"The whirligig of time brings in his revenges."—Still Undine.—The
"salvation" question stands over.
In the winter of 1542–3 Charles V. was in Italy, returning from his
unsuccessful expedition against Algiers. As usual, the sovereigns of
Italy were all on the alert to do homage to their great "barbarian"
master; buzzing about him, to beg "investitures,"—to plead for pardon
in respect of deeds done in contempt of their allegiance as soon as his
back was turned,—to complain one against the other, and in general to
kotoo the great man, and express by all means their own flunkyhood.
Even octogenarian Paul III. thought it necessary to travel in
mid–winter to meet the Emperor in the neighbourhood of Bologna. Paul
was anxious about the great council now at last in earnest on the point
of being summoned; was very desirous of sounding the Emperor's mind,
and getting, if possible, at his real views upon the subject; and
thought, perhaps, that some good might be done by having an opportunity
of ear–wigging him respecting sundry matters connected with it.
Charles had promised to meet him at Busseto; and the old Pope had
travelled as far as Parma towards the place of meeting. But the Emperor
kept him waiting there in vain, remaining himself the while in Genoa.
[Sidenote: TIME'S REVENGES.]
Very near the spot, where the octogenarian Pope was, in the depth of
winter, awaiting the pleasure of the Emperor, there had taken place,
some five hundred years before, another meeting between an Emperor and
a Pope, of which the circumstances had been somewhat different. And it
may be supposed that the vicinity of that world–famous Canossa castle
can hardly have failed to suggest some very disagreeable comparisons
to the mind of the pontiff. Then it had been the Emperor, who had
waited the good pleasure of the priest, standing there for three days'
space bareheaded among the snow. Those were the good old days, eh,
your Holiness! But then, that grand old Hildebrand, you see, really
did think and believe, without any manner of doubt, that he absolutely
_was_ God's vicar on earth;—in some sense, indeed, truly was so. And
that makes all the difference in the matter. Whereas your Holiness, in
this sixteenth century, you know, between ourselves ... must put the
best face you can upon the matter, swallow your indignation as best you
may, and turn your face homewards.
Pope Paul did so; and determined on returning to Bologna by way of
Ferrara, very much to the annoyance of Duke Hercules.[64] It was not
that there was not plenty of business to be transacted between the Pope
and the Duke. But the successor of St. Peter travelled in a manner that
made the honour of being his host a very serious consideration. Duke
Hercules was much given to splendid hospitality, was fond, generally,
of magnificence, and of occasions for display. But he had already borne
the entire expense of the Pope's passage through Modena on his way
northwards, and was not anxious to do the honours of his capital to
such a visitor on such a scale as he felt he must do them, if they were
to be done at all.
In the first place "Servus servorum" travelled with a suite of three
thousand persons, among whom were eighteen cardinals, forty bishops,
and a whole posse of ambassadors and princes. He brought with him
fourteen hundred horses, which seem few enough to drag and carry all
these ecclesiastical dignitaries and their followers over the roads
of Italy as they then were. Then festivals, gala doings temporal and
spiritual, spectacles and celebrations of all sorts must be provided,
and cash disbursed on all sides. A magnificent state barge,—a
bucentaur, as the chroniclers call it, such as that in which the
Venetian doge went out to wed the Adriatic—was sent up the Po to the
nearest point to Parma, together with a whole fleet of other boats to
bring the Pope and his enormous following down the river.
The famous villa of Belvidere was to be the Pope's resting place
the first night after entering the Duke's territories. This was a
pleasure–palace of the Dukes of Ferrara, built on an island in the Po,
which was entirely occupied by it and the superb gardens attached to
it. The recorders of the Ferrarese magnificences are never tired of
describing the splendours of Belvidere, its marble quays and stairs
from the water's edge, its courts, its fountains (which necessarily, as
Frizzi remarks, must have been worked by machinery), its walls, glowing
with the frescoes of the best masters of the Ferrara school, and, above
all, its enchanting—if not, as Tasso describes them, enchanted—gardens.
For these ducal pleasure–grounds furnished, it is said, the model
whence the poet drew his well–known description of the gardens of
Armida.
[Sidenote: PERFORMANCE OF TERENCE.]
