"She is my virtue, and my vice;She is my wound, and yet my balm.She is my heart's constant abode,Yet makes me gray and makes me old."
"She is my virtue, and my vice;She is my wound, and yet my balm.She is my heart's constant abode,Yet makes me gray and makes me old."
"She is my virtue, and my vice;
She is my wound, and yet my balm.
She is my heart's constant abode,
Yet makes me gray and makes me old."
While happily married himself, he knew enough of bad wives. Albrecht Durer's unhappy married life could furnish him sufficient material for hisNinefold Skin of a Scold, andThe Twelve Properties of a Bad Woman, against which all the arts employed in the "taming of the shrew" came to naught.
In 1560 his beloved wife died, and one year later he married Barbara Harscher, a charming girl of seventeen years, whose beauty he sang in hisArtistic Woman's Praise, and with whom he lived happily till 1576. He was buried in Saint John's Cemetery at Nürnberg. The grateful city erected in 1874 a beautiful monument in his honor. But the highest monument, "more abiding than steel," the prince of poets, Goethe, erected to him in hisHans Sachs's Poetic Mission:
"An oak wreath hovers yonder in the clouds,With ever green fair foliage adorned;With this the grateful nation crowns his brow."
"An oak wreath hovers yonder in the clouds,With ever green fair foliage adorned;With this the grateful nation crowns his brow."
"An oak wreath hovers yonder in the clouds,
With ever green fair foliage adorned;
With this the grateful nation crowns his brow."
Hans Sachs is the typical, the universal, the noblest, and the purest Mastersinger; but he is only the first among hundreds of others who helped to preserve in Germany the sacred fire of poetry.
The bourgeoisie womanhood of the school of humanism, of the circle where virtue was the ideal of life, ably seconded the efforts of men like Sachs. But no one lofty specimen of superior womanhood arose from the atmosphere of feud, brigandage, and drunken intemperance among the so-called higher classes. Banqueting, hunting, fighting, gambling, carousing, and sexual excesses are recorded in plenty.The diary of the Silesian knight Hans Von Schweinichenintroduces us, in the middle of the sixteenth century, into a "noble" society full of poverty, brutality, and ignorance. He relates the slight acquirements of his education, interrupted by the occupation of tending the geese, his service as a page at the court of the Duke of Liegnitz, his early interest in women, his presence at weddings, "where he ate and drank his fill for day and night just as they wanted to have it." Of his friendly expedition with the Duke of Liegnitz to Mecklenburg, he says: "I have made for myself a great reputation with drinking, as I could never get enough to drink myself full." Anna of Saxony, daughter of Elector Moritz, wife of William of Orange, who died ofdelirium tremens, proves, by the way, that drunkenness was by no means uncommon with princely ladies. Scherr also adduces many other such princely examples. A festival at the Mecklenburg court is thus described in naïve fashion by Schweinichen in his diary: "The native squires as well as the noble young ladies lost themselves little by little, until finally there remained with me but two ladies and one knight, who began a dance. I followed with the other lady. It did not last long; my good friend slipped with his dancer to the next chamber; I followed him. As we came to the chamber, two squires and ladies rested in a bed; the one who danced before me fell also with his lady in one bed. I asked my lady what we should do. She said in her Mecklenburg language: I should lie by her. I did not have her ask me a long time, but lay down with mantle and garments, so did the lady, and thus we chatted till the dawn of morning; however, in all honor. This they call there 'to lie by a maiden on truth and faith,' but I do not trust such a 'lying by' for such truth and faith might easily become roguish." Evidently, so far as the nobility were concerned, delicacy and propriety were quite unknown in sixteenth century society.
Woman, it has been said, always needs a background. She has one in early sixteenth century Germany a splendid background of material prosperity.
The great free cities were at the zenith of their power. Organized labor had triumphed. The guilds and the merchant corporations had done their work well. From the sturdy, self-respecting German handworker, modestly offering his own wares for sale, had been evolved the governing patrician. Prince, pope, emperor, even foreign potentates, bowed before the German patrician, for he held the purse strings of the world. Not a sovereign in all Europe dared enter into a campaign without permission of the Fuggers, the great merchant-bankers of Augsburg.
In their magnificent free cities the patricians of Germany lived in far more than royal splendor. The chronicler, Wimpheling, writes: "It was not an uncommon thing to eat from gold and silver plates at merchants' tables as I, myself, did in company with eleven other guests at Cologne."
Æneas Sylvius exclaims to Martin Mayer, Chancellor of Mainz: "How is it that even in your inns you always serve drinks in silver vessels? What shall I say of the knights and of the bits of their horses which are of pure gold, of their rings, girdles, and helmets blazing in gold, of the spears and sheaths studded thickly with diamonds? What riches are displayed in your altar decorations! How beautiful are the reliquaries set in pearls and gold! How magnificent your priests' vestments! What riches in your sacristies!"
Dress received much attention. Women revelled in embroideries of gold and silver, plaited skirts with expensive galloon borders, mantles of ermine, sable and marten; crowns of gold and precious stones; pearl embroidered smocks and the daintiest, finest linen ever woven. Even the burghers' wives and daughters braided gold and silver into their back hair and curls and wore gems of rare value.
