"The whirligig of time brings in his revenges."—Still Undine.—The "salvation" question stands over.
In the winter of 1542–3 Charles V. was in Italy, returning from his unsuccessful expedition against Algiers. As usual, the sovereigns of Italy were all on the alert to do homage to their great "barbarian" master; buzzing about him, to beg "investitures,"—to plead for pardon in respect of deeds done in contempt of their allegiance as soon as his back was turned,—to complain one against the other, and in general to kotoo the great man, and express by all means their own flunkyhood.
Even octogenarian Paul III. thought it necessary to travel in mid–winter to meet the Emperor in the neighbourhood of Bologna. Paul was anxious about the great council now at last in earnest on the point of being summoned; was very desirous of sounding the Emperor's mind, and getting, if possible, at his real views upon the subject; and thought, perhaps, that some good might be done by having an opportunity of ear–wigging him respecting sundry matters connected with it.
Charles had promised to meet him at Busseto; and the old Pope had travelled as far as Parma towards the place of meeting. But the Emperor kept him waiting there in vain, remaining himself the while in Genoa.
Very near the spot, where the octogenarian Pope was, in the depth of winter, awaiting the pleasure of the Emperor, there had taken place, some five hundred years before, another meeting between an Emperor and a Pope, of which the circumstances had been somewhat different. And it may be supposed that the vicinity of that world–famous Canossa castle can hardly have failed to suggest some very disagreeable comparisons to the mind of the pontiff. Then it had been the Emperor, who had waited the good pleasure of the priest, standing there for three days' space bareheaded among the snow. Those were the good old days, eh, your Holiness! But then, that grand old Hildebrand, you see, really did think and believe, without any manner of doubt, that he absolutely was God's vicar on earth;—in some sense, indeed, truly was so. And that makes all the difference in the matter. Whereas your Holiness, in this sixteenth century, you know, between ourselves ... must put the best face you can upon the matter, swallow your indignation as best you may, and turn your face homewards.
Pope Paul did so; and determined on returning to Bologna by way of Ferrara, very much to the annoyance of Duke Hercules.[64] It was not that there was not plenty of business to be transacted between the Pope and the Duke. But the successor of St. Peter travelled in a manner that made the honour of being his host a very serious consideration. Duke Hercules was much given to splendid hospitality, was fond, generally, of magnificence, and of occasions for display. But he had already borne the entire expense of the Pope's passage through Modena on his way northwards, and was not anxious to do the honours of his capital to such a visitor on such a scale as he felt he must do them, if they were to be done at all.
In the first place "Servus servorum" travelled with a suite of three thousand persons, among whom were eighteen cardinals, forty bishops, and a whole posse of ambassadors and princes. He brought with him fourteen hundred horses, which seem few enough to drag and carry all these ecclesiastical dignitaries and their followers over the roads of Italy as they then were. Then festivals, gala doings temporal and spiritual, spectacles and celebrations of all sorts must be provided, and cash disbursed on all sides. A magnificent state barge,—a bucentaur, as the chroniclers call it, such as that in which the Venetian doge went out to wed the Adriatic—was sent up the Po to the nearest point to Parma, together with a whole fleet of other boats to bring the Pope and his enormous following down the river.
The famous villa of Belvidere was to be the Pope's resting place the first night after entering the Duke's territories. This was a pleasure–palace of the Dukes of Ferrara, built on an island in the Po, which was entirely occupied by it and the superb gardens attached to it. The recorders of the Ferrarese magnificences are never tired of describing the splendours of Belvidere, its marble quays and stairs from the water's edge, its courts, its fountains (which necessarily, as Frizzi remarks, must have been worked by machinery), its walls, glowing with the frescoes of the best masters of the Ferrara school, and, above all, its enchanting—if not, as Tasso describes them, enchanted—gardens. For these ducal pleasure–grounds furnished, it is said, the model whence the poet drew his well–known description of the gardens of Armida.
The next day there is the usual ceremony of the state entry into the city. The cannon fire, and the bells ring; the crown prince Alphonso, with an hundred youths, chiefly of the students of the University, bring the keys of the city in a golden basin to the feet of his Holiness, who kisses the prince on the forehead. Then he has to hear an oration, then to be carried in a chair on men's shoulders all round the city, blessing all the way, till his arm is ready to drop off, then to "attend service" at the Cathedral—(adorned for the occasion by four pieces of arras belonging to the Duke, valued at sixty thousand crowns, some three hundred thousand pounds sterling, at least, of our present money!)—then to hear more orations; and then, it is to be hoped, to be put to bed. For in truth, for an octogenarian Servus servorum, such a day's work must have been harder than that of most of his masters.
The next day the Duchess has to do her share of the hard work, and with seventy–two ladies all on horseback, and all dressed in black and gold, and twenty–two cars full of other ladies following them, "made several circuits of the city."
