Transcriber's Note.
Bold text is indicated with =equals signs=. Italic text is indicated
with _underscores_.
Further transcriber's notes may be found at the end of the book.
QUEENS OF THE
RENAISSANCE
BY
M. BERESFORD RYLEY
WITH TWENTY-FOUR ILLUSTRATIONS
METHUEN & CO.
36 ESSEX STREET W.C.
LONDON
_First Published in 1907_
[Illustration: BEATRICE AND LUDOVICO KNEELING
ALTAR-PIECE BY ZENALE]
To B----
CONTENTS
PAGE
PREFACE ix
CATHERINE OF SIENA 1
BEATRICE D'ESTE 53
ANNE OF BRITTANY 104
LUCREZIA BORGIA 150
MARGARET D'ANGOULÊME 202
RENÉE, DUCHESS OF FERRARA 251
PREFACE
There are no two people who see with the same kind of vision. It is
for this reason that, though twenty lives of the six women chosen for
this book had been written previously, there would still, it seems to
me, be room for a twenty-first. For though the facts might remain
identical, there is no possible reiteration of another mind's exact
outlook. Hence I have not scrupled to add these six character studies
to the many volumes similar in scope and subject.
The book is called "Queens of the Renaissance," but Catherine of Siena
lived before the Renaissance surged into being, and Anne of Brittany,
though her two husbands brought its spirit into France, had not
herself a hint of its lovely, penetrating eagerness. They are included
because they help, nevertheless, to create continuity and coherence of
impression, and the six leading, as they do naturally, one to the
other, convey, in the mass, some co-ordinated notion of the
Renaissance spirit.
The main object, perhaps, in writing at all lies in the intrinsic
interest of any real life lived before us. For every existence is a
_parti pris_ towards existence; every character is a personal opinion
upon the value of character, feeling, virtue, many things. No
personality repeats another, no human drama renews just the same
intricate complications of other dramas. In every life and in every
person there is some element of uniqueness, some touch of speciality.
Because of this even the dullest individuality becomes quickening in
biography. It has, if no more, the pathos of its dulness, the didactic
warnings of its refusals, the surprise of its individualizing
blunders.
All the following lives convey inevitably and unconsciously some
statement concerning the opportunity offered by existence. To one, it
seemed a place for an ecstasy of joy, success, gratification; to
another, a great educational establishment for the soul; to a third,
an admirable groundwork for practical domestic arrangements and
routine; to Renée of Ferrara, a bewildering, weary accumulation of
difficulties and distress; to her more charming relative, an enigma
shadowed always by the still greater and grimmer enigma of mortality.
And lastly, for the strange, elusive Lucrezia, it is difficult to
conceive what it must have meant at all, unless a sequence of
circumstances never, under any conditions, to be dwelt upon in their
annihilating entirety, but just to be taken piecemeal day by day,
reduced and simplified by the littleness of separate hours and
moments.
In a book of this kind, where the intention is mainly concerned with
character, and for which the reading was inevitably full of bypaths
and excursions, a complete bibliography would merely fill many pages,
while seeming to a great extent to touch but remotely upon the ladies
referred to, but among recent authors a deep debt of gratitude for
information received is due to the following: Jacob Burckhardt, Julia
Cartwright, Augusta Drane, Ferdinand Gregorovius, R. Luzio, E. Renier,
E. Rodoconarchi, and J. Addington Symonds.
Finally, in reference to the portraits included in the life of
Beatrice D'Este, a brief statement is necessary. For not only that of
Bianca, wife of Giangaleazzo, but also those of Il Moro's two
mistresses, Cecilia Gallerani and Lucrezia Crivelli, are regrettably
dubious. The picture of Bianca, however, by Ambrogio da Predis, is
more than likely genuinely that of Bianca, though some writers still
regard it as a likeness of Beatrice herself. It is to be wished that
it were; her prettiness then would have been incontestable and
delicious. But in reality there is no hope. One has but to look at the
other known portraits of Beatrice to see that her face was podgy, or
nearly so, and that her charm came entirely and illusively from
personal intelligence. It evaporated the moment one came to fix her
appearance in sculpture or on canvas. Nature had not really done much
for her. There was no outline, no striking feature, no ravishing
freshness of colouring. On a stupid woman Beatrice's face would have
been absolutely ugly. But she, through sheer "aliveness," sheer
buoyant trickery of expression, conveyed in actuality the equivalent
of prettiness. But it was all unconscious conjuring,--in reality
Beatrice was a plain woman, with sufficient delightfulness to seem a
pretty one, while the portrait of Bianca is unmistakably and lovingly
good-looking.
As regards the portraits, again, of Il Moro's two mistresses, Cecilia
Gallerani and Lucrezia Crivelli, there is no absolute certainty. The
portrait facing page 6 in the life of Beatrice has been recently
discovered in the collection of the Right Hon. the Earl of Roden, and
in an article published by the _Burlington Magazine_ it has been
tentatively looked upon as that of Lucrezia Crivelli. This does not,
however, appear probable, because Lucrezia, at the time of Il Moro's
infatuation, was a young girl, and the picture by Ambrogio da Predis
is certainly that of a woman, and a woman, moreover, whose experiences
have brought her perilously near the verge of cynicism.
