VI

There is one, however, who calls for more attention, not only because

of her enduring fame, but because she stood in a light so strong as

to make her, even at this distance, a living personality to us;

also because she represents the best phases of the Renaissance, its

learning, its intelligence, its enthusiasm, its subtle Platonism,

combined with a profound religious faith and a trace of the mysticism

of a simpler age. We are apt to recall Vittoria Colonna as half

poet, half saint. Her spiritual face looks out of a century of vice

and license, crowned with the delicate halo of a Madonna brooding

tenderly over the sins of the world in which she lives with an air of

apartness, as if she were in it but not of it. Whether we see her under

the soft skies of Ischia, happy and a bride, or seeking solace among

its orange-scented groves for the lost joys of her youth; at Naples,

holding a lettered court with the beautiful and accomplished Giulia

Gonzaga; at Rome, talking on high themes with a group of serious and

thoughtful men in the cool shadows of the Colonna gardens; at Ferrara,

discussing the new thought, receiving the homage of a distinguished

circle, and generously using her great name to shield the persecuted

and unhappy; or kneeling at prayers and chanting Misereres in the

cloisters where, at intervals, she hid a sorrowful heart--there is

always the same flavor of purity and saintliness in her character and

personality as in her genius.

The romance of her life is well known. She was born in 1490,--just

before Lorenzo de’ Medici died and Savonarola expiated the crime of

being too good for his time,--in a gloomy old Colonna castle that

towers picturesquely above the rambling, medieval town of Marino among

the Alban hills. But she did not stay there long, as she was betrothed

at four to the Marquis of Pescara, and, for some inexplicable reason,

sent away to the sunny island of Ischia to be educated with him by his

sister Costanza d’Avalos, Duchess of Francavilla, a woman so noted for

wisdom, ability, and virtue that she was made governor, or châtelaine,

of the island at her husband’s death. For once, this commercial

arrangement proved a fortunate one, as the brilliant duchess was as

famous for her culture and the lettered society gathered about her as

for her practical talent in ruling. The gifted child grew up among

poets and men of learning, with her future lord as her playmate and a

woman of intellect as her guide. Add to this the changing splendors of

sea and sky, the haunting memories of the beautiful shore that curves

away from the headlands of Misenum to the Isles of the Sirens, the

repose broken only by the cool dripping of fountains, the plashing

of the indolent waves on the beach, and the plaintive songs of the

boatmen floating at evening across the tranquil water to find a sweet

refrain in the music of the vesper bell--and we have the _milieu_

of the poet. There were royal festivities when the king came to break

the monotony of the days, occasional glimpses of the magnificent court

pageants at Naples, and rare visits to the somber ancestral home on

the Alban Lake. But the mind of the thoughtful maiden was more in

harmony with the quiet scenes among which most of her days were passed,

and had taken its permanent tone when the youthful lovers were married

at about eighteen, or possibly nineteen.

Two or three years of unclouded happiness, and this idyllic life came

to an end. The marquis was called to the army, and the devoted wife saw

him only at long intervals during his brilliant career, which he closed

some fifteen years later with a tarnished name. The blow that shattered

the hopes of Vittoria came near costing her life. In the first agony of

her grief she fled to a convent, and wished to take the veil of a nun;

but she was too valuable in her own sphere to be lost to the world, and

Clement VII forbade it. Her only resource was to consecrate herself

to the memory of one she never ceased to call _mio bel sole_, to

religion, and to matters of the intellect.

How she reconciled her undying love with the faithless and treacherous

character of her Spanish husband, who was willing to sell his loyalty

for a kingdom, we do not know. That she was ignorant of his disgrace is

not probable. She had given him high counsel, putting honor and virtue

above titles and worldly grandeur, and saying that she had no wish to

be the wife of a king, since she is already the wife of a captain who

has vanquished kings, not only by his bravery, but by his magnanimity.

But she had, to a marked degree, the fine idealism that gives vitality

to a sentiment. It is shown in the poise of the shapely head, in the

broad, high, speculative forehead that hid a wealth of imagination and

exalted feeling, in the large, soft, penetrating dark eyes, lighted

with sensibility, which relieved the delicately chiseled features and

firm but beautiful mouth from a tinge of asceticism. She was tall,

stately, and graceful, with a fair, variable face of pure outlines, and

hair of Titian gold. Her picture is one of a rare woman, capable of

high thought, great generosity, great sacrifice, and great devotion.

This love of her youth was interwoven with every fiber of her being.

