At Augsburg,—and at WÜrzburg.

Augsburg, in the middle of the sixteenth century, had a fair claim to be entitled the Athens of the North. Among the cities of Germany it held a place similar to that occupied by Florence among those of Italy. And in both instances the primacy attained in arts and letters had depended on the fostering hand of successful commerce. That which the Medici had done for Florence, the Fugger family had done for Augsburg. The latter name has not at the present day the worldwide celebrity of the former. But then the Fuggers never exalted themselves to sovereignty on the ruin of their country; and flunkeydom has accordingly less assiduously embalmed their memory.

In the sixteenth century, however, their name was celebrated throughout Europe. Rabelais, writing from Rome to the Bishop of Maillezais in the year 1536, tells him that Philip Strozzi was esteemed the richest merchant in Christendom, with the sole exception of the Fuggers. Charles V. was their guest when at Augsburg; and an anecdote has been preserved of the fire in the imperial bedchamber under their roof having been made of a faggot of cinnamon, lighted with an I. O. U. of his majesty's to a large amount. It is true that the cinnamon may probably have been the more costly part of the sacrifice. Towards the end of the century Dominick Custos, an engraver of Antwerp, published a magnificent folio volume of a hundred and twenty–seven portraits, "Fuggerorum et Fuggerarum;" a somewhat cacophonous title, the strange sound of which has amusingly caused the book to be classed in more than one catalogue by un–historical bibliopoles among botanical works, under the impression that the ladies and gentlemen of the great merchant family were specimens of ferns.

When Olympia was at Augsburg, the heads of the family were the brothers Anthony and Raymond Fugger. A contemporary[94] writer has left us a curious account of the magnificence of their residence. He speaks of the abundance of pictures by the great Italian masters; of a large collection of portraits by Lucas Cranach; and especially of a most extensive museum of antiquities,—mosaics and statues in bronze and marble;—"all the divinities of Olympus, Jove with his thunderbolt, Neptune with his trident, Pallas with her Ægis." He mentions also a collection of medals occupying one room. The number of fragments of antique sculpture was wonderful. "We stood long in admiration before a head of the God of Sleep, crowned with poppies, and having the eyes closed. We saw several heads of Bacchus of colossal size, ornamented with ivy and vine–leaves. We were told that these remains of antiquity had been brought together from nearly every part of the world, but chiefly from Greece and Sicily. For Raymond, though but very slightly tinctured with learning himself—litterarum minime expers,—has so great a love for antiquity, that he grudges no expense for the pleasure of possessing these things; which indicates the truly noble and generous character of the man." He possessed also, despite his want of erudition, a library, of which the librarian, Jerome Wolff, declared in Greek verse, that it contained more books than there were stars in the heavens;[95] and he commissioned men who had the learning he wanted, to compile a collection of ancient inscriptions, which was published in folio at Ingoldstadt in 1534.[96]

It was to this munificent Raymond Fugger that Olympia had charged her friend John Sinapi to present a volume of her verses. As they were of course written in Greek or Latin, we must suppose, unless, indeed, the "minime expers" of Rhenatus is to be very widely understood, that the Augsburg MÆcenas could not read a word of them. Moreover, the wealthy and worthy merchant would seem to have been far from coming up to Olympia's standard in matters of religion. For the Fuggers were among those to whom Charles committed the government of Augsburg, when he turned out the old municipality; and all those so appointed, we are told, swore to observe the papistical Interim. We are driven, therefore, to the conclusion, that the religious world of the fifteenth century was so totally dissimilar from that of the nineteenth, as not to be extreme to mark the backslidings of men whose position, like that of Raymond Fugger, put "so large a power for good" into their hands.

We have no means of knowing whether the presentation of the poems to the great merchant was followed by any special result. But that the reception of the wanderers at Augsburg generally was flattering and satisfactory is recorded in a letter[97] from Olympia to Gregorio Giraldi, the gouty old friend, now drawing very near his end, who used to write verses to her in her girlhood. "We are still," she writes, "with our excellent friend; and I am delighted with my stay here. I pass my entire day in literary pursuits—me cum Musis delecto;—and have no business to draw me away from them. I also apply myself to the study of Holy Writ, which is so productive of peace and contentment. Nothing can be more favourable than the reception my husband has met with in this town. Our affairs are looking well, and, by God's help, will have a happy issue."

