[ISABELLA SFORZA.]

An extraordinarily rare survival, an anonymous, unknown English translation of an Italian humanist treatise by a prominent Renaissance woman, Isabella Sforza (1503-c.61), first published as Della vera tranquillita dell’animo by Aldus in 1544. The work was published in Spanish and French translations during the STC period, but never in English. The Italian original is still in print. 

The manuscript dates to the latter half of the sixteenth century, most likely towards its end. This period was characterised by translations of Italian works of travel and voyages, commensurate with the burgeoning interest in New World exploration and colonisation, along with a renewed interest in ‘courtly’ humanism and works on literary style. Especially in the case of the latter genre, the purpose of translation was always, in part at least, the refinement of the English language and its orthography, intended for an increasingly varied audience, as works of Italian humanism became more readily available. This was not apparently true, however, of Sforza’s work, as our translator was working either from a copy of Aldus’s imperfect printed text, or a ms. which was their common ancestor. The translator was missing the last few lines of Chapter 11 and the header for Chapter 12, instead inserting an elaborate note, which, like the preface (see below), gives us some idea of the translator’s own voice: ‘Here, I am inforced to make an abrupt connexion of that which followeth because there wanteth two leaves in the Originall; as though the starrs did envye the good of mankinde, as knowing the conclusion of this booke, to be altogether heavenlye, and therefore fitter for their contemplation, than for the unworthye viewe of earthlye minded mortalitye’ (etc.). The missing portion is matched by N3-4 of the Aldine 1544 edition. Our translator remains anonymous but was evidently from the nobility, addressing this fair copy to their ‘dear mother’ and ‘Ladye’, explicitly emphasising the gender and the nobility of the Italian author: ‘a worthy monument, both of a woman and a Ladye, and therefore the fitter to be consecrated unto you, who muste needs like it well as being a woman, better as being a Ladye, best of all as being a mother’ (etc.). There follows a lengthy diatribe against the misogynistic views held by some men. Possibly this manuscript was also intended for circulation within a wider circle, if not for publication. ‘During the Renaissance as a whole … English interest in the Italian humanists was a non-academic one, the translators originating from varied social classes and walks of life, for numbered among them were aristocrats, merchants, teachers and churchmen’ (Olga Zorzi Pugliese, ‘English Translations from the Italian Humanists: An Interpretive Survey and Bibliography’ in Italica, 50.3 (1973), p. 415).

The preface of 5 pp. is the translator’s own. It contains some charming imagery and turns of phrase, comparing some men to ‘candle-flyes pursuing their owne mischiefe’, others to ‘the Chamelion … still gaping after the ambitous blasts of fleeting preferrments [and] worldly pelfe’, i.e. wealth. The translator also uses a medical metaphor, reflecting some of the content of Sforza’s work, which, ‘muche like to that hearbe Panace[a], among the Phisitions, doth affoord severall medicines, to cure all the diseases of the minde …’ There are twelve chapters in the original text and eleven here (see above), as follows: ‘Of the excellencye and dignitye of man’; ‘Of the principal passions which trouble us’; ‘That povertye is to be preferred before wealth: and that the desire of children is most vayne’; ‘Of the suffering of injuryes: and the refraining from anger’; ‘Howe we ought still to remember, and yet still despise, deathe’; ‘Howe we ought to tame gluttonye and wantonnes’; ‘That we must lay aside pride and envye’; ‘That no ague or cholicke, or goute, or want of sleepe, or leprosye, is able to hinder the tranquillitye of the minde’; ‘That neither blindnes, nor deafnes, can any wise hinder our foresayd tranquillitye’; ‘That neither dombe, nor stammerers, nor those that are full of sores … are thereby hindered from the obtaining of tranquillitye’; ‘That sinne is that which above all other things robbs us of our tranquillitye.’ The final, twelfth chapter – shortened here due to missing text in the original – is on how the ‘knowledge of Jesus Christ atones for our sins and brings us peace’, with an emphasis on reading the scriptures. This is the most explicitly religious portion of Sforza’s text, shown to have been strongly influenced by the Beneficio di Cristo, one of the most popular and influential works of Italian ‘Evangelism’, published 1543, which desired reform of the Catholic Church through individual spirituality, study of scripture and even the problematic doctrine (from a Catholic perspective) of justification by faith (Erdmann). Sforza’s message would have made her treatise appealing to a Protestant English audience, though this chapter also begins by lamenting the schisms and ‘heresies’ affecting the Catholic Church, almost certainly referring to the Reformed churches. It is just possible, therefore, that the translator’s omission of the first part of this chapter indicated their use of a printed copy that had at some point been deliberately defaced. A fascinating and extremely rare example of humanist Elizabethan translation of an Italian text into English, and one that deserves further research.

Isabella Sforza was the illegitimate daughter of Giovanni Sforza, 3rd Lord of Pesaro (d.1510), of the famous ruling family of Milan, and formerly husband of Lucrezia Borgia. Their disastrous marriage ended with Giovanni’s lurid claims of Lucrezia’s incest with her notorious brother Cesare. Pope Alexander VI, father of Cesare and Lucrezia, excommunicated Giovanni in 1500; beset by attacks from the Borgias and his own citizens, Giovanni lost hold of Pesaro, a port on the Adriatic Sea, regaining control only briefly before his death, when Isabella was still a young child. Noted in her lifetime for her learning, very little is known about her, and accounts differ regarding her education. She was frequently in financial trouble (as she makes clear several times in this work) and appears to have lived an itinerant life, though she certainly lived in Piacenza, since this is where the editor of this treatise, Ortensio Lando, found her. Her first husband, a Florentine merchant, Cipriano Sernigi, was murdered in 1532 during an argument; her second, Francesco Carminati di Brembilla, was the godson of Isabella’s own godmother Cecilia Gallerani – known as the model for Leonardo da Vinci’s painting ‘Lady with an Ermine’ – though this marriage was annulled on account of the couple’s ‘spiritual kinship’. Isabella died in Rome without issue.