Troublous new times in Ferrara—How a French King's daughter became a
Duchess—Bygones were aught but bygones—and Mitre and Cowl were lords
of all.
Previously to this celebrated era of "renaissance," all the business
of education, such as it was, had necessarily been in the hands of the
clergy. But the well–known circumstances which at the beginning of the
sixteenth century led to a new zeal for the study of the languages of
ancient Greece and Home, led also to the creation of a totally new
class of teachers. The most eminent professors of the new learning were
men, whose position made it necessary that their acquirements should
be made a means of gaining a livelihood. And they became therefore for
the most part professional teachers. They were also generally laymen.
A body of lay pedagogues was a new thing in the world; and surely one
of no small significance. For though these men professed simply to
give instruction in the Greek or in the Latin tongue and literature,
not to educate their pupils, yet the mass of idea, unstamped by the
ecclesiastical mint, which was necessarily thus circulated, must have
exercised an influence, which has perhaps not been estimated at its
worth, in inquiries into the causes of the mental tendencies of that
period.
[Sidenote: PEREGRINO MORATO.]
Among the number of learned laymen, thus independently exercising
the profession of teacher, we find a certain Peregrino or Pellegrino
Morato, a native of Mantua, established at Ferrara early in the
sixteenth century. He had, we are told, many of the nobility of Ferrara
for his pupils; and had already acquired considerable reputation by
his teaching in several cities of Italy.[33] All that has reached us
concerning him concurs to produce the impression that Morato must have
been an estimable and worthy man; among which testimonies may perhaps
be reckoned the fact of his continued poverty, notwithstanding his
success as a teacher, and the lofty position of some among his pupils.
The most noted scholars and teachers of that age would seem to have
led almost invariably wandering lives. They are heard of now holding a
chair in one university and now in another, or attached to several of
the princely houses of Italy in succession. And such appears to have
been the early life of Morato. But at Ferrara he fixed himself more
permanently, and soon anchored himself there in a manner, which made
"La gran Donna del Po," as Tassoni calls that city, his home, and the
centre of all this world's joys and sorrows for the remainder of his
life. There he married, and became the father of five children, of whom
Olympia appears to have been the eldest. There also he formed close and
durable friendships with most of the learned men, of whom a remarkable
band were gathered together in the court and university of Ferrara.
Among these, one of the most notable for his varied acquirements
as well as for the closeness of his intimacy with Morato, was Celio
Calcagnini, who occupied the chair of "belle lettere" in the university
of his native city. Antiquarian, mathematician, astronomer, poet,
scholar, and critic, Calcagnini was one of the most encyclopædic men in
an age, when students still dreamed of mastering the "omne scibile."
The numerous letters printed among his works prove his friendship with
Morato to have been of the most intimate kind. And, if these letters
had fortunately preserved their dates, instead of being printed in a
confused mass, we should have had the means of ascertaining much more
accurately than is now possible, the leading events of his friend
Morato's life.
Alexander Guarini the grammarian, professor in the university and
secretary to the Duke; Giglio Gregorio Giraldi, one of the most eminent
Greek scholars of his day, a man of vast erudition and the first writer
of any value on the ancient mythology; Bartolomeo Ricci, the learned
but amusingly vain–glorious and quarrelsome scholar and critic, whose
comedy in Italian prose entitled "the Nurses" is reckoned by Quadrio
among the best in the language, and who was brought to Ferrara in 1539,
on the recommendation of Calcagnini, to be tutor to Duke Hercules'
son Alphonso, then six years old; the two brothers Chilian and John
Sinapi, Germans, who occupied the chairs of Greek and Medicine in the
University of Ferrara, of whom the former was Olympia's master, and was
regarded by her as a second father; and lastly, but bound to Morato and
his family by a more intimate and closer friendship than any of the
others enumerated, Celio Secondo Curione,—all these, with others of
similar tastes and pursuits formed a society, which rendered Ferrara
at that time perhaps the most attractive and desirable residence for a
scholar, of any city in Italy.
[Sidenote: DUKE HERCULES II.'S MARRIAGE.]
