PALMA VECCHIO, ST. BARBARA

When she came to die her husband said of her, writing to his nephew in whose regard there was not the slightest question of hypocrisy or pretence: "I cannot write this without tears, knowing myself to be deprived of such a dear and sweet companion. For such her exemplary conduct and the tender love which existed between us made her to me."

The greatest woman of the French Renaissance and probably the most influential of the women of the time, with the possible exception of Vittoria Colonna, was Marguerite of Angoulême. In English-speaking countries she is better known as Marguerite of Navarre, though in France she is sometimes spoken of also as Marguerite of Valois or of France. She was the sister of Francis I, King of France, and devoted in her affection towards him. Undoubtedly it was she more than any other who inspired her brother with the idea of founding the College of France, and it was she who was the patron and guardian of the French Renaissance. After Francis had been captured at the battle of Pavia and shipped as a prisoner to Spain she made the long, perilous, difficult journey that it was in those days from Paris to Madrid with sisterly devotion, and in spite of trying hardships stayed near her brother during his confinement.

The world generally knows her as the author of the "Heptameron" and has condemned her rather severely because of its too great freedom of manners and morals. Our own generation, however, which from its youngest years reads in our daily newspapers much worse stories than Margaret ever wrote, should not be ready to condemn her. It is difficult to understand her writing of these stories unless one knows the conditions of the time. The license that had come in among the novelists led to the telling of many stories that even our age, accustomed to the greatest license in this matter, finds too frank. Margaret, whom her generation has agreed in calling a saint, hoped to undo the evil of such stories by telling them frankly and adding morals to them. The stories have been read and the morals neglected. Her idea was very much the same as the excuse made for the publication of many {306} criminal stories of all kinds in our time, that publicity makes for deterrence. The erroneous psychology of this attempt at justification for a serious breach of ethics is only too patent. Margaret's good intentions in the matter are undoubted. Good intentions, however, do not guarantee that acts will be without evil effects. Margaret was trying to correct the corruption of her time in very much the same way as many women have been aroused into activity in ours, only she made the sad mistake of using the wrong means by thinking that publicity or information would prove a safeguard against evil instead of an incentive to the very forms of vice that she was trying to correct--above all for the young. Her significance in literature is discussed in the chapter on French literature.

Margaret's personal character is one of the most beautiful in history and it fully justifies the praise of her contemporaries and even Vittoria Colonna's words, which would seem fulsome. The most interesting phase of Marguerite's character is her devotion to the sick poor. Down at Alençon the large hospital owed its origin to her and her name was in benediction among the people because of all that she did. Hers was no mere distant service such as a queen might render because of the power she had to employ others, but she devoted herself to personal work for them that made them feel her saintly unselfishness. The king, her brother, gave her a grant for a foundling school in Paris. This was known as La Maison des Enfants Rouges, The House of the Red Children, because of the scarlet dresses which were the uniforms. Francis in his grant says that his sister had told him how these little children that had been picked up on the streets of Paris die when they are taken to the Hôtel Dieu and that they need the more special care of an institution for themselves and he is very glad to come to her assistance.

When her own boy died at the age of a few months Marguerite, whose tender family affection can be very well appreciated from her relations with her brother, was stricken with grief. We have the naive description, however, of the strength of soul with which she bore it: "She went into her room, refusing the aid of any of the women attached to the Court, she thanked the Lord very humbly for all the good it had pleased {307} Him to do her." She went even farther than that, however, she forbade that there should be any public grief, had the Te Deum sung for joy in the church because the death meant the welcoming into Heaven of an angel and she had placards made to be posted throughout the city bearing the inscription, "The Lord hath given and the Lord hath taken away; blessed be the name of the Lord." And yet she herself wore black after this and never changed it and after a time this became the formal color of ladies' dress at her court.

One of the important women of the century whose administrative ability surpassed that of the men of the time is Mary of Burgundy, whose beautiful tomb is to be seen in Bruges. The monument is one of the gems of the old town, but is not more than befitting the character of the lady it was meant to commemorate. Her dealings with the proud burghers of the Netherlands were those of a sympathetic sovereign trying to assure prosperity to these thrifty towns whose trade made it possible for so many of their people to become wealthy and happy citizens. Had her mode of treating them descended to some of her successors we would have been spared that ugly record of nearly a hundred years of bloodshed and war and famine in the Low Countries, which makes one of the saddest blots on modern history. Her granting of privileges and conferring of rights with recognition of old customs in formal documents is now commemorated in many places in the modern art of the Low Countries, and these constitute her finest tribute and memorial.

