Olympia Morata deserves, for her own sake, more than a passing mention.
She was by no means a simple receptacle of heterogeneous knowledge,
but a woman as noted for feminine virtues and strength of character as
for the brilliancy of her intellect. Her father was a distinguished
professor in the University of Ferrara, and his gifted daughter was fed
from infancy on the classics. At six she was taught by a learned canon
who advised her parents to put a pen in her hand instead of a needle.
At twelve she was well versed in Greek, Latin, and the sciences of
the day, petted and flattered by scholars old and young, compared to
the Muses and to all the feminine stars of antiquity, and in the way
of being altogether spoiled. In the midst of this chorus of praise she
donned the habit of a professor at sixteen, wrote dialogues in the
language of Vergil and Plato, a Greek essay on the Stoics, and many
poems. She also lectured without notes at the academy, before the court
and the university dons, on such themes as the paradoxes of Cicero,
speaking in Latin, and improvising at pleasure with perfect ease. The
great Roman orator was her model of style, and in a preface to one of
her lectures she says: “I come to my task as an unskilled artist 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 useless. The
beauty of the material will give value to his production. Perhaps it
will be so with mine. There are some tunes so full of melody that they
retain their sweetness even when played upon a poor instrument. Such
are the words of my author. In passing through my lips they will lose
nothing of their grace and majesty.”
This brilliant and classical maiden passed eight or ten years of her
youth at the court of Ferrara in intimate companionship with Anna
d’Este and her mother, the “wise, witty, and virtuous” Duchess Renée.
These were the days when the latter had Bernardo Tasso, a fashionable
poet who was eclipsed by his greater son, for her private secretary,
and delighted to fill her apartments with men of learning. The little
Anna, too, a child of ten, had been brought up on the classics, and the
two girls, who studied Greek together, liked to talk of Plato, Apollo,
and the Muses much better than to gossip about dress and society, or
the gallants of the court. Even their diversions had a pagan flavor.
When Paul III came on a visit, the royal children played a comedy of
Terence to entertain his eighteen cardinals and forty bishops, with all
the magnates and great ladies that usually grace such festivities. It
is quite probable that the clever Olympia had much to do in directing
it.
The literary academy of the duchess had a singular fascination for
the gifted young girl, who was one of its brightest ornaments. “Her
enthusiasm over antiquity became an idolatry, and badly prepared her
intellect for the doctrines of grace,” wrote one of her friends. “She
loved better the wisdom of Homer and Plato than the foolishness of St.
Paul.” She says of herself that she was full of the vanities of her
sex, though it is difficult to conceive of this worshiper of poets
and philosophers as very frivolous. That she had many attractions is
certain, as she won all hearts. “Thy face is not only beautiful and thy
grace charming,” said one of the great scholars of the time, “but thou
hast been elevated to the court by thy virtues.... Happy the princess
who has such a companion! Happy the parents of such a child, who
pronounce thy beautiful name within their doors! Blessed the husband
who shall win thy hand!”
But this sunny life could not go on forever. The “Tenth Muse” was
called home to care for her father in his last illness, and proved as
capable in the qualities of a nurse as in those of a muse. At his death
the little family was left to her care. To make the prospect darker,
her friend Anna d’Este had just married and gone off to her brilliant
but not altogether smooth career in France, and the duchess gave her
a chilling reception that boded no good; indeed, night had overtaken
her, and she found herself cruelly dismissed in her hour of sorrow and
trouble.
Other subjects had been discussed in this literary circle besides Greek
poetry and Ariosto and the courtly Bembo and the rising stars of the
day. Calvin had been there in disguise, and they had talked of free
will, predestination, and like heresies, much to the discomfiture of
the orthodox duke, whose interests did not lie in that direction. The
young savante had listened to these things, and her eager mind had
pondered on them. Perhaps, too, she was one of the group that discussed
high and grave themes when Vittoria Colonna was there. At all events,
the duchess had fallen into disgrace for her Protestant leanings, and
could do no more for her favorite, who was branded with a suspicion of
the same heresy. Indeed, she was herself confined for a time to one
wing of the palace and forbidden to see her children lest she should
contaminate them with her own liberal views. The only powerful friend
left to the desolate girl in her adversity was Lavinia della Rovere
of the ducal family of Urbino, who had shared her tastes, sympathized
with her views in happier times, and now proved her loyalty in various
ways that sustained her drooping heart. But there was another, equally
helpful if not so powerful, a young German of good family, who had
been a medical student in the university, and fallen in love with
this paragon of learning and accomplishments. He was true when others
fell away, and she gave him the devotion of her life. Both were under
the same ban, and soon after their marriage fled to Germany, with the
blessing of Lavinia and some valuable letters to her friends.
It was a strange series of misfortunes that pursued this brave
couple. After drifting about in the vain search for a foothold in an
unsympathetic world, where they could think their own thoughts and
satisfy their modest wants, they found at last a home in which they set
up their household goods and gathered their few treasures with their
much-loved books. But when kings fall out other people suffer. No
sooner were they settled than the small city was besieged, and for many
months they went through all the horrors of war, famine, pestilence,
and, in the end, fire, which destroyed their small possessions, and
compelled them to flee for their lives through a hostile country,
scantily clothed, unprotected, and penniless.
