Dark days.—The great question begins to be answered.
In 1548 Peregrino Morato fell ill. The master's chair was empty; the
scholar's desks,—those school–like looking desks, which we may still
see sculptured on the monumental stones of old sixteenth century
professors in academic Bologna—were vacant; the last new edition
issued by Aldus, beautiful with the delicately–cut types of Francesco
de Bologna, and damp from the press of neighbouring Venice, remained
half–cut; and the wearied scholar, old, we are told,[72] and broken
down before his time, lay on his poor pallet.
Olympia hurried from the court to her father's bedside. It was the
first call to her of painful duty, a great epoch in every life!
Suddenly from the midst of her bright–hued dream–life, her "Muses'
haunts," and gay poetical imaginings, she was called to face some of
the sternest realities, that post themselves like sentinels inevitable
in the smoothest path of mortal existence. Suffering to be ended
only by dissolution,—the mysterious departure of the loved one for
that dim uncertain cloudland, the existence and nature of which have
hardly hitherto been realised, but which henceforward will be invested
with all the interest attaching to the home of those who have been
our home–mates,—the newness of that solitude that first teaches
the startled heart the meaning of those dreary words, never! never
more!—these are the divining rods that first reveal the hidden wealth
dormant beneath the flower–decked surface of many a gifted nature.
[Sidenote: MORATA'S DEATH.]
Olympia's loving watch by the bedside of her father was considerably
prolonged, as he sank gradually to his rest; and finally closed his
eyes tranquil in the assurance that the position which his Olympia's
rare talents and acquirements had attained for her, would enable her
to be the stay and protectress of her three young sisters and younger
brother.
But while this scene was passing in the humble home of the worn–out
scholar, events of a very different sort were in progress in the palace
home she had so recently left.
Anne D'Este, Olympia's friend and companion, though five years her
junior, was now seventeen. And her father, the Duke, who had in the
earlier part of this year been to Turin for the purpose of meeting
there Henry II. of France, the nephew of the Duchess Renée, had then
arranged with the King a marriage between her and Francis of Lorraine,
afterwards well known to history as the Duc de Guise. On the return
of Duke Hercules to Ferrara the marriage was solemnised on the 29th
of July, 1548, Louis of Bourbon standing proxy for the bridegroom.
"The citizens of Ferrara," we are told,[73] "were not altogether well
pleased with this marriage; but they constrained themselves to put on
an air of festivity." There was but little of this, we may be sure,
or we should have had the usual accounts of feastings and processions,
with the details of the dishes and the dresses, and the cost thereof.
The marriage seems to have been done with business–like simplicity;
and the young Princess, regretted by a whole city, "who," says
Muratori,[74] "loved and reverenced her beyond all belief," was sent
off, to find shortly enough,—she too, as well as her old playmate,—that
life had other things in store for her than classical philosophy
and dilettante poetry. The Duke, her father, accompanied her as far
as the frontier of his states, her mother and two sisters as far as
Mantua, and certain ladies of the court as far as Grenoble; and there,
the links of the chain that bound her to her home having been thus
gradually severed, she was launched into the strange life before her.
Thus, when Olympia had paid the last duties to her father, and returned
to the palace, her friend was no longer there, and she found herself
dismissed under circumstances that showed her to have fallen under the
displeasure of the Duke. This blow followed the other so closely that
Olympia admits herself to have been beaten down to the ground by them.
And in truth the burden suddenly laid on those young shoulders, which
had never yet learned that life had any burdens which could gall the
bearer, was a heavy one. A sick mother, three young sisters, and an
infant brother in that poverty–stricken mourning home, all looking up
to Olympia, the pride of the family, the admired, successful Olympia,
the inmate of the palace, whose friends and intimate companions were
the great ones of the land, and she driven forth into the cold shade
of disgrace, just at the moment when there was so much need that some
gleams from the brilliant sunshine of her prosperity should have
cheered the cold home of the widow and orphaned sisters;—the burden was
a heavy one for that young heart, making her first acquaintanceship
with sorrow.
[Sidenote: FIRST SORROWS.]
But Olympia struggled bravely with her difficulties.[75] "Haunts of the
Muses," and brilliant heathen Undine–life were all left far behind; and
that salvation question began to be answered.
The cause of Olympia's disgrace is not clearly apparent. M. Bonnet,
who writes her biography with the sympathy of a co–religionist,
attributes[76] it to the evil machinations of one Jerome Bolsec, a name
of very ill savour in the annals of Calvinistic Protestantism. The
suspicion that Bolsec had a hand in this, as in so much other mischief,
would seem to rest on some phrases from a letter of John Sinapi to
Calvin, cited by M. Bonnet from the inedited correspondence of that
intolerant Geneva pope. But the few words given do not seem at all
conclusive on the subject. It may be that the context is more so.
