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                      A DECADE OF ITALIAN WOMEN.

[Illustration: VITTORIA COLONNA.]

_From an Original Painting in the Colonna Gallery at Rome_




                               A DECADE

                                  OF

                            ITALIAN WOMEN.

                                  BY

                         T. ADOLPHUS TROLLOPE,

           AUTHOR OF "THE GIRLHOOD OF CATHERINE DE' MEDICI."

                            IN TWO VOLUMES.

                                VOL. I.

                                LONDON:
                  CHAPMAN AND HALL, 193, PICCADILLY.
                                 1859.

               [_The right of Translation is reserved._]




                                LONDON:
               RADBURY AND EVANS, PRINTERS, WHITEFRIARS.




PREFACE.


The degree in which any social system has succeeded in ascertaining
woman's proper position, and in putting her into it, will be a very
accurate test of the progress it has made in civilisation. And the
very general and growing conviction, that our own social arrangements,
as they exist at present, have not attained any satisfactory measure
of success in this respect, would seem, therefore, to indicate,
that England in her nineteenth century has not yet reached years of
discretion after all.

But conscious deficiency is with nations at least, if not always with
individuals, the sure precursor of improvement. The path before us
towards the ideal in this matter is a very long one; extends, indeed,
further than eye can see. What path of progress does not? And our
advance upon it will still be a sure concomitant and proof of our
advance in all civilisation. But the question of more immediate moment
is, admitting that we are moving in this respect, are we moving in the
right direction? We have been _moving_ for a long time back. Have we
missed the right road? Have we unfortunately retrograded instead of
progressing?

There are persons who think so. And there are not wanting, in the
great storehouse of history, certain periods, certain individuals,
certain manifestations of social life, to which such persons point as
countenancing the notion, that better things have been, as regards
woman's position and possibilities, than are now. There are, painted
on the slides of Mnemosyne's magic lanthorn, certain brilliant and
captivating figures, which are apt to lead those who are disgusted with
the smoke and reek of the Phœnix-burning going on around them, to
suppose that the social conditions which produced such, must have been
less far from the true path than our present selves. Nay, more. There
have been constellations of such stars, quite sufficiently numerous to
justify the conclusion, that the circumstances of the time at which
they appeared were in their nature calculated to produce them.

Of such times, the most striking in this respect, as in so many others,
is that fascinating dawn time of modern life, that ever wonderful
"rénaissance" season, when a fresh sap seemed to rush through the
tissues of the European social systems, as they passed from their long
winter into spring. And in the old motherland of European civilisation,
where the new life was first and most vehemently felt,—in Italy,
the most remarkable constellations of these attractive figures were
produced.

The women of Italy, at that period remarkable in different walks, and
rich in various high gifts, form in truth a very notable phenomenon;
and one sufficiently prevalent to justify the belief, that the general
circumstances of that society favoured the production of such. But
the question remains, whether these brilliant types of womanhood,
attractive as they are as subjects of study, curiously illustrative as
they are of the social history of the times in which they lived, are
on the whole such as should lead us to conclude, that the true path of
progress would be found to lead towards social conditions that should
be likely to reproduce them?

Supposing it to be asserted, that they were not so necessarily
connected in the relationship of cause and effect with the whole social
condition of the times in which they lived, as that any attempt to
resuscitate such types need involve a reproduction of their social
environment; even then the question would remain, whether, if it were
really possible to take them as single figures out of the landscape
in which they properly stand, they would be such as we should find it
desirable to adopt as models of womanhood? Are these such as are wanted
to be put in the van of our march—in the first ranks of nineteenth
century civilisation? Not whether they are good to put in niches to be
admired and cited for this or that virtue or capacity; nor even whether
they might be deemed desirable captains in a woman's march towards
higher destinies and better conditioned civilisation, if, indeed, such
a progress were in any sane manner conceivable; but whether such women
would work harmoniously and efficiently with all the other forces
at our command for the advancement of a civilisation, of which the
absolute _sine quâ non_ must be the increased solidarity, co-operation,
and mutual influence of both the sexes?

