VITTORIA COLONNA
Lived in court—
Which rare it is to do—most praised, most loved,
A sample to the youngest, to the more mature
A glass that feated them, and to the graver
A child that guided dotards.
—Cymbeline.
Twelve miles from Rome, on an almost isolated knoll of the Alban range of hills, more than thirteen hundred feet above the sea, which glimmers in the distance beyond the Campagna, rises the picturesque, mediæval town of Marino. Many quiet Romans spend the villeggiatura there, to enjoy its pure air and the shady promenades and beautiful views around it; but few foreigners do more than visit, on the way, a classical spot, a deep and wooded glen at the foot of the hill, where the representatives of the Latin tribes used to meet for deliberation on public matters down to the year 340 B.C., and which is noted for the tragic end of Turnus Herdonius, an influential chief of the league, who was treacherously accused, condemned, and drowned, at the request of Tarquin the Proud, in the clear pool of water—called by Livy caput aquæ Ferentinæ—which wells up so innocently
from under a moss-covered rock overspread by an ancient, crooked beech-tree at the head of the little valley.
We do not intend to sketch the history of Marino or describe its local monuments, however interesting, but will simply remark that during the middle ages it passed successively from the Counts of Tusculum to the Frangipanis, the Orsinis, and, under Pope Martin V., to the Colonnas, in whose favor it was erected into a dukedom in 1424. The large baronial palace of the sixteenth century which stands in the middle of the town is full of curiosities and ancestral portraits of this powerful family, although the rarer and more interesting ones have long since been removed to the princely headquarters near the Santi Apostoli, in Rome. The stone-work and towers which still surround Marino and add so much to its feudal aspect, were raised in the year 1480, and
the ruins of the castle, with its battlements and proud armorial signs upon the walls, are on the most precipitous side of the town, overlooking the noisy little stream of Aqua Ferentina. It was in this castle—which, having been made by the Colonnas their principal stronghold in that part of the Roman States, was then in the pride of all its freshness and strength of portals, merlons, and machicolations—that a daughter was born in the year 1490 to Don Fabrizio Colonna and his wife, the Lady Agnes of Montefeltro. As soon as possible she was held up at a window to be seen by her father’s retainers and saluted with the discharge of artillery, peal of trumpets, and shouts of men-at-arms.
This infant was Vittoria Colonna, who became one of the most celebrated women of the sixteenth century, and who is even remembered in Italy to this day for her learning, her poetry, beauty, conjugal affection, piety, and sorrows; and yet, strange as it may seem, although hardly singular—for illustrious names of the same period have fallen into a like obscurity—no date more precise than that of the year can be assigned to her birth; and certainly one of the benefits derived by biographers from the reforms which followed the Council of Trent is the better keeping of baptismal registers, by means of which—in countries, at least, where the church was not persecuted nor war made on parochial books—sometimes the very hour, often the day of the week, always that of the month, of an individual’s birth may be found.
Vittoria was the eldest, and only female, of six children. Her father was not only a great nobleman of the States of the Church, but the
possessor of many Neapolitan fiefs; and soon after Charles VIII. of France, who had attempted the conquest of the kingdom of Naples, began to experience an evil turn of fortune, Don Fabrizio was detached from his service by Ferdinand of Spain, who succeeded in driving the French out of the southern part of Italy. Most of his life was spent in courts and camps, and but little time was passed in his castles, whither he went either to enjoy the chase or when called by domestic concerns, such as this one that gave a daughter to his house. Her mother was a child of Frederic, Duke of Urbino, head of an illustrious family which for three centuries had ranked among the lesser independent princes of Italy. Some of Vittoria’s ancestors of this line had figured in a conspicuous manner in history, especially as patrons of letters, and during a certain period the court of Urbino was the most refined and intellectual of the Italian peninsula. She felt its influence through her accomplished mother; but her father’s family was also remarkable for an hereditary genius and aptitude in every branch of learning; and a long list could be made of men of erudition, and of writers more or less distinguished, belonging to the Colonna lineage, at the head of which would stand Ægidius Romanus, or Giles of Rome, General of the Augustinians, and for his profound knowledge surnamed Doctor fundatissimus, whose work, De Regimine Principum, composed for his pupil, Philip the Fair of France, was the model in its general subject and didactic form, but without the immoral maxims, of Macchiavelli’s treatise, Del Principe.
According to the custom among
the great in that age, Vittoria, while a mere child, being only four years of age, was affianced to one not much older than herself. This was Ferdinand Francesco d’Avalos. His noble family, of Catalan origin, had come over to Italy with the Spanish invaders in 1442, and risen to considerable importance; Don Alonzo, son of Inigo, who accompanied Alphonsus I. in his expedition and died at Naples, having been created Marquis of Pescara, a fortified town of the Abruzzi at the mouth of a river that empties itself into the Adriatic. This very honorable betrothal was made at the suggestion of King Ferdinand, who hoped in this way to attach Fabrizio more strongly to himself. Except this affair, hardly anything is known of Vittoria’s early years, nor who were her instructors; but, judging from subsequent events, she must have been surrounded by whatever advantages wealth, social influence, and political position could procure; and the literary ardor which marked the fifteenth century having passed from colleges and universities into the ranks of private life, her education was such as to ensure her the highest mental culture, united with every accomplishment befitting her station. At the age of five she was transferred to the tutelage of her future husband’s family and placed in care of her sister-in-law, the Duchess of Francavila, who was castellan for the king of the fortress and island of Ischia, at the entrance of the Bay of Naples. This important charge could only have been entrusted to a woman of superior talents, and justifies the praises which Vittoria has given in several sonnets to the “magnanimous Costanza,” as she delights to call her. The duchess loved study, and cultivated
the society of the learned, being herself well acquainted with Latin, Spanish, and Italian, in which last language she wrote a work on the misfortunes and trials of the world—Degli Infortuni e Travagli del Mondo. It was in the midst of enchanting scenery, of the fame of martial deeds, and of an elegant conversation that Vittoria’s youthful happiness was passed. She grew up beautiful in person, lovely in mind, and adorned with every grace of manners. She was tall and of an easy carriage, the blood in her veins forming over her white skin a delicate cerulean tracery, while her face was set in a mass of auburn hair which has been sung—such a color being rare in Italy—by some of the best writers of her day. Of her personal appearance, those who have mentioned it can never say enough. That her charms were not the poetical exaggerations of devoted admirers we know from several sources, and particularly from the very sober prose of a curious diary[185] kept by a certain Giuliano Casseri who had occasion to see Vittoria at Naples. She was considered by all—except, of course, by her own sex—the handsomest woman of the age:
Her ivory forehead, full of bounty brave,
Like a broad table did itself dispread,
For Love his lofty triumphs to engrave,
And write the battles of his great godhead:
All good and honor might therein be read;
For there their dwelling was. And, when she spake
Sweet words, like dropping honey, she did shed;
And ‘twixt the pearls and rubies softly brake
A silver sound that heavenly music seemed to make.