A few months before the date of this letter, while Olympia was pining on account of her husband's absence, she spoke in her dialogue with Lavinia della Rovere, of her regrets at having "intoxicated herself with the poison" of the classical writers. And now we find her again "delighting herself with the Muses." The compatibility of classical studies with a strictly Christian tone and habit of thought and feeling, which many religionists have decided in the negative, seems to have been mooted by Olympia, and by the advice of her learned and devout friends affirmed. For in a letter to Curione written about this time, she says that "since pious men approve it," she will continue her classical studies and writings.

But it would seem, that these "delights with the Muses," however classical, were henceforward for the most part religious in their nature. For almost all that remains of her composition subsequent to this period, with the exception of her letters, are translations from the psalms into Greek verse. These her husband used to set to music, and the singing of them would often form the evening amusement of their little circle. One of these translations had been sent to Curione, who was probably the chief of those pious friends who encouraged her to continue to write. "I have read," he says, "the psalm that you have translated into Greek, and I am delighted with it. I wish that you would treat more of them in the same way. We should then have no cause to envy the Greeks their Pindar. Persevere, then, my Olympia, in the path to which the Muse invites you. Place upon your brow the sacred laurel; for you have drawn your poetic inspiration from a purer fount than Sappho of old."

The stay of GrÜnthler, his wife, and their young brother under the roof of George Hermann, was prolonged for several months. The tranquil security of her life there, after all she had gone through during the last two or three years, was extremely soothing and delightful to Olympia. The hoped–for professor's chair was not yet found; but she seems to have been in good hope that it soon would be. In the meantime GrÜnthler had an opportunity of repaying in some measure the generous hospitality he and his family were receiving. For George Hermann fell seriously ill; and his guest had the pleasure of restoring him to health before he left him.

It was while still at Augsburg that Olympia wrote[98] to her friend Lavinia urging her to exert herself in every possible way to save the life of Fannio.

"A thousand thanks," she writes, "for your promise to do all you can in favour of Fannio. Nothing could give me greater pleasure; and I have great hope of what may be done on the occasion of your leaving Ferrara; for I am well aware how powerful is your interest at Rome. Besides, I cannot doubt that the Duke would be willing to gratify you when you are taking leave of him. Entreat him then, if he wishes to do you a favour, to release an innocent man, whose long captivity would have more than expiated his faults, had he been really criminal. That will be the moment to speak, without losing sight of the dictates of prudence, what your heart shall suggest to you.

"'Haud ignara mali miseris succurrere disces.'

Above all, I exhort you not to allow the malevolent representations of designing men to influence your mind in matters pertaining to the pure religion of Christ."

Olympia little understood yet the nature of the power against which she hoped to prevail. How grimly Caraffa would have smiled at the notion, that his prey could be thus taken from him. A Duke of Ferrara release a convicted and relapsed heretic to pleasure a silly woman, herself more than suspected of sympathy with his errors! Or that that contemptible voluptuary at Rome, simoniacal usurper of Peter's keys, dare to absolve him whom the Holy Inquisition has condemned! Not while John Peter Caraffa keeps watch, as Inquisitor, over the interests of the Church! As to the Duke, it would have been saying that his soul was his own, contrary to all contract, and saying so in a most dangerous and blasphemous manner. And had even indolent, easy–going Julius III. dreamed of dipping the tips of his jewelled fingers in such troubled waters, he would have found, as many a Pope has found, that powerful as the Servus Servorum might be while working in accordance with the powers of the machinery of which he is a part, he was powerless to stop the operation of it. Lavinia della Rovere, her sister–in–law Maddalena Orsini, and the other generous and gentle souls, who dreamed of attempting the absurd quixotism of speaking mercy to a Church in danger, succeeded only in leaving to other and happier times a record, still by no means unneeded, of womanly protest against priestly intolerance.

In the same letter to Curione, in which Olympia speaks of her intention not to give up her classical studies, she says that she and her husband would willingly settle at BÂle if there were any prospect of GrÜnthler's being able to obtain either medical practice or teaching there. For still the future was all uncertain before them; and yet the time was come when they determined on no longer trespassing on the hospitality of their generous host. John Sinapi, now established as physician to the prince–bishop at WÜrzburg, had pressed them to stay awhile with him; and they accordingly removed from Augsburg to that city. Sinapi had been the master of both husband and wife at Ferrara. His wife, Francesca Bucyronia, had been Olympia's friend at court there; and the reunion of the party, under circumstances so widely different from all that surrounded them in Italy, must have brought back many a recollection of those old times and brilliant scenes, which every one of the party was so thankful to have exchanged for their present pale, and sometimes difficult, northern life.