The next day there is the usual ceremony of the state entry into the
city. The cannon fire, and the bells ring; the crown prince Alphonso,
with an hundred youths, chiefly of the students of the University,
bring the keys of the city in a golden basin to the feet of his
Holiness, who kisses the prince on the forehead. Then he has to hear
an oration, then to be carried in a chair on men's shoulders all round
the city, blessing all the way, till his arm is ready to drop off, then
to "attend service" at the Cathedral—(adorned for the occasion by four
pieces of arras belonging to the Duke, valued at sixty thousand crowns,
some three hundred thousand pounds sterling, at least, of our present
money!)—then to hear more orations; and then, it is to be hoped, to be
put to bed. For in truth, for an octogenarian Servus servorum, such a
day's work must have been harder than that of most of his masters.
The next day the Duchess has to do her share of the hard work, and with
seventy–two ladies all on horseback, and all dressed in black and gold,
and twenty–two cars full of other ladies following them, "made several
circuits of the city."
But the grand day was the third, which happened to be the festival of
St. George, the patron saint of Ferrara. The Pope had to do pontifical
mass in the cathedral to begin with. After dinner, he was present at
a tournament held in his honour. And after supper the "Adelphi" of
Terence was performed before him and all the great folks assembled, by
the sons and daughters of the Duke, and doubtless also by our Olympia.
Muratori, in his "Antiquities of the House of Este," rehearses the
different parts sustained by the three princesses and their two
brothers, but says nothing of the share Olympia had in the fête. But
this, of course, is quite in accordance with the natural instincts
of a court historian. It is likely enough, however, that the poor
schoolmaster's daughter, who would most assuredly have eclipsed
her fellow comedians, was not permitted to have the opportunity of
committing such a solecism. But it is impossible that such a business
could have been afoot in the court of Ferrara, and that Olympia should
not have had a leading share in the guidance of it, behind if not
before the curtain.
As a detached bit of sixteenth century life, brought up out of
the dark past, and made to flit for a moment before our vision by
history's magic lanthorn, it is a pretty and striking scene enough,
and interestingly characteristic of tastes and manners,—this venerable
(looking) octogenarian pontiff, with his eighteen cardinals and forty
bishops, &c., sitting there to hear a group of royal children, of whom
the youngest was only five years old, declaim the rough comedy of
ancient Rome! Little Luigi, sustained the part of a slave, Muratori
tells us; and had not, we must suppose, much to say.
Amid all these festivities and amusements the Pope and the Duke had to
find time for long colloquies, the subjects of which, we are told, were
kept secret, but which may be easily divined.
The old investiture difficulty was not settled yet; and the new
inquisition had to be established in Ferrara. Here, then, the proposed
body and soul arrangement, might, one would think, have been brought to
a settlement. But, as usual, the Duke assented to the proposed new and
more complete abandonment of his own and his subjects' right to their
own souls, but by no means obtained the temporal advantages he was so
desirous of in return.
[Sidenote: HYDROSTATIC TROUBLES.]
There were other matters, too, of very really important, but
altogether material interest, to be debated between the Duke and
the father of the faithful. All the rich cities, with their fertile
territories, which are situated in the lower part of the great valley
of the Po, have suffered from the earliest historic times, and to the
present day still suffer from very great difficulty in getting rid
of the waters brought down to them from the higher country by the Po
itself, and sundry other rivers. As usual in the compensatory processes
of nature, the same causes have produced their prosperity, and the
circumstances which tend to diminish it. The whole of the wonderfully
fertile region in question is alluvial soil of extremely recent
formation. Very numerous and exceedingly curious discoveries, made
at different times within the last two centuries at various points,
extending over the whole district from Modena to the Adriatic, prove
that the country has been at former times inhabited, when the surface
of the soil was from four to ten or more feet lower than it is at the
present day. On the left bank of the Brenta, near Fusina, a mosaic
pavement, and other Roman remains, were found _in situ_ at a level now
two feet and a half below that of the mean height of the Adriatic. And
a great variety of similar facts have been placed on record,[65] which
satisfactorily prove that the level of the sea has been raised, _pari
passu_, with that of the adjoining low lands.
The result of the process thus always going on is, that an exceedingly
small margin of difference between the level of the land and that of
the sea remains to render possible the discharge of the waters from
the mouths of the different rivers. The fertilising materials, which
are brought down from the Apennines in vast quantities, not only
tend to raise the general level of the district, but also, and with
much greater rapidity, to raise the beds of the rivers, and obstruct
their course. From a very early period, this evil has been met by the
inhabitants by constructing lofty banks along the courses of their
rivers. The more the bed of the stream became raised in the process of
time, the higher these moles had to be built to follow it, till some
of the rivers now traverse large districts of country in a perfectly
artificial canal, constructed upon, instead of in, the face of the
soil. Near Ferrara itself, the surface of the Po is now higher, it is
said, than the highest building in the city.