—Spenser.
After a few years passed in this family, Vittoria returned to Marino to prepare for her marriage, which took place at Ischia in 1507, with all the pomp and splendor
that the two great families and their numerous friends could command. The list of marriage gifts and the names of the personages who witnessed the matrimonial contract are interesting—apart from the subjects themselves—for the light they throw upon high society in Italy at a period when it easily surpassed, in the means of luxurious living and all the amenities of social intercourse, that of any other country in Europe.
The Avalos family, like that of Colonna and Montefeltro, was famous for its attention to classical literature and its patronage of learned men. Tiraboschi, in his History of Italian Literature, says of this young Marquis of Pescara that he was no less a diligent student himself than a munificent patron of learning in others. Tall, naturally of romantic ardor, he had moved among men who always inspired him with a taste for the profession of arms, and he rose to be one of the greatest captains of his age.
The first three years of their married life were spent very happily either at Ischia or at Naples. Their affection was mutual and tender. They had ratified the choice of their parents, and their marriage was one of those which are said to be made in heaven. In fact, between her betrothal and final engagement, when the brilliant qualities of her mind and the exquisite beauty of her features began to be the talk and admiration of every one, several great offers had been made to her father in hopes of detaching his daughter from Avalos, and among these suitors were the Dukes of Savoy and Braganza. But while a malicious pen has told us that the reason they were not accepted is that one was too old
and the other too far away, the gentle maiden herself assures us that she remained firm to the first love from the purest sentiment of devotion:
A pena arean gli spiriti intiera vita,
Quando il mio cor proscrisse agni altro oggetto.
In 1512, when war broke out with France, the young Marquis of Pescara was summoned to serve his king, and accompanied his wife’s father, who was Grand Constable of Naples, her uncle, the renowned Prospero Colonna, and her five gallant brothers to the scene of action. Vittoria, meanwhile, remained at Ischia; but before many months had passed she had cause of grief far heavier than that of separation—her husband was wounded and a prisoner. It was at the battle of Ravenna (11th of April, 1512), which has been so tersely described by Macaulay as one of those tremendous days in which human folly and wickedness compress the whole devastation of a famine or a plague, that Fabrizio, who commanded the Spanish vanguard, and Pescara, who was master of the horse, surrendered their swords. The latter was carried to Milan and placed in the fortress of Porta Gobbia. When the news was brought to Ischia, Vittoria and Costanza gave way to their grief, but with a dignified moderation becoming their lofty ideals of sacrifice and duty, and without any of that wild emotion so common to the tender sentiment in the sex.
The illustrious prisoner consoled himself during confinement by composing for his wife a Dialogue on Love. His captivity did not last long, and he was liberated after paying a heavy ransom. He then returned to his beloved home, where he was welcomed by all classes as
a veritable hero, and a little of the fast-fading glamour of chivalry showed itself among the Italians in the attention which was directed to his scarred face, so much so that one of his fair admirers, the Duchess of Milan, exclaimed that she too would like to be a man, if only to receive a wound across the cheek, and see how it would add to a fine appearance. All this is very ridiculous, but that it had a hold upon certain minds at this age, and may therefore be noted, is shown from many other circumstances of the same kind; for instance, the delight of Francis of Guise in being surnamed Le Balafré, from a severe cut received at the siege of Bologna, in 1545.
When Pescara was again called (in 1513) to join the forces collected in Lombardy against the French, his wife returned to Ischia, where she continued a diligent course of reading. Besides studying the classics, she cultivated Italian poetry, from which her fame, in our day at least, has chiefly arisen, and in her graceful verses displayed a charm and musical rhythm not equalled since the strains of Petrarch’s muse were heard.
Her husband sometimes came to see her, but his visits from the camp could not be frequent, and most of the time she was left alone in the midst of the little court at Ischia, consumed by that species of domestic grief so poignant to a loving heart when the marital union has not been blessed by issue. Vittoria mentions this particular sorrow, this absence of maternal joy, in a very touching sonnet (No. 22). Finally, despairing of children of her own, she prevailed upon her husband in 1515 to adopt as his son and heir his young cousin, the Marquis del Vasto.
In 1521 we find Vittoria at home. The year before she lost her father, whom Italians delight to mention as having lived a life full of grandeur and glory; but more impartial writers dispute the intaminatis fulget honoribus, and assert that his desertion of the losing for the winning party, when he passed over from Charles to Ferdinand, was done without principle, and merely to save his Neapolitan fiefs. He was a great friend of Macchiavelli, and the well-known contempt and hatred of this political fiend for what he was pleased to call the barbarous domination of the foreigner probably influenced him to think that it mattered little whether he served Frenchman or Spaniard, since neither had a right to or deserved his services. It was to him that the subtle Florentine addressed his seven books on the Art of War. His wife, the lovely and pious Agnes, survived him only two years, dying after a pilgrimage to Our Lady of Loretto. One of Vittoria’s most beautiful sonnets is on her mother.