It may be guessed, perhaps, from the tone of the above sentences,
that the writer is not one of those who think that the past can in
this matter be made useful to us, as affording ready-made models for
imitation. But he has no intention of dogmatising, or even indulging
in speculations on "the woman's question." On the contrary, in
endeavouring to set before the reader his little cabinet of types of
womanhood, he has abstained from all attempt at pointing any moral
of the sort. The wish to do so is too dangerously apt to lead one to
assimilate one's portrait less carefully to the original than to a
pattern figure conceived for the purpose of illustrating a theory.
Whatever conclusions on the subject of woman's destiny, proper
position, and means of development are to be drawn, therefore, from the
consideration of the very varied and certainly remarkable types set
before him, the reader must draw for himself. It has been the writer's
object to show his portraits, more or less fully delineated according
to their interest, and in some measure according to the abundance or
the reverse of available material, in their proper setting of social
environment. They have been selected, not so much with any intention of
bringing together the best, greatest, or most admirable, nor even the
most remarkable women Italy has produced, as with a view of securing
the greatest amount of variety, in point of social position and
character. Each figure of the small gallery will, it is hoped, be found
to illustrate a distinct phase of Italian social life and civilisation.

The canonised Saint, that most extraordinary product of the "ages of
faith," highly interesting as a social, and perhaps more so still as
a psychological phenomenon;—the feudal Châtelaine, one of the most
remarkable results of the feudal system, and affording a suggestive
study of woman in man's place;—the high-born and highly-educated
Princess of a somewhat less rude day, whose inmost spiritual nature was
so profoundly and injuriously modified by her social position;—the
brilliant literary denizen of "La Bohème;"—the equally brilliant
but large-hearted and high-minded daughter of the people, whose
literary intimacies were made compatible with the strictest feminine
propriety, and whom no princely connections, lay and ecclesiastical,
prevented from daring to think and to speak her thought, and to meet
with brave heart the consequences of so doing;—the popular actress,
again a daughter of the people, and again in that, as is said,
perilous walk in life, a model of correct conduct in the midst of
loose-lived princesses;—the nobly-born adventuress, every step in
whose extraordinary _excelsior_ progress was an advance in degradation
and infamy, and whose history, in showing us court life behind the
scenes, brings us among the worst company of any that the reader's
varied journey will call upon him to fall in with;—the equally
nobly-born, and almost equally worthless woman, who shows us that
wonderful and instructive phenomenon, the Queen of a papal court;—the
humbly born artist, admirable for her successful combination in perfect
compatibility of all the duties of the home and the studio;—and
lastly, the poor representative of the effeteness of that social system
which had produced the foregoing types, the net result, as may be said,
of the national passage through the various phases illustrated by
them:—all these are curiously distinct manifestations of womanhood,
and if any measure of success has been attained in the endeavour to
represent them duly surrounded by the social environment which produced
them, while they helped to fashion it, some contribution will have been
made to a right understanding of woman's nature, and of the true road
towards her more completely satisfactory social development.




CONTENTS.




  ST. CATHERINE OF SIENA.
  Born, 1347. Died, 1380.

  CHAPTER I.
                                                                PAGE

  Her Birth-place                                                  1

  CHAPTER II.

  The Saint's Biographer                                           9

  CHAPTER III.

  The Facts of the Case                                           18

  CHAPTER IV.

  The Church View of the Case                                     32

  CHAPTER V.

  St. Catherine as an Author                                      51

  CHAPTER VI.

  Catherine's Letter to the King of France                        67

  CHAPTER VII.

  Dupe or Impostor?                                               77

  CHAPTER VIII.

  The Secret of her Influence                                     83


  CATERINA SFORZA.
  Born, 1462. Died, 1509.

  CHAPTER I.

                                                                PAGE


  Of Catherine's father, the Duke, and of his magnificent
  journey to Florence                                             90


  CHAPTER II.

  A Franciscan Pope and a Franciscan Cardinal.—A notable
  illustration of the proverb concerning mendicants'
  rides.—The Nemesis of Despotism                               102


  CHAPTER III.

  Catherine's marriage.—"Petit Courrier des dames"
  for 1476.—Four years of prosperity.—Life in Rome
  in the fifteenth century.—A hunting party in the
  Campagna.—Guilty or not guilty.—Catherine and her
  husband leave Rome                                             121


  CHAPTER IV.

  From Rome to Forlì with bag and baggage.—First
  presentation of a new lord and lady to their
  lieges.—Venice again shows a velvet paw to a second
  Riario.—Saffron-hill in brocade and ermine.—Sad conduct
  on the part of our lieges.—Life in Rome again.—"Orso!
  Orso!"—"Colonna! Colonna!"—A Pope's hate, and a Pope's
  Vengeance.—Sixtus finally loses the game                      140


  CHAPTER V.

