TORNABUONI,

LUCREZIA, of Florence, was the wife of Pietro de Medici, and mother of Lorenzo the Magnificent. She was a zealous promoter of literature. Under her patronage, and by her encouragement, Pulci published his Morgante. She wrote in Spenserian | stanza, or, as the Italians term it, octave rhyme 46 The Life of St. John,' "The History of Judith," of "Susanna," and of "Tobit," besides the "Life of the Blessed Virgin Mary." She died, 1482.

U.

URRACA, or PATERNA,

Was the wife of Don Ramiro, a king of Oviedo and Leon, who succeeded Don Alphonso on the throne of Spain. Urraca was a very pious Catholic, and celebrated for her zeal in contributing to endow churches. She lavished rich gifts on the church of St. James (Santiago,) in gratitude to that saint for the assistance he rendered the Christians against the Moors at the battle of Clavjo, where he is said to have appeared, armed cap-apie, mounted on a white charger, and bearing a white banner, with a red cross embroidered in the centre. This is the origin of invoking this patron saint on the eve of battle, and of the war-cry, of “Santiago y cierra España”—St. James and close Spain! Doña Urraca died in 861, and was buried by the side of her husband, who had died in 831, in the church of St. Mary, in Oviedo.

URGULANIA,

A ROMAN lady, was a favourite of the empress Livia, mother of Tiberius. So insolent did she grow upon this, that she refused to go to the Senate to give in her evidence, and therefore the prætor was obliged to repair to her house to examine her. Lucius Piso sued her for a debt, and Urgulania withdrew to the emperor's palace, refusing to appear; but Piso proceeded in his suit; and, although Tiberius promised his mother that he would solicit the judges in favour of Urgulania, Livia was at length obliged to have the sum which Piso claimed paid to him.

URGULANILLA,

GRAND-DAUGHTER of Urgulania, was married to the emperor Claudius, before he was raised to the empire. He had by her a son and daughter. | Claudius repudiated Urgulanilla on account of her bad reputation, and her being suspected of murder. In that age of crime, it was a mark of her discretion or innocence when no murder was proven against her.

V.

VALADA,

A MOORISH Spaniard, daughter of king Almostakeph, of Corduba, was greatly skilled in polite learning. She more than once contended with

VALENTINE,

Or Milan, daughter of John Galeas, duke of Milan, and of Isabelle, the youngest of the ten children of John II. of France, married, in 1389, Louis, duke of Orleans, brother of Charles VI. of France. She was a beautiful and accomplished woman, and appears, in the midst of that disastrous epoch in French history, like an angel of goodness and beauty. The first few years that Valentine passed in France, were spent in the midst of festivals, and all kinds of amusements. Although her husband was unfaithful to her, he surrounded her with all splendour and luxury suited to her rank and station. She occupied herself principally in taking care of her children, and in literary pursuits, for which she, as well as her husband, had a decided taste.

The insanity of her brother-in-law, Charles VI., affected Valentine deeply, and she exerted herself to the utmost to calm his paroxysms, and console him for the negligence of his wife. Charles, in his turn, became very much attached to her; he called her his well-beloved sister, went every day to see her, and in the midst of his ravings could always be controlled by her. Her power over the unhappy monarch seemed to the ignorant populace so supernatural, that she was accused of using sorcery, and, to prevent disagreeable consequences, her husband sent her, in 1395, to the duchy of Orleans.

This exile, so painful to Valentine, terminated in 1398, when she was recalled to Paris; after this time she lived principally at Blois, superintending the education of her sons, till the death of Louis d'Orleans, who was assassinated by the duke of Burgundy, in 1407. Unable to avenge his death, she died of a broken heart, in 1408, aged thirty-eight, recommending to her children, and to John, count of Dunois, the natural son of her husband, the vindication of their father's reputation and glory.

VALERIA,

DAUGHTER of the emperor Dioclesian, who had abdicated the throne in 305, was married to Galerius, on his being created Cæsar, about 292. Galerius became emperor of Rome in 305, and died in 311. He recommended Valeria, and his natural son Candidien, whom he had caused Valeria to adopt, as he had no other, to Licinius, his friend, whom he had raised to be emperor. Valeria was rich and beautiful, and Licinius wished to marry her; but Valeria, to avoid this, fled from the court of Licinius, with her mother Prisca and Candidien, and took refuge with Maximin, one of the other emperors.

