The Century of Columbus Part 21

Many a church in Spain was proud to display an altar cloth that was worked by her hands, and the historical traditions that traced them to her actual hand labor are well authenticated.

Her daughters as well as her sons received the benefit of the best education, though, with their mother's example and encouragement, they devoted themselves to needlework and even to the arts of spinning and weaving. It is said that Ferdinand the Catholic, her husband, could declare, as Charlemagne had done, that he used no article of clothing that {293} had not been made for him by his wife or his daughters.

When she was married to Ferdinand they were so poor that they had to borrow the money to make the presents to the servants that were customary on such occasions. It is said that she mended one doublet for her husband, the King, as often as seven times. Her deep piety, her firm character, her habits of industry and thrift, and yet her ability to recognize what was likely to be good for her kingdom and her people and to spend money freely on it, made an admirable example for the time. Above all, she discouraged the idle extravagance of the n.o.bility and succeeded in greatly lessening the immorality at court.

She made a magnificent collection of books, fostered learning at the universities, encouraged it among the women of the time, and it is no wonder that historians have spoken so much in praise of her. With all this she was extremely unhappy in her children--she saw her son die in the promise of youth, her daughter went mad, other daughters, including Queen Catherine of England, were destined, in spite of felicitous auguries in early life, to the most poignant unhappiness--and mother had to be the source of consolation for them all.

[Ill.u.s.tration: HOLBEIN, QUEEN CATHERINE OF ARAGON]

The spirit of Isabella in the matter of the rights of her subjects will perhaps be best appreciated from the famous expression which she used on hearing that Columbus had offered some of the Indians whom he brought home with him to some of the Spanish n.o.bility as gifts. The Queen indignantly demanded when she heard of it, "Who gave permission to Columbus to parcel out my va.s.sals to anyone?" Having learned that some of the Indians were being held as slaves in Spain she issued a decree that they should be returned to their native country at the expense of the person in whose possession they were found.

Prescott has drawn a striking contrast between the character of Isabella and of Elizabeth. The two names are in origin the same and there are many details of their careers that tempt to the making of a comparison. Because Elizabeth is really a product of Columbus'

Century, seventeen years of age before the century closed, Prescott's comparison is a doc.u.ment of special value for us here, for it tells the {294} story of two great women of the time, though the work of one of them was accomplished after the close of our period. He says (p.

188, Vol. III):

"Both succeeded in establis.h.i.+ng themselves on the throne after the most precarious vicissitudes. Each conducted her kingdom, through a long and triumphant reign, to a height of glory to which it had never before reached. Both lived to see the vanity of all earthly grandeur, and to fall the victims of an inconsolable melancholy; and both left behind an ill.u.s.trious name, unrivalled in the subsequent annals of their country.

"But with these few circ.u.mstances of their history, the resemblance ceases. Their characters afford scarcely a point of contact.

Elizabeth, inheriting a large share of the bold and bluff King Harry's temperament, was haughty, arrogant, coa.r.s.e and irascible; while with these fiercer qualities she mingled deep dissimulation and strange irresolution. Isabella, on the other hand, tempered the dignity of royal station with the most bland and courteous manners.

Once resolved, she was constant in her purposes, and her conduct in public and private life was characterized by candour and integrity.

Both may be said to have shown that magnanimity which is implied by the accomplishment of great objects in the face of great obstacles.

But Elizabeth was desperately selfish; she was incapable of forgiving, not merely a real injury, but the slightest affront to her vanity; and she was merciless in exacting retribution. Isabella, on the other hand, lived only for others,--was ready at all times to sacrifice self to considerations of public duty; and, far from personal resentments, showed the greatest condescension and kindness to those who had most sensibly injured her; while her benevolent heart sought every means to mitigate the authorized severities of the law, even towards the guilty. . . .

"To estimate this (contrast) aright, we must contemplate the results of their respective reigns. Elizabeth found all the materials of prosperity at hand, and availed herself of them most ably to build up a solid fabric of national grandeur. Isabella created these materials. She saw the faculties of her people locked up in a death-like lethargy, and she breathed {295} into them the breath of life for those great and heroic enterprises which terminated in such glorious consequences to the monarchy. It is when viewed from the depressed position of her early days, that the achievements of her reign seem scarcely less than miraculous."