But the grand day was the third, which happened to be the festival of St. George, the patron saint of Ferrara. The Pope had to do pontifical mass in the cathedral to begin with. After dinner, he was present at a tournament held in his honour. And after supper the "Adelphi" of Terence was performed before him and all the great folks assembled, by the sons and daughters of the Duke, and doubtless also by our Olympia.
Muratori, in his "Antiquities of the House of Este," rehearses the different parts sustained by the three princesses and their two brothers, but says nothing of the share Olympia had in the fête. But this, of course, is quite in accordance with the natural instincts of a court historian. It is likely enough, however, that the poor schoolmaster's daughter, who would most assuredly have eclipsed her fellow comedians, was not permitted to have the opportunity of committing such a solecism. But it is impossible that such a business could have been afoot in the court of Ferrara, and that Olympia should not have had a leading share in the guidance of it, behind if not before the curtain.
As a detached bit of sixteenth century life, brought up out of the dark past, and made to flit for a moment before our vision by history's magic lanthorn, it is a pretty and striking scene enough, and interestingly characteristic of tastes and manners,—this venerable (looking) octogenarian pontiff, with his eighteen cardinals and forty bishops, &c., sitting there to hear a group of royal children, of whom the youngest was only five years old, declaim the rough comedy of ancient Rome! Little Luigi, sustained the part of a slave, Muratori tells us; and had not, we must suppose, much to say.
Amid all these festivities and amusements the Pope and the Duke had to find time for long colloquies, the subjects of which, we are told, were kept secret, but which may be easily divined.
The old investiture difficulty was not settled yet; and the new inquisition had to be established in Ferrara. Here, then, the proposed body and soul arrangement, might, one would think, have been brought to a settlement. But, as usual, the Duke assented to the proposed new and more complete abandonment of his own and his subjects' right to their own souls, but by no means obtained the temporal advantages he was so desirous of in return.
There were other matters, too, of very really important, but altogether material interest, to be debated between the Duke and the father of the faithful. All the rich cities, with their fertile territories, which are situated in the lower part of the great valley of the Po, have suffered from the earliest historic times, and to the present day still suffer from very great difficulty in getting rid of the waters brought down to them from the higher country by the Po itself, and sundry other rivers. As usual in the compensatory processes of nature, the same causes have produced their prosperity, and the circumstances which tend to diminish it. The whole of the wonderfully fertile region in question is alluvial soil of extremely recent formation. Very numerous and exceedingly curious discoveries, made at different times within the last two centuries at various points, extending over the whole district from Modena to the Adriatic, prove that the country has been at former times inhabited, when the surface of the soil was from four to ten or more feet lower than it is at the present day. On the left bank of the Brenta, near Fusina, a mosaic pavement, and other Roman remains, were found in situ at a level now two feet and a half below that of the mean height of the Adriatic. And a great variety of similar facts have been placed on record,[65] which satisfactorily prove that the level of the sea has been raised, pari passu, with that of the adjoining low lands.
The result of the process thus always going on is, that an exceedingly small margin of difference between the level of the land and that of the sea remains to render possible the discharge of the waters from the mouths of the different rivers. The fertilising materials, which are brought down from the Apennines in vast quantities, not only tend to raise the general level of the district, but also, and with much greater rapidity, to raise the beds of the rivers, and obstruct their course. From a very early period, this evil has been met by the inhabitants by constructing lofty banks along the courses of their rivers. The more the bed of the stream became raised in the process of time, the higher these moles had to be built to follow it, till some of the rivers now traverse large districts of country in a perfectly artificial canal, constructed upon, instead of in, the face of the soil. Near Ferrara itself, the surface of the Po is now higher, it is said, than the highest building in the city.
In such a state of things, it may easily be imagined how important a public concern was, and still is, the maintenance and regulation of these vast artificial banks, and how vital a question the management of the waters of those secondary streams, which contribute their volume to the mass that threatens the lower country.
Then, again, the disputes inevitably arising from the conflicting interests of adjacent districts, in this respect, were further complicated by differences of an exactly opposite kind. For the waters, which, under certain conditions, were agents of destruction, which all were eager to escape at the expense of their neighbours, were, under other circumstances, creators of fertility and wealth, which all sought to appropriate to their own advantage.
