It is worthy of note that in an age which was essentially devoted to
beauty and a glorification of the senses, women almost invariably wrote
on sacred or ethical themes. Even love they transfigured into something
divine. The first-fruits of their intelligence were offered on the
shrine of a purer morality. As a rule, too, they were women of serious
tastes and conspicuous virtues.
There was one poet, however, of some note who may be mentioned as an
exception to the consistently high character of the literary women of
a notably wicked period; but even her poems were largely religious in
tone. Tullia d’Aragona, who discussed affairs in Latin and wrote Greek
when a child, was a wit, a genius, and a brilliant woman. She had a
bad father, though he was a cardinal, and a mother who was beautiful
but is not plainly visible at this distance. The clever Tullia, who
had a questionable salon at Rome, with plenty of cardinals and princes
in her train, carried with her to other courts a certain prestige
which they did not scrutinize too closely, and she fascinated many men
who were not quite equal to the moral and intellectual altitude of a
Vittoria Colonna or an Olympia Morata. “Vittoria is a moon, Tullia a
sun,” said an enthusiastic admirer and fellow-poet. But in the waning
of her charms she turned seriously to literature, and wrote a poem of
thirty thousand lines, besides a curious dialogue on “The Infinity
of Love,” and many sonnets. At this time in her life, which verged
toward the twilight, she had put off frivolous things and was disposed
to moralize. In the preface to her poem she says that reading is a
resource for women when everything else fails; but she mourns over
the fact that Boccaccio, who claimed to write for them, said so many
things not fit to be read; that even Ariosto was not above reproach;
and closes by declaring that she has not put down a word that might
not be read by “maiden, nun, or widow at any hour”--all of which goes
to show the final tendency of women toward moral ideals, in spite of
the entanglements of very mundane surroundings. They take refuge in
charity and religion from a world that has ceased to charm, as men do
in cynicism and stimulants.
This versatile poet of more esprit than decorum had a great deal of
incense offered her, and in the end won even the patronage of the
grave, virtuous, and sorrowful Eleanor of Toledo, but she died in
penitence and misery. As she lived and shone in the most dissolute
society of her day, and was trained from childhood with special
reference to pleasing men of brilliant position and gifts but low
morals, she by no means fitly represents the learned women of Italy,
whether of court or university. She belonged to a class apart. We lift
our eyes at the laxity of a society which could receive and smile upon
her, but we have not far to go to find the same complaisance even in
a period that prides itself on its superior morals. Our censor of
the twenty-fifth century may find here a text for a sermon on the
wickedness of the scientific age, which he will otherwise prove by
copious quotations from the glaring headlines of our daily journals.
So far as appears, in an age when no man’s life was secure and no
woman’s honor was quite safe, when men in power did not scruple to
send those who were in their way out of the world, atoning for it, if
it needed atonement, at least celebrating it, by a grand Te Deum, or a
De Profundis,--which seems more suitable though less cheerful,--it was
the women of the highest intelligence who held the balance of humanity
and morals. There were wicked ones, no doubt, in abundance, as the
more facile and helpless sex was not free from the subtle influence of
the spirit of the age against which good men with all their vaunted
strength struggled in vain. But it can hardly be disputed that the
virtues and graces of character blossomed in the most significant
profusion among women of distinctly scholarly tastes, who found in the
pleasures of the intellect an unfailing resource against the vices as
well as the sorrows and disappointments of a bad and pitiless world.