CECILIA GONZAGA

CECILIA GONZAGAA Little Italian Schoolgirl of the Renaissance

A Little Italian Schoolgirl of the Renaissance

It was ever the custom of that most excellent Lord, Gianfrancesco Gonzaga, when he was home from his wars, to spend the hour before supper with his wife, and their children, in a fair loggia on a garden terrace overlooking the Mincio. Here, while the evening breeze came, cool from the lakes, and perfumed from the gardens, he tasted the delights of family life, and rested from the cares of War and State in the gentle atmosphere, which surrounded his pious and cultured Lady, Madonna Paola Malatesta.

Those who visit Mantua to-day may see, in the heart of its old Castello, in the celebrated Sala degli Sposi, just such another family scene, painted in fresco by Mantegna. It shows, it is true, a later generationof Gonzagas. Stately Marchese Lodovico, who sits in patriarchal dignity by the side of his wife, Marchesa Barbara, surrounded by their children and grandchildren, is, in the group I would fain conjure up for you, but a boy. At the risk of ruining the poetry of the scene, I must tell you that he is an extremely fat boy—oh! of a fatness, out of which he is to be presently most vigorously educated! His eight-year-old brother, Carlo, having outgrown his strength, is, on the other hand, far too lank and thin. But for the others, you are at liberty to call up the images of the dearest youngsters of your acquaintance. Margherita, a charming maiden of thirteen summers, whose betrothal to Leonello of Este, the heir of Marchese Niccolò of Ferrara, is already spoken of, might resent being called a “youngster.” But Gianlucido and Alessandro are tiny children; and golden-haired Cecilia, the flower of the flock, has reached the mature age of three!

This was the scene which met the eye of that most distinguished educationist, Vittorino da Feltre, who had come at the invitation of the Capitano of Mantua to undertake the education of these children; and as his eye fell upon it, he may well havefelt all the doubts, that had ridden with him through all the long miles from Venice, suddenly depart. Indeed he had done well to come. Surely it was a task well worthy of a man’s noblest energies, to train up these fair children, and to make of them the men and women, in whom the Christian Humanist sees his ideals realised.

Who had been responsible for bringing Vittorino da Feltre to Mantua? Who had suggested to that bluff soldier, Gianfrancesco, eager to give his children all the benefits of the “New Learning,” for which Italy was madly athirst, the choice of a teacher, who was as great a Christian as he was a scholar and an educationist?

The accepted story is that Guarino, the great Greek scholar, being unable to accept the Gonzagas’ offer, himself, passed it on to his friend, Vittorino da Feltre. But I have my own good reasons for thinking that the choice of Vittorino was something more than a “pis aller,” and that Madonna Paola herself was mainly responsible for it.

The grand-daughter of that Carlo Malatesta (who took so much to heart the Gospel precepts of sacrificing whatever gives scandal—be it a man’s own right eye, or right hand—that he had, during his guardianship of a Gonzaga minor, thrown intothe lake, at Mantua, a statue of Virgil, to which he found the people paying idolatrous reverence), her girlhood had been spent in Rimini, as great in repentance as in crime. Rimini hath other memories besides that of Francesca; and Madonna Paola, in the very year[9]when the fate of her kinswoman, Parisina, at the hands of her husband, Marquis Nicholas of Ferrara, recalled, but too exactly, the story heard by Dante in the Second Circle of the Inferno, may well have turned to one of them for comfort. During the years of her girlhood, Rimini was the scene of the labours of the great Dominican reformer, the Blessed Giovanni Dominici. This remarkable man was a great friend of her grandfather, and we may well assume that his book, the “Regola del Governo di Cura famigliare,” though dedicated to a Florentine lady, Madonna Bartolommea, wife of Antonio Alberti (and kinswoman of the celebrated Leo Battista Alberti) was not unknown to those who had charge of Paola’s education, and, very probably, represented one of the very strongest influences of her girlhood. If this be so, it is impossible to see nothing more than a mere chance in the selection of a teacher who had already made a namefor himself by a system of education exactly corresponding to that outlined in Dominici’s treatise. In studying the Renaissance, we are under a great disadvantage from the fact that its best known interpreters are generally quite incapable of appreciating the force and vivacity of religion during it. Symonds, and Burckhardt, and Settenbrini, setting out to prove Michelet’s theory that “the Renaissance was a discovery of the World and Man,” reject and misinterpret anything that contradicts it. The Middle Ages must be made as dark, and stagnant, and evil-smelling as possible—the “Dead Sea” indeed of Symonds; and the guiding principle of the Middle Ages, the Catholic Religion, must be a Spirit of Darkness—otherwise, what becomes of the theory? Poor Humanity, according to Symonds, had a cowl put on it by the Obscurantist Church, and was bidden to look neither “on the azure of the waters, nor the luxuriance of the vines, nor the radiance of the mountains with their robe of sun and snow.” And so, with downcast eyes, it passed on its way, knowing nothing but that “beauty is a snare, pleasure a sin, the world a fleeting show, man fallen and lost, death the only certainty, judgment inevitable,hell everlasting, heaven hard to win,ignorance acceptable to God.” “These,” we were told, were the “fixed ideas of the mediæval Church.”