The child with whom she had wandered hand in hand by the sea; the youth

who had responded to her every taste and thought, poetic like herself,

proud, accomplished, handsome, and knightly; the man who had whiled

away the hours of his captivity in writing for her a rather stilted

Dialogue of Love, were alike transfigured in her memory. If she heard

that he was a traitor, probably she did not believe it, and the very

fact of unmerited disgrace would have been an added claim upon her

affection. She was young, and naturally slow to think that an act which

Pope and cardinals had assured him was quite consistent with the finest

honor could be treasonable at all, though she had a keen moral sense

that led her straight to the heart of things. Then the harshness and

cruelty for which he was noted belonged to the exigencies of war, which

is never merciful. It was easy to malign him there. At all events, it

is certain that the faults of this brilliant cavalier of very flexible

honor were swept away in a flood of happy memories and imperishable

love. Many were the suitors who presented themselves to the gifted,

rich, and beautiful princess, who was scarcely past thirty-five; but

she had gathered the wealth of her affections in a vase that was

broken, and for her there was no second gathering. The spirit that held

captive her own still shone in the heavens as a sun that lighted the

inner temple of her soul and made its hidden treasures luminous.

When she rallied a little from the first stunning blow, she began to

write. This had been one of the diversions of her youth, and she had

often sent tender verses to her husband. Now it offered an outlet to

her sorrows, and, at the same time, a tribute to his memory. Never

was such a monument dedicated to a man as this series of more than a

hundred sonnets. Her love colored all her thoughts, and gave to her

clear, strong intellect a living touch that comes only from the heart.

If one misses in these verses the fire of Sappho, one is conscious of

coming in contact with a pure and lofty soul in which earthly passion

has been transformed into a glow of divine tenderness. But the note of

longing and loneliness is always there. Laura was no more idealized by

her poet lover than was this unworthy man by his desolate wife. For

seven years her poems were a series of variations on the same theme.

The sun shone no longer for her; there was no more beauty in tree, or

flower, or sparkling waves; the birds were mute, and nature was draped

in gloom. In death only there was hope; but even here was the dreadful

possibility that she might not be perfect enough to meet this paragon

of all noble qualities in heaven. So Mrs. Browning might have written.

She had the same tendency to transfigure her idols in the light of the

imagination, the same meditative quality, the same fine idealism. But

she lived and died a happy wife, while her sister poet spent lonely

years in the companionship of a memory.

Time, however, which tempers all things, if it does not change them,

brought a new element into her thoughts, and her elegiac songs rose to

cathedral hymns. In her religious sonnets she reveals the intrinsic

quality of her mind and its firm grasp of spiritual things. Some of

them touch on forbidden questions, and wander among the dangerous

heresies of the new age. Theology and poetry are not quite in accord,

and these are of value mainly as showing the liberal drift of her

opinions. Others are the spontaneous outpouring of a full and ardent

soul. Rich in thought, alive with feeling, and lighted with hope, they

soar on the wings of an exalted faith far above the heavy and sin-laden

air of her time.

And, as the light streams gently from above,

Sin’s gloomy mantle bursts its bonds in twain,

And robed in white, I seem to feel again

The first sweet sense of innocence and love.

This gentle-hearted poet was a purist in style, and chiseled carefully

the vase in which she put her thoughts, not for the sake of the vase,

but reverently, to make it worthy of the thought. These hymns fall upon

the ear like some thrilling strain from Palestrina, who translated

into song the dreams, the aspirations, the baffled hopes, the sorrows

of a race in its decline, and sent it along the centuries with its

everlasting message of love and consolation. There was something akin

in the two spirits that lived at the same time, though Palestrina was

young when the poet neared the evening. It was he who first gave to

music a living soul. Vittoria gave the world its first collection of

religious poems, and poured her own heart into them. Both vibrated to

the deepest note of their age. Only the arts differed, and the quality

of thought, and the outer vestments of life.

But we are far from the days when this beautiful woman in her

magnificent robes of crimson velvet and gold, attended by six ladies

in azure damask and as many grooms in blue and yellow satin, was one

of the central figures in some royal wedding festivities at Naples.

Mundane pleasures had long ago lost their charm, and the still lovely

poet in her sable costume finds her consolation in ministering

to the poor and suffering, and in an active interest in all the

intellectual movements of her time. She was the friend of great men

and distinguished women. Cardinal Bembo, the famous “dictator of

letters,” lauds her virtues and her genius while he craves her favor.

