We do not know how it happened that Bitisia Gozzadina stepped out
of the traditional seclusion of her sex as early as the benighted
thirteenth century, to be made doctor of civil and canon law in the
University of Bologna at the age of twenty-seven. She had already
pronounced a funeral oration in Latin and otherwise distinguished
herself several years before. It is no longer the fashion to give Latin
orations outside of the universities, but we know how women fared a few
decades ago, when they tried to speak publicly in their own language.
It was perfectly understood that women of such oratorical proclivities
forfeited all right to social consideration. They were practically
ostracized. Happily, now they are treated about as well as they were
six hundred years ago, when people crowded the university halls and
even the public squares to listen to this remarkable woman. We do not
hear that she was called any disagreeable names, not even a bas-bleu,
though there is a vague tradition that she had peculiar notions about
dress. It is said that she had rare beauty, but her charm and esprit
made people forget it.
There is nothing in the medieval ideals of womanhood to suggest such
a phenomenon, still less its cordial acceptance. Not even in the
early poets is there a trace of the type of woman which played so
distinguished a part in the golden age of the Renaissance. Beatrice
was little more than a beautiful abstraction, the spiritual ideal of
a man who dwelt mainly upon other-worldly matters. Petrarch found it
interesting to kneel before Madonna Laura in the clouds, and sing hymns
in her praise; but she was only an elusive figure on which to drape
poetic fancies. In these days, when it is quite the fashion to pull
the halos from the saints and put them on the sinners,--when even the
wicked Lucrezia Borgia has become a respectable wife and a particularly
good mother, who expiated the sins of her youth, if she had any, by her
pious devotion, her kindness to the poor, and her patronage of art and
literature,--it is not surprising to hear that Laura was a common-place
matron, “fair, fat, and forty,” who would have found it difficult to
live up to the ideals of her adorer,--even if she had known what they
were,--and prudently kept out of so rarefied an air. This blending of
chivalry and mysticism made fine poetry but not very substantial women.
Boccaccio paid a generous tribute to the heroic qualities of the women
of the past, but he evidently preferred them at a distance or in books.
Personally he seems to have had no more taste for savantes than for
saints. He belonged to the new age, which glorified the joys of life
and liked to sing love-songs--not of the choicest--to frail beauties.
Fiammetta was, no doubt, a clever woman and a beautiful one, but she
was no divine Egeria to inspire him with high thoughts. If he did
brilliant things at her bidding, the trail of the serpent was over them
all. Perhaps he aimed to suit the taste of the day, which was neither
delicate nor moral; or he may have lived in bad company from which
he took his models. We should be sorry to take as representative the
heroines of the Decameron, who must have brought blushes, which the
twilight could not hide, to the faces of the little coterie of friends
that sat on the grass telling or listening to these tales during the
long summer evenings at Florence, when men and women were dying all
about them. But they give us one phase of the life of the time, and
reflect the taste of an audience composed mainly of men who laughed at
morals and deified art, regardless of its aim or its subject. The age
was not strait-laced, but Italian ladies were not permitted to read
Boccaccio. One story, however, they might read. When the poet wished to
portray a good woman, for a change, he made a fine little picture of
Griselda, the patient, who was duly thankful for every indignity her
amiable lord chose to offer, mainly because she thought her sufferings
made him happy. When these incredible cruelties culminated in sending
her away loaded with unmerited disgrace, she still thanked him like
a good wife who was grateful for being trampled upon, even when her
innocent heart was breaking. It was a fine object-lesson for the proper
education of girls, and this marvel of self-sacrifice was held up from
one end of Europe to the other as a model of womanhood. Poets painted
her over and over again, with race variations; moralists praised her;
and men quoted her to their wives. Some instinct of justice prompted
Boccaccio to reward her in the end for all this useless misery, which
was simply a test of her servile quality, by putting her again, after
a series of years, into the good graces of her inhuman husband; but
it is needless to say that such rewards of virtue, if they could be
considered rewards, are not in the way of a world in which these
lessons are read.
All this shows how far the heroines of the early poets, whether
good or bad, differed from the strong, able, and accomplished women
who were recognized as the glories of the Renaissance. It suggests
also the lurid or colorless background against which the latter were
outlined. The cynical bachelor in Molière’s comedy summed up the whole
duty of woman according to the gospel of the middle ages--and, it
might be added, of many other ages--when he said that his wife must
know only how to “pray to God, love, sew, and spin.” The last three
qualifications were necessary for his own comfort, and he had the
penetration to divine that she might have ample need of the first on
her own account. Then it gave him an agreeable sense of security to
have a certain proprietorship in some one mildly affiliated with the
next world. “In thy orisons be all my sins remembered,” says Hamlet
to the fair Ophelia. A man might be the worst of sinners himself,
but he liked a seasoning of piety in his wife, provided it was not
too aggressive and left him free to be wicked if he chose. It was
like having an altar in the home, and gave it a desirable flavor of
saintliness.
Beyond the fireside and the docile domestic slave, however, there was
another medieval ideal of womanhood, a _religieuse_ who prayed
and sang hymns in the cloister. Aside from this, it was her special
mission to help the poor, care for the sick, console the sorrowful, and
advance the interests of the church. But these women of the cloister,
who had the altar without the home, found a possible outlet for their
imprisoned intellects, if they had sufficient natural force. The Roman
Church, which had always frowned upon any exercise of a woman’s mental
gifts in a worldly sphere, was glad to avail itself of them in its own
interest, and there were a few women more or less distinguished both as
leaders of religious organizations and counselors of ecclesiastics, who
kept alive the prestige of their sex through centuries of darkness. It
was one of the strange paradoxes of that age, as of many others, that
a woman is an irrational being, too fragile to bear distinction of any
sort, except when her talents make for the glory of men or the church.
Activity in public affairs, so long as they were religious ones, was
not considered unwomanly, notwithstanding the conservative opinions
of St. Paul. No one took it amiss when Catherine of Siena used her
wisdom and eloquence in persuading the Pope to return from Avignon to
Rome after men’s counsels had failed. No one found fault because her
emotional exaltation was tempered by a vigorous intellect. She was a
thinker and seer, and wrote ably on political as well as ecclesiastical
questions. Her style was simple and classic; indeed, she was altogether
phenomenal, and had strange influence over the popes and kings to whom
she did not hesitate to tell unpleasant truths. It was quite fitting
that she should devote these gifts to the interests of her church and
incidentally of her country. Men honored her for it, and canonized her.
This was a hundred and fifty years or so before the beautiful
Isabella of Cordova, who was more learned and less mystical, gave
up mundane pleasures for the classics and a degree in theology;
and Isabella Rosera devoted herself to the conversion of the Jews,
dazzled multitudes with her eloquence in the cathedral at Barcelona,
and expounded the subtleties of Duns Scotus before prelates and
cardinals at Rome. But in that interval women had made great strides
in intelligence, and the talents that shone so conspicuously in great
moral and religious movements had become a powerful factor in other
directions. Bitisia Gozzadina had multitudes of successors to her
honors.