CHAPTER X
THE SEVENTEENTH AND EIGHTEENTH CENTURIES
The transition from the sixteenth to the seventeenth century in Italy was marked by no sudden changes of any kind. The whole country was thoroughly prostrate and under the control of the empire; a national spirit did not exist, and the people seemed content to slumber on without opposing in any way the tyranny of their foreign masters. The glory of the Italian Renaissance had been sung in all the countries of Europe; in every nook and corner of the continent, Italian painters and sculptors, princes and poets, artists and artisans of all kinds, had stimulated this new birth of the world; but this mission accomplished, Italy seemed to find little more to do, and for lack of an ideal her sons and daughters wasted their time in the pursuit of idle things. It was the natural reaction after an age of unusual force and brilliancy. In the shadow of the great achievements of the sixteenth century in all lines of human activity, the seventeenth, lost in admiration, could imagine no surer way to equal attainment than to imitate what had gone before. Literature became stilted and full of mannerisms and underwent a process of refinement which left it without strength or vigor, and society in general seemed more concerned with form and ceremony than with the deeper things of the spirit.
Countless examples are on record to show the petty jealousies which were agitating the public mind at this time, and the number of quarrels and arguments which had their origin in most trivial causes passes belief. Rank and position were of the utmost consequence, and questions of precedence in public functions were far more eagerly discussed than were questions of national policy. Naples, under the control of Spanish princes, was particularly noted for such exhibitions of undignified behavior. On one occasion, during a solemn church ceremony, the military governor of the city left the cathedral in a great rage because he had noticed that a small footstool had been placed for the archbishop, while nothing of the kind had been provided for his own comfort. At the death of a certain princess, the royal commissioners delayed the funeral because it was claimed that she had used arms and insignia of nobility above her true rank, and was not entitled, therefore, to the brilliant obsequies which were being planned by the members of her family. The body was finally put in a vault and left unburied until the matter had been passed upon by the heraldry experts in Madrid! During the funeral services which were being held in honor of the Queen of Spain, the archbishop desired footstools placed for all the bishops present, but the vicegerent opposed this innovation, and the ceremony was finally suspended because they could come to no agreement. The cities of Cremona and Pavia were in litigation for eighty-two years over the question as to which should have precedence over the other in public functions where representatives of the two places happened to be together; finally, the Milanese Senate, to which the question was submitted, "after careful examination and mature deliberation, decided that it had nothing to decide." Another example of this small-mindedness is shown in the case of the General Giovanni Serbelloni, who, while fighting in the Valteline in 1625, was unwilling to open a despatch which had been sent to him, because he had not been addressed by all his titles. It is a pleasure to add that as a result of this action he was left in ignorance as to the approach of the enemy and the next day suffered a severe defeat.
Rome was the seat of much splendor and display--an inevitable state of affairs when the fact is taken into consideration that the city was filled with legates and embassies, all anxious to wait upon his holiness the pope and gain some special privilege or concession. At this time the cardinals, too, were not mere ecclesiastics, but rather men of great wealth and power; often they became prime ministers in their several countries,--as Richelieu, for example,--and the great and influential houses of Savoy, Este, Gonzaga, Farnese, Barberini, and many others, always possessed one or more of them who vied in magnificence with the pope himself. And all this helped to make the Eternal City the scene of much brilliancy. The papal court was the natural centre of all this animation, and many a stately procession wended its way to the Vatican. On one occasion, the Duke of Parma, wishing to compliment a newly elected pope, sent as his representative the Count of San Secondo, who went to his solemn interview followed by a long procession of one hundred and fifty carriages, and appeared before the pontiff with eighteen distinguished prelates in his train. This mad passion for display led to so many evils of all kinds that Urban VIII. prohibited "indecent garments" for both men and women. In the interests of public morality, it was further decreed that women were not to take music lessons from men, and nuns were allowed no other professors than their own companions. Public singing, distinct from religious ceremonies, was a novelty at this time, and women with the gift of song were paid most liberally for their services. Venice was the city most noted for its festivals and carnivals, and here these women were given most generous treatment.
In Florence, as in all the rest of Italy, Spain was taken as "the glass of fashion, the mould of form" for the first part of the century, but the splendor of the court of Louis Quatorze soon caused French fashions to reign supreme. Then, as now, brides were accustomed to dress in white, while married women were given a wide latitude in their choice of colors. At first, widows wore a dress distinctive not only in color but in cut, yet eventually they were to be distinguished by only a small head-dress of black crape. Young women were much given to curling their hair, and at the same time it was the fashion to wear upon the forehead a cluster of blond curls, a petite perruque, which, in the words of an old chronicler, Rinuccini, "is very unbecoming to those whose hair happens to be of another color." From the same authority is derived the following information concerning the women belonging to the under crust of society: "Prostitutes, formerly, all wore an apparent sign which revealed their infamous profession; it was a yellow ribbon fastened to the strings of the hats, which were then in fashion; when hats went out of style, the yellow ribbon was worn in the hair, and if the women were ever found without it they were severely punished. Finally, on payment of a certain tax, they were allowed to go without the ribbon, and then they were to be distinguished by their impudence only." In Florence, women of this class were especially noted for their beauty, and there it was customary to compel them all to live within a certain district.
