PART I.—A DOMINICAN EDUCATIONIST.

It was ever the custom of that most excellent Lord, Gianfrancesco Gonzaga, when he was home from his wars, to spend the hour before supper with his wife, and their children, in a fair loggia on a garden terrace overlooking the Mincio. Here, while the evening breeze came, cool from the lakes, and perfumed from the gardens, he tasted the delights of family life, and rested from the cares of War and State in the gentle atmosphere, which surrounded his pious and cultured Lady, Madonna Paola Malatesta.

Those who visit Mantua to-day may see, in the heart of its old Castello, in the celebrated Sala degli Sposi, just such another family scene, painted in fresco by Mantegna. It shows, it is true, a later generation of Gonzagas. Stately Marchese Lodovico, who sits in patriarchal dignity by the side of his wife, Marchesa Barbara, surrounded by their children and grandchildren, is, in the group I would fain conjure up for you, but a boy. At the risk of ruining the poetry of the scene, I must tell you that he is an extremely fat boy—oh! of a fatness, out of which he is to be presently most vigorously educated! His eight-year-old brother, Carlo, having outgrown his strength, is, on the other hand, far too lank and thin. But for the others, you are at liberty to call up the images of the dearest youngsters of your acquaintance. Margherita, a charming maiden of thirteen summers, whose betrothal to Leonello of Este, the heir of Marchese Niccolò of Ferrara, is already spoken of, might resent being called a “youngster.” But Gianlucido and Alessandro are tiny children; and golden-haired Cecilia, the flower of the flock, has reached the mature age of three!

This was the scene which met the eye of that most distinguished educationist, Vittorino da Feltre, who had come at the invitation of the Capitano of Mantua to undertake the education of these children; and as his eye fell upon it, he may well have felt all the doubts, that had ridden with him through all the long miles from Venice, suddenly depart. Indeed he had done well to come. Surely it was a task well worthy of a man’s noblest energies, to train up these fair children, and to make of them the men and women, in whom the Christian Humanist sees his ideals realised.

Who had been responsible for bringing Vittorino da Feltre to Mantua? Who had suggested to that bluff soldier, Gianfrancesco, eager to give his children all the benefits of the “New Learning,” for which Italy was madly athirst, the choice of a teacher, who was as great a Christian as he was a scholar and an educationist?

The accepted story is that Guarino, the great Greek scholar, being unable to accept the Gonzagas’ offer, himself, passed it on to his friend, Vittorino da Feltre. But I have my own good reasons for thinking that the choice of Vittorino was something more than a “pis aller,” and that Madonna Paola herself was mainly responsible for it.

The grand-daughter of that Carlo Malatesta (who took so much to heart the Gospel precepts of sacrificing whatever gives scandal—be it a man’s own right eye, or right hand—that he had, during his guardianship of a Gonzaga minor, thrown into the lake, at Mantua, a statue of Virgil, to which he found the people paying idolatrous reverence), her girlhood had been spent in Rimini, as great in repentance as in crime. Rimini hath other memories besides that of Francesca; and Madonna Paola, in the very year[9] when the fate of her kinswoman, Parisina, at the hands of her husband, Marquis Nicholas of Ferrara, recalled, but too exactly, the story heard by Dante in the Second Circle of the Inferno, may well have turned to one of them for comfort. During the years of her girlhood, Rimini was the scene of the labours of the great Dominican reformer, the Blessed Giovanni Dominici. This remarkable man was a great friend of her grandfather, and we may well assume that his book, the “Regola del Governo di Cura famigliare,” though dedicated to a Florentine lady, Madonna Bartolommea, wife of Antonio Alberti (and kinswoman of the celebrated Leo Battista Alberti) was not unknown to those who had charge of Paola’s education, and, very probably, represented one of the very strongest influences of her girlhood. If this be so, it is impossible to see nothing more than a mere chance in the selection of a teacher who had already made a name for himself by a system of education exactly corresponding to that outlined in Dominici’s treatise. In studying the Renaissance, we are under a great disadvantage from the fact that its best known interpreters are generally quite incapable of appreciating the force and vivacity of religion during it. Symonds, and Burckhardt, and Settenbrini, setting out to prove Michelet’s theory that “the Renaissance was a discovery of the World and Man,” reject and misinterpret anything that contradicts it. The Middle Ages must be made as dark, and stagnant, and evil-smelling as possible—the “Dead Sea” indeed of Symonds; and the guiding principle of the Middle Ages, the Catholic Religion, must be a Spirit of Darkness—otherwise, what becomes of the theory? Poor Humanity, according to Symonds, had a cowl put on it by the Obscurantist Church, and was bidden to look neither “on the azure of the waters, nor the luxuriance of the vines, nor the radiance of the mountains with their robe of sun and snow.” And so, with downcast eyes, it passed on its way, knowing nothing but that “beauty is a snare, pleasure a sin, the world a fleeting show, man fallen and lost, death the only certainty, judgment inevitable, hell everlasting, heaven hard to win, _ignorance acceptable to God_.” “These,” we were told, were the “fixed ideas of the mediæval Church.”