Thus the Reno, which comes from the Apennines above Bologna, and is one of the most important of the tributaries of the Lower Po, had been modified in its course by embankments, which tended to divert its waters from the extensive rice grounds of Bologna and Imola, and bring them into the Ferrarese branch of the Po, which the people of that city at that time feared would, from the encumberment of its bed, soon become unnavigable.[66]
Here then was matter for interminable dispute and negotiation between the two governments,—disputes, too, which, in the hands of their more immediately interested subjects, gave rise to perpetual acts of lawless violence, to quarrels, and, on more than one occasion, even to pitched battles between commune and commune. For in the season of the floods, when the ruin of a whole district from anticipated inundation might be prevented by the cutting of an embankment, and thus averting the devastation from one's own to one's neighbour's fields; or when, in the summer, the fertilising stream, precious as a Pactolus, was insufficient for all the demands upon it, it could hardly be expected that such acts should not be resorted to, especially when, from the undecided condition of all the questions concerning the law of the case, either party honestly believed themselves to be in the right.
Thus, thrice in the course of the year 1542, the embankments of the Reno had been cut through in the night–time,[67] and it was whispered that the Duke himself was the instigator of the deed,—an opinion, which was strengthened by the evident unwillingness of the authorities to discover and punish the offenders.
But in this matter of the waters, as in the other affair, the Duke had to concede all and obtain nothing. The Pope deferred his decision till his return to Rome, and then gave sentence in his own favour, by awarding to the Bolognese all the advantages in dispute.
Olympia continued to be an inmate of the palace for about five years after the memorable visit of Pope Paul to Ferrara: five more happy sunshine years of Undine–Muse existence. The public declamations, the triumphs, the homage of the learned,[68] the interchange of complimentary poetry, the heathen philosophisings on Scipio's dream, and such like matters, went on as before. A more brilliant creature than this beautiful young priestess in the Temple of Minerva, or a sunnier existence, it is impossible to conceive. But had her life reached its term before the end of this summer–tide period, she would not have left behind her the fair claim to be remembered as one of the noblest types on record of true womanly excellence, which she afterwards made good. The depths of her moral nature slept like an unstirred lake, while the intellectual portion of her being was in full and energetic activity. And the subsequent completion of a noble character by the awakening of her soul at that fire–touch, which is woman's true Prometheus spark, shows us a psychological study of great beauty and interest.
But a very noteworthy indication of the genuineness of her nature, of the sincere simplicity of her enthusiasm and Muse–ship, and the sympathetic loveableness of her character, is to be found in the fact, that in the midst of her triumphant career, while she was the cynosure of all male eyes, and the object of so much male admiration, she formed the most durable and loving friendships with all that was best and noblest in the female world around her.
The attachment which existed between her and the companion of her studies, Anne d'Este, has been mentioned. It must have been at an early period of her residence at the court, that she and one of the ladies of the Duchess, Francesca Bucyronia, were drawn together rather by a similarity of qualities of heart than of intellectual pursuits. The learned German, John Sinapi, Olympia's Greek master, and second father, as she considered him, had also discovered the good qualities of Francesca, and induced her to leave the sunny skies of her own Italy and accompany him to Germany as his wife. The friendship which had been formed between the two young women in the bright springtide of their existence was life–long, and became strengthened in their after life under less brilliant skies, and in less brilliant fortunes.
Another friendship, of perhaps a yet closer and more intimate kind, was that which sprung up between Olympia and the Princess Lavinia della Rovere. This daughter of the Ducal family of Urbino had recently married Paolo Orsini, when, at the court of Ferrara, she became acquainted with Olympia. Lavinia, says the historian of her husband's family,[69] "was a lady of most excellent and cultivated mind, inasmuch as, besides her other rare and excellent qualities, she was devoted to philosophy and the other branches of profane literature;" "alla filosofia, e all'altre belle lettere humane." This, too, was a friendship for life; and, despite the wide difference in the social standing and circumstances of the two friends, was one, in which the most perfect equality of affection placed these two natures—highly gifted both—in the relative position to each other, which their respective calibre of intellect made the fitting and natural one, of guide and guided, as is seen from the letters of Olympia in after life.
The remarkable limitation in Sansovino's above quoted eulogy to excellence in philosophy and profane literature, would seem to imply that Lavinia, at the time of which the writer is speaking, had paid no attention to the theological questions which were agitating the world. It may be, that the orthodox historian of the house of Orsini merely intended to indicate in a manner reflecting as little scandal as might be on the family of his patron, that in the province of religion there was little good to be said of the lady Lavinia. Either meaning on the part of a good Catholic would have done her little wrong at the time of her companionship with Olympia at the court of Ferrara.
The general movement of mind, and the ventilation of theological questions which was stirring society from the monk's cell to the lady's bower, had produced on both the friends a destructive, but as yet no constructive result. They had ceased to believe the incredibilities taught by the Church; and their emancipation had brought them to a state,—if not of entirely comfortable and contented indifferentism, yet to one of unanxious infidelity, in which their meditations were rather curious speculations, than struggles for vital truth.