In the average Florentine household it had been the custom to have three women servants,--a cook, a second girl, and a matrona. This third servant was better educated than the others, and it was her duty, outside of the house, to keep her mistress company, whether she rode in her carriage or went about on foot. At home, she did the sewing and the mending, and generally dressed her mistress and combed her hair. For this work the matrona received a salary of six or seven dollars a month, and it seems to have been usual for her employers to arrange a good marriage for her after several years of service, giving her at that time from one hundred to one hundred and fifty crowns as a dowry. Later in the century, the matrona does not seem to have been so common, and many women went alone in their carriages, while on foot they were accompanied by a manservant in livery. The wealthier ladies of the nobility, however, were accompanied in their conveyances by a donzella, and on the street and in all public places by an elderly and dignified manservant, dressed in black, who was known as the cavaliere. The fashion with regard to this male protector became so widespread that the women of the middle class were in the habit of hiring the services of some such individual for their occasional use on fête days and whenever they went to mass. The further development of this custom and its effect upon public morals in the following century will be discussed on another page.
Busy with all-absorbing questions of dress, etiquette, and domestic management, it does not appear that the women of the seventeenth century in Italy took any great share in public events, although one Italian woman at least, leaving the country of her birth, was placed by fate upon a royal throne. Henry IV. of France, about the year 1600, was hard pressed for the payment of certain debts by Ferdinand I., Grand Duke of Tuscany, as the Medici were still the bankers of Europe, and the French king was owing more than a million louis d'or; but the whole matter was settled in a satisfactory way when Henry gave definite promises to pay within a dozen years. To maintain his credit in the meantime, and to facilitate the payment of the money, the one-time King of Navarre demanded in marriage Marie de' Medici, the niece of the grand duke; it is needless to say that the request was speedily granted, for the pride and ambition of this rich Tuscan family were unlimited, and the memory of that other daughter of the house of Medici, Catherine, who had been Queen of France and mother of three French kings, was still fresh in the minds of all. The wedding ceremony was performed in great splendor, at Florence, Henry sending a proxy to represent him at that time; and then the young bride set out for France, followed by a glittering retinue, and bearing, as her dowry, six hundred thousand crowns of gold. Arriving at Leghorn, they took ship for Marseilles, and then began a triumphal march across the country, cities vying with each other in doing her honor. Cantu tells us that at Avignon, which was still a city under the temporal sway of the pope, Marie was placed in a chariot drawn by two elephants, and given an escort of two thousand cavaliers. There were seven triumphal arches and seven theatres; for it was the proud boast of the residents of Avignon that everything went by sevens in their city, as there were seven palaces, seven parishes, seven old convents, seven monasteries, seven hospitals, seven colleges, and seven gates in the city wall! Several addresses of welcome were delivered in the presence of the young queen, though in this instance the number was hardly seven, poems were read, and she received a number of gold medals bearing her profile upon one side and the city's coat of arms upon the other. Henry had left Paris to come to meet his bride, and it was at Lyons that the royal pair saw each other for the first time. It cannot be said that this first interview was warmly enthusiastic, for the king found her far less beautiful than the portrait which had been sent to him, and he soon came to the sad conclusion that she was too fat, had staring eyes and bad manners, and was very stubborn.
After the birth of a son and heir, who later became Louis XIII., the king neglected his wife to such an extent that she felt little sorrow at the time of his assassination. Then it was, as queen-regent, that Marie for the first time entered actively into political life; but her ability in this sphere of action was only moderate, and she was soon the centre of much quarrel and contention, wherein the unyielding feudal nobility and the Protestants figured largely as disturbing causes. In the midst of these troublous times, the queen had an invaluable assistant in the person of Eleanora Galigaï, her foster-sister, whose husband, Concino Concini, a Florentine, had come to France in the suite of Marie, and had subsequently risen to a position of influence in the court. Eventually, he became the Maréchal d'Ancre, and his wife was spoken of as la Maréchale or la Galigaï, for so great was the extent of Eleanora's control over the queen that she was one of the most conspicuous women in all Europe at that time. Gradually, she was criticised on account of the way in which she used her power, and it was alleged that she was overmuch in the company of divers magicians and astrologers who had been brought from Italy, and that the black art alone was responsible for her success. These accusations finally aroused such public hostility that, after a trial which was a travesty upon justice, Eleanora was soon condemned to death, on the charge of having unduly influenced the queen by means of magic philters. Eleanora went to her death bravely, saying with dignity to her accusers: "The philter which I have used is the influence which every strong mind possesses, naturally, over every weaker one."