On the banks of the Mincio, the Gonzagas, very splendid even in their
Condottiere days, had built a stately Pleasure House, which (for reasons
on which it pleases certain historians yet to dispute) they called the
“Casa Giocosa”—the “Joyous House,” if you care to translate it thus.
When Vittorino da Feltre came to Mantua, it would seem that the two elder
of the Gonzaga boys were already being educated in this house. The Court
School, where the sons of the reigning house and of the gentlemen in
their service were educated, was an old European institution. The Palace
Schools of Charlemagne are notable examples.
No trace of the “Casa Giocosa” is now to be found. Even its situation is
a matter of uncertainty; but it has been described for us so often, and
so vividly, that we need but to close our eyes, and there it stands again
on broad meadow lands, that sweep down to the “slow-gliding Mincio,”
in the midst of its fair lawns and terraced gardens, with its avenues
of acacias and plane trees, its hedges of roses, its shady courts and
fountains and statues, its marble “loggie,” and frescoed, spacious
chambers, full of air and sunshine—a memory and an inspiration for all
the schools that have followed it since.
Now, if ever there was a man who was that rare thing, a schoolmaster
born, it was Vittorino da Feltre. He had discovered his vocation in his
student days at the University of Padua, where he had kept body and soul
together by teaching backward students, and helping them to keep up with
their classes. He had developed it at Venice, where he had shared the
management of a school with the great Greek scholar, Guarino. But at
Mantua, whither he came, a ripe man of forty-five or so, with a large
experience of boy-nature, a thorough mastery of methods of teaching,
a store of well-tested theories, and a new field on which to exercise
them, he was like a prince coming into his own kingdom. There seems
something providential in the way things were arranged for Vittorino
da Feltre. One is reminded of the Providence which we shall see in a
later paper, surrounding the foundation of another great educational
institution—Madame de Maintenon’s Saint-Cyr.
One condition Vittorino made before he took over the “Casa Giocosa.” He
was to be supreme master in the establishment. Even the parents were not
to interfere, and there was to be no appeal from his decision, whether
as to the studies of the children, their food and manner of life, or
their companions. On the last point, he was destined to meet with
grave opposition. Some families claimed it as one of their immemorial
privileges to send their children to the Court School, to be educated
with the Princes. But, privilege or no privilege, Vittorino would
tolerate nobody at the school whose example was likely to be harmful.
Here you see him putting into practice one of the most constantly
reiterated of the precepts of the Blessed Giovanni Dominici: “Be careful
of your children’s companions.”
Not alone of the companions of the Princes was he careful, but of the
servants. It would seem that when Vittorino took over the “Casa Giocosa,”
he found a whole troup of liveried menials ready to minister to the
slightest wish of the young Princes. His first care was to send them all
off, replacing them by a few trustworthy attendants, not numerous enough
to make discipline difficult. He put porters at the gate, on whom he
could rely, wishing to secure for his school the atmosphere of quiet, and
work, and prayer, and order, and wholesome austerity in which the young
souls confided to him might grow to their full perfection. The vicinity
of a splendid court made his precautions all the more necessary.
With the troops of servants disappeared the soft carpets, and luxurious
couches, the gold and silver plate, and, above all, the rich foods which
were playing such havoc with poor Lodovico’s figure—not to speak of
anything else. Everything was to be plain and wholesome and abundant,
but there was to be no luxury. Had not the Blessed Giovanni warned
Madonna Bartolommea against rearing her children too softly? “Rear them
hardily” had been his advice. “Teach them to eat bitter food and things
unpleasant,” so shall they be able to say “we care not” when life is hard
with them in the years to come.
The little picture-children for whom Dominici pleads, that Madonna
Bartolommea’s boys and girls may make friendship with them early, were
not forgotten by Vittorino. Be sure, when, at his request, Madonna Paola
sent her painter to cover the walls of the study-halls and galleries
with “frescoes of children playing,” the tiny Jesukin, and dear Saint
John, who was as an elder brother to Him, were to be seen there, playing
together—in the carpenter’s shop, mayhap, when Elizabeth had taken her
boy to Nazareth to visit his small cousin, or by the covered well under
the palm-tree in Zachary’s garden, when the sweet spring days had called
Mary and her bambino to the hill-country.
