of those women who came early on Sunday morning with perfumes to embalm the body of Christ. SAPPHIRA, THE wife of Ananias, who, with her husband, made pretence of becoming converts to the religion of Jesus, soon after the apostles commenced their mission. We only hear of this couple, because of one wicked act. The disciples of the new faith then shared their property in common. Ananias sold his possessions, pretending to bring all the money to the apostles, while he kept back part of the price, his wife also being privy." For this lie, Ananias and Sapphira were struck down dead. The record is remarkable in another respect; it is the only example given in the New Testament of an evil deed, or act of apostasy, done by any woman who professed to follow the Saviour. See Acts, chap. v. SAPPHIRA, THE wife of a rich merchant in Gueldres, equally distinguished for her beauty and virtue. Rhinsauld, a German officer, and governor of the town of Gueldres, became enamoured of her, and finding promises and presents ineffectual, imprisoned her husband, pretending that he kept up a traitorous correspondence with the enemies of the state. Sapphira yielded to the passion of the governor, to obtain the promised release of her husband; but Rhinsauld had given private orders for his execution. Sapphira complained to Charles, duke of Burgundy, who ordered Rhinsauld to marry her, and make over to her all his possessions. As soon as this was done, Charles ordered him to be put to death. Thus the children of a wife whom he had seduced, and a husband whom he had murdered, inherited his wealth. This happened in the fifteenth century. SCALA, ALEXANDRA, was daughter of Bartholemi Scala, an Italian, eminent as a statesman and man of letters in the fifteenth century, and was a very accomplished woman. She became the wife of the celebrated Marullus, whose avowed reason for marrying her was to become perfect in the Latin tongue. Nevertheless, she was not only a learned, but an excellent and a beautiful woman. She was often praised by Politian in Greek. She died in 1506. Marullus wrote several poems in her praise. SELVAGGIA, RICCIARDA, WAS of a noble family of Pistoia, and beloved by Cino, a famous scholar and poet of the fourteenth century. The parents of Ricciarda were haughty, and though she returned the love of the young poet, it was unknown to her family. At length her father, who belonged to the faction of the Bianchi, was banished, with his family, from Pistoia, by the faction of the Neri. They took refuge in a little fortress among the Apennines, where they suffered severe privations. Cino hastened to comfort them, and the parents now received him gladly; but Ricciarda drooped under the pressure of anxiety and want, and died in a few months. Her parents and her lover buried her in a nook among the mountains; and many years afterwards, when Cino had been crowned with wreaths and honours, he made a pilgrimage to her tomb. Ricciarda, or Selvaggia, as she is usually called, possessed poetical talents which were then considered of a high order. Some of her "Madrigals" are now extant; but her chief fame rests on being the beloved of Cino. In the history of Italian poetry, Selvaggia is distinguished as the "bel numero una," the fair number one of the four celebrated women of the fourteenth century. The others were Dante's Beatrice, Petrarch's Laura, and Boccaccio's Fiammetta. SENENA, or SINA, WIFE of Gryffydh, son of Llewellyn, prince of North Wales. Gryffydh having been supplanted and imprisoned by his younger brother, David, Senena, a woman of spirit and address, in concert with the bishop of Bangor, and many of the Welsh nobility, entered into a treaty with Henry III. of England, hoping to interest him in her husband's cause. She managed the business so well that she induced Henry to demand Gryffydh of his brother, who gave him up, but, at the same time, infused such suspicions of Gryffydh into the breast of Henry, that he confined him in the Tower of London. After two years' imprisonment, Gryffydh was killed by a fall, while attempting to escape, in the presence of his wife and son, who shared his captivity, 1244. This son afterwards became joint sovereign of Wales, with his brother. SETON, LADY, was the wife of Sir Alexander Seton, who was acting-governor of Berwick-upon-Tweed, at the time that important fortress was besieged by Edward III. The garrison, being reduced to a scarcity of provisions, proposed to surrender upon the terms that there should be an armistice of five days, and if in that interval the town and castle should not be relieved by two hundred menat-arms, or by battle, they should be given up to Edward; the lives and property of the inhabitants to be protected. The eldest son of Sir Alexander Seton was one of the hostages delivered by the Scots for the performance of the conditions: the younger son of Seton was also a prisoner in Edward's hands, having been taken in a sally. No sooner had Edward obtained the hostages, than he insisted on the immediate surrender of the town, threatening Sir Alexander, that if he refused, his