I have no intention of refuting this palpably absurd rendering of the Catholic outlook, nor is there much necessity, for, fortunately, true history is coming into her own. In Germany she has made her first conquests; and here, thinking of men like Janssen, and Pastor, and Emil Michael, and praying to see go forth one day from the Lecture Halls of our Irish Universities, reapers to follow them into the fields that stand ready for the sickle; I cannot but rejoice at the bright prospects of a great Irish publishing house, which shall do for Irish savants, what Herder did for those of Germany.

As long as historians like Symonds interpreted the Renaissance for us, it was inevitable that we should be shown only a small part of it—just as much as would fit comfortably into the Michelet formula. Moreover, Symonds and his fellows really did not know Catholicism when they saw it. Between involuntary ignorance, and deliberate “suppressiones veri,” they have managed to give us a very untruthful picture of the Renaissance.

It is with something like a gasp of wonder we turn to the complete picture presented by Dr. Pastor. Here, side by side with belated Pagans, like the “Panormita,” and Lorenzo Valla, we see true Christian Savants like Gianozzo Manetti, Lionardo Bruni, Ambrogio Traversari, and our own Vittorino; side by side with monsters like Sigismondo Pandolfo Malatesta we have Christian rulers like the good Duke Frederick of Urbino; side by side with social butterflies like poor Beatrice of Este, we have devoted mothers of families like Madonna Paola; side by side with the celebrated sinners, we have the canonized saints, a long, long list of them. I believe, indeed, that, at no period of their history, have the two great Orders of St. Francis and St. Dominic shown themselves so fruitful in Saints, as that across which Symonds would fain have us see written the “I follow the finite” of Cosimo de’ Medici.

As a result of this treatment of the period, many of its most characteristic works have been hidden away from us. So it has come to pass that, while most students of Italian Literature know a great deal about a book like “Il Trattato del Governo della Famiglia,” if only because the question of its authorship has been so hotlydebated, even those who hold for the paternity of Leo Battista Alberti, as against Pandolfini, may very well be unaware of the existence of the “Regola del Governo di Cura Famigliare,” dedicated to Leo Battista’s kinswoman, Bartolommea.

If anything were wanting to prove how much alike is Catholicism in all ages and nations, one would only have to put this little book, written five hundred years ago, for a Florentine lady, into the hands of an Irish Catholic mother of to-day, and see how much of it she can use for herself. Practically all of it, we should find.

“You have offered yourself,” the author says to Bartolommea, “body and soul, with all your possessions and your children, as far as they belong to you, to God, Our Lord, and now you want to know how to make the best use of all these things for His glory.” Thus, with the precision of the schoolman, he states and divides his subject. The first book, then, tells how to use the powers of the soul for God; the second, the faculties and senses of the body; the third, temporal goods. The fourth book tells how children are to be trained, and is, indeed, a most thorough treatise on Education.

Children are to be brought up (1) for God, (2) for father and mother, (3) for themselves,(4) for their country, (5) for the trials of life. Again, you see the schoolman, and admire the method. Can anything be more admirable than this summing up of the whole end and aim of Catholic Education, which takes account of the child in his future relations as Christian, member of a family, individual with an individual’s responsibilities for the investment of his talents (the faculties of soul and body), citizen, and man?