Poor Lodovico must have felt the change rather hard at first. He had been
accustomed to get up whatever time he liked, do as little as he pleased,
and have his interest aroused by nothing except questions of eating and
drinking. One really thinks there must have been something diseased in
poor Lodovico’s extraordinary appetite. Our ancestors would have seen
in him a fellow victim of Cathal MacFinguine, King of Munster, in whom
there entered the Demon of Gluttony through eating the apples, whereon
the Scholar of Fergal, son of Maelduin, had put his heathen charms, “so
that the demon abode in the throat of Cathal, to the ruin of the men of
Munster during three half-years; and it is likely he would have ruined
Ireland during another half-year.”
At all events, Vittorino took Lodovico in hand at once. He was only
allowed to eat at mealtimes; but at first his meals were set at short
intervals, and there was no stint on the quantity of food; which,
however, was as plain as possible, so that the appetite should not be
over-stimulated.
Gradually, the meals became fewer, and Vittorino, discovering that
Lodovico’s voracity was as much the result of an empty mind and starved
interests as anything else, had the inspiration to accompany them with
little entertainments. He had singers, and musicians, and storytellers
placed in the dining-hall; and, lo! Lodovico, listening to them, forgot
his plate, for the nonce, and did not notice the loss of it, when an
attendant, on a sign from Vittorino, bore it quietly away.
With Carlo, the second son, the master pursued quite a different plan.
Carlo was growing too fast, and spending his energies too rapidly in the
ardour which he put into his games. Vittorino saw to it that the boy
should have as much to eat as he wished at meal times. Between meals he
had permission to eat, too—but only bread.
His attention to the food of his pupils and to their bodily welfare
give the key to Vittorino’s whole educational system. The “Mens sana in
corpore sano,” is as an educational ideal, not the exclusive possession
of the Greeks. I have tried to show how vitally it influenced education
in the Middle Ages; but, undoubtedly, Vittorino found new ardour for his
pursuit of it in the image of the “Academy,” which his Greek studies had
conjured up for him, and kept constantly before his mind.
But the little boys and girls, for whom Vittorino was going to assume
responsibility, had something more than a body and a mind to be
developed. They had each an immortal soul. The recognition of that fact
must, logically, alter any system of education, not founded on it,
into something very different. And so the Christian school of Mantua,
forming colonists for this world, and citizens for heaven, was something
essentially different from the Platonic Academy, however much it may have
borrowed from it.
The strengthening and developing of _body_, and _mind_, and _soul_—that
is, in a few words, what the whole system of Vittorino aimed at. It is
in the harmonious ordering of the different studies and exercises, which
he chose for the perfecting of the three parts of men, that the chief
excellence of the “Casa Giocosa” consists.
“You are rearing your children for God,” the Blessed Giovanni reminded
Madonna Bartolommea. Vittorino never forgot this for a moment, nor did he
ever allow his pupils to forget that they had been “created and placed”
in this world by God, “to know Him, love Him, and serve Him, and by that
means to gain Everlasting Life.”
The common day began with hearing Mass in the school chapel. After Mass,
the Office of Our Lady was recited, and a short instruction in some point
of Christian Doctrine was given to the school. But this teaching was not
theoretic only. He taught them not only what Christians must believe,
but showed them how Christians must act. And so we find his pupils, in
the after years, distinguished, among all the men and women of Italy, by
their practical Christianity. Lodovico, once the self-indulgent, grew
into the Marchese Lodovico, chaste and sober, and wise and kind—the best
of the Gonzaga Princes. Little Frederick Montefeltro, sent as a hostage
to the Mantuan Court, rejoiced, in the years when men spoke of him as
the “Good Duke of Urbino,” that the chances of war had brought him such
good fortune as to make him the pupil of such a master. Ever before his
eyes he would have that master’s image, and as much as might be, he
would carry out his system of life in the order of the Ducal Palace.
