"Ofttimes to God through frost and cloud I go
For light and warmth to break my icy chain,
And pierce and rend my veils of doubt in twain
With his divinest love, and radiant glow.
And if my soul sit cold and dark below
Yet all her longings fixed on heaven remain;
And seems she 'mid deep silence to a strain
To listen, which the soul alone can know,—
Saying, Fear nought! for Jesus came on earth,—
Jesus of endless joys the wide deep sea,
To ease each heavy load of mortal birth.
His waters ever clearest, sweetest be
To him, who in a lonely bark drifts forth,
On his great deeps of goodness trustfully."
It will probably be admitted, that the foregoing extracts from Vittoria Colonna's poetry, if they do not suffice to give the outline of the entire fabric of her religious faith, yet abundantly prove, that she must be classed among the Protestant and reforming party of her age and country, rather than among the orthodox Catholics, their opponents. The passages quoted all bear, more or less directly, on a few special points of doctrine, as do also the great bulk of her religious poems. But these points are precisely those on which the reforming movement was based, the cardinal points of difference between the parties. They involve exactly those doctrines which Rome, on mature examination and reflection, rightly found to be fatally incompatible with her system. For the dominant party at Trent were assuredly wiser in their generation than such children of light, as the good Contarini, who dreamed that a purified Papacy was possible, and that Rome might still be Rome, after its creed had been thus modified. Caraffa and Ghislieri, Popes Paul IV. and Pius V., and their inquisitors knew very clearly better.
It is, of course, natural enough, that the points of doctrine then new and disputed, the points respecting which the poetess differed from the majority of the world around her, and which must have been the subject of her special meditation, should occupy also the most prominent position in her writings. Yet it is remarkable, that in so large a mass of poetry on exclusively religious themes, there should be found hardly a thought or sentiment on topics of practical morality. The title of "Rime sacre e morali," prefixed by Visconti to this portion of Vittoria's writings, is wholly a misnomer. If these sonnets furnish the materials for forming a tolerably accurate notion of her scheme of theology, our estimate of her views of morality must be sought elsewhere.
BAD MORALITY.
There is every reason to feel satisfied, both from such records as we have of her life, and from the perfectly agreeing testimony of her contemporaries, that the tenour of her own life and conduct was not only blameless, but marked by the consistent exercise of many noble virtues. But, much as we hear from the lamentations of preachers of the habitual tendency of human conduct to fall short of human professions, the opposite phenomena exhibited by men, whose intuitive moral sense is superior to the teaching derivable from their creed, is perhaps quite as common. That band of eminent men, who were especially known as the maintainers and defenders of the peculiar tenets held by Vittoria, were unquestionably in all respects the best and noblest of their age and country. Yet their creed was assuredly an immoral one. And in the rare passages of our poetess's writings, in which a glimpse of moral theory can be discerned, the low and unenlightened nature of it is such, as to prove, that the heaven-taught heart reached purer heights than the creed-taught intelligence could attain.
What could be worse, for instance, than the morality of the following conclusion of a sonnet, in which she has been lamenting the blindness of those who sacrifice eternal bliss for the sake of worldly pleasures.
She writes:—