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.
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.
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.
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.
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]
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."
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.
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.
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]
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]
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."
"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.
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.
The eldest child of Hercules and Renée was a daughter, Anna, born in 1531. Alphonso, the heir apparent, who succeeded to the Duchy in 1559, was born in 1533. Then came another daughter, Lucrezia, born in 1535, a third named Eleonora, in 1547, and lastly a second son, called Luigi, in 1538. Thus Anna, the eldest, was eight years old at the time of Morato's return to Ferrara; and her education, according to the newest fashion then in vogue, was the chief pre–occupation of the Duchess. The new learning was the fashionable mania of the day in ladies' bower, as in the halls of universities. A delicate taste for the charm of a Ciceronian style was as much necessary to the finished education of a noble lady then, as the graceful carriage of the person in crossing a room or entering a carriage is now. Male blockheadism had not yet suggested to the prudent jealousy of the lords of the creation the discovery, that learning tended to unfit women for the more special duties of wives and mothers. Not to be classical was to be nothing. So Anna d'Este was above all else to be a perfect Latinist and Grecian.
It was in 1540, when she was only nine years old (!) that Calcagnini thus wrote to her, of course in Latin, only to be known from that of the purest Augustan mintage by its greater difficulty and a certain affected intricacy of construction, observable in most of the Latinists of that period:—
"I have read the fables you have translated from the Tuscan into Latin, in an elegant and ornate style, as becomes a royal hand. On finishing the perusal I had only to regret, that it was so soon ended, and that my curiosity was left unsatisfied. I trust that these essays may be the seed of future compositions, which, when matured, will reflect honour on your name. I have already the pleasure of applauding these first steps on the path to fame."
What the very young lady's own composition may have been we have no means of judging; but it must be presumed that she was at all events competent to read readily the letter in which these compliments are addressed to her; and we should now–a–days consider that much for a young lady of nine years, or young gentleman either.
Other translations sent, as it seems, to Celio Curione in the following year, are acknowledged by him in still more flattering and flowery language. And the circumstance is remarkable on other grounds than as a testimony to the Princess Anna's classical proficiency. Curione was at that time, as has been seen, a refugee from ecclesiastical persecution, finding shelter and concealment in the house of Morato. Is it to be supposed that Duke Hercules would have tolerated his daughter's correspondence with one so situated, and that, too, after the unfortunate Calvin discovery? It seems to be but too clear, that Miss Anna and her mamma must have come to the understanding that papa was to know nothing about these literary intimacies with gentlemen under a cloud.
We may be tolerably certain too, that had the Duke known all that his wife knew of Messer Peregrino Morato, he would not have permitted another step, which that lady took about the time of which we are speaking, very soon after the return of Morato,—that is, and in all probability not later than 1540. This was the invitation of Olympia to court, to be the companion of her daughter, and sharer in her studies. Renée well knew the power of emulation; and in her eagerness to stimulate the efforts of her daughter, she determined to place beside her one, just five years older than herself, of whose wonderful talents and acquirements all Ferrara was talking.
So in, or very near about, 1540, Olympia left her father's humble home and went to be an inmate of the court, in the dissenting interest, or female side of the house. For dissension and dispute were ever more and more openly manifesting themselves in that splendid dwelling. The Duke and his councillors, lay and ecclesiastical, were becoming from day to day more jealously and suspiciously orthodox; as tidings from all parts of Italy showed that the Church was becoming alive to the dangers which threatened it from the new ideas, and, having once realised this fact, was suddenly convinced of their heretical nature, and determined to exert its utmost power to extinguish them by violence.
Paul III., a politic and worldly wise old man, with considerable desire to do such parts of a Pope's duty as could be accomplished without interfering with his own projects and schemes of ambition, was quite as much minded as any member of the sacred college to preserve intact to Rome its bishops and high priests, the monopoly of those sacerdotal emoluments and perquisites, which sacramental Christianity was contrived to afford in abundance. Pius IX., a better man, as living in better times than Paul III., found himself in front of the same eternal difficulty. All hope and project of reform had to be abandoned before the too–evident incompatibility of the fundamental sine–quâ–non condition, that "I transmit to my successors intact the power I have received from my predecessors." Thorough reform on the condition, that nothing shall be changed! Poor Pius! So once again Holy Church had to return to its vomit of St. Angelo and Paliano prisons, arbitrary arrests, immaculate conceptions, winking virgins, and concordats. And mankind finding finally, all hope of curing the cancer vain, has to screw its courage to the truly painful and terrible operation of excision;—as mankind silently and with naturally reluctant procrastination, is even now doing.
