MY LORD CARDINAL'S DAUGHTER.

One remarkable circumstance among those which specially characterised the great intellectual movement in Italy in the sixteenth century, was the large part taken in it by women. The writers of literary history,—a class especially abundant to the south of the Alps,—enumerate a surprisingly long catalogue of ladies more or less celebrated for their works. The list of poetesses registered by Tiraboschi as flourishing during the first half of the sixteenth century, consists of some forty names. And he intimates, that it might have been made much longer, had he thought it worth while to record every name mentioned by the chroniclers of such matters, who preceded him. A great many more are noticed as having been "learned" or "skilled in polite literature."

Such facts constitute a very noteworthy feature of the social aspect of the period in question; and doubtless influenced largely the tone of society and manners, as well as the position and well–being of the sex. But it is very questionable, whether certain theories respecting the comparative value of modern female education, to which all this sixteenth century galaxy has given rise, be not founded on misconception partly of the value of the learning possessed by these ladies, and more still of the circumstances and appearance, under which it presented itself to them.

Intellectual culture in that day meant especially, almost exclusively, what has been since more technically called "learning." The movement, which was then once again stirring up the mind of the educated classes arose mainly, as every body knows, from the discovery and resuscitation of the literature of ancient Greece and Rome. To be, if not a good Grecian, at least a competent Latin scholar, was the first step absolutely necessary in the liberal education of either male or female. Nay, it constituted very frequently not only the first step, but the entire course. In Italy this was in an especial degree the case. Not only the fashion of literature, but the general tone of the educated mind became classical,—and pagan. And the rapidity with which the new modes of thought and fashion of taste spread, and,—speaking of course with reference only to the educated classes,—popularised themselves, is very striking. But they did so, because they were eminently suited to the proclivity of the minds to which they were presented.

For this new learning came to them as an emancipation and a licence. Such learning as had been before in existence was dry, severe, repulsive, associated only with ideas of discipline, sacrifice, and renunciation of the world and its pleasures—the proper business of ascetic priests and hermits. The new studies were the reverse of all this. Elegant, facile, materialistic in all their tendencies and associations, adapting themselves readily to the amusements and passions of the young and gay, they must be compared, if we would parallel them with aught of modern culture, with the lighter of those accomplishments, which are now called ornamental. The total unchristianising of Italian society, which the rage for classical literature very rapidly produced, was such as strikingly to justify the modern[1] crusade against classical culture preached by those who are anxious to preserve such Christianity as that, which then went down before the irruption of literary paganism. The exquisitely organised Æsthetic faculties of the southern mind eagerly imbibed and readily assimilated the habits of thought, generated by a religion, whose only real object of worship was material beauty. The extremely relaxed morality of the time was subjected to a refining influence, but by no means checked by a literature rich in poetical drapery for every form of vice. And the lightest, gayest, freest portion of society, beginning now to be awakened to a relish for the elegances of life by increasing wealth and luxury, found exactly what suited them in the revived literature of the forefathers of their race; a literature which was the product of generations uninfluenced by the wholly irreconcilable ideas of a philosophy and religion imposed on their descendants with very partial success by men of differently constituted races from the east and from the north.

Englishmen are wont to estimate the study of the literature of Greece and Rome in a manner very much at variance with the ideas expressed in the above sentences; and judging it, as of course we do, from its results among ourselves, most justly so. It would take us much too far afield to examine satisfactorily why these results should have been so different in the two cases. The most important portion of the causes of difference would probably be found to consist in the dissimilarity of our northern idiosyncrasies to those of the ancient writers. In Italy, the old tree bore its own natural fruit. With us, it was engrafted on another stock. The southern mind became all classical. The northern mind was modified only by contact with the ancient literature. Perhaps also, some weight may be allowed to the greater difficulty of the study in our case; whence it has arisen, that the thorough and analytical study of the dead languages, has been deemed eminently profitable as intellectual discipline, and as the best foundation of general mental culture.

And these views of classic learning lead us to attribute almost instinctively, as it were, a high degree of solidity, grave scholastic laboriousness, and respectability to the acquirements of those who possess it. A lady well read in Greek and Latin, appears to us to have necessarily reached an intellectual elevation which places her above the shallowness, superficiality, and frivolousness with which modern female education is ordinarily reproached. And we sigh over the supposed inferiority in this respect, of England in the nineteenth century, to the brilliant Italy of the sixteenth. It is true, that in the case of Vittoria Colonna, we have seen a product of the classical training of that day, which—mutatis mutandis—we might be content to reproduce. But the instance is wholly exceptional; and the qualities, moreover, which we admire in Vittoria are to be traced, probably, as far as they are independent on constitutional idiosyncrasy, to those associations with some very remarkable men, which taught her to use her ancient learning as a tool, and not a final object.

The subject of these pages is a less exceptional product of Italian sixteenth century classical studies; but by no means a less curious and suggestive exponent of one phase of the social life and manners of that epoch.

