THE LEARNED WOMEN OF THE RENAISSANCE
· Glorification of Women in the Fifteenth and Sixteenth Centuries ·
· Their New Cult of Knowledge ·
· Bitisia Gozzadina ·
· Ideals of the Early Poets ·
· Dante · Petrarch · Boccaccio · Medieval Saints ·
· Catherine of Siena · Women in Universities ·
· Precocious Girls · Olympia Morata ·
· Women Poets · Veronica Gambara ·
· Vittoria Colonna ·
· High Moral Tone of Literary Women ·
· An Exception · Tullia d’Aragona ·
There was a curious book written early in the sixteenth century by a savant of Cologne, on “The Superiority of Women over Men.” It was one out of many that were devoted to the glorification of the long-secluded sex, but its title serves to indicate the nature of the epidemic of eulogies that raged more or less for nearly two hundred years after Boccaccio set the fashion. This he did by singing the praises of the great heroines he brought out from the shadows of the past to adorn the pages of his “Illustrious Women.” It seemed as if men had been struck with a sudden remorse for the unkind things they had been saying about women since the dawn of the world, and were trying to make amends by putting them, theoretically at least, on a pinnacle of glory. Some celebrated their beauty, others their virtues, and still others their talents, while a few did not stop short of awarding them all the graces and perfections. Paul de Ribera published “The Immortal Triumphs and Heroic Enterprises of Eight Hundred and Forty-five Women,” which was comprehensive if not convincing. Hilarion of Coste devoted two large volumes to eulogies of women of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, finding nearly two hundred to put into his Temple of Fame. What their special claims to glory may have been I do not know beyond the fact that they were pious and devout Catholics. One man who had contended for the equality of the sexes tried afterward to refute himself; but his recantation was half-hearted, as he confessed his private conviction that logic was against him.
Cardinal Pompeo Colonna takes it upon himself to demolish the old creed that a woman is an inferior creature, convenient in the house, but unfit for any large responsibility. He proves her capacity for public life by many examples, treats lightly the plea of the moral dangers that would beset her, and shows what men become when left to their own devices. After giving exalted praise to the masterful, accomplished women of his time, he cites his beautiful cousin, the “divine Vittoria,” as a living model of talent and strength, as well as of virtue, magnanimity, and devotion. More pointed and concise, though less definite, was Monti, a famous Roman prelate, who said: “If men complain of seeing themselves equaled or surpassed by women, so much the worse for them. It is because they are not worthy of their wives.” The climax of praise was reached in a work written to prove that women are “nobler, braver, more tactful, more learned, more virtuous, and more economical than men.” Such a pitch of adulation could hardly be maintained without a protest, and there were a few men ungallant enough to say that the best proof of their own sovereignty was the effort needed to combat it.
It is pleasant to record that the most ardent champions of feminine ability were men of more than ordinary caliber. As men rarely exaggerate the talents of women, though they sometimes make goddesses of them, we may safely conclude that their pictures were not overdrawn on that side. Truth, however, compels me to say that some of the eulogists were accomplished courtiers with special appreciation of queens and princesses who might make or mar their fortunes; also that this complaisance was by no means universal. Whether the satirists, novelists, and minor poets found the wicked more effective, from a dramatic point of view, than the good, as many of their successors do to-day, or the sensual age was more interested in pretty sinners than in saints, it is certain that these writers paid scant honor to women, and delighted to put them in the worst light, though satire was in the main directed against the ignorant and the frivolous, not against the intelligent or the strong. Even Montaigne refused to look upon a woman otherwise than as a useful but inferior animal, though he inconsistently chose one of these “inferior animals” as his confidante and literary executor, because she was the “only person he knew in whose literary judgment he could confide.” The scholarly Erasmus said she was “a foolish, silly creature, no doubt, but amusing and agreeable.” He was happy in the belief that “the great end of her existence is to please men”; but he pays his own sex a poorer compliment than we should like to when he adds that “she could not do this without folly.”
