The literature of biography presents no chapter that can rival this in the idyllic beauty of the lives of those two children on the lovely island in the violet sea. The perpetual conflicts that were waged in both Rome and Naples awakened no echoes in this romantic and isolated spot, whose atmosphere was that of the peace of scholarly pursuits and lofty thought that is found where the arts and the muses hold their sway.
But in 1496 came the tragedy of the death of the young king and queen of Naples; four years later Rome celebrated a jubilee in which Naples took part, sending a splendid procession as escort to the famous Madonna that was carried from Naples to Rome and back, working miracles, it is said, on both journeys, as a Madonna should. A year later Frederick of Naples and the queen, and two of the king"s sisters,--ladies of high n.o.bility,--came as guests to the castle in Ischia,--royal exiles seeking shelter. Five years later the new king and queen were welcomed with gorgeous parade and acclamation. A pier was thrown out over one hundred feet into the sea; on this a tent of gold was erected, and all the n.o.bility of Naples, in the richest costumes of velvet and jewels, thronged to meet the royal guests. Over the sunlit Bay of Naples resounded the thunder of the guns in military salute and the cheers of the people. Among the distinguished n.o.bility present, Costanza, d.u.c.h.essa and Principessa di Francavilla, was a marked figure with her young charge, Vittoria Colonna, at her side. She made a deep reverence and kissed the hand of the king as he pa.s.sed, as did many of the ladies of highest rank, and at the fete of that evening Vittoria"s beauty charmed all eyes. Although it was well understood that she had been betrothed since childhood to Francesco d"Avalos, yet many princes and n.o.bles sued for her hand and were refused by her father, who was at this time established magnificently in Naples. Pope Julius II refused the pleadings of two dukes, both of whom wished to seek Vittoria in marriage, as he considered the love of the young girl for her betrothed a matter to be held sacred. Three years later, when Vittoria was nineteen and Francesco twenty, their marriage was celebrated in Castel d"Ischia with the richest state and beauty of ceremonial observance. A few months previous to this time she had returned to her father"s country home in the family castle at Marino, whither both Fabrizio and Agnese Colonna accompanied their daughter. When the time appointed for her bridal came, Vittoria was escorted to Ischia by princes, and dukes, and ladies of honor, and the marriage gifts to the bride included a chain of rubies, diamonds, and emeralds, linked with gold; a writing desk of solid gold; wonderful bracelets; costumes of velvets, and brocades and rich embroideries, and a portion of fourteen thousand ducats.
[Ill.u.s.tration: LA ROCCA, ISCHIA _Page 294_]
"The noted pair had not their equals in Italy at this time," writes a contemporary historian. "Their life in Naples was all magnificence and festivity, and when they desired to exchange it for the country they left Naples for Pietralba on Monte Emo, where they a.s.sembled pleasant parties of ladies and gentlemen. Much time was pa.s.sed in their beloved Ischia, where the d.u.c.h.essa, as Castellana, was obliged to receive much company. And here were found the flower of chivalry and the men most noted in letters.... They listened to the poets Sanazzaro, il Rota, and Bernardo Ta.s.so; or they heard the admirable discourses on letters of Musefico, il Giovio, and il Minturno. It was an agreeable school for the youthful minds of Vittoria and Pescara. Thus pa.s.sed in great happiness the first three years of their married life."
It is not strange that to the young Marchesa di Pescara, Ischia had become an enchanted island. The scene of her happy childhood, of her studies, of her first efforts in lyric art, of her stately and resplendent bridal; the home, too, of her early married life,--it is little wonder that in after years she translated into song its scenic loveliness and the thoughts and visions it had inspired.
Again, the ever-recurring war came on, and in the spring of 1512 the King of Naples conferred the doubtful privilege on the Marchesa di Pescara of serving as the royal representative. It is said that Vittoria personally superintended her young husband"s outfit,--in horses, attendants, armor, and other details belonging to a gentleman of rank.
