He
himself rode on horseback, as he could not walk without difficulty. An
edict was afterwards published of the same kind as that of 1496. It is
well known how many churches and monasteries were built by this ruler.
He even sent for a live saint, the Suor Colomba, shortly before he
married his son Alfonso to Lucrezia Borgia (1502). A special messenger
fetched the saint with fifteen other nuns from Viterbo, and the Duke
himself conducted her on her arrival at Ferrara into a convent prepared
for her reception. We shall probably do him no injustice if we
attribute all these measures very largely to political calculation. To
the conception of government formed by the House of Este, this
employment of religion for the ends of statecraft belongs by a kind of
logical necessity.
Religion and the Spirit of the Renaissance
But in order to reach a definite conclusion with regard to the
religious sense of the men of this period, we must adopt a different
method. From their intellectual attitude in general, we can infer their
relation both to the divine idea and to the existing religion of their
age.
These modern men, the representatives of the culture of Italy, were
born with the same religious instincts as other mediaeval Europeans.
But their powerful individuality made them in religion, as in other
matters, altogether subjective, and the intense charm which the
discovery of the inner and outer universe exercised upon them rendered
them markedly worldly.
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