FERRARA.
Lovely in its Ruins--Number and Wealth of its Churches--Tasso's
Prison--Renee's Palace--Calvin's Chamber--Influence of Woman on the
Reformation--Renee and her Band--Re-union above--Utter Decay of its
Trade, its Manufactures, its Knowledge.
Even in its ruins Ferrara is lovely. It wears in the tomb the sunset
hues of beauty. Its streets run out in straight lines, and are of noble
breadth and length. Unencumbered with the heavy arcades that darken
Padua, the marble fronts of its palaces rise to a goodly height, covered
with rich but exceedingly sweet and chaste designs. On the stone of
their pilasters and door-posts the ilex puts forth its leaf, and the
vine its grapes; and the carving is as fresh and sharp, in many
instances, as if the chisel were but newly laid aside. But it is
melancholy to see the long grass waving on its causeways, and the ivy
clinging to the deserted doorways and balconies of palatial residences,
and to hear the echoes of one's foot sounding drearily in the empty
street.
I passed the afternoon in visiting the churches. There is no end of
these, and night fell before I had got half over them. It amazes one to
find in the midst of ruins such noble buildings, overflowing with
wealth. Pictures, statuary, marbles, and precious metals, dazzle, and at
last weary, the traveller, and form a strange contrast to the desolate
fields, the undrained swamps, the mouldering tenements, and the beggarly
population, that are collected around them. Of the churches of Ferrara,
we may say as Addison of the shrine of Loretto, "It is indeed an amazing
thing to see such a prodigious quantity of riches lie dead and
untouched, in the midst of so much poverty and misery as reign on all
sides of them. If these riches were all turned into current coin, and
employed in commerce, they would make Italy the most flourishing country
in the world."
Two objects specially invited my attention in Ferrara: the one was the
prison of Tasso,--the other the palace of Renee, the Duchess of Ferrara.
Tasso's prison is a mere vault in the courtyard of the hospital of St
Anna, built up at one end with a brick wall, and closed at the other by
a low and strong door. The floor is so damp that it yields to the foot;
and the arched roof is so low that there is barely room to stand
upright. I strongly doubt whether Tasso, or any other man, could have
passed seven years in this cell and come out alive. It is written all
over within and without with names, some of them illustrious ones.
"Byron" is conspicuous in the crowd, cut in strong square characters in
the stone; and near him is "Lamartine," in more graceful but smaller
letters.
Tasso seems to have regarded his country as a prisoner not less than
himself, and to have strung his harp at times to bewail its captivity.
The dungeon "in which Alphonso bade his poet dwell" was dreary enough,
but that of Italy was drearier still; for it is Italy, fully more than
the poet, that may be regarded as speaking in the following lines, which
furnish evidence that, along with Dante, and all the great minds of the
period, Torquato Tasso had seen the hollowness of the Papal Church, and
felt the galling bondage which that Church inflicts on both the
intellect and the soul.
"O God, from this Egyptian land of woe,
Teeming with idols and their monstrous train,
O'er which the galling yoke that I sustain
Like Nilus makes my tears to overflow,
To thee, her land of rest, my soul would go:
But who, ah! who will break my servile chain?
Who through the deep, and o'er the desert plain
Will aid and cheer me, and the path will show?
Shall God, indeed, the fowls and manna strew,--
My daily bread? and dare I to implore
Thy pillar and thy cloud to guide me, Lord?
Yes, he may hope for all who trusts thy word.
O then thy miracles in me renew;
Thine be the glory, and my boasting o'er."
From the reputed prison of Tasso I went to see the roof which had
sheltered the presiding intellect of the Reformation,--John Calvin.
Tasso's glory is like a star, burning with a lovely light in the deep
azure; Calvin's is like the sun, whose waxing splendour is irradiating
two hemispheres. The palace of the illustrious Renee,--now the Austrian
and Papal Legations, and literally a barrack for soldiers,--has no
pretensions to beauty. Amid the graceful but decaying fabrics of the
city, it erects its square unadorned mass of dull red, edged with a
strip of lawn, a few cypresses, and a moat brim-full of water, which not
only surrounds it on all sides, but intersects it by means of arches,
and makes the castle almost a miniature of Venice. Good part of the
interior is occupied as passport offices and guard-rooms. The staircase
is of noble dimensions. Some of the rooms are princely, their panellings
being mostly covered with paintings, but not of the first excellence.
The small room in the southern quadrangle which Calvin is said to have
occupied is now fitted up as an oratory; and a very pretty little
show-room it is, with its marble altar-piece, its silver candlesticks,
its crucifixes, and, in short, all the paraphernalia of such places. If
there be any efficacy in holy water, the little chamber must by this
time be effectually cleansed from the sad defilement of the
arch-heretic.
Ferrara is indissolubly connected with the Reformation in Italy. In
fact, it was the centre of the movement in the south of the Alps. This
distinction it owed to its being the residence of Renee, the daughter of
Louis XII. of France, and wife of Hercules II., Duke of Ferrara. This
lady, to a knowledge of the ancient classics and contemporary
literature, and the most amiable and generous dispositions, added a deep
love of evangelical truth, and gladly extended shelter to the friends of
the Reformation, whom persecution now forced to leave their native
country. Thus there came to be assembled round her a galaxy of talent,
learning, and piety. If we except John Calvin, who was known during his
brief sojourn of three months as Charles Heppeville, the two noblest
minds in this illustrious band were women,--Renee and Olympia Morata.
