LUCRETIA'S EDUCATION
The cardinal's relations with Vannozza continued until about 1482, for
after the birth of Lucretia she presented him with another son, Giuffrè,
who was born in 1481 or 1482.
After that, Borgia's passion for this woman, who was now about forty,
died out, but he continued to honor her as the mother of his children
and as the confidant of many of his secrets.
Vannozza had borne her husband, a certain Giorgio di Croce, a son, who
was named Octavian--at least this child passed as his. With the
cardinal's help she increased her revenues; in old official records she
appears as the lessee of several taverns in Rome, and she also bought a
vineyard and a country house near S. Lucia in Selci in the Subura,
apparently from the Cesarini. Even to-day the picturesque building with
the arched passageway over the stairs which lead up from the Subura to
S. Pietro in Vincoli is pointed out to travelers as the palace of
Vannozza or of Lucretia Borgia. Giorgio di Croce had become rich, and he
built a chapel for himself and his family in S. Maria del Popolo. Both
he and his son Octavian died in the year 1486.[8]
His death caused a change in Vannozza's circumstances, the cardinal
hastening to marry the mother of his children a second time, so that she
might have a protector and a respectable household. The new husband was
Carlo Canale, of Mantua.
[Illustration: CHURCH OF S. MARIA DEL POPOLO, ROME.]
Before he came to Rome he had by his attainments acquired some
reputation among the humanists of Mantua. There is still extant a letter
to Canale, written by the young poet Angelo Poliziano regarding his
_Orfeo_; the manuscript of this, the first attempt in the field of the
drama which marked the renaissance of the Italian theater, was in the
hands of Canale, who, appreciating the work of the faint-hearted poet,
was endeavoring to encourage him.[9] At the suggestion of Cardinal
Francesco Gonzaga, a great patron of letters, Poliziano had written the
poem in the short space of two days. Carlo Canale was the cardinal's
chamberlain. The _Orfeo_ saw the light in 1472. When Gonzaga died, in
1483, Canale went to Rome, where he entered the service of Cardinal
Sclafetano, of Parma. As a confidant and dependent of the Gonzaga he
retained his connection with this princely house.[10] In his new
position he assisted Ludovico Gonzaga, a brother of Francesco when he
came to Rome in 1484 to receive the purple on his election as Bishop of
Mantua.
Borgia was acquainted with Canale while he was in the service of the
Gonzaga, and later he met him in the house of Sclafetano. He selected
him to be the husband of his widowed mistress, doubtless because
Canale's talents and connections would be useful to him.
Canale, on the other hand, could have acquiesced in the suggestion to
marry Vannozza only from avarice, and his willingness proves that he had
not grown rich in his former places at the courts of cardinals.
The new marriage contract was drawn up June 8, 1486, by the notary of
the Borgia house, Camillo Beneimbene, and was witnessed by Francesco
Maffei, apostolic secretary and canon of S. Peter's; Lorenzo Barberini
de Catellinis; a citizen, Giuliano Gallo, a considerable merchant of
Rome; Burcardo Barberini de Carnariis, and other gentlemen. As dowry
Vannozza brought her husband, among other things, one thousand gold
florins and an appointment as _sollicitator bullarum_. The contract
clearly referred to this as Vannozza's second marriage. Would it not
have been set down as the third, or in more general terms as new, if the
alleged first marriage with Domenico d'Arignano had really been
acknowledged?
In this instrument Vannozza's house on the Piazza de Branchis, in the
Regola quarter, where the marriage took place, is described as her
domicile. The piazza still bears this name, which is derived from the
extinct Branca family. After the death of her former husband she must,
therefore, have moved from the house on the Piazza Pizzo di Merlo and
taken up her abode in the one on the Piazza Branca. This house may have
belonged to her, for her second husband seems to have been a man without
means, who hoped to make his fortune by his marriage and with the
protection of the powerful cardinal.
From a letter of Ludovico Gonzaga, dated February 19, 1488, we learn
that this new marriage of Vannozza's was not childless. In this epistle,
the Bishop of Mantua asks his agent in Rome to act as godfather in his
stead, Carlo Canale having chosen him for this honor. The letter gives
no further particulars, but it can mean nothing else.[11]
We do not know at just what time Lucretia, in accordance with the
cardinal's provision, left her mother's house and passed under the
protection of a woman who exercised great influence upon him and upon
the entire Borgia family.