Jerome Hermes Bolsec was at all events a very sorry knave, capable
enough of any wickedness of the sort. He had been a Carmelite monk at
Paris, and having got into trouble by unorthodox preaching there, fled
across the mountains, says Bayle,[77] "to Renée of France, Duchess of
Ferrara, the common asylum of those who were persecuted for adhering to
the new doctrines." The Duchess made him her almoner, as we learn from
Sinapi. And Bayle says that he married and practised as a physician
at Ferrara, till he was exiled for some unknown cause. He went thence
to Geneva, and there had the fatal misfortune to differ from Calvin on
some points of doctrine. In one of his pastorals to the Swiss churches,
the latter recounts how one day at sermon time "this rogue got up and
said ... that men are not saved because they are elect, but are elect
because they believe, and that no man is damned by the mere decree
of God—_nudo Dei placito_—but those only who have by their own acts
deprived themselves of the election common to all." Whereupon, says
Theodore Beza,[78] Calvin "so confuted him, belaboured him, overwhelmed
him with testimony from holy writ, passages from St. Augustin, and
weighty arguments, that all present, except the brazen–faced monk
himself, were ashamed of the figure he cut." Plenty of reason for being
ashamed of themselves for all parties concerned doubtless. But Calvin,
who was not wont to be contented with mere argumentative belabouring of
those who disagreed with him, had him forthwith hauled off to prison,
and finally banished from the Canton, as he might have anticipated,
when he ventured on the dangerous enterprise of attacking the pet tenet
of the Geneva pope's tremendous devil worship.
Bolsec went to Berne, but Calvin's resentment followed him there, and
finally harried him out of Switzerland. So he returned to his old faith
to spite the reformers, and published lives of Beza and Calvin filled
with calumnies so gross that even the controversialists of the Romish
Church have admitted their falsehood, and given up Jerome Bolsec as a
discredit to either or any party.
[Sidenote: JEROME BOLSEC.]
It may be admitted then that this "most slippery fellow, Almoner to the
Court of Ferrara, by your leave," as Sinapi calls him,—_vaferrimus in
aulâ Ferrariense, si diis placet, Eleemosynarius_,—was capable enough
of making mischief, if his ill passions prompted him to do so. But as
he was on his Protestant tack when under the protection of the Duchess,
it hardly seems probable that he should have practised against Olympia
by denouncing her as a heretic to the Catholics. Yet it seems plain[79]
that her shortcomings in the matter of orthodoxy were the real cause
of her disgrace at court. The Duchess, who, as has been seen, was much
attached to her, did not, we are told, attempt to interfere in her
favour. And the most probable explanation of this abandonment is to
be found in the supposition, that the suspicion and ill–repute under
which the Duchess herself laboured in the matter of religion, made the
danger of openly defending an heretical delinquent greater than she was
willing to meet.
"The Duke," writes M. Bonnet,[80] "urged as he had been for some time
past to give proofs of his fidelity to the Apostolic See, watched with
a jealous eye the different movements of his court. He believed blindly
such calumnies as always find a ready echo in a palace. His wrath,
increased by the long suppression of his suspicions, burst forth in
violence the more terrible. Olympia was the first victim."
The Duchess was herself by no means in a secure position. When a little
after the period in question, one Matthew Ori, a Dominican monk, was
sent from Paris to Ferrara, as Grand Inquisitor, Henry II. "who knew
well enough which foot Renée was lame of,"[81] especially charged him
"to heal her." The monk came and did his best, "gaining some ground,
as it seemed by his efforts." For "the Duchess feared her husband, and
his terrible method of proceeding against those accused of offences in
matters of religion."
The Duke's "method" in spiritual affairs became indeed more and more
compendious and energetic, as Rome's fears and exigencies became more
urgent.
Paul III. died on the 10th of November, 1549, and was succeeded by
the Cardinal del Monte, who took the name of Julius III.; an easy and
good–natured, though passionate old gentleman, who loved pleasure,
quiet, and luxury,—inscribed over the palace he built, "Honeste
voluptarier cunctis fas honestis esto!"—"Let all honest men enjoy
themselves decently without scruple!"—and troubled himself as little
about the business of life as might be.
This was not the sort of man for a persecutor. But the progress of the
Inquisition during his reign is a remarkable instance of the degree
in which the policy of the Church overrides the individual tendencies
of the man who may be the temporary occupant of St. Peter's chair,
whenever either the imbecility or the scruples of the latter may seem
to endanger the interests of the corporation over which he presides.
