Women of the Romance Countries

J >> John R. Effinger >> Women of the Romance Countries

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[Illustration: MARIA DE PADILLA

_After the painting by Paul Gervais._]

WOMAN

In all ages and in all countries

WOMEN OF THE ROMANCE COUNTRIES

by

JOHN R. EFFINGER, Ph.D.
_Of the University of Michigan_

THE RITTENHOUSE PRESS
PHILADELPHIA

_Copyrighted at Washington and entered at
Stationers' Hall, London

1907 1908

and printed by arrangement with George Barrie's Sons._

PRINTED IN U. S. A.

PREFACE

No one can deny the influence of woman, which has been a potent factor
in society, directly or indirectly, ever since the days of Mother Eve.
Whether living in Oriental seclusion, or enjoying the freer life of the
Western world, she has always played an important part in the onward
march of events, and exercised a subtle power in all things, great and
small. To appreciate this power properly, and give it a worthy
narrative, is ever a difficult and well-nigh impossible task, at least
for mortal man. Under the most favorable circumstances, the subject is
elusive and difficult of approach, lacking in sequence, and often
shrouded in mystery.

What, then, must have been the task of the author of the present volume,
in essaying to write of the women of Italy and Spain! In neither of
these countries are the people all of the same race, nor do they afford
the development of a constant type for observation or study. Italy, with
its mediaeval chaos, its free cities, and its fast-and-loose allegiance
to the temporal power of the Eternal City, has ever been the despair of
the orderly historian; and Spain, overrun by Goth, by Roman, and by
Moslem host, presents strange contrasts and rare complexities.

Such being the case, this account of the women of the Romance countries
does not attempt to trace in detail their gradual evolution, but rather
to present, in the proper setting, the most conspicuous examples of
their good or evil influence, their bravery or their cowardice, their
loyalty or their infidelity, their learning or their illiteracy, their
intelligence or their ignorance, throughout the succeeding years.

Chroniclers and historians, poets and romancers, have all given valuable
aid in the undertaking, and to them grateful acknowledgment is hereby
made.

JOHN R. EFFINGER.

_University of Michigan._

Part First

Italian Women

Chapter I

The Age of the Countess Matilda of Tuscany

The eleventh century, which culminated in the religious fervor of the
First Crusade, must not on that account be considered as an age of
unexampled piety and devotion. Good men there were and true, and women
of great intellectual and moral force, but it cannot be said that the
time was characterized by any deep and sincere religious feeling which
showed itself in the general conduct of society. Europe was just
emerging from that gloom which had settled down so closely upon the
older civilizations after the downfall of the glory that was Rome, and
the light of the new day sifted but fitfully through the dark curtains
of that restless time. Liberty had not as yet become the shibboleth of
the people, superstition was in the very air, the knowledge of the
wisest scholars was as naught, compared with what we know to-day;
everywhere, might made right.

In a time like this, in spite of the illustrious example of the Countess
Matilda, it cannot be supposed that women were in a very exalted
position. It is even recorded that in several instances, men, as
superior beings, debated as to whether or not women were possessed of
souls. While this momentous question was never settled in a conclusive
fashion, it may be remarked that in the heat of the discussion there
were some who called women angels of light, while there were others who
had no hesitation in declaring that they were devils incarnate, though
in neither case were they willing to grant them the same rights and
privileges which they themselves possessed. Though many other facts of
the same kind might be adduced, the mere existence of such discussion is
enough to prove to the most undiscerning that woman's place in society
was not clearly recognized, and that there were many difficulties to be
overcome before she could consider herself free from her primitive state
of bondage.

In the eye of the feudal law, women were not considered as persons of
any importance whatever. The rights of husbands were practically
absolute, and led to much abuse, as they had a perfectly legal right to
punish wives for their misdeeds, to control their conduct in such a way
as to interfere with their personal liberty, and in general to treat
them as slaves and inferior beings. The whipping-post had not then been
invented as a fitting punishment for the wife beater, as it was
perfectly understood, according to the feudal practices as collected by
Beaumanoir, "that every husband had the right to beat his wife when she
was unwilling to obey his commands, or when she cursed him, or when she
gave him the lie, providing that it was done moderately, and that death
did not ensue." If a wife left a husband who had beaten her, she was
compelled by law to return at his first word of regret, or to lose all
right to their common possessions, even for purposes of her own support.