Another circumstance occurred not many years after Morato's first
establishment in Ferrara, which very notably contributed to impress a
special character on the learned society there congregated, and to make
that city a rallying point for the free thought, which was beginning
yeast–like to heave the surface of Italian life.
The difficulties of protecting his dominions from the encroachments
and greed of the Church, which compelled Alphonso to be continually
oscillating between the friendship of the Emperor, or of the French
King, according to the ever shifting aspects of Italian affairs, and
the preponderance of the danger imminent from one side or the other,
necessitated in 1528 an alliance with the latter. And with this view
a marriage was arranged between Hercules, who was to succeed his
father Alphonso in the Duchy as second duke of that name, and Renée,
daughter of Louis XII. Hercules, then just twenty years old, went to
Paris, where the marriage was celebrated on the 28th of June, 1528, and
brought home his bride in the November of that year.
And now again, as six and twenty years before, when Alphonso brought
his Borgia home, there was to be a ceremonial entry of the heir
apparent's bride. But times were changed. And Ferrara, both court
and city, had other matters to think of besides gala processions and
festivities. The clergy, and the university doctors indeed went out
to meet her,[34] as in duty bound; and the citizens equally as in
duty bound, hung out of their windows their gay–coloured silk rugs
and curtains, as Italians do to the present day on the occasions when
anything royal or divine has need of such glorification. But we hear of
no preparations for Homeric feasting, nor of wonderful gold dresses,
and dancing all day, and morris dances at night. The entry of Louis
XII.'s daughter was a very tame affair. And then Renée herself was a
very different person from the splendid Lucrezia, who captivated all
eyes, as she sat superb in black and gold, on her proudly pacing steed.
Renée on the contrary came in on a litter; for "this one was by no
means handsome, as were the two Duchesses, who preceded her. On the
contrary she was, according to a MS. record of that period, somewhat
crooked. But this was compensated by her elevated mind, her intellect,
her literary culture, and her great partiality for learned men."[35]
Alas! Poor Renée must have valued these good gifts far more highly
than even those of her sex most rich in such are wont to do, if she
would not in her own heart have bitterly denied the value of any such
compensation! Lucrezia with a dower of infamy "compensated" by beauty,
became the happy wife of an affectionate husband. Renée with her store
of virtues, and rich intellectual qualities, found but a state prison,
heart–ache, and an unloving lord in this exile from her native France.
[Sidenote: CONTRASTED FORTUNES.]
And then that "elevated intelligence," which was to compensate for
crookedness, was but little likely to contribute to the happiness
of one in the position of Renée of France at the court of Ferrara.
Elevated intelligence was a dangerous commodity just about that time
in Italy! For we have already seen the tendency of men's minds in those
days to think of things that it was far better not to think about at
all; a tendency which it very soon became necessary to extinguish and
trample out at whatever cost. Thus we find that Renée, not content with
having studied "the learned tongues, history, literature, philosophy,
mathematics, and even astrology," and "unable to bridle her fervid
intellect, gave herself over to the study of theology, and to complete
her misfortune selected for her instructor one of the most celebrated
of the new–fangled teachers who then infested Europe,"[36] no other
than one John Calvin. And the result was, that, whereas the beautiful
and catholic Lucrezia was able,—juvenile indiscretions and ardour of
pulse happily moderated and past—to spend her mornings in orthodox
devotion performed _secundum artem_, and her evenings in embroidery,
to such purpose as to have secured the good word of Popes, Cardinals,
Bishops, and learned Doctors, and the final general approval of
Mnemosyne in her official surplice and rochet,—poor Duchess Renée with
her "elevated intellect," and unhappy improprieties in the matter of
theological inquiry, is marked as a moral leper by the same consistent
ecclesiastical Muse, and finally consigned to a worse limbo than that
of their own sulphureous pages.