At frequent intervals, sumptuary laws designed to lessen feminine extravagance were passed, but, like all such laws since the days of Eve's figleaf, they failed. The women invariably got the better of the city fathers. In Mainz one of the most beautiful young dames of the town, acting as the representative of a large number of society women, appealed, personally, to Prince Albert, Archbishop of Brandenburg, against a decree of the Council concerning feminine attire. That handsome, Lothario-priest, Prince Albert, was not the man to resist the pleading of a pretty woman. Dismissing his fair petitioner with a kiss and the gift of a beautiful jewelled bracelet, he at once ordered the repeal of the hateful law.
But the great sociological preacher, Geiler von Kaisersberg, was no debonair voluptuary. The fairest woman's face could never persuade him to look leniently upon feminine vanity. He shouts:
"The authorities ought to forbid the abominably short skirts that are worn! Look at the belts which encircle their waists, sometimes they are of silk, sometimes of gold, sometimes so costly that the jeweller charges from forty to fifty florins for making them. They drag long trains through the dirt without thinking of the nakedness of Christ among his poor. Some have so many dresses that, during the week, they have two dresses for each day, morning and afternoon. They have many others for dancing, and they would rather see them eaten by moths than give their cost to the poor. We see women letting their hair hang down their backs in cues like men, and wearing cock's feathers in the astoundingly ugly bonnets on their heads. What a shame and a sin! Do you not see there is no one without donkey ears on her head? It is a shame that women wear hats with ears. Some paint themselves many times a day and have false teeth and hair. O Woman! are you not fearful, with the hair of strangers on your heads? It may be the hair of some dead woman to the injury of your souls!"
The Renaissance was a period of transition a liberation of mental force which, from Italy, spread itself, invigoratingly, over the rest of Europe. The modern world was rolling into light. With a gun in his hands, the peasant soldier was the equal, physically at least, of his former master. The art of printing and the invention of cheap paper had given wings to thought and knowledge. Trade had penetrated strange lands. Every returning sailor and adventurer brought back tales more fascinating than fairy lore of mysterious golden islands newly discovered in the west. Wonder and imagination were awakened. Money was plentiful. In the German cities a leisure class existed. Conditions were ripe for culture, and Humanism came.
The "New Learning," as Humanism was generally called, rapidly overwhelmed the old, barren scholasticism and ecclesiasticism. Every monastery and university became a battleground where Humanism fought Scholasticism to the death.
Under the quickening influence of the "New Learning," free Latin schools for boys were established over all Germany. The poorest boy might attend any or all of the schools. Thus arose the specifically German educational system of "wandering students," with its good and evil influences.
At first little was done, educationally, for the girls. There were a very few small, poorly equipped public schools where daughters of artisans and laborers received religious teaching and slight rudimentary instruction in reading, spelling, and writing. Girls belonging to noble and patrician families were usually taught in convents. Music, dancing, embroidery, deportment, and, above all, the supervision of a large household were the studies upon which wealthy parents insisted for their daughters. But the brighter girls soon became curious about the "New Learning" of which their fathers and brothers spoke so frequently. Sastrow, in his biography, writes:
"One of my five younger sisters, Catherine, was an excellent, amiable, lovely, pious maiden. When my brother, Johannes, came home from Wittenberg, where he was a student, she bade him tell her how one could say in Latin, 'This is, truly, a beautiful maiden.' He replied, 'Profecto formosa puella.' She asked farther how one could say, 'Rather so.' He replied, 'Sic satis.' Some time after, three students, sons of gentlemen, came from Wittenberg to see our town. They had been recommended to the hospitality of the burgomaster, Herr Nicholas Smiterlow, who was desirous to entertain them well and have good society for them. As he had three grown-up daughters, my sister Catherine was invited among other guests. The students exchanged all kinds of jokes with the maidens, and as young fellows are wont to do also said things to one another in Latin that it would not have been seemly to say before maidens in German. At last one said to the other, 'Profecto formosa puella,' whereupon, my sister answered, 'Sic satis,' Then the students were much afraid, fancying she had also understood their former amatory talk."
Enthusiasm for the "New Learning" quickly spread among German women of the higher class. Among the princesses, Matilda of the Palatinate was especially famed for her love of learning. She was a generous patron of the fine arts, and, a rarer trait among humanistic scholars, she was also an admirer of the literature of her fatherland. She made a collection of ninety-four works on the old court poetry, and delighted in the national folk songs orally preserved. Matilda encouraged the poets of her court to write poetry after the ancient methods. She ordered many valuable works translated into German. Through her influence the university of Tubingen, in Wurtemberg was established.
The "New Learning" stole into the convents and made many proselytes among the nuns. Aleydis Raiskop, of Goch, to whom Butzbach dedicated a book, was renowned for her classical scholarship. She composed seven homilies on Saint Paul and translated a work on the mass from Latin into German. In the same convent with Aleydis lived an artist nun, Gertrude von Buchel, to whom Butzbach also dedicated a book, Celebrated Painters. Richmondis von der Horst, abbess of the convent of Seebach, corresponded in Latin with Trithemius who highly praises her various writings. Of the nun Ursula Canton, one of her admirers exclaims: "Her equal in knowledge of theological matters, of the fine arts and in eloquence and belles lettres, has not been seen for centuries."
Among German Humanists, Charitas Pirkheimer, of Nürnberg, stands preeminent. Through her brother, Willibald Pirkheimer, the friend and generous patron of Albrecht Durer, Erasmus, and a host of lesser Humanists, Charitas corresponded with many renowned men. Christopher Scheurl, "The Cicero of Nürnberg," said that in all his life he had known only two women, the pious Cassandra of Venice and Charitas of Nürnberg, who, "for their gifts of mind and fortune, their knowledge and high station, their beauty and their prudence could be compared with Cornelia, the mother of Laelius and Hortensius." In a letter to Charitas, Scheurl praises her for "preferring the book to the wool and the pen to the spindle."