The daughters of a feudal household had even fewer rights than the wife.
All who are willing to make a candid acknowledgment of the facts must
admit that even to-day, a girl-baby is often looked upon with disfavor.
This has been true in all times, and there are numerous examples to show
that this aversion existed in ancient India, in Greece and Sparta, and
at Rome. The feudal practices of mediaeval Europe were certainly based
upon it, and the Breton peasant of to-day expresses the same idea
somewhat bluntly when he says by way of explanation, after the birth of
a daughter: _Ma femme a fait une fausse couche._ Conscious as all must
be of this widespread sentiment at the present time, it will not be
difficult to imagine what its consequences must have been in so rude a
time as the eleventh century, when education could do so little in the
way of restraining human passion and prejudice. As the whole feudal
system, so far as the succession of power was concerned, was based upon
the principle of primogeniture, it was the oldest son who succeeded to
all his father's lands and wealth, the daughter or daughters being left
under his absolute control. Naturally, such a system worked hardship for
the younger brothers, but then as now it was easier for men to find a
place for themselves in the world than for women, and the army or the
Church rarely failed to furnish some sort of career for all those who
were denied the rights and privileges of the firstborn. The lot of the
sister, however, was pitiful in the extreme (unless it happened that the
older brother was kind and considerate), for if she were in the way she
could be bundled off to a cloister, there to spend her days in solitude,
or she could be married against her will, being given as the price of
some alliance.

The conditions of marriage, however, were somewhat complicated, as it
was always necessary to secure the consent of three persons before a
girl of the higher class could go to the altar in nuptial array. These
three persons were her father or her guardian, her lord and the king. It
was Hugo who likened the feudal system to a continually ascending
pyramid with the king at the very summit, and that interminable chain of
interdependence is well illustrated in the present case. Suppose the
father, brother, or other guardian had decided upon a suitable husband
for the daughter of the house, it was necessary that he should first
gain the consent of that feudal lord to whom he gave allegiance, and
when this had been obtained, the king himself must give his royal
sanction to the match. Nor was this all, for a feudal law said that any
lord can compel any woman among his dependants to marry a man of his own
choosing after she has reached the age of twelve. Furthermore, there was
in existence a most cruel, barbarous, and repulsive practice which gave
any feudal lord a right to the first enjoyment of the person of the
bride of one of his vassals. As Legouve has so aptly expressed it: _Les
jeunes gens payaient de leur corps en allant a la guerre, les jeunes
filles en allant a l'autel._

Divorce was a very simple matter at this time so far as the husband was
concerned, for he it was who could repudiate his wife, disown her, and
send her from his door for almost any reason, real or false. In earlier
times, at the epoch when the liberty of the citizen was the pride of
Rome, marriage almost languished there on account of the misuse of
divorce, and both men and women were allowed to profit by the laxity of
the laws on this subject. Seneca said, in one instance: "That Roman
woman counts her years, not by the number of consuls, but by the number
of her husbands." Juvenal reports a Roman freedman as saying to his
wife: "Leave the house at once and forever! You blow your nose too
frequently. I desire a wife with a dry nose." When Christianity
appeared, then, the marriage tie was held in slight consideration, and
it was only after many centuries and by slow degrees that its sanctity
was recognized, and its rights respected. While, under the Roman law,
both men and women had been able to get a divorce with the same ease,
the feudal idea, which gave all power into the hands of the men, made
divorce an easy thing for the men alone, but this was hardly an
improvement, as the marriage relation still lacked stability.