So much for the man’s point of view. But the women were not silent, and a few glorified themselves as naïvely as some of their modern sisters have done. If we ever had any doubts as to our own modesty they ought to convince us of it. Lucrezia Marinelli, a clever Venetian and a poet, defined herself quite clearly in a work entitled “The Nobleness and Excellence of Women and the Faults and Imperfections of Men.” As a comparison this seems rather unfair, but considering the fact that men had for ages given themselves all the noble qualities and women all the weak ones, they could not take serious exception to it. Indeed, they evidently found it refreshing. It furnished them with a new sensation, and was quite harmless on the practical side, as they still held the reins of power. Marguerite of France, the brilliant and lettered wife of Henry IV, tried to prove that women are very superior to men, but, unfortunately, in her category of superiorities morals had no place. Mlle. de Gournay was more generous, as well as more just, and declared herself content with simple equality, though one cannot help wondering how she settled that matter with her friend Montaigne. But Mlle. Schurmann of Cologne thought that even this was going too far. It seems as if she might fairly have claimed to be the peer of the average man, since she spoke nine languages and was more or less noted as painter, musician, sculptor, engraver, philosopher, mathematician, and theologian. Just how much solid learning was implied in this formidable list of accomplishments we cannot judge, but it is clear that there has been a time before to-day when women aimed to know everything, though there was a safeguard against shattered nerves in the fact that there were not so many books to read nor so many brain-splitting problems to solve. It is fair, however, to suppose that this learned lady did not waste much time on clothes or five-o’clock teas. Louise Labé, the poet and savante of Lyons, takes a more modern tone. In claiming intellectual equality for women, she begs them not to permit themselves to be despoiled of the “honest liberty so painfully won—the liberty of knowing, thinking, working, shining.” In spite of her courageous words, however, this paragon of so many talents and virtues, the glory of her sex and the pride of her city, asserts herself in a half-deprecating way, as if she were asking pardon for presuming to publish her little verses, and shelters herself behind the admiring friends who are willing to “take half the shame.” But she was a Frenchwoman, and her day was not yet. Women had so long hidden their light, if they had any, that it blinked perceptibly when exposed to the winds of heaven or the more chilly breezes of masculine criticism.
It is needless to extend the list of writers on this subject, but it is a long and remarkable one. The books would make rather interesting reading to-day, whatever we might think of their quality, as problems familiar to us were pretty thoroughly if not always ably discussed, and apparently with great good nature. A distinguished Frenchman, well known in the salons of the eighteenth century, unearthed a great many curious facts and opinions hidden away in these books, which are now mostly buried too deep in the dust of old libraries for resurrection, and his own wise and quite modern conclusions entitled him to more consideration than he received from the women of his time. But this rapid glimpse will suffice, perhaps, to show the spirit in which latter-day questions were treated four or five centuries ago; also to throw a strong light on the position of women during the period, without very precise limits, known as the Renaissance—a period of special interest to us, as it marks the dawn of a new era of feminine intelligence.
We do not know how it happened that Bitisia Gozzadina stepped out of the traditional seclusion of her sex as early as the benighted thirteenth century, to be made doctor of civil and canon law in the University of Bologna at the age of twenty-seven. She had already pronounced a funeral oration in Latin and otherwise distinguished herself several years before. It is no longer the fashion to give Latin orations outside of the universities, but we know how women fared a few decades ago, when they tried to speak publicly in their own language. It was perfectly understood that women of such oratorical proclivities forfeited all right to social consideration. They were practically ostracized. Happily, now they are treated about as well as they were six hundred years ago, when people crowded the university halls and even the public squares to listen to this remarkable woman. We do not hear that she was called any disagreeable names, not even a bas-bleu, though there is a vague tradition that she had peculiar notions about dress. It is said that she had rare beauty, but her charm and esprit made people forget it.
