SOURCE: Russell, Rinaldina. “The Mind's Pursuit of the Divine: A Survey of Secular and Religious Themes in Vittoria Colonna's Sonnets.” Forum Italicum 26, No. 1 (Spring, 1992): 14-27.

[In the following essay, Russell considers a pattern in Colonna's poems of moving upward from a sorrowful condition towards a sublime state of peace, understanding, and connection with the divine.]

Since the earliest publications Vittoria Colonna's poetry was organized in two distinct groups: the Pirogallo's edition of 1538, which gathered he poems in remembrance and praise of her husband, Ferrante d'Avalos, and the Valgrisi edition of 1547, which brought to light the poetry expressing the theological concerns and the devotion that became Vittoria's from about 1534 until her death in 1546. This separation between love and religious poems reflects a fundamental shift in the poet's interest and thematic choices and has, therefore, been kept ever since.

Vittoria's contemporary readers were also aware of the presence in her poetry of popular Platonic ideas and of current religious views.¹ Modern scholars have developed two corresponding lines of research: on one hand, they have established direct connections between the sonnets of sublimated love for D'Avalos and 16th century Neoplatonism; on the other, they have traced the theological ideas present in many religious poems to the works of contemporary evangelical leaders.² The result has been a sort of fourfold classification: sonnets lamenting the death of Ferrante, poems celebratory of him, sonnets inspired by evangelical doctrine, and a smaller group of poems, presumably written during the poet's last years, which express a less militant and more orthodox type of devotion.

This article intends to bring to light a fundamental identity in the poet's mental process and in the poetic projection of most love and religious sonnets. Beyond the changes from Platonic to evangelical themes, a constant progression can be noticed from a present sorrowful condition to a consideration of attaining a sublime state of being and, upward, to a swift moment of understanding and peace. It is a meditative thrust toward the divine that translates itself into a few recurring types of sonnet construction, and is best represented by the poetic image of the soul's ascent to God.

The analysis of this pattern necessarily involves reconsidering some Neoplatonic and religious concepts. Reference to specific texts, however, is meant only to identify the poet's statements that are theoretically distinguishable, hence to illustrate her successive attempts at the description of the ascent. At the same time, they are used to show how the representation of the ascent is organized in the sonnet structure.

Of the 141 love poems in section AI and AII of Alan Bullock's edition,³ about forty sonnets contain almost exclusively Ferrante's praise. In about thirty more the poet vents her grief for his death. In about as many more sonnets the theme of her faithfulness to his memory turns into the assertion of their extraordinary union. It is in this group of sonnets, in which the poet repeatedly redefines the character of her bond to her husband, that the image of the ascent slowly emerges. We also see that she wavers between different orders of ideas. In some sonnets her union to Ferrante is defined in conformity to the theory of love espoused by Gismondo in Book 2 of Bembo's Gli Asolani. Vittoria claims, for instance, that her bond to her husband is “a tie made by Reason and Love … knotted by Loyalty, tightened by Time” (AI: 10, 11. 1-4 [A refers to the rime amorose portion of Rime; AI designates the portion of the rime amorose which was collected in 1540]); death could not undo, rather only strengthen this bond made by “Heaven, Nature and Love” (AI: 30, 1-2). This definition is in agreement with Gismondo's argument that love is a benevolent force of nature, as good as anything else in God's universe; that love is a natural affection of our minds, and, therefore, reasonable and beneficent.⁴

In other sonnets, Vittoria's union to her dead husband is defined in a Neoplatonic context that is consistent with Lavinello's theory of love in Book 3 of Gli Asolani. Sonnet AII: 20 [AII designates the portion of the rime amorose which was not collected in 1540] is a good example of Vittoria's often tortuous way of duplicating in poetry current philosophical ideas:

          D'ogni sua gloria fu largo al mio Sole
il Ciel, che di virtù l'animo cinse
e 'l volto di color vaghi dipinse,
e diede alto concento a le parole.
          Di qui nacque il disio, com'Amor vole
che dal veder e da l'udir constrinse
la mente, in cui quel lume non si estinse,
ma serba ancor le forme belle e sole.
          Gli altri semplici sensi, che non fanno
concordia, ove beltà nasce, e quel vero
divino amor che gentil alma accende,
          non mi fur mai cagion di gioia, o affanno,
ché 'l chiaro fuoco mio fa il cor sì altero
ch'ogni basso pensier sempre l'offende.