This woman was Adriana, of the house of Mila, a daughter of Don Pedro,
who was a nephew of Calixtus III, and first cousin of Rodrigo. What
position he held in Rome we do not know.
He married his daughter Adriana to Ludovico, a member of the noble house
of Orsini, and lord of Bassanello, near Civita Castellana. As the
offspring of this union, Orsino Orsini, married in 1489, it is evident
that his mother must have entered into wedlock at least sixteen years
before. Ludovico Orsini died in 1489 or earlier. As his wife, and later
as his widow, Adriana occupied one of the Orsini palaces in Rome,
probably the one on Monte Giordano, near the Bridge of S. Angelo, this
palace having subsequently been described as part of the estate which
her son Orsino inherited.
Cardinal Rodrigo maintained the closest relations with Adriana. She was
more than his kinswoman; she was the confidant of his sins, of his
intrigues and plans, and such she remained until the day of his death.
To her he entrusted the education of his daughter Lucretia during her
childhood, as we learn from a letter written by the Ferrarese ambassador
to Rome, Gianandrea Boccaccio, Bishop of Modena, to the Duke Ercole in
1493, in which he remarks of Madonna Adriana Ursina, "that she had
educated Lucretia in her own house."[12] This doubtless was the Orsini
palace on Monte Giordano, which was close to Cardinal Borgia's
residence.
According to the Italian custom, which has survived to the present day,
the education of the daughters was entrusted to women in convents, where
the young girls were required to pass a few years, afterwards to come
forth into the world to be married. If, however, Infessura's picture of
the convents of Rome is a faithful one, the cardinal was wise in
hesitating to entrust his daughter to these saints. Nevertheless there
certainly were convents which were free from immorality, such, for
example, as S. Silvestre in Capite, where many of the daughters of the
Colonna were educated, and S. Maria Nuova and S. Sisto on the Appian
Way. On one occasion during the papacy of Alexander, Lucretia chose the
last named convent as an asylum, perhaps because she had there received
her early spiritual education.
Religious instruction was always the basis of the education of the women
of Italy. It, however, consisted not in the cultivation of heart and
soul, but in a strict observance of the forms of religion. Sin made no
woman repulsive, and the condition of even the most degraded female did
not prevent her from performing all her church duties, and appearing to
be a well-trained Christian. There were no women skeptics or
freethinkers; they would have been impossible in the society of that
day. The godless tyrant Sigismondo Malatesta of Rimini built a
magnificent church, and in it a chapel in honor of his beloved Isotta,
who was a regular attendant at church. Vannozza built and embellished a
chapel in S. Maria del Popolo. She had a reputation for piety, even
during the life of Alexander VI. Her greatest maternal solicitude, like
that of Adriana, was to inculcate a Christian deportment in her
daughter, and this Lucretia possessed in such perfection that
subsequently a Ferrarese ambassador lauded her for her 'saintly
demeanor.'
It is wrong to regard this bearing simply as a mask; for that would
presuppose an independent consideration of religious questions or a
moral process which was altogether foreign to the women of that age, and
is still unknown among the women of Italy. There religion was, and still
is, a part of education; it consisted in a high respect for form and was
of small ethical worth.
The daughters of the well-to-do families did not receive instruction in
the humanities in the convents, but probably from the same teachers to
whom the education of the sons was entrusted. It is no exaggeration to
say that the women of the better classes during the fifteenth and
sixteenth centuries were as well educated as are the women of to-day.
Their education was not broad; it was limited to a few branches; for
then they did not have the almost inexhaustible means of improvement
which, thanks to the evolution of the human mind during the last three
hundred years, we now enjoy. The education of the women of the
Renaissance was based upon classical antiquity, in comparison with which
everything which could then be termed modern was insignificant. They
might, therefore, have been described as scholarly. Feminine education
is now entirely different, as it is derived wholly from modern sources
of culture. It is precisely its many-sidedness to which is due the
superficiality of the education of contemporary woman when compared with
that of her sister of the Renaissance.