Then, with an astonishing feeling for realities, he prescribes the practical method by which this end shall be attained.

“You are bringing up your child for God. Therefore, let the thought of God await his first consciousness. For such as him, God became a Little Child. Show him that Little Child; have His image and that of Saint John in your homes, and let your baby make a playmate of Jesukin. (Does that not make one think a little of Iosagan playing with the children along the stone ditches of the Connemara roads?) For the girl have pictures of the girl-saints: Agnes with her lamb; Elizabeth and Cecilia with their roses; and Catherine with her wheel. But if you cannot afford to have these pictures in your homes (for those were not the days of colour printing and lithography)be sure to bring the little ones often to the Church, and let them see them there.”

I like to think that a great master, painting in those years, had a thought of dear, little, chubby, dark-eyed boys and girls being taken, one of the days soon to follow, into the church, when the masterpiece should be hanging in its place, and making friends with his “Bambino.”

Not by “sight” alone shall you teach your little ones to know God. “While they lie against your breast, and you feed them with your own substance, feed their souls with the sweetness of the love of Jesus, that wells first from your own heart; let the first words they utter be: ‘Jesus, Ave Maria, Deo Gratias, Pater noster qui es in coelo.’

“Have a little altar for the children,” the author counsels, “and teach them the different colours and the different vestments for the several festivals. Let them ring the ‘Hours’ with their own small bell. Nor were it ill done to let them preach to you; to the which preaching do you listen with all due attention and reverence. So shall they learn more easily, and more exactly, their Christian Doctrine, and you will have an opportunity of judging what progress they are really making in it.”

Dominici loves to see the young things gambol about. “As for games,” he says, “let them run and jump, and gambol and play”—but never so as to scare away the little playmate, Jesukin. He throws in a word of warning about the choice of their companions among the neighbour’s children.

Dominici is not in favour of sending children to the schools, as things then were. (It must be remembered that he was engaged in a work of reform among those responsible for those schools.) He advises the mother to teach the children as much as she can at home herself. Here the question of what they should study meets him. Is it safe to let their young and innocent minds come into contact with pagan morality? He strongly regrets the old days and the old ways. Our ancestors were wiser. First they taught the Psalter, and Sacred Doctrine. Then, if the child was to go further: the Morality of Cato, the Fictions of Aesop, the profitable wisdom of Prospero (i.e., certain “sentences” taken from the works of Saint Augustine); the Fidei Confessio of Bœthius; the philosophy of the “Eva Columello,”[10]the “Tres leo Naturas”[11]; and to help them to memorizethe Sacred Story, the poem “Aethiopium Terras.”

He was writing this book for a woman who had known much trouble, who had seen her husband’s family driven into exile by the Medici. It behoves her then to rear up her children in the possession of that liberty of which no Cosimo can dispossess them—the liberty which is in the heart of every true man who has emancipated his Will from the thraldom of his passions. Again and again, he returns to this point: train their will. Teach them to know Good from Evil, and tochoosegood. No man can be free who is not free from these three things: free from sin, free from vengeance, free from debt. Nor can a man be free whose soul is in bondage to the appetites of his body. Rear your children hardily; so shall they have no fear of future evil fortune. Again he goes into detail: “Teach them to eat bitter things, lest too great daintiness be their undoing.” And again: “if they are sick, do not show them too much compassion, for so shall you take from them the opportunity of practising patience.”

Be careful with whom your children associate. “None of the things entrusted to you are so precious as your children.Their souls are worth more in God’s eyes than Heaven and Earth, and the whole of the irrational creation; and you do Him a greater service in bringing up your children well than if you possessed the whole world, and gave all away to the poor.”

When treating of the relation of the child to his parents, Dominici lays great stress on the observance of those outward forms, which express the reverence due from him to them. In the presence of parents, children shall not sit down unless desired to do so; they must stand in a respectful attitude, humbly bow the head when any command is addressed to them, and uncover when they meet their father or mother. “Twice a day at least shall they kneel and beg your blessing. The child must say: ‘Benedicite,’ and you shall answer: ‘May God bless thee with an everlasting blessing,’ or ‘may the blessing of God be always with thee.’ And let the child, kneeling to ask a blessing from you, remind you to ask a blessing from your Father who is in Heaven—not twice a day only, but as often as you change your occupation.”