In the first lines, to Ferrante's praise the poet subsumes the theory of “honest” love. Heaven gave her Sun a virtuous soul, which can be apprehended through a high concert of words, as well as a beautiful face, which is perceived as harmony of colors. From this harmony sprang Vittoria's love, for sight and hearing compelled her mind so, that his light was never extinguished there, rather his handsome forms are forever and exclusively preserved. These lines are reminiscent of Lavinello's distinction between “honest” and “dishonest” love. Dishonest love is motivated by the sensual impulses of the lower senses, which being disharmonious lead the lover to a conflict of doubts, and to unhappiness. Honest love is a desire for beauty, which is a grace born of the harmony of soul and body, and is consequently directed to a virtuous as well as beautiful person. In order to enjoy the harmony that inspires a virtuous love, only the superior senses are to be brought into play: sight, whereby the lover contemplates the beauty of the beloved's body, and hearing, whereby the sounds, hence the soul's harmony, are apprehended.⁵ Lines 9-14 reformulate the same theory in the negative: the inferior senses, which do not generate that harmony, the sole purveyor of beauty and of that divine love that burns in the noble soul, [the inferior senses] never moved her either to joy or sorrow, for her bright fire makes her heart so proud that low thoughts always offend it.

This is a two-part structure that is very common in Vittoria's sonnets. In the quartine her mental attitudes are declared and brought into line with authorized versions of behavior; the terzine give a different version of the same idea and then go on to a correlated one. The syntax proceeds through strung-out clauses that connect parallel concepts or relate cause and effect. In this connecting effort the period turns on itself and, as a consequence, the sonnet often closes on a down note.

A different construction appears when the poet, in her continued effort to give an uplifting description of her marital bond, turns to the Platonic concept of a God-directed love and delineates a trajectory that goes from the contemplation of natural beauty to the contemplation of the divine light. The idea reminds us again of Book 3 of Gli Asolani, more precisely of the speech on love made by Lavinello's Hermit.⁶ A poetic rendition of such movement from nature to God is found in sonnet AII: 13.

          Quando io dal caro scoglio guardo intorno
la terra e 'l mar, ne la vermiglia aurora,
quante nebbie nel ciel son nate alora
scaccia la vaga vista, il chiaro giorno.
          S'erge il pensier col sol, ond'io ritorno
al mio, che 'l Ciel di maggior luce onora;
e da questo alto par che ad or ad ora
richiami l'alma al suo dolce soggiorno.
          Per l'exempio d'Elia non con l'ardente
celeste carro ma col proprio aurato
venir se 'l finge l'amorosa mente
          a cambiarmi 'l mio mal doglioso stato
con l'altro eterno; in quel momento sente
lo spirto un raggio de l'ardor beato.

The first quartina establishes a wide natural horizon: at dawn, from the rock of Ischia, Vittoria looks at the sea and at the light that shines from the eastern sky and dissolves the night mist. The second quartina begins the visual ascent by negotiating the passage from this sun to her Sun: “my thought rises with the sun, hence I return to my Sun, / who in Heaven is honored by greater light.” Notwithstanding the confusing adjectival references, the ascending movement continues into the next terzina, where the biblical image of Elija's burning carriage is used in conjunction with mystical/erotic metaphors to represent the soul's flight to Heaven. In line 12, however, the consideration of the sorrowful state causes a downturn which is barely overcome by the final image of a ray of blissful ardor. A similar downturn also mars the ending of AII: 15, “Vivo su questo scoglio orrido e solo.” Here, however, notwithstanding the contorted and obscure phrasing the reader can perceive a suggestive image of the mind's flight to Heaven: from the isolated island of Ischia, Vittoria's thought is recalled from diverting flights and, falcon-like, rises on command to her adored Sun in Paradise.