So Vittorino’s portrait adorned one of the walls of the famous palace,
with these words written under it: “In honour of his saintly master,
Vittorino da Feltre, who by word and example, instructed him in all human
excellence, Frederico, has set this here.” And better still, “the Court
of Urbino was framed on the precepts which the Duke had learnt in the
Casa Giocosa, and became in its turn a school where Italian princes sent
their sons to be trained in knightly exercises and elegant manners.” And
so we trace, in a direct line of descent from the “Casa Giocosa,” “the
best book that was ever written upon good breeding,” as Doctor Johnson
testified to Boswell: “‘Il Cortegiano’—the best book, I tell you, and you
should read it.” An advice which one could not do better than repeat.
In an age when men lied and deceived shamelessly, Vittorino’s pupils were
known for their absolute sincerity. This love of truth and hatred of
falsehood was not won without careful efforts on the part of the master.
He would not punish for a fault that was bravely confessed, and so took
away one of the occasions of lying from timid children. A funny little
story is told of Alessandro Gonzaga. The little fellow was ill, and had
been ordered not to drink any water. But he was horribly thirsty, and
disobeyed the commands. There was no great danger of being “found out,”
but the boy was uneasy, until he had confessed. “Do you know what I did?”
he said to Vittorino. “I took a _big, big_ drink of water. Wasn’t I very
good?” “Well,” said Vittorino, seeing that it could not be helped now,
“at least, you were _very_ good to tell it.”
He never allowed his pupils to utter a profane word. When Carlo was quite
grown up, he swore a soldier’s oath in his master’s presence. And lo!
the little man was upon him in an instant, boxing his ears, as if he were
still a schoolboy. To the honour of Carlo, it must be said that he bore
the indignity meekly, feeling that he had deserved it.
Like Dominici, Vittorino loved to see the children run about, and laugh,
and leap, and play. He found two of them, during recreation hour one day,
confabbing in a corner about their lessons. Do you think he was pleased?
Not a bit of it. Out he routed them, and made them take part in the other
children’s games. For, long before the English Duke, he had found out
for himself that many a battle yet to be fought was being won already on
those meadows by the Mincio, where his pupils were playing merrily.
One of the outstanding features in Vittorino’s system was the importance
he attached to games—and all sorts of physical exercises. He held as
a fundamental principle that “the human spirit cannot exercise its
faculties fully, if the physical organs which it must use are defective.”
He insisted on outdoor exercise, whatever the weather. He had his pupils
taught riding, and swimming, and wrestling, and fencing. He organised
hunting and fishing expeditions for them; and, remembering that many
of his pupils were to be soldiers, he liked to teach them the art of
warfare, by occupying mimic trenches, and pitching mimic camps, and
taking mimic towns—according to the most approved methods.
These rougher plays were not for the girls, though they, in general,
shared the lessons of the boys. For them there were dancing lessons,
where every movement of their body was trained to an exquisite grace.
They had riding lessons, too, and hunted and played “palla,” or
tennis. No game was tolerated for them which would tend to make them
ungraceful—as so many of the games our girls play to-day really seem to
do.
Plenty of fresh air and exercise, plenty of good, simple food, to which
they brought the sauce of a healthy hunger, sound and dreamless sleep,
soon made the youngsters of the “Casa Giocosa” a healthy, happy band,
whom it was a delight to see at their lessons.
He had the supreme gift of the good teacher, our Vittorino, that of
knowing how to interest his pupils in their work. The maxim of Quintilian
“do not allow the boy to conceive an aversion for the studies which
he cannot yet love,” was adopted by him, and, until the young minds
were ripe enough to love learning for its own sake, it was the master’s
care to surround it with attractions. So we find him reviving the
Quintilianian device of teaching the youngsters to read by means of
painted cards and wooden blocks. As we have seen already, our Irish
ancestors had a similar plan. In Whitley Stokes’ “Lives of the Irish
Saints from the Book of Lismore,” there is a charming story of Saint
Columbkille, as a child, learning his letters from a cake, on which they
had been stamped.
In Vittorino’s school there was no place for the rod, which we have seen
play such an important part in the mediæval school-system. He liked to
appeal to the children through their sense of honour and dignity. The
greatest punishment for such children was to make them feel ashamed.