He had already a wife and children, and as the adopted son of Galerius, had been accustomed to regard Valeria as his mother. But her beauty and wealth tempted him, and he offered to divorce his present wife if she would take her place. Valeria replied, "That still wearing the garb of mourning, she could not think of marriage; that Maximin should remember his

father, the husband of Valeria, whose ashes were not yet cold; that he could not commit a greater injustice than to divorce a wife by whom he was beloved; and that she could not flatter herself with better treatment; in fine, that it would be an unprecedented thing for a woman of her rank to engage in a second marriage."

This reply roused Maximin's fury. He proscribed Valeria, seized upon her possessions, tortured some of her officers to death, and took the rest away from her, banished her and her mother, and caused several ladies of the court, friends of theirs, to be executed on a false accusation of adultery. Valeria, exiled to the deserts of Syria, found means to inform Dioclesian of her misery; and he sent to Maximin, desiring the surrender of his daughter, but in vain: the unhappy father died of grief. At length Prisca and Valeria went disguised to Nicomedia, where Licinius was, and mingled unknown among the domestics of Candidien. Licinius soon became jealous of him, and had him assassinated at the age of sixteen. Valeria and Prisca again fled, and for fifteen months wandered in disguise through different provinces. they were discovered and arrested in Thessalonica, in 315, and were condemned to death by Licinius, for no other crime than their rank and chastity. They were beheaded, amidst the tears of the people, and their bodies were thrown into the sea. Some authors assert that they were Christians.

At length

VARANO DI COSTANZA,

BORN at Camerino, 1428. She had a learned and literary education. Her family having lost the signory of Camerino, she made a Latin harangue to Bianca Visconti, in order to obtain its restitution. Having failed in her eloquence, she wrote to the principal sovereigns of Italy to procure assistance, and this time her efforts resulted successfully. At the restoration of her father she addressed a large assembly in a Latin oration. This erudite lady became the wife of Alexander Sforza, sovereign of Pesaro. She died in 1447, at the age of nineteen, leaving a son, Costanzo. She has left several orations and some epistles.

VELEDA, or VELLEDA, WAS a German prophetess, who lived in the country of the Bructeri in the first century. She exercised a powerful influence over her own countrymen, and the Romans regarded her with great awe and dread. She was venerated as a goddess, and to increase the respect with which she was regarded, she lived in a high tower, allowing no one to see her, and communicating her directions, on the important affairs of her nation, to the people, through one of her relations. She instigated her countrymen to rebel against the Romans.

VICTORINA,

A CELEBRATED Roman matron, who placed herself at the head of the Roman armies, and made war against the emperor Gallienus. Her son Victorinus, and her grand-son of the same name, were declared emperors, but when they were as

sassinated, Victorina invested with the imperial purple one of her favourites, called Petricius. She was some time after poisoned, in 269, and according to some by Petricius himself.

VON DER WART,

GERTRUDE, was the wife of baron Von der Wart, who was accused, in the fourteenth century, of being an accomplice in the murder of Albert, emperor of Germany. There is every reason to believe that Von der Wart was innocent, but he was condemned to be broken on the wheel; and during the whole of his sufferings, which lasted for two days and nights, his wife braved the queen's anger and the inclemency of the weather to watch by his scaffold, and soften, as much as possible, the tortures of that agonizing death. During one of the days, she saw the queen, who, in male attire, and surrounded by her courtiers, rode up to see how Von der Wart was bearing his sufferings. The queen ordered Gertrude to be sent away, but some more compassionate persons interfering, she was allowed to remain.

Her own sufferings, with those of her unfortunate husband, are most touchingly described in a letter which she afterwards wrote to a female friend, and which was published some years ago, at Haarlam, in a book entitled, "Gertrude Von der Wart, or Fidelity unto Death." Mrs. Hemans wrote a poem of great pathos and beauty, commemorating this sad story.

W.

WALPURGA, or WALPURGIS,

A SAINT in the Roman Catholic Church, was born in England, and was the sister of St. Willibald, first bishop of Eichstädt, in Germany, and niece of St. Boniface, the apostle to the Germans. She went to Germany as a missionary, and was made abbess of a convent at Heidenheim, in Franconia. She was a learned woman, and wrote a work in Latin, entitled, 66 The Travels of St. Willibald." She died in 778, and was canonized after her death by the pope. From some accidental association, the night previous to the first of May is called, in many parts of Germany, Walpurgis night.