There is nothing in the medieval ideals of womanhood to suggest such a phenomenon, still less its cordial acceptance. Not even in the early poets is there a trace of the type of woman which played so distinguished a part in the golden age of the Renaissance. Beatrice was little more than a beautiful abstraction, the spiritual ideal of a man who dwelt mainly upon other-worldly matters. Petrarch found it interesting to kneel before Madonna Laura in the clouds, and sing hymns in her praise; but she was only an elusive figure on which to drape poetic fancies. In these days, when it is quite the fashion to pull the halos from the saints and put them on the sinners,—when even the wicked Lucrezia Borgia has become a respectable wife and a particularly good mother, who expiated the sins of her youth, if she had any, by her pious devotion, her kindness to the poor, and her patronage of art and literature,—it is not surprising to hear that Laura was a common-place matron, “fair, fat, and forty,” who would have found it difficult to live up to the ideals of her adorer,—even if she had known what they were,—and prudently kept out of so rarefied an air. This blending of chivalry and mysticism made fine poetry but not very substantial women.
Boccaccio paid a generous tribute to the heroic qualities of the women of the past, but he evidently preferred them at a distance or in books. Personally he seems to have had no more taste for savantes than for saints. He belonged to the new age, which glorified the joys of life and liked to sing love-songs—not of the choicest—to frail beauties. Fiammetta was, no doubt, a clever woman and a beautiful one, but she was no divine Egeria to inspire him with high thoughts. If he did brilliant things at her bidding, the trail of the serpent was over them all. Perhaps he aimed to suit the taste of the day, which was neither delicate nor moral; or he may have lived in bad company from which he took his models. We should be sorry to take as representative the heroines of the Decameron, who must have brought blushes, which the twilight could not hide, to the faces of the little coterie of friends that sat on the grass telling or listening to these tales during the long summer evenings at Florence, when men and women were dying all about them. But they give us one phase of the life of the time, and reflect the taste of an audience composed mainly of men who laughed at morals and deified art, regardless of its aim or its subject. The age was not strait-laced, but Italian ladies were not permitted to read Boccaccio. One story, however, they might read. When the poet wished to portray a good woman, for a change, he made a fine little picture of Griselda, the patient, who was duly thankful for every indignity her amiable lord chose to offer, mainly because she thought her sufferings made him happy. When these incredible cruelties culminated in sending her away loaded with unmerited disgrace, she still thanked him like a good wife who was grateful for being trampled upon, even when her innocent heart was breaking. It was a fine object-lesson for the proper education of girls, and this marvel of self-sacrifice was held up from one end of Europe to the other as a model of womanhood. Poets painted her over and over again, with race variations; moralists praised her; and men quoted her to their wives. Some instinct of justice prompted Boccaccio to reward her in the end for all this useless misery, which was simply a test of her servile quality, by putting her again, after a series of years, into the good graces of her inhuman husband; but it is needless to say that such rewards of virtue, if they could be considered rewards, are not in the way of a world in which these lessons are read.
All this shows how far the heroines of the early poets, whether good or bad, differed from the strong, able, and accomplished women who were recognized as the glories of the Renaissance. It suggests also the lurid or colorless background against which the latter were outlined. The cynical bachelor in Molière’s comedy summed up the whole duty of woman according to the gospel of the middle ages—and, it might be added, of many other ages—when he said that his wife must know only how to “pray to God, love, sew, and spin.” The last three qualifications were necessary for his own comfort, and he had the penetration to divine that she might have ample need of the first on her own account. Then it gave him an agreeable sense of security to have a certain proprietorship in some one mildly affiliated with the next world. “In thy orisons be all my sins remembered,” says Hamlet to the fair Ophelia. A man might be the worst of sinners himself, but he liked a seasoning of piety in his wife, provided it was not too aggressive and left him free to be wicked if he chose. It was like having an altar in the home, and gave it a desirable flavor of saintliness.
