"Gli angeli eletti al gran bene infinito Braman oggi soffrir penosa morte, Acciò nella celeste empirea corte Non sia più il servo, che il signor, gradito. Piange l'antica madre il gusto ardito Ch'a' figli suoi del ciel chiuse le porte; E che due man piagate or sieno scorte Da ridurne al cammin per lei smarrito. Asconde il sol la sua fulgente chioma; Spezzansi i sassi vivi; apronsi i monti; Trema la terra e 'l ciel; turbansi l'acque; Piangon gli spirti, al nostro mal si pronti, Delle catene lor l'aggiunta soma. L'uomo non piange, e pur piangendo nacque!" Of which the following is an inadequate but tolerably faithful translation: "The angels to eternal bliss preferred, Long on this day a painful death to die, Lest in the heavenly mansions of the sky The servant be more favoured than his Lord. Man's ancient mother weeps the deed, this day That shut the gates of heaven against her race, Weeps the two piercèd hands, whose work of grace, Refinds the path, from which she made man stray. The sun his ever-burning ray doth veil; Earth and sky tremble; ocean quakes amain, And mountains gape, and living rocks are torn. The fiends, on watch for human evil, wail The added weight of their restraining chain. Man only weeps not; yet was weeping born." [Sidenote: UNCERTAINTY OF ORTHODOXY.] As the previous extracts from the works of Vittoria have been, as has been stated, selected principally with a view to prove her Protestantism, it is fair to observe, that there are several sonnets addressed to the Virgin Mary, and some to various Saints, from which (though they are wholly free from any allusion to the grosser superstitions that Rome encourages her faithful disciples to connect with these personages), it is yet clear that the writer believed in the value of saintly intercession at the throne of grace. It is also worth remarking, that she nowhere betrays the smallest consciousness that she is differing in opinion from the recognised tenets of the Church, unless it be found, as was before suggested, in an occasional obscurity of phrase, which seems open to the suspicion of having been intentional. The great majority of these poems, however, were in all probability composed before the Church had entered on her new career of persecution. And as regards the ever-recurring leading point of "justification by grace," it was impossible to say exactly how far it was orthodox to go in the statement of this tenet, until Rome had finally decided her doctrine by the decrees of the Council of Trent.