But Vittoria's first feeling, on receiving that fatal message at

Viterbo, was, that she could never again face that world, which was

so ready to open its arms to her. Escape from the world, solitude, a

cell, whose walls should resemble, as nearly as might be, those of the

grave, since that asylum was denied to her, was her only wish. And

she hastened, stunned by her great grief, to Rome, with the intention

of throwing herself into a cloister. The convent of San Silvestro in

Capite—so called from the supposed possession by the community of the

Baptist's head—had always been a special object of veneration to the

Colonna family; and there she sought a retreat. Her many friends, well

knowing the desperation of her affliction, feared, that acting under

the spur of its first violence, she would take the irrevocable step

of pronouncing the vows. That a Vittoria Colonna should be so lost to

the world was not to be thought of. So, Jacopo Sadoleto, Bishop of

Carpentras, and afterwards made a cardinal by Pope Paul III., one of

the most learned men of his day, himself a poet, and an intimate friend

of Vittoria, hastened to Pope Clement, whose secretary he was at the

time, and obtained from him a brief addressed to the abbess and nuns of

San Silvestro, enjoining them to receive into their house, and console

to the best of their ability the Marchesana di Pescara, "omnibus

spiritualibus et temporalibus consolationibus," but forbidding them,

under pain of the greater excommunication, to permit her to take the

veil, "impetu potius sui doloris, quam maturo consilio circa mutationem

vestium vidualium in monasticas."

This brief is dated the 7th December, 1525.

She remained with the sisters of San Silvestro till the autumn of the

following year; and would have further deferred returning into a world

which the conditions of the times made less than ever tempting to her,

had not her brother Ascanio, now her only remaining natural protector,

taken her from the convent to Marino, in consequence of the Colonna

clan being once again at war with the Pope, as partisans of the Emperor.

On the 20th of September, 1526, this ever turbulent family raised a

tumult in Rome to the cry of "Imperio! Imperio! Libertà! Libertà!

Colonna! Colonna!" and sacked the Vatican, and every house belonging to

the Orsini;[183] the old clan hatred showing itself as usual on every

pretext and opportunity.

The result was a papal decree, depriving Cardinal Colonna of his hat;

and declaring confiscated all the estates of the family. Deeply grieved

by all these excesses, both by the lawless violence of her kinsmen,

and by the punishment incurred by them, she left Marino, and once more

returned to the retirement of Ischia in the beginning of 1527. It was

well for her that she had decided on not remaining in or near Rome

during that fatal year. While the eternal city and its neighbourhood

were exposed to the untold horrors and atrocities committed by the

soldiers of the Most Catholic King, Vittoria was safe in her island

home, torn indeed to the heart by the tidings which reached her of the

ruin and dispersion of many valued friends, but at least tranquil and

secure.

[Sidenote: IN MEMORIAM.]

And now, if not perhaps while she was still with the nuns of San

Silvestro, began her life as a poetess. She had hitherto written but

little, and occasionally only. Henceforward, poetical composition

seems to have made the great occupation of her life. Visconti, the

latest, and by far the best editor of her works, has divided them into

two portions. With two or three unimportant exceptions, of which the

letter to her husband already noticed is the most considerable, they

consist entirely of sonnets. The first of Signor Visconti's divisions,

comprising 134 sonnets, includes those inspired almost entirely by her

grief for the loss of her husband. They form a nearly uninterrupted

series "In Memoriam," in which the changes are rung with infinite

ingenuity on a very limited number of ideas, all turning on the glory

and high qualities of him whom she had lost, and her own undiminished

and hopeless misery.

"I only write to vent that inward pain,

On which my heart doth feed itself, nor wills

Aught other nourishment,"

begins the first of these elegiac sonnets; in which she goes on to

disclaim any idea of increasing her husband's glory,—"non per giunger

lume al mio bel sole;" which is the phrase she uses invariably to

designate him. This fancy of alluding to Pescara always by the same

not very happily chosen metaphor, contributes an additional element of

monotony to verses still further deprived of variety by the identity of

their highly artificial form.

This form, it is hardly necessary to remark, more than any other

mode of the lyre, needs and exhibits the beauties of accurate finish

and neat polish. Shut out, as it is, by its exceeding artificiality

and difficult construction from many of the higher beauties of more

spontaneous poetical utterance, the sonnet, "totus, teres atque

rotundus," is nothing if not elaborated to gem-like perfection.

Yet Vittoria writes as follows:—

"Se in man prender non soglio unqua la lima

Del buon giudicio, e ricercando intorno

Con occhio disdegnoso, io non adorno

Nè tergo la mia rozza incolta rima,

Nasce perchè non è mia cura prima

Procacciar di ciò lode, o fuggir scorno;

Nè che dopo il mio lieto al ciel ritorno

Viva ella al mondo in più onorata stima.

Ma dal foco divin, che 'l mio intelletto

Sua mercè infiamma, convien che escan fuore

Mal mio grado talor queste faville.

E se alcuna di loro un gentil core

Avvien che scaldi, mille volte e mille

Ringraziar debbo il mio felice errore."

Which may be thus Englished with tolerable accuracy of meaning, if not

with much poetical elegance.[184]

"If in these rude and artless songs of mine

I never take the file in hand, nor try

With curious care, and nice fastidious eye,

To deck and polish each uncultured line,

'Tis that it makes small portion of my aim

To merit praise, or 'scape scorn's blighting breath;

Or that my verse, when I have welcomed death,

May live rewarded with the meed of fame.

But it must be that Heaven's own gracious gift,

Which with its breath divine inspires my soul,

Strike forth these sparks, unbidden by my will.

And should one such but haply serve to lift

One gentle heart, I thankful reach my goal,

And, faulty tho' the strain, my every wish fulfil."

[Sidenote: SPECIMENS OF SONNETS.]

Again, in another sonnet, of which the first eight lines are perhaps

as favourable a specimen of a really poetical image as can be found

throughout her writings, she repeats the same profession of "pouring an

unpremeditated lay."

"Qual digiuno augellin, che vede ed ode

Batter l'ali alla madre intorno, quando

Gli reca il nutrimento; ond egli amando

Il cibo e quella, si rallegra e gode,

E dentro al nido suo si strugge e rode

Per desio di seguirla anch'ei volando,

E la ringrazia in tal modo cantando,

Che par ch'oltre 'l poter la lingua snode;

Tal'io qualor il caldo raggio e vivo

Del divin sole, onde nutrisco il core

Più del usato lucido lampeggia,

Muovo la penna, spinta dall'amore

Interno; e senza ch'io stessa m'avveggia

Di quel ch'io dico le sue lodi scrivo."

Which in English runs pretty exactly as follows:—

"Like to a hungry nestling bird, that hears

And sees the fluttering of his mother's wings

Bearing him food, whence, loving what she brings

And her no less, a joyful mien he wears,

And struggles in the nest, and vainly stirs,

Wishful to follow her free wanderings,

And thanks her in such fashion, while he sings,

That the free voice beyond his strength appears;

So I, whene'er the warm and living glow

Of him my sun divine, that feeds my heart,

Shine's brighter than its wont, take up the pen,

Urged by the force of my deep love; and so

Unconscious of the words unkempt by art

I write his praises o'er and o'er again."

The reader conversant with Italian poetry will have already seen enough

to make him aware, that the Colonna's compositions are by no means,

unkempt, unpolished, or spontaneous. The merit of them consists in

the high degree, to which they are exactly the reverse of all this.

They are ingenious, neat, highly studied, elegant, and elaborate. It

may be true, indeed, that much thought was not expended on the subject

matter; but it was not spared on the diction, versification, and form.

So much so, that many of her sonnets were retouched, altered, improved,

and finally left to posterity, in a form very different from that in

which they were first handed round the literary world of Italy.[185]

The file in truth was constantly in hand; though the nice fastidious

care bestowed in dressing out with curious conceits a jejune or trite

thought, which won the enthusiastic applause of her contemporaries,

does not to the modern reader compensate for the absence of passion,

earnestness, and reality.

Then, again, the declaration of the songstress of these would-be "wood

notes wild," that they make no pretension to the meed of praise, nor

care to escape contempt, nor are inspired by any hope of a life of fame

after the author's death, leads us to contrast with such professions

the destiny that really did,—surely not altogether unsought,—await

these grief-inspired utterances of a breaking heart during the author's

lifetime.

No sooner was each memory-born pang illustrated by an ingenious

metaphor, or pretty simile packed neatly in its regulation case of

fourteen lines with their complexity of twofold rhymes all right, than

it was handed all over Italy. Copies were as eagerly sought for as

_the_ novel of the season at a nineteenth-century circulating library.

Cardinals, bishops, poets, wits, diplomatists, passed them from one

to another, made them the subject of their correspondence with each

other, and with the fair mourner; and eagerly looked out for the next

poetical bonne bouche which her undying grief and constancy to her "bel

sole" should send them.

[Sidenote: WOOD-NOTES WILD.]

The enthusiasm created by these tuneful wailings of a young widow as

lovely as inconsolable, as irreproachable as noble, learned enough to

correspond with the most learned men of the day on their own subjects,

and with all this a Colonna, was intense. Vittoria became speedily the

most famous woman of her day, was termed by universal consent "the

divine," and lived to see three editions of the grief-cries, which

escaped from her "without her will."

Here is a sonnet, which was probably written at the time of her return

to Ischia in 1527; when the sight of all the well-loved scenery of the

home of her happy years must have brought to her mind Dante's—

"Nessun maggior dolore

Che ricordarsi del tempo felice

Nella miseria!"

Vittoria looks back on the happy time as follows:—

"Oh! che tranquillo mar, oh che chiare onde

Solcava già la mia spalmata barca,

Di ricca e nobil merce adorna e carca,

Con l'aer puro, e con l'aure seconde,

Il ciel, ch'ora i bei vaghi lumi asconde

Porgea serena luce e d'ombra scarca;

Ahi! quanto ha da temer chi lieto varca!

Chè non sempre al principio il fin risponde.

Ecco l'empia e volubile fortuna

Scoperse poi l'irata iniqua fronte,

Dal cui furor sì gran procella insorge.

Venti, pioggia, saette insieme aduna,

E fiere intorno a divorarmi pronte;

Ma l'alma ancor la fida Stella scorge."

In English, thus:—

"On what smooth seas, on what clear waves did sail

My fresh careenèd bark! what costly freight

Of noble merchandise adorn'd its state!

How pure the breeze, how favouring the gale!

And Heaven, which now its beauteous rays doth veil,

Shone then serene and shadowless. But fate

For the too happy voyager lies in wait.

Oft fair beginnings in their endings fail.

And now doth impious changeful fortune bare

Her angry ruthless brow, whose threat'ning power

Rouses the tempest, and lets loose its war!

But though rains, winds, and lightnings fill the air,

And wild beasts seek to rend me and devour,

Still shines o'er my true soul its faithful star."

Bearing in mind what we have seen of Pescara, it would seem evident,

that some monstrous illusion with respect to him must have obscured

Vittoria's mind and judgment. It might have been expected that she

would have been found attributing to him high and noble qualities,

which existed only in her own imagination. But it is remarkable that,

though in general terms she speaks of him as all that was noblest and

greatest, yet in describing his merits, she confines herself to the

few which he really had. This highly cultured, devout, thoughtful,

intellectual woman, seems really to have believed, that a mercenary

swordsman's calling was the noblest occupation earth could offer, and

the successful following of it the best preparation and surest title to

immortal happiness hereafter.

[Sidenote: SONNET TO HER HUSBAND.]

The following sonnet is one of many expressing the same sentiments.

"Alle Vittorie tue, mio lume eterno,

Non diede il tempo o la stagion favore;

La spada, la virtù, l'invitto core

Fur li ministri tuoi la state e' verno.

Col prudente occhio, e col saggio governo

L'altrui forze spezzasti in si brev'ore,

Che 'l modo all'alte imprese accrebbe onore

Non men che l'opre al tuo valore interno.

Non tardaro il tuo corso animi altieri,

O fiumi, o monti; e le maggior cittadi

Per cortesia od ardir rimaser vinte.