In such a state of things, it may easily be imagined how important a
public concern was, and still is, the maintenance and regulation of
these vast artificial banks, and how vital a question the management of
the waters of those secondary streams, which contribute their volume to
the mass that threatens the lower country.
Then, again, the disputes inevitably arising from the conflicting
interests of adjacent districts, in this respect, were further
complicated by differences of an exactly opposite kind. For the waters,
which, under certain conditions, were agents of destruction, which all
were eager to escape at the expense of their neighbours, were, under
other circumstances, creators of fertility and wealth, which all sought
to appropriate to their own advantage.
Thus the Reno, which comes from the Apennines above Bologna, and is
one of the most important of the tributaries of the Lower Po, had been
modified in its course by embankments, which tended to divert its
waters from the extensive rice grounds of Bologna and Imola, and bring
them into the Ferrarese branch of the Po, which the people of that
city at that time feared would, from the encumberment of its bed, soon
become unnavigable.[66]
[Sidenote: WATER DISPUTES.]
Here then was matter for interminable dispute and negotiation between
the two governments,—disputes, too, which, in the hands of their
more immediately interested subjects, gave rise to perpetual acts of
lawless violence, to quarrels, and, on more than one occasion, even to
pitched battles between commune and commune. For in the season of the
floods, when the ruin of a whole district from anticipated inundation
might be prevented by the cutting of an embankment, and thus averting
the devastation from one's own to one's neighbour's fields; or when,
in the summer, the fertilising stream, precious as a Pactolus, was
insufficient for all the demands upon it, it could hardly be expected
that such acts should not be resorted to, especially when, from the
undecided condition of all the questions concerning the law of the
case, either party honestly believed themselves to be in the right.
Thus, thrice in the course of the year 1542, the embankments of the
Reno had been cut through in the night–time,[67] and it was whispered
that the Duke himself was the instigator of the deed,—an opinion, which
was strengthened by the evident unwillingness of the authorities to
discover and punish the offenders.
But in this matter of the waters, as in the other affair, the Duke
had to concede all and obtain nothing. The Pope deferred his decision
till his return to Rome, and then gave sentence in his own favour, by
awarding to the Bolognese all the advantages in dispute.
Olympia continued to be an inmate of the palace for about five years
after the memorable visit of Pope Paul to Ferrara: five more happy
sunshine years of Undine–Muse existence. The public declamations,
the triumphs, the homage of the learned,[68] the interchange of
complimentary poetry, the heathen philosophisings on Scipio's dream,
and such like matters, went on as before. A more brilliant creature
than this beautiful young priestess in the Temple of Minerva, or a
sunnier existence, it is impossible to conceive. But had her life
reached its term before the end of this summer–tide period, she would
not have left behind her the fair claim to be remembered as one of
the noblest types on record of true womanly excellence, which she
afterwards made good. The depths of her moral nature slept like an
unstirred lake, while the intellectual portion of her being was in
full and energetic activity. And the subsequent completion of a noble
character by the awakening of her soul at that fire–touch, which is
woman's true Prometheus spark, shows us a psychological study of great
beauty and interest.
But a very noteworthy indication of the _genuineness_ of her nature,
of the sincere simplicity of her enthusiasm and Muse–ship, and the
sympathetic loveableness of her character, is to be found in the fact,
that in the midst of her triumphant career, while she was the cynosure
of all male eyes, and the object of so much male admiration, she formed
the most durable and loving friendships with all that was best and
noblest in the female world around her.
[Sidenote: FEMALE FRIENDS.]
The attachment which existed between her and the companion of her
studies, Anne d'Este, has been mentioned. It must have been at an
early period of her residence at the court, that she and one of the
ladies of the Duchess, Francesca Bucyronia, were drawn together rather
by a similarity of qualities of heart than of intellectual pursuits.
The learned German, John Sinapi, Olympia's Greek master, and second
father, as she considered him, had also discovered the good qualities
of Francesca, and induced her to leave the sunny skies of her own Italy
and accompany him to Germany as his wife. The friendship which had been
formed between the two young women in the bright springtide of their
existence was life–long, and became strengthened in their after life
under less brilliant skies, and in less brilliant fortunes.