This state of mind is clearly indicated by passages of Olympia's letters of an after period, joined to the traces yet left of her pre–occupations and studies at that time. Writing after her own mind had attained firm convictions, she exhorts her friend to "lay aside that old error, which formerly induced us to think that, before calling on God, it was necessary to know whether we had been from eternity elected by him. Rather let us, as he commands us, first implore his mercy, and then, when we have done so, we shall know of a certainty, that we are of the number of elect."
It is needless now–a–days to stop to point out how this method of defending the tenets of Calvinism consists in simply abandoning them. The use of the passage quoted is only to show, that when the two friends had talked of these things together at Ferrara, they had been prevented from adopting the reformer's faith by these perplexities.
And this difficulty of finding the way to any firm standing ground of conviction was not a cause of unhappiness or struggle to these pure young hearts. Witness Olympia's subsequent opinion of her then state of mind.
"Had I remained longer at court," she writes[70] to her earliest friend Celia Curione, "it would have been all over with me and my salvation. For never while I remained there, could I attain the knowledge of aught lofty or divine, or read the books of either Testament."
The two young women talked of these subjects, soon discovered that they sympathised in utter alienation from the faith of the Church, compared their difficulties as to the new doctrines in vogue, and turned to the more congenial subjects of pagan philosophy and Augustan literature;—Olympia, for example, to the amusement of translating into the language of Cicero a couple of the fables of Boccaccio.
They are the first and second of the entire Decameron; a circumstance which looks as if it had been the translator's intention to proceed with the work. But they are such as to make the selection of them, if they were selected, sufficiently indicative of the tone of thinking and speaking of Church matters in those secret inner women's chambers of the Ferrara palace, which the Duke found it so impossible to purify from the heretical smell.
In the first place it may be observed, that the two "Novelle" in question are free from the indecency which marks so many of the collection. But they are among those which hit hardest the ecclesiastical shortcomings and absurdities of the age. In the first Ser Ciappelletto, who is described as one of the most worthless scoundrels who ever lived, sends for a friar when on his death–bed, and makes such a confession of all sorts of virtues, under the guise of remorseful dissatisfaction at the imperfection of them, that the confessor has him buried in a costly tomb at the expense of his convent, where his body forthwith begins to work miracles in the most satisfactory manner. The author, as if afraid of the telling force of his own satire, and the conclusions to which it naturally points, finishes by remarking, that after all it is impossible to deny that Ser Ciappelletto may have become San Ciappelletto in the other world by force of a sincere, even though momentary repentance in the last instants of his life!
The second story tells how a rich Jew was induced by a Christian friend to go to Rome for the purpose of examining Christianity at its fountain head, with a view to conversion in case conviction of the truth should reach his mind. The Jew notes well all that he can see and hear in the capital of Christianity, returns, and is baptised at once, alleging that nothing but divine miraculous interposition could possibly enable a religion preached and maintained by such men and such means to subsist and find credence among mankind.
We can easily imagine, that such fun as this would be well relished with all the zest of forbidden fruit in the young Muse's classical version by the initiated set of erudite freethinkers, male and female, that made the circle of the Duchess of Renée. But Boccaccio is not the author, to whom Calvin, or even Celio Curione would have recommended one struggling with religious doubts and difficulties to resort. Nor can we doubt that Olympia, while thus occupying herself, was in that state of religious indifferentism, which she subsequently as we have seen, regarded as one of perdition.
Another extant fragment of her composition, which is marked by its subject as belonging to the last year of her court life, places her before us, still as the heathen Muse, drawing all her inspiration and her imagery from pagan sources, even on an occasion which might seem by its nature to require, if merely as a matter of art, a Christian treatment.
Cardinal Bembo died on the 18th of February 1547; and his loss, keenly felt by the literary world in all parts of Italy, was especially lamented in Ferrara, where he had been so well known and highly valued by all the learned society gathered there. Bembo was, it is true, a Churchman of the old school of Leo X.'s easy going days, who found more pleasure in reading Plato than St. Paul, and liked Cicero infinitely better than the vulgate. Though inclined in all ways to liberal opinions, he probably would have had as little disposition to meddle in the controversy between the old and new theology, as many a greek–play–learned Bishop of George III's time, would have felt to be made moderator between the "high" and "low" schools of our own day. Cardinal as he was, he might no doubt have been permitted to be present at any of those little gatherings of the unorthodox, under the rose, in the apartments of the Duchess, without danger to any of the set; and if he had there heard Olympia's Boccaccio translations, he would have laughed at the fun, and been delighted with the classical latinity as much as any there. And this aspect of very mildly ecclesiastical literary Mæcenas–ship was doubtless that under which the amiable and generally beloved Cardinal had appeared to Olympia.