Salisti al mondo i più pregiati gradi;

Or godi in ciel d'altri trionfi e veri,

D'altre frondi le tempie ornate e cinte."

Which may be Englished as follows:—

"To thy great victories, my eternal light,

Nor time, nor seasons, lent their favouring aid;

Thy sword, thy might, thy courage undismay'd,

Summer and winter serv'd thy will aright.

By thy wise governance and eagle sight,

Thou didst so rout the foe with headlong speed,

The manner of the doing crown'd the deed,

No less than did the deed display thy might.

Mountains and streams, and haughty souls in vain

Would check thy course. By force of courtesy

Or valour vanquish'd, cities of name were won.

Earth's highest honours did thy worth attain;

Now truer triumphs Heaven reserves for thee,

And nobler garlands do thy temples crown."

Often her wishes for death are checked by the consideration, that haply

her virtue may not suffice to enable her to rejoin her husband in the

mansions of the blest. Take the following example:—

"Quando del suo tormento il cor si duole

Si ch'io bramo il mio fin, timor m'assale,

E dice; il morir tosto a che ti vale

Si forse lungi vai dal tuo bel sole?

Da questa fredda tema nascer suole

Un caldo ardir, che pon d'intorno l'ale

All alma; onde disgombra il mio mortale

Quanto ella può, da quel ch e 'l mondo vuole.

Così lo spirto mio s'asconde e copre

Qui dal piacer uman, non già per fama

O van grido, o pregiar troppo se stesso;

Ma sente 'l lume suo, che ognor lo chiama,

E vede il volto, ovunque mira, impresso,

Che gli misura i passi e scorge l'opre."

Thus done into English:—

"When of its pangs my heart doth sore complain,

So that I long to die, fear falls on me,

And saith, what boots such early death to thee,

If far from thy bright sun thou should'st remain.

Then oft from this cold fear is born again

A fervent boldness, which doth presently

Lend my soul wings, so that mortality

Strives to put off its worldly wishes vain.

For this, my spirit here herself enfolds,

And hides from human joys; and not for fame,

Nor empty praise, nor overblown conceit;

But that she hears her sun still call her name,

And still, where'er she looks, his face doth meet,

Who measures all her steps, and all her deeds beholds."

A similar cast of thought, both as regards her own disgust of life and

the halo of sanctity, which by some mysterious process of mind she was

able to throw around her husband's memory, is found again in this, the

last of the sonnets, selected to illustrate this phase of our poetess's

mind, and exemplify the first division of her writings.

"Cara union, che in si mirabil modo

Fosti ordinata dal signor del cielo,

Che lo spirto divino, e l'uman velo

Legò con dolce ed amoroso nodo,

Io, benchi lui di si bell'opra lodo,

Pur cerco, e ad altri il mio pensier non celo,

Sciorre il tuo laccio; ni più a caldo o gelo

Serbarti; poi che qui di te non godo.

Che l'alma chiusa in questo carcer rio

Come nemico l'odia; onde smarrita

Ne vive qui, nè vola ove desia.

Quando sarà con suo gran sole unita,

Felice giorno! allor contenta fia;

Che sol nel viver suo conobbe vita."

[Sidenote: SENTIMENTS IN HER POETRY.]

Of which the subjoined rendering, prosaic and crabbed as it is, is

perhaps hardly more so than the original.

"Sweet bond, that wast ordain'd so wondrous well

By the Almighty ruler of the sky,

Who did unite in one sweet loving tie

The godlike spirit and its fleshy shell,

I, while I praise his loving work, yet try—

Nor wish my thought from others to withhold—

To loose thy knot; nor more, through heat or cold,

Preserve thee, since in thee no joy have I.

Therefore my soul, shut in this dungeon stern,

Detests it as a foe; whence, all astray,

She lives not here, nor flies where she would go.

When to her glorious sun she shall return,

Ah! then content shall come with that blest day,

For she, but while he liv'd, a sense of life could know."

In considering the collection of 117 sonnets, from which the above

specimens have been selected, and which were probably the product of

about seven or eight years, from 1526 to 1533–4 (in one she laments

that the seventh year from her husband's death should have brought

with it no alleviation of her grief); the most interesting question

that suggests itself, is,—whether we are to suppose the sentiments

expressed in them to be genuine outpourings of the heart, or rather

to consider them all as part of the professional equipment of a poet,

earnest only in the work of achieving a high and brilliant poetical

reputation? The question is a prominent one, as regards the concrete

notion to be formed of the sixteenth-century woman, Vittoria Colonna;

and is not without interest as bearing on the great subject of woman's

nature.

Vittoria's moral conduct, both as a wife and as a widow, was wholly

irreproachable. A mass of concurrent contemporary testimony seems to

leave no doubt whatever on this point. More than one of the poets of

her day professed themselves her ardent admirers, devoted slaves,

and despairing lovers, according to the most approved poetical and

Platonic fashion of the time; and she received their inflated bombast

not unpleased with the incense, and answered them with other bombast,

all _en règle_ and in character. The "carte de tendre" was then laid

down on the Platonic projection; and the sixteenth century fashion in

this respect was made a convenient screen, for those to whom a screen

was needful, quite as frequently as the less classical whimsies of a

later period. But Platonic love to Vittoria was merely an occasion for

indulging in the spiritualistic pedantries, by which the classicists

of that day sought to link the infant metaphysical speculations then

beginning to grow out of questions of church doctrine, with the

ever-interesting subject of romantic love.

A recent French writer,[186] having translated into prose Vittoria's

poetical epistle to her husband, adds that she has been "obliged to

veil and soften certain passages which might damage the writer's

poetical character in the eyes of her fair readers, by exhibiting her

as more woman than poet in the ardent and 'positive' manner, in which

she speaks of her love." Never was there a more calumnious insinuation.

It is true indeed that the Frenchwoman omits, or slurs over some

passages of the original, but as they are wholly void of the shadow of

offence, it can only be supposed that the translator did not understand

the meaning of them.

There is no word in Vittoria's poetry which can lead to any other

conclusion on this point, than that she was, in her position and

social rank, an example, rare at that period, not only of perfect

regularity of conduct, but of great purity and considerable elevation

of mind. Such other indications as we have of her moral nature are

all favourable. We find her, uninfluenced by the bitter hereditary

hatreds of her family, striving to act as peacemaker between hostile

factions, and weeping over the mischiefs occasioned by their struggles.

We find her the constant correspondent and valued friend of almost

every good and great man of her day. And if her scheme of moral

doctrine, as gatherable from that portion of her poems which we have

not yet examined, be narrow,—as how should it be otherwise,—yet it

is expressive of a mind habitually under the influence of virtuous

aspiration, and is more humanising in its tendencies, than that

generally prevalent around her.

[Sidenote: PESCARA'S CHARACTER.]

Such was Vittoria Colonna. It has been seen what her husband Pescara

was. And the question arises,—how far can it be imagined possible that

she should not only have lavished on him to the last while living,

all the treasures of an almost idolatrous affection; not only have

looked back on his memory after his death with fondness and charitable,

even blindly charitable, indulgence; but should absolutely have so

canonised him in her imagination as to have doubted of her own fitness

to consort hereafter with a soul so holy! It may be said, that Vittoria

did not know her husband as we know him; that the few years they had

passed together had no doubt shown her only the better phases of his

character. But she knew that he had at least doubted whether he should

not be false to his sovereign, and had been most infamously so to his

accomplices or dupes. She knew at least all that Giovio's narrative

could tell her; for the bishop presented it to her, and received a

sonnet in return.

But it is one of the most beautiful properties of woman's nature, some

men say, that their love has power to blind their judgment. Novelists

and poets are fond of representing women whose affections remain

unalterably fixed on their object, despite the manifest unworthiness

of it; and set such examples before us, as something high, noble,

admirable, "beautiful;" to the considerable demoralisation of their

confiding students of either sex. There _is_ a tendency in woman to

refuse at all risks the dethroning of the sovereign she has placed on

her heart's throne. The pain of deposing him is so great, that she is

tempted to abase her own soul to escape it; for it is only at that cost

that it can be escaped. And the spectacle of a fine nature "dragged

down to sympathise with clay," is not "beautiful," but exceedingly the

reverse. Men do not usually set forth as worthy of admiration—though

a certain school of writers do even this, in the trash talked of love

at first sight—that kind of love between the sexes, which arises from

causes wholly independent of the higher part of our nature. Yet it is

that love alone which can survive esteem. And it is highly important to

the destinies of woman, that she should understand and be thoroughly

persuaded, that she cannot love that which does not merit love, without

degrading her own nature; that under whatsoever circumstances love

should cease when respect, approbation, and esteem have come to an end;

and that those who find poetry and beauty in the love which no moral

change in its object can kill, are simply teaching her to attribute

a fatally debasing supremacy to those lower instincts of our nature,

on whose due subordination to the diviner portion of our being all

nobleness, all moral purity and spiritual progress depends.

[Sidenote: POETICAL PLATONISM.]

Vittoria Colonna was not one whose intellectual and moral self had

thus abdicated its sceptre. The texture of her mind and its habits of

thought forbid the supposition; and, bearing this in mind, it becomes

wholly impossible to accept the glorification of her "bel sole,"

which makes the staple of the first half of her poems, as the sincere

expression of genuine feeling and opinion.

She was probably about as much in earnest as was her great model and

master, Petrarch, in his adoration of Laura. The poetical mode of the

day was almost exclusively Petrarchist; and the abounding Castalian

fount of that half century in "the land of song" played from its

thousand jets little else than Petrarch and water in different degrees

of dilution. Vittoria has no claim to be excepted from the "servum

pecus," though her imitation has more of self-derived vigour to support

it. And this assumption of a mighty, undying, exalted and hopeless

passion, was a necessary part of the poet's professional appurtenances.

Where could a young and beautiful widow, of unblemished conduct, who

had no intention of changing her condition, and no desire to risk

misconstruction by the world, find this needful part of her outfit as

a poet, so unobjectionably as in the memory of her husband, sanctified

and exalted by the imagination to the point proper for the purpose.

For want of a deeper spiritual insight, and a larger comprehension of

the finer affections of the human heart and the manifestations of them,

with the Italian poets of the "rénaissance," love-poetry was little

else than the expression of passion in the most restricted sense of

the term. But they were often desirous of elevating, purifying, and

spiritualising their theme. And how was this to be accomplished? The

gratification of passion, such as they painted, would, they felt, have

led them quite in a different direction from that they were seeking. A

hopeless passion therefore, one whose wishes the reader was perfectly

to understand were never destined to be gratified—better still, one

by the nature of things impossible to be gratified—this was the

contrivance by which love was to be poetised and moralised.

The passion-poetry, which addressed itself to the memory of one no

more, met the requirements of the case exactly; and Vittoria's ten

years despair and lamentations, her apotheosis of the late cavalry

captain, and longing to rejoin him, must be regarded as poetical

properties brought out for use, when she sat down to make poetry for

the perfectly self-conscious, though very laudable purpose of acquiring

for herself a poet's reputation.

But it must not be supposed that anything in the nature of hypocrisy

was involved in the assumption of the poetical rôle of inconsolable

widow. Everybody understood that the poetess was only making poetry,

and saying the usual and proper things for that purpose. She was no

more attempting to impose on anybody than was a poet when on entering

some "academia" he termed himself Tyrtæus or Lycidas, instead of the

name inherited from his father.

And from this prevailing absence of all real and genuine feeling,

arises the utter coldness and shallow insipidity of the poets of

that time and school. Literature has probably few more unreadable

departments than the productions of the Petrarchists of the beginning

of the sixteenth century.

Vittoria, when she began to write on religious subjects, was more in

earnest; and the result, as we shall see, is accordingly improved.

CHAPTER VI.

Vittoria in Rome in 1530.—Antiquarian rambles.—Pyramus and Thisbe

medal.—Contemporary commentary on Vittoria's poems.—Paul the

Third.—Rome again in 1536.—Visit to Lucca.—To Ferrara.—Protestant

tendencies.—Invitation from Giberto.—Return to Rome.