She writes of the gifts of her “divine Bembo,” addresses sonnets to

him, and receives his “celestial, holy, and very Platonic” affection

with gracious dignity. Castiglione sends her his manuscript of “Il

Cortegiano” for criticism, and complains that she held it too long

and copied it for other eyes. She gives discriminating praise of the

“subject as well as the tact, elegance, and animation of the style,”

but she suggests the wisdom of dwelling less persistently on the beauty

and virtue of living women. The unscrupulous but keen-witted Aretino

pays her compliments and begs her aid. “One must count with the tastes

of one’s contemporaries,” he writes, in half-apology for his own base

standards; “only amusement or scandal are lucrative; they burn with

unholy passions, as you do with an inextinguishable angelic flame.

Sermons and vespers for you, music and comedy for others.... Why write

serious books? After all, I write to live.” This was the note of the

new age in an ever-descending scale--the death-knell of all that is

fine and noble in any age. It is needless to ask what this high-souled

woman thought of sordid motives that were by no means confined to the

Italian decadence; but she managed the vain and vindictive man, who

held reputations in the hollow of his hand, with graceful dignity and

infinite tact. Living at a time when the great poets were passing, and

literature was fast becoming the trade of artisans who appealed to the

lowest passions of a sense-intoxicated people, or the tool of cynics

and courtiers, she held her own way serenely, superior to worldly

motives and worldly entanglements. There are numerous glimpses of her

in the poems and letters of her time, but the chorus of praise was

universal. “She has more eloquence and breathes more sweetness than all

other women,” says Ariosto, “and gives such force to her lofty words

that she adorns the heavens in our day with another sun.” And again:

“She has not only made herself immortal by her beautiful style, than

which I have heard none better, but she can raise from the tomb those

of whom she speaks or writes, and make them live forever.”

It was her sympathy with all high things that made her so warm a

friend to the apostles of the new religious thought. Though an ardent

Catholic, she was no bigot to be held within the iron-bound limits of

a creed which had lost its moral force, no beauty-loving disciple of

an estheticism that veiled crime and corruption with the splendors

of a ceremonial, sang Te Deums over the triumphs of the wicked and

Misereres while plotting assassination. She felt the need of a purer

morality and a deeper spirituality, though, like Savonarola, she wished

reform within the church, not outside of it. We find her always in the

ranks of the thinkers. She was the devoted friend of Contarini, the

broad-minded cardinal, who grieved so sincerely over the universal

corruption, and died, possibly of that grief and his own helplessness,

before the hour came when it was a crime to speak one’s best thoughts.

He should have been Pope, she said in her sonnet on his death, to make

the age happy. It was a striking tribute to the vigorous quality of

her intellect that he dedicated to her his work “On Free Will.” Fra

Bernardino she defended when he fled to Switzerland and joined the

Lutherans, but she was powerless to help him in his hours of darkness.

Even this brought her under the suspicion of heresy. Carnesecchi,

another of her friends, was burned, and one of the chief accusations

against a Florentine who was condemned to a like fate years afterward

was that he belonged to her circle. “It is an inexpressible pleasure

to me that my counsels are approved by a woman of so much virtue and

wisdom,” wrote Sadolet to Cardinal Pole. She sustained these powerful

prelates by the prestige of her name and the fullness of her sympathy.

The liberal circle of her friend Renée attracted her to Ferrara,

but the air was full of suspicion. They talked much and pleasantly

of literature, poetry, and the arts; when they touched upon the new

thought which was revolutionizing the world, it was behind closed

doors, and with the vivid consciousness that the walls had ears which

stretched to Rome.

But to-day Vittoria Colonna is known best as the friend of

Michelangelo, to whom she was a polar star, an inspiration, an

everlasting joy. “Without wings, I fly with your wings; by your genius

I am raised toward the skies,” he writes. “In your soul my thought is

born; my words are in your mind.” It was the perfect sympathy of finely

attuned spirits, the divine friendship that exists only between men

and women who live at an altitude far above the things of sense. The

age was full of talk about Platonic love. A few reached it, and they

were of the spiritual elect; but they did not talk much about it. To

this solitary artist, who dwelt on lonely heights, the divining and

sympathetic spirit of a thoughtful woman was a revelation. He wrote

sonnets to her, sometimes calm and philosophical, sometimes fiery and

passionate. He also sent her poems and sketches for criticism. The

tact with which she drew out the best in this colossal man is shown

by a conversation in the softly lighted Chapel of San Silvestro, as

recorded by an artist who was present. She had been listening to a

private exposition of St. Paul, but when Michelangelo came in, she

delicately turned the conversation upon the subject nearest his heart,

on which it was not easy to lead him to talk. Both were apart from the

spirit of an age that was fast tearing down the few ethical standards

it had, and virtually taking for its motto the most dangerous of

fallacies, “Art for art’s sake.” “True painting is only an image of

the perfection of God, a shadow of the pencil with which he paints, a

melody, a striving after harmony,” said the master. And the lady, in

her turn, spoke, until the tears fell, of the divine message of art

that “leads to piety, to glory, to greatness.” They discussed, too, her

project of building a convent on the spot where Nero had watched the

burning of Rome, that “virtuous women might efface the memory of so

wicked a man.”