The last of the women of this century who deserves to be mentioned and without whom indeed any account of the century would be quite incomplete is probably the greatest of all the women of the period and perhaps the greatest intellectual woman who ever lived. The end of the chapter brings us back to Spain to Teresa de Cepeda y Ahumada, whom the world knows as St. Teresa. It is true that most of her work was accomplished after the close of the century, but as she was born in 1515 and was therefore thirty-five years of age before Columbus' Century closed, receiving all of her training and formation of mind in the great Renaissance period, her place is naturally in this epoch. She is the most important {308} of the women of the Renaissance, though this is seldom realized, and her reputation instead of decreasing with the years has rather increased. Even within the last twenty years a number of lives of her was written in every language in Europe and no less than a dozen of them have appeared in English. The feminists of the modern time have turned to her as one of the great representative women of all time.

It is worth while recording some of the great tributes to her. Her own Spanish compatriots call her lovingly their Doctor of the Church. At Rome at the entrance of the Vatican Basilica where appear in marble the Fathers and the Doctors of the Church you will see one single statue raised to a woman and bearing this inscription, "Mater Spiritualium"--Mother of Things Spiritual. It is the statue of Teresa who has been gloriously proclaimed the Mother of Spirituality, the Mistress of Mystical Theology and practically a Doctor of the Church, in the principles of the spiritual life.

The French and the Spanish are almost at opposite poles in their critical appreciations, yet Teresa has been honored almost as much in France as in her native country. Men so different as Bossuet and Fénelon have united in proclaiming her their teacher in the science of the saints and have declared her books, "The Way of Perfection," "The Castle of the Soul," "The Book of Foundations" and "Spiritual Advice," the most wonderful contributions to human knowledge that have ever been made.

Nor was her appeal only to the Latin races in Europe. The German mystics have always found a special attraction in St. Teresa's work and this was true not only among the Catholic students in Germany, but also at nearly all times among the Protestants. In the modern time Teresa has been the subject of many monographs by German writers.

In English, though national feeling and religious prejudice might be expected to make Teresa little known or even deliberately neglected, her works came to be very well known. In the middle of the seventeenth century Crashaw became enamored (no other word will express his lofty sentiments) of her writings and literally thought that no one had ever had so high a vision of things other-worldly. George Eliot paid {309} her tribute in the preface to "Middlemarch," and while her own dissatisfaction with life makes that tribute somewhat grudging and half-hearted, there is no doubt that our greatest woman novelist of the nineteenth century had been very deeply influenced by the writings of the calm light of the sixteenth.

Scarcely any writer has had as wide a European influence as this cloistered saint, who wrote only because her confessor commanded her to and who had no thought of style or of anything other than getting the thoughts that would come to her as simply as possible before her Spanish religious brethren. Her Spanish prose is a marvel of simple dignity and correctness representing the best Spanish prose, even down to our time. When Echegaray, the well-known Spanish novelist of our time, received the Nobel Prize for literature a few years ago, he was asked what he did for the perfection of his Spanish style. He declared that almost the only book that he read for the sake of its style was "The Letters of St. Teresa." We have nothing quite like these letters in English, though Cowper's letters approach nearest to them. They are full of simplicity, are deeply interesting in their detail of ordinary life and above all are full of humor. This is the quality that most people would be quite sure was lacking in the great Spanish nun. Those who would explain her visions and her mortification on the ground of hysteria or psycho-neurotic conditions would be undeceived at once in their estimation of her character did they but read her letters. The hysterical are above all lacking in a sense of humor and take themselves very seriously.

Dante is probably the only writer in European literature with whom St. Teresa can properly be compared. She has the same power to convey all the deep significance of other-worldliness, the same universality of interest, the same marvellous quality that draws to her particularly those who are themselves of deeply poetic or profoundly spiritual nature. Men who have spent long years in the study and the experience of the things with which her writings are concerned, find them most wondrously full of meaning and are most willing to devote time to them. The editions of her various works would fill a very large library, and there is no doubt at all that the {310} writings of no woman who ever lived occupy so large a place in libraries all over the world at the present time as those of St. Teresa.

Beside St. Thomas and Dante as a worthy member of a glorious trinity of writers, with regard to the subjects that have been most elusive though most alluring for men, St. Teresa deserves a place. Anyone who would think, however, that she was merely a mystic would be sadly mistaken in the estimate of her career. She was above all a thoroughly practical woman. Her many foundations of the reform Carmelites under the most discouraging circumstances show the indomitable will of the woman and her power to live to accomplish. It was she who said when her poverty was urged as a reason for not making further foundations, "Teresa and five ducats can do nothing, but Teresa with God and five ducats can do everything." There is no doubt now that she more than any other in Spain turned back the tide of the Reformation. Her advice was eagerly sought on all sides. While carefully maintaining her cloistered life, she made many friends and influenced all of them for what was best in them. Her reform of the Carmelites brought many enemies, above all because other religious orders recognized that they too would have to share in the reform, yet all was carried out to a marvellously successful issue with gentleness and sweetness, but with a firmness and courage that nothing could daunt and a power of accomplishment that nothing could balk.