It is needless to follow their dark wanderings. Suffice it to say that
they found refuge at last in Heidelberg, where the husband was given
a professorship, and the wife, too, was offered the chair of Greek,
which she was never able to take. Her health had succumbed to her many
sufferings and hardships, and she died before she was twenty-nine. But
her strong soul rose above them all. “I am happy--entirely happy,” she
said at the close. “I have never known a spirit so bright and fair, or
a disposition so amiable and upright,” wrote her husband, who could not
survive her loss and followed her within a few months.
There is more than the many-colored tissue of a life as sad as it
was brilliant in these records. They carry within them all the
possibilities of a strong and symmetrical womanhood. The rare quality
of her scholarship was never questioned. She was the admitted peer of
the most learned men of her time, one of whom expects her to “produce
something worthy of Sophocles.” But she was clever, winning, and
fascinating, as well as serious. Living for years among the gaieties
of a court, she went out into a world of storms and gloom without a
murmur or a regret, buoyed up by her love and unquestioning faith. She
refers more to the joys than to the sorrows of this tempestuous time.
Lavinia and the Duchess of Guise, the friends of her youth, were true
to the end. In her letters to them and to the learned men who never
lost sight of her, we have curious glimpses of the home of a woman
who was a disciple of the Muses and a savante of intrinsic quality.
While her husband prepares his lectures, she puts the house in order,
buys furniture, and manages servants who were about as troublesome as
they are to-day. One asks a florin a month, and reserves a part of
the time for her own profit. Others insist upon staying out late and
running in the streets. Most of them are grossly incompetent. Poor as
she is, she is always ready to help those who are in greater need, and
is constantly imposed upon. She even borrows money to send to an old
servant in distress.
Then there are the evenings when grave professors come in, and they
talk in Latin of the affairs of the day, the religious persecutions, or
some disputed dogma. Sometimes they sing one of her Greek psalms which
her husband has set to music. She has her heart full with the care of
her young brother and the little daughter of a friend, who has been
sent to her for instruction. But her life is bound up in that of her
husband, whom she “cannot live without.” A pure and generous spirit,
happy in her sacrifices, and true to every relation, she is a living
refutation of the fallacy, too often heard even now, that learning and
the gentler qualities of womanhood do not go together.
There were many other women of great distinction in the universities,
whose names still live in enduring characters after four or five
centuries--professors, and wives of professors who worked side by side
with their husbands, and received their due meed of consideration. We
have women of fine scholarly attainments to-day, though in the great
universities they are mostly relegated to the anterooms and honored
with second-class degrees; but fancy the consternation of the students
of Harvard or Oxford if asked to listen to the lecture of a woman on
law or philosophy, or, indeed, on any subject whatever! Yet there were
great men and great scholars in Italy, possibly too great to fear
competition. Society was in no sense upset, and, so far as women were
concerned, the harmony of creation was not interfered with. Indeed, the
best mothers and the most devoted, helpful wives in Italy of whom we
have any knowledge were among the women who spoke Latin, read Greek,
and worshiped at the shrine of the Muses--all of which may be commended
to the college girls of to-day as well as to their critics.
V
In other fields there were equally accomplished women. Cassandra
Fidelis was the pride and glory of Venice in the days when Titian
walked along the shores of the Adriatic, absorbing the luminous tints
of sea and sky, and picturing to himself the faces that look out upon
us to-day from the buried centuries, instinct with color and the
fullness of life. Poet and philosopher, she wrote in many languages,
even spoke publicly at Padua. She caught, too, the spirit of beauty
and song, and was as noted for her music and her graceful manners as
for her learning. Men of letters paid court to her, Leo X wrote to
her, and Ferdinand tried to draw her to Naples; but the Doge refused
to part with this model of so many gifts and virtues. She lived a
century divided between literature and piety, but drifted at last, in
her widowhood, to the refuge of so many tired souls, and ended her
brilliant career in a convent.
This remarkable flowering of the feminine intellect was not confined
to Italy. Besides the noted Spanish women already mentioned, there
were celebrated professors of rhetoric in the universities of Alcala
and Salamanca. Even more distinguished was Aloysia Sigea, a poet
and savante of Toledo, who surprised Paul III with a letter in five
languages, which he was able to answer in only three. Just why she
found it necessary to put what she had to say in five languages,
instead of one, does not appear, but she proved her right to be
considered a prodigy. Her fame was great, and she died young.
Frenchwomen were less serious and made a stronger point of the arts of
pleasing. They approached literature with the air of a dilettante, who
finds in it an amusement or accomplishment rather than a passion or
an aim. At a later period they brought to its height a society based
upon talent and the less tangible quality of esprit. But we have the
virile intellect and versatile knowledge of the Renaissance in Mlle. de
Gournay, who aspired to the highest things, including the perfection of
friendship, which she said her sex had never been able to reach; and
the famous Marguerite, the witty, learned, independent, and original
sister of Francis I, who aimed at all knowledge, and tried her hand
at everything from writing verses and tales, patronizing letters, and
gathering a society of philosophers and poets, to reforming religion
and ruling a state.