These literary preferences, however, did not spoil Charitas Pirkheimer for practical life. As abbess of Saint Clare's she showed great administrative ability. Her annual reports of receipts and expenditures are models of clearness and accuracy. To manage, without serious friction, a large nunnery composed wholly of aristocrats (only the daughters of Nürnberg patricians and nobles were eligible as members) was no easy task. But Charitas seems to have made herself beloved and respected by every sister. She kept her nuns busy with such good result that Saint Clare tapestries became famous throughout Europe, and orders from private and civic patrons poured in faster than they could be filled.
No more splendid fight was ever made by any woman for conscience' sake than that of Charitas Pirkheimer to preserve the integrity of her convent after the storm of the Reformation broke over Germany. And in the fight she conquered. The Lutherans succeeded in closing the houses of every other conventual order, both male and female, in Nürnberg; but Saint Clare's, through the valor of its abbess, remained intact until the last nun died late in the century. But it was a long, a bitter, and, often, a humiliating fight that Mother Charitas waged. Persecution was continued for years. The abbess and her nuns were denied the sacraments and confession. Three Lutheran preachers in turn, one of them a coarse, vile man, were installed at Saint Clare's. Spies were placed in the convent to see that the nuns "did not put cotton into their ears to shut out the preaching." The convent school was broken up and all revenues ceased. Poverty sorely pinched the women of the convent. Insulting rhymes and obscene pictures were flung over the walls of the garden. The maids sent out to buy bread were hooted and even roughly handled by brutal men and fanatical women. A letter which Charitas wrote to Jerôme Emser, thanking him for his Defence of the Faith, was printed with scurrilous marginal notes. The day had not yet dawned when a woman could, "with seemliness," said Willibald Pirkheimer, "enter the field of public disputation." Pirkheimer told his sister, in somewhat brutal language, that she had "better have held her woman's tongue."
Just when the future looked most dark for Saint Clare's, Philip Melanchthon sweetest, calmest, sanest spirit of the Reformation came to Nürnberg. He visited his old friend, Charitas Pirkheimer, in her convent. "Would to God," Charitas writes afterward, "that every one were as discreet as Master Philip. We might then hope to be rid of many things that are vexatious." Melanchthon quietly put a stop to the persecutions of the convent. From the date of his visit Saint Clare's remained comparatively undisturbed.
It is easy to understand how the "Evangelist of Art," Albrecht Durer, and Charitas Pirkheimer could be, as they were, the closest of friends. But Conrad Celtes, the Heine of the Renaissance, and the stately, pious abbess of Saint Clare's would seem, at first sight, to have little in common. Nevertheless, a warm and long-continued friendship existed between these two.
The ethical note of the Renaissance was first struck in Germany. Even Conrad Celtes (the one Humanist in the Italian the Lorenzo de' Medici sense of the term that Germany has ever produced) could not quite deaden the Teutonic conscience. Celtes's writings are full of questionings that are almost startlingly modern. "Is there, really, a God?" "Will the soul live after death?" "What is the nature of the force that produces lightning?" Then, in the very next line perhaps, the poet lapses again into sensuality. "There is nothing sweeter under the sun than a pretty maid in a man's arms to banish care." "This," says Bezold, "was Celtes's heart-confession, and he lived up to it." Bezold adds: "In spite of his voluminous correspondence with them, Celtes did not appreciate good women. He really knew only alehouse wenches." In the light of Celtes's letters to Charitas Pirkheimer, it is hard to accept this harsh judgment unreservedly.
The Renaissance and the Reformation in Germany are so closely allied that it is difficult to separate one energy from the other. Mental and spiritual forces are not easily anchored to dates. For convenience, however, we may say that the German Renaissance lasted from 1450 to 1519 as a distinct movement, while the Reformation largely an outgrowth of the Renaissance fell between the years 1519 and 1560. With the beginning of the Reformation the brotherhood of humanistic scholarship was disrupted. To German women the national unrest brought heartache and soul bewilderment.
Charitas Pirkheimer was not the only woman to "forget her sex and mix in an unseemly manner in disputes about which only men are properly qualified to express an opinion." Argula von Grumbach, friend of Spalatin and wife of an officer at the Bavarian court, also brought much sorrow upon herself by writing a spirited letter, which was printed by her friends and rejoiced in by her enemies.
Seehofer, a young Lutheran master at the university of Ingolstadt, was accused of proselyting the students. He presented to his classes seventeen propositions which he had deduced from the writings of Melanchthon. The rector of the university, by imprisonment and by threats of the Inquisition, compelled the too zealous young Lutheran to recant. At this point, Argula an emotional, warmhearted, and talented woman took a hand in the affair. She wrote the rector an impertinent letter, in which she spoke of Seehofer as a "mere child of eighteen," and, with refreshing confidence in her own powers of oratory, offered to come to Ingolstadt to defend, publicly, both the young master and his theses. The university authorities ignored this offer, but the Catholic cartoonists of the time made the most of it. From every quarter of Germany Argula was assailed in mocking rhymes, to which she replied in counter rhymes. The verses on both sides are rather bad, though the plucky little baroness holds her own fairly well. For her "indiscreetness" Argula was banished from court; and her husband, "for not controlling his wife properly," was dismissed from his lucrative position at the palace.
