed as having been "learned" or "skilled in polite literature."

Such facts constitute a very noteworthy feature of the social aspect of the period in question; and doubtless influenced largely the tone of society and manners, as well as the position and well–being of the sex. But it is very questionable, whether certain theories respecting the comparative value of modern female education, to which all this sixteenth century galaxy has given rise, be not founded on misconception partly of the value of the learning possessed by these ladies, and more still of the circumstances and appearance, under which it presented itself to them.

Intellectual culture in that day meant especially, almost exclusively, what has been since more technically called "learning." The movement, which was then once again stirring up the mind of the educated classes arose mainly, as every body knows, from the discovery and resuscitation of the literature of ancient Greece and Rome. To be, if not a good Grecian, at least a competent Latin scholar, was the first step absolutely necessary in the liberal education of either male or female. Nay, it constituted very frequently not only the first step, but the entire course. In Italy this was in an especial degree the case. Not only the fashion of literature, but the general tone of the educated mind became classical,—and pagan. And the rapidity with which the new modes of thought and fashion of taste spread, and,—speaking of course with reference only to the educated classes,—popularised themselves, is very striking. But they did so, because they were eminently suited to the proclivity of the minds to which they were presented.

THE NEW LEARNING.

For this new learning came to them as an emancipation and a licence. Such learning as had been before in existence was dry, severe, repulsive, associated only with ideas of discipline, sacrifice, and renunciation of the world and its pleasures—the proper business of ascetic priests and hermits. The new studies were the reverse of all this. Elegant, facile, materialistic in all their tendencies and associations, adapting themselves readily to the amusements and passions of the young and gay, they must be compared, if we would parallel them with aught of modern culture, with the lighter of those accomplishments, which are now called ornamental. The total unchristianising of Italian society, which the rage for classical literature very rapidly produced, was such as strikingly to justify the modern[1] crusade against classical culture preached by those who are anxious to preserve such Christianity as that, which then went down before the irruption of literary paganism. The exquisitely organised æsthetic faculties of the southern mind eagerly imbibed and readily assimilated the habits of thought, generated by a religion, whose only real object of worship was material beauty. The extremely relaxed morality of the time was subjected to a refining influence, but by no means checked by a literature rich in poetical drapery for every form of vice. And the lightest, gayest, freest portion of society, beginning now to be awakened to a relish for the elegances of life by increasing wealth and luxury, found exactly what suited them in the revived literature of the forefathers of their race; a literature which was the product of generations uninfluenced by the wholly irreconcilable ideas of a philosophy and religion imposed on their descendants with very partial success by men of differently constituted races from the east and from the north.

Englishmen are wont to estimate the study of the literature of Greece and Rome in a manner very much at variance with the ideas expressed in the above sentences; and judging it, as of course we do, from its results among ourselves, most justly so. It would take us much too far afield to examine satisfactorily why these results should have been so different in the two cases. The most important portion of the causes of difference would probably be found to consist in the dissimilarity of our northern idiosyncrasies to those of the ancient writers. In Italy, the old tree bore its own natural fruit. With us, it was engrafted on another stock. The southern mind became all classical. The northern mind was modified only by contact with the ancient literature. Perhaps also, some weight may be allowed to the greater difficulty of the study in our case; whence it has arisen, that the thorough and analytical study of the dead languages, has been deemed eminently profitable as intellectual discipline, and as the best foundation of general mental culture.

And these views of classic learning lead us to attribute almost instinctively, as it were, a high degree of solidity, grave scholastic laboriousness, and respectability to the acquirements of those who possess it. A lady well read in Greek and Latin, appears to us to have necessarily reached an intellectual elevation which places her above the shallowness, superficiality, and frivolousness with which modern female education is ordinarily reproached. And we sigh over the supposed inferiority in this respect, of England in the nineteenth century, to the brilliant Italy of the sixteenth. It is true, that in the case of Vittoria Colonna, we have seen a product of the classical training of that day, which—mutatis mutandis—we might be content to reproduce. But the instance is wholly exceptional; and the qualities, moreover, which we admire in Vittoria are to be traced, probably, as far as they are independent on constitutional idiosyncrasy, to those associations with some very remarkable men, which taught her to use her ancient learning as a tool, and not a final object.

COUNCIL OF TRENT.

The subject of these pages is a less exceptional product of Italian sixteenth century classical studies; but by no means a less curious and suggestive exponent of one phase of the social life and manners of that epoch.

Among the grave and reverend seniors industriously busy at Trent, in the year 1552, at their great work of constructing a dam to stop the course of a perennial river, may be observed one Peter Tagliavia, Archbishop of Palermo, a silver–haired and right reverend old man, very prudent, wise, and sagacious, we are told, in the management of affairs of all[2] sorts. There he is sagaciously dragging forward his bit of stick to contribute to the formation of the great dam, undismayed by the swift running of the stream the while. He is much puzzled by the consideration of the manner and style in which it will be proper for the assembled Fathers of the Church to communicate with heretics. For it is quite clear, on the one hand, that being heretics and excommunicate, and damned already accordingly, all propriety and Church etiquette would require that they should be treated and addressed as such. But, on the other hand, there is reason to believe that their arrogance will reach the height of expecting to be treated like Christians, and that failing such treatment, no reply will be got from them at all, and so all proceedings be stopped in limine.[3] Very perplexing!

The sagacious Archbishop insisted much on this point, dragging up his bit of drift wood to the dam with pertinacious industry. He was made a cardinal in the following year for this and other merits; partly also, because he had royal blood in his veins,—writing himself "Tagliavia d'Aragona." He died five years later, in 1558, still busy in damming that terrible river, which was already changing the face of things around him. Even Rome itself was very unlike what he had remembered it in the good old times, some fifty years ago or thereabouts. Ah! Rome was worth living in and living for in those days! Happy days! when, as His Eminence of Bibbiena used to say, we wanted nothing but a court with ladies. Court, with ladies, quotha!

And with that our Archbishop's musings on the brave old days, when the second Julius was Pope, and no heretical turbulence had yet disturbed the sacerdotal empyrean, could hardly fail to recall a tolerably brilliant galaxy of such ladies, as were especially attracted from all parts of Italy, to a court whose numerous and wealthy courtiers were all professionally and permanently bachelors.

"Poor Giulia!" sighed the Archbishop, "sometimes I wonder what became of her?"

We will not ask for a reference to the accurate historian, who overheard, and has chronicled these words. Roccho Pirro, in his learned and voluminous history of the Sicilian prelates, it is true, omits to mention them. Yet, I think, that if his Eminence, Pietro Tagliavia d'Aragona, had been satisfactorily Boswellised, they must have been recorded. For "poor Giulia" had been the mother[4] of the rising young churchman's daughter some fifty years or so before the time at which we find his Eminence working in his vocation at the great dam. And this daughter was the celebrated Tullia (more or less) d'Aragona.

GIULIA OF FERRARA.

What did become of poor Giulia? Giulia of Ferrara, the most celebrated beauty of her day, in all Italy: the noted toast of Rome,—the be–rhymed of ecclesiastical sonnetteers—the sighed–for by purple–stockinged swains: Giulia, the Aspasia of many a frocked Pericles, and the mother of a royal–blooded churchman's child! How should respectable Mnemosyne know what becomes of such? Mnemosyne mentions, with a blush, having just seen her once in the pride of her beauty, flashing with cortège of horses and attendants, and glitter through the streets of Rome.[5] And that is all. Mnemosyne begs to be asked nothing more about her; and proceeds to relate with much complacency the fortunes and preferments of the excellent Cardinal Archbishop, the rules that he made for his clergy, and the privileges and property he acquired for his Church.

Yet despite all this propriety on the part of respectable Mnemosyne, despite her decent reticences, and official records of Palermo chapterhouse doings, and Trent diplomacy, despite learned Roccho Pirro's folios and immortality in the columns of Ciacconius,[6] the fact is, that if the name of Archbishop Peter Tagliavia d'Aragona is ever now spoken by the lips of living nineteenth–century men, it is owing, incredible as the circumstance would have seemed to his Eminence, solely to his relationship to little nullius filia Tullia. Not that the blood–royal young churchman, candidate as he was there at Rome, under the immediate eye of infallibility for the Church's highest honours—scarlet stockings, palliums, red hats, and what not—seems to have felt any scruples and embarrassment about the matter. At all events he provided abundantly for his "furtively received daughter," as Zilioli phrases it; and took care that she should receive an education, calculated to make the most of the brilliant talents of all sorts, manifested by her from her earliest childhood. "To the utter astonishment of learned men," says Zilioli, "she was heard to carry on a disputation in Latin while yet a child. She wrote also both in Latin and in Italian compositions worthy of any literary man. So that, when grown up, joining as she did, to her knowledge and worth, an exquisite elegance of manner, she acquired the reputation of being the most perfectly accomplished woman of her time. She appeared in public with so much grace, with such beauty, and such affability of manner, that when to all that was added the magnificence and adornment of dress, calculated to set off all the charms of her person[7] to the utmost, it is impossible to imagine anything more charming and exquisitely finished than she was. Her musical touch was so exquisite, and she managed her voice in singing so sweetly, that the first professors were astonished at her performance. She spoke with grace and with rare eloquence, so that whether in light conversation or serious discussion, she delighted and captivated her hearers, like a second Cleopatra; and at the same time, her lovely and ever cheerful features were not wanting in those more potent charms, which admirers of female beauty are wont to look for in a beautiful face."

HER ACCOMPLISHMENTS.

So richly had nature endowed, and so successfully had art cultivated the child of the rising churchman! Father and daughter were both, during those early years of the sixteenth century, perfecting themselves for their subsequent destinies in the strangely jumbled social world of that wonderful old Rome; he duly progressing towards scarlet stockings and hats; and she to the somewhat similarly coloured promotion, in the enjoyment of which, painfully blushing Mnemosyne next authentically falls in with her.

CHAPTER II.

ASPASIA REDIVIVA.

It is fancied, with small reason probably, that to grow old is necessarily more disagreeable to women than to men. And dates are therefore popularly held to be especially detestable facts to the fair sex. If this be so, the world in this matter, as in most others, showed itself excessively complaisant to our fascinating sixteenth century, Aspasia. For her contemporaries have been most strangely silent on the subject as regards her. The year of her birth, and more strangely still, that of her death, are alike unknown and undiscoverable. Must we therefore conclude, that the departure of the superannuated beauty, was as little interesting to the world as the arrival of the "furtively received" infant?

The literary historians content themselves with vaguely stating, that Tullia "flourished" in 1550.[8] It is true, that a difference of opinion may be supposed to exist as to the portion of her career best deserving to be so characterised. But it is to be feared, that poor Tullia herself must have considered her "flourishing" to be over and gone for ever, by the time she reached that period. For in the total silence and negligence of every regular clerk in Mnemosyne's office, some not–to–be–baffled, Dryasdust, whom our brilliant Tullia would doubtless have hated with instinctive aversion, has succeeded in poking out a certain letter that blabs much. Ah! those old letters in dusty yellow bundles, with the unimpeachable evidences of their signatures, addresses, and dates, hoarded by some correspondent's preserving instincts, in many cases little counted on by the writer, how much of all we know about our predecessors on earth's surface is due to their unforeseen tale–telling!

FILIPPO STROZZI.

In the year 1531, Rome was settling down into her usual way of life, after the dreadful catastrophes of 1527. Pope Clement the Seventh had got over the most perilous and immediate of his troubles, but was, as Popes are wont to be, very much in need of assistance from his banker. Now, this necessary and important person was no other than the celebrated Filippo Strozzi, who was then in Rome, busied in the political as well as the monetary affairs of the papacy. But Strozzi was one of those marvellous men, whose abounding vital energies enable them to unite in their own persons, characters, pursuits, and occupations, which might seem to belong to half a dozen most dissimilar individuals. His political speculations and intrigues did not interfere with his much–loved literary pursuits. His free–thinking philosophy did not prevent his close intimacy with the Pope. And his vast commercial and banking operations were somehow made compatible with the career of a very notorious man of pleasure.