At the same time, the portrait is not only beyond doubt that of a
woman loved by Il Moro, but was presumably painted while his affection
for her still continued, as not only are the little heart-shaped
ornaments holding together the webs of her net thought to represent Il
Moro's badge of a mulberry-leaf, but painted exquisitely in a space of
⅜ by ⅝ inch upon the plaque at the waistbelt is a Moor's head,
another of Ludovico's badges, while the letters L. O. are placed on
either side of it, and the two Sforza S. S. at the back. A discarded
mistress, if Ambrogio--one of Il Moro's court painters--had painted
her at all, would have had the discretion not to wear symbols
obviously intended only for one beloved at that moment.
There seems--speculatively--every reason to suppose that the picture
represents Cecilia Gallerani, who was already beyond the charm of
youth before Ludovico reluctantly discarded her, and whom he not only
cared for very greatly, but for quite a number of years. Cecilia
Gallerani, besides, to strengthen the supposition, was an
exceptionally intellectual woman, and the portrait in the possession
of the Earl of Roden expresses above everything to an almost
disheartened intelligence. To think deeply while in the position of
_any_ man's mistress must leave embittering traces, and Cecilia became
famous less even for physical attractions than because her mind was so
intensely rich and receptive.
The other two--the pictures of "La Belle Ferronière" and the "Woman
with the Weasel,"--by Leonardo da Vinci, have both a contested
identity. But since the first is now almost universally looked upon as
being the portrait of Lucrezia Crivelli, the second must surely
represent her also. For in both there is the same beautiful oval, the
same youth, the same unfathomable eyes and gentle deceit of
expression. Both, besides, represent to perfection the kind of
beautiful girl likely to have drawn Ludovico into passionate
admiration. He was no longer young when he cared for Lucrezia, and if
Leonardo's paintings are really portraits of her, she was like some
emblematical figure of perfect youthfulness,--unique and unrepeatable.
M. B. R.
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
TO FACE PAGE
BEATRICE AND LUDOVICO KNEELING. ALTAR PIECE BY
ZENALE AT BRERA _Frontispiece_
_From a Photograph by Messrs. Anderson_
STATUE IN WOOD OF ST. CATHERINE, BY NEROCCIO LANDI 2
_From a Photograph by Messrs. Lombardi_
ST. CATHERINE'S HOUSE AT SIENA 16
_From a Photograph by Messrs. Lombardi_
CATHERINE PRAYING AT AN EXECUTION. FRESCO BY SODOMA 18
THE BRIDGE AT PAVIA 61
BEATRICE D'ESTE. BUST IN THE LOUVRE 64
_From a Photograph by Messrs. Levy_
PORTRAIT, PROBABLY OF CECILIA GALLERANI, SAID TO BE BY
AMBROGIO DA PREDIS 90
_From the Collection of the Earl of Roden_
LUCREZIA CRIVELLI, BY LEONARDO DA VINCI 96
_From a Photograph by Messrs. Mansell_
PROBABLE PORTRAIT OF BIANCA SFORZA, WIFE OF GALEAZZO
SANSEVERINO 98
_From a Photograph by Messrs. Mansell_
CHURCH OF ST. MARIA DELLE GRAZIE AT MILAN 100
_From a Photograph by Messrs. Brogi_
EFFIGY OF BEATRICE D'ESTE AT SOUTH KENSINGTON MUSEUM 102
FROM THE CALENDRIER, IN ANNE'S BOOK OF HOURS IN THE
BIBLIOTHÈQUE NATIONALE, PARIS 120
_From a Photograph by Messrs. Berthaud_
ANNE KNEELING. FROM THE BOOK OF HOURS IN THE BIBLIOTHÈQUE
NATIONALE 128
_From a Photograph by Messrs. Berthaud_
ST. URSULA. FROM ANNE'S BOOK OF HOURS IN THE BIBLIOTHÈQUE
NATIONALE 140
_From a Photograph by Messrs. Berthaud_
PROBABLE PORTRAIT OF LUCREZIA IN "ST. CATHERINE AND THE
ELDERS," BY PINTORRICCHIO 152
_From a Photograph by Messrs. Brogi_
VIRGIN AND CHILD, BY PINTORRICCHIO, IN THE HALL OF ARTS
AT THE VATICAN 159
_From a Photograph by Messrs. Anderson_
THE ANNUNCIATION. FROM THE SERIES OF FRESCOES PAINTED
BY PINTORRICCHIO AT THE VATICAN 171
_From a Photograph by Messrs. Anderson_
SUSANNAH AND THE ELDERS. FROM THE SERIES OF FRESCOES
PAINTED BY PINTORRICCHIO AT THE VATICAN 188
_From a Photograph by Messrs. Anderson_
HEAD OF GASTON DE FOIX 206
_From the Monument at Milan_
CHARLES V. 226
_From a Photograph by Messrs. Giraudon_
MARGARET D'ANGOULÊME. FROM A DRAWING AFTER CORNEILLE
DE LYON 248
_From a Photograph by Messrs. Giraudon_
RENÉE OF FERRARA, AGED FIFTEEN, BY CORNEILLE DE LYON 254
_From a Photograph by Messrs. Giraudon_
THE CASTELLO AT FERRARA 260
RENÉE, DUCHESS OF FERRARA. FROM A DRAWING AT THE
BIBLIOTHÈQUE NATIONALE 294
_From a Photograph by Messrs. Giraudon_
QUEENS OF THE RENAISSANCE
CATHERINE OF SIENA
1347-1380
Catherine of Siena does not actually belong to the Renaissance. At the
same time she played an indirect part in furthering it, and she
represented a strain of feeling which continued to the extreme limits
of its duration. During the best period of the desire for culture, a
successor--and imitator--of Catherine's, Sister Lucia, became a craze
in certain parts of Italy. Duke Ercole of Ferrara, then old and
troubled about his soul, took as deep and personal an interest in
enticing her to Ferrara as he did in the details of his son's marriage
to Lucrezia Borgia, just then being negotiated. The atmosphere
Catherine created is never absent from the Renaissance. She fills out
what is one-sided in the impression conveyed by the women who follow.