The noble rivalry of Francis I. and Charles V. was again, in 1530,

making Naples a field of glory in such sort, that outraged nature

appeared also on the scene with pestilence in her hand. The first

infliction had driven most of the literary society in Naples to take

refuge in the comparative security of Ischia. The latter calamity had

reached even that retreat; and Vittoria some time in that year again

visited Rome.

Life was beginning there to return to its usual conditions after the

tremendous catastrophe of 1527. Pestilence had there also, as usual,

followed in the train of war and military license. And many in all

classes had been its victims. Great numbers fled from the city, and

among these were probably most of such as were honoured by Vittoria's

personal friendship. Now they were venturing back to their old haunts

on the Pincian, the Quirinal, or those favourite Colonna gardens, still

ornamented by the ruins of Aurelian's Temple to the Sun. The tide

of modern Goths, who had threatened to make the eternal city's name

a mockery, had been swept back at the word of that second and "most

Catholic" Alaric, Charles V. Cardinals, poetasters, wits, Ciceronian

bishops, statesmen, ambassadors, and artists, busy in the achievement

of immortality, were once more forming a society, which gave the Rome

of that day a fair title to be considered, in some points of view, the

capital of the world. The golden Roman sunlight was still glowing over

aqueduct, arch and temple; and Rome the Eternal was herself again.

By this varied and distinguished society Vittoria was received with

open arms. The Colonna family had become reconciled to Pope Clement,

and had had their fiefs restored to them; so that there was no cloud

on the political horizon to prevent the celebrated Marchesana from

receiving the homage of all parties. The Marchese del Vasto, Vittoria's

former pupil, for whom she never ceased to feel the warmest affection,

was also then at Rome.[187] In his company, and that of some others of

the gifted knot around her, Vittoria visited the ruins and vestiges of

ancient Rome with all the enthusiasm of one deeply versed in classic

lore, and thoroughly imbued with the then prevailing admiration for

the works and memorials of Pagan antiquity. Vittoria's sister-in-law,

Donna Giovanna d'Aragona, the beautiful and accomplished wife of her

brother Ascanio, in whose house she seems to have been living during

this visit to Rome, was doubtless one of the party on these occasions.

The poet Molza has chronicled his presence among them in more than one

sonnet. His muse would seem to have "made increment of anything." For

no less than four sonnets[188] were the result of the exclamation from

Vittoria, "Ah happy they"—the ancients, "who lived in days so full

of beauty!" Of course, various pretty things were obtainable out of

this. Among others, we have the gallant Pagans responding to the lady's

ejaculation, that on the contrary their time was less fortunate than

the present, in that it was not blessed by the sight of her.

[Sidenote: VISIT TO ROME.]

It would have been preferable to have had preserved for us some further

scraps from the lips of Vittoria, while the little party gazed at

sunset over that matchless view of the aqueduct-bestridden Campagna

from the terrace at the western front of the Lateran, looked up at

the Colosseum, ghostly in the moonlight, from the arch of Titus, or

discoursed on the marvellous proportions of the Pantheon.

But history rarely guesses aright what the after-ages she works for

would most thank her for handing down to them. And we must be content

to construct for ourselves, as best we may, from the stray hints we

have, the singularly pleasing picture of these sixteenth century

rambles among the ruins of Rome by as remarkable a company of pilgrims

as any of the thousands who have since trodden in their steps.

Vittoria's visit to Rome upon this occasion was a short one. It was

probably early in the following year that she returned to Ischia.

Signor Visconti attributes this journey to the restlessness arising

from a heart ill at ease, vainly hoping to find relief from its

misery by change of place. He assumes all the expressions of despair

to be found in her sonnets of this period, to be so many reliable

autobiographical documents, and builds his narrative upon them

accordingly. To this period he attributes the sonnet, translated in a

previous chapter, in which the poetess declares that she has no wish to

conceal from the world the temptation to suicide which assails her.

And in commemoration of this mood of mind, he adds, in further proof of

the sad truth, a medal was struck upon this occasion, in Rome, of which

he gives an engraving. It represents, on one side, the inconsolable

lady as a handsome, well nourished, comfortable-looking widow, in

mourning weeds, more aged in appearance, certainly, since the striking

of the former medal spoken of, than the lapse of seven years would seem

sufficient to account for. And, on the reverse, is a representation of

the melancholy story of Pyramus and Thisbe, the former lying dead at

the feet of the typical paragon, who is pointing towards her breast

a sword, grasped in both hands, half-way down the blade, in a manner

sure to have cut her fingers. The two sides of the medal, seen at one

glance, as in Signor Visconti's engraving, are, it must be admitted,

calculated to give rise to ideas the reverse of pathetic.

To this period too belongs the sonnet, also previously alluded to, in

which Vittoria speaks of the seventh year of her bereavement having

arrived, without bringing with it any mitigation of her woe. Signor

Visconti takes this for simple autobiographical material. It is

curious, as a specimen of the modes of thought at the time, to see how

the same passage is handled by Vittoria's first editor and commentator,

Rinaldo Corsi, who published her works for the second time at Venice in

1558. His commentary begins as follows:—"On this sonnet, it remains

for me to speak of the number Seven as I have done already of the

number Four. But since Varro, Macrobius, and Aulus Gellius, together

with many others, have treated largely of the subject, I will only add

this,—which, perhaps, Ladies, may appear to you somewhat strange;

that, according to Hippocrates, the number four enters twice into

the number seven; and I find it stated by most credible authors as a

certain fact, and proved by the testimony of their own observation,

that a male child of seven years old has been known to cure persons

afflicted by the infirmity called scrofula by no other means than by

the hidden virtue of that number seven," &c., &c., &c.

[Sidenote: MESSER RINALDO CORSO.]

In this sort, Messer Rinaldo Corso composed, and the literary ladies,

to whom throughout, as in the above passage, his labours are especially

dedicated, must be supposed to have read more than five hundred

close-printed pages of commentary on the works of the celebrated

poetess, who, in all probability, when she penned the sonnet in

question, had no more intention of setting forth the reasons for her

return to Ischia, than she had of alluding to the occult properties of

the mysterious number seven. The natural supposition is, that as she

had been driven from her home by the pestilence, she returned to it

when that reason for absence was at an end.

There she seems to have remained tranquilly employed on her favourite

pursuits, increasing her already great reputation, and corresponding

assiduously with all the best and most distinguished men of Italy,

whether laymen or ecclesiastics, till the year 1536.

In that year she again visited Rome, and resided during her stay there

with Donna Giovanna d'Aragona, her sister-in-law. Paul III., Farnese,

had in 1534 succeeded Clement in the chair of St. Peter; and though

Paul was on many accounts very far from being a good Pope or a good

priest, yet the Farnese was an improvement on the Medici. As ever,

Rome began to show signs of improvement when danger to her system

from without began to make itself felt. Paul seems very soon to have

become convinced that the general council, which had been so haunting

a dread to Clement during the whole of his pontificate, could no

longer be avoided. But it was still hoped in the council chambers of

the Vatican that the doctrinal difficulties of the German reformers,

which threatened the Church with so fatal a schism, might be got over

by conciliation and dexterous theological diplomacy. As soon as it

became evident that this hope was vain, fear began to influence the

papal policy, and at its bidding the ferocious persecuting bigotry of

Paul IV. was contrasted with the shameless profligacy of Alexander, the

epicurean indifferentism of Leo, and the pettifogging worldliness of

Clement.

Between these two periods came Paul III., and the illusory hopes

that the crisis might be tided over by finding some arrangement of

terminology, which should satisfy the reformers, while Rome should

abandon no particle of doctrine on which any vital portion of her

system of temporal power was based. To meet the exigencies of this

period, Paul III. signalised his accession by raising to the purple

a number of the most earnest, most learned, and truly devout men in

Italy. Contarini, the Venetian; Caraffa, from Naples; Sadoleto, Bishop

of Carpentras; Pole, then a fugitive from England; Giberti, Bishop of

Verona; and Fregoso, Archbishop of Salerno, were men chosen solely on

account of their eminent merit.

With most, if not all of these, Vittoria was connected by the bonds of

intimate friendship. With Contarini, Sadoleto, and Pole, especially,

she corresponded; and the esteem felt for her by such men is the most

undeniable testimony to the genuine worth of her character. It is easy

to imagine, therefore, how warm a reception awaited her arrival on this

occasion in Rome, and how delightful must have been her stay there.

She had now reached the full measure of her reputation. The religious

and doctrinal topics which were now occupying the best minds in Italy,

and on which her thoughts were frequently busied in her correspondence

with such men as those named above, had recently begun to form the

subject-matter of her poems. And their superiority in vigour and

earnestness to her earlier works must have been perfectly apparent to

her reverend and learned friends.

[Sidenote: TO FERRARA.]

Accordingly we are told that her stay in Rome on this occasion was a

continued ovation; and Signor Visconti informs us, on the authority of

the Neapolitan historian Gregorio Rosso, that Charles V. being then in

Rome "condescended to visit in their own house the ladies Giovanna di

Aragona, wife of Ascanio Colonna, and Vittoria Colonna, Marchesa di

Pescara."

The following year, 1537 that is, she went, Visconti says, to Lucca,

from which city she passed to Ferrara, arriving there on the 8th of

April "in humble guise, with six waiting women only."[189] Ercole

d'Este, the second of the name, was then the reigning duke, having

succeeded to his father Alphonso in 1534. And the court of Ferrara,

which had been for several years preeminent among the principalities

of Italy for its love of literature and its patronage of literary men,

became yet more notably so in consequence of the marriage of Hercules

II. with Renée of France, the daughter of Louis XII. The Protestant

tendencies and sympathies of this Princess had rendered Ferrara also

the resort, and in some instances the refuge, of many professors and

favourers of the new ideas which were beginning to stir the mind of

Italy. And though Vittoria's orthodox Catholic biographers are above

all things anxious to clear her from all suspicion of having ever held

opinions eventually condemned by the Church, there is every reason

to believe that her journey to Ferrara was prompted by the wish to

exchange ideas upon these subjects with some of those leading minds

which were known to have imbibed Protestant tendencies, if not to have

acquired fully formed Protestant convictions. It is abundantly clear,

from the character of her friendships, from her correspondence, and

from the tone of her poetry at this period, and during the remainder of

her life, that her mind was absorbingly occupied with topics of this

nature. And the short examination of the latter division of her works,

which it is proposed to attempt in the next chapter, will probably

convince such as have no partisan Catholic feelings on the subject,

that Vittoria's mind had made very considerable progress in the

Protestant direction.

No reason is assigned for her stay at Lucca. Visconti, with unusual

brevity and dryness, merely states that she visited that city.[190]

And it is probable that he has not been able to discover any documents

directly accounting for the motives of her visit. But he forbears to

mention that the new opinions had gained so much ground there that that

Republic was very near declaring Protestantism the religion of their

state. After her totally unaccounted-for visit to the heresy-stricken

city, she proceeds to another almost equally tainted with suspicion.

[Sidenote: A REPUBLIC OF LETTERS.]

It is no doubt perfectly true that Duke Hercules and his court

received her with every possible distinction on the score of her

poetical celebrity, and deemed his city honoured by her presence. He

invited, we are told, the most distinguished poets and men of letters

of Venice and Lombardy to meet her at Ferrara. And so much was her

visit prized that when Cardinal Giberto sent thither his secretary,

Francesco della Torre, to persuade her to visit his episcopal city

Verona, that ambassador wrote to his friend Bembo, at Venice, that he

"had like to have been banished by the Duke, and stoned by the people

for coming there with the intention of robbing Ferrara of its most

precious treasure, for the purpose of enriching Verona." Vittoria,

however, seems to have held out some hope that she might be induced to

visit Verona. For the secretary, continuing his letter to the literary

Venetian cardinal, says, "Who knows but what we may succeed in making

reprisal on them? And if that should come to pass, I should hope to see

your Lordship more frequently in Verona, as I should see Verona the

most honoured as well as the most envied city in Italy."[191]

It is impossible to have more striking testimony to the fame our

poetess had achieved by her pen; and it is a feature of the age and

clime well worth noting, that a number of small states, divided by

hostilities and torn by warfare, should have, nevertheless, possessed

among them a republic of letters capable of conferring a celebrity so

cordially acknowledged throughout the whole extent of Italy.

