Woman in the golden ages

by Amelia Gere Mason

And, as the light streams gently from above,
Sin’s gloomy mantle bursts its bonds in twain,
And robed in white, I seem to feel again
The first sweet sense of innocence and love.

This gentle-hearted poet was a purist in style, and chiseled carefully the vase in which she put her thoughts, not for the sake of the vase, but reverently, to make it worthy of the thought. These hymns fall upon the ear like some thrilling strain from Palestrina, who translated into song the dreams, the aspirations, the baffled hopes, the sorrows of a race in its decline, and sent it along the centuries with its everlasting message of love and consolation. There was something akin in the two spirits that lived at the same time, though Palestrina was young when the poet neared the evening. It was he who first gave to music a living soul. Vittoria gave the world its first collection of religious poems, and poured her own heart into them. Both vibrated to the deepest note of their age. Only the arts differed, and the quality of thought, and the outer vestments of life.

But we are far from the days when this beautiful woman in her magnificent robes of crimson velvet and gold, attended by six ladies in azure damask and as many grooms in blue and yellow satin, was one of the central figures in some royal wedding festivities at Naples. Mundane pleasures had long ago lost their charm, and the still lovely poet in her sable costume finds her consolation in ministering to the poor and suffering, and in an active interest in all the intellectual movements of her time. She was the friend of great men and distinguished women. Cardinal Bembo, the famous “dictator of letters,” lauds her virtues and her genius while he craves her favor. She writes of the gifts of her “divine Bembo,” addresses sonnets to him, and receives his “celestial, holy, and very Platonic” affection with gracious dignity. Castiglione sends her his manuscript of “Il Cortegiano” for criticism, and complains that she held it too long and copied it for other eyes. She gives discriminating praise of the “subject as well as the tact, elegance, and animation of the style,” but she suggests the wisdom of dwelling less persistently on the beauty and virtue of living women. The unscrupulous but keen-witted Aretino pays her compliments and begs her aid. “One must count with the tastes of one’s contemporaries,” he writes, in half-apology for his own base standards; “only amusement or scandal are lucrative; they burn with unholy passions, as you do with an inextinguishable angelic flame. Sermons and vespers for you, music and comedy for others.... Why write serious books? After all, I write to live.” This was the note of the new age in an ever-descending scale—the death-knell of all that is fine and noble in any age. It is needless to ask what this high-souled woman thought of sordid motives that were by no means confined to the Italian decadence; but she managed the vain and vindictive man, who held reputations in the hollow of his hand, with graceful dignity and infinite tact. Living at a time when the great poets were passing, and literature was fast becoming the trade of artisans who appealed to the lowest passions of a sense-intoxicated people, or the tool of cynics and courtiers, she held her own way serenely, superior to worldly motives and worldly entanglements. There are numerous glimpses of her in the poems and letters of her time, but the chorus of praise was universal. “She has more eloquence and breathes more sweetness than all other women,” says Ariosto, “and gives such force to her lofty words that she adorns the heavens in our day with another sun.” And again: “She has not only made herself immortal by her beautiful style, than which I have heard none better, but she can raise from the tomb those of whom she speaks or writes, and make them live forever.”

It was her sympathy with all high things that made her so warm a friend to the apostles of the new religious thought. Though an ardent Catholic, she was no bigot to be held within the iron-bound limits of a creed which had lost its moral force, no beauty-loving disciple of an estheticism that veiled crime and corruption with the splendors of a ceremonial, sang Te Deums over the triumphs of the wicked and Misereres while plotting assassination. She felt the need of a purer morality and a deeper spirituality, though, like Savonarola, she wished reform within the church, not outside of it. We find her always in the ranks of the thinkers. She was the devoted friend of Contarini, the broad-minded cardinal, who grieved so sincerely over the universal corruption, and died, possibly of that grief and his own helplessness, before the hour came when it was a crime to speak one’s best thoughts. He should have been Pope, she said in her sonnet on his death, to make the age happy. It was a striking tribute to the vigorous quality of her intellect that he dedicated to her his work “On Free Will.” Fra Bernardino she defended when he fled to Switzerland and joined the Lutherans, but she was powerless to help him in his hours of darkness. Even this brought her under the suspicion of heresy. Carnesecchi, another of her friends, was burned, and one of the chief accusations against a Florentine who was condemned to a like fate years afterward was that he belonged to her circle. “It is an inexpressible pleasure to me that my counsels are approved by a woman of so much virtue and wisdom,” wrote Sadolet to Cardinal Pole. She sustained these powerful prelates by the prestige of her name and the fullness of her sympathy. The liberal circle of her friend Renée attracted her to Ferrara, but the air was full of suspicion. They talked much and pleasantly of literature, poetry, and the arts; when they touched upon the new thought which was revolutionizing the world, it was behind closed doors, and with the vivid consciousness that the walls had ears which stretched to Rome.

