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.

Passing along the same line of streets which she had traversed twenty-three years before as the bride of the then wealthiest and most powerful man in Rome,—as much an object of curiosity now as then to the sight-loving populace, eager to stare at the celebrated prisoner of the now wealthiest and most powerful man in Rome, as then to welcome the great man's bride,—Catherine was led by her captor to the Vatican. Up the well-known stair, and through the familiar chambers, lined, when last she passed across them, with a crowd of bending courtiers, anxious to catch a word or glance from the powerful favourite, who held all Apostolic graces in her hand, she passed on to the presence of the Pontiff.

Alexander received her courteously; assigned an apartment in the Belvidere of the Vatican as her prison, and assured her, that no care should be wanting to make her residence there as little irksome as was consistent with the precautions necessary to secure her safe custody.

No doubt the haughty lady replied to the Sovereign Pontiff, who, when last they had met, had been too happy in being honoured with her friendship, with equal courtesy. But the feelings in the breast of either interlocutor, which were thus decorously veiled, may be easily estimated.

And it was not long before the genuine hatred pierced through the flimsy sham of courtly politeness. In the month of June—that is, four months after her arrival in Rome—an accusation was brought against Catherine of having attempted to destroy the Pope by poison. The story put forward was one strangely characteristic of medieval modes of thinking and acting.[143] It was asserted that when Catherine heard in the spring of 1499, that the Pope had judicially declared her deposed from her sovereignty, she had at once determined on compassing his death. With this view, she had caused certain letters, written by her to the Pontiff, to be placed inside the clothing, on the breast of one dying of the plague, then prevalent in ForlÌ. These letters, having thus been rendered deadly to whoso should touch them, were consigned to a certain confidential servant of the Countess, named Battista, with orders to proceed to Rome, and deliver the papers into no hand save that of Alexander himself. This man, the accusation went on to say, met in Rome one Cristoforo Balatrone, a former servant of the Riarii, then in disgrace with his mistress; and confided to him the real object of the mission intrusted to him, promising him restoration to Catherine's favour, if he would assist in the execution of it.

The accusation, therefore, it will be observed, supposed that Catherine did not merely avail herself of this servant's aid, as a courier to carry the letters and deliver them as ordered, which would have been all that was needful, but unnecessarily, as it would seem, confided to him the fatal secret of her intentions.

Cristoforo, it was said, instead of acquiescing in Battista's proposal, persuaded the latter to reveal the whole to the Pontiff. For that purpose they forthwith proceeded to the Vatican. It was late in the evening, and they were bidden by one Tommaso Carpi, the Pope's chamberlain, and who was also, as it happened, a ForlÌ man, to return on the morrow if they wished an audience. In the mean time Cristoforo, not being able to keep so great a secret for so many hours, related the whole matter to his brother, a private in the Papal guards. The soldier immediately reported the story to his captain; and he, thinking promptitude necessary in such a case, forthwith arrested both Cristoforo and Battista, and made the Pope acquainted with all the circumstances on the following morning. Alexander knowing, it was said (although at that period he could have known nothing of the sort, but could only have hoped it), that Catherine would shortly be brought to Rome, ordered that these men should be kept in secret confinement till the arrival of the Countess.

According to this story, therefore, Alexander was aware of Catherine's murderous intentions at the time of that courteous reception we read of. But then, and for four months afterwards, no such accusation was heard of. At the end of that time Catherine was submitted to the humiliation of being confronted with the two men who testified to this accusation, before Alexander himself. To our ideas it would seem that there must have been various means of proving or disproving the facts in question. The letters might have been produced, and means of ascertaining their contagiousness devised. But juridical and medical science were in far too barbarous a state, and still more fatally the sentiment of fairness and appreciation of the desirableness of truth, far too much deadened for any such mode of proceeding to have been thought of. The witnesses maintained their story by their assertion; Catherine utterly denied that there was any truth in any part of it; and the whole scope of the examination seems to have been to see which party would most obstinately adhere to their assertion.

In an ordinary case the obstinacy would quickly have been more satisfactorily tested by placing the accused on the rack. But even a Pope, and that Pope Alexander VI., would hardly venture to apply the torture to Catherine Sforza. The examination, therefore appears to have resulted in a battledore-and-shuttlecock iteration of "You did," and "I did not," so much to the advantage of the lady, that one[144] of her biographers writes triumphantly of her, that "Although confronted with those who audaciously accused her of having sent them to Rome for that purpose, she, with a virile and intrepid mind, conquered by her obstinate constancy the wicked will of Alexander."

This wicked will was not, however, so completely vanquished as to prevent the accused, though not convicted, Countess from being immediately transferred from the Belvidere to the castle of St. Angelo; to the prisons of which ill-omened fortress she was consigned on the 26th of June.