Beyond the fireside and the docile domestic slave, however, there was another medieval ideal of womanhood, a religieuse who prayed and sang hymns in the cloister. Aside from this, it was her special mission to help the poor, care for the sick, console the sorrowful, and advance the interests of the church. But these women of the cloister, who had the altar without the home, found a possible outlet for their imprisoned intellects, if they had sufficient natural force. The Roman Church, which had always frowned upon any exercise of a woman’s mental gifts in a worldly sphere, was glad to avail itself of them in its own interest, and there were a few women more or less distinguished both as leaders of religious organizations and counselors of ecclesiastics, who kept alive the prestige of their sex through centuries of darkness. It was one of the strange paradoxes of that age, as of many others, that a woman is an irrational being, too fragile to bear distinction of any sort, except when her talents make for the glory of men or the church. Activity in public affairs, so long as they were religious ones, was not considered unwomanly, notwithstanding the conservative opinions of St. Paul. No one took it amiss when Catherine of Siena used her wisdom and eloquence in persuading the Pope to return from Avignon to Rome after men’s counsels had failed. No one found fault because her emotional exaltation was tempered by a vigorous intellect. She was a thinker and seer, and wrote ably on political as well as ecclesiastical questions. Her style was simple and classic; indeed, she was altogether phenomenal, and had strange influence over the popes and kings to whom she did not hesitate to tell unpleasant truths. It was quite fitting that she should devote these gifts to the interests of her church and incidentally of her country. Men honored her for it, and canonized her.
This was a hundred and fifty years or so before the beautiful Isabella of Cordova, who was more learned and less mystical, gave up mundane pleasures for the classics and a degree in theology; and Isabella Rosera devoted herself to the conversion of the Jews, dazzled multitudes with her eloquence in the cathedral at Barcelona, and expounded the subtleties of Duns Scotus before prelates and cardinals at Rome. But in that interval women had made great strides in intelligence, and the talents that shone so conspicuously in great moral and religious movements had become a powerful factor in other directions. Bitisia Gozzadina had multitudes of successors to her honors.
That women emerged so suddenly from a state of ignorance, superstition, and mystic dreams to a position of intellectual distinction and virtual though not legal equality with men, is one of the marvels of the Renaissance. The change was as rapid and complete as that which came over the women of the nineteenth century. It is scarcely less remarkable, in the light of our own experience, that their new-born passion for learning met with so little opposition. They did not find it necessary to fight their own battles. There was no question of asserting their right to the higher education, as we have been forced to do. This was taken as a matter of course and without controversy. They were educated on equal lines with men, and by the same masters; nor were the most distinguished teachers of the age afraid of being enervated by this contact with the feminine mind, as certain modern professors claim to be. Doubtless they would have smiled at such a reflection on their own mental vigor.
One is constantly surprised by the extraordinary precocity of the young girls. Cecilia, the daughter of an early Marquis of Mantua, was trained with her brothers by the most famous master in Italy, and wrote Greek with singular purity at ten. She refused a brilliant but distasteful marriage, and devoted her life to literature. The little Battista, whose talents descended to her illustrious granddaughter, Vittoria Colonna, was chosen, at an age when girls are usually playing with dolls or learning their letters, to greet Pius II in a Latin address. Anna d’Este, who became the wife of the Duke of Guise, and in later life was so prominent a patroness of letters in France, translated Italian into Latin with ease at ten, and was otherwise a prodigy. One might imagine these children to have been insufferable little prigs, but such does not seem to have been the case. So far as we can learn, they did not lose their simplicity, and grew up to be capable, many-sided, and charming women, quite free from pedantry or affectation of any sort. Without attaching too much importance to these childish efforts, which were by no means uncommon, they are of value mainly in showing the care given to the serious education of girls.
It is certain that the place held by educated women was a new and exceptional one. They filled chairs of philosophy and law, discoursed in Latin before bishops and cardinals, spoke half a dozen or more languages, understood the mysteries of statecraft better than any of us do to-day, and were consulted on public affairs by the greatest sovereigns of their age. Nor do we hear that they were unsexed or out of their sphere. On the contrary, men recognized their talents and gave them cordial appreciation. While the shafts of satire fell thick and fast upon the follies peculiar to ignorance and weakness, they were rarely aimed at those who, even to-day, would be more or less stigmatized as strong-minded. Possibly a clue to this may be found in the fact that in training the intellect they did not lose their distinctive virtues and graces; they simply added the cult of knowledge, which heightened all other charms. We find constant reference to their attractions of person and character, as well as of mind. Novella d’Andrea took her father’s place in his absence and lectured on jurisprudence at the University of Bologna; but, either from modesty or from the fear of distracting the too susceptible students, she hid her lovely face behind a curtain. At a later time Elena Cornaro—who was not only versed in mathematics, astronomy, philosophy, theology, and six languages, but sang her own verses, gave Latin eulogies, and lectured on various sciences—was crowned doctor of philosophy at Padua. She took her honors modestly, and is said to have been as pious as she was learned.