Those who think that Teresa's books are mere essays in pietism or pleasant reading for moments of spiritual exaltation will be sadly mistaken. For depth of meaning and profundity of aspiration after the unknowable, yet approaching it nearer than any other has ever done, St. Teresa's books are unmatched. For analysis of the soul and for the manner of its unfolding in its strivings after higher things, Teresa has no equal. Her pictures of celestial things are a constant reminder of Dante. Most people think of the "Inferno" as Dante's masterpiece. Those who know him best think rather of the "Purgatorio," but a few lofty, poetic souls, steeped in the spiritual, have found his "Paradiso" the sublimest of human documents. While there are constant reminders of the {311} "Purgatorio" in many of Teresa's writings, it is the "Paradise," however, that most frequently recurs in comparison. What Cardinal Manning said of the "Paradiso" may well be repeated of Teresa's mystical works. It has been said, "After the 'Summa' of St. Thomas nothing remains but the vision of God." To this Cardinal Manning added, "after the 'Paradiso' of Dante there remains nothing but the beatific vision." Those whose life and studies have best fitted them as judges have felt thus about the Spanish Doctress of the Church.

Teresa was eminently human in every regard, and though what might be considered harsh with herself, she was always kind to those who were around her, and especially any who were in real suffering. She came by these qualities very naturally, for her father is noted as an extremely good man and exceptionally good to his servants and charitable toward the poor of Avila. Indeed Teresa's biographers insist so much on these qualities as to make it very clear that the spirit of the time is represented by this member of the old Spanish nobility, who took his duties towards others so seriously. Teresa was not one of the exceptional souls who find convent life easy and even consoling from the beginning, but on the contrary she has told herself that she found the first eight days of her convent life terrible. It seemed to her a prison. She had a physical fear of austerities and pious books bored her. Perhaps the one very human thought that tempted her more than any other to enter the convent was her feeling of independence. The idea of marriage was quite distasteful. As she expressed it, it was one thing to obey God, but quite another thing to bind oneself to obey a man for a lifetime.

As if in compensation for all that the neurologists and psychiatrists had to say of her, she herself had something to say of nervous patients. For her, nervousness so-called was largely selfishness. While sympathetic for feelings of depression, she had no sympathy for those who would not throw them off by occupation of mind, but yielded to them. She said, "What is called melancholy is at bottom only a desire to have one's own way." She believed firmly that one could not be made good by many rules, but goodness had to come from within and from the spirit. She was quite impatient with the {312} religious visitors, that is, special superiors sent to make inspections of houses of religious who gave a number of new rules for the communities. She said: "I am so tired with having to read all these rules that I do not know what would become of me if I were obliged to keep them."

It is easy to understand then why Cardinal Manning should have said that St. Teresa furnishes an example that "spirituality perfects common sense." She herself was one of the most sensible, joyous and charming persons. Miss Field in the Atlantic for March, 1903, says: "Her charm, her sweetness, the loveliness of her conversation were irresistible." It was Cardinal Manning, I believe, who declared that "she was one of those sovereign souls that are born from time to time as if to show what her race was created for at first and to what it is still destined."

Teresa once said: "God preserve me from those great nobles who can do something, yet who are such strange cranks." She reminded her nuns on more than one occasion when she found in them a tendency to go to too great lengths in austerity that we have a body as well as a soul, and that this body when disregarded revenges itself upon the soul. There are few subjects of importance in life on which St. Teresa has not expressed herself wisely, and to know her writings is to be able to quote many marvellous summations of worldly experience that the cloister might seem to have precluded in her. On the subject of the relation of low wages and virtue, Miss Repplier in the article on "Our Loss of Nerve" (Atlantic Monthly, September, 1913) quoted St. Teresa's profound comment which sums up so well our whole social situation "where virtue is well rooted provocations matter little."

MOSTAERT, VIRGO DEIPARA (ANTWERP)

CHAPTER IX

FEMININE EDUCATION

There is probably no more interesting phase of Columbus' Century for our time than its feminine education, for the education of women had a period of important development in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries which affected a very large number of women of the time and afforded abundant opportunity to all those who wished to obtain the highest intellectual culture. This was not, in spite of the apparently very prevalent impression to that effect, the first time that women had been given a chance to secure the higher education, for on the contrary whenever there was a new awakening of educational interest, women asked and obtained the privilege of sharing in it and showed how thoroughly they could take advantage of such opportunities as were afforded them. In the early days of the universities women had been welcomed not only among the students but also the professors. They had full charge of the department of women's diseases down in the south of Italy where the most important part of the university was the medical school, and then later at Bologna they had been professors in every department,--in law, when the law school was the central university feature, in mathematics, in literature, even in anatomy. As a consequence of the tradition thus established there has never been a century since the twelfth in which there have not been distinguished women professors at some of the Italian universities.