But it is not to be supposed that Renée came to her husband's court
branded as a heretic; though we find that she forthwith established in
her own apartments "a literary academy," or meeting of men of letters,
which, we are told,[37] was "much for the honour of literature, but
not at all for that of the catholic religion." Nor, though almost all
of those learned men, whom she patronised, turned out later to be,
as the historian says, tarred with the same brush, was the delicate
orthodoxy of her husband Hercules offended by any ill savour of heresy
at that time. For the Church–in–danger alarm bell had not yet rung in
Italy. Clement VII. having quite enough to do to hold his own among the
clashing of the perfectly material interests of quite satisfactorily
catholic, but very unscrupulous princes, thought of nothing less
than the smelling out of traces of heretical taint. And it needed
something more appreciable by the ducal mind than speculations about
justification by faith to stimulate its orthodoxy into activity.
So the Duchess for years after her marriage gathered around her the
best minds in her little capital, and talked her own talk with them,
unmolested and unsuspected.
Nor can it be concluded that Morato was not at this time imbued with
the new opinions, from the fact, that he evidently stood well in the
court society at Ferrara. In the absence of all ascertained dates
to enable us to fix with precision the leading events of his life,
we must content ourselves with concluding, that it must have been
between the years 1520 and 1525, in all probability, that he first
established himself in that city. We know that he there married a
Ferrarese lady, and that his daughter Olympia was born there in 1526.
Now it is clear from the letters of Calcagnini that he must about
that time have adopted at least those doctrines on justification by
faith, and on free–will, which a few years afterwards were stamped as
heretical and visited with persecution. But nobody on the southern side
of the Alps dreamed as yet that such opinions, must, or even might,
lead to that dreaded consummation, separation from the Church. Morato
was at this time a valued member of the learned society of Ferrara;
and though doubtless a frequenter of those academic meetings in the
apartments of the Duchess, which were afterwards discovered to have
been so heretically pernicious, he was as yet well esteemed by the most
unsuspectedly orthodox churchmen.
[Sidenote: ANECDOTE OF BEMBO.]
A little anecdote from the vast repertory of such supplied by the
"quarrels of authors," may serve to show that the favourable opinion of
Messer Peregrino Morato was no little valued among the set with whom he
lived. The celebrated Pietro Bembo, who was a few years after this time
called to the purple by Paul III., had passed some years at Ferrara in
the early part of his life, and having formed friendships with most
of the literary men there, never lost an opportunity of paying them
a visit, and was thus intimate with all the knot among whom Morato
lived. Now it seems that Bernardo Tasso, the father of the poet, who
was secretary to the Duchess Renée, had somewhat maliciously written
to Bembo that Morato had accused[38] him of plagiarising certain
grammatical speculations, from one Francesco Fortunio. Upon which
Bembo, writing in reply on the 27th May, 1529, manifests great anxiety
to convince Morato that he is in error. "On the contrary," writes
Bembo, "he stole these things from me, together with the very words as
I had written them in a small work of mine before he could speak, much
less write, badly as he does it. This work of mine he saw and had in
his hands many days; and I am ready to show it to him (Morato) whenever
he please; and he will then see whether I deserve to be thus branded
and cut up by him. Besides, I can introduce him to several great
personages worthy of all credit, who heard and learned from me all
the matters in question, long before Fortunio took to teaching others
what he does not know himself."[39] Bembo, ex–secretary to Pope Leo,
and presently to be a Cardinal, stood very much higher in the social
scale than the poor Ferrara schoolmaster; and would probably have cared
for his mistaken accusation as little as for the obscure Fortunio's
plagiarism, had not his standing in the world of letters given a very
different value to his opinion.
Olympia thus passed the first seven years of her life in the tranquil
prosperity of a humble home, maintained by the successful labour of
its owner, and cheered by the intimate society of congenial friends.
That the precocious child had already attracted the notice of the grave
and learned seniors who frequented her father's house, is indicated
by a passage in a letter from Calcagnini to Morato, when absent from
Ferrara, bidding him "to kiss for him the little Muse, whose prattle
was already so charming." And at a later date, when writing to her, and
recalling his remembrances of her infancy, he says, that the language
of the Muses was her earliest mother tongue, "which she had imbibed
together with the milk from the breast."[40]
[Sidenote: EXILE.]