  The Family is founded.—But finds it very difficult
  to stand on its Foundations.—Life in Rome during an
  Interregnum.—Magnificent Prince short of Cash.—Our
  Heroine's Claims to that Title.—A Night Ride to Forlì,
  and its results.—An Accident to which splendid Princes
  are liable                                                     166


  CHAPTER VI.

  Catherine in trouble.—"Libertà e Chiesà!" in Forlì.—The
  Cardinal Savelli.—The Countess and her Castellano
  perform a comedy before the lieges.—A veteran
  revolutionist.—No help coming from Rome.—Cardinal
  Legate in an awkward position.—All over with the
  Orsi.—Their last night in Forlì.—Catherine herself
  again.—Retribution.—An octogenarian conspirator's last
  day                                                            182


  CHAPTER VII.

  An unprotected Princess.—Match-making, and its
  penalties.—A ladies' man for a Castellano.—A woman's
  weakness, and a woman's political economy.—Wanted, by
  the city of Forlì, a Jew; any Israelite, possessing
  sufficient capital, will find this, &c. &c.—The new Pope,
  Alexander VI.—The value of a Jubilee.—Troublous times in
  Forlì.—Alliances made, and broken.—Catherine once more a
  widow                                                          204


  CHAPTER VIII.

  Guilty or not guilty again.—Mediæval Clanship.—A woman's
  vengeance.—Funeral honours.—Royal-mindedness.—Its
  costliness; and its mode of raising the wind.—Taxes spent
  in alms to ruined tax-payers.—Threatening times.—Giovanni
  de' Medici.—Catherine once more wife, mother, and widow       223


  CHAPTER IX.

  A nation of good haters.—Madama's soldier trade.—A
  new Pope has to found a new family.—Catherine's bounty
  to recruits.—A shrewd dealer meets his match.—Signs
  of hard times.—How to manage a free council.—Forlì
  ungrateful.—Catherine at Bay.—"A Borgia! A Borgia!"—A
  new year's eve party in 1500.—The lioness in the
  toils.—Catherine led captive to Rome                          238


  CHAPTER X.

  Catherine arrives in Rome; is accused of attempting to
  poison the Pope; is imprisoned in St. Angelo; is liberated;
  and goes to Florence.—Her cloister life with the Murate
  nuns.—Her collection of wonderful secrets.—Making
  allowances.—Catherine's death                                 256


  VITTORIA COLONNA.
  Born, 1490. Died, 1547.

  CHAPTER I.

                                                                PAGE


  Changes in the Condition of Italy.—Dark
  Days.—Circumstances which led to the Invasion of
  the French.—State of things in Naples.—Fall of
  the Arragonese Dynasty.—Birth of Vittoria.—The
  Colonna.—Marino.—Vittoria's Betrothal.—The Duchessa di
  Francavilla.—Literary Culture at Naples.—Education of
  Vittoria in Ischia                                             271


  CHAPTER II.

  Vittoria's Personal Appearance.—First Love.—A Noble
  Soldier of Fortune.—Italian Wars of the Fifteenth and
  Sixteenth Centuries.—The Colonna Fortunes.—Death
  of Ferdinand II.—The Neapolitans carry Coals to
  Newcastle.—Events in Ischia.—Ferdinand of Spain in
  Naples.—Life in Naples in the Sixteenth Century.—Marriage
  of Pescara with Vittoria.—Marriage presents                   287


  CHAPTER III.

  Vittoria's Married Life.—Pescara goes where glory waits
  him.—The Rout of Ravenna.—Pescara in prison turns
  penman.—His "Dialogo di amore."—Vittoria's poetical
  epistle to her Husband.—Vittoria and the Marchese del
  Vasto.—Three cart-loads of ladies, and three mule-loads of
  sweatmeats.—Character of Pescara.—His Cruelty.—Anecdote
  in proof of it                                                 301


  CHAPTER IV.

  Society in Ischia.—Bernardo Tasso's sonnet thereon.—How
  a wedding was celebrated at Naples in 1517.—A Sixteenth
  Century trousseau.—Sack of Genoa.—The Battle of
  Pavia.—Italian conspiracy against Charles V.—Character of
  Pescara.—Honour in 1525.—Pescara's treason.—Vittoria's
  sentiments on the occasion.—Pescara's infamy.—Patriotism
  unknown in Italy in the sixteenth century.—No such
  sentiment to be found in the writings of Vittoria.—Evil
  influence of her husband's character on her mind.—Death of
  Pescara                                                        312


  CHAPTER V.