The education of women at the present time, generally,--even in Germany,
which is famous for its schools,--is without solid foundation, and
altogether superficial and of no real worth. It consists usually in
acquiring a smattering of two modern tongues and learning to play the
piano, to which a wholly unreasonable amount of time is devoted.
During the Renaissance the piano was unknown, but every educated woman
performed upon the lute, which had the advantage that, in the hands of
the lady playing it, it presented an agreeable picture to the eyes,
while the piano is only a machine which compels the man or the woman who
is playing it to go through motions which are always unpleasant and
often ridiculous. During the Renaissance the novel showed only its first
beginnings; and even to-day Italy is the country which produces and
reads the fewest romances. There were stories from the time of
Boccaccio, but very few. Vast numbers of poems were written, but half of
them in Latin. Printing and the book trade were in their infancy. The
theater likewise was in its childhood, and, as a rule, dramatic
performances were given only once a year, during the carnival, and then
only on private stages. What we now call universal literature or culture
consisted at that time in the passionate study of the classics. Latin
and Greek held the place then which the study of foreign languages now
occupies in the education of women. The Italians of the Renaissance did
not think that an acquaintance with the classics, that scientific
knowledge destroyed the charm of womanliness, nor that the education of
women should be less advanced than that of men. This opinion, like so
many others prevalent in society is of Teutonic origin. The loving
dominion of the mother in the family circle has always seemed to the
Germanic races to be the realization of the ideal of womanliness. For a
long time German women avoided publicity owing to modesty or a feeling
of decorum. Their talents remained hidden except in cases where peculiar
circumstances--sometimes connected with affairs of court or of
state--compelled them to come forth. Until recently the history of
German civilization has shown a much smaller number of famous female
characters than Italy, the land of strong personalities, produced during
the Renaissance. The influence which gifted women in the Italian salons
of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, and later in those of France,
exercised upon the intellectual development of society was completely
unknown in England and Germany.
Later, however, there was a change in the relative degree of feminine
culture in Teutonic and Latin countries. In the former it rose, while in
Italy it declined. The Italian woman who, during the Renaissance,
occupied a place by man's side, contended with him for intellectual
prizes, and took part in every spiritual movement, fell into the
background. During the last two hundred years she has taken little or no
part in the higher life of the nation, for long ago she became a mere
tool in the hands of the priests. The Reformation gave the German woman
greater personal freedom. Especially since the beginning of the
eighteenth century have Germany and England produced numbers of highly
cultivated and even learned women. The superficiality of the education
of woman in general in Germany is not the fault of the Church, but of
the fashion, of society, and also of lack of means in our families.
A learned woman, whom men are more apt to fear than respect, is called,
when she writes books, a blue-stocking. During the Renaissance she was
called a _virago_, a title which was perfectly complimentary. Jacopo da
Bergamo constantly uses it as a term of respect in his work, _Concerning
Celebrated Women_, which he wrote in 1496.[13] Rarely do we find this
word used by Italians in the sense in which we now employ it,--namely,
termigant or amazon. At that time a _virago_ was a woman who, by her
courage, understanding, and attainments, raised herself above the masses
of her sex. And she was still more admired if in addition to these
qualities she possessed beauty and grace. Profound classic learning
among the Italians was not opposed to feminine charm; on the contrary,
it enhanced it. Jacopo da Bergamo specially praises it in this or that
woman, saying that whenever she appeared in public as a poet or an
orator, it was above all else her modesty and reserve which charmed her
hearers. In this vein he eulogizes Cassandra Fedeli, while he lauds
Ginevra Sforza for her elegance of form, her wonderful grace in every
motion, her calm and queenly bearing, and her chaste beauty. He
discovers the same in the wife of Alfonso of Aragon, Ippolita Sforza,
who possessed the highest attainments, the most brilliant eloquence, a
rare beauty, and extreme feminine modesty. What was then called modesty
(_pudor_) was the natural grace of a gifted woman increased by education
and association. This modesty Lucretia Borgia possessed in a high
degree. In woman it corresponded with that which in man was the mark of
the perfect cavalier. It may cause the reader some astonishment to learn
that the contemporaries of the infamous Cæsar spoke of his 'moderation'
as one of his most characteristic traits. By this term, however, we must
understand the cultivation of the personality in which moderation in man
and modesty in woman were part and manifestations of a liberal
education.