In these days of specialties one looks with distrust on so formidable an array of accomplishments. We are apt to think of such women as either hopelessly superficial, or pedants without any fine human quality. A few salient points from the life of one of the most distinguished may serve to correct this impression.
Olympia Morata deserves, for her own sake, more than a passing mention. She was by no means a simple receptacle of heterogeneous knowledge, but a woman as noted for feminine virtues and strength of character as for the brilliancy of her intellect. Her father was a distinguished professor in the University of Ferrara, and his gifted daughter was fed from infancy on the classics. At six she was taught by a learned canon who advised her parents to put a pen in her hand instead of a needle. At twelve she was well versed in Greek, Latin, and the sciences of the day, petted and flattered by scholars old and young, compared to the Muses and to all the feminine stars of antiquity, and in the way of being altogether spoiled. In the midst of this chorus of praise she donned the habit of a professor at sixteen, wrote dialogues in the language of Vergil and Plato, a Greek essay on the Stoics, and many poems. She also lectured without notes at the academy, before the court and the university dons, on such themes as the paradoxes of Cicero, speaking in Latin, and improvising at pleasure with perfect ease. The great Roman orator was her model of style, and in a preface to one of her lectures she says: “I come to my task as an unskilled artist who can make nothing of a coarse-grained marble. But if you offer a block of Parian to his chisel, he will no longer deem his work useless. The beauty of the material will give value to his production. Perhaps it will be so with mine. There are some tunes so full of melody that they retain their sweetness even when played upon a poor instrument. Such are the words of my author. In passing through my lips they will lose nothing of their grace and majesty.”
This brilliant and classical maiden passed eight or ten years of her youth at the court of Ferrara in intimate companionship with Anna d’Este and her mother, the “wise, witty, and virtuous” Duchess Renée. These were the days when the latter had Bernardo Tasso, a fashionable poet who was eclipsed by his greater son, for her private secretary, and delighted to fill her apartments with men of learning. The little Anna, too, a child of ten, had been brought up on the classics, and the two girls, who studied Greek together, liked to talk of Plato, Apollo, and the Muses much better than to gossip about dress and society, or the gallants of the court. Even their diversions had a pagan flavor. When Paul III came on a visit, the royal children played a comedy of Terence to entertain his eighteen cardinals and forty bishops, with all the magnates and great ladies that usually grace such festivities. It is quite probable that the clever Olympia had much to do in directing it.
The literary academy of the duchess had a singular fascination for the gifted young girl, who was one of its brightest ornaments. “Her enthusiasm over antiquity became an idolatry, and badly prepared her intellect for the doctrines of grace,” wrote one of her friends. “She loved better the wisdom of Homer and Plato than the foolishness of St. Paul.” She says of herself that she was full of the vanities of her sex, though it is difficult to conceive of this worshiper of poets and philosophers as very frivolous. That she had many attractions is certain, as she won all hearts. “Thy face is not only beautiful and thy grace charming,” said one of the great scholars of the time, “but thou hast been elevated to the court by thy virtues.... Happy the princess who has such a companion! Happy the parents of such a child, who pronounce thy beautiful name within their doors! Blessed the husband who shall win thy hand!”
But this sunny life could not go on forever. The “Tenth Muse” was called home to care for her father in his last illness, and proved as capable in the qualities of a nurse as in those of a muse. At his death the little family was left to her care. To make the prospect darker, her friend Anna d’Este had just married and gone off to her brilliant but not altogether smooth career in France, and the duchess gave her a chilling reception that boded no good; indeed, night had overtaken her, and she found herself cruelly dismissed in her hour of sorrow and trouble.