Sinapi and Francesca had several children. A niece, Bridget, also lived with them; and in one of Olympia's letters of this time we find a Leonora mentioned as one of the inmates of the family, and we get a fleeting glimpse of the party gathered round the good physician's hearth in the evening, with books and learned talk, while Leonora taught the girls embroidery,—"docens ambas acu pingere."

The tenour of this quiet life was one day broken by an accident that happened to the child Emilio. He fell from a high window to the ground on some rough stones, and it was thought that he must be killed. He was little hurt, however; and, as Olympia writes, "lives and is well, to the great surprise of every one." But the incident is only worth mentioning for the sake of Olympia's method of "improving" it. This happened, she writes,[99] "that we might know by experience that God hath given order to his angels to bear up his sons in their hands." And again; "Thus God, who can raise up even the dead from the grave, is wont to defend and preserve his own in safety."

It is painful to find one, for whose character we cannot but have the warmest esteem, and with the feelings of whose heart we can always sympathise, forming for herself such theories of the Divine government of the world. How is it possible, we ask ourselves, that such a one can have supposed the occurrences of life to be arranged by a constant succession of miracles, so that there is no reason to anticipate that similar causes will produce similar effects? How conceivable, that an Olympia Morata should pronounce all those who fall, and do break their bones, to be none of God's own? Her feelings towards her fellow–creatures were assuredly not logically consistent with so monstrous a theory of the Invisible. No! but the creed was held as a creed of the brain; and not arrived at even by the brain by any process of reasoning, but only by intellectual adoption of the theories of others;—probably, even, to a great extent, of their phraseology only. For the most entire sincerity is perfectly compatible with the use of certain phrases imitatively adopted, and believed to be proper to be said in certain conjunctures, the sense, bearing, and consequences of which have never been realised or examined by those who use them.

Olympia and her husband remained with John Sinapi, at WÜrzburg, till the latter part of October, 1551. It was shortly after the accident of Emilio, that GrÜnthler received an invitation from the senate of his native town of Schweinfurth to settle himself as physician to the garrison of Spanish soldiers quartered there by the Emperor, when he himself went into winter quarters at Innspruck. Though this was not exactly the kind of employment that he would have wished, yet the proposal was acceptable as coming from his own fellow–citizens; and he was not in a position to allow any opportunity of employment in his profession to escape him. He accepted it. And Olympia, for the first time, was about to find herself in a woman's best and happiest position, a home of her own.

It was but an obscure one to which she was going. But her name was already sufficiently well known in Germany to ensure her carrying with her thither the interest of a large circle of the learned world, especially of such as professed her own faith. There is an amusing indication both of the celebrity her name had acquired, and of the uncertainty, that a small distance could in those days throw over facts of the simplest kind, in a letter written about this time by Curione to one Xysto Betuleio, which has been already cited. Curione's correspondent had written to him to ask if the name Olympia Morata was in reality that of a living woman; because it was very generally asserted to be a fictitious nom–de–plume,—"De Olympia nostra scribis te certiorem fieri cupere, quod plerique fictum nomen arbitrantur." And thereupon he proceeds to give that sketch of her career, which has been before quoted.

In the brilliant springtide of Olympia's career, when she stood before us in Grecian virgin guise, fooled to the top of her bent by the applause and flattery of an entire city, with syntax–laws for a rule of life, a knowledge of words in the place of all experience of things, classicality for a summum bonum, and Æsthetic appreciation of the beautiful as sole means of satisfying every need and capacity for worship, the question was suggested, shaping itself into the words so familiar, and, howsoever diversely understood, most important to every man,—How is this Olympia to be saved? And the question has been dwelt on, because the peculiar interest attaching to her story is to be found in the particularly well–marked development of the saving process, whether as studied by those who, like herself, deem it to have been accomplished by her adoption of a special creed, or by those who find it in the working of her awakened moral nature. Both to the religionist and the moralist Olympia is a specially "well–marked specimen;" and both will concur in affirming that, whatever may have been the saving influence, a very noble specimen of womanhood was the result.

Now, to one looking from the moral stand–point, it seems, as has been said in a former chapter, that the question was satisfactorily answered, when the course of our story had shown the heroine under the successive influences of sorrow and adversity, of a true and devoted love, and of the adoption of a persecuted faith, be it a true or false one. And we have now reached the time when this discipline will show its fruit in a "saved" life;—a life fitted to make its close the starting–point of further progress.