Woman in the golden ages

by Amelia Gere Mason

IV

The life at Urbino, with its literary flavor, its refined manners, its serious conversations, and its Platonic dreams, took another tone at Ferrara. This court was gayer, but hardly less noted as a center of culture. No one chronicled its conversations, but the fame of its poets illuminated it. Boiardo lived and wrote and administered affairs in the magnificent old castle whose four towers frown to-day in lonely grandeur over the silent and grass-grown streets of the once lively city; Ariosto immortalized the women “as fair as good, and as learned as they were fair,” who gathered artists, men of letters, statesmen, cardinals, and philosophers within its tapestried walls; and the genius of Tasso still sheds over it a melancholy splendor strangely contrasting with the tragedy that left so dark a cloud on the last days of its glory.

The Duke Hercules I did a wise thing for the brilliancy of his reign when he chose for his wife the learned and accomplished Leonora of Aragon, who had grown up in the intellectual atmosphere of her royal father’s court at Naples. She was a versatile princess, a lover of art, a patron of letters, and an able, efficient woman, who gave equal care to the fostering of talent and the practical interests of her people. The art of gold and silver metal work, on which she was an authority, reached great perfection under her patronage, and she gave her personal supervision to the skilled embroiderers whom she brought from elsewhere to stimulate the native artists. When her husband was absent he left the government in her charge. Nothing shows more clearly the masterful ability of these Italian princesses than the wisdom and facility with which they managed public affairs, and the confidence reposed in them. In this model republic of the twentieth century, who would think of intrusting matters of State to the wife of president or governor in any emergency whatever? Let us admit that women are not trained here for such responsibilities, even if they cared to assume them; but why treat us to a homily on their natural incapacity for affairs of State, in the face of innumerable examples in the past that prove the contrary?

And these women lost neither their charm nor their essentially feminine qualities. Certainly there was no wiser mother than this same Duchess Leonora. Her daughters had the best of masters, and were versed in all the knowledge of the day, as well as in the lighter accomplishments. They were schooled also in the duties of their high position, and were never permitted to neglect their serious studies for amusement. While they were busy with their tapestries some man of letters recited or read to them. Perhaps it was Boiardo, perhaps another of the literary stars of the court. The untiring mother had her reward in the fame and virtuous character of these children. One of them, the beautiful and gifted Isabella d’Este, had a brilliant career as the Marchioness of Mantua, and her scarcely less fascinating sister Beatrice carried the tastes of her own youth to the more splendid but corrupt court of the Sforzas at Milan.

The enlightened duchess, who seems to have been as kind as she was capable, did not escape calumny, as few did in that age of license; but she has a blessed immortality in the glowing lines of Ariosto, who paid an eloquent tribute to her talents and virtues at her death. The court of Ferrara never lost the lettered tone which she gave it, though its fashions of living and thinking changed from time to time.

One cannot quote her son’s wife, the fair-haired Lucrezia Borgia, as a model princess, though in later years she partly redeemed the faults of her past by her kindness to the poor, her intelligent patronage of art and letters, and her devotion as wife and mother. It is not likely that she was as black as she has been painted, or, as has been suggested by later historians, Ariosto, with all his courtier love for paying pretty compliments to women, especially princesses, would hardly have dared to put her on a level with the Roman Lucretia in “charms and chastity,” in a country where satire was merciless and scandal many-tongued. In her tragical youth she was possibly more sinned against than sinning. With a father who was the embodiment of all the vices, and brothers as powerful as they were infamous, one can readily imagine that she had little choice in her manner of life. It was quite in the interest of this terrible trio that her three husbands were disposed of in one way or another, and it was equally in their interest that the widowed Duke Alfonso was virtually forced to marry her, though evidently against his inclination. The wishes of a Holy Father with unlimited power were compelling. And so it happened that this beautiful, clever, and much-talked-of woman went to Ferrara with a flourish of trumpets, as became a pope’s daughter. She was only twenty-five, though she had seen tragedies enough to color a lifetime. On her way she visited Urbino with her two thousand attendants,—princesses were costly guests in those days,—and the good Duchess Elisabetta, by command of this wicked and grasping Holy Father, who had designs on her own domains that might be furthered by her absence, went with the much heralded bride to take part in the magnificent wedding festivities. There was little in the entry of this brilliant but very much clouded Lucrezia on her white jennet, resplendent in satin and gold and flashing jewels, to suggest the beauty and desirableness of “plain living and high thinking.” To be sure, she had university dons to support her canopy, and all the learning of Ferrara in her train; but it was a fashion of these princesses to honor scholars. Then there were comedies of Plautus to give the occasion a classic flavor, besides music, dancing, medieval combats, Moorish interludes, and more barbaric amusements for the multitude. The splendors of dress, the wealth of velvets, brocades, gold, and gems, were all duly chronicled by the society reporter of the time, and the descriptions of modern court balls seem modest and tame in comparison. The good Duchess Leonora had been sleeping in her tomb with the other princesses many a year, duly labeled by Ariosto. But the pure-souled Isabella d’Este was there with a new and regal costume for every scene, and no doubt various misgivings about her imposing sister-in-law which she thought best to say nothing about.

This dangerous Lucrezia, however, had her serious moments. After the pageants were over, she took out of her traveling-case the Dante and Petrarch she had brought for her daily reading, also some histories, with her manual of devotion. She had, too, her literary circle of poets, savants, men of letters, prelates, cardinals, and clever women who spoke in Latin and wrote Greek quite naturally and as a matter of course. They talked of manners, art, and philosophy, as at Urbino, but perhaps not quite so seriously; they talked also of love, spiritual and otherwise. The inevitable Bembo was there for a time, and afterward wrote Platonic letters about literature to the friend of his soul, which she answered with insight and discrimination as well as matronly discretion. These letters were preserved, with a lock of her golden hair.