Other subjects had been discussed in this literary circle besides Greek poetry and Ariosto and the courtly Bembo and the rising stars of the day. Calvin had been there in disguise, and they had talked of free will, predestination, and like heresies, much to the discomfiture of the orthodox duke, whose interests did not lie in that direction. The young savante had listened to these things, and her eager mind had pondered on them. Perhaps, too, she was one of the group that discussed high and grave themes when Vittoria Colonna was there. At all events, the duchess had fallen into disgrace for her Protestant leanings, and could do no more for her favorite, who was branded with a suspicion of the same heresy. Indeed, she was herself confined for a time to one wing of the palace and forbidden to see her children lest she should contaminate them with her own liberal views. The only powerful friend left to the desolate girl in her adversity was Lavinia della Rovere of the ducal family of Urbino, who had shared her tastes, sympathized with her views in happier times, and now proved her loyalty in various ways that sustained her drooping heart. But there was another, equally helpful if not so powerful, a young German of good family, who had been a medical student in the university, and fallen in love with this paragon of learning and accomplishments. He was true when others fell away, and she gave him the devotion of her life. Both were under the same ban, and soon after their marriage fled to Germany, with the blessing of Lavinia and some valuable letters to her friends.
It was a strange series of misfortunes that pursued this brave couple. After drifting about in the vain search for a foothold in an unsympathetic world, where they could think their own thoughts and satisfy their modest wants, they found at last a home in which they set up their household goods and gathered their few treasures with their much-loved books. But when kings fall out other people suffer. No sooner were they settled than the small city was besieged, and for many months they went through all the horrors of war, famine, pestilence, and, in the end, fire, which destroyed their small possessions, and compelled them to flee for their lives through a hostile country, scantily clothed, unprotected, and penniless.
It is needless to follow their dark wanderings. Suffice it to say that they found refuge at last in Heidelberg, where the husband was given a professorship, and the wife, too, was offered the chair of Greek, which she was never able to take. Her health had succumbed to her many sufferings and hardships, and she died before she was twenty-nine. But her strong soul rose above them all. “I am happy—entirely happy,” she said at the close. “I have never known a spirit so bright and fair, or a disposition so amiable and upright,” wrote her husband, who could not survive her loss and followed her within a few months.
There is more than the many-colored tissue of a life as sad as it was brilliant in these records. They carry within them all the possibilities of a strong and symmetrical womanhood. The rare quality of her scholarship was never questioned. She was the admitted peer of the most learned men of her time, one of whom expects her to “produce something worthy of Sophocles.” But she was clever, winning, and fascinating, as well as serious. Living for years among the gaieties of a court, she went out into a world of storms and gloom without a murmur or a regret, buoyed up by her love and unquestioning faith. She refers more to the joys than to the sorrows of this tempestuous time. Lavinia and the Duchess of Guise, the friends of her youth, were true to the end. In her letters to them and to the learned men who never lost sight of her, we have curious glimpses of the home of a woman who was a disciple of the Muses and a savante of intrinsic quality. While her husband prepares his lectures, she puts the house in order, buys furniture, and manages servants who were about as troublesome as they are to-day. One asks a florin a month, and reserves a part of the time for her own profit. Others insist upon staying out late and running in the streets. Most of them are grossly incompetent. Poor as she is, she is always ready to help those who are in greater need, and is constantly imposed upon. She even borrows money to send to an old servant in distress.
Then there are the evenings when grave professors come in, and they talk in Latin of the affairs of the day, the religious persecutions, or some disputed dogma. Sometimes they sing one of her Greek psalms which her husband has set to music. She has her heart full with the care of her young brother and the little daughter of a friend, who has been sent to her for instruction. But her life is bound up in that of her husband, whom she “cannot live without.” A pure and generous spirit, happy in her sacrifices, and true to every relation, she is a living refutation of the fallacy, too often heard even now, that learning and the gentler qualities of womanhood do not go together.
There were many other women of great distinction in the universities, whose names still live in enduring characters after four or five centuries—professors, and wives of professors who worked side by side with their husbands, and received their due meed of consideration. We have women of fine scholarly attainments to-day, though in the great universities they are mostly relegated to the anterooms and honored with second-class degrees; but fancy the consternation of the students of Harvard or Oxford if asked to listen to the lecture of a woman on law or philosophy, or, indeed, on any subject whatever! Yet there were great men and great scholars in Italy, possibly too great to fear competition. Society was in no sense upset, and, so far as women were con