It must not be supposed that all the mediaeval ideas respecting marriage
and divorce and the condition of women in general, which have just been
explained, had to do with any except those who belonged in some way to
the privileged classes, for such was not the case. At that time, the
great mass of the people in Europe--men and women--were ignorant to the
last degree, possessing little if any sense of delicacy or refinement,
and were utterly uncouth. For the most part, they lived in miserable
hovels, were clothed in a most meagre and scanty way, and were little
better than those beasts of burden which are compelled to do their
master's bidding. Among these people, rights depended quite largely upon
physical strength, and women were generally misused. To the lord of the
manor it was a matter of little importance whether or not the serfs upon
his domain were married in due form or not; marriage as a sacrament had
little to do with these hewers of wood and drawers of water, and they
were allowed to follow their own impulses quite generally, so far as
their relations with each other were concerned. The loose moral
practices of the time among the more enlightened could be but a bad
example for the benighted people of the soil; consequently, throughout
all classes of society there was a degree of corruption and immorality
which is hardly conceivable to-day.

So far as education was concerned, there were but a few who could enjoy
its blessings, and these were, for the most part, men. Women, in their
inferior and unimportant position, rarely desired an education, and more
rarely received one. Of course, there were conspicuous exceptions to
this rule; here and there, a woman working under unusually favorable
circumstances was really able to become a learned person. Such cases
were extremely rare, however, for the true position of woman in society
was far from being understood. Schools for women were unknown; indeed,
there were few schools of any kind, and it was only in the monasteries
that men were supposed to know how to read and write. Even kings and
queens were often without these polite accomplishments, and the right of
the sword had not yet been questioned. Then, it must be taken into
consideration that current ideas regarding education in Italy in this
early time were quite different from what they are to-day. As there were
no books, book learning was impossible, and the old and yellowed
parchments stored away in the libraries of the monasteries were
certainly not calculated to arouse much public enthusiasm. Education at
this time was merely some sort of preparation for the general duties of
life, and the nature of this preparation depended upon a number of
circumstances.

To make the broadest and most general classification possible, the women
of that time might be divided into ladies of high degree and women of
the people. The former were naturally fitted by their training to take
their part in the spectacle of feudal life with proper dignity; more
than that, they were often skilled in all the arts of the housewife, and
many times they showed themselves the careful stewards of their
husbands' fortunes. The women of the people, on the other hand, were not
shown any special consideration on account of their sex, and were quite
generally expected to work in the fields with the men. Their homes were
so unworthy of the name that they required little care or thought, and
their food was so coarse that little time was given to its preparation.
Simple-minded, credulous, superstitious in the extreme, with absolutely
no intellectual uplift of any kind, and nothing but the sordid drudgery
of life with which to fill the slow-passing hours, it is no wonder that
the great mass of both the men and the women of this time were
hopelessly swallowed up in a many-colored sea of ignorance, from which,
with the march of the centuries, they have been making slow efforts to
rise. So the lady sat in the great hall in the castle, clad in some
gorgeous gown of silk which had been brought by the patient caravans,
through devious ways, from the far and mysterious East; surrounded by
her privileged maidens, she spun demurely and in peace and quiet, while
out in the fields the back of the peasant woman was bent in ceaseless
toil. Or again, the lady of the manor would ride forth with her lord
when he went to the hunt, she upon her white palfrey, and he upon his
black charger, and each with hooded falcon on wrist; for the gentle art
of falconry was almost as much in vogue among the women as among the men
of the time. Often it happened that during the course of the hunt it
would be necessary to cross a newly planted field, or one heavy with the
ripened grain, and this they did gaily and with never a thought for the
hardship that they might cause; and as they swept along, hot after the
quarry, the poor, mistreated peasant, whether man or woman, dared utter
no word of protest or make moan, nor did he or she dare to look boldly
and unabashed upon this hunting scene, but rather from the cover of some
protecting thicket. Scenes of this kind will serve to show the great
gulf which there was between the great and the lowly; and as there was
an almost total lack of any sort of education in the formal sense of the
word, it will be readily understood that all that education could mean
for anybody was that training which was incident to the daily round of
life, whatever it happened to be. So the poor and dependent learned to
fear and sometimes to hate their masters, and the proud and haughty
learned to consider themselves as superior and exceptional beings.

