PART II.—LA CASA GIOCOSA.

On the banks of the Mincio, the Gonzagas, very splendid even in their Condottiere days, had built a stately Pleasure House, which (for reasons on which it pleases certain historians yet to dispute) they called the “Casa Giocosa”—the “Joyous House,” if you care to translate it thus.

When Vittorino da Feltre came to Mantua, it would seem that the two elder of the Gonzaga boys were already being educated in this house. The Court School, where the sons of the reigning house and of the gentlemen in their service were educated, was an old European institution. The Palace Schools of Charlemagne are notable examples.

No trace of the “Casa Giocosa” is now to be found. Even its situation is a matter of uncertainty; but it has been described for us so often, and so vividly, that we need but to close our eyes, and there it stands again on broad meadow lands, that sweep down to the “slow-gliding Mincio,” in the midst of its fair lawns and terraced gardens, with its avenues of acacias and plane trees, its hedges of roses, its shady courts and fountains and statues, its marble “loggie,” and frescoed, spacious chambers, full of air and sunshine—a memory and an inspiration for all the schools that have followed it since.

Now, if ever there was a man who was that rare thing, a schoolmaster born, it was Vittorino da Feltre. He had discovered his vocation in his student days at the University of Padua, where he had kept body and soul together by teaching backward students, and helping them to keep up with their classes. He had developed it at Venice, where he had shared the management of a school with the great Greek scholar, Guarino. But at Mantua, whither he came, a ripe man of forty-five or so, with a large experience of boy-nature, a thorough mastery of methods of teaching, a store of well-tested theories, and a new field on which to exercise them, he was like a prince coming into his own kingdom. There seems something providential in the way things were arranged for Vittorino da Feltre. One is reminded of the Providence which we shall see in a later paper, surrounding the foundation of another great educational institution—Madame de Maintenon’s Saint-Cyr.

One condition Vittorino made before he took over the “Casa Giocosa.” He was to be supreme master in the establishment. Even the parents were not to interfere, and there was to be no appeal from his decision, whether as to the studies of the children, their food and manner of life, or their companions. On the last point, he was destined to meet with grave opposition. Some families claimed it as one of their immemorial privileges to send their children to the Court School, to be educated with the Princes. But, privilege or no privilege, Vittorino would tolerate nobody at the school whose example was likely to be harmful. Here you see him putting into practice one of the most constantly reiterated of the precepts of the Blessed Giovanni Dominici: “Be careful of your children’s companions.”

Not alone of the companions of the Princes was he careful, but of the servants. It would seem that when Vittorino took over the “Casa Giocosa,” he found a whole troup of liveried menials ready to minister to the slightest wish of the young Princes. His first care was to send them all off, replacing them by a few trustworthy attendants, not numerous enough to make discipline difficult. He put porters at the gate, on whom he could rely, wishing to secure for his school the atmosphere of quiet, and work, and prayer, and order, and wholesome austerity in which the young souls confided to him might grow to their full perfection. The vicinity of a splendid court made his precautions all the more necessary.

With the troops of servants disappeared the soft carpets, and luxurious couches, the gold and silver plate, and, above all, the rich foods which were playing such havoc with poor Lodovico’s figure—not to speak of anything else. Everything was to be plain and wholesome and abundant, but there was to be no luxury. Had not the Blessed Giovanni warned Madonna Bartolommea against rearing her children too softly? “Rear them hardily” had been his advice. “Teach them to eat bitter food and things unpleasant,” so shall they be able to say “we care not” when life is hard with them in the years to come.

The little picture-children for whom Dominici pleads, that Madonna Bartolommea’s boys and girls may make friendship with them early, were not forgotten by Vittorino. Be sure, when, at his request, Madonna Paola sent her painter to cover the walls of the study-halls and galleries with “frescoes of children playing,” the tiny Jesukin, and dear Saint John, who was as an elder brother to Him, were to be seen there, playing together—in the carpenter’s shop, mayhap, when Elizabeth had taken her boy to Nazareth to visit his small cousin, or by the covered well under the palm-tree in Zachary’s garden, when the sweet spring days had called Mary and her bambino to the hill-country.

