Women of the Romance Countries (Illustrated). Effinger John Robert
when compared with that of Dante and Beatrice, it certainly does not lack in grace or interest. While Dante early took an interest in the political affairs which distracted Florence, and was of a stern and somewhat forbidding character, mingling study with action, Petrarch, humanist and scholar as he was, represents also the more polite accomplishments of his time, as he was a most polished courtier and somewhat vain of his fair person. Dante's whole exterior was characteristic of his mind. If accounts be true, his eyes were large and black, his nose was aquiline, his complexion dark, and in all his movements he was slow and deliberate. Petrarch, on the contrary, was more quick and animated; he had bright blue eyes, a fair skin, and a merry laugh; and he himself it is who tells us how cautiously he used to turn the corner of a street lest the wind should disarrange the elaborate curls of his beautiful hair. Though record is made of this side of his character, it must not be assumed that his mind was a frivolous one, for he may be considered-as Professor Robinson says-as "the cosmopolitan representative of the first great forward movement" in Western civilization and deserves to rank-as Carducci claims-with Erasmus and Voltaire, each in his time the intellectual leader of Europe.
With regard to Laura, Petrarch has left the following lines, which were inscribed upon the fly-leaf of a favorite copy of Virgil, wherein it was his habit to keep a record of all those things which most concerned him: "Laura, who was so distinguished by her own virtues and so widely celebrated by my poetry, first appeared before my eyes in my early manhood, in the year of our Lord 1327, upon the sixth day of April, at the first hour, in the Church of Santa Clara at Avignon; in the same city, in the same month of April, on the same sixth day, at the same first hour, in the year 1348, that light was taken from our day, while I, by chance, happened to be at Verona, ignorant, alas! of my fate. The sad news came to me at Parma, in a letter from my friend Ludovico, on the morning of the nineteenth of May of the same year. Her chaste and beautiful form was laid in the Church of the Franciscans, the evening of the day she died. I am persuaded that her soul returned, as Seneca says of Scipio Africanus, to the heaven whence it came. I have experienced a certain satisfaction in writing this bitter record of a cruel event, especially in this place, where I may see it often, for so may I be led to reflect that life can afford me no further joys; and the most serious of my temptations being removed, I may be counselled by the frequent perusal of these lines and by the thought of my departing years, that now the time has come to flee from Babylon. This, with God's help, will be easy when I frankly and manfully consider the needless troubles of the past with its empty hopes and unexpected issue."
The Babylon to which Petrarch refers was Avignon, then the home of the popes, which he declares was a place filled with everything fearful that had ever existed or been conceived by a disordered mind-a veritable hell on earth. But here he had stayed this quarter of a century, a captive to the charms of his fair Laura. According to the generally accepted story, she was of high birth, as her father-Audibert de Noves-was a noble of Avignon, who died in her infancy, leaving her a dowry of one thousand gold crowns, which would amount to almost ten thousand pounds sterling to-day, and which was a splendid marriage portion for that time. In 1325, two years before her meeting with Petrarch, she was married to Hugh de Sade, when she was but eighteen; and while her husband was a man of rank and of an age suited to her own, it does not appear that he was favored in mind or in body, or that there was any special affinity between them. In the marriage contract it was stipulated that her mother and brother were to pay the dower left by the father and also to bestow upon the bride two gowns for state ceremonies, one of them to be green, embroidered with violets, and the other of crimson, with a trimming of feathers. Petrarch frequently alludes to these gowns, and in the portraits of Laura which have been preserved she is attired in either one or the other of them. Her personal beauty has been described in greatest detail by the poet, and it is doubtful if the features of any other woman and her general characteristics of mind and body were ever subjected to such minute analysis as is exemplified in the present instance. Hands and feet, hair, eyes, ears, nose, and throat-all are depicted in most glowing and appreciative fashion; and, from the superlative degree of the adjectives, she must indeed have been fair to look upon and possessed of a great compelling charm. But from her lovely mouth-la bella bocca angelica, as he calls it-there never came a weak or yielding word in answer to his passionate entreaties. For this was no mystical love, no such spiritual affection as was felt by Dante, but the love of an active man of the world whose feelings had been deeply troubled. In spite of his pleadings, she remained unshaken; and although she felt honored by the affection of this man, and was entirely susceptible to the compliment of his poetry, and in spite of the current notions of duty and fidelity, which were far from exacting, she had a better self which triumphed. The profligate Madame du Deffand, who occupies so conspicuous a place in the annals of the French court in the days of its greatest corruption, has little sympathy with a situation of this kind, and is led to exclaim: Le fade personnage que votre Pétrarque! que sa Laure était sotte et précieuse! But Petrarch himself thought otherwise, for he has written thereupon: "A woman taught me the duty of a man! To persuade me to keep the path of virtue, her conduct was at once an example and a reproach."
Without following it in all its various incidents, it will suffice to say that this love of Petrarch for Laura, which lasted for so many years, exerted a powerful influence upon the poet and had much to do in shaping the character which was to win for him in later times the praise which Pierre de Nolhac has bestowed upon him in calling him the first modern man. Petrarch considered unworthy, it is true, the poems and sonnets which he consecrated to the charms of Laura, and he even regretted that his fame should rest upon them, when, in his own estimation, his ponderous works in Latin were of much more consequence. But, incidental to his passion for Laura, he was led to discuss within himself the two conceptions of love which were current at that time, – the mediæval and monkish conception, based upon a sensual idea which regarded women as the root of all evil and the source of all sin, and the modern or secular idea, which is spiritual and may become holy. In an imaginary conversation with Saint Augustine which Petrarch wrote to furnish a vehicle for the discussion of these matters, the poet exclaims that it is the soul-the inborn and celestial goodness-that he loves, and that he owes all to her who has preserved him from sin and urged him on to a full development of his powers. The ultimate result of all this thought and all this reflection upon the nature of the affections developed the humanity of the man, excited broad interests within his breast, gave him a wide sympathy, and entitled him to rank as the first great humanist.
Dante, with his vague and almost mystical adoration of Beatrice, which was at times a passion almost subjective, is still in the shadow of the Middle Ages, their gloom is still upon him, and he can see but dimly into the centuries which are still to come; but his face is glorified by his vision of the spiritual possibilities of good and noble womanhood. Petrarch, in the brief interval which has passed, has come out into the light of a modern world; and there, in the midst of baffled desire, he is brought face to face with the great thought that though love be human it has power divine.
CHAPTER VI
WOMEN IN THE EARLY RENAISSANCE
Although the fourteenth century in Italy was one of almost continuous warfare between the different contending states of the peninsula, the fact remains that the whole country was enjoying a degree of prosperity which was unprecedented in the history of the Italian people. It was the beginning of the age of the despots, it is true, but in the midst of strife and contention there was at the same time a material progress which did much to enrich the country and enable its inhabitants to elevate their standard of living. The Italian cities were encouraging business transactions on a large scale; Italian merchants were among the most enterprising on the continent, making long trips to foreign countries for the purpose of buying and selling goods; and the Oriental trade, which had been diverted in great measure to Italian channels, was a constant source of profit. That all this could be so in the face of the warlike condition of society is due to the fact that much of the fighting was done by mercenary soldiers, or that the political quarrels of the time, which frequently concerned the fate of cities, too often had their rise in family feuds which, no matter how fiercely they were waged, did not interest the masses. There were always thousands upon thousands of worthy citizens who felt no direct personal interest in the outcome of the fighting, and who pursued the even tenor of their way without much regard for what was taking place, so far as allowing it to interfere with their daily occupations was concerned.
The