Among the grave and reverend seniors industriously busy at Trent, in the year 1552, at their great work of constructing a dam to stop the course of a perennial river, may be observed one Peter Tagliavia, Archbishop of Palermo, a silver–haired and right reverend old man, very prudent, wise, and sagacious, we are told, in the management of affairs of all[2] sorts. There he is sagaciously dragging forward his bit of stick to contribute to the formation of the great dam, undismayed by the swift running of the stream the while. He is much puzzled by the consideration of the manner and style in which it will be proper for the assembled Fathers of the Church to communicate with heretics. For it is quite clear, on the one hand, that being heretics and excommunicate, and damned already accordingly, all propriety and Church etiquette would require that they should be treated and addressed as such. But, on the other hand, there is reason to believe that their arrogance will reach the height of expecting to be treated like Christians, and that failing such treatment, no reply will be got from them at all, and so all proceedings be stopped in limine.[3] Very perplexing!

The sagacious Archbishop insisted much on this point, dragging up his bit of drift wood to the dam with pertinacious industry. He was made a cardinal in the following year for this and other merits; partly also, because he had royal blood in his veins,—writing himself "Tagliavia d'Aragona." He died five years later, in 1558, still busy in damming that terrible river, which was already changing the face of things around him. Even Rome itself was very unlike what he had remembered it in the good old times, some fifty years ago or thereabouts. Ah! Rome was worth living in and living for in those days! Happy days! when, as His Eminence of Bibbiena used to say, we wanted nothing but a court with ladies. Court, with ladies, quotha!

And with that our Archbishop's musings on the brave old days, when the second Julius was Pope, and no heretical turbulence had yet disturbed the sacerdotal empyrean, could hardly fail to recall a tolerably brilliant galaxy of such ladies, as were especially attracted from all parts of Italy, to a court whose numerous and wealthy courtiers were all professionally and permanently bachelors.

"Poor Giulia!" sighed the Archbishop, "sometimes I wonder what became of her?"

We will not ask for a reference to the accurate historian, who overheard, and has chronicled these words. Roccho Pirro, in his learned and voluminous history of the Sicilian prelates, it is true, omits to mention them. Yet, I think, that if his Eminence, Pietro Tagliavia d'Aragona, had been satisfactorily Boswellised, they must have been recorded. For "poor Giulia" had been the mother[4] of the rising young churchman's daughter some fifty years or so before the time at which we find his Eminence working in his vocation at the great dam. And this daughter was the celebrated Tullia (more or less) d'Aragona.

What did become of poor Giulia? Giulia of Ferrara, the most celebrated beauty of her day, in all Italy: the noted toast of Rome,—the be–rhymed of ecclesiastical sonnetteers—the sighed–for by purple–stockinged swains: Giulia, the Aspasia of many a frocked Pericles, and the mother of a royal–blooded churchman's child! How should respectable Mnemosyne know what becomes of such? Mnemosyne mentions, with a blush, having just seen her once in the pride of her beauty, flashing with cortÈge of horses and attendants, and glitter through the streets of Rome.[5] And that is all. Mnemosyne begs to be asked nothing more about her; and proceeds to relate with much complacency the fortunes and preferments of the excellent Cardinal Archbishop, the rules that he made for his clergy, and the privileges and property he acquired for his Church.

Yet despite all this propriety on the part of respectable Mnemosyne, despite her decent reticences, and official records of Palermo chapterhouse doings, and Trent diplomacy, despite learned Roccho Pirro's folios and immortality in the columns of Ciacconius,[6] the fact is, that if the name of Archbishop Peter Tagliavia d'Aragona is ever now spoken by the lips of living nineteenth–century men, it is owing, incredible as the circumstance would have seemed to his Eminence, solely to his relationship to little nullius filia Tullia. Not that the blood–royal young churchman, candidate as he was there at Rome, under the immediate eye of infallibility for the Church's highest honours—scarlet stockings, palliums, red hats, and what not—seems to have felt any scruples and embarrassment about the matter. At all events he provided abundantly for his "furtively received daughter," as Zilioli phrases it; and took care that she should receive an education, calculated to make the most of the brilliant talents of all sorts, manifested by her from her earliest childhood. "To the utter astonishment of learned men," says Zilioli, "she was heard to carry on a disputation in Latin while yet a child. She wrote also both in Latin and in Italian compositions worthy of any literary man. So that, when grown up, joining as she did, to her knowledge and worth, an exquisite elegance of manner, she acquired the reputation of being the most perfectly accomplished woman of her time. She appeared in public with so much grace, with such beauty, and such affability of manner, that when to all that was added the magnificence and adornment of dress, calculated to set off all the charms of her person[7] to the utmost, it is impossible to imagine anything more charming and exquisitely finished than she was. Her musical touch was so exquisite, and she managed her voice in singing so sweetly, that the first professors were astonished at her performance. She spoke with grace and with rare eloquence, so that whether in light conversation or serious discussion, she delighted and captivated her hearers, like a second Cleopatra; and at the same time, her lovely and ever cheerful features were not wanting in those more potent charms, which admirers of female beauty are wont to look for in a beautiful face."

So richly had nature endowed, and so successfully had art cultivated the child of the rising churchman! Father and daughter were both, during those early years of the sixteenth century, perfecting themselves for their subsequent destinies in the strangely jumbled social world of that wonderful old Rome; he duly progressing towards scarlet stockings and hats; and she to the somewhat similarly coloured promotion, in the enjoyment of which, painfully blushing Mnemosyne next authentically falls in with her.