two sons should immediately be hung in front of the ramparts. The governor was thunderstruck, and, in his agony, was on the point of sacrificing his country's honour to his paternal tenderness, when he was roused and supported in his duty by his wife, the mother of these two sons. Lady Seton came suddenly forward, and called upon her husband to stand firm to his honour and his country. She represented, that if the savage monarch did really put his threat into execution, they should become the most wretched of parents, but their sons would have died nobly for their country, and they themselves could wear out life in sorrow for their loss; but, that if he abandoned his honour, their king, their country, their consciences, nay, their sons themselves, would regard them with contempt; and that they should not only be miserable, but entail lasting disgrace on those they sought to save. Never did Spartan or Roman matron plead with the eloquence of the most exalted virtue, more forcibly against the weakness of her own and her husband's mind. And when she saw, across the water, preparations actually making for the death of her sons, and beheld her husband, at the dreadful spectacle, again giving way, she drew him from the horrid scene, and thus saved his honour, though at the sacrifice of their children. The tyrant put them to death. This was in July, 1332. SFORZA, BIANCA MARIA VISCONTI, was the natural child of Filippo Visconti; and, being his only daughter, she was legitimated, and apportioned with the dowry of a princess; and, in 1441, she was married to Francesco Sforza, duke of Milan. She was then fifteen years of age, and distinguished among all the ladies of the court for beauty and elegance. The duchess, though not of a race eminent for piety, had always an inclination for promoting religious institutions; by her influence over her husband, who loved her passionately, she was now in a situation to gratify her pious wishes. She placed the first stone in the temple of St. Agnes, in Milan; and, nine years afterwards, erected the church of St. Nicolas, and founded the monastery of Corpo Cristo, in Cremona. But her most useful and greatest establishment was the grand hospital of Milan, a magnificent edifice, which she caused to be begun in 1456, but which was not completed until 1797. After the death of her husband, she was regent for her son, Galeazzo. In her administration she exhibited the utmost strictness, good sense, and political ability. Her son, when arrived at manhood, ungratefully forgetting all he owed to her care and prudence, rendered his conduct so distasteful to her, by his arrogance and rudeness, that she retired to an estate she possessed at Marignard, where she began a plan of life to be pursued in good works and pious duties; when a sudden death terminated her existence, at the age of forty-two, in the year 1468. SFORZA, IPOLITA, wife of Alphonso II., king of Naples. Born at Milan, 1445; died, 1488. She understood the classical languages; and Lascari wrote a grammar for her, in Greek. Argelatti declares that she wrote Latin with consummate elegance. In the Ambrosian Library, at Milan, are preserved two orations, in Latin, spoken by her in Mantua, to pope Pius II. In the monastery of Santa Croce is to be seen an autograph manuscript of a codex to Cicero's treatise De Senectute, in which she has produced striking thoughts in a finished style of expression. SHORE, JANE, the celebrated mistress of Edward IV., king of England, was the wife of Matthew Shore, a goldsmith in Lombard-street, London. She is represented as extremely beautiful, cheerful, and very generous. She never used her great influence over the king to the prejudice of any one, but in favour of the unfortunate. After his death, she attached herself to Lord Hastings; and when he was executed by Richard III., Jane Shore was also arrested on the accusation of witchcraft; however, she was only condemned to a public penance as an adulteress, and the loss of her property. Sir Thomas More saw her in the reign of. Henry VIII., poor, old, and shrivelled, without the least trace of her former beauty. The popular tradition of her dying of hunger in a ditch, is untrue. SOPHIA, OF Hispali, was a Spanish-Arabian lady, celebrated for her poetry and oratory. She died in 1039. None of her writings are now extant. She had a sister, Maria, who was also a poet and a learned lady. SULPITIA, A ROMAN poetess, who lived in the reign of Domitian, in the first century after Christ. She has been called the Roman Sappho. There are none of her writings left but a fragment of a satire against Domitian, who published a decree for the banishment of the philosophers from Rome. This satire has usually been printed at the end of the Satires of Juvenal, to whom it has been sometimes falsely attributed. From the invocation, it would seem that she was the author of many other poems, and the first Roman lady who taught her sex to vie with the Greeks in poetry. Her language is easy and elegant, and she appears to have had a ready talent for satire. She is mentioned by Martial