How nearly two of the manifestations of this multiform character would occasionally chance to jostle each other, is indicated by the conclusion of a long and important letter[9] on matters of high political moment to Francesco Vettori. "Write to me in reply," he says, "and be sure, that your letter shall be seen by no one but His Holiness, as I desire may be the case with this of mine, written in much haste, and with Tullia at my side." Dated, Rome, 28th January, 1531.

Was the bewitching Tullia close enough to his side to look over his shoulder, as the plotting politician wrote matters to be shown only to the Pope? Did she interest herself in schemes for the keeping a Florentine oligarchy in check? Or did she sit patiently at the writer's elbow, while he penned a letter of sixty–four lines of small print, waiting till he was at leisure to bestow some attention on his companion? In either case the degree of intimacy indicated is much closer than an ordinary one. Yet the next letter,[10] written little more than a month later to the same correspondent, seems in its sadly Don–Juan–like tone, to afford very clear evidence that the writer, if not already tired of his gifted Sappho, certainly considered his liaison with her in the nature of a "terminable contract."

After a few lines on political matters, this Don Juan of a middle–aged banker[11] writes as follows:

"As for my own private affairs, I should be sorry, that you should have believed certain silly stories of challenges and quarrels, about matters which in truth passed amicably among friends here. For though I do not pretend to take rank among your very prudent people, still I don't want to be set down as a perfect fool, as truly I should deserve to be, had I got into any such scrape for Tullia, or any other woman. She is not, as you say, beautiful; but she is, if I am not mistaken, highly gifted with talent and wit; and on that account, as it is impossible to me to live without the society of women, I have preferred hers to that of others.[12] And I have assisted her in some of her necessities, to prevent her from going to the wall by unjust oppression, during the period of my connection with her, which would have been painful and discreditable to me."

DATE OF HER BIRTH.

The date of this letter is March the 2nd, 1531.

And as this date, with that of the preceding letter, are among the very few of any kind discoverable with reference to Tullia's biography, we must make the most of them. It is to be presumed, then, from the above passages, that she must have been at least twenty, and probably older, in 1531. But as her father died in 1558, and appears to have been engaged in active business up to the time of his death, and as no intimation is found of his age, as would probably have been the case, if he had lived to be remarkably old, we can hardly be very far wrong, in supposing him to have been about seventy at the time of his death, and accordingly two–and–twenty in 1510. It would seem, therefore, that Tullia could not have been born much before, and certainly not much after that date.

In one respect, however, poor Tullia was assuredly wronged by the wealthy and libertine Florence banker. He says that she was not beautiful. Now, the testimony of a dozen enamoured poets might be adduced in favour of her rare and fascinating beauty. And if it should be thought that evidence of this kind, however abundant and concurrent, needs confirmation, it has been supplied by the sister art. There is an admirable portrait of her by Bonvicini, a contemporary of Raphael, more generally known as Il Moretto da Brescia, which was engraved very tolerably at Milan, in 1823, by Caterina Piotti. It represents a very lovely face of the genuine regal type of Roman beauty. The brow is noble; and the magnificently cut, but rather large and statuesque features might perhaps seem somewhat hard in the firmness of their rich contour, were not the expression softened by an eye eloquent of all the tenderer emotions. Laurel branches fill the whole background of the picture, in token of the lady's rank as a poetess.

How long after the date of the above–mentioned letters Tullia continued her residence in Rome, there remain no means of ascertaining. Zilioli says that she left it "after the death of her husband." And this one phrase is the only intimation of any sort we meet with, that such a person as Tullia's husband ever existed. It is true that such an appendage is not of a nature likely to be dwelt much on in love verses addressed to a lady. And to this category belong the greatest number of the notices of her, which have come down to us. Yet it seems strange that a wife should be celebrated from one end of Italy to the other, and recorded, or at least mentioned, in the pages of every literary historian of her country, and that she should have a husband whose name even was never, as it should seem, alluded to by his cotemporaries, and who has not left the slightest trace of his existence. It must be supposed that, if ever spoken of at all, he was only known as "La Tullia's" husband, a member of society discharging functions somewhat analogous to those of a Ballerina's mama. It is, at all events, certain that the lady was never known either among her contemporaries, or subsequently, by any other name than that of Tullia d'Aragona, and more commonly simply "La Tullia." And the strangeness of the view of sixteenth century society offered to us by an examination of the position "La Tullia" occupied in it, is not a little increased by the fact of her having had a sort of behind–the–scenes husband, who appears to have exercised about as much influence on her social standing as her waiting–maid.

HER HUSBAND.

There is reason to suppose that her residence in Rome must have continued till 1540 or 1541. For among the "Strozziane"[13] MSS. preserved in the Magliabecchian library at Florence, there is a volume containing the rules, members' names, transactions, &c. of the Academy of the "Humidi," in which are entered three or four sonnets sent from Rome to the Society by Tullia. They are not dated; but the Academy was founded in 1540, and the volume bears at the end the date of 1541. Nothing can be conceived more insipid and dry, than the lucubrations of these "Humid" Academicians; and in truth the effusions despatched to them by Tullia, and honoured by the Academy with insertion in their solemn Archives, are quite worthy of their place in the Humid annals. One is a sonnet in praise of Cosmo I. It begins "Almo pastor," and attributes to that lowminded debauchee and cruel tyrant all the virtues that can possibly be packed into fourteen lines.

And this was written a couple of years after Filippo Strozzi (the very particular friend and protector, by whose side it was a pleasure to sit, while he wrote long business letters in 1531) put himself to death in despair, in preference to remaining in the power of Cosmo, his mortal and vindictive enemy. One might suspect that the fair Tullia had had an opportunity of looking over his shoulder also when he was writing that second letter, in which he had dared to say that she was not beautiful!

Another of the sonnets sent by Tullia, and preserved by the "Humidi," is inscribed to Maria Salviati, and begins—

"Soul pure and bright, as when thou cam'st from God!"

Whence it may be inferred that there was in those days no such yawning abyss between the "monde" and "demi–monde," as to prevent a lady highly placed in the former from being addressed acceptably by one who, according to nineteenth century notions, must be deemed a denizen of the latter.

It must be understood, however, that any such phrase applied to Tullia's social position in her own sixteenth century, would give a very erroneous idea of what that in reality was. The classic Hetaira seems more akin to this Apollo–chartered libertine of an age bent on being equally classical.

Accordingly we find that the house of La Tullia—her house! no mention or hint of that Junius–like individual (Il Tullio, shall we call him?), who must nevertheless be supposed to have been at home there under hatches somewhere, or acting perhaps as groom–porter, and shouting the names and titles of the Monsignori and Eminences, as they arrived;—the house of La Tullia was frequented by the "best society" in Rome. Ludovico Domenichi of Piacenza, himself a poet and a curious specimen of a sixteenth century professional literary man, who must have known Tullia at Florence in the latter years of her life, has recorded some of the sayings and doings of a company assembled at her house in Rome.[14]

A PARTY AT HER HOUSE.

A party of "gentilhuomini virtuosi" there were discussing Petrarch; and the question was raised, how far he had availed himself of ideas suggested to him by ancient Tuscan and Provençal poets. While this was being debated, "L'Humore da Bologna" came in. This personage is mentioned frequently by Domenichi as a sayer and doer of eccentricities and droll things; but I have not succeeded in finding any account of him; and think it probable that "L'Humore" may have been one of those nicknames which the Italians are so fond of bestowing on one another. He at once showed himself to be quite at home, says Ludovico, laid aside his cloak; and entering into the conversation, gave it as his opinion that Petrarch had served the verses of his predecessors as Spaniards serve the cloaks, which they steal in the night; put fresh ornaments and trimmings on them, so that when they appear in them the next day, they are no longer recognisable. Upon which a Spaniard, who chanced to be among the company, attempted to call "L'Humore" to account for this insulting mention of his countrymen. "What!" cried the wit, "is your Excellency a Spaniard? Boy, bring me my cloak directly!" And so saying, he put it on, and wrapped it closely round him, as he sat, to the infinite amusement, says Domenichi, of the assembled company.

After the death of that mysterious phantom, her husband, says Zilioli, Tullia left Rome in search of "fresh fields and pastures new." We can only know that this was after 1540. But it must have been much after this that she took up her residence in Florence. For the same writer tells us, that she was then both in years and appearance pretty nearly an old woman.[15] In 1562 she was, according to the date we have assigned to her birth, only fifty–two or three, or thereabouts. And she must have resided in Florence several years prior to that date. For she lived there, we are told, under the patronage of Cosmo's Duchess Eleonora of Toledo, who died in that year. So that she could not have been much more than half–way between forty and fifty, when she appeared to be "half an old woman."

Supposing her to have gone to Florence about 1555, and to have left Rome not long after 1540, there is a space of some twelve or fifteen years, during which we very nearly lose all sight of her.

Very nearly, but not quite; for we hear of long residences at Venice and Ferrara; and can trace her to Bologna by a phrase in an epigram too coarsely abusive to be reproduced, which Pasquin fired after her when she quitted Rome. Little cared the brilliant poetess—errant for pasquinades let off behind her back, while her course from one pleasure–loving court to another was tracked, as Zilioli writes, by "an infinite number of lovers, especially among the poets, who pursued her like a pack of greyhounds, striving to bring her down by volleys of odes and sonnets," to which our not insensible Sappho was ready enough to reply in similar strain.

A SONNET BY HER.

Here, as a specimen of "her make," as the Italians say, is a sonnet addressed by her to Pietro Manelli, of Florence, who was one of her most devoted slaves:

"Qual vaga Filomena, che fuggita
È dall'odiata gabbia, ed in superba
Vista sen va tra gli arboscelli e l'erba
Tornata in libertate, e lieta vita;

Ed io dagli amorosi lacci uscita,
Schernendo ogni martir, e pena acerba
Dell'incredibil duol, che in se riserba
Qual ha per troppo amar l'alma smarrita;

Ben avev'io ritolte, ahi stella fiera!
Dal tempio di Ciprigna le mie spoglie
E di lor premio me n'andava altera.

Quando a me Amor; le tue ritrose voglie
Muterò, disse; e femmi prigioniera
Di tua virtù, per rinovar mie doglie."

Which may be Englished as follows, without, it is to be hoped, any very cruel injury to the original:

"As when from her abhorr'd captivity
Fair Philomel hath fled, and proudly takes
Her way through grassy meads and bushy brakes
Restored to joyous life and liberty;

So I, from amorous bonds escaping free,
All torment scorning, and the poignant aches
Of grief untold, which too much loving makes
The doom of such, as love–bewilder'd be,

Had borne (alas! my hapless stars!) away
My garments from the Cyprian Goddess' shrine
Proud of the feat, when Love to me did say,

'I will transform that stubborn will of thine;'
And so he made me captive to thy power,
Renewing all my torments from that hour."

This sonnet is not worse than thousands of other such, which obtained for their fabricators the name and reputation of poets in that age of vaunted intellectual movement; and it is certainly better than the majority of them.

And thus our brilliant Aspasia of the renaissance fluttered from court to court, everywhere received with open arms, everywhere the cynosure of all eyes, everywhere the centre of a knot of poets and littérateurs; and flashing off her sonnets and canzonets right and left; now as offerings to be laid at the feet of some most illustrious duke or duchess, and now in loving or saucy requital of those addressed to her by her brethren of the guild.

But as

"All that's bright must fade,
The brightest still the fleetest,"

the inexorable years too soon brought poor Tullia to that period of "half old–womanhood," as Zilioli so uncourteously terms it, which must have nearly coincided with the date assigned by grave Mazzuchelli to that period of "flourishing," which, it is to be feared, the "half–old woman" would have fixed some five–and–twenty years earlier.