The real strength of Protestant women, however, lay not with its excitable Argulas, but with firm, steady, sensible women like Catharine von Bora, who became Luther's wife. It seems almost unjust that a girl possessed of sufficient spirit and courage to propose to the man she loved should, for posterity, be forever submerged under the appended title, "his wife." Catharine von Bora's individuality was marked. Her wise management, as wife and mother, seems phenomenal when we remember how suddenly she was transplanted from conventual to secular life, but no healthy young tree ever better stood removal from shade to sunlight.
Catharine von Bora was descended from a noble but impoverished family. At the age of ten she was placed in the convent of Nimtsch, near Grimma. At sixteen she became a nun. In 1523, under the influence of Luther's preaching, she, with eight of her sister nuns, left the convent secretly by night and fled to Wittenberg. For her apostasy, Catharine's family cast her off. Luther found her a comfortable home and did his best to provide her with a husband. But Catharine, who, says Erasmus, was "a wonderfully pretty girl," would not accept either of the two suitors Luther recommended. Amsdorf, Luther's envoy, argued with her upon her stubbornness. Whereupon, Catharine replied, calmly, "I will not marry Glatz, but I will marry either you or Luther, if you want me." She meant that she would marry Martin Luther, for she well knew that Amsdorf's affections were already placed elsewhere. Luther, though somewhat surprised at the turn things had taken, accepted Catharine's proposal and the nuptials were duly celebrated amid the remonstrances of the Reformer's friends and the derisive howls of his enemies.
"Antichrist only can be born from this unholy union of priest and nun," was the scandalized cry of the Catholics. To which Erasmus made sarcastic reply: "Then there must have been a good many Antichrists born before now."
An indisputable testimony to Catharine's kindly nature is the affection which old John Luther and his wife felt for their son's wife. Catharine bore good, as evil fortune, with dignity. Her head was never in the least turned by the popularity of her husband. When princes visited the humble home at Wittenberg, she received them with simple, well-bred courtesy. When beggars came she welcomed them with equal cordiality. She had much to contend against. They were poor and her husband was over generous, not only in hospitality, but in constantly giving away household effects which his family could ill afford to spare. Martin Luther, too, was a man of storms. A woman less firm and tactful than his beloved "Kathie" could hardly have lived peaceably with him.
In the evil days that fell after Luther's death, his widow did not lose her courage. She struggled nobly to support herself and children. She followed the usual heart-breaking course of poor widows in trying to make a living. She sewed; she kept boarders; she turned her hand, patiently, to any honest labor that offered itself. War, flight from pestilence, and then sudden death so runs the record of the last bitter years of Catharine von Bora's active, helpful, noble life.
While a handful of earnest women were studying, thinking, praying, fashionable women in Germany were doing just what fashionable women always have done everywhere in all ages, just what they were doing long ago in Athens when Aristophanes made clever sketches of them, they were eating and drinking sumptuously; riding, visiting, backbiting, getting their daughters married, and trying to outdo each other in giving costly entertainments. It was this mode of life that necessitated the pretty dresses, "as many as two a day" against which Geiler of Kaisersberg railed.
Every little German principality had its court, and in nearly all these courts corruption reigned. The Italian or the Frenchman may be gracefully, even captivatingly wicked. But in a German sensuality is invariably coarse, pronounced, and revolting. There is something fiercely Titanic in a German's embrace of evil. The student, who, leaving the doings of kings and queens, untangles thread by thread the biography of lesser men and women connected with these old German courts, has before him entertainment for a lifetime. In each of these small court circles he will find stories of sin, passion, and remorse, beside which the tales of a D'Annunzio, a Balzac, or a Zola seem mere inchoate records of childish bravado.
The enormous effect of vice upon the women of the Renaissance and Reformation periods cannot be ignored in any true picture of the time. Man's lust was an accepted factor of everyday life. Very early, as we have noted in a preceding chapter, houses of prostitution were established and regulated by law. The woman superintendent put in charge of such a house was required to swear formally that she would "serve the best interests of the city" loyally;i. e., she must increase the revenues. She swore to "induce to come in as many girls as possible." The inmates of a house of prostitution continued to wear a distinctive dress whenever they appeared on the streets. This uniform served a double purpose. It was a convenience to the men, and it prevented the girls from escaping easily. When a distinguished visitor came to town, he was, even during the Reformation period, sometimes taken, soon after his arrival, to one of these houses by the chief magistrate, and the prettiest girls sometimes richly dressed, sometimes naked were brought before him for choice. Even in some private houses a similar form of hospitality was shown to male visitors, the prettiest maids of the house being detailed to "attend" such visitors.
The lot of a German workingwoman in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries was very hard. Her hours of work were from sunrise to sunset. If she lived in the country, she did all the ordinary housework for a large family; she planted and harvested, she attended to the cattle, she sheared the sheep, gathered the flax, spun and wove the linen and wool, bleached or dyed the finished cloth, and with her needle fashioned it into garments for her husband, her children, and herself. In the country, grand ladies often had workrooms where as many as three hundred girls were employed. A city workingwoman was shut out by the guilds from any remunerative labor. She could seldom earn more than her board, no matter how hard she might work. Women's wages, except for sin, were pitifully meagre. That the majority of German workingwomen did remain chaste in spite of the ever present temptations toward vice speaks volumes in praise of the German feminine character.