In England we find Lady Jane Grey at sixteen a mistress of many
languages and preferring Plato to a hunting-party; the Seymour sisters,
who were familiar with the sciences and wrote Latin verses; the
daughters of Sir Thomas More, whose talents and accomplishments were
only surpassed by their virtues; and many others, by no means least
Queen Elizabeth herself, whose attainments were overshadowed by her
genius of administration. The taste for knowledge was widely spread,
and it would take us far beyond the limits of this essay to recall the
women of many countries who were noted for learning and gifts that
must always be relatively rare in any age, though pretenders may be as
numerous as parrots in a tropical forest.
But it is mainly the women of Italy, where this movement had its birth,
that we are considering here, and their talents were not confined to
the acquisition of knowledge. There were many poets among them. To be
sure, we find no Dante, or Petrarch, or Ariosto, or Tasso. Of creative
genius there was very little; of taste and skill and poetic feeling
there was a great deal. Domenichi made a collection of fifty women
poets who compared well with the average men of their time and far
surpassed them in refinement and moral purity. In their new enthusiasm
for things of the intellect, they never lost their simplicity of faith,
and were infected little, if at all, with the cynical skepticism of the
age. Some of these numerous poets were connected with the universities,
others belonged to the great world, and still others were women of
moderate station, who were honored at the various courts for their
gifts of mind.
No doubt much of this poetry was mediocre. Indeed, men, aside from
the greatest, wrote very little that one now cares to read. It is a
truism that “poets are born, not made,” and they are not born very
often. But the work of women which was not even of the best received
high consideration. Tarquinia Molza, a maid of honor at Ferrara,--who
held public discussions with Tasso, wrote sonnets and epigrams,
and translated the dialogues of Plato,--was so celebrated for her
learning and poetic gifts that the Senate of Rome conferred upon her
the title of Roman Citizen. Laura Battiferri, one of the ornaments
of the court of Urbino, was spoken of as a rival of Sappho in genius
and her superior in modesty and decorum. She was an honored member of
the Academy of the Intronati at Siena. There were no women’s clubs
in those days. They were not needed when women were admitted to many
of the academies on equal terms with men. The number may have been
small, but evidently the way was clear. They were barred, if at all, by
incapacity, not by sex.
One of the most celebrated of these numerous poets was Veronica
Gambara, Countess of Correggio, a woman of fine gifts, many virtues,
and great personal charm, who was left a widow after nine happy years
of marriage. Like her friend Vittoria Colonna, she spent the rest of
her life in mourning her husband, draping herself, her apartments,
and everything she had in black, and refusing all offers of a second
marriage. But this sable grief did not prevent her from managing her
affairs, her little state, and her two sons, both of whom reached high
positions, with great judgment and ability. Her husband had trusted
her implicitly, and left her in full control at his death. It was
largely to his memory that she devoted her poetic gifts. She did not
write a great deal, but her verses were simple and showed masculine
vigor. Many of them were tender, though by no means sentimental. She
wrote on the vanity of earthly things, a subject on which women have
always been specially eloquent, as they have so often written out of
their own sad experience. Her home at Bologna was a sort of academy,
where the most distinguished men of the age met, and it was noted as
a center of brilliant conversation. One of its chief attractions was
Cardinal Bembo, a lifelong friend, to whom she addressed a sonnet at
ten. Philosopher, high priest of Platonism, critic, poet, and man
of the world, this famous cardinal paid the highest tributes to the
distinguished women of his time. Intellectually he lived in an air
that was somewhat tenuous, but he sought the society of those who
loved things of the spirit--especially princesses. It was a convenient
fashion among these diplomats and churchmen to have two lives--one
poetic, Platonic, with ecstatic glimpses of the celestial, the other
running through various grades of the terrestrial. The versatile Bembo
was no exception. Veronica Gambara, who combined grace and delicacy
with a distinctly mundane vigor, sat metaphorically at his feet, and
was an ardent disciple of the new Platonic philosophy. She had natural
eloquence, and gave a charm to the serious discussions at her house.
Among her noted visitors was Charles V, who was fascinated by her
talents and gracious manners. She reproached him and Francis I with the
quarrels that had flooded Europe with tears, and wrote him a poem fired
with patriotic ardor, in which she asks peace for Italy and protection
against the infidel. In her poetry and her letters she followed
Petrarch. Without commanding genius, and less mystical than Vittoria
Colonna, but with possibly more strength in a limited range, she was
greatly considered for her learning, her poetry, her social graces, her
practical ability, and her spotless character.
These are a few out of a multitude of poets and savantes who are of
little interest to-day, except as showing the notable attainments of
women in a new field and the drift of public sentiment regarding them.