She was also the contemporary of Petrarch and Boccaccio, the
acknowledged forerunners of the intellectual awakening that came after
them, and being so, is well within the dawn, faint though it still
was, of the coming Renaissance day. Finally, in her own person she
contained so much power and fascination that to omit her, when there
exists the least excuse for inclusion, would be wilfully to neglect
one of the most enchanting characters among the women of Italian
history.
The daughter of a well-to-do tradesman, Giacomo Benincasa, Catherine
was born in Siena in 1347. Her father possessed several pleasant
qualities, and a great reserve of speech, hating inherently all
licence of expression. Catherine's mother, Lapa, on the other hand,
belonged to an ordinary type of working woman--laborious, but
irritable and narrow. She brought twenty-five children into the world,
and her irascibility may have been not unconnected with this heroic
achievement. The sons also, after their marriages, continued to live,
with their wives--it being the custom at that time--under the parental
roof. Even a sociable temperament would easily have found such a
community difficult always to handle cordially.
[Illustration: STATUE IN WOOD OF ST. CATHERINE
BY NEROCCIO LANDI]
Catherine was Benincasa's youngest child. As a baby she proved
extraordinarily attractive. She was, in fact, so sweet and radiant
that the neighbours nicknamed her Euphrosyne, and her little person
was much enticed and humoured. Unfortunately, like all children of
that period, she became bewilderingly precocious, and with the first
development of intelligence, the religious passion revealed itself.
With Catherine the desire for spirituality was inborn. At five years
old she formed the habit of going upstairs on her knees, reciting the
"Hail, Mary," at every step. She delighted in being taken to churches
and places of devotion, and at the age of six years her deliberate and
piteous self-martyrdom commenced.
The child, during an errand on which she was sent, believed herself to
have seen a holy vision. The incident had nothing extraordinary, for
her imagination was keen, and her temperament nervous. In a later
century, fed upon fairy stories, she would have seen gnomes, sprites,
or golden-haired princesses. Instead, saturated in religious legends,
she perceived Jesus Christ in magnificent robes, and with a tiara on
His head, while on each side of Him stood a saint, and several nuns in
white garments. This unchallenged vision produced colossal
consequences. The child went home convinced that God Himself had come
to call her to a better life; proud, frightened, and exultant, she set
her mind to find out, therefore, how she might best become as good as
God wanted her to be.
This beginning of Catherine's religious life is painful to remember.
She decided primarily that she must give up childish amusements; in
addition, she determined to eat the least possible amount of food, and
to fill up her life with penances in the manner of the grown-up holy
men and women about her. She also procured some cord, and, having
knotted it into a miniature scourge, formed the habit of secretly
scourging herself until her back was lined with weals. Describing
these first spiritual struggles of a child of six years old,
Cafferini, her contemporary and biographer, says, "Moreover, by a
secret instinct of grace, she understood that she had now entered on a
warfare with nature, which demanded the mortification of every sense.
She resolved, therefore, to add fasting and watching to her other
penances, and in particular to abstain entirely from meat, so that
when any was placed before her, she either gave it to her brother
Stephen, who sat beside her, or threw it under the table to the cats,
in such a manner as to avoid notice."
This pitiable "warfare with nature" continued until she reached the
age of twelve. Her parents, so far, had been pleased at her religious
fervency. But at twelve years old the girl became marriageable. The
comparative freedom of childhood ceased; Catherine was kept secluded
in the house, besides being harried with injunctions concerning the
arrangement of her hair and her dress.
She had, as a matter of fact, charming, warm brown hair.
Unfortunately, a shade of gold was then fashionable, and Lapa,
ambitious for a good marriage, insisted that the girl should do like
others, and have it dyed that colour. Catherine resisted with all the
strength of her frightened soul. But in the end, apparently through
the persuasions of a favourite married sister, she allowed her hair to
become golden. It was no sooner done than conscience suffered
passionate remorse. In fact, to the end of life this one backsliding
remained almost the sharpest regret Catherine possessed. She could
never refer to it without sobbing, from which it is at least
presumable that a canary-coloured head had its attractions for a saint
of twelve years old.
Meanwhile, the choice of a husband became imminent. At this
Catherine's semi-passivity turned into actual panic. It was not
possible both to marry and to give up one's life to God. Only, who
would listen to the refusals of so young a girl? Following the
practice of the Roman Catholic religion, she took her difficulties to
her confessor, and was saved through the proposal of a rather
questionable trick. She had only to cut her hair off to make marriage
impossible: no Italian would marry a woman with a shaven head.