Very noble are the precepts he gives Madonna Bartolommea, to whom Florence had shown herself, indeed, but an unkind stepmother. “You owe your child to yourcountry. Therefore, teach him the duties of a good citizen, and morning and evening let him pray for the Patria.” Those are precepts we in Ireland might follow with profit.

I have lingered a little on the educational theories of the great Dominican, because many of them were put in practice in the school which Vittorino da Feltre founded at Mantua, under the protection of the Gonzagas that it is almost unthinkable that Vittorino and Madonna Paola were not directly influenced by it. We shall now see these theories in practice.

On the banks of the Mincio, the Gonzagas, very splendid even in their Condottiere days, had built a stately Pleasure House, which (for reasons on which it pleases certain historians yet to dispute) they called the “Casa Giocosa”—the “Joyous House,” if you care to translate it thus.

When Vittorino da Feltre came to Mantua, it would seem that the two elder of the Gonzaga boys were already being educated in this house. The Court School, where the sons of the reigning house and ofthe gentlemen in their service were educated, was an old European institution. The Palace Schools of Charlemagne are notable examples.

No trace of the “Casa Giocosa” is now to be found. Even its situation is a matter of uncertainty; but it has been described for us so often, and so vividly, that we need but to close our eyes, and there it stands again on broad meadow lands, that sweep down to the “slow-gliding Mincio,” in the midst of its fair lawns and terraced gardens, with its avenues of acacias and plane trees, its hedges of roses, its shady courts and fountains and statues, its marble “loggie,” and frescoed, spacious chambers, full of air and sunshine—a memory and an inspiration for all the schools that have followed it since.

Now, if ever there was a man who was that rare thing, a schoolmaster born, it was Vittorino da Feltre. He had discovered his vocation in his student days at the University of Padua, where he had kept body and soul together by teaching backward students, and helping them to keep up with their classes. He had developed it at Venice, where he had shared the management of a school with the great Greek scholar, Guarino. But at Mantua, whitherhe came, a ripe man of forty-five or so, with a large experience of boy-nature, a thorough mastery of methods of teaching, a store of well-tested theories, and a new field on which to exercise them, he was like a prince coming into his own kingdom. There seems something providential in the way things were arranged for Vittorino da Feltre. One is reminded of the Providence which we shall see in a later paper, surrounding the foundation of another great educational institution—Madame de Maintenon’s Saint-Cyr.

One condition Vittorino made before he took over the “Casa Giocosa.” He was to be supreme master in the establishment. Even the parents were not to interfere, and there was to be no appeal from his decision, whether as to the studies of the children, their food and manner of life, or their companions. On the last point, he was destined to meet with grave opposition. Some families claimed it as one of their immemorial privileges to send their children to the Court School, to be educated with the Princes. But, privilege or no privilege, Vittorino would tolerate nobody at the school whose example was likely to be harmful. Here you see him putting into practice one of the most constantly reiteratedof the precepts of the Blessed Giovanni Dominici: “Be careful of your children’s companions.”

Not alone of the companions of the Princes was he careful, but of the servants. It would seem that when Vittorino took over the “Casa Giocosa,” he found a whole troup of liveried menials ready to minister to the slightest wish of the young Princes. His first care was to send them all off, replacing them by a few trustworthy attendants, not numerous enough to make discipline difficult. He put porters at the gate, on whom he could rely, wishing to secure for his school the atmosphere of quiet, and work, and prayer, and order, and wholesome austerity in which the young souls confided to him might grow to their full perfection. The vicinity of a splendid court made his precautions all the more necessary.

With the troops of servants disappeared the soft carpets, and luxurious couches, the gold and silver plate, and, above all, the rich foods which were playing such havoc with poor Lodovico’s figure—not to speak of anything else. Everything was to be plain and wholesome and abundant, but there was to be no luxury. Had not the Blessed Giovanni warned Madonna Bartolommeaagainst rearing her children too softly? “Rear them hardily” had been his advice. “Teach them to eat bitter food and things unpleasant,” so shall they be able to say “we care not” when life is hard with them in the years to come.