Earlier when Charlemagne was reorganizing education on the continent with the help of the Irish and English monks, the women of the court attended the palace school as well as the men, and we have many records of their interest. The women of the Benedictine monasteries shared the interest of the Benedictines generally in literature, made many copies of books, possessed large and important libraries and even {314} became distinguished as writers. Hroswitha, the nun dramatist of the tenth century, who came into prominence in Columbus' Century because of the issuance of an edition of her work by Celtes, the German Renaissance humanist, is but one example of the literary interest in the Benedictine convents which must have been ardent and widespread. Later we have the works of the great Abbess Hildegarde, who wrote on many subjects and who was probably the most important writer of her time. This is certainly true so far as physical sciences are concerned. St. Bernard, who was her contemporary, has enjoyed more reputation in subsequent generations than Hildegarde but she was almost as well known in her own as the great founder of the Cistercians.

Earlier still than Charlemagne or the foundation of the convent schools St. Brigid had established a college for women at Kildare, in Ireland, to which there came many of the nobility not only of Ireland itself but also of England and of the neighboring shores of Europe, seeking the opportunity for higher education. We have learned more of the details of this Irish phase of feminine education in recent years, and it has grown ever more and more important in the history of education.

At every new phase of educational development, then, the women had had their share in the movement, and it is not surprising that when the Renaissance brought with it that deep interest in the ancient classics, that was known as the New Learning, women also had their share in this. The very first of the great Italian teachers of the Renaissance Vittorino da Feltre insisted that there should be two conditions for his teaching. One was that the young women should be allowed to take advantage of it as well as the young men and the other that the poor who desired to study should not be denied access to his classes. The magnificent success that he made of education at Mantua was soon followed by similar movements in other Italian cities and everywhere the tradition of feminine education for those who desired to have it, came into existence. Guarino's influence for feminine education is only less than that of Vittorino. As a consequence there was not a city of any importance in Italy in which there were not some women {315} noted for their knowledge of the classics and their interest in the New Learning, and in many of the cities there were distinguished woman students who, even in their early years, exhibited scholarly qualifications that made them famous.

Vittorino da Feltre, the great teacher of the beginning Renaissance, had during the first half of the fifteenth century a school at Mantua, where on the border of the lake he was teaching a group of noble youths and maidens according to the high ideals of education which he has so well laid down. Their course of study included Latin, Greek, philosophy, mathematics, grammar, logic, music, singing and dancing. Besides this, however, his scholars were taught "to live the simple life, to tell the truth and to remember that true scholarship was inseparable from virtue and a sense of lofty gratitude towards the Creator." As might have been expected from the Greek traditions of education, which were then attracting so much attention, the training of the body was not neglected and various outdoor games were insisted on so that there might be a healthy mind in a healthy body.

Some of the traditions of that school at Mantua make very interesting reading and show how much some of the intervening periods in the history of education degenerated from those early days. For instance, we hear that not infrequently when Vittorino wanted to make a passage of Virgil impressive his scholars were taken out to Pietole, which has been identified as probably the village of Andes, in which, according to Donatus, Virgil was born, and here in the shady groves Virgil would be read and discussed and then there would be games and a return to the castle. While Vittorino was broad in his selections in the classic authors, and Virgil and Cicero and Homer and Demosthenes were read with explanations and then certain passages required to be learned by heart so as to form their style, he was no pedant and no friend of any exhibition of mere erudition. His most important bit of advice for his students was "First be sure that you have something to say, then say it simply." No wonder one of the D'Estes declared "that for virtue, learning and a rare and excellent way of teaching good manners, this master surpassed all others."

It would be easy to think that perhaps the young noblewomen of the time got but a very superficial knowledge of the classics, but we have a tradition of Cecilia Gonzaga, the daughter of the reigning house of Mantua and Vittorino's favorite pupil, that she could read Chrysostom at the age of eight and could write Greek with singular purity at the age of twelve. No wonder we hear of her later as the marvel of the age. Evidently all prejudice with regard to feminine education was at an end when Bembo said: "A girl ought to learn Latin, it puts the finishing touch to her charm."