Pescara, being again called to arms, hurried to the north of Italy, and after the battle of Sessia behaved with exquisite courtesy towards the wounded and expiring Bayard. At the battle of Pavia, on Feb. 24, 1525, Pescara was grievously wounded. Although he greatly contributed by his skill and valor to the fortunes of that day, he could not conceal his disappointment at not being more generously rewarded by the emperor, and was soon afterwards approached by Morone, the experienced minister of the Duke of Milan, with an offer of the kingdom of Naples for himself if he would join a league which was being formed among the Italian princes to free Italy of foreign
rulers, whether French, Spanish, or German. Historians differ in their accounts of his conduct in this delicate affair. Writers in the imperial interest from that time to this assert that he indignantly rejected the proposal, which involved both treachery and ingratitude—even although he had not received the full measure of his merits—and Sandoval says that he showed himself among those double-dealing Italians “verdadero Español, Castellano viejo.” Certain it is that Pescara used to consider himself more a Spaniard than an Italian, was prouder of his Spanish blood than of his Neapolitan title, and often regretted that he was not born in the land of his ancestors. On the other hand, Italian writers say that he fully committed himself, and was perfectly willing to abandon and turn against his sovereign, but that at the last moment he quailed, and basely betrayed his companions to the vengeance of the emperor, for which reason the rancorous Guicciardini (xiv.. 189) calls him, with almost incredible insolence, “Capitano altiero, insidioso, maligno, senz’ alcuna sincerità.” More moderate historians say that he was merely dazzled by the prospect of a crown, perhaps even entertained the proposition, and would probably have thrown himself into the movement but for the protest and heroic abnegation of his wife. The truth seems to be, as Gregorovius remarks, that national antipathy has biassed the judgment of Italian writers. Immediately after the battle of Pavia, Charles V. wrote a most flattering autograph letter to Vittoria. Her answer from Ischia, May 1, 1525, is written in a fair hand, and preserved among the papers of the Gonzaga Archives at Mantua.
Pescara received three wounds, and lay for some months suffering from their effects, which he imprudently aggravated by copious draughts of ice-water. He was too weak to travel, and, growing worse, sent a hasty messenger to his wife to come to Milan and receive his last breath. She started immediately, but was met at Viterbo by the fatal intelligence that he had died on Nov. 25.[186] His funeral took place on the 30th, and the body was afterwards transported to Naples and buried in the church of St. Dominic. Paulus Jovius, a contemporary, wrote his life—Vita Ferdinandi Davali Pescarii—in elegant Latin. A literary memorial of Spanish domination in another extremity of Europe, and of the days when, the great school of war being transferred from classical Italy to the Netherlands, the gests of illustrious soldiers were eagerly studied by military men—although, as a rule, no longer in the learned language of Cæsar’s Commentaries—is preserved to us in the Historia del fortissimo y prudentissimo Capitan Don Hernando de Avalos, Marques de Pescara, published at Antwerp in 1570.
Vittoria’s first impulse, following this shock, was to take the religious habit, but she was prudently dissuaded by the learned Sadolet, Bishop of Carpentras, who was then in Rome, from a measure which would seem to proceed rather from overwhelming grief than mature deliberation. She did, however, retire for a time to the convent of San Silvestro in Capite, which was closely connected with the fortunes
of the Colonna family. It was during this pious retreat that she began that In Memoriam to her dead husband which we will mention a little further on.
The first seven years of her widowhood were passed in inconsolable grief. She resided at different periods either with her father’s family at Rome, Marino, or in some other of their castles, or at Naples and Ischia with the relatives of her late husband. Being still in the prime of life, in the bloom of beauty, and well provided for by Pescara’s will, her hand was sought in marriage by several distinguished suitors; but she turned a deaf ear to all proposals of this kind, vowing that her first love still reigned supreme.
Amor le faci spense ove l’accese.[187]
(Love lit his torch, and quenched it in the flame.)
When the Emperor Charles V. was in Rome in 1536, he made a ceremonious visit, the more honorable as his stay was so short in the Eternal City, to the widow of his faithful general. In 1537 she made a tour among several cities in northern Italy, and was everywhere received with the greatest distinction. We find her with the Ducal Estes at Ferrara, with the celebrated Veronica Gambara[188] at Bologna, and with the erudite Ghiberto, Bishop of Verona. From a letter of Pietro Aretino it appears that she was bent about this period on making a pilgrimage to Jerusalem, but was dissuaded by her adopted son and husband’s heir, Del Vastro, who feared that her
health would very seriously suffer. During this time, also, she assisted Bernardo Tasso (father of the poet), who acknowledges the benefit he received from her religious sentiments.
In 1538 she was back again in Rome, and one of the most interesting episodes of her life—her friendship with Michael Angelo—was then begun. The austere artist, who was sixty-four years old, felt animated by a fervent but chaste affection, such as he had never before experienced. It brought him the poet’s crown to add to his other crowns of painter, architect, and sculptor; for it is chiefly upon his sonnets to Vittoria that his literary reputation rests. The few years of this sacred friendship were the happiest in his life; and it is no small part of our heroine’s reputation to have inspired in this wonderful man a muse so chaste and powerful. His poetic addresses to her, though marked, says Harford, by the highest admiration of her mind and heart, are throughout expressive of the most reverential respect. They gratefully acknowledge her condescending courtesy, and the beneficial influence of her piety and wisdom upon his own opinions, fluctuating between vice and virtue, but he never presumes even to refer to her personal attractions. It was only after her death, and then but in a single sonnet, that he relaxed in a slight degree his habitual reserve and sang of her earthly beauty. But the strain is still elevated far above the expressions of carnal love, and describes a celestial countenance not unworthy of the Beatrice of Dante.