No shadow ever rested on this friendship. Michelangelo was past sixty

and Vittoria was not far from forty-seven when they met. There is no

trace of tender sentiment in their brief correspondence, though a deep

and abiding friendship is apparent. Once she playfully writes him to

curtail his letters lest they interfere with his duties at St. Peter’s

and keep her from the Chapel of St. Catherine, “so that one would fail

in duty to the sisters of Christ and the other to his Vicar.” She said

that those who knew only his works were ignorant of the best part of

the man. When she lay dead before him he kissed her hand reverently,

and went out in inconsolable grief to regret the rest of his life that

he had not dared to leave a kiss on the pure forehead.

In early life, Vittoria, having no children of her own, had undertaken

the care of her husband’s cousin, the Marchese del Vasto, a boy of

singular beauty, fine gifts, but wild and passionate temper, which no

one had been able to control. Under her gentle and wise influence he

had grown to be a brilliant and accomplished man, who never ceased to

regard her with the greatest affection. She said that she could not be

considered childless after molding the moral character of this son of

her adoption. It was one of her great griefs that he died in the flower

of his manhood, when the shadows were darkening about her and she

needed more than ever his sympathy and support.

At this time fate laid upon her a heavy hand. When Rome became

unsafe, she joined the devoted group that surrounded Cardinal Pole at

Viterbo; but the last years before her final illness were spent in the

Benedictine convent of St. Anne, where she prayed and wrote devotional

poems. When she grew ill a celebrated physician said that the fairest

light in this world would go out unless some physician for the mind

could be found. Her friends were scattered or dead; the misfortunes

of her family weighed heavily on her spirit; the cruelties of the

new régime had crushed the lives of many whom she loved; she had been

forced to stifle her purest convictions and to turn away from the

falling fortunes which she had no power to save. It was only a joy to

lay down the burden of her fifty-seven years, surrounded by the few who

were left to her. She ordered a simple burial, such as was given to the

sisters in the convent. There was no memorial, and, strange to say, no

one knows where she lies.

No woman better refutes the theory that knowledge makes pedants, that

the gentler qualities fade before the cold light of the intellect. To

a vigorous, versatile mind, and the calm courage of her convictions,

Vittoria Colonna united a tender heart, fine sensibilities, and broad

sympathies. Her clear judgment was tempered by a winning sweetness.

The age of specialties was still in the distance, and the woman was

superior to any of her achievements. In a period that was notably lax

in morals, she carried herself among crowds of adorers with such gentle

dignity that no cloud ever shadowed her fair fame. With this rare

harmony of intellect, heart, and character, she held the essentials of

life above all its decorations; but she retained to the end the simple

graces, the flexible tact, and the stately manners of the _grande

dame_.

This literary woman, great lady, and _dévote_ of centuries ago

belongs to a type that is out of fashion to-day; it was not common even

then. She was the perfected fruit of the finest spirit of her time. She

did not write for money or fame; she sought neither honors nor society

nor worldly pleasures, though she was a social queen by right of

inheritance. She loved high things for their own sake and because she

was akin to them. She loved her friends, too, for what they were, not

for what they brought her, and gave them of her best, even to her own

hurt. If she tried to reconcile her beliefs and her environment, it was

a fault of sanity and loyalty; to break with her church traditions was

to lose her influence and gain nothing. Possibly this is not the spirit

of a reformer, but it is the spirit of those who trust to the saving

quality of light rather than of heat. No doubt the conflict helped to

wear out her waning forces. In this restless age the world praises such

women from afar. They appeal to it as do the pictures of Raphael and

Fra Angelico, which we are quite ready to adore as they hang in gallery

or drawing-room, for some subtle quality of beauty consecrated by the

homage of centuries, though their underlying significance we may have

long outgrown. If they are seen at rare intervals in real life, we

give them a certain tribute of admiration, no doubt, but we are apt to

speak of them personally as visionary, antiquated, or other-worldly.

The lofty sentiment, the stateliness, the repose, the indefinable

distinction, are not in the line of modern ideals.