It may be gratifying to many women to learn that the city and University of Oxford have for patroness, and in mediæval times honored as such, the Saxon maiden, Frideswide, whose church and monastery, after having undergone many vicissitudes, are now known as Christ Church College. Ursula, the virgin martyr of Cologne, is, according to Butler, “patroness of the famous College of Sorbonne, and titular saint of that church. Several religious establishments have been erected, under her name and patronage, for the virtuous education of young ladies. St. Ursula, who was the mistress and guide to heaven to many holy maidens whom she animated to the heroic practice of virtue, is regarded as a model and patroness by those who undertake to train up youth in the sentiments and practice of piety and religion.” The Ursuline institutes for the education of girls are renowned throughout Europe, and even to this day are powerful auxiliaries of the church in the training of youth. Later ages have not been behind in emulating the sixteenth century, which, seven hundred years after the death of Ursula, so nobly commemorated her triumphs in the institution of the Ursuline Order. The Nuns of the Visitation, and still later those of the Sacred Heart, have continued the work of Christian education up to the present day.
The beginning of the twelfth century leads us to Delphina and her husband Elzear, both of Provençal descent, and holding high office at the court of Naples and Sicily. Butler says of them that “no coldness for so much as one moment ever interrupted the harmony or damped the affections of this holy couple. The countess [Delphina] was sensible that the devotions of a married woman ought to be ordered in a different manner from those of a religious person.... The care with which she looked into the economy of her house was a sensible proof of the interior order in which she kept her own soul. Nothing was more admirable than her attention to all her domestics, and her prudent application to the preservation of domestic peace.”[108] These two devoted followers of Christ were always ready to assist and protect the poor; they lived together in perpetual virginity, and gave themselves up entirely to their self-imposed duties of charity. King Robert of Sicily showed his esteem of Elzear by making him his son’s governor. In this office he exercised his influence as irreproachably as he had done in other positions, and the counsels of his wife were ever at hand to assist and cheer him. At his death his widow retired into a monastery.
Another remarkable woman of the middle ages was Catharine of Genoa, who towards the latter end of the fifteenth century became a model for her sex in each of the states of life to which women are called. As a virgin, a wife, and a widow, her life was perfect in its sincere subordination to the will of God. Her marriage was unhappy, and she suffered much from her husband’s brutality, his extravagance and licentiousness. She trusted to a higher power than the civil courts for her vindication and reward, and after her husband’s death gave herself up to active works of mercy. She devoted herself to the care of the sick in the great hospital of Genoa. Of this house, says Butler, she lived many years the mother superior. Her charity could not be confined to the bounds of her own hospital; she extended her care and solicitude to all distressed sick persons over the whole city, and employed proper persons with indefatigable industry to discover, visit, and relieve such objects. Here we see a woman governing and managing a most important national institution, guarding its temporal interests, and watching over its spiritual relations with the utmost care and most delicate discrimination; showing a talent for government which would do good credit to the best men, and preserving withal the greatest humility and modesty both of thought and demeanor. Does the church deny the sex any legitimate opening for its energies? Judge for yourselves, sisters, and answer impartially. Does she not, on the contrary, enable it to do that which, outside her, is next to impossible? Cannot a woman wearing the distinctive badge of one of her orders pass unmolested where no other woman however pure, however earnest, could go without at least risk of insult; and does she not invest with the dignity of an organized association efforts which, made singly, would be barely removed from Quixotism?
We have long delayed speaking of Catharine of Sienna, the St. Teresa of mediæval times, one of the most energetic and wonderful women the world ever produced. Ventura calls her a “missionary and apostle,” and Butler says that her influence was so great that no one ever approached her who went not away better. She was only eighteen, when, after suffering the hardships of her humble home during her childhood, she took the veil in the Third Order of St. Dominic. The most hardened sinners could not withstand the force of her exhortations; thousands flocked from distant places to hear or only see her, and were converted by her words or example. At the earnest suit of the citizens of Pisa, she went to their town, and it is related that the confessions of those she reclaimed from evil courses were so numerous that the priests of the town had much trouble to attend to them. The Florentines and Perugians having, in 1375, leagued together against the Holy See, the Pope, Gregory XI., who at that time was living at Avignon, sent an army into Italy and interdicted the rebellious principalities. The country fell into such intolerable confusion that, to end the chaotic state of things, the Florentines submitted to the Pope. They first sent for St. Catharine, who was met at the city gates by the chiefs of the magistrates. The negotiations were entrusted to her, and the ambassadors who followed her to Avignon received orders to sign and confirm whatever decision she should make. The Pope and cardinals received her at Avignon with great marks of distinction; and the Pontiff said after his conference with her: “I put the affair entirely into your hands, only I recommend you the honor of the church.” The heads of the church were seemingly not afraid to trust the gravest issues in a woman’s hands!