How highly she was esteemed by all classes is shown, among many other sources, from the words of an unprejudiced foreigner then in
Rome, the Spanish artist d’Olanda, who says in his journal that she is one of the noblest and most famous women in Italy and in the whole world; beautiful, chaste, a Latin scholar; adorned with every grace that can redound to a woman’s praise; devoting herself since her husband’s death to thoughts of Christ and to study; supporting the needy; a model of genuine piety. From a letter of Cardinal Pole, dated April 2, 1541, we learn that she visited Ratisbon, but neither the motives nor any details of this long journey have been discovered; only it is known that she was received with honor by the emperor and by the citizens. Her fame, then, had already passed the Alps. On her return from Germany she rested for a while in the convent of San Paolo at Orvieto, whence she wrote to Cardinal Pole, expressing how much delight she found in the rules and society of the sisters, whom she calls “a company of angels.” It was while in this holy place that the apostate Ochino sent her a letter, in which he tried to explain and apologize for his conduct; but she indignantly forwarded it to Cervini at Rome, to be lodged with the ecclesiastical authorities, as it was unbecoming in her to receive any communication from such a reprobate. With fine womanly tact she had long before discovered the weak points in the character of this gifted but miserable man, consumed by pride and lust, and, after hearing him preach, she used often, as though struck by some vague apprehension of a hidden conflict in that eloquent soul, pray for his final perseverance.
And yet it is from her intercourse with several persons—Valdez, Ochhino, Vermigli (Peter Martyr), and some others, who afterwards
became heretics, that her English biographers especially have striven to make her out a Protestant! There is not one sentence in her voluminous writings which can be honestly made to bear an uncatholic sense. But we perceive everywhere a love of the church, a respect for the pope—whom she styles, in the most orthodox language, “the Vicar of Christ”—an admiration for celibacy and the religious life,[189] and, finally, a tender devotion to the Blessed Virgin Mary. If this be Protestantism, Protestants are welcome to it; and God grant they may make the most of it! Cardinal Pole, who was many years her junior, used to honor her as his mother, and assiduously cultivated her friendship. She left him a legacy of 10,000 scudi in her will, but he made it over to her niece. At Viterbo she displayed a lively interest in all matters of education, and took the greatest pleasure in teaching the pupils entrusted to the religious community of St. Catherine.
Vittoria returned to Rome at the beginning of the year 1547, and retired to the palace of Julian Cesarini, who was married to Julia Colonna. While here she fell very ill, and, feeling her end approach, she was filled with the pious sentiments of one of her own sonnets, composed but a short time before, and which will show her constant preparation for death and serve as a specimen of her style. The translation is by Harford:
“Would that a voice impressive might repeat,
In holiest accents to my inmost soul,
The name of Jesus; and my words and works
Attest true faith in him, and ardent hope;
The soul elect, which feels within itself
The seeds divine of this celestial love,
Hears, sees, attends on Jesus; grace from him
Illumes, expands, fires, purifies the mind;
The habit bright of thus invoking him
Exalts our nature so that it appeals
Daily to him for its immortal food.
In the last conflict with our ancient foe.
So dire to nature, armed with Faith alone,
The heart, from usage long, on him will call.”
—Sonnet 29.
She died towards the end of February, 1547—the exact date is not known—in the odor of sanctity, as one of her Italian biographers says. By her will she made Ascanio Colonna her heir, left one thousand scudi to each of the four convents in which she had so often lived, provided for all her servants, and disposed of a large sum in charity, besides making other pious bequests. Her signature to this instrument is in Latin, in these words: Ita testavi ego Vitoria Columna.
Strange it is, perhaps, but yet a worthy ending of a life of humility and mortification, even in the midst of the glories of the world, that no monument is raised over her remains. In fact, her body cannot be identified; for having requested to be buried in the religious habit of the nuns of Sant’Anna de’ Funari, and in their midst, it was committed to the common vault of the community, where it lies undistinguished from the others that repose there.
Her poetry may be classified into a series composed during her husband’s life and the first years of her widowhood, and another written when she had devoted herself to a stricter manner of living. The former is taken up with conjugal love, descriptions of nature, and miscellaneous subjects; the latter is exclusively given up to religious ideas: one is the profane, the other the sacred, series. As an example of the lofty energy with which her mind poured its whole current of feeling into the channel of Christian
devotion, we present her 28th sonnet in Harford’s translation:
“Deaf would I be to earthly sounds, to greet,
With thoughts intent and fixed on things above,
The high, angelic strains, the accents sweet,
In which true peace accords with perfect love;
Each living instrument the breath that plays
Upon its strings from chord to chord conveys,
And to one end so perfectly they move
That nothing jars the eternal harmony
Love melts each voice, Love lifts its accents high,
Love beats the time, presides o’er ev’ry string;
Th’ angelic orchestra one signal sways.
The sound becomes more sweet the more it strays
Through varying changes, in harmonious maze;
He who the song inspired prompts all who sing.”
As an impartial critic we must confess that, however refined the language, beautiful the sentiments, and learned the imagery, there is too much classical grandiloquence in her love-songs to permit us to forget the head that composed, and allow us to think only of the heart that inspired, them. When Pescara went forth on his first military expedition, she described her grief in a long rhymed letter of thirty-seven stanzas, in which all that is heroic in ancient Greece and Rome is summoned to witness her disconsolate state. The opening address—Eccelso Mio Signore! (My high-engendered Lord!)—while it shows the reverential homage which the wife in those days was expected to offer to her husband, and which, with all its formalism, was better than the disrespectful familiarity of a later age, is the prelude to a style altogether too much like that of the eccentric Margaret, Duchess of Newcastle, whose biography of her husband—her Julius Cæsar, her thrice noble, high, and puissant Prince, as she used to call him—is the acme of connubial admiration. After the death of Pescara, Vittoria depicted her own grief and his great, good qualities in a flow of verses full of beauty, dignity, and pathos. Upwards of one hundred sonnets are devoted to his memory.
Trollope, with the conceit of his class, calls these touching expressions of sorrow “the tuneful wailings of a young widow as lovely as inconsolable, as irreproachable as noble”; but the more generous feelings and, doubtless, the Catholic instincts of her French biographer discover in this exquisite threnody a form of prayer to God for peace to the living and eternal rest to the dead. After seven years of widowhood a great change took place in her nature. She gave herself up entirely to higher influences; and the difference of style is remarkable between her worldly and her religious poems. The first are, as we have said, devoted to the love of a mortal object; the second to a divine dilection. This series is entitled Rime Spirituali. She begins it:
“Since a chaste love my soul has long detained
In fond idolatry of earthly fame,
Now to the Lord, who only can supply
The remedy, I turn …”—Sonnet 1.