Catherine rushed home, and at once did as she was told, covering her
work, when she had finished, with a white linen coif. Virgins in Italy
wore their hair flowing; the stratagem, therefore, did not exist an
hour before discovery took place. Then followed a passionate domestic
scene. The whole family appears for once to have unanimously agreed
that Catherine's piety had overstepped the bounds of common sense. The
loss of her child's hair left Lapa infuriated. Exasperation grew so
intense that for a time, with the view to breaking her stubborn
spirit, Catherine was deliberately ill-treated. A servant had been
kept for rough work in the kitchen; she was dismissed, and Catherine
made to take her place. But the girl had not a temperament that could
be cowed. She was a true Sienese, and Boccaccio, as well as others,
speaks of the virile character of the people of Siena. The name
Euphrosyne also still expressed her disposition. With a pretty
childishness of imagination, she made religious play out of their
harshness. Her father, she pretended, was Jesus Christ, Lapa she made
the Virgin Mary, and her brothers and sisters the apostles and
disciples. The kitchen became the innermost tabernacle of the temple
where sacrifices were offered to God. In consequence, she went about
diffusing radiance and a sober joy, and bewildering those who wanted
to see her crushed and penitent.
In the end Giacomo interfered. He had the instinct of kindness, and
was himself sincerely religious. Both the question of marriage and the
system of ill-treatment were abandoned. A little later he gave consent
to the pursuance of a religious vocation, and Catherine, still a
child, became a member of the order of St. Dominic. It was not a
strict community. The sisters did not live in retirement, but in their
own homes, merely wearing a white veil and a black habit called
_Mantellate_.
Just before this Catherine experienced a very human temptation. She
became possessed by the longing to dress herself in the pretty
clothes of a rich married woman, and to go out flaunting in silks and
extravagance. The wish is more likeable than her physical
self-torturings. The latter gain their power to distress, in fact, to
some extent because her few temptations show that Catherine had all
the average longings of humanity, and was not devoid of the
companionable frailties of ordinary men and women.
The temptation was, of course, conquered, and from the glad moment of
taking her vows Catherine intensified every austerity of conduct. As a
child she had been robust and hardy. But the frightful treatment to
which she subjected her system would have ruined any constitution, and
from the time she grew up she became more and more delicate,
suffering, and neurotic. The desire to suppress her excesses is very
great. One could write abundantly and give only a life overflowing in
fragrant incidents. But in the case of Catherine, to pass over
foolishness would entail not only a falsification of character, but a
falsification also of the curious atmosphere from which she drew the
principal inspirations of her conduct.
From the age of twelve she forced herself gradually to eat so little,
that her stomach became finally incapable of retaining solid food at
all. How she kept life in her body for the last half of her existence
is difficult to understand. Her bed, from the time she became a nun,
consisted of a few planks with a log of wood for pillow. An iron band
made part of her wearing apparel, and her discipline--if the one now
shown as hers in the sacristy of St. Dominico is genuine--consisted of
an iron chain with sharp projections for piercing and tearing the
flesh. The idea was monstrous and horrible; nevertheless, its
fortitude uplifts it into heroism. To pursue unflinchingly martyrdom
such as this may be grotesque and ridiculous, but no invertebrate
creature could contemplate it. Of all the violences, however, which
Catherine did to her body, the one under which she suffered most
acutely was her refusal of proper sleep. It is said, though it is
extremely hard to believe, that for a certain length of time she took
only half an hour's sleep in the twenty-four hours, and that--only
every other day.
Notwithstanding this, a picture given of her at the time by Father
Thomas Antonio Cafferini, also a member of St. Dominic, and an
intimate friend of the family, is altogether charming. He asserts that
her face was always gay and smiling, more especially if she were
called upon to help those troubled or out of health. Other
contemporaries bear out this possession of an effulgent gladness.
When she spoke her face became illuminated, and her smile was like
some living radiance passing into the hearts of those she looked at.
The same writer mentions her delight in singing and her love of
flowers. A certain Fra Bartolomeo of Siena bears similar witness. He
wrote, "She was always cheerful, and even merry." He mentioned,
besides, that she "was passionately fond of flowers, and used to
arrange them into exquisite bouquets." Catherine's personal writings
are strewn with references to plants and blossoms. It was also part of
the fulness of a character unusually rich in finer fascinations that
she was constantly singing. Melancholy she scarcely knew. The
spirituality which did not produce happiness, she could only feel as a
spurious effort. Either it lacked love or understanding.
For years she lived as a recluse in her father's house, but while
still in her teens it appeared to her--presumably through a natural
wisdom of character--that God needed less personal worship than
continuous benefits to others, out of her religious exaltation, and
from that time Catherine's public career commenced. Almost the first
result of her belief in being called to an active existence was her
constant attendance at the hospitals and among the lepers. One of the
prettiest of all the stories told about her deals with her nursing
labours. Pity had very small vitality either during the Middle Ages or
the Renaissance; it was almost a dead quality of character, and the
Sienese were particularly hardened by harsh experiences.