Paul III. was as free from persecuting instincts as Pius IX. He had been a man of the world, was the father of children, and had a natural human heart within his bosom. But at his elbow stood one, who was all priest. No merciful weakness, no natural affection, no human sympathy, no shade of misgiving, ever checked John Peter Caraffa in his crusade against free human thought. When Paul was doubtfully deliberating what measures might best be adopted to check the progress of heresy in Italy, Caraffa promptly decided for him, that the Inquisition was the one thing wanted,—the Inquisition with fullest powers of imprisonment, confiscation, and death, and he himself as Chief Inquisitor,—this, by God's help, and that of fire and sword, and nothing else than this, would succeed in victoriously crushing and extirpating hydra–headed heresy. On the 21st of July, 1542, the requisite bull was obtained from Paul III., and Caraffa rushed to his work, with the avidity of an unleashed hound on his prey.
Such signs of the times were not lost upon Duke Hercules, and reproduced themselves in sundry painful forms in the interior of the palace. The Duchess is still found to have about her persons "of very unwholesome smell;"[53] the flock of them have to be overhauled by the Duke's new Jesuit director, Pelletario, and all those found "with the rot upon them" are got rid of. A powerful stream of pure doctrine was turned on upon the infected Duchess, and sacraments were prescribed without much success. The "miserable woman" is found with flesh–meat on her table on a Friday; and the justly exasperated Duke, at his wits' end, has to shut her up in her apartment, with two attendants only, and send her daughters to a convent. "Now, though Renée was very astute," writes the historian, "far more so than the Duke and all his counsellors, yet it is not permissible to attribute wholly to her cunning the surprising conversion that was operated in her, immediately after she was shut up."[54] The imprisoned lady, under plainly miraculous influence, sent suddenly for her husband's priest, made a full confession, placed her conscience entirely in his keeping, and asked for the sacrament from his hands. So efficacious a spiritual agent is a little persecution, that astute as the patient was, and temporary as the conversion was proved in the sequel, the historian cannot believe but that some genuine spiritual effect was produced by it.
It at all events had the effect of releasing Renée from her durance, and restoring her daughters to her. For the Duke, delighted at the success of his discipline, "admitted her to sup with him that same evening."
But amid all this, in a family so constituted, and living under such conditions, young Olympia must have been placed at times in strange positions, have witnessed some suggestive scenes, and altogether have had offered to her ripening intelligence matter for meditation on many things. As to the disputed points, and antagonistic principles and prejudices, which lay at the root of all these jars and difficulties, she seems to have been at that time effectually preserved against all the dangers of partizanship by thorough indifference to the whole subject. The arrangement by which she had become a resident at the court was to her a subject of unmixed rejoicing and exultation. The household duties which the narrow circumstances of her father's home had imposed upon her, had occasioned many a sigh over the hours thus lost to her beloved studies. Now her whole life was to be devoted under the most favourable circumstances to the prosecution of them. "Henceforward," writes Calcagnini in a letter to her, "you may give yourself up to your favourite pursuits, change the distaff for the pen, house linen for books, and the exercise of the fingers for that of the mind.... It will now be for you to preserve without flaw the good gifts which you have received from your parents—modesty, candour, and virtuous principles, and to add to them wisdom, elegance, high–mindedness, and contempt for all that is base."[55]
She was, moreover, still to be under the tuition of her father in the palace, and was to share with the Princess Anne the Greek lessons of Sinapi.
Several specimens have been preserved of her compositions about this time, which indicate a very remarkable amount of acquirement. Various passages have have been quoted by her biographers with perhaps more of admiration than they merit. They were received by her contemporaries with the most unbounded and hyperbolical applause; and the modern narrators of her career seem to have taken the tone of the high–flown eulogies of these productions which they have found on record. But in reading things of this kind, of Cisalpine production, much allowance must always be made for the prevalent habit of undiscriminating and exaggerated laudation, arising from the ever–present influence of municipal rivalry. The "nul aura de l'esprit, hors nous et nos amis," principle was always at work. To a Ferrara man, Olympia was our Olympia,—"gloria Ferraræ; patriæ decus," &c., and was to be made the most of accordingly. But, secondly, still more allowance must be made for the strong tendency of the literary culture of that period in Italy to regard the form rather than the matter. Artistic love for the beauties of language leads the literary world of Italy, even at the present day, to attach an undue measure of importance to diction and style, at the expense of subject–matter. And at the flood–tide of the classical mania of the sixteenth century, correctness of classic phraseology, and perfection of mimicry of the ancients, was the alpha and omega of excellence.
And in these respects the writings of Olympia are truly remarkable. The amount of acquaintance with the classics then most in vogue, the familiarity with their modes of thinking, and the mastery of their language, attained by a girl of from fourteen to sixteen, are really astonishing. Thus we have an essay on Mutius Scævola in Greek; a defence of Cicero against some of his detractors; and, more remarkable still, lectures (!) on the paradoxes of that author.
