Women of the Romance Countries | Page 5

feudal
period, which was the beginning of the golden age of the older chivalry,
that women exerted a most gentle influence upon the men about them
and that the honor and respect in which they were held did much to
elevate the general tone of life. In Italy, however, chivalry did not
flourish as it did in other countries. Since the time of the great Emperor
Charlemagne all Italy had been nominally a part of the imperial domain,
but owing to its geographical position, which made it difficult of access
and hard to control, this overlordship was not always administered with
strictness, and from time to time the larger cities of Italy were granted
special rights and privileges. The absence of an administrative capital
made impossible any centralization of national life, and it was entirely
natural, then, that the various Italian communities should assert their
right to some sort of local government and some measure of freedom.
This spirit of citizenship in the free towns overcame the spirit of
disciplined dependence which was common to those parts of the empire
which were governed according to the usual feudal customs, and, as a
result, Italy lacks many of those characteristics which are common to
the more integral parts of the vast feudal system.
The most conspicuous offspring of feudalism was chivalry, with its
various orders of knighthood; but chivalry and the orders of knighthood
gained little foothold in Italy, where the conditions necessary for the
growth and development of such a social and military order were far
from propitious. Knights, it is true, came and went in Italy, and
performed their deeds of valor; fair maidens were rescued, and women
and children were given succor; but the knights were foreign knights,
and they owed allegiance to a foreign lord. So far, then, Italy was
without the institution of chivalry, and, to a great degree, insensible to
those high ideals of fealty and honor which were the cardinal virtues of
the knightly order. Owing to the absence of these fine qualities of mind
and soul, the Italian in war was too often of fierce and relentless temper,
showing neither pity nor mercy and having no compassion for a fallen

foe. Warriors never admitted prisoners to ransom, and the annals of
their contests are destitute of those graceful courtesies which shed such
a beautiful lustre over the contests of England and France. Stratagems
were as common as open and glorious battle, and private injuries were
revenged by assassination and not by the fair and manly joust à
l'outrance. However, when a man pledged his word for the
performance of any act and wished his sincerity to be believed, he
always swore by the parola di cavaliere, and not by the parola di
cortigiano, so general was the acknowledgment of the moral
superiority of chivalry.
It was in the midst of this age of ignorance that Matilda, the great
Countess of Tuscany, by means of her wisdom and intelligence and her
many graces of mind and body, made such a great and lasting
reputation for herself that her name has come down in history as the
worthy companion of William the Conqueror and the great monk
Hildebrand, later Pope Gregory VII., her most distinguished
contemporaries. Matilda's father, Boniface, was the richest and most
powerful nobleman of his time in all Italy, and as Margrave and Duke
of Tuscany, Duke of Lucca, Marquis of Modena, and Count of Reggio,
Mantua, and Ferrara, he exerted a very powerful feudal influence.
Though at first unfriendly to the interests of the papal party in Italy, he
was just about ready to espouse its cause when he fell under the hand of
an assassin; and then it was that Matilda, by special dispensation of the
emperor, was allowed to inherit directly her father's vast estate, which
she shared at first with her brother Frederick and her sister Beatrice.
Generally, fiefs reverted to the emperor and remained within his
custody for five years--were held in probate, as it were--before the
lawful heirs were allowed to enter into possession of their property.
Frederick and Beatrice were short-lived, however, and it was not many
years before Matilda was left as sole heir to this great domain; she was
not entirely alone, as she had the watchful care and guidance of her
mother, who assisted her in every emergency.
As the result of this condition of affairs, both mother and daughter were
soon sought in marriage by many ardent and ambitious suitors, each
presenting his claims for preferment and doing all in his power to bring

about an alliance which meant so much for the future. Godfrey of
Lorraine, who was not friendly to the party of the Emperor Henry III.,
while on a raid in Italy, pressed his suit with such insistency that the