The cause of the Reformation lies under great obligations to woman;
though the part she acted in that great drama has never been
sufficiently acknowledged.[2] In the heart of woman, when sanctified by
Divine grace, there lies concealed under a veil of gentleness and
apparent timidity, a fund of fortitude and lofty resolution, which
requires a fitting occasion to draw it forth; but when that occasion
arrives, there is seen the strength and grandeur of the female
character. For woman, whatever is noble, beautiful, and sublime, has
peculiar attractions. A just cause, overborne by power or numbers,
appeals peculiarly to her unselfish nature; and thus it has happened
that the Reformation sometimes found in woman its most devoted disciple
and its most undaunted champion. Who can tell how much the firmness and
perseverance of the more prominent actors in these struggles were owing
to her wise and affectionate counsels? And not only has she been the
counsellor of man,--she has willingly shared his sufferings; and the
same deep sensibility which renders her so shrinking on ordinary
occasions, has at these times given her unconquerable strength, and
raised her above the desolation of a prison,--above the shame and horror
of a scaffold. Of such mould were the two illustrious women I have
mentioned,--the accomplished Renee, the daughter of a king of France,
and the yet more accomplished Olympia Morata, the daughter of a
schoolmaster and citizen of Mantua.
To me these halls were sacred, for the feet which had trodden them three
centuries ago. They were thronged with Austrian soldiers and passport
officials; but I could people them with the mighty dead. How often had
Renee assembled her noble band in this very chamber! How often here had
that illustrious circle consulted on the steps proper to be taken for
advancing their great cause! How often had they indulged alternate fears
and hopes, as they thought now of the power arrayed against them, and
now of the progress of the truth, and the confessors it was calling to
its aid in every city of Italy! And when the deliberations and prayers
of the day were ended, they would assemble on this lawn, to enjoy, under
these cypresses, the delicious softness of the Italian twilight. Ah! who
can tell the exquisite sweetness of such re-unions! and how
inexpressibly soothing and welcome to men whom persecution had forced
to flee from their native land, must it have been to find so secure a
haven as this so unexpectedly opened to receive them! But ah! too soon
were they forced out upon an ocean of storms. They were driven to
different countries and to various fates,--some to a life of exhausting
labour and conflict, some to exile, and some to the stake. But all this
is over now: they dread the dungeon and the stake no more; they are
wanderers no longer, having come to a land of rest. Renee has once again
gathered her bright band around her, under skies whose light no cloud
shall ever darken, and whose calm no storm shall ever ruffle. But do
they not still remember and still speak of the consultations and sweet
communings which they had together under the shady cypress trees, and
the still, rich twilights of Ferrara?
Ferrara was the first town subject to the Pope I had entered; and I had
here an opportunity of marking the peculiar benefits which attend
infallible government. This city is only less wretched than Padua; and
the difference seems to lie rather in the more cheerful look of its
buildings, than in any superior wealth or comfort enjoyed by its people.
Its trade is equally ruined; it is even more empty of inhabitants; its
walls, of seven miles' circuit, enclose but a handful of men, and these
have a wasted and sickly look, owing to the unhealthy character of the
country around. The view from its ramparts reminded me of the prospect
from the walls of York. The plain is equally level; the soil is
naturally more rich; but the drainage and cultivation of the English
landscape are wanting. The town once enjoyed a flourishing trade in
hemp,--an article which found its way to our dockyards; but this branch
of traffic now scarcely exists. The native manufactures of Ferrara have
been ruined; and a feeble trade in corn is almost all that is left it.
How is this? Is its soil less fertile? Has its natural canal, the Po,
dried up? No; but the Government, afraid perhaps that its fields would
yield too plenteously, its artizans become too ingenious, and its
citizens too wealthy in foreign markets, has laid a heavy duty on its
exports, and on every article of home manufacture. Hence the desolate
Polesina without, and the extinct forges and empty workshops within, its
walls. A city whose manufactures were met with in all the markets of
Europe is now dependent for its own supply on the Swiss. The ruin of its
trade dates from its annexation to the Papal States. The decay of
intelligence has kept pace with that of trade. At the beginning of the
sixteenth century Ferrara was one of the lights of Europe: now I know
not that there is a single scholar in its university; and its library of
eighty thousand volumes and nine hundred manuscripts, among which are
the Greek palimpsests of Gregory Nazianzen and Chrysostom, and the
manuscripts of Ariosto and Tasso, is becoming, equally with Ariosto's
dust, which reposes in its halls, the prey of the worm.
I have to thank the papal police at Ponte Lagoscuro for the opportunity
of seeing Ferrara; for, with the bad taste which most travellers in
Italy display on this head, I had overlooked this town, and booked
myself right through to Bologna. I lodged at a fine old hotel, whose
spacious apartments left me in no doubt that it had once belonged to
some of the princely families of Ferrara. I saw there, however, men who
had "a lean and hungry look," and not such as Caesar wished to have about
him,--"fat, sleek-headed men, and such as sleep o' nights;" and my
suspicions which were awakened at the time have since unfortunately been
confirmed, for I read in the newspapers, rather more than a year ago,
that the landlord had been shot.