I have no intention of refuting this palpably absurd rendering of the Catholic outlook, nor is there much necessity, for, fortunately, true history is coming into her own. In Germany she has made her first conquests; and here, thinking of men like Janssen, and Pastor, and Emil Michael, and praying to see go forth one day from the Lecture Halls of our Irish Universities, reapers to follow them into the fields that stand ready for the sickle; I cannot but rejoice at the bright prospects of a great Irish publishing house, which shall do for Irish savants, what Herder did for those of Germany.

As long as historians like Symonds interpreted the Renaissance for us, it was inevitable that we should be shown only a small part of it—just as much as would fit comfortably into the Michelet formula. Moreover, Symonds and his fellows really did not know Catholicism when they saw it. Between involuntary ignorance, and deliberate “suppressiones veri,” they have managed to give us a very untruthful picture of the Renaissance.

It is with something like a gasp of wonder we turn to the complete picture presented by Dr. Pastor. Here, side by side with belated Pagans, like the “Panormita,” and Lorenzo Valla, we see true Christian Savants like Gianozzo Manetti, Lionardo Bruni, Ambrogio Traversari, and our own Vittorino; side by side with monsters like Sigismondo Pandolfo Malatesta we have Christian rulers like the good Duke Frederick of Urbino; side by side with social butterflies like poor Beatrice of Este, we have devoted mothers of families like Madonna Paola; side by side with the celebrated sinners, we have the canonized saints, a long, long list of them. I believe, indeed, that, at no period of their history, have the two great Orders of St. Francis and St. Dominic shown themselves so fruitful in Saints, as that across which Symonds would fain have us see written the “I follow the finite” of Cosimo de’ Medici.

As a result of this treatment of the period, many of its most characteristic works have been hidden away from us. So it has come to pass that, while most students of Italian Literature know a great deal about a book like “Il Trattato del Governo della Famiglia,” if only because the question of its authorship has been so hotly debated, even those who hold for the paternity of Leo Battista Alberti, as against Pandolfini, may very well be unaware of the existence of the “Regola del Governo di Cura Famigliare,” dedicated to Leo Battista’s kinswoman, Bartolommea.

If anything were wanting to prove how much alike is Catholicism in all ages and nations, one would only have to put this little book, written five hundred years ago, for a Florentine lady, into the hands of an Irish Catholic mother of to-day, and see how much of it she can use for herself. Practically all of it, we should find.

“You have offered yourself,” the author says to Bartolommea, “body and soul, with all your possessions and your children, as far as they belong to you, to God, Our Lord, and now you want to know how to make the best use of all these things for His glory.” Thus, with the precision of the schoolman, he states and divides his subject. The first book, then, tells how to use the powers of the soul for God; the second, the faculties and senses of the body; the third, temporal goods. The fourth book tells how children are to be trained, and is, indeed, a most thorough treatise on Education.

Children are to be brought up (1) for God, (2) for father and mother, (3) for themselves, (4) for their country, (5) for the trials of life. Again, you see the schoolman, and admire the method. Can anything be more admirable than this summing up of the whole end and aim of Catholic Education, which takes account of the child in his future relations as Christian, member of a family, individual with an individual’s responsibilities for the investment of his talents (the faculties of soul and body), citizen, and man?

Then, with an astonishing feeling for realities, he prescribes the practical method by which this end shall be attained.

“You are bringing up your child for God. Therefore, let the thought of God await his first consciousness. For such as him, God became a Little Child. Show him that Little Child; have His image and that of Saint John in your homes, and let your baby make a playmate of Jesukin. (Does that not make one think a little of Iosagan playing with the children along the stone ditches of the Connemara roads?) For the girl have pictures of the girl-saints: Agnes with her lamb; Elizabeth and Cecilia with their roses; and Catherine with her wheel. But if you cannot afford to have these pictures in your homes (for those were not the days of colour printing and lithography) be sure to bring the little ones often to the Church, and let them see them there.”