Another friendship, of perhaps a yet closer and more intimate kind,
was that which sprung up between Olympia and the Princess Lavinia
della Rovere. This daughter of the Ducal family of Urbino had recently
married Paolo Orsini, when, at the court of Ferrara, she became
acquainted with Olympia. Lavinia, says the historian of her husband's
family,[69] "was a lady of most excellent and cultivated mind,
inasmuch as, besides her other rare and excellent qualities, she was
devoted to philosophy and the other branches of profane literature;"
"alla filosofia, e all'altre belle lettere humane." This, too, was a
friendship for life; and, despite the wide difference in the social
standing and circumstances of the two friends, was one, in which the
most perfect equality of affection placed these two natures—highly
gifted both—in the relative position to each other, which their
respective calibre of intellect made the fitting and natural one, of
guide and guided, as is seen from the letters of Olympia in after life.
The remarkable limitation in Sansovino's above quoted eulogy to
excellence in philosophy and _profane_ literature, would seem to imply
that Lavinia, at the time of which the writer is speaking, had paid no
attention to the theological questions which were agitating the world.
It may be, that the orthodox historian of the house of Orsini merely
intended to indicate in a manner reflecting as little scandal as might
be on the family of his patron, that in the province of religion there
was little good to be said of the lady Lavinia. Either meaning on the
part of a good Catholic would have done her little wrong at the time of
her companionship with Olympia at the court of Ferrara.
The general movement of mind, and the ventilation of theological
questions which was stirring society from the monk's cell to the lady's
bower, had produced on both the friends a destructive, but as yet no
constructive result. They had ceased to believe the incredibilities
taught by the Church; and their emancipation had brought them to a
state,—if not of entirely comfortable and contented indifferentism, yet
to one of unanxious infidelity, in which their meditations were rather
curious speculations, than struggles for vital truth.
This state of mind is clearly indicated by passages of Olympia's
letters of an after period, joined to the traces yet left of her
pre–occupations and studies at that time. Writing after her own mind
had attained firm convictions, she exhorts her friend to "lay aside
that old error, which formerly induced us to think that, before calling
on God, it was necessary to know whether we had been from eternity
elected by him. Rather let us, as he commands us, first implore his
mercy, and then, when we have done so, we shall know of a certainty,
that we are of the number of elect."
[Sidenote: INDIFFERENTISM.]
It is needless now–a–days to stop to point out how this method of
defending the tenets of Calvinism consists in simply abandoning them.
The use of the passage quoted is only to show, that when the two
friends had talked of these things together at Ferrara, they had been
prevented from adopting the reformer's faith by these perplexities.
And this difficulty of finding the way to any firm standing ground of
conviction was not a cause of unhappiness or struggle to these pure
young hearts. Witness Olympia's subsequent opinion of her then state of
mind.
"Had I remained longer at court," she writes[70] to her earliest friend
Celia Curione, "it would have been all over with me and my salvation.
For never while I remained there, could I attain the knowledge of aught
lofty or divine, or read the books of either Testament."
The two young women talked of these subjects, soon discovered that
they sympathised in utter alienation from the faith of the Church,
compared their difficulties as to the new doctrines in vogue, and
turned to the more congenial subjects of pagan philosophy and Augustan
literature;—Olympia, for example, to the amusement of translating into
the language of Cicero a couple of the fables of Boccaccio.
They are the first and second of the entire Decameron; a circumstance
which looks as if it had been the translator's intention to proceed
with the work. But they are such as to make the selection of them, if
they were selected, sufficiently indicative of the tone of thinking
and speaking of Church matters in those secret inner women's chambers
of the Ferrara palace, which the Duke found it so impossible to purify
from the heretical smell.
In the first place it may be observed, that the two "Novelle"
in question are free from the indecency which marks so many of
the collection. But they are among those which hit hardest the
ecclesiastical shortcomings and absurdities of the age. In the first
Ser Ciappelletto, who is described as one of the most worthless
scoundrels who ever lived, sends for a friar when on his death–bed,
and makes such a confession of all sorts of virtues, under the guise
of remorseful dissatisfaction at the imperfection of them, that the
confessor has him buried in a costly tomb at the expense of his
convent, where his body forthwith begins to work miracles in the most
satisfactory manner. The author, as if afraid of the telling force
of his own satire, and the conclusions to which it naturally points,
finishes by remarking, that after all it is impossible to deny that
Ser Ciappelletto may have become San Ciappelletto in the other world
by force of a sincere, even though momentary repentance in the last
instants of his life!