And what was to be done by a brilliant Apollo–chartered Aspasia, when fallen into half old–womanhood?

CHAPTER III.

"ALL'S WELL, THAT ENDS WELL."

One of two alternatives only, according to the well–known dictum of a judicious French philosopher, could be adopted by any Aspasia or other "charming woman" whatsoever, when brought to that pass. She must either take to cards, or "enter into devotion." Such would seem, according to the authority alluded to, to be the law of nature, which rules the destinies of charming women whose charms have gone from them. Tullia appears to have chosen the latter alternative, and established herself permanently at Florence under the special protection of the pious Duchess Eleonora di Toledo.

The times were changed, too, in Italy, since the days of Tullia's youth. Life in Rome, and hence in a somewhat less degree also in the other centres of the peninsula, was very different under Popes Paul IV. and Pius IV., from what it had been under Leo X., Clement VII., or Paul III. Devotion was now the mode, especially in courts. Princes had begun to understand, that the cause of despotism was bound up with that of sacerdotal tyranny; and that reform in matters ecclesiastical went hand in hand with freedom in matters secular. Popes and kings had become aware, that their fight against mankind could only be carried on successfully by strict offensive and defensive alliance. Hence orthodox piety was one of the surest roads to court favour. And thus considerations of all sorts united in pointing out to Tullia the expediency of quitting La Bohème, and becoming at once a respectable member of society, and a pattern of propriety.

Literature, however, of a courtly sort was held in much favour at the court of Cosmo, who founded academies and kept historians in his pay, to set him and his doings before posterity in a proper point of view. Tullia, therefore, in quitting the "pays de la Bohème," did not leave her muse behind her. On the contrary, her most important work was the production of this period of her life.

"Guerrino il Meschino" is a poem consisting of some thirty thousand lines, in thirty–six cantos of octave rhyme. The poetess states in her preface, that it is a versification of a Spanish original; an assertion which has given some trouble to bibliographers; for the story of Guerrino was popular in Italian prose long before the time of Tullia, and has indeed continued so, quite independently of her poetical version, to such a degree as to have afforded the subject of popular dramatic representation within the present century. Some importance has been attached to the question of its origin from the circumstance of its having been supposed to have suggested to Dante some part of the plan of his poem.

GUERRINO IL MESCHINO.

In an article on Dantescan literature, by M. Charles Labitte, in the 31st vol. of the second series of the Révue des Deux Mondes, he says, that "it has been maintained that Dante took directly from the old romance of 'Guerrino il Meschino' the subject and the entire plan of his work. The date and the origin of the Guerrino, whether French or Provençal, are uncertain.... Hell is represented in it with the concentric form attributed to it by Dante, and Satan in both cases occupies the lowest part of the abyss. But it would be easy to show, despite the weighty authority of Pelli and of Fontanini, that the romance of Guerrino, so popular in the fifteenth century, is at least in its present form posterior to the Divine Comedy."

The fact is, however, that the idea of describing the adventures and sights encountered by a denizen of this world, or his travels through the world beyond the tomb, was exceedingly common in the century preceding Dante; and we find it reproduced in many different forms. And in all probability the story of Guerrino was popular long before it was written in the earliest shape in which we now have it.

The contents are of the ordinary staple of the romances of chivalry, unreadable enough for the most part. Crescimbeni declares[16] that the story is comparable to the Odyssey; while the more critical Mazzuchelli finds it "full of improbabilities, utterly contrary to history, chronology, and geography."[17]

Tullia's own view of her work, and her account of her motives in writing it, as set forth in her preface, are more to our present purpose. She begins by observing, that whereas all other pleasures either require the ministration of others, whose services we may not always be able to command, or are of such a nature as to be of short duration, like eating and drinking, or again bring with them dangers, expense, anxiety, and often mischief,—such as travelling, gambling, love–making, and such–like; reading alone is open to none of these inconveniences. Accordingly everybody above the lowest classes, says Tullia, reads now–a–days; and for women it is a resource especially useful and necessary, as Giovanni Boccaccio well knew, who informed us that he wrote almost entirely for the ladies. And had he only done one thing which he has left undone, and left undone one which he has done, his book would have been all that could have been desired. The first is to have put his tales into verse, which it cannot be doubted, says our poetess, is much more pleasant reading than prose. The other matter, which should have been avoided, is the quantity of "improper, indecent, and truly abominable things which are found from one end to the other of that book, in which no respect is paid to the honour of married women, nor of widows, nor of nuns, nor of secular damsels, nor of godmothers or godfathers, nor of friends, nor of priests, nor of friars, and, lastly, not even of bishops. So that it is truly a thing to wonder at that not only princes and superiors, but even thieves and felons, who call themselves Christians, can bear to hear his name mentioned, without signing themselves with the Holy Cross, and stopping their ears as against the most horrible and abominable thing that human ears could listen to. Yet so utterly corrupt is our nature, that not only is this book not avoided as an abomination, but every one runs after it."

Poor dear Tullia's virtue fresh taken up from grass, runs away with her a little! It is quite clear that there are to be no more cakes and ale for any body, now that her junketing days are done!

HER PROPRIETY.

She goes on to complain that all the romance writers, "even Ariosto himself," are disfigured by the same fault. She therefore, intent on finding some pleasant reading with no offence in it, met with this "exquisite book in the Spanish tongue, in which so many and various matters are treated of, that I assuredly know of none so pleasant in that language or any other. And then it is throughout perfectly chaste, perfectly pure, thoroughly Christian; and neither in the facts nor diction is there anything which any respectable and holy man or woman, married or single, nun or widow, may not read at all hours."

This treasure of a book therefore she determines to clothe with verse, the only thing wanting to make it perfect. It is for you therefore, "my gentle readers, to accept my good intention, and give all the praise to God alone, from whom comes all good, and to whom alone I am thankful for the great grace which has so enlightened me while yet not over–ripe, but youthful and fresh in age,—in questa mia età non ancor soverchiamente matura, ma giovenile e fresca,—as to bring back my heart to Him, and make me wish and strive, as far as in me lies, that all others, both men and women, may have like grace."

How delightfully the vein of natural womanhood crops out from under the thick overlying strata of propriety and devoutness! Poor Tullia! And to think of that wretch of a biography–man Zilioli, talking of "half–old–womanhood in years and in appearance," in speaking of a period anterior to this!

It might be supposed, on the principle of setting a thief to catch a thief, that our Sappho sanctified, animated with the excellent dispositions she manifests, would have avoided the faults she so furiously inveighs against. But that hallucination of her "not yet over–ripe age" would seem to have come upon her so strongly at times, as to have caused her to think the old thoughts and talk the old Bohème talk of her youth, in total forgetfulness of her present character, and all the promises of her preface. Mazzuchelli, in noticing this preface of hers, briefly and gravely remarks that certain passages of her poem, which he refers to, show that she has not attained the object she aimed at. It is, however, difficult to say what Tullia may have deemed proper reading for nuns and damsels at all hours. And if any English readers wish to judge of this for themselves, they may be satisfied by consulting the tenth canto of the poem; which contains matters that would among us be considered very undesirable reading for any section of the community at any hours.

To this reformed period of Tullia's life belongs also her dialogue "On the infinity of Love." It professes to be the report of a conversation that took place at her house in Florence, between herself and Benedetto Varchi, the historian and philosopher; and it no doubt in a great degree resembles the style of talk affected at the quasi–academic meetings of friends, which constituted the then fashionable form of social intercourse. It was first printed at Venice in 1547, in a small volume of some two or three hundred pages, with a preface by Girolamo Muzio, one of Tullia's most fervent and most constant adorers. He commences his preface by drawing a distinction between spiritual and material love, and declares that his affection for the authoress of the dialogue is purely of the former kind. The work was sent to him, he says, by Tullia, without any idea of publication; and he had ventured to send it to the press without her knowledge. In the manuscript, as it reached him, the name "Sabina" stood as Varchi's interlocutor, in the place of "Tullia;" "doubtless," says Muzio, "because the writer's modesty was shocked at writing in her own name all the praises that Varchi is made to bestow on her in the course of the work." But he, Muzio, thinking that a feigned name could not with propriety be introduced in conjunction with the real name of Varchi, had decided on inserting the name of Tullia.

HER DIALOGUE ON LOVE.

The production itself is a truly wonderful proof of the amount of difference that may exist between the average cultivated human intellect in one age and country and in another. This dialogue on the infinity and necessary durability of love, is one of hundreds of similar writings on that and other such subjects, which constituted the fashionable and much–enjoyed light reading of the educated classes in Italy at that period. To a modern English reader, no dryest blue book, no trashiest novel could appear so perfectly unreadable. The subject presented to a man of our day as the theme for an essay, might seem somewhat stiff and formal—banal, as the French say; but he would see at once, that the consideration of it might lead to the discussion of several questions closely touching some of the most interesting and important problems of social polity. But Tullia and her contemporaries saw nothing of the kind.

Nor let any saucy scapegrace imagine, that any experiences of the different attributes of Eros and Anteros, which the authoress may be supposed to have acquired in the course of her life, are in any wise brought to bear on any part of her theme. The dialogue might be innocently, if not profitably, read by any of those damsels and nuns for whom Tullia specially prepared her less immaculate poem. There are scholastically constructed argumentations, quotations from Petrarch and Dante, syllogisms, with talk of major and minor premise, and plenty of references to Aristotle, a little horribly fade and mild raillery between the lady and Varchi, and words—words—words, with such weary going backwards and forwards over the same dry places paved with them, as would make an admirable substitute for the treadmill in the case of felons of education.

There are no means of knowing for how many years Tullia continued her pleasant life of literary occupation and society, with all that was most cultivated and agreeable in Florence. She would have published other things on which she was engaged, says Zilioli, "had she not been surprised by death before she had reached that extreme old age, which Pietro Angelio of Barga, a most able astrologer, had promised her, possibly with a view of acquiring favour in her eyes."

Her patroness, Eleonora of Toledo, who despite many virtues and good qualities, was odious to the Florentines, on account of her "insopportabile gravità," says Litta,[18] because, that is, she was with her Spanish seriousness and gravity an intolerable bore to the light–hearted Tuscans,—died in 1562. And in all probability Tullia did not survive her many years.

AS A SOCIAL PHENOMENON.

The name of Tullia d'Aragona lives in the pages of Italian literary historians, and in the memory of educated Italians as a poetess. But she would not have merited presentation to the English reader as such. As a remarkable social phenomenon, the product of the social soil of the sixteenth century under the sun of the renaissance, the story of her life, imperfect as it is, is well worth notice.

OLYMPIA MORATA.

(1526–1555.)

CHAPTER I.

Good Old Times in Ferrara—How a Pope's Daughter became a Duchess—Bygones were bygones—and Love was still the Lord of all.

A certain class of writers, probably among the most sincere and earnest of the defenders of the Catholic faith, have been driven by the social aspect presented by all those countries in which Catholicism has power, to admit, accept, and justify the absence of material, and even intellectual prosperity, as a necessary consequence of catholic views of life here and hereafter. Material prosperity, say these ascetics,—plenty to eat and to drink, good clothing, commodious habitations, life–embellishing arts, and ministrations of all sorts to corporeal well–being, are not the proper objects of man here on this earth. Nay, the wisest of mankind have in all ages, they say, recognised such things as highly inimical to the pursuit of that better aim, to which all human endeavour should tend. While the fatal consequences resulting from untrammelled intellectual culture, are among the surest and saddest teachings of human experience. That the true and faithful fashioning of life therefore in accordance with the doctrines of a creed, the whole scope and tendency of which is the undivided pursuit of that higher and better aim, should be found unconducive to material and merely human intellectual advantages, is, they urge, not only what might reasonably be anticipated, but is a confirmatory proof of the correctness of those views, which it cannot be denied have made Catholic countries what they are.

TENDENCIES OF CATHOLICISM.