The little picture-children for whom Dominici pleads, that Madonna Bartolommea’s boys and girls may make friendship with them early, were not forgotten by Vittorino. Be sure, when, at his request, Madonna Paola sent her painter to cover the walls of the study-halls and galleries with “frescoes of children playing,” the tiny Jesukin, and dear Saint John, who was as an elder brother to Him, were to be seen there, playing together—in the carpenter’s shop, mayhap, when Elizabeth had taken her boy to Nazareth to visit his small cousin, or by the covered well under the palm-tree in Zachary’s garden, when the sweet spring days had called Mary and her bambino to the hill-country.

Poor Lodovico must have felt the change rather hard at first. He had been accustomed to get up whatever time he liked, do as little as he pleased, and have his interest aroused by nothing except questions of eating and drinking. One really thinks there must have been something diseased in poorLodovico’s extraordinary appetite. Our ancestors would have seen in him a fellow victim of Cathal MacFinguine, King of Munster, in whom there entered the Demon of Gluttony through eating the apples, whereon the Scholar of Fergal, son of Maelduin, had put his heathen charms, “so that the demon abode in the throat of Cathal, to the ruin of the men of Munster during three half-years; and it is likely he would have ruined Ireland during another half-year.”

At all events, Vittorino took Lodovico in hand at once. He was only allowed to eat at mealtimes; but at first his meals were set at short intervals, and there was no stint on the quantity of food; which, however, was as plain as possible, so that the appetite should not be over-stimulated.

Gradually, the meals became fewer, and Vittorino, discovering that Lodovico’s voracity was as much the result of an empty mind and starved interests as anything else, had the inspiration to accompany them with little entertainments. He had singers, and musicians, and storytellers placed in the dining-hall; and, lo! Lodovico, listening to them, forgot his plate, for the nonce, and did not notice the loss of it, when anattendant, on a sign from Vittorino, bore it quietly away.

With Carlo, the second son, the master pursued quite a different plan. Carlo was growing too fast, and spending his energies too rapidly in the ardour which he put into his games. Vittorino saw to it that the boy should have as much to eat as he wished at meal times. Between meals he had permission to eat, too—but only bread.

His attention to the food of his pupils and to their bodily welfare give the key to Vittorino’s whole educational system. The “Mens sana in corpore sano,” is as an educational ideal, not the exclusive possession of the Greeks. I have tried to show how vitally it influenced education in the Middle Ages; but, undoubtedly, Vittorino found new ardour for his pursuit of it in the image of the “Academy,” which his Greek studies had conjured up for him, and kept constantly before his mind.

But the little boys and girls, for whom Vittorino was going to assume responsibility, had something more than a body and a mind to be developed. They had each an immortal soul. The recognition of that fact must, logically, alter any system of education, not founded on it, into something very different. And so the Christianschool of Mantua, forming colonists for this world, and citizens for heaven, was something essentially different from the Platonic Academy, however much it may have borrowed from it.

The strengthening and developing ofbody, andmind, andsoul—that is, in a few words, what the whole system of Vittorino aimed at. It is in the harmonious ordering of the different studies and exercises, which he chose for the perfecting of the three parts of men, that the chief excellence of the “Casa Giocosa” consists.

“You are rearing your children for God,” the Blessed Giovanni reminded Madonna Bartolommea. Vittorino never forgot this for a moment, nor did he ever allow his pupils to forget that they had been “created and placed” in this world by God, “to know Him, love Him, and serve Him, and by that means to gain Everlasting Life.”