I like to think that a great master, painting in those years, had a thought of dear, little, chubby, dark-eyed boys and girls being taken, one of the days soon to follow, into the church, when the masterpiece should be hanging in its place, and making friends with his “Bambino.”

Not by “sight” alone shall you teach your little ones to know God. “While they lie against your breast, and you feed them with your own substance, feed their souls with the sweetness of the love of Jesus, that wells first from your own heart; let the first words they utter be: ‘Jesus, Ave Maria, Deo Gratias, Pater noster qui es in coelo.’

“Have a little altar for the children,” the author counsels, “and teach them the different colours and the different vestments for the several festivals. Let them ring the ‘Hours’ with their own small bell. Nor were it ill done to let them preach to you; to the which preaching do you listen with all due attention and reverence. So shall they learn more easily, and more exactly, their Christian Doctrine, and you will have an opportunity of judging what progress they are really making in it.”

Dominici loves to see the young things gambol about. “As for games,” he says, “let them run and jump, and gambol and play”—but never so as to scare away the little playmate, Jesukin. He throws in a word of warning about the choice of their companions among the neighbour’s children.

Dominici is not in favour of sending children to the schools, as things then were. (It must be remembered that he was engaged in a work of reform among those responsible for those schools.) He advises the mother to teach the children as much as she can at home herself. Here the question of what they should study meets him. Is it safe to let their young and innocent minds come into contact with pagan morality? He strongly regrets the old days and the old ways. Our ancestors were wiser. First they taught the Psalter, and Sacred Doctrine. Then, if the child was to go further: the Morality of Cato, the Fictions of Aesop, the profitable wisdom of Prospero (i.e., certain “sentences” taken from the works of Saint Augustine); the Fidei Confessio of Bœthius; the philosophy of the “Eva Columello,”[10] the “Tres leo Naturas”[11]; and to help them to memorize the Sacred Story, the poem “Aethiopium Terras.”

He was writing this book for a woman who had known much trouble, who had seen her husband’s family driven into exile by the Medici. It behoves her then to rear up her children in the possession of that liberty of which no Cosimo can dispossess them—the liberty which is in the heart of every true man who has emancipated his Will from the thraldom of his passions. Again and again, he returns to this point: train their will. Teach them to know Good from Evil, and to _choose_ good. No man can be free who is not free from these three things: free from sin, free from vengeance, free from debt. Nor can a man be free whose soul is in bondage to the appetites of his body. Rear your children hardily; so shall they have no fear of future evil fortune. Again he goes into detail: “Teach them to eat bitter things, lest too great daintiness be their undoing.” And again: “if they are sick, do not show them too much compassion, for so shall you take from them the opportunity of practising patience.”

Be careful with whom your children associate. “None of the things entrusted to you are so precious as your children. Their souls are worth more in God’s eyes than Heaven and Earth, and the whole of the irrational creation; and you do Him a greater service in bringing up your children well than if you possessed the whole world, and gave all away to the poor.”

When treating of the relation of the child to his parents, Dominici lays great stress on the observance of those outward forms, which express the reverence due from him to them. In the presence of parents, children shall not sit down unless desired to do so; they must stand in a respectful attitude, humbly bow the head when any command is addressed to them, and uncover when they meet their father or mother. “Twice a day at least shall they kneel and beg your blessing. The child must say: ‘Benedicite,’ and you shall answer: ‘May God bless thee with an everlasting blessing,’ or ‘may the blessing of God be always with thee.’ And let the child, kneeling to ask a blessing from you, remind you to ask a blessing from your Father who is in Heaven—not twice a day only, but as often as you change your occupation.”

Very noble are the precepts he gives Madonna Bartolommea, to whom Florence had shown herself, indeed, but an unkind stepmother. “You owe your child to your country. Therefore, teach him the duties of a good citizen, and morning and evening let him pray for the Patria.” Those are precepts we in Ireland might follow with profit.

I have lingered a little on the educational theories of the great Dominican, because many of them were put in practice in the school which Vittorino da Feltre founded at Mantua, under the protection of the Gonzagas that it is almost unthinkable that Vittorino and Madonna Paola were not directly influenced by it. We shall now see these theories in practice.