Prescott has declared that her heart was filled with benevolence to all mankind. In the most fiery heat of war she was engaged in devising means for mitigating its horror. She is said to have been the first to introduce the benevolent inst.i.tution of camp hospitals and her lively solicitude to spare the effusion of blood even of her enemies is often told. Her establishment of the Inquisition and the exile of the Jews are often set over against this, but Prescott did not hesitate to say, "It will be difficult to condemn her indeed without condemning her age; for these acts are not only excused, but extolled by her contemporaries as const.i.tuting her constant claims to renown and to the grat.i.tude of her country." Spaniards of much more modern time have not scrupled to p.r.o.nounce the Inquisition "the great evidence of her prudence and piety; whose uncommon utility not only Spain but all Christendom freely acknowledged." Undoubtedly it saved Spain from some of the troubles which devastated Germany during the Hundred Years' War after the Reformation, when religious divisions so embittered the struggle and made it impossible for national affairs to prosper or for men to be brought to any common understanding with regard to anything for the good of the commonwealth. The difference between the position of Spain and of Germany in this regard is highly instructive.

There are so many distinguished women of this period in Italy that a choice indeed is embarra.s.sing. Probably, however, the general consensus of opinion would be that the typical great intellectual woman of this time is Vittoria Colonna, the daughter of the great Roman family of that name, who became the wife of the Marquis of Pescara. The Colonnas were at this time in exile at Naples, where her father was the Grand Constable. Her mother was Agnesina de Montefeltro of the Ducal house of Urbino and she was brought up after the age of ten by her prospective sister-in-law, the d.u.c.h.ess {296} Costanza, in the Island of Ischia. She was intimately related, then, to many of the important n.o.ble families of Italy and her career may be taken as a type of the possibilities of education and intellectual influence in her cla.s.s at this time. Her husband became distinguished as a military leader and finally at scarcely more than thirty years of age was made the General of the Imperial forces when the Pope and the Emperor Charles V made an alliance and drove the French from Milan in 1528. He had been the commander of the Imperial Army at the battle of Pavia in 1525, after which Francis I, badly beaten and taken prisoner, sent his mother the famous despatch from his captive cell in the Certosa near Pavia, "All is lost save honor."

Francis was too important a prisoner to be left to the fortunes of war in Italy, so Charles V had him transferred by s.h.i.+p to Madrid.

Emissaries of the French, who tried to win the Marquis of Pescara from his allegiance to the Emperor, represented this action to him as something of an insult or at least a lack of trust. They offered him the throne of Naples if he should abandon the Emperor and come over to the French. The Marquis had been wounded and was just recovering when these offers were made. He wrote to his wife, Vittoria, with whom he was on terms of the most charming affection, telling her of the offer and asking her advice. With a crown dangling before her and the added temptation, the subtlest there could be for a woman, of going back as Queen where she had been only a lady-in-waiting at Court, Vittoria wrote the famous letter which has deservedly so often been quoted:

"Consider well what you are doing, mindful of the fame and estimation which you have always enjoyed; and in truth, for my part, I care not to be the wife of a king, but rather to be joined to a faithful and loyal man; for it is not riches, t.i.tles, and kingdoms which can give true glory, infinite praise, and perpetual renown to n.o.ble spirits desirous of eternal fame; but faith, sincerity, and other virtues of the soul; and with these man may rise higher than the highest kings, not only in war, but in peace."

[Ill.u.s.tration: t.i.tIAN, PRESENTATION OF VIRGIN]

{297}

Not long afterwards her husband died as a consequence of his wounds and Vittoria was broken-hearted. The letters which they had written to each other show how much of a love match this was and all the sixteen years of married life there seems to have been nothing to disturb it.

Vittoria's only consolation now was in religion, and she thought of entering a convent, but it was felt that she could accomplish much more good in the world and a special Papal brief was issued permitting her to spend as much time as she wished in convents, but forbidding superiors to allow her to take the veil until the poignancy of her grief subsided and she might be able to make up her mind without being too much overborne by her sense of loss. Most of the rest of her life was spent in convents or in almost conventual seclusion. She wrote a series of poems, many of which are religious. A long series const.i.tutes a sort of _In Memoriam_ for her dead husband. They are written in very charming Italian verse and a well-known critic and writer on Italian literature has described these poems "as penetrated with genuine feeling. They have that dignity and sweetness which belong to the spontaneous utterances of a n.o.ble heart." During the last fifteen years of her life she lived very retired in Rome and exercised her profound influence over many of the great men of the Renaissance and particularly over Michelangelo.