In both city and country, spinning was looked upon as woman's natural occupation. "She was pious and spun" is a common epitaph upon sixteenth century tombstones in Germany. "Let men fight and women spin," preached Berthold von Regensberg. Almost as soon as a girl baby could walk she was taught to spin. Little Gertrude Sastrow, at the age of five, asked one day what the princes at the Diet did. Her brother replied: "They determine what shall be done in the empire." "Then," her brother relates, "the little maiden at her distaff gave a deep sigh and said dolefully, 'Oh, good God, if they would only decree that little girls should not spin!"
Luther bitterly resented the accusation that his teachings were responsible for the Peasant's War. He declared, truly enough, that the peasants, long ground between the upper and nether millstones of an oppressive nobility and a greedy merchant monopoly, had again and again revolted long before he was born. Nevertheless, it cannot be denied that Protestantism, as representing individualism, had much to do with the social upheavals of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Both the Renaissance and the Reformation, or rather, the underlying force which produced both, made tremendously for Democracy.
The peasant woman's lot was doubly hard. The horrible outrages committed upon her during war make one's blood run cold even now, after centuries have passed. In time of peace, too often, she was considered little better than a beast of burden. Men of the peasant class gathered hazy notions of the world and its doings at the alehouses. But the cat or dog upon the hearth was not more dumb, intellectually, than the average peasant woman. One searches the records of history in vain to find, during the Renaissance and Reformation periods, a single peasant woman anywhere in Germany who rose notably above her class.
The influence of Marguerite of Austria, aunt, guardian, and closest adviser of Charles V. upon the destiny of Germany was incalculably great. That Charles, instead of his rival, Francis I. of France, was chosen emperor was mainly due to Marguerite's persistent efforts in behalf of her nephew, whom she idolized. Marguerite kept the Fuggers constantly on Charles's side a stroke of wisdom that carried the election. The life story of Marguerite of Austria, daughter of Maximilian and granddaughter of Charles the Bold, is almost unknown to English readers. It is worth telling at some length for it illustrates an important phase in the history of German womanhood the way in which royal girls were disposed of in marriage.
Storms in the life of Marguerite began long before the Reformation. At the age of two years she lost her mother, beautiful Mary of Burgundy, daughter of Charles the Bold. The young queen's last words were spoken to her "Daisy." "Farewell, farewell, my sweetest little daughter," she murmured. "Thou art too soon left motherless." At the age of four, Marguerite, for political reasons, was married to the Dauphin of France, afterward known as Charles VIII., who was ten years her senior. The marriage was solemnized with great pomp at Amboise. After the ceremony the tired, bewildered baby was returned to her good governess, Madame Secrete.
Marguerite, up to her twelfth year, was educated wholly with a view to her future position as Queen of France. But the pride of Charles the Bold ran in the little maid's veins. She never forgot that she was the "daughter of Cæsar." Cæsar himself "Our Max," "Beggar Max," "Spendthrift Max," "Mayor of Augsburg," "Hunter Max," as he was variously called by his people, but always with a "God bless him!" added could, and a hundred times a day did, easily throw off the imperial dignity; but stately little Marguerite never laid hers aside, even in her childish games with the French royal children. She is described as possessing "set will, affectionate nature, and unusual zeal for study."
At the age of twelve, a crushing blow fell upon this proud little daughter of Cæsar. To gain a province, her husband divorced her and married Anne of Brittany. The latter maid was kidnapped during a journey through France and held prisoner in a castle until she agreed to the marriage, which was then speedily effected. Marguerite haughtily refused to resign the title, "Queen of France," which she had borne for eight years. For seventeen months there were, therefore, two Queens of France Anne at Paris, and Marguerite holding her court at Amboise. Even the annals of royalty have never shown a more complicated situation. Anne of Brittany was, legally, for she had been married by proxy to Maximilian Marguerite's stepmother. Now, by her enforced marriage to Charles, Anne found herself the rival of her nominal stepdaughter.
Maximilian, doubly furious against France, demanded that Marguerite's dowry be returned and that she be sent back to him with regal honors. It was a hard journey for a high-spirited girl. Every town along the route held fetes and was brightly illuminated as she passed through it. These municipal displays, either from stupidity or malice, were mostly in execrable taste. On every hand, blazoned in fire, Marguerite saw her own name sometimes even her own portrait coupled with that of the king who had cast her off. But she exhibited few outward signs of inward shame. Once at Cambrai, when the crowd shouted "Noel, Noel;" she called in a clear, far-reaching tone "Say not 'Noel,' but cry, 'Long live Burgundy!'" Once, at dinner in a French town through which she passed, lament was made that the vintage had been blighted; and she said: "Small wonder that the grapes wither in a country where oaths are broken!"