Poor Lodovico must have felt the change rather hard at first. He had been accustomed to get up whatever time he liked, do as little as he pleased, and have his interest aroused by nothing except questions of eating and drinking. One really thinks there must have been something diseased in poor Lodovico’s extraordinary appetite. Our ancestors would have seen in him a fellow victim of Cathal MacFinguine, King of Munster, in whom there entered the Demon of Gluttony through eating the apples, whereon the Scholar of Fergal, son of Maelduin, had put his heathen charms, “so that the demon abode in the throat of Cathal, to the ruin of the men of Munster during three half-years; and it is likely he would have ruined Ireland during another half-year.”

At all events, Vittorino took Lodovico in hand at once. He was only allowed to eat at mealtimes; but at first his meals were set at short intervals, and there was no stint on the quantity of food; which, however, was as plain as possible, so that the appetite should not be over-stimulated.

Gradually, the meals became fewer, and Vittorino, discovering that Lodovico’s voracity was as much the result of an empty mind and starved interests as anything else, had the inspiration to accompany them with little entertainments. He had singers, and musicians, and storytellers placed in the dining-hall; and, lo! Lodovico, listening to them, forgot his plate, for the nonce, and did not notice the loss of it, when an attendant, on a sign from Vittorino, bore it quietly away.

With Carlo, the second son, the master pursued quite a different plan. Carlo was growing too fast, and spending his energies too rapidly in the ardour which he put into his games. Vittorino saw to it that the boy should have as much to eat as he wished at meal times. Between meals he had permission to eat, too—but only bread.

His attention to the food of his pupils and to their bodily welfare give the key to Vittorino’s whole educational system. The “Mens sana in corpore sano,” is as an educational ideal, not the exclusive possession of the Greeks. I have tried to show how vitally it influenced education in the Middle Ages; but, undoubtedly, Vittorino found new ardour for his pursuit of it in the image of the “Academy,” which his Greek studies had conjured up for him, and kept constantly before his mind.

But the little boys and girls, for whom Vittorino was going to assume responsibility, had something more than a body and a mind to be developed. They had each an immortal soul. The recognition of that fact must, logically, alter any system of education, not founded on it, into something very different. And so the Christian school of Mantua, forming colonists for this world, and citizens for heaven, was something essentially different from the Platonic Academy, however much it may have borrowed from it.

The strengthening and developing of _body_, and _mind_, and _soul_—that is, in a few words, what the whole system of Vittorino aimed at. It is in the harmonious ordering of the different studies and exercises, which he chose for the perfecting of the three parts of men, that the chief excellence of the “Casa Giocosa” consists.

“You are rearing your children for God,” the Blessed Giovanni reminded Madonna Bartolommea. Vittorino never forgot this for a moment, nor did he ever allow his pupils to forget that they had been “created and placed” in this world by God, “to know Him, love Him, and serve Him, and by that means to gain Everlasting Life.”

The common day began with hearing Mass in the school chapel. After Mass, the Office of Our Lady was recited, and a short instruction in some point of Christian Doctrine was given to the school. But this teaching was not theoretic only. He taught them not only what Christians must believe, but showed them how Christians must act. And so we find his pupils, in the after years, distinguished, among all the men and women of Italy, by their practical Christianity. Lodovico, once the self-indulgent, grew into the Marchese Lodovico, chaste and sober, and wise and kind—the best of the Gonzaga Princes. Little Frederick Montefeltro, sent as a hostage to the Mantuan Court, rejoiced, in the years when men spoke of him as the “Good Duke of Urbino,” that the chances of war had brought him such good fortune as to make him the pupil of such a master. Ever before his eyes he would have that master’s image, and as much as might be, he would carry out his system of life in the order of the Ducal Palace. So Vittorino’s portrait adorned one of the walls of the famous palace, with these words written under it: “In honour of his saintly master, Vittorino da Feltre, who by word and example, instructed him in all human excellence, Frederico, has set this here.” And better still, “the Court of Urbino was framed on the precepts which the Duke had learnt in the Casa Giocosa, and became in its turn a school where Italian princes sent their sons to be trained in knightly exercises and elegant manners.” And so we trace, in a direct line of descent from the “Casa Giocosa,” “the best book that was ever written upon good breeding,” as Doctor Johnson testified to Boswell: “‘Il Cortegiano’—the best book, I tell you, and you should read it.” An advice which one could not do better than repeat.