And again we observe in the following production her resolve to abandon pagan allusions and confine her poetry to sublimer subjects:
“Me it becomes not henceforth to invoke
Or Delos or Parnassus; other springs,
Far other mountain-tops, I now frequent,
Where human steps, unaided, cannot mount.”
All writers on Italian poetry are agreed that for delicacy and grace of style Vittoria ranks next to Petrarch.
Several medals and portraits have perpetuated her features at different periods of life. Of the former, two were made while her husband was living—both heads being represented—and two during her widowhood. A most beautiful medal was struck at Rome in 1840 on occasion of the marriage of Prince Torlonia to Donna Teresa Colonna, but the face is more or less ideal.
Several portraits were painted during her lifetime, but it is difficult to trace them all. Some are lost, and others are doubtful originals. The thoroughly genuine one (say the Romans) is that in the Colonna Gallery. It is a fine type of chaste and patrician beauty. It was taken when she was about eighteen; although how it can in this case (and it certainly represents her still in her teens) be ascribed to Muziano, as it is by Mrs. Roscoe, we cannot understand, because this artist was born only in 1528, when Vittoria was already thirty-eight years old. The fact is that the artist is unknown; but there should be some acuteness even in conjecture. Although it would be highly flattering to the vanity of her race, and of the Romans in general, to believe that her portrait was sketched by Michael Angelo and painted by Sebastiano del Piombo, they reject with horror the celebrated picture by their hands in the Tribune at Florence in which others see her face and figure. The best judges, however, call it simply “A Lady, 1512”; and our ideal of Vittoria revolts from the voluptuous features and disgusting pectoral development of this portrait; but if it were possible to determine it in her favor (?) we should have to exclaim:
“Appena si può dir, questà furosa.”
All writers on Italian literature mention our heroine at considerable length; but of separate biographies the principal ones are the following: Gio. Batt. Rota, Rime e Vita di D. Vittoria Colonna, Marchesana di Pescara, 1 vol. 8vo, 1760; Isabella Teotochi Albizzi, Ritratti, etc., Pisa, 1826 (4th ed., copy in Astor Library); John S. Harford, Life of Michael Angelo Buonarotti …
with Memoirs of … Vittoria Colonna, 2 vols., London, 1857 (Astor Library); Cav. P. E. Visconti, Vita di Vittoria Colonna, Rome, 1840; Le Fèvre Deumier published a memoir of her in French in 1856; T. A. Trollope, A Decade of Italian Women; Mrs. Henry Roscoe, Vittoria Colonna, 1 vol., London, 1868. In 1844 the Accademia degli Arcadi at Rome decreed to have a bust of Vittoria made and placed in the museum of the Capitol. It was inaugurated with great pomp on May 12, 1845; and thirty-two poems in Latin and Italian were written to celebrate the event, and afterwards collected into a volume and published. The following is the simple inscription beneath the bust:
A. Vittoria Colonna.
N.MCCCCXC. M.MDXLVII.
Teresa. Colonna. Principessa. Romana.
Pose.
MDCCCXLV.
[185] Published only in 1785.
[186] Philippe Macquer, in his esteemed work, Abrégé Chronologique de l’Histoire d’Espagne et de Portugal (1759-65), 2 vols. 8vo, says that there is ground for believing that he was poisoned by his enemies, which we think is very likely to have been the case.
[187] 18th Sonnet.
[188] One of the most distinguished females of the age, and for love of letters and literary success ranking next to Vittoria. She was born in 1485; her father, the Count Gianfrancesco Gambara of Brescia; her mother, Alda Pia of Carpi; her husband was Ghiberto, Lord of Correggio. She died in 1550.
[189] Writing to Michael Angelo from the convent of St. Catherine at Viterbo, as late as 1543, she calls the nuns, her companions, “the spouses of Christ.”
ALLIES’ FORMATION OF CHRISTENDOM[190]
The appearance of the third part of Mr. Allies’ great work offers an occasion for expressing the interest with which we have regarded it since the publication of the first volume in 1865. The author is well known on both sides of the Atlantic, and the present work has been noticed from time to time in this magazine.
It consists of a series of historical lectures grouping and classifying the leading features of that wonderful movement which began shortly after the foundation of the Roman Empire, and has survived its downfall more than a thousand years.
Mr. Allies proposes to examine minutely and accurately into these facts. Those who are familiar with his other works will fully appreciate his ability to cope with his present task, while the need of a calm and
studious presentation of this period of history is sufficiently evident.
The religious movement of the sixteenth century boasts, and not without reason, of having been a radical departure from the spirit of the age which preceded it. It broke with the past; first, in regard to particular questions, concerning which it took issue with existing belief. But the separation which ensued in the religious sphere soon extended to the whole range of man’s spiritual faculties. The followers of the new prophets were associated together in communities and nations, and became entirely estranged from the ancient system.
This isolation was bound to produce in a short time wide divergence of sentiment, and an ever-increasing estrangement from the past.
Americans going abroad find themselves constantly misinterpreting and being misunderstood by foreigners.
We live in another era, and under circumstances so different that it is only by earnest and thoughtful preparation that we can qualify ourselves to judge of other nations.
Any person who will pause for a moment will realize the difficulty of conceiving what the present state of the world would have been had the movement towards a high material development, which preceded Protestantism, been conducted under Catholic auspices alone. Of course, such a conception is impossible to the common ignorant Protestant; but even enlightened minds outside the Catholic Church must acknowledge that it is not easy to acquire a full sympathy with the intellectual epoch which preceded Protestantism. Wherever the new religion became dominant, a thorough break was effected between past and present. The American freeman resembles his English great-grandfather far more closely than the Protestant of the seventeenth resembles the Catholic of the fifteenth century. The French communist still speaks the language in which the feudal tenant addressed the seigneur of the last century; but it would be rash to affirm his capacity to understand the sentiments of his peasant grandfather.