The common day began with hearing Mass in the school chapel. After Mass, the Office of Our Lady was recited, and a short instruction in some point of Christian Doctrine was given to the school. But this teaching was not theoretic only. He taught them not only what Christians must believe, but showed them how Christians must act.And so we find his pupils, in the after years, distinguished, among all the men and women of Italy, by their practical Christianity. Lodovico, once the self-indulgent, grew into the Marchese Lodovico, chaste and sober, and wise and kind—the best of the Gonzaga Princes. Little Frederick Montefeltro, sent as a hostage to the Mantuan Court, rejoiced, in the years when men spoke of him as the “Good Duke of Urbino,” that the chances of war had brought him such good fortune as to make him the pupil of such a master. Ever before his eyes he would have that master’s image, and as much as might be, he would carry out his system of life in the order of the Ducal Palace. So Vittorino’s portrait adorned one of the walls of the famous palace, with these words written under it: “In honour of his saintly master, Vittorino da Feltre, who by word and example, instructed him in all human excellence, Frederico, has set this here.” And better still, “the Court of Urbino was framed on the precepts which the Duke had learnt in the Casa Giocosa, and became in its turn a school where Italian princes sent their sons to be trained in knightly exercises and elegant manners.” And so we trace, in a direct line of descent from the “CasaGiocosa,” “the best book that was ever written upon good breeding,” as Doctor Johnson testified to Boswell: “‘Il Cortegiano’—the best book, I tell you, and you should read it.” An advice which one could not do better than repeat.

In an age when men lied and deceived shamelessly, Vittorino’s pupils were known for their absolute sincerity. This love of truth and hatred of falsehood was not won without careful efforts on the part of the master. He would not punish for a fault that was bravely confessed, and so took away one of the occasions of lying from timid children. A funny little story is told of Alessandro Gonzaga. The little fellow was ill, and had been ordered not to drink any water. But he was horribly thirsty, and disobeyed the commands. There was no great danger of being “found out,” but the boy was uneasy, until he had confessed. “Do you know what I did?” he said to Vittorino. “I took abig, bigdrink of water. Wasn’t I very good?” “Well,” said Vittorino, seeing that it could not be helped now, “at least, you wereverygood to tell it.”

He never allowed his pupils to utter a profane word. When Carlo was quite grown up, he swore a soldier’s oath in hismaster’s presence. And lo! the little man was upon him in an instant, boxing his ears, as if he were still a schoolboy. To the honour of Carlo, it must be said that he bore the indignity meekly, feeling that he had deserved it.

Like Dominici, Vittorino loved to see the children run about, and laugh, and leap, and play. He found two of them, during recreation hour one day, confabbing in a corner about their lessons. Do you think he was pleased? Not a bit of it. Out he routed them, and made them take part in the other children’s games. For, long before the English Duke, he had found out for himself that many a battle yet to be fought was being won already on those meadows by the Mincio, where his pupils were playing merrily.

One of the outstanding features in Vittorino’s system was the importance he attached to games—and all sorts of physical exercises. He held as a fundamental principle that “the human spirit cannot exercise its faculties fully, if the physical organs which it must use are defective.” He insisted on outdoor exercise, whatever the weather. He had his pupils taught riding, and swimming, and wrestling, and fencing. He organisedhunting and fishing expeditions for them; and, remembering that many of his pupils were to be soldiers, he liked to teach them the art of warfare, by occupying mimic trenches, and pitching mimic camps, and taking mimic towns—according to the most approved methods.

These rougher plays were not for the girls, though they, in general, shared the lessons of the boys. For them there were dancing lessons, where every movement of their body was trained to an exquisite grace. They had riding lessons, too, and hunted and played “palla,” or tennis. No game was tolerated for them which would tend to make them ungraceful—as so many of the games our girls play to-day really seem to do.

Plenty of fresh air and exercise, plenty of good, simple food, to which they brought the sauce of a healthy hunger, sound and dreamless sleep, soon made the youngsters of the “Casa Giocosa” a healthy, happy band, whom it was a delight to see at their lessons.

He had the supreme gift of the good teacher, our Vittorino, that of knowing how to interest his pupils in their work. The maxim of Quintilian “do not allow the boy to conceive an aversion for the studieswhich he cannot yet love,” was adopted by him, and, until the young minds were ripe enough to love learning for its own sake, it was the master’s care to surround it with attractions. So we find him reviving the Quintilianian device of teaching the youngsters to read by means of painted cards and wooden blocks. As we have seen already, our Irish ancestors had a similar plan. In Whitley Stokes’ “Lives of the Irish Saints from the Book of Lismore,” there is a charming story of Saint Columbkille, as a child, learning his letters from a cake, on which they had been stamped.