WOODVILLE,

ELIZABETH, was the widow of Sir John Grey, who lost his life in the battle of Bernard's Heath. Edward IV. king of England, married her, though he had before demanded Bona of Savoy, sister to the queen of France, in marriage. The story of the courtship and marriage of this beautiful woman is like a romance; how king Edward first saw her, when, clad in the deepest weeds of widowhood, she threw herself at his feet and pleaded for the restoration of the inheritance of her fatherless sons; how the king fell desperately in love with her; how she resisted his passion, till he offered her honourable marriage; the secresy of the espousals; and the grandeur of her queenly life,

with the wretchedness of her lot after the death of Edward, are all like scenes in a highly-wrought fiction. The effect of the ill-assorted marriage was soon apparent on the fortunes of Edward. It made the French king, and also the earl of Warwick, his enemy. The queen's happiness was embittered by Edward's infidelity. After the death of Edward, in 1483, her two sons were murdered by their uncle Richard III., who had usurped the crown. After the battle of Bosworth, where Richard was defeated and killed by Henry, earl of Richmond, afterwards Henry VII., the conqueror married Elizabeth, the daughter of Edward IV. and Elizabeth, thus uniting the houses of York and Lancaster.

Elizabeth took a third husband, Lord Stanley. She died in the convent of Bermondsey, where her son-in-law, Henry VII., had provided an asylum for her years and misfortunes. The daughter of Elizabeth, then queen of England, attended her death-bed, and paid her grand-mother every attention.

ZAIDA,

A MOORISH princess, daughter of Benabet, king of Seville, married Alfonso VI., king of Castile and Leon. Zaida is said to have been induced to adopt the Christian faith by a dream, in which St. Isodorus appeared to her and persuaded her to become a convert. Her father, when she acquainted him with the resolution she had formed, made no objections; but fearful it might cause discontent among his subjects, he allowed her to escape to Leon. Thither she fled; the Christian sovereigns instructed her in the new creed, and had her baptized Isabel; or, as some assert, Mary. Zaida subsequently became the third wife of Alfonso, the king; though Pelagius, the bishop of Oviedo, denies that she was married to that sovereign, asserting she was only his mistress. She bore the king one son, Don Sancho, and died soon afterwards, near the close of the eleventh century.

brated for her beauty, the melody of her voice, her mental talents, literary acquirements, and her distinguished heroism and valour, as well as her modesty and chastity. "Her manly understanding," says Gibbon, "was strengthened and adorned by study. She was not ignorant of the Latin tongue, and possessed in equal excellence the Greek, the Syriac, and the Egyptian languages; she had drawn up, for her own use, an epitome of Oriental history, and familiarly compared the beauties of Homer and Plato, under the tuition of the sublime Longinus."

She married Odenatus, a Saracen prince, who had raised himself from a private station to the dominion of the East; and she delighted in those exercises of war and the chase to which he was devoted. She often accompanied her husband on long and toilsome marches, on horseback or on foot, at the head of his troops; and many of his victories have been ascribed to her skill and valour.

Odenatus was assassinated, with his son Herod, by his nephew Maronius, about the year 267, in revenge for a punishment Odenatus had inflicted on him. Maronius then seized upon the throne; but he had hardly assumed the sovereign title, when Zenobia, assisted by the friends of her husband, wrested the government from him, and put him to death. For five years she governed Palmyra and the East with vigour and ability; so that by her success in warlike expeditions, as well as by the wisdom and firmness of her administration, she aggrandized herself in Asia, and her authority was recognized in Cappadocia, Bithynia, and Egypt. She united with the popular manners of a Roman princess, the stately pomp of the Oriental courts, and styled herself "Queen of the East." She attended, herself, to the education of her three sons, and frequently showed them to her troops, adorned with the imperial purple.

When Aurelian succeeded to the Roman empire, dreading the power of such a rival, and determined to dispossess her of some of the rich provinces under her dominion, he marched, at the head of a powerful army, into Asia; and, having defeated the queen's general, Zabdas, near Antioch, Zenobia retreated to Emessa, whither she was pursued by Aurelian. Under the walls of that city, another engagement, commanded and animated by Zenobia herself, took place, in which the emperor was again victorious. The unfortunate queen withdrew the relics of her forces to Palmyra, her capital, where she was pursued by Aurelian. Having closely invested the city, he found the besieged made a most spirited resistance.

It was after he had been wounded by an arrow, that he wrote his memorable letter to the senate of Rome, defending himself from the charge of protracting the siege unnecessarily.

"The Roman people," says Aurelian, "speak with contempt of the war I am waging against a woman. They are ignorant both of the character and of the power of Zenobia. It is impossible to enumerate her warlike preparations of stones, of arrows, and every species of missile weapons. Every part of the walls is provided with two or

three balista, and artificial fires are thrown from her military engines. The fear of punishment has armed her with a desperate courage. Yet still I trust in the protecting deities of Rome, who have hitherto been favourable to all my undertakings."