The absence of Morato from Ferrara, which gave rise to the former of
these letters, occurred in 1533.[41] That it was involuntary, and
regarded by him and his friends as a great misfortune, is certain. It
is tolerably clear, also, that it was caused by the will of the Duke.
But beyond this we know nothing. Tiraboschi supposed, with a confusion
of dates and events, common to most of the Romanist writers, who ever
seem to imagine that heresy was always heresy, the same in 1533 as in
1553, that he was exiled for the heterodoxy of his religious opinions.
But that historian admits, that he afterwards saw reason to change his
opinion on this point.[42]
Whatever may have been the cause of a removal, which the nature of
Morato's connection with Ferrara make him feel as an expatriation, it
is certain that it lasted for six years,[43]—the six years that carried
Olympia from seven to thirteen years of age, a period in the life of
a girl of the southern blood on the sunny side of the Alps, which may
probably be equivalent to that included between the tenth and sixteenth
year of a child of our more tardily developed race.
The nature of her home in Ferrara, and of the influences that
surrounded it, have been indicated. But of those which had the forming
of her character during these important years of exile, we know
nothing. And Olympia's biographers, in dwelling on her progress under
the eyes of her father's learned friends at Ferrara, and attributing
to them, in great measure, the truly remarkable degree of classical
scholarship to which she attained, seem to have too much forgotten
the importance of this period, when she was withdrawn from their
instructions. The force of this will be more apparent, when we come to
see the extent of her attainments at the time of her return, in her
thirteenth year.
It is to the struggling father that this triumph of pedagogue
workmanship must be chiefly ascribed. That these six years were years
of difficulty and struggle to the poor scholar, who had to turn
his classical lore into bread for his wife and increasing family,
is sufficiently indicated by the wandering nature of the life in
which they were passed. From Venice to Vicenza, and from Vicenza to
Cesena,[44] the poor pedlar pedagogue had to hawk his learned wares,
and drive a very uphill trade. For though learning in many cases
enriched its professors in those days in such sort as might excite
the envy of their successors in our own, this was always the result
of princely patronage. That Jenkins in Belgrave Square received more
than the value of a curacy is small comfort to starving flunkies out
of place. Between living in clover as the retainer of some lay or
ecclesiastical grandee, and finding it very difficult to live at all,
there can have been hardly any middle path for a sixteenth–century
scholar, whose erudition was his patrimony. And then again, though the
poor scholar was a character well enough known through Europe from the
twelfth to the sixteenth century, a poor scholar with a wife and family
was a modern anomaly in 1533. And such incumbrances fatally put him out
of the way of profiting by any of those small aids which the charities
of that day, in accordance with its modes of life, afforded towards
keeping together the body and soul of many an indigent "clerk."
[Sidenote: CELIO CURIONE.]
But through all the vicissitudes of these hard six years, Morato
pursued unflinchingly the dear object of his heart, to make his
Olympia—the apple of his eye, whose precocious talents had already
awakened all the pride and ambition of the pedagogue father's bosom—a
perfect specimen of classical training.
Among the towns visited by Morato during these years of exile, was
Vercelli, in Piedmont; and there he formed a friendship with one who
was destined to exercise an important influence over his future life
and that of Olympia. This was Celio Secondo Curione, whose acts of
overt dissidence from the Church had even then made him an object of
persecution. Having become wholly alienated from Rome by the study
of the Bible, and of certain of the writings of Melancthon, he was
about escaping into Germany, when he was arrested, and thrown into
prison by the Bishop of Ivrea. At the intercession of a relative, he
was released, on condition of entering a monastery. There he finally
made the breach between himself and the Church irreparable, by an act
of audacity, which seems to have been more calculated to produce a
theatrical and epigrammatic effect, than to bring about any useful
result. Having quietly one day removed the relics from the high altar
of the convent church, he installed the Bible in their place; thus
indicating, more significantly probably than he intended, the tendency
of the new Church then springing into existence, to substitute a new
idolatry, less gross perhaps than that which it strove to supplant, but
equally destined to impede for long ages the progress of mankind to a
higher and purer theology.