Some idea of the place that she held in the cultured society of Italy at this time may be gathered from the fact that in 1528 Castiglione submitted his _"Il Cortigiano"_ to her in ma.n.u.script for her approval and criticism. She kept it for a considerable time, read portions of it to her friends, submitted others to them and then returned it with the highest praise. She declared that she was quite jealous of the persons that are quoted in the book, even though they were dead. A writer who knew this period very thoroughly and who had studied particularly the lives of the women of the Renaissance declared:

"Vittoria Colonna was indeed a woman to be proud of: untouched by scandal, unspoiled by praise, incapable of any ungenerous action, unconvicted of one uncharitable word. Long in the midst of such religious and political dissensions {298} as divided and uprooted families, she yet preserved in all the relations of life that jewel of perfect loyalty which does not ask to be justified."

Only too often it seems to be the impression that Vittoria Colonna stands almost alone in her supreme n.o.bility of character, but that is only due to the fact that she has been deservedly much talked of.

There are, however, many rivals in all that is best among the women of Italy at this time. The charm of certain of these women of the Renaissance can be best understood from the expressions of praise with regard to them that we have from the distinguished literary men of the time. One of them, Elizabeth Gonzaga, had some of the most beautiful things said with regard to her by men whose judgment and critical faculty commend them to the after world as great scholarly writers. In the prefatory epistle to his _"Cortigiano"_ Castiglione says in allusion to the death of this peerless lady, "but that which cannot be spoken without tears is that the d.u.c.h.ess, also, is dead. And if my mind be troubled also with the loss of so many friends that have left me in this life as it were in a wilderness full of sorrow, yet with how much more grief do I bear the affliction of my dear lady's death than of all the rest; since she was more worthy than all and I more bounden to her." Indeed Catiglione's great work was partly written as a memorial to her. Pietro Bembo, recalling the happy days he had spent at her court, says, "I have seen many excellent and n.o.ble women and have heard of some who are as ill.u.s.trious for certain qualities, but in her alone among women all virtues were united and brought together.

I have never seen nor heard of anyone who was her equal and know very few who have even come near her."

Every city in Italy possessed some of these n.o.ble women at this time.

Prominent among those who are not known as well as they deserve is Donna Catarina Fiesco or Adorno of Genoa, one of the saintly women of the time, who, in forgetfulness of self knew how to be so helpful to others in a wise and womanly way that she has been given the t.i.tle of St. Catharine of Genoa. She was the daughter of one of the n.o.ble Genoese ruling families, the Fieschi, the daughter {299} of Conte Giacomo Fiesco, who was Viceroy of Naples and Papal Chamberlain during the first half of the fifteenth century. Catarina was born July 10, 1447, the third of seven daughters whose mother also came from an ancient house of Genoa enrolled in the first Libro d'Oro. Very early she chose to be a religious, but Giuliano Adorno, a son of Doge Antoniotto Adorno, fell in love with her and though his reputation was that of a young blade and sport, he was good-looking and handsome of figure, and Donna Catarina, having seen him several times at ma.s.s, fell in love with him. Political considerations helped on the match and indeed seemed to have been most powerful, for after Catarina had been told of Giuliano's wild ways she refused to marry him and finally was married in black, positively declining to don the customary red velvet robe and lavish ornaments of gold and jewels of Genoese brides.

Their marriage, as Catarina evidently had dreaded, was not happy and after five years Catarina betook herself to a convent. After her departure her husband went from bad to worse, and finally, cast off by his indulgent father, was reduced to abject poverty and despair. His wife sought him out, lifted him up and together they took a house near the Spedale Maggiore where they received and cared for poor incurables. Five years later her husband died, "his death having paid all debts," and Catarina was elected prioress of the women's department of the hospital. She organized the nursing, reorganized the hospital service, especially as regards the poor, and took her official duties as prioress very seriously. She found time, however, to compose a number of little books for persons in distress of mind and of body, and some of them have been translated into French and Spanish. Her "Treatise on Purgatory," setting forth the strength of Christian piety in the face of death, was published in 1502 and had a wide popularity in the Latin countries of Europe. She wrote a series of dialogues that became very popular and were widely used by the parish clergy in dramatic form in the churches. The two characters in the dialogues were Good and Evil, and from rival pulpits these presented their various claims. The custom of having this dialogic form of church instruction is still extant in {300} Genoa. In 1509 she died, leaving all of her property and possessions to the hospital, and her body, miraculously preserved, reposes in a superb crystal casket within the chapel of the hospital. Of her, as Edgc.u.mbe Staley says in his "Heroines of Genoa," the well-known Italian proverb has been quoted: _Vera felicita senza Dio non si da_--True happiness without G.o.d there is none.