It is true that in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries emancipated
women did not sit on the benches of the lecture halls of Bologna,
Ferrara, and Padua, as they now do in many universities, to pursue
professional studies; but the same humane sciences to which youths and
men devoted themselves were a requirement in the higher education of
women. Little girls in the Middle Ages were entrusted to the saints of
the convents to be made nuns; during the Renaissance parents consecrated
gifted children to the Muses. Jacopo da Bergamo, speaking of Trivulzia
of Milan, a contemporary of Lucretia, who excited great amazement as an
orator when she was only fourteen years of age, says, "When her parents
noticed the child's extraordinary gifts they dedicated her to the
Muses--this was in her seventh year--for her education."
The course of study followed by women at that time included the classic
languages and their literature, oratory, poetry, or the art of
versifying, and music. Dilettanteism in the graphic and plastic arts of
course followed, and the vast number of paintings and statues produced
during the Renaissance inspired every cultivated woman in Italy with a
desire to become a connoisseur.
Even philosophy and theology were cultivated by women. Debates on
questions in these fields of inquiry were the order of the day at the
courts and in the halls of the universities, and women endeavored to
acquire renown by taking part in them. At the end of the fifteenth
century the Venetian, Cassandra Fedeli, the wonder of her age, was as
well versed in philosophy and theology as a learned man. She once
engaged in a public disputation before the Doge Agostino Barbarigo, and
also several times in the audience hall of Padua, and always showed the
utmost modesty in spite of the applause of her hearers. The beautiful
wife of Alessandro Sforza of Pesaro, Costanza Varano, was a poet, an
orator, and a philosopher; she wrote a number of learned dissertations.
"The writings of Augustinus, Ambrosius, Jerome, and Gregory, of Seneca,
Cicero, and Lactantius were always in her hands." Her daughter, Battista
Sforza, the noble spouse of the cultivated Federico of Urbino, was
equally learned. So, too, it was related that the celebrated Isotta
Nugarola of Verona was thoroughly at home in the writings of the fathers
and of the philosophers. Isabella Gonzaga and Elisabetta of Urbino were
likewise acquainted with them, as were numerous other celebrated women,
such as Vittoria Colonna and Veronica Gambara.
These and other names show to what heights the education of woman during
the Renaissance attained, and even if the accomplishments of these women
were exceptional, the studies which they so earnestly pursued were part
of the curriculum of all the daughters of the best families. These
studies were followed only for the purpose of perfecting and beautifying
the personality. Conversation in the modern salon is so excessively dull
that it is necessary to fill in the emptiness with singing and piano
playing. Still the symposiums of Plato were not always the order of the
day in the drawing-rooms of the Renaissance, and it must be admitted
that their social disputations would cause us intolerable weariness;
however, tastes were different at that time. In a circle of
distinguished and gifted persons, to carry on a conversation gracefully
and intelligently, and to give it a classic cast by introducing
quotations from the ancients, or to engage in a discussion in dialogue
on a chosen theme, afforded the keenest enjoyment. It was the
conversation of the Renaissance which attained later to such æsthetic
perfection in France. Talleyrand called this form of human intercourse
man's greatest and most beautiful blessing. The classic dialogue was
revived, with only the difference that cultivated women also took part
in it. As samples of the refined social intercourse of that age, we have
Castiglione's _Cortegiano_ and Bembo's _Asolani_, which was dedicated to
Lucretia Borgia.
[Illustration: VITTORIA COLONNA.
From an engraving by P. Caronni.]
Alexander's daughter did not occupy a preeminent place among the Italian
women renowned for classical attainments, her own acquirements not being
such as to distinguish her from the majority; but, considering the
times, her education was thorough. She had received instruction in the
languages, in music, and in drawing, and later the people of Ferrara
were amazed at the skill and taste which she displayed in embroidering
in silk and gold. "She spoke Spanish, Greek, Italian, and French, and a
little Latin, very correctly, and she wrote and composed poems in all
these tongues," said the biographer Bayard in 1512. Lucretia must have
perfected her education later, during the quiet years of her life, under
the influence of Bembo and Strozzi, although she doubtless had laid its
foundation in Rome. She was both a Spaniard and an Italian, and a
perfect master of these two languages. Among her letters to Bembo there
are two written in Spanish; the remainder, of which we possess several
hundred, are composed in the Italian of that day, and are spontaneous
and graceful in style. The contents of none of them are of importance;
they display soul and feeling, but no depth of mind. Her handwriting is
not uniform; sometimes it has strong lines which remind us of the
striking, energetic writing of her father; at others it is sharp and
fine like that of Vittoria Colonna.