Having fled to escape the consequences of this daring practical
protest, he committed, in Milan, about 1530, the yet more unpardonable
outrage of marrying a wife. Being by this act finally cast adrift
upon the world, with increased responsibilities and necessities,
he sought to obtain wherewithal to live, by publicly teaching the
learned languages and literature. He did this with such success, as to
attain not only that, but a very wide–spread reputation also, under
circumstances which made obscurity most desirable for his safety.
Driven, accordingly, from his occupation by the pursuit of his enemies,
and yielding to a strong desire to revisit his native Piedmont, he
appears, while travelling in that direction, to have fallen in with
Morato at Vercelli, and to have been received by his brother exile and
scholar in his temporary dwelling.
They did not part till there had been time for a friendship of the
most intimate kind to spring up between them. And though, doubtless,
there was plenty of congenial conversation between them on topics of
classical lore,—on the disputed authenticity of Cicero's rhetoric,
or the right interpretation of a passage of Plato,—we may be very
sure, that the talk which most served to bind them to each other was
on far more burning questions; on subjects which it was dangerous to
touch, but which it had already become impossible for their minds to
leave unprobed,—subjects, in speaking of which, either felt in his
heart, that each cautious word, that moved a beam of doctrine but a
hair's–breadth, might bring down a whole superincumbent fabric of
venerated creed–edifice in ruin; subjects, too, in the discussion of
which, the man who poured light into his neighbour's mind, was thereby
exposing him to danger in life and goods,—a danger proportioned to the
temperament of the mind enlightened.
[Sidenote: FIRST RELIGIOUS IMPRESSIONS.]
Morato was, it would seem, not formed in the martyr's mould. There is
no reason to suspect him of hypocritical compliances or tergiversation.
But there are some men, in whom truth so works, that it cannot lie
hidden and dormant, who, despite all pains and penalties, must needs
testify to it, and publish it. Of such, as has abundantly been seen,
was Celio Curione. That Morato shared his convictions is certain. But
he lived and died in peace in the city of his adoption.
But there was a third mind there present at these pregnant
conversations, vivid, impressionable, unforgetting, and cast, as
appeared, when it reached its maturity, in the true heroic mould. And
though the seeds that then fell, unheeded, probably, by the sower, on
Olympia's young intellect, do not appear to have produced immediate
fruit of any kind, unless, indeed, we trace their consequences in a
total absence of all respect for the orthodox superstitions, they were
assuredly thrown on soil which received and treasured them.
The two scholars parted. Curione in Piedmont soon found that the
hostility of his family, outraged by his heretical manifestations, was
such as to make it necessary for him to seek safety in obscurity. And
this he succeeded in finding as tutor to the children of a nobleman,
who lived in the country, near Turin. Here, however, his zeal for
the truth did not allow him long rest for the sole of his foot. For
chancing once to be present while an itinerant Dominican was preaching
in a neighbouring church, and hearing him falsify in the course of his
sermon some extracts from the writings of some of the German reformers,
he publicly interrupted him to correct his statement. Seizure,
imprisonment in the dungeons of the neighbouring city of Turin, with
the prospect of a trial before the ecclesiastical authorities, which
would be sure to end in a capital condemnation, were the results, as
might have been anticipated, of this audacious testimony to the truth.
Having, by almost miraculous good fortune, succeeded in escaping
from his prison, he fled to Pavia, and there obtained a chair in the
University.
The decree of the Senate of that city, conferring on him this
employment, is dated 9th of October, 1538.[45] And that such a body
should have made such an appointment, just after the candidate
for it had escaped from imprisonment for heresy in a neighbouring
city, is a curious instance of the utter severance in all respects
of one community from another, which a few miles of intervening
territory could in those days effect. It having been soon discovered,
however, adds Tiraboschi, who the new professor was, he would have
been arrested, if his pupils, already appreciating their teacher
at his worth, had not formed themselves into a bodyguard for him,
which for three years ensured his safety despite the efforts of the
ecclesiastical authorities to get possession of his person. And here we
have another very remarkable indication of the strange looseness of the
bonds which held society together at that period; and also, as it may
be fairly argued, of the general reluctance of the Italians to accept
these first manifestations of inquisitorial action, or to lend them,
if it could possibly be avoided, the assistance of the secular arm. At
length, however, urgent representations from Rome to the government of
Milan compelled the University senate of Pavia to advise Curione to
escape from their city, while it was yet possible to do so.