As far as school-work went, however, there was little need for
punishment. The enthusiasm for letters which had seized on all Italy
had taken possession of the little people of the “Casa Giocosa” in an
extraordinary degree; and in some cases, especially that of Gianlucido,
the master’s care was rather to restrain than to urge them on. That
great scholar, Ambrogio Traversari, General of the Camaldolese Order,
writing to his friend, the celebrated Niccolò Nicoli, mentioned the boy’s
marvellous achievements in Latin and Greek. On the occasion of a later
visit, which he described for the great Cosimo de’ Medici, he listened to
a Latin poem of about two hundred verses, wherein Gianlucido celebrated
the coming of the Emperor Sigismund to Mantua.
That same letter to Cosimo makes mention of Cecilia, whom, perhaps, my
readers think I have left too long undistinguished, among the band of
merry children, playing by the Mincio. “There is also a daughter of the
Marquis[12] at the school,” writes Ambrogio, “who, though only ten years’
old, writes Greek with such elegance that, I am ashamed to acknowledge,
scarcely any of my own pupils can approach it.” This tribute, indeed,
hardly does full credit to Cecilia’s astonishing attainments. At eight
years old, we are told, she read the works of Saint John Chrysostom,
and wrote elegant Latin verses. She had begun the study of Greek at the
mature age of six.
Nor did she excel less in the feminine arts, on which her master’s
educational system laid such stress. Those little, high-born, Italian
girls learned to dance almost as soon as they learned to walk, and a
suggestion of the music which accompanied their early dancing lessons
lingered in every graceful movement. Music, too, was as general as
speech, and the child learned it as naturally. But, general as it was, it
was never cheapened by being wedded to unworthy words. When a little girl
learned to sing, there was food for her intellect in the lesson, too;
for, in those days, men set sonnets of Petrarch and passages from Virgil
to music, and the lute made a charming accompaniment.
The “speaking” voice was even more carefully trained than the “singing”
voice. To quote from the delightful “Life of Vittorino da Feltre” in
the Saint Nicholas Series: “the greatest trouble was taken with the
cultivation of the voice, the manner of breathing, pronunciation, and all
the other details which go to make up an easy and elegant delivery....
Like the ancient Romans, the master attached to this exercise a certain
hygienic value.” It was a rare treat to hear Cecilia, in that golden
voice of hers, declaim some of her own verses.
It is worth while to examine, in some detail, the system which led to
such astonishing results.
Those painted cards and blocks, of which I have spoken, had been designed
to teach the child to read Latin. The thing was not so surprising in
those days as it would be in ours. As a matter of fact, it was as short
a step towards the “unknown from the known” (the safest of pedagogic
principles) to teach a child, whose mother-tongue was the speech of
Lombardy, to read Latin, as to teach him or her to read Italian. So the
children learned to read Latin very young indeed. Unless Cecilia was an
exception, they learned to read Greek very young, too. The practice was
to translate Greek into Latin.
Later on, the pupils took up the study of Grammar. The rules of Latin
Grammar were deduced from a careful study of the works of Virgil and
Cicero, while those of Greek were formulated while the pupils studied
Homer and Demosthenes. The barbarous system, from which we are just
emerging, which made the study of grammatical rules precede all else, was
the unfortunate discovery of the century following Vittorino’s.
History was studied in the pages of Sallust, Valerius Maximus, and Livy.
Vittorino’s practice was to make his pupils read aloud, insisting on good
pronunciation and artistic delivery. He made them learn off by heart,
too, the best passages of the poets, orators, and philosophers. And so
the children had faultless models to hand, when it was time for them to
address themselves to original composition.
To balance any tendency this practice might have had to make his pupils
adopt other people’s thoughts ready-made, he put them through a very
thorough course of mental gymnastics. He aimed, with these exercises, to
win for his pupils rather strength and vigour of mentality than subtilty.
“I want to teach them to think, and not to split hairs,” expresses a
pedagogic maxim of his, of which all his biographers have taken note. He
made the youngsters propose difficulties to him, or raised them himself
for them, and helped them to solve them. The Mathematical training
given in the “Casa Giocosa” was the best in all Italy. At none of the
Universities were Mathematics taught in a manner so profitable, or their
educative value so fully realised.