A woman who had lived a notoriously bad life lay dying in one of the
hospitals, absolutely and deliberately neglected. A sinner laid low
was scum to spit at for most people. Catherine saw no scum on earth.
She smiled with all her native inborn softness at the dying woman,
listened to her desolate complainings, her maundering reminiscences,
gave her the nourishment she liked best, coddled her with sweet
attentions, and finally, without any violent denunciations, brought
her to repentance and tranquillity. A child might as tenderly have
been coaxed out of a phase of naughtiness.
The incident brings one naturally to Catherine's reputation as a
peacemaker. She was still a young girl when tales of her
persuasiveness were told to amazed, arrested audiences throughout the
country. The Sienese temper was fundamentally savage; nothing,
therefore, could touch fancy more than stories of a nature capable of
acting as a gentle and cooling balm upon outrageousness. Catherine, as
a matter of fact, possessed both the magnetism of intense belief and
the power of innate urbanity. The first awed superstition by
incomprehensible achievements. Forestalling the Christian Scientists,
she had healed the sick by prayer, while her mere enticements brought
about the end of many virulent dissensions.
To dabble with mystical methods is an old and universal weakness. The
wife of a certain Francesco Tolomei, head of one of the noblest
families in Siena, heard of Catherine's miracles, and being hard
pressed by domestic difficulties, turned to the dyer's daughter for
assistance. Madonna Tolomei was herself a profoundly religious woman,
but she anguished with the consciousness that the rest of her family
were damned. The eldest son, Giacomo, had murdered two men before he
was grown up, and his cruelty had now become diabolical, ingenious,
and systematic. There were also two daughters, bitten with worldliness
to the marrow of their bones. Both were fast, dyed, and painted.
Catherine offered to see the girls, but expressed no confidence as to
the consequences. She found them with the garish hair that always
touched her to the quick, and possibly felt more yearningly because of
it. No account has been given of the interview. The two sisters, with
the Tolomei blood in their veins, could hardly have been easy natures
to lure out of worldliness; but at the end of Catherine's visit, they
were like lambs in the hands of a skilful shepherd. According to
Cafferini, they threw their cosmetics into the gutter, cut off their
gleaming hair, and in a few days joined the Sisters of St. Dominic.
This is the kind of triumph of which Catherine's life is full. Her
personal magnetism was extraordinary, her insight actually a touch of
genius. At this time also she was young, and herself a living exponent
of how seductively gay goodness could make one. To the end, in truth,
she remained less a nun than a woman, and as a woman she was the
embodiment of enchanting sympathies and comfort. Merely to see
her,--soft, sweet, mysteriously comprehending,--was like a cordial to
an aching heart. But the most astounding part of the Tolomei story is
still to be told. Giacomo, with his mad and bloody passions, was away
when his sisters' conversion took place. He came home to cow the house
with terror. A lunatic let loose would have been less persistently
dangerous. Donna Tolomei, shaken now with physical and not spiritual
forebodings, immediately sent a messenger to warn Catherine that no
danger was too horrible to anticipate; in his present condition he was
capable of doing anything. Catherine did not feel a quicker
heart-beat. She was steeped in intuitions and spontaneous knowledge.
Ostensibly as an act of exquisite courtesy, she sent Fra
Bartolomeo--who must have been a brave man--to explain matters, while
she prayed with all her heart and soul for the unmanageable sinner.
Some hours later Bartolomeo came back. Catherine met him smiling; she
knew already the news he brought. Her prayers--so passionately
eager--had already been answered. Giacomo--the diabolical, murderous,
implacable Giacomo--was already meek as a lamb under the shock of a
new and overwhelming emotion. It is not the least curious part of the
story that he remained a changed character, and continued to abominate
wickedness with the same intensity that in his earlier days he had
practised it. Towards the end of his life he even took the habit of a
Dominican of the Tertiary Order, the obligations of this third order
not being excessive.
There is another story of this earlier period more enchanting still,
in its original and tragic graciousness. Only before telling it the
question of Catherine's miracles should, perhaps, be dealt with, for
they also commenced when she was scarcely out of childhood, and helped
enormously to render her a recognized celebrity. They and her
austerities are the unlikeable side of Catherine's holiness. At the
same time no saint of the period could have obtained a hearing without
them, and no human system could have endured the strain put upon it by
a mediæval religious enthusiast, without producing self-hypnotism and
catalepsy. Catherine, at an early age, fell into trances, described by
her biographers as "ecstasies at the thought of God." Describing one
of these ecstasies, her friend Raymond wrote "that on these occasions
her body became stiff, and raised in the air, gave out a wonderful
fragrance." All the old Catholic writers, to whom miracles were an
integral part of saintship, were generous in multiplying supernatural
details. A good deal has to be deducted from these statements; but
even then there remain a good many so-called miracles attested by
other and more critical witnesses. That she was seen raised from the
ground while she prayed, is a fact sworn to by a number of people. A
man called Francesco Malevolti affirms that he saw her "innumerable
times" raised from the ground as she prayed, and remaining suspended
in the air more than a cubit above the earth. He mentions, to give
weight to his evidence, that in order to test the reality of the
occurrence, he and some others passed their hands between her and the
floor--a thing perfectly easy to do. As this occurred in broad
daylight, modern spiritualistic _séances_ become clumsy in comparison.
Catherine could do better in the fourteenth century.