From a letter[192] written by Vittoria to Giangiorgio Trissino of

Vicenza, the author of an almost forgotten epic, entitled "Italia

liberata da Goti," bearing date the 10th of January (1537), we

learn that she found the climate of Ferrara "unfavourable to her

indisposition;" which would seem to imply a continuance of ill-health.

Yet it was at this time that she conceived the idea of undertaking a

journey to the Holy Land.[193] Her old pupil, and nearly life-long

friend, the Marchese del Vasto, came from Milan to Ferrara, to dissuade

her from the project. And with this view, as well as to remove her from

the air of Ferrara, he induced her to return to Rome, where her arrival

was again made a matter of almost public rejoicing.

[Sidenote: CHURCH HOPES.]

The date of this journey was probably about the end of 1537. The

society of the Eternal City, especially of that particular section of

it which made the the world of Vittoria, was in a happy and hopeful

mood. The excellent Contarini had not yet departed[194] thence on his

mission of conciliation to the Conference, which had been arranged with

the Protestant leaders at Ratisbon. The brightest and most cheering

hopes were based on a total misconception of the nature, or rather on

an entire ignorance of the existence of that under current of social

change, which, to the north of the Alps, made the reformatory movement

something infinitely greater, more fruitful of vast results, and

more inevitable, than any scholastic dispute on points of theologic

doctrine. And at the time of Vittoria's arrival, that little band

of pure, amiable, and high-minded, but not large-minded men, who

fondly hoped that, by the amendment of some practical abuses, and a

mutually forbearing give-and-take arrangement of some nice questions of

metaphysical theology, peace on earth and good-will among men, might

be yet made compatible with the undiminished pretensions and theory of

an universal and infallible Church, were still lapped in the happiness

of their day-dream. Of this knot of excellent men, which comprised all

that was best, most amiable, and most learned in Italy, Vittoria was

the disciple, the friend, and the inspired Muse. The short examination

of her religious poetry, therefore, which will be the subject of the

next chapter, will not only open to us the deepest and most earnest

part of her own mind, but will, in a measure, illustrate the extent and

nature of the Protestantising tendencies then manifesting themselves in

Italy.

CHAPTER VII.

Oratory of Divine Love.—Italian reformers.—Their

tenets.—Consequence of the doctrine of justification by

faith.—Fear of schism in Italy.—Orthodoxy of Vittoria

questioned.—Proofs of her Protestantism from her writings.—Calvinism

of her sonnets.—Remarkable passage against auricular

confession.—Controversial and religious sonnets.—Absence from the

sonnets of moral topics.—Specimen of her poetical power.—Romanist

ideas.—Absence from the sonnets of all patriotic feeling.

The extreme corruption of the Italian church, and in some degree also

the influence of German thought, had even as early as the Pontificate

of Leo X., led several of the better minds in Italy to desire ardently

some means of religious reform. A contemporary writer cited by

Ranke,[195] tells us that in Leo's time some fifty or sixty earnest and

pious men formed themselves into a society at Rome, which they called

the "Oratory of Divine Love," and strove by example and preaching to

stem as much as in them lay the tide of profligacy and infidelity.

Among these men were Contarini, the learned and saint-like Venetian,

Sadolet, Giberto, Caraffa (a man, who however earnest in his piety,

showed himself at a later period, when he became pope as Paul IV.,

to be animated with a very different spirit from that of most of his

fellow religionists), Gaetano, Thiene, who was afterwards canonised,

etc. But in almost every part of Italy, not less than in Rome, there

were men of the same stamp, who carried the new ideas to greater

or lesser lengths, were the objects of more or less ecclesiastical

censure and persecution; and who died, some reconciled to, and some

excommunicated by the Church they so vainly strove to amend.

[Sidenote: JUAN VALDEZ.]

In Naples, Juan Valdez, a Spaniard, Secretary to the Viceroy, warmly

embraced the new doctrines; and being a man much beloved, and of

great influence, he drew many converts to the cause. It was a pupil

and friend of his, whose name it has been vainly sought to ascertain,

who composed the celebrated treatise, "On the Benefits of the Death

of Christ," which was circulated in immense numbers over the whole of

Italy, and exercised a very powerful influence. A little later, when

the time of inquisitorial persecution came, this book was so vigorously

proscribed, sought out and destroyed, that despite the vast number of

copies which must have existed in every corner of Italy, it has utterly

disappeared, and not one is known to be in existence.[196] It is

impossible to have a more striking proof of the violent and searching

nature of the persecution under Paul IV. Another friend of Valdez, who

was also intimate with Vittoria, was Marco Flaminio, who revised the

treatise "On the Benefits of Christ's Death."

In Modena, the Bishop Morone, the intimate friend of Pole and

Contarini, and his chaplain, Don Girolamo de Modena, supported and

taught the same opinions.

In Venice, Gregorio Cortese, Abbot of San Giorgio Maggiore, Luigi

Priuli, a patrician, and the Benedictine Marco, of Padua, formed a

society mainly occupied in discussing the subtle questions which formed

the "symbolum" of the new party.

"If we enquire," says Ranke,[197] "what was the faith which chiefly

inspired these men, we shall find that the main article of it was that

same doctrine of justification, which, as preached by Luther, had given

rise to the whole Protestant movement."

The reader fortunate enough to be wholly unread in controversial

divinity, will yet probably not have escaped hearing of the utterly

interminable disputes on justification, free-will, election, faith,

good works, prevenient grace, original sin, absolute decrees, and

predestination, which, with much of evil, and as yet little good

consequence, have occupied the most acute intellects, and most

learning-stored brains of Europe for the last three centuries. Without

any accurate knowledge of the manner in which the doctrines represented

by these familiar terms are dependent on, and necessitated by each

other, and of the precise points on which the opposing creeds have

fought this eternal battle, he will be aware that the system popularly

known as Calvinism, represents the side of the question taken by the

reformers of the sixteenth century, while the opposite theory of

justification by good works was that held by the orthodox Catholic

Church, or unreforming party. And with merely these general ideas to

guide him, it will appear strangely unaccountable to find all the

best, noblest and purest minds adopting a system which in its simplest

logical development inevitably leads to the most debasing demonolatry,

and lays the axe to the root of all morality and noble action;

while the corrupt, the worldly, the ambitious, the unspiritual,

the unintellectual natures that formed the dominant party, held the

opposite opinion apparently so favourable to virtue.

[Sidenote: JUSTIFICATION.]

An explanation of this phenomenon by a partisan of either school

would probably be long and somewhat intricate. But the matter

becomes intelligible enough, and the true key to the wishes and

conduct of both parties is found, if, without regarding the moral or

theological results of either scheme, or troubling ourselves with

the subtleties by which either side sought to meet the objections of

the other, we consider simply the bearings of the new doctrines on

that ecclesiastical system, which the orthodox and dominant party

were determined at all cost to support. If it were admitted that man

is justifiable by faith alone, that his election is a matter to be

certified to his own heart by the immediate operation of the divine

spirit, it would follow that the whole question of his religious

condition and future hopes might be, or rather must be, settled between

him and his creator alone. And then what would become of ecclesiastical

authority and priestly interference? If the only knowledge possible to

be attained of any individual's standing before God, were locked in

his own breast, what hold can the Church have on him? It is absolutely

necessary to any system of spiritual tyranny, that no doctrine should

be admitted by virtue of which a layman may tell a priest that despite

the opinion he, the priest, may form upon the subject, he, the layman,

has the assurance of acceptation before God, by means of evidence of

a nature inscrutable to the priest. Once admit this, and the whole

foundation of ecclesiastical domination is sapped. Nay, by a very

logical and short route, sure to be soon travelled by those who have

made good this first fundamental pretension, they would arrive at the

negation and abolition of all priesthood. Preachers and teachers might

still have place under such a system, but not priests, or priestly

power. To this an externally ascertainable religion is so vitally

necessary, that the theory of justification by good works was far from

sufficient for the purposes of the Catholic priesthood, as long as

good works could be understood to mean a general course of not very

accurately measurable virtuous living. This was not sufficient, because

though visible not sufficiently tangible, countable, and tariffable.

Hence the good works most urgently prescribed, became reduced to that

mass of formal practices so well known as the material of Romanist

piety, among which, the most valuable for the end in view, are of

course those which can only be performed by the intervention of a

priest.

But it must not be supposed that all this was as plainly discerned

by the combatants in that confused strife as it may be by lookers

back on it from a vantage ground three centuries high. The innovators

were in all probability few, if any of them, conscious of the extent

and importance of the principle they were fighting for. And, on the

other hand, there is no reason to attribute an evil consciousness of

motives, such as those nakedly set forth above, to the conservative

party. The fact that a doctrine would tend to abridge Church power and

endanger Church unity, would doubtless have appeared to many a good and

conscientious man a sufficient proof of its unsoundness and falsity.

[Sidenote: HER PROTESTANTISM.]

Indeed, even among the reformers in Italy the fear of schism was so

great, and the value attached to Church unity so high, that these

considerations probably did as much towards checking and finally

extinguishing Protestantism in Italy as did the strong hand of

persecution. From the first, many of the most earnest advocates of the

new doctrines were by no means prepared to sever themselves from the

Church for the sake of their opinions. Some were ready to face such

schism and martyrdom also in the cause; as, for instance, Bernardino

Ochino, the General of the Capuchins, and the most powerful preacher

of his day, who fled from Italy and became a professed Protestant, and

Carnesecchi, the Florentine, who was put to death for his heresy at

Rome.

But it had not yet become clear how far the new doctrines might be

held compatibly with perfect community with the Church of Rome at the

time when Vittoria arrived in that city from Ferrara. The conference

with the German Protestants, by means of which it was hoped to effect

a reconciliation, was then being arranged, and the hopes of Vittoria's

friends ran high. When these hopes proved delusive, and when Rome

pronounced herself decisively on the doctrines held by the Italian

reformers, the most conspicuous friends of Vittoria did not quit

the Church. She herself writes ever as its submissive and faithful

daughter. But as to her having held opinions which were afterwards

declared heretical, and for which others suffered, much of her poetry,

written probably about this time, affords evidence so clear that it

is wonderful Tiraboschi and her biographers can deem it possible to

maintain her orthodoxy.

Take, for example, the following sonnet:

"Quand'io riguardo il nobil raggio ardente

Della grazia divina, e quel valore

Ch'illustra 'l intelletto, infiamma il core

Con virtù sopr'umana, alta, e possente,

L'alma le voglie allor fisse ed intente

Raccoglie tutte insieme a fargli onore;

Ma tanto ha di poter, quant'è 'l favore

Che dal lume e dal foco intende e sente.

Ond ella può ben far certa efficace

L'alta sua elezion, ma insino al segno

Ch'all autor d'ogni ben, sua mercè, piace.

Non sprona il corso nostro industria o ingegno;

Quel corre più sicuro e più vivace,

C'ha dal favor del ciel maggior sostegno."

Thus rendered into English blank verse, with a greater closeness to

the sense of the original than might perhaps have been attained in a

translation hampered by the necessity of rhyming:

"When I reflect on that bright noble ray

Of grace divine, and on that mighty power,

Which clears the intellect, inflames the heart

With virtue, strong with more than human strength,

My soul then gathers up her will, intent

To render to that Power the honour due;

But only so much can she, as free grace

Gives her to feel and know th'inspiring fire.

Thus can the soul her high election make

Fruitful and sure; but only to such point

As, in his goodness, wills the Fount of good.

Nor art nor industry can speed her course;

He most securely and alertly runs

Who most by Heaven's free favour is upheld."

The leading points of Calvinistic doctrine could hardly be in the

limits of a sonnet more clearly and comprehensively stated. Devotional

meditation inclines the heart to God; but the soul is powerless even

to worship, except in such measure as she is enabled to do so by

freely-given grace. By this means only can man make sure his election.