[Sidenote: CURIONE'S STORY.]
He was thus thrown once again upon the wide world. And it was then that
his friend Morato, who had by that time been restored to his home and
position at Ferrara, wrote to him to offer him an asylum under his own
roof.
"Come to us;" writes the Ferrarese pedagogue to his fellow–labourer;
"you will find your place at our hearth vacant. And especially there is
a corner for you in my library, where you may indulge _ad libitum_ in
the united blessings of solitude, silence, peace, and oblivion."
It cannot be doubted, that the persecuted scholar quitted these good
things occasionally to share in those meetings in the apartments
of Duchess Renée, which were found to be so pernicious to the true
religion. It was by her, that he was eventually sent with pressing
recommendations to the republic of Lucca, which city was from the first
one of the strongholds of the "novatori," as the Catholic historians
love to style the Reformers. The Luchesi at once provided him with a
professor's chair in their schools. But he had hardly been there a year
when there came a demand that he should be given up into the hands of
the Pope's officers. This the free republicans refused to do. But they
judged it prudent to advise him to fly. And as it was now clear that
there was neither safety nor rest for him in Italy, he determined on
abandoning it; and escaping first to Lausanne, where he taught with
credit and success for four years, was thence invited by the city of
Bâle to accept the chair of literature in that University; where he
remained leading a life of peaceful and useful literary labour till
his death in 1569.[46] The numerous works left by him, which may be
found catalogued by Schelhorn in his "Amænities," are some of them on
theological subjects, but chiefly treat of classical criticism and
grammar.
Morato had returned to Ferrara. His wanderings were brought to an
end by the permission to do so in 1539. His colleagues, friends, and
pupils had never ceased to regret his absence. Calcagnini had written
to him in his exile, assuring him that "every one confesses how great
a loss the city has suffered by your departure," and that his scholars
refused to attend the lectures of any other professor.[47] Whatever
may have been the cause of his exile, it is evident that no prejudice
against him existed at the court on his return. When he left Ferrara
in 1533, Alphonso I. was still reigning. He died in 1534; and Morato
on his return found Hercules II. and his wife Renée on the throne.
And very shortly after this restoration to his home and his pupils
he was appointed tutor to the late Duke's two sons, Alphonso and
Alphonsino.[48]
[Sidenote: MORATO'S RETURN.]
Now, therefore, all was once again well with our professor. His old
friends hastened to gather round him, and found in his modest home a
new attraction, in addition to those which had previously rendered
his society precious to them. Old Calcagnini found the "prattling
infant muse" to whom he had sent a kiss in her exile, grown into a
lovely girl, on the eve of blossoming into womanhood, with talents and
acquirements sufficient to make the reputation of a mature scholar. In
truth, the apparition among them of this bright–eyed and bright–minded
creature, enthusiastic in her love for that literature which had been
the object and business of their lives, animated with the very spirit
of the poesy of Greece and Rome, eloquent with the well–loved music
of Homer's or Virgil's tones, which fell mended from her lips, talking
their talk, interested in their discussions, and anxious to learn
more of all, that it was so delightful a task to them to teach, seems
nearly to have turned the learned heads of that knot of grey–beards,
who frequented her father's house. They seem at a loss how to express
their admiration in terms sufficiently glowing. Old Gregory Giraldi,
writing amid the tortures of the gout, which kept him bed–ridden
during the last ten years of his life, speaks of her as "a damsel
talented beyond the nature of her sex, thoroughly skilled in Greek
and Latin literature, and a miracle to all who hear her." Comparisons
with Diotima, Aspasia, the Muses, Graces, and everything feminine that
ever was wise, brilliant, or charming, were showered around her. If
it be possible that the head of a youthful beauty should be turned by
the flattery and admiration of grey–headed and gouty old gentlemen,
expressed in the most Attic Greek, and purest Ciceronian Latin, that of
Olympia could hardly have escaped.