In Vittorino’s school there was no place for the rod, which we have seen play such an important part in the mediæval school-system. He liked to appeal to the children through their sense of honour and dignity. The greatest punishment for such children was to make them feel ashamed.

As far as school-work went, however, there was little need for punishment. The enthusiasm for letters which had seized on all Italy had taken possession of the little people of the “Casa Giocosa” in an extraordinary degree; and in some cases, especially that of Gianlucido, the master’s care was rather to restrain than to urge them on. That great scholar, AmbrogioTraversari, General of the Camaldolese Order, writing to his friend, the celebrated Niccolò Nicoli, mentioned the boy’s marvellous achievements in Latin and Greek. On the occasion of a later visit, which he described for the great Cosimo de’ Medici, he listened to a Latin poem of about two hundred verses, wherein Gianlucido celebrated the coming of the Emperor Sigismund to Mantua.

That same letter to Cosimo makes mention of Cecilia, whom, perhaps, my readers think I have left too long undistinguished, among the band of merry children, playing by the Mincio. “There is also a daughter of the Marquis[12]at the school,” writes Ambrogio, “who, though only ten years’ old, writes Greek with such elegance that, I am ashamed to acknowledge, scarcely any of my own pupils can approach it.” This tribute, indeed, hardly does full credit to Cecilia’s astonishing attainments. At eight years old, we are told, she read the works of Saint John Chrysostom, and wrote elegant Latin verses. She had begun the study of Greek at the mature age of six.

Nor did she excel less in the feminine arts, on which her master’s educationalsystem laid such stress. Those little, high-born, Italian girls learned to dance almost as soon as they learned to walk, and a suggestion of the music which accompanied their early dancing lessons lingered in every graceful movement. Music, too, was as general as speech, and the child learned it as naturally. But, general as it was, it was never cheapened by being wedded to unworthy words. When a little girl learned to sing, there was food for her intellect in the lesson, too; for, in those days, men set sonnets of Petrarch and passages from Virgil to music, and the lute made a charming accompaniment.

The “speaking” voice was even more carefully trained than the “singing” voice. To quote from the delightful “Life of Vittorino da Feltre” in the Saint Nicholas Series: “the greatest trouble was taken with the cultivation of the voice, the manner of breathing, pronunciation, and all the other details which go to make up an easy and elegant delivery.... Like the ancient Romans, the master attached to this exercise a certain hygienic value.” It was a rare treat to hear Cecilia, in that golden voice of hers, declaim some of her own verses.

It is worth while to examine, in somedetail, the system which led to such astonishing results.

Those painted cards and blocks, of which I have spoken, had been designed to teach the child to read Latin. The thing was not so surprising in those days as it would be in ours. As a matter of fact, it was as short a step towards the “unknown from the known” (the safest of pedagogic principles) to teach a child, whose mother-tongue was the speech of Lombardy, to read Latin, as to teach him or her to read Italian. So the children learned to read Latin very young indeed. Unless Cecilia was an exception, they learned to read Greek very young, too. The practice was to translate Greek into Latin.

Later on, the pupils took up the study of Grammar. The rules of Latin Grammar were deduced from a careful study of the works of Virgil and Cicero, while those of Greek were formulated while the pupils studied Homer and Demosthenes. The barbarous system, from which we are just emerging, which made the study of grammatical rules precede all else, was the unfortunate discovery of the century following Vittorino’s.

History was studied in the pages of Sallust, Valerius Maximus, and Livy.

Vittorino’s practice was to make his pupils read aloud, insisting on good pronunciation and artistic delivery. He made them learn off by heart, too, the best passages of the poets, orators, and philosophers. And so the children had faultless models to hand, when it was time for them to address themselves to original composition.

To balance any tendency this practice might have had to make his pupils adopt other people’s thoughts ready-made, he put them through a very thorough course of mental gymnastics. He aimed, with these exercises, to win for his pupils rather strength and vigour of mentality than subtilty. “I want to teach them to think, and not to split hairs,” expresses a pedagogic maxim of his, of which all his biographers have taken note. He made the youngsters propose difficulties to him, or raised them himself for them, and helped them to solve them. The Mathematical training given in the “Casa Giocosa” was the best in all Italy. At none of the Universities were Mathematics taught in a manner so profitable, or their educative value so fully realised.