In an age when men lied and deceived shamelessly, Vittorino’s pupils were known for their absolute sincerity. This love of truth and hatred of falsehood was not won without careful efforts on the part of the master. He would not punish for a fault that was bravely confessed, and so took away one of the occasions of lying from timid children. A funny little story is told of Alessandro Gonzaga. The little fellow was ill, and had been ordered not to drink any water. But he was horribly thirsty, and disobeyed the commands. There was no great danger of being “found out,” but the boy was uneasy, until he had confessed. “Do you know what I did?” he said to Vittorino. “I took a _big, big_ drink of water. Wasn’t I very good?” “Well,” said Vittorino, seeing that it could not be helped now, “at least, you were _very_ good to tell it.”

He never allowed his pupils to utter a profane word. When Carlo was quite grown up, he swore a soldier’s oath in his master’s presence. And lo! the little man was upon him in an instant, boxing his ears, as if he were still a schoolboy. To the honour of Carlo, it must be said that he bore the indignity meekly, feeling that he had deserved it.

Like Dominici, Vittorino loved to see the children run about, and laugh, and leap, and play. He found two of them, during recreation hour one day, confabbing in a corner about their lessons. Do you think he was pleased? Not a bit of it. Out he routed them, and made them take part in the other children’s games. For, long before the English Duke, he had found out for himself that many a battle yet to be fought was being won already on those meadows by the Mincio, where his pupils were playing merrily.

One of the outstanding features in Vittorino’s system was the importance he attached to games—and all sorts of physical exercises. He held as a fundamental principle that “the human spirit cannot exercise its faculties fully, if the physical organs which it must use are defective.” He insisted on outdoor exercise, whatever the weather. He had his pupils taught riding, and swimming, and wrestling, and fencing. He organised hunting and fishing expeditions for them; and, remembering that many of his pupils were to be soldiers, he liked to teach them the art of warfare, by occupying mimic trenches, and pitching mimic camps, and taking mimic towns—according to the most approved methods.

These rougher plays were not for the girls, though they, in general, shared the lessons of the boys. For them there were dancing lessons, where every movement of their body was trained to an exquisite grace. They had riding lessons, too, and hunted and played “palla,” or tennis. No game was tolerated for them which would tend to make them ungraceful—as so many of the games our girls play to-day really seem to do.

Plenty of fresh air and exercise, plenty of good, simple food, to which they brought the sauce of a healthy hunger, sound and dreamless sleep, soon made the youngsters of the “Casa Giocosa” a healthy, happy band, whom it was a delight to see at their lessons.

He had the supreme gift of the good teacher, our Vittorino, that of knowing how to interest his pupils in their work. The maxim of Quintilian “do not allow the boy to conceive an aversion for the studies which he cannot yet love,” was adopted by him, and, until the young minds were ripe enough to love learning for its own sake, it was the master’s care to surround it with attractions. So we find him reviving the Quintilianian device of teaching the youngsters to read by means of painted cards and wooden blocks. As we have seen already, our Irish ancestors had a similar plan. In Whitley Stokes’ “Lives of the Irish Saints from the Book of Lismore,” there is a charming story of Saint Columbkille, as a child, learning his letters from a cake, on which they had been stamped.

In Vittorino’s school there was no place for the rod, which we have seen play such an important part in the mediæval school-system. He liked to appeal to the children through their sense of honour and dignity. The greatest punishment for such children was to make them feel ashamed.