This chorus of admiration must, at all events, have been gratifying to
the proud father. The home–coming, after his long wanderings, must have
been a happy one. His appointment at the court, too, must have been
a satisfactory assurance that no suspicion of heterodoxy had as yet
arisen to injure him. Yet mischief from this source had been busy in
Ferrara during his absence, and that in the innermost chambers of the
palace. The priest had, as usual, thrust himself between the husband
and the wife; and the Duchess Renée had become, on theological grounds,
an object of suspicion to her husband, whose political relations
with the Holy See made it expedient that he and his should enjoy a
reputation of unblemished orthodoxy.
Renée had, years before, as we have seen, consorted with those who
were _afterwards_ found to have been enemies to the Church; and she
must have been known to have held, ever since her first coming into
Italy, doctrines which were _afterwards_ pronounced heretical. But so
did Contarini, who was sent by the Pope to Ratisbon in 1541 to hold
conference, and, if possible, come to accord with the Protestants.
Meantime nobody knew exactly how the Church might peremptorily require
her sons to believe themselves justified. And Duke Hercules was by no
means likely to have any special personal susceptibilities on such
matters. So, as long as no offence was given to Rome, Renée might hold
her "academies," gather her spiritual friends around her, and talk
about faith and works, if she liked it.
But during Morato's absence events had happened which had changed
all this. One M. Charles d'Espeville had arrived at Ferrara in 1536.
The good Duchess, always eager to welcome, and assist if need were,
her countrymen, accorded the most hospitable reception to this M.
d'Espeville. He at once became one of her intimates, and was admitted
to conferences either secret, or shared only with a select few.
Now if lay sovereigns have, as has been said, long arms, Mother Church
has a piercing and most ubiquitous eye. Though Duke Hercules might not
see what was passing under his nose, vigilant Mother Church saw it, as
she sat far away in the middle of her spider's web there at Rome. And
she hastened to hiss into the ear of Duke Hercules the horror, that
there in his city of Ferrara, in the innermost chambers of his own
palace, in the closet of his wife, was crouched, hatching heresies and
treasons, the arch–heretic, the very emissary of the Evil one, Calvin
himself![49]
[Sidenote: SPIRITUALITIES AND TEMPORALITIES.]
These, it must be admitted, were tidings of a sort to irritate a
ducal husband, troubled little about his "justification," but much
about his investiture parchments;—most orthodoxly willing to be saved
either by works or faith, or any other way Holy Church might deem
best for him; but extremely anxious about his "tail male," and the
securing of his temporalities against the strangely temporal appetites
of that spiritual mother. For of all the long disputes between Duke
Hercules and the Apostolic chamber, painfully prosecuted by envoys,
memorials, writings innumerable, by even personal riding to Rome,
and heart–wearying struggle with the obstructions, insincerities and
chicaneries of that most intolerable of human entities, the gist
was briefly this. My body, with its ducal cloak and trappings, its
dignities, possessions, and hereditaments to be mine, and the same
to pass to the heirs thereof lawfully begotten;—my soul, with all
thereunto appertaining,—of course carrying with it _sans mot dire_,
the souls of all my subjects,—to be yours in eternal fee simple, to
fashion, manage, and dispose of as to you shall seem fit. A fair
bargain surely this, proposed by Duke Hercules of Ferrara, by no means
a singular or eccentric prince, if indeed souls were what Mother Church
was specially eager after, as she said! And this agreement might have
been quickly and easily made, to be loyally observed by either party,
as agreements between honest folk are, had it not been that Holy Mother
Church, fully minded to keep tight hold of the souls in question,
would not give up the hope of laying her hand on the bodies also.
And now in the midst of all the uphill work of driving his negotiation
to a favourable conclusion, as he hoped, while promising largely, and
most sincerely, poor man! the complete cession of his own and subjects'
souls, here was his own wife, not only saying her soul was her own, but
disposing of it to Mother Church's most dreaded and detested enemy.