Whether the moderate, politic, and worldly–minded statesman, Paul
III., the poco–curante voluptuary Julius III., or the pure and saintly
sage Marcellus II., were pontiff, the crusade against free thought
knew no relaxation. Caraffa and his Inquisitors pursued _their_ work
at least with zeal and unflagging perseverance. Duke Hercules took
his cue readily enough as to the duties of an orthodox prince; and as
he had the misfortune of labouring under the ill–repute that attached
to a wife of notoriously heretical inclinations, it was all the more
necessary that he should prove his attachment to the Holy See by the
most unmistakeable zeal for the purity of the faith.
[Sidenote: FANNIO THE MARTYR.]
Under these circumstances the arrest of a young man named Fannio, at
Faenza, for holding and disseminating heterodox opinions, was a lucky
chance to be made the most of.
At first, however, it seemed that he would turn craven, and show no
sport. The unhappy man had a wife tenderly attached to him, and her
tears and entreaties induced him to recant, and accept his liberty as
the price of declaring that he believed what his persecutors and judges
knew perfectly well he did not believe. But his life became intolerable
to him under such conditions. Though he had forced his tongue to utter
the lying words that were the price demanded for his life, he could not
live up to his lie; so he "relapsed," was again arrested, and this time
thrown into the dungeons of Ferrara.
Some time elapsed, while his "trial" for heresy was going through the
regular edifying forms before the tribunal of the Inquisition at Rome.
Condemnation was of course perfectly certain; and the terror among the
numerous band of more or less suspected Protestants at Ferrara was
great. Yet, hazardous as it must have been to attract attention by any
such manifestation of sympathy, we are assured,[82] that many visited
him in his prison, and "were consoled by his exhortations." It seems
strange that such visits should have been permitted. The Inquisition
which had thrown him into prison for preaching, could hardly intend
that he should have the means of continuing the offence with all the
extra prestige of martyrdom. And the fact would seem to indicate, that
the "secular arm," or at least those subordinate executive officers of
its will who had not the same reasons for being in love with orthodoxy
that moved the prince, had little sympathy with the new persecuting
tribunal recently established among them, and seconded its intentions
as little as might be.
But it is still more surprising to find, that among these clandestine
visitors to this poor Fannio in his prison were the lady Lavinia
della Rovere and her friend Olympia. Lavinia then dared to remain
on terms of intimacy with the disgraced favourite, when all, as she
complains deserted her. Lavinia ventured to seek her friend out in her
humble home, and risk subjecting herself to the same suspicions which
weighed so heavily on Olympia. But surely this dangerous expedition
indicates a notable change of mind and feeling in both these young
women, since but a year or so ago. It is but a very little time since
those conversations, in which the difficulties of the doctrine of
predestination prevented the young friends from accepting the religion
of the reformers; and since Olympia's state of mind on religious
matters was such as to lead her subsequently to think that "it would
have been all over with her and her salvation," if she had remained
longer at court. And now, after the lapse of a few months, we find the
youthful pair sufficiently interested in the faith for which a martyr
is about to suffer, to visit him in his dungeon, and "find consolation"
from his exhortations!
[Sidenote: MARTYRDOM.]
Or should we rather suppose, that deeper thought, a more serious
interest, and ultimate complete adoption of the persecuted faith on the
part of Olympia and her friend, were the consequences, rather than the
cause of their visit to Fannio in his dungeon; and that mere female
compassion and sympathy with a fellow–unbeliever at least, if not as
yet a fellow–believer, led them to the prison. It is probable enough,
that the first heart–deep seeds of conviction fell into Olympia's mind
during that solemn and affecting prison conference. It is a property of
persecution to operate thus on generous and noble hearts. The desolate,
disheartening, and precarious situation of Olympia's own fortunes,
and the severe lesson she had so recently received on the vanity and
instability of worldly prosperity, were well calculated to prepare her
heart for the martyr's teaching, and open it to the emotional reception
of a faith, which, according to the avowal of its adherents, cannot
approve itself to the reasoning faculties.
With a strange and solemn authority,—almost as of one speaking from
beyond the awful boundary line, he was so soon to cross—the words of
that noble heroic man must have sunk deep into the hearts of the young
women. For noble and heroic,—let more ignoble natures chatter what
trash they may of gratified vanity, obstinacy, and such futilities in
the vain attempt to bring down the heroic to their own level,—noble
and heroic, with a heroism inferior to none other practicable by man,
and wholly unmodified by the intellectual value of the conviction for
which a martyr dies—is the soul, that true to its own indefeasible
independence refuses, in the face of all the worst the body and the
heart lacerated in its affections can suffer, to abdicate its right of
self–sovereignty.