But Marguerite or, rather, her wealth was not long without suitors. Don Juan of Austria, son of Ferdinand and Isabella, offered himself and was accepted by Maximilian. There was a brief delay in the negotiations and Don Juan, exasperated thereby, impudently reminded the emperor that a divorced princess ought to come cheaper than either a widow or a maid. At about the same time Marguerite's brother, Philip the Handsome, was betrothed to Don Juan's sister, Juana. The two girls travelled together from Brussels as far as Liege, where Philip was to be married. There was a great contrast between the two Marguerite calm, stately, fair, was ruled always by reason; and Juana dark, intense, was governed by emotion. Upon this journey, however, youth and common interests must have made the two girls companionable to each other. No prophetic sign warned either of sorrows which the future held in store. The following letter, lately printed inSecret Memoirs of the House of Austria, gives the story of Juana's tragedy. Another letter, to which we shall refer later, proves that Marguerite's love passion, though free from crime, unlike Juana's, was no less deep and real than that of her hot-blooded southern sister. The letter was written by one of Philip's generals. An extract from it says: "The good King Philip was suspected by his Queen of an amour, and that without reason, as was afterward discovered, but she took it so much and so grievously to heart that she at last resolved to kill her lord and husband in revenge for it. As women are so easily moved and impelled, according to the old adage 'they have long robes but short counsels,' she got so utterly beside herself as to poison her good husband, although it was to her own loss. Shortly after, she found out that she had been wrong, and that she had allowed her quick temper to get the better of her. Then she began to rue what she had done, and found no rest, tormented as she was by the furies of remorse; and as she had her husband no more and could not get him back, she began to love him twice as well as before, and grieved and fretted so violently that at last she went out of her mind altogether and became quite childish."
For months Juana kept Philip's embalmed body in her room, frequently embracing it in an agony of grief. When, at last, it was buried she could not rest until it was exhumed. Then she travelled with it at night by the light of torches all through Spain. Curiously enough, a soothsayer had once told Philip that he would make longer journeys through his kingdom after his death than he had ever taken while living.
Philip the Handsome had one strong trait in his otherwise weak nature. He was devotedly attached to his sister Marguerite. He loved her better than anything else on earth except himself. She loved him, and his children after him for his sake, with no thought of self. When Marguerite left the Netherlands for Spain where her marriage with Don Juan was to take place, Philip went with her to the seacoast. The ship in which Marguerite and her suite sailed was threatened with destruction. Marguerite calmly dressed herself in her richest robes and jewels in order that her body, if washed ashore, might be easily identified. Then under one of her splendid bracelets she slipped a band of oiled silk containing an epitaph written by herself:
"Cy gise Margot, la gente damoysella,Qui eust deux maris, et si morut pucelle."
"Cy gise Margot, la gente damoysella,Qui eust deux maris, et si morut pucelle."
"Cy gise Margot, la gente damoysella,
Qui eust deux maris, et si morut pucelle."
This has been roughly translated thus:
"Beneath this tomb the highborn Margaret's laid,Who had two husbands and yet died a maid."
"Beneath this tomb the highborn Margaret's laid,Who had two husbands and yet died a maid."
"Beneath this tomb the highborn Margaret's laid,
Who had two husbands and yet died a maid."
In this epitaph we get one of the few hints of the fact that Marguerite had inherited her father's whimsical sense of humor. Her letters and her papers generally seem written under the shadow of court etiquette. Her acts, however, and many of her recorded conversations, show a quick appreciation of ludicrous or grotesque situations.
But the young poetess's epitaph was premature. The ship made the coast of England in safety. The princess was invited to visit Henry VII. of England; which invitation she accepted with the result that she was, says the old historian, "much caressyed by the whole Court." Whether Marguerite at this time met Charles Brandon (afterward the Duke of Suffolk) who was destined secretly to play an important part in her love affairs, is unknown, but it is probable that she did. Shortly after, her marriage a magnificent ceremony took place at Madrid.
Once more a crown glittered before the ambitious girl's eyes, and again it was dashed from her. Six months after their marriage, Don Juan suddenly died. Marguerite returned to Germany. Again she married, this time Philibert of Savoy, who seems to have loved her deeply; he, too, soon died. Twice a widow and once divorced, Marguerite at the age of twenty-five returned to her father's court, declaring that no political exigencies should again force her into matrimony. About this time, she adopted her strange, sad motto:Spoliat mors munera nostra(Death ever destroys what is granted to us). A pathetic little poem it loses much in translation written by Marguerite at this time is still preserved:
"Must I thus ever languish on?Must I, alas, thus die alone?Shall none my tears and anguish know?From childhood, I have suffered so!Too long it lasts this weary woe."
"Must I thus ever languish on?Must I, alas, thus die alone?Shall none my tears and anguish know?From childhood, I have suffered so!Too long it lasts this weary woe."
"Must I thus ever languish on?
Must I, alas, thus die alone?
Shall none my tears and anguish know?
From childhood, I have suffered so!
Too long it lasts this weary woe."
As Thackeray said long afterward of the work of another poet-princess: "These plaintive lines are more touching than better poetry."
Still another sorrow was in store for Marguerite. Her beloved brother, Philip the Handsome, died. The manner of his death we know. It was his dying request that his sister Marguerite, then regent of the Netherlands, should have the guardianship of his five children, Charles, Leonora, Isabel, Marie, and Catalina. The maternal instinct never beat more strongly in any woman's heart than in that of the royal Marguerite. Faithfully, wisely, lovingly, she fulfilled her brother's trust.
Another crown was offered Marguerite: Henry VII. of England sought her in marriage. Her father wished her to accept this suitor, but Marguerite persistently refused. Much correspondence passed between Maximilian and his daughter at this time. From it we learn little of Marguerite's inner life, but the glimpses of Maximilian are charming. Had he not been sure that his daughter would appreciate his humorous allusions and his nonsensical fancies, he would never have written as he did. In regard to his plan for settling the difficulties between Church and State by the startling expedient of making himself Pope, he writes:
"VERY DEAR AND MOST BELOVED DAUGHTER:
"We send the Bishop of Greece to-morrow to Rome, to the Pope, to find some means of agreeing with him to take us for a coadjutor, so that after his death we may be sure of having his papacy, and of becoming a priest, and you will be obliged after my death to worship me, of which I shall be extremely proud. I have also begun to sound the cardinals, with whom two or three thousand ducats will do me great service, considering the partiality which they already exhibit.