Such doctrine, though little likely to be deemed conclusive by enlightened intelligence, or acceptable by the popular mind, has at all events the advantage of moving the question into a strictly theological court, into which the economist, the historian, the moralist, the politician, and the philanthropist, are not obliged to follow it. For their purposes it is sufficient, that the tendency of Catholicism to produce poverty, squalor, ignorance, and depopulation, should be admitted and registered. And they may well afford, at this period of the world's history, to treat with a silent shrug, the theory of those, who declare that these things are preferable to enlightenment, abundance, and material prosperity.

But if it be indeed true, that intellectual and material decadence is the proof and guarantee of a people's spiritual advancement; if the desolating blight which marks unmistakeably every land overshadowed by the wings of the Roman Church, be indeed an indication of its ripeness for a better harvest than any to be garnered on this side of the grave; then assuredly may we expect to find the purest and brightest spiritual life ever yet manifested by a nation, among the happy populations—fortunati nimium sua si bona nôrint—subjected to the immediate sway of the successors of St. Peter. And should any curious student of the modus operandi and results of ecclesiastical government, desire to know where he may advantageously examine such phenomena in their most unmitigated form and perfect development, he may be safely advised to bestow his researches on the city and district of Ferrara.

There, indeed, the lesson he is in search of, is so written, that he who runs, even though he speed on with the haste of the posting traveller, eager to leave the abomination of desolation behind him, may read it without fear of blundering. There indeed is a city and people unmistakably marked by Holy Mother Church, as her own; silence and solitude, decay, dilapidation, neglect, and sordid squallor, characterise the impress of her paternal hand. And yet more forcibly to point the moral of the spectacle, there remains sufficient traces of what Ferrara was in the young ungodly days of her lay government, to give all the force of contrast to her present condition. There is the gaunt frame of a city calculated to house four times the amount of its present population. The lofty walls of vast palaces enclose wide and spacious streets, over which the green weeds are growing, and a dead silence broods. In the centre is the moated castle of the old Dukes of Ferrara, now the monstrously disproportioned residence of the priest, who governs (!) Ferrara and its legation. Around this still lingers what little of life and movement is left in the paralysis–struck city. The more distant streets may be traversed from end to end without the sight of a living creature, save perhaps a group of half–naked mendicants basking in the sun, or the still more unpleasing figure of a capuchin friar, sauntering along with his wallet over his shoulder, on his daily quest, like some unclean reptile of ill omen crawling among ruins which are its appropriate dwelling–place.

FERRARA UNDER HER DUKES.

Such are the normal and necessary results as they lie developed and palpable before our eyes, of that system which was inaugurated at the period to which the subject of these pages belongs. But let ascetic theologians console themselves, and defend the issues of their handywork, as they may, it is undeniable, that, be they as sincere as they will, all such considerations are but after–thoughts. The production of a society vowed to apostolic poverty and heedlessness of the morrow, was not the object which the sixteenth century popes, and those misguided rulers who played into their hands, had in view. They intended to bring about very different issues. Yet this, which we see, was the only one in the long run possible, as the upshot of their doings. Divine providence so over–ruled the matter, quite in accordance with divine precedent, having very irreversibly laid down the law for the regulation of all such cases, at the time of man's first creation.

Previously to the inauguration of this fatal policy, the rule of the earlier dukes of Ferrara of the house of Este had aimed at, and in very considerable degree attained, quite other results. Beginning with old Borso the first duke, who was invested with that dignity in 1471, and who left behind him so good a name, that when in after and worser times, men grumbled in Ferrara,[19] they would say, "Ah, 'tis not now as in Duke Borso's days," down to his great nephew Hercules the Second, who ruled the duchy at the period to which our subject belongs; the Ferrarese princes had been very favourable specimens of the Italian sovereigns of those days.

As for good–old–times Borso, the just, though he had not the advantage of book–learning himself, he honoured it in others. The fact of his own deficiency in this respect, we gather from the amusingly frank avowal of a contemporary chronicler, who in a dedication of his book to his sovereign,[20] remarks that, "Fortune, ever the enemy of worth, has not willed, that to your other singular accomplishments should be added that of literature." From the records of his reign however, it would seem, that illiterate as he was, he must have had talents, that would make an invaluable chancellor of the exchequer. For the same historians, who give us the most glowing accounts of his magnificence assure us, that he never oppressed his subjects with unjust or grievous taxation. He dressed we are told, even when in the country, in brocade and cloth of gold; he never went without a chain about his neck of the value of seventy thousand ducats (!!), kept seven hundred magnificent horses in his stables, and dogs and falcons in proportion. Then his buildings were on a scale that might rival the doings of Napoleon the Third. But that collar! We have heard of the oppressive weight of the trappings of state, but little thought of the terrible extent of the reality. For seventy thousand ducats must be reckoned at the lowest calculation to be worth at the present day thirty–five thousand pounds, and to be equivalent to about two thousand two hundred and fifty pounds weight of gold. Now, admitting that nine–tenths of this value was represented by the exquisite workmanship of the celebrated Venetian goldsmiths, still we must suppose, poor Duke Borso to have walked about the world with upwards of two hundred weight of gold round his neck!

HERCULES THE FIRST.

Borso's brother, Hercules the First, who succeeded to him in 1471, is also spoken of with high praise by the contemporary chroniclers.[21] They tell us, that his title to the dukedom was maintained against a collateral pretender by seventy thousand inhabitants of Ferrara. He signalised his accession by the remission of several taxes, which seems somewhat incompatible with the praises previously bestowed on Borso on that head; and still more so with the accounts we have of his own magnificent doings. For he also was a mighty builder both of palaces and villas for his own pleasure, and of improved and increased dwellings for that of his people. Towards the end of the century, the population of Ferrara, which we have already seen rated at seventy thousand, had become so largely increased, chiefly in consequence of the expulsion from Spain and Portugal of the Jews, who thronged in great numbers into Italy, and especially settled themselves at Ferrara under the then tolerant rule of its popular dukes, that a writer of the time[22] declares, that no dwelling was to be found there for money. Hercules, therefore, in 1492, undertook the herculean task of erecting buildings to such a number as to double the size of his capital.

The work was commenced on such a scale, that the cautious Venetian senators, his neighbours, were startled, and deemed it prudent to ask what was intended by such vast preparations for construction. Duke Hercules answered, that he was building houses for his subjects to live in, and the Queen of the Adriatic seems to have been contented with the reply. Various taxes were imposed, not on Ferrara only, but on the whole of the Duke's dominions, including Modena and Reggio, to supply the means of executing these works. But there is no indication to be found of their having been considered grievous or excessive. And we have no means of ascertaining whose property the newly–raised quarters of the city were considered when built. Did they become crown property, and thus enormously increase the already large means of which the princes of the house of Este disposed, independently of taxation? Or, as seems under the circumstances of the case hardly possible, were any accounts kept, and means adopted to make the proceeds of the new property available, in the shape of interest, to those who had contributed to their expense?

Next to his ruling passion for building, spectacles of all sorts, dramatic and others, and travelling, were the great delight of Hercules I. All these were costly pleasures; and we find that, in contradiction to the policy of the early days of his reign, want of money often induced him to lay heavy burthens on his subjects. Nevertheless, he had the art of making himself exceedingly beloved by his people. He never hoarded money, but spent it almost entirely among the citizens in making his court and capital the gayest and most splendid in Italy. It was always "festa," always carnival at Ferrara. "Tournaments, races of horses, of oxen, of asses, of girls and boys, shooting matches, and hunting parties succeeded each other without interruption."[23] Then the good Duke would sally forth o' nights, and looking in quite unexpectedly take pot luck at supper with his loving subjects, in genuine Caliph Haroun Alraschid fashion.

ALPHONSO THE FIRST.

Neither then nor at any other time was any court in Italy so thronged with men of learning and genius. For such, come they from what nation they might, there was always a warm welcome, and assistance, if they needed it. Then again the court of Ferrara was a noted resort of noble knights, who had differences touching their honour, to put to the arbitrement of the sword. For the sport–loving Duke was always ready to afford a tilting–ground, and the countenance of his august presence to champions in need of such accommodation. Many accordingly were the celebrated duels which came off at Ferrara, to the infinite satisfaction and diversion of the Duke and his subjects. Then as for his piety, if all the churches and monasteries he built were not enough to vouch for it, says Frizzi, piously, it is abundantly proved by his habit of going to various churches accompanied by all his famous band, there to have mass celebrated with all the attractions of music. Besides, in holy week, he used to wash the feet of hundreds of old men! What more would you have?

His son Alphonso, born in 1476, succeeded him in 1505. This prince's first wife, Anna Strozzi, having died in 1477, he married in 1501 the too celebrated Lucrezia Borgia. That such a marriage could have been thought possible, that it should have been proposed to the court of Ferrara, and accepted by Alphonso and his father, are facts which very strikingly set before us the vastness of the difference between the habits of thought and feeling of an Italian of the fifteenth and an Englishman of the nineteenth century. The consideration of a gulf of separation so impassable warns us of the exceeding difficulty of so sympathising with the men of that time and country, as to form any tolerably fair appreciation of their conduct; not merely in the sense of morally judging of it, with reference to the responsibilities of the individual, with which wholly impossible task we have fortunately no need to meddle; but in the sense of comprehending the bearing and weight of the motives which regulated it.

Lucrezia was twenty–five at the time of this her fourth marriage. What the tenour of her life had been, and the nature of the scenes she had passed through, the English reader is probably in some small degree aware; in a very small degree, unless indeed he happens to have sought out in the folio Latin columns of the contemporary chroniclers the details of abominations wholly unreproducible in any modern page. And yet this woman, whose moral nature, if judged according to our habits of thought, must be deemed to have been saturated with impurity, and hopelessly depraved and destroyed, is proposed and accepted as the wife of a prince, whose character stands higher than that of any of his contemporaries of the sovereign houses of Italy, and whose family was already remarkable among them for enlightenment and respectability!—accepted to be the mother of his children, and the means of transmitting his unsullied name and crown!

A very noteworthy instance of the extraordinary incompatibility of the moral feelings of those times with our own, or of our imperfect appreciation of the exact value of the terms used, occurs in a passage of the "Relazione,[24]" of the Venetian ambassador Paolo Cappello, who, returning from Alexander the Sixth's Court in 1500, tells the Senate that Lucrezia is "prudent and liberal"—savia e liberale—and adds within five lines, without further remark, that it is said, that she had an incestuous connection with her brother![25]

LUCREZIA BORGIA.

But perhaps the most extraordinary and interesting fact of Lucrezia's history, is that after her marriage with Alphonso, not only was her life blameless, but her conduct was such as to merit and secure her high–minded husband's affection and esteem, and in all respects to do honour to her station. Her marriage with Alphonso therefore divides, as by an abruptly and suddenly drawn line, the life of Lucrezia into two portions, the earlier all black with atrocities and abominations unspeakable, the latter shining with purity and many noble virtues. Such a statement has been deemed to involve an absolute moral impossibility; and Roscoe has been induced by the consideration of it, to attempt a denial of the charges which have made Lucrezia Borgia's name a by–word of infamy.

"If the Ethiopian cannot change his skin," he writes,[26] "nor the leopard his spots, how are we to conceive it possible that a person, who had during so many years of her life been sunk into the lowest depths of guilt and infamy could at once emerge to respectability and virtue? The history of mankind furnishes no instances of such a rapid change."

But Roscoe's elaborate though weak defence signally breaks down. It would extend what has already undesignedly assumed the proportions of a digression far too much to enter into an examination of the historical evidence on the subject. It will be sufficient to observe, that Roscoe's "chivalrous" attempt, as somebody with infinite absurdity somewhere calls it, was abundantly demolished by the "Edinbro' Review," January, 1806, at the time. And further evidence than was then accessible to the reviewer, has since been made available to establish the historical certainty, that the earlier portion of Lucrezia's life was in truth all that it has been ordinarily supposed to have been. On the correctness of the account of the latter portion, as stated above, no doubt has ever been cast. So that we in reality have this whitewashed–black–a–moor phenomenon before us, to make of it what we may.

