Woman in the golden ages

by Amelia Gere Mason

IV

Olympia Morata deserves, for her own sake, more than a passing mention. She was by no means a simple receptacle of heterogeneous knowledge, but a woman as noted for feminine virtues and strength of character as for the brilliancy of her intellect. Her father was a distinguished professor in the University of Ferrara, and his gifted daughter was fed from infancy on the classics. At six she was taught by a learned canon who advised her parents to put a pen in her hand instead of a needle. At twelve she was well versed in Greek, Latin, and the sciences of the day, petted and flattered by scholars old and young, compared to the Muses and to all the feminine stars of antiquity, and in the way of being altogether spoiled. In the midst of this chorus of praise she donned the habit of a professor at sixteen, wrote dialogues in the language of Vergil and Plato, a Greek essay on the Stoics, and many poems. She also lectured without notes at the academy, before the court and the university dons, on such themes as the paradoxes of Cicero, speaking in Latin, and improvising at pleasure with perfect ease. The great Roman orator was her model of style, and in a preface to one of her lectures she says: “I come to my task as an unskilled artist who can make nothing of a coarse-grained marble. But if you offer a block of Parian to his chisel, he will no longer deem his work useless. The beauty of the material will give value to his production. Perhaps it will be so with mine. There are some tunes so full of melody that they retain their sweetness even when played upon a poor instrument. Such are the words of my author. In passing through my lips they will lose nothing of their grace and majesty.”

This brilliant and classical maiden passed eight or ten years of her youth at the court of Ferrara in intimate companionship with Anna d’Este and her mother, the “wise, witty, and virtuous” Duchess Renée. These were the days when the latter had Bernardo Tasso, a fashionable poet who was eclipsed by his greater son, for her private secretary, and delighted to fill her apartments with men of learning. The little Anna, too, a child of ten, had been brought up on the classics, and the two girls, who studied Greek together, liked to talk of Plato, Apollo, and the Muses much better than to gossip about dress and society, or the gallants of the court. Even their diversions had a pagan flavor. When Paul III came on a visit, the royal children played a comedy of Terence to entertain his eighteen cardinals and forty bishops, with all the magnates and great ladies that usually grace such festivities. It is quite probable that the clever Olympia had much to do in directing it.

The literary academy of the duchess had a singular fascination for the gifted young girl, who was one of its brightest ornaments. “Her enthusiasm over antiquity became an idolatry, and badly prepared her intellect for the doctrines of grace,” wrote one of her friends. “She loved better the wisdom of Homer and Plato than the foolishness of St. Paul.” She says of herself that she was full of the vanities of her sex, though it is difficult to conceive of this worshiper of poets and philosophers as very frivolous. That she had many attractions is certain, as she won all hearts. “Thy face is not only beautiful and thy grace charming,” said one of the great scholars of the time, “but thou hast been elevated to the court by thy virtues.... Happy the princess who has such a companion! Happy the parents of such a child, who pronounce thy beautiful name within their doors! Blessed the husband who shall win thy hand!”

But this sunny life could not go on forever. The “Tenth Muse” was called home to care for her father in his last illness, and proved as capable in the qualities of a nurse as in those of a muse. At his death the little family was left to her care. To make the prospect darker, her friend Anna d’Este had just married and gone off to her brilliant but not altogether smooth career in France, and the duchess gave her a chilling reception that boded no good; indeed, night had overtaken her, and she found herself cruelly dismissed in her hour of sorrow and trouble.

Other subjects had been discussed in this literary circle besides Greek poetry and Ariosto and the courtly Bembo and the rising stars of the day. Calvin had been there in disguise, and they had talked of free will, predestination, and like heresies, much to the discomfiture of the orthodox duke, whose interests did not lie in that direction. The young savante had listened to these things, and her eager mind had pondered on them. Perhaps, too, she was one of the group that discussed high and grave themes when Vittoria Colonna was there. At all events, the duchess had fallen into disgrace for her Protestant leanings, and could do no more for her favorite, who was branded with a suspicion of the same heresy. Indeed, she was herself confined for a time to one wing of the palace and forbidden to see her children lest she should contaminate them with her own liberal views. The only powerful friend left to the desolate girl in her adversity was Lavinia della Rovere of the ducal family of Urbino, who had shared her tastes, sympathized with her views in happier times, and now proved her loyalty in various ways that sustained her drooping heart. But there was another, equally helpful if not so powerful, a young German of good family, who had been a medical student in the university, and fallen in love with this paragon of learning and accomplishments. He was true when others fell away, and she gave him the devotion of her life. Both were under the same ban, and soon after their marriage fled to Germany, with the blessing of Lavinia and some valuable letters to her friends.