Another of these distinguished intellectual women of the Renaissance in Italy was the venerable Battistina Vernazza, whose parents were famous for their benevolence and had a high place in the Libro d'Oro de' Benemeriti of Genoa. She was born in 1497. Early in life she showed remarkable talents as a student of Latin and a writer of verses in Latin and in the vernacular. She entered the Convento delle Grazie but declined to take the veil until both her parents gave their consent, and though her father was willing her mother refused to permit her to be separated from her. After her mother's early death she entered the convent and there became noted for her piety and learning. Her writings are mainly controversial and were very famous in her time. Letters of hers to well-known leaders of the Protestantizing party are extant. At the death of her father, her father's considerable fortune came to her. She applied it all to works of charity, and especially in the direction of the rescue of young girls from evil a.s.sociations. She lived to be ninety years of age and her memory is still so green among the Genoese because of all that she did for the good of the people that in the quarter of the city where she was born the Munic.i.p.al School for Girls bears her name of Battistina Vernazza.

Even the smaller towns gave birth to great women, and one of the most distinguished women of the Century whose name is very little known, mainly because her modesty would have it so, is Angela of Merici, the distinguished founder of a religious order for the education of girls of all cla.s.ses, whose work has endured down to our time and whose religious daughters are literally all over the world at the present day. It is probable that the work of no woman of the Renaissance has had so far-reaching an effect as that of this humble village maiden whose one a.s.set in life was her thought for {301} others and for duty.

An all too brief abstract of her story will be found in the chapter on Feminine Education.

An important phase of the careers of the women of the Renaissance is the manliness and independence of spirit which became manifest. It was at this time that the word virago was first used but employed not as now as a mark of disrespect, but on the contrary as a high compliment.

Catherine of Sforza, whose manly defence of her castle is well known and whose life exhibited a series of thoroughly courageous incidents, was known as the Virago of Forli, though at the same time she was hailed as "the best gentlewoman of Italy." Isabella Gonzaga manifests something of this same heroic vein and Clarice de Medici, the wife of Filippo Strozzi, is in the same group. These women stand out as remarkable, and yet many of the women of the Renaissance exhibited an independence of character which is usually thought to be of much later development.

There are many educated people who are quite convinced that while the Renaissance possessed distinguished women deservedly famous for their unselfish character and their fine moral influence, it possessed an even greater proportion of women whose vices made them a scandal for all time and whose influence was far-reaching for evil. Indeed for many the name of Lucretia Borgia, which has become a byword for everything worst in human life, is supposed to be a better symbol of the Renaissance than that of Vittoria Colonna. Probably the best way--apart from the actual facts in the lives of women already cited--to show the absolute untruth of this very prevalent impression is to take the life of Lucretia Borgia herself, for it makes clear not only how absolutely lacking in historical confirmation are the ordinary traditions with regard to her, but on the contrary how well she deserves to be cla.s.sed among the great good women of the Renaissance, all the scurrilous abuse of her that has acc.u.mulated to the contrary notwithstanding. There is probably nothing that shows how little of trust can be placed in contemporary doc.u.ments unless these are critically considered, than the complete change of view with regard to the Borgia family, particularly Lucretia, which has taken place in the last few years, as a consequence {302} of the more careful scientific scholarly historical research of recent years.

The facts in Lucretia's life are comparatively few and rather easy to understand. Its first part is shrouded in the calumnies so common with regard to the Borgias. They were Spaniards making their way in Italy and nothing was too bad to say of them. Her later life was all in the limelight of publicity and should be the basis of any judgment of her.