Gibbon disposes[27] of the matter by observing, that "perhaps the youth of Lucrezia had been seduced by example; perhaps she had been satiated by pleasure; perhaps she was awed by the authority of her new parent and husband," Alphonso, and his father Hercules. But the moral philosopher will hardly deem any of these suppositions a satisfactory explanation of the facts before him. And a more serious consideration of them will perhaps lead him to the conclusion, that whatever of strangeness or novelty they may present, is rather matter for the historian's study than for his own.

LUCREZIA BORGIA.

Well convinced of the reality of the impossibility alleged, that any human being should pass suddenly from such a moral state as that indicated to our judgments by the facts of Lucrezia's early career, to such an ethical condition as that presumed to accompany her later life, while he in no wise seeks to invalidate the historical evidence of the case, he will yet deny such change to have been accomplished. Knowing how large a portion of the spiritual deterioration arising from any outward acts, is dependent on the degree to which the conscience of the agent is enlightened, he will deny that Lucrezia's moral state during the first part of her life was such as we are apt to conceive that it needs must have been. Aware how very much of the difficulty of turning from evil to good, consists in the arduousness of the struggle to rise from infamy to good repute, he will assert, that Lucrezia could not have been sunk in that depth of infamy to which we suppose that the admitted facts of her conduct must necessarily have consigned her.

For the moralist there will be nothing new or striking in all this. The interesting significance of the phenomenon is for the historian. That restoration and rehabilitation, it would appear, which would be impossible in the nineteenth, was possible in the fifteenth century. The gulf which would now be wholly impassable, did not then yawn so wide as to make crossing it impossible. Here is to be found the explanation, and herein consists the historical interest of the facts of the case. The finely organised moral sense of the nineteenth century would have been wholly killed by similar wounds, and the spiritual destruction of the individual would have been irretrievable. But the lower, coarser, more rudimentary moral sense of the "ages of faith" was not wholly killed by such injuries. And the extraordinary social phenomenon of the marriage is only explicable in the same manner. The moral reprobation, which among us would doom such an offender to the isolation of a leper, did not exist in that age and country. When the aged Pontiff Paul III. characterised the even more horrible atrocities of his son Piero Luigi Farnese as juvenile indiscretions, though the respectable world of the sixteenth century was revolted, the discrepancy between the moral judgment of Heaven's vicegerent and that of his faithful people, was very far from being as monstrous as that between his and our nineteenth century English feeling. The career of Lucrezia was also doubtless deemed highly reprehensible by her contemporaries. Indeed we find it made the subject of invective and epigram. But it is clear, that none of the horror and the loathing attached to it with which we now regard it. It is evident that she was not deemed hopelessly and irrecoverably soiled and destroyed by it.

And such proofs of the enormous amount of the advance in the moral sense of mankind, which has been accomplished in the world, that according to theologians, has been staggering onwards amid tottering creeds and ever–multiplying heresies towards a religious cataclysm, are among the most important fruits of historical study.

LUCREZIA'S MARRIAGE.

When the marriage was first proposed to the court of Ferrara by Alexander VI., both Alphonso and his father Hercules were extremely averse to it[28]. The Pope induced Louis XII. to use his influence with the Ferrarese princes; and the king deputed a posse of churchmen, the Cardinal of Rohan, the Archdeacon of Chalon, and the Archbishop of Narbonne, to persuade Hercules and his son of the desirableness of such an union. Their arguments seem to have consisted entirely in setting forth the dangers that would arise to Ferrara from refusal. The father was thus first brought over. Alphonso still expressed the greatest reluctance. But when his father declared, that under the pressure of the circumstances, he would himself, were it not for his advanced age, accept the hand of Lucrezia, the son consented.

The bribes administered by the Pope in the shape of dower, were very considerable. The investiture of his Duchy, which had hitherto been conferred by the Apostolic see for three generations only, was made perpetual. The tribute payable on account of it was reduced from four thousand ducats to one hundred florins. An hundred thousand ducats was also paid down in gold; and the bride carried with her to Ferrara the value of an hundred and seventeen thousand ducats in precious stones and jewelry; besides a proportionate amount of property in dresses and furniture. And it was especially provided in the marriage contract, that, in case of Lucrezia's death, Alphonso should not be called on to restore any portion of this property.[29]

The marriage was celebrated at Rome on the 29th December, 1501, Alphonso's brother Don Ferrante standing proxy for the bridegroom.

On the 1st of February the bride reached Ferrara, where the preparations for receiving her may be said to have been nearly the sole occupation of the entire city, during the interval between the marriage and her arrival in her new home. And although Donna Lucrezia and her extraordinary marriage have already too much lengthened these notices of the court of Ferrara, the only scope of which is to give the reader some idea of the scene on which the subject of these pages is to appear, yet some of the details of these preparations, as recorded by the contemporary diarist above cited, afford so curious a peep at the manners and customs of the period, that the somewhat undue extension of a merely prefatory chapter will probably be pardoned for the sake of the interest attaching to them.

On the 22nd of December, the diarist notes, that fourteen bushels of comfits were already prepared, counting up to that night, and that the ducal confectioners would continue to increase the store with all diligence. It has been seen already how large a part preparations of sugar played on all such occasions.

Then we have a very curious illustration of a custom, traces of which still remain among the people in several parts of Italy. On the night before the Epiphany, children are in these days wont to hang up a stocking, or some other such receptacle outside their chambers, into which their friends put little presents, which the child finds in the morning, and considers, or makes fun of pretending to consider, as the gifts of the fairy "Beffana;" for such is the popular conception of the meaning of the term Epiphany! Now see of how mighty a wallet is the poor child's stocking the dwindled representative. The enormous expense of the wedding preparations made a few "Beffana" presents especially welcome to the young prince Alphonso at the Epiphany tide of 1502. So at nightfall he rode forth accompanied by twenty–five horsemen, with drums and trumpets, and went through the city "per la sua ventura," in quest of fortune, or, as we might say, to see what luck would send him. "And he got for his fairing, 'di sua ventura,' three hundred head of oxen, an equal number of large cheeses, upwards of a thousand couple of capons, and other things to the estimated value of a thousand ducats."

THE BEFFANA.

In truth, the Beffana was something like a good fairy in the good old times, especially when a gallant young prince sought her favour!

But the Beffana could not supply all that was needed. For on the following Sunday came out the list of appointments to offices for the year. "And every man in the list paid for his place through the nose." Bonifacio Ariosto and Battista di Zilioli, among others, paid an immense sum for the post of commissioners of customs. And Tito Strozzi, the Latin poet, was continued in his place of judge, to the great discontent of all the people, "but it cost him very dear."

Besides all this, the ducal palace was open to all loyal subjects, who came with anything eatable or drinkable to assist their sovereign in the coming tremendous call on his hospitality. It was counted that up to the evening of the 27th, among other things, fifteen thousand head of poultry had been brought in as presents. Indeed the zeal of the Ferrarese outran the necessity of the case, great as it was; for a few days later we find that a large quantity of game and poultry had to be thrown into the Po, because it had become unusable.

From the 25th to the end of the month, all Ferrara was hard at work adorning the streets, levelling places that were uneven, putting up scaffolding for seats where the bride would pass on her entry, preparing accommodation for the five thousand three hundred horses which were expected, contriving as far as possible means of lodging the "incredible number" of strangers, who were continually arriving to witness the festival; putting new marble steps to the altar in the cathedral; and, lastly, in erecting over the door of the palace a blazonry of the Pope's arms, together with those of the King of France, and those of the most illustrious House of Este, "with angels and hydras, and other exquisitely beautiful ornaments."

But a most provoking thing was, that in the midst of all this bustle we had to send out a party on horseback to meet a certain French cardinal, who was coming to Ferrara on his way from the King of France to the Pope. And they had their ride for nothing, "for his most reverend lordship determined to stay the night where he was, because his most reverend lordship had not got his clothes with him."

A STOLEN VISIT.

At last on the 2nd of February the bride and her immense cortège, increased by the Duke and the bridegroom, together with all that was either noble or learned in Ferrara, who had gone out to meet them, made their triumphal entry into the city. Alphonso, whose aversion to the match has been mentioned, was more than reconciled to his lot by the sight of the bride,[30] whose rare beauty at once captivated him. She passed the night of the first of February at a villa outside of the city, in order to make her ceremonial entry on the following day, when according to courtly etiquette she was to be duly presented to her bridegroom with infinite laborious co–operation of bishops and benedictions, trumpeters, heralds, court–ushers, and bell–ringers. And doubtless when the appointed moment came, both the lady and gentleman performed their part of the show, and made their first acquaintance with each other in the presence of assembled Italy with all propriety. But it did so happen that a certain lynx–eyed "gentleman of the press," (who was early afoot in the exercise of his profession on the morning of the great day of the 2nd, picking up stray facts to present them,—if not all hot to "our readers" at their breakfast tables in a second edition of the Ferrara Times, yet embedded fossil–like in the vast strata of Muratori's colossal folios, to us and all future generations) did see a figure, whom he perfectly well recognised as the Prince Alphonso, quietly slipping out from a side entrance of the villa, which held the bride, and hastening back to the city to prepare himself for his part in the coming pageant.

Early it must have been that "our reporter" was guilty of this professional indiscretion, for both dame and cavalier had much to do in preparation for their day's work. She had to dress her head with a cap and jewels valued at fifteen thousand ducats, and her feet with sandals worth two thousand. She had to get on her state dress of gold brocade and black satin, heavy with such a vast quantity of precious stones that the value of it was incalculable. Thus accoutred she had to get upon a white jennet entirely covered with gold brocade, under a canopy supported by all the doctors of the University of Ferrara, and manage him as best she might, despite his starting (duly chronicled) every time the salvos of cannon were fired. Last, and by no means probably least, she had to get her following of ladies of honour stowed in sixteen carts.

As for Alphonso, he had only to put on a cloak all of plates of beaten gold, of the value of eight thousand ducats, and hang chains about his neck to the value of almost as much more, then to mount his black charger, and ride forth at the head of all the Ferrarese nobility.

Then followed Pantagruelian feastings and junketings for several days; in which the usual order seems to have been to dance all day, and after the feast at night, to see "comedies" and "Moresche" or morris dances. Then there were most extraordinary feats of rope–dancing. Among others, a certain youth—uno zovene nominato cingano—probably "zingaro" or the gypsy, passed along a cord stretched across the whole piazza of Ferrara, from the summit of the bishop's residence to the summit of the ducal palace, frightening all the ladies by pretending to fall when half way across, and catching himself by hooking his foot on the cord!

After having narrated all that the Duke's lieges did for their sovereign on this grand occasion, it would not be fair to quit the subject, without recording what the good Duke did for them in return. On the morning of 23rd, all Ferrara was gladdened by a proclamation made with sound of trumpet throughout the city, to the effect that his Highness had obtained from Pope Alexander, permission for all the subjects of the Duke of Ferrara to eat eggs and milk on all days whatsoever, no further dispensation being needed than that signified by the present proclamation!

DUKE ALPHONSO THE FIRST.

So old Duke Hercules was laid in the family vault in the early days of 1505, not unlamented by his people, leaving behind him a favourable old–King–Cole sort of reputation, as the most junketing cake–and–ale loving sovereign of his day. But he had pretty well seen the last of the good cake–and–ale times in Italy, for many a long year to come. His son Alphonso had his lot cast in very different days.

Italy begins to be overrun by the troops of the most Catholic Emperor, and the most Christian King; and famine and pestilence follow in their wake. Ferrara is afflicted by both scourges. And we catch a glimpse[31] of the young duke striving at the opening of his reign to do his duty by his subjects, by starting off himself in quest of corn. Carrying with him good store of gold, he takes several of those huge ungainly vessels, half ship half barge, such as may be still seen on the rivers and canals of the Delta of the Po, goes to buy corn in Venice, and returns with his fleet laden, with wretched stuff indeed, and bought at an enormous price, but most welcome to starving Ferrara.