Yet, had her mind not been still in 1547 wholly uninfluenced by any deep religious impressions, she would not have written on the death of a prince of the Church in so thoroughly a heathen spirit as that of the following lines:[71]
"Bembo, the great light of the sea–girt queen,
The Muse's glory, Bembo hath gone hence;
Nor left his equal 'mong the sons of men
In noble deeds, or witching eloquence.
For Tully's self, with Hermes by his side,
Recross'd the Stygian flood, when Bembo died."
Such as may be gathered from these productions and occupations, and from her own subsequent reminiscences, were Olympia's thoughts and views of life and death up to this her twenty–first year. To her, indeed, whose being had as yet been stirred by no deeper feeling than gratified love of approbation, congenial friendship, and enthusiasm for her favourite studies, the age in which she was living might have appeared one of "renaissance," as it has since been discovered to have been. Not because she was able to look out far, but because her view was as yet so circumscribed. The social earthquake which was heaving the world around her, had not yet awakened her from her dream–life among "the haunts of the Muses."
Her talk with Lavinia della Rovere on the great topics which were agitating the world, election, grace, free will, and justification, was only such as may serve curiously to indicate how thoroughly the general mind must have been saturated with speculations on such subjects, when two girls, neither of them feeling strongly on the matter, could not meet and make friends without diversifying their Boccaccio readings and Ciceronian studies with chat on the difficulties of predestination. The outside air must have been very highly charged with an electricity of thought that boded stormful changes. For the meeting and shock of large masses of human thought always is a portent indicating that much change is at hand. Absence of much thought is an indispensable condition of stability.
But the time was now come when Olympia was to be waked from her Helicon dreams, and to be summoned very suddenly to descend from her calm Parnassus heights, step out into this storm–atmosphere, and find herself under circumstances wholly unknown to "Apollo and the Æonian maids."
Dark days.—The great question begins to be answered.
In 1548 Peregrino Morato fell ill. The master's chair was empty; the scholar's desks,—those school–like looking desks, which we may still see sculptured on the monumental stones of old sixteenth century professors in academic Bologna—were vacant; the last new edition issued by Aldus, beautiful with the delicately–cut types of Francesco de Bologna, and damp from the press of neighbouring Venice, remained half–cut; and the wearied scholar, old, we are told,[72] and broken down before his time, lay on his poor pallet.
Olympia hurried from the court to her father's bedside. It was the first call to her of painful duty, a great epoch in every life! Suddenly from the midst of her bright–hued dream–life, her "Muses' haunts," and gay poetical imaginings, she was called to face some of the sternest realities, that post themselves like sentinels inevitable in the smoothest path of mortal existence. Suffering to be ended only by dissolution,—the mysterious departure of the loved one for that dim uncertain cloudland, the existence and nature of which have hardly hitherto been realised, but which henceforward will be invested with all the interest attaching to the home of those who have been our home–mates,—the newness of that solitude that first teaches the startled heart the meaning of those dreary words, never! never more!—these are the divining rods that first reveal the hidden wealth dormant beneath the flower–decked surface of many a gifted nature.
Olympia's loving watch by the bedside of her father was considerably prolonged, as he sank gradually to his rest; and finally closed his eyes tranquil in the assurance that the position which his Olympia's rare talents and acquirements had attained for her, would enable her to be the stay and protectress of her three young sisters and younger brother.
But while this scene was passing in the humble home of the worn–out scholar, events of a very different sort were in progress in the palace home she had so recently left.
Anne D'Este, Olympia's friend and companion, though five years her junior, was now seventeen. And her father, the Duke, who had in the earlier part of this year been to Turin for the purpose of meeting there Henry II. of France, the nephew of the Duchess Renée, had then arranged with the King a marriage between her and Francis of Lorraine, afterwards well known to history as the Duc de Guise. On the return of Duke Hercules to Ferrara the marriage was solemnised on the 29th of July, 1548, Louis of Bourbon standing proxy for the bridegroom. "The citizens of Ferrara," we are told,[73] "were not altogether well pleased with this marriage; but they constrained themselves to put on an air of festivity." There was but little of this, we may be sure, or we should have had the usual accounts of feastings and processions, with the details of the dishes and the dresses, and the cost thereof. The marriage seems to have been done with business–like simplicity; and the young Princess, regretted by a whole city, "who," says Muratori,[74] "loved and reverenced her beyond all belief," was sent off, to find shortly enough,—she too, as well as her old playmate,—that life had other things in store for her than classical philosophy and dilettante poetry. The Duke, her father, accompanied her as far as the frontier of his states, her mother and two sisters as far as Mantua, and certain ladies of the court as far as Grenoble; and there, the links of the chain that bound her to her home having been thus gradually severed, she was launched into the strange life before her.
