A Decade of Italian Women, vol. 1 (of 2)

by Thomas Adolphus Trollope

Lastly, there are a great number of a kind that, less than any of the others, should have been of any interest to the recluse of the Murate; such as love philtres, specifics against sterility and other kindred inconveniences. Several are for purposes set forth by the noble lady with the utmost cynical directness of terms, but which cannot, under any veil of phrase, be even indicated here. And some instructions there are, which would place any modern English man or woman acting on them, in a very disagreeable position in the dock of the Old Bailey; but which are here, by some theological sharp practice, so cleverly and piously managed, as to attain their object, "senza carico di coscienza."

It would seem, too, that, startling as is the cynicism of some of the language which Messer Lucantonio has not scrupled to copy in his best text-hand, some of the lady's secrets must have been of a yet more abominable description. For passages in cipher frequently occur in a context, which indicates that such has been the reason for so veiling them.

In short, there is to be found in the pages of this strangely curious and tell-tale volume, abundant evidence that the woman who could collect, transcribe, and find an interest in preserving such "secrets," as many of those here, must, according to English nineteenth-century codes and feelings, have been lost to every sense of decency, and deplorably ignorant of the laws, and even of the true nature of morality. But there is no reason to think that Catherine fell in these respects at all lower than the general level of her age and country. There is ample proof, on the contrary, that in these, as in all other matters, Catherine was essentially a woman of her time—in no respect in advance of her time, or behind it; but furnishing a full and fair expression and type of her age and class, as is ever the case with vigorous, bustling, strong, practical natures of her stamp. The men, who are before their time, whose domain is the future, to their utter exclusion from all dominion over the present, are of another sort.

BIOGRAPHIC JUDGMENTS.

The writers and readers of biographies are, as it seems to the author of the present, too much wont to feel themselves called upon to express, or at least to form a judgment, as to the amount of moral approbation or condemnation to be awarded to the object of their examination. They continually suffer their thoughts to be drawn from the legitimate and useful study of their subject, by a constant consideration of the judgment to be passed on such or such individual soul by the one all-seeing Judge, alone competent to solve any such question. They talk of "making allowance," as the phrase goes; and spend much weighing on the quantum of such allowance admissible. Vain speculation surely, and quite beside the purpose! Not on the ground of "charitable construction" being due, and of "judging not," &c. (for lack of charity towards a fellow-creature, or other evil passion whatever, can hardly find place in our thoughts of one, whose exit from our scene was four centuries ago), but because such questions are insoluble, and if they were soluble, would be unprofitable. For we are not in the position of the bedside physician, whose duty is to alleviate the pangs of the sufferer, and to struggle against the individual malady by individual appliances. We are in the place of the post-mortem anatomist, who, without reference to the sufferings of the deceased, has only to ascertain that a certain amount of mischief to the machine he is examining, resulted from such and such circumstances. And this information is useful only on account of his persuasion that other similar machines will be in like circumstances similarly affected.

We have no need, therefore, of any of that feeling of the moral pulse, which might be useful for the priest or philosopher, who would "minister to a mind diseased." We have only to ascertain that a certain amount of deviation from moral health existed under such and such circumstances. And this, in as much as the laws which govern our ethical constitution are as immutable as those which rule the physical world, is an investigation of infinite and eternal interest. Under the influence of such and such social constitutions, spiritual teachings, and modes of living, this case of moral disease was generated. Here is a practically useful fact. And if it should appear that, under those same influences this malady was epidemic, the interest of the case assumes larger proportions.

Altogether dismissing from our minds, therefore, all considerations of our poor defunct subject's blameableness, and deservings, and all weighing of allowances wholly imponderable in any scales of ours, let us heedfully observe and reflect on the proved facts of the case.

This poor Catherine, born, as our autopsy shows, with so strong, vigorous, and large a nature, came to be savagely reckless of human life, and blood-thirsty in her vengeance; came to be so grossly material in her mode of regarding that part of our nature, which, duly spiritualised, contributes much to our preparation for eternity, but which, unspiritualised, most draws us to the level of the lower animals, as to be capable of writing such things as have been alluded to; came lastly to consider all distinction between right and wrong, and God's eternal laws to be of the nature of an Act of Parliament carelessly drawn, through which, by sharp-witted dexterity, coaches-and-four, as the saying goes, might be driven with impunity; came, we say, to be all this as the result of the teaching offered her by all around her in that great fifteenth century, of the spiritual guidance afforded her by those "ages of faith," and living heart-felt religion, and of the social ideas produced by the medieval relationship between the governors of mankind and their subjects.

Catherine continued to reside with the Murate nuns till the time of her death, in the year 1509, the forty-seventh of her age. She made a long and accurately drawn will, characterised by the justice and good sense with which she partitioned what belonged to her among the children of her three marriages; and was buried in the chapel of the convent; where her monument was still visible, although, strangely enough, its inscribed altar tombstone had at some period been turned face downwards, and where her remains reposed till they were (literally) dispersed a few years ago, on occasion of the old Murate convent being converted into a state prison.