When the children were a little older they took part in certain
oratorical exercises, the idea of which the master had borrowed from
the “Schools of Rhetoric” of Antiquity. Many of these boys would, in the
years to come, be employed in Diplomatic Missions, and nothing could more
fittingly prepare them for such work than these “Disputations.”
Such, in broadest outline, was the education which made of Cecilia
Gonzaga, at the age of sixteen, one of the most charming and accomplished
ladies in all Italy. Many a princely suitor came riding over the
long bridge of San Giorgio to lay his hand and heart at the feet of
the Marchese’s golden-haired girl, whose beauty and attainments had
set their poets singing. One, in particular, found favour with her
father—Oddantonio of Montefeltro, elder brother of that Frederico who
had been Cecilia’s fellow-pupil at the “Casa Giocosa.” Oddantonio saw
Cecilia, for the first time, on the occasion of Margherita’s marriage
with Leonello of Este, fell in love with her immediately, and formally
asked for her hand six weeks later. The alliance proposed was one that
offered immense political advantages to the House of Gonzaga, and the
Marchese eagerly accepted it, though the reputation of his prospective
son-in-law was none of the best. In the off-hand way fathers had in those
days, when it was a question of arranging their daughters’ matrimonial
affairs, the Marquis sent for Cecilia one day, and told her to hold
herself ready to be married.
But another Lover than Oddantonio had won Cecilia for Himself. The
little Jesukin, with Whom she had played her childish games, Who, grown
to manhood, had changed the water of the old philosophies into the wine
of truth for her drinking, Who had sanctified the dust of the earth’s
materialism because His Feet had touched it, and made the World a Sacred
Place because He had died in it, was the Beloved of her heart.
As Magdalene, on a day, had broken the “alabaster box of precious
ointment,” and anointed His Feet therewith, so, too, was Cecilia ready
to pour out at His Feet all the treasures of heart, and mind, and soul,
which Vittorino’s teaching had helped her to gather; as Magdalene spent
the beauty of her hair to wipe the Feet she had anointed, so, too, was
Cecilia ready to lay down her beauty for His dear sake.
Not many yards from the Castello of Mantua was a Convent of the Poor
Clares, founded by Madonna Paola. Here was the abode which her Beloved
had chosen for her, and here He offered her the habit which Francis had
bestowed on Clare, the rope-girdle, the coarse veil. Oddantonio’s jewels
and gifts, the satins and laces, and cloth of gold in which he would have
decked his bride, were dross in the eyes of her, whose chosen ornaments
were the jewels of Madonna Poverty.
When she announced her intention of becoming a Clarice to her father, his
rage knew no bounds. One blushes to tell it (for Gianfrancesco, with all
his faults, has a way of making us like him), but it must be told: he
actually used physical violence to the poor girl to compel her to do what
she was told. But steadfast as Clare herself, Cecilia stood firm, finding
a little comfort in the unfailing sympathy of her mother and her teacher.
For two years the struggle lasted—Vittorino and Paola managing, between
them, to dissuade the Marquis from forcing on his daughter’s marriage
with a Prince, whose name was beginning to be in all men’s mouths as that
of a notorious libertine. It may well be that Gianfrancesco was a little
ashamed of himself when he was forced to recognise the true character of
his chosen son-in-law. But ashamed or not, he was no more ready to see
his brilliant girl bury herself in a Poor Clare’s Cell. To the last,
he refused his permission for her entrance into religion; and Cecilia,
fearing to bring disaster on the Convent she had chosen, was forced to
acquiesce.
But a day came when Gianfrancesco had power to make his will felt no
longer—a day when he lay very still and cold on a bier of black velvet,
and was borne to his tomb in San Francesco.
Curiously enough, the Church wherein the great Marchese lay buried was
part of the Convent Cecilia had been so anxious to make her home. Nothing
stood in the way of the accomplishment of her heart’s desire now; and
so it came to pass that the Vows he had so long refused to allow his
daughter to take were uttered over Marchese Gianfrancesco’s tomb.
[Illustration]
MARGARET MORE
A Little Schoolgirl of Tudor England