Of the whole picture, such as we are able to realise it, of this bright and beautiful Olympia, ambitious of praise, triumphant, full of fervid poetic enthusiasm, and love of the beautiful, enchanting all eyes, and charming all ears,—approaching, one may fancy, in social position, some Siddons or Mars more nearly than any other existence known to our times; of the whole picture, these public lectures, or declamations, seem to our notions the strangest feature. Let the inmates of our "Establishments," "Colleges," "Academies," of the most finished and "finishing" category, picture to themselves a young lady of sixteen called on to lecture before an audience, composed of all the court circle, and most learned Dons of Ferrara, on the Paradoxes of Cicero!—improvising her declamation, too, in Latin and Greek, if we may believe her friend Curio, writing many years afterwards, with the enthusiastic admiration of these exhibitions still strong within him.
"Then," writes he, "we used to hear her declaiming in Latin, improvising in Greek, explaining the paradoxes of the greatest orators, and answering to all the questions addressed to her."[56]
It is evident that these public performances were considered among the most important and valuable parts of a complete education, from the instructions still extant, which Morato gave in writing to his daughter about the time when she left his roof to reside under that of Duchess Renée.
Here are some of the admonitions which a fond and anxious father deemed most important to be impressed on a daughter about to leave her paternal roof for the first time.
"A matron, before leaving her bower, consults her mirror and her favourite maid to know with what look and air she is about to appear in society. The human voice ought to act in like manner. A speaker should use his lips as bridles to his words, raising or lowering his tones, and giving them delicacy or sonority as he opens his lips more or less.
"Virgil, Cæsar, Brutus, Cicero, excelled in the art of elocution. Minerva, Mercury, the Muses, the harmony of the spheres, the chords of the lyre, Apollo, the king of song, echo, which repeats our voices,—are not all these images of the multiplicity of tone of which the human voice is capable? What man does not listen with pleasure to accents pure and harmonious? The guardian of the infernal gate, Cerberus himself, is appeased by them. The wheel of Ixion at the sound of a sweet voice stands still!"
Humph! It does not quite please one!—rings mighty hollow, at least on the Teutonic ear, all this about Minerva, Mercury, Apollo, king of song, and the wheel of Ixion! Was that worthy old sixteenth–century schoolmaster really and truly scooped and hollowed out by perpetual droppings from Helicon into an empty shell resounding classicalities, and mere togaed simulacrum of a Roman of the Augustan age? To the Teutonic imagination, the picture thus far realised of our Olympia, seems to present an altogether scenic personage, prepared for purposes of representation, slender, graceful figure, draped in long white muslin robes, with beautifully eloquent upraised arm, "Andres athenaioi" on her lovely lips, and background of gleaming marble porticoes, and grey–green olive groves behind,—the cloudless blue above, and bluer Egean in the distance! A truly charming picture! And yet this nineteenth century of ours would be sorely puzzled to what good use to put the original, if we had her among us, for any other than mere academic drawing–school purposes.
Not a principal "in any establishment," of howsoever slight "finishing" pretensions, but would at once, on most cursory examination, pronounce our poor Olympia an entire failure as a specimen of female education, a mistake from beginning to end, good only as an example of what should be avoided.
Several of the lectures, or declamations, pronounced by her before the learned world of Ferrara, have been preserved. Here is a specimen of the introductory portion of one of them.[57]
"I well know the rarely equalled benevolence of my audience; yet the timidity natural to my age, joined to the feebleness of my talents, fills me with reasonable alarm. I tremble, and remain voiceless, like the rhetorician who steps up to the altar at Lyons[58]—
"'Ceu Lugdunensem rhetor dicturus ad aram.'
"However, you command, and I will obey; for no sacrifice is more agreeable to God than that of a willing obedience. I submit myself, therefore, to this trial for the third time, like an artist unskilled in his art, who can make nothing of a coarse–grained marble. But if you offer a block of Parian to his chisel, he will no longer deem his work valueless. The beauty of the material will give value to his production. Perhaps it will be so with mine. There are strains so rich in melody and harmony, that even when reproduced by the most miserable instrument, they yet retain all their charm. Such are the words of my favourite author. Listen to them. They will lose nothing of their grace and majesty even in passing from my lips."
Those who were present at those performances thought that the words gained much, on the contrary, in passing from those lips. Nothing seems to have excited the admiration and approbation of her contemporaries more than these public declamations. "One might have fancied that one was listening to one of the learned virgins of Greece or Rome, to whom, indeed, she may be justly compared!"[59] cries one enthusiastic hearer.