Then comes the pestilence, against which no ducal treasures avail aught. Such general provisions, as fear and the rude science of the time dictate, are enforced. Infected houses are shut up absolutely,—none permitted to enter or come out from them. The great convent of Franciscans is thus closed upon its wretched inmates. The University is shut up; and all tribunals of whatsoever kind suspend their business. But in five months the deaths amount to six thousand; while other four thousand have saved themselves by flight.

But these are only the beginnings of misfortune. That terrible and indomitable old man, Julius II., was on the papal throne;—a pope, who really does seem to have had some idea of doing his duty as Heaven's vicegerent on earth, on the theory that this was most effectually to be accomplished by crying war to the knife against all who withheld from St. Peter, dues, titles, or dominions, that should, could, or might be his. Ferrara occupied a singularly provocative position on the map to a Holy Father of this temperament. And what could be easier than to find at Mother Church's need some flaw to a feudal title, among the forgotten deeds of ecclesiastical archives, carefully hoarded, ad hoc. Besides, if there were nothing else to be said, the Duke makes salt in the marshes of Comacchio, to the damage of the apostolical trade in that article; and is therefore hereby excommunicated, and declared deposed from his Duchy, and his subjects released from their allegiance!

A very hard struggle had Alphonso to hold his own against all the spiritual and carnal weapons of the Church. It must be admitted, that the latter seem to have troubled him by far the most. And more than once it appeared as if he must have been overwhelmed by the superiority of the force against him. But partly by his own military talents, partly by the aid of the French, and partly by good fortune, he won through, till the death of Julius allowed him, and the rest of the world, a short breathing time of repose.

Not that his difficulties with Mother Church were at an end. Leo X., though as mild a mannered Pope as ever launched a curse, had no intention of abandoning all the Church's claims on a vassal in disgrace. He relieved him from the excommunication, and permitted him to hold Ferrara, but still maintained a claim on Modena, and made good his hold on that city.

LUCREZIA'S LATTER DAYS.

In 1519, Alphonso lost, and as it would seem, bitterly regretted, his wife Lucrezia. "Her husband and his subjects," writes Frizzi,[32] "all loved her for her gracious manners and for her piety, to which," as Giovio says, "having long before abandoned all worldly vanities, she wholly dedicated herself. She used to spend the morning in prayer; and in the evening, would invite the ladies of Ferrara to embroidery–working parties, in which accomplishment she greatly excelled. Her liberality to the poor, and to men of letters, which generally means one and the same thing," says Frizzi, "was especially notable."

Clement VII., if not so terrible an adversary as Julius II., was one quite as difficult to deal with. Promises made only to delude, negotiations entered on with no intention that they should lead to anything, treaties made only to be broken, a dexterous playing off of one potentate against another,—these were the arts by which Clement sought to steer his devious and trimming course among the difficulties of the time; and which at last landed him a prisoner in his own fortress of St. Angelo, while his and the world's capital was being sacked beneath his eyes. In this predicament Clement had by his duly authorised representative, Cardinal Cibo, in consideration of Alphonso's joining the French King in a league against the Emperor, conceded all the points in dispute between them. The investiture of Ferrara was to be renewed and confirmed; all claim of the Apostolic See to Modena, Reggio, &c., was to be abandoned; Ippolito the Duke's second son was to have a Cardinal's hat and the bishopric of Modena; and Alphonso was to make as much salt at Comacchio as he pleased.

But hardly was the treaty signed before the Pope escaped from St. Angelo to Orvieto, and thereupon unblushingly refused to perform any one of the promises made. And Alphonso, who had incurred great risk of the Emperor's displeasure by performing his share of the bargain, had to turn about with all possible speed, break with the King of France, and hope by humble excuses to be able to make it up again with Charles.

Thus in Ferrara, as indeed throughout Italy, things were very different from what they had been during the latter half of the fifteenth century. Men might with some show of reason talk of the good old times, and look out on those around them with misgiving and despondency. And yet the Phœnix was burning herself as usual; only, as must be admitted, with more than ordinary amount of pestilential stench and stifling smoke,—smoke so stifling, so pestilential, that but few of those, who had to draw their life–breath, as best they might, in the midst of it, attained to any remotest guess that all this so sulphureous smother, and confused darkness of the air, was in truth but caused by that Phœnix burning, and preparatory for a purer atmosphere when it was accomplished. Few in any age can gain such Pisgah–glimpse of the coming time; fewest in that of which this writing treats.

THE WORLD IN HER DAY.

But of those few our Olympia, as it is hoped the reader will see reason to believe, was one. Yet that terrible burning time,—such a Phœnix burning as the world has once and once only seen since—was but on the eve of beginning in the scene on which Olympia had to appear, at the time of her appearance. Her mortal career had to be passed in the midst of the very densest smoke–clouds of the funeral pyre.

Easy for us, looking back over the traversed maze with chart in hand, to understand the plan of it! Easy enough to talk of renaissance and glorious morning–tide spring of human thought! To those in the thick of the sweltering struggle, it was as the eve of dissolution and universal cataclysm.

CHAPTER II.

Troublous new times in Ferrara—How a French King's daughter became a Duchess—Bygones were aught but bygones—and Mitre and Cowl were lords of all.

Previously to this celebrated era of "renaissance," all the business of education, such as it was, had necessarily been in the hands of the clergy. But the well–known circumstances which at the beginning of the sixteenth century led to a new zeal for the study of the languages of ancient Greece and Home, led also to the creation of a totally new class of teachers. The most eminent professors of the new learning were men, whose position made it necessary that their acquirements should be made a means of gaining a livelihood. And they became therefore for the most part professional teachers. They were also generally laymen. A body of lay pedagogues was a new thing in the world; and surely one of no small significance. For though these men professed simply to give instruction in the Greek or in the Latin tongue and literature, not to educate their pupils, yet the mass of idea, unstamped by the ecclesiastical mint, which was necessarily thus circulated, must have exercised an influence, which has perhaps not been estimated at its worth, in inquiries into the causes of the mental tendencies of that period.

PEREGRINO MORATO.

Among the number of learned laymen, thus independently exercising the profession of teacher, we find a certain Peregrino or Pellegrino Morato, a native of Mantua, established at Ferrara early in the sixteenth century. He had, we are told, many of the nobility of Ferrara for his pupils; and had already acquired considerable reputation by his teaching in several cities of Italy.[33] All that has reached us concerning him concurs to produce the impression that Morato must have been an estimable and worthy man; among which testimonies may perhaps be reckoned the fact of his continued poverty, notwithstanding his success as a teacher, and the lofty position of some among his pupils.

The most noted scholars and teachers of that age would seem to have led almost invariably wandering lives. They are heard of now holding a chair in one university and now in another, or attached to several of the princely houses of Italy in succession. And such appears to have been the early life of Morato. But at Ferrara he fixed himself more permanently, and soon anchored himself there in a manner, which made "La gran Donna del Po," as Tassoni calls that city, his home, and the centre of all this world's joys and sorrows for the remainder of his life. There he married, and became the father of five children, of whom Olympia appears to have been the eldest. There also he formed close and durable friendships with most of the learned men, of whom a remarkable band were gathered together in the court and university of Ferrara.

Among these, one of the most notable for his varied acquirements as well as for the closeness of his intimacy with Morato, was Celio Calcagnini, who occupied the chair of "belle lettere" in the university of his native city. Antiquarian, mathematician, astronomer, poet, scholar, and critic, Calcagnini was one of the most encyclopædic men in an age, when students still dreamed of mastering the "omne scibile." The numerous letters printed among his works prove his friendship with Morato to have been of the most intimate kind. And, if these letters had fortunately preserved their dates, instead of being printed in a confused mass, we should have had the means of ascertaining much more accurately than is now possible, the leading events of his friend Morato's life.

Alexander Guarini the grammarian, professor in the university and secretary to the Duke; Giglio Gregorio Giraldi, one of the most eminent Greek scholars of his day, a man of vast erudition and the first writer of any value on the ancient mythology; Bartolomeo Ricci, the learned but amusingly vain–glorious and quarrelsome scholar and critic, whose comedy in Italian prose entitled "the Nurses" is reckoned by Quadrio among the best in the language, and who was brought to Ferrara in 1539, on the recommendation of Calcagnini, to be tutor to Duke Hercules' son Alphonso, then six years old; the two brothers Chilian and John Sinapi, Germans, who occupied the chairs of Greek and Medicine in the University of Ferrara, of whom the former was Olympia's master, and was regarded by her as a second father; and lastly, but bound to Morato and his family by a more intimate and closer friendship than any of the others enumerated, Celio Secondo Curione,—all these, with others of similar tastes and pursuits formed a society, which rendered Ferrara at that time perhaps the most attractive and desirable residence for a scholar, of any city in Italy.

DUKE HERCULES II.'S MARRIAGE.

Another circumstance occurred not many years after Morato's first establishment in Ferrara, which very notably contributed to impress a special character on the learned society there congregated, and to make that city a rallying point for the free thought, which was beginning yeast–like to heave the surface of Italian life.

The difficulties of protecting his dominions from the encroachments and greed of the Church, which compelled Alphonso to be continually oscillating between the friendship of the Emperor, or of the French King, according to the ever shifting aspects of Italian affairs, and the preponderance of the danger imminent from one side or the other, necessitated in 1528 an alliance with the latter. And with this view a marriage was arranged between Hercules, who was to succeed his father Alphonso in the Duchy as second duke of that name, and Renée, daughter of Louis XII. Hercules, then just twenty years old, went to Paris, where the marriage was celebrated on the 28th of June, 1528, and brought home his bride in the November of that year.

And now again, as six and twenty years before, when Alphonso brought his Borgia home, there was to be a ceremonial entry of the heir apparent's bride. But times were changed. And Ferrara, both court and city, had other matters to think of besides gala processions and festivities. The clergy, and the university doctors indeed went out to meet her,[34] as in duty bound; and the citizens equally as in duty bound, hung out of their windows their gay–coloured silk rugs and curtains, as Italians do to the present day on the occasions when anything royal or divine has need of such glorification. But we hear of no preparations for Homeric feasting, nor of wonderful gold dresses, and dancing all day, and morris dances at night. The entry of Louis XII.'s daughter was a very tame affair. And then Renée herself was a very different person from the splendid Lucrezia, who captivated all eyes, as she sat superb in black and gold, on her proudly pacing steed. Renée on the contrary came in on a litter; for "this one was by no means handsome, as were the two Duchesses, who preceded her. On the contrary she was, according to a MS. record of that period, somewhat crooked. But this was compensated by her elevated mind, her intellect, her literary culture, and her great partiality for learned men."[35]

Alas! Poor Renée must have valued these good gifts far more highly than even those of her sex most rich in such are wont to do, if she would not in her own heart have bitterly denied the value of any such compensation! Lucrezia with a dower of infamy "compensated" by beauty, became the happy wife of an affectionate husband. Renée with her store of virtues, and rich intellectual qualities, found but a state prison, heart–ache, and an unloving lord in this exile from her native France.

CONTRASTED FORTUNES.