Sandys in his Harvard lectures on the Revival of Learning, has told the story of some of these young women scholars of Vittorino da Feltre and Guarino with some interesting details which show that success in scholarship did not prove an inflater of vanity in the young women of the time nor impair their religious spirit.

"Women, as well as men, retained a grateful remembrance of the intellectual training, which they had received from Guarino and Vittorino. Vittorino's pupil, Cecilia Gonzaga, a daughter of the ruling house of Mantua, whose fresh and simple grace may be admired in the medallion of Pisanello, was already learning Greek at the age of seven; while, among the pupils of Guarino, Isotta Nogarola was skilled in Latin verse and prose, and quoted Greek and Latin authors in the course of those learned letters to her tutor, which were not entirely approved by the public opinion of Verona. In cases such as these, the studious temper was often associated with retiring habits and with strong religious feeling; and, like Baptista dei Malatesti, the former correspondent of Leonardo Bruni, both of these learned ladies ultimately took the veil."

While so much attention was paid to the classics, the great Italian authors were not neglected and the Italian girls of the Renaissance were brought up to know the classic literature of the vernacular. It was the custom to have Dante and Petrarch and Ariosto read to them while they were doing embroidery, and these charming young women of the Renaissance in every country in Europe had the reputation for doing most wonderful embroidery. They also learned to play on {317} various musical instruments, and their voices were cultivated to the best possible advantage. It is often a source of wonder where they got the time to do all these things. Some of the letters from the French and Spanish ambassadors at these various Italian courts tell of the marvellous ability of these charming young women. As a rule the ambassador's idea in writing such descriptions was to suggest the possibility of marriages being arranged between the scions of the noble houses of their own countries with these women. It was rather important, therefore, that there should not be much exaggeration or the ambassador might well be discredited.

It is easy to think that with all this of intellectual life the young women of the time must have had very little exercise, especially in the outer air, and above all must not have indulged in what we think of as sport. The story of Vittorino da Feltre's school is a contradiction of this, and besides the traditions that have come to us show that every young woman of the nobility learned to ride horseback at this time. All of them could ride boldly. They hunted and many of them went hawking. Riding was of course an absolutely necessary accomplishment at that time, for carriages were very rare, and such as there were were almost impossibly uncomfortable for long journeys. Good roads had not as yet been made outside of the towns, and the only way to go visiting friends at any distance was on horseback. Many of these young women had to travel long distances, especially at the time of their marriage, and later on they sometimes accompanied their husbands on rather long journeys.

In spite of their reputation for scholarship, we have not any very serious remains of their intellectual efforts, and yet some of them wrote poetry and prose well above the average in merit, and at least in Italy their works are still read by students of Italian literature. For instance, we have the poems of Lucretia de Medici, the mother of Lorenzo the Magnificent, who had been one of the Tornabuoni family, merchant princes of Florence, with many of the solid virtues of the middle class from which she sprang. Tradition tells us that she was ever her great son's most trusted councillor, and he has left it on record that he thought her the wisest. She was {318} noted for her princely alms, her endowment of poor convents, her dowries to orphan girls, and though it has sometimes been said that these were all so many bids for popularity, any such discount of her good works wrongs her deeply, for she was profoundly religious, took particular care to bring up her children piously, and it is to the fact that she wrote hymns for them that we owe the poetic works that have come to us and which rank high among this form of poetry.

The best known of these women of the Renaissance, that is, the most famous for their learning, were the sisters D'Este, Isabella and Beatrice, of whom we have so many interesting traditions. The famous Battista Guarino of Verona was chosen as teacher for the girls, and with him they learned to read Cicero and Virgil and study the history of Greece. They learned Italian literature from the many distinguished literary men, some of them themselves gifted poets, who came to the beautiful palace and its gardens at Ferrara, and were welcomed by the well-known patron of learning, the Duke of Ferrara. They learned to read French at least and to enjoy Provençal poetry. Their mother, Leonora of Aragon, the daughter of Ferdinand, or as he is sometimes called, Ferrante, King of Naples, was herself a scholarly woman. The traditions of scholarship at the Court of Naples were deep, and of long duration. As their father was the famous scholar and patron of learning, Duke Ercole I, there was a precious heritage of culture on both sides. Their mother, however, was more known for her piety even than for her learning, though this was so noteworthy as to be historical. Her charities made her looked up to by all of her people until it is not surprising that the chroniclers of her time speak of her as a saint.