"The young girls of thy age," writes another, "pluck spring flowers from the meadows to weave them into many–coloured chaplets. But thou gatherest no flowerets doomed ere long to fade and die, but selectest the immortal amaranths from the abounding gardens of the Muses, whose altogether divine privilege it is never more to wither, but gain beauty from time, and flourish ever more greenly as it passes."[60]
Poor old Giraldi sends her Latin verses from his gout–tormented bed.
"Thou'rt all fair and brightly glowest,
As in years and lore thou growest,
In the Virtue's court, young maid,
Which Renée's fair virgins tread,
And the sister Muses nine.
Happy he, whom speech of thine
Warms and gladdens! happier yet
Parents that did thee beget,
And named Olympia! happiest he—
Should fate to man such bliss decree—
Whose bride thou shalt consent to be.
And e'en I, though old 'tis true,
Have my share of pleasure too,
While to soothe my gouty pains
Such a damsel's smile remains."[61]
To all this homage was added the affectionate kindness and liking of the Duchess, Olympia's sovereign and mistress. She had, apparently after she had been at the court about a couple of years, an illness which made it desirable for her to return to her father's house, though it was with difficulty, we are told,[62] that Renée could make up her mind to part with her. Her absence was not long, and the following letter from the Greek professor, John Sinapi (he too, be it observed, in passing, "of very unwholesome smell;" so vain were poor Duke Hercules' efforts to keep a purely orthodox household), indicates the high place occupied by Olympia in the favour of the court.
"All here are greatly delighted to know that you are re–established and out of the doctor's hands. Settle at once with your father the day and the manner of your return among us. The Princess has declared that it will be a great pleasure to her to see you again, be it brought about how it may. She places at your disposition the litter in which you were carried to your father's house. Only arrange with your father your return, in whatever manner you may find most agreeable and speediest."
With her companion and fellow–student, the Princess Anne, she lived on terms of the most affectionate intimacy. A durable friendship grew up between them; and a letter written many years afterwards by Olympia to her old playmate, gives a pleasing idea of the sort of companionship which existed between the two young girls.
"You remember," she writes, "how familiarly we lived together, notwithstanding you were my sovereign and liege lady, and for how many years the companionship lasted; how all our studies were in common, and how the pursuit of them continually increased the affection which had grown up between us."
Surely here was enough to "spoil" any young lady in her teens, if homage, flattery, applause, admiration, excited and gratified vanity, had spoiling power!
And Olympia stepped upon the pedestal set for her with all the youthful audacity of conscious genius. They all told her, that she was a tenth muse, and she accepted the part with exulting confidence, that it was in truth that for which kind nature had best fitted her. Hear her own joyous profession of faith, as standing there in the pride and grace of her beauty before a courtly, gay, and learned circle, she mouthed it forth in sonorous Greek verse, harmoniously flowing with the pure young voice amid a burst of enthusiastic applause, the echoes of which have sounded across three hundred years.
Done into homely English the rhymes fall sadly flat. But the meaning may correctly be gathered as thus:[63]
"No joy is still a joy to all mankind,
For Jove hath given to each a different mind!
Castor and Pollux by a different aim,
Though twin–born brothers, seek the path to fame.
And I, though woman, womanly gear have left,
Distaff and threads, and work–basket and weft!
The Muses' haunts, Parnassus' flowery hill,
These have been all my joy, these shall be still.
For other pleasures other maids have sighed,
These are my glory, these my joy and pride."
The hexameters and pentameters are quite as good, and no better, than our English schools, after sufficient years spent in minutely copying from the model, can supply, if need were, in any quantity to order.
Poor Olympia! The highly competent principle of that finishing establishment, to whose experienced judgment we have already had occasion to refer, would arch her awful brows more highly than ever over her gold double eye–glasses, it is to be feared, at these shockingly unfeminine sentiments, τἁ θηλυκἁ λεϊπον," "taken leave of your feminalities"! Miss Morata! If I am rightly informed of your meaning, unhappily it would indeed seem so! A very unfortunately situated young woman! Altogether devoid too of religious principle, as I am told; and as indeed might have been guessed without telling!
Not improbably there may have been ladies too in Ferrara who commented on the young muse much to the same purpose. But Olympia trod her bright path exultingly, scattering poesies and gathering triumphs, serenely indifferent to the justification quarrels, and free–will perplexities which were distracting the world around her, serenely worshipping beauty amid her muse–haunted attic shades in undeniably heathenish and pagan fashion.
Poor Olympia! "Malignant fate sate by and smiled." But some better ruler of the destinies than any malignant fate smiled also. The "Theluka" were after all not left very far behind. They will all be forthcoming in due time, these saucily abused feminalities, at the quickening trumpet–blast of the fairy knight appointed to the adventure of breathing the soul of womanhood into our Undine–like muse.