The Duchess of Trajetto Part 22

"The 'Alfabeto Christiano' is a book unknown even to bibliographers for the last three centuries. It had its origin in an actual conversation between Juan de Valdes, twin brother to the Latin secretary of the Emperor Charles the Fifth, and Giulia Gonzaga, d.u.c.h.ess of Trajetto and Countess of Fondi, at Naples, about the close of 1535, or the beginning of the following year. At her request it was immediately afterwards written down by him in Spanish, to promote her instruction and refresh her memory. It now essentially conveys to us the spirit and substance of the conversation in the precise form and manner in which it took place between them."--_Introduction by Benjamin B. Wiffen, Esq., to his translation of the "Alfabeto Christiano."_

"It was printed at a time when for a few years the press of Venice was comparatively free; and when, taking advantage of this liberty, then existing nowhere else in Italy, it multiplied the tracts of the Reformation by thousands. When the friends of Valdes were afterwards persecuted at Naples, and his name condemned by the authority of Rome, implicating by connection with him, one of the most distinguished members of the n.o.ble family of the Gonzagas,--all parties, friends equally with opponents, would of course be concerned to observe silence on the subject; while all the friends of the family would be urged alike by religious sentiment and by family considerations to destroy silently and irrecoverably every copy of a book that appeared to cast, by its a.s.sociation with her name, the shadow of its principles upon those who were allied to her."--_Ibid._

The pa.s.sage describing the manner in which a stray copy fell into his hands, and the circ.u.mstances under which he perused it, is one of the pleasantest in Mr. Wiffen's Introduction. McCrie quotes a pa.s.sage from Fontaine, who tells us that "on taking down an old house at Urbino, in 1728, the workmen disinterred a copy of Bruccioli's 'Paraphrase of St.

Paul's Epistles,' with some books of Ochino, Valdes, and others of the same kind, which had remained in concealment for more than a century and a half."

III.

"Carnesecchi was secretary to Clement the Seventh, and afterwards prothonotary to the Apostolic See. One of his preferments was an abbey at Naples.... After the death of Clement, he retired from the Roman court to Naples, where he became intimate with Juan de Valdes. He was in that city in December, 1540, when Valdes died; and if he did not himself receive his last confession, which is very probable, he at least knew what it was, for his commendation of it formed part of the accusation against him on his trial in 1567, before the Inquisition at Rome; and after the death of Valdes he succeeded to the confidence of Giulia Gonzaga. This correspondence brought her also under the suspicion of the Inquisition on two occasions; once in 1545, and again, a short time before her death, in 1566."--_Wiffen's Introd., &c._

IV.

"Few were the years of the life of Valdes after the conversation of the 'Alfabeto Christiano,' yet during four, or at the most, five of them, he presented to Giulia his translation from the Greek of the Gospel according to Matthew, of the Psalms translated from the Hebrew, of the Epistle to the Romans, from the Greek, with a commentary; nor could she be unacquainted with his 'Considerations' and other writings, while they were yet in ma.n.u.script."--_Ibid._

V.

"Ippolito's translation of the second book of the aeneid was published at Rome, in 1538, 4to., and in Venice, 1540. The latter is ent.i.tled, 'I sei primi libri del Eneide de Vergilio, &c. Il secondo di Vergilio de Hipolito de Medici Cardinale, a la Signora Giulia Gonzaga, MDx.x.xX.' It contains twenty-three leaves."--_Ibid._

The lengthy t.i.tle of Ireneo Affo's work, which a friend transcribed for me at the British Museum, is:--"Memorie di tre Principesse della famiglia Gonzaga; offerte a sua ecc: il Signor Conte Stefano Sanvitale Parmigiano, gentiluomo di camera con esercito ed essente delle reali guardie del corpo di S. A. R., in occasione delle sue felicissime nozze con sua eccel: la Signora Principessa Donna Luigia Gonzaga Mantovana.

Parma, 1787. 4to."

The t.i.tle is not more wordy than the memoir itself, though a short one.

THE END.