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

by Thomas Adolphus Trollope

Italy is still the home of art. The citizens of the transalpine nations still flock to her schools of painting, sculpture, and music. But in all else she must submit to be the scholar of her former pupils. It was not so in the sixteenth century. In those days Germans, Englishmen, and Frenchmen thronged the celebrated universities of Italy for instruction in law, science, medicine, and "the humanities." Italy was still the acknowledged leader of European civilisation, though on the very eve of ceasing to be so. Already the orthodox prowess of Duke Hercules was busy in bringing about the change. Human thought cannot be made to advance straight along a path walled in on either side, however long the vista within its narrow bounds may seem to be. Men whose occupation is thinking, will not carry it on at all, while large fields of thought are prohibited to them on penalties, such as those incurred by Fannio of Faenza. So the students from the northern side of the Alps began to find that Ferrara, celebrated as a seat of learning though it had hitherto been, was no longer a home for them.

The learned Germans, John and Chilian Sinapi, were of this number, as was also a young medical student, their countryman and pupil, who had recently received from the University of Ferrara his degree of Doctor of Medicine, named Andreas Grünthler. He was a native of Schweinfurth, one of the Bavarian free cities on the banks of the Main; and was, we are assured, of "honourable" birth, distinguished talents, and the possessor of a modest patrimony. He had visited most of the cities of Italy, and had acquired a reputation for Greek and Latin scholarship, before he settled at Ferrara, and dedicated himself to the study of medicine under the teaching of the brothers[83] Sinapi.

Having rehearsed these particulars, it is almost superfluous to add, that Grünthler also was an adherent of the new theology. And for him, too, Ferrara was no longer a safe residence. But the Protestant German student had lost his heart to the brilliant Italian Muse;—lost it in the time of her heathendom, and classical Grecian virginship! And though Ferrara was deserted by his friends and countrymen, though it was about to reek with the blood of martyrs, though it was falling more and more from day to day under the blighting ban of the Inquisition, how could poor Grünthler shake the dust off his feet against it, and go forth, leaving behind him her who had become dearer to him than life, country, or friends;—leaving her, too, now no longer in the pride and prosperity of her Muse–ship, but in poverty, sorrow, and disgrace, and in danger from the same causes, that made his own retreat expedient? His friend and master Sinapi had loved, and wooed, and won an Italian wife, who had accompanied him across the mountains to his northern home. Why should not he do likewise?

FIRST LOVE.

But in the glowing Grecian–virgin days of court prosperity, the gulf that seemed to separate the grave German student from the brilliant creature who had witched his heart was too great, and the contrast between her summer–day existence and the pale life which he could offer to her to share, too strongly marked for him to hope that such an offer would be listened to. It appears, indeed, that the offer had been made and rejected; in terms, too, that would effectually have prevented its repetition by a less devoted and self–forgetting lover. That such was the fact may be gathered from a curious passage in the first letter from Olympia to her husband, which, for some incomprehensible motive, her recent French biographer, who gives a translation of the letter in question,[84] has omitted, without giving any typographical or other intimation, that any part of the sense of the original is absent. After pouring forth her love in the usual delightful fashion of honeymoon letters, she adds, "Were my feelings different I would not conceal them from you, as formerly I plainly told you that I had conceived an aversion to you;"—"ut ante aperte me tui odium cepisse significabam."[85] It was necessary, it should seem, that that Undine nature should be first exorcised by the touch of sorrow, before the mightier wizard, love, could be allowed to enter, and complete the task of purifying, humanising, and elevating it.

But the dark days came; sorrow did its appointed ministry; and then love spoke, and was listened to. In that time of tribulation and trial, when all the world had suddenly changed its welcoming smile to a frown, when none of those she had once thought her friends dared to manifest any interest for the disgraced favourite, then Andreas Grünthler dared to woo, and succeeded in inspiring as devoted a love as ever woman's heart felt. Olympia was deeply touched by the noble disinterestedness of her lover's suit. "Neither the resentment of the Duke," she writes, long afterwards, to her earliest friend, Celio Curione, "nor all the miserable circumstances which surrounded me, could induce him to abandon his desire to make me his wife. So great and true a love has never been surpassed."

In Olympia, the unselfish affection of a noble heart evoked, as the sequel of her story shows, a sentiment of equally ennobling devotion. And thus, whatever issue from the predestination maze the puzzled brain may have fancied it had found for itself, the purified heart furnished the completion of the answer to the great salvation question.

The marriage was celebrated in 1550, probably in the last months of that year. A "marriage prayer," in eight Greek verses by Olympia, has been preserved among her works. Her latest biographer[86] says of these lines, that they are a "chant of Pindar repeated by an echo of the Christian revival at Ferrara"—a performance, one would think, nearly equivalent to that of the well–known Irish echo that answered "How do you do?" by "Pretty well, I thank you." The lines in question touch, in very irreproachable Greek, on the analogy between marriage and the mystic union of Christ with the souls of the faithful, and are remarkable only as indicating how complete was the change in the tone of the poet's mind, since she classicalised on death in the manner we have seen in a former chapter.

PARTING WITH HER HUSBAND.