The second story tells how a rich Jew was induced by a Christian friend
to go to Rome for the purpose of examining Christianity at its fountain
head, with a view to conversion in case conviction of the truth should
reach his mind. The Jew notes well all that he can see and hear in the
capital of Christianity, returns, and is baptised at once, alleging
that nothing but divine miraculous interposition could possibly enable
a religion preached and maintained by such men and such means to
subsist and find credence among mankind.
[Sidenote: EARLY COMPOSITIONS.]
We can easily imagine, that such fun as this would be well relished
with all the zest of forbidden fruit in the young Muse's classical
version by the initiated set of erudite freethinkers, male and female,
that made the circle of the Duchess of Renée. But Boccaccio is not the
author, to whom Calvin, or even Celio Curione would have recommended
one struggling with religious doubts and difficulties to resort. Nor
can we doubt that Olympia, while thus occupying herself, was in that
state of religious indifferentism, which she subsequently as we have
seen, regarded as one of perdition.
Another extant fragment of her composition, which is marked by its
subject as belonging to the last year of her court life, places her
before us, still as the heathen Muse, drawing all her inspiration and
her imagery from pagan sources, even on an occasion which might seem
by its nature to require, if merely as a matter of art, a Christian
treatment.
Cardinal Bembo died on the 18th of February 1547; and his loss, keenly
felt by the literary world in all parts of Italy, was especially
lamented in Ferrara, where he had been so well known and highly
valued by all the learned society gathered there. Bembo was, it is
true, a Churchman of the old school of Leo X.'s easy going days, who
found more pleasure in reading Plato than St. Paul, and liked Cicero
infinitely better than the vulgate. Though inclined in all ways to
liberal opinions, he probably would have had as little disposition to
meddle in the controversy between the old and new theology, as many a
greek–play–learned Bishop of George III's time, would have felt to be
made moderator between the "high" and "low" schools of our own day.
Cardinal as he was, he might no doubt have been permitted to be present
at any of those little gatherings of the unorthodox, under the rose,
in the apartments of the Duchess, without danger to any of the set;
and if he had there heard Olympia's Boccaccio translations, he would
have laughed at the fun, and been delighted with the classical latinity
as much as any there. And this aspect of very mildly ecclesiastical
literary Mæcenas–ship was doubtless that under which the amiable and
generally beloved Cardinal had appeared to Olympia.
Yet, had her mind not been still in 1547 wholly uninfluenced by any
deep religious impressions, she would not have written on the death of
a prince of the Church in so thoroughly a heathen spirit as that of the
following lines:[71]
"Bembo, the great light of the sea–girt queen,
The Muse's glory, Bembo hath gone hence;
Nor left his equal 'mong the sons of men
In noble deeds, or witching eloquence.
For Tully's self, with Hermes by his side,
Recross'd the Stygian flood, when Bembo died."
Such as may be gathered from these productions and occupations, and
from her own subsequent reminiscences, were Olympia's thoughts and
views of life and death up to this her twenty–first year. To her,
indeed, whose being had as yet been stirred by no deeper feeling than
gratified love of approbation, congenial friendship, and enthusiasm
for her favourite studies, the age in which she was living might have
appeared one of "renaissance," as it has since been discovered to have
been. Not because she was able to look out far, but because her view
was as yet so circumscribed. The social earthquake which was heaving
the world around her, had not yet awakened her from her dream–life
among "the haunts of the Muses."
[Sidenote: CHANGES AT HAND.]
Her talk with Lavinia della Rovere on the great topics which were
agitating the world, election, grace, free will, and justification, was
only such as may serve curiously to indicate how thoroughly the general
mind must have been saturated with speculations on such subjects, when
two girls, neither of them feeling strongly on the matter, could not
meet and make friends without diversifying their Boccaccio readings and
Ciceronian studies with chat on the difficulties of predestination. The
outside air must have been very highly charged with an electricity of
thought that boded stormful changes. For the meeting and shock of large
masses of human thought always is a portent indicating that much change
is at hand. Absence of much thought is an indispensable condition of
stability.
But the time was now come when Olympia was to be waked from her
Helicon dreams, and to be summoned very suddenly to descend from her
calm Parnassus heights, step out into this storm–atmosphere, and find
herself under circumstances wholly unknown to "Apollo and the Æonian
maids."