The image of the ascent is clearly and powerfully realized in AII: 38.

          Sovra del mio mortal, leggiera e sola,
aprendo intorno l'aere spesso e nero,
con l'ali del desio l'alma a quel vero
Sol, che più l'ardè ognor, sovente vola,
          e là su ne la sua divina scola
impara cose ond'io non temo o spero
che 'l mondo toglia o doni, e lo stral fero
di morte sprezzo, e ciò che 'l tempo invola,
          che 'n me dal chiaro largo e vivo fonte
ov'ei si sazia tal dolcezza stilla
che 'l mel m'è poi via più ch'assenzio amaro,
          e le mie pene a lui noiose e conte
acqueta alor che con un lampo chiaro
di pietade e d'amor tutto sfavilla.

The switch from this earthly sun to the true Sun in heaven occurs in the first quartina; in the second we have a view of paradisiacal bliss that is complex but easily apprehended because visually and emotionally coherent: “and there above, in his divine school, / [my soul] learns of such things that I neither fear nor hope / the world may take or give, and the fearsome arrow / of Death I scorn, and everything that Time steals.” The period continues uninterrupted into the second part of the sonnet: its upward thrust is first reinforced by the vivid image of the heavenly spring, then it is brought to a metaphorical climax by a final flash of lightning: “for into me, from that clear rich and loving spring / where he is sated, such sweetness flows / that, after it, honey is bitterer than gall; / and my grief, known and botheresome to him / is eased as, in a clear lightning / of mercy and love, all brightly shines” (9-14).

The natural background of sonnets AI: 13, 15, 20, and 38 suggest that they were written at Ischia during the first years of the poet's widowhood.⁷ These were also the years when The Book of the Courtier, with its climaxing hymn to divine love was first published (1528), and when the second edition of Gli Asolani came out of the press (1530). It is not surprising that these two popular dialogues on love supplied Vittoria with theories and imagery.⁸ It might have also been noticed that those sonnets are not found in AI, but in the AII section of the Bullock's edition. This means that, when Vittoria, at the apex of her evangelical enthusiasm, selected a representative group of her love poems to be sent to Francesco della Torre, she no longer found those sonnets acceptable. The love for a human being, although platonically sublime, had become incompatible with her new religious views.

By common consent the central subject of Vittoria's religious poetry is Christ. This main theme can be further differentiated into meditation on the Passion, consideration of Christ's triumphant salvation of mankind, and the description of the soul's union with Him. Here again the sonnet structure changes as the poet progresses from the consideration of doctrine to a projection of the ascent.

Meditation of the Passion as the first step in the soul's journey to God had dominated Italian devotion since the spiritual revival of the last decades of the 15th century. The numerous editions of Savonarola's works, of the Pseudo-Bonaventure's Meditationes vitae Christi, of many tracts on Christ, of books entitled Via del paradiso, Specchio interiore, and Regola di vita spirituale, all attest to the general tendency to go back to the ascetic teaching of the Gospels: in order to attain perfection and happiness, Christians must renew themselves and conform their lives to that of Christ.⁹ In the two decades preceding the opening of the Council of Trent (1545), imitation of Christ became the main teaching point of those “evangelical” leaders who in Italy advocated a spiritual renewal of Christianity and of the Church.¹⁰ Among them, most important for Vittoria's poetry are Juan de Valdés and his follower, Bernardino Ochino.¹¹

In her sonnets Vittoria strives toward an intellectual understanding of the theological meaning of the Passion and Salvation. Her meditation does not contain effusions of feeling. The effort to express the ineffable, to explain the inexplicable, results in repeated statements of belief, in interconnected declarations of doctrine seemingly aimed at bolstering her faith, at satisfying her need to believe. Correspondingly, several subthemes become intertwined in a typical two-part structure. Sonnets SI: 40 and 45 [S refers to the rime spirituali portion of Rime; SI designates the portion of the rime spirituali which was collected in 1540] are apt examples of how this occurs.