To strive after virtue is useless to the non-elect, seeing that man can

safely run his course only in proportion as he has received the favour

of God.

[Sidenote: DEVOTIONAL SONNET.]

Again, in the following sonnet will be remarked a tone of thought and

style of phrase perfectly congenial to modern devotional feeling of

what is termed the evangelical school; while it is assuredly not such

as would meet the approval of orthodox members of either the Roman

Catholic or Anglo-Catholic churches:

"Quando dal lume, il cui vivo splendore

Rende il petto fedel lieto e sicuro,

Si dissolve per grazia il ghiaccio duro,

Che sovente si gela intorno al core,

Sento ai bei lampi del possente ardore

Cader delle mie colpe il manto oscuro,

E vestirmi in quel punto il chiaro e puro

Della prima innocenza e primo amore.

E sebben con serrata e fida chiave

Serro quel raggio; egli è scivo e sottile,

Si ch'un basso pensier lo scaccia e sdegna.

Ond'ei ratto sen vola; io mesta e grave

Rimango, e 'l prego che d'ogni ombra vile

Mi spogli, acciò più presto a me sen vegna."

Which may be thus, with tolerable accuracy, rendered into English:

"When by the light, whose living ray both peace

And joy to faithful bosoms doth impart,

The indurated ice, around the heart

So often gather'd, is dissolved through grace,

Beneath that blessed radiance from above

Falls from me the dark mantle of my sin;

Sudden I stand forth pure and radiant in

The garb of primal innocence and love.

And though I strive with lock and trusty key

To keep that ray, so subtle 'tis and coy,

By one low thought 'tis scared and put to flight.

So flies it from me. I in sorrowing plight

Remain, and pray, that he from base alloy

May purge me, so the light come sooner back to me."

Here, in addition to the "points of doctrine" laid down in the previous

sonnet, we have that of sudden and instantaneous conversion and

sanctification; and that without any aid from sacrament, altar, or

priest.

Similar thoughts are again expressed in the next sonnet selected, which

in Signor Visconti's edition immediately follows the preceding:

"Spiego per voi, mia luce, indarno l'ale,

Prima che 'l caldo vostro interno vento

M'apra l'ere d'ntorno, ora ch'io sento

Vincer da nuovo ardir l'antico male;

Chè giunga all'infinito opra mortale

Opra vostra è, Signor, che in un momento

La può far degna; ch'io da me pavento

Di cader col pensier quand'ei più sale.

Bramo quell'invisibil chiaro lume,

Che fuga densa nebbia; e quell'accesa

Secreta fiamma, ch'ogni gel consuma.

Onde poi, sgombra dal terren costume,

Tutta al divino amor l'anima intesa

Si mova al volo altero in altra piuma."

Thus done into English:

"Feeling new force to conquer primal sin,

Yet all in vain I spread my wings to thee,

My light, until the air around shall be

Made clear for me by thy warm breath within.

That mortal works should reach the infinite

Is thy work, Lord! For in a moment thou

Canst give them worth. Left to myself I know

My thought would fall, when at its utmost height.

I long for that clear radiance from above

That puts to flight all cloud; and that bright flame

Which secret burning warms the frozen soul;

So that set free from every mortal aim,

And all intent alone on heavenly love,

She flies with stronger pinion t'wards her goal."

[Sidenote: ON THE CONFESSIONAL.]

In the following lines, which form the conclusion of a sonnet, in which

she has been saying that God does not permit that any pure heart

should be concealed from His all-seeing eye "by the fraud or force of

others," we have a very remarkable bit of such heresy on the vital

point of the confessional, as has been sufficient to consign more than

one victim to the stake:

"Securi del suo dolce e giusto impero,

Non come il primo padre e la sua donna,

Dobbiam del nostro error biasimare altrui;

Ma con la speme accesa e dolor vero

Aprir dentro, _passando oltra la gonna

I falli nostri a solo a sol con lui_".

The underlined words, "passando oltra la gonna," literally, "passing

beyond the gown," though the sense appears to be unmistakable, are

yet sufficiently obscure and unobvious, and the phrase sufficiently

far-fetched, to lead to the suspicion of a wish on the part of the

writer in some degree to veil her meaning. "That in the captain's but

a choleric word, which in the soldier is foul blasphemy." And the

high-born Colonna lady, the intimate friend of cardinals and princes,

might write much with impunity which would have been perilous to less

lofty heads. But the sentiment in this very remarkable passage implies

an attack on one of Rome's tenderest and sorest points. In English the

lines run thus:

"Confiding in His just and gentle sway

We should not dare, like Adam and his wife,

On other's backs our proper blame to lay;

But with new-kindled hope and unfeigned grief,

_Passing by priestly robes, lay bare within

To him alone the secret of our sin_."

Again, in the conclusion of another sonnet, in which she has been

speaking of the benefits of Christ's death, and of the necessity of

a "soprannatural divina fede" for the receiving of them, she writes

in language very similar to that of many a modern advocate of "free

inspiration," and which must have been distasteful to the erudite

clergy of the dominant hierarchy, as follow:

"Que' ch'avrà sol in lui le luci fisse,

Non que' ch'intese meglio, o che più lesse

Volumi in terra, in ciel sarà beato.

In carta questa legge non si scrisse;

Ma con la stampa sua nel cor purgato

Col foco dell'amor Gesù l'impresse."

In English:

"He who hath fixed on Christ alone his eyes,

Not he who best hath understood, or read

Most earthly volumes, shall Heaven's bliss attain.

For not on paper did He write His law,

But printed it on expurgated hearts

Stamped with the fire of Jesus' holy love."

In another remarkable sonnet, she gives expression to the prevailing

feeling of the pressing necessity for Church reform, joined to a

marked declaration of belief in the doctrine of Papal infallibility; a

doctrine, which by its tenacious hold on the Italian mind, contributed

mainly to extinguish the sudden straw-blaze of reforming tendencies

throughout Italy. The lines run as follows:—

"Veggio d'alga e di fango omai sì carca,

Pietro, la rete tua, che se qualche onda

Di fuor l'assale o intorno circonda,

Potria spezzarsi, e a rischio andar la barca;

La qual, non come suol leggiera e scarca,

Sovra 'l turbato mar corre a seconda,

Ma in poppa e 'n prora, all'una e all'altra sponda

E' grave sì ch'a gran periglio varca.

Il tuo buon successor, _ch'alta cagione

Direttamente elesse_, e cor e mano

Move sovente per condurla a porto.

Ma contra il voler suo ratto s'oppone

L'altrui malizia; onde ciascun s'è accorto,

Ch'egli senza 'l tuo aiuto adopra in vano."

Which may be thus read in English blank verse, giving not very

poetically, but with tolerable fidelity, the sense of the original:—

"With mud and weedy growth so foul I see

Thy net, O Peter, that should any wave

Assail it from without or trouble it,

It might be rended, and so risk the ship.

For now thy bark, no more, as erst, skims light

With favoring breezes o'er the troubled sea;

But labours burthen'd so from stem to stern,

That danger menaces the course it steers.

Thy good successor, _by direct decree

Of providence elect_, with heart and hand

Assiduous strives to bring it to the port.

But spite his striving his intent is foiled

By other's evil. So that all have seen

That without aid from thee, he strives in vain."

[Sidenote: PAPAL PRETENSIONS DEAR TO ITALIANS.]

The lofty pretensions of the Bishop of Rome, which our poetess, with

all her reforming aspirations, goes out of her way to declare and

maintain in the phrase of the above sonnet marked by Italics, were

dear to the hearts of Italians. It may be, that an antagonistic bias,

arising from feelings equally beyond the limits of the religious

question, helped to add acrimony to the attacks of the transalpine

reformers. But there can be no doubt, that Italian self-love was active

in rendering distasteful to Italians a doctrine, whose effect would be

to pull down Rome from her position as capital of the Christian world,

and no longer permit an Italian eclesiastic to issue his lofty decrees

"Urbi et Orbi." And those best acquainted with the Italian mind of

that period, as evidenced by its literature, and illustrated by its

still-existing tendencies and prejudices, will most appreciate the

extent to which such feelings unquestionably operated in preventing the

reformation from taking root, and bearing fruit in Italy.

The readers of the foregoing sonnets, even those who are familiar

with the language of the original, will probably have wondered at the

greatness of the poetical reputation, which was built out of such

materials. It is but fair, however, to the poetess to state, that

the citations have been selected, rather with the view of decisively

proving these Protestant leanings of Vittoria, which have been so

eagerly denied, and of illustrating the tone of Italian Protestant

feeling at that period, than of presenting the most favourable

specimens of her poetry. However fitly devotional feeling may be

clothed in poetry of the highest order, controversial divinity is not

a happy subject for verse. And Vittoria, on the comparatively rare

occasions, when she permits herself to escape from the consideration of

disputed dogma, can make a nearer approach to true poetry of thought

and expression.

In the following sonnet, it is curious to observe how the expression

of the grand and simple sentiment of perfect trust in the will and

intentions of the omnipotent Creator, which, in the first eight lines,

rises into something like poetry, becomes flattened and debased into

the most prosaic doggrel, as soon as the author, recollecting the

controversies raging round her on the subject, bethinks her of the

necessity of duly defining the theological virtue of "Faith," as being

of that sort fit for the production of works.

"Deh! mandi oggi, Signor, novello e chiaro

Raggio al mio cor di quella ardente fede,

Ch'opra sol per amor, non per mercede,

Onde ugualmente il tuo voler gli è caro!

Dal dolce fonte tuo pensa che amaro

Nascer non possa, anzi riceve e crede

Per buon quant'ode, e per bel quanto vede,

Per largo il ciel, quand'ei si mostra avaro.

Se chieder grazia all'umil servo lice,

Questa fede vorrei, che illustra, accende,

E pasce l'alma sol di lume vero.

Con questa in parte il gran valor s'intende,

Che pianta e ferma in noi l'alta radice,

Qual rende i frutti a lui tutti d'amore."

Which may be thus rendered:—

"Grant to my heart a pure fresh ray, O Lord,

Of that bright ardent faith, which makes thy will

Its best-loved law, and seeks it to fulfil

For love alone, not looking for reward;—

That faith, which deems no ill can come from thee,

But humbly trusts, that, rightly understood

All that meets eye or ear is fair and good,

And Heaven's love oft in prayers refused can see.

And if thy handmaid might prefer a suit,

I would that faith possess that fires the heart,

And feeds the soul with the true light alone;

I mean hereby, that mighty power in part,

Which plants and strengthens in us the deep root,

From which all fruits of love for him are grown."

[Sidenote: THEOLOGICAL SONNETS.]

In the following sonnet, which is one of several dictated by the same

mood of feeling, the more subjective tone of her thought affords us an

autobiographical glimpse of her state of mind on religious subjects.

We find, that the new tenets which she had imbibed had failed to give

her peace of mind. That comfortable security, and undoubting satisfied

tranquillity, procured for the mass of her orthodox contemporaries, by

the due performance of their fasts, vigils, penitences, &c., was not

attained for Vittoria by a creed, which required her, as she here tells

us, to stifle the suggestions of her reason.

"Se con l'armi celesti avess'io vinto

Me stessa, i sensi, e la ragione umana,

Andrei con altro spirto alta e lontana

Dal mondo, e dal suo onor falso dipinto.

Sull'ali della fede il pensier cinto

Di speme, omai non più caduca e vana,

Sarebbe fuor di questa valle insana

Da verace virtute alzato e spinto.

Ben ho già, fermo l'occhio al miglior fine

Dei nostro corso; ma non volo ancora

Per lo destro sentier salda e leggiera.

Veggio i segni del sol, scorgo l'aurora;

Ma per li sacri giri alle divine

Stanze non entro in quella luce vera."

Englished as follows:—

"Had I with heavenly arms 'gainst self and sense

And human reason waged successful war,

Then with a different spirit soaring far

I'd fly the world's vain glory and pretence.

Then soaring thought on wings of faith might rise

Armed by a hope no longer vain or frail

Far from the madness of this earthly vale,

Led by true virtue towards its native skies.