Her father and her uncle, Prospero Colonna, were also among the military who led Italian troops. In the terrible battle of Ravenna (which was fought on the Easter Sunday, April 11, of 1512), Pescara was wounded, taken prisoner, and carried to the fortress of Porta Gobbia. A messenger was sent to Ischia, where Vittoria lived between her books and the orange groves; and the twentieth-century cynic of 1907 will smile at the form in which she expressed her sorrow,--that of a poem of some forty stanzas, which began:--
"_Eccelso Mio Signor! Questa ti scrivo Per te narrar tra quante dubbie voglie, Fra quanti aspri martir, dogliosa io vivo!_"
A translation of this lyric epistle, made in prose, gives it more fully as follows:--
"Eccelso Mio Signor: I write this to thee to tell thee amid what bitter anxieties I live.... I believed that so many prayers and tears, and love without measure, would not have been displeasing to G.o.d.... Thy great valor has shone as in a Hector or an Achilles."
In this letter Vittoria tells him that when the messenger reached her, she was lying on a point of the island ("_I_, in the _body_, my _mind_ always with _thee_," she says), and that the whole atmosphere had been to her that day "like a cavern of black fog," and that "the marine G.o.ds seemed to say to Ischia, "To-day, Vittoria, thou shalt hear of disgrace from the confines: thou now in health and honor, thou shalt be turned to grief; but thy father and husband are saved, though taken prisoners.""
This presentiment she related to her husband"s aunt, the d.u.c.h.essa Francavilla, the Castellana of Ischia, who begged her not to think of it and said, "It would be strange for such a force to be conquered."
Just after this conversation between the youthful Marchesa and the d.u.c.h.essa, the messenger arrived. The psychic science of to-day would see in this occurrence a striking instance of telepathy. In her poetic epistle to her husband, Vittoria also says:--
"A wife ought to follow her husband at home and abroad; if he suffers trouble, she suffers; if he is happy, she is; if he dies, she dies. What happens to one happens to both; equals in life, they are equals in death. His fate is her fate."
These letters--in keeping with the times--were, on both sides, expressed in literary rather than in personal form. Pescara, from his captivity, wrote to her a "Dialogue on Love,"--a ma.n.u.script for which Visconti notes that he has searched in vain.
The Marchesa di Pescara went from Ischia to Naples, after learning of the misfortunes that had overtaken her husband, in order that she might be able constantly to receive direct communication regarding his fate. A few months later the Marchese returned, making the day "brilliant with joy" to Vittoria, but after a year of happiness he was again called to service, and the Marchesa returned to her beloved Ischia. She gave herself to the study of the ancient cla.s.sics; she wrote poems, and "considered no time of value but so spent," says Rota. The age was one of a general revival of learning. Royalty, the Pope, the princes and n.o.bility were all giving themselves with ardor to this higher culture.
Under Dante the Italian language a.s.sumed new perfection. This period was to Vittoria one of intense stimulus, and it must have had a formative influence on her gifts and her mental power. Having no children, she adopted a young cousin of her husband, the Marchese del Vasto, to educate and to be the heir of their estates. In 1515, Pescara again returned and the entire island of Ischia was "aflame with bonfires, and the borders of the beautiful sh.o.r.e bright and warm with lights," in honor of the event. Of this event, Vittoria wrote:--
"... My beloved returns to us ... his countenance radiant with piety to G.o.d, with deeds born of inward faith."
At a magnificent wedding festival in the d"Avalos family about this time, it is recorded that the Marchesa di Pescara "wore a robe of brocaded crimson velvet, with large branches of beaten gold wrought on it, with a headdress of wrought gold and a girdle of beaten gold around her waist."
When the coronation of Charles V was to be celebrated at Aix-la-Chapelle the Marchese di Pescara was appointed amba.s.sador to represent the House of Aragon on this brilliant occasion, when the new emperor was to be invested with the crown and the sceptre of Charlemagne. Charles had decided to journey by sea and to visit Henry VIII on the way, an arrangement of which Cardinal Wolsey was aware, although he had kept Henry in ignorance of it, according to those curious mental processes of his mind where his young monarch was concerned. Shakespeare, in the play of "King Henry VIII," describes the meeting of the two kings, which occurred at Canterbury, "at a grand jubilee in honor of the shrine of Thomas a Becket." One historian thus describes this scene:--
"The two handsome young sovereigns rode into Canterbury under the same canopy, the great Cardinal riding directly in front of them, and on the right and left were the proud n.o.bles of Spain and England, among whom was Pescara. The kings alighted from their horses at the west door of the cathedral and together paid their devotions before that rich shrine blazing with jewels. They humbly knelt on the steps worn by the knees of tens of thousands of pilgrims."