          L'invitto Re del Ciel, sol d'amor vero
e d'alta pura obedienza armato,
in mezzo del superbo mondo ingrato
e del popolo suo malvagio e fero
          tolse lo scritto ov'era il primo altero
uomo a l'eterno duol sempre obligato,
miser, tristo, prigion, servo, legato,
sotto la dura legge e l'aspro impero.
          Spogliando i gran tiranni a campo aperto
prese di terra in croce un picciol volo;
ivi l'affisse e lo dannò col sangue;
          indi carco di spoglie il camin erto
salio del Ciel. Questo è il trionfo solo
la cui gloria per tempo unque non langue.

The meditation here takes place in two stages, of which the second is a variation of the first. A fundamental concept of Valdesian belief is stated in the quartine: surrounded by the world's hostility but protected by his love for humanity and his obedience to God, Jesus was victorious in abrogating the old Law that enslaved man to the original sin. The terzine restate Christ's death as the abrogation of the existing Law—“There He posted and with his blood condemned it,” which refers to the “written Law” (lo scritto) of 1. 5—, and, in a variation of the same concept, they visualize the Resurrection as a triumphant flight from earth to the Cross, and from the Cross to Heaven.

Sonnet SI: 45 moves away from the external representation of the Passion to an inner consideration of it:

          Vanno i pensier talor carghi di vera
fede al gran Figlio in croce ed indi quella
luce, ch'Ei porge lor serena e bella,
li guida al Padre in gloriosa schiera;
          né questo almo favor rende più altera
l'alma fedele, poi che fatta è rubella
del mondo e di se stessa; anzi rende ella
a Dio de l'onor Suo la gloria intera.
          Non giungon l'umane ali a l'alto segno
senza il vento divin, né l'occhio scopre
il bel destro sentier senza il gran lume.
          Cieco è 'l nostro voler, vane son l'opre,
cadono al primo vol le mortai piume
senza quel di Gesù fermo sostegno.

As in many other sonnets, a few visual details are sufficient to evoke Christ's Crucifixion.¹² Here, rather than visualizing her meditation, Vittoria explicitly states her mental progression. True faith leads her thoughts to the Son on the Cross; from there, enlightened by His wisdom and serenity, they proceed to contemplate the Father (ll. 1-4). In a construction parallel to the first, the second quartina claims credit for this ascent for God alone, whose gift salvation is. The gratuitous character of divine grace is then explicitly restated in lines 9-10, and reformulated, with a metaphorical variation, in the last terzina.

Most sonnets on the Passion are organized in similar parallel sections. Se also SI: 30, 41, 42, 69, 77, 78, 83, 87, 89, 94, 95, 96, and SII: 4 [SII designates the portion of the rime spirituali which was not collected in 1540]. The quartine contain considerations on Jesus' death and Resurrection, usually with emblematic images of the Crucifixion; the terzine elaborate the same doctrinal points with variations. The order is reversed in SI: 89 and 159. The doctrinal considerations are made in dialogue form in SI: 159, while in SI: 77 the entire first quartina is given to a visual representation of the Passion.

In the religious sonnets too a new structure takes shape when the poet turns to the description of the soul's ascent to God. The consideration of theological meanings in Christ's history gives way to a contemplative stance. The construction becomes continuous, the rhythm is uninterrupted and ascending, the images are unified in one visual trajectory that moves from earth to Heaven (SI: 39, 41, 66, 167, 172); or, more often, the visual movement starts from a comprehensive view of the world, descends to the individual soul and, then, turns upward toward the Divinity (SI: 23, 27, 34, 64, 65, 80, 85, 86, 88, 93, 96, 150, 154, 157, 164, 169).

The visual continuity is the result of a harmonious blending of the Christian and the Neoplatonic worlds. In the Neoplatonic cosmos, which is created by a loving God and receives from Him life and movement, human souls are emanations of the universal Mind fallen and imprisoned in matter. They can however free themselves from it, and, by returning to their original spiritual condition, achieve reunion with God. This pervasive, life-giving presence of the Divinity blends beautifully with the Christian view of God's relation to man and with the evangelical concept of Salvation by faith.¹³ Sonnet SI: 37 is a good example of such blending of ideas: here the quartine form a single period smoothly running from line to line as an encircling view unfolds from God to the earth and back to Him, by way of the energy, made of faith, love and hope, that God Himself bestows on his creatures:

          L'Occhio divin, che sempre il tutto vede,
nulla vide qua giuso in terra eguale
a l'alma, Sua mercé, fatta immortale,
onde per proprio obietto il Ciel le diede,
          sposandola con pura ardente fede,
e di ricche amorose e leggiere ale
di speme ornando, acciò per cotai scale
lieta salisse a la celeste sede.

