John R. Effinger

“ In that same old monastery at Las Huelgas where the youth Fernando had kept his lonely vigil before he had been knighted by his noble mother, Queen Berenguela, the English prince now kept his watch; and when the morning came and he stood, tall and fair, clothed in a robe of white, ready to receive the accolade, before a company of chosen knights and ladies, the scene must have been wonderfully impressive. The bride, Eleanor, had been a great favorite with all her people, of both high and low degree, and all were glad to see that the future seemed to smile upon her. ”

“ The transition from the sixteenth to the seventeenth century in Italy was marked by no sudden changes of any kind. The whole country was thoroughly prostrate and under the control of the empire; a national spirit did not exist, and the people seemed content to slumber on without opposing in any way the tyranny of their foreign masters. The glory of the Italian Renaissance had been sung in all the countries of Europe; in every nook and corner of the continent, Italian painters and sculptors, princes and poets, artists and artisans of all kinds, had stimulated this new birth of the world ”

“ To one whose fancy roves to Spain in his dream of fair women there comes at once the picture of a dark-eyed beauty gazing out discreetly from behind her lattice window, listening to the tinkling sound of her lover's mandolin, and sighing at the ardor of his passion ”

“ Almost instantly the youth, filled as he was with most romantic ideas and readily susceptible to the power of woman's beauty, fell a captive to the charms of the Princess Leonora d'Este, who, though some ten years his senior, seemed to embody all the graces and to completely satisfy the ideal which up to this time he had been able to see only with his mind's eye. Leonora had already been sought in marriage by many titled suitors, but she had invariably turned a deaf ear to such proposals, never finding one who could please her fancy or who promised comfort in her loneliness. ”

“ Dante, with his vague and almost mystical adoration of Beatrice, which was at times a passion almost subjective, is still in the shadow of the Middle Ages, their gloom is still upon him, and he can see but dimly into the centuries which are still to come; but his face is glorified by his vision of the spiritual possibilities of good and noble womanhood. Petrarch, in the brief interval which has passed, has come out into the light of a modern world; and there, in the midst of baffled desire, he is brought face to face with the great thought that though love be human it has power divine. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Urraca of Castile, daughter of Constance and King Alfonso VII., inherited little of her mother's devout nature; the world rather than the Church had attracted her, and she began to show at an early age a taste for gallantry and intrigue which became but more pronounced with her maturer years. She was dark rather than fair, with an imperious bearing, she had compelling eyes, and there was a grace in her movements which it was difficult to see without admiring, but she was vain, intent upon conquest, and without an atom of moral firmness, if all accounts be true. ”

“ There can be little doubt that Saint Catherine of Pallanza, in her comparatively short life, really did more for the cause of true religion than did the pious Saint Catherine of Bologna, who lived almost twice as long within the walls of her quiet and tranquil convent. The one, though a recluse at the beginning of her career, came more into actual contact with people and things than did the smooth-faced, white-handed mother superior in all the course of her calm and unruffled existence. ”

“ Women warriors there have been in every day and generation in some part of the world perhaps, but never one like this. Clad in her suit of mail, and urging on her battle horse at the head of her followers, her pale face filled with the light of a holy zeal, it is small wonder that her arms triumphed, and that before her death she came to be acknowledged openly as by far the most important person in all Italy. ”

“ She was nothing by halves; jealous and imperious in her attachments; a zealous friend, unchangeable by time or absence, and a most implacable and inveterate enemy. Finally, her love of existence was not greater than her love of power; but her ambition was of that towering kind which women seldom feel, and superior even to the ordinary spirit of man. ”

“ There the sky is bright, the heavens are deep, the sun is warm, mountainous hills lend a purple haze to the horizon, and the air is filled with the sweet perfume of thyme and lavender; and there came to its maturity that brilliant life of the Midi which has been so often told in song and story, and which furnished inspiration for that wonderful poetry which has come down to us from the troubadours. ”