On the return to Naples of the Marchese di Pescara he told the story of his regal journey to an a.s.semblage of n.o.bles in the Church of Santa Maria di Monte Oliveto, and he then joined the Marchesa in Rome, where she had gone to visit her family and to pay her devotions to Leo X, who had just created Pompeo Colonna a cardinal.
Pope Leo aspired to draw around him a court distinguished for its culture and brilliancy in both art and literature. In this court the Marchesa di Pescara shone resplendent. "She was at the height of her beauty, and her charms were sung by the poets of the day," says a contemporary.
A year later Leo X died, succeeded by Adrian (who had been tutor to Charles V), to the intense and bitter disappointment of Cardinal Wolsey, who had made the widest--and wiliest--efforts to gratify his own ambition of reigning in the Papal chair. Again the war between France and Italy, that which seemed to be a perpetually smouldering feud, and the Marchese di Pescara, again summoned to battle, was wounded at Pavia.
For some time he lay between life and death at Milan, and a messenger was sent to beg Vittoria to come to him. She set out on this journey, leaving Naples in great haste; but on reaching Viterbo another messenger met her with the tidings of the death of the Marchese, which had occurred on Nov. 25, 1525. Overcome with grief, Vittoria was carried back to Rome and for the solace of entire seclusion she sought the cloistered silence of the convent of San Silvestre, which lay at the foot of the Monte Cavallo in Rome, almost adjoining the gardens of the Colonna palace. To the Marchese di Pescara, who had the military rank of general, was given a funeral of great pomp and splendor in Milan, and his body was brought to the famous Naples church of Santa Domenica Maggiore, where it was entombed with the princes and n.o.bles of his house.
Before the death of the Marchese there had been a political plot to join the Papal, Venetian, and Milanese forces and rescue Italy from the Emperor"s rule, and the Pope himself had sent a messenger to Pescara asking him to unite with the league. The Marchese, Spanish by ancestry and by sympathies, used this knowledge to frustrate the Italian designs and to warn Spain. The Italian historians have execrated him for this act, which they regard as that of a traitor. Vittoria, however, did not take this view apparently, as in a letter to her husband she wrote:--
"t.i.tles and kingdoms do not add to true honor.... I do not desire to be the wife of a king, but I glory in being the wife of that great general who shows his bravery in war and, still more, by magnanimity in peace, surpa.s.ses the greatest kings."
The inducement of the throne of Naples had been held out to Marchese di Pescara. He evidently regarded this in the nature of a dishonorable bribe, and it is this view which the Marchesa plainly shared.
After his death her first impulse was to take the vows of a cloistered nun. The Pope himself intervened to dissuade her, and she consented to enter, only temporarily, the convent of San Silvestre on the Monte Cavallo.
In the will of the Marchese di Pescara there was a clause directing that anything in his estate unlawfully acquired should be restored to the owner; and under this, Vittoria gave back to the monastery of Monte Ca.s.sino the Monte San Magno that had formerly been its property.
From the cloistered shades of the convent Vittoria removed to the family castle of the Colonna at Marino, where, on the sh.o.r.e of this beautiful lake (which was the scenery of Virgil"s aeneid), she pa.s.sed some months, engaged in writing sonnets. Of one of these a translation runs in part:--
"I write solely to a.s.suage my inward grief, which destroys in my heart the light of this world"s sun; and not to add light to _mio bel sole_, to his glorified spirit. It is fit that other tongues should preserve his great name from oblivion."