The most important miracle of all was, of course, the stigmatization.
That alone definitely assured her position as one with authority from
God; it constituted the final and irrefutable sign of Divine and
miraculous intervention. At the time of its occurrence Catherine was
twenty-eight, and suffered extreme agony from it. The most curious
circumstance about the stigmata in Catherine's case was that they were
not properly visible during her lifetime, but became perfectly clear
after her death. In this one matter her successor, St. Lucia, the
religious celebrity of Lucrezia Borgia's day, outdid the woman she
tried to follow. Her stigmata were always visible--bleeding wounds
anybody could look at.
[Illustration: ST. CATHERINE'S HOUSE AT SIENA]
Returning to the loveliest of all the stories concerning Catherine's
girlhood, it must be remembered that the prisons of Siena were almost
more filled with political prisoners than criminals. During the whole
of the Renaissance political prisoners were in themselves almost
sufficient in number decently to fill Italian dungeons. Catherine, who
had the understanding to love sinners, habitually visited condemned
offenders. Those forlorn of any hope in this world she insidiously
replenished with winning dreams of hope hereafter. She did more. When
the day of execution came, she joined the procession to the scaffold.
What it meant, in the unconveyable desolation of that last public
outgoing, to have the company of this woman, with her sweet,
contagious promises in the name of Christ, would be hard to
overestimate. She was at all times embodied comfort to be with, and
even a sharp and reluctant death must have been easier when she was
there to pour out pity and encouragement.
Among the prisoners at one time was a certain Nicholas di Toledo, who
had spoken irreflectively against the Riformatori--the strong
Government party. This Riformatori consisted of a council chosen
originally at a tense political crisis for purposes of urgent
amendments. The nobility had no part in it. Siena, since 1280, when a
reconciliation occurred between the Sienese Guelfs and Ghibellines,
had been a merchant oligarchy, first governed by the _Nove_, then by
_Dodici_, and after both these had been swept away, by the
_Riformatori_, into which some members of both the previous
Governments had been included. The _Riformatori_ began well and ended
badly. The _Noveschi_ and _Dodicini_ members almost immediately worked
against it; civil trouble became interminable. The new power,
exasperated, fell back upon repressive horrors. People were arrested
upon simple suspicion of disapproval, and then publicly tortured in
order to appal others. A common habit was to tear a criminal slowly to
pieces with red-hot pincers while he was bound upon a cart driven
slowly through the principal streets.
[Illustration: ST. CATHERINE PRAYING AT AN EXECUTION
FRESCO BY SODOMA]
In the case of Nicholas di Toledo, he had barely gone from the place
of his impulsive utterance before he was arrested, and he was barely
arrested before he was condemned to death. Such a sentence had never
risen in his thoughts for one sickening moment even; it came with so
awful an unexpectedness that his mind for an interval whirled to the
verge of insanity. Nicholas di Toledo was scarcely more than a boy,
and the first warmth of life ran in every pulse. This bitter,
inconceivable end unnerved him--he could not make up his mind to die.
Suddenly he thought of Catherine, of whom other prisoners may have
babbled, and sent a messenger imploring her to come to him. She wrote
afterwards to her confessor a full description of the brief drama. Her
presence almost immediately calmed and heartened him. Both were young,
and Catherine, if not actually pretty, was delicious with overflowing
tenderness. For Nicholas, besides the optimism communicated to him by
her spiritual promises, there must have been the unconsidered but
poignant fact that she was a woman and he a man. It is undeniable that
no monk, however good, could have helped his dying to the same extent.
Catherine not only rendered it possible to go through with courage,
but in the end tinged it with something almost blessed. She was with
him, it would seem, most of the time, and not only promised to
accompany him to the scaffold when the day of execution came, but
previously took him to Mass, and persuaded him to communicate for the
first occasion in his life.
Nicholas had been nothing deeper than a young society man, and the
wrench of this merciless conclusion was all the greater because of
it. Catherine, in her account of the circumstance, went on to say
that he grew quite resigned, his only dread being lest his courage
should fail him at the supreme moment. He repeated constantly, "Lord,
be with me; abandon me not." To help him she reiterated her assurance
that she would be with him at the last. In a moment his face
brightened, and he asked her with a boyish impulsiveness how it was so
great a sweetness was being vouchsafed to him. With this to look
forward to he could face the end, not only with courage, but with
something strangely akin to pleasure.
They met, as she had promised, at the scaffold next day. Catherine
wrote concerning it that when he saw her his face broke into a smile,
and that he begged her to make the sign of the cross upon his
forehead. She did so, whispering that soon, very soon, he would have
passed to a life that never ends. Then occurred the unforgettable
incident of the story. At the best Nicholas was a creature not
disciplined to suffering, and the worst moment had yet to come.
Leaping to obey an intuition in itself exquisite, Catherine did what
the prudery alone of most religious women would have made unthinkable.
She took the boy's head in her thin, soft hands, and herself laid it
in position upon the block. The action was like a caress in which his
last impressions melted. He murmured the words "Jesus and Catherine."
The knife ripped through the air to his neck, and his head fell into
the same trembling hands that had guided it during its last activity.
