The Press.
London, England, 1856-11-15 00:00:00

THE PRESS.

the " Niurate," a community of nuns secluded,
or supposed to be secluded, from all communica-
tion with the outward world, and " decidedly
'• the most esteemed and most fashionable
" nunnery in Forence." Here she remained
two years and a half ; and her biographer, in
pursuance of his design, attempts to track
the influences by which she was here sur-
rounded :

In due imitation of their poor half crazed, but certainly
sincere, foundress, who shut herself in earnest reality
from all communication with the world iu her narrow cell
on the bridge over Arno, each noble damsel on her en-
trance into the sisterhood edified the Florentines by per-
forming the theatrical feat of passing in through a hole in
the wall broken for the purpose, while archbishop and
canons were there to make up the show, and to lay with
their own right reverend hands the first brick of the
mended wall behind her. But the solemn reclusion,
typified by so awful a ceremony, appears to have been
about as much a genuine reality as the other parts of their
monastic discipline. If the one hole was bricked up, there
were plenty of other eut►ances into the warren. Jf doors
were decorously shut with ostentatious bolt and bar, there
were other means of reaching the forbidden fruit ripening
within those not too savagely guarded gardens. The
Florentine chroniclers and novelists of the sixteenth
century, whose melodmme-like tales are on this point
sufficiently confirmed by the official edicts and complaints
of the civic and ecclesiastical authorities of the ilay, prove
that such means were put in habitual requisition by noble
youths outside the cloister walls, who wished to visit noble
ladies within them.

Then the author proceeds to notice " sinister
" stories which have been current in Florence
"in later years, of the remains of infant skele-
" tons, found thick-sown in ancient nunnery
" gardens." The conclusion he desires to
point to is, that " Catherine's female educators
" in her girlhood were as practically atheist
" as the purple guardians of her infancy."

The few facts brought forward by the author
wholly fail to support this sweeping insinua-
tion. His object being to support a theory—
that all Catherine's crimes in after life were
due to her early training—he thinks it neces-
s►ry to represent that she was wholly sur-
rounded by depravity. In this case, however,
the letters of Catherine herself furnish the
strongest presumption against her biographer's
sinister inferences. When at the height of
her power Catherine settled lands on the
Murate sisterhood to the value of six thou-
sand crowns, accompanying the gift with a
letter commencing—

The notable and unceasing zeal for God's service, as
well as the purity and uprightness of life which in my
childhood I observed to reign in your monastery ',where
possibly some one may yet be alive of those who saw me
there when a young girl) have induced me to show my
gratitude for the continual and devout prayers that you
have offered, and ever continue to offer up, for the King,
my husband, and me, &c.

The other letters of Catherine to the sister-
hood, dating from 1542 to 1588, a year before
her death, are conceived in the same spirit.
Assuredly, had this community of nuns been
so vicious and hypocritical as it suits Mr.
Trollope's scheme to represent them, Cathe-
tine would not in after years have cherished
such grateful and affectionate remembrance of
her residence amongst them. Nor are these
letters consistent with the author's general
idea of her character. He supposes that she
was entirely indifferent to religion. It would
be nearer the truth to say that she always con
sidered herself a dutiful daughter of the
Church. Her crimes were much less due to
the general spirit of her age than to the teach-
ing of her Church, which taught that with
heretics no faith was to be kept and no mercy
shown. And Mr. Trollope misses the whole
moral of her story in arguing that it was moral
depravity, and not religious bigotry, which
made her what she was. It was not, as Mr.
Trollope would have us believe, that her mind
was depraved by vicious practices within the
convent of the Nlurate—(vicious practices which
most likely never existed, though his imagina-
tion, strongly antagonistic to whatever is decent
in history, fondly paints them)—nor that the
gentle sisters were practical atheists, caring
nothing for the creed they professed, but that
the creed itself was of a nature to stimulate
the most ruthless extremities against those
who denied it Hence it unfortunately hap-
pened that the moat zealous believers were
the most cruel persecutors. A large heart
and an enlightened knowledge of the Gospel
could alone save the genuine Romanist of
those days from applauding the policy of Pro-
testant massacres and heretic fires.