BELLINI, MADONNA, ST. CATHERINE AND MARY MAGDALEN (VENICE)

Often it is said that only a few of the daughters of the nobility had the opportunity for the higher education, and it is even the custom to declare that most of these were instances where fathers had expected sons instead of daughters and then raised the girls as companions and gave them the education that ordinarily was reserved for boys. George Eliot's picture of the times as given in "Romola," has sometimes emphasized this, and she herself seems not to have been quite able to persuade herself that there were liberal and abundant {319} opportunities for the education of women in Italy towards the end of the fifteenth century. It was so difficult in her (George Eliot's) time for a woman to obtain education that it was almost impossible to bring oneself to think of ample facilities existing nearly four centuries before. Anyone who reads Burckhardt, however, or indeed any of the modern writers on the Renaissance, will not be likely to think that education was reserved for single daughters of families, or that they indeed had any better opportunities than others except for the fact that family attention was centred on them as it is now. Burckhardt notes that it was especially the wives and daughters of the condottieri, that is, of the hired leaders of armies, the self-made men of the time, who were lifting themselves up into positions of prominence, who were the most frequent among the educated women of the Renaissance.

The records are complete enough to show that there was probably as much, if not more, feminine education in Italy at least than in our own time. This will probably be hard for many people to believe, but, as I have said, no important city was without it. What may be called the important cities of that time nearly all contained less than 100,000 inhabitants and many of them had not more than ten to twenty thousand. When one finds schools for the higher education of women in every one of these it is easy to understand how widely diffused the feminine movement was. Lest it should be thought that the education provided for or allowed the women of the time was narrow in its scope, with so many limitations that intellectual development in the true sense of the word was hampered, it may be as well to recall that women were even encouraged in the public display of their talents. We read of the young princesses and their court attendants taking part in Latin plays given before the Pope and other high ecclesiastics, as well as visiting rulers at this time. We have the story of Ippolita Sforza saluting Pope Pius II, who had been the scholarly AEneas Sylvius before his elevation to the pontificate, with a graceful Latin address when he came to the Congress at Mantua. Another of the oratorical princesses of the time was Battista Montefeltro, who is famous for addresses delivered on many important occasions.

While the D'Estes have been probably better known, historians declare that the women of the House of Gonzaga reached the highest excellence in this Renaissance period of feminine education. Everywhere, however, woman received the opportunity for whatever education she desired. Down in Naples the old Greek traditions had survived, and when the disturbance of the Grecian Empire by the Turks brought about a reawakening of Greek culture in the south of Italy, the women shared it as well as the men. At the Court of Joanna or Giovanna, whose career is of special interest as an anticipation of the ill-fated Mary, Queen of Scots, many of the women reached high intellectual distinction. It is to these lofty Neapolitan educational influences that we owe the intellectual development of Vittoria Colonna. Everywhere, however, the same story might be told. At Rome, at Florence, at Verona, at Padua, even at Forli and Ravenna and Rimini, as well as at Genoa, though Genoa was so much more intent on making money than developing its culture, the women took excellent advantage of the opportunities for learning, often proved to be more successful in their studies than their brothers, and though they did not accomplish much that was to endure in the intellectual life, they seem to have been thoroughly respected by their contemporaries and looked up to as cultured, scholarly personalities.

In his "Heroines of Genoa and the Rivieras," Edgcumbe Staley [Footnote 27] has said something of the productivity of the literary women even of Genoa during this period. Genoa was known as probably more interested in mere luxury and less interested in the intellectual life for its own sake than any of the cities of Italy with which we are familiar. The Genoese were the merchant princes whose wives and children, like our own, were much more occupied with the display of their wealth than in the development of a taste for art and letters and the cultivation of a true critical faculty. I have already mentioned some of the products of the Genoese intellectual life among women, however, and this will add to the impression that I think is so true that in proportion to the population there were just as many women interested in education and in {321} literature, women writers and poets in that time as there are in our own. Mr. Staley said:

[Footnote 27: Scribner & Sons, New York.]

"Among the glittering bevies of intellectual and virtuous damsels, who delighted in the beauties and revelled in the romances of the Villetta di Negro and similar pleasures, were such gentildonne as Peretta Scarpa-Negrone and Livia Spinola, who wrote poems of the heart and the home; Benedetta--Livia's sister--and Caterina Gastadenghi--she sang and played the folk songs of Liguria; Leonora Cibo and Pellegrina Lescara, sweet translators of the 'Aeneid' of Virgil and the 'Odes' of Horace."

