It was ever the custom of that most excellent Lord, Gianfrancesco
Gonzaga, when he was home from his wars, to spend the hour before supper
with his wife, and their children, in a fair loggia on a garden terrace
overlooking the Mincio. Here, while the evening breeze came, cool from
the lakes, and perfumed from the gardens, he tasted the delights of
family life, and rested from the cares of War and State in the gentle
atmosphere, which surrounded his pious and cultured Lady, Madonna Paola
Malatesta.
Those who visit Mantua to-day may see, in the heart of its old Castello,
in the celebrated Sala degli Sposi, just such another family scene,
painted in fresco by Mantegna. It shows, it is true, a later generation
of Gonzagas. Stately Marchese Lodovico, who sits in patriarchal dignity
by the side of his wife, Marchesa Barbara, surrounded by their children
and grandchildren, is, in the group I would fain conjure up for you, but
a boy. At the risk of ruining the poetry of the scene, I must tell you
that he is an extremely fat boy—oh! of a fatness, out of which he is to
be presently most vigorously educated! His eight-year-old brother, Carlo,
having outgrown his strength, is, on the other hand, far too lank and
thin. But for the others, you are at liberty to call up the images of the
dearest youngsters of your acquaintance. Margherita, a charming maiden
of thirteen summers, whose betrothal to Leonello of Este, the heir of
Marchese Niccolò of Ferrara, is already spoken of, might resent being
called a “youngster.” But Gianlucido and Alessandro are tiny children;
and golden-haired Cecilia, the flower of the flock, has reached the
mature age of three!
This was the scene which met the eye of that most distinguished
educationist, Vittorino da Feltre, who had come at the invitation of the
Capitano of Mantua to undertake the education of these children; and as
his eye fell upon it, he may well have felt all the doubts, that had
ridden with him through all the long miles from Venice, suddenly depart.
Indeed he had done well to come. Surely it was a task well worthy of a
man’s noblest energies, to train up these fair children, and to make of
them the men and women, in whom the Christian Humanist sees his ideals
realised.
Who had been responsible for bringing Vittorino da Feltre to Mantua? Who
had suggested to that bluff soldier, Gianfrancesco, eager to give his
children all the benefits of the “New Learning,” for which Italy was
madly athirst, the choice of a teacher, who was as great a Christian as
he was a scholar and an educationist?
The accepted story is that Guarino, the great Greek scholar, being unable
to accept the Gonzagas’ offer, himself, passed it on to his friend,
Vittorino da Feltre. But I have my own good reasons for thinking that
the choice of Vittorino was something more than a “pis aller,” and that
Madonna Paola herself was mainly responsible for it.
The grand-daughter of that Carlo Malatesta (who took so much to heart
the Gospel precepts of sacrificing whatever gives scandal—be it a man’s
own right eye, or right hand—that he had, during his guardianship of a
Gonzaga minor, thrown into the lake, at Mantua, a statue of Virgil, to
which he found the people paying idolatrous reverence), her girlhood had
been spent in Rimini, as great in repentance as in crime. Rimini hath
other memories besides that of Francesca; and Madonna Paola, in the very
year[9] when the fate of her kinswoman, Parisina, at the hands of her
husband, Marquis Nicholas of Ferrara, recalled, but too exactly, the
story heard by Dante in the Second Circle of the Inferno, may well have
turned to one of them for comfort. During the years of her girlhood,
Rimini was the scene of the labours of the great Dominican reformer,
the Blessed Giovanni Dominici. This remarkable man was a great friend
of her grandfather, and we may well assume that his book, the “Regola
del Governo di Cura famigliare,” though dedicated to a Florentine lady,
Madonna Bartolommea, wife of Antonio Alberti (and kinswoman of the
celebrated Leo Battista Alberti) was not unknown to those who had charge
of Paola’s education, and, very probably, represented one of the very
strongest influences of her girlhood. If this be so, it is impossible to
see nothing more than a mere chance in the selection of a teacher who
had already made a name for himself by a system of education exactly
corresponding to that outlined in Dominici’s treatise. In studying the
Renaissance, we are under a great disadvantage from the fact that its
best known interpreters are generally quite incapable of appreciating the
force and vivacity of religion during it. Symonds, and Burckhardt, and
Settenbrini, setting out to prove Michelet’s theory that “the Renaissance
was a discovery of the World and Man,” reject and misinterpret anything
that contradicts it. The Middle Ages must be made as dark, and stagnant,
and evil-smelling as possible—the “Dead Sea” indeed of Symonds; and the
guiding principle of the Middle Ages, the Catholic Religion, must be a
Spirit of Darkness—otherwise, what becomes of the theory? Poor Humanity,
according to Symonds, had a cowl put on it by the Obscurantist Church,
and was bidden to look neither “on the azure of the waters, nor the
luxuriance of the vines, nor the radiance of the mountains with their
robe of sun and snow.” And so, with downcast eyes, it passed on its way,
knowing nothing but that “beauty is a snare, pleasure a sin, the world a
fleeting show, man fallen and lost, death the only certainty, judgment
inevitable, hell everlasting, heaven hard to win, _ignorance acceptable
to God_.” “These,” we were told, were the “fixed ideas of the mediæval
Church.”