  Vittoria, a widow, with the Nuns of San Silvestro.—Returns
  to Ischia.—Her Poetry divisible into two
  classes.—Specimens of her Sonnets.—They rapidly attain
  celebrity throughout Italy.—Vittoria's sentiments towards
  her husband.—Her unblemished character.—Platonic
  love.—The love poetry of the Sixteenth Century                328


  CHAPTER VI.

  Vittoria in Rome in 1530.—Antiquarian rambles.—Pyramus
  and Thisbe medal.—Contemporary commentary on Vittoria's
  poems.—Paul III.—Rome again in 1536.—Visit to Lucca.—To
  Ferrara.—Protestant tendencies.—Invitation from
  Giberto.—Return to Rome                                       345


  CHAPTER VII.

  Oratory of Divine Love.—Italian reformers.—Their
  tenets.—Consequence of the doctrine of justification
  by faith.—Fear of schism in Italy.—Orthodoxy of
  Vittoria questioned.—Proofs of her Protestantism from
  her writings.—Calvinism of her sonnets.—Remarkable
  passage against auricular confession.—Controversial
  and religious sonnets.—Absence from the sonnets of
  moral topics.—Specimen of her poetical power.—Romanist
  ideas.—Absence from the sonnets of all patriotic feeling      356


  CHAPTER VIII.

  Return to Rome.—Her great reputation.—Friendship with
  Michael Angelo.—Medal of this period.—Removal to
  Orvieto.—Visit from Luca Contile.—Her determination
  not to quit the Church.—Francesco d'Olanda.—His
  record of conversations with Vittoria.—Vittoria at
  Viterbo.—Influence of Cardinal Pole on her mind.—Last
  return to Rome.—Her death                                     377


  APPENDIX:

  The Original of the Letter of St. Catherine of Siena to the
  King of France                                                 393


  NOTES                                                          398


  INDEX                                                          410




A DECADE OF ITALIAN WOMEN.

SAINT CATHERINE OF SIENA.
(1347–1380.)




CHAPTER I.

HER BIRTH-PLACE.


There are not many chapters of history more extraordinary and more
perplexing than that which relates the story of St. Catherine. Very
perplexing it will be found by any, who may think it worth while to
examine the record;—which is indeed well worthy of examination, not
only as illustrative of one of the most obscure phases of human nature,
but also as involving some highly interesting questions respecting the
value of historic evidence.

Of such examination it has received but little. Among Catholics the
"legend" of the Saint is to this day extensively used for such purposes
as similar legends were intended to serve. Orthodox teachers have
used the story unsparingly as stimulus, example, and testimony. But
orthodox historians have passed over it with the lightest tread and
most hurried step; while such Protestant readers as may have chanced
to stray into the dim, despised wilderness of Romish hagiography, have
in all probability very quickly tossed the volume aside, compendiously
classing its subject in their minds with other dark-aged lumber of
martyrs, who walked with their heads in their hands, and saints who
personally maltreated the enemy of mankind.

Yet a very little consideration of the story will show, that it
cannot with fairness be thus summarily disposed of. After seeing
large solid masses of monastic romance and pious falsehood evaporate
from the crucible of our criticism, there will be still found a very
considerable residuum of strangely irreducible fact of the most
puzzling description.

It is to be borne in mind, moreover, that the phenomena to be examined
are not the product of the dark night-time of history, so favourable
to the generation of saints and saintly wonders. Cock-crow was
near at hand when Catherine walked the earth. The grandsons of her
contemporaries had the printing-press among them; and the story of
her life was printed at Florence in the ninety-seventh year after
her death. While the illiterate Sienese dyer's daughter was working
miracles, moral and physical, Petrarch and Boccaccio were still
writing, and Dante had recently written. Giotto had painted the panels
we still gaze on, and Niccolò of Pisa carved the stones we yet handle.
Chroniclers and historians abounded; and the scene of the strange
things recorded by them was at that time one of the centres of human
civilisation and progress. We are there in no misty debateable land
of myth and legendary song; but walk among familiar facts of solid
well-authenticated history, studied for its lessons by statesmen, and
accepted as the basis of theories by political philosophers. And yet,
in the midst of these indubitable facts, mixed with them, acting on
them, undeniably influencing them, we come upon the records of a story
wild as any tale of Denis or Dunstan.

[Sidenote: SIENA.]

When once launched on the strange narrative, as it has come down to
us, it is somewhat difficult to remember steadily how near we are
all along to the solid shore of indisputable fact. Holding fast to
this, therefore, as long as may be, we will approach the subject by
endeavouring to obtain some idea of the material aspect of the "locus
in quo."