and Sidonius Apollinaris, and is said to have addressed to her husband Calenus, who was a Roman knight, "A Poem on Conjugal Love." The thirty-fifth epigram in Martial's tenth book refers to her poem on conjugal love : "Omnes Sulpiciam legant puellæ, Uni quæ cupiant viro placere. SURVILLE, MARGUERITE ELEONORE CLOTILDE DE, of the noble family of Vallon Chalys, was the wife of Berenger de Surville, and lived in those disastrous times which immediately succeeded the battle of Agincourt. She was born in 1405, and educated in the court of the count de Foix, where she gave an early proof of literary and poetical talent, by translating, when eleven years old, one of Petrarch's Canzoni, with a harmony of style wonderful, not only for her age, but for the time in which she lived. At the age of sixteen, she married the Chevalier de Surville, then, like herself, in the bloom of youth, and to whom she was passionately attached. In those days no man of high standing, who had a feeling for the misery of his country, or a hearth and home to defend, could avoid taking an active part in the scenes of barbarous strife around him; and De Surville, shortly after his marriage, followed his heroic sovereign, Charles VII., to the field. During his absence, his wife addressed to him the most beautiful effusions of conjugal tenderness to be found in the compass of poetry. Clotilda has entitled her first epistle "Heroïde à mon époux Bérenger;" and as it is dated in 1422, she could not have been more than seventeen when it was written. The commencement recalls the superscription of the first letter of Heloise to Abelard. "Clotilde, au sien ami, douce mande accolade! Ah, tandis qu'eplorée et de cœur si malade, Que deviens? où cours tu? Lion de ta bien-aimée, Où les destins, entrainent donc tes pas ? 'Faut que le dise, hèlas! s'en crois la renommée De bien long temps ne te reverrai pas?" Among some other little poems, which place the conjugal and maternal character of Clotilde in a most charming light, one deserves notice for its tender and heartfelt beauty. It is entitled "Ballade à mon premier né," and is addressed to her child, apparently in the absence of its father. "O chèr enfantelet, vrai portrait de ton père ! "N'etait ce teint fleuri des couleurs de la pomme, Then, shuddering at the idea she had conjured up, she breaks forth into a passionate apostrophe to her sleeping child. "Arrête, chèr enfant! j'en fiémis toute entière- Mon fils.... pour un moment--ah revois la lumière! | Douce erreur! il dormait.... c'est, assez, je respire. Songes légers, flattez son doux sommeil Ah! quand verrai celui pour qui mon cœur soupire, Au miens cotés jouir de son réveil? * Quand reverrai eelui dont as reçu la vie? Mon jeune époux, le plus beau des humains Oui-déja crois voir ta mère, aux cieux ravie, Que tends vers lui tes innocentes mains. Comme ira se duisant à ta première caresse! Au miens baisers com' t'ira disputant! Ainz ne compte, à toi seul, d'épuiser sa tendresse,A sa Clotilde en garde bien autant!" Her husband, count de Surville, closed his brief career of happiness and glory (and what more than these could he have asked of heaven?) at the siege of Orleans, where he fought under the banner of Joan of Arc. He was a gallant and a loyal knight; so were hundreds of others who then strewed the desolated fields of France: and De Surville had fallen undistinguished amid the general havoc of all that was noble and brave, if the love and genius of his wife had not immortalized him. Clotilde, after her loss, resided in the château of her husband, in the Lyonnois, devoting herself to literature and the education of her son; and it is very remarkable, considering the times in which she lived, that she neither married again, nor entered a religious house. The fame of her poetical talents, which she continued to cultivate in her retirement, rendered her at length an object of celebrity and interest. The duke of Orleans happened one day to repeat some of her verses to Margaret of Scotland, the first wife of Louis XI.; and that accomplished patroness of poetry and poets wrote her an invitation to attend her at court; which Clotilde modestly declined. The queen then sent her, as a token of her admiration and friendship, a wreath of laurel, surmounted with a bouquet of daisies, (Marguèrites, in allusion to the name of both,) the leaves of which were wrought in silver and the flowers in gold, with this inscription: "Marguerite d'Ecosse à Marguerite d' Helicon." We are told that Alain Chartier, envious, perhaps, of these distinctions, wrote a satirical quatrain, in which he accused Clotilde of being deficient in l'air de cour; and that she replied to him, and defended herself, in a very spirited rondeau. Nothing more is known of the life of this interesting woman, but that she had the misfortune to survive her son as well as her husband; and dying at the advanced age of ninety, in 1495, she was buried with them in the same tomb. SYBELLA, WIFE of Robert of Normandy, son of William the Conqueror, lived in the twelfth century. Her husband was wounded by a poisoned arrow, and, while he slept, Sybella applied her lips to the wound, and drew forth the venom, which soon caused her death. SYMPHOROSA, A ROMAN matron, living in the reign of Trajan, embraced the Christian faith with her seven sons. During Trajan's persecution of the Christians, about the year 108, Symphrosa was ordered to sacrifice to the heathen deities. Refusing to comply with this command, she and her sons were cruelly put to death. Many other women suffered death in this persecution for the same cause. ww.wwwww.