But though Aurelian appeared confident of final success, yet he found the conquest of Palmyra so difficult that he proposed very advantageous offers to Zenobia, if she would submit and surrender the the city. She rejected his terms, in the following haughty letter, addressed to the emperor himself: "It is not by writing, but by arms, that the submission you require from me can be obtained. You have dared to propose my surrender to your prowess. You forget that Cleopatra preferred death to servitude. The Saracens, the Persians, the Armenians, are marching to my aid; and how are you to resist our united forces, who have been more than once scared by the plundering Arabs of the desert? When you shall see me march at the head of my allies, you will not repeat an insolent proposition, as though you were already my conqueror and master."

Whatever may be thought of the prudence of this reply, the courage and patriotism of the queen are shown to be of the highest order. She superscribed this daring epistle, "Zenobia, Queen of the East, to Aurelian Augustus."

It was her last triumph. She held out a long time, expecting aid from her allies; but the disturbed state of the country, and the bribes of Aurelian, prevented their arrival. After protracting the siege as long as possible, Zenobia, determined not to surrender, mounted one of the swiftest of her dromedaries, and hastened towards the Euphrates, with a view of seeking an asylum in the Persian territories. But being overtaken in her flight, she was brought back to Aurelian, who sternly demanded of her, how she dared to resist the emperors of Rome. She replied, "Because I could not recognise as such, Gallienus and others like him; you, alone, I acknowledge as my conqueror and my sovereign."

At Emessa, the fate of Zenobia was submitted to the judgment of a tribunal, at which Aurelian presided. Hearing the soldiers clamouring for her death, Zenobia, according to Zosimus, weakly purchased her life, with the sacrifice of her wellearned fame, by attributing the obstinacy of her resistance to the advice of her ministers. It is certain that these men were put to death; and as Zenobia was spared, it was conjectured her accusations drew down the vengeance of the emperor on the heads of her counsellors; but the fact has never been proven. One of the victims of this moment of cowardice, was the celebrated Longinus, who calmly resigned himself to his fate, pitying his unhappy mistress, and comforting his afflicted friends. He was put to death in 273.

Zenobia, reserved to grace the triumph of Aurelian, was taken to Rome, which she entered on foot, preceding a magnificent chariot, designed by her, in the days of her prosperity, for a triumphal entry into Rome She was bound by chains of

gold, supported by a slave, and so loaded with jewels, that she almost fainted under their weight.

She was afterwards treated more humanely by the victor, who presented her an elegant residence near the Tiber, about twenty miles from Rome, where she passed the rest of her life as a Roman matron, emulating the virtues of Cornelia. Whether she contracted a second marriage, with a Roman senator, as some have asserted, is uncertain. Her surviving son, Vhaballat, withdrew into Armenia, where he possessed a small principality, granted him by the emperor; her daughters contracted noble alliances, and her family was not extinct in the fifth century. She died about the year 300.

Zenobia had written a "History of Egypt;" and, previous to her defeat by Aurelian, she interested herself in the theological controversies of the times; and, either from policy or principle, protected Paul of Samosata, the celebrated unitatarian philosopher, whom the council of Antioch had condemned. In estimating her character, it may well be said that she was one of the most illustrious women who have swayed the sceptre of royalty; in every virtue which adorns high station, as far superior to Aurelian, as soul is superior to sense. But moral energy was then overborne by physical force; the era was unpropitious for the gentle sex; yet her triumphs and her misfortunes alike display the wonderful power of woman's spirit.

ZOBEIDE, or ZOEBD-EL-KHEMATIN,

THAT is, the flower of women, was the cousin and wife of the celebrated caliph Haroun al Raschid. She was a beautiful, pious, and benevolent woman, and is said to have founded the city of Tauris, in Persia. She is frequently mentioned in the "Arabian Nights." She died in 831.

ZOE,

FOURTH wife of Leo VI., emperor of Constantinople, was mother of Constantine Porphyrogenitus, during whose minority, 912, she governed with great wisdom and firmness. She crushed the rebellion of Constantine Ducas, made peace with the Saracens, and obliged the Bulgarians to return to their own country. Though thus entitled to the gratitude of her son and the people, she was obliged, by the intrigues of the courtiers, to retire to a private station, and she died in exile.

ZOE,

DAUGHTER of Constantine IX., was born in 978. She married Argyrus, who succeeded her father; but she soon caused her husband to be strangled, and married Michael the Paphlagonian, whom she placed on the throne. She was afterwards confined in a monastery; but on Michael's death, in her sixty-fourth year, she married Constantine Monomachus. She died eight years after this third marriage, in 1050. Another Zoe, daughter of the Stylian, married the emperor Leo, the philosopher, and died in less than two years after, in 893.