In another, perhaps her most perfect sonnet, she beseeches the winds to convey to her beloved the message she sends:--
"_Ch"io di lui sempre pensi; o pianga, o parli_,"--That I always think of him, or weep for him, or speak of him.
Again, a year later, Vittoria returned to lovely Ischia, which, as one writer has described, "rises out of the blue billows of the Mediterranean like giant towers. The immense blocks of stone are heaped one upon another, in such a supernatural manner as to give a coloring to the legend, that beneath them, in those vast volcanic caverns, dwells the giant Tifeo." The castle where the d.u.c.h.essa Francavilla and the Marchesa Pescara lived is built on a towering ma.s.s of rock joined to the island by a causeway. The castle includes the palace, a church, and other buildings for the family and their guests and dependants.
For some three years the Marchesa did not again leave Ischia. In the mean time volumes of her poems were published. She received the acclamation of all the writers of her time. The crown of immortelles, often laid but on a tomb, was continually pressed upon her brow. She was the most famous woman of her time. Her beauty, her genius, her n.o.ble majesty of character impressed the contemporary world. Her days were filled with correspondence with the most distinguished men of the day.
Ariosto, Castiglione, Ludovico Dolce, Cardinal Bembo, Cardinal Contarini, and Paolo Giovio were among her nearer circle of friends.
[Ill.u.s.tration: CASTELLO DI ALFONSO, ISCHIA _Page 306_]
Stormy times fell upon Italy, in all of which the Colonna family bore prominent part, and all of which affected the life of Vittoria Colonna in many ways. Her biography, if written with fulness and accuracy, would be largely a history of the Italy of that time, for her life seemed always inseparably united with great events.
In the year 1530 (Clement VII being the Pope) a full Papal pardon had been extended to all the Colonna, and their castles and estates had also been restored to them. For years past Rome had been in a state of conflict. Benvenuto Cellini, who had watched the terrible scenes from Castel San Angelo where he was immured, has described the terrors. The Eternal City, whose population under Leo X had been 90,000, was now--in 1530--reduced to half that number. Palaces and temples had been the scenes of riot and destruction, yet to this very lawlessness of the time the Roman galleries of the present owe their ancient statues, which were uncovered by these a.s.saults. The Coliseum was left in the ruined state in which it is now seen, and by the sale of the stones taken from it the Palazzo Barberini was erected.
Vittoria, coming again to Rome and revisiting its cla.s.sic greatness, exclaimed that happy were they who lived in times so full of grandeur; to which the poet Molza gallantly replied that they were less happy, as they had not known her! Everywhere was she received with the highest honors. She made a tour, visiting Bagni di Lucca, Bologna, and Ferrara, where she was the guest of the Duca and d.u.c.h.essa Ercole in the ducal palace. The d.u.c.h.essa was the Princesse Renee, the daughter of Louis XII of France, and an ardent friend of Calvin, who visited her in Ferrara.
It was to this visit that Longfellow refers in his poem ent.i.tled "Michael Angelo," when he pictures Vittoria as sitting for her portrait to the artist and conversing with her friend Giulia, the d.u.c.h.ess of Trajetto, Michael Angelo begs them to resume the conversation interrupted by his entrance, and Vittoria says:--
"Well, first, then, of Duke Ercole, a man Cold in his manners, and reserved and silent, And yet magnificent in all his ways."
To which the d.u.c.h.essa replies:--
"How could the daughter of a king of France Wed such a duke?"
MICHAEL ANGELO.
"The men that women marry, And why they marry them, will always be A marvel and a mystery to the world."
VITTORIA.
"And then the d.u.c.h.ess,--how shall I describe her, Or tell the merits of that happy nature Which pleases most when least it thinks of pleasing?
Not beautiful, perhaps, in form and feature, Yet with an inward beauty, that shines through Each look and att.i.tude and word and gesture; A kindly grace of manner and behavior, A something in her presence and her ways That makes her beautiful beyond the reach Of mere external beauty; and in heart So n.o.ble and devoted to the truth, And so in sympathy with all who strive After the higher life."
JULIA.
"She draws me to her As much as her Duke Ercole repels me."
VITTORIA.