1097

Were it worth while, it would not be difficult
to show the fallacy of those grounds on which
the author hai based his opinion of the
iniquity of the sisterhood of the Murate
The inference he draws from his assumption
that

the cognisance of such a fact as the deliberate murder
of innocents because their removal was necessary for the
suppression of scandal and the glory of religion, would be
a most efficient training for the perpetration of such deeds
as the pupil was in after years guilty of,

would be sufficient of itself to destroy all con-
fidence in the author's judgment and impar-
tiality. The thirty months of Catherine's
residence with the Murate go far, he conceives.
to account for " the portentous phenomenon of
" the exterminating Queen." It would he more
just, as well as more pleasing, to contemplate
Catherine when forcibly removed from the
shelter she loved as pure and pious, but with
the germ of that hatred agitiust heretics in her
heart which was so fearfully to expand when
the interests of her ambition combined with
the sentiments of her faith to intensify her
animosity against them.
The sisterhood of the Murate incurred the
suspicions of the popular party in Florence by
their supposed attachment to the Medici :
It was rumoured through the town, in the summer of
1530, that baskets bad been sent from the Murate to
known favourers of the Medici, with designs of the Medi-
cian arms—the hated sik balls worked in flowers at the
bottom of the basket. some said even that the cakes
themselves had been arranged into the same treasonable
semblance.

Acting on this suspicion, the Government
determined to remove Catherine—the " Du-
ehessina," as she was called—to her former
residence of Santa Lucia :

The tears and prayers of the DIM, however, and the
remonstrances of the " Duchessina " herself, obtained a
delay till the following day. The nuns, we are told, passed
the whole of the intervening night in prayer in their
chapel. Catherine herself, now just eleven years and
three months old, seems to have been already capable of
showing a sufficiently strong will and promptitude of action
upon the occasion ; for while the sisterhood were thus em-
ploying the midnight hours, they were surprised by the
sudden apparit►on of the Duchessina among them in the
dress of their order, and with all her hair cut off according
to monastic rule, crying out as she rushed into the choir.
" Holy Mothers, lam yours! Let us now see what ex-
communicated wretch will dare to drag a spouse of Christ
from her monastery."

The reader will not fail to mark how this
anecdote discountenances that indictment of
vice and falsehood which the author has been
at such pains to frame against the sisterhood.
It is obviously the conclusion of a shallow
mind to suppose that because certain beliefs
and practices were false there could have been
no truth in those who clung to them. Witch-
craft was a delusion, but all who believed in it
were not knaves and hypocrites.
Catherine, despite her resistance, was re-
moved from the care of the Murate to the
covent of Santa Lucia. Sooa afterwards the
popular Government of Florence fell before
the Imperial forces, and Alessandro, the kins-
man of Catherine, was named Grand Duke by
the victors. Between the victory over the re-
publicans and the re-establishment of the
Medici there was an interval, employed by
Clement in getting rid of the most obnoxious
opponents of the Medici. Catherine was
spared these bloody scenes by being taken to
Rome. It is one proof of the purity and
amiability of her mind at this period that she
sought and obtained the pardon of Silvestro
Aldobrandini, who had been employed to re-
move her from the care of the Murate, and
who seems to have behaved with as much ten-
derness as the strict nature of his instructions
would allow.

On her return to Florence, Catherine entered
into possession of a splendid home. Pumps
and festivities succeeded to civil strife, and the
young Dachessina seems to have been greatly
admired for her talents, awl beloved for her
amiable qualities. One of the most pleasing
passages of this book is that describing the
meeting of Catherine with the Princess Mar-
garet—an illegitimate daughter of Charles V.—
the betrothed bride of Alessandro Catherine
rode several miles out of Florence to meet the
youthful Princess at Cafaggiolo. The follow-
ing is a pretty example of constructive his-
tory:—

■

Margaret was attended by the Cardinal appointed b y
Charles as her governor, and by a numerous suit of male
attendants. She was moreover accompanied by twelve