No one perhaps of the more important cities of Italy retains the
visible impress of its old republican medieval life to so remarkable
a degree as Siena. Less favoured by fortune than her old enemy, and
present ruler, Florence, she has been less benefited or injured by
the activity and changes of modern days. And the city retains the
fossilised form and shape which belonged to it at the time when its
own stormy old life was finally crushed out of it. The once turbulent,
energetic, and brave old city, sits there still, on the cold bleak
top of a long spent volcano—emblem meet enough of her own nature and
fortunes—grim, silent, stern, in death. The dark massy stone fronts,
grand and gloomy, of old houses, built to defy all the vicissitudes
of civic broils, and partisan town-fighting, still frown over narrow
streets, no longer animated by the turbulent tide of life which filled
them during the centuries of the city's independence.

The strange old "piazza," once the pulsating heart, whence the hot tide
of the old civic life flowed through all the body of the little state,
still occupies its singular position in the hollow of what was in
some remote ante-Etruscan time, the crater of a volcano. Tall houses
of five or six stories stand in a semicircle around this peculiar
shell-shaped cup, while the chord of the arc they form, is furnished
by the picturesque "palazzo pubblico," with its tall slender tower of
dark brick, and quaintly painted walls. Like the lava tide, which at
some distant period of the world's history flowed hence down the scored
sides of the mountain, the little less boiling tide of republican war
and republican commerce, which Siena was wont to pour out from the same
fount, is now extinct and spent. But such lazy, stagnant, unwholesome
life as despotism and priestcraft have left to Siena, is still most
alive in and around the old piazza.

Up the sides of this doubly extinguished crater, and down the
exterior flanks of the mountain, run steep, narrow, tortuous and
gloomy, the flagstone-paved streets of the old city. So steep are
they in some parts, that stairs have to take the place of the sloping
flagstones, which are often laid at such an angle of declivity as
to render wheel-traffic impossible. On the highest pinnacle of the
rim, overlooking the hollow of the once crater, stands the Cathedral,
on such uneven ground, that its east end is supported by a lofty
baptistery, built underneath it on the rapid descent. In the most
ornamented style of Italian-gothic architecture, and picturesque,
though quaint, in its parti- livery of horizontal black and
white stripes in alternate courses of marble, the old church still
contains a wonderful quantity of medieval Sienese art in many kinds.
Carving in wood and in stone, painting in fresco and in oil, inlaid
work and mosaic, richly  windows and gilded cornices, adorn
walls, floor, and roof, in every part. The whole history of art
from the early days, when Sienese artists first timidly essayed to
imitate barbaric Byzantine models, to its perfect consummation in
those glorious ages which immediately preceded the downfall of Italian
liberty, is set forth in this fine old church, as in a rich and
overflowing museum. Some half dozen popes sleep beneath sculptured tons
of monumental marble in different parts of it,—among them two of the
very old Sienese family of Picolomini.

[Sidenote: FONTEBRANDA.]

On another peak, or spur, of the deeply seamed mountain, stands
the huge unornamented brick church and monastery of St. Dominic,
so situated, that between it and the Cathedral is a steep gorge,
the almost precipitous sides of which the old city has covered with
stair-like streets. Deep at the bottom of this gorge, near a gate in
the city wall, which runs indefatigably up and down the mountain ridges
and ravines in its circuit around the spacious city, now a world too
wide for its shrunken population, is that old fountain, which one
passing word of the great poet has made for ever celebrated. Here is
still that Fontebranda,[1] which, with all its wealth of sparkling
water, the thirst-tormented coiner in the thirtieth canto of the
Inferno, less longs for than he does to see in torment with him those
who had tempted him to the deed he was expiating.

The Dantescan pilgrim, who, among his first objects at Siena, runs
to visit this precious fountain, finds, not without a feeling of
disappointment, a square mass of heavy ugly brickwork, supported on
some three or four unornamented arches on each of its four sides.
Within is a large tank, also of brick, the sides of which rise about
two feet above the level of the soil; and this is perennially filled
by a cool and pure spring from the sandstone side of the mountain,
which there rises in a broken cliff immediately behind the ungraceful,
though classic building. Descending the steep street in search of this
poet-hallowed spot, with the Cathedral behind him, and St. Dominic's
church high on its peak above and in front of him, the visitor finds
that he is passing through a part of the city inhabited by the poorer
classes of its people. And near the bottom of the hill, and around the
fountain itself, it is manifest to more senses than one, that a colony
of tanners and dyers is still established on the same site which their
forefathers occupied, when Giacomo Ben