None of Lucretia's letters indicate that she fully understood Latin, and
her father once stated that she had not mastered that language. She
must, however, have been able to read it when written, for otherwise
Alexander could not have made her his representative in the Vatican,
with authority to open letters received. Nor were her Hellenic studies
very profound; still she was not wholly ignorant of Greek. In her
childhood, schools for the study of Hellenic literature still flourished
in Rome, where they had been established by Chrysoleras and Bessarion.
In the city were many Greeks, some of whom were fugitives from their
country, while others had come to Italy with Queen Carlotta of Cyprus.
Until her death, in 1487, this royal adventuress lived in a palace in
the Borgo of the Vatican, where she held court, and where she doubtless
gathered about her the cultivated people of Rome, just as the learned
Queen Christina of Sweden did later. It was in her house that Cardinal
Rodrigo made the acquaintance, besides that of other noble natives of
Cyprus, of Ludovico Podocatharo, a highly cultivated man, afterwards his
secretary. He it was, probably, who instructed Borgia's children in
Greek.
In the cardinal's palace there was also a humanist of German birth,
Lorenz Behaim, of Nurenburg, who managed his household for twenty years.
As he was a Latinist and a member of the Roman Academy of Pomponius
Laetus, he must have exercised some influence on the education of his
master's children. Generally there was no lack of professors of the
humane sciences in Rome, where they were in a nourishing condition, and
the Academy as well as the University attracted thither many talented
men. In the papal city there were numerous teachers who conducted
schools, and swarms of young scholars, ambitious academicians, sought
their fortune at the courts of the cardinals in the capacity of
companions or secretaries, or as preceptors to their illegitimate
children. Lucretia, also, received instruction in classic literature
from these masters. Among the poets who lived in Rome she found teachers
to instruct her in Italian versification and in writing sonnets, an art
which was everywhere cultivated by women as well as men. She doubtless
learned to compose verses, although the writers on the history of
Italian literature, Quadrio and Crescimbeni, do not place her among the
poets of the peninsula. Nowhere do Bembo, Aldus, or the Strozzi speak of
her as a poet, nor are there any verses by her in existence. It is not
certain that even the Spanish canzoni which are found in some of her
letters to Bembo were composed by her.
FOOTNOTES:
[8] See Adinolfi's notice quoted by the author in his Geschichte der
Stadt Rom im Mittelalter. 2d Aufl. vii, 312.
[9] The letter, with the inscription "A Messer Carlo Canale," is printed
in the edition of Milan, 1808. Angelo Poliziano, Le Stanze e l'Orfeo ed
altre poesie.
[10] In the archives of Mantua there is a letter from the Marchesa
Isabella to Carlo Canale, dated December 4, 1499.
[11] Lodovico Gonzaga to Bartolomeo Erba, Siamo contenti contrahi in
nome nro. compaternità cum M. Carolo Canale, et cussi per questa nostra
ti commettiamo et constituimo nostro Procuratore. Note by Affò in his
introduction to the Orfeo, p. 113.
[12] Ma Adriana Ursina, la quale è socera de la dicta madona Julia
(Farnese), che ha sempre governata essa sposa (Lucrezia) in casa propria
per esser in loco de nepote del Pontifice, la fu figliola de messer
Piedro de Mila, noto a V. Ema Sigria, cusino carnale del Papa. Despatch
from the above named to Ercole, Rome, June 13, 1493, in the state
archives of Modena. And again she is mentioned in a despatch of May 6,
1493, as madona Adriana Ursina soa governatrice figliola che fu del
quondam messer Pietro del Mila.
[13] Jacobus Burgomensis _de claris mulieribus_, Paris, 1521.