Thus, when Olympia had paid the last duties to her father, and returned to the palace, her friend was no longer there, and she found herself dismissed under circumstances that showed her to have fallen under the displeasure of the Duke. This blow followed the other so closely that Olympia admits herself to have been beaten down to the ground by them. And in truth the burden suddenly laid on those young shoulders, which had never yet learned that life had any burdens which could gall the bearer, was a heavy one. A sick mother, three young sisters, and an infant brother in that poverty–stricken mourning home, all looking up to Olympia, the pride of the family, the admired, successful Olympia, the inmate of the palace, whose friends and intimate companions were the great ones of the land, and she driven forth into the cold shade of disgrace, just at the moment when there was so much need that some gleams from the brilliant sunshine of her prosperity should have cheered the cold home of the widow and orphaned sisters;—the burden was a heavy one for that young heart, making her first acquaintanceship with sorrow.
But Olympia struggled bravely with her difficulties.[75] "Haunts of the Muses," and brilliant heathen Undine–life were all left far behind; and that salvation question began to be answered.
The cause of Olympia's disgrace is not clearly apparent. M. Bonnet, who writes her biography with the sympathy of a co–religionist, attributes[76] it to the evil machinations of one Jerome Bolsec, a name of very ill savour in the annals of Calvinistic Protestantism. The suspicion that Bolsec had a hand in this, as in so much other mischief, would seem to rest on some phrases from a letter of John Sinapi to Calvin, cited by M. Bonnet from the inedited correspondence of that intolerant Geneva pope. But the few words given do not seem at all conclusive on the subject. It may be that the context is more so.
Jerome Hermes Bolsec was at all events a very sorry knave, capable enough of any wickedness of the sort. He had been a Carmelite monk at Paris, and having got into trouble by unorthodox preaching there, fled across the mountains, says Bayle,[77] "to Renée of France, Duchess of Ferrara, the common asylum of those who were persecuted for adhering to the new doctrines." The Duchess made him her almoner, as we learn from Sinapi. And Bayle says that he married and practised as a physician at Ferrara, till he was exiled for some unknown cause. He went thence to Geneva, and there had the fatal misfortune to differ from Calvin on some points of doctrine. In one of his pastorals to the Swiss churches, the latter recounts how one day at sermon time "this rogue got up and said ... that men are not saved because they are elect, but are elect because they believe, and that no man is damned by the mere decree of God—nudo Dei placito—but those only who have by their own acts deprived themselves of the election common to all." Whereupon, says Theodore Beza,[78] Calvin "so confuted him, belaboured him, overwhelmed him with testimony from holy writ, passages from St. Augustin, and weighty arguments, that all present, except the brazen–faced monk himself, were ashamed of the figure he cut." Plenty of reason for being ashamed of themselves for all parties concerned doubtless. But Calvin, who was not wont to be contented with mere argumentative belabouring of those who disagreed with him, had him forthwith hauled off to prison, and finally banished from the Canton, as he might have anticipated, when he ventured on the dangerous enterprise of attacking the pet tenet of the Geneva pope's tremendous devil worship.
Bolsec went to Berne, but Calvin's resentment followed him there, and finally harried him out of Switzerland. So he returned to his old faith to spite the reformers, and published lives of Beza and Calvin filled with calumnies so gross that even the controversialists of the Romish Church have admitted their falsehood, and given up Jerome Bolsec as a discredit to either or any party.
It may be admitted then that this "most slippery fellow, Almoner to the Court of Ferrara, by your leave," as Sinapi calls him,—vaferrimus in aulâ Ferrariense, si diis placet, Eleemosynarius,—was capable enough of making mischief, if his ill passions prompted him to do so. But as he was on his Protestant tack when under the protection of the Duchess, it hardly seems probable that he should have practised against Olympia by denouncing her as a heretic to the Catholics. Yet it seems plain[79] that her shortcomings in the matter of orthodoxy were the real cause of her disgrace at court. The Duchess, who, as has been seen, was much attached to her, did not, we are told, attempt to interfere in her favour. And the most probable explanation of this abandonment is to be found in the supposition, that the suspicion and ill–repute under which the Duchess herself laboured in the matter of religion, made the danger of openly defending an heretical delinquent greater than she was willing to meet.
"The Duke," writes M. Bonnet,[80] "urged as he had been for some time past to give proofs of his fidelity to the Apostolic See, watched with a jealous eye the different movements of his court. He believed blindly such calumnies as always find a ready echo in a palace. His wrath, increased by the long suppression of his suspicions, burst forth in violence the more terrible. Olympia was the first victim."
The Duchess was herself by no means in a secure position. When a little after the period in question, one Matthew Ori, a Dominican monk, was sent from Paris to Ferrara, as Grand Inquisitor, Henry II. "who knew well enough which foot Renée was lame of,"[81] especially charged him "to heal her." The monk came and did his best, "gaining some ground, as it seemed by his efforts." For "the Duchess feared her husband, and his terrible method of proceeding against those accused of offences in matters of religion."