On its human side Catherine's spirituality was seldom less than
perfect. Character and beauty emanated from her every spontaneous
action. Nicholas di Toledo was only one of the many men she
fascinated, and the fact renders the question of her personal
appearance peculiarly interesting. The triumphs of a plain woman are
always more stirring than those achieved by a simple success of
feature. The "divine plainness," immortalized by Lamb, can convey
subtleties not possible to the simple regularities of well-cut
features. Catherine proved adorable to most people, but from her
portraits it is practically impossible to receive any impression save
that of dulness. This, at any time, was the last thing she could have
been, but the conventions of the Roman Catholic Church in dealing with
the portraits of saints opposed any lifelike treatment. The picture of
her in the church of St. Domenico at Siena, said to be by Francesco
Vanni, might do equally well for any other emaciated sister. There is
no temperament in it, no illumination, no visible sweetness. The eyes
are half closed, the expression is inert and apathetic. The mouth is
small but meaningless, the nose is long and well formed, the oval of
the face delightful. Vanni did slightly better on another occasion.
There is an engraving by him which is very nearly attractive. The
eyes, owing to the religious demand for humility, are again half
closed, but the mouth is both delightful and winning, and a half-smile
plays about her expression. Given the glamour of vivacity, the
kindling changes of life, and Catherine when young must have been
delightful to look at. Certainly many men loved her. She had the power
of being poignant in recollection, and disturbingly sweet in her
bodily presence.
Even the painter Vanni, wicked enough to have been conversion-proof,
yielded to the disquieting need she roused in him. He had been a great
hater, and the men he hated were assassinated without after-remorse.
For some amazing reason--probably that of curiosity--he consented to
interview Catherine. She was out when he called, and her Confessor
Raymond received him. According to Raymond, who describes the
incident, Vanni soon grew bored, and presently remarked bluntly that
he had promised to call upon Catherine, but since she was out, and he
was a busy man, he could not wait for her any longer.
At that moment Catherine appeared--according to Raymond, much to
Vanni's disgust. But Catherine was all smiles, comfortableness, and
simple ease of manner. Vanni's chances, in fact, of not being
converted ended with her entrance. The manner of his surrender was
humorously characteristic of the man himself. Catherine--she was
always so clever when she was good--presently left the room. No woman
ever knew better when another word would have been too much. She had
hardly gone when Vanni broke out that, for the sake of courtesy, he
could not wholly refuse her some gratification. At the moment he had
four virulent hatreds, but to please Catherine he would give up, in
the case of one of them, all thoughts of vengeance. He then started to
leave the house, but before he reached the door stopped suddenly and
declared he could hardly draw his breath, so intense was the sense of
peace and ecstasy this one small action of the right kind had given
him. Evidently it was useless to hold out against her influence, and
he then and there declared himself conquered, and ready to abandon all
the vices he could under Catherine's gentle guidance.
Thus came an end to Vanni's murders. Catherine held him for the rest
of his days. It is only to be regretted that he did not paint her
portrait before instead of after his conversion. He would have
attended less to her reputation as a saint, and more to what was
lovely and pictorial in her person.
Catherine no longer lived at home. She had instituted an informal
sisterhood at Siena, where "Mantellate" sisters from every part of
Lombardy lived in community. Her work still continued among the sick,
the lepers, and prisoners. But rumours of her miracles, and of an
almost miraculous gift of persuasion, were spreading to many parts of
Italy. Talk of the dyer's daughter had already reached the ears of the
Pope at Avignon, and was paving the way to further political
successes. Before Catherine had passed out of her teens she employed
four secretaries to cope with the colossal inflow of correspondence
that reached her. It was through the urgency of help in answering
letters in fact that Catherine made the great friendship of her life,
and drew under her influence the man who largely contributed towards
keeping natural feelings alive in her.
Stephen Marconi never cast off a cheerful and innate earthliness. He
came across Catherine originally, as so many people did, over the
matter of a Sienese family feud. Stephen, headstrong and exuberant,
had roused ill-feeling in both the Tolomei and Rinaldini families.
Torrents of blood loomed as the sole termination. Mutual acquaintances
had made useless attempts to produce peace; at the last crisis before
violence Stephen's mother implored him to go to the "Mantellate"
sister. The suggestion drew some contemptuous comments. But the woman
persisted, and essentially good-natured, Stephen went in order to
pacify her. He had every reason subsequently to thank the
solicitations that overbore derision. Catherine settled everything
with absolute successfulness, Stephen himself speaking of the
reconciliation that followed as truly miraculous.
More extraordinary than the reconciliation even was the effect of
Catherine's individuality upon Stephen Marconi. He possessed no
natural aptitude for spirituality. Handsome, irresponsible, sought
after, he epitomized effervescent worldliness. But, having once seen
Catherine, he could not keep away. Excuses were raked together for
further interviews, and one day, finding her overburdened with
correspondence, he wrote a letter at her dictation. It was the
beginning of the end. At first informally, and later explicitly, he
became one of her secretaries; presently also a member of what was
called her "spiritual family."