That better aim is ever in my sight,

Of man's existence; but not yet 'tis mine

To speed sure-footed on the happy way.

Signs of the rising sun and coming day

I see; but enter not the courts divine

Whose holy portals lead to perfect light."

A touch of similar feeling may be observed also in the following

sonnet, united with more of poetical feeling and expression. Indeed,

this sonnet may be offered as a specimen of the author's happiest

efforts.—

"Fra gelo e nebbia corro a Dio sovente

Per foco e lume, onde i ghiacci disciolti

Sieno, e gli ombrosi veli aperti e tolti

Dalla divina luce e fiamma ardente.

E se fredda ed oscura è ancor la mente,

Pur son tutti i pensieri al ciel rivolti;

E par che dentro in gran silenzio ascolti

Un suon, che sol nell'anima si sente;

E dice; Non temer, chè venne al mondo

Gesù d'eterno ben largo ampio mare,

Per far leggiero ogni gravoso pondo.

Sempre son l'onde sue più dolci e chiare

A chi con umil barca in quel gran fondo

Dell'alta sua bontà si lascia andare."

[Sidenote: DEVOTIONAL SONNETS.]

If the reader, who is able to form a judgment of the poetical merit of

this sonnet only from the subjoined translation, should fail to find in

it anything to justify the opinion that has been expressed of it, he is

entreated to believe that the fault is that of the translator, who can

promise only that the sense has been faithfully rendered:—

"Ofttimes to God through frost and cloud I go

For light and warmth to break my icy chain,

And pierce and rend my veils of doubt in twain

With his divinest love, and radiant glow.

And if my soul sit cold and dark below

Yet all her longings fixed on heaven remain;

And seems she 'mid deep silence to a strain

To listen, which the soul alone can know,—

Saying, Fear nought! for Jesus came on earth,—

Jesus of endless joys the wide deep sea,

To ease each heavy load of mortal birth.

His waters ever clearest, sweetest be

To him, who in a lonely bark drifts forth,

On his great deeps of goodness trustfully."

It will probably be admitted, that the foregoing extracts from Vittoria

Colonna's poetry, if they do not suffice to give the outline of the

entire fabric of her religious faith, yet abundantly prove, that she

must be classed among the Protestant and reforming party of her age and

country, rather than among the orthodox Catholics, their opponents.

The passages quoted all bear, more or less directly, on a few special

points of doctrine, as do also the great bulk of her religious poems.

But these points are precisely those on which the reforming movement

was based, the cardinal points of difference between the parties. They

involve exactly those doctrines which Rome, on mature examination

and reflection, rightly found to be fatally incompatible with her

system. For the dominant party at Trent were assuredly wiser in their

generation than such children of light, as the good Contarini, who

dreamed that a purified Papacy was possible, and that Rome might still

be Rome, after its creed had been thus modified. Caraffa and Ghislieri,

Popes Paul IV. and Pius V., and their inquisitors knew very clearly

better.

It is, of course, natural enough, that the points of doctrine then new

and disputed, the points respecting which the poetess differed from the

majority of the world around her, and which must have been the subject

of her special meditation, should occupy also the most prominent

position in her writings. Yet it is remarkable, that in so large a

mass of poetry on exclusively religious themes, there should be found

hardly a thought or sentiment on topics of practical morality. The

title of "_Rime sacre e morali_," prefixed by Visconti to this portion

of Vittoria's writings, is wholly a misnomer. If these sonnets furnish

the materials for forming a tolerably accurate notion of her scheme

of theology, our estimate of her views of morality must be sought

elsewhere.

[Sidenote: BAD MORALITY.]

There is every reason to feel satisfied, both from such records as we

have of her life, and from the perfectly agreeing testimony of her

contemporaries, that the tenour of her own life and conduct was not

only blameless, but marked by the consistent exercise of many noble

virtues. But, much as we hear from the lamentations of preachers of the

habitual tendency of human conduct to fall short of human professions,

the opposite phenomena exhibited by men, whose intuitive moral sense is

superior to the teaching derivable from their creed, is perhaps quite

as common. That band of eminent men, who were especially known as the

maintainers and defenders of the peculiar tenets held by Vittoria, were

unquestionably in all respects the best and noblest of their age and

country. Yet their creed was assuredly an immoral one. And in the rare

passages of our poetess's writings, in which a glimpse of moral theory

can be discerned, the low and unenlightened nature of it is such, as

to prove, that the heaven-taught heart reached purer heights than the

creed-taught intelligence could attain.

What could be worse, for instance, than the morality of the following

conclusion of a sonnet, in which she has been lamenting the blindness

of those who sacrifice eternal bliss for the sake of worldly pleasures.

She writes:—

"Poichè 'l mal per natura non gli annoia,

E del ben per ragion piacer non hanno,

Abbian almen di Dio giusto timore."

In English:—

"Since evil by its nature pains them not,

Nor good for its own proper sake delights,

Let them at least have righteous fear of God."

She appears incapable of understanding, that no fear of God could in

any wise avail to improve or profit him, who has no aversion from

evil, and no love for good. She does not perceive, that to inculcate

so godless a fear of God, is to make the Creator a mere bugbear for

police purposes; and that a theory of Deity constructed on this basis

would become a degrading demonolatry!

Vittoria Colonna has survived in men's memory as a poetess. But she is

far more interesting to the historical student, who would obtain a full

understanding of that wonderful sixteenth century, as a Protestant.

Her highly gifted and richly cultivated intelligence, her great social

position, and above all, her close intimacy with the eminent men who

strove to set on foot an Italian reformation which should not be

incompatible with the Papacy, make the illustration of her religious

opinions a matter of no slight historical interest. And the bulk of the

citations from her works has accordingly been selected with this view.

But it is fair to her reputation to give one sonnet at least, chosen

for no other reason than its merit.

The following, written apparently on the anniversary of our Saviour's

crucifixion, is certainly one of the best, if not the best in the

collection:

"Gli angeli eletti al gran bene infinito

Braman oggi soffrir penosa morte,

Acciò nella celeste empirea corte

Non sia più il servo, che il signor, gradito.

Piange l'antica madre il gusto ardito

Ch'a' figli suoi del ciel chiuse le porte;

E che due man piagate or sieno scorte

Da ridurne al cammin per lei smarrito.

Asconde il sol la sua fulgente chioma;

Spezzansi i sassi vivi; apronsi i monti;

Trema la terra e 'l ciel; turbansi l'acque;

Piangon gli spirti, al nostro mal si pronti,

Delle catene lor l'aggiunta soma.

L'uomo non piange, e pur piangendo nacque!"

Of which the following is an inadequate but tolerably faithful

translation:

"The angels to eternal bliss preferred,

Long on this day a painful death to die,

Lest in the heavenly mansions of the sky

The servant be more favoured than his Lord.

Man's ancient mother weeps the deed, this day

That shut the gates of heaven against her race,

Weeps the two piercèd hands, whose work of grace,

Refinds the path, from which she made man stray.

The sun his ever-burning ray doth veil;

Earth and sky tremble; ocean quakes amain,

And mountains gape, and living rocks are torn.

The fiends, on watch for human evil, wail

The added weight of their restraining chain.

Man only weeps not; yet was weeping born."

[Sidenote: UNCERTAINTY OF ORTHODOXY.]

As the previous extracts from the works of Vittoria have been, as

has been stated, selected principally with a view to prove her

Protestantism, it is fair to observe, that there are several sonnets

addressed to the Virgin Mary, and some to various Saints, from

which (though they are wholly free from any allusion to the grosser

superstitions that Rome encourages her faithful disciples to connect

with these personages), it is yet clear that the writer believed in

the value of saintly intercession at the throne of grace. It is also

worth remarking, that she nowhere betrays the smallest consciousness

that she is differing in opinion from the recognised tenets of the

Church, unless it be found, as was before suggested, in an occasional

obscurity of phrase, which seems open to the suspicion of having been

intentional. The great majority of these poems, however, were in all

probability composed before the Church had entered on her new career

of persecution. And as regards the ever-recurring leading point of

"justification by grace," it was impossible to say exactly how far

it was orthodox to go in the statement of this tenet, until Rome had

finally decided her doctrine by the decrees of the Council of Trent.

One other remark, which will hardly fail to suggest itself to the

modern reader of Vittoria's poetry, may be added respecting these

once celebrated and enthusiastically received works. There is not to

be discovered throughout the whole of them one spark of Italian, or

patriotic feeling. The absence of any such, must, undoubtedly, be

regarded only as a confirmation of the fact asserted in a previous

chapter, that no sentiment of the kind was then known in Italy. In that

earlier portion of her works, which is occupied almost exclusively

with her husband's praises, it is hardly possible that the expression

of such feelings should have found no place, had they existed in her

mind. But it is a curious instance of the degree to which even the

better intellects of an age are blinded by, and made subservient to,

the tone of feeling and habits of thought prevalent around them, that

it never occurs to this pure and lofty-minded Vittoria, in celebrating

the prowess of her hero, to give a thought to the cause for which he

was drawing the sword. To prevail, to be the stronger, "to take great

cities," "to rout the foe," appears to be all that her beau ideal of

heroism required.

Wrong is done, and the strong-handed doer of it admired, the moral

sense is blunted by the cowardly worship of success, and might takes

from right the suffrages of the feeble, in the nineteenth as in the

sixteenth century. But the contemplation of the total absence from such

a mind as that of Vittoria Colonna, of all recognition of a right and

a wrong in such matters, furnishes highly instructive evidence of the

reality of the moral progress mankind has achieved.

CHAPTER VIII.

Return to Rome.—Her great reputation.—Friendship with Michael

Angelo.—Medal of this period.—Removal to Orvieto.—Visit from

Luca Contile.—Her determination not to quit the Church.—Francesco

d'Olanda.—His record of conversations with Vittoria.—Vittoria at

Viterbo.—Influence of Cardinal Pole on her mind.—Last return to

Rome.—Her death.

Vittoria arrived in Rome from Ferrara in all probability about the end

of the year 1537. She was now in the zenith of her reputation. The

learned and elegant Bembo[198] writes of her, that he considered her

poetical judgment as sound and authoritative as that of the greatest

masters of the art of song. Guidiccioni, the poetical Bishop of

Fossombrone, and one of Paul III.'s ablest diplomatists, declares[199]

that the ancient glory of Tuscany had altogether passed into Latium in

her person; and sends her sonnets of his own, with earnest entreaties

that she will point out the faults of them. Veronica Gambara, herself a

poetess, of merit perhaps not inferior to that of Vittoria, professed

herself her most ardent admirer, and engaged Rinaldo Corso to write the

commentary on her poems, which he executed as we have seen. Bernardo

Tasso made her the subject of several of his poems. Giovio dedicated

to her his life of Pescara, and Cardinal Pompeo Colonna his book on

"The Praises of Women;" and Contarini paid her the far more remarkable

compliment of dedicating to her his work "On Free Will."

Paul III. was, as Muratori says,[200] by no means well disposed towards

the Colonna family. Yet Vittoria must have had influence with the

haughty and severe old Farnese. For both Bembo, and Fregoso, the Bishop

of Naples, have taken occasion to acknowledge that they owed their

promotion to the purple in great measure to her.

But the most noteworthy event of this period of Vittoria's life,

was the commencement of her acquaintance with Michael Angelo

Buonarroti.[201] That great man was then in his 63rd year, while the

poetess was in her 47th. The acquaintanceship grew rapidly into a close

and durable friendship, which lasted during the remainder of Vittoria's

life. It was a friendship eminently honourable to both of them. Michael

Angelo was a man whose influence on his age was felt and acknowledged,

while he was yet living and exercising it, to a degree rarely

observable even in the case of the greatest minds. He had, at the time

in question, already reached the zenith of his fame, although he lived

to witness and enjoy it for another quarter of a century. He was a man

formed by nature, and already habituated by the social position his

contemporaries had accorded to him, to mould men—not to be moulded

by them—not a smooth or pliable man; rugged rather, self-relying,

self-concentrated, and, though full of kindness for those who needed

kindness, almost a stern man; no courtier, though accustomed to the

society of courts; and apt to consider courtier-like courtesies and

habitudes as impertinent impediments to the requirements of his high

calling, to be repressed rather than condescended to. Yet the strong

and kingly nature of this high-souled old man was moulded into new form

by contact with that of the comparatively youthful poetess.