The Duke's "method" in spiritual affairs became indeed more and more compendious and energetic, as Rome's fears and exigencies became more urgent.
Paul III. died on the 10th of November, 1549, and was succeeded by the Cardinal del Monte, who took the name of Julius III.; an easy and good–natured, though passionate old gentleman, who loved pleasure, quiet, and luxury,—inscribed over the palace he built, "Honeste voluptarier cunctis fas honestis esto!"—"Let all honest men enjoy themselves decently without scruple!"—and troubled himself as little about the business of life as might be.
This was not the sort of man for a persecutor. But the progress of the Inquisition during his reign is a remarkable instance of the degree in which the policy of the Church overrides the individual tendencies of the man who may be the temporary occupant of St. Peter's chair, whenever either the imbecility or the scruples of the latter may seem to endanger the interests of the corporation over which he presides. Whether the moderate, politic, and worldly–minded statesman, Paul III., the poco–curante voluptuary Julius III., or the pure and saintly sage Marcellus II., were pontiff, the crusade against free thought knew no relaxation. Caraffa and his Inquisitors pursued their work at least with zeal and unflagging perseverance. Duke Hercules took his cue readily enough as to the duties of an orthodox prince; and as he had the misfortune of labouring under the ill–repute that attached to a wife of notoriously heretical inclinations, it was all the more necessary that he should prove his attachment to the Holy See by the most unmistakeable zeal for the purity of the faith.
Under these circumstances the arrest of a young man named Fannio, at Faenza, for holding and disseminating heterodox opinions, was a lucky chance to be made the most of.
At first, however, it seemed that he would turn craven, and show no sport. The unhappy man had a wife tenderly attached to him, and her tears and entreaties induced him to recant, and accept his liberty as the price of declaring that he believed what his persecutors and judges knew perfectly well he did not believe. But his life became intolerable to him under such conditions. Though he had forced his tongue to utter the lying words that were the price demanded for his life, he could not live up to his lie; so he "relapsed," was again arrested, and this time thrown into the dungeons of Ferrara.
Some time elapsed, while his "trial" for heresy was going through the regular edifying forms before the tribunal of the Inquisition at Rome. Condemnation was of course perfectly certain; and the terror among the numerous band of more or less suspected Protestants at Ferrara was great. Yet, hazardous as it must have been to attract attention by any such manifestation of sympathy, we are assured,[82] that many visited him in his prison, and "were consoled by his exhortations." It seems strange that such visits should have been permitted. The Inquisition which had thrown him into prison for preaching, could hardly intend that he should have the means of continuing the offence with all the extra prestige of martyrdom. And the fact would seem to indicate, that the "secular arm," or at least those subordinate executive officers of its will who had not the same reasons for being in love with orthodoxy that moved the prince, had little sympathy with the new persecuting tribunal recently established among them, and seconded its intentions as little as might be.
But it is still more surprising to find, that among these clandestine visitors to this poor Fannio in his prison were the lady Lavinia della Rovere and her friend Olympia. Lavinia then dared to remain on terms of intimacy with the disgraced favourite, when all, as she complains deserted her. Lavinia ventured to seek her friend out in her humble home, and risk subjecting herself to the same suspicions which weighed so heavily on Olympia. But surely this dangerous expedition indicates a notable change of mind and feeling in both these young women, since but a year or so ago. It is but a very little time since those conversations, in which the difficulties of the doctrine of predestination prevented the young friends from accepting the religion of the reformers; and since Olympia's state of mind on religious matters was such as to lead her subsequently to think that "it would have been all over with her and her salvation," if she had remained longer at court. And now, after the lapse of a few months, we find the youthful pair sufficiently interested in the faith for which a martyr is about to suffer, to visit him in his dungeon, and "find consolation" from his exhortations!
Or should we rather suppose, that deeper thought, a more serious interest, and ultimate complete adoption of the persecuted faith on the part of Olympia and her friend, were the consequences, rather than the cause of their visit to Fannio in his dungeon; and that mere female compassion and sympathy with a fellow–unbeliever at least, if not as yet a fellow–believer, led them to the prison. It is probable enough, that the first heart–deep seeds of conviction fell into Olympia's mind during that solemn and affecting prison conference. It is a property of persecution to operate thus on generous and noble hearts. The desolate, disheartening, and precarious situation of Olympia's own fortunes, and the severe lesson she had so recently received on the vanity and instability of worldly prosperity, were well calculated to prepare her heart for the martyr's teaching, and open it to the emotional reception of a faith, which, according to the avowal of its adherents, cannot approve itself to the reasoning faculties.