There is little trace of the early Lucrezia in her later years. No more worldly vanities. She prayed a great deal, and spent her evenings in working beautiful designs in embroidery with the ladies of her court. “Her husband and his subjects all loved her for her gracious manners and her piety,” we are told. She was not old when she died,—two or three years past forty,—leaving an inconsolable husband and several children. In a letter of condolence the Doge of Venice gives great praise to her devotion and her fine qualities of character. The most distinguished prelates of the day pay a tribute to her many virtues. The experiences of her life, which were dark enough at its beginning and too surely not blameless, are wrapped in a mystery so deep that we cannot fairly judge them to-day.

If the court of Ferrara was gay, literary, artistic, with more or less of a dilettante tone under Lucrezia, it took quite another color in the reign of her daughter-in-law, the serious and thoughtful Renée. This princess had more solid qualities of intellect, but less beauty and less charm. “She was good and clever, with a mind the best and most acute possible,” says Brantôme. Her father was Louis XII, and her mother Anne of Bretagne, whose talent and independent spirit she inherited. She had Protestant tendencies, and brought strange guests to these stately halls and haunts of poets. Calvin was among them. He was young then, and came under the name of Charles d’Espeville—which was much safer for an arch-heretic. With him came Clément Marot, a poet and a heretic of milder type, who shone brilliantly at the court of the clever Marguerite of Navarre. The stern moralist and ascetic reformer was no friend to women, except as convenient appendages, and these were apt to be troublesome unless kept in their lowly place. He looked upon their government as “a deviation from the original and proper order of nature, to be ranked no less than slavery among the punishments consequent upon the fall of man.” In this case he evidently found the punishment rather pleasant, as he stayed many months in a court where the power of women was very much en évidence, though it fell under an eclipse because of him. Perhaps he modified his opinions for the moment in so stimulating an atmosphere. While he never fails to denounce the “inferior sex” in plain terms, he is kind enough to make discreet exceptions as to women in high places, who were not made of common clay. It was certainly inconvenient for the duke to have a wife with convictions, who persisted in compromising him with the higher powers; but what would have become of the superior Calvin, with the door closed upon him and the Inquisition on his track, if this incapable being had been superintending the cook and the maids or working patterns in embroidery, as she plainly ought to have been, instead of courageously and with clear foresight despatching some trustworthy friends to liberate the reverend suspect from his dangerous and uncomfortable surveillance, and send him on his way to a freer air?

There was much talk on free will and election, as well as of sinners in power, and the need of grace and reformation, when Vittoria Colonna came, a little later, to enjoy the liberty of thought and literary discussion for which this court was famous, also to forward the interest of her friend, the eloquent Fra Bernardino, who wished to found here a Capuchin convent. It was quite safe to sit on the grass or in the gardens during the long summer evenings, listening to a Greek play, and talking about the respective merits of Homer and Petrarch, who had been dead a long time, or the genius of Ariosto, who had just closed his eyes after charming his age and saying so many agreeable things about its women. But it was not so safe to reflect on wicked popes, or call in question whatever dogma they might choose to present to a credulous world. The Duchess Renée was made sadly conscious of this fact, as was her gifted protégée, Olympia Morata. Her mind had a mystical quality, and the germs of a more spiritual faith had taken root there. But her amiable husband applied the screw as he was told. To have one’s children taken away and to be confined in a remote corner of one’s castle was too much to bear, and a suspiciously sudden conversion under good orthodox ministrations was the result, with convenient mental reservations to serve until the duke died and the lady was safely back in France with her royal kin and the protecting sympathy of her heretical friend, the gifted and powerful Marguerite of many-sided fame.

But in the meantime the literary talks went on, led by her brilliant daughters, who contented themselves with topics that were less explosive. Tasso said that Lucrezia and Leonora d’Este were “so well versed in affairs of State and literature that no one could listen to their conversation without amazement.” Here, as elsewhere, they talked a great deal about matters of sentiment. Tasso held a controversy at the academy on “Fifty Points of Love.” One of them was a question whether men or women love the more constantly and intensely. Orsini Cavaletti, a lady of distinction in literature and philosophy, claimed the palm for her own sex, and came off with equal if not superior honors before a learned and brilliant audience. What the other points were I do not know. The amount of energy expended on such trivial themes was curiously illustrated a few years before by Isotta Nogarola, a lady of Verona, who discussed with learned men the question as to whether Adam or Eve was the more guilty, and wrote a defense of Eve which must have created more than a ripple of interest, as it was printed a century afterward. This champion of justice was not a reformer nor an emancipée, but a woman of rank and a friend of popes, who had the courage to come to the rescue of her sex from the denunciations of ages. Doubtless the discussion was largely a play of wit and an exercise in analysis that applied itself to small things, since it was not safe to attack great ones.

But our unfortunate poet did not confine himself to theory, and love proved a more disastrous subject for him than did religion for some of his friends. It was to this same brilliant Leonora, whom he lauded to the skies, that Tasso dared lift his eyes in too familiar or ambitious a fashion before he was shut out of the world seven years as a madman. Whatever the facts of this tragical romance may have been, we know that the lady died at forty-five, in the odor of sanctity and unmarried, while her gayer but equally clever sister became the wife of the last Duke of Urbino, whom she found so dull and tiresome that she returned after three years to her brother’s court, where the livelier tastes were more to her liking. But its glories had already paled and its stars had mostly set. Tasso was the last.

The traveler of to-day looks with curious eye on the faded splendors of the grim old castle, and speculates idly upon the tragedies that have been acted within its silent walls. But he goes away to the poor little cell at the hospital of St. Anna and drops a tear over the fate of the poet who ate his heart out there. Time brings strange reparations, but they are always too late.