(1-8)

In SI: 73 the harmony between the Neoplatonic world of love and the Christian salvation is realized through the image of a “string of love” that ties all creatures among themselves and with God, a knot that has been strengthened by the hand of Christ:

          Tira su l'alma al Ciel col suo d'amore
laccio attorto il gran Padre, e stringe il nodo
per man del caro Figlio, e sì bel modo
non men che l'opra stessa appaga il core,
          tal ch'io sento sottil vivace ardore
penetrar dentro, sì ch'ardendo godo,
e chiaro ed alto grido ascolto ed odo
che mi richiama a più verace onore.
          Gradi di fede e caritate e speme
e di quella umiltà che l'uom sublima
ne fanno scale infino al Ciel superno,
          ove l'alme beate unite insieme
di mano in man da l'ultima a la prima
si miran tutte nel gran specchio eterno.

This is a divine love that penetrates the soul, enflames it and pulls it toward its creator. The description of it seems to communicate an intensity of feeling that quickens the pace of the poem, unravels its sentence structure and gives it a rising continuous rhythm. The sonnet is still organized in two sections, but the uplifting movement is carried from the first to the second part, and there it invests the final, all embracing image of the blessed souls that reflect themselves in God's eternal mirror.

Vittoria experiments with the common image of the stormy navigation as a metaphor for life by combining with it the scriptural image of Christ as a rock (SI: 82); or she attempts, with varying degrees of success, to bring about a metaphorical transformation from the troubled waters of human existence to the peaceful sea of God's goodness, as her consideration progresses from the soul's sinful condition to a state of grace (SI: 32, 79, 84, 179).¹⁴ To represent the vivifying presence of God in the world she uses arboreal imagery. The vine of John's Gospel, IV, has become “The vine of Divine love,” and extends into several preliminary images: in order to prepare for Grace, she insists, the ploughshare of humility must work a deep furrow into the heart's soil and make it ready for heaven's dew (SI: 39). She herself is a living branch of the true vine that embraces the world, and prays that she may escape the dark shadows of the worldly concerns and enter the eternal spring of Divine grace (SI: 12). Hers is a vine with a rich undergrowth, whose branches grow greener as they are nearer to God, the great Gardener of the world, who refreshes, opens up and gives color to all (SI: 154).

There is a scattering of conventional images of light throughout. Several visual projections into Heaven draw from Dante's choreographic displays of Paradiso.¹⁵ Most striking, because new in lyric poetry, are expressions such as “immense and pure abyss of light” (SI: 93), “inexcessible light,” “high darkness” (SI: 84). These are images borrowed from mystical writings where the light of God is often described in varying degrees of intensity as the soul rises to it, is dazzled and, then, plunges into darkness. Whatever their origin, these images are given new relevance and vitality by the doctrinal context in which they are used. The reader's immediate recognition makes them effective emblems of complex theological concepts.

As an example, let us take SI: 93, which is simultaneously a sonnet of the ascent and a fervent evangelical exhortation for the renewal of society:

          Di vero Lume abisso immenso e puro,
con l'alta tua pietà le luci amiche
rivolgi a questi, quasi vil formiche,
saggi del mondo, ch'hanno il cor sì duro.
          Rompi de l'ignoranza il grosso muro
ch'ancor li copre, e quelle nebbie antiche
del vecchio Adamo scaccia empie nemiche
al divin raggio tuo caldo e sicuro,
          tal che rendendo al Pastor santo onore,
vestiti sol di pura fede viva,
portin la legge Tua scritta nel core,
          sì che dei propri affetti ogni alma schiva
voli con l'ali del verace amore
a la beata Tua celeste riva.