~ T. TENDA, BEATRICE, was born in 1370, in a castle erected in a valley which opens to the north of the celebrated Col di Tenda. Her progenitors were counts Lascari di Ventimiglia, sovereigns of a large province in the maritime region of the Alps, and more properly were called counts di Tenda. How or why Beatrice was given in marriage to the celebrated condottier, Facino Cane, cannot now be ascertained. Probably her family constrained her to this union. By him she was, however, always treated with the greatest consideration and respect; his glories and treasures were divided with her; and while his wife, she received sovereign honours, and by her gentle influence she mitigated the natural cruelty of his disposition. The elevation of Facino Cane was owing to these circumstances. The viscount's family had rendered their sovereignty odious throughout Lombardy by a course of crimes and oppressions beyond endurance. In their domestic relations assassinations and poisonings were frequent; towards their subjects they were cruel and unjust; and towards other princes their outrageous violations of the most solemn treaties seemed to render an alliance with them impossible. Things had arrived at such a point, that at the death of duke Giovanni, all classes were determined to put an end to their dominion. The principal captains of the provinces assembled, and elected the most distinguished of their leaders, Facino Cane, to be at the head of a new government. He, a very warlike and unscrupulous man, soon rendered himself master of the state of Milan; and to the power he would doubtless soon have added the title of duke, had not death taken him off in the midst of his glory and conquests. He left every possession in the hands of his widow; and from this state of things the viscount's faction evolved a plan for re-obtaining their former dignities. The heir of that house, Filippo Visconti, lived in seclusion; he was brought forward, and by various manoeuvres familiar to politicians, a marriage was effected between him and Beatrice di Tenda. By this connection she resigned the treasures, the fortresses, the army of Facino Cane, and by these means he obtained an easy conquest over the various little rulers of the neighbourhood; and, building on the foundation erected by Facino, achieved a state more extended and powerful than had been enjoyed by his predecessors. A curious result of perverse sentiments arose from this; the more he felt that the valour and conduct of Facino had contributed to his grandeur, the plainer he perceived that these qualities eclipsed all that the Visconts could boast of, the more he hated any allusion to the brave condottier; and he felt a growing aversion to Beatrice as the widow of this man, and as the person to whom his own elevation was owing. Besides, she was twenty years older than he; and though she was still handsome, and eminently endowed with accomplishments and mental charms, his inclinations were fixed upon a young girl named Agnes de Maino. At first his hate manifested itself in neglect and contumelious treatment. Beatrice, who had been in the time of Facino the adored object of every attention, the cynosure of all eyes, was now exposed to jeers, and left to solitude. To amuse her dreary hours, she sought to draw around her the society of some persons of letters and talents, and among whom was Orombello, a young gentleman quite remarkable for his sprightly conversation, his many acquirements, and especially his skill in music. This intimacy with the duchess, though perfectly innocent and harmless, was seized upon by Filippo as a pretext for the destruction of his guiltless wife. Calumnies and aspersions were followed by imprisonment; next came the rack. Under its tortures, Orombello avowed whatever they proposed; but on the firmer spirit of Beatrice torture had no effect to oblige her to distort the truth. With a despot and a Visconti, judgment was pronounced as he ordered; and the unhappy victims were condemned to be executed. Beatrice was so much beloved by the people, that Filippo ordered her judgment and decapitation to take place at night, and in the secret dungeons of the castle, as open measures might have caused a revolt. Before the blow of the executioner was allowed to fall, they were again cruelly submitted to the torture, and Orombello again weakly gave way. Beatrice, still superior to bodily suffering, addressed him in a very noble speech, which has been transmitted from an ear-witness. After reproaching him for basely uttering falsehoods in that tremendous