The change wrought by the sixteenth century extends throughout the world, and affects the deepest, most powerful, and most mysterious range of sentiment. This change occurred just as the literature of modern times had begun to take shape and form. Everything has borne the stamp either of its action or of the reaction against it. It was a veritable Lethe; and those who passed through it forgot the images, expressions, and thoughts of preceding generations.
The results of this tendency were entirely overlooked by the partisans of Luther and Calvin. But the most superficial student of history nowadays perceives in them irrefragable proof of two things: first, that the movement of the sixteenth century was something altogether new in the world; and, secondly, that it was completely subversive of the entire order which preceded it. To deny either of these propositions is to bid defiance to truth and farewell to reason. And whereas Catholics have been abused for predicting these facts, there are not wanting Protestants who glory in acknowledging them, now that they can no longer be controverted.
However, we do not wish to bring them forward in our condemnation of Protestantism, but simply to illustrate another fact which is equally true.
Protestantism, amongst other evils, has brought a spirit of scepticism into historical research which is one of the most ghastly symptoms of its present stage of dissolution. We do not mean a spirit which demands proof, but a spirit which no amount of proof can satisfy—which denies facts unquestionably true, and endeavors to cast discredit upon the most authentic records.
It is not hard to perceive the cause or to trace the development of this spirit.
The cause is that Protestantism was in every sense a break in history. It was an abnormal and morbid occurrence. The consequences of its denial—its protest—extended into every order of truth. But nowhere was their influence more fatal than in the domain of history. It lost the thread of sacred history by denying the authority of the Roman Church. But the isolated position
into which it was thrown soon rendered it unfit to interpret any tradition. In fact, it had no tradition; it was obliged to make one in accordance with its own needs. At first its doubts were all directed against the Papacy, because the Papacy was irreconcilable with its existence. Then the histories of the saints were condemned, because Protestantism had nothing of the kind to show. But the irreverent critic of the claims of the Sovereign Pontiff at last attacked the Scripture, which was thrown to him as bearing its own credentials. Far worse than this—the Bible having been destroyed, the sacred person of the Author of Christianity has been exposed for dissection. Nothing is deemed too blasphemous either to deny or assert of him. But now that he has been judged by the high-priests of the new religion, and condemned as an impostor, something has to be done with that vast system which civilized the world and endured for sixteen centuries, on the theory that Christ was what he proclaimed himself to be—the Lord of all things, and that his revelation was true.
After practically demonstrating that Protestantism is a denial of Christianity, we might expect the age to pause in its career of denial. This, however, at present seems to be expecting too much. Having denied the authority which Christ has commissioned, the revolution soon came to deny Christ. Having denied him, it has proceeded to deny him from whom Jesus was sent.
It only remains to deny every other fact which conflicts with the negative theory. It is, therefore, considered necessary to express doubt with regard to every historical fact connected with Christianity. A notable
instance of this is before our eyes in Mr. Hare’s Walks in Rome, a book quite free from the more offensive forms of Protestant vulgarity. Mr. Hare has spent many years in Rome, and learned from its antiquarians the history of its secular traditions. He knows that the scene of St. Peter’s imprisonment is as well attested as any other which he describes in his work. In the course of his remarks on the Mamertine Prison, he says:
“It was by this staircase that Cicero came forth and announced the execution of the Catiline conspirators to the people in the Forum by the single word Viverunt—‘they have ceased to live!’ Close to the exit of these stairs the Emperor Vitellius was murdered.”
He discusses the age of the structure, and cites Ampère to prove it to be the oldest building in Rome. The author further says: “It is described by Livy and by Sallust, who depicts its horrors in his account of the execution of the Catiline conspirators. The spot is shown to which these victims were attached and strangled in turn. In this dungeon, at an earlier period, Appius Claudius and Oppius the decemvirs committed suicide (B.C. 449). Here Jugurtha, king of Mauritania, was starved to death by Marius. Here Julius Cæsar, during his triumph for the conquest of Gaul, caused his gallant enemy Vercingetorix to be put to death. Here Sejanus, the friend and minister of Tiberius, disgraced too late, was executed for the murder of Drusus, son of the emperor, and for an intrigue with his daughter-in-law Livilla. Here, also, Simon Bar Givras, the last defender of Jerusalem, suffered during the triumph of Titus.”
Thus far the writer is dealing with facts of pagan tradition, which has been dead for centuries. Observe the change of tone when he comes to facts of the living Christian tradition—facts which he is evidently inclined to believe, but which must not be spoken of with the confidence appropriate to pagan narrative:
“The spot is more interesting to the Christian world as the prison of SS Peter and Paul, who are said to have been bound for nine months to a pillar, which is shown here.” A little further on: “It is hence that the Roman Catholic Church believes that St. Peter and St. Paul addressed their farewells to the Christian world” (pp. 94-96).
The testimony of the Egyptian hieroglyphs is unquestioned. The most fabulous antiquity is readily admitted for Indian and Chinese history. It is gratuitously assumed that the time of stone implements was not coincident with the use of metals in other nations, though the contrary may be witnessed on our own frontiers. If human remains are found along with those of extinct animals, it is assumed that they died together. No demand upon belief is too great unless it be in connection with Christianity. This tendency is to make men imagine that the era of our Saviour’s advent was purely mythical, and that the events of his time are as obscure as those of the siege of Troy.
We think that we have accounted for the existence of this tendency in the nature of Protestantism, as developed in Strauss and the “more advanced” German speculators. But after having created this artificial cloud in history, the same parties seek to give the impression that
Christianity was but a natural development out of the union of Eastern with Western thought. Having endeavored to reduce it to a myth by denying or questioning history, the process is reversed, and history is appealed to in order to prove that Christianity was a purely natural phenomenon which can be readily explained.