And all the probabilities of the case seem to indicate that the accusation was trumped up merely to justify this change in the Countess' place of confinement. Catherine, while she lived, was likely to be ever as tormenting a thorn in the side of CÆsare Borgia, as the ousted Ordelaffi pretenders had been in hers, even during the Pontiff's life. And after that, when the new sovereign of Romagna would have to maintain himself in his position unaided by Apostolic influence, she would be a far more dangerous enemy. Yet the rank and connections of Catherine, and her own reputation and character and standing among the princes of Italy were such, that it was requisite to proceed warily in any attempt to get rid of her. A good pretext was necessary to justify even the rigour of imprisoning her in St. Angelo. But that step taken, the rest would not be so difficult. Those once hidden in the dreadful vaults of that huge mass of old Roman masonry, were too completely cut off from all communication with the outer world, for there to be any possibility of marking their passage from the living tomb, to the veritable grave within its walls. Papal dungeons reveal no secrets; and there can be little doubt that, but for the interposition of an arm more powerful than that of the Pontiff, Catherine would never have recrossed that threshold passed by so many unreturning feet.

As to the real guilt of our heroine in this matter, it must be admitted that the presumption in her favour rests more on the improbability of the means said to have been selected by her, and on the incredibility of Alexander's having suppressed all mention of the crime for four months, rather than on any conviction that she would have been incapable of any such atrocity. That Catherine would without hesitation or scruple take human life—nay, many human lives—on the provocation of wrong much lighter than that received by her from the Pontiff, is clear enough; but it is true, that many, most probably, of her contemporaries, who would have never thought twice of sending burgher or peasant to the rack or gallows in a fit of passing passion, would have shrunk from poisoning a Pope. The atrocity of the deed, in the estimation of the contemporary writers, is derived from the sacred character and high rank of its object. And these are considerations which, it may be fairly supposed from what we have seen of Catherine, would be likely to influence her less than they might have done others. It is difficult to believe that Popes were very sacred personages in her eyes. She had been too much behind the scenes to be much under the influence of stage illusion. And, in a word, it will be felt, if the foregoing pages have at all succeeded in picturing this masterful woman to the reader as she appears to the writer, that she was not likely to have turned away from any means that presented themselves to her of removing out of her path any individual, be he who he might, whose existence seemed fatal to the objects for which she had lived and struggled.

Nevertheless, for the reasons above stated, it seems more probable that the accusation in question was trumped up for the sake of furnishing an opportunity to the Pope of taking her life, which was almost as dangerous to his aims, as his life was to her. And had it not been for the powerful interference of the French king, doubtless Catherine would never have come out alive from the dungeons of St. Angelo. One of the historians[145] simply says that she owed her life to the protection of France. Things were not in a position to render it possible that Alexander should act in defiance of the remonstrances of Louis XII.; and Catherine was liberated on the 30th of June, 1501.

Having remained at Rome a few days among her relatives and connections of the house of Riario, she left it for the last time on the 27th of July, and went to Florence. All her children by her three husbands had already found an asylum there; where, in consideration of her third marriage, rights of citizenship had, by an instrument bearing date the 27th of July, 1498, been conferred on all of them.

It is not without a certain feeling of surprise that one remembers that Catherine, after a career so full of incident, comprising three married lives and three widowhoods, was now only thirty-nine years of age. The active and useful portion of many an existence begins at as late a period. But Catherine seems to have felt that she had lived her life, and that the active portion of her career was over. Almost immediately on arriving in Florence, she selected the convent of the Murate as the place of her retirement; and she never afterwards quitted it.

More than one change in the political world occurred during the years she passed there, which seemed calculated to make a place for her once again upon the great scene of Europe, and perhaps to open a path for her return to sovereign place and power. Alexander VI. died in 1503; and, after a few months' occupation of the Papal throne by Pius III., Giuliano della Rovere, first cousin of Girolamo Riario, was elected and became Pope under the name of Julius II. It is true that this warrior Pope did not subsequently appear disposed to lend any helping hand to his Riari cousins for the recovery of their dominions; but the elevation of a cousin to the chair of St. Peter might well call forth from the cloister one who had any wish remaining to play a part in the world.

But Catherine remained quiet in the monotonous repose of her cell in the Via Ghibellina, and did not disturb herself to make even the smallest attempt at obtaining the favour of the new Pontiff. It must be concluded that she had in truth abandoned the world, with an earnestness of purpose more durable than is usually the case with such votaries of seclusion.

Yet few can have ever experienced a more violent change than that suffered by this strong-willed woman in passing from a life so filled with movement, excitement, activity, danger, pains, pleasures, and vicissitudes, to the dead tranquillity of a secure cloister cell. Her priest biographer[146] hints that the macerations, fasts, and austerities practised by her during her residence at the Murate, were such as in all probability to have shortened her life. Having followed with infinite complacency the worldly triumphs and grandeurs of his heroine, as long as devoutly worshipped Mammon had rewards to shower on his votary, the greedy biographer seeks to finish off his picture by adding a little halo of sanctity, and thus claims double honours for his client.