Here we have images of three different origins. The opening metaphor “abyss of light” for God's knowledge has precedents in mystical language.¹⁶ On line 8, divin raggio is a commonplace borrowed from popular definition of spiritual love, which, however, receives new life by being linked with the adjectives caldo and sicuro to describe the warmth and security that God communicates to the reborn soul. On the last line, beata tua celeste riva is a variation of Dante's lume in forma di rivera in Paradiso XXX, 61. The images are placed at important points in the sonnet's trajectory. From the metaphorical light reflected in the endless space of the universe, the poem reaches down to the human level where blindness and insensitivity prevail. On the third line, the prayer begins which weaves together the main tenets of Valdesian thought: the unworthiness of human knowledge, the reassuring presence of God in the world, the possibility of freeing oneself from sin through faith in Christ and inner obedience to the Law. The repeated exhortation at the start of line 5 carries the momentum through the syntactical pause at the end of the first quartina into the second. The last terzina reaches the sonnet's visual climax with the image of the soul, born aloft by divine love, alighting on God's celestial shore.

In the great number of themes and subthemes relating to Salvation, whether it may be considered in a personal perspective or from a communal point of view, there is actively present in Vittoria's poetry the tendency toward the description of the ascent. For contemporary devotion the ascent was the culmination and goal of a complex process of meditation. For the poet, it represented the solution to all psychological and mental conflicts, it meant reaching a moment of understanding and peace that only communion with the Divinity could provide. On the literary level, the description of the ascent translates into an open, smoothly running sentence structure that often envelops the whole poem, and it creates an encircling visual movement that culminates in a metaphorical image of the soul's union with God.

This impulse gives a coherence to Vittoria's poetry that goes beyond the apparent variety of themes. It goes back to her love poems. The definition of her union to Ferrante, intended to distance them both from worldly circumstances, leads the poet to the consideration of a communion with the Divine which is at first formulated in Neoplatonic terms, and later is contemplated in the light of an evangelical renewal.

In her monolinear system Ferrante and Christ have the same structural function.¹⁷ In the early sonnets, the image of her husband, bearer of a love leading to virtue, does not overrun the limits of a Petrarchan scenography. As Laura to her poet, D'Avalos appears to Vittoria in a dream, his hand pointing to the path of truth (AI: 84, but see also AI: 14, 25, 39, 63, 73, 80, 84). In other poems, he is the “escort” to Heaven, and is described in a Platonizing context (AII: 37, 39, 41, 44, 46). Christ too is “escort” and “guide” (SI: 24 and 165): “the two wounded hands are now escort / that lead us back to the lost path”; “with that escort, / [the soul] soars aloft … it runs / swift and secure to its true sign.” Although the contextual information changes, the function and the vocabulary describing it remain unchanged.

It was this consistency of pursuit that conferred meaning to Vittoria's life and poetry, and in the eyes of her contemporaries, gave them both exemplary value.

Notes

1. Not all sixteenth century commentaries were exclusively concerned with grammatical problems. In his commentary to Vittoria Colonna's poetry (Tutte le rime dell'Illustriss. et eccellentiss. Signora Vittoria Colonna [Venice: Giovan Battista et Melchior Sessa, 1558]), Rinaldo Corso makes reference to Plato and Platonists, as well as to the key scriptural texts of Italian Evangelism. See pp. 169-72, 400, 141, 458 for Neoplatonic philosophers and theologians; pp. 114-19, 394-7, 428-9, 433, 445-6, for references to the Old Testament, the Gospels, Paul's letters and the Church fathers. A mention of Vittoria's acceptance of the views put forward by the Capuchin order can be found on p. 467.