These educated women of the Renaissance were particularly noted for the application of their education to the concerns of their home. Their artistic taste was exercised, as we have already shown, in selecting various ornaments for it and in directing artists in its decoration. They did not have many art objects around them, but what few there were had been made as a rule by distinguished artists and represented something of the personality of the mistresses of the household. But it must not be thought that they devoted themselves exclusively to the cult of beauty in things. They realized their influence for good over the men of their time and exercised it. The example of Vittoria Colonna is often cited in this regard, but not because it is exceptional, rather what was characteristic. These educated women of the Renaissance were model wives and mothers. They were sedulous for the education of their children, and the poetry that we have from them, or the letters that have been preserved, and which show very clearly their high intellectual development, were meant for their children or for their relatives. Their homes were evidently always their first thought. They planned their own dresses, often executed some of the decoration for them, or had them designed or made under their direction, bought beautiful books for the home, encouraged the illuminators and the embroiderers and beautiful needleworkers of the time, and in general proved to be ready and able to help through their households to give opportunities for the artists, but also for the artisans and the arts and crafts workers of the time.

We find a number of their names on the list of Aldus' {322} regular customers at Venice, his subscribers, who made it possible by assuring him at least the cost of his books to go on with his magnificent editions of the classics. We have letters in which they complain of the cost of these first editions because there were other household expenses to be met, but undoubtedly they were always greatly helpful in the educational cause.

Most interesting perhaps of all that they did is the beautiful gardens, which, now that our generation through better transportation facilities is able to live out of town, are coming to be more properly appreciated than before. The Renaissance gardens have been the subject of much writing and illustration in our magazines and books in recent years, and it must not be forgotten that we owe them above all to the women of the Renaissance. They invited artists and architects, who designed them, and trained landscape gardeners to execute them, but it was their interest that was most important. Their gardens came to be an enlargement of their houses, and in the sunny land of Italy afforded many refuges for pleasant living, even in the warmest weather, and for the privacy of even their crowds of guests, which made their homes welcome repairs for the nobility of the time.

Perhaps the best criterion of the thoroughness of the education given women at this time is the influence exerted by the women of the period on art and artists and literary men of the time, and above all the cultivated taste displayed in their homes. A typical example is afforded by Isabelle D'Este whose camerini, her private apartments, are reproduced at South Kensington and described in one of their manuals on Interior Decoration in Italy in the fifteenth century and the sixteenth century. As these decorations for the dowager Duchess D'Este were made just about the middle of Columbus' Century, the authoritative description of them will be the best document. The Museum of South Kensington has had one side of her painting room reconstructed, and it shows, as no mere description could, the beauty of the apartment and the taste of its owner.

A quotation from the description of the three rooms as given in the South Kensington Art Handbook "Italian Wall Decorations of the Fifteenth and Sixteenth Centuries" will {323} serve better than any praise to give an idea of the charming retreat that Isabella made for herself when her position as Dowager Duchess gave her the leisure as well as the opportunity to devote herself to the construction of a retreat which should reflect her personality.

"The 'Grotta,' on the ground floor of the old Palazzo Bonnacolsi, remained set apart for her collections of art and for receptions; princes on their travels, ambassadors on their missions, travellers of distinction and artists came to visit her. She accumulated in it statues and rare objects, and even added a 'Cortile,' with fountains playing during the summer. But the three new rooms at the top of the 'Paradiso' became the object of her predilection, and it is amidst such surroundings, the real 'paradise' of Isabella D'Este, that historians must place her portrait.

"The first room was dedicated to music, the favorite pursuit of Isabella. The cupboards were filled with beautiful instruments: mandolines, lutes, clavichords inlaid with mother-of-pearl, and made specially for her by Lorenzo of Pavia; and here stood the famous organ by the same master, the description of which is to be found in the princess's correspondence. Round the walls of this first room were reproduced views of towns in 'intarsia' of rare woods, and on one of the panels figured a few bars of a 'Strambotto,' composed by Okenghem to words dictated by Isabella, and signed by that famous singing master. On the ceiling was the 'Stave,' which exists in the coat-of-arms of the House of Este, and along the cornices friezes were formed of musical instruments carved in the wood.

"In the second room, devoted to painting and also to study, six masterpieces by the greatest painters of the time adorned the walls above the panelling.

"The third room was reserved for receptions. Everywhere in the ceiling, in the compartments, in the friezes (delicately carved in gilded stucco upon an azure background) are found the devices commented on at length by the humanists of her court: 'Alpha and Omega' and the golden candlestick with seven branches, on which a single light has resisted the effects of the wind, with the motto, 'Unum sufficit in tenebris;' and {324} everywhere is to be read the mysterious motto of which she was so proud, 'Nec Spe nec Metu,' the highest resolution of a strong mind, which henceforth 'without hope, without fear,' ended in solitude a tormented life. In the recess of the thick wall slightly raised above the floor, Isabella placed her writing table within reach of the shelves containing her favorite books; while she read there or wrote those letters addressed to the poets and artists of Italy, overflowing with enthusiasm for arts and letters, when she lifted her eyes beyond the tranquil waters at the mouth of the Po, towards Governolo, she would see coming the gilded Bucentaur with the coat-of-arms of Ferrara, which brought her news of her family, D'Este, and that of Aragon."