But there is reason to think that these severe penances are wholly the creatures of the writer's priestly invention. The Murate, at the period of Catherine's retirement there, was not the place any penitent would have selected for the leading of an austere life. The convent was inhabited exclusively by noble ladies, and some picture of the life led there by them, has been given by the present writer in speaking of the residence there of another Catherine[147] a few years afterwards. Her childhood was passed within the same cloister-wall that had sheltered the decline of that namesake whose character presented so many striking points of similarity to her own.

It is not likely that the Murate convent was the scene of any severe austerities. But if no spiritual excitement of this sort supplied for Catherine the place of that which she had lost, the hours of the long day, however diversified by matins, lauds, complines, and vesper amusements, must surely have passed heavily.

A very curious MS. volume,[148] copied from one in Catherine's own handwriting, may perhaps indicate the disposal of some of those weary hours. It consists of more than five hundred receipts and experiments in medicine, chemistry, cosmetics, perfumery, alchemy, &c. The practice of forming and preserving such collections seems to have been a common one among the ladies of that time; and various similar volumes may be met with. In a short preface, the copier of Catherine's manuscript, a certain Messer Lucantonio Cuppani, declares that he has tested many of the receipts and found the results perfectly satisfactory, and that he doubts not that the rest are equally trustworthy, seeing that so great a woman had recorded them; wherefore he has made the present copy, lest the knowledge of such wonderful secrets might be lost.

Many of these valuable secrets are of a nature to be only too really valuable in the hands of a sovereign possessing a mint of her own. The papal bull authorising the coining of money at ForlÌ contains a special provision for the goodness of the metal. But the following entries, in the royal-minded Catherine's own hand, suggest strong doubts of the condition having been duly observed:—

"To convert pewter into silver of the finest quality and of standard alloy."

"For giving to bars of brass a fine golden colour."

Several receipts, "For multiplying silver."

More curious and suspicious still, is the possession of a method by which "to give weight to a crown or ducat of gold, without hurting the conscience—senza carico di coscienza"!

A great number refer to subjects, which we must suppose to have been more interesting to Catherine at an earlier period of her life, than when living among "the wall'd-up Nuns." As, for instance, a receipt "to drive away pallor from the face, and give it a colour." For this purpose, roots of myrrh must be shred into good generous wine; then "drink sufficiently of that, and it will give you a carnation of the most beautiful." This is probably one of the receipts tried, and found to answer by Messer Lucantonio.

Then we have a water to preserve the skin against blotches; another to make the teeth white; and a third to make the gums red; and very many others for the beautification of almost every part of the person.

As a specimen of the medical "secrets," of which a great number are treasured up in this curious volume, the following may be cited: For infirm lungs, an ointment is to be made of the blood of a hen, a duck, a pig, a goose, mixed with fresh butter and white wax. And this is to be applied to the chest on a fox's skin. In which the fox-skin holds a place analogous to that of the six pounds of beef in the well-known recipe for making stone soup.

More problematical is a receipt for "a drink to make splintered bones come out of the wound of themselves."

There are many examples of sick-room practice, based on curious combinations of medical with theological treatment; as in the following method for healing sabre wounds: "Take three pieces of an old shirt, steeped in holy water, and bind them on the wound in the form of a cross. The wound must have been carefully washed; and the patient must have no offensive arms about him. He must say three paters and three aves off; if he cannot, some one must say them for him. For the success of this cure, it is necessary that both the wounded man and the operator be in a state of bodily purity."

The following must probably be one of those which good Lucantonio did not make trial of, but took on trust undoubtingly, from his faith in the noble author's "greatness:" "To make a toad cast his stone. Take a toad of those which have a red head. Place him in a cage, and put the cage upon a piece of scarlet cloth; and early in the morning, set it in the ray of the rising sun. The toad will look fixedly at the sun; and you must let him remain there for three hours. And at the end of that time he will cast forth a stone which has three virtues: 1st, It is specific against poison; 2nd, It is good to staunch blood; 3rd, When a horse is in pain, grate some of the stone, and make him drink it."

There are among these valuable secrets, waters "to make iron hard;" "to make it as brittle as glass;" "to dissolve pearls;" "to dissolve all metals;" &c., &c.

There are no less than thirteen different specifics against witchcraft.

Then, if you would know whether a sick person will recover, you must "clean the face of the sick with warm paste, and then give the paste to a dog. If the dog should eat the paste, the sick man will recover; if not, he will die."