When she was about twenty-four after two sad matrimonial experiences she was married by political arrangement to Alfonso, the son of Ercole, Duke of Ferrara. Before that marriage careful investigation as to her character was made and a special envoy sent for that purpose wrote that "there was nothing at all out of the way with Lucretia herself. She was sensible, discreet, of good and loving nature and her manners full of modesty and decorum; a good Christian filled with the fear of G.o.d. ... In truth such are her good qualities that I rest a.s.sured there is nothing to fear from her or rather everything to hope from her." After her marriage Lucretia lived for nearly twenty years at Ferrara. When she died in early middle life her funeral was followed to the tomb by all the people of the city, who revered her as a saint and looked up to her as one who had done everything that she could to make life happier for her people. She was buried in the Convent of the Sisters of the Corpus Christi, in the same tomb as the Mother of Alfonso, the d.u.c.h.ess Leonora, of whose goodness we have spoken, and her praises were on every tongue.

Whatever there is defamatory that is said about Lucretia concerns the years before this marriage while she was living at Rome up to the age of twenty-three. A knowledge of that fact alone is quite sufficient to make the stories with regard to her unexampled viciousness very dubious. Gregorovius has recently re-examined all the doc.u.ments and has completely vindicated her. She was merely the victim of the violent political hatreds of the time. To take the one item of poisoning with regard to which her name has been so infamous and her reputation so notorious, Garnett, in the "Cambridge Modern History,"

declares that there is only one case in which the Borgias are supposed to have used poison for which there is {303} any evidence, and that is very dubious. With that one Lucretia had nothing to do. In discussing her divorce from Sforza, he says: "The transaction also served to discredit in some measure the charges against the Borgias of secret poisoning, which would have been more easily and conveniently employed than the disagreeable and scandalous method of a legal process."

Some of the tributes to Lucretia Borgia from her contemporaries are highly laudatory. Among her friends were some of the best people of the time. Aldus Manutius praises her to the skies, lauds her benevolence to the poor, her care for the afflicted and her ability as a ruler. There is no doubt at all that she was one of these wonderful women of the Renaissance whose administrative ability must be admired more than any other quality. During the absence of her husband she ruled the State with wonderful prudence, and yet with a justice tempered always with mercy. It was through her that a law was pa.s.sed, protecting the Jews of Ferrara, that became a model for other similar legislation in the cities of Italy.

It is interesting to trace the change of att.i.tude of mind toward her on the part of those who either did not care for her or were actually bitterly opposed to her. Her sister-in-law, Isabella D'Este, became a real friend, as her letters attest, though at first she did not like at all the idea of the union of the house of D'Este with that of the Borgias, and it required all her father's force of will and all his political astuteness besides to secure her presence at the marriage.

The letters of ten years later reveal a most intimate friends.h.i.+p between these two women. Within a year after her marriage she had completely won her husband, who was altogether indifferent at the beginning and who married her because of his father's insistence and entirely for political reasons. When her first baby died at birth her husband was most solicitous for her, anxious about her health and made a vow that he would go on a pilgrimage to Loretto for her recovery, a vow which he fulfilled just as soon as her convalescence was a.s.sured.

The biographer of Bayard, the famous French Chevalier of the time, _sans peur et sans reproche_, declared apropos of the visit of Bayard to Madonna Lucretia at Ferrara: "I venture {304} to say that neither in her time nor for many years before has there been such a glorious princess. For she is beautiful and good, gentle and amiable to everyone." Gregorovius declares in his "Lucretia Borgia, According to Original Doc.u.ments and Correspondence of Her Day": [Footnote 26]

"Lucretia had won universal esteem and affection; she had become the mother of her people. She lent a ready ear to the suffering and helped all who were in need. She put aside, as Jovius, a contemporary, said, 'the pomps and vanities of the world to which she had been accustomed from childhood and gave herself up to pious works and founded and endowed convents and hospitals.'" She died at the early age of forty, so that the nearly twenty years of service for others represent not the aftermath of a long stormy life, when human pa.s.sions had burnt themselves out, but the ripe years of maturity and highest vitality.

[Footnote 26: Translated by Garner, Appleton, 1913, New York.]

Caviceo even ventured when he wished to praise the famous Isabella Gonzaga to say that she approached the perfection of Lucretia. He adds, and Gregorovius has emphasized this opinion, "she redeemed the name of Borgia, which now was always mentioned with respect." Indeed there are few women who ever lived of whom such marvellous encomiums have been given by men who knew her well personally and who were themselves often among those in a period of great men and women whose memory the world will not willingly let die. Whatever of evil is said of her is said by writers of scandal and littleness in her own time, Italian enemies of the Spanish house of Borgia, which had come into Italy and had a great success. These vile traditions, the kitchen stories of the Renaissance, were gathered together and preserved because so many people are interested in what is evil rather than good. At a time when the greatness of the period in which she lived was ill appreciated and when religious motives tempted to credulity they came to be generally reported until Victor Hugo gathered them all together for his characterization of her and with Donizetti's opera popularized the idea that Lucretia was probably the worst woman who had ever lived. It has taken much writing of real history to modify this popular notion, which is not yet corrected, and nothing ill.u.s.trates {305} better the fallibility of popular historical information than this Lucretia story.