"P. S. The Pope has intermittent fever. Cannot live long."
No better business woman ever lived than royal Marguerite. Her first act as regent was the abrogation of several of her father's unwise, self-cheating treaties. She encouraged trade, secured financial stability in her realm, always kept on good terms with the Fuggers, the money kings of the world, and increased the revenue from all sources. A marriage was planned between her nephew, Charles, and Mary Tudor, the youngest daughter of Henry VII.
When Henry VIII., in the war between France and England, led an army to the battle of Guinegatte, Marguerite invited him to visit her at Lille. Did Marguerite know when she sent her letter of invitation that with Henry was one whom she had met at the English court and had never forgotten? The following letter, written her from Henry's camp by her confidential messenger, would indicate that she did know. "The Grand Equerry, the second king," mentioned in the letter was Charles Brandon, then Viscount Lisle and later ennobled by Henry for Marguerite's sake, gossip said Lord Suffolk. The messenger, Philippe de Brigilles, writes:
"MADAME:
"The Grand Equerry, my Lord Lisle, has been to me to beg of me that I would convey to you his most humble respects and the hearty desire which he had to do you service. I think you know sufficiently well that he is the second king and it is only proper that you should write him a gracious letter, for he it is who does and undoes all. This knoweth God, who give you, Madame, what ever you most desire. From the camp before Therouanne, this Wednesday last.
"Your most humble and most obedient slave,
"PHILIPPE DE BRIGILLES."
Marguerite was now thirty-three. A portrait of her at Hampton Court shows that she was a fine-looking, if not, strictly speaking, a beautiful woman. The face is oval, the hair, showing from underneath the rather picturesque widow's headdress of the sixteenth century, is brown, the eyes are dark and expressive, the nose Grecian, the lips somewhat full. The hands, resting upon a balcony, are beautiful, with long, tapering fingers.
Brandon is described as "a large man, tall and elegantly proportioned, with dark brown eyes and hair: he was handsome in his countenance, courtly in his manners, and extremely prepossessing in his address."
For the next few months, the soul of Marguerite of Austria was struggling in deep waters. The facts, as clearly as they can be made out through the misty perspective of centuries, seem to be these: Marguerite loved Charles Brandon, then Viscount Lisle and afterward the Duke of Suffolk. He asked her hand in marriage, wooing her passionately. The young and powerful king, Henry VIII., favored Suffolk's suit, even to the point of making several personal appeals to Marguerite, whose pride and her fear of causing a political catastrophe made her hesitate to accept Suffolk. Gossiping rumors concerning the love affair were spread broadcast, and Maximilian, hearing them, became enraged. Marguerite drew back. Henry VIII. pretended to the emperor that he knew nothing about the matter except by hearsay. Brandon accepted the situation and later consoled himself by marrying the youngest sister of the king, the bride first selected for Charles, Mary Tudor.
To give reality and color to the above bare outline of a story that once throbbed with life, a few descriptions and quotations may be permitted.
Henry VIII., with his suite, including Brandon, visited Marguerite at Lille. She in return "accompanied by her young nephew Charles and divers other nobles," visited Henry in his camp at Tournay. Henry met them outside the gates and "brought them in with greate triumphe." The chronicler adds: "The noys went that the Lord Lysle made request of marriage to the Ladye Margurite, Duchess of Savoy, and daughter to the Emperor Maximilian. But whether he proffered marriage or not, she favored him highly."
An evening banquet following, a day of tournaments is thus described:
"This night the King made a sumptuous banket of a. c. dishes to the Prince of Castell and the Lady Margarete, and to all other Lords and ladies and after the banket the ladies daunsed; and then came in the king and a XI in a maske, all richly appareled with bonnettes of gold, and when they had passed the time at their pleasure, the garments of the maske were cast off amongst the ladies, take who could take."
That handsome Charles Brandon and stately Marguerite of Austria "took" each other is proved by the following extracts, made from two letters signed "M" among the Cottonian manuscripts now in the British Museum. The epistles are evidently translations from French originals. They are addressed to "Sir Richard Wingfield, Ambassadour," and are labelled on the outside, in Sir Richard Wingfield's handwriting:Secrete Matters of the Duke of Suffolk. The letters were delivered to Wingfield by Marotin, a confidential servant, whom it is known Marguerite dismissed for having "evile kept" her secrets. As Marotin was at once taken into Maximilian's service it is probable that he was the emperor's informant concerning the Suffolk love affair. For nearly a year afterward, intercourse between the emperor and his daughter was confined to the coldest formalities.
In the case of a few words, liberties have here been taken with Sir Richard Wingfield's spelling in order to make the letter intelligible to modern readers:
"The Archduchess Marguerite to Sir Richard Wingfield.
"My Ladye began this wryting before the koming of Marrotin, who came to Lavoyne on Sundaye last."
"MY LORDE AMBASSADOURE:
"Sythe that I see that I may not have tydynges from the Emperor so soon, it seemeth me that I shulde do welle no longer to tarry to depeche this gentleman. And for that my lettres addressyed to the King and the Duke of that I dare not aventure me to wryte on to them so at lengthe of thys bisyness I fear me to be evile kept, I me determine to wrythe to you at lengthe that you may the better advertise them of myne intent."