Lastly, there are a great number of a kind that, less than any of the others, should have been of any interest to the recluse of the Murate; such as love philtres, specifics against sterility and other kindred inconveniences. Several are for purposes set forth by the noble lady with the utmost cynical directness of terms, but which cannot, under any veil of phrase, be even indicated here. And some instructions there are, which would place any modern English man or woman acting on them, in a very disagreeable position in the dock of the Old Bailey; but which are here, by some theological sharp practice, so cleverly and piously managed, as to attain their object, "senza carico di coscienza."

It would seem, too, that, startling as is the cynicism of some of the language which Messer Lucantonio has not scrupled to copy in his best text-hand, some of the lady's secrets must have been of a yet more abominable description. For passages in cipher frequently occur in a context, which indicates that such has been the reason for so veiling them.

In short, there is to be found in the pages of this strangely curious and tell-tale volume, abundant evidence that the woman who could collect, transcribe, and find an interest in preserving such "secrets," as many of those here, must, according to English nineteenth-century codes and feelings, have been lost to every sense of decency, and deplorably ignorant of the laws, and even of the true nature of morality. But there is no reason to think that Catherine fell in these respects at all lower than the general level of her age and country. There is ample proof, on the contrary, that in these, as in all other matters, Catherine was essentially a woman of her time—in no respect in advance of her time, or behind it; but furnishing a full and fair expression and type of her age and class, as is ever the case with vigorous, bustling, strong, practical natures of her stamp. The men, who are before their time, whose domain is the future, to their utter exclusion from all dominion over the present, are of another sort.

The writers and readers of biographies are, as it seems to the author of the present, too much wont to feel themselves called upon to express, or at least to form a judgment, as to the amount of moral approbation or condemnation to be awarded to the object of their examination. They continually suffer their thoughts to be drawn from the legitimate and useful study of their subject, by a constant consideration of the judgment to be passed on such or such individual soul by the one all-seeing Judge, alone competent to solve any such question. They talk of "making allowance," as the phrase goes; and spend much weighing on the quantum of such allowance admissible. Vain speculation surely, and quite beside the purpose! Not on the ground of "charitable construction" being due, and of "judging not," &c. (for lack of charity towards a fellow-creature, or other evil passion whatever, can hardly find place in our thoughts of one, whose exit from our scene was four centuries ago), but because such questions are insoluble, and if they were soluble, would be unprofitable. For we are not in the position of the bedside physician, whose duty is to alleviate the pangs of the sufferer, and to struggle against the individual malady by individual appliances. We are in the place of the post-mortem anatomist, who, without reference to the sufferings of the deceased, has only to ascertain that a certain amount of mischief to the machine he is examining, resulted from such and such circumstances. And this information is useful only on account of his persuasion that other similar machines will be in like circumstances similarly affected.

We have no need, therefore, of any of that feeling of the moral pulse, which might be useful for the priest or philosopher, who would "minister to a mind diseased." We have only to ascertain that a certain amount of deviation from moral health existed under such and such circumstances. And this, in as much as the laws which govern our ethical constitution are as immutable as those which rule the physical world, is an investigation of infinite and eternal interest. Under the influence of such and such social constitutions, spiritual teachings, and modes of living, this case of moral disease was generated. Here is a practically useful fact. And if it should appear that, under those same influences this malady was epidemic, the interest of the case assumes larger proportions.

Altogether dismissing from our minds, therefore, all considerations of our poor defunct subject's blameableness, and deservings, and all weighing of allowances wholly imponderable in any scales of ours, let us heedfully observe and reflect on the proved facts of the case.

This poor Catherine, born, as our autopsy shows, with so strong, vigorous, and large a nature, came to be savagely reckless of human life, and blood-thirsty in her vengeance; came to be so grossly material in her mode of regarding that part of our nature, which, duly spiritualised, contributes much to our preparation for eternity, but which, unspiritualised, most draws us to the level of the lower animals, as to be capable of writing such things as have been alluded to; came lastly to consider all distinction between right and wrong, and God's eternal laws to be of the nature of an Act of Parliament carelessly drawn, through which, by sharp-witted dexterity, coaches-and-four, as the saying goes, might be driven with impunity; came, we say, to be all this as the result of the teaching offered her by all around her in that great fifteenth century, of the spiritual guidance afforded her by those "ages of faith," and living heart-felt religion, and of the social ideas produced by the medieval relationship between the governors of mankind and their subjects.

Catherine continued to reside with the Murate nuns till the time of her death, in the year 1509, the forty-seventh of her age. She made a long and accurately drawn will, characterised by the justice and good sense with which she partitioned what belonged to her among the children of her three marriages; and was buried in the chapel of the convent; where her monument was still visible, although, strangely enough, its inscribed altar tombstone had at some period been turned face downwards, and where her remains reposed till they were (literally) dispersed a few years ago, on occasion of the old Murate convent being converted into a state prison.