It is, according to these rash theorists, a syncretism of the best thoughts of Egypt, India, and Greece, produced principally by the agency of the Alexandrian schools. This explanation is mainly satisfactory to them because it would explain the rise and establishment of Christianity without a miracle.[191] The hypothesis was eagerly embraced for this reason. Just so Strauss leaped for joy at the hypothesis of Darwin, because it professed to account for the existence of men without creation. But just as Darwin, while able to produce both specimens and remains of man and ape, could never find the intermediate animal, or even any trace of him, so this forged account of the origin of Christianity breaks down in the very fact which is necessary to give it even the semblance of value, viz., the warrant of historical facts. In order still further to misrepresent the origin of Christianity, it is necessary to observe the testimony of history as to the moral condition of the pagan world. Tacitus and Suetonius are pagan authors, therefore it will not do to impeach their writings in the same manner as the Gospels and the Christian Fathers. Being heathens, their works are certainly genuine,
and they are to be held as truthful men—a presumption to which the Evangelists and Fathers are in no way entitled. But we notice the tendency to overlook the frightful picture presented by these historians, and the attempt, by a judicious comparison of the best specimens of paganism with the worst scandals or most austere characters of church history, to draw conclusions injurious to Christianity.
This whole process of doubting the records, misstating the origin, and denying the real nature of early Christianity, is a fraud which will not bear scrutiny; it is maintained by men who avow their willingness to accept any hypothesis which conflicts with the ancient faith, and to lend the prestige of their talents to any effort against it.
The historical warfare has been vigorously carried on in Germany by both sides. The movement has penetrated into the English universities. Its echoes have been heard in our own midst, in the utterances of certain writers who, being possessed by the spirit of snobbishness, cleave to outlandish modes of thought because of their foreign or novel character.
Mr. Allies’ work is a thoughtful and profound exposition of facts, and brushes away the cobwebs with which hostile criticism has sought to envelop the history of Christianity. The author does not aim at a connected narrative. The chapters of his work are lectures, each one of which is an essay, complete in itself. The reader is presumed to be acquainted with the general outlines of history, and the author directs his efforts to answer such questions as naturally arise with regard to the introduction of Christianity and the foundation of that
order which appeared under the title of Christendom in the Middle Age.
Accordingly, after giving his idea of the philosophy of history, Mr. Allies draws a graphic picture of the state of the Roman world. The civil polity of the Augustan age, the majesty of the Pax Romana, appear in their splendid proportions. The reader is brought face to face with all that is known of that epoch. Its ideas of manhood and morality are set forth from the testimony of eye-witnesses. Then follows a sketch of the work to be accomplished by Christianity, entitled the New Creation of Individual Man. This is succeeded by a series of lectures viewing the results which were to be expected from the influence of Christianity upon human character. Here we find also the testimony of eye-witnesses of the growth of the new religion, and an instructive comparison between Cicero and St. Augustine, illustrative of two most important ages of history. The fifth lecture of this first volume is on the New Creation of the Primary Relation between Man and Woman; and the seventh lecture deals with an equally Christian doctrine, viz., the Creation of the Virginal Life.
A recent German writer, laboring under a delusion not uncommon in his country, doubts whether the improved morality which appeared after the introduction of Christianity was really due to that religion or to the German race. This characteristic doubt is left undecided by the writer, but will probably soon be settled adversely to Christianity by some more adventurous Teuton. The public, for whose benefit these speculations are likely to be extended, will do well to read a little history,
and will not find Mr. Allies’ chapters amiss.
The second volume, which appeared in 1869, treats of the developments of that spiritual society which sprang into existence with the original ideas of Christianity and from the same source. The peculiar characteristics are traced of that hierarchical order which, after three centuries of bloody persecution, came forth from its hiding-place in perfect organization, to receive at once the homage of Constantine and to become the guide of civilization and the supreme ruler of nations for more than a thousand years.
The position of the church at the time of Constantine was that of complete victory. The portent in the sky which appeared to that emperor was not more miraculous than the spectacle afforded by Christianity. Starting from a distant point in an obscure race, without means, without facilities of communication, it had not only revolutionized the pagan world but it had maintained its own unity as a corporate body in the face of wholesale treason from within, and intense intellectual opposition, accompanied with three centuries of proscription, from without. Three centuries ago another movement started in our modern world. It had all the prestige of the civilization which germinated along with it. It has had the support of the civil power. It has had the best blood and most vigorous races to work for it. No earthly element of success has been refused to it. What is the result? Where is its unity? The very idea is abandoned. Where are its original convictions? Not one remains. What is its present
influence? It has none. What is its prospect in the future? Entire destruction.
Nothing is better calculated to give us a correct idea of the difference between Protestantism and Christianity than this sort of a comparison. Such, however, is not Mr. Allies’ design. He aims, in his second volume, to show that Christianity had a definite theory and constructive spirit with regard to society. As he contrasts in his first volume the pagan notion of individual man with the Christian ideal, and shows a creative power in the latter producing results undreamed of in the heathen character, so the author traces, in his second volume, the social ideas brought in by Christianity.
The unity of the church, as taught and described by the fathers, was an idea no less remarkable in its marvellous working than in its utter novelty. This conception was based on the fundamental principle of Christianity, that its divine Founder had authorized a corporate body to teach the world those truths which he came to bring, and that the power of God was pledged to the infallibility of his church. This doctrine is the only constructive idea that has ever been broached with regard to society. Protestantism was a direct assault upon the very nature of Christianity, and is to be held responsible for the absence of this idea in modern civilization.
Mr. Allies develops the history of this Christian idea with great accuracy, filling out his comparison between Christian and pagan thinkers in all departments of thought, and establishing the claims of the new faith to be a creation fresh from the Author of all things, and not a development out of the putrescent
civilization of the ancient world.
That Christianity produced a type of character wholly distinct and peculiar, is a fact of which there can be no doubt on the part of those who have the slightest disposition to consult authentic records. That it possessed a vitality and organizing power of which there is no other instance, is equally certain. But we often hear the sayings of Epictetus, Marcus Aurelius, and the later Stoics quoted, as exhibiting a tone of thought almost equal to that of Christianity, and by the enemies of religion vaunted as something far above the morality of the Gospel. No reader of Plutarch can escape the impression of his gentle and refined philosophy. Though full of grievous errors, it has a flavor of truth, a respect for purity, and an appreciation of virtue which are not to be found in the earlier historians.