She then explains that her intent is to put a stop to the whole matter. Fear of endangering the prospects of her idolized nephew, Charles, should she make a mesalliance, was probably Marguerite's main reason for disobeying the dictates of her heart. Marguerite was a politician, clear-headed, keen, cool, calculating; but she was also a very human woman. She wished Sir Richard to think well of her she desired the king to know that she did not blame him in the matter. Above all, she wished Suffolk to understand that while she rejected him she still remained true to him. She told Wingfield how "at severall occaysions" the king pleaded for his friend and favorite courtier:
"He sayde that I was yet too young for to abide thus, and that the ladyes of hys contree dyd remarye at fifty and three score yeeres." But Marguerite was firm. She says: "Whereupon I answered hym that I hadde never hadde wylle so to do and that I was too muche unhappy in hosbondes, but he wolde nott beleve me."
Throughout the letters, Suffolk (Brandon) is referred to by Marguerite as the "Personnage." Again the king told her that his friend was most unhappy, fearing she would marry someone else.
"Wyche I promised to hym," says Marguerite, "I schulde not do." But the "Personnage," who appears to have been present at this interview, was not satisfied. Marguerite says: "He mayde me promyse in his hands that how soever I shulde be pressed by my father, or otherwyse, I should not make alyance of maryage with Prynce off the worlde."
The king was sometimes discreetly absent when the two met.
"At the head of a koppboorde," a few days later, Suffolk made Marguerite renew her promise to him. Marguerite refers also to certain "gracyewse letters" that passed between herself and her English suitor. The report had got abroad in the court that Suffolk had in his possession a diamond ring known to belong to the archduchess. She confesses the truth of the rumor:
"One night at Tournaye, being at the bankett, after the bankett, he put hymself upon hys knees before me, and hym playing, he drew from my finger the rynge, and put it on hys finger, and sythe shewed it me. And I took to Lawe, and to hym sayde that he was a theefe, and that I thowte not the King hadde wyth hym ledde theeves out of hys contree." Somehow, one feels glad of that half-hour "after the bankett" in Marguerite's hard life.
Brandon behaved well in the matter when he found that Marguerite had fully made up her mind to end their friendship. His daughter by his first wife and an adopted daughter were both under Marguerite's care at her court, and Suffolk offered to remove them if the archduchess wished him to do so. Another young English girl also was under Marguerite's charge, Anne Bullen, better known to history as Anne Boleyn. Suffolk, about this time, adopted for his shield the singular motto: "Who can hold that will away?"
The affair with the Duke of Suffolk being over, Marguerite plunged into politics, straining every nerve to secure the imperial succession for Charles against the new claimant who had arisen, Francis I. of France. When her help was no longer needed by the young emperor, Marguerite retired to her favorite spot, Malines. There she held a quiet court, devoting herself to study. When remonstrated with upon the score of health for confining herself too closely to books, she replied: "When the mind has congenial employment, the body will always take care of itself." At the Field of the Cloth of Gold, and also at Cambrai, where the "Ladies' Peace" treaty was arranged by herself and Louise of Savoy, Marguerite again met her old lover, the Duke of Suffolk. If history holds any records of that meeting, they are still hidden in her secret archives.
The Renaissance and the Reformation both touched Marguerite of Austria closely. Toward the Renaissance she was kindly and even gratefully inclined. For Protestantism, however, she had only scorn and hatred. Her natural benevolence kept her from the cruel persecutions which darkened the reign of another Marguerite--Marguerite of Parma--in the Netherlands. But Marguerite of Austria, nevertheless, was openly committed to "the extermination of the Lutherans." That her niece Isabel died in the new and hated faith was a source of great sorrow to her. Isabel, with her last breath, committed her children to her aunt Marguerite's care; and Marguerite, whose life had been largely spent in rearing other women's children, took these little orphans also to her heart.
When the Reformation came, even the gay, profligate courts of the German principalities were sobered. At first, in certain cases, the sudden seriousness caused by Luther's ringing call took the form of attempted evasion of the consequences of sin. Philip of Hesse, a big, handsome prince into whose material nature a bit of the new leaven had fallen, asked "Pope Luther" to let him marry a second wife while his first was living. He did not propose to put the first away; he would provide for both. In extenuation of this suggested bigamy he pleaded truly enough that Christine, his spouse, was addicted to over-indulgence in strong drink, and, also, was personally repulsive. He wished to marry Katharine von Saal, one of the court ladies. It was a crucial moment for Protestantism. Philip's powerful aid would perhaps save the new faith. Long ago, Luther had twice given it as his opinion that the Scriptures sanctioned plural marriages. The dispensation was granted. The second marriage took place, Christine agreeing placidly. Katharine von Saal made Philip a good wife, and the three Christine being left in undisturbed enjoyment of her daily dram lived, it seems, harmoniously enough.
A very different story is that of another court. Joachim, Elector of Brandenburg, bitterly opposed the new faith, but his wife became a convert. The latter partook of the sacrament in both kinds, and then fearing vengeance from her angry lord and master fled from his court to a refuge near Lotha. Her husband refused to take her back, but he allowed her children to visit her. Carlyle, in his Frederick the Great, tells the story.
The vexed question, Which has done more to advance the world, the Renaissance or the Reformation? will probably never be satisfactorily settled. At the best, 'tis rather a shallow question, born of provincial intelligence. Without the Renaissance there could have been no Reformation. Without the Reformation, the Renaissance, contenting itself with past culture, would never have become the active force it is in the world to-day. To both, the twentieth century woman owes much.