But to-day Vittoria Colonna is known best as the friend of Michelangelo, to whom she was a polar star, an inspiration, an everlasting joy. “Without wings, I fly with your wings; by your genius I am raised toward the skies,” he writes. “In your soul my thought is born; my words are in your mind.” It was the perfect sympathy of finely attuned spirits, the divine friendship that exists only between men and women who live at an altitude far above the things of sense. The age was full of talk about Platonic love. A few reached it, and they were of the spiritual elect; but they did not talk much about it. To this solitary artist, who dwelt on lonely heights, the divining and sympathetic spirit of a thoughtful woman was a revelation. He wrote sonnets to her, sometimes calm and philosophical, sometimes fiery and passionate. He also sent her poems and sketches for criticism. The tact with which she drew out the best in this colossal man is shown by a conversation in the softly lighted Chapel of San Silvestro, as recorded by an artist who was present. She had been listening to a private exposition of St. Paul, but when Michelangelo came in, she delicately turned the conversation upon the subject nearest his heart, on which it was not easy to lead him to talk. Both were apart from the spirit of an age that was fast tearing down the few ethical standards it had, and virtually taking for its motto the most dangerous of fallacies, “Art for art’s sake.” “True painting is only an image of the perfection of God, a shadow of the pencil with which he paints, a melody, a striving after harmony,” said the master. And the lady, in her turn, spoke, until the tears fell, of the divine message of art that “leads to piety, to glory, to greatness.” They discussed, too, her project of building a convent on the spot where Nero had watched the burning of Rome, that “virtuous women might efface the memory of so wicked a man.”

No shadow ever rested on this friendship. Michelangelo was past sixty and Vittoria was not far from forty-seven when they met. There is no trace of tender sentiment in their brief correspondence, though a deep and abiding friendship is apparent. Once she playfully writes him to curtail his letters lest they interfere with his duties at St. Peter’s and keep her from the Chapel of St. Catherine, “so that one would fail in duty to the sisters of Christ and the other to his Vicar.” She said that those who knew only his works were ignorant of the best part of the man. When she lay dead before him he kissed her hand reverently, and went out in inconsolable grief to regret the rest of his life that he had not dared to leave a kiss on the pure forehead.

In early life, Vittoria, having no children of her own, had undertaken the care of her husband’s cousin, the Marchese del Vasto, a boy of singular beauty, fine gifts, but wild and passionate temper, which no one had been able to control. Under her gentle and wise influence he had grown to be a brilliant and accomplished man, who never ceased to regard her with the greatest affection. She said that she could not be considered childless after molding the moral character of this son of her adoption. It was one of her great griefs that he died in the flower of his manhood, when the shadows were darkening about her and she needed more than ever his sympathy and support.

At this time fate laid upon her a heavy hand. When Rome became unsafe, she joined the devoted group that surrounded Cardinal Pole at Viterbo; but the last years before her final illness were spent in the Benedictine convent of St. Anne, where she prayed and wrote devotional poems. When she grew ill a celebrated physician said that the fairest light in this world would go out unless some physician for the mind could be found. Her friends were scattered or dead; the misfortunes of her family weighed heavily on her spirit; the cruelties of the new régime had crushed the lives of many whom she loved; she had been forced to stifle her purest convictions and to turn away from the falling fortunes which she had no power to save. It was only a joy to lay down the burden of her fifty-seven years, surrounded by the few who were left to her. She ordered a simple burial, such as was given to the sisters in the convent. There was no memorial, and, strange to say, no one knows where she lies.

No woman better refutes the theory that knowledge makes pedants, that the gentler qualities fade before the cold light of the intellect. To a vigorous, versatile mind, and the calm courage of her convictions, Vittoria Colonna united a tender heart, fine sensibilities, and broad sympathies. Her clear judgment was tempered by a winning sweetness. The age of specialties was still in the distance, and the woman was superior to any of her achievements. In a period that was notably lax in morals, she carried herself among crowds of adorers with such gentle dignity that no cloud ever shadowed her fair fame. With this rare harmony of intellect, heart, and character, she held the essentials of life above all its decorations; but she retained to the end the simple graces, the flexible tact, and the stately manners of the grande dame.

This literary woman, great lady, and dévote of centuries ago belongs to a type that is out of fashion to-day; it was not common even then. She was the perfected fruit of the finest spirit of her time. She did not write for money or fame; she sought neither honors nor society nor worldly pleasures, though she was a social queen by right of inheritance. She loved high things for their own sake and because she was akin to them. She loved her friends, too, for what they were, not for what they brought her, and gave them of her best, even to her own hurt. If she tried to reconcile her beliefs and her environment, it was a fault of sanity and loyalty; to break with her church traditions was to lose her influence and gain nothing. Possibly this is not the spirit of a reformer, but it is the spirit of those who trust to the saving quality of light rather than of heat. No doubt the conflict helped to wear out her waning forces. In this restless age the world praises such women from afar. They appeal to it as do the pictures of Raphael and Fra Angelico, which we are quite ready to adore as they hang in gallery or drawing-room, for some subtle quality of beauty consecrated by the homage of centuries, though their underlying significance we may have long outgrown. If they are seen at rare intervals in real life, we give them a certain tribute of admiration, no doubt, but we are apt to speak of them personally as visionary, antiquated, or other-worldly. The lofty sentiment, the stateliness, the repose, the indefinable distinction, are not in the line of modern ideals.