[Sidenote: FRIENDSHIP WITH MICHAEL ANGELO.]

The religious portion of the great artist's nature had scarcely shaped

out for itself any more defined and substantial form of expression than

a worship of the beautiful in spirit as well as in matter. By Vittoria

he was made a devout Christian. The change is strongly marked in his

poetry; and in several passages of the poems, four or five in number,

addressed to her, he attributes it entirely to her influence.[202]

Some silly stuff has been written by very silly writers, by way of

imparting the "interesting" character of a _belle passion_, more or

less platonic, to this friendship between the sexagenarian artist and

the immaculate Colonna. No argument is necessary to indicate the utter

absurdity of an idea which implies a thorough ignorance of the persons

in question, of the circumstances of their friendship, and of all that

remains on record of what passed between them. Mr. Harford, whose "Life

of Michael Angelo" has been already quoted, was permitted, he says, to

hear read the letters from Vittoria to her friend, which are preserved

in that collection of papers and memorials of the great artist, which

forms the most treasured possession of his descendants;[203] and he

gives the following account of them:[204]

"They are five in number; and there is a sixth, addressed by her to a

friend, which relates to Michael Angelo. Two of these letters refer in

very grateful terms to the fine drawings he had been making for her,

and to which she alludes with admiration. Another glances with deep

interest at the devout sentiments of a sonnet, which it appears he

had sent for her perusal.... Another tells him in playful terms that

his duties as architect of St. Peter's, and her own to the youthful

inmates of the convent of St. Catherine at Viterbo, admit not of their

frequently exchanging letters. This must have been written just a

year before her death, which occurred in 1547. Michael Angelo became

architect of St. Peter's in 1546. These letters are written with the

most perfect ease, in a firm, strong hand; but there is not a syllable

in any of them approaching to tenderness."

The period of Vittoria's stay in Rome on this occasion must have been a

pleasant one. The acknowledged leader of the best and most intellectual

society in that city; surrounded by a company of gifted and high-minded

men, bound to her and to each other by that most intimate and ennobling

of all ties, the common profession of a higher, nobler, purer theory

of life than that which prevailed around them, and a common membership

of what might almost be called a select church within a church, whose

principles and teaching its disciples hoped to see rapidly spreading

and beneficially triumphant; dividing her time between her religious

duties, her literary occupations, and conversation with well-loved and

well-understood friends;—Vittoria can hardly have been still tormented

by temptations to commit suicide. Yet in a medal struck in her honour

at this period of her life, the last of the series engraved for

Visconti's edition of her works, the reverse represents a phœnix on

her funeral pile gazing on the sun, while the flames are rising around

her. The obverse has a bust of the poetess, showing the features a

good deal changed in the course of the six or seven years which had

elapsed since the execution of that silly Pyramus and Thisbe medal

mentioned in a previous chapter, though still regular and well formed.

The tendency to fatness and to a comfortable-looking double chin is

considerably increased. She wears a singularly unbecoming head-dress of

plaited linen, sitting close to and covering the entire head, with long

pendants at the sides falling over the shoulders.

[Sidenote: THE COLONNA AT WAR.]

These pleasant Roman days were, however, destined to be of brief

duration. They were cut short, strange as the statement may seem,

by the imposition of an increased tax upon salt. For when Paul III.

resorted, in 1539, to that always odious and cruel means of pillaging

his people, Ascanio Colonna maintained that, by virtue of some ancient

privilege, the new tax could not be levied on his estates. The

pontifical tax-gatherers imprisoned certain of his vassals for refusing

to pay; whereupon Ascanio assembled his retainers, made a raid into the

Campagna, and drove off a large number of cattle.[205] The Pope lost no

time in gathering an army of ten thousand men, and "war was declared"

between the sovereign and the Colonna. The varying fortunes of this

"war" have been narrated in detail by more than one historian.[206]

Much mischief was done, and a great deal of misery occasioned by both

the contending parties. But at length the forces of the Sovereign got

the better of those of his vassal, and the principal fortresses of the

Colonna were taken, and their fortifications ordered to be razed.

It was in consequence of these misfortunes, and of that remarkable

"solidarity" which, as has been before observed, united in those days

the members of a family in their fortunes and reverses, that Vittoria

quitted Rome, probably towards the end of 1540, and retired to Orvieto.

But the loss of their brightest ornament was a misfortune which the

higher circles of Roman society could not submit to patiently. Many

of the most influential personages at Paul III.'s court visited the

celebrated exile at Orvieto, and succeeded ere long in obtaining her

return to Rome after a very short absence.[207] And we accordingly find

her again in the eternal city in the August of 1541.

There is a letter written by Luca Contile,[208] the Sienese historian,

dramatist and poet, in which he speaks of a visit he had paid to

Vittoria in Rome in that month. She asked him, he writes, for news of

Fra Bernardino (Ochino), and on his replying that he had left behind

him at Milan the highest reputation for virtue and holiness, she

answered, "God grant that he so persevere!"

[Sidenote: WOULD NEVER QUIT THE CHURCH.]

On this passage of Luca Contile's letter, Visconti and others have

built a long argument in proof of Vittoria's orthodoxy. It is quite

clear, they say, that she already suspected and lamented Ochino's

progress towards heresy, and thus indicates her own aversion to aught

that might lead to separation from the church of Rome. It would

be difficult, however, to show that the simple phrase in question

had necessarily any such meaning. But any dispute on this point is

altogether nugatory; for it may be at once admitted that Vittoria did

not quit, and in all probability would not under any circumstances

have quitted, the communion of the Church. And if this is all that her

Romanist biographers wish to maintain, they unquestionably are correct

in their statements. She acted in this respect in conformity with

the conduct of the majority of those eminent men whose disciple and

friend she was during so many years. And the final extinction of the

reformatory movement in Italy was in great measure due precisely to the

fact that conformity to Rome was dearer to most Italian minds than the

independent assertion of their own opinions. It may be freely granted

that there is every reason to suppose that it would have been so to

Vittoria, had she not been so fortunate as to die before her peculiar

tenets were so definitively condemned as to make it necessary for her

to choose between abandoning them or abandoning Rome. But surely all

the interest which belongs to the question of her religious opinions

consists in the fact that she, like the majority of the best minds of

her country and age, assuredly held doctrines which Rome discovered and

declared to be incompatible with her creed.

A more agreeable record of Vittoria's presence in Rome at this time,

and an interesting glimpse of the manner in which many of her hours

were passed, is to be found in the papers left by one Francesco

d'Olanda,[209] a Portuguese painter, who was then in the eternal

city. He had been introduced, he tells us, by the kindness of Messer

Lattanzio Tolemei of Siena to the Marchesa de Pescara, and also to

Michael Angelo; and he has recorded at length several conversations

between these and two or three other members of their society in which

he took part. The object of his notes appears to have been chiefly to

preserve the opinions expressed by the great Florentine on subjects

connected with the arts. And it must be admitted, that the conversation

of the eminent personages mentioned, as recorded by the Portuguese

painter, appears, if judged by the standard of nineteenth century

notions, to have been wonderfully dull and flat.

The record is a very curious one even in this point of view. It is

interesting to measure the distance between what was considered

first-rate conversation in 1540, and what would be tolerated among

intelligent people in 1850. The good-old-times admirers, who would

have us believe that the ponderous erudition of past generations

is distasteful to us, only by reason of the touch-and-go butterfly

frivolousness of the modern mind, are in error. The long discourses

which charmed a sixteenth century audience, are to us intolerably

boring, because they are filled with platitudes;—with facts,

inferences, and speculations, that is, which have passed and repassed

through the popular mind, till they have assumed the appearance of

self-evident truths and fundamental axioms, which it is loss of time to

spend words on. And time has so wonderfully risen in value! And though

there are more than ever men whose discourse might be instructive

and profitable to their associates, the universality of the habit of

reading prevents conversation from being turned into a lecture. Those

who have matter worth communicating, can do so more effectually and

to a larger audience by means of the pen; and those willing to be

instructed, can make themselves masters of the thoughts of others far

more satisfactorily by the medium of a book.

But the external circumstances of these conversations, noted down for

us by Francesco d'Olanda, give us an amusing peep into the literary

life of the Roman world three hundred years ago.

[Sidenote: CONVERSATION IN 1540.]

It was one Sunday afternoon that the Portuguese artist went to call

on Messer Lattanzio Tolemei, nephew of the cardinal of that name.

The servants told him, that their master was in the church of San

Silvestro, at Monte Cavallo, in company with the Marchesa di Pescara,

for the purpose of hearing a lecture on the Epistles of St. Paul,

from a certain Friar Ambrose of Siena. Maestro Francesco lost no time

in following his friend thither. And "as soon as the reading and the

interpretations of it were over," the Marchesa turning to the stranger,

and inviting him to sit beside her, said; "If I am not mistaken,

Francesco d'Olanda would better like to hear Michael Angelo preach on

painting, than to listen to Friar Ambrose's lecture."

Whereupon the painter, "feeling himself piqued," assures the lady that

he can take interest in other matters than painting, and that however

willingly he would listen to Michael Angelo on art, he would prefer to

hear Friar Ambrose when St. Paul's epistles were in question.

"Do not be angry, Messer Francesco," said Signor Lattanzio, thereupon.

"The Marchesa is far from doubting that the man capable of painting

may be capable of aught else. We, in Italy, have too high an estimate

of art for that. But, perhaps, we should gather from the remark of

the Signora Marchesa the intention of adding to the pleasure you have

already had, that of hearing Michael Angelo."

"In that case, said I, her Excellence would do only as is her

wont;—that is, to accord greater favours than one would have dared to

ask of her."

So Vittoria calls to a servant, and bids him go to the house of Michael

Angelo, and tell him, "that I and Messer Lattanzio are here in this

cool chapel, that the church is shut, and very pleasant, and ask him if

he will come and spend a part of the day with us, that we may put it to

profit in his company. But do not tell him that Francesco d'Olanda the

Spaniard is here."

Then there is some very mild raillery about how Michael Angelo was to

be led to speak of painting;—it being, it seems, very questionable

whether he could be induced to do so; and a little bickering follows

between Maestro Francesco and Friar Ambrose, who feels convinced that

Michael will not be got to talk before the Portuguese, while the latter

boasts of his intimacy with the great man.

Presently there is a knock at the church door. It is Michael Angelo,

who has been met by the servant as he was going towards the baths,

talking with Orbino, his colour-grinder.

"The Marchesa rose to receive him, and remained standing a good while,

before making him sit down between her and Messer Lattanzio." Then,

"with an art, which I can neither describe nor imitate, she began to

talk of various matters with infinite wit and grace, without ever

touching the subject of painting, the better to make sure of the great

painter."

"One is sure enough," she says at last, "to be completely beaten, as

often as one ventures to attack Michael Angelo on his own ground, which

is that of wit and raillery. You will see, Messer Lattanzio, that to

put him down and reduce him to silence, we must talk to him of briefs,

law processes, or painting."

By which subtle and deep-laid plot the great man is set off into a long

discourse on painters and painting.

[Sidenote: IN THE CHURCH OF SAN SILVESTRO.]

"His Holiness," said the Marchesa, after a while, "has granted me the

favour of authorising me to build a new convent, near this spot, on the

slope of Monte Cavallo, where there is the ruined portico, from the top

of which, it is said, that Nero looked on while Rome was burning; so

that virtuous women may efface the trace of so wicked a man. I do not

know, Michael Angelo, what form or proportions to give the building,

or on which side to make the entrance. Would it not be possible to

join together some parts of the ancient constructions, and make them

available towards the new building?"

"Yes," said Michael Angelo; "the ruined portico might serve for a

bell-tower."

This repartee, says our Portuguese reporter, was uttered with so much

seriousness and _aplomb_, that Messer Lattanzio could not forbear from

remarking it.