“ When the spoils of battle were divided, the fair captive queen fell to the lot of Mousa's son, Abdul Aziz, who had been made ruler over the newly conquered territory. The young Moorish prince was soon a slave to the charms of Egilona, and so great did his love for her become that he married her, with the promise that he would always regard her as queen and would never marry again; he never broke that promise. Seville was his capital, and there his power was so great that the kalif in Damascus, fearing that he might attempt to rule independently, sent out men to take his life. ”

“ No man can tell whether this unhappy woman would have developed a strong, self-reliant character if the course of her life had been other than it was, but, accepting the facts as they stand, there is no more pathetic figure in all the history of Spain than this poor, mistreated Juana la Loca, "the mad Juana," and to every diligent student of Spanish history this instance of woman's inhumanity to woman will ever be a blot on the scutcheon of the celebrated Isabella of Castile. ”

“ The extent of Dante's greatness is to be measured not only by his wide learning--for he was the greatest scholar of his time--but also by his noble seriousness, which enabled him to penetrate through that which was light and frivolous to that which was of deep import to humanity. His was not the task of amusing the idle populace with what he wrote--he had a high duty, which was to make men think on the realities of life and of their own short-comings. ”

“ Inasmuch as the real marriage of the time was but a mariage de convenance, which gave the wife to the husband without regard for her own inclinations, and without consideration for the finer things of sense and sentiment which should find a perfect harmony in such relationship, it came to be a well-recognized fact that love and marriage were two things quite distinct and different. A wife was expected to show a material fidelity to her lord, keep her honor unstained, and devote herself to his service; and this done, she was allowed to bestow upon a lover her soul and better spirit. ”

“ Many a pink and rosy Venus had been evoked before, many a pale-faced nun had received the veneration of the multitude for her saintly life, but here we have neither Venus nor saint; for Beatrice is the type of the good woman in the world, human in her instincts and holy in her acts. The air of mysticism with which Dante has enveloped his love for the daughter of the Portinari family does not in any way detract from our interest in his point of view, for the principal fact for the modern world is that he had such thoughts about women. ”

“ No woman more completely devoted herself to her husband's memory, by means of her enduring verse, or deserves a higher place in the annals of conjugal poetry, than Vittoria Colonna; such laurel wreaths did she put upon the brow of her spouse, the Marquis of Pescara, that Ariosto was tempted to say, in substance, that if Alexander had envied Achilles the fame he had acquired in the songs of Homer, how much more would he have envied Pescara those strains wherein his gifted wife had exalted his fame above that of all contemporary heroes! ”

“ 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. ”

“ Spain, at that time, with its Inquisition and its fervid zeal for Rome, was the most religious country in Europe, while in the Netherlands there was a growing liberal spirit which attracted the archduchess. It must have been annoying to her to feel that her mother, Isabella, was in a constant fret about the condition of her soul, while otherwise she was treated with a distant formality, entirely devoid of a mother's love, and it is no small wonder that she refused to accept a spiritual director and father confessor who had been sent from Spain to save her from perdition. ”

“ Now, there is a measure of freedom to each and all—then, justice was not only blind but went on crutches, and women were made to suffer because they were women and because they could not defend, by force, their own. Still, there is comfort in the fact that from this dead level of mediocrity and impotence, one woman, the great Countess of Tuscany, was able to rise up and show herself possessed of a great heart, a great mind, and a great soul ”

“ We, the Arabs of Andalusia, have not preserved our illustrious tribes: we have dispersed and intermixed them, and have long had no fellowship with our tribes and families who dwell in Africa. Want of union has led to discord, and our natural enemies are prevailing against us. Each day becometh more unbearable the fury of King Alfonso, who like a mad dog enters our lands, takes our castles, makes Moslems captive, and will tread us under foot unless an emir from Africa will arise to defend the oppressed, who behold the ruin of their kindred, their neighbors, and even of their law. ”

“ In the shadow of the great achievements of the sixteenth century in all lines of human activity, the seventeenth, lost in admiration, could imagine no surer way to equal attainment than to imitate what had gone before. Literature became stilted and full of mannerisms and underwent a process of refinement which left it without strength or vigor, and society in general seemed more concerned with form and ceremony than with the deeper things of the spirit. ”