Lucretia Borgia at Ferrara not only continued the tradition of aesthetic good taste so characteristic of the D'Este family into which she had married, but even her years as mistress of the palace at Ferrara mark an epoch in its history. She succeeded in securing the services of some of the greatest of the artists of this wonderful period, who came and contributed to the decoration of her private apartments. Unfortunately her camerini, private apartments, in the Castello Rosso of Ferrara were destroyed by fire in 1634. They had been adorned with paintings by Bellini, Titian and Dosso Dossi, fitted into recesses of white marble carved by Antonio Lombardi. These rooms as elsewhere were of small size, real living rooms, reflecting the character of the personal taste of the owner. They were sanctuaries of art and of literature with selected libraries of chosen volumes in fine bindings and of music with beautiful musical instruments.

Many of these women of the Renaissance in Italy were famous for their devotion to works of charity. Indeed I know nothing that is more admirable than the story of their care for the ailing poor. It is often presumed that between their interest in education and literature and the artists of the time, and above all their devotion to the pleasures of dress and decoration, silks and jewels and perfumes, then coming in so rapidly from the East, these women must have had very little time for anything but selfish display of their personal beauty or intellectual talent. The rapid accumulation of wealth, {325} proportionally at least as great as in our time, might very readily be supposed to direct them as it has many other generations from the more serious side of life. The actual story of their lives is very different. There were exceptions, who have unfortunately attracted more attention than others, of whom little that is good can be said. The proportion, however, who devoted themselves with a nobility of soul that deserves to be commemorated to unselfish care for those who needed it was very large. Mr. Staley in his "Heroines of Genoa" (p. 225) has a paragraph on this subject which well deserves to be recalled, for it refers almost entirely to the women of Columbus' Century, and it must not be forgotten that Genoa was much more of a commercial city, with a more rapid rise in wealth, than any other in Italy except possibly Venice, and the beautiful spirit of personal service for the poor is therefore all the more admirable.

"Women in every age and land are prone much more to works of mercy and religion; of such surely was 'the crown of daughters of Genoa'--so-called by many writers. Benedettina Grimaldi, 'chaste, self-denying, amiable, charitable, moderate in dress and personal pleasures,' a munificent patroness of the great Ospedale di Pammatone, nursed patients suffering from plague and leprosy and endowed beds for their treatment and alleviation; Argentina, daughter of Signore Opicio Spinola, and wife of the Marchese di Monferrato: Violanta, daughter of Signore Gianandrea Doria; and Isabella, daughter of Signore Luca Fiasco, and wife of Luchino, Prince of Milan, were contemporaries in the beneficent field of charity. Devoted to the offices of religion, they proved the sincerity of their faith by their eleemosynary services to sick and dying men and women in prison and to debased mariners in port. Benevolent institutions were founded and endowed, under the style of 'Le Donne di Misericordia,' in 1478 and in 1497, 'La Campagnia del Mantiletto'--'Wearers of the Veil,' by the munificence of noble-hearted women. All these threw open to the suffering objects of their regard the healthful pleasure grounds of their villas, and it was no rare sight to find a lady, fashionably attired, seated under the {326} colonnade of a temple, or beneath a shady tree, talking to and cheering poor and friendless sufferers."

The names of the princesses who were prominent in the feminine education of this time have led many to conclude that only women of the higher classes were given the chance to be educated at this time. To a certain extent this is true, but at all times it must be true, for they alone have the leisure for the intellectual life. To recall what the nobility of Italy were at this time is to appreciate better the real situation. They were the successful merchant-bankers and their descendants (as the House of Medici), leaders of victorious armies, the scions of old families, who had made their influence felt in the politics of their cities for from three, sometimes even less, to ten, rarely more generations, the children of great navigators or admirals, even of successful traders and manufacturers--as the glass makers of Murano and the merchant princes of Genoa--in a word they represented exactly the same elements of the population as our better-to-do classes of to-day. It was the daughters of these who were accorded and took so well at this time the opportunity for education and culture.

Besides these there were not a few of what may be called the lower classes who became famous for their scholarship. This had always been true in Italy particularly. Catherine of Siena was a dyer's daughter. Dante's inamorata and her companions, whom we think of as cultured because of the poems addressed to them, were the daughters of men in trade. But in the Renaissance the opportunities even for the comparatively poor to obtain education were greatly widened, and it is evident that any of the young women of the time who had the ambition for learning might obtain it and undoubtedly many of them did. The tradition created by Vittorino da Feltre, according to which women and those of less means might obtain education, maintained itself and proved the seed of further developments in the liberal provision of opportunities for education for all classes.