When the children were a little older they took part in certain oratorical exercises, the idea of which the master hadborrowed from the “Schools of Rhetoric” of Antiquity. Many of these boys would, in the years to come, be employed in Diplomatic Missions, and nothing could more fittingly prepare them for such work than these “Disputations.”

Such, in broadest outline, was the education which made of Cecilia Gonzaga, at the age of sixteen, one of the most charming and accomplished ladies in all Italy. Many a princely suitor came riding over the long bridge of San Giorgio to lay his hand and heart at the feet of the Marchese’s golden-haired girl, whose beauty and attainments had set their poets singing. One, in particular, found favour with her father—Oddantonio of Montefeltro, elder brother of that Frederico who had been Cecilia’s fellow-pupil at the “Casa Giocosa.” Oddantonio saw Cecilia, for the first time, on the occasion of Margherita’s marriage with Leonello of Este, fell in love with her immediately, and formally asked for her hand six weeks later. The alliance proposed was one that offered immense political advantages to the House of Gonzaga, and the Marchese eagerly accepted it, though the reputation of his prospective son-in-law was none of the best. In the off-hand way fathers had in those days, whenit was a question of arranging their daughters’ matrimonial affairs, the Marquis sent for Cecilia one day, and told her to hold herself ready to be married.

But another Lover than Oddantonio had won Cecilia for Himself. The little Jesukin, with Whom she had played her childish games, Who, grown to manhood, had changed the water of the old philosophies into the wine of truth for her drinking, Who had sanctified the dust of the earth’s materialism because His Feet had touched it, and made the World a Sacred Place because He had died in it, was the Beloved of her heart.

As Magdalene, on a day, had broken the “alabaster box of precious ointment,” and anointed His Feet therewith, so, too, was Cecilia ready to pour out at His Feet all the treasures of heart, and mind, and soul, which Vittorino’s teaching had helped her to gather; as Magdalene spent the beauty of her hair to wipe the Feet she had anointed, so, too, was Cecilia ready to lay down her beauty for His dear sake.

Not many yards from the Castello of Mantua was a Convent of the Poor Clares, founded by Madonna Paola. Here was the abode which her Beloved had chosen for her, and here He offered her the habit whichFrancis had bestowed on Clare, the rope-girdle, the coarse veil. Oddantonio’s jewels and gifts, the satins and laces, and cloth of gold in which he would have decked his bride, were dross in the eyes of her, whose chosen ornaments were the jewels of Madonna Poverty.

When she announced her intention of becoming a Clarice to her father, his rage knew no bounds. One blushes to tell it (for Gianfrancesco, with all his faults, has a way of making us like him), but it must be told: he actually used physical violence to the poor girl to compel her to do what she was told. But steadfast as Clare herself, Cecilia stood firm, finding a little comfort in the unfailing sympathy of her mother and her teacher.

For two years the struggle lasted—Vittorino and Paola managing, between them, to dissuade the Marquis from forcing on his daughter’s marriage with a Prince, whose name was beginning to be in all men’s mouths as that of a notorious libertine. It may well be that Gianfrancesco was a little ashamed of himself when he was forced to recognise the true character of his chosen son-in-law. But ashamed or not, he was no more ready to see his brilliant girl bury herself in a Poor Clare’s Cell. To the last,he refused his permission for her entrance into religion; and Cecilia, fearing to bring disaster on the Convent she had chosen, was forced to acquiesce.

But a day came when Gianfrancesco had power to make his will felt no longer—a day when he lay very still and cold on a bier of black velvet, and was borne to his tomb in San Francesco.

Curiously enough, the Church wherein the great Marchese lay buried was part of the Convent Cecilia had been so anxious to make her home. Nothing stood in the way of the accomplishment of her heart’s desire now; and so it came to pass that the Vows he had so long refused to allow his daughter to take were uttered over Marchese Gianfrancesco’s tomb.

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