And then that "elevated intelligence," which was to compensate for crookedness, was but little likely to contribute to the happiness of one in the position of Renée of France at the court of Ferrara. Elevated intelligence was a dangerous commodity just about that time in Italy! For we have already seen the tendency of men's minds in those days to think of things that it was far better not to think about at all; a tendency which it very soon became necessary to extinguish and trample out at whatever cost. Thus we find that Renée, not content with having studied "the learned tongues, history, literature, philosophy, mathematics, and even astrology," and "unable to bridle her fervid intellect, gave herself over to the study of theology, and to complete her misfortune selected for her instructor one of the most celebrated of the new–fangled teachers who then infested Europe,"[36] no other than one John Calvin. And the result was, that, whereas the beautiful and catholic Lucrezia was able,—juvenile indiscretions and ardour of pulse happily moderated and past—to spend her mornings in orthodox devotion performed secundum artem, and her evenings in embroidery, to such purpose as to have secured the good word of Popes, Cardinals, Bishops, and learned Doctors, and the final general approval of Mnemosyne in her official surplice and rochet,—poor Duchess Renée with her "elevated intellect," and unhappy improprieties in the matter of theological inquiry, is marked as a moral leper by the same consistent ecclesiastical Muse, and finally consigned to a worse limbo than that of their own sulphureous pages.

But it is not to be supposed that Renée came to her husband's court branded as a heretic; though we find that she forthwith established in her own apartments "a literary academy," or meeting of men of letters, which, we are told,[37] was "much for the honour of literature, but not at all for that of the catholic religion." Nor, though almost all of those learned men, whom she patronised, turned out later to be, as the historian says, tarred with the same brush, was the delicate orthodoxy of her husband Hercules offended by any ill savour of heresy at that time. For the Church–in–danger alarm bell had not yet rung in Italy. Clement VII. having quite enough to do to hold his own among the clashing of the perfectly material interests of quite satisfactorily catholic, but very unscrupulous princes, thought of nothing less than the smelling out of traces of heretical taint. And it needed something more appreciable by the ducal mind than speculations about justification by faith to stimulate its orthodoxy into activity.

So the Duchess for years after her marriage gathered around her the best minds in her little capital, and talked her own talk with them, unmolested and unsuspected.

Nor can it be concluded that Morato was not at this time imbued with the new opinions, from the fact, that he evidently stood well in the court society at Ferrara. In the absence of all ascertained dates to enable us to fix with precision the leading events of his life, we must content ourselves with concluding, that it must have been between the years 1520 and 1525, in all probability, that he first established himself in that city. We know that he there married a Ferrarese lady, and that his daughter Olympia was born there in 1526. Now it is clear from the letters of Calcagnini that he must about that time have adopted at least those doctrines on justification by faith, and on free–will, which a few years afterwards were stamped as heretical and visited with persecution. But nobody on the southern side of the Alps dreamed as yet that such opinions, must, or even might, lead to that dreaded consummation, separation from the Church. Morato was at this time a valued member of the learned society of Ferrara; and though doubtless a frequenter of those academic meetings in the apartments of the Duchess, which were afterwards discovered to have been so heretically pernicious, he was as yet well esteemed by the most unsuspectedly orthodox churchmen.

ANECDOTE OF BEMBO.

A little anecdote from the vast repertory of such supplied by the "quarrels of authors," may serve to show that the favourable opinion of Messer Peregrino Morato was no little valued among the set with whom he lived. The celebrated Pietro Bembo, who was a few years after this time called to the purple by Paul III., had passed some years at Ferrara in the early part of his life, and having formed friendships with most of the literary men there, never lost an opportunity of paying them a visit, and was thus intimate with all the knot among whom Morato lived. Now it seems that Bernardo Tasso, the father of the poet, who was secretary to the Duchess Renée, had somewhat maliciously written to Bembo that Morato had accused[38] him of plagiarising certain grammatical speculations, from one Francesco Fortunio. Upon which Bembo, writing in reply on the 27th May, 1529, manifests great anxiety to convince Morato that he is in error. "On the contrary," writes Bembo, "he stole these things from me, together with the very words as I had written them in a small work of mine before he could speak, much less write, badly as he does it. This work of mine he saw and had in his hands many days; and I am ready to show it to him (Morato) whenever he please; and he will then see whether I deserve to be thus branded and cut up by him. Besides, I can introduce him to several great personages worthy of all credit, who heard and learned from me all the matters in question, long before Fortunio took to teaching others what he does not know himself."[39] Bembo, ex–secretary to Pope Leo, and presently to be a Cardinal, stood very much higher in the social scale than the poor Ferrara schoolmaster; and would probably have cared for his mistaken accusation as little as for the obscure Fortunio's plagiarism, had not his standing in the world of letters given a very different value to his opinion.

Olympia thus passed the first seven years of her life in the tranquil prosperity of a humble home, maintained by the successful labour of its owner, and cheered by the intimate society of congenial friends. That the precocious child had already attracted the notice of the grave and learned seniors who frequented her father's house, is indicated by a passage in a letter from Calcagnini to Morato, when absent from Ferrara, bidding him "to kiss for him the little Muse, whose prattle was already so charming." And at a later date, when writing to her, and recalling his remembrances of her infancy, he says, that the language of the Muses was her earliest mother tongue, "which she had imbibed together with the milk from the breast."[40]

EXILE.

The absence of Morato from Ferrara, which gave rise to the former of these letters, occurred in 1533.[41] That it was involuntary, and regarded by him and his friends as a great misfortune, is certain. It is tolerably clear, also, that it was caused by the will of the Duke. But beyond this we know nothing. Tiraboschi supposed, with a confusion of dates and events, common to most of the Romanist writers, who ever seem to imagine that heresy was always heresy, the same in 1533 as in 1553, that he was exiled for the heterodoxy of his religious opinions. But that historian admits, that he afterwards saw reason to change his opinion on this point.[42]

Whatever may have been the cause of a removal, which the nature of Morato's connection with Ferrara make him feel as an expatriation, it is certain that it lasted for six years,[43]—the six years that carried Olympia from seven to thirteen years of age, a period in the life of a girl of the southern blood on the sunny side of the Alps, which may probably be equivalent to that included between the tenth and sixteenth year of a child of our more tardily developed race.

The nature of her home in Ferrara, and of the influences that surrounded it, have been indicated. But of those which had the forming of her character during these important years of exile, we know nothing. And Olympia's biographers, in dwelling on her progress under the eyes of her father's learned friends at Ferrara, and attributing to them, in great measure, the truly remarkable degree of classical scholarship to which she attained, seem to have too much forgotten the importance of this period, when she was withdrawn from their instructions. The force of this will be more apparent, when we come to see the extent of her attainments at the time of her return, in her thirteenth year.

It is to the struggling father that this triumph of pedagogue workmanship must be chiefly ascribed. That these six years were years of difficulty and struggle to the poor scholar, who had to turn his classical lore into bread for his wife and increasing family, is sufficiently indicated by the wandering nature of the life in which they were passed. From Venice to Vicenza, and from Vicenza to Cesena,[44] the poor pedlar pedagogue had to hawk his learned wares, and drive a very uphill trade. For though learning in many cases enriched its professors in those days in such sort as might excite the envy of their successors in our own, this was always the result of princely patronage. That Jenkins in Belgrave Square received more than the value of a curacy is small comfort to starving flunkies out of place. Between living in clover as the retainer of some lay or ecclesiastical grandee, and finding it very difficult to live at all, there can have been hardly any middle path for a sixteenth–century scholar, whose erudition was his patrimony. And then again, though the poor scholar was a character well enough known through Europe from the twelfth to the sixteenth century, a poor scholar with a wife and family was a modern anomaly in 1533. And such incumbrances fatally put him out of the way of profiting by any of those small aids which the charities of that day, in accordance with its modes of life, afforded towards keeping together the body and soul of many an indigent "clerk."

CELIO CURIONE.

But through all the vicissitudes of these hard six years, Morato pursued unflinchingly the dear object of his heart, to make his Olympia—the apple of his eye, whose precocious talents had already awakened all the pride and ambition of the pedagogue father's bosom—a perfect specimen of classical training.

Among the towns visited by Morato during these years of exile, was Vercelli, in Piedmont; and there he formed a friendship with one who was destined to exercise an important influence over his future life and that of Olympia. This was Celio Secondo Curione, whose acts of overt dissidence from the Church had even then made him an object of persecution. Having become wholly alienated from Rome by the study of the Bible, and of certain of the writings of Melancthon, he was about escaping into Germany, when he was arrested, and thrown into prison by the Bishop of Ivrea. At the intercession of a relative, he was released, on condition of entering a monastery. There he finally made the breach between himself and the Church irreparable, by an act of audacity, which seems to have been more calculated to produce a theatrical and epigrammatic effect, than to bring about any useful result. Having quietly one day removed the relics from the high altar of the convent church, he installed the Bible in their place; thus indicating, more significantly probably than he intended, the tendency of the new Church then springing into existence, to substitute a new idolatry, less gross perhaps than that which it strove to supplant, but equally destined to impede for long ages the progress of mankind to a higher and purer theology.

Having fled to escape the consequences of this daring practical protest, he committed, in Milan, about 1530, the yet more unpardonable outrage of marrying a wife. Being by this act finally cast adrift upon the world, with increased responsibilities and necessities, he sought to obtain wherewithal to live, by publicly teaching the learned languages and literature. He did this with such success, as to attain not only that, but a very wide–spread reputation also, under circumstances which made obscurity most desirable for his safety. Driven, accordingly, from his occupation by the pursuit of his enemies, and yielding to a strong desire to revisit his native Piedmont, he appears, while travelling in that direction, to have fallen in with Morato at Vercelli, and to have been received by his brother exile and scholar in his temporary dwelling.

They did not part till there had been time for a friendship of the most intimate kind to spring up between them. And though, doubtless, there was plenty of congenial conversation between them on topics of classical lore,—on the disputed authenticity of Cicero's rhetoric, or the right interpretation of a passage of Plato,—we may be very sure, that the talk which most served to bind them to each other was on far more burning questions; on subjects which it was dangerous to touch, but which it had already become impossible for their minds to leave unprobed,—subjects, in speaking of which, either felt in his heart, that each cautious word, that moved a beam of doctrine but a hair's–breadth, might bring down a whole superincumbent fabric of venerated creed–edifice in ruin; subjects, too, in the discussion of which, the man who poured light into his neighbour's mind, was thereby exposing him to danger in life and goods,—a danger proportioned to the temperament of the mind enlightened.

FIRST RELIGIOUS IMPRESSIONS.

Morato was, it would seem, not formed in the martyr's mould. There is no reason to suspect him of hypocritical compliances or tergiversation. But there are some men, in whom truth so works, that it cannot lie hidden and dormant, who, despite all pains and penalties, must needs testify to it, and publish it. Of such, as has abundantly been seen, was Celio Curione. That Morato shared his convictions is certain. But he lived and died in peace in the city of his adoption.

But there was a third mind there present at these pregnant conversations, vivid, impressionable, unforgetting, and cast, as appeared, when it reached its maturity, in the true heroic mould. And though the seeds that then fell, unheeded, probably, by the sower, on Olympia's young intellect, do not appear to have produced immediate fruit of any kind, unless, indeed, we trace their consequences in a total absence of all respect for the orthodox superstitions, they were assuredly thrown on soil which received and treasured them.

The two scholars parted. Curione in Piedmont soon found that the hostility of his family, outraged by his heretical manifestations, was such as to make it necessary for him to seek safety in obscurity. And this he succeeded in finding as tutor to the children of a nobleman, who lived in the country, near Turin. Here, however, his zeal for the truth did not allow him long rest for the sole of his foot. For chancing once to be present while an itinerant Dominican was preaching in a neighbouring church, and hearing him falsify in the course of his sermon some extracts from the writings of some of the German reformers, he publicly interrupted him to correct his statement. Seizure, imprisonment in the dungeons of the neighbouring city of Turin, with the prospect of a trial before the ecclesiastical authorities, which would be sure to end in a capital condemnation, were the results, as might have been anticipated, of this audacious testimony to the truth. Having, by almost miraculous good fortune, succeeded in escaping from his prison, he fled to Pavia, and there obtained a chair in the University.