With society in such a state as this, the question will naturally arise:
What did the Church do under these circumstances to ameliorate the
condition of the people and to advance the cause of woman? The only
answer to this question is a sorry negative, as it soon becomes
apparent, after an investigation of the facts, that in many cases the
members of the clergy themselves were largely responsible for the wide
prevalence of vice and immorality. It must be remembered that absolution
from sin and crime in those days was but a matter of money price and
that pardons could be easily bought for any offence, as the venality of
the clergy was astounding. The corruption of the time was great, and the
priests themselves were steeped in crime and debauchery. In former
generations, the Church at Rome had many times issued strict orders
against the marriage of the clergy, and, doubtless as one of the
consequences of this regulation, it had become the custom for many of
the priests to have one or more concubines with whom they, in most
cases, lived openly and without shame. The monasteries became, under
these conditions, dens of iniquity, and the nunneries were no better.
The nunnery of Saint Fara in the eleventh century, according to a
contemporary description, was no longer the residence of holy virgins,
but a brothel of demoniac females who gave themselves up to all sorts of
shameless conduct; and there are many other accounts of the same general
tenor. Pope Gregory VII. tried again to do something for the cause of
public morality, in 1074, when he issued edicts against both concubinage
and simony--or the then prevalent custom of buying or selling
ecclesiastical preferment; but the edict was too harsh and unreasonable
with regard to the first, inasmuch as it provided that no priest should
marry in the future, and that those who already possessed wives or
concubines were to give them up or relinquish their sacred offices. This
order caused great consternation, especially in Milan, where the clergy
were honestly married, each man to one wife, and it was found impossible
to exact implicit obedience to its requirements.

So far as the general influence of women upon the feudal society of
Italy in the eleventh century is concerned, it is not discoverable to
have been manifest in the ways which were common in other countries. It
will be understood, of course, that, in speaking of woman's influence
here, reference is made to the women of the upper classes, as those of
the peasant class cannot be said to have formed a part of social Europe
at this time. It is most common to read in all accounts of this feudal
period, which was the beginning of the golden age of the older chivalry,
that women exerted a most gentle influence upon the men about them and
that the honor and respect in which they were held did much to elevate
the general tone of life. In Italy, however, chivalry did not flourish
as it did in other countries. Since the time of the great Emperor
Charlemagne all Italy had been nominally a part of the imperial domain,
but owing to its geographical position, which made it difficult of
access and hard to control, this overlordship was not always
administered with strictness, and from time to time the larger cities of
Italy were granted special rights and privileges. The absence of an
administrative capital made impossible any centralization of national
life, and it was entirely natural, then, that the various Italian
communities should assert their right to some sort of local government
and some measure of freedom. This spirit of citizenship in the free
towns overcame the spirit of disciplined dependence which was common to
those parts of the empire which were governed according to the usual
feudal customs, and, as a result, Italy lacks many of those
characteristics which are common to the more integral parts of the vast
feudal system.

The most conspicuous offspring of feudalism was chivalry, with its
various orders of knighthood; but chivalry and the orders of knighthood
gained little foothold in Italy, where the conditions necessary for the
growth and development of such a social and military order were far from
propitious. Knights, it is true, came and went in Italy, and performed
their deeds of valor; fair maidens were rescued, and women and children
were given succor; but the knights were foreign knights, and they owed
allegiance to a foreign lord. So far, then, Italy was without the
institution of chivalry, and, to a great degree, insensible to those
high ideals of fealty and honor which were the cardinal virtues of the
knightly order. Owing to the absence of these fine qualities of mind and
soul, the Italian in war was too often of fierce and relentless temper,
showing neither pity nor mercy and having no compassion for a fallen
foe. Warriors never admitted prisoners to ransom, and the annals of
their contests are destitute of those graceful courtesies which shed
such a beautiful lustre over the contests of England and France.
Stratagems were as common as open and glorious battle, and private
injuries were revenged by assassination and not by the fair and manly
_joust a l'outrance_. However, when a man pledged his word for the
performance of any act and wished his sincerity to be believed, he
always swore by the _parola di cavaliere_, and not by the _parola di
cortigiano_, so general was the acknowledgment of the moral superiority
of chivalry.