The great error of those who would make Christianity a development of heathen thought is simply, then, mistaking the cause for the effect. A great change was undoubtedly to be expected from the blending of Greek and Roman speculation with the Jewish and Egyptian religions. This change actually took place. But its product was acted upon by Christianity, and did not become a factor of the new religion. Mr. Allies gives us the summary of ancient philosophy, which he traces down to its contact with Christian truth. We are able to see the vanity of that false reading of history which seeks to represent Christianity as a mendicant receiving crumbs from Plato, Pythagoras, Philo, and the Stoics. We perceive from their writings and the tone of their disciples the
barrenness and emptiness of Attic thought, up to the time when it received the few corrections and additions from Christian doctrine which enabled it to appear for a short time as a rival of heavenly truth.
The author goes with laborious scrutiny through that labyrinth of error which is included under the title of Neo-Platonism. Outside the Catholic Church, few scholars have read even the principal works of St. Thomas Aquinas. Charles Sumner was said to possess them; Disraeli the elder and George Eliot refer to them. But the former never showed that he understood their contents, and the last-named writers show that they have not. Although such a study is absolutely necessary towards acquiring a correct knowledge of the intellectual life of the Middle Age, it is rarely undertaken by non-Catholics. To study the remains of Neo-Platonism is a task of equal subtlety, and yet nothing is more common than to hear shallow speculators on history affirm that Christianity was greatly affected by the Alexandrian school. But the difference is no less marked when we come to find out what the views of the leading Neo-Platonist actually were. This “distracted chaos of hallucinations” was the highest effort of paganism. It was an attempt to reconcile and weld together all the elements of the old world, as a barrier to the new and irresistible power which was everywhere gaining ground. It was the development which was to have been expected. It was the fusion of East and West to which Christianity has been credited. But, instead of acting upon, it was radically affected by, Christianity; and, instead of bringing
forth Christianity, it was the deadliest foe of the Gospel. It is from this old armory of Alexandria that modern error draws and refurbishes the clumsy weapons which dropped thirteen centuries ago from the hands of the first opponents of Christianity. It is a good place to go for this sort of bric-à-brac. It contains a sum of all the aberrations of the human intellect. Here, stripped of its modern garb, we find the cosmic sentimentalism of Strauss. Here the absolute being of the German pantheists stares us in the face. Here, from Iamblichus and Porphyry, we hear the same mournful and unhealthy drivel which is printed and sewed up in gilt morocco by enterprising and philanthropic publishers of the present day. On rising from the perusal of Mr. Allies’ third volume, we see clearly the end of that wonderful and brilliant Hellenism which, while ever occupied “either in telling or in hearing something new,” slighted the real truth which had come into the world, and served but as a pit to its own pride.
Too much praise cannot be given to Mr. Allies for the labor bestowed upon his history of the actual development of the philosophy of Greece in the Roman Empire. He has traced each school of thought from year to year, and reproduced a correct summary of its beliefs. The Neo-Stoic philosophy, which is especially vaunted by the enemies of Christianity, is studiously delineated. The points of agreement and difference are clearly noted between its four great chiefs—Seneca, Musonius, Epictetus, and Marcus Aurelius. The analogies and contrasts between the developed Stoic school and the Christian teachers who were its contemporaries, are also brought into relief.
In order to portray the effect of the Neo-Pythagorean doctrines and the revived Platonism, the author gives a complete analysis of that most singular and interesting character, Philo the Jew—singular, in that he was the only one of the ancient Hebrew race who became a great philosopher; interesting, because he shows us the precise difference between Platonism and Jewish belief, and the immeasurable superiority of the unreasoning Jew, who believed only that which he had received by tradition, over the highest flight of heathen genius unaided by revelation. The lecture on Philo closes with a summary of the interval between his time and Plutarch’s, and the change during that epoch from the old Roman world of Cicero, together with the cause of this change.
Following this, another lecture presents the state of the pagan intellect and the common standing ground of philosophy, from the accession of Nero to that of Severus.
Towards the close of his reign, under the auspices of the Empress Julia and from the labors of Philostratus, came forth the new gospel of paganism in the life of Apollonius of Thyana. This work, upon the strength of which modern infidels have sought to attribute a mythical origin to the Gospels, was a counterfeit of the truth, in which paganism sought to construct an ideal teacher, to oppose to that Master who was now beginning to be known throughout the world. This sketch of Apollonius of Thyana is very complete, and shows a new phase of thought yet more strikingly affected by that hated and persecuted power which was daily growing in the midst of the Roman world. Having completed
his study of pagan belief and sentiments as far as the reign of Severus, the author is fully prepared for the difficult and thankless task of reviewing the struggle between Neo-Platonism, as represented by Iamblichus, Porphyry, and Plotinus, and their followers, against divine truth. The third volume closes with a graphic summary of the intellectual results from Claudius to Constantine, and a comparative glance at the relative power of the old order and the new to reconstruct a society in stable and harmonious proportions.
With this lecture, which seems to foreshadow the contents of a fourth volume, Mr. Allies’ work stops for the present. Its publication in parts has placed it at a great disadvantage, inasmuch as ten years have passed since the first volume appeared. It may seem premature to review a work not yet complete, but enough has been published to
establish the claim of the author to a most useful and successful contribution to the needs of the time. He has grown into his task, and has accumulated both facts and reflections. There is little reason to fear that the remaining volume will not be equal to the three which have preceded it.
The style is unpretending, and the whole work extremely modest. In this respect, it will not meet the approval of those who prefer rhetoric to exact truthfulness. Historical works must be plentifully illustrated, either by the engraver or the imagination of the author, to make them popular nowadays.
But the intelligent reader who will take pains to examine carefully Mr. Allies’ volumes will be well repaid, and the author himself can rest in the conviction that he has written a solid and useful book, which deserves a place in every library.
[190] The Formation of Christendom. By T. W. Allies. Part Third. London: Longmans, Green, Reader & Dyer. 1875.
[191] It is also necessary on account of its vagueness, and eminently fits in or rather mixes with the confusion of mind which is so marked a characteristic in this school of speculators.