Swift remedy found the exasperated Duke for such domestic treason. And
here Mnemosyne begs to suggest as a subject for artistic presentment
the incident which followed. Scene—the private closet of the Duchess in
the castle of Ferrara. The persons assembled there have been engaged in
that sweet converse so delightful to persons bound together by common
thoughts and feelings in the midst of an unsympathising and hostile
world around them. There is the good Duchess, who has perhaps been
mingling with more serious discourse questionings of things in that
dear distant France, which she never ceased while absent from it to
regret. The elderly lady, somewhat austerely dressed in black to the
throat, with deep ruffle around her neck, and large hanging sleeves to
her dress, is Madame de Soubise, who came with Renée from France, and
who was, as is well known, "lame of the same foot," as the Catholic
writers phrase it. The great heresiarch himself might have been
recognised by those handsome but hard and severe features, the lofty
but not noble forehead, and the bright but domineering eye; but he
could not have been known from habiliments chosen to suit the character
of M. Charles d'Espeville. The Signeurs de Pons and de Soubise may also
have been present. But one other person was assuredly there;—a writer
of obscene French verses, as the orthodox Italians call him,[50] who
had an absurd mania for meddling in theology, and fancying that he
comprehended the original language of the sacred writers, one Clement
Marot,—he was there too, and "assisted Calvin much in saturating the
mind of the Duchess with pestilent doctrine."
[Sidenote: DUCHESS RENÉE IN A SCRAPE.]
"To them, enter" hurriedly and noisily the Duke in high wrath, and at
his heels, opera–stage fashion, a sufficient impersonation of "la force
publique."
A rapid glance of the angry eye indicates to those active officers the
duty in hand. And M. Charles d'Espeville, alias John Calvin, and the
luckless poet turned theologian, are marched off, with a very tolerable
prospect of martyrdom before them. "And as for you, Madame! ... &c."
Calvin and Marot were marched off under escort to Bologna. But the
terrible marital lecture, which it has been left to the competent
reader's imagination to supply, did not so terrify Renée as to prevent
her from promptly and secretly dispatching certain trustworthy
emissaries, who, overtaking the escort on their road,[51] liberated the
prisoners, and set them free to make the best of their way across the
Alps.
This incident made a serious difference in the condition of the
Duchess. Constant suspicion and severity seem to have henceforth made
her life at Ferrara a very unhappy one. And the following lines[52]
addressed by Clement Marot to Marguerite, the sister of Francis I.,
speak touchingly enough the forlorn misery of her life:—
"Ah, Marguerite! list to the bitter smart,
That fills Renée of France her noble heart;
And sisterlike some better aid impart
Than hope alone.
Thou knowest how she left her native shore,
Leaving there friends and kin for evermore;
But what in that strange land she doth endure
Thou dost _not_ know.
She sees not one, to whom she can complain;
Her bright eye seeks her distant land in vain;
And, as to quench all hope, the mountain chain
Parts her and you."
Renée was henceforward a person marked as "infected," and subjected
to suspicion and severity accordingly; not because she held certain
opinions, which, as has been before insisted on, were not yet
condemned; but because she had been discovered to be the disciple and
friend of Calvin. He at all events was condemned clearly enough; and
to consort with him was overt heresy. And this happened in 1536. It is
impossible to suppose, therefore, that Morato could have continued in
the good graces of the court, had he been known to harbour beneath his
roof a fugitive from the ecclesiastical authorities, as Celio Curione
was in 1541, which must have been the epoch of his visit to Ferrara.
Nor could the Duchess have ventured, unless in strict secrecy, to have
received him, and sent him with her recommendations to Lucca.
The palace of Ferrara was thus at this time essentially divided against
itself. The Duke and the Duchess were pulling with might and main in
diametrically opposite directions; he by open exercise of authority,
every now and then irritated into violence: she by dissimulation and
secret intelligences.
And this was the state of that household, not pleasing in any home
however royal, when our Olympia was called to become a member of it.