Catharine exerted all her powers of persuasion to induce Gregory XI. to return to Rome, and after her departure wrote urgent letters to him on this subject. Twice, both at Avignon and at Sienna, learned prelates and doctors disputed with her, vainly trying to find her wanting either in learning, in sincerity, or in humility. They were obliged to confess themselves in the wrong. She had many disciples, both men and women, one of whom, Stephen, the son of a senator of Sienna, became her secretary and afterwards a Carthusian monk. The Pope commissioned her to go to Florence, and try once more to pacify the troubles which the insincerity of the government of that state was always rekindling. “She lived some time in that factious place,” says Butler, “... and showed herself always most undaunted, even when swords were drawn against her.” At length she effected the long-wished-for reconciliation, though not under Gregory, but his successor, Urban VI. Some of his discourses have been collected, and compose the treatise On Providence. When Urban VI. had been elected, there followed a great schism, during which anti-popes usurped the chair of Peter, and the whole Italian peninsula was violently distracted. She wrote to several countries and princes in Urban’s favor, and also to the Pope himself, entreating him to restrain his somewhat hasty disposition for the sake of the peace of the church. Many treatises and other writings of hers are still extant. She died at the early age of thirty-three in 1380, in Rome, where Urban had called her to help and advise him. She predicted the schism and other calamities, and whether this gift be ascribed, as reverent believers would wish, to the favor of God who allowed her a prophetic vision of the future, or, as the hard-headed philosophy of modern times would dictate, to the superior discrimination of an extraordinary woman, it is equally an honor to her and a title to especial and enthusiastic remembrance. Another woman concurred in the work of St. Catharine of Sienna, Bridget of Sweden, to whom we have already referred. She too prophesied the coming disasters of the church; she too pressed Gregory XI. to go back to Rome. Catharine was once commanded to harangue the Sacred College, in order to procure peace and unity among them. “This unique example,” says Ventura, “showed the powers of eloquence and the depth of the wisdom of this young Christian heroine.” As a means to reunite Christendom and perhaps avert what she prophetically foresaw, she urged upon Gregory XI. the advisability of inaugurating a new crusade, and, when told in amazement that first the Christians themselves would have to be reconciled, answered with consummate tact and prudence: “Holy Father, the expedition will be so popular that in itself it will unite them. Few men are so depraved as to be unwilling to serve God by means to which they are passionately attached. To separate the burning brands is virtually to quench the fire.”
She traced a plan of pacification as the basis of the policy she wished the Pope to adopt, urging the necessity of peace, and adds, “Let it not be a supine, weakling peace, but, on the contrary, an active, organizing state of things, in which bad and mercenary pastors will be summarily punished and all scandals swept away.” The vigorous foresight of this woman is a greater marvel than her holiness. In her we have a noble example of the heights of intellect to which the grace of God can lead a woman’s nature, and we might almost close our argument with this crowning figure of the moral Joan of Arc of Italy. Yet, lest we be met with the objection that all this greatness is part of a lost system, and that a new dispensation has superseded the church’s championship of the sex, we must, in justice to our own times, recall a few of those facts which since the Renaissance have repeatedly testified to the recognized influence of woman in political and social spheres.
Take, for instance, Isabella of Castile, the protectress and friend of Christopher Columbus, the great queen to whom Spain first owed the proud position of mistress of the seas and queen of the New World.
Columbus had offered his services to several kings and governments; it was a woman who alone treated his projects as sublime realities and had faith in the future he prophesied. When he returned from his first expedition, it was she who received him with greater honors than those rendered to the old Spanish nobility; it was she who upheld him in his new speculations and furnished him the means to prosecute further discoveries. Long before he had gained her favor, it was again a woman whose intelligent appreciation had encouraged him in weary labors, his mother-in-law, Madame Peristiello, herself the widow of a famous navigator, the discoverer of the Islands of Madeira and Porto Santo.
Isabella governed her hereditary dominions of Castile herself, while her husband, Ferdinand of Aragon, administered his own; but not long after their marriage, so persuaded was he of her superior talents for government, that he gave up his kingdom to her care. The final expulsion of the Moors from Catholic Spain was her conception, was carried out by her personal influence, and owed its success mainly to her inspiring presence among the Christian besiegers of Granada. The great Captain Gonsalvus of Cordova, who seconded her most admirably in her gigantic undertaking, was sought out and patronized by her on account of the genius she discovered in him; the great legislator, Cardinal Ximenes, owed his elevation to her, and was forced by her to accept the great dignities which were to enable him to reform and aggrandize the country. Fernando Cortez, the conqueror of Mexico, was likewise her special protégé, and indeed no better proof could be had of the omnipotence of her personal influence in Spain than the fact that after her death these great men were either forgotten or, worse still, persecuted. Without the queen’s knowledge, Ferdinand had listened to the detractors of Columbus, and degraded him from his post of viceroy over the newly discovered lands in America. Isabella indignantly interfered and had him reinstalled in his dignities, but when, shortly after, his protectress died, he was again imprisoned, and fell the victim to Ferdinand’s ingratitude. As to Gonsalvus of Cordova, he then, after the queen’s death, was disgraced, and sent, under a pretext of hypocritical regard, to occupy the post of a viceroy at Naples.
One of Isabella’s biographers, Desormeaux, says that “to the graces of her sex the queen of Castile added the greatness of a hero, the profound and able policy of a minister, the views of a legislator, the brilliant qualities of a conqueror, the honesty of a good citizen, and the uprightness of a perfect magistrate.” Ventura quotes this with these italics. Rohrbacher calls her a true king, drawing attention to her indefatigable zeal in seeing to all affairs herself, and in constantly encouraging her troops by her presence on horseback among them. He repeats her praises in almost the same words as Desormeaux. Innocent VIII. granted her the formal title of “Most Catholic Majesty”; Cardinal Ximenes said that the world would never see again a sovereign so inflexibly just; Peter of Anghiera, the professor of the palace-school for the youth of the nobility, lamented her as “the refuge of the good, the sword raised against the guilty, the mirror of rigid virtue.”