Woman in the golden ages

by Amelia Gere Mason

V

In other fields there were equally accomplished women. Cassandra Fidelis was the pride and glory of Venice in the days when Titian walked along the shores of the Adriatic, absorbing the luminous tints of sea and sky, and picturing to himself the faces that look out upon us to-day from the buried centuries, instinct with color and the fullness of life. Poet and philosopher, she wrote in many languages, even spoke publicly at Padua. She caught, too, the spirit of beauty and song, and was as noted for her music and her graceful manners as for her learning. Men of letters paid court to her, Leo X wrote to her, and Ferdinand tried to draw her to Naples; but the Doge refused to part with this model of so many gifts and virtues. She lived a century divided between literature and piety, but drifted at last, in her widowhood, to the refuge of so many tired souls, and ended her brilliant career in a convent.

This remarkable flowering of the feminine intellect was not confined to Italy. Besides the noted Spanish women already mentioned, there were celebrated professors of rhetoric in the universities of Alcala and Salamanca. Even more distinguished was Aloysia Sigea, a poet and savante of Toledo, who surprised Paul III with a letter in five languages, which he was able to answer in only three. Just why she found it necessary to put what she had to say in five languages, instead of one, does not appear, but she proved her right to be considered a prodigy. Her fame was great, and she died young.

Frenchwomen were less serious and made a stronger point of the arts of pleasing. They approached literature with the air of a dilettante, who finds in it an amusement or accomplishment rather than a passion or an aim. At a later period they brought to its height a society based upon talent and the less tangible quality of esprit. But we have the virile intellect and versatile knowledge of the Renaissance in Mlle. de Gournay, who aspired to the highest things, including the perfection of friendship, which she said her sex had never been able to reach; and the famous Marguerite, the witty, learned, independent, and original sister of Francis I, who aimed at all knowledge, and tried her hand at everything from writing verses and tales, patronizing letters, and gathering a society of philosophers and poets, to reforming religion and ruling a state.

In England we find Lady Jane Grey at sixteen a mistress of many languages and preferring Plato to a hunting-party; the Seymour sisters, who were familiar with the sciences and wrote Latin verses; the daughters of Sir Thomas More, whose talents and accomplishments were only surpassed by their virtues; and many others, by no means least Queen Elizabeth herself, whose attainments were overshadowed by her genius of administration. The taste for knowledge was widely spread, and it would take us far beyond the limits of this essay to recall the women of many countries who were noted for learning and gifts that must always be relatively rare in any age, though pretenders may be as numerous as parrots in a tropical forest.

But it is mainly the women of Italy, where this movement had its birth, that we are considering here, and their talents were not confined to the acquisition of knowledge. There were many poets among them. To be sure, we find no Dante, or Petrarch, or Ariosto, or Tasso. Of creative genius there was very little; of taste and skill and poetic feeling there was a great deal. Domenichi made a collection of fifty women poets who compared well with the average men of their time and far surpassed them in refinement and moral purity. In their new enthusiasm for things of the intellect, they never lost their simplicity of faith, and were infected little, if at all, with the cynical skepticism of the age. Some of these numerous poets were connected with the universities, others belonged to the great world, and still others were women of moderate station, who were honored at the various courts for their gifts of mind.

No doubt much of this poetry was mediocre. Indeed, men, aside from the greatest, wrote very little that one now cares to read. It is a truism that “poets are born, not made,” and they are not born very often. But the work of women which was not even of the best received high consideration. Tarquinia Molza, a maid of honor at Ferrara,—who held public discussions with Tasso, wrote sonnets and epigrams, and translated the dialogues of Plato,—was so celebrated for her learning and poetic gifts that the Senate of Rome conferred upon her the title of Roman Citizen. Laura Battiferri, one of the ornaments of the court of Urbino, was spoken of as a rival of Sappho in genius and her superior in modesty and decorum. She was an honored member of the Academy of the Intronati at Siena. There were no women’s clubs in those days. They were not needed when women were admitted to many of the academies on equal terms with men. The number may have been small, but evidently the way was clear. They were barred, if at all, by incapacity, not by sex.

One of the most celebrated of these numerous poets was Veronica Gambara, Countess of Correggio, a woman of fine gifts, many virtues, and great personal charm, who was left a widow after nine happy years of marriage. Like her friend Vittoria Colonna, she spent the rest of her life in mourning her husband, draping herself, her apartments, and everything she had in black, and refusing all offers of a second marriage. But this sable grief did not prevent her from managing her affairs, her little state, and her two sons, both of whom reached high positions, with great judgment and ability. Her husband had trusted her implicitly, and left her in full control at his death. It was largely to his memory that she devoted her poetic gifts. She did not write a great deal, but her verses were simple and showed masculine vigor. Many of them were tender, though by no means sentimental. She wrote on the vanity of earthly things, a subject on which women have always been specially eloquent, as they have so often written out of their own sad experience. Her home at Bologna was a sort of academy, where the most distinguished men of the age met, and it was noted as a center of brilliant conversation. One of its chief attractions was Cardinal Bembo, a lifelong friend, to whom she addressed a sonnet at ten. Philosopher, high priest of Platonism, critic, poet, and man of the world, this famous cardinal paid the highest tributes to the distinguished women of his time. Intellectually he lived in an air that was somewhat tenuous, but he sought the society of those who loved things of the spirit—especially princesses. It was a convenient fashion among these diplomats and churchmen to have two lives—one poetic, Platonic, with ecstatic glimpses of the celestial, the other running through various grades of the terrestrial. The versatile Bembo was no exception. Veronica Gambara, who combined grace and delicacy with a distinctly mundane vigor, sat metaphorically at his feet, and was an ardent disciple of the new Platonic philosophy. She had natural eloquence, and gave a charm to the serious discussions at her house. Among her noted visitors was Charles V, who was fascinated by her talents and gracious manners. She reproached him and Francis I with the quarrels that had flooded Europe with tears, and wrote him a poem fired with patriotic ardor, in which she asks peace for Italy and protection against the infidel. In her poetry and her letters she followed Petrarch. Without commanding genius, and less mystical than Vittoria Colonna, but with possibly more strength in a limited range, she was greatly considered for her learning, her poetry, her social graces, her practical ability, and her spotless character.

These are a few out of a multitude of poets and savantes who are of little interest to-day, except as showing the notable attainments of women in a new field and the drift of public sentiment regarding them.