Between these two periods came Paul III., and the illusory hopes that the crisis might be tided over by finding some arrangement of terminology, which should satisfy the reformers, while Rome should abandon no particle of doctrine on which any vital portion of her system of temporal power was based. To meet the exigencies of this period, Paul III. signalised his accession by raising to the purple a number of the most earnest, most learned, and truly devout men in Italy. Contarini, the Venetian; Caraffa, from Naples; Sadoleto, Bishop of Carpentras; Pole, then a fugitive from England; Giberti, Bishop of Verona; and Fregoso, Archbishop of Salerno, were men chosen solely on account of their eminent merit.
With most, if not all of these, Vittoria was connected by the bonds of intimate friendship. With Contarini, Sadoleto, and Pole, especially, she corresponded; and the esteem felt for her by such men is the most undeniable testimony to the genuine worth of her character. It is easy to imagine, therefore, how warm a reception awaited her arrival on this occasion in Rome, and how delightful must have been her stay there. She had now reached the full measure of her reputation. The religious and doctrinal topics which were now occupying the best minds in Italy, and on which her thoughts were frequently busied in her correspondence with such men as those named above, had recently begun to form the subject-matter of her poems. And their superiority in vigour and earnestness to her earlier works must have been perfectly apparent to her reverend and learned friends.
TO FERRARA.
Accordingly we are told that her stay in Rome on this occasion was a continued ovation; and Signor Visconti informs us, on the authority of the Neapolitan historian Gregorio Rosso, that Charles V. being then in Rome "condescended to visit in their own house the ladies Giovanna di Aragona, wife of Ascanio Colonna, and Vittoria Colonna, Marchesa di Pescara."
The following year, 1537 that is, she went, Visconti says, to Lucca, from which city she passed to Ferrara, arriving there on the 8th of April "in humble guise, with six waiting women only."[189] Ercole d'Este, the second of the name, was then the reigning duke, having succeeded to his father Alphonso in 1534. And the court of Ferrara, which had been for several years preeminent among the principalities of Italy for its love of literature and its patronage of literary men, became yet more notably so in consequence of the marriage of Hercules II. with Renée of France, the daughter of Louis XII. The Protestant tendencies and sympathies of this Princess had rendered Ferrara also the resort, and in some instances the refuge, of many professors and favourers of the new ideas which were beginning to stir the mind of Italy. And though Vittoria's orthodox Catholic biographers are above all things anxious to clear her from all suspicion of having ever held opinions eventually condemned by the Church, there is every reason to believe that her journey to Ferrara was prompted by the wish to exchange ideas upon these subjects with some of those leading minds which were known to have imbibed Protestant tendencies, if not to have acquired fully formed Protestant convictions. It is abundantly clear, from the character of her friendships, from her correspondence, and from the tone of her poetry at this period, and during the remainder of her life, that her mind was absorbingly occupied with topics of this nature. And the short examination of the latter division of her works, which it is proposed to attempt in the next chapter, will probably convince such as have no partisan Catholic feelings on the subject, that Vittoria's mind had made very considerable progress in the Protestant direction.
No reason is assigned for her stay at Lucca. Visconti, with unusual brevity and dryness, merely states that she visited that city.[190] And it is probable that he has not been able to discover any documents directly accounting for the motives of her visit. But he forbears to mention that the new opinions had gained so much ground there that that Republic was very near declaring Protestantism the religion of their state. After her totally unaccounted-for visit to the heresy-stricken city, she proceeds to another almost equally tainted with suspicion.
A REPUBLIC OF LETTERS.
It is no doubt perfectly true that Duke Hercules and his court received her with every possible distinction on the score of her poetical celebrity, and deemed his city honoured by her presence. He invited, we are told, the most distinguished poets and men of letters of Venice and Lombardy to meet her at Ferrara. And so much was her visit prized that when Cardinal Giberto sent thither his secretary, Francesco della Torre, to persuade her to visit his episcopal city Verona, that ambassador wrote to his friend Bembo, at Venice, that he "had like to have been banished by the Duke, and stoned by the people for coming there with the intention of robbing Ferrara of its most precious treasure, for the purpose of enriching Verona." Vittoria, however, seems to have held out some hope that she might be induced to visit Verona. For the secretary, continuing his letter to the literary Venetian cardinal, says, "Who knows but what we may succeed in making reprisal on them? And if that should come to pass, I should hope to see your Lordship more frequently in Verona, as I should see Verona the most honoured as well as the most envied city in Italy."[191]
It is impossible to have more striking testimony to the fame our poetess had achieved by her pen; and it is a feature of the age and clime well worth noting, that a number of small states, divided by hostilities and torn by warfare, should have, nevertheless, possessed among them a republic of letters capable of conferring a celebrity so cordially acknowledged throughout the whole extent of Italy.