I have no intention of refuting this palpably absurd rendering of the
Catholic outlook, nor is there much necessity, for, fortunately, true
history is coming into her own. In Germany she has made her first
conquests; and here, thinking of men like Janssen, and Pastor, and Emil
Michael, and praying to see go forth one day from the Lecture Halls of
our Irish Universities, reapers to follow them into the fields that stand
ready for the sickle; I cannot but rejoice at the bright prospects of
a great Irish publishing house, which shall do for Irish savants, what
Herder did for those of Germany.
As long as historians like Symonds interpreted the Renaissance for us,
it was inevitable that we should be shown only a small part of it—just
as much as would fit comfortably into the Michelet formula. Moreover,
Symonds and his fellows really did not know Catholicism when they saw it.
Between involuntary ignorance, and deliberate “suppressiones veri,” they
have managed to give us a very untruthful picture of the Renaissance.
It is with something like a gasp of wonder we turn to the complete
picture presented by Dr. Pastor. Here, side by side with belated Pagans,
like the “Panormita,” and Lorenzo Valla, we see true Christian Savants
like Gianozzo Manetti, Lionardo Bruni, Ambrogio Traversari, and our own
Vittorino; side by side with monsters like Sigismondo Pandolfo Malatesta
we have Christian rulers like the good Duke Frederick of Urbino; side by
side with social butterflies like poor Beatrice of Este, we have devoted
mothers of families like Madonna Paola; side by side with the celebrated
sinners, we have the canonized saints, a long, long list of them. I
believe, indeed, that, at no period of their history, have the two great
Orders of St. Francis and St. Dominic shown themselves so fruitful in
Saints, as that across which Symonds would fain have us see written the
“I follow the finite” of Cosimo de’ Medici.
As a result of this treatment of the period, many of its most
characteristic works have been hidden away from us. So it has come to
pass that, while most students of Italian Literature know a great deal
about a book like “Il Trattato del Governo della Famiglia,” if only
because the question of its authorship has been so hotly debated, even
those who hold for the paternity of Leo Battista Alberti, as against
Pandolfini, may very well be unaware of the existence of the “Regola
del Governo di Cura Famigliare,” dedicated to Leo Battista’s kinswoman,
Bartolommea.
If anything were wanting to prove how much alike is Catholicism in all
ages and nations, one would only have to put this little book, written
five hundred years ago, for a Florentine lady, into the hands of an
Irish Catholic mother of to-day, and see how much of it she can use for
herself. Practically all of it, we should find.
“You have offered yourself,” the author says to Bartolommea, “body and
soul, with all your possessions and your children, as far as they belong
to you, to God, Our Lord, and now you want to know how to make the best
use of all these things for His glory.” Thus, with the precision of the
schoolman, he states and divides his subject. The first book, then, tells
how to use the powers of the soul for God; the second, the faculties and
senses of the body; the third, temporal goods. The fourth book tells how
children are to be trained, and is, indeed, a most thorough treatise on
Education.
Children are to be brought up (1) for God, (2) for father and mother,
(3) for themselves, (4) for their country, (5) for the trials of life.
Again, you see the schoolman, and admire the method. Can anything be
more admirable than this summing up of the whole end and aim of Catholic
Education, which takes account of the child in his future relations
as Christian, member of a family, individual with an individual’s
responsibilities for the investment of his talents (the faculties of soul
and body), citizen, and man?
Then, with an astonishing feeling for realities, he prescribes the
practical method by which this end shall be attained.
“You are bringing up your child for God. Therefore, let the thought of
God await his first consciousness. For such as him, God became a Little
Child. Show him that Little Child; have His image and that of Saint John
in your homes, and let your baby make a playmate of Jesukin. (Does that
not make one think a little of Iosagan playing with the children along
the stone ditches of the Connemara roads?) For the girl have pictures of
the girl-saints: Agnes with her lamb; Elizabeth and Cecilia with their
roses; and Catherine with her wheel. But if you cannot afford to have
these pictures in your homes (for those were not the days of colour
printing and lithography) be sure to bring the little ones often to the
Church, and let them see them there.”