It was in the midst of this age of ignorance that Matilda, the great
Countess of Tuscany, by means of her wisdom and intelligence and her
many graces of mind and body, made such a great and lasting reputation
for herself that her name has come down in history as the worthy
companion of William the Conqueror and the great monk Hildebrand, later
Pope Gregory VII., her most distinguished contemporaries. Matilda's
father, Boniface, was the richest and most powerful nobleman of his time
in all Italy, and as Margrave and Duke of Tuscany, Duke of Lucca,
Marquis of Modena, and Count of Reggio, Mantua, and Ferrara, he exerted
a very powerful feudal influence. Though at first unfriendly to the
interests of the papal party in Italy, he was just about ready to
espouse its cause when he fell under the hand of an assassin; and then
it was that Matilda, by special dispensation of the emperor, was allowed
to inherit directly her father's vast estate, which she shared at first
with her brother Frederick and her sister Beatrice. Generally, fiefs
reverted to the emperor and remained within his custody for five
years--were held in probate, as it were--before the lawful heirs were
allowed to enter into possession of their property. Frederick and
Beatrice were short-lived, however, and it was not many years before
Matilda was left as sole heir to this great domain; she was not entirely
alone, as she had the watchful care and guidance of her mother, who
assisted her in every emergency.

As the result of this condition of affairs, both mother and daughter
were soon sought in marriage by many ardent and ambitious suitors, each
presenting his claims for preferment and doing all in his power to bring
about an alliance which meant so much for the future. Godfrey of
Lorraine, who was not friendly to the party of the Emperor Henry III.,
while on a raid in Italy, pressed his suit with such insistency that the
widowed Beatrice promised to marry him and at the same time gave her
consent to a betrothal between Matilda and Godfrey's hunchback son, who
also bore the name of Godfrey. This marriage with an unfriendly prince,
after so many years of imperial favor, and this attempt at a
consolidation of power for both present and future, so angered Henry
that he insisted that Beatrice must have yielded to violence in this
disposition of her affairs. Finally, in spite of her repeated denials,
she was made a prisoner for her so-called insubordination, while Matilda
was compelled to find safety in the great fortress at Canossa. In the
meantime, Godfrey had gone back to Lorraine, more powerful than ever, to
stir up trouble in the empire.

In this same year, 1054, Henry III. died, and his son, Henry IV., won
over by the prayers of Pope Victor II., made peace with Godfrey and
restored Beatrice to liberty. They, being more than grateful to Victor
for this kindly intervention, invited him to come to their stately
palace in Florence and tarry with them for a while. From this time on,
in the period when Matilda was growing into womanhood, the real seat of
the papal power was not in Rome, but in Florence, and Godfrey's palace
became an acknowledged centre of ecclesiastical activity.

Matilda was a girl of a mystic temperament, credulous, it is true, and
somewhat superstitious like all the other people of her time, and yet
filled with a deep yearning for a greater knowledge of the secrets of
the universe. Her ideal of authority was formed by intercourse with the
various members of her own circle, who were all devoted heart and soul
to the cause of the Holy See, and it was but natural that, when she
became old enough to think and act for herself, all her inclinations
should lead her to embrace the cause of the pope. While it is beyond the
province of the present volume to describe in detail the exact political
and religious situation in Italy at this time, it should be said that
the pope was anxious to reassert the temporal power of his office, which
had for a long time been subservient to the will of the emperors. He
desired the supremacy of the papacy within the Church, and the supremacy
of the Church over the state. Early filled with a holy zeal for this
cause, Matilda tried to inform herself regarding the real state of
affairs, so that she might be able to act intelligently when the time
for action came. Through skilful diplomacy, it came to pass that
Matilda's uncle--Frederick--became Pope Stephen X.; and then, of course,
the house of Lorraine came to look upon the papal interests as its own,
and the daughter of the house strengthened the deep attachment for the
Church which was to die only when she died. Nor must it be thought that
the priestly advisers of the house were blind to the fact that in
Matilda they had one who might become a pillar of support for the
fortunes of the papacy. The monk Hildebrand, for a long time the power
behind the pope until he himself became pope in 1073, was a constant
visitor at Matilda's home, and he it was who finally took her education
in hand and gave it its fullest development. She had many teachers, of
course, and under Hildebrand's guiding genius, the work was not stopped
until the young countess could speak French, German, and Latin with the
same ease as she did her mother tongue.

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