From which we are led to infer, that the great Michael was understood

to have made a joke. He added, however, more seriously; "I think, that

your Excellence may build the proposed convent without difficulty; and

when we go out, we can, if your Excellence so please, have a look at

the spot, and suggest to you some ideas."

Then, after a complimentary speech from Vittoria, in which she declares

that the public, who know Michael Angelo's works only without being

acquainted with his character, are ignorant of the best part of him,

the lecture, to which all this is introductory begins. And when the

company part at its close, an appointment is made to meet again another

Sunday in the same church.

A painter in search of an unhackneyed subject might easily choose a

worse one than that suggested by this notable group, making the cool

and quiet church their Sunday afternoon drawing-room.

The few remaining years of Vittoria's life were spent between Rome and

Viterbo, an episcopal city some thirty miles to the north of it. In

this latter her home was in the convent of the nuns of St. Catherine.

Her society there consisted chiefly of Cardinal Pole, the governor of

Viterbo, her old friend Marco Antonio Flaminio, and Archbishop Soranzo.

[Sidenote: HER LETTER TO CERVINO.]

During these years the rapidly increasing consciousness on the part of

the Church of the danger of the doctrines held by the reforming party,

was speedily making it unsafe to profess those opinions, which, as we

have seen, gave the colour to so large a portion of Vittoria's poetry,

and which had formed her spiritual character. And these friends, in the

closest intimacy with whom she lived at Viterbo, were not the sort of

men calculated to support her in any daring reliance on the dictates of

her own soul, when these chanced to be in opposition to the views of

the Church. Pole appears to have been at this time the special director

of her conscience. And we know but too well, from the lamentable sequel

of his own career, the sort of counsel he would be likely to give her

under the circumstances. There is an extremely interesting letter

extant, written by her from Viterbo to the Cardinal Cervino, who was

afterwards Pope Marcellus II., which proves clearly enough, to the

great delight of her orthodox admirers, that let her opinions have been

what they might, she was ready to "submit" them to the censureship of

Rome. We have seen how closely her opinions agreed with those which

drove Bernardino Ochino to separate himself from the Church, and fly

from its vengeance. Yet under Pole's tutelage she writes as follows:—

"Most Illustrious and most Reverend Sir,

"The more opportunity I have had of observing the actions of his

Eminence the Cardinal of England (Pole), the more clear has it

seemed to me that he is a true and sincere servant of God. Whenever,

therefore, he charitably condescends to give me his opinion on any

point, I conceive myself safe from error in following his advice.

And he told me that, in his opinion, I ought, in case any letter or

other matter should reach me from Fra Bernardino, to send the same to

your most Reverend Lordship, and return no answer, unless I should

be directed to do so. I send you therefore the enclosed, which I

have this day received, together with the little book attached. The

whole was in a packet, which came to the post here by a courier from

Bologna, without any other writing inside. And I have thought it best

not to make use of any other means of sending it, than by a servant of

my own." * * *

She adds in a postscript:

"It grieves me much that the more he tries to excuse himself the

more he accuses himself; and the more he thinks to save others from

shipwreck, the more he exposes himself to the flood, being himself out

of the ark which saves and secures."[210]

Poor Ochino little thought probably that his letter to his former

admiring and fervent disciple, would be passed on with such a remark to

the hands of his enemies! He ought, however, to have been aware that

princesses and cardinals, whatever speculations they may have indulged

in, do not easily become heretics.

She returned once more from Viterbo to Rome towards the end of the

year 1544, and took up her residence in the convent of Benedictines

of St Anne. While there she composed the latin prayer, printed in

the note,[211] which has been much admired, and which, though not

so Ciceronian in its diction as Bembo might have written, will bear

comparison with similar compositions by many more celebrated persons.

Several of the latest of her poems were also written at this time. But

her health began to fail so rapidly as to give great uneasiness to her

friends. Several letters are extant from Tolomei to her physician,

anxiously inquiring after her health, urging him to neglect no

resources of his art, and bidding him remember that "the lives of many,

who continually receive from her their food—some that of the body, and

others that of the mind—are bound up in hers."[212] The celebrated

physician and poet Fracastoro, was written to in Verona. In his reply,

after suggesting medical remedies, he says, "Would that a physician

for her mind could be found! Otherwise the fairest light in this world

will, from causes by no means clear (_a non so che strano modo_) be

extinguished and taken from our eyes."[213]

The medical opinion of Fracastoro, writing from a distance, may not be

of much value. But it is certain that many circumstances combined to

render these declining years of Vittoria's life unhappy. The fortunes

of her family were under a cloud; and it is probable that she was as

much grieved by her brother's conduct, as by the consequences of it.

The death also of the Marchese del Vasto, in the flower of his age,

about this time, was a severe blow to her. Ever since those happy early

days in Ischia, when she had been to him, as she said, morally and

intellectually a mother, the closest ties of affection had united them;

and his loss was to Vittoria like that of a son. Then again, though she

had perfectly made up her mind as to the line of conduct it behoved

her to take in regard to any difficulties of religious opinion, yet

it cannot be doubted that the necessity of separating herself from so

many whom she had loved and venerated, deserting them, as it were, in

their falling fortunes, must have been acutely painful to her. Possibly

also conscience was not wholly at rest with her on this matter. It

may be that the still voice of inward conviction would sometimes make

obstinate murmur against blindfold submission to a priesthood, who

ought not, according to the once expressed opinion of the poetess, to

come between the creature and his creator.

[Sidenote: HER LAST HOURS.]

As she became gradually worse and weaker, she was removed from the

convent of St. Anne, to the neighbouring house of Giuliano Cesarini,

the husband of Giulia Colonna, the only one of her kindred then left

in Rome. And there she breathed her last towards the end of February,

1547, in the 57th year of her age.

In her last hours she was visited by her faithful and devotedly

attached friend Michael Angelo, who watched the departure of the spirit

from her frame; and who declared,[214] years afterwards, that he had

never ceased to regret that in that solemn moment he had not ventured

to press his lips for the first and last time, to the marble forehead

of the dead.

She had directed that her funeral should be in all respects like that

of one of the sisters of the convent in which she last resided. And so

completely were her behests attended to, that no memorial of any kind

remains to tell the place of her sepulture.

APPENDIX.

ORIGINAL TEXT OF CATHERINE'S LETTER TO THE KING OF FRANCE.

LETTERA 187.

Carissimo padre in Cristo dolce Jesù. Io Catarina, schiava de' servi

di Jesù Cristo, scrivo a voi nel prezioso sangue suo, con desiderio

di vedere in voi uno vero e perfettissimo lume, acciò che cognosciate

le verità di quello che v'è necessario per la vostra salute. Senza

questo lume andaremmo in tenebre, la qual tenebre non lascia discernere

quello che ci è nocivo all'anima e al corpo, e quello che ci è utile;

e per questo guasta il gusto dell'anima, che le cose buone le fanno

parer cattive e le cattive buone, cioè il vizio; e quelle cose che ci

conducono a peccato, ci pajono buone e dilettevoli; e le virtù e quello

che ci induce alla virtù ci pajono amare e di grande malagevolezza: ma

chi ha lume cognosce bene la verità: e però ama la virtù, e Dio, che è

la cagione di ogni virtù, ed odia il vizio e la propria sensualità, che

è cagione d'ogni vizio. Chi ci tolle questo vero e dolce lume? L'amor

proprio che l'uomo ha a sè medesimo, il quale è una nuvola che offusca

l'occhio dell'intelletto e ricopre la pupilla del lume della santissima

fede; e però va come cieco ed ignorante seguitando la fragilità sua,

tutto passionato senza lume di ragione, si come animale che, perchè non

ha ragione, si lassa guidare al proprio sentimento. Grande miseria e

dell'uomo, il quale Dio ha creato all'imagine e similitudine sua, che

egli voluntariamente per suo difetto si facci peggio che animale bruto,

come ingrato ed ignorante non cognosce, nè ricognosce li benefizj da

Dio, ma ritribuisceli a sè medesimo. Dall'amor proprio procede ogni

male. Unde vengono le ingiustizie e tutti gli altri difetti? dall'amore

proprio. Egli commette ingiustizia contra Dio, contra sè e contra al

prossimo suo, e contra la santa Chiesa. Contra Dio la commette, che non

rende gloria e loda al nome suo come egli è obbligato; a sè non rende

odio e dispiacimento del vizio, ed amore delle virtù; nè al prossimo

la benivolenza; e se egli è signore non gli tiene giustizia, perchè

non la fa se non secondo il piacere delle creature o per proprio suo

piacere umano. Nè alla Chiesa rende l'obbedienzia e non la sovviene, ma

continuamente la perseguita: di tutto è cagione l'amor proprio, che non

il lassa cognoscere la Verità, perchè è privato del lume. Questo ci è

molto manifesto, e tutto dì il vediamo e proviamo in noi medesimi, che

egli è così.

Non vorrei, carrissimo padre, che questa nuvola vi tollesse il lume; ma

voglio che in voi sia quel lume che vi faccia cognoscere e discernere

la Verità. Parmi secondo che io intendo, che cominciate a lassarvi

guidare al consiglio de' tenebrosi, e voi sapete, che se l'uno cieco

guida l'altro, ambidue caggiono nella fossa. Così diverrà a voi, se

voi non ci ponete altro remedio che quello che io sento. Honne grande

ammirazione che uomo cattolico che voglià temere Dio ed esser virile,

si lassi guidare come fanciullo, e che non vegga come metta sè e altrui

in tanta ruina, quanta è di contaminare il lume della santissima fede

per consiglio e detto di coloro che noi vediamo esser membri del

demonio, arbori corrotti, dei quali ci sono manifesti i diffetti loro

per l'ultimo veleno che hanno seminato della eresia: dicendo che papa

Urbano VI. non sia veramente papa. Aprite l'occhio dell'intelletto, e

riguardate che essi mentono sopra il capo loro, per loro medesimi si

possono confondere, e veggonsi degni di grande supplicio da qualunque

lato noi ci volliamo. Se noi ci volliamo a quelli che essi dicono, che

l'elessero per paura della furia del populo, essi non dicono la verità,

perocchè prima l'avevano eletto con elezione canonica ed ordinata sì

come fosse eletto mai verun altro sommo pontifice. Essi si spacciarono

ben di fare la elezione per lo timore che il populo no si levasse, ma

non che per timore elli non elegessero misser Bartolomeo arcivescovo

di Bari, il quale è oggi papa Urbano VI., e così confesso in verità,

e non lo niego. Quello che essi elessero per paura, ciò fu missere

di Santo Pietro, apparbe evidente a ciascuno, ma la elezione di papa

Urbano era fatta ordinamente come detto è. Questo annunziarono a voi e

a noi, ed agli altri signori del mondo, manifestando per opera quello

che ci dicevano con parole, cioè facendoli riverenzia, adorandolo come

Cristo in terra, e coronandolo con tanta solennità; rifacendo di nuovo

l'elezione con grande concordia: a lui come sommo pontifice chiesero le

grazie, ed usaronle; e se non fusse stato vero, che papa Urbano fusse

papa, ma che lo avessoro eletto per paura, e non sarebbero essi degni

eternalmente di confusione? Che le colonne della santa Chiesa poste

per dilatare la fede, per timore della morte corporale volessero dare

a loro ed a noi morte eternale? Mostrando ci per padre quello che non

fussi? E non sarebbero essi ladri, tollendo ed usando quello, che non

potessero usare? Sì ben; se vero fusse quello che ora dicono che non

è, anco è veramente papa Urbano VI., ma come stolti e matti accecati

dal proprio amore, hanno mostrata e data a noi questa verità, e per

loro tengono la bugia: tanto la confessarono questa verità, quanto

la Santità sua indugiò a voler correggere i vizi loro: ma come egli

cominciò a monderli ed a mostrare, che lo scellerato viver loro li era

spiacevole e che egli voleva ponervi il rimedio, subito levarono il

capo. E contra chi l'hanno levato? contra la santa fede. Fatto hanno

peggio che cristiani rinnegati.