With a strange and solemn authority,—almost as of one speaking from beyond the awful boundary line, he was so soon to cross—the words of that noble heroic man must have sunk deep into the hearts of the young women. For noble and heroic,—let more ignoble natures chatter what trash they may of gratified vanity, obstinacy, and such futilities in the vain attempt to bring down the heroic to their own level,—noble and heroic, with a heroism inferior to none other practicable by man, and wholly unmodified by the intellectual value of the conviction for which a martyr dies—is the soul, that true to its own indefeasible independence refuses, in the face of all the worst the body and the heart lacerated in its affections can suffer, to abdicate its right of self–sovereignty.
And like all noble emotions, it is a contagious heroism. While the terrible circumstances of the place and scene, never to be forgotten by either of them, spoke fearful warning of the not improbable consequences of the nascent convictions even then rising in their minds, their courage was stimulated to confront whatever danger might arise from the exercise of free thought.
So Fannio and Duke Hercules both had their triumph. The martyr hung, burned, and the ashes of his body thrown to the winds in the market–place of Ferrara, died a free man, lord of his own soul, and conscious of having implanted in many another breast the faith for which he suffered. The Duke showed his subjects what came of presuming to have an opinion on matters of faith, secured the approbation of his own conscience, and approved himself a faithful and meritorious son of Holy Mother Church.
It was not however till 1551, some three years after Olympia's disgrace and ejection from the palace, that Fannio was, after long imprisonment, burned on the Piazza of Ferrara, the first, but not the last victim of the Duke's anxiety to conciliate the Church. And we have other indications, besides this notable prison scene, that this time of difficulty and tribulation was a period of rapid spiritual growth to her. It is difficult to imagine a more violent contrast, than that between the brilliant palace life which eight years had made habitual to her, and the pale existence, made up wholly of those elements both so new to her, duties and difficulties, which passed in the narrow home overshadowed by the cloud of disgrace, and tenanted by a helpless family of five women and an infant brother, whose education was one of Olympia's most pleasing duties.
Small space in her day now for polishing Greek and Latin verses, or composing dissertations on the Stoic philosophy! But two fragments of four lines each, one in Latin, and one in Greek, have been preserved, as the productions of this period of her life, passed in quite other "haunts" than those of the Muses. The old classic "Grecian virgin" tone is no longer discoverable in them; and the topics show that her mind was busy with an entirely different order of ideas.
Olympia was now about twenty–three years old, and still single; and interestingly enough the Latin quatrain above mentioned indicates that her mind had been dwelling on the subject in connection with her religious aspirations:—
"Quæ virgo est, nisi mente quoque est et corpore virgo,
Hæc laudem nullam virginitatis habet.
Quæ virgo est, uni Christo nisi tota dicata est,
Hæc Veneris virgo est, totaque mancipium."
Or, in lines as poor and flat as the original, but not more so:—
"The virgin, who is not such in her soul,
Small praise of her virginity can have,
If Christ alone have not her being's whole,
She is but Venus' bondsmaid and her slave."
Curious to note, that the mental daring which had led to rebellion against Church authority on questions of justification and free will, had not strength of wing or originality enough to see the truth in a much simpler matter, detect the fallacy of the Church's entire system of celibacy, and comprehend that there can be nothing meritorious in wilfully abandoning all the most sacred duties of womanhood.
The Greek lines mentioned compare the consolation that an afflicted heart derives from the contemplation of a crucified Saviour, with the healing virtue of the brazen serpent set up by Moses in the wilderness.
Thus passed two years of trouble and sorrow, which left our Undine–Muse a very different being from what she had been before their discipline. That it was painful enough may be read in a letter from her to Celio Curione, in which she looks back on these dark days.
"After my father's death, I remained alone, betrayed, abandoned by those who ought to have supported me, and exposed to the most unjust persecution. My sisters were involved in my misfortune, and received only ingratitude in return for the devotion and services of so many years. How great was my grief under these afflictions you may easily believe. Not one of those we had in other times deemed our friends, dared to manifest the least interest in us; and we were in so deep a pit of adversity, that it appeared impossible for us ever to escape from it."
There was at least one friend who had been tried in the furnace of adversity, and not found wanting, the brave and noble–hearted Lavinia della Rovere. But this exception Curio was able to supply for himself. He knew that Lavinia had remained, and was still the friend and frequent correspondent of Olympia.
Our heroine has thus been brought to her twenty–fourth year. The present is hard and unkindly around her. Suspicion, neglect, and all the anxious ignoble cares attendant on poverty, had by a sudden scene–shifting taken the places of luxurious ease, admiration, flattery, and troops of friends. The future was dark and precarious. The bad times were every day becoming worse for those on whom any taint of heresy had ever rested.
In short, our gifted Muse stood bare and desolate, and shivering in the midst of a very unharmonious world in most sad and pitiable plight.
But the salvation question was beginning to be answered.