The doings in the Vatican furnished ground for endless gossip, which had long been current in Rome. It was related in Venice, in October, 1496, that the Duke of Gandia had brought a Spanish woman to his father, with whom he lived, and an account was given of a crime which is almost incredible, although it was related by the Venetian ambassador and other persons.[46]
SAVONAROLA.
From a painting by Fra Bartolommeo
It was not long before Donna Sancia caused herself to be freely gossiped about. She was beautiful and thoughtless; she appreciated her position as the daughter of a king. From the most vicious of courts she was transplanted into the depravity of Rome as the wife of an immature boy. It was said that her brothers-in-law Gandia and Cæsar quarreled over her and possessed her in turn, and that young nobles and cardinals like Ippolito d'Este could boast of having enjoyed her favors.
Savonarola may have had these nepot-courts in mind when, from the pulpit of S. Marco in Florence, he declaimed in burning words against the Roman Sodom.
Even if the voice of the great preacher, whose words were filling all Italy, did not reach Lucretia's ears, from her own experience she must have known how profligate was the world in which she lived. About her she saw vice shamelessly displayed or cloaked in sacerdotal robes; she was conscious of the ambition and avarice which hesitated at no crime; she beheld a religion more pagan than paganism itself, and a church service in which the sacred actors,—with whose conduct behind the scenes she was perfectly familiar,—were the priests, the cardinals, her brother Cæsar, and her own father. All this Lucretia beheld, but they are wrong who believe that she or others like her saw and regarded it as we do now, or as a few pure-minded persons of that age did; for familiarity always dulls the average person's perception of the truth. In that age the conceptions of religion, of decency, and of morality were entirely different from those of to-day. When the rupture between the Middle Ages and its ascetic Church and the Renaissance was complete, human passions threw off every restraint. All that had hitherto been regarded as sacred was now derided. The freethinkers of Italy created a literature never equaled for bold cynicism. From the Hermaphroditus of Beccadeli to the works of Berni and Pietro Aretino, a foul stream of novelle, epigrams, and comedies, from which the serious Dante would have turned his eyes in disgust, overflowed the land.
Even in the less sensual novelle, the first of which was Piccolomini's Euryalus, and the less obscene comedies, adultery and derision of marriage are the leading motives. The harlots were the Muses of belles-lettres during the Renaissance. They boldly took their place by the side of the saints of the Church, and contended with them for fame's laurels. There is a manuscript collection of poems of the time of Alexander VI which contains a series of epigrams beginning with a number in praise of the Holy Virgin and the Saints, and then, without word or warning, are several glorifying the famous cyprians of the day; following a stanza on S. Pauline is an epigram on Meretricis Nichine, a well-known courtesan of Siena, with several more of the same sort. The saints of heaven and the priestesses of Venus are placed side by side, without comment, as equally admirable women.[47]
No self-respecting woman would now attend the performance of a comedy of the Renaissance, whose characters frequently represented the popes, the princes, and the noble women of the day; and their presentation, even before audiences composed entirely of men, would now be prohibited by the censor of the theater in every land.
The naturalness with which women of the South even now discuss subjects which people in the North are careful to conceal excites astonishment; but what was tolerated by the taste or morals of the Renaissance is absolutely incredible. We must remember, however, that this obscene literature was by no means so diffused as novels are at the present time, and also that Southern familiarity with whatever is natural also served to protect women. Much was external, and was so treated that it had no effect whatever upon the imagination. In the midst of the vices of the society of the cities there were noble women who kept themselves pure.