Siena relished as a joke the dandy converted by the ascetic, but
Stephen was unconcerned. An irrepressible humourist, he appreciated to
the full the oddity of the situation; though if jocose, he was also
deeply contented. Catherine had become almost instantly the
instigating motive of his life, the one precious thing his heart
needed. Catherine, on her side, was known to care for him more than
for almost any other person. Her relations with him became those of a
deep and exciting friendship. Towards the end of her life she heard a
report that Stephen had definitely cast off his semi-worldliness and
taken ascetic vows. Catherine should have known an exquisite and
glowing comfort. Instead of it, her letter to him on the subject is
very nearly petulant. That any action should have been taken without
first becoming a matter of confidences between them clearly
unspeakably hurt her. She wrote that of course it was a great joy to
hear that he desired to lead a better life, but that she was "very
surprised" that he should have made any decision without previously
having said a word to her about it. She added further that there was
something in the matter that she could not understand, though she
prayed that whatever he did would prove to be for the benefit of his
soul.
There is more sign in this of a woman stung by an unexpected neglect,
than any religious exaltation at a soul saved. Stephen had not become
a monk, and the misunderstanding swiftly passed over. But the letter
is pleasant reading, because it was written at a time when Catherine's
mysticism threatened to overshadow the purely human kindnesses of her
earlier years. The idea of Christ as the heavenly Husband had
developed from vague symbolism into a definite expression of spiritual
familiarity. It was an unrealized element of good fortune that
Stephen's whimsical frivolity kept alive in her a strain of normal
sensations. She suffered whenever they were separated, and among the
last letters she ever wrote, moreover, was one to Stephen with the
pathetic, dependent cry, "When will you come, Stephen? Oh, come soon!"
Another secretary closely associated with Catherine's life for many
years was Neri di Landoccio, a poet belonging to the group of dawning
Renaissance writers. He suffered from melancholy, and having once met
Catherine, naturally clung to the heartening radiance of her
presence. From his letters, his youth appears to have been vicious. He
was, at any rate, haunted by the notion that his misdemeanours were
greater than God would be likely to forgive. He worried himself into a
dangerous dismalness--a gloom perceiving no remedy. Then Catherine
wrote him a long letter. She reiterated that God was far more ready to
forgive than humanity to offend; that He was the Physician, and
mankind His sick and ailing children. She told him that sadness
constituted the worst fault of all in a disciple of Christ. To believe
in the unplumbable love of God, and still persist in disheartenment,
was a form of unrighteousness.
Neri did his best, but a gentle wistfulness penetrated his
disposition, and not even Catherine could give him gaiety of thoughts.
He and Stephen Marconi--the extreme opposites in temperament--became
deeply attached to one another. They corresponded when apart, and
Stephen, after Catherine's death, called Neri "among those whom the
Lord has engrafted in the very innermost depths of my heart." A third
man constantly in Catherine's society was her Confessor Raymond. Two
small incidents told by himself, and against himself, suggest a
perfectly honest and rather pleasant temperament, but a somewhat
limited spiritual capacity. In the first, he confesses that when on
their journeys great multitudes thronged to Catherine for confession
and comfort, and that the fact of having to go for hours without food
or rest greatly annoyed as well as wearied him.
From the other, both issue rather sweetly, but Catherine with almost a
touch of greatness. Raymond, who again tells the story, says that she
loved to talk to him upon spiritual matters, but that, not having the
same mystical sensibility, these conversations frequently sent him to
sleep. Catherine, absorbed in her subject, would continue for some
time talking without perceiving that she lacked a listener, but when
she did, she would merely wake the other, and good-humouredly tease
him for allowing her to talk to the walls.
Catherine had by nature the sanest and tenderest common sense. It was
she who wrote of prayer that everything done for the love of God or of
our neighbours was a form of prayer, and those who were always doing
good were always, as it were, at prayer. Love of one's fellow-creatures
was practically one long-continued lifting of the heart to God.
When Catherine came to the political portion of her life, the point
at which she may be said to have indirectly affected the Renaissance
in Italy was reached. The popes were still at Avignon, while Rome
clamoured for a return of the papacy to its original capital.
Petrarch, in a letter, pictured Rome as a venerable matron standing
desolate and in rags at the gate of the Vatican. "I asked at last," he
wrote, "her name, and she murmured it forth. It reached me through the
void, in the midst of sobs--it was Roma." Certainly, since the removal
of the popes to France, Rome, as a city, had gone to pieces. The
churches were in ruins, grass grew through the pavements up to the
very steps of St. Peter's, peaceful sheep used its environments for
pasturage. As the two great families of the town, the Colonna and
Orsini fought unceasingly for supremacy, while the people were equally
pestered, tortured, and destroyed by both. Save for those who fancied
murder as a profession, life had grown a nightmare; decency and quiet
were as things of which even the ashes had been scattered.
Catherine, like Petrarch, flung the weight of her eloquence on the
side of the Romans, and Gregory's return to Italy is always attributed
by Roman Catholics to her influence. But before this question had
become poignant between them, Gregory had already tested Catherine's
good sense in two political missions--one to Lucca, and one to Pisa.
Both were successfully concluded, and in consequence, when Florence
rose openly against the authority of the Pope, Catherine was chosen
for a third time to conduct mediation. The employment of any woman as
a diplomatic agent as early as 1370, was an extraordinary
circumstance. During the Renaissance, frequent use was made of the
intellectual adroitness of women. But, in Catherine's day, females, as
Boccaccio states definitely, had few occupations besides house-bound
duties and the excitements of intrigue.