The decree of the Senate of that city, conferring on him this employment, is dated 9th of October, 1538.[45] And that such a body should have made such an appointment, just after the candidate for it had escaped from imprisonment for heresy in a neighbouring city, is a curious instance of the utter severance in all respects of one community from another, which a few miles of intervening territory could in those days effect. It having been soon discovered, however, adds Tiraboschi, who the new professor was, he would have been arrested, if his pupils, already appreciating their teacher at his worth, had not formed themselves into a bodyguard for him, which for three years ensured his safety despite the efforts of the ecclesiastical authorities to get possession of his person. And here we have another very remarkable indication of the strange looseness of the bonds which held society together at that period; and also, as it may be fairly argued, of the general reluctance of the Italians to accept these first manifestations of inquisitorial action, or to lend them, if it could possibly be avoided, the assistance of the secular arm. At length, however, urgent representations from Rome to the government of Milan compelled the University senate of Pavia to advise Curione to escape from their city, while it was yet possible to do so.

CURIONE'S STORY.

He was thus thrown once again upon the wide world. And it was then that his friend Morato, who had by that time been restored to his home and position at Ferrara, wrote to him to offer him an asylum under his own roof.

"Come to us;" writes the Ferrarese pedagogue to his fellow–labourer; "you will find your place at our hearth vacant. And especially there is a corner for you in my library, where you may indulge ad libitum in the united blessings of solitude, silence, peace, and oblivion."

It cannot be doubted, that the persecuted scholar quitted these good things occasionally to share in those meetings in the apartments of Duchess Renée, which were found to be so pernicious to the true religion. It was by her, that he was eventually sent with pressing recommendations to the republic of Lucca, which city was from the first one of the strongholds of the "novatori," as the Catholic historians love to style the Reformers. The Luchesi at once provided him with a professor's chair in their schools. But he had hardly been there a year when there came a demand that he should be given up into the hands of the Pope's officers. This the free republicans refused to do. But they judged it prudent to advise him to fly. And as it was now clear that there was neither safety nor rest for him in Italy, he determined on abandoning it; and escaping first to Lausanne, where he taught with credit and success for four years, was thence invited by the city of Bâle to accept the chair of literature in that University; where he remained leading a life of peaceful and useful literary labour till his death in 1569.[46] The numerous works left by him, which may be found catalogued by Schelhorn in his "Amænities," are some of them on theological subjects, but chiefly treat of classical criticism and grammar.

Morato had returned to Ferrara. His wanderings were brought to an end by the permission to do so in 1539. His colleagues, friends, and pupils had never ceased to regret his absence. Calcagnini had written to him in his exile, assuring him that "every one confesses how great a loss the city has suffered by your departure," and that his scholars refused to attend the lectures of any other professor.[47] Whatever may have been the cause of his exile, it is evident that no prejudice against him existed at the court on his return. When he left Ferrara in 1533, Alphonso I. was still reigning. He died in 1534; and Morato on his return found Hercules II. and his wife Renée on the throne. And very shortly after this restoration to his home and his pupils he was appointed tutor to the late Duke's two sons, Alphonso and Alphonsino.[48]

MORATO'S RETURN.

Now, therefore, all was once again well with our professor. His old friends hastened to gather round him, and found in his modest home a new attraction, in addition to those which had previously rendered his society precious to them. Old Calcagnini found the "prattling infant muse" to whom he had sent a kiss in her exile, grown into a lovely girl, on the eve of blossoming into womanhood, with talents and acquirements sufficient to make the reputation of a mature scholar. In truth, the apparition among them of this bright–eyed and bright–minded creature, enthusiastic in her love for that literature which had been the object and business of their lives, animated with the very spirit of the poesy of Greece and Rome, eloquent with the well–loved music of Homer's or Virgil's tones, which fell mended from her lips, talking their talk, interested in their discussions, and anxious to learn more of all, that it was so delightful a task to them to teach, seems nearly to have turned the learned heads of that knot of grey–beards, who frequented her father's house. They seem at a loss how to express their admiration in terms sufficiently glowing. Old Gregory Giraldi, writing amid the tortures of the gout, which kept him bed–ridden during the last ten years of his life, speaks of her as "a damsel talented beyond the nature of her sex, thoroughly skilled in Greek and Latin literature, and a miracle to all who hear her." Comparisons with Diotima, Aspasia, the Muses, Graces, and everything feminine that ever was wise, brilliant, or charming, were showered around her. If it be possible that the head of a youthful beauty should be turned by the flattery and admiration of grey–headed and gouty old gentlemen, expressed in the most Attic Greek, and purest Ciceronian Latin, that of Olympia could hardly have escaped.

This chorus of admiration must, at all events, have been gratifying to the proud father. The home–coming, after his long wanderings, must have been a happy one. His appointment at the court, too, must have been a satisfactory assurance that no suspicion of heterodoxy had as yet arisen to injure him. Yet mischief from this source had been busy in Ferrara during his absence, and that in the innermost chambers of the palace. The priest had, as usual, thrust himself between the husband and the wife; and the Duchess Renée had become, on theological grounds, an object of suspicion to her husband, whose political relations with the Holy See made it expedient that he and his should enjoy a reputation of unblemished orthodoxy.

Renée had, years before, as we have seen, consorted with those who were afterwards found to have been enemies to the Church; and she must have been known to have held, ever since her first coming into Italy, doctrines which were afterwards pronounced heretical. But so did Contarini, who was sent by the Pope to Ratisbon in 1541 to hold conference, and, if possible, come to accord with the Protestants. Meantime nobody knew exactly how the Church might peremptorily require her sons to believe themselves justified. And Duke Hercules was by no means likely to have any special personal susceptibilities on such matters. So, as long as no offence was given to Rome, Renée might hold her "academies," gather her spiritual friends around her, and talk about faith and works, if she liked it.

But during Morato's absence events had happened which had changed all this. One M. Charles d'Espeville had arrived at Ferrara in 1536. The good Duchess, always eager to welcome, and assist if need were, her countrymen, accorded the most hospitable reception to this M. d'Espeville. He at once became one of her intimates, and was admitted to conferences either secret, or shared only with a select few.

Now if lay sovereigns have, as has been said, long arms, Mother Church has a piercing and most ubiquitous eye. Though Duke Hercules might not see what was passing under his nose, vigilant Mother Church saw it, as she sat far away in the middle of her spider's web there at Rome. And she hastened to hiss into the ear of Duke Hercules the horror, that there in his city of Ferrara, in the innermost chambers of his own palace, in the closet of his wife, was crouched, hatching heresies and treasons, the arch–heretic, the very emissary of the Evil one, Calvin himself![49]

SPIRITUALITIES AND TEMPORALITIES.

These, it must be admitted, were tidings of a sort to irritate a ducal husband, troubled little about his "justification," but much about his investiture parchments;—most orthodoxly willing to be saved either by works or faith, or any other way Holy Church might deem best for him; but extremely anxious about his "tail male," and the securing of his temporalities against the strangely temporal appetites of that spiritual mother. For of all the long disputes between Duke Hercules and the Apostolic chamber, painfully prosecuted by envoys, memorials, writings innumerable, by even personal riding to Rome, and heart–wearying struggle with the obstructions, insincerities and chicaneries of that most intolerable of human entities, the gist was briefly this. My body, with its ducal cloak and trappings, its dignities, possessions, and hereditaments to be mine, and the same to pass to the heirs thereof lawfully begotten;—my soul, with all thereunto appertaining,—of course carrying with it sans mot dire, the souls of all my subjects,—to be yours in eternal fee simple, to fashion, manage, and dispose of as to you shall seem fit. A fair bargain surely this, proposed by Duke Hercules of Ferrara, by no means a singular or eccentric prince, if indeed souls were what Mother Church was specially eager after, as she said! And this agreement might have been quickly and easily made, to be loyally observed by either party, as agreements between honest folk are, had it not been that Holy Mother Church, fully minded to keep tight hold of the souls in question, would not give up the hope of laying her hand on the bodies also.

And now in the midst of all the uphill work of driving his negotiation to a favourable conclusion, as he hoped, while promising largely, and most sincerely, poor man! the complete cession of his own and subjects' souls, here was his own wife, not only saying her soul was her own, but disposing of it to Mother Church's most dreaded and detested enemy.

Swift remedy found the exasperated Duke for such domestic treason. And here Mnemosyne begs to suggest as a subject for artistic presentment the incident which followed. Scene—the private closet of the Duchess in the castle of Ferrara. The persons assembled there have been engaged in that sweet converse so delightful to persons bound together by common thoughts and feelings in the midst of an unsympathising and hostile world around them. There is the good Duchess, who has perhaps been mingling with more serious discourse questionings of things in that dear distant France, which she never ceased while absent from it to regret. The elderly lady, somewhat austerely dressed in black to the throat, with deep ruffle around her neck, and large hanging sleeves to her dress, is Madame de Soubise, who came with Renée from France, and who was, as is well known, "lame of the same foot," as the Catholic writers phrase it. The great heresiarch himself might have been recognised by those handsome but hard and severe features, the lofty but not noble forehead, and the bright but domineering eye; but he could not have been known from habiliments chosen to suit the character of M. Charles d'Espeville. The Signeurs de Pons and de Soubise may also have been present. But one other person was assuredly there;—a writer of obscene French verses, as the orthodox Italians call him,[50] who had an absurd mania for meddling in theology, and fancying that he comprehended the original language of the sacred writers, one Clement Marot,—he was there too, and "assisted Calvin much in saturating the mind of the Duchess with pestilent doctrine."

DUCHESS RENÉE IN A SCRAPE.

"To them, enter" hurriedly and noisily the Duke in high wrath, and at his heels, opera–stage fashion, a sufficient impersonation of "la force publique."

A rapid glance of the angry eye indicates to those active officers the duty in hand. And M. Charles d'Espeville, alias John Calvin, and the luckless poet turned theologian, are marched off, with a very tolerable prospect of martyrdom before them. "And as for you, Madame! ... &c."

Calvin and Marot were marched off under escort to Bologna. But the terrible marital lecture, which it has been left to the competent reader's imagination to supply, did not so terrify Renée as to prevent her from promptly and secretly dispatching certain trustworthy emissaries, who, overtaking the escort on their road,[51] liberated the prisoners, and set them free to make the best of their way across the Alps.

This incident made a serious difference in the condition of the Duchess. Constant suspicion and severity seem to have henceforth made her life at Ferrara a very unhappy one. And the following lines[52] addressed by Clement Marot to Marguerite, the sister of Francis I., speak touchingly enough the forlorn misery of her life:—

"Ah, Marguerite! list to the bitter smart,
That fills Renée of France her noble heart;
And sisterlike some better aid impart

Than hope alone.

Thou knowest how she left her native shore,
Leaving there friends and kin for evermore;
But what in that strange land she doth endure

Thou dost not know.

She sees not one, to whom she can complain;
Her bright eye seeks her distant land in vain;
And, as to quench all hope, the mountain chain

Parts her and you."

Renée was henceforward a person marked as "infected," and subjected to suspicion and severity accordingly; not because she held certain opinions, which, as has been before insisted on, were not yet condemned; but because she had been discovered to be the disciple and friend of Calvin. He at all events was condemned clearly enough; and to consort with him was overt heresy. And this happened in 1536. It is impossible to suppose, therefore, that Morato could have continued in the good graces of the court, had he been known to harbour beneath his roof a fugitive from the ecclesiastical authorities, as Celio Curione was in 1541, which must have been the epoch of his visit to Ferrara. Nor could the Duchess have ventured, unless in strict secrecy, to have received him, and sent him with her recommendations to Lucca.

The palace of Ferrara was thus at this time essentially divided against itself. The Duke and the Duchess were pulling with might and main in diametrically opposite directions; he by open exercise of authority, every now and then irritated into violence: she by dissimulation and secret intelligences.

And this was the state of that household, not pleasing in any home however royal, when our Olympia was called to become a member of it.

CHAPTER III.

How shall a Pope be saved? with the answer thereto.—How shall our Olympia be saved? To be taken into consideration in a subsequent chapter.