[Ill.u.s.tration: PALMA VECCHIO, ST. BARBARA]

When she came to die her husband said of her, writing to his nephew in whose regard there was not the slightest question of hypocrisy or pretence: "I cannot write this without tears, knowing myself to be deprived of such a dear and sweet companion. For such her exemplary conduct and the tender love which existed between us made her to me."

The greatest woman of the French Renaissance and probably the most influential of the women of the time, with the possible exception of Vittoria Colonna, was Marguerite of Angouleme. In English-speaking countries she is better known as Marguerite of Navarre, though in France she is sometimes spoken of also as Marguerite of Valois or of France. She was the sister of Francis I, King of France, and devoted in her affection towards him. Undoubtedly it was she more than any other who inspired her brother with the idea of founding the College of France, and it was she who was the patron and guardian of the French Renaissance. After Francis had been captured at the battle of Pavia and s.h.i.+pped as a prisoner to Spain she made the long, perilous, difficult journey that it was in those days from Paris to Madrid with sisterly devotion, and in spite of trying hards.h.i.+ps stayed near her brother during his confinement.

The world generally knows her as the author of the "Heptameron" and has condemned her rather severely because of its too great freedom of manners and morals. Our own generation, however, which from its youngest years reads in our daily newspapers much worse stories than Margaret ever wrote, should not be ready to condemn her. It is difficult to understand her writing of these stories unless one knows the conditions of the time. The license that had come in among the novelists led to the telling of many stories that even our age, accustomed to the greatest license in this matter, finds too frank.

Margaret, whom her generation has agreed in calling a saint, hoped to undo the evil of such stories by telling them frankly and adding morals to them. The stories have been read and the morals neglected.

Her idea was very much the same as the excuse made for the publication of many {306} criminal stories of all kinds in our time, that publicity makes for deterrence. The erroneous psychology of this attempt at justification for a serious breach of ethics is only too patent. Margaret's good intentions in the matter are undoubted. Good intentions, however, do not guarantee that acts will be without evil effects. Margaret was trying to correct the corruption of her time in very much the same way as many women have been aroused into activity in ours, only she made the sad mistake of using the wrong means by thinking that publicity or information would prove a safeguard against evil instead of an incentive to the very forms of vice that she was trying to correct--above all for the young. Her significance in literature is discussed in the chapter on French literature.

Margaret's personal character is one of the most beautiful in history and it fully justifies the praise of her contemporaries and even Vittoria Colonna's words, which would seem fulsome. The most interesting phase of Marguerite's character is her devotion to the sick poor. Down at Alencon the large hospital owed its origin to her and her name was in benediction among the people because of all that she did. Hers was no mere distant service such as a queen might render because of the power she had to employ others, but she devoted herself to personal work for them that made them feel her saintly unselfishness. The king, her brother, gave her a grant for a foundling school in Paris. This was known as _La Maison des Enfants Rouges_, The House of the Red Children, because of the scarlet dresses which were the uniforms. Francis in his grant says that his sister had told him how these little children that had been picked up on the streets of Paris die when they are taken to the Hotel Dieu and that they need the more special care of an inst.i.tution for themselves and he is very glad to come to her a.s.sistance.

When her own boy died at the age of a few months Marguerite, whose tender family affection can be very well appreciated from her relations with her brother, was stricken with grief. We have the naive description, however, of the strength of soul with which she bore it: "She went into her room, refusing the aid of any of the women attached to the Court, she thanked the Lord very humbly for all the good it had pleased {307} Him to do her." She went even farther than that, however, she forbade that there should be any public grief, had the Te Deum sung for joy in the church because the death meant the welcoming into Heaven of an angel and she had placards made to be posted throughout the city bearing the inscription, "The Lord hath given and the Lord hath taken away; blessed be the name of the Lord." And yet she herself wore black after this and never changed it and after a time this became the formal color of ladies' dress at her court.