And like all noble emotions, it is a contagious heroism. While the
terrible circumstances of the place and scene, never to be forgotten
by either of them, spoke fearful warning of the not improbable
consequences of the nascent convictions even then rising in their
minds, their courage was stimulated to confront whatever danger might
arise from the exercise of free thought.
So Fannio and Duke Hercules both had their triumph. The martyr
hung, burned, and the ashes of his body thrown to the winds in the
market–place of Ferrara, died a free man, lord of his own soul, and
conscious of having implanted in many another breast the faith for
which he suffered. The Duke showed his subjects what came of presuming
to have an opinion on matters of faith, secured the approbation of his
own conscience, and approved himself a faithful and meritorious son of
Holy Mother Church.
It was not however till 1551, some three years after Olympia's disgrace
and ejection from the palace, that Fannio was, after long imprisonment,
burned on the Piazza of Ferrara, the first, but not the last victim
of the Duke's anxiety to conciliate the Church. And we have other
indications, besides this notable prison scene, that this time of
difficulty and tribulation was a period of rapid spiritual growth to
her. It is difficult to imagine a more violent contrast, than that
between the brilliant palace life which eight years had made habitual
to her, and the pale existence, made up wholly of those elements both
so new to her, duties and difficulties, which passed in the narrow
home overshadowed by the cloud of disgrace, and tenanted by a helpless
family of five women and an infant brother, whose education was one of
Olympia's most pleasing duties.
[Sidenote: "GRECIAN VIRGIN," NO MORE!]
Small space in her day now for polishing Greek and Latin verses, or
composing dissertations on the Stoic philosophy! But two fragments of
four lines each, one in Latin, and one in Greek, have been preserved,
as the productions of this period of her life, passed in quite other
"haunts" than those of the Muses. The old classic "Grecian virgin" tone
is no longer discoverable in them; and the topics show that her mind
was busy with an entirely different order of ideas.
Olympia was now about twenty–three years old, and still single; and
interestingly enough the Latin quatrain above mentioned indicates
that her mind had been dwelling on the subject in connection with her
religious aspirations:—
"Quæ virgo est, nisi mente quoque est et corpore virgo,
Hæc laudem nullam virginitatis habet.
Quæ virgo est, uni Christo nisi tota dicata est,
Hæc Veneris virgo est, totaque mancipium."
Or, in lines as poor and flat as the original, but not more so:—
"The virgin, who is not such in her soul,
Small praise of her virginity can have,
If Christ alone have not her being's whole,
She is but Venus' bondsmaid and her slave."
Curious to note, that the mental daring which had led to rebellion
against Church authority on questions of justification and free will,
had not strength of wing or originality enough to see the truth in a
much simpler matter, detect the fallacy of the Church's entire system
of celibacy, and comprehend that there can be nothing meritorious in
_wilfully_ abandoning all the most sacred duties of womanhood.
The Greek lines mentioned compare the consolation that an afflicted
heart derives from the contemplation of a crucified Saviour, with the
healing virtue of the brazen serpent set up by Moses in the wilderness.
Thus passed two years of trouble and sorrow, which left our Undine–Muse
a very different being from what she had been before their discipline.
That it was painful enough may be read in a letter from her to Celio
Curione, in which she looks back on these dark days.
"After my father's death, I remained alone, betrayed, abandoned by
those who ought to have supported me, and exposed to the most unjust
persecution. My sisters were involved in my misfortune, and received
only ingratitude in return for the devotion and services of so many
years. How great was my grief under these afflictions you may easily
believe. Not one of those we had in other times deemed our friends,
dared to manifest the least interest in us; and we were in so deep a
pit of adversity, that it appeared impossible for us ever to escape
from it."
There was at least one friend who had been tried in the furnace of
adversity, and not found wanting, the brave and noble–hearted Lavinia
della Rovere. But this exception Curio was able to supply for himself.
He knew that Lavinia had remained, and was still the friend and
frequent correspondent of Olympia.
Our heroine has thus been brought to her twenty–fourth year. The
present is hard and unkindly around her. Suspicion, neglect, and
all the anxious ignoble cares attendant on poverty, had by a sudden
scene–shifting taken the places of luxurious ease, admiration,
flattery, and troops of friends. The future was dark and precarious.
The bad times were every day becoming worse for those on whom any
taint of heresy had ever rested.
[Sidenote: POOR MUSE!]
In short, our gifted Muse stood bare and desolate, and shivering in the
midst of a very unharmonious world in most sad and pitiable plight.
But the salvation question was beginning to be answered.