hour, she pathetically turned to God, and addressed him in a solemn prayer, as the being who knew her innocence, and as the sole support left to her. They were buried in the court-yard without any memorial. The purity and excellence of Beatrice were disputed by nobody; and her violent death was in fact a judicial murder. Her melancholy story has been the theme of poets and romance writers, and has been sung by the plaintive genius of Bellini. THECLA, A NOBLE lady of Alexandria, in Egypt, who transcribed the whole of the Bible into the Greek, from the original Septuagint copy then in the Alexandrian library; and this ancient copy is still preserved, and is the celebrated Alexandrian manuscript, so often appealed to by commentators. It was presented to Charles I. of England, by the patriarch of Constantinople, in 1628. THEODELINDA, QUEEN of the Lombards, was the daughter of Garibaldo, duke of Bavaria. She was betrothed to Childebert, but rejected by his mother, the haughty Brunechild. She afterwards, in 589, married Antari, king of the Lombards, with whom she lived in great affection; when in 590 he died, not without suspicion of poison. The people were very much attached to her; but that turbulent age seemed to require a stronger hand than that of a young girl, to sway the rod of empire. She therefore found it expedient to contract a second marriage with Flavius Agilulphus, who, as her husband, was invested with the ensigns of royalty before a general congress at Milan. She was destined to be a second time a widow. Agilulphus died in 615. From that time she assumed the government as regent, which she maintained with vigour and prosperity; she encouraged and improved agriculture; endowed charitable foundations; and, in accordance with what the piety of that age required, built monasteries. What was more extraordinary, and seems to have been rarely thought of by the men sovereigns of that day, she reduced the taxes, and tried to soften the miseries of the inferior classes. She died in 628, bitterly lamented by her subjects. Few men have exhibited powers of mind so well balanced as were those of Theodelinda; and this natural sense of the just and true fitted her for the duties of government. THEODORA, EMPRESS of the East, the wife of Justinian, famous for her beauty, intrigues, ambition, and talents, and for the part she acted in the direction of affairs, both in church and state, in the reign of her husband. Her father was the keeper of the beasts for public spectacles at Constantinople, and she herself was a dancer at the theatre, and a courtezan notorious for her contempt of decency, before her elevation to the throne. Justinian saw her on the stage, and made her his mistress during the reign of his uncle Justin, whose consent he at length obtained for his marriage with Theodora; and a Roman law, which prohibited the marriage of the great officers of the empire with actresses, was repealed in her favour. She was crowned, together with Justinian, in 527; and the death of Justin, shortly after, left her in possession of sovereign authority, through the blind partiality and weakness of her imperial consort. She made use of the power she had attained to raise from obscurity her friends and favourites, and to avenge herself of her enemies. According to Procopius, she continued to indulge herself in the most degrading sensuality after she became empress; and, if the disgusting detail which he gives of her crimes is to be believed, seldom indeed has a brothel been disgraced by scenes of more infamous profligacy than those exhibited in the palace of Theodora. With all her faults, however, this woman displayed courage and presence of mind in circumstances of difficulty and danger; for in the alarming sedition at Constantinople, in 532, her counsels animated the drooping spirits of Justinian, and induced him to forego his inglorious design of fleeing before the rebels, who were subsequently reduced to subjection by Belisarius. Theodora died of a cancer in 548, much to the regret of her surviving husband. THOMA, A MOORISH Spaniard, also called Habeba of Valencia. She wrote celebrated books on grammar and jurisprudence. She died in 1127. THUSNELDA, THE wife of Herman, or Armin, the prince of the Cherusky and conqueror of Voro. She was born in the year 7 of the new era. A daughter of Segest, a prince of the Cherusky, she married Herman contrary to the wish of her father, who was the ally and friend of the Romans. When Herman took up arms in behalf of his people, she did everything in her power to sustain him in his arduous undertaking. One day, while Herman was pursuing the enemy, Segest attacked his castle, where Thusnelda had been left under the care of Herman's mother, and carried her off, before her husband could hasten to her assistance. Thusnelda remained for a while a prisoner in the hands of her cruel father, who finally delivered her over to the Romans, as a victim for her husband's attempt to liberate his people. Herman made several desperate attempts to rescue her, but in vain; she was carried to Rome with her little |