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

by Thomas Adolphus Trollope

Leaving, then, to the pious Dutchmen all the satisfaction derivable from the "orthodox reformed" doctrine, we may reserve to ourselves that of believing, that a pure and noble womanly heart dared to be heretical and human at least thus far.

In another letter, written about this time from Schweinfurth, she noticeably recurs to Luther rather than to Calvin for the means of converting Romanists to Protestantism. It is addressed to Flacius Illyricus, the classical alias of Mathias Flach, who was one of the writers of the centuries of Magdeburg, and author of a vast number of controversial works. Olympia had never seen him; and writes to him merely on the strength of his literary reputation. Having long been anxious, she says, to find the means of providing for her beloved Italy some share of that religious instruction so abundantly possessed by Germany, she had at length determined on applying to him, whose works were well known to her, to undertake the task. "No more would be needed," she writes, "than to translate from German into Italian some one of the writings of Martin Luther, in which the errors of the Roman Church are refuted. I would not have shrunk from the labour myself, were it not, that after two years' residence in this country, I am still ignorant of the language. Perhaps, also, you might write some work in Italian on the subject; which, with your profound knowledge of those Scriptures which I have but dipped into, it would be easy to you to do. It would be the means of enlightening many pious men, now living in darkness. Should your zeal for the truth give you courage to undertake such a work, you may rest assured that it would be received on the other side of the Alps with infinite gratitude. But for the success of such a book, it is essential that it should be written in Italian; for only a few of my compatriots read the learned languages."

The dialogue mentioned in the letter to Lavinia della Rovere, cited a few pages back, is one of the few compositions by Olympia which have been preserved.[107] It is a conversation between Philotima and Theophila, in which the former, who is meant to be Lavinia della Rovere, complains of the sorrows caused her by the continual absence of her husband; "for there is no greater happiness on earth than to live with him we love. But this felicity is refused me; and my sorrow is bitter in proportion to the eagerness with which I had looked forward to happiness."

Thereupon Theophila, who is, of course, Olympia, lectures her friend at considerable length, referring her to "the holy women in the Bible, who sought not in marriage the realisation of their dreams of earthly happiness, but the glory of God;" with several pages more in the usual strain of those writers, whose ethical system is based on the assumption, that every natural affection of the heart is in its nature evil. It is curious to recognise in Olympia's nearly irreproachable sixteenth–century Latin, the common stock phrases, similitudes, and metaphors, still in vogue in the Zion meeting–houses and little Bethel chapels. The well–turned sentences read very hollow; and though it is impossible to doubt Olympia's perfect sincerity, or her desire to school her own feelings into the unnatural quietism which she recommends to her friend, yet we cannot forget the very different tone of real feeling and earnestness manifest in those letters written from Ferrara during her own husband's absence, when she talked of pining to death unless he returned within the month! How came the glory of God and the holy women of the Bible to be forgotten, when there was so much need of the consolation to be derived from the meditation of such themes?

Then there are letters indicating that the Scheinfurth dwelling was beginning to take the semblance of a home, with the means and appliances of a scholarly life about it. Thanks to the intervention of good George Hermann, the box of books has arrived from Italy. The dear old books from the little library at Ferrara, where Olympia had passed among them so many, many solitary hours of ambitious girlhood; where Curione had been invited to enjoy "the blessings of solitude and peaceful study;" and in whose safe shelter many a dangerous talk on grace, free–will, and absolute decrees, had been prolonged far into the night! The dear old books, each individual of them bringing with it the well–remembered physiognomy of a familiar friend! In these days of unlimited literary supply, when books are made to be used like oranges, hastily sucked and chucked away, it is difficult to appreciate fully the reverential love felt by a sixteenth–century scholar for the precious tomes produced with so much labour and difficulty, and acquired at the cost of so much self–denial.

SHE RECEIVES SINAPI'S DAUGHTER.

All the books came safely to their far northern home, except Avicenna, which was no where to be found in the box! And Olympia writes to a German friend at Padua,[108] thanking him for forwarding them, and asking what was due for their carriage. She complains in the same letter, that for fourteen months she has received no tidings from Ferrara, all her letters to her relatives and other friends having remained unanswered. "You have no doubt heard the news of the deliverance and restoration of the Elector of Saxony—(John Frederick, deposed, and long kept prisoner by Charles V.),—it is the great event of the day."

Another indication that the home of Grünthler and Olympia had assumed a certain amount of comfortable stability, as also of the high estimation in which they were held by their friends, may be found in the presence of Theodora, the daughter of John Sinapi, as an inmate of it. The learned physician had begged his former pupil to receive her to be educated together with Olympia's young brother, Emilio. The occupation was one particularly well suited to her. Her whole life, and all her associations, had been scholastic; and if, in the general tenor of her compositions,—putting aside, of course, questions of religious doctrine,—any tone grates possibly a little upon the ear of one who has pictured her to himself as a young, lovely, and fascinating woman, it is an occasional slight echo of pedagogue–ism, which is just the least bit in the world suggestive of Minerva, with a birch in her hand, and a pair of spectacles on her nose. She was herself childless. In one of her letters to Curione, sending him some of her Greek translations from the Psalms, she begs him to "accept these verses, the only offspring to which I have given birth. And for the present I have no hope of any other."

In one of her letters to Sinapi, she reports favourably of Theodora's progress. "Your daughter," she writes, "every day learns something, and is thus, little by little, putting together her riches."

Look, reader; see, if by putting your eye to the magic glass, you cannot discern the little party framed there in that autumn of the year 1552, in a rather large, but very low, wainscoted room of one of those narrow high–peaked houses, with quaint gables, seeming to be almost endowed with physiognomical expression, that wink and nod at each other across the narrow German street. Doctissimus dominus Andreas is abroad among his patients, of whom he has only too many, much disease being generated, as usual, by the cramming of a number of ill–paid, ill–fed, ill–lodged, and ill–lived soldiers into the narrow quarters of a close–walled town. Olympia and her two pupils are sitting near the small first–floor window which projects over the street, that they may have all the little pale light there is, as the three heads bend together over the small, but well–cut, type of that octavo volume of the Iliad which Luke Anthony Giunta printed at Venice in the year 1537, and which poor Peregrino Morato, being an exile in that city at the time, bought with so much difficulty. The precious volume is not endangered by any easy–chair fashion of holding it in the hand, or letting it lie on the lap, but reposes stately on a little wooden desk in front of Olympia's chair, while Theodora and Emilio stand one on each side the youthful matron's knee. The large low chamber, extending over the narrow entrance passage, and two small rooms, one on each side on the ground–floor, occupies the entire extent of the house on the first floor, and has two narrow windows.