2. A study of Neoplatonic language and concepts in Vittoria's love poetry is Dennis J. McAuliffe's “Neoplatonism in V. C.'s Poetry: from the Secular to the Divine,” in Ficino and Renaissance Neoplatonism, ed. K. Eisenbichler and O. Zorzi Pugliese (Ottawa: Dovehouse, 1989), pp. 101-112. For the poet's religious sources see Benedetto Nicolini, “Sulla religiosità di V.C.” in Studi e materiali di storia della religione, XXII (1949-50), 89-108. A very erudite and perceptive study is Mila Mazzetti's “La poesia come vocazione morale,” in Rassenga della letteratura italiana, 77 (1973), 58-99. While Mazzetti traces the origins of Vittoria's theological consideration mostly from Juan de Valdés, Roland H. Bainton, who is a Bernardino Ochino scholar, sees in the Capuchin preacher the main inspirer of her religious stance: see Women of the Reformation in Germany and in Italy (Minneapolis: Augsburg, 1971), p. 203.

3. Rime (Bari: Laterza, 1982). Section AI represents the collection of love poems assembled around 1540 by Carlo Gualteruzzi, the poet's secretary, presumably under her supervision. Section AII gathers all the love poems not included in that collection, which is considered the authorized edition. All translation of Vittoria's poetry found in the text of the article are mine.

4. Pietro Bembo, Gli Asolani, trans. R. B. Gottfried (Bloomington: Indiana Univ. Press, 1954), pp. 97-114: “Love can be defined as a desire for beauty … beauty is a kind of grace which is born of proportion and harmony of things … in human beings it is an attribute of the mind no less than of the body; and in order to reach the object of its longing, love spreads and beats its wings … And on its flight two senses guide it: hearing … and sight. For as the forms which our eyes perceive reveal how fair the body is, so from the words which reach our ears we understand the fairness of the mind.” The same concepts are found in Baldesar Castiglione, The Book of the Courtier, IV, 52-62.

5. Ib. pp. 155-8.

6. P. 189.

7. A Reumont, V. C. Marchesa di Pescara. Vita fede e poesia nel secolo decimosesto, trans G. Muller and E. Ferrero (Turin: Loescher, 1882), pp. 130-33.

8. From her correspondence with Baldesar Castiglione we know that Vittoria was in possession of an earlier version of his work at least since 1524. See V.C., Carteggio, eds. E. Ferrero and G. Muller (Turin: Loescher, 1892), pp. 23-26. The concluding hymn to love was added to Castiglione's dialogue only in the final version published in 1528. Cfr. G. Ghinassi, “Fasi dell'elaborazione del ‘Cortegiano,’” in Studi di filologia italiana, XXV (1967), 176.

9. The Meditations on the Life of Christ attributed to Bonaventure, and Savonarola's Il Trionfo della Croce were published very frequently in this period. Cfr. Anne Jacobson Schutte, Printed Italian Vernacular Religious Books 1465-1550: A Reading List (Geneve: Droz, 1983), pp. 100-104 and 324-52. Savonarola's representation of Jesus as a triumphant hero may have influenced sonnets SI: 30, 77, 168, 170; and SII: 4. Antonio Beccaria da Ferrara—Scala di profecto spirituale, 1514—, Gabriello Benedetti da Bologna—Via del Paradiso, 1515—, Battista Carioni da Crema—Philosophia divina ossia historia de la passione del nostro S G C crocifixo et modo di contemplare quella per imitarlo, 1531—, Bartolomeo Cordoni da Castello—Dialogo della unione spirituale de Dio con l'anima, 1538, are only a few among the many writers of devotional and ascetic tracts popular in this period. Cfr. Schutte pp. 65 passim, and G. Zarri, “Note su diffusione e circolazione di testi devoti (1520-1550),” Libri, idee e sentimenti religiosi nel Cinquecento italiano (Ferrara: Panini, 1987), pp. 131-52. On the history of meditation and correlative subjects very important are the three volumes by P. Pourrat, Christian Spirituality, trans. H. H. Mitchel and S. P. Jacques (London: Burns Oates and Washbourne, 1922-27), especially, in vol. II, pp. 38-51, 182-91), and, in vol. III, pp. 4-22, 235-52.