It was a strange series of misfortunes that pursued this brave couple. After drifting about in the vain search for a foothold in an unsympathetic world, where they could think their own thoughts and satisfy their modest wants, they found at last a home in which they set up their household goods and gathered their few treasures with their much-loved books. But when kings fall out other people suffer. No sooner were they settled than the small city was besieged, and for many months they went through all the horrors of war, famine, pestilence, and, in the end, fire, which destroyed their small possessions, and compelled them to flee for their lives through a hostile country, scantily clothed, unprotected, and penniless.

It is needless to follow their dark wanderings. Suffice it to say that they found refuge at last in Heidelberg, where the husband was given a professorship, and the wife, too, was offered the chair of Greek, which she was never able to take. Her health had succumbed to her many sufferings and hardships, and she died before she was twenty-nine. But her strong soul rose above them all. “I am happy—entirely happy,” she said at the close. “I have never known a spirit so bright and fair, or a disposition so amiable and upright,” wrote her husband, who could not survive her loss and followed her within a few months.

There is more than the many-colored tissue of a life as sad as it was brilliant in these records. They carry within them all the possibilities of a strong and symmetrical womanhood. The rare quality of her scholarship was never questioned. She was the admitted peer of the most learned men of her time, one of whom expects her to “produce something worthy of Sophocles.” But she was clever, winning, and fascinating, as well as serious. Living for years among the gaieties of a court, she went out into a world of storms and gloom without a murmur or a regret, buoyed up by her love and unquestioning faith. She refers more to the joys than to the sorrows of this tempestuous time. Lavinia and the Duchess of Guise, the friends of her youth, were true to the end. In her letters to them and to the learned men who never lost sight of her, we have curious glimpses of the home of a woman who was a disciple of the Muses and a savante of intrinsic quality. While her husband prepares his lectures, she puts the house in order, buys furniture, and manages servants who were about as troublesome as they are to-day. One asks a florin a month, and reserves a part of the time for her own profit. Others insist upon staying out late and running in the streets. Most of them are grossly incompetent. Poor as she is, she is always ready to help those who are in greater need, and is constantly imposed upon. She even borrows money to send to an old servant in distress.

Then there are the evenings when grave professors come in, and they talk in Latin of the affairs of the day, the religious persecutions, or some disputed dogma. Sometimes they sing one of her Greek psalms which her husband has set to music. She has her heart full with the care of her young brother and the little daughter of a friend, who has been sent to her for instruction. But her life is bound up in that of her husband, whom she “cannot live without.” A pure and generous spirit, happy in her sacrifices, and true to every relation, she is a living refutation of the fallacy, too often heard even now, that learning and the gentler qualities of womanhood do not go together.

There were many other women of great distinction in the universities, whose names still live in enduring characters after four or five centuries—professors, and wives of professors who worked side by side with their husbands, and received their due meed of consideration. We have women of fine scholarly attainments to-day, though in the great universities they are mostly relegated to the anterooms and honored with second-class degrees; but fancy the consternation of the students of Harvard or Oxford if asked to listen to the lecture of a woman on law or philosophy, or, indeed, on any subject whatever! Yet there were great men and great scholars in Italy, possibly too great to fear competition. Society was in no sense upset, and, so far as women were concerned, the harmony of creation was not interfered with. Indeed, the best mothers and the most devoted, helpful wives in Italy of whom we have any knowledge were among the women who spoke Latin, read Greek, and worshiped at the shrine of the Muses—all of which may be commended to the college girls of to-day as well as to their critics.