I like to think that a great master, painting in those years, had a
thought of dear, little, chubby, dark-eyed boys and girls being taken,
one of the days soon to follow, into the church, when the masterpiece
should be hanging in its place, and making friends with his “Bambino.”
Not by “sight” alone shall you teach your little ones to know God. “While
they lie against your breast, and you feed them with your own substance,
feed their souls with the sweetness of the love of Jesus, that wells
first from your own heart; let the first words they utter be: ‘Jesus, Ave
Maria, Deo Gratias, Pater noster qui es in coelo.’
“Have a little altar for the children,” the author counsels, “and teach
them the different colours and the different vestments for the several
festivals. Let them ring the ‘Hours’ with their own small bell. Nor were
it ill done to let them preach to you; to the which preaching do you
listen with all due attention and reverence. So shall they learn more
easily, and more exactly, their Christian Doctrine, and you will have an
opportunity of judging what progress they are really making in it.”
Dominici loves to see the young things gambol about. “As for games,” he
says, “let them run and jump, and gambol and play”—but never so as to
scare away the little playmate, Jesukin. He throws in a word of warning
about the choice of their companions among the neighbour’s children.
Dominici is not in favour of sending children to the schools, as things
then were. (It must be remembered that he was engaged in a work of reform
among those responsible for those schools.) He advises the mother to
teach the children as much as she can at home herself. Here the question
of what they should study meets him. Is it safe to let their young
and innocent minds come into contact with pagan morality? He strongly
regrets the old days and the old ways. Our ancestors were wiser. First
they taught the Psalter, and Sacred Doctrine. Then, if the child was to
go further: the Morality of Cato, the Fictions of Aesop, the profitable
wisdom of Prospero (i.e., certain “sentences” taken from the works of
Saint Augustine); the Fidei Confessio of Bœthius; the philosophy of the
“Eva Columello,”[10] the “Tres leo Naturas”[11]; and to help them to
memorize the Sacred Story, the poem “Aethiopium Terras.”
He was writing this book for a woman who had known much trouble, who had
seen her husband’s family driven into exile by the Medici. It behoves her
then to rear up her children in the possession of that liberty of which
no Cosimo can dispossess them—the liberty which is in the heart of every
true man who has emancipated his Will from the thraldom of his passions.
Again and again, he returns to this point: train their will. Teach them
to know Good from Evil, and to _choose_ good. No man can be free who is
not free from these three things: free from sin, free from vengeance,
free from debt. Nor can a man be free whose soul is in bondage to the
appetites of his body. Rear your children hardily; so shall they have
no fear of future evil fortune. Again he goes into detail: “Teach them
to eat bitter things, lest too great daintiness be their undoing.” And
again: “if they are sick, do not show them too much compassion, for so
shall you take from them the opportunity of practising patience.”
Be careful with whom your children associate. “None of the things
entrusted to you are so precious as your children. Their souls are worth
more in God’s eyes than Heaven and Earth, and the whole of the irrational
creation; and you do Him a greater service in bringing up your children
well than if you possessed the whole world, and gave all away to the
poor.”
When treating of the relation of the child to his parents, Dominici
lays great stress on the observance of those outward forms, which
express the reverence due from him to them. In the presence of parents,
children shall not sit down unless desired to do so; they must stand in
a respectful attitude, humbly bow the head when any command is addressed
to them, and uncover when they meet their father or mother. “Twice a
day at least shall they kneel and beg your blessing. The child must
say: ‘Benedicite,’ and you shall answer: ‘May God bless thee with an
everlasting blessing,’ or ‘may the blessing of God be always with thee.’
And let the child, kneeling to ask a blessing from you, remind you to ask
a blessing from your Father who is in Heaven—not twice a day only, but as
often as you change your occupation.”
Very noble are the precepts he gives Madonna Bartolommea, to whom
Florence had shown herself, indeed, but an unkind stepmother. “You owe
your child to your country. Therefore, teach him the duties of a good
citizen, and morning and evening let him pray for the Patria.” Those are
precepts we in Ireland might follow with profit.
I have lingered a little on the educational theories of the great
Dominican, because many of them were put in practice in the school which
Vittorino da Feltre founded at Mantua, under the protection of the
Gonzagas that it is almost unthinkable that Vittorino and Madonna Paola
were not directly influenced by it. We shall now see these theories in
practice.