10. Pierre Imbart de la Tour called this movement of spiritual reform within the Roman Church “Evangelism”: Les Origines de la Réforme, Vol. III: L' Évangélisme (Paris, 1914). On the definition of Evangelism see also Philip M. J. McNair, “Beneficium Christi as Index to the Language of Sixteenth-Century Italian Evangelism: Assumption and Actuality,” in The Languages of Literature in Renaissance Italy, eds. P. Hainsworth, V. Lucchesi, C. Roaf, D. Roby and J. R. Woodhouse (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1988), pp. 257-70.

11. Vittoria had knowledge of Valdés' writings through Giulia Gonzaga before their publication in 1545-50. See Letter CXLII in Carteggio, pp. 238-40. Most important in this context are Valdés' One Hundred and Ten Considerations, in Life and Writings of J. d. V., ed. B. B. Wiffen (London: Spottiswood, 12865)—and Alfabeto Christiano, which Valdés wrote for the religious instruction of Giulia—Cristian Alphabet, ed. B. B. Wiffen (London: 1861). Very helpful is Valdés' dedicatory letter “To the Most Illustrious Lady Signora Donna Giulia Gonzaga,” which Wiffen published in the Appendix of the Alphabet on pp. 216-29. Here is a short dictionary of evangelical concepts, for under the heading of a few key words, such as “Gospel,” “Letter,” “Spirit,” “Faith” etc. the main tenets of Valesian instruction are presented in a succinct form.

12. These are imaginative preliminaries that trigger the visualization of the whole passion: “The High Lord is hanging from the cruel Cross” (SI: 6); “I see the Lord stretched naked on the Cross” (SI: 77). From these images the poet proceeds to meditate on the theological implication of salvation, often in the same sentence: “Through the wound on his right side, / God brings a perpetual shower of endless treasure” (SI: 33, ll. 9-11); “Eternal truth and our rich reward shine / through his open wounds” (SI: 61, ll. 2-4). Seeing with the eyes of one's imagination the place where Jesus walked is the first stage in the process of meditation, St. Ignatius will soon prescribe. Louis L. Martz wrote on the influence of meditation exercises on poetry in The Poetry of Meditation (New Haven, 1932). Vittoria does not present all the stages of the systematized process of meditation, which will be fully developed in the second half of the century.

13. Neoplatonic teaching began to exercise a great deal of influence on Christian writers as far back as the fourth century A. D., as the works of St. Augustine testify. Down the centuries, and before the great Platonic revival of the Renaissance, Dionysius the Areopagite and Hugo of St. Victor were the Christian theologians most influenced by Neoplatonism. On this subject see Pourrat, vol. I, pp. 67-8, 208-22; vol. II, pp. 120-29, 234.

14. Corinthians X, 14. Valdés: “that which was wrought by the rock on the Hebrews was a type of what Christ works upon the Christians,” from Commentary upon St. Paul's First Epistle to the Church of Corinth, trans. J. T. Betts (London: Trubner, 1883), p. 173. Vittoria gives an extended description of the ascent as a sea journey in a letter to Alvise Priuli: B. Fontana, “Nuovi documenti vaticani intorno a V. C.,” Archivio storico romanico di storia patria, X (1881), 601. The image of the sea as God's goodness is traceable to one of Ochino's sermons, which I found quoted by Bainton in “V. C. and Michelangelo,” p. 37: “Behold in this not a drop merely of His goodness and mercy but an infinite sea”.

15. Examples of Dantesque visions of paradise are sonnets SI: 2, 13, 64 and 79.

16. God's absolute transcendence was described by Dionysius as “divine obscurity” and “inaccessible light.” In his commentary, Corso explains: “Che in quella inaccessibil luce della divinità tua, dove non può vista alcuna, o intelletto creato pervenire, ti nascondi quasi in alta caligine posto … Et non è dubbio alcuno secondo me che questo luogo è tolto da Dionigi Areopagita, nella 5 epistola a Doroteo, e nel libro della Mistica Teologia,” p. 414.

17. Here is how Nicolini described Ferrante's transformation: “Vittoria cambia il desiderio di ricongiungersi al marito in paradiso nell'ansia di liberarsi da quel carcere che per lei era divenuto il mondo per poter contemplare senza veli Dio (che, in parole povere, era un sostituire Dio al D'Avalos),” p. 95.