Her donation of Tuscany, the Marches, Parma, Modena, Reggio, and various other cities and lands, to the Holy See, is a fact that stands alone in history, and is simply the most momentous act of practical devotion which the Chair of Peter ever received. This generous and unreserved gift, first made to Gregory VII. in 1077, and confirmed in 1102 to Pascal II., is the unparalleled expression of the whole nature of woman, in its thoroughness, its spirit of martyrdom, its enthusiastic and unerring instincts, towards the good and the true. Henry IV. of Germany, having incurred excommunication, was reconciled to the Pope through the good offices of the great countess, and met him for that purpose at the fortress of Canossa, then a fief of the Countess of Tuscany. Ventura says of her that she was as learned as she was pious, and as solicitous for the propagation of science and the interests of literature as for the reformation of clerical abuses and the consolidation of the church. She multiplied schools and colleges over her dominions, but the crowning work of her great reign was the foundation of the famous University of Bologna, confessedly the best seat of learning in Europe for many centuries. Mathilda gathered together all the enlightened and talented masters of her age in this time-honored and world-renowned university, and in honor of her munificence it has remained a custom to this day to allow women to graduate there, to take a doctorate, and “profess” in public any of the learned faculties. Women, we are told by Ventura, the earnest panegyrist of the sex, have taken advantage of this custom at all times, and even up to the present day, when (in the beginning of this century, we believe) the celebrated female professor, Tambroni, taught Latin and Greek within the Bolognese university. Cardinal Mezzofanti, the great linguist, was at one time her pupil.
We have been led so far in the search, however superficial, for instances of the greatness of woman, as recognized, protected, and rewarded by the church, that we have reached a limit to our explorations in this article without mentioning any of the great women of the middle ages save those of royal descent. There are many who claim our attention, and whose influence over public affairs and the minds of men was not less than that exercised by the royal matrons and maidens we have cursorily named. Some were destined to mingle in political struggles, others owe their fame to their learning, one of them to actual feats of arms, and all to the spirit of chivalry which rendered a woman inviolable and sacred wherever honor was known and laws revered. But this spirit itself, what was it save the offspring of that higher spirit of reverential homage ever inculcated by the church towards that sex which gave a mother to our God?
Before taking up the subject of the status of woman within the church after the sixteenth century, we may, perhaps, return for a brief space to the Catherines of Sienna, the Joans of Arc, and the Genevieves of ecclesiastical history.
BRYANT’S TRANSLATION OF THE ILIAD. [86]
The appearance at this time and in this country of a first-rate translation of the Iliad is an event of much significance. Through the exaggerated praise which London critics bestow on our dialect poetry, there runs a quiet assumption that our culture is narrow and unsound. Our oaten pipe is well enough, but our lyre disjointed and unstrung. To such insinuations Mr. Bryant’s work is a complete and final rejoinder. We shall find it easy to show that he has made the best translation of Homer in our language, and with one exception the very best extant. In the face of such an achievement, it will henceforth be preposterous to sneer at American scholarship.
Winged words the Homeric poems may well be called, which, fledged in the dawn of time, have not yet faltered in their flight across the centuries. Their superiority as works of art is not more unquestionable than is their procreative power. They have ever been—to use Milton’s words—as lively and as vigorously productive as those fabulous dragon’s teeth. The history of Greek letters, we might almost say, is the genesis of the Iliad and the Odyssey. Upon them Aristotle based his canons; from them the Attic tragedy drew her inspiration and her argument. To the same source the most delightful of Greek historians referred his style and his method, while the choir of lyric and erotic poets confessed their debt to him who “gave them birth, but higher sang.” The direct action of the Homeric poems upon the masters of the Latin literature has been compared to that of the sunlight, but their indirect influence through the medium of Athenian models was pervasive and quickening as the solar heat. The development of poetry among Western nations can be accurately measured by the thoroughness with which they have assimilated Homer. The Orlando and the Lusiad repeat the story of Ulysses. Even minor excellences of the Iliad are reproduced in the Jerusalem Delivered. Milton and Goethe have drawn copiously from the same stores. Nor is there a single modern poet of the first rank, with the exception of Shakespeare, whose obligations to Homer are not manifold and obvious.
It is true that the eighteenth century, which sought to shatter so many idols, chose to depreciate these poems. Embellished by Pope, dissected by Fontanelle, and patronized by Mme. Dacier, they fell, it must be confessed, upon evil times. It is a suggestive commentary upon the self-styled siècle du goût that the autocrat of letters could pronounce the Iliad “une poème qu’on admire, et qu’on ne lit pas.”[87] To the author of the Henriade, Homer was only a beau parleur. It is now many years since the stigma went home to roost. Perrault and La Motte Houdart, who knew him only in the rags and gyves of an obscure translation, point with a satisfied smirk to the “coarseness” and “barbarism” of Homer. One is reminded of those Philistine lords who flung their jests at Samson Agonistes while he leaned against the pillars in Gaza.
Of living English poets, the strongest and sweetest acknowledge gratefully in Homer a source of their melody and strength. The fragment of an epic which is perhaps the Laureate’s best work was presented by the author as “faint Homeric echoes.” From Homer, quite as truly as from Chaucer, has the Earthly Paradise caught its genial sunshine and bracing air. The world, we presume, would have lost nothing had Mr. Swinburne read Euripides less and the Iliad more. A timely reaction has set in against the morbid self-consciousness and the hankering after glitter and novelty which are sure precursors of decay. Of that reaction, Matthew Arnold, who in childhood was taught to reverence Homer, has been the prophet and protagonist. With the same movement the temper and discipline of Mr. Bryant’s mind place him in active sympathy. We do not doubt that it was the aim of his Iliad to elevate and purify the taste of his countrymen. The success which his translation has already achieved augurs for it not a little influence upon the national literature.