As far as school-work went, however, there was little need for punishment. The enthusiasm for letters which had seized on all Italy had taken possession of the little people of the “Casa Giocosa” in an extraordinary degree; and in some cases, especially that of Gianlucido, the master’s care was rather to restrain than to urge them on. That great scholar, Ambrogio Traversari, General of the Camaldolese Order, writing to his friend, the celebrated Niccolò Nicoli, mentioned the boy’s marvellous achievements in Latin and Greek. On the occasion of a later visit, which he described for the great Cosimo de’ Medici, he listened to a Latin poem of about two hundred verses, wherein Gianlucido celebrated the coming of the Emperor Sigismund to Mantua.

That same letter to Cosimo makes mention of Cecilia, whom, perhaps, my readers think I have left too long undistinguished, among the band of merry children, playing by the Mincio. “There is also a daughter of the Marquis[12] at the school,” writes Ambrogio, “who, though only ten years’ old, writes Greek with such elegance that, I am ashamed to acknowledge, scarcely any of my own pupils can approach it.” This tribute, indeed, hardly does full credit to Cecilia’s astonishing attainments. At eight years old, we are told, she read the works of Saint John Chrysostom, and wrote elegant Latin verses. She had begun the study of Greek at the mature age of six.

Nor did she excel less in the feminine arts, on which her master’s educational system laid such stress. Those little, high-born, Italian girls learned to dance almost as soon as they learned to walk, and a suggestion of the music which accompanied their early dancing lessons lingered in every graceful movement. Music, too, was as general as speech, and the child learned it as naturally. But, general as it was, it was never cheapened by being wedded to unworthy words. When a little girl learned to sing, there was food for her intellect in the lesson, too; for, in those days, men set sonnets of Petrarch and passages from Virgil to music, and the lute made a charming accompaniment.

The “speaking” voice was even more carefully trained than the “singing” voice. To quote from the delightful “Life of Vittorino da Feltre” in the Saint Nicholas Series: “the greatest trouble was taken with the cultivation of the voice, the manner of breathing, pronunciation, and all the other details which go to make up an easy and elegant delivery.... Like the ancient Romans, the master attached to this exercise a certain hygienic value.” It was a rare treat to hear Cecilia, in that golden voice of hers, declaim some of her own verses.

It is worth while to examine, in some detail, the system which led to such astonishing results.

Those painted cards and blocks, of which I have spoken, had been designed to teach the child to read Latin. The thing was not so surprising in those days as it would be in ours. As a matter of fact, it was as short a step towards the “unknown from the known” (the safest of pedagogic principles) to teach a child, whose mother-tongue was the speech of Lombardy, to read Latin, as to teach him or her to read Italian. So the children learned to read Latin very young indeed. Unless Cecilia was an exception, they learned to read Greek very young, too. The practice was to translate Greek into Latin.

Later on, the pupils took up the study of Grammar. The rules of Latin Grammar were deduced from a careful study of the works of Virgil and Cicero, while those of Greek were formulated while the pupils studied Homer and Demosthenes. The barbarous system, from which we are just emerging, which made the study of grammatical rules precede all else, was the unfortunate discovery of the century following Vittorino’s.

History was studied in the pages of Sallust, Valerius Maximus, and Livy.

Vittorino’s practice was to make his pupils read aloud, insisting on good pronunciation and artistic delivery. He made them learn off by heart, too, the best passages of the poets, orators, and philosophers. And so the children had faultless models to hand, when it was time for them to address themselves to original composition.

To balance any tendency this practice might have had to make his pupils adopt other people’s thoughts ready-made, he put them through a very thorough course of mental gymnastics. He aimed, with these exercises, to win for his pupils rather strength and vigour of mentality than subtilty. “I want to teach them to think, and not to split hairs,” expresses a pedagogic maxim of his, of which all his biographers have taken note. He made the youngsters propose difficulties to him, or raised them himself for them, and helped them to solve them. The Mathematical training given in the “Casa Giocosa” was the best in all Italy. At none of the Universities were Mathematics taught in a manner so profitable, or their educative value so fully realised.

When the children were a little older they took part in certain oratorical exercises, the idea of which the master had borrowed from the “Schools of Rhetoric” of Antiquity. Many of these boys would, in the years to come, be employed in Diplomatic Missions, and nothing could more fittingly prepare them for such work than these “Disputations.”

Such, in broadest outline, was the education which made of Cecilia Gonzaga, at the age of sixteen, one of the most charming and accomplished ladies in all Italy. Many a princely suitor came riding over the long bridge of San Giorgio to lay his hand and heart at the feet of the Marchese’s golden-haired girl, whose beauty and attainments had set their poets singing. One, in particular, found favour with her father—Oddantonio of Montefeltro, elder brother of that Frederico who had been Cecilia’s fellow-pupil at the “Casa Giocosa.” Oddantonio saw Cecilia, for the first time, on the occasion of Margherita’s marriage with Leonello of Este, fell in love with her immediately, and formally asked for her hand six weeks later. The alliance proposed was one that offered immense political advantages to the House of Gonzaga, and the Marchese eagerly accepted it, though the reputation of his prospective son-in-law was none of the best. In the off-hand way fathers had in those days, when it was a question of arranging their daughters’ matrimonial affairs, the Marquis sent for Cecilia one day, and told her to hold herself ready to be married.

But another Lover than Oddantonio had won Cecilia for Himself. The little Jesukin, with Whom she had played her childish games, Who, grown to manhood, had changed the water of the old philosophies into the wine of truth for her drinking, Who had sanctified the dust of the earth’s materialism because His Feet had touched it, and made the World a Sacred Place because He had died in it, was the Beloved of her heart.

As Magdalene, on a day, had broken the “alabaster box of precious ointment,” and anointed His Feet therewith, so, too, was Cecilia ready to pour out at His Feet all the treasures of heart, and mind, and soul, which Vittorino’s teaching had helped her to gather; as Magdalene spent the beauty of her hair to wipe the Feet she had anointed, so, too, was Cecilia ready to lay down her beauty for His dear sake.

Not many yards from the Castello of Mantua was a Convent of the Poor Clares, founded by Madonna Paola. Here was the abode which her Beloved had chosen for her, and here He offered her the habit which Francis had bestowed on Clare, the rope-girdle, the coarse veil. Oddantonio’s jewels and gifts, the satins and laces, and cloth of gold in which he would have decked his bride, were dross in the eyes of her, whose chosen ornaments were the jewels of Madonna Poverty.

When she announced her intention of becoming a Clarice to her father, his rage knew no bounds. One blushes to tell it (for Gianfrancesco, with all his faults, has a way of making us like him), but it must be told: he actually used physical violence to the poor girl to compel her to do what she was told. But steadfast as Clare herself, Cecilia stood firm, finding a little comfort in the unfailing sympathy of her mother and her teacher.

For two years the struggle lasted—Vittorino and Paola managing, between them, to dissuade the Marquis from forcing on his daughter’s marriage with a Prince, whose name was beginning to be in all men’s mouths as that of a notorious libertine. It may well be that Gianfrancesco was a little ashamed of himself when he was forced to recognise the true character of his chosen son-in-law. But ashamed or not, he was no more ready to see his brilliant girl bury herself in a Poor Clare’s Cell. To the last, he refused his permission for her entrance into religion; and Cecilia, fearing to bring disaster on the Convent she had chosen, was forced to acquiesce.

But a day came when Gianfrancesco had power to make his will felt no longer—a day when he lay very still and cold on a bier of black velvet, and was borne to his tomb in San Francesco.

Curiously enough, the Church wherein the great Marchese lay buried was part of the Convent Cecilia had been so anxious to make her home. Nothing stood in the way of the accomplishment of her heart’s desire now; and so it came to pass that the Vows he had so long refused to allow his daughter to take were uttered over Marchese